alexander solzhenitsyn a day in the life of ivan denisovich

During World War II he served as commander of a Soviet Army artillery unit and was twice decorated for bravery. His father died in a hunting accident before his birth, and his mother, the daughter of a wealthy landowner, struggled to support the family on her meager wages as a typist.īetween 19 Solzhenitsyn studied philosophy, literature, mathematics, and language in 1941 he received a degree in mathematics and physics from the University of Rostov. Author BiographyĪlexandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodsk, Russia, on December 11, 1918. The major themes of the story are human survival and human dignity in the face of human cruelty and absurdity. Its publication opened the door for further revelations and explorations of Gulag life by other authors. Today “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is still admired for its succinct and stark depiction of the cruelty and degradation of prison life during that time. In fact, Solzhenitzyn drew from his own personal experience as a prisoner in the camps under Stalin. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970, and most critics still regard “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” as the most realistic and evocative depiction of life in a Stalinist prison camp.

Unfortunately, with the fall of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in 1964 and a resumption of hard-line attitudes, Solzhenitsyn’s outspoken writings were banished and much of his writing circulated in Samisdat (self-published format). This short story about a single day in the life of a “zek” (a political prisoner) in the Soviet “Gulag” (work camps) brought its author, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, almost immediate notoriety in the Soviet Union and throughout the world. The publication of “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” in 1962 in the leading Soviet intellectual magazine Novy Mir (New World), was a significant victory for dissident artists in the Soviet Union.

Alexander solzhenitsyn a day in the life of ivan denisovich