About the product
Solzhenitsyn wrote the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” in 1959. The work was first published in 1962 in the magazine “New World”. The story brought Solzhenitsyn worldwide fame and, according to researchers, influenced not only literature, but also the history of the USSR. The original author's title of the work is “Shch-854 (One day of one prisoner)”, it names the serial number of the main character Shukhov in a correctional camp.
On our website you can read online a summary of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, as well as take a test to consolidate and test your knowledge of the story.
The material was prepared jointly with a teacher of the highest category, Ilyina Galina Sergeevna.
Experience as a teacher of Russian language and literature - 36 years.
Main characters
Shukhov Ivan Denisovich is a prisoner of a forced labor camp who ended up there due to a misunderstanding. Coming from a peasant family, he served at the front.
Tyurin Andrey Prokofyevich – foreman of the 104th prison brigade. A fair and independent man, on whom the fate of the entire brigade depends. He went to prison because he was the son of a “kulak”.
Tsezar Markovich is an authority among prisoners, loves art, is far from the problems of his cellmates, because he works in a “warm office.”
Alyoshka is a Baptist who is serving time because of his religious beliefs. But in prison his faith did not waver, but became even stronger.
Fetyukov is a negative character. In prison they call him “the jackal.” A cowardly and vile person who evokes contempt among those around him.
Other characters
- Tyurin Andrey Prokofyevich - foreman of the 104th prison brigade. He was “dismissed from the ranks” of the army and ended up in a camp for being the son of a “kulak”. Shukhov knew him from the camp in Ust-Izhma.
- Kildigs Jan - a prisoner who was given 25 years; Latvian, good carpenter.
- Fetyukov - “jackal”, prisoner.
- Alyoshka is a prisoner, a Baptist.
- Gopchik is a prisoner, a cunning but harmless guy.
Summary of the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by Solzhenitsyn A.I.
On June 23, 1941, the second day after the start of the Great Patriotic War, Ivan Denisovich, the hero of the story, went to the front. A peasant left the village of Temgenevo, leaving his wife and two daughters at home. There was also a son, but he died. In February 1942, he was surrounded on the Northwestern Front. The Red Army abandoned its soldiers, they were starving and weakened. It got so bad that they ate the hooves of fallen horses...
Ivan was captured by the Germans and managed to escape. Five exhausted prisoners got out to their own. But “their” machine gunners killed two on the spot, and the third died from his wounds. The remaining two were handed over to the NKVD. The investigation was short-lived - Ivan Denisovich immediately ended up in a Soviet concentration camp. During the Stalinist repressions, anyone who was captured by the Germans was automatically classified as a spy. And try to deny it, try not to sign - they will shoot you, otherwise you will live a little longer.
Ivan Denisovich Shukhov served eight years in Ust-Izhma, and has been serving his ninth year in hard labor in Siberia. Half of his teeth are gone, his head is shaved, his beard is long—a convict!
In the camp, every detail is important to preserve life. The author describes in detail the prisoner's clothing: a pea coat, belted with a string, over a padded jacket, felt boots, under the felt boots - two pairs of foot wraps (old and new). A dirty patch with a camp number is sewn onto the cotton trousers just above the knee.
Strictly speaking, the action in the story takes place over the course of one day. But on this day we can see what happened in Stalin’s penal servitude.
The main thing in the camp is not to die of hunger, to get food for yourself. Don't prisoners get fed? The main food is a vile gruel (pottage) of small fish and frozen cabbage. You can try and get yourself an extra ration of bread or another bowl of the same gruel.
Some manage to receive parcels, for example Tsezar Markovich. He was once going to be a director, but before he even had time to shoot his first film, he was taken and imprisoned. This is a handsome man of the Eastern type - either Greek or Jew. He has a thick, black mustache - they didn’t shave it off in the camp, because such a photograph was included with the file. Caesar still lives with memories of the past and feels like a cultural figure. He talks with intelligent people about film and theater directors, about the “political idea” as a justification for tyranny. He can loudly scold Stalin, the “mustachioed old man,” from which Shukhov concludes that in penal servitude there is more freedom than in Ust-Izhma: no one knocks, no one adds time. Caesar is quite practical: he knows how to “put in the mouth of whoever needs it” from his packages. So I got a job as a “moron” (in an easy job) - as an assistant to a standard-setter. You can’t call him greedy - having received a parcel, he shares both tobacco and food, especially for the service provided.
To Shukhov, a peasant, this intellectual seems to understand nothing in life: the parcel should not be left in the barracks, but rather dragged to the storage room - after all, his “comrades” will steal it. Ivan Denisovich guarded Caesar's good - and he did not remain in debt to him.
The intellectual shares food especially generously with his neighbor “on the bedside table” - Kavtorang, sea captain of the second rank Buinovsky. A naval officer who sailed both the Northern Sea Route and around Europe once accompanied an English admiral as a liaison officer. The Englishman highly appreciated the professionalism of the Russian captain and once after the war sent him a souvenir, from which the NKVD made a logical conclusion: Kavtorang is an English spy!
This noble officer has only recently been to the camp, so he still believes in justice and the Constitution: “You have no right to undress people in the cold!” Accustomed to command, Buinovsky nevertheless does not shy away from work. The prisoners respect this man.
But whoever is not respected is the former office boss Fetyukov - he doesn’t know how to do anything except carry a stretcher, there is no help for him from home - his wife abandoned him and immediately got married.
Fetyukov is used to eating from his belly and is not shy about “jackaling,” that is, begging. He has absolutely no self-esteem, which is why he is despised and sometimes beaten. Fetyukov cannot give resistance - “he will wipe himself off, cry and go.” The wise peasant Shukhov concludes that such a person cannot survive in the zone: “He doesn’t know how to position himself.” And it is necessary to maintain dignity even for simple life reasons - a degraded person loses the will to live and cannot survive until the end of his sentence.
Shukhov does not receive parcels from home - the village is starving. He tries to stretch out the rations wisely: so as not to feel hungry during the day. He is not shy about taking an extra piece from the camp authorities.
Convicts work on this day to build a house. Shukhov is not shying away from business. Based on the results of the work, foreman Andrei Prokofievich Tyurin (also a prisoner, dispossessed of kulaks) writes out a “percentage”, and this is an extra ration of bread, while in the zone “two hundred grams rule life.” Work helps fill the day with meaning, without toiling from getting up to bed. The joy of physical labor especially supports such natures as the peasant Shukhov. Ivan Denisovich is the best foreman in the brigade. He knows how to distribute his forces so as not to overexert himself, but also not to shamelessly shirk. Working diligently and even recklessly, Shukhov is also happy that he managed to hide a fragment of a saw from the guards - craftsmen will make miniature knives from it, and they can already be exchanged for tobacco and bread.
“Stashed” (hidden) things are constantly at risk of being discovered - security regularly conducts “shmonas” (searches). Deceiving the camp authorities is an important task that awakens a kind of excitement.
Alyosha the Baptist has an amazing “stash” - he is a sectarian imprisoned for his faith, very clean and bright, always washed. He copied half of the Gospel into a notebook and cunningly stuffs his treasure into a crack in the wall - not a single “bug” has yet found this evidence of the crime. Alyosha sat down for his faith and became stronger in his faith. At every opportunity he agitates: “We must pray for spiritual things: so that the Lord will remove the evil scum from our hearts.”
So it’s not just their daily bread that they worry about in hard labor - there are also religious and political disputes, conversations about art...
However, the healthy peasant nature of Ivan Denisovich Shukhov first of all forces him to highlight the following results of the outgoing (in his opinion, successful) day: “they didn’t put him in a punishment cell, they didn’t send him to work in Sotsgorodok (in a bare field in bitter frosts), he kept a piece of a hacksaw and during a search with I didn’t get caught by her, I managed to get an extra portion of porridge at lunch (mow), I worked at Caesar’s. I bought some tobacco..."
This is such an almost happy camp day.
And there are three thousand five hundred and sixty-four such “happy days”.
Summary
“At five o’clock in the morning, as always, the rise struck - with a hammer on the rail at the headquarters barracks.” Shukhov never woke up, but today he was “chilling” and “breaking.” Because the man did not get up for a long time, he was taken to the commandant’s office. Shukhov was threatened with a punishment cell, but he was punished only by washing the floors.
For breakfast in the camp there was balanda (liquid stew) of fish and black cabbage and porridge from magara. The prisoners slowly ate the fish, spat the bones onto the table, and then swept them onto the floor.
After breakfast, Shukhov went into the medical unit. A young paramedic, who was actually a former student of the literary institute, but under the patronage of a doctor ended up in the medical unit, gave the man a thermometer. Temperature 37.2. The paramedic suggested that Shukhov “stay at his own risk” to wait for the doctor, but still advised him to go to work. Two sick prisoners have already been released from work today, but no more were allowed.
Shukhov went into the barracks for rations: bread and sugar. The man divided the bread into two parts. I hid one under my padded jacket, and the second in the mattress. Baptist Alyoshka read the Gospel right there. The guy “so deftly stuffs this little book into a crack in the wall - they haven’t found it on a single search yet.”
The brigade went outside. Fetyukov tried to get Caesar to “sip” a cigarette, but Caesar was more willing to share with Shukhov. On this day it was 27 degrees below zero, and the prisoners were upset that it was not 30 degrees - at such a temperature they were not driven from the camp to work. During the “shmona”, prisoners were forced to unbutton their clothes: they checked whether anyone had hidden a knife, food, or letters. People were frozen: “the cold has gotten under your shirt, now you can’t get rid of it.” The column of prisoners moved. “Due to the fact that he had breakfast without rations and ate everything cold, Shukhov felt unfed today.”
“A new year began, the fifty-first, and in it Shukhov had the right to two letters.” “Shukhov left the house on the twenty-third of June forty-one. On Sunday, people from Polomnia came from mass and said: war.” Shukhov's family was waiting for him at home. His wife hoped that upon returning home her husband would start a profitable business and build a new house.
Shukhov and Kildigs were the first foremen in the brigade. They were sent to insulate the turbine room and lay the walls with cinder blocks at the thermal power plant.
One of the prisoners, Gopchik, reminded Ivan Denisovich of his late son. Gopchik was imprisoned “for carrying milk to the Bendera people in the forest.”
Ivan Denisovich has almost served his sentence. In February 1942, “in the North-West, their entire army was surrounded, and nothing was thrown from the planes for them to eat, and there were no planes. They went so far as to cut the hooves off dead horses, soak them and eat them. Shukhov was captured by the Germans, but escaped two days later. However, “their own people,” having learned about the captivity, decided that Shukhov and other soldiers were “fascist agents.” It was believed that he was imprisoned “for treason”: he surrendered to German captivity, and then returned “because he was carrying out a task for German intelligence. What a task - neither Shukhov himself nor the investigator could come up with.”
Lunch break. The workers were not given enough food, the “sixes” got a lot, the cook took away the good food. For lunch there was oatmeal porridge. It was believed that this was the “best porridge,” and Shukhov even managed to deceive the cook and take two extra servings for the brigade. On the way to the construction site, Ivan Denisovich picked up a piece of a steel hacksaw.
The 104th brigade was “like a big family.” Work began to boil again: they were laying cinder blocks on the second floor of the thermal power plant. They worked until sunset. The foreman, jokingly, noted Shukhov’s good work: “Well, how can we let you go free? Without you, the prison will cry!”
The prisoners returned to the camp. The men were harassed again, checking to see if they had taken anything from the construction site. Suddenly Shukhov felt in his pocket a piece of a hacksaw, which he had already forgotten about. It could be used to make a shoe knife. Shukhov hid the hacksaw in his mitten and miraculously passed the test.
Shukhov took Caesar's place in line to receive the parcel. Ivan Denisovich himself did not receive the parcels: he asked his wife not to take them away from the children. In gratitude, Caesar gave Shukhov his dinner. In the dining room they served gruel again. Sipping the hot liquid, the man felt good: “here it is, the short moment for which the prisoner lives!”
Shukhov earned money “from private work” - he sewed slippers for someone, sewed a quilted jacket for someone. With the money he earned, he could buy tobacco and other necessary things. When Ivan Denisovich returned to his barracks, Caesar was already “humming over the parcel” and also gave Shukhov his ration of bread.
Caesar asked Shukhov for a knife and “got into debt to Shukhov again.” The check has begun. Ivan Denisovich, realizing that Caesar’s parcel could be stolen during the check, told him to pretend to be sick and go out last, while Shukhov would try to be the very first to run in after the check and look after the food. In gratitude, Caesar gave him “two biscuits, two lumps of sugar and one round slice of sausage.”
We talked with Alyosha about God. The guy said that you need to pray and be glad that you are in prison: “here you have time to think about your soul.” “Shukhov silently looked at the ceiling. He himself didn’t know whether he wanted it or not.”
“Shukhov fell asleep, completely satisfied.” “They didn’t put him in a punishment cell, they didn’t send the brigade to Sotsgorodok, he made porridge at lunch, the foreman closed the interest well, Shukhov laid the wall cheerfully, he didn’t get caught with a hacksaw on a search, he worked in the evening at Caesar’s and bought tobacco. And I didn’t get sick, I got over it.”
“The day passed, unclouded, almost happy.
There were three thousand six hundred and fifty-three such days in his period from bell to bell.
Due to leap years, three extra days were added...”
Summary of “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”
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, convicted without guilt during the times of 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 '42, their entire army was surrounded on the North-Western [Front], and they didn’t throw anything from the planes to eat, but there were no planes. They went so far as to cut the hooves off dead horses, soak that cornea in water and eat it,” that is, the command of the Red Army abandoned its soldiers to die surrounded. Together with a group of fighters, Shukhov found himself in German captivity, fled from the Germans and miraculously reached his own. A careless story about how he was in captivity led him to a Soviet concentration camp, since the state security authorities indiscriminately considered all those who escaped from captivity to be spies and saboteurs.
The second part of Shukhov’s memories and reflections during long camp labors and a short rest in the barracks relates to his life in the village. From the fact that his relatives do not send him food (he himself refused the parcels in a letter to his wife), we understand that they are starving in the village no less than in the camp. The wife writes to Shukhov that collective farmers make a living by painting fake carpets and selling them to townspeople.
If we leave aside flashbacks and random information about life outside the barbed wire, the entire 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 film figure, who, however, even in the camp leads a “lordly” life compared to Shukhov: he receives food parcels, enjoys some benefits during work ; Kavtorang - a repressed naval officer; an old convict who had also been in tsarist prisons and hard labor (the old revolutionary guard, who did not find a common language with the policies of Bolshevism in the 30s); Estonians and Latvians are the so-called “bourgeois nationalists”; Baptist Alyosha - exponent of 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. And Shukhov himself is a typical 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 different figure emerges - the head of the regime, Volkov, who regulates the lives 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 subtle experiences. They are mainly related to the problem of getting food. They are fed little and poorly with 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, a little tobacco. For this, one has to resort to the greatest tricks, currying favor with “authorities” like Caesar and others. At the same time, it is important to preserve your 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 for lofty reasons, but out of necessity: a “descended” person loses the will to live and will certainly die. Thus, the question of preserving the human image within oneself becomes a question of survival. The second vital issue is the attitude towards forced labor. Prisoners, especially in winter, work hard, almost competing with each other and team with team, in order not to freeze and in a way “shorten” the time from overnight to overnight, from feeding to feeding. The terrible system of collective labor is built on this incentive. But nevertheless, it does not completely destroy the natural joy of physical labor in people: the scene of the construction of a house by the team where Shukhov works is one of the most inspired in the story. The ability to work “correctly” (without overexerting, but also without slacking), as well as the ability to get extra rations, is also a high art. As well as the ability to hide from the eyes of the guards a piece of saw that turns up, from which the camp craftsmen make miniature knives for exchange for food, tobacco, warm things... In relation to the guards who are constantly conducting “shmons”, Shukhov and the rest of the Prisoners are in the position of wild animals: they must be more cunning and dexterous than armed people who have the right to punish them and even shoot them for deviating from the camp regime. Deceiving the guards and camp authorities is also a high art.
The day that the hero talks about was, in his own opinion, successful - “they didn’t put him in a punishment cell, they didn’t send the brigade to Sotsgorodok (working in a bare field in winter - editor’s note), at lunch he mowed down porridge (he got an extra portion - editor's note), the foreman closed the interest well (the camp labor assessment system - editor's note), Shukhov laid the wall cheerfully, did not get caught with a hacksaw on the search, worked in the evening at Caesar's and bought tobacco. And he didn’t get sick, he got over it. The day passed, unclouded, almost happy. There were three thousand six hundred and fifty-three such days in his period from bell to bell. Because of leap years, three extra days were added...”
At the end of the story, a brief dictionary of criminal expressions and specific camp terms and abbreviations that appear in the text is given.
