“One day of Ivan Denisovich” is a story about a prisoner that describes one day of his life in prison, of which there are three thousand five hundred and sixty four. Summary - below 🙂

The protagonist of the work, the action of which takes place within one day, is the peasant Ivan Denisovich Shukhov. On the second day after the start of the Great Patriotic War, he went to the front from his native village of Temgenevo, where he left his wife and two daughters. Shukhov still had a son, but he died.

In February, one thousand nine hundred and forty-two, on the North-Western Front, a group of soldiers, which included Ivan Denisovich, was surrounded by the enemy. It was impossible to help them; from hunger, the soldiers even had to eat the hooves of dead horses soaked in water. Shukhov soon fell into German captivity, but he, along with four colleagues, managed to escape from there and get to his own. However, Soviet submachine gunners killed two former prisoners immediately. One died of wounds, and Ivan Denisovich was sent to the NKVD. As a result of a quick investigation, Shukhov was sent to a concentration camp - after all, every person who was captured by the Germans was considered an enemy spy.

Ivan Denisovich has been serving his term for the ninth year. For eight years he was imprisoned in Ust-Izhma, and now he is in a Siberian camp. Over the years, Shukhov has grown a long beard, and his teeth have become half as many. He is dressed in a quilted jacket, over which is a pea coat girded with a rope. Ivan Denisovich has cotton trousers and felt boots on his feet, and under them are two pairs of footcloths. On the trousers just above the knee there is a patch on which the camp number is embroidered.

The most important task in the camp is to avoid starvation. Prisoners are fed a nasty gruel - a soup made from frozen cabbage and small pieces of fish. If you try, you can get an extra portion of such gruel or another ration of bread.

Some prisoners even receive parcels. One of them was Tsezar Markovich (either a Jew or a Greek), a man of pleasant oriental appearance with a thick, black mustache. The prisoner's mustache was not shaved off, as without it he would not have matched the photograph attached to the file. Once he wanted to become a director, but did not have time to shoot anything - they put him in jail. Cesar Markovich lives on memories and behaves like a cultured person. He talks about the "political idea" as a justification for tyranny, and sometimes publicly scolds Stalin, calling him "dad with a mustache." Shukhov sees that the atmosphere in hard labor is freer than in Ust-Izhma. You can talk about anything without fear that they will increase the term for this. Caesar Markovich, being a practical person, managed to adapt to hard labor: from the parcels sent to him, he knows how to "put it in the mouth of those who need it." Thanks to this, he works as an assistant rater, which was pretty easy. Caesar Markovich is not greedy and shares food and tobacco from parcels with many (especially with those who helped him in any way).

Ivan Denisovich nevertheless understands that Tsezar Markovich still does not understand anything about camp procedures. Before the “search”, he does not have time to take the parcel to the storage room. The cunning Shukhov managed to save the good sent to Caesar, and he did not remain indebted to him.

Most often, Caesar Markovich shared supplies with his neighbor "on the nightstand" Kavtorang - sea captain of the second rank Buinovsky. He went around Europe and along the Northern Sea Route. Once Buinovsky, as a communications captain, even accompanied an English admiral. He was impressed by his high professionalism and after the war sent a souvenir. Because of this package, the NKVD decided that Buinovsky was an English spy. Kavtorang is in the camp not so long ago and has not yet lost faith in justice. Despite the habit of commanding people, Kavtorang does not shy away from camp work, for which he is respected by all prisoners.

There is in the camp and the one whom no one respects. This is the former clerical head Fetyukov. He does not know how to do anything at all and is only able to carry a stretcher. Fetyukov does not receive any help from home: his wife left him, after which she immediately married another. The former boss is used to eating enough and therefore often begs. This man has long since lost his self-respect. He is constantly offended, and sometimes even beaten. Fetyukov is not able to fight back: "he will wipe himself off, cry and go." Shukhov believes that it is impossible for people like Fetyukov to survive in a camp where you need to be able to position yourself correctly. The preservation of one's own dignity is necessary only because without it a person loses the will to live and is unlikely to be able to last until the end of his term.

Ivan Denisovich himself does not receive parcels from home, because in his native village they are already starving. He diligently stretches the ration for the whole day so as not to experience hunger. Shukhov does not shy away from the opportunity to "mow down" an extra piece from his superiors.

On the day described in the story, the prisoners are working on the construction of the house. Shukhov does not shy away from work. His foreman, dispossessed Andrei Prokofievich Tyurin, writes out a "percentage" - an extra bread ration at the end of the day. Work helps the prisoners, after getting up, not to live in the painful expectation of lights out, but to fill the day with some meaning. The joy that physical labor brings is especially supportive of Ivan Denisovich. He is considered the best master in his team. Shukhov competently distributes his forces, which helps him not to overstrain and work effectively throughout the day. Ivan Denisovich works with passion. He is glad that he managed to hide a piece of a saw that can be used to make a small knife. With the help of such a homemade knife, it is easy to earn money for bread and tobacco. However, the guards regularly search the prisoners. The knife can be taken away during the “shmon”; this fact gives the case a peculiar excitement.

One of the prisoners is the sectarian Alyosha, who was imprisoned for his faith. Alyosha the Baptist copied half of the Gospel into a notebook and made a hiding place for it in a crack in the wall. Not once during a search of Aleshino's treasure was found. In the camp, he did not lose faith. Alyosha tells everyone to pray that the Lord will remove the evil scale from our hearts. In penal servitude, neither religion, nor art, nor politics are forgotten: the prisoners worry not only about their daily bread.

Before going to bed, Shukhov sums up the day: he was not put in a punishment cell, he was not sent to work on the construction of the Sotsgorodok (in a frosty field), he hid a piece of the saw and did not get caught in the “shmon”, during lunch he received an extra portion of porridge (“mowed down”), bought tobacco... This is what an almost happy day at the camp looks like.

And Ivan Denisovich has three thousand five hundred and sixty-four such days.

At five o'clock in the morning, as always, the rise struck - with a hammer on the rail at the headquarters barracks. The intermittent ringing faintly passed through the panes, which were frozen two fingers deep, and soon died down: it was cold, and the warder was reluctant to wave his hand for a long time.

The ringing subsided, and outside the window everything was the same as in the middle of the night, when Shukhov got up to the bucket, there was darkness and darkness, but three yellow lanterns fell through the window: two - in the zone, one - inside the camp.

And the barracks didn’t go to unlock something, and it was not heard that the orderlies took the vat barrel on sticks - to take it out.

Shukhov never slept through the rise, he always got up on it - before the divorce there was an hour and a half of his time, not official, and whoever knows the camp life can always earn extra money: sewing a cover for mittens from an old lining; give a rich brigadier dry felt boots directly to the bed, so that he does not trample barefoot around the heap, do not choose; or run through the supply rooms, where you need to serve someone, sweep or bring something; or go to the dining room to collect bowls from the tables and carry them in slides into the dishwasher - they will also feed them, but there are many hunters there, there is no lights out, and most importantly - if there is anything left in the bowl, you can’t resist, you start licking the bowls. And Shukhov firmly remembered the words of his first foreman Kuzemin - the old one was a camp wolf, he had been sitting for twelve years by the year 943, and he once said to his replenishment, brought from the front, in a bare clearing by the fire:

- Here, guys, the law is the taiga. But people live here too. In the camp, this is who dies: who licks bowls, who hopes for the medical unit, and who kumu goes knocking.

As for the godfather - this, of course, he turned down. They save themselves. Only their protection is on someone else's blood.

Shukhov always got up when he got up, but today he didn't get up. Since the evening he had been uneasy, either shivering, or broken. And didn't get warm at night. Through a dream it seemed that he seemed to be completely ill, then he was leaving a little. I didn't want it to be morning.

But the morning came as usual.

Yes, and where can you get warm - there is frost on the window, and on the walls along the junction with the ceiling throughout the barrack - a healthy barrack! - white gossamer. Frost.

Shukhov did not get up. He lay on top lining, covering his head with a blanket and a pea jacket, and in a padded jacket, in one tucked up sleeve, putting both feet together. He did not see, but from the sounds he understood everything that was going on in the barracks and in their brigade corner. Here, stepping heavily along the corridor, the orderlies carried one of the eight-bucket buckets. It is considered a disabled person, easy work, but come on, take it out, don’t spill it! Here, in the 75th brigade, a bunch of felt boots from the dryer slammed on the floor. And here - in ours (and ours today was the turn of felt boots to dry). The foreman and pom foreman put on their shoes in silence, and the lining creaks. The foreman will now go to the bread slicer, and the foreman will go to the headquarters barracks, to workmen.

Yes, not just to the contractors, as he goes every day, - Shukhov remembered: today the fate is being decided - they want to fug their 104th brigade from the construction of workshops to the new Sotsgorodok facility. And that Sotsgorodok is a bare field, covered in snowy ridges, and before doing anything there, you have to dig holes, put up poles and pull barbed wire from yourself - so as not to run away. And then build.

There, sure enough, there will be nowhere to warm up for a month - not a kennel. And you can’t make a fire - how to heat it? Work hard on the conscience - one salvation.

The foreman is concerned, he is going to settle. Some other brigade, sluggish, to push there instead of yourself. Of course, you can't come to an agreement with empty hands. Half a kilo of fat to the senior worker to bear. And even a kilogram.

The test is not a loss, do not try it in the medical unit squint to be freed from work for a day? Well, just the whole body separates.

And one more thing - which of the guards is on duty today?

On duty - he remembered - Ivan and a half, a thin and long black-eyed sergeant. The first time you look, it’s downright scary, but they recognized him as the most accommodating of all the duty officers: he doesn’t put him in a punishment cell, he doesn’t drag him to the head of the regime. So you can lie down, as long as the ninth hut is in the dining room.

The carriage shook and swayed. Two people got up at once: upstairs was Shukhov's neighbor Baptist Alyoshka, and downstairs was Buinovsky, a former captain of the second rank, captain.

The old orderlies, having taken out both buckets, scolded who should go for boiling water. They scolded affectionately, like women. An electric welder from the 20th brigade barked:

- Hey, wicks!- and launched a felt boot at them. - I'll make peace!

The felt boot thudded against the pole. They fell silent.

In the neighboring brigade, the pom-brigade leader murmured a little:

- Vasil Fedorych! They shuddered in the prodstole, bastards: there were four nine hundred, and there were only three. Who is missing?

He said this quietly, but of course the whole brigade heard and hid: they would cut off a piece from someone in the evening.

And Shukhov lay and lay on the compressed sawdust of his mattress. At least one side took it - either it would have scored in a chill, or the aches had passed. But neither.

While the Baptist was whispering prayers, Buinovsky returned from the breeze and announced to no one, but as if maliciously:

- Well, hold on, Red Navy men! Thirty degrees true!

And Shukhov decided to go to the medical unit.

And then someone's powerful hand pulled off his quilted jacket and blanket. Shukhov threw off his pea coat from his face and stood up. Beneath him, head level with the top bunk of the lining, stood a thin Tatar.

It means that he was not on duty in the queue and crept quietly.

“Eight hundred and fifty-four!” - Read the Tatar from a white patch on the back of a black pea jacket. – Three days kondeya with a conclusion!

And as soon as his special choked voice was heard, as in the whole half-dark barracks, where not every light bulb was on, where two hundred people were sleeping on fifty stinky wagons, everyone who had not yet got up immediately began to turn and hastily dress.

- Why, Citizen Chief? Shukhov asked, giving his voice more pity than he felt.

With the conclusion to work - this is still half a punishment cell, and they will give you hot, and there is no time to think. A complete punishment cell is when no output.

- Didn't get up on the rise? Let's go to the commandant's office, - Tatarin explained lazily, because it was clear to him, and Shukhov, and everyone what the conde was for.

On the hairless wrinkled face of the Tatar, nothing was expressed. He turned around, looking for someone else, but everyone already, some in semi-darkness, some under a light bulb, on the first floor of the wagons and on the second, pushed their legs into black wadded trousers with numbers on the left knee, or, already dressed, wrapped themselves up and hurried to the exit - wait out Tatarin in the yard.

If Shukhov had been given a punishment cell for something else, where he deserved it, it would not have been so insulting. It was a shame that he always got up first. But it was impossible to ask Tatarin for leave, he knew. And, continuing to ask for time off just for the sake of order, Shukhov, as he was in wadded trousers, not taken off for the night (a worn, dirty patch was also sewn above their left knee, and the number Sh-854 was drawn on it with black, already faded paint), put on a padded jacket (she had two such numbers - one on her chest and one on her back), chose his felt boots from a pile on the floor, put on a hat (with the same patch and number in front) and went out after Tatarin.

The entire 104th brigade saw how Shukhov was taken away, but no one said a word: no need, and what can you say? The foreman could have intervened a little, but he wasn't there. And Shukhov didn't say a word to anyone either, he didn't tease Tatarin. Save breakfast, guess.

So the two of them left.

Frost was with haze, breathtaking. Two large searchlights hit the area crosswise from the far corner towers. The zone lights and interior lights shone. So many of them were poked that they completely lit up the stars.

Creaking felt boots in the snow, the prisoners quickly ran about their business - some to the restroom, some to the supply room, another to the parcel warehouse, the other to hand over cereals to the individual kitchen. All of them had their heads sunk into their shoulders, their jackets were wrapped up, and they were all cold, not so much from the frost as from the thought that they would spend a whole day in this frost.

And the Tatar, in his old overcoat with greasy blue buttonholes, walked steadily, and the frost did not seem to take him at all.

Almost a third of the prison camp term - from August 1950 to February 1953 - Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn served in the Ekibastuz special camp in northern Kazakhstan. There, at common work, and on a long winter day, the idea of ​​​​a story about one day of one prisoner flashed. “It was just such a camp day, hard work, I was carrying a stretcher with a partner and I thought about how the whole camp world should be described - in one day,” the author said in a television interview with Nikita Struve (March 1976). “Of course, you can describe your ten years of the camp, there the whole history of the camps, but it’s enough to collect everything in one day, as if by pieces, it’s enough to describe only one day of one average, unremarkable person from morning to evening. And everything will be.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The story "One day of Ivan Denisovich" [see. on our website its full text, summary and literary analysis] was written in Ryazan, where Solzhenitsyn settled in June 1957 and from the new academic year became a teacher of physics and astronomy at secondary school No. 2. Started on May 18, 1959, completed on May 30 June. The work took less than a month and a half. “It always turns out like this if you write from a dense life, the life of which you know too much, and not only do you not have to guess something there, try to understand something, but only fight off excess material, just so that the excess does not climbed, but to accommodate the most necessary, ”said the author in a radio interview for the BBC (June 8, 1982), hosted by Barry Holland.

Writing in the camp, Solzhenitsyn, in order to keep his composition and himself secret, memorized at first some verses, and at the end of the term, dialogues in prose and even solid prose. In exile, and then rehabilitated, he could work without destroying passage after passage, but he had to hide as before in order to avoid a new arrest. After being typewritten, the manuscript was burned. The manuscript of the camp story was also burned. And since the typescript had to be hidden, the text was printed on both sides of the sheet, without margins and without spaces between lines.

Only more than two years later, after a sudden violent attack on Stalin, undertaken by his successor N. S. Khrushchev at the XXII Party Congress (October 17 - 31, 1961), A.S. ventured to offer a story for publication. On November 10, 1961, “Cave Typewriting” (without the name of the author) was handed over to Anna Samoilovna Berzer by R. D. Orlova, the wife of A. S.’s prison friend Lev Kopelev, to the prose department of the Novy Mir magazine on November 10, 1961. The typists rewrote the original, Anna Samoilovna asked Lev Kopelev, who came to the editorial office, how to name the author, and Kopelev suggested a pseudonym for his place of residence - A. Ryazansky.

On December 8, 1961, as soon as the editor-in-chief of Novy Mir, Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky, appeared at the editorial office after a month's absence, A.S. Berzer asked him to read two difficult-to-pass manuscripts. One did not need a special recommendation, even if only by hearing about the author: it was the story of Lydia Chukovskaya "Sofya Petrovna". About the other, Anna Samoilovna said: "The camp through the eyes of a peasant, a very popular thing." Tvardovsky took her with him until the morning. On the night of December 8-9, he reads and rereads the story. In the morning, he calls the same Kopelev through the chain, asks about the author, finds out his address, and calls him to Moscow by telegram a day later. On December 11, on the day of his 43rd birthday, A.S. received this telegram: “I ask the editors of the new world to come as soon as possible, the costs will be paid = Tvardovsky.” And Kopelev already on December 9 telegraphed to Ryazan: “Alexander Trifonovich is delighted with the article” (this is how the former prisoners agreed among themselves to encrypt the unsafe story). For himself, Tvardovsky wrote in his workbook on December 12: “The strongest impression of recent days is the manuscript of A. Ryazansky (Solonzhitsyn), whom I will meet today.” The real name of the author Tvardovsky recorded from the voice.

On December 12, Tvardovsky received Solzhenitsyn, summoning the entire head of the editorial board to meet and talk with him. “Tvardovsky warned me,” notes A. S., “that he does not firmly promise to publish (Lord, I was glad that they did not transfer to the ChKGB!), And he would not indicate the deadline, but he would spare no effort.” Immediately, the editor-in-chief ordered to conclude an agreement with the author, as A. S. notes ... “at the highest rate accepted by them (one advance payment is my two-year salary)”. A.S. was then earning “sixty rubles a month” by teaching.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn. One day of Ivan Denisovich. The author is reading. Fragment

The original titles of the story are “Sch-854”, “One day of one convict”. The final title was composed in the editorial of Novy Mir on the author's first visit, at Tvardovsky's insistence, by "throwing assumptions across the table with Kopelev's participation."

In accordance with all the rules of Soviet hardware games, Tvardovsky gradually began to prepare a multi-way combination in order to finally enlist the support of the country's chief apparatchik, Khrushchev, the only person who could allow the publication of the camp story. At the request of Tvardovsky, written reviews about "Ivan Denisovich" were written by K. I. Chukovsky (his note was called "Literary Miracle"), S. Ya. Marshak, K. G. Paustovsky, K. M. Simonov ... Tvardovsky himself compiled a brief preface to the story and a letter addressed to the First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR N. S. Khrushchev. On August 6, 1962, after a nine-month editorial campaign, the manuscript of “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” with a letter from Tvardovsky was sent to Khrushchev’s assistant, V.S. Lebedev, who agreed, after waiting for a favorable moment, to acquaint the patron with an unusual essay.

Tvardovsky wrote:

“Dear Nikita Sergeevich!

I would not consider it possible to encroach on your time on a private literary matter, if it were not for this truly exceptional case.

We are talking about the amazingly talented story by A. Solzhenitsyn "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich." The name of this author has not yet been known to anyone, but tomorrow it may become one of the remarkable names of our literature.

This is not only my deep conviction. The unanimous appreciation of this rare literary find by my co-editors of the Novy Mir magazine, including K. Fedin, is joined by the voices of other prominent writers and critics who had the opportunity to read it in the manuscript.

But due to the unusual nature of the life material covered in the story, I feel an urgent need for your advice and approval.

In a word, dear Nikita Sergeevich, if you find an opportunity to pay attention to this manuscript, I will be happy, as if it were my own work.

In parallel with the progress of the story through the supreme labyrinths in the journal, there was a routine work with the author on the manuscript. On July 23, the editorial board discussed the story. A member of the editorial board, soon the closest collaborator of Tvardovsky, Vladimir Lakshin, wrote in his diary:

“I see Solzhenitsyn for the first time. This is a man of about forty, ugly, in a summer suit - canvas trousers and a shirt with an unbuttoned collar. The appearance is simple, the eyes are set deep. Scar on forehead. Calm, reserved, but not embarrassed. He speaks well, fluently, distinctly, with an exceptional sense of dignity. Laughs openly, showing two rows of large teeth.

Tvardovsky invited him - in the most delicate form, unobtrusively - to think about the remarks of Lebedev and Chernoutsan [an employee of the Central Committee of the CPSU, to whom Tvardovsky gave Solzhenitsyn's manuscript]. Let's say, add righteous indignation to the katorang, remove a shade of sympathy for the Bandera people, give someone from the camp authorities (at least a warden) in more reconciled, restrained tones, not all of them were scoundrels.

Dementiev [deputy editor-in-chief of Novy Mir] spoke about the same thing more sharply, more straightforwardly. Yaro stood up for Eisenstein, his "Battleship Potemkin". He said that even from an artistic point of view, he was not satisfied with the pages of the conversation with the Baptist. However, it is not the art that confuses him, but the same fears. Dementiev also said (I objected to this) that it is important for the author to think about how the former prisoners, who remained staunch communists after the camp, would accept his story.

This offended Solzhenitsyn. He replied that he had not thought about such a special category of readers and did not want to think about it. “There is a book and there is me. Maybe I am thinking about the reader, but this is a reader in general, and not different categories ... Then, all these people were not at common work. They, according to their qualifications or former position, usually settled in the commandant's office, at the bread cutter, etc. And you can understand the position of Ivan Denisovich only by working in general jobs, that is, knowing it from the inside. Even if I was in the same camp, but watched it from the side, I would not write this. I wouldn’t write, I wouldn’t understand what salvation is work ... "

There was a dispute about the place in the story where the author directly speaks about the position of the captain, that he - a sensitive, thinking person - must turn into a stupid animal. And here Solzhenitsyn did not concede: “This is the most important thing. Anyone who does not become stupefied in the camp, does not coarsen his feelings - perishes. That's the only way I saved myself. I'm scared now to look at the photograph as I came out of there: then I was older than now, by fifteen years, and I was stupid, clumsy, my thought worked clumsily. And that's the only reason he was saved. If, like an intellectual, he had rushed about internally, been nervous, experienced everything that had happened, he would certainly have died.

In the course of the conversation, Tvardovsky inadvertently mentioned the red pencil, which at the last minute can delete one or the other from the story. Solzhenitsyn became alarmed and asked to explain what this meant. Can the editors or censors remove something without showing him the text? “To me, the integrity of this thing is more precious than its printing,” he said.

Solzhenitsyn carefully wrote down all the comments and suggestions. He said that he divides them into three categories: those with which he can agree, even considers that they are beneficial; those that he will think about are difficult for him; and finally, the impossible ones, those with which he does not want to see the thing printed.

Tvardovsky proposed his amendments timidly, almost embarrassedly, and when Solzhenitsyn took the floor, he looked at him with love and immediately agreed if the author's objections were solid.

A.S. wrote about the same discussion:

“The main thing that Lebedev demanded was to remove all those places in which the captain rank was presented as a comic figure (by the standards of Ivan Denisovich), as it was intended, and to emphasize the party spirit of the captain (you must have a “positive hero”!). It seemed to me the least of the sacrifices. I removed the comic, what was left seemed to be “heroic”, but “insufficiently disclosed”, as critics later found. Now the captain's protest at the divorce was a little blown up (the idea was that the protest was ridiculous), but this, perhaps, did not disturb the picture of the camp. Then it was necessary to use the word “buttocks” less often for the escorts, I lowered it from seven to three; less often - “bastard” and “bastards” about the authorities (it was a bit thick with me); and so that at least not the author, but the katorang would condemn the Banderaites (I gave such a phrase to the katorang, but then threw it out in a separate publication: it was natural for the katorang, but they were too heavily reviled without it). Another thing is to add some hope for freedom to the prisoners (but I could not do this). And, the funniest thing for me, a hater of Stalin, at least once it was required to name Stalin as the culprit of disasters. (And indeed, he was never mentioned by anyone in the story! This is no coincidence, of course, it worked out for me: I saw the Soviet regime, and not Stalin alone.) I made this concession: I mentioned the “Moustached Old Man” once ... ".

On September 15, Lebedev telephoned Tvardovsky that “Solzhenitsyn (“One Day”) has been approved by N[ikita] S[ergeevich]chem” and that in the coming days the boss would invite him for a conversation. However, Khrushchev himself considered it necessary to enlist the support of the party elite. The decision to publish One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was made on October 12, 1962 at a meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU under pressure from Khrushchev. And only on October 20 did he receive Tvardovsky to report on the favorable result of his efforts. About the story itself, Khrushchev remarked: “Yes, the material is unusual, but, I will say, both the style and the language are unusual - it didn’t suddenly go away. Well, I think the thing is strong, very. And it does not cause, despite such material, a feeling of heavy, although there is a lot of bitterness.

Having read “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” even before publication, in typescript, Anna Akhmatova, who described in “ Requiem"The grief of the "hundred-million people" on this side of the prison gates, uttered with pressure:" This story must be read and memorized - every citizen out of all two hundred million citizens of the Soviet Union.

The story, for weightiness, was called by the editors in the subtitle a story, published in the journal Novy Mir (1962. No. 11. P. 8 - 74; signed for publication on November 3; an advance copy was delivered to the editor-in-chief on the evening of November 15; according to Vladimir Lakshin, mailing started on November 17; on the evening of November 19, about 2,000 copies were brought to the Kremlin for the participants in the plenum of the Central Committee) with a note by A. Tvardovsky "Instead of a preface." Circulation 96,900 copies. (by permission of the Central Committee of the CPSU, 25,000 were printed additionally). Republished in "Roman-gazeta" (M.: GIHL, 1963. No. 1/277. 47 p. 700,000 copies) and a book (M.: Soviet writer, 1963. 144 p. 100,000 copies). On June 11, 1963, Vladimir Lakshin wrote: “Solzhenitsyn presented me with a hastily issued “Soviet Writer” “One Day ...”. The edition is really shameful: a gloomy, colorless cover, gray paper. Alexander Isaevich jokes: "They released it in the GULAG edition."

Cover of the edition of "One day of Ivan Denisovich" in Roman-Gazeta, 1963

“In order for it [the story] to be published in the Soviet Union, it was necessary to have a combination of incredible circumstances and exceptional personalities,” A. Solzhenitsyn noted in a radio interview on the 20th anniversary of the release of “One Day in Ivan Denisovich” for the BBC (June 8, 1982 G.). - It is quite clear: if it were not for Tvardovsky as the editor-in-chief of the magazine - no, this story would not have been published. But I will add. And if it were not for Khrushchev at that moment, it would not have been published either. More: if Khrushchev had not attacked Stalin one more time at that very moment, it would not have been published either. The publication of my story in the Soviet Union, in 1962, is like a phenomenon against physical laws, as if, for example, objects themselves began to rise upward from the earth or cold stones began to heat up themselves, to heat up to fire. It's impossible, it's completely impossible. The system was so arranged, and for 45 years it has not released anything - and suddenly here is such a breakthrough. Yes, and Tvardovsky, and Khrushchev, and the moment - everyone had to come together. Of course, I could then send it abroad and print it, but now, from the reaction of Western socialists, it is clear: if it had been printed in the West, these same socialists would say: everything is a lie, there was nothing of this, and there were no camps, and there was no destruction, there was nothing. Only because everyone’s tongues were taken away, that this was printed with the permission of the Central Committee in Moscow, that shocked me.

“If this hadn’t happened [submission of the manuscript to Novy Mir and publication in my homeland], something else would have happened, and worse,” A. Solzhenitsyn wrote fifteen years earlier, “I would have sent a photographic film with camp things abroad, under the pseudonym Stepan Khlynov as it was already prepared. I did not know that in the most successful version, if in the West it was both published and noticed, even a hundredth of that influence could not have happened.

With the publication of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, the author returned to work on The Gulag Archipelago. “Even before Ivan Denisovich, I conceived Archipelago,” Solzhenitsyn said in a CBS television interview (June 17, 1974), hosted by Walter Cronkite, “I felt that such a systematic thing was needed, a general plan for everything that was , and in time, how it happened. But my personal experience and the experience of my comrades, no matter how much I asked about the camps, all the fates, all the episodes, all the stories, was not enough for such a thing. And when “Ivan Denisovich” was printed, letters to me exploded from all over Russia, and in the letters people wrote what they had experienced, what anyone had. Or they insisted to meet with me and tell, and I began to meet. Everyone asked me, the author of the first camp story, to write more, more, to describe this whole camp world. They did not know my plan and did not know how much I had already written, but they carried and carried the missing material to me. “And so I collected indescribable material that cannot be collected in the Soviet Union - only thanks to “Ivan Denisovich,” summed up A. S. in a radio interview for the BBC on June 8, 1982. “So he became like a pedestal for the Gulag Archipelago.

In December 1963, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was nominated for the Lenin Prize by the editorial board of Novy Mir and the Central State Archives of Literature and Art. According to Pravda (February 19, 1964), selected "for further discussion." Then included in the list for secret ballot. Didn't receive an award. Oles Gonchar for the novel "Tronka" and Vasily Peskov for the book "Steps on the Dew" (Pravda, April 22, 1964) became laureates in the field of literature, journalism and journalism. “Already then, in April 1964, it was rumored in Moscow that this story with the vote was a “rehearsal for a putsch” against Nikita: will the apparatus succeed or not succeed in taking away the book approved by Himself? In 40 years, this has never been dared. But they got bolder - and succeeded. This gave them hope that even Himself was not strong.”

From the second half of the 60s, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” was withdrawn from circulation in the USSR along with other publications of A. S. The final ban on them was introduced by order of the Main Directorate for the Protection of State Secrets in the Press, agreed with the Central Committee of the CPSU, dated January 28, 1974 In the order of Glavlit No. 10 of February 14, 1974, specially dedicated to Solzhenitsyn, the issues of the Novy Mir magazine with the writer’s works (No. 11, 1962; No. 1, 7, 1963; No. 1, 1966) and separate editions of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, including a translation into Estonian and a book for the blind. The order is accompanied by a note: "Foreign publications (including newspapers and magazines) with the works of the specified author are also subject to seizure." The ban was lifted by a note of the Ideological Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU dated December 31, 1988.

Since 1990, "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" has been published again in his homeland.

Foreign feature film based on "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich"

In 1971, an Anglo-Norwegian film was made based on One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (director Kasper Wrede, Tom Courtney as Shukhov). For the first time, A. Solzhenitsyn was able to watch it only in 1974. Speaking on French television (March 9, 1976), he answered the host’s question about this film:

“I must say that the directors and actors of this film approached the task very honestly, and with great penetration, because they themselves did not experience this, they did not survive it, but they were able to guess this poignant mood and were able to convey this slow pace that fills the life of such a prisoner 10 years, sometimes 25 if, as often happens, he doesn't die sooner. Well, very little reproach can be made to the design, it is mostly where the Western imagination simply can no longer imagine the details of such a life. For example, for our eyes, for mine or if my friends could see it, former convicts (will they ever see this film?), - for our eyes, quilted jackets are too clean, not torn; then, almost all the actors, in general, are solid men, and yet there in the camp people are on the very verge of death, their cheeks are hollow, they no longer have strength. According to the film, it is so warm in the barracks that a Latvian with bare legs and arms is sitting there - this is impossible, you will freeze. Well, these are minor remarks, but in general, I must say, I am surprised how the authors of the film could understand this way and sincerely tried to convey our suffering to the Western audience.

The day described in the story falls on January 1951.

Based on the materials of the works of Vladimir Radzishevsky.

At five o'clock in the morning, as always, the rise struck - with a hammer on the rail at
headquarters barracks. An intermittent ringing faintly passed through the panes frozen in
two fingers, and soon calmed down: it was cold, and the warder was reluctant for a long time
wave your hand.
The ringing subsided, and outside the window everything was the same as in the middle of the night when Shukhov got up.
to the bucket, there was darkness and darkness, but three yellow lanterns fell through the window: two - on
zone, one inside the camp.
And the barracks didn’t go to unlock something, and it wasn’t heard that the orderlies
they took a shack barrel on sticks - to take it out.
Shukhov never slept through the rise, he always got up on it - before the divorce
it was an hour and a half of his time, not official, and who knows camp life,
can always earn extra money: sewing a cover for someone from an old lining
mittens; give the rich brigadier dry felt boots right on the bed, so that he
barefoot do not stomp around the heap, do not choose; or run through the storerooms,
where someone needs to be served, sweep or bring something; or go to
the dining room to collect bowls from the tables and carry them in slides into the dishwasher - also
they will feed them, but there are many hunters there, there is no lights out, and most importantly - if there is anything in the bowl
left, you can’t resist, you start licking bowls. And Shukhov was strongly remembered
the words of his first brigadier KuzЈmin - the old one was a camp wolf, he sat by
nine hundred and forty-three is already twelve years old and its replenishment,
brought from the front, once on a bare clearing by the fire he said:
- Here, guys, the law is the taiga. But people live here too. Here in the camp
who dies: who licks bowls, who hopes for the medical unit, and who goes to godfather1
knock.
As for the godfather - this, of course, he turned down. They save themselves. Only
their protection is on someone else's blood.
Shukhov always got up on his way up, but today he didn't get up. Since the evening he
it was not on its own, it was either shivering, or breaking. And didn't get warm at night. Through a dream
it seemed that he seemed to be completely ill, then he went away a little. All did not want
to morning.
But the morning came as usual.
Yes, and where can you get warm here - there is frost on the window, and on the walls along
junction with the ceiling throughout the hut - a healthy hut! - white gossamer. Frost.
Shukhov did not get up. He was lying on top of the lining, covering his head
a blanket and a pea jacket, and in a padded jacket, in one tucked-up sleeve, putting both
feet together. He did not see, but by the sounds he understood everything that was being done in the barracks
and in their brigade corner. Here, stepping heavily along the corridor, the orderlies carried
one of the eight bucket buckets. It is considered disabled, easy work, come on,
go take it out, don't spill it! Here in the 75th brigade they slammed a bunch of felt boots from

Dryers. And here - in ours (and ours today was the turn of felt boots to dry).
The foreman and pom foreman put on their shoes in silence, and the lining creaks. Pombrigadier
now he will go to the bread slicer, and the foreman - to the headquarters barracks, to workmen.
Yes, not just to workmen, as he goes every day, - Shukhov remembered:
today fate is being decided - they want to fug their 104th brigade from construction
workshops for the new facility "Sotsbytgorodok".

Frame from the film "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" (1970)

The peasant and front-line soldier Ivan Denisovich Shukhov turned out to be a "state criminal", a "spy" and ended up in one of Stalin's camps, like millions of Soviet people who were convicted without guilt during the "cult of personality" and mass repressions. He left home on June 23, 1941, on the second day after the start of the war with Nazi Germany, “... in February of the forty-second year on the North-Western [front] they surrounded their entire army, and they didn’t throw anything to eat from the planes, and there were no planes. They got to the point where they cut the hooves from the horses that had died, soaked that cornea in water and ate, ”that is, the command of the Red Army left its soldiers to die surrounded. Together with a group of fighters, Shukhov ended up in German captivity, fled from the Germans and miraculously reached his own. A careless story about how he was captured led him to a Soviet concentration camp, since the state security agencies indiscriminately considered all those who escaped from captivity to be spies and saboteurs.

The second part of Shukhov's memoirs and reflections during the long camp work and a short rest in the barracks refers to his life in the countryside. From the fact that his relatives do not send him food (in a letter to his wife he himself refused to send parcels), we understand that the people in the village are starving no less than in the camp. His wife writes to Shukhov that the collective farmers make a living painting fake carpets and selling them to the townspeople.

Leaving aside flashbacks and incidental details about life outside the barbed wire, the whole story takes exactly one day. In this short period of time, a panorama of camp life unfolds before us, a kind of “encyclopedia” of life in the camp.

Firstly, a whole gallery of social types and at the same time bright human characters: Caesar is a metropolitan intellectual, a former filmmaker, who, however, in the camp leads a "lordly" life compared to Shukhov: he receives food parcels, enjoys some benefits during work ; Kavtorang - repressed naval officer; an old convict who was still in tsarist prisons and hard labor (the old revolutionary guard, who did not find a common language with the policy of Bolshevism in the 30s); Estonians and Latvians - the so-called "bourgeois nationalists"; the Baptist Alyosha - the spokesman for the thoughts and way of life of a very heterogeneous religious Russia; Gopchik is a sixteen-year-old teenager whose fate shows that repression did not distinguish between children and adults. Yes, and Shukhov himself is a characteristic representative of the Russian peasantry with his special business acumen and organic way of thinking. Against the background of these people who suffered from repression, a figure of a different series emerges - the head of the regime, Volkov, who regulates the life of prisoners and, as it were, symbolizes the merciless communist regime.

Secondly, a detailed picture of camp life and work. Life in the camp remains life with its visible and invisible passions and subtlest experiences. They are mainly related to the problem of obtaining food. They feed little and badly with a terrible gruel with frozen cabbage and small fish. A kind of art of life in the camp is to get yourself an extra ration of bread and an extra bowl of gruel, and if you're lucky, some tobacco. For this, one has to go to the greatest tricks, currying favor with "authorities" like Caesar and others. At the same time, it is important to preserve one’s human dignity, not to become a “descended” beggar, like, for example, Fetyukov (however, there are few of them in the camp). This is important not even from lofty considerations, but out of necessity: a “descended” person loses the will to live and will surely die. Thus, the question of preserving the human image in oneself becomes a matter of survival. The second vital issue is the attitude towards forced labor. Prisoners, especially in winter, work in hunting, almost competing with each other and brigade with brigade, in order not to freeze and in a peculiar way "reduce" the time from bed to bed, from feeding to feeding. On this stimulus the terrible system of collective labor is built. But nevertheless, it does not completely destroy the natural joy of physical labor in people: the scene of building a house by a team where Shukhov works is one of the most inspired in the story. The ability to work “correctly” (not overworking, but not shirking), as well as the ability to get extra rations for oneself, is also a high art. As well as the ability to hide from the eyes of the guards a piece of saw that turned up, from which the camp craftsmen make miniature knives to exchange for food, tobacco, warm clothes ... In relation to the guards, who constantly carry out "shmons", Shukhov and the rest of the prisoners are in the position of wild animals : they must be more cunning and more dexterous than armed people who have the right to punish them and even shoot them for deviating from the camp regime. To deceive the guards and the camp authorities is also a high art.

That day, about which the hero narrates, was, in his own opinion, successful - “they didn’t put them in a punishment cell, they didn’t kick out the brigade to Sotsgorodok (work in a bare field in winter - ed.), At lunchtime he mowed down porridge (he got an extra portion - ed.), the foreman closed the percentage well (the system for evaluating camp labor - ed.), Shukhov laid the wall cheerfully, he didn’t get caught with a hacksaw, he worked part-time with Caesar in the evening and bought tobacco. And I didn't get sick, I got over it. The day passed, nothing marred, almost happy. There were three thousand six hundred and fifty three such days in his term from bell to bell. Due to leap years, three extra days were added ... "

At the end of the story, a brief dictionary of thieves' expressions and specific camp terms and abbreviations that are found in the text is given.

retold