1000 solzhenitsyn, Alexsandr
admitted to this crime he did not commit because
“if he didn’t . . . he’d be shot. If he signed [the state-
ment] he’d still get a chance to live.” He believes
that if he can handle the suffering physically, his
body will give him the strength of mind to desire
continued life. While enjoying his dinner, “this was
all he thought about now: we’ll survive. We’ll stick
it out, God willing, till it’s over.” According to the
psychologist Abraham Maslow, people function on
a hierarchy of needs. If basic necessities for food and
rest are not met, people’s minds will not focus on
other thoughts until they find these essentials.
The story contains very little casual conversation
since, as Shukhov describes during roll call, you “face
a whole day of work. You lose your tongue. You lose
all desire to speak to anyone.” When Shukhov thinks
for a moment about his family, he feels hurt that he
does not receive packages from them, so he would
rather not think of them at all. Instead of wanting
to pray or read the Bible, as his bunkmate does, he
thinks only about whether to eat a small piece of
bread in the evening or to save it for the next day.
The greatest luxuries he strives for are a solid pair of
boots, called valenki, to keep him warm outside and
a cigarette to give him a few moments of joy.
Elizabeth Walpole
Work in One Day in the Life of
Ivan Denisovich
In the forced-labor camps of the gulags, Ivan Den-
isovich Shukhov and his fellow prisoners work in
freezing cold temperatures from sunup to sundown,
building structures that only expand their prison.
These workers actually build the walls that enclose
them and raise barbed wire fences around their civi-
lization in the snow. They work ceaselessly and are
never paid for their labor. The work is fruitless, since
they do not get to leave the prison sooner if they
accomplish the work faster. Instead of accumulating
leisure time and prosperity, the prisoners spend their
fragments of free time scrounging for basic neces-
sities. The most Shukhov hopes to earn is an extra
bowl of soup.
In the socialist atmosphere of the Soviet Union,
the idea of the worker was frequently glamorized.
Images of smiling laborers working for the good of
their country were the subject of much visual and
literary art. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
provides a starkly contrasting view of the glory of
work. One of the principles of communism is that
history is made up of struggles between the different
economic classes. The prison life reveals a distorted
type of communism where guards, who are often as
unhappy as the prisoners, deprive prisoners unfairly.
Since the gulag’s economic system is not capitalist,
the prisoners cannot improve their lives through
extra or more skilled work. Therefore, Shukhov dis-
tinguishes between the situations where he is doing
work for a pointless reason, as when they have him
clean the hall, and when the work will actually mat-
ter. He budgets his labor because he knows that the
work is not always necessary for any kind of progress
but only to keep the prisoners occupied and prevent
them from plotting.
Although all the prisoners long to be excused
from work, the time in the middle of the day when
they are out and laboring is when time moves quick-
est. Shukhov dreads getting penalties by which the
guards prevent him from working. Sitting by himself
would be a much greater punishment for him than
doing additional work. With work, “they gave you
hot food and you had no time to start thinking.” At
many points in the day, Shukhov would rather be
active than have time to ponder his situation. In the
middle of the workday, while other men are trying to
warm up around a stove, Shukhov continues to work
even though it is not a part of his main task. He puts
his entire mind into his current job and enjoys that
when doing so, “all his memories and worries faded.
He had only one idea—to fix the bend in the stove-
pipe and hang it up to prevent it from smoking.”
Shukhov works through his exhaustion and illness
when he barely misses having a fever to get a day off
from work. After a long, tiring day, he surprises him-
self by noticing that, “funny, he’d forgotten all about
the dispensary while he’d been working.”
The novel’s sparse wording gives a sense of the
prisoners’ value of practicality. In their extreme situ-
ation, with an outside temperature of -17° Fahren-
heit, the prisoners orchestrate the work so that it
helps relieve their discomfort. Their meager reward
finally arrives when, “thanks to the urgent work, the
first wave of heat had come over them.” Much of
the middle of the novel concentrates on their assign-