Thanks to an undergraduate class taught by a Soviet emigre (or refugee, his accent was thick and I couldn’t always tell what he was saying), I have had extensive exposure to Soviet literature. I have been delighted to read We, Doctor Zhivago, The Foundation Pit, Master and Margarita, and many others as result. But the book which we didn’t have time to get to in the class, and which it has taken me more than a decade to get around to, is possibly the most important of them (with all due respect to We and Doctor Zhivago): Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
If you’ve not read it, what on earth are you doing reading a review of it? Go take up and read this classic first, then come back and read about how fantastic it is. Because it is excellent, and worth reading along side other survivor narratives, including If this be a man, Night, and of course Solzhenitsyn’s own Gulag Archipelago.
And yet, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich isn’t exactly in line with these kinds of books either. It’s somewhere in between a survival narrative and Soviet literature. I suspect that what makes it seem off when placed in either of those categories is its underlying–but unexpressed–Christian worldview.
Ivan Denisovich Shukov is in the Gulag unjustly, along with dozens of others (many of whom we meet in the course of Ivan’s day). A hardened prisoner (if not a criminal), Ivan has learned how to survive and how to even sort-of thrive, so much as is possible in such circumstances. Starting off the day feeling ill, by lights-out Ivan is on top of the world. He has gotten double meals, found an extra tool to squirrel away, earned brownie points with the powers-that-be, and even gotten to do meaningful labor. In other words, we have witnessed a good day in the life of Ivan Denisovich–even as he stands in the cold, eats food barely fit for human consumption, is brutalized by corrupt guards, and knows that his term in prison might never be up.
I said above that this book falls somewhere in between survival narrative and Soviet literature. One Day is too optimistic for the former, and in some ways too dark for the latter. Yes, Soviet literature has an unmistakable grim streak through it, but its grimness often exists on the sides and in the shadows, and often in tension with what is otherwise an ironic/in-your-face cheerfulness. In this book, Solzhenitsyn flips that and presents the darkness and oppression as the setting (how could it be anything else in the gulag?) and sends a stream of joy underneath.
That said, it is a joy that, well, it’s not sustainable. To use the theological terms, it is a common grace joy. And I think that’s intentional as well. Ivan has had a good day. He may have another one tomorrow, and another one the day after that. Or he may not. Maybe tomorrow will be bad, and the day after will be worse, and the day after that he’ll be sent into solitary and left to functionally starve. And even if that doesn’t happen this week, it might happen next week. And if it doesn’t happen then, well, he’s got years left on his sentence–assuming it doesn’t get renewed. And if he does get released, life on the outside is still life in the same Soviet Union that unjustly imprisoned him in the first place.
In other words, Ivan is living in the world as it actually exists and as it is explained by Scripture. We all have good days and bad days, sometimes several of them in a row. These are gifts of God that make life in this world tolerable–these are functions of common grace. Sometimes we’re the people in the camps who have it all together and actually seem to be doing well, and sometimes we’re not doing so well and are headed for a crash. And yet, whatever our situation–whether we’re on top of the world or in utter misery–we’re still in a camp with no escape. We need someone from outside to break in and set us free. We need a Savior. Solzhenitsyn knew this, and leaves us where we are in the real world–desperately in need of salvation, even at the moment when we think we’re doing the best we could be.
All that to say, you’ll walk away from One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich with mixed feelings, but certainly with the sense that you’ve read something very much worthwhile–a book that is itself, for all its grimness, a part of the common grace of this world that makes life bearable, and that points us towards the need of something outside of the book for our salvation.
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