The document provides information about Alexander Solzhenitsyn and his book "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich". It summarizes that Solzhenitsyn spent 8 years in the Soviet Gulag system after WWII for alleged spying. While in the Gulag, he gathered material for his book which realistically depicted life in the 1950s Soviet Gulag and was published in 1962 in the USSR. The book caused a huge sensation and Solzhenitsyn later won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970. He was then expelled from the USSR in 1974 for being critical of the Soviet system in his writings.
2. Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Nobel Prize Winner Author
A moral indictment of the Soviet Gulag
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Day_in_the_Life_of_Ivan_Denisovich http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20216696,00.html
3. http://geocurrents.info/
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From 1929, when the Gulag first expanded, to its apex in 1953 when Stalin died,
it is estimated that 18 million people were sent to the Gulag.
• Six million were sent into prison or exiled elsewhere.
• Anne Applebaum, author of Gulag: A History, calculates that 3 million died directly
from being in the Gulag.
• At its height there were 476 separate prison camps.
4. Alexander Solzhenitzyn
• Solzhenitsyn, after having been a German POW in WWII, spent 8
years in the Gulag, like many others, convicted of having been sent
back to the USSR to spy for the Germans.
• During the Khrushchev thaw he was “rehabilitated” and allowed to
return home.
• One Day was set in the Soviet Gulag of the 1950s; it was published
in 1962 in the USSR, after Khrushchev had denounced Stalin’s
excesses.
• In 1970 Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
• He also wrote The First Circle, Cancer Ward and The Gulag
Archipelago, all critical of the Soviet Union, and then he was
expelled from the USSR in 1974.
• He returned to Russia in 1994, and he died there in 2008.
5. Themes
• The inhumanity in the Gulag
– The arbitrary and senseless rules
– The disregard for human life and suffering
• Isolation from loved ones
• Resourcefulness
• Human beings’ resilience / survival instinct
• Camaraderie
• The small blessings / triumphs in each day
6. Questions to consider as you read
• Be sure to read the foreword and introduction before
you read the book.
• What aspects of the book are the most realistic?
– That is, how can you tell that Solzhenitsyn had been in the
Gulag himself?
• The book caused a huge sensation in the Soviet Union
when it was published.
– What do you think Soviet citizens were thinking as they read
the book?
– What would the people of the USSR have found most
disturbing or remarkable?
