Book Around the Corner

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1962-1973) French title: Une journée d’Ivan Denissovitch by Alexandre Soljénitsyne. Translated by Lucia and Jean Cathala.

The day we heard about the death of Alexei Navalny is the day I finished reading One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Talk about a coincidence. It’s hard not to superimpose images from Solzhenitsyn’s book on the description of Navalny’s prison camp in Siberia. 50 years later and nothing has changed.

Ivan Denisovich Shukhov has been in prison camps for eight years. He escaped from the Germans during the war and was considered as a spy by the Russian army. He got 10 years of imprisonment and hasn’t been home since 1941.

He’s in Gang 104 and he’s lucky because Tyurin, the gang’s foreman is a decent guy. The other men in his gang are from various backgrounds. Alyocha got years because he’s a Baptist and won’t give up his religion. Gopchit is a Ukrainian nationalist. Buynovsky is a former Soviet Naval Captain. Kildigs is Latvian and Senka Klevshin was freed from Buchenwald. It is just the illustration that no one was safe in Stalin’s days.

Solzhenitsyn tells us an ordinary day in the life of Shukhov, from his point of view. Shukov is street smart and has learnt all the little tricks to make his life easier at the camp. He does it the right way: he’s not walking over other people and his fellow inmates like him. He just knows how to provide useful services to the right persons. He works hard and is a team player.

His goals are simple: ensuring he gets acceptable tools at work, getting a second helping of food, staying near the stove, protecting his meagre possessions, trading tobacco here and there. All his mental energy revolves around his basic needs: to keep himself fed, warm, rather healthy and out of trouble. Bend the rule and stay safe. Help the right persons and keep one’s dignity. Stay under the radar and be seen as a reliable fellow.

A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is based upon Solzhenitsyn’s own experience as a prisoner in such a camp. He describes the rules, the countdown of prisoners, the way meals are organized, the sleeping arrangements. They all wear a number, sewn on their clothes and mandatory.

The most ludicrous part is when Solzhenitsyn describes their working day. They go to work for a contractor and build walls for an upcoming electricity plant. It’s around -27°C that day. There’s snow everywhere and the prisoners are very cold. They spend the whole morning protecting themselves from the biting cold and setting up a stove. There’s no wood for it, so they burn whatever they can. It’s so cold that the mortar freezes before they can use it if they’re not cautious. Building a wall is a stupid idea in this weather.

It’s utter inefficiency: they are left to their own devices, so imagine a gang with no one who ever worked in construction. There’s no direction from a foreman, they have to guess how to build this wall. They are so cold that they destroy tools and scaffoldings to take the wood and feed the stove. Shukhov is a Jack of all trades and it helps that he can work with his hands. He knows how to build a brick wall.

Like in Fateless by Imre Kertész, Shukhov’s train of thought is pragmatic. He adjusts to his environment. Solzhenitsyn’s style also reminded me of Gogol. It’s inventive, humorous and according to the author, faithful to the argot language of the camps.

It’s not as hard to read as If This is a Man by Primo Levi because of Solzhenitsyn’s style. He doesn’t sugarcoat the living conditions of the prisoners but he pictures a down-to-earth character who adapts to the camp, makes the best of it and keeps his moral boundaries. He behaves like a decent human being and thus retains his humanity in a dehumanizing setting.

Very highly recommended.

This is part of my Tame the TBR project. I don’t know why it took me so long to get to this book.