Sections: Literature
Epigraph for the lesson:
2. “...groan and bend...but if you resist, you’ll break..”
Lesson equipment: on the board there is a portrait of A.I. Solzhenitsyn, a projector, a screen, presentations (Appendix 1).
Objective of the lesson:
1. Analyze the story of A.I. Solzhenitsyn.
2. Bring students to the idea of the possibility and even the necessity of preserving human dignity in any conditions.
3. Show the connection between Solzhenitsyn’s recitation and the traditions of Russian classical literature.
Lesson progress
1. Introductory speech by the teacher.(from an article by Lydia Chukovskaya)
There are destinies that seem to be deliberately conceived and staged on the stage of history by some brilliant director. Everything in them is dramatically tense and everything is dictated by the history of the country, the ups and downs of its people.
One of these destinies is, of course, the fate of Solzhenitsyn. Life and literature.
Life is known. It coincides with the destinies of millions. In peacetime - a student, in wartime - a soldier and commander of a victorious army, and then, with a new wave of Stalinist repressions, - a prisoner.
Monstrous and - alas! - usually. The fate of millions.
1953 Stalin died.
His death in itself has not yet resurrected the country. But then, in 1956, Khrushchev, from the rostrum of the party congress, exposed Stalin as an executioner and murderer. In 1962, his ashes were taken out of the mausoleum. Little by little, the curtain is carefully lifted over the corpses of the innocently tortured and the secrets of the Stalinist regime are revealed.
And here the writer enters the historical stage. History instructs Solzhenitsyn, yesterday’s camp inmate, to speak loudly about what he and his comrades experienced.
This is how the country learned the story of Ivan Shukhov - a simple Russian worker, one of millions, who was swallowed up by the terrible, bloodthirsty machine of a totalitarian state.
2. Checking the lead homework (1)
“How was this born? It was just such a camp day, hard work, I was carrying a stretcher with my partner and I thought how to describe the whole camp world- one day. Of course, you can describe your ten years of the camp, and then the entire history of the camps, but it is enough to collect everything in one day, as if from fragments; it is enough to describe only one day of one average, unremarkable person from morning to evening. And everything will be. This idea came to me in 1952. At the camp. Well, of course, it was crazy to think about it then. And then the years passed. I was writing a novel, I was sick, I was dying of cancer. And now... in 1959..."
“Conceived by the author during general work in the Ekibastuz Special Camp in the winter of 1950-51. Realized in 1959, first as “Shch - 854. One day of one prisoner,” more politically acute. It was softened in 1961 - and in this form it was useful for submission to the New World in the fall of that year.
The image of Ivan Denisovich was formed from the soldier Shukhov, who fought with the author in the Soviet-German war (and never went to prison), general experience captive and the author's personal experience in the Special Camp as a mason. The rest of the faces are all from camp life, with their authentic biographies.”
3. New theme
Teacher. Let's try to piece together a picture of camp life using the fragments of text.
What lines allow the reader to see all the realities of this life?
Possible citations:
“...An intermittent ringing faintly passed through the glass, frozen into two fingers...”
“...the orderlies carried one of the eight-bucket buckets...”
“...Three days of withdrawal with withdrawal...”
“..lanterns...There were so many of them that they completely illuminated the stars..”
Checking advanced homework (2):
The camp depicted by the writer has its own strict hierarchy:
There are ruling bosses (among them stands out the head of the Volkova regime, “dark, long, and frowning,” who fully lives up to his name: he looks like a wolf, “rushes quickly,” waves a twisted leather whip). There are guards (one of them is a gloomy Tatar with a wrinkled face, who appears every time “like a thief in the night”). There are prisoners who are also located at different levels of the hierarchical ladder. Here there are “masters” who have settled well, there are “sixes”, informers, informants, the worst of the prisoners, betraying their fellow sufferers. Fetyukov, for example, without shame or disdain, licks dirty bowls and removes cigarette butts from the spittoon. There are the “nets” hanging out in the infirmary, the “morons”. There are people who are slavishly humiliated and depersonalized.
Conclusion. One day from getting up to lights out, but it allowed the writer to say so much, to reproduce in such detail the events that were repeated over three thousand six hundred and fifty-three days, that we can get a complete picture of the life of Ivan Shukhov and the people around him.
Teacher. Solzhenitsyn casually writes about “morons”, “sixes”, “shackles” - in just one sentence, sometimes their last names or first names say more: Volkova, Shkuropatenko, Fetyukov. The technique of “speaking” names refers us to the works of Fonvizin and Griboedov. However, the writer is more interested not so much in this social “cut” of the camp as in the characters of the prisoners, who are directly related to the main character.
Who are they?
Checking advanced homework (3)
Possible answer:
These are prisoners who do not give up and save their face. This is old man Yu-81, who “has been in camps and prisons for countless times.” Soviet power stands”, but at the same time did not lose human dignity. And the other is the “wiry old man” X-123, a convinced fanatic of the truth. This is the deaf Senka Klevshin, a former prisoner of Buchenwald who was a member of an underground organization. The Germans hung him up by the arms and beat him with sticks, but he miraculously survived so that he could now continue his torment in a Soviet camp.
This is the Latvian Jan Kildigis, who has been in the camp for two years out of the allotted twenty-five, an excellent mason who has not lost his penchant for jokes. Alyoshka is a Baptist, a pure-hearted and neat-looking young man, a bearer of spiritual faith and humility. He prays for spiritual things, convinced that the Lord is “bashing evil” from him and others.
Buinovsky, a former captain of the second rank, who commanded destroyers, “went around Europe and along the Great Northern Route,” behaves cheerfully, although he is “getting there” before our eyes. Capable of difficult moment take the blow. He is ready to fight with cruel guards, defending human rights, for which he receives “ten days in a punishment cell”, which means he will lose his health for the rest of his life.
Tyurin, with traces of smallpox, was a former peasant, but has been sitting in the camp for 19 years as the son of a dispossessed man. That is why he was dismissed from the army. His position is now that of a brigadier, but for the prisoners he is like a father. At the risk of getting a new term, he stands up for people, which is why they respect and love him, and try not to let him down.
Teacher. Trying to destroy the person in man, prisoners were deprived of their name and assigned a number. In which work have we already encountered a similar situation?
(E. Zamyatin “We”)
Indeed, E. Zamyatin warned people at the beginning of the century about what could happen to a person in a totalitarian society. The novel is written as a utopia, that is, a place that does not exist, but in the middle of the 20th century it turned into reality.
Teacher. Ivan Denisovich Shukhov. Who is he main character Solzhenitsyn's story?
Checking advanced homework(4)
Possible answer:
Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, a forty-year-old peasant, torn out by evil will from the army, where he honestly fought, like everyone else, for native land, and from a family where his wife and two daughters are hanging around without him, having lost his beloved work on the land, so important in the hungry post-war years. A simple Russian man from the village of Temgenevo near Polomnya, lost in middle lane Russia, he went to war on June 23, 1941, fought with enemies until he was surrounded, which ended in captivity. He escaped from there with four other daredevils. Shukhov miraculously made his way to “his own people,” where neither the investigator nor Shukhov himself could figure out what task the Germans were carrying out after escaping from captivity. Counterintelligence beat Shukhov for a long time and then offered him a choice. “And Shukhov’s calculation was simple: if you don’t sign, it’s a wooden pea coat; if you sign, you’ll at least live a little longer. Signature." So they “concocted” Article 58 for him, and it is now believed that Shukhov went to prison for treason. Ivan Denisovich found himself with this painful cross, first in the terrible Ust-Izhmensky general camp, and then in a Siberian convict prison, where a patch with the prisoner number Shch-854 was sewn onto his cotton trousers.
Teacher. How does the main character live, or rather, try to survive? What laws did Shukhov learn during his time in prison?
Possible answers:
“...Shukhov was deeply filled with the words of the first foreman Kuzyomin....:
Here, guys, the law is the taiga. But people live here too. In the camp, this is who is dying: who licks the bowls, who hopes at the medical unit, and who goes to the godfather’s house to knock.”
“Not counting sleep, a camp inmate lives for himself only for ten minutes in the morning at breakfast, five at lunch, and five at dinner.”
“..Caesar was smoking...But Shukhov did not ask directly, but stopped next to Caesar and half-turned to look past him.”
“Shukhov has been trampling the earth for forty years, half his teeth are missing and he has bald spots on his head, he never gave to anyone or took from anyone, and he didn’t learn in the camp...”
“...but Shukhov understands life and doesn’t stretch his belly for other people’s goods...”
“The knife is also a source of income. Possession of it is punishable by a punishment cell.”
“Money came to Shukhov only from private work: if you sew slippers from the rags of the dealer - two rubles, if you pay for a quilted jacket - also by agreement...”
Conclusion. For eight years now, Ivan Denisovich He knows that he should not give up, maintain his dignity, not be a “moron”, not become a “jackal”, not get into the “sixes”, that he must take care of himself, showing both efficiency and common sense meaning, and endurance, and perseverance, and ingenuity.
Teacher. What unites all these people: former peasant, military, Baptist….
Possible answer:
All of them are forced to comprehend the wild customs and laws of Stalin’s hellish machine, striving to survive without losing their human appearance.
Teacher. What helps them not to sink, not to turn into an animal?
Possible answer:
Each of them has its own core, its own moral basis. They try not to return to thoughts of injustice, not to moan, not to bully, not to fuss, to strictly calculate each step in order to survive, in order to preserve themselves for future life, because hope has not yet faded.
Teacher. Let’s turn to the epigraph of our lesson “...and the further, the more tightly I held on...”. Now knowing quite a lot about the characters in the story, explain how you understand this expression. To whom do you think he can be attributed first of all?
Teacher. Let's try to explain the second line of the epigraph. Whose words are these and how do you understand them?
Conclusion. Ivan Denisovich continues the galaxy of heroes of classical Russian literature. You can remember the heroes of Nekrasov, Leskov, Tolstoy... the more trials, suffering, and hardships that befell them, the stronger their spirit they became. So Shukhov tries to survive where nothing contributes to this; moreover, he tries to preserve himself not only physically, but spiritually, because to lose human dignity means to die. But the hero is not at all inclined to take all the blows of camp life, otherwise he will not survive, and this is what the second line of the epigraph tells us.
Teacher. Once upon a time, F.M. Dostoevsky, in his novel Notes from the House of the Dead, described a year of life in the tsarist penal servitude and, when involuntarily compared with one day in the Soviet penal servitude, despite all the shackles and girders, the tsar’s looks more merciful, if such a word is appropriate in relation to objects of this kind. Solzhenitsyn chooses from all the camp days of Ivan Denisovich not the worst, without scenes of bullying and violence, although all this is invisible, somewhere in snatches of phrases, a meager description. But what’s amazing is remember with what thoughts Shukhov ends this day.
(« Shukhov fell asleep completely satisfied………The day passed...almost happy...".)
Does the writer really want to convince us that it is possible to live in a camp, that a person can be happy in his misfortune?
Possible answer: I didn’t end up in a punishment cell, I didn’t get sick, I didn’t get caught during a search, I lost my extra rations... the absence of misfortunes in conditions that you can’t change - what’s not happiness?! “He had a lot of luck that day...”
Teacher. Ivan Denisovich considered work to be one of the pleasant moments of this day. Why?
Reading and analysis of the wall masonry scene of a thermal power plant.(from the words “And Shukhov no longer saw a distant glance...” to the words “And he outlined where to put how many cinder blocks..”; from the words “..But Shukhov is not mistaken...” to the words “The work went like this - no time for the nose wipe...".)
In what mood does Shukhov work?
How does his peasant thrift manifest itself?
How can you characterize the work of Ivan Denisovich?
What words of the sentence indicate Shukhov’s conscientious attitude to work?
Conclusion. Innate hard work is another quality of Solzhenitsyn’s hero, which makes him similar to the heroes of Russian literature of the 19th century and which helps him survive. A former carpenter and now a mason, he works conscientiously even in the area fenced with barbed wire; he simply doesn’t know how to do it any other way. And it is work that allows him, at least for a while, to break out of the camp existence, remember his past self, think about his future life and experience that rare joy in the camp that a hard worker - a peasant - is capable of experiencing.
4. Teacher's final words
About so small and so large work we can talk ad infinitum. The number of times you reread Solzhenitsyn's story, the more times you will discover it in a new way. And this is also a property best works classical Russian literature. Today, finishing our lesson, I would like to return to the topic posed in the title of the lesson.
At the beginning of the last century, Anna Andreevna Akhmatova wrote her “Requiem” as a memorial service for her tortured, persecuted, lost generation. Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn wrote “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” as a hymn to his generation, a hymn to a man who withstood everything that his “native” state had in store for him, withstood, survived, preserving his human dignity. Many broke down and died, but many remained human. They returned to live, raise children and selflessly love their homeland.
5. Homework
It is impossible to discuss and analyze all aspects of such a multifaceted work within the framework of one lesson. I suggest you write an essay about what we didn’t have time to talk about. What were you able to see in the story that we missed? What conclusions did you come to that we couldn’t?
What qualities of the hero of the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” appeared in the scene teamwork on construction?
In the camp main task Shukhov became not a simple physical survival, but self-preservation human qualities: dignity, self-esteem. But to the best of his ability, even in these conditions, Ivan Denisovich finds the possibility of internal, at least moral, resistance. Suffice it to compare his attitude towards working for guards with work for himself or the brigade: “Work, it’s like a stick, there are two ends to it: what you do for people is quality Give it to me, if you’re doing it for the bosses, just show off.” With love and emotional excitement, the hero remembers the things he made: a knife, a spoon, which at least slightly diversified and made camp life easier, at least to a small extent giving the opportunity to feel that you have your own world, not just property. The attitude towards work, which was the main content of the entire difficult life of the hero-peasant, soldier, and in the camp remains for him the most important criterion for assessing a person.
It was in the scene of selfless labor on the construction of the camp thermal power plant that the hero showed his most important qualities. This scene is the culmination of the work.
Suddenly, hunger, cold, and humiliation are forgotten. The only thing that matters is the ardent creative common work in itself. A person with strengths and weaknesses, his most important inner content, manifests himself here better than anywhere else. In Shukhov there is a growing feeling of pride, joy from his own skill, mastery, which he masters better than many and which provides him with the respect of people, a worthy place in a strange, but human world. “Oh, the eye is a spirit level! Smooth!" - the hero admires, hastily, but still looking back at his glorious work.
In this scene, it becomes clear that the system of suppressing people does not completely control a person. And the closer the character is to the type of personality that carries traditional folk values, the more freely his soul manifests itself. The hero, not through direct protest, not through open disobedience, but through the very way of thinking and life behavior, leaves the power of totalitarianism, but still lives according to popular laws. Camaraderie, mutual assistance, loyalty to the word, internal intransigence, a lively mind, feelings not dulled in captivity - all this characterizes the writer’s favorite heroes. These qualities were not easy to demonstrate in captivity, but it is all the more valuable and worthy of respect that Ivan Denisovich Shukhov manages to preserve them, in particular, in the analyzed scene.
The story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” brought popularity to the writer. The work became the author's first published work. It was published by the magazine New world"in 1962. The story described one ordinary day of a camp prisoner under the Stalinist regime.
History of creation
Initially the work was called “Shch-854. One day for one prisoner,” but censorship and a lot of obstacles from publishers and authorities influenced the name change. Main actor The story described was Ivan Denisovich Shukhov.
The image of the main character was created based on prototypes. The first to serve was Solzhenitsyn’s friend, who fought with him at the front during the Great Patriotic War. Patriotic War, but did not end up in the camp. The second is the writer himself, who knew the fate of camp prisoners. Solzhenitsyn was convicted under Article 58 and spent several years in a camp, working as a mason. The story takes place in the winter month of 1951 in hard labor in Siberia.
The image of Ivan Denisovich stands apart in Russian literature of the 20th century. When there was a change of power, and it became permissible to talk about the Stalinist regime out loud, this character became the personification of a prisoner in a Soviet forced labor camp. The images described in the story were familiar to those who suffered a similar sad experience. The story served as an omen for a major work, which turned out to be the novel “The Gulag Archipelago.”
"One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich"
The story describes the biography of Ivan Denisovich, his appearance and how the daily routine in the camp is drawn up. The man is 40 years old. He is a native of the village of Temgenevo. When he went to war in the summer of 1941, he left his wife and two daughters at home. As fate would have it, the hero ended up in a camp in Siberia and managed to serve eight years. The ninth year is coming to an end, after which he will again be able to lead a free life.
By official version the man received a sentence for treason. It was believed that, having been in German captivity, Ivan Denisovich returned to his homeland on instructions from the Germans. I had to plead guilty to stay alive. Although in reality the situation was different. In the battle, the detachment found itself in a disastrous situation without food and shells. Having made their way to their own, the fighters were greeted as enemies. The soldiers did not believe the story of the fugitives and brought them to trial, which determined hard labor as punishment.
First, Ivan Denisovich ended up in a strict regime camp in Ust-Izhmen, and then he was transferred to Siberia, where restrictions were not so strictly observed. The hero lost half his teeth, grew a beard and shaved his head bald. He was assigned the number Shch-854, and his camp clothes make him a typical little man whose fate is decided by higher authorities and people in power.
During his eight years of imprisonment, the man learned the laws of survival in the camp. His friends and enemies from among the prisoners had equally sad fates. Relationship problems were a key disadvantage of being incarcerated. It was because of them that the authorities had great power over the prisoners.
Ivan Denisovich preferred to show calm, behave with dignity and maintain subordination. A savvy man, he quickly figured out how to ensure his survival and a worthy reputation. He managed to work and rest, planned his day and food correctly, skillfully found common language with whoever was needed. The characteristics of his skills speak of wisdom inherent at the genetic level. Serfs demonstrated similar qualities. His skills and experience helped him become the best foreman in the team, earning respect and status.
Illustration for the story "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" Ivan Denisovich was a full-fledged manager of his destiny. He knew what to do to live comfortably, did not disdain work, but did not overwork himself, could outwit the warden and easily avoided sharp corners in his dealings with prisoners and with his superiors. Ivan Shukhov's happy day was the day when he was not put in a punishment cell and his brigade was not assigned to Sotsgorodok, when the work was done on time and the rations were stretched out for the day, when he hid a hacksaw and it was not found, and Tsezar Markovich gave him some extra money for tobacco.
Critics compared the image of Shukhov with a hero - Hero from common people, broken by the insane state system, found himself between the millstones of the camp machine, breaking people, humiliating their spirit and human self-awareness.
Shukhov set himself a bar below which it was unacceptable to fall. Therefore, he takes off his hat when he sits down at the table and neglects the fish eyes in the gruel. This is how he preserves his spirit and does not betray his honor. This elevates a man above the prisoners licking bowls, vegetating in the infirmary and knocking on the boss. Therefore, Shukhov remains a free spirit.
The attitude towards work in the work is described in a special way. The laying of the wall causes an unprecedented stir, and the men, forgetting that they are camp prisoners, put all their efforts into its rapid construction. Industrial novels filled with a similar message supported the spirit of socialist realism, but in Solzhenitsyn’s story it is rather an allegory for The Divine Comedy.
A person will not lose himself if he has a goal, so the construction of a thermal power plant becomes symbolic. Camp existence is interrupted by satisfaction from the work done. The purification brought by the pleasure of fruitful work even allows you to forget about illness.
The main characters from the story "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" on the theater stage The specificity of the image of Ivan Denisovich speaks of the return of literature to the idea of populism. The story raises the topic of suffering in the name of the Lord in a conversation with Alyosha. The convict Matryona also supports this theme. God and imprisonment do not fit into the usual system of measuring faith, but the dispute sounds like a paraphrase of the Karamazovs’ discussion.
Productions and film adaptations
The first public visualization of Solzhenitsyn's story took place in 1963. The British channel NBC released a teleplay with Jason Rabards Jr. leading role. Finnish director Caspar Reed shot the film “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” in 1970, inviting artist Tom Courtenay to collaborate.
Tom Courtenay in the film "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" The story is in little demand for film adaptation, but in the 2000s it found a second life on theater stage. A deep analysis of the work carried out by the directors proved that the story has great dramatic potential, describes the country's past, which should not be forgotten, and emphasizes the importance of eternal values.
In 2003, Andriy Zholdak staged a play based on the story in Kharkov drama theater them. Solzhenitsyn did not like the production.
Actor Alexander Filippenko created a one-man show in collaboration with theater artist David Borovsky in 2006. In 2009 in Perm academic theater opera and ballet Georgy Isaakyan staged an opera to music by Tchaikovsky based on the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” In 2013, the Arkhangelsk Drama Theater presented a production by Alexander Gorban.
[in the camp]? [Cm. summary of the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.”] After all, it’s not just the need to survive, not the animal thirst for life? This need alone produces people who work at the table, like cooks. Ivan Denisovich is at the other pole of Good and Evil. Shukhov’s strength lies in the fact that despite all the inevitable moral losses for a prisoner, he managed to keep his soul alive. Such moral categories as conscience, human dignity, decency determine his life behavior. Eight years of hard labor did not break the body. They didn’t break their soul either. Thus, the story about the Soviet camps grows to the scale of a story about the eternal power of the human spirit.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn. One day of Ivan Denisovich. The author is reading. Fragment
Solzhenitsyn's hero himself is hardly aware of his spiritual greatness. But the details of his behavior, seemingly insignificant, are fraught with deep meaning.
No matter how hungry Ivan Denisovich was, he did not eat greedily, attentively, and tried not to look into other people's bowls. And even though his shaved head was freezing, he always took off his hat while eating: “no matter how cold it is, he couldn't allow himself is in the hat." Or another detail. Ivan Denisovich smells the fragrant smoke of a cigarette. “... He tensed up in anticipation, and now this tail of a cigarette was more desirable to him than, it seems, the will itself - but he wouldn't have dropped himself and I wouldn’t look into your mouth like Fetyukov.”
There is deep meaning in the words highlighted here. Behind them lies a huge inner work, struggle with circumstances, with oneself. Shukhov “forged his soul himself, year after year,” managing to remain human. “And through that - a grain of his people.” Speaks about him with respect and love
This explains Ivan Denisovich’s attitude towards other prisoners: respect for those who survived; contempt for those who have lost their human form. So, he despises the goner and jackal Fetyukov because he licks bowls, that he “dropped himself.” This contempt is aggravated, perhaps, because “Fetyukov, of course, was a big boss in some office. I drove a car." And any boss, as already mentioned, is an enemy for Shukhov. And so he doesn’t want the extra bowl of gruel to go to this goner, he rejoices when he gets beaten. Cruelty? Yes. But we also need to understand Ivan Denisovich. It took him considerable mental effort to preserve his human dignity, and he earned the right to despise those who had lost their dignity.
However, Shukhov not only despises, but also feels sorry for Fetyukov: “To figure it out, I feel so sorry for him. He won't live out his time. He doesn’t know how to position himself.” Zek Shch-854 knows how to stage himself. But moral victory it is expressed not only in this. After spending for many years in penal servitude, where the cruel “taiga law” operates, he managed to preserve his most valuable asset - mercy, humanity, the ability to understand and pity another.
All sympathies, all sympathy of Shukhov are on the side of those who survived, who have strong spirit and mental fortitude.
Brigadier Tyurin is pictured in the imagination of Ivan Denisovich like a fairy-tale hero: “... the foreman has a steel chest /... / I’m afraid to interrupt his high thought /... / Stands against the wind - he won’t wince, the skin on his face is like oak bark.” (34) . The same is true for prisoner Yu-81. “...He spends countless hours in camps and prisons, how much Soviet power costs...” The portrait of this man matches the portrait of Tyurin. Both of them evoke images of heroes, like Mikula Selyaninovich: “Of all the hunched backs of the camp, his back was excellently straight /... / His face was all exhausted, but not to the weakness of a disabled wick, but to a hewn, dark stone” (102).
This is how “Human Fate” is revealed in “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” - the fate of people placed in inhuman conditions. The writer believes in the unlimited spiritual powers of man, in his ability to withstand the threat of brutality.
Re-reading Solzhenitsyn’s story now, you involuntarily compare it with “ Kolyma stories » V. Shalamova. The author of this terrible book draws the ninth circle of hell, where suffering reached such a degree that, with rare exceptions, people could no longer maintain their human appearance.
“Shalamov’s camp experience was bitterer and longer than mine,” writes A. Solzhenitsyn in “The Gulag Archipelago,” and I respectfully admit that it was he, and not I, who got to touch the bottom of brutality and despair to which the entire camp life pulled us " But while giving this mournful book its due, Solzhenitsyn disagrees with its author in his views on man.
Addressing Shalamov, Solzhenitsyn says: “Maybe anger is not the most durable feeling after all? With your personality and your poems, don’t you refute your own concept?” According to the author of “The Archipelago,” “...and in the camp (and everywhere in life) corruption does not occur without ascension. They are nearby."
Noting the fortitude and fortitude of Ivan Denisovich, many critics, however, spoke of his poverty and down-to-earth nature. spiritual world. Thus, L. Rzhevsky believes that Shukhov’s horizons are limited to “bread alone.” Another critic argues that Solzhenitsyn’s hero “suffers as a man and a family man, but to a lesser extent from the humiliation of his personal and civic dignity.”
Ivan Denisovich
IVAN DENISOVICH is the hero of A.I. Solzhenitsyn’s story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” (1959-1962). Image of I.D. as if the author were composed of two real people. One of them is Ivan Shukhov, an already middle-aged soldier of the artillery battery, which was commanded by Solzhenitsyn during the war. The other is Solzhenitsyn himself, who served time under the notorious Article 58 in 1950-1952. in the camp in Ekibastuz and also worked there as a mason. In 1959, Solzhenitsyn began writing the story “Shch-854” (the camp number of prisoner Shukhov). Then the story was called “One Day of One Prisoner.” The editors of the magazine “New World”, in which this story was first published (No. 11, 1962), at the suggestion of A.T. Tvardovsugo, gave it the name “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.”
Image of I.D. is of particular importance for Russian literature of the 60s. along with the image of Zhivago before and Anna Akhmatova’s poem “Requiem”. After the publication of the story in the era of the so-called. Khrushchev's thaw, when Stalin’s “personality cult” was first condemned, I.D. became for the entire USSR of that time a generalized image of a Soviet prisoner - a prisoner of Soviet forced labor camps. Many former convicts under Article 58 recognized “Shv.D. themselves and their destiny.
I.D. Shukhov is a hero from the people, from the peasants, whose fate is being broken by the merciless state system. Finding himself in the camp's hellish machine, grinding and destroying physically and spiritually, Shukhov tries to survive, but at the same time remain human. Therefore, in the chaotic whirlwind of camp non-existence, he sets a limit for himself, below which he must not fall (not to eat in a hat, not to eat fish eyes swimming in gruel) - otherwise death, first spiritual, and then physical. In the camp, in this kingdom of continuous lies and deceit, those who die are those who betray themselves (lick bowls), betray their bodies (hang around in the infirmary), betray their own (snitch) - lies and betrayal destroy first of all those who obeys them.
Particularly controversial was the episode of “shock labor” - when the hero and his entire team suddenly, as if forgetting that they were slaves, with some kind of joyful enthusiasm began laying the wall. L. Kopelev even called the work “a typical production story in the spirit of socialist realism.” But this episode has above all symbolic meaning, correlated with " Divine Comedy» Dante (transition from the lower circle of hell to purgatory). In this work for the sake of work, creativity for the sake of creativity, I.D. he is no longer building the notorious thermal power plant, he is building himself, he remembers himself free - he rises above the camp slave non-existence, experiences catharsis, purification, he even physically overcomes his illness. Immediately after the release of “One Day” in Solzhenitsyn, many saw the new Leo Tolstoy,” Shv.D. - Platon Karataev, although he is “not round, not humble, not calm, does not dissolve in the collective consciousness” (A. Arkhangelsky). In essence, when creating the image of I.D. Solzhenitsyn proceeded from Tolstoy’s idea that a peasant’s day could form the subject of a volume as voluminous as several centuries of history.
To a certain extent, Solzhenitsyn contrasts his I.D. “Soviet intelligentsia”, “educated people”, “paying taxes in support of obligatory ideological lies.” Disputes between Caesar and the kavtorang about the film “Ivan the Terrible” by I.D. are incomprehensible, he turns away from them as far-fetched, “lordly” conversations, as from a boring ritual. Phenomenon I.D. is associated with the return of Russian literature to populism (but not to nationalism), when in the people the writer no longer sees “truth”, not “truth”, but a comparatively smaller “touch of lies” compared to “education”.
Another feature of the image of I.D. is that he does not answer questions, but rather asks them. In this sense, the dispute between I.D. is significant. with Alyoshka the Baptist about imprisonment as suffering in the name of Christ. (This dispute directly correlates with the disputes between Alyosha and Ivan Karamazov - even the names of the heroes are the same.) I.D. does not agree with this approach, but reconciles their “cookies”, which I.D. gives it to Alyosha. The simple humanity of the act overshadows both Alyoshka’s frenziedly exalted “sacrifice” and I.D.’s reproaches to God “for imprisonment.”
The image of I.D., like Solzhenitsyn’s story itself, stands among such phenomena of Russian literature as “ Caucasian prisoner"A.S. Pushkin, "Notes from dead house"and "Crime and Punishment" by F.M. Dostoevsky, "War and Peace" (Pierre Bezukhoe in French captivity) and "Resurrection" by L.N. Tolstoy. This work became a kind of prelude for the book “The Gulag Archipelago”. After the publication of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Solzhenitsyn received a huge number of letters from readers, from which he later compiled the anthology “Reading Ivan Denisovich.”
Lit.: Niva Zh. Solzhenitsyn. M., 1992; Chalmaev V.A. Alexander Solzhenitsyn: life and work. M., 1994; Curtis J.M. Solzhenitsyn’s traditional imagination. Athens, 1984; Krasnov V. Solzhenitsyn and Dostoevsky. Athens, 1980.