Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008)

What is it about summer that always makes me want to re-read the historical novels and memoirs that took over my life during the crammed summer session at UVIC of 2009? I’ve largely forgotten most of the 20th century Russian history that we covered and you couldn’t pay me to remember what my final papers were about for that course, but Ivan Denisovich’s day (of a life) in a Russian prison camp (gulag) has always stuck with me. Solzhenitsyn himself spent time in these prisons for his show more seditionary writing and this novel, while fictional, helped shed light on the political and social climate of Russia during the author’s lifetime. His prose is sparse, almost apersonal, as he describes the minutiae of Denisovich’s day from dawn to dusk, with the essential quest for scamming more food, the prisoner’s need for his work to have meaning, and the inner workings of camp politics looming as predominant themes. For all its simplicity, the story is somehow still engaging as we see ourselves walking the day in the prisoner’s shoes through a largely barren, but still lived, landscape. Do we sense a flicker of hope that he will one day be freed, a sense of warm camaraderie with his fellow work gang, a small satisfaction in a brick structure well-built by ingenuity and everyman-skill? Possibly. Solzhenitsyn has played his audience well in this missive, which on the surface seems like an exploration of monotony, but when imagined as a continuity for the protagonist we can see how the small details and choices made can change a day entirely. One day, indeed. show less

The story takes place in the men's cancer ward of a hospital in a city in Soviet Central Asia. The patients in Ward 13 all suffer from cancer, but differ in age, personality, nationality, and social class (as if such a thing could be possible in the Soviet "classless" society!). We are first introduced to Pavel Rusanov, a Communist Party functionary, who enters the hospital because of a rapidly-growing neck tumor.
"The hard lump of his tumor--unexpected, meaningless and quite without use--had show more dragged him in like a fish on a hook and flung him onto this iron bed--a narrow, mean bed, with creaking springs and an apology for a mattress."(p 10)

Solzhenitzyn himself was released from a labor camp in early 1953, just before Stalin's death, and was exiled to a village in Kazakhstan. While incarcerated, he had been operated on for a tumor, but was not told the diagnosis. He subsequently developed a recurrence, received radiotherapy in Tashkent, and recovered.

The narrative places its focus on the central character of Oleg Kostoglotov, a young man who has recently been discharged from a penal camp and is now "eternally" exiled to this particular province. Only two weeks earlier, he was admitted to the ward in grave condition from an unspecified tumor, but he has responded rapidly to radiation therapy. Among the doctors are Zoya, a medical student; Vera Gangart, a young radiologist; and Lyudmila Dontsova, the chief of radiation therapy.

Rusanov and Kostoglotov respond to therapy and are eventually discharged; other patients remain in the ward, get worse, or are sent home to die. In the end Kostoglotov boards a train to the site of his "eternal" exile: "The long awaited happy life had come, it had come! But Oleg somehow did not recognize it."

In The Cancer Ward Solzhenitzyn transforms his own experiences into a multifaceted tale about Soviet society during the period of hope and liberalization after Stalin's death. While Cancer, of course, is an obvious metaphor for the totalitarian state there is also a penetrating look at mid-century Soviet medicine and medical ethics.
“But substantial X-ray treatment is impossible without transfusion!” “Then don’t give it! Why do you assume you have the right to decide for someone else? Don’t you agree it’s a terrifying right, one that rarely leads to good? You should be careful. No one’s entitled to it, not even doctors.” “But doctors are entitled to that right—doctors above all,” exclaimed Dontsova with deep conviction. By now she was really angry. “Without that right there’d be no such thing as medicine!”
Of course, the paternalism evident here (e.g. lack of truth-telling and informed consent) was also characteristic of medicine in other countries in the 1950's and remains an important concern in professional ethics.

The novel also explores the personal qualities and motivation of physicians, and the issue of intimate relationships between doctors and patients. The most incisive aspects of the book are its insight into human nature and the realism of its characters. show less

"Almost a happy day."--Ivan Deisovich Shokhov

There is no doubt that the Siberian gulags, implemented under Stalin who, it has been estimated, killed 7 million of his own people, were absolute horrors. But in this novel, depicting just one day, no one dies. They are merely grossly mistreated while serving ten and twenty-five year sentences for minor, sometimes illogical infractions. For example, men were sent to the gulag after surviving a Nazi camp. They were sent to the gulag because they show more had spent time around "foreigners" in those camps and thus could not be trusted. (There's Stalin's famous paranoia for you.) Whatever the infraction, the prisoners at the end of their sentences, if they lived to see that day, will either be exiled, have more years tacked on, or they will be dead. None will ever go home again and they know it.

This day, a day in 1951, nothing extraordinarily horrific happens: the camp's 400 men are merely under-clothed, under-fed. Like all the days before and the days after, they spend this day freezing, working, and hungry. And being counted.

What I found discombobulating was how I reacted to the story. It was awful, God yes, but it didn't invoke tears or major fear. There are men easily given to violence in the camp but this day no one is grossly assaulted. Tragedies are mentioned in passing without hyper focus or sting, told off-screen, so to speak.

Rather, the day is spent by the main character, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, being careful, being wily. He has figured out how to survive one more day, and this day with tiny additions of luxury: another 6 ounces of bread, an extra bowl of thin cabbage soup, and a cigarette.

In my reading journal, I even made a list from his thoughts of survival which I titled, "Rules for Surviving the Gulag," which included:

"...you never put your feet near the flame if you're wearing boots," "...never be conspicuous. The main thing was never to be seen by a camp guard on your own, only in a group..." and "When you work for the knowing you gave them quality; when you worked for a fool you simply gave him eyewash."

Dozens of small things like those meant the difference between living another day or starting your spiral toward terrible misery and then inevitably, terrible death. No one can save you.

This novel--based on Solzhenitsyn's own years in labor camps--made a big impact in the Soviet Union and in the world when it was published in 1962, approved by Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin now dead and no hero of Khrushchev's. It was the first time the Stalin Terrors were openly acknowledged. A couple of years later the novel became banned again after Khrushchev was ousted in 1964, but the cat was out of the bag. Solzhenitsyn continued secretly writing and publishing outside of the USSR. In 1970, Solzhenitsyn was award the Nobel Peace Prize, which gave him a whole new set of political headaches, and exile.

Very complicated, all that.

That makes me wonder if that is why the novel seemed to pull its punches.

Or was there some other subversive message from Solzhenitsyn? Was it a message to the Soviet government about its short-sightedness toward its own valuable resources? (Ivan Denisovich Shukhov was a kulak, one of the thousands of peasants who had their lands taken from them and made into collectives). Was the message that the true strength of the Union was the hard working and skilled people, a major resource they stupidly abused and murdered by the millions?

In the Afterword, Eric Bogosian writes, "The individual cannot detach himself from the matrix of his society." In this case, it was the societal matrix of the USSR and equally the matrix of the gulag.

P.S. Hey 2024, the good guys don't create thousands of interment camps. show less

First published in 1962, this was the first book that openly talked about life in the Soviet gulag system. The story is very simple, it follows a single day in the life of a former Russian solider, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, now serving 10 years hard labour in Siberia after being falsely accused of treason because he was an escaped German POW.

The authorities claimed that "he’d returned from captivity to carry out a mission for German intelligence. What sort of mission neither Shukhov nor show more the interrogator could say…. Shukhov had it all figured out. If he didn’t sign he’d be shot. If he signed he’d still get a chance to live. So he signed."

The thing about this book that really struck me was that nothing really happens and is almost devoid of any emotions. Shukhov is counting the days down to his supposed release date with no idea as to whether or not it will actually happen yet shows almost no discontentment at all. He just goes through the motions of his day, the same day he has had thousands of times before. In fact, he feels almost serenely fortunate at the end of it because he'd managed to get hold of some extra food and smuggle a piece of scrap metal back into camp that he will be able to fashion into a tool with which earn extra rations in the future. However, he also realises that tomorrow the daily struggle to survive will resume.

“The belly is a demon. It doesn’t remember how well you treated it yesterday; it’ll cry out for more tomorrow.”

Solzhenitsyn writes from personal experience, he spent eight years in the gulag. The simplicity of this tale makes it a remarkable piece of powerful writing that shines a spotlight on an important piece of social history as well as being a history maker in itself. As such it deserves to be regarded as a classic. show less