One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

By: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Narrated by: Frank Muller

Length: 4 hrs and 29 mins

Publisher's summary

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn’s startling book led, almost 30 years later, to Glasnost, Perestroika, and the "Fall of the Wall". One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich brilliantly portrays a single day, any day, in the life of a single Russian soldier who was captured by the Germans in 1945 and who managed to escape a few days later. Along with millions of others, this soldier was charged with some sort of political crime, and since it was easier to confess than deny it and die, Ivan Denisovich "confessed" to "high treason" and received a sentence of 10 years in a Siberian labor camp.

<[>In 1962, the Soviet literary magazine Novy Mir published a short novel by an unknown writer named Solzhenitsyn. Within 24 hours, all 95,000 copies of the magazine containing this story were sold out. Within a week, Solzhenitsyn was no longer an obscure math teacher, but an international celebrity. Publication of the book split the Communist hierarchy, and it was Premier Khrushchev himself who read the book and personally allowed its publication.

©1963 E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc. (P)1982 Recorded Books

An Important Book

I’ve always wanted to read One Day. Now I’ve experienced it, and I’m glad I did.

I think it may be more important historically than valuable literarily. The author gets into Ivan’s inner life a bit. I wanted him to do that more.

But, in the end, I recommend both the book and the performance. It’s both a key piece of Soviet history and yet another glimpse into the tyranny of the 20th century.

Brutal and yet human depiction of the gulags

I enjoyed this book for really getting you into the head of a gulag prisoner, without it feeling preachy or fake. You feel Ivan’s pain and frustration as he goes through one more day of his ten year term, knowing that it might all be in vain when he is released back to a home he has long forgotten (or is sent to another camp due to the machinations of a bloated and corrupt communist government).

Ivan often talks about God throughout the book, and you can sense the frustration of a quasi-theistic soviet: he has been told that belief in God is stupid but at the same time is shown that belief in man is more stupid. He sees the joy and content of the Baptist prisoner, and wonders how such a man could keep his faith and love in such a hell as the gulag. Towards the end Ivan and the Baptist try to convert one another: Ivan talks about a materialistic agnosticism where God exists but that man is only a temporary being in creation; while the Baptist argues for a eternal providence where God uses all things (good and bad) for the salvation and nurturing of his beloved children (while citing many examples for imprisonment and suffering as the paths to holiness and conforming one’s self to Christ).

Sadly, Ivan rejects the Baptist’s pleas for the embracing of one’s cross in suffering. He has been hardened through surviving the Eastern front, being taken prisoner by the Germans, and being sent to gulag by the Soviets for having been a German prisoner. He looks through his life and can not accept that is was all ordained by God, but rather the cruelty and stupidity of man. Yet he still believes in God, even while he rebels in his wounded state.

TL;DR:
It’s a great book, and will make you think about the fate of countless millions like Ivan who suffered by the hands of Godless socialist governments.

Excellent narration of a haunting tale

It turns out that &quot;Ivan Denisovich&quot; makes a great audiobook! The text itself is short and to the point. And the translation does a great job turning the Russian into plain, conversational English.

Frank Muller is excellent, really embodying the mood and tone of Gulag life.

Hard times

A quick story showing the manaughteny of prison life in Siberia. Time takes forever to come and it often stays too long.

This will wake you up

Wondered how a woke world treats its own? This books gives a beautiful account of one day in that people’s replublic. Wonderful poetry, great allegories and a riveting plot.

A Classic! Still a great read after 30 years!

Still a great read after reading it the first time 30 years ago. A study of the adverse.

Men struggling to remain men

It is interesting to think that the Soviet’s stand against capital punishment ended up producing this terrifying system of gulag. The picture of the men working on the wall or struggling to get their supper make the Zeks seem less than human. Each day just trying to survive and not weaken in the face of ever restrictive and tyrannical rules that serve little purpose.

An amazing insight into the tyranny of socialism run rampant.

Great read. Beware of Communism/Socialism

Amazing that the author was able to survive his own ordeal in the camps. Hope to read Gulag Archipelago as well someday. Very instructive on why we have to be ever vigilant in our opposition to Communist/Socialist/Big Government tyranny.

Awesome book very good Narrator

Really liked this and planning to get paper version to read later again. Highly recommend

An Amazing Psychological and Spiritual Study

I’m old enough to remember when Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, writer and dissident from the USSR, won the Nobel Prize and eventually was expelled from his homeland. I remember the news when he settled in Vermont. I met one of his sons on a hike across southern Taiwan several decades ago. But, I had never read one of his books until this one, and this is one that made him famous and also got him into at least a little bit of trouble. It was published in 1962 at a time when Kruschev was encouraging more openness and trying to break away from and discredit Stalin. 

The story is set in 1951 and describes one day in the life of a prisoner in one of Stalin’s prison camps and Solzhenitsyn had personal experience to go on for he had also been arrested for writing some derogatory comments in a personal letter to a friend and, in 1945, sentenced to 8 years in a prison camp. The book is interesting because there are no chapter breaks. It is one unit as if to emphasize that it is one day. 

You may imagine that nothing could be more boring than a book that describes a single day in the life of a prisoner, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Shukhov (Ivan Denisovich’s everyday name)  has been given a ten-year sentence and has now been in prison for 8 years.  We are told how many days that is (including the days for leap years), but that Shukhov no longer is counting the days to his release because he has seen that there is no certainty that a prisoner will be released at the end of their sentence. And he never actually committed a crime. He was a soldier and was captured by the Germans but escaped. Because he told them that he had been captured, he was accused of being a spy because Stalin was so paranoid. It is bitterly cold, although he describes how a prisoner is assigned to climb a pole to read a thermometer each morning, and if the temperature is below minus 40 degrees, they will not have to leave the camp to work outside. He describes every detail of his day from the boots he puts on, the lines for the food, the march to the job site, and the preparations for work. He describes the sawdust mattresses and the constant fears of making a tiny wrong step that could lead to solitary confinement which often weakens a prisoner to the point that they are not able to survive returning to work. There are little secrets to survival, unwritten rules that govern the prisoners’ lives, and the boredom, hopelessness, and powerlessness that takes over. There is even a description of how to try to eat slowly so that the food has more time to satiate one’s hunger and the joy on finding that there is a fishbone in the piece of half-rotten fish in the soup. A fishbone can be chewed up slowly to release the tiny amount of marrow inside for just a bit more nutrition that just might mean the difference in your survival.

Occasionally prisoners get packages from home and may trade them for special favors, but Shukhov never gets them. He has told his family not to send them. He knows how they are struggling already since many things are denied family members of prisoners and he knows that the guards who open the packages to check for contraband also take anything really good. 

There is some drama as when Shukhov is almost late for the lineup to return in the evening,  when the prisoner count comes up short, or when he decides to smuggle a hacksaw blade back to the room, but even that is described matter of factly. It just emphasizes the sameness and drudgery. Don’t think about tomorrow. Don’t hope for the future. The point is that this isn’t just one day. It’s every day. In fact, that is a good thing. In the end, Shukhov notes that the day was a good day. There is joy in drudgery, in sameness. Anything out of line might mean that you don’t survive. 

The interesting thing is that Shukhov puts his heart into his work. He is a bricklayer and in the morning when he starts work he notes the careless work of the person who worked on this wall the day before and considers how the layers he adds to the wall can bring the wall better into plumb, make it straighter, make the joints more uniform. He values professionalism. He wants to do a good job even though he is a prisoner, not a laborer earning wages. He’s the kind of bricklayer that you and I would want to hire. He is almost late that evening because he doesn’t want to waste the mortar that has already been made up and keeps working until the last possible minute. The message is that, when dealing with difficulties, the way one looks at things can be the difference in survival. Retaining that pride in oneself and in one’s work is a way to retain one’s humanity in a dehumanizing world.  

This is a classic and I expected to be impressed. I didn’t expect to be so moved. I didn’t expect to say that I liked it, not that I enjoyed it because it’s not an enjoyable topic. I prefer not to find bones in my fish and I like interesting days. But, I liked this book. It made me think and it moved my soul. It certainly made me feel more content. Now I’m considering whether I should read “The Gulag Archipelago” or another of his works.