Being one of the greatest Russian writers of 20th century, Aleksander Solzhenitsyn had a unique talent that he used to truthfully depict the realities of life of ordinary people living in Soviet era. Unlike many other writers, instead of writing about “bright future of communism”, he chose to write about everyday hardships that common people had to endure in Soviet realm. In “Matryona’s Home”, the story focuses on life of an old peasant woman living in an impoverished collectivized village after World War 2 . In the light of Soviet’s propaganda of creating a new Soviet Nation, the reader can observe that Matryona’s personality and way of life drastically contradicted the desired archetype of New Soviet Man. Like most of the people in her village, …show more content…
She lived in a very old rotten house full of cockroaches and mice, and could only afford eating potatoes or barley for every meal. She worked her whole life for collectivized farm, but the government did not provide any pension for her once she got sick and unable to work. Life of other people in the village was not much better, since they were not able to have an adequate household to sustain themselves due to collectivization. Trapped in harsh conditions of poverty, villagers became aggressive and greedy, turning against each other for the smallest benefit. Whenever anyone of Matryona’s neighbors or collective farm needed a spare pair of hands for farm work, she would always offer her help. I think that was part of her living by the principles of the old life, when life in the village was prosperous and each peasant would gladly help his neighbor. Matryona was the only person in the village who did let the times change her, and eventually got killed by the greediness of people around …show more content…
Any signs of innovation and improvements were saved for cities, while conditions in the villages drastically worsened. Villagers like Matryona would listen about new inventions and Earth satellites through radio as if they were some useless magic wonders, and then they would go on loading peat with forks and eat plain potatoes and barley kasha. Soviet ideology infiltrated Matryona’s life through a wall poster and a radio, but it was unable to change her peasant soul into sophisticated and progressive New Soviet Man. Villagers’ life was a struggle of surviving the winter and finding food to eat, leaving no place for abstract concerns about ideological
He goes with some other workers to a state run farm outside of Magnitogorsk to help repair tractors he remarks, “everything, in fact, had been thought of, he said, 'except good land and men to work it'.”7 This was the issue with Stalin's “revolution from above” be built these grand cities that were essentially just large plants like Magnitogorsk, but the people lived in horrible conditions, the collectivized farms that were meant to support the food supply for the workers of Magnitogorsk had bad land and nobody to work to the farms. In theory Stalin's plans could work, but the people, the land, the infrastructure could not feasibly attain the end result that was needed, it just wasn’t possible. For Stalin's plans to have worked he needed to be in the right place and the Soviet Union, and the unforgiving landscape just was not it. Things got so bad that Scott writes, “ the new Bolshevik government sent inspectors to every village to look for hoarded bread.”8 Scott writes, “ during the early thirties the main energies of the Soviet Union went into construction. New plants, mines, whole industries, sprang up all over the country” but he also recalls, “the new aggregates failed to work normally.
The use of mass terror was one of the most representative characteristics of the Stalinist regime. The Gulag embodied the constant and large scale use of fear by the Bolsheviks to administer the population. Varlam Shalamov’s Kolyma Tales and Fyodor Mochulsky’s Gulag Boss stood out by their treatment of the question. While relating the same events, namely the daily routine of an arctic Gulag, these two works dealt with this topic from two diametrically opposed perspectives. Indeed, Shalamov was a political prisoner for seventeen years while Mochulsky was a supervisor in the camp. Therefore, their experience of the Gulag diverged in nearly every aspect. Furthermore, Mochulsky and Shalamov pursued different designs. On the one hand, Shalamov attempts to depict the Gulag’s ability to dehumanize prisoners. On the other hand, Mochulsky wrote his book after the fall of the USSR. As a former guard, he attempted to justify his past behavior, not to say exonerate himself.
In describing the setting, the general locale is the prison in the coldest part of Russia- Siberia, geographically but socially depicting the social circumstances in the prison, but draws analogies to the general social, political and economic circumstances of Russia during the Stalinist era (form 1917 revolution up to 1955). The symbolic significance of the novel and the film (genres) reflects experiences, values and attitudes of the Russian society. The genres reflect the origins of the Russian social disorders and massive counts of political misgivings which watered down real communism in Russia. We are constantly reminded of the social and cultural heritage and originality of Russian ethnic groups through those different levels of meanings
During Russia’s transition to communism in the early 20th century, conflict and unease permeated every part of life. Nothing was stable and very little of what the Bolsheviks had fought for had come to fruition by the time the USSR disbanded in 1991. The “classless society”, which was to work together for the prosperity of everyone, never became a reality. In the end, the majority of Russia’s 20th century was an utter failure on a grand scale. However, there were many amazing products of the system do to the great importance of education in Russian culture. Priceless novels were written, timeless movies were made, and great scientific endeavors were realized despite the rigid control placed upon Russian persons by the government. In fact, some of the most memorable written works of the time were written protests to the creativity-stifling situation many writers found themselves in. Because of the danger to their lives should the wrong people be upset by their writings, Yevgeny Zamyatin and Mikhail Bulgakov wrote their most popular, Soviet-life condemning novels under the guise of satire. Even though they’re satirizing the same subject, in both We and The Master and Margarita respectively, they take very different paths to do so.
Solzhenitsyn believed that it was nearly impossible to have truly free thoughts under the prison camp conditions described in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, or in any situation where there is an authoritarian ruler. In a pris...
Ivan Fyodorovich Sponka The short story, “Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Aunt”, explicates the life of a man named Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka. We see him briefly in his young years, followed by his life in the army, and his return to the farm where his strong characterized aunt resides. We can see immediately that this man lives in constant cleanliness and dutiful paranoia; these are some of his desires that he wishes to exhibit to others. We can also see his fears, which reside in the confiscation of his masculinity and independence.
Solzhenitsyn does express the evils of his own nation clearly, which becomes eerie when looking through the same lens upon which we see our own nation slipping into. He makes remarks about the soviet government controlling everything. Elections are folly; the...
After the October Revolution of 1917, Soviet Society was dramatically changed in the countryside. Prior to the revolution the countryside consisted of family plots that allowed them sustain themselves. On these family farms women from a young age worked alongside men. The self-sustaining family plot was one in which every member of the family had their share of the work. Howeve...
Alexander Solzhenitsyn carefully and tediously depicted what life is like in a prison. Ivans monotonous life prompts the reader initially to think that Ivans day is a living death of tedious details. Yet, in truth, Ivan i...
“Days of a Russian Noblewoman” is a translated memoir originally written by a Russian noblewoman named Anna Labzina. Anna’s memoir gives a unique perspective of the private life and gender roles of noble families in Russia. Anna sees the male and female gender as similar in nature, but not in morality and religiosity. She sees men as fundamentally different in morality and religiosity because of their capability to be freely dogmatic, outspoken, and libertine. Anna implies throughout her memoir that woman in this society have the capacity to shape and control their lives through exuding a modest, submissive, and virtuous behavior in times of torment. Through her marriage, Labzina discovers that her society is highly male centered.
Mainly, this book educates the reader about the past. When Sasha entered his communal apartment you got to see all of their living conditions with 12 families in their small apartment and what they had during Communism. The reader seeing all of these hardships in Sasha’s
"For the ethical force with which he pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature." - This quote from the Nobel Prize Citation for Alexander Solzhenitsyn in 1970 remains a testament to his literary prowess. In 1962, Solzhenitsyn burst onto the literary scene with his groundbreaking work, One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich, which quickly became a sensation in the USSR and beyond. However, by 1963, Solzhenitsyn and other liberal figures in Soviet culture, including the editor of Novy Mir, Khrushchev, and Tvardovsky, became targets of a campaign to restore Stalinist orthodoxy to the arts.
In the late 1800’s slavery was slowly being abolished. Unfortunately it was not until the second half of the century that serfdom found an end in Russia and many were given the rights they deserved. On the contrary the liberation was not so simple for women. They continued to fight for their rights to attain true freedom and faced severe consequences for their radical efforts. As shown through Elizaveta Kovalskaia’s memoir, she, like many women in Russia, was faced with many challenges and adversaries in her attempts for change and fairness for all women.
Dostoevsky’s noteworthy literary works each contain similarities in theme, character development, and purpose when analyzed beyond face value. Dostoevsky’s early life and ideals, intertwined with life-changing events that shifted his ideologies, and critiques of fellow Russian writers during his time period lay the groundwork for Dostoevsky’s recurring arguments for the way which Russian society would be best-off, as well as ways in which the people of Russia would be suited to live the most fulfilling, non-corrupt lives.
The following literary analysis is over “The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation,” which was written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Who is a former Nobel Prize winner for literature. The book at least the abridged version is broken into several different parts, seven to be exact. The book starts with his arrest and the law of the Soviet Union, then he talks about the way the labor camps were basically created to break down a man and kill him. To begin the book Aleksandr was arrested for writing a letter to friends criticizing the government and mainly Stalin. Back in those days of the Soviet Union no one was allowed to talk bad about the government or they were arrested and convicted of the crime. Aleksandr talks about the