One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

First published:Odin den Ivana Denisovicha, 1962 (English translation, 1963)

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Historical realism

Time of plot: 1951

Locale: Siberia, northern Soviet Union

Principal Characters

• Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, a prisoner in a Soviet labor camp
• Tsezar, ,
• Alyosha, ,
• Pavlo, ,
• Fetikov, ,
• Senka, ,
• Kilgas, and
• Buinovsky, members of Shukov’s work squad
• Tiurin, Shukhov’s squad leader

The Story

Reveille begins the day for Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, a victim of the mass imprisonments that took place in the Soviet Union during the regime of Joseph Stalin. Ivan has been unjustly sentenced to ten years imprisonment on spurious charges of espionage while serving in the Soviet Army during World War II. He is serving his term in a labor camp in a remote corner of Siberia. It is the dead of winter, and Ivan wakes up feeling ill. He intends to report for sick call.

Ivan’s plan to report for sick call is apparently thwarted when a camp guard detains him for violating a rule: not getting up at reveille. Ivan is told he will be sentenced to ten days in the guardhouse but soon discovers the prison guard only wants someone to mop the guardhouse floor. Having been thus “let off,” Ivan adroitly manages to get out of the work he was assigned as punishment and returns to his barracks. The sort of adroitness he demonstrates in this incident is a necessary characteristic for survival in the brutal environment of the camp.

Ivan then begins the routine of his day. After a trip to the mess hall, he still has time to go to the infirmary and try to get on sick call. At the infirmary, he is turned down because the daily quota of two prisoners exempted from work because of sickness has already been filled. A bureaucratic culture rules the camp. In contrast to the filth of the barracks and the mess hall, the infirmary is clean, quiet, orderly, and warm. When Ivan enters, the doctors are still asleep. The orderly on duty is writing not a medical report but poetry for the doctor in charge. The orderly, one of the better-off prisoners, has an easy job and some privileges because of his education level. There is a definite hierarchy in the camp, even among the prisoners, or “zeks.”

Ivan reports to his squad, which moves out to the work site. As the squad members begin their work, they start telling the stories of their lives. The prison camp is a microcosm of Soviet Russia. Tiurin, the squad leader, has been imprisoned because his father was a kulak (a well-to-do peasant), a member of a group persecuted by Stalin. Senka is a deaf former soldier who survived the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald; Fetikov, a former high-ranking member of the Communist Party, was arrested in one of Stalin’s purges; Captain Buinovsky is also a loyal Communist and a Soviet naval captain unjustly accused of spying; Alyosha, a Baptist, has been imprisoned for practicing his religion; and Tsezar is an intellectual. These men, together with other squad members, struggle through the day with Ivan, sharing the victories, harassment, tragedies, and triumphs of prison life.

After breakfast, the squad is sent to work at an outpost where a power station is being built. The disorganization, ruin, and waste seen at the building site illustrate the Soviet government’s overall management of society. Ivan works as a mason on the building. As the squad continues working, the building of the wall becomes a heroic task; the dignity of work preserves Ivan’s humanity.

Adroitness carries with it additional benefits. Ivan, who by camp standards is poor and does not receive money or food packets from home, is able to survive and live a bit better because of his abilities. Ample opportunities to use his skills arise through the day. He has his own trowel, which he hides in different places so it will not be confiscated by the authorities, and at the noon meal, he is able to steal two extra bowls of oatmeal when a server is distracted. Such things, though small, empower the inmates of the camp and create a sense of independence that the authorities cannot crush.

After the meal, the job of building continues. One of the prisoners, an overseer for the camp authorities named Der, comes to the site and notices that Ivan’s squad has pilfered some building material to seal windows. He threatens to report Tiurin and his squad, but the men surround him and Tiurin declares that the day Der turns in the squad will be his last day on earth. Reduced to passivity, the overseer promises not to say anything about the pilfering. This incident is a great moral victory for Ivan’s squad.

The workday ends, and the men line up to return to the prison compound. For some reason, there is a delay, and since time is a precious commodity to the prisoners, they deeply resent being kept waiting for half an hour in the freezing cold. The trouble is finally revealed to be a missing Moldavian prisoner who has fallen asleep in one of the buildings. He is charged with attempted escape, and the column finally returns to the prison compound.

Once in the compound, Ivan helps Tsezar get his food parcel from home and manages to fight his way into the mess hall afterward. Later, Tsezar shares some items from his parcel with Ivan as payment for his help. While in the mess hall, Ivan observes a legendary prisoner, an old man, eating near him. Despite decades in prison camps and many physical infirmities, the old man eats with irrepressible dignity, a symbol of the unconquerable humanity demonstrated again and again by Ivan and the other camp inmates.

As the day draws to an end, there is more harassment by the camp authorities. The men are called out for a final assembly. Captain Buinovsky is sentenced to ten days of solitary confinement for an infraction committed that morning. Ivan lies down for the night, thankful for the many good things that had happened that day, and utters a prayer. His prayer is overheard by Alyosha, the Baptist, and the two engage in a discussion of the reasons they are in the prison camp. Alyosha believes that he is there because God has willed it so, and thus he can fully accept his lack of freedom. Ivan, however, believes that he is suffering only because his country was unprepared for war. He wants only to return home, and he cannot accept his incarceration as Alyosha does. After another assembly, Ivan is able to go to sleep. It has been, the narrator comments, an “almost happy day.”

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