Translated by Ralph Parker. Introduction by Marvin L. Foreword by Alexander Tvardovsky. One of the most chilling novels ever written about the oppression of totalitarian regimes--and the first to open Western eyes to the terrors of Stalin's prison camps, this book allowed Solzhenitsyn, who later became Russia's conscience in exile, to challenge the brutal might of the Soviet Union.
Focuses on the brutal and dehumanizing aspects of life in a Russian concentration camp. The story of labor-camp inmate Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, it graphically describes his struggle to maintain his dignity in the face of communist oppression.
An unforgettable portrait of the entire world of Stalin's forced work camps, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is one of the most. One of the most significant works ever to emerge from Soviet Russia, this novel is both a graphic picture of World War II work camp life and a testimony to the human spirit. Revised reissue. If you see a Google Drive link instead of source url, means that the file witch you will get after approval is just a summary of original book or the file has been already removed.
Loved each and every part of this book. I will definitely recommend this book to fiction, classics lovers. Your Rating:. Your Comment:. Read Online Download. Shukhov has been in the camp eight years and knows the ropes— how to avoid detection by the guards, how to wangle an extra bowl of gruel or husband a crust of bread inside his jacket.
Eating, he rolls each pellet of bread slowly in his mouth to extract the last bit of taste and nourishment from it. And when Shukhov lies down to sleep, he can count his day — one of many thousands exactly like it— as a happy one r for at least he has survived.
The hero of the novel, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, a simple carpenter unjustly accused of collaboration with the Germans during the second World War, has survived more than half of a year sentence— a bleak succession of thousands of days of beatings, frostbite, malnutrition, and incessant physical labour.
As seen through his eyes, the novel is a bitter, unadorned documentary of that battle for survival. Premier Khrushchev himself made the decision to publish, un- doubtedly aware that this novel would be a powerful weapon against the Stalinists. Consequently, Khrushchev himself recommended the publication of the novel. The novel appeared originally in Novy Mir a liberal literary monthly in its November 20, issue.
The editor of Novy Mir warned Soviet readers that some of the language of the novel is shocking; and the warning holds for readers of the translations that the interpellation of some raw vulgarities in the speech of inmates and guards is necessary to convey the flavour of the talk is admitted. As an authentic picture of life in one of the many such Siberian penal camps, this can be recommended, with the reservation made above, to adult readers.
It was a sensation, and the first edition was promptly sold out. They have a worthy successor in him. If the story moves us, we can imagine how it must have affected the Russians, among whom nearly every family had a member who had been sent to the camps. The writer himself spent eight years in a camp much like the one he describes. For this brave feat he was immedi- ately seized by the Russian secret police on suspicion that the Germans had let him return only to spy.
He confessed because he thought he would be shot if he did not— a common belief that seems to shed light on how confessions were obtained during the Stalin period. The novelist speaks very much for himself, and in a voice of his own. One Day , yields, more than anything else, a beautiful sense of its author as a Chekhovian affection, wholly vii One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich serious. As a revelation of the recent past, One Day tells us f nothing that many other witnesses — also victims of the Siberian camps— have not told.
Tf, however, we do try to examine the book simply as a novel, what do we find? A work that is modest in scope, pure in tone, and utterly authentic in treatment. Moreover, it is a novel from whose pages rises a fully alive person who communicates with us, whose feelings we share, whose thoughts we understand, however remote his experiences may be from our own— such a book is a good book.
However, One Day is not anti-Soviet, but simply anti- Stalinist, and a very moderate indictment of the labour camp system. Its claim to sensationalism rests principally on the fact that it is a clear acknowledgement of a black period in recent Soviet history, issued with the approval of the present regime. But politically he is still on the attack. His tales deal with the evils of bureaucracy, and he is open in his condemnation of lingering Stalinism and of personal ambition.
As a translator of Russian literature, I wrote to him officially through the Soviet Writers Union inquiring about his work, Tnresponsehe sent me ten pages of his new work. This happened to be Cancer Ward. After that I understood that Russia had given birth to yet another of her great writers.
I arranged that our official Slovak Communist Party newspaper Pravda published the excerpt. This was the first and only publication of Cancer Ward in Eastern Europe and, in fact, the first publication in the world of this novel. It made quite a splash in the literary circles in our country and I was sent to the Soviet Union by our leading literary journal to talk to Solzhenitsyn.
But when I arrived in Moscow in March , 1 realised it was not so easy. Solzhenitsyn does not live in Moscow : he lives in the small town of Ryazan miles away. The Russian Writers Union kept telling me that he was busy or ill, or almost dying, and that in any case he did not like visitors. I could not just go there and check these stories. Ryazan is closed to all foreigners, even those from the Socialist countries, and I needed a special visa.
I was a Soviet officer during the last war. But this proved to be not enough. Then I was dumped about ten miles outside Ryazan at a small station in the steppe. It seemed to have no name. After a while I found a taxi- driver, and 1 noticed that he had a labour camp number surrounded with a crown of barbed wire tatooed on his wrist. I told him I had come to see Solzhenitsyn. He just took me there, refusing to talk on the way, in complete silence, and he refused to accept the fare.
Solzhenitsyn lives in a standard Russian house, three storeys, new but already shabby. He has three rooms on the ground floor down a dirty corridor smelling of burst drain pipes.
A very tall, bearded man, very athletic, met me at the door. We spent six hours in his flat, crammed with books and music sheets and full of old but tasteful furniture, including a grand piano. The books are mostly not in Russian. We ate, we drank only a little. Solzhenitsyn hardly drinks— this was the only time in Russia that I was refused a second glass of vodka. And we talked. I made some notes during the conversation. He was, of course, educated as a mathematician and he behaves like a modern-type scientist.
When he makes an appointment he appears in the dot— a very un-Russian trait. He has the efficient manner and thinks like a. Russian, particularly about literature He must discover the unexpected in the life of his society and he does it by exploring and following his memory, the memory of an artist. He is not overwhelmed by modem Western European literature either. He said that Western Europe had not lived through any cataclysms recently, that life had been too prosperous and too quiet there to give birth to a great literature.
Good literature arises out of pain. What a writer needs above all is not money or glory, but objective criticism to point out to him when his books lack these qualities.
He also got some foreign currency from Sweden, directly from the Swedish Ambassador and strictly legally, of course.
He does not feel himself to be the focal point of a new movement in Russia. But objectively speaking, he enjoys great authority and respect among the writers and among the intelligentsia. He is the beginning of an intellectual movement which might eventually bridge the gap between Russia and the rest of the world. I think that the emergence of Solzhenitsyn is more important in its invasion of my country in its positive effect than even the invasion of my country is in its negative effect, painful as that is for all of us in Czechoslovakia.
The implication of the passage is that the people in this region still had not lost some of the manner of non-Soviet society. In these camps, the prisoners were employed mostly in cutting timber. Old Believers Staroobryadtsy — Schismatics of the Russian Orthodox Church who refused to accept certain reforms introduced by the Patriarch Nikon in the seventeenth century.
They were persecuted both under the Czars and under the Soviets. Bendera was assassinated by Soviet agents in Germany in October, His assas- sination there in , probably engineered by Stalin himself, provided the excuse for mass arrests and the liquidation of real and imagined political opponents that culminated in the Great Purge of The ringing noise came faintly on and off through the windowpanes covered with ice more than an inch thick, and died away fast. The sound stopped and it was pitch black on the other side of the window, just like in the middle of the night when Shukhov had to get up to go to the latrine, only now three yellow beams fell on the window — from two lights on the perimeter a nd one inside the camp.
Shukhov never slept through reveille but always got up at once. That gave him about an hour and a half to himself before the morning roll call, a time when anyone who knew what was what in the camps could always scrounge a little something on the side.
He could sew someone a cover for his mittens out of a piece of old lining. He could bring one of the big gang bosses his dry felt boots while he was still in his bunk, to save him the trouble of hanging around the pile of boots in his bare feet and trying to find his own.
Or he could run around to one of the supply 1 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich rooms where there might be a little job, sweeping or carrying something. Or he could go to the mess hall to pick up bowls from the tables and take piles of them to the dishwashers.
That was another way of getting food, but there werd always too many other people with the same idea. And the worst thing was that if there was something left in a bowl you started to lick it. But even here you can live. The first to go is the guy who licks out bowls, puts his faith in the infirmary, or squeals to the screws.
They knew how to look after themselves. They got away with it and it was the other guys who suffered. All the time he dreaded the morning. But the morning came, as it always did. Anyway, how could anyone get warm here, what with the ice piled up on the window and a white 2 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich cobweb of frost running along the whole barracks where the walls joined the ceiling? And a hell of a barracks it was.
Shukhov stayed in bed. He was lying on the top bunk, with his blanket and overcoat over his head and both his feet tucked in the sleeve of his jacket. He could hear the orderlies tramping down the corridor with one of the twenty-gallon latrine tanks.
This was supposed to be light work for people on the sick list — but it was no joke carrying the thing out without spilling it! Then someone from Gang 75 dumped a Pile of felt boots from the drying room on the floor. And now someone from his gang did the same it was also their turn to use the drying room today. The gang boss and his assistant quickly put on their boots, and their bunk creaked.
The assistant gang boss would now go and set the bread rations. Today was the big day for them. So your only hope was to work like hell. The gang boss was worried and was going to try to fix things, try to palm the job off on some other gang, one that was a little slower on the uptake. It would take a pound of fatback for the chief clerk. Or even two. Maybe Shukhov would try to get himself on the sick list so he could have a day off.
There was no harm in trying. His whole body was one big ache. Then he wondered — which warder was on duty today? He remembered that it was Big Ivan, a tall, scrawny sergeant with black eyes. So Shukhov could stay put till it was time for Barracks 9 to go to the mess hall. They went on and on like two old women.
The orderlies shut up. The bastards pulled a fast one on me in the supply room. We always get four two-pound loaves, but today we only got three. Who was going to be shortchanged on rations this evening? Shukhov stayed where he was, on the hard- packed sawdust of his mattress. If only it was one thing or another — either a high fever or an end to the pain. And then some strong hand stripped his jacket and blanket off him.
Shukhov jerked his quilted over-coat off his face and raised himself up a bit. Below him, his head level with the top of the bunk, stood the Thin Tartar. Comrade Warder? The can was only half as bad if you were given normal work.
You got hot food and there was no time to brood. Not being let out to work — that was real punishment. He turned around and looked for somebody else to pick on, but everyone — whether in the dark or under a light, whether on a bottom bunk or a top one— was shoving his legs into the black, padded trousers with numbers on the left knee. Or they were already dressed and were wrapping them- selves up and hurrying for the door to wait outside till the Tartar left.
What made him mad was that he was always one of the first to get up. So he went on asking to be let off just for the hell of it, but mean- time pulled on his padded trousers they too had a worn, dirty piece of cloth sewed above the left knee, with the number S painted on it in black and already faded , put on his jacket this had two numbers, one on the chest and one on the back , took his boots from the pile on the floor, put on his cap with the same number in front , and went out after the Tartar.
The whole Gang saw Shukhov being taken off, but no one said a word. And Shukhov himself said nothing to anyone. The two of them went out. It was freezing cold, with a fog that caught your breath. Two large searchlights were crisscrossing over the compound from the watchtowers at the far corners. The lights on the perimeter and the lights inside the camp were on full force.
There were so many of them that they blotted out the stars. With their felt boots crunching on the snow, prisoners were rushing past on their business — to 7 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich the latrines, to the supply rooms, to the package room, or to the kitchen to get their groats cooked.
They went past the high wooden fence around the punishmept block the stone prison inside the camp , past the barbed-wire fence that guarded the bakery from the prisoners, past the corner of the HQ where a length of frost-covered rail was fastened to a post with heavy wire, and past another post where — in a sheltered spot to keep the readings from being too low — the thermometer hung, caked over with ice.
Shukhov gave a hopeful sidelong glance at the milk- white tube. Sure enough, the Tartar now told Shukhov that he was letting him off and ordered him to mop the floor. They called for him once or twice, then got wise and began pulling in ordinary prisoners to do the job. There was a bucket and rag in the corner.
Now that Shukhov had been given some work, his pains seemed to have stopped. The gang bosses reporting at the PPS had formed' a small group near the post, and one of the younger ones, who was once a Hero of the Soviet Union, climbed up and wiped the thermometer. Shukhov put down the bucket and dug his hands into his sleeves.
He wanted to see what was going on. Shukhov ran to the well. The top of the well was covered by a thick crust of ice so that the bucket would hardly go through the hole.
And the rope was stiff as a board. He felt warmer. The Tartar had gone, but four of the warders were there quarreling. During his eight years inside, Shukhov had seen all kinds of ups and downs in the footwear situa- tion. Now the boot situation had begun to look up. For a week he was on top of the world and went around knocking his new heels together with joy. Then felt boots were issued in December and life was great.
During the whole eight years, nothing had hit him more than having to turn in those boots. Now Shukhov had an idea. Comrade Warder! He gave an innocent smile which showed that some of his teeth were missing — they'd been thinned out by scurvy at Ust-Izhma in , a time when he thought he was on his last legs. He was really far gone. But now all that was left from those days was his funny way of talking. They ought to get shit instead. It makes the place damp all the time.
Now, , listen here. Shukhov quickly finished up the job. That was for sure. Shukhov went over the floorboards, leaving no dry patches, threw his rag behind the stove without wringing it out, pulled on his boots, splashed the water out of his pail onto the path used by the top brass, and cut across to the mess hall, past the bath- house and the dark, cold recreation hall.
He also had to make it to the hospital block— he was aching all over again. Then he had to keep out of sight of the warders in front of the mess hall. The Commandant had given strict orders to pick up any stray prisoners and put them in the cells. So he went straight in. It was like a steam bath inside — what with the frosty air coming in through the doors and the steam from the thin camp gruel.
The men were sitting at tables or crowding in the spaces between them, wait- ing for places. Shouting their way through the mob, two or three prisoners from each gang were carrying bowls of gruel and mush on wooden trays and look- ing for a place for them on the tables.
And then you let them have it in the neck with your free hand! On the other side of the table there was a young fellow who was crossing himself before he started to eat.
It was cold sitting in the mess hall and most of the men ate with their caps on, but without hurrying, chasing bits of rotten fish among the cabbage leaves and spitting the bones out on the table. When there was a whole pile of them, someone would sweep them off before the next gang came, and they were ground underfoot on the floor.
Spitting the bones out on the floor was thought bad manners. In the middle of the mess hall there were two 14 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich rows of what you might call pillars or supports. To look at them, the gang was all the same — the same black overcoats and numbers — but underneath they were all different. Fetyukov spotted Shukhov and gave up his seat with a sigh. I was going to eat it for you — I thought you were in the cooler. Shukhov pulled his spoon out of his boot.
He was very fond of his spoon, which had gone with him all over the North. He stirred up the cold gruel and took a quick look to see what was in his bowl. It was the usual thing. Even so, he ate it slow and careful like he always did. And now it was cabbage. The camp was fed best in June, when they ran out of vegetables and started using groats instead.
The worst time was July, when they put shredded nettles in the caldron. The fish was mostly bones. The flesh was boiled off except for bits on the tails and the heads. Not leaving a single scale or speck of flesh on the skeleton, Shukhov crunched and sucked the bones and spit them out on the table.
The others laughed at him for this. Shukhov made a kind of saving today. It was one solid lump, and Shukhov broke it off in pieces. It was noth- ing but grass that looked like millet. It came from the Chinese, they said. They got ten ounces of it and that was that. He licked his spoon, pushed it back in his boot, put on his cap, and went to the hospital block. The sky was as dark as ever, and the stars were blotted out by the camp lights.
And the two search- lights were cutting broad swathes through the com- pound. Then they stopped using them.
Maybe they thought it was too expensive. It was just as dark as it was at reveille. But from this, that and the other an old hand could see that roll call would soon be sounded. An old artist with a little beard trotted over to the Culture and Education Section CES to get paint and a brush to paint number tags for prison uniforms. Anyway, you had to keep your eyes open all the time.
They were always on the lookout for someone to do a job or to have someone to pick on if they were in a lousy mood. Some of the ward- ers wandered around with their eyes shut and just didn't care, but others got a kick out of it. The num- ber of guys that had been put in the can just on this!
No thank you. Better to wait around the corner. The Tartar went by. And Shukhov was just about to go on to the hospital when he suddenly remem- bered that the Latvian in Barracks 7 had told him to come this morning before roll call to buy a couple of mugs of tobacco. But Shukhov was so busy it had gone clean out of his head. And his tobacco was good. It had the right strength and it smelled good and it was sort of brownish.
Shukhov felt bothered and stopped dead. But he was near the hospi- tal, so he went on up to the steps. The snow crunched under his feet. The corridor in the hospital was so clean — it always was — that he was scared to walk along it.
The walls were painted a shiny white, and the furniture was all white as well. But the office doors were shut. The doctors must still be in bed. He was writing something. There was no one else around. Vdovushkin looked up from his work, cool and wide-eyed. He wore a white cap, to match his coat, and he had no number tags. And in the winter there was always snow to clear. He kept saying that work was the best cure for illness.
What he didn't understand was that work has killed many a horse. Vdovushkin was still writing away. This sort of thing could only happen in a camp. It was Stepan Grigoryevich who told Vdovushkin to say he was a medic and then gave him the job. So Vdovushkin started learning how to give injections to poor, ignorant prisoners who would never let it enter their simple, trusting minds that a medic might not be a medic at all. Nikolay had studied literature at the university and had been arrested in his second year.
The signal for roll call came faintly through the 22 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich double windows. They were covered by ice. Shukhov sighed and stood up. He still felt feverish, but it looked as though he had no chance to get out of work.
Vdovushkin reached for his thermometer and squinted at it. Take a chance and stay if you want. He rammed on his cap and went out. The air outside hit Shukhov. The cold and the biting mist took hold of him and made him cough. It was 16 degrees below, while his own temperature was 99 above. He had to fight it out. Shukhov trotted off to his barracks. The yard was absolutely empty. The escort guards were sitting in their warm barracks, leaning their heads against their rifles — it was no picnic for them either to kick their heels on top of watchtowers in this freezing cold.
The guards in the main guardhouse threw some more coal in the stove. The prisoners — they were now dressed in all their rags, tied around with all their bits of string and their faces wrapped in rags from chin to eyes to protect them from the cold — were lying on their bunks on top of their blankets with their boots on, quite still and with their eyes closed.
Only the assistant gang boss, Pavlo, was busy, moving his lips as he counted some- thing with the help of a small pencil. Pavlo raised his head. And are you still alive? Even in camp they were polite to people and addressed them by tbeir full name.
Pavlo handed him his bread ration from the table. There was a little white heap of sugar on top of it. He was in a great hurry, but he answered just as politely even an assistant gang boss is a big shot of sorts, and more depends on him than on the Commandant. He scooped up the sugar with his 24 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich lips, licked the bread clean with his tongue, and put -one leg on the ledge to climb up and make his bed.
He looked at the ration, turning it, weighing it in his hand as he moved, to see if it was the full pound -due him. Every ration was short. The only question was — by how much? He made a move to shove his half- ration in his locker, but changed his mind again.
He remembered the orderlies had already been beaten up twice for thieving. The barracks was as public as the courtyard of an apartment building. So, not letting go of the bread, Ivan Denisovich pulled his feet out of his felt boots, neatly leaving his foot-cloths and spoon inside them, climbed up bare- 25 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich footed, widened the little hole in his mattress, and hid the other half of his rations in the sawdust.
Meanwhile the sugar in his mouth had melted. The Baptist was reading the Gospels not just to himself but almost aloud. Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed ; but let him glorify God on this behalf.
With the same swift movements, Shukhov hung his overcoat on a crossbeam, and from under the mattress he pulled out his mittens, a pair of thin foot-cloths, a bit of rope, and a piece of rag with 26 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich two tapes.
Shukhov finished all his chores and caught up with the last of the men in the entryway as they filed through the door and out to the steps. Bulky, wearing everything they had, they edged put in the single file, and nobody was in a hurry to get out first. It was still dark, though the sky in the east was getting bright and looked kind of green.
A nasty little wind was blowing. This was the toughest moment — when you lined up for roll call in the morning. Into the bitter cold in the darkness with an empty belly — for the whole day. Near the perimeter a deputy work-controller was going frantic. Dragging your feet again, eh? The gang came after him over the snow : tramp-tramp- tramp, crunch-crunch-crunch.
The boss must have slipped the fellow two pounds of fatfcack — you could see from the other gangs near- by the Gang was being lined up in its usual place. The boss needed a lot of fatback to slip to the people in the PPS and still have enough left for his own belly. It was always handed over to him right away by anyone in the 28 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich gang who got some.
That was the only way you could live. Who was missing? But was he sick? And right away there was a lot of whispering in the gang. Panteleyev the sonofabitch had managed to get out of it again. They worked it through the sick list. Shukhov remembered that he wanted to get the number on his jacket redone, and made his way over to the other side of the yard. There were a couple of men waiting in front of the artist. Shukhov joined them. These number tags were nothing but trouble.
The warders could spot you a long way off and the guards could write the number down when you did something wrong. There were three of these artists in the camp. They painted picture free for the higher-ups, and also 29 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich took turns painting numbers at roll call. Today it was the old man with the little gray beard. When he painted the number on your cap, it was like a priest anointing your brow.
And he noticed at once that another fellow from his gang, Caesar, was smoking— not his pipe, but a ciga- rette —which meant there was a chance of cadging a smoke. He stopped just next to Caesar, turned halfway towards him, and then looked past him. Right at this moment, that scavenger Fetyukov latched onto them, and stood right in front of Caesar and stared with burning eyes at his mouth.
He was tense all over from waiting, and. He was still young. He had a big, black, bushy mustache. He smoked to help his mind come up with great ideas. He took 31 One Day in ihe Life of Ivan Denisovich it with one hand, quickly and thankfully, and put his- other hand underneath to guard against dropping it. The smoke seemed to go all through his hungry body and into his feet and his head. Shukhov had gotten used to it.
Why shirts? No, something was wrong. There were only two gangs ahead of them before the friskers, and everyone in Gang spotted Lieu- tenant Volkovoy, the disciplinary officer. Not for nothing was he called Volkovoy. He was dark and tall and scowling, and always dashing around. In the early days he carried a whip of braided leather as long as his arm. They said he beat people with it. When it was freezing, the frisking routine was not so tough in the morning — though it still was in the evening.
The prisoners undid their coats and held them open. They marched up by fives, and five warders were waiting for them. They pat- ted the pocket the only one allowed on the right knee.
What they had to watch out for in the mornings was people carrying a lot of 33 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich food to escape with. Most likely the idea was to make things even tougher for people and add to their troubles— you took a bite out of it to put your markon it, and threw it in the box. But all these hunks looked alike anyway.
It was all the same bread. Then all the way you worried yourself sick about not getting your own piece back. And some- times you got into a fight with people over it. Then one day three fellows escaped from the building site in a truck and took one of these boxes with them. So the bosses had all the boxes chopped up in the guardroom and then they went back to the old system. In the mornings they also had to look out for anyone with civilian clothes under his camp uniform.
And another thing they checked for — letters you might try and slip to someone on the outside to mail. But Voikovoy shouted to the warders to give them a real going over, and the warders quickly re- moved their gloves, told the men to open their jackets where each man had taken a little of the warmth 34 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich from his barracks and undo their shirts.
Then they began to feel around to see whether extra clothes had been put on against regulations. The gangs that had gone ahead were lucky — some of them had alreay been checked out through the gates.
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