Commentary one Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Suzanne de Ridder

English A1

May 11, 2005

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Commentary on pages 69-70

During Soviet times, it was common use for the government to censor writers on what they wrote in order to restrict them from expressing opinions that might hurt the sovereignty of the Soviet State. Sometimes, this close scrutiny even resulted in imprisonment, which when one remembers the cruel nature of the Soviet labour camps, meant an almost certain death.

Even writers who are now praised around the world for their ingenious writing skills and magnificent minds, were then seen as an eminent threat. Alexandr Solzhenitsyn was one of them.

Solzhenitsyn's novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich barely passed the censorship. It took an intense round of scrutiny by Party officials and a final decision made by Kruschev himself before the novel, which describes one day in the life of a labour camp prisoner, was allowed to hit the prints.

When reading the novel now, it