One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

4 hrs. 26 min.

Romance & Prose

Language Russian

Author Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Narrator Roman Ilyin

Description

Written in 1950–1951, one of the first landmark works to proclaim freedom of speech within the territory of the USSR and reveal a small portion of the events that culminated in the communist destruction of the population. The events unfold in a strict-regime labor camp somewhere in Siberia, and are told by Ivan Denisovich Shukhov—an inmate, a former peasant—about a single day he lived. He was drafted into the war in 41st year and soon ended up captured by the Germans. After escaping from captivity through the forests, he was caught by Soviet border guards. Like many Russian soldiers who fled German camps, the hero is charged with espionage, and under torture he is made to wear Article 58, 56, “Treason to the Motherland”—followed by 10 years of exile, hard labor, and camps. Everyday life, the laws of life, relationships among inmates, their stories, and what happens throughout the labor day and free time are described by Solzhenitsyn with the spirit of the place and with a presentation that is characteristic of him, and the book anticipates his main work—“The Gulag Archipelago.”