Solzhenitsyn, Alexander "In the First Circle"

Solzhenitsyn, Alexandr "In the First Circle" (RUS: В круге первом/V krugue pervom) - 1955

The book description states that this is an extensive and substantive work—and that is absolutely correct. Spanning nearly 800 pages, it explores life in the Soviet Union shortly after the Second World War. It is not, however, a book about everybody; it chronicles the lives of political prisoners and their families.

Once someone ended up in a so-called "sharashka"—a labor camp for scientists and engineers—or in the Lubyanka, the notorious Moscow prison for political prisoners, they could effectively consider their life over; most never regained their freedom. Although these prisoners may have enjoyed a few minor concessions compared to others, they remained captives, forced to work for the very regime they loathed.

The narrative details the lives of various inmates, both before and after their imprisonment. It also covers the women and families, who were effectively punished alongside them.

For everyone involved, this marked the end of life as they had known it—or, as the final chapter puts it, "the first circle of hell."

Along with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the poet Osip Mandelstam is another figure who wrote about his "life" under this regime. It is fortunate that such individuals existed—and continue to exist—to shed light on these conditions.

A deeply compelling book; alongside "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", it is surely one of the best works written about this subject.

And last but least a quote that should be of particular interest to all bookworms:

"There were so many immeasurably valuable, indispensable, first-rate books in the world, and the desire to read them all prevented Rubin from ever writing a book of his own. Now, he had prepared himself to read well past midnight, with no thought for the workday ahead. But in the evening, his mind—and his penchant for debate—would always awaken, and his wit would become especially sharp; it took very little, then, to draw him into entertaining the company at large. ..."

Book Description:

"In the First Circle depicts the lives of the occupants of a sharashka (a research and development bureau made of GULAG inmates) located in the Moscow suburbs. This novel is highly autobiographical. Many of the prisoners (zeks) are technicians or academics who have been arrested under Article 58 of the RSFSR Penal Code in Joseph Stalin's purges following the Second World War. 

Unlike inhabitants of other gulag labor camps, the sharashka zeks were adequately fed and enjoyed good working conditions; however, if they found disfavor with the authorities, they could be instantly shipped to Siberia. The title is an allusion to Dante's first circle, or limbo of Hell in The Divine Comedy, wherein the philosophers of Greece, and other virtuous pagans, live in a walled green garden. They are unable to enter Heaven, as they were born before Christ, but enjoy a small space of relative freedom in the heart of Hell."

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970 "for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature".

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