998 solzhenitsyn, Alexsandr
SoLzHENiTSyN, aLExSaNDr One
Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962)
In One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Ivan Den-
isovich Shukhov, simply referred to as “Shukhov” in
the novel, is serving a 10-year sentence in a political
prison in Siberia. He has been falsely accused of
political crimes because when he escaped from a
German prisoner-of-war camp, the Soviets thought
he had returned as a spy. He lives in a gulag, which
is a hard-labor camp for men.
Shukhov has a wife who is barely making ends
meet, but he has allowed himself to nearly forget
her and his old way of life since he knows he can-
not return home for a very long time. He asks that
she not waste her money on sending him packages.
Shukhov has a very independent spirit, especially
since he chooses not to rely on his memories of past
comforts or family. He finds clever ways to get
through the day, and he has learned the social system
of the prison. After observing other prisoners’ mis-
takes, Shukhov knows how to keep himself out of
trouble. On good days, he even manages to acquire
an extra bowl of soup or a single cigarette.
When Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) first
published this novel in 1962, censors in the Soviet
Union banned it until Premier Nikita Khrushchev
read it and decided to allow its publication. The
descriptions of the gulags were frighteningly accu-
rate, since Solzhenitsyn himself had spent time in
them. By portraying an ordinary day in the prison
camp, Solzhenitsyn introduced the world outside of
the Soviet Union to characters who were immensely
realistic and confronted themes of survival, work,
and the individual and society on a regular basis.
Elizabeth Walpole
IndIvIduaL and SocIety in One Day in the
Life of Ivan Denisovich
Shukhov is sentenced to a prisoner’s life for “three
thousand six hundred and fifty-three days,” and
thus he provides a perspective of one estranged
from general society. Once the Soviet government
arrests the prisoners, they are removed from their
hometowns and moved to Siberia. With this land’s
freezing temperatures and desert-like barrenness,
there are almost no reminders of the prisoners’ pre-
vious lives. The prisoners see no women, children,
or very elderly people in their section of Siberia.
Therefore, their prison society does not resemble
the natural variations among Soviets across different
ages and sexes. Without their neighbors, the men
lose their social definitions of themselves. Since
they are unable to see or provide for their wives,
they forget their identity as husbands. Likewise,
as their children grow up and their parents grow old
without them, the men are unable to be responsible
father figures or caring sons. Many of the men in
the prison originally served in the army, which made
them valued individuals in society. As defenders
of their nation, they could command respect. Part
of the torture of being imprisoned seems to come
from the men being stripped of all of the roles they
originally could fulfill. As prisoners, the government
labels these men (often unjustly) as detrimental to
society. In addition to relocating them to isolated
Siberia, the work that the men do on a daily basis
does not help serve their country in any way but only
expands the prison and helps sustain it.
The prison system described in the novel creates
a lifelong exile for the prisoners even when they are
not expressly forbidden from returning home after
they serve their sentence. Prisoners like Shukhov
have barely any contact with people from home.
At another camp, letters home were allowed every
month, but in the novel’s prison setting, Shukhov
only has “the right to two letters that year.” Some
of the men try to recreate the roles they had in free
society, such as the painters offering to repaint the
identification numbers on the prisoners’ clothing.
For Shukhov, though, prison life helps him fashion
a new sense of individuality for himself. He forms
a new identity around that of being a survivor. He
comes face to face with his future one day in the
canteen, when he sits across from a tall man called
U 81, who is as worn, but still full of pride, as
Shukhov will be with age. Shukhov notices that U
81 “held himself straight . . . his eyes didn’t dart after
everything going on in the mess hall.” By no longer
being surprised or interested in the prison society
around him, U 81 becomes the ideally stoic prisoner.
He is all strength, but for no purpose, as “all life
had drained out of his face but it had been left, not
sickly or feeble, but hard and dark like carved stone.”
Shukhov, like U 81, adapts himself to the prison’s