“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” written by Alexander Solzhenitsyn is a simple story of one day in the life of prisoner or “Zek” during the Stalin’s era. Solzhenitsyn himself was purged to the labor camps, later he transformed his experience in that camp into “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”. It is very important to note that this work came out when Nikita Khrushchev launched de-Stalinization program in Soviet Union. It was a time when intellectuals where able to break taboos associated with Soviet history during Stalin’s years. “One Day” reflects very sensitive topics included the brutal implementations during collectivization, imprisonment and elimination of vast numbers of people by virtue of their social class, nationality, religion and many other factors that were considered to be disloyal to the political system. Majority of them were sentenced to harsh terms, up to twenty-five years, for theoretically nonexistent crimes.
Very important theme of this novel is that most of the prisoners were basically innocent. They were imprisoned just because they were considered to be class enemies, in contrast to common criminals who were socially friendly.…
