Facts from the life of A. Solzhenitsyn and the audiobook “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” Camp life in story A

06.07.2022 | Literature

Year: 1959 Genre: story

Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn wrote the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” in 1959. It became the first work about Soviet concentration camps, bringing him worldwide fame. This is a story about one day of an ordinary Soviet prisoner. The events of the story written by Solzhenitsyn take place at the beginning of the 51st year of the 20th century.

It was winter. At 5 am in the camp, as always, the rise was announced. It was dark and cold outside. And in the large barracks for hundreds of people there was also a terrible cold. Prisoner Ivan Denisovich Shukhov was sick, so he really didn’t want to get up.

Today their team was supposed to be transferred to the construction of another facility. Because of the terrible cold, no one wanted this. The foreman, Andrei Prokofievich Tyurin, had to negotiate the cancellation of the transfer to a new facility for a bribe, of course, a kilogram of lard.

Shukhov decided to go to the medical unit. He has already served 8 years out of the required 10. Shukhov was transferred to this camp from another: he previously served his sentence in Ust-Izhma. The duty officer turned to Shukhov and said that he would receive three days in a punishment cell for failure to comply with the lifting time. The entire 104th brigade saw Ivan Denisovich being taken away from the barracks.

The duty officer took Shukhov to the headquarters barracks, where he had to wash the floor. Ivan was very happy about this, because it was flooded here. He got to work. Having wiped the floors under the close attention of the guards, Shukhov went to the dining room for another portion of gruel.

It was cold in the dining room. Black cabbage with millet was eaten in hats. Teammate Fetyukov was guarding Shukhov’s already cold breakfast. Ivan took off his hat; he always had a spoon with him, in his felt boots. Slowly, he ate it all, breaking off pieces of the almost frozen porridge.

After breakfast, Shukhov remembered that he had agreed to buy two glasses of samosada from the Latvian from the neighboring barracks. But the medical unit was more needed. There was only one guy there in the morning - paramedic Kolya. Nikolai Semenovich knew that Shukhov was not faking. But he could not be released from work, since two prisoners were much more seriously ill.

Ivan Denisovich went to work with a slight fever. Along the way, he received a weighted ration of bread and underwent a morning inspection for prohibited foods and letters. A local artist updated the number Shch-854 on Shukhov’s padded jacket to make it easier to see. Otherwise, you could end up in a punishment cell.

In the new year, Shukhov had the right to two letters, but he himself did not want more. Ivan Denisovich left home on June 23, 1941, immediately after the start of the war. His family also wrote to him twice a year. Shukhov did not understand their life, their problems. His wife was waiting for Ivan with the hope that when he returned, he would earn a lot of money and put his children on their feet. Shukhov was not very hopeful: he didn’t know how to cheat, he didn’t take or give bribes.

Work went to each of the brigade: some carried water, others carried sand, others cleared snow. Shukhov, as the first master, got the job of laying the walls with cinder blocks. He carried it out together with his partner, the Latvian Kildiks, whose prison term was 25 years. Until noon, cinder blocks were lifted by hand to the second floor. For lunch, the workers were given oatmeal. Shukhov got a double portion.

Work on laying the wall continued. Considering the frost, there was no time to hesitate: the solution set quickly. Shukhov admired the well-done work late in the evening, when everyone had left.

After dinner and the evening check, Ivan Denisovich climbed onto his bed and lit a cigarette. He didn’t want to sleep at all, because the day had turned out to be successful:

They didn’t put me in a punishment cell;
A brigade was not sent for new construction;
For lunch he received a double portion of porridge;
The foreman closed the interest well;
Shukhov laid out the wall cheerfully;
I didn’t get caught on a search with a hacksaw found, from which I was going to make a shoe knife;
I bought two glasses of samosada tobacco for 2 rubles;
Almost recovered without getting sick.

And there were 3653 such days in his period from call to call.

The story teaches moral overcoming, preserving human dignity even in conditions in which survival can be very difficult.

Picture or drawing One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich

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Still from the film “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” (1970)

Peasant and front-line soldier Ivan Denisovich Shukhov turned out to be a “state criminal”, a “spy” and ended up in one of Stalin’s camps, like millions of Soviet people, convicted without guilt during the “cult of personality” and mass repressions. He left home on June 23, 1941, the second day after the start of the war with Hitler's Germany, “...in February 1942, on the North-Western [Front], their entire army was surrounded, and they weren’t thrown anything from the planes to eat, and there weren’t any of those planes either. They went so far as to cut the hooves off dead horses, soak that cornea in water and eat it,” that is, the command of the Red Army abandoned its soldiers to die surrounded. Together with a group of fighters, Shukhov found himself in German captivity, fled from the Germans and miraculously reached his own. A careless story about how he was in captivity led him to Soviet concentration camp, since the organs state security all those who escaped from captivity were indiscriminately considered spies and saboteurs.

The second part of Shukhov’s memories and reflections during long camp labors and a short rest in the barracks relates to his life in the village. From the fact that his relatives do not send him food (he himself refused the parcels in a letter to his wife), we understand that they are starving in the village no less than in the camp. The wife writes to Shukhov that collective farmers make a living by painting fake carpets and selling them to townspeople.

If we leave aside flashbacks and random information about life outside the barbed wire, the entire story takes exactly one day. In this short period of time, a panorama of camp life unfolds before us, a kind of “encyclopedia” of life in the camp.

Firstly, a whole gallery of social types and at the same time bright human characters: Caesar is a metropolitan intellectual, a former film figure, who, however, even in the camp leads a “lordly” life compared to Shukhov: he receives food parcels, enjoys some benefits during work ; Kavtorang - repressed Marine officer; an old convict who had also been in tsarist prisons and hard labor (the old revolutionary guard, who did not find a common language with the policies of Bolshevism in the 30s); Estonians and Latvians are the so-called “bourgeois nationalists”; Baptist Alyosha is an exponent of the thoughts and way of life of a very heterogeneous religious Russia; Gopchik is a sixteen-year-old teenager whose fate shows that repression did not distinguish between children and adults. And Shukhov himself is a typical representative of the Russian peasantry with his special business acumen and organic way of thinking. Against the background of these people who suffered from repression, a different figure emerges - the head of the regime, Volkov, who regulates the lives of prisoners and, as it were, symbolizes the merciless communist regime.

Secondly, a detailed picture of camp life and work. Life in the camp remains life with its visible and invisible passions and subtle experiences. They are mainly related to the problem of getting food. They are fed little and poorly with terrible gruel with frozen cabbage and small fish. A kind of art of life in the camp is to get yourself an extra ration of bread and an extra bowl of gruel, and if you're lucky, a little tobacco. For this, one has to resort to the greatest tricks, currying favor with “authorities” like Caesar and others. At the same time, it is important to preserve your human dignity, not to become a “descended” beggar, like, for example, Fetyukov (however, there are few of them in the camp). This is important not even for lofty reasons, but out of necessity: a “descended” person loses the will to live and will certainly die. Thus, the question of preserving the human image within oneself becomes a question of survival. Second vital important question- attitude towards forced labor. Prisoners, especially in winter, work hard, almost competing with each other and team with team, in order not to freeze and in a way “shorten” the time from overnight to overnight, from feeding to feeding. The terrible system of collective labor is built on this incentive. But nevertheless, it does not completely destroy the natural joy of physical labor in people: the scene of the construction of a house by the team where Shukhov works is one of the most inspired in the story. The ability to work “correctly” (without overexerting, but also without slacking), as well as the ability to get extra rations, is also a high art. As well as the ability to hide from the eyes of the guards a piece of saw that turns up, from which the camp craftsmen make miniature knives for exchange for food, tobacco, warm things... In relation to the guards who are constantly conducting “shmons”, Shukhov and the rest of the Prisoners are in the position of wild animals : they must be more cunning and dexterous than armed people who have the right to punish them and even shoot them for deviating from the camp regime. Deceiving the guards and camp authorities is also a high art.

The day that the hero narrates was, in his own opinion, successful - “they didn’t put him in a punishment cell, they didn’t send the brigade to Sotsgorodok (working in a bare field in winter - editor’s note), at lunch he mowed down porridge (he got an extra portion - editor's note), the foreman closed the interest well (the camp labor assessment system - editor's note), Shukhov laid the wall cheerfully, did not get caught with a hacksaw on the search, worked in the evening at Caesar's and bought tobacco. And he didn’t get sick, he got over it. The day passed, unclouded, almost happy. There were three thousand six hundred and fifty-three such days in his period from bell to bell. Due to leap years, three extra days were added...”

At the end of the story it is given short dictionary criminal expressions and specific camp terms and abbreviations that appear in the text.

Retold

The impact of a hammer on the rail near the headquarters barracks at 5 am meant a rise in the prisoner camp. Main character story, the peasant Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, prisoner number Shch-854, could not force himself to get up, because he was either shivering or aching. He listened to the sounds coming from the barracks, but continued to lie until the guard, nicknamed Tatar, tore off his padded jacket. He announced to Shukhov for not getting up on the rise, “three days of confinement with withdrawal,” that is, a punishment cell for three days, but with a walk and a hot lunch. In fact, it turned out that the floor in the guard's room needed to be washed, so they found the “victim.”

Ivan Denisovich was going to go to the medical unit, but after the “punishment cell” he changed his mind. He learned well the lesson of his first foreman, the camp wolf Kuzemin: he argued that in the camp “he dies,” “who licks the bowls, who hopes for the medical unit,” and “knocks on the authorities.” Having finished washing the floor in the guard's room, Shukhov poured water on the path where the camp authorities walk, and hurried to the dining room.

It was cold there (after all, it was 30 degrees below zero outside), so we ate with our hats on. The prisoners ate slowly, spitting out the bones of the fish from which the gruel was cooked onto the table, and from there they were thrown onto the floor. Shukhov did not go into the barracks and did not receive a ration of bread, but this made him happy, because then the bread can be eaten separately - it is even more satisfying. The gruel was always cooked from fish and some vegetables, so it didn’t make you full. For the second course they gave magara - corn porridge. It didn’t add satiety either.

After breakfast, Ivan Denisovich decided to go to the medical unit, but his temperature was low (only 37.2), so the paramedic advised Shukhov to go to work after all. He returned to the barracks, received his ration of bread and divided it into two parts: he hid one in his bosom, and the second he sewed into the mattress. And as soon as he managed to sew up the hole, the foreman called the 104th brigade to work.

The brigade went to its previous work, and not to the construction of Sotsbytgorodok. Otherwise, we would have to go out into a bare snow field, dig holes and string barbed wire for ourselves. This is in thirty-degree frost. But, apparently, their foreman made a fuss and took a piece of bacon to someone who needed it, so now other brigades will go there - stupider and poorer ones.

At the exit, a search began: they checked that they did not take food with them. At the entrance to the zone they searched more strictly: they checked that no pieces of iron were brought in. Today it turned out that they check everything down to the undershirt to see if anything unnecessary has been removed. Kavtorang Buinovsky tried to appeal to conscience: he said that the guards do not have the right to undress people in the cold, that they soviet people. For this he received 10 days of strict regime in the BUR, but in the evening, so as not to lose the employee.

In order not to completely freeze after the bustle, Shukhov covered his face with a rag, raised his collar, lowered the front flap of his hat onto his forehead and, together with the column, moved towards the piercing wind. After a cold breakfast, his stomach was growling, and Shukhov, in order to distract himself, began to remember the contents of the last letter from his wife. She wrote that young people strive to leave the village and get a job in the city at a factory or peat mining. Only women carry the collective farm, and the few men who returned after the war did not work on the collective farm: some work on the side, while others have put together an artel of “dyers” and paint pictures using stencils directly on old sheets. Such a picture costs 50 rubles, so “the money is coming in in the thousands.”

The wife hoped that after his release Ivan would become such a “painter”, so that they could then get out of poverty, send their children to a technical school and build a new hut instead of a rotten one, because everyone had already built new houses for themselves - not for 5 thousand, as before, but 25. To Shukhov, such easy income seemed dishonest. Ivan Denisovich understood that easily earned money would just as easily go away. Over his forty years, he was used to earning money, albeit hard, but honestly.

He left home on June 23, 1941 to go to war. In February 1942, he was surrounded and then captured by the Nazis - for just two days. Soon the five of them managed to escape, but let it slip that they were in captivity. They, supposedly fascist agents, were put behind bars. Shukhov was beaten a lot to make him admit what assignment he received, but he couldn’t say it, and the investigator never came up with an idea. To avoid being beaten to death, Shukhov had to sign a lie against himself. I served seven years in the north, almost two years here. I couldn’t believe that a year later he could walk free with his own feet.

To reminisce about his memories, Ivan Denisovich took out a piece of bread and began biting and chewing little by little. Previously, they ate a lot - from the belly, but now the former peasant only realized the real value of bread: even raw, black, it seemed so fragrant. And there are still 5 hours until lunch.

We arrived at an unfinished thermal power plant, and the foreman divided us into groups of fives so that they could push each other on. With their small team, they set up the place of work: they covered the windows with roofing felt to keep the cold out, and lit the stove. Kavtorang and Fetyukov carried the solution on a stretcher, but it was slow. At first Buinovsky could not adjust, and then Fetyukov began to tilt the stretcher and pour out the solution to make it easier to carry up the ladder. The captain got angry, then the foreman assigned Fetyukov to shift the cinder blocks, and sent Alyoshka the Baptist to the mortar.

Shukhov hears screams below. Construction foreman Dair came. They said he used to be a minister in Moscow. He saw that the windows were closed with tar paper and threatened Tyurin with a third term. All the members of the brigade came up: Pavlo raised the shovel with a backhand, healthy Sanka put his hands on his hips - it was scary to watch. The foreman then quietly said to Deru that if he wants to live, he should remain silent. The foreman turned pale, stood away from the ladder, then became attached to Shukhov, as if he were putting a thin seam. You have to take it out on someone.

Finally, the foreman shouted to Deru to get the lift fixed: pay for a wheelbarrow, but they carry mortar and cinder blocks on a stretcher, the work is moving slowly, you can’t earn much money. The foreman always tried to cover a good percentage - the rations for at least a week depended on this. For lunch there was the best porridge - oatmeal, and Shukhov managed to “mow” two extra servings. One went to Cesar Markovich, a young film director. He was on special conditions: he received parcels twice a month and sometimes treated his cellmates.

Shukhov happily ate one extra portion himself. Until lunch was over, Brigadier Tyurin talked about his difficult life. Once upon a time he was kicked out of a military school because of his kulak father. His mother was also exiled, and he managed to arrange for his younger brother to join the thieves. Now he regrets that he did not pester them. After such a sad story, we went to work. Shukhov had his own trowel hidden away, which was easy for him to work with. And today, while building the wall brick by brick, Ivan Denisovich was so carried away by this process that he even forgot where he was.

Shukhov had to level the walls, so only five rows were raised. But they mixed a lot of mortar, so he and Sanka had to continue laying the brickwork. And time is running out, all the other brigades lined up to return to the zone. The foreman was able to explain their lateness, but one person was missing. It turned out that it was in the 32nd brigade: the Moldovan hid from the foreman on the scaffolding and fell asleep. He took away the time of five hundred people - and he heard enough strong words, and received a slap on the withers from the brigadier, and the Magyar kicked him in the ass.

Finally the column moved towards the camp. Now the evening bustle is ahead. Padded jackets and peacoats need to be unbuttoned, arms raised to the sides so that clapping at the sides is comfortable. Suddenly Ivan Denisych put his hand in the pocket on his knee, and there was a piece of a hacksaw. During the day I picked it up “out of housekeeping” in the middle of the work area and didn’t even intend to bring it into the camp. And now I have to throw it away, but it’s a pity: I’ll need to make a knife later, either a tailor’s knife or a shoemaker’s knife. If I had decided to pick it up right away, I would have figured out how to bring it in, but now there’s no time. For a hacksaw they could get 10 days in a punishment cell, but that was income, it was bread!

And Shukhov came up with an idea: he hid the scrap in his mitten, in the hope that the mittens would not be checked, and obsequiously lifted the hems of his pea coat and padded jacket so that they could “sneak around” faster. Luckily for him, the next brigade was approaching, and the warden did not probe the second mitten. The light had already been high in the sky for a month when the 104th entered the camp. Shukhov went into the parcel room to see if there was anything for Tsezar Markovich. He was on the list, so when he appeared, Shukhov quickly explained who it was his turn and ran to the dining room to slurp the gruel while it was hot. And Caesar graciously allowed him to eat his portion. Lucky again: two servings for lunch and two for dinner. I decided to leave four hundred grams of my bread and two hundred grams of Caesar’s for tomorrow, because now I was full.

Ivan Denisovich felt good, and he decided to get some more tobacco from the Latvian. The money he had earned long ago was sewn into the lining. The tobacco turned out to be good: “it’s both tart and fragrant.” In the barracks, many had already lain down on the bunks, but then they came for the cavalry: for the morning incident with the warden - 10 days in a punishment cell in the cold, on bare boards, and the gruel is hot only on the third, sixth and ninth days. You will lose your health for life. Caesar laid out his parcel: butter, sausage, cookies. And then there's the evening check. Shukhov again suggested to Caesar how to hide it better so that it would not be taken away. For this I received two cookies, sugar and a circle of sausage.

Ivan Denisovich fell asleep completely satisfied: today turned out to be an almost happy day. There were a lot of successes: they weren’t put in a punishment cell, they weren’t sent to Sotsgorodok, the interest rate was well closed, Shukhov didn’t get caught on a search, he ate two portions each, and earned extra money. And most importantly, I didn’t get sick.

Among the works of Russian literature there is a whole list of those that were dedicated to contemporary reality by the authors. Today we will talk about one of the works of Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn and present it summary. “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is the story that will serve as the topic of this article.

Facts from the author's biography: youth

Before describing the summary of the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” I would like to dwell on some information from the writer’s personal life in order to understand why such a work appeared among his creations. Alexander Isaevich was born in Kislovodsk in December 1918 into an ordinary peasant family. His father was educated at the university, but his life was tragic: he took part in the bloody First World War, and upon returning from the front, by an absurd accident, he died without even seeing the birth of his son. After this, the mother, who came from a “kulak” family, and little Alexander had to huddle in corners and rented shacks for more than 15 years. From 1926 to 1936, Solzhenitsyn studied at school, where he was bullied due to disagreement with certain provisions of communist ideology. At the same time, he first became seriously interested in literature.

Constant persecution

Studying for correspondence department Literary Faculty at the Institute of Philosophy was interrupted by the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. Despite the fact that Solzhenitsyn went through it all and even rose to the rank of captain, in February 1945 he was arrested and sentenced to 8 years in camps and lifelong exile. The reason for this was the negative assessments of the Stalin regime, the totalitarian system and Soviet literature, saturated with falsehood, discovered in Solzhenitsyn’s personal correspondence. Only in 1956 the writer was released from exile by a decision of the Supreme Court. In 1959, Solzhenitsyn created a famous story about a single, but not at all last, day of Ivan Denisovich, a brief summary of which will be discussed below. It was published in the periodical " New world"(issue 11). To do this, the editor, A. T. Tvardovsky, had to enlist the support of N. S. Khrushchev, the head of state. However, since 1966, the author was subjected to a second wave of repression. He was deprived of Soviet citizenship and sent to West Germany. Solzhenitsyn returned to his homeland only in 1994, and only from that time his creations began to be appreciated. The writer died in August 2008 at the age of 90.

“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”: the beginning

The story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” a brief summary of which could not be presented without an analysis of the turning points in the life of its creator, tells the reader about the camp existence of a peasant, a worker, a front-line soldier, who, due to Stalin’s policies, ended up in a camp, in exile. By the time the reader meets Ivan Denisovich, he is already an elderly man who has lived in such inhuman conditions for about 8 years. Lived and survived. He got this share because during the war he was captured by the Germans, from which he escaped, and was later accused by the Soviet government of espionage. The investigator who examined his case, of course, was unable not only to establish, but even to come up with what the espionage could consist of, and therefore simply wrote a “task” and sent him to hard labor. The story clearly resonates with other works of the author on similar topics - these are “In the First Circle” and “The Gulag Archipelago”.

Summary: “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” as a story about a common man

The work opens with the date 1941, June 23 - it was at this time that the main character left his native village of Temgenevo, left his wife and two daughters in order to devote himself to defending his homeland. A year later, in February, Ivan Denisovich and his comrades were captured, and after a successful escape to their homeland, as mentioned above, they found themselves classified as spies and exiled to a Soviet concentration camp. For refusing to sign the protocol drawn up, they could have been shot, but this way the man had the opportunity to live at least a little longer in this world.

Ivan Denisovich Shukhov spent 8 years in Ust-Izhma, and spent the 9th year in Siberia. There is cold and monstrous conditions all around. Instead of decent food - a disgusting stew with fish remains and frozen cabbage. That is why both Ivan Denisovich and the minor characters around him (for example, the intellectual Caesar Markovich, who did not manage to become a director, or the naval officer of the 2nd rank Buinovsky, nicknamed Kavtorang) are busy thinking about where to get food for themselves in order to last at least one more day. The hero no longer has half of his teeth, his head is shaved - a real convict.

A certain hierarchy and system of relationships have been built in the camp: some are respected, others are disliked. The latter includes Fetyukov, a former office boss who avoids work and survives by begging. Shukhov, like Fetyukov, does not receive parcels from home, unlike Caesar himself, because the village is starving. But Ivan Denisovich does not lose his dignity; on the contrary, on this day he tries to lose himself in construction work, only devoting himself more diligently to the work, without overexerting himself and at the same time not shirking his duties. He manages to buy tobacco, successfully hide a piece of a hacksaw, get an extra portion of porridge, not end up in a punishment cell and not be sent to Social Town to work in the bitter cold - these are the results the hero sums up at the end of the day. This one day in the life of Ivan Denisovich (the summary will be supplemented by an analysis of the details) can be called truly happy - this is what the main character himself thinks. Only he already has 3,564 such “happy” camp days. The story ends on this sad note.

The nature of the main character

Shukhov Ivan Denisovich is, in addition to all of the above, a man of word and deed. It is thanks to labor that a person from the common people does not lose his face under the current conditions. Village wisdom dictates to Ivan Denisovich how he should behave: even in such debilitating circumstances, he must remain an honest person. For Ivan Denisovich, humiliating himself in front of others, licking plates and making denunciations against fellow sufferers seems low and shameful. The key guidelines for him are simple folk proverbs and sayings: “He who knows two things with his hands can also do ten.” Mixed in with them are the principles acquired already in the camp, as well as Christian and universal postulates, which Shukhov truly begins to understand only here. Why did Solzhenitsyn create exactly such a person as the main character of his story? “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” a brief summary of which was discussed in this material, is a story that affirms the opinion of the author himself that the driving force behind the development of the state, one way or another, was, is and will always be ordinary people. Ivan Denisovich is one of its representatives.

Time

What else allows the reader to establish both the full and brief content? “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is a story, the analysis of which cannot be considered complete without analyzing the time component of the work. The time of the story is motionless. Days replace each other, but this does not bring the end of the term closer. The monotony and mechanicalness of life were yesterday; they will be there tomorrow too. That is why one day accumulates the entire camp reality - Solzhenitsyn did not even have to create a voluminous, weighty book to describe it. However, in the vicinity of this time, something else coexists - metaphysical, universal. What matters here is not the crumbs of bread, but the spiritual, moral and ethical values that remain unchanged from century to century. Values that help a person survive even in such harsh conditions.

Space

In the space of the story, a contradiction with the spaces described by the writers of the golden age is clearly visible. The heroes of the 19th century loved freedom, vastness, steppes, forests; heroes of the 20th century prefer cramped, stuffy cells and barracks to them. They want to hide from the eyes of the guards, to get away, to escape from wide open spaces and open areas. However, this is not all that allows us to determine both the full and brief content. “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is a story in which the boundaries of imprisonment remain extremely blurred, and this is a different level of space. It seems that the camp reality has swallowed up the entire country. Taking into account the fate of the author himself, we can conclude that this was not too far from the truth.

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The idea for the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” came to Alexander Solzhenitsyn while imprisoned in a special regime camp in the winter of 1950-1951. He was able to implement it only in 1959. Since then, the book has been reprinted several times, after which it was withdrawn from sale and libraries. The story became freely available in the homeland only in 1990. The prototypes for the characters in the work were real people whom the author knew while in the camps or at the front.

Shukhov's life in a special regime camp

The story begins with a wake-up call in a special regime correctional camp. This signal was given by hitting the rail with a hammer. The main character, Ivan Shukhov, never woke up. Between him and the start of work, the prisoners had about an hour and a half of free time, during which they could try to earn extra money. Such a part-time job could be helping in the kitchen, sewing, or cleaning stores. Shukhov always happily worked part-time, but that day he was not feeling well. He lay there and wondered whether he should go to the medical unit. In addition, the man was worried about rumors that they wanted to send their brigade to build “Sotsgorodok” instead of building workshops. And this work promised to be hard labor - in the cold without the possibility of heating, far from the barracks. Shukhov's foreman went to settle this issue with the contractors, and, according to Shukhov's assumptions, brought them a bribe in the form of lard.
Suddenly, the man's padded jacket and peacoat with which he was covered were roughly torn off. These were the hands of a warden nicknamed Tatar. He immediately threatened Shukhov with three days of “withdrawal.” In local jargon, this meant three days in a punishment cell with assignment to work. Shukhov began to pretend to ask for forgiveness from the warden, but he remained adamant and ordered the man to follow him. Shukhov obediently hurried after Tatar. It was bitterly cold outside. The prisoner looked hopefully at the large thermometer hanging in the yard. According to the rules, if the temperature was below forty-one degrees, they were not allowed to go to work.

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Meanwhile, the men came to the guards' room. There the Tatar generously proclaimed that he forgives Shukhov, but he must wash the floor in this room. The man assumed such an outcome, but began to feigned gratitude to the warden for mitigating the punishment and promised never to miss a lift again. Then he rushed to the well for water, wondering how to wash the floor without getting his felt boots wet, because he didn’t have replacement shoes. Once during his eight years of imprisonment he was given excellent leather boots. Shukhov loved them very much and took care of them, but the boots had to be returned when they were given felt boots in their place. During his entire imprisonment, he never regretted anything as much as those boots.
Having quickly washed the floor, the man rushed into the dining room. It was a very gloomy building, filled with steam. Men sat in teams at long tables eating gruel and porridge. The rest were crowded in the aisle, waiting for their turn.

Shukhov in the medical unit

There was a hierarchy in each prisoner brigade. Shukhov was not there last person in his own, so when he came from the dining room, a guy lower than his rank was sitting and guarding his breakfast. The gruel and porridge have already cooled down and become practically inedible. But Shukhov ate it all thoughtfully and slowly, he thought that in the camp the prisoners only have personal time, ten minutes for breakfast and five minutes for lunch.
After breakfast, the man went to the medical unit, having almost reached it, he remembered that he had to go buy a samosad from a Lithuanian who had received a parcel. But after hesitating a little, he still chose the medical unit. Shukhov entered the building, which never tired of striking him with its whiteness and cleanliness. All the offices were still locked. Paramedic Nikolai Vdovushkin sat at the post and carefully wrote words on sheets of paper.

Our hero noted that Kolya was writing something “leftist,” that is, not related to work, but immediately concluded that this did not concern him.

He complained to the paramedic about feeling unwell, he gave him a thermometer, but warned him that the orders had already been distributed, and he needed to complain about his health in the evening. Shukhov understood that he would not be able to stay in the medical unit. Vdovushkin continued to write. Few people knew that Nikolai became a paramedic only after being in the zone. Before that, he was a student at a literary institute, and the local doctor Stepan Grigorovich took him to work, in the hope that he would write here what he could not in the wild. Shukhov never ceased to be amazed at the cleanliness and silence that reigned in the medical unit. He spent a full five minutes inactive. The thermometer showed thirty-seven point two. Ivan Denisovich Shukhov silently pulled his hat down and hurried to the barracks to join his 104th brigade before work.

The harsh everyday life of prisoners

Brigadier Tyurin was sincerely glad that Shukhov did not end up in a punishment cell. He gave him a ration, which consisted of bread and a pile of sugar poured on top of it. The prisoner hastily licked the sugar and sewed half of the bread he had been given into the mattress. He hid the second part of the ration in his padded jacket pocket. At the signal from the foreman, the men set off to work. Shukhov noted with satisfaction that they were going to work in the same place - which means Tyurin managed to come to an agreement. On the way, the prisoners were subjected to a “shmon.” This was a procedure to determine whether they were taking anything prohibited outside the camp. Today the process was led by Lieutenant Volkova, whom even the camp commander himself was afraid of. Despite the cold, he forced the men to strip down to their shirts. Anyone who had extra clothes was confiscated. Shukhov's teammate Buinovsky is a former hero Soviet Union, was outraged by this behavior of the authorities. He accused the lieutenant of not being a Soviet man, for which he immediately received ten days of strict regime, but only upon returning from work.
After the search, the prisoners were lined up in lines of five, carefully counted and sent under escort to the cold steppe to work.

The frost was such that everyone wrapped their faces in rags and walked in silence, looking down at the ground. Ivan Denisovich, in order to distract himself from the hungry rumbling in his stomach, began to think about how he would soon write a letter home.

He was entitled to two letters a year, and he didn’t need more. He had not seen his family since the summer of forty-one, and now it was fifty-one. The man reflected that now he has more common themes with his bunk neighbors than with his relatives.

Letters from my wife

In her rare letters, his wife wrote to Shukhov about the difficult collective farm life that only women endure. The men who returned from the war work on the side. Ivan Denisovich could not understand how anyone could not want to work on their land.

The wife said that many in their area are engaged in a fashionable, profitable trade - carpet dyeing. The unfortunate woman hoped that her husband would also take up this business when he returned home, and this would help the family get out of poverty.

In the work area

Meanwhile, the one hundred and fourth brigade reached the working area, they were lined up again, counted and allowed into the territory. Everything there was dug up and dug up, boards and chips were lying everywhere, traces of the foundation were visible, prefabricated houses stood. Brigadier Tyurin went to receive an outfit for the brigade for the day. The men, taking the opportunity, ran into a large wooden building on the territory, a heating room. The place near the furnace was occupied by the thirty-eighth brigade that worked there. Shukhov and his comrades just leaned against the wall. Ivan Denisovich could not control the temptation and ate almost all the bread he had saved for lunch. About twenty minutes later the foreman appeared, and he looked unhappy. The team was sent to complete the construction of the thermal power plant building, which had been abandoned since the fall. Tyurin distributed the work. Shukhov and the Latvian Kildigs were given the task of laying walls, since they were the best craftsmen in the brigade. Ivan Denisovich was an excellent mason, the Latvian was a carpenter. But first it was necessary to insulate the building where the men would work and build a stove. Shukhov and Kildigs went to the other end of the yard to bring a roll of roofing felt. They were going to use this material to seal the holes in the windows. The roofing felt had to be smuggled into the thermal power plant building secretly from the foreman and the informers who were monitoring the theft of building materials. The men stood the roll upright and, pressing it tightly with their bodies, carried it into the building. The work was in full swing, each prisoner worked with the thought - the more the brigade does, each member will receive a larger ration. Tyurin was a strict but fair foreman, under his command everyone received a well-deserved piece of bread.

Closer to lunch, the stove was built, the windows were covered with tar paper, and some of the workers even sat down to rest and warm their chilled hands by the fireplace. The men began to tease Shukhov that he had almost one foot in freedom. He was given a sentence of ten years. He has already served eight of them. Many of Ivan Denisovich’s comrades had to serve another twenty-five years.

Memories of the Past

Shukhov began to remember how all this happened to him. He was imprisoned for treason. In February 1942, their entire army in the North-West was surrounded. Ammo and food ran out. So the Germans began to catch them all in the forests. And Ivan Denisovich was caught. He remained in captivity for a couple of days - five of him and his comrades escaped. When they reached their own, the submachine gunner killed three of them with his rifle. Shukhov and his friend survived, so they were immediately registered as German spies. Then the counterintelligence service beat me for a long time and forced me to sign all the papers. If I hadn’t signed, they would have killed me completely. Ivan Denisovich has already visited several camps. The previous ones were not strict security, but living there was even harder. At a logging site, for example, they were forced to complete the daily quota at night. So everything here is not so bad, Shukhov reasoned. To which one of his comrades, Fetyukov, objected that people were being slaughtered in this camp. So it’s clearly no better here than in domestic camps. Indeed, for Lately in the camp they killed two informers and one poor worker, apparently having mixed up the sleeping place. Strange things began to happen.

Prisoners' lunch

Suddenly the prisoners heard the whistle of the energy train, which meant it was time for lunch. Deputy foreman Pavlo called Shukhov and the youngest in the brigade, Gopchik, to take their places in the dining room.

The industrial canteen was a rough-hewn wooden building without a floor, divided into two parts. In one the cook was cooking porridge, in the other the prisoners were having lunch. Fifty grams of cereal were allocated per prisoner per day. But there were a lot of privileged categories who received a double portion: foremen, office workers, sixes, a medical instructor who supervised the preparation of food. As a result, the prisoners received very small portions, barely covering the bottom of the bowls. Shukhov was lucky that day. Counting the number of servings for the brigade, the cook hesitated. Ivan Denisovich, who helped Pavel count the bowls, gave the wrong number. The cook got confused and miscalculated. As a result, the crew ended up with two extra servings. But only the foreman could decide who would get them. Shukhov hoped in his heart that he would. In the absence of Tyurin, who was in the office, Pavlo commanded. He gave one portion to Shukhov, and the second to Buinovsky, who had given up a lot over the last month.

After eating, Ivan Denisovich went to the office and brought porridge to another member of the team who worked there. It was a film director named Caesar, he was a Muscovite, a wealthy intellectual and never wore clothes. Shukhov found him smoking a pipe and talking about art with some old man. Caesar took the porridge and continued the conversation. And Shukhov returned to the thermal power plant.

Memories of Tyurin

The foreman was already there. He gave his boys good rations for the week and was in a cheerful mood. The usually silent Tyurin began to remember his past life. I remembered how he was expelled from the Red Army in 1930 because his father was a kulak. How he made his way home on the stage, but didn’t find his father anymore, how he managed to escape from his home at night with his little brother. He handed that boy over to the gang and after that he never saw him again.

The prisoners listened to him attentively with respect, but it was time to get to work. They started working even before the bell rang, because before lunch they were busy setting up their workplace, and had not yet done anything to meet the norm. Tyurin decided that Shukhov would lay one wall with a cinder block, and assigned the friendly, somewhat deaf Senka Klevshin as his apprentice. They said that Klevshin escaped from captivity three times, and even went through Buchenwald. The foreman himself, together with Kildigs, undertook to lay the second wall. In the cold, the solution hardened quickly, so it was necessary to lay the cinder block quickly. The spirit of competition captured the men so much that the rest of the brigade barely had time to bring them the solution.

The 104th brigade worked so hard that it barely made it in time for the recount at the gate, which takes place at the end of the working day. Everyone was again lined up in fives and began to count with the gates closed. The second time they had to count it when they were open. There were supposed to be four hundred and sixty-three prisoners in total at the facility. But after three recounts it turned out to be only four hundred and sixty-two. The convoy ordered everyone to form into brigades. It turned out that the Moldovan from the thirty-second was missing. It was rumored that, unlike many other prisoners, he was a real spy. The foreman and assistant rushed to the site to look for the missing person, everyone else stood in the bitter cold, overwhelmed with anger at the Moldavian. It became clear that the evening was gone - nothing could be done on the territory before lights out. And there was still a long way to get to the barracks. But then three figures appeared in the distance. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief - they found it.

It turns out that the missing man was hiding from the foreman and fell asleep on the scaffolding. The prisoners began to vilify the Moldovan at all costs, but quickly calmed down, everyone already wanted to leave the industrial zone.

Hacksaw hidden in sleeve

Just before the bustle on duty, Ivan Denisovich agreed with director Caesar that he would go and take his turn at the parcel post. Caesar was from the rich - he received parcels twice a month. Shukhov hoped that for his service the young man would give him something to eat or smoke. Just before the search, Shukhov, out of habit, examined all his pockets, although he had no intention of bringing anything prohibited today. Suddenly, in the pocket on his knee, he discovered a piece of a hacksaw, which he had picked up in the snow at a construction site. In the heat of the moment he completely forgot about the find. And now it was a shame to throw away the hacksaw. She could bring him a salary or ten days in a punishment cell if found. At his own peril and risk, he hid the hacksaw in his mitten. And then Ivan Denisovich was lucky. The guard who was inspecting him was distracted. Before that, he only managed to squeeze one mitten, but didn’t finish looking at the second one. Happy Shukhov rushed to catch up with his people.

Dinner in the zone

Having passed through all the numerous gates, the prisoners finally felt “ free people“Everyone rushed to go about their business. Shukhov ran to the line for parcels. He himself did not receive the parcels - he strictly forbade his wife to tear him away from the children. But still, his heart ached when one of his neighbors in the barracks received a parcel post. About ten minutes later Caesar appeared and allowed Shukhov to eat his dinner, and he himself took his place in line.

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Inspired, Ivan Denisovich rushed into the dining room.
There, after the ritual of searching for free trays and a place at the tables, the one hundred and fourth finally sat down to dinner. The hot gruel pleasantly warmed the chilled bodies from the inside. Shukhov was thinking about what a successful day it had been - two servings at lunch, two in the evening. He didn’t eat the bread - he decided to hide it, and he also took Caesar’s rations with him. And after dinner, he rushed to the seventh barrack, he himself lived in the ninth, to buy a samosad from a Latvian. Having carefully fished out two rubles from under the lining of his padded jacket, Ivan Denisovich paid for the tobacco. After that, he hurriedly ran “home.” Caesar was already in the barracks. The dizzying smells of sausage and smoked fish wafted around his bunk. Shukhov did not stare at the gifts, but politely offered the director his ration of bread. But Caesar did not take the ration. Shukhov never dreamed of anything more. He climbed upstairs to his bunk to have time to hide the hacksaw before the evening formation. Caesar invited Buinovsky to tea; he felt sorry for the goner. They were sitting happily eating sandwiches when... former hero came. They did not forgive him for his morning prank - Captain Buinovsky went to the punishment cell for ten days. And then the check came. But Caesar did not have time to hand over his food to the storage room before the start of the inspection. Now he had two left to go out - either they would take him away during the recount, or they would sneak him out of bed if he left him. Shukhov felt sorry for the intellectual, so he whispered to him that Caesar would be the last one to go to the recount, and he would rush in the front row, and they would take turns guarding the gifts.

Reward for work

Everything turned out just fine. The capital's delicacies remained untouched. And Ivan Denisovich received several cigarettes, a couple of cookies and one slice of sausage for his efforts. He shared the cookies with Baptist Alyosha, who was his bunk neighbor, and ate the sausage himself. The meat tasted good in Shukhov's mouth. Smiling, Ivan Denisovich thanked God for another day. Today everything turned out well for him - he didn’t get sick, he didn’t end up in a punishment cell, he got some rations, and managed to buy a self-propelled gun. It was a good day. And in total Ivan Denisovich had three thousand six hundred and fifty-three such days...