With the thaw in Soviet censorship during Khrushchev’s regime, friends encouraged Solzhenitsyn to submit his novel concerning the struggles of a political prisoner to the Russian literary journal Novy Mir. He taught physics and astronomy and continued to write. During this period he began work on his poetry, plays, and novels.įreed from internal exile, he moved to Riazan, Russia. In 1953 he was released from prison-but still in internal exile, which limited his movement and activities-and became a mathematics teacher in Kok-Terek, Kazakhstan. In 1946 he went to Butyrki Prison and worked in construction from 1947 to 1950 he worked at Marfino Prison as a mathematician on technological projects from 1950 to 1953 he was sent to the Ekibastuz labor camp, Kazakhstan, where he worked as a mason and carpenter. In 1945 he wrote a letter criticizing Stalin, which fell into the hands of authorities as a result, he was arrested and sentenced to eight years for anti-Soviet activities.
During World War II he served as commander of a Soviet Army artillery unit and was twice decorated for bravery. His father died in a hunting accident before his birth, and his mother, the daughter of a wealthy landowner, struggled to support the family on her meager wages as a typist.īetween 19 Solzhenitsyn studied philosophy, literature, mathematics, and language in 1941 he received a degree in mathematics and physics from the University of Rostov. Author BiographyĪlexandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodsk, Russia, on December 11, 1918. The major themes of the story are human survival and human dignity in the face of human cruelty and absurdity. Its publication opened the door for further revelations and explorations of Gulag life by other authors. Today “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is still admired for its succinct and stark depiction of the cruelty and degradation of prison life during that time. In fact, Solzhenitzyn drew from his own personal experience as a prisoner in the camps under Stalin. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970, and most critics still regard “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” as the most realistic and evocative depiction of life in a Stalinist prison camp. Unfortunately, with the fall of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in 1964 and a resumption of hard-line attitudes, Solzhenitsyn’s outspoken writings were banished and much of his writing circulated in Samisdat (self-published format).
This short story about a single day in the life of a “zek” (a political prisoner) in the Soviet “Gulag” (work camps) brought its author, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, almost immediate notoriety in the Soviet Union and throughout the world. The publication of “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” in 1962 in the leading Soviet intellectual magazine Novy Mir (New World), was a significant victory for dissident artists in the Soviet Union.
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