One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Narrated by Richard Brown

One of the most extraordinary literary documents to have emerged from the Soviet Union, this is the story of labor camp inmate Ivan Denisovich Shukhov and his struggle to maintain his dignity in the face of Communist oppression. Based on the author’s own experience in the gulags, where he spent nearly a decade as punishment for making derogatory remarks against Stalin, the novel is an unforgettable portrait of the entire world of Stalin’s forced work camps.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blackstone Audio
• Release date: Jan 4, 2011
• ISBN: 9780786103294

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature, was born in 1918. In February 1945, while he was captain of a reconnaissance battery of the Soviet Army, he was arrested and sentenced to an eight-year term in a labor camp and permanent internal exile, which was cut short by Khrushchev's reforms, allowing him to return from Kazakhstan to Central Russia in 1956. Although permitted to publish One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in 1962—which remained his only full-length work to have appeared in his homeland until 1990—Solzhenitsyn was by 1969 expelled from the Writers' Union. The publication in the West of his other novels and, in particular, of The Gulag Archipelago, brought retaliation from the authorities. In 1974, Solzhenitsyn was arrested, stripped of his Soviet citizenship, and forcibly flown to Frankfurt. Solzhenitsyn and his wife and children moved to the United States in 1976. In September 1991, the Soviet government dismissed treason charges against him; Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia in 1994. He died in Moscow in 2008.

Reviews for One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

[judithrs · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Alexander Solzhenitsyn. 1963. We read this in addition to Solzhenitsyn’s 1978 Harvard Commencement address in our book club. I read the book in the early 70s in a Young Adult Lit class in grad school. I remember liking it, but not much else as I suspect I read close to 200 YA books that summer semester. For those who don’t know it is, just as the title indicates, one day in the life of Ivan Denisovich who is the Gulag, a Soviet prison camp in Siberia. What we see is both the humanity and the inhumanity found in any prison camp, though the Siberian winter intensifies the harshness of the camp. Shukhov or Ivan begins the day at 5 a.m. We follow him through the day and see how he has managed to beat the system and maintain his humanness. I had forgotten what a great writer Solzhenitsyn is, and am glad I re-read this.

[richj_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The writing hammers at the experience of being in a Soviet work camp. This translation makes you feel as if it was written in English. Well worth reading. Or rereading if you read the previous translation.

[petroglyph_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

There’s not much I can say about this that hasn’t already been said. Nasty, brutish and short. Read it.

[bohemima · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This could have been so depressing as to put off the reader. But Solzhenitsyn tells his tale in a matter-of-fact immediate fashion. I was appalled by the routine horrors of a Russian prison camp (and a “special” camp to boot), of course. But the conversational tone, and ivan’s determination to survive through guile and skill make this short book a fascinating read. Recommended.

[over.the.edge · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

# 11 of 100 Classics Challenge🍒🍒🍒🍒
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
By Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
Translated by Max Hayward & Ronald Hingley
1963

Tells of a 24 hour period in the life of Ivan Denisovich, in one of Stalins forced labor camps. Ivan's crime was not against another person, his crime was speaking out the communist oppression . His sentence was 25 years, live in harsh conditions, fed bread and mush, and are forced to build brick and mortar walls in sub zero temperatures, with only felt boots on their feet.
This is sad, and hard to believe there are people who feel ok or justified treating others so poorly. The discrimination will never end.
Recommended!

[breic-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Informative but never dry or overlong. Straightforward writing/translation, but with some personality and humanity.I think the book has been oversold. It does not really convey the horror of the gulag, because so much of it comes from the repetition, and this story just tells of one day, and a good day. Shukov avoids the worst of it, and simply makes do.

[borrows0n0wants · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very good book. It made me aware of some history that I probably should have known already but didn't. It is the story of a man's day (beginning to end) in a gulag work camp. The characters are very memorable, and there are several beautiful quotes sprinkled throughout this novel.

[clara53_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I had to just sit quietly for awhile after finishing this book. The enormity of the message had to sink in: this unimaginable human endurance (both mental and physical) in the face of cruelty, humiliation, as well as most base and inhumane conditions in the gulag, astonished me. Slavery of a different kind - total subjugation by one's own compatriots... I was expecting bitterness, resignation. Instead I found an odd sort of triumph of the human spirit. An amazing read.

[jillrhudy · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Deeply affecting and difficult to recover from. Comparable to the best Holocaust fiction or Angela's Ashes in its impact. Once I was drawn into this deceptively simple story of one man's day in a Siberian labor camp under Stalin's regime, I could not put the book down. I had it like a disease. Halfway through, I found myself moving in slow motion, paying attention to small things, eating thoughtfully, grateful for being warm and comfortable. After I read it, I had trouble settling into another book; all other fiction seemed fluffy and inconsequential.

[chriszodrow · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Masterpiece.

[bookomaniac-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Literair is dit een heel simpel, chronologisch verhaal, door een derde verteller, niks experiment, gewoon een klassiek verhaal, zonder veel opsmuk. De waarde van het boek is vooral historisch-documentair: de reconstructie van een dag in een Goelag-strafkamp, rond 1950, gefocust op de figuur van gevangene Sjoechov. De novelle, eerst verschenen in een Sovjettijdschrift sloeg in 1962 in als een bom, en Solzjenitsyns naam was meteen gevestigd. Interessant dus, maar literair niet meteen een hoogvlieger.

[drmaf-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I have read this book perhaps a dozen times and I believe it gets more powerful every time I read it. An amazing story of human endurance and the ability to make the best of things even under the most hellish conditions. An ordinary day in the life of Ivan Denisovitch Shukov, serving ten years in the gulag for the crime of having been a soldier captured by the Germans and managing to escape back to his own lines, which makes him deeply suspect to the paranoid Stalinist authorities. Forced to rise before daybreak in -27 degree temperatures, in danger of time in the cells just for sleeping in, fed only on thin gruel ahead of a hard day's work in the cold, Ivan Denisovitch manages through perception, skill and pluck to make what to him is a good day out of a life we consider absolute hell, in the end describing it as "almost a happy day" despite the sheer brutality of life in the gulag. I rank this among the 10 top books I have ever read.

[hamburgerclan · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I hate it when I fall behind in by book reviews. Sometimes I'm able to recall the book and my reactions to it. But it's more likely that I stare at the cover and my blank screen and wonder what I can write beyond "On my shelf." So anyway, almost two months ago I read this slim volume, the tale of an inmate in a Soviet labor camp. Many words have been written about this classic. Me, all I can think to say is that Mr. Solzhenitsyn does an amazing job of creating an entire word in his tale. He also fills it with a variety of characters--some very human characters in a dehumanizing situation. I also appreciated that he didn't go for drama, trying to recount some horrid tragedy to illustrate the injustice of that Soviet system, but rather let the quiet pain of day's events speak for itself.--J.

[lord_boris-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Set in a Stalinist gulag, the book describes a single day for Ivan Denisovich Shukhov. The camp is woken at five in the morning and all day is spent in hard labour. Shukhov is a skilled labourer and the middle section of the book dealing with the bricklaying in Siberian temperatures was great. The book is generally about oppression, survival and dignity. Shukhov is well into his ten year sentence and is savvy in how to survive and who's back to scratch to get an extra ration here or some tobacco there. On this particular day he does well on these fronts and at night on his bunk he considers it "almost a happy day".

Based on Solzhenitsyn's time spent in a similar camp.

[kanikoski · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

For a day in the gulag, this passes remarkably easily. (I think Solzhenitsyn would approve of that sentiment.) The one day of the title is filled with detail rather than any over-arching narrative, but that does not mean that there is no big picture; rather that, as for the prisoners, or zeks, although the big picture takes a back seat to the business of survival, the nitty-gritty of survival reveals much about its wider context. The political hangs in the air like a thunder-cloud, along with part-answered questions of what these zeks did to warrant the punishment they are receiving. Like Shukhov, a.k.a. Ivan Denisovich, this work is remarkable for how much it achieves with so little, and for how smoothly it gets through the seemingly insurmountable. It's a classic for good reason.

[bevok-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I must reread this powerful book. I'll always remember him chewing and rechewing the small morsel of bread that was his daily ration.

[magadri-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very good book. It made me aware of some history that I probably should have known already but didn't. It is the story of a man's day (beginning to end) in a gulag work camp. The characters are very memorable, and there are several beautiful quotes sprinkled throughout this novel.

[brakketh-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

First time that I have read this book. Was hoping to manage to read this in one day but couldn't manage. Found this book disheartening and heartening in approximately equal measure, which was a surprise to me considering the topic of the book.

[garrison0550 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I first read this book years ago right after I finished school and got a job as a hod carrier (a mason's laborer). That was one hell of a tough job, but after reading this book my life sure looked a whole lot brighter. I still have the same copy but it's a bit more tattered these days from the times I've re-read it over the years. If you haven't read this book, no matter what genre you prefer, do yourself a favor and read it.

[seriousgrace · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Ivan Denisovich Shukhov (#S 854) is a prisoner in a Stalinist work camp in Siberia with only two years left on his sentence. This is one day in his life, from reveille to lights-out. It has been called extraordinary and I couldn't agree more. Ivan is the very picture of bravery, hope and above all, survival. Solzhenitsyn relentlessly reminds the reader of the Siberian bitter winters by using variations of words like frost, ice, snow, chill, freeze and cold over 120 times. Added to that is the constant lack of warmth (mentioned another 25 times). While Solzhenitsyn is reminding readers of the cold, Shukov is stressing the importance of flying under the radar; avoiding detection and unwanted attention. Whether he is squirreling away food or tools he is careful not to rock the boat. He knows his fate can be altered in the blink of an eye or the time it takes for a guard to focus on him.

[mathmaverick-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of the BEST books I've ever read (and re-read). I believe that this books should be mandatory reading for everyone!

[shanaqui_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

If you can't face the idea of reading the entirety of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, this makes a good second choice. It follows a day in the life of one of the prisoners in a Russian gulag, and touches on a lot of issues that faced them -- and, of course, the author really was one of those prisoners himself, so it is very close to not being fiction at all. It's not an easy read, emotionally, but it's easier than Gulag Archipelago for sure.When I read Gulag Archipelago, I was sure that the very existence of such accounts would help to prevent such a thing from happening again. I'm less sure, now. But it's still worth reading to understand the depths to which we can sink.

[proustitutes · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book is bleak. Perhaps unbearingly bleak.

Solzhenitsyn details a day in the gulag in the early 50's. I found it easy to forget that these conditions were a reality a mere fifty or sixty years ago. Ivan Denisovich, the protaganist, manages to keep a clean conscience while being masterful in his manipulation of others. He knows the truth: you need to be crafty in order to survive the long, ten-year sentence.

The monotony and length of his sentence is reflected in the physical act of reading this book: while the words chronicle solely a single day from bell to bell, the book itself has no chapters, page breaks, or markers to indicate progress. There is no stopping point to take stock; the only option is to continue going. Sound familiar? Because of this, I was exhausted once I finished the book... I wanted to lie down, watch TLC for a couple mindless hours, take a leisurely nap, and *maybe* do some light Nicholas Sparks reading. I couldn't help but feel in the back of my mind that perhaps this is what Solzhenitsyn intended. The monotony, the cold, and the utter grimness of existence were reflected in every word of the novel.

You don't win the Nobel Prize in Literature for nothing, and Solzhenitsyn penned a masterpiece--which, I'm sure, is all the more beautiful in Russian with its 'jail talk' and peasant colloqialisms.

[cecrow · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A political prisoner with a ten-year prison camp sentence, Ivan's an remarkable fellow and a friend you'd like to have there: resourceful and quick-thinking, mindful of others and willing to share (within reason), a good assessor of risks and opportunities, proud of his skills and of a job well done even when it's being forced upon him. His enemy is not the camp guards, who are just as unhappy to be present as the prisoners they watch. The true enemy is the penetrating cold. If you haven't experienced minus thirty weather then it's hard to grasp what working in it all day would be like, let alone with so little opportunity to shelter from it. Canadian or not, I don't care for more than a few minutes of it. Standing only next in line to the cold is hunger. Ivan measures every gram with his eyes, counts every spoonful, every lick, every crumb, leaving nothing to waste. He is very philosophical about his dilemma. He doesn't place too much hope on getting out when his time is served, where that kind of hope can kill a man. He takes each day at a time, finds blessings in the smallest pieces of luck. It's a reversal of the life I know. From dawn until dusk it's the things that go wrong which stand out to me as I judge how good my day was. Ivan lives in a world of wrongs, and so he measures by what goes unexpectedly right.I'm astonished this got past Soviet regime censors in 1962. There's bold-faced anti-government dialogue and social commentary that I never guessed they'd allow after other authors like Bulgakov were reduced to skulking around in metaphor (possibly restored for this edition? I read there was some censoring.) Its publication is symbolic of the Soviet Russia that emerged from beneath the shadow of Stalin under Khrushchev and kept ebbing all the way to 1991.

[jwarren42 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Stunning in its portrayal of the lengths a man has to go to in order to survive forced labor camp life. The genius is in reminding us that, no matter what walks of life we come from, given the right conditions, we could all become shells of who we think we are. The plight of Buinovsky and of Gopchik were especially compelling to me. HIGHLY recommended.

[bayardus-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Alexander Solzhenitsyn shows us how terrible the communist labor camp system is, not by showing us how bad a bad day in such circumstances can be, but by showing us how bad even a good day is in that situation. Ivan's attempts to scrounge enough food not to starve or succumb to illness and his efforts at back-breaking labor in the bitter Russian cold all turn out relatively well in the one day the story takes place on. The key word there is "relatively." The reader is left to contemplate what a bad day looks like, if this was a good day.

Short, evocative, and packing an emotional punch, this is how it's done.

[jimmaclachlan · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a fantastic look at the post WWII gulag system in the USSR. It is literally one day in the life of a typical prisoner. The things he is joyful for, the misery he endures & how he continues to live are incredibly engaging, yet horrifying.

I recommend this to anyone who is certain that the State has a better nature or those who are sure there is good in everyone. The evil that can be institutionalized by men is incredible.

[clancy.coonradt · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is an incredibly image packed and undeniably powerful book. The size allows for a quick one day read, or two at most, and the amount of information and descriptions make the time seem as though it is much longer than the day being described.The way the author uses the non-stop nature of the environment to create a piece that the reader is unable to put down, and captivates them without question is amazing.Unfortunately the subject matter is quite depressing, but that is the reality of it. The constant activity and degradation makes this a very gut wrenching story.A wonderful read, great for anyone high-school and above. For a beginning reader the subject may be a bit harsh, but isn't the world? Don't we learn this at some point? What better way than to see it from the persecuted point of view before the dictator'? Or does it matter?For adults, this is a great read that really gives a gritty weighted view of just one day in a gulag.

[jmlibrarian · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Deeply affecting and difficult to recover from. Comparable to the best Holocaust fiction or Angela's Ashes in its impact. Once I was drawn into this deceptively simple story of one man's day in a Siberian labor camp under Stalin's regime, I could not put the book down. I had it like a disease. Halfway through, I found myself moving in slow motion, paying attention to small things, eating thoughtfully, grateful for being warm and comfortable. After I read it, I had trouble settling into another book; all other fiction seemed fluffy and inconsequential.

[lucasdwi · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich should be required reading for all students. He transports the reader back to the Russian steppe and brilliantly describes what life was like in a Stalinist work camp. The reader feels like they are a fly on the wall suffering right along with Ivan. With simple prose, Solzhenitsyn is able to communicate exactly what he needs to make one of the most powerful accounts of the Soviet Union's atrocities.