spjuver 's review for:

In the First Circle by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

5.0

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The first circle of hell would be Limbo, and the sharaska depicted in this book could certainly be seen as just that. The prisoners here have been sent to work on various electrical devices or other such work of engineering and design. These inmates are people with higher education that can be deemed adequately safe to keep in an environment less strict than the regular prison camps. Sometimes the prisoners of the sharaska get sent home after serving their sentences, other times their sentences are prolonged (again and again). Amongst them are spies who listen and look for any sign of dissidents among them (funny siden note: look up the word dissident on tyda.se (an online english - swedish translator) and you will find a picture of Solzhenitsyn himself)), which constantly keep everyone on guard (if caught, next stop might be Siberia = ruthless/hard work until death). And the people locked in have often very much to say, but those thoughts are better kept unspoken. Some of them have been sent to prison for committing an anti-revolutionary act ("A counter-revolutionary action is any action aimed at overthrowing, undermining or weakening of the power of workers' and peasants' Soviets... and governments of the USSR and Soviet and autonomous republics, or at the undermining or weakening of the external security of the USSR and main economical, political and national achievements of the proletarial revolution"), others are there just because they could have thought of committing one. There are not really any real rules that apply to the people in charge. Sometimes you might get an appeal approved for some more flour in prison though, and in such a world as this: any fight is a good fight, and any win - no matter how small - can be of great importance to the people living in it.

I did not know much about Stalin's purges before reading this book and I am very glad that I picked this up. It is written so very well and manages to convey an incredible amount of information regarding the lives of the inmates and the surround conditions of Soviet/Russia with notions of literature and music embedded in the narration. As I am a fan of Tolstoy, Dostoyevskij and Gogol, an understanding of how these authors might be looked upon by their landsmen was welcome.

Anyway. I knew this book would not end well but there could not have been any other ending. The thought of how much a human can take before it chooses to stand up against any wrong-doing – no matter if the price to be paid is all too high – is, sadly, one that will never become obsolete in this world. Then there is also the way that Nerzhin's and Volodin's stories are told alongside each other. One of them standing up on the inside of the system where there is little (but at the same time everything) to lose, and the other on the outside with everything (but at the same time nothing(?)) to lose is just perfect. The men in prison can learn to subsist on bare necessities, tightly controlled cultural enrichment and hard work to keep the mind busy. But there is no love in their lives. And life for their wives on the outside does not get better when others learn that their husbands have been condemned. Now Volodin basically had it all (cushy diplomat job, beautiful wife, soon to be promoted and living in France) but he was still not happy (when is the mere notion of such thing ever enough if not valued). There had been adultery on both sides of the marriage and depression had probably been brooding for a while. So his act of trying to save someone connected to the time when he was younger and purer was probably one of retribution. But it could not end well. The dismantling of Volodin and his immediate mental decline could very well be seen as one of the strongest chapters in any book (in context, naturally).

As always, keeping track of all the people with their names, nick names and pun-names is a hassle. But, yeah, very worth it. Indubitably.