The Historical Period of One Day in the Life of Iv Essays

The Historical Period of One Day in the Life of Iv Essays The Historical Period of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: Living Eight Years in a Day One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is a story of a man, Ivan Denisovich, during only one day of his sentence in a labor camp in Russia. The novel recounts in a fictional story, the experiences of Solzhenitsyn himself, and of his observations during his "stay" as a foundryworker and bricklayer, just as Shukov was in Solzhenitsyn's novel (One Day... 204). Sent to the Special Camps of Stalin in 1950, he experienced the life of a camp laborer as a political prisoner (Solzhenitsyn 1). Later exiled for life, he began work on the book secretly and recalled the memories with which he constructed the story, yet historical account, of life in a soviet labor camp. Within the text of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, one finds constant references to the actual dress, code of conduct, and language of the prisoners. For example, Shukov, the main character, is a member of gang 104, number S-854 (One Day... 4,6). During their imprisonment, the laborers were assigned numbers of identification: Not only was this an attempt to keep a foothold on some type of organization of the prisoners, but it was also a device of the government to psychologically destroy the individuality of each prisoner, making him a number, burning his name with the clothes that he'd worn on the train ride to the camp (Ratushinskaya ch.4). This practice was much like and even patterned after the practices of the Nazis in their camps in which they imprisoned and humiliated the Jews. Similarly, the crimes for which soviet prisoners were charged ranged from general criminal offenses to ludicrous breaches of petty laws and incriminating political whispersanything that may remotely threaten the safety of Stalin's position in power. Historical documentation of these offenses finds not only Solzhenitsyn himself imprisoned for his "anti-Stalinism" remarks embedded within a discreet letter to a friend (Solzhenitsyn 1), but also the imprisonment of other authors as well. For example, Pasternak and Akhmatova were silenced by Stalin's iron fist for their anti-Stalinist poetry, though brilliant and exquisite (Yarmolinsky 191). Furthermore, attesting to the historical accuracy of the novel, this imprisonment of poets is found in Irina Ratushiskaya's documentation of her own imprisonment as an young, up-and-coming shining star in Russian literature, only to have her efforts quaffed, burned, and she herself, subjected to live as a zek, or prisoner, in the camp (Ratushinskaya c h. 3, 5, 10). Zek-life, as it was called by Ratushinskaya in her book Grey is the Color of Hope, was much like that of the prisoners in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich; Irina, imprisoned nearly 45 years after the time period in which One Day... was set. The vulgar language and unabashed forwardness of both wardens and prisoners exhibits the baseness of the camps(One Day... xiix). Solzhenitsyn described the zeks as being supplied with a minimal amount of clothing and barely minimal amount of food, subjected to strip searches in the middle of winter, and expected to work everyday, maintaining their health (One Day... 37) "Each prisoner was allowed one shirt and one vest. Everything else had to come off.." was the mandate for clothing (One Day... 37). Later is said about Shukov and of the lack of food, "The amount of oats Shukov fed to the horses when he was a boy, and he never thought he'd long for a handful himself one day!"Subjected to the extreme cold of the region, the dampness of the bui ldings, the lack of food, prisoners suffered emotionally, physically, and spiritually. 'One of the main elements of persecution was based on differences in beliefs: A Baptist, evenanyone whose beliefs may conflict with the efforts of The Party (One Day... 38)stood his ground beneath the persecution of Stalin. This example was one, even though a fictional one, of many. Documented in Ratushinskaya's book is the plight of the "nuns" who, in their refusal to leave their traditional faith to join the reconstructed Russian Orthodox Church (Ratushinskaya 53). Similarly, have other orientations been persecuted as well, including sexual orientation. The noted author and Russian Literary great Pushkin was himself a