aleksandr solzhenitsyn a day in the life of ivan denisovich

For this reason, the Russian poet Nikolai Gribachev, a diehard Stalinist and Solzhenitsyn’s most vocal critic on the committee, argued that Solzhenitsyn’s portrayal of Ivan Denisovich was an affront to the Russian nation. Rather than resisting the injustices of the camp, he accepted his fate and hoped simply to survive. According to the novella’s critics, Ivan Denisovich was too passive. Rather, much of the writers’ discussion revolved around the future Nobel Prize winner’s portrayal of the character of Ivan Denisovich, an ordinary Russian war veteran from a peasant background. Yet I was surprised to discover that the discussion of the Soviet writers who made up the literature section of the Lenin Prize Committee had relatively little to do with Solzhenitsyn’s harrowing description of the everyday degradations of life in the Gulag. It was the most important literary work of Nikita Khrushchev’s “Thaw,” if not the entire Soviet period. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is a chilling account of a single exhausting day in the life of a prisoner in a Stalinist labor camp. According to the log attached to the cover of the file, it had been examined by many researchers over the years, but I had never seen it cited.Īfter a few hours of poring over the discussion, I was puzzled.

16, was the transcript of the discussion of the nomination of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s famous novella One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich for the 1964 Lenin Prize, the Soviet Union’s highest literary award. Novy Mir editor Aleksandr Tvardovsky wrote a short introduction for the issue entitled 'Instead of a Foreword'.“This is going to be good,” I thought to myself as I opened the large archival file at a desk in the reading room of the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art.

The book's publication was an extraordinary event in Soviet literary history, since never before had an account of Stalinist repressions been openly distributed.

The story is set in a Soviet labor camp in the early 1950s and features the day of prisoner Ivan Denisovich Shukhov.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Russian: Один день Ивана Денисовича, romanized: Odin den' Ivana Denisovicha, IPA: ) is a short novel by the Russian writer and Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, first published in November 1962 in the Soviet literary magazine Novy Mir (New World). 'One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich' by Alexander Solzhenitsyn and translated by Ralph Parker - Victor Gollancz, London - 1963 first UK edition first printing - 18cmx15cm -condition: very good copy in very good original dust jacket with trivial wear to edges, in mylar cover, retaining its bright yellow color

Aleksandr solzhenitsyn a day in the life of ivan denisovich