Russia, has a lowest ever temperature of -44 oC, and an average of 104 days a year above 0 oC and a yearly average of 261 days below 0 oC. It is the second coldest continent in the world only behind Antarctica, it snows on average 111 days of the year. It is dark, gloomy, freezing and miserable in the winter, and in the summer, cold, dark, and gloomy. Camps for political prisoners seemed even colder, especially with no real heating and limited clothes to wear on these wintriness days. The camp which was the bases of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s novel A Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisov ich was initiated by Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union from 1953 until 1956. Stalin, which means “man of steel”, constructed one of the tightest and toughest communists in history.
He is such a dominant figure in Russian history, even though he will always be remembered to heavily contributing to bringing Russia down. This was no general camp, but a so called “special” camp for long term prisoners. Shukhov was a political prisoner, in fact not one of these prisoners were common criminals. Stalin had established many camps like this, full of spies, prisoners of war, and those who rebelled against his system of government. The camps were in poor condition, the government spent as little on them as possible, all the repairs and erections of new buildings was all done by it’s inhabitants.
The primary theme in this nobel prize winning novel is the endurance of humanity and fight for survival. Survival is a fight every human must take part in, although ones fight is much easier than another’s. The fight for survival is tough in the camp especially under the severe conditions, the cold and the brutality of the guards and camp life. The author has paid special and close attention to the weather, the bitter cold, it is not made an extremity, but the facts. A prisoner had 1 grubby blanket, covering his mattress, which incidentally was made of sawdust, this blanket was supposed to help them keep warm through those winter nights. “No one ever took his wadded trousers off at night- you’d grow numb with cold unless you wore them under your blanket.” The amount of work the prisoners were required to do was enough to keep them going, but then to have to worry about the cold, and completing the task to the captains expectations, man life for prisoners was tough.
Although prisoners maintain their humanity and dignity by small acts and rituals. That is what Solzhenitsyn hoped to explain, but no matter what the conditions, and no matter how bad life is like, we can all survive through it, if we are willing to fight. With numerous nationalities and cultures represented in the novel, such as Russians, Estonians, Letts and a Ukrainian just to name a few, there was bound to be conflict in cultures and beliefs, and there was. From large arguments to the conversation between Shukhov and Aloysha about God, ” Aloysha, I’m not readily against God, understand that. I readily believe in God. But I don’t believe in paradise and hell.
Why d’you take us as fools and stuff us with your paradise and hell stories? That’s what I don’t like.” Thus also leads into another significant theme, the demolition of human unity, what happened to looking out for each other, well when it cost you time, effort and punishment why should you look out for each other. This was the view of many of the prisoners, and is clearly illustrated when they all yelled abuse at the Moldavian who missed work because he feel asleep, and cost the prisoners more time. However there is evidently also a great sense of team work and unity among many of the prisoners. There are eighty six thousand and four hundred seconds in a day, five hundred and twenty five thousand and six hundred minutes in a year and three thousand six hundred and fifty three days in a ten year sentence, the three extra days were for leap years. Time is absolutely nothing to us, just a number, to hands on a clock, digits, however it was once proclaimed by Benjamin Franklin ‘Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that’s the stuff life is made of.’ Time is said to be of the essence, but is it? To us it is, we are free for the majority of our time, how can we understand how life would be when you have close to no time to yourself. As Benjamin Franklin said time is the stuff life is made of, what kind of life would political prisoners have in a concentration camp.
It is said that time is money, not to all though, especially those who can’t earn money. Every prisoner knew the exact number of days in his stretch, from the first to the last, including the extra leap year days. Time was not something they had much of, and when the prisoners did have time, it was usually squandered by re-counts, or extra work. The little free time the prisoners got, before the roll call in the morning, over meals, or simply waiting for work to begin became so precious and sacred. Conversely any time that was squandered was stolen time, time taken away from them, time which was theirs. The prisoners weren’t able to take time off, in fact the only chance they got of having a day off, some free time was if the temperature fell below -41 oC, however do you think the guards would put a thermometer out that told the real temperature.
The only other what the prisoners could gain some time was if they were sick and were lucky enough to be accepted sick by the hospital staff.” The sick bay lay in the most remote and deserted corner of the zone, where no sounds of any sort reached it. Shukov sat on a bench near the wall, right at the very end, so that he nearly tipped it up. He sat in that uncomfortable way, involuntarily emphasizing that he was unfamiliar with the place and that he’d come with some minor manner. but the limit of how many men are allowed in the sick bay was already full. For Shukov it was a strange experience to sit in the spick and span room, in such quietness, to sit under the bright lamps for five long minutes, doing nothing. He cast his eyes around the wall and found them empty.
Not even mice scratched there, they had been dealt with.” Solzhenitsyn manages to combine the same despair and lack of hope into the sick bay by telling us it was plain, miserable and quiet. The most depressing fact of the sick bay is not being declared sick and being sent to work, in the novel Shukov attempted to have a day off but was declared well, and sent to work, this is how the author Solzhenitsyn manages to keep the same despair in the sick bay as all over other parts of the camp. The camp has no real source of heating, and if you are lucky a bit of heat may be thrown your way. The work was labor intensive, with all of it one by hand. The days where a lot of work was done, when it was warm, when the team worked together were the good days, they were the easy days where the stolen time didn’t seem so bad. However the days when it was miserable cold and the jobs weren’t completed to satisfaction were the long days, the hard days to survive.
Although at the end of each day, there was dinner, a time where each prison had a few scared minutes to himself, and was only concerned for himself. The significance of a piece of bread and a bit of kasha was extraordinary. This novel is living proof of the struggle of survival for prisoners in communist countries. It illustrates problems we all face in our everyday lives, especially cultural and religious conflict.
It was published to awaken the world to the horrendous conditions Stalin put these prisoners in, and shows what kind of man he really was. The novel consists of cold hard facts about Stalin’s prisoner camps, and a story of courage and hope despite the conditions and odds.