The crimes of Stalinism in Europe are endless. The experience of the people who lived under the Soviet regime after the end of World War II lived in a time of terror, hopelessness and misery. For Soviet citizens and the prisoners life was miserable. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, a short novel written by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, is a story about the one day in the life of a person caught between the chaos of the war and the faceless entity that controls their lives. The story takes place somewhere in Siberia in 1951 at a “special” (forced labor) camp. Ivan is sent here after escaping from the Germans that captured him and some other men on the northwest front. Due to the control and paranoia of Stalinism, instead of being welcomed as a hero, he is accused of being a spy for the Germans and is forced to “confess” or be killed (71). During this one day of Ivan’s life the iron clad control Stalin has is apparent in daily life and there are little touches of humanity, faith and hope that give him and the others on the 104th the strength to get through each day at the camp. Ivan is representative of mainstream Soviet society; he is an uneducated, peasant Russian man. Ivan has an average name and does not aspire for much and his needs are fairly simple. The first suggestion of Ivan being uneducated is at the beginning of the story when Ivan goes to the dispensary in hopes of getting out of work for few days. From the masonry work that the squadron does during the day we know that Ivan is a skilled laborer. The other prisoners in his squadron long for freedom but Ivan views freedom as home. Ivan received a sentence of ten years but learns later that there is a chance that they could give him another term at the camp or he woul... ... middle of paper ... ...world and after the work day ends continues to work. This is only space that Ivan feels he can claims as his own. The prisoners quietly fight the system by holding onto anything that makes them feel they still have individuality and control. Solzhenitsyn illustrates the life of an average Soviet citizen. Stalin controlled everything about a person’s private and public life. Individuality was taken away through various methods such as making giving numbers instead of names and taking away personal belongings. Families were torn apart by sending men away to camps and letters were censored. People were deprived of all things that made them feel human. The story emphasizes the importance of having faith to endure hard times and to keep the human spirit intact even in one of the most ominous regimes in history. Ivan concludes that it was “almost a happy day” (p 159).
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich takes place in a camp run by the Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps. This camp is called a Gulag which was established for people who were working against the soviet union under the man named Stalin. You would go there for disobeying, not believing in what stalin wanted the perfect soviet society to be. One of the men named Ivan denisovich told his story about the life in the Gulags. When ivan was sent there for being a soldier. He would always wake up on time and do the work he was demanded of. But one of the days he fell ill. he hoped he was going to be put on the sick list. So that day he decided to lay in bed for a few minutes longer. Instead the guard so rudely does tell him to get up and said you're coming with me. When you disobeyed the guards orders you were sent to a prison cell.A guard named TarTar took him to the punishment cells for his tardiness but instead he makes him clean the floor in the guard room. This job was for After doing this he goes to eat breakfast which consists of bread and water. When he was done with breakfast he went to the doctor because he felt ill but the guy took his temperature and sent him to do some work. The only thing that kept him moving and fighting was having people he was close with which was necessarily his gang consisting of tiuryn, tsezar, aloysha a baptist not being able to have his own religion. As Shukhov he said “Come on, boys, don’t let it get you down! It’s only a Power Station, but we’ll make it a home away from home.” ( page, Schukov wanted to make knifes with the scrap metal he found. He wanted to be able to fight back with the soviet guards in hopes to go home. But when he was searched at first he remembered that ...
The mood of Night is harder to interpret. Many different responses have occurred in readers after their perusal of this novel. Those that doubt the stories of the holocaust’s reality see Night as lies and propaganda designed to further the myth of the holocaust. Yet, for those people believing in the reality, the feelings proffered by the book are quite different. Many feel outrage at the extent of human maliciousness towards other humans. Others experience pity for the loss of family, friends, and self that is felt by the holocaust victims. Some encounter disgust as the realization occurs that if any one opportunity had been utilized the horror could of been avoided. Those missed moments such as fleeing when first warned by Moshe the Beadle, or unblocking the window when the Hungarian officer had come to warn them, would have saved lives and pain.
This book was written as a record of a person’s involvements in a concentration camp during World War II, and the psychology of the prisoners who were there with him to experience the rough and hard times every day. Viktor Frankl's was a man who was a part of this experience, along with his wife, father, mother and brother who all died in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. All endured extreme hunger, cold and cruelty, first in Auschwitz then Dachau; Frankl himself was under endless threat of going to the gas chambers. He lost every belonging on his first day in the camps, and was forced to give up a scientific manuscript he considered his life's work. Viktor starts his story with his entrance into Auschwitz. He explains how as he was entering the death camp: he and his companions held onto slight remains of hope that they would be rescued at the last possible moment. He relates this to a convicted man believing he will be saved before he is executed. He defines this feeling as the, "delusion of reprieve” and remembers getting off the train after arriving to Auschwitz, the people were separated into two lines, one for men and one for women. During this process everything on them was taken from them. They eventually got to a man who would point them in a direction of left or right. One way was the direction to the crematories, the other to a cleansing station.
Intro with Thesis: A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is a novel by Alexander Solzhenitsyn that documents totalitarian communism through the eyes of an ordinary prisoner in a Soviet labor camp. This story describes the protagonist, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, as he freezes and starves with the other prisoners, trying to survive the remainder of his ten-year sentence. In this story, Solzhenitsyn uses the struggles in the camp as a way to represent the defaults of the Soviet Union under Stalin’s regime. By doing this, Solzhenitsyn uses authoritative oppression in his labour camps to demonstrate the corrupt nature of the Soviet system.
Throughout the book Solzhenitsyn uses the portrayal of the common prisoner, the man with average desires, views and means of survival, to show how civil values are victorious over evil. To show how the person who wins the small victories is not the person who lets go of his disciplines and drops to a place where nothing and no one matters except themselves. To show how the person who will make it through the night without having their throat cut is the one who holds on to their mental constitution. They will be the ones who get the extra cigars and the friends who will help them in times of need. The book is truly a story of victory; the victory of morals over selfishness.
Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, the story takes place in a prison camp,
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...
The two sources Industry, State, and Society in Stalin’s Russia, 1926-1934 by David Shearer and Life and Bitter Waters: Life and Work in Stalin's Russia: A Memoir by Gennady Andreev-Khomiakov and Ann Erickson Healy will be evaluated according to their value, purpose, origin, and limitations.
...he destitution and demoralization of the citizens of Petrograd. Andrei, the character with the most honor and virtue, still finds ruin because of his affiliation with the immoral politic. All morality is beaten out of the characters with the most potential for it by the dire circumstances of their lives. An excellent, emotionally moving story, this novel leaves no doubt as to the author's feelings about the path of destruction down which socialism leads.
During Stalin’s regime, the individual Russian was the center of his grand plan for better or worse. Stalin wanted all of his people to be treated the same. In the factory the top producer and the worst producer made the same pay. He wanted everyone to be treated as equals. His goal to bring the Soviet Union into the industrial age put tremendous pressure on his people. Through violence and oppression Stalin tried to maintain an absurd vision that he saw for the Soviet Union. Even as individuals were looked at as being equals, they also were viewed as equals in other ways. There was no one who could be exempt when the system wanted someone imprisoned, killed, or vanished. From the poorest of the poor, to the riches of the rich, everyone was at the mercy of the regime. Millions of individuals had fake trumped up charges brought upon them, either by the government or by others who had called them o...
Throughout the 20th century, many countries were ruled by totalitarian leaders who were ready to commit many horrible deeds in order to achieve their goals. Josef Stalin, the leader of Soviet Union between 1924 and 1953, is the perfect example of a despotic ruler, who was responsible for the deaths of millions of people. He believed that communism would transform the Soviet Union into a perfect nation, with an ideal society where everyone would be treated equally. However, in order to achieve this perfection, all external and, more importantly, internal enemies had to be destroyed. Instead of a perfect nation, Stalin created a system, which was based on fear and denunciation, where killing of the so-called "enemies of the nation" became a sport, where Stalin's representatives competed against each other on the basis of the number of "enemies" killed. Throughout almost three decades, millions of innocent people were either killed or put into labour camps. The author of the book himself, was sentenced to eight years in a concentration camp for his anti-Soviet views, which he expressed in writing, and through the characters of his novel, Solzhenitsyn portrays his personal beliefs. Most of the characters in "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" are innocent people, who have never done anything reprehensible. Among them is Gopchik, a sixteen-year-old boy who was sentenced to 10 years in concentration camp for giving milk to Ukrainian nationalist rebels, and Aleshka the Baptist who received twenty-five years for his religious beliefs. The protagonist of the novel, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, is a simple man without any heroic qualities. He is a former carpenter who was sent off to the battlefield during the World War II. After being captured by the Germans, Ivan and five of his fellow soldiers were able to escape and return to the Soviet military base. However, three of them were killed instantly, mistaken for German soldiers while the fourth soldier died from wounds a couple of days later. Although Ivan Denisovich was not shot, he was arrested and accused of being a German spy. Even though he was innocent, he had to confess during the interrogation, because he understood that he would be shot immediately if he did not. As a result, he was sentenced to ten years in a Siberian concentration camp for betraying Soviet Union. The Soviet labour camps represented a small-scale totalitarian nation, where wardens were the despotic rulers who frequently abused the prisoners.
Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon depicts the fallacious logic of a totalitarian regime through the experiences of Nicolas Salmanovitch Rubashov. Rubashov had fought in the revolution and was once part of the Central Committee of the Party, but he is arrested on charges of instigating attempted assassinations of No. 1, and for taking part in oppositional, counter-revolutionary activities, and is sent to a Soviet prison. Rubashov, in his idle pacing throughout his cell, recollects his past with the Party. He begins to feel impulses of guilt, most especially in those moments he was required to expel devoted revolutionaries from the Party, sending them to their death. These subconscious feelings of guilt are oftentimes represented physically in the form of toothache or through day- or night-dreams. As his thought progresses with the novel, he begins to recognize his guilt, which emerges alongside his individuality. It remains in his subconscious, and it is not until Rubashov absolves himself through silent resignation at his public trial that he is fully conscious of guilt. By joining the Party, Rubashov allows himself to forget the questions of human nature and of his individuality. The nature of his guilt lies in this betrayal of his individuality.
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
The novel focuses on one man, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, as he tries to survive another day in the Soviet Union with dignity and compassion. The action takes place at a prison camp in Russia in the northeastern region called Ekibastuz. The location is pounded by snow, ice and winds of appalling and shocking force during winter and lasted for many weeks. The camp is very isolated as it consists double rows of barbed wire fencing around the entire area, making sure it is fully concealed and private, so that no prisoners can escape. The conditions of the camp are very harsh. It is a union where camp prisoners have to earn their food by working hard in their inadequate clothing during the extremely cold weather. Living conditions are almost unbearable; heavy mattresses do not include sheets, as an alternative it is stuffed with sawdust, prisoners only eat two hundred grams of bread per meal and guards would force prisoners to remove their clothing for body searches at temperatures of forty below zero. The building walls are covered in dull and monotonous white paint and it was untidy and unpleasant. “It’s constant chaos, constant crowds and constant confusion” shows that ceilings are most likely coated with frost and men at the tables are packed as tight and it was always crowded. Rats would diddle around the food store, because of the incredibly unhygienic and filthy environment the camp is and it was so insanitary that some men would die from horrible diseases. “Men trying to barge their way through with full trays” suggests that the living conditions are very harsh indeed and mealtimes would be chaotic, as every famished men would be rushing to receive food. However, not only did the place cause the prisoners to suffer and lose their...
xvi Solzhenitsyn, A. I. The Gulag Archipelago, (I-II). Translated by Thomas P. Whitney. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1973, 436.