John Mulcrone

Dr. Auge

Literature of Oppression and Resistance

3 December 2019

Ivan Denisovich and his Resistance in the Gulag

In A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Alexander Solzhenitsyn shows Ivan Denisovich

winning in his internal battle versus the gulag, despite the oppression and difficulties that he

endures. His commitment to his work and humble yet driven approach show this victory. In the

face of incredibly harsh conditions, Ivan manages to sustain the mental toughness necessary to

do enough to be “winning” in his battle against the gulag and those who put him there.

The gulags in which Ivan Denisovich and so many other Russian political prisoners were

shipped off to as a result of Josef Stalin’s regime and its ruthless censorship and control. The

gulag system began in 1917, when the Bolshevik Revolution led to Vladimir Lenin rising to

power. He ordered that all “unreliable elements” be put in concentration camps. An “unreliable

element” could be anything from an aristocrat to a merchant to clergymen. It was anybody that

the government felt could raise trouble in the future. By 1924, there were 84 camps intended for

“rehabilitation” of political prisoners. Around 1929, Stalin began to use the camps for

industrialization. The free labor that the camps provided was extremely helpful to the Soviet

government. It was around this time that the Soviet secret police began to take control of the

camps. Around 1937, a period called “The Great Purge” began where Stalin ordered the

roundup of between 700,000 and 1 million people. In between 1937 and 1953, there were

between 18 and 20 million people imprisoned, with 3 million dying. So, while these gulags
began with the purpose of labor to help the industrialization of the country, they eventually

became symbols of the power of Stalin’s regime, intimidating the rest of the population into

submission

The camp described in “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” was primarily a labor

camp in the northern part of Russia in what is likely Siberia. It was an unfathomably cold place,

where prisoners worked every from morning till night. While the prisoners are allowed a little

bit of freedom in the morning and evening, their days are effectively scheduled down to the

minute by the guards. Every morning, what was known as the “Morning Prayer” was led by the

chief guard. We see it here on page 31: “Attention, prisoners. Marching orders must be strictly

obeyed. Keep to your ranks. No hurrying, keep a steady pace. No talking. Keep your eyes

fixed ahead and your hands behind your backs. A step to right or left is considered an attempt to

escape and the escort has orders to shoot without warning. Leading guards, on the double.” This

prayer is said to the prisoners every morning as the march out of the gates to get to work for the

day. The bitter cold is something that the prisoners must deal with at every second of every day.

On page 31, Solzhenitsyn writes “It hadn’t snowed for a week and the road was worn and

smooth. They skirted the camp and the wind caught their faces sideways. Hands clasped behind

their backs, heads lowered, the column of prisoners moved on as though at a funeral. All you

saw was the feet of two or three men ahead of you and the patch of trodden ground where your

own feet were stepping. From time to time one of the escorts would cry: “U 48. Hands behind

back,” or “B 502. Keep up.” But they shouted less and less; the slashing wind made it difficult

to see. The guards weren’t allowed to tie cloth over their faces. Theirs was not much of a job

either.” The cold for these prisoners was something that invaded every single part of their lives.

They were battling the cold almost more than they had to battle their guards, because the guards
were also busy trying to battle the cold. This is the type of cold that seems like it could break

someone, and there is no question that the prisoners of the camp had to figure out a way to

mentally block out the cold in order to simply do their jobs.

The prisoners in the gulag were being dominated in almost every way by the gulag itself.

If you look at traditional forms of domination, they are all there. Materially, the prisoners are

having their own labor appropriated. In the status sense, they can have their privileges denied at

any time. The guards control the privileges of the prisoners. Ideologically, the domination of

the prisoners is justified by whatever charges were levied against them. “The Tartar” was a

camp guard that was known for his ruthless tactics and how he enjoyed humiliating prisoners.

Most of all, what the camp did was attempt to strip the dignity and individuality from the

prisoners. The cold, the work, the food, and the rules all combined to make what would have

been a thoroughly miserable existence. There was also the constant threat of being punished and

thrown into the camp’s version of solitary confinement. While the guards had to deal with the

cold, their experience with it was nothing compared to most of the prisoners. As Solzhenitsyn

wrote on page 19, “How can you expect a man who’s warm to understand a man who’s cold?”

Ivan himself is considered one of the veterans of the squad. Having been in the gulag for

so long, he knows what rules he can bend and what rules he cannot. Reveille for the prisoners

was at 5 o’clock in the morning, but they did not have to report anywhere for 90 minutes. Many

men took this as a chance to get some extra sleep, but Ivan rarely did. Solzhenitsyn writes on

pages 3 and 4: “Shukhov never overslept reveille. He always got up at once, for the next ninety

minutes, until they assembled for work, belonged to him, not to the authorities, and any old-timer

could always earn a bit-by sewing a pair of mittens for someone out of old sleeve lining; or

bringing some rich loafer in the squad his dry valenki right up to his bunk, so that he wouldn’t
have to stumble barefoot round the heaps of boots looking for his own pair; or going the rounds

of the warehouses, offering to be of service, sweeping up this or fetching that; or going to the

mess hall to collect bowls from the tables and bring them stacked to the dishwashers-you’re sure

to be given something to eat there, though there were plenty of others at that game, more than

plenty- and what’s worse, if you found a bowl with something left in it you could hardly resist

licking it out. But Shukhov had never forgotten the words of his first squad leader, Kuziomin- a

hard-bitten prisoner who had already been in for twelve years by 1943- who told the newcomers,

just in from the front, as they sat beside a fire in a desolate cutting in the forest. “Here, men we

live by the law of the taiga. But even here people manage to live. The ones that don’t make it

are those who lick other men’s leftovers, those who count on the doctors to pull them through,

and those who squeal on their buddies.”” A large part of Ivan’s resistance towards the gulag is

his own independence and autonomy that he manages to find despite being stuck in the gulag.

He knows he can make improve his own life if he just disciplines himself enough to be able to

handle the 5 AM wake up call. The quote from Kuziomin, his old squad leader is also extremely

important. He is essentially saying that the men who do not survive are those who sacrifice their

dignity and their manhood for a quick reprieve from something, be it hunger or cold or an injury.

The men who stay solid within themselves and discipline themselves are the ones who carve out

an existence within the gulag.

Ivan realizes that morning that he and his squad may be assigned to work on “The

Socialist Way of Life Settlement”, where they will be miserable for weeks. On page 5,

Solzhenitsyn outlines why this would be so bad: “Shukhove remembered that this morning his

fate hung in the balance: they wanted to shift the 104th from the building shops to a new site, the

“Socialist Way of Life” settlement. It lay in open country covered with snowdrifts, and before
anything else could be done there they would have to dig holes and put up posts and attach

barbed wire to them. Wire themselves in, so that they wouldn’t run away. Only then would they

start building. There wouldn’t be a warm corner for a whole month. Not even a doghouse. And

fires were out of the question. There was nothing to build them with. Let your work warm you

up, that was your only salvation. No wonder the squad leader looked so worried, that was his

job- to elbow some other squad, some bunch of suckers, into the assignment instead of the 104th.

Of course with empty hands you got nowhere. He’d have to take a pound of salt pork to the

senior official there, if not a couple of pounds.” Tiurin, Ivan’s squad leader, is a good man, and

will do his best to avoid this job. However, this just illustrates the mentally breaking nature of

these gulags. Being sent here and realizing you are going to be even more freezing than normal

for an entire month-that must have been incredibly mentally taxing.

Possibly the part of the novel that is most indicative of the oppression faced by Ivan and

the other prisoners is at the end of their day. They are all returning from their work sites, and the

process to get back into the camp takes forever. Every single prisoner must be accounted for,

and the process is painstakingly slow. In the day chronicled by Solzhenitsyn, there is one

prisoner missing. The rest of the prisoners are livid. They are stuck in the cold while another

count is done. Solzhenitsyn articulates this on page 93: “In the crowd everybody, including

Shukhov, flew into a rage. Were they going through all this for that shit, that slimy little snake,

that stinking worm? The sky was already quite dark; what light there was came from the moon.

You could see the stars-this meant the frost was gathering strength for the night- and that runty

bastard was missing. What, you haven’t had your bellyful of work, you miserable idiot? Isn’t

the official spell of eleven hours, dawn to dusk, long enough for you? Just you wait, the

prosecutor will add something.” By forcing the prisoners to wait outside the gates in the cold
for so long, they are only reinforcing those ideas of status domination. They are in power. The

prisoners are entirely at their mercy in that moment. If a prisoner tries to run, he will be shot.

There is nothing that they can do besides wait to be let inside the camp.

Resisting the domination impressed upon the prisoners of the gulag is not easy, but it is

where Ivan effectively fights his battle versus the gulag. Ivan resists largely through his own

discipline and commitment to his work. When someone is being oppressed, one of the hardest

things to do can be to keep your own dignity and respect for yourself. Ivan demonstrates this

throughout the novel through his routine and attention to detail. At breakfast, many men keep

their hats on when eating because it is so cold in the mess hall. Ivan does not. He adheres to the

same routine every morning. Solzhenitsyn shows this on pages 13-14, writing “Shukhov pulled

his spoon out of his boot. His little baby. It had been with him his whole time in the North, he’d

cast it with his own hands in sand out of aluminum wire, and it was embossed with the words

“Ust-Izhma 1944.” Then he removed his hat from his clean-shaven head- however cold it might

be, he could never bring himself to eat with his hat on- and stirred the cold stew, taking a quick

look to see what kind of helping they’d given him. An average one. They hadn’t ladled it from

the top of the kettle, but they hadn’t ladled it from the bottom either. Fetiukove was the sort who

when he was looking after someone else’s bowl took the potatoes from it. The only good thing

about stew was that it was hot, but Shukhov’s portion had grown quite cold. However, he ate it

with his usual slow concentration. No need to hurry, not even for a house on fire. Apart from

sleep, the only time a prisoner lives for himself is ten minutes in the morning at breakfast, five

minutes over dinner, and five at supper.” The discipline and concentration that Ivan attacks his

breakfast with is similar to the way he does everything: calmly, measured, and with a purpose.

He has used the same spoon for all these years, and he still takes his hat off to eat. These are
both indicative of Ivan refusing to forsake his own human dignity within the camp. It doesn’t

clearly fall into any of the categories of resistance we have discussed in class, but it could

technically be considered a combination of ideological and status resistance. Ivan is finding a

space in which he can assert his own human dignity, which falls under the category of status

resistance. By savoring that morning meal, however cold or meager, he was finding himself

some sort of peace. The prisoners had to hold on to whatever semi-positive experience they

could. But he is also constantly holding and maintaining the ideals which have brought him this

far, and I feel that that would be considered ideological resistance.

Another way that Ivan resists the negative forces of the gulag is by just working harder

and more diligently than everyone else. He is so good at his work that it is second nature to him

by now. This is outlined by Solzhenitsyn on pages 75 and 76, where he writes “And now

Shukhov was no longer seeing that distant view where sun gleamed on snow. He was no longer

seeing the prisoners as they wandered from the warming up places all over the site, some to hack

away at the holes they hadn’t finished that morning, some to fix the mesh reinforcement, some to

put up beams in the workshops. Shukhov was seeing only his wall- from the junction at the left

where the blocks rose in steps, higher than his waist, to the right to the corner where it met

Kilgas’s. He showed Senka where to remove ice and chopped at it energetically himself with the

back and blade of his ax, so that splinters of ice flew all about and into his face. He worked with

drive, but his thoughts were elsewhere. His thoughts and his eyes were feeling their way under

the ice to the wall itself, the outer façade of the power station, two blocks thick. At the spot he

was working on, the wall had previously been laid by some mason who was either incompetent

or had stunk up the job. But now Shukhov tackled the wall as if it was his own handiwork.

There, he saw, was a cavity that couldn’t be leveled up in one row; he’d have to do it in three.”
Shukhov has the mental strength to block out all of the other noise-he just works. Again, this

calls back to Ivan’s holding on to his own dignity and autonomy by diligently attacking his work,

however menial or tedious it may be.

Another way Ivan displays resistance is by smuggling a piece of a hacksaw blade past the

guards. He did not intentionally bring the blade with him from the work site, but once he

realizes he has it, he decides to smuggle it into camp, because such a blade could go a long way

in terms of currency inside the camp. Ivan barely gets the blade in, but a little bit of luck gets

him through undetected. This to me seems to be a clear example of ideological resistance as a

part of a dissident subculture. There is a large trade of objects and goods going on between

prisoners, largely unbeknownst to the guards. A large portion of the camp is involved in this.

Many of the other prisoners have their own forms of resistance as well. For example, Aloysha is

a fellow prisoner of Ivan’s who is a devout Baptist. Aloysha uses his faith to resist and get

through his stint in the camp. He has a New Testament that he keeps hidden in the walls of the

barracks. Ivan has a great deal of respect for Aloysha, and believes that he has handled the trials

and tribulations that accompany life in it better than many of the other people he has been with in

the camp. This would be considered ideological resistance, as he is promoting a counter

ideology that asserts himself and his fellow prisoners as equal to the Soviet captors. There was

also a pair of brothers from Estonia, that were almost exclusively referred to as “The Estonians”.

These two managed to get through their time in the camp by sticking very closely to one another

and constantly leaning on each other for support. This doesn’t fit perfectly with any one

philosophy; it’s simply one man leaning on his brother for support through a horribly difficult

time.
 Possibly my favorite example of a prisoner besides Ivan resisting the forces of the gulag

is the old man. This old man has been bouncing around the gulag system for decades, yet has

not lost his discipline and dignity. Solzhenitsyn tells us of this man on pages 118 and 119,

writing “Now Shukhov looked closely at the man. He held himself straight-the other zeks sat all

hunched up- and looked as if he’d put something extra on the bench to sit on. There was nothing

left to crop on his head; his hair had dropped out long since-the result of high living, no doubt.

His eyes didn’t dart after everything going on in the mess hall. He kept them fixed in an

unseeing gaze at some spot over Shukhov’s head. His worn wooden spoon dipped rhythmically

into the thin stew, but instead of lowering his head to the bowl like everybody else, he raised the

spoon high to his lips. He’d lost all his teeth and chewed his bread with iron gums. All life had

drained out of his face but it had been left, not sickly or feeble, but hard and dark like carved

stone. And by his hands, big and cracked and blackened, you could see that he’d had little

opportunity of doing soft jobs. But he wasn’t going to give in, oh no! he wasn’t going to put his

nine ounces on the dirty, bespattered table- he put it on a well-washed bit of rag.” Every single

element of this description is important. The diligent, careful, focused manner with which the

old man eats, his perfect posture, and his well-washed piece of rag all combine to show that this

man has lost almost everything as a result of the Soviets and the gulags, but he still has his

dignity. He still hasn’t lost his sense of himself. In my mind, this man is what Ivan would be if

he wasn’t due to be released in a couple years. This man, while not overtly resisting, is winning

his battle versus the gulag because he refuses to let the gulag take everything from him.

Solzhenitsyn does a tremendous job in this novel of displaying the vicious hardships and

obstacles that these men in the gulags face and how they resist the domination imparted upon

them by the Soviets. Some men resist through their faith, others lean on their friends and family,
and others resist by doing whatever they can to undermine their captors and get ahead. Ivan

primarily resists by pouring himself so fully into his work and disciplining himself in such a way

that he prevents the outside factors and the guards from ever truly breaking him. It is through

that humility, work ethic, and refusal to give up his humanity that Ivan triumphs in his battle

versus the gulags of Soviet Russia.