Since it’s late in the morning now, the orderly is unable to exempt any more workers. When able to leave, he reports to the dispensary. He’s sent to the guardhouse & forced to clean it for oversleeping-a minor punishment. The final paragraph suggests he serves the term, but whether this is merely a hope is left for readers to decide. The sentence is ten years, but the book suggests few leave. Ivan has been sentenced to the gulag, wrongly accused of becoming a spy after capture by the Germans. Novy Mir’s editor, Aleksandr Tvardovsky, wrote a piece, “Instead of a Foreword,” preparing readers for the material. Never before had an account of Stalinist repression been openly distributed. The story is set in a 1950s labor camp & describes a day of an ordinary prisoner, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Один день Ивана Денисовича) is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s novel, 1st published in the Soviet literary magazine Novy Mir (New World, 11/62).
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