The fate of man in a totalitarian state
The name AI Solzhenitsyn appeared in fiction in the 60s, during the “Khrushchev thaw.” “One Day of Ivan Denisovich” shocked readers with knowledge about the forbidden – camp life under Stalin.
For the first time, one of the innumerable islands of the GULAG archipelago was opened. Behind him stood the state itself, a merciless totalitarian system, overwhelming a man.
The plot of the story is devoted to the resistance of the living – inanimate, human – to the camp. Solzhenitsyn convict camp is a mediocre, dangerous, cruel machine, grinding everyone who gets into it. The camp was created for the sake of murder, aimed at exterminating the main thing in man – thoughts, conscience, memory.
Ivan Shukhov “the life here has been rattling from rising to rebound.” And remembering the native house “less and less was his reason.” So who is the camp: the man? Or is man a camp? Many camps won, ground to dust.
Ivan Denisovich goes through the vile temptations of the camp, which may be stronger or weaker, but they are persistent. On this endless day, a drama of resistance is played out. Some win it: Ivan Denisovich, Kavtorang, convict X-123, Alyoshka-Baptist, Senka Klevshin, Pavlo-pombrigadira, the foreman Tyurin himself. Others are doomed to perdition: film director Caesar Markovic, “jackal” Fetyukhov, ten’s manager Dare and others.
Life in the camp mercilessly pursues all human and implants the inhuman. Ivan Denisovich thinks to himself: “Work is like a stick, there are two end to it: for the people you do – quality give, for the fool you do – show off.” Otherwise, everyone would die long ago, the case is well-known. ” Ivan Shukhov remembered the words of his first brigade leader, Kuzemin, the old camp wolf who had been sitting since 1943 for 12 years: “Here, guys, the law is taiga, but people live here too.” In the camp, who dies: who picks licks, who on the medical unit hopes and who goes to the kum to knock. ” This is the essence of camp philosophy.
What is the camp? And how does a person live and survive in it? The camp is an image both real and surreal, absurd. This is the commonness, and the symbol, the embodiment of eternal evil and the usual low anger, hatred, laziness, dirt, violence, thoughtlessness, taken up by the System.
Man is at war with the camp, for he takes away the freedom to live for himself, to be himself. “There is no substitute” for the camp anywhere – this is the tactic of resistance. “Yes, and you can not yawn.” It’s necessary that no supervisor see you alone, but in the crowd only, “this is the tactic of survival.
Contrary to the humiliating system of numbers, people persistently call each other by their names, patronymics, surnames. Before us are faces, not cogs and not camp dust, which the System of people would like to turn into. To defend freedom in a convict camp means to depend as little as possible on his regime, on his destructive order, on his own. In addition to sleep, the prisoner lives for himself only in the morning -10 minutes at breakfast, but at dinner – 5 minutes, yes at dinner-5 minutes. This is reality. Therefore, Shukhov even eats “slowly, thoughtfully.” This is also liberation.
The closer the end of the story, the more understandable it becomes for us that the main thing in it is a dispute about spiritual values. Alyoshka the Baptist says that it is necessary to pray “not about sending a parcel or for an extra portion of the balance.” It is necessary to pray for the spiritual, so that the Lord will scavenge the evil from our heart. ”
The final story is paradoxical for perception:” Ivan Denisovich, completely satisfied The day passed, not overshadowed by anything, almost happy. ” If this is one of the “good” days, then what are the bad ones.
Solzhenitsyn breached the Iron Curtain and soon became an outcast himself. His books were banned and removed from libraries. By the time of the forcible expulsion of the writer from the USSR, “In the First Circle”, “Cancer Corps”, “Gulag Archipelago” had already been written.
The time of oblivion has passed. Solzhenitsyn’s merit is that for the first time he spoke about the terrible calamity that our long-suffering people and the author himself experienced. Solzhenitsyn lifted the veil over the dark night of our history of the period of Stalinism.
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