At five o'clock in the morning, as always, an ascent struck - with a hammer on the rail at the headquarters barrack. The intermittent ringing faintly passed through the glass, frozen into two fingers, and soon subsided: it was cold, and the warden was reluctant to wave his hand for a long time.

The ringing died down, and outside the window everything was the same as in the middle of the night, when Shukhov got up to the parasha, there was darkness and darkness, and three yellow lanterns hit the window: two - in the zone, one - inside the camp.

And they didn't go to unlock the barracks, and it was impossible to hear that the orderlies took the parachute barrel on sticks - to carry it out.

Shukhov never woke up, always got up on it - before the divorce it was an hour and a half of his own time, not official, and who knows the camp life, can always earn extra money: sew someone from the old lining a cover for mittens; for a rich brigadier to serve dry felt boots directly on the bed, so that he does not stomp around the heap with bare feet, does not choose; or run through the lockers, where someone needs to serve, sweep or bring something; or go to the dining room to collect the bowls from the tables and take them to the dishwasher with slides - they will also feed, but there are many hunters there, there is no end to it, and most importantly, if you can't resist in the bowl, you start licking the bowls. And Shukhov firmly remembered the words of his first brigadier Kuzyomin - he was an old camp wolf, he had been sitting by nine hundred and forty-three for twelve years already, and once on a bare clearing by the fire he said to his reinforcements brought from the front:

- Here, guys, the law is the taiga. But people live here too. In the camp, that's who dies: who licks the bowls, who hopes for the medical unit, and who to godfather walks to knock.

As for the godfather, of course, he turned it down. Those are saving themselves. Only their care is on someone else's blood.

Shukhov always got up on the way up, but today he didn’t get up. Even in the evening he felt uneasy, either shivering or breaking. And I didn't get warm at night. Through a dream, it seemed that he seemed to be completely ill, then he left a little. I didn’t want the morning.

But the morning came as usual.

And where do you get eels - there is ice on the window, and on the walls along the junction with the ceiling all over the barracks there is a healthy barrack! - the spider web is white. Frost.

Shukhov did not get up. He lay on top lining, with his head covered with a blanket and a pea jacket, and in a quilted jacket, in one rolled up sleeve, thrusting both feet together. He did not see, but from the sounds he understood everything that was going on in the barracks and in their brigade corner. Here, stepping heavily along the corridor, the orderlies carried one of the eight-bucket parasha. It is considered a disabled person, easy work, but come on, take it out, do not spill it! Here in the 75th brigade, a bunch of boots from the dryer slammed on the floor. And here - in ours (and today it was our turn to dry boots). The foreman and the foreman are silently putting on their shoes, and their lining creaks. The brigadier will now go to the bread slicer, and the brigadier will go to the headquarters barrack, to the workmen.

Yes, not just to the contractors, as he goes every day, - Shukhov remembered: today the fate is being decided - they want to fry their 104th brigade from the construction of workshops to the new Sotsgorodok facility. And that Sotsgorodok is a bare field, in snowy hillsides, and before you can do anything there you have to dig holes, put up poles and pull barbed wire from yourself so as not to run away. And then build.

There, surely, there will be nowhere to warm up for a month - not a kennel. And you can't make a fire - how to heat it? Work hard on your conscience - one salvation.

The foreman is anxious, he is going to settle it. Some other brigade, slow, to push there instead. Of course, you can't come to an agreement empty-handed. To carry half a kilo of bacon to the senior contractor. And even a kilogram.

The test is not a loss, is it possible to try in the medical unit touch, free from work for a day? Well, right, the whole body separates.

And yet - which of the guards is on duty today?

On duty - I remembered - One and a half Ivan, thin and long sergeant black-eyed. The first time you look - it's just scary, but they recognized him - of all the attendants, he is more agreeable: he doesn't put him in a punishment cell, he doesn't drag him to the head of the regime. So you can lie down, as long as in the dining room of the ninth barrack.

The lining shook and swayed. Two people got up at once: above - Shukhov's neighbor, the Baptist Alyoshka, and below - Buinovsky, a former captain of the second rank, cavtorang.

The old men of the orderlies, carrying out both buckets, got in trouble, who should go for boiling water. They swore affectionately, like women. An electric welder from the 20th brigade barked:

- Hey, wicks!- and launched a felt boot into them. - I'll make peace!

The felt boot knocked dully on the post. They fell silent.

In the next brigade, the brigade leader was a little booted:

- Vasil Fyodoritch! They twitched in the food table, you bastards: there were nine hundred and four, but there were only three. Who shouldn't be?

He said this quietly, but of course the whole team heard and hid: they will cut off a piece of someone in the evening.

And Shukhov lay and lay on the compressed sawdust of his mattress. At least one side would have taken it - or it would have chilled in a chill, or the aches would have passed. And neither one nor the other.

While the Baptist was whispering prayers, Buinovsky returned from the breeze and announced to anyone, but as if gloatingly:

- Well, hold on, Red Navy men! Thirty degrees of faithful!

And Shukhov decided to go to the medical unit.

And then someone with authority pulled off his quilted jacket and blanket. Shukhov threw off his pea jacket and raised himself. Below him, his head equal to the top bunk of the lining, stood a thin Tatar.

So he was on duty out of line and crept quietly.

- Still eight hundred and fifty-four! - read the Tatar from a white patch on the back of a black pea jacket. - Three days kondeya with a conclusion!

And as soon as his special stifled voice rang out, as in the whole half-dark barrack, where not every light was on, where two hundred people slept on fifty bungalows, everyone who had not yet got up immediately turned and began to dress hastily.

- Why, citizen chief? - giving his voice more pity than he felt, asked Shukhov.

With the conclusion to work - this is still half a punishment cell, and they will give hotter, and there is no time to think. A full punishment cell is when without withdrawal.

- Didn't you get up on the ascent? Let's go to the commandant's office, - explained Tatarin lazily, because both he and Shukhov, and everyone, understood what the condo was for.

There was nothing on the Tartar's hairless, crumpled face. He turned around, looking for the second one, but everyone already, some in the semi-darkness, some under a light bulb, on the first floor of the clapboards and on the second, pushed their legs into black cotton trousers with numbers on their left knees or, already dressed, wrapped themselves up and hurried to the exit - wait out the Tatar in the yard.

If Shukhov had been given a punishment cell for something else, where he would have deserved, it would not have been so insulting. It was a shame that he always got up from the first. But it was impossible to take time off from the Tatar, he knew. And, continuing to ask for time off just for the sake of order, Shukhov, as he was in wadded trousers that had not been taken off for the night (above the left knee, they also had a worn, soiled flap sewn on, and on it a black, already faded paint number Shch-854), put on a quilted jacket (there were two such numbers on her - one on the chest and one on the back), chose his felt boots from a pile on the floor, put on a hat (with the same flap and number on the front) and went out after Tatar.

The entire 104th brigade saw Shukhov being taken away, but no one said a word: to nothing, and what do you say? The brigadier could have intervened a little, but he was not there. And Shukhov didn’t say a word to anyone either, he didn’t tease Tatarin. They'll save breakfast, they'll guess.

So we went out together.

The frost was with a haze, breath taking. Two large searchlights shot across the area from the far corner towers. The lanterns of the zone and the inner lanterns were shining. There were so many of them that they completely brightened the stars.

Squeaking with felt boots in the snow, the convicts quickly ran about their business - some to the lavatory, some to the locker, some to the parcel warehouse, and then the cereals were taken to the individual kitchen. All of them have their heads sunk into their shoulders, their pea coats are wrapped around them, and all of them are not so cold from the frost as from the thought that they will spend a whole day in this frost.

And the Tatar, in his old greatcoat with his blue collar tabs, walked smoothly, and the frost seemed not to take him at all.

August 3, 2013 is the fifth anniversary of the death of Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008), Russian writer, publicist, dissident and Nobel laureate. Russian writer, public figure, Alexander Solzhenitsyn was born on December 11, 1918 in Kislovodsk, into a Cossack family. The father, Isaac Semyonovich, died on the hunt six months before the birth of his son. Mother - Taisiya Zakharovna Shcherbak - from the family of a wealthy landowner. In 1941, Alexander Solzhenitsyn graduated from the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of Rostov University (entered 1936).
In October 1941 he was drafted into the army. He was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 2nd degree and the Order of the Red Star. For criticizing JV Stalin's actions in personal letters to childhood friend Nikolai Vitkevich, Captain Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was arrested and sentenced to 8 years in forced labor camps. In 1962, in the magazine "Novy Mir", with the special permission of NS Khrushchev, the first story of Alexander Solzhenitsyn was published - "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" (the story "Shch-854", altered at the request of the editorial board).
In November 1969, Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Writers' Union. In 1970, Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize in Literature, but refused to travel to Stockholm for the award ceremony, fearing that the authorities would not let him back into the USSR. In 1974, after the publication in Paris of the book "The Gulag Archipelago" (in the USSR one of the manuscripts was seized by the KGB in September 1973, and in December 1973 it was published in Paris), the dissident writer was arrested. On May 27, 1994, the writer returned to Russia, where he lived until his death in 2008.

Several unexpected facts from the life of the writer.

1. Solzhenitsyn entered literature under the erroneous patronymic "Isaevich". The real patronymic of Alexander Solzhenitsyn is Isaakievich. The writer's father, the Russian peasant Isaak Solzhenitsyn, died on a hunt six months before the birth of his son. The error crept in when the future Nobel laureate received a passport.
2. In the lower grades, Sasha Solzhenitsyn was laughed at for wearing a cross and going to church.
3. Solzhenitsyn did not want to make literature his main specialty and therefore entered the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of Rostov State University. At the university he studied excellently and received a Stalinist scholarship.
4. Solzhenitsyn was attracted by the theatrical environment, and so much so that in the summer of 1938 he went to take exams at the Moscow theater studio of Yu. A. Zavadsky, but failed.

5. In 1945, Solzhenitsyn ended up in a correctional camp for being at the front, writing letters to friends in which he called Stalin a “godfather” who distorted “Lenin's norms”.
6. In the camp, Solzhenitsyn fell ill with cancer. He was diagnosed with a neglected seminoma - a malignant tumor of the genital glands. The writer received radiation therapy, but he didn't feel better. Doctors predicted three weeks of life for him, but Solzhenitsyn was healed. In the early 1970s, he had three sons.
7. While still at the university, Solzhenitsyn began to write poetry. A collection of poetry entitled "Prussian Nights" was published in 1974 by the emigrant publishing house YMCA-press. 8. While in prison, Solzhenitsyn developed a way of memorizing texts with the help of a rosary. On one of the shipments, he saw how Lithuanian Catholics make rosary from soaked bread, dyed with burnt rubber, tooth powder or streptocide in black, red and white. Fingering the beads of the rosary, Solzhenitsyn repeated poetry and excerpts of prose. This way the memorization went faster.
9. Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky, who put a lot of effort into publishing Solzhenitsyn's story "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich," later became disillusioned with Solzhenitsyn and spoke extremely negatively about his work Cancer Ward. Tvardovsky told Solzhenitsyn in the face: "You have nothing sacred. Your bitterness is already hurting your skill." Mikhail Sholokhov also did not sympathize with the Nobel laureate, who called Solzhenitsyn's work "morbid shamelessness."
10. In 1974 Solzhenitsyn was accused of treason and expelled from the USSR when he went abroad for the "Gulag Archipelago". Sixteen years later, he was restored to Soviet citizenship and was awarded the State Prize of the RSFSR for the same "GULAG Archipelago". A recording of Solzhenitsyn's first interview after the expulsion is preserved:

11. In 1998, he was awarded the highest order of Russia, but rejected it with the wording: "I cannot accept the award from the supreme power that has brought Russia to its present disastrous state."
12. The "Polyphonic Novel" is Solzhenitsyn's favorite literary form. This is the name of a novel with precise signs of the time and place of action, in which there is no main character. The most important character is the one who is "caught" by the story in this chapter. Solzhenitsyn's favorite technique is the “montage” technique of a traditional story with documentary materials.
13. In the Tagansky district of Moscow there is Alexander Solzhenitsyn street. Until 2008, the street was called Bolshaya Kommunisticheskaya, but it was renamed. In order to do this, it was necessary to change the law prohibiting naming streets after a real person earlier than ten years after the death of that person.

Audiobook A. Solzhenitsyn "One day of Ivan Denisovich"

Observer. Topic: The story of A. Solzhenitsyn "One day of Ivan Denisovich." In the studio: A. Filippenko, actor, People's Artist of Russia; L. Saraskina, critic, literary critic; B. Lyubimov, rector of the Higher Theater School named after M. S. Shchepkina.

Several quotes from A. I. Solzhenitsyn

Merciful to men, the war took them away. And she left the women to torment themselves. ("Cancer Ward")

If you don't know how to use a minute, you will be wasting an hour, a day, and your whole life.

What is the most valuable thing in the world? It turns out: to be aware that you are not participating in injustice. They are stronger than you, they were and will be, but let them not through you. ("In the first circle")

All the same, you are, Creator, in the sky. You endure for a long time, but it hurts.

No matter how we laugh at miracles, while we are strong, healthy and prosperous, but if life becomes so wedged, so flattened that only a miracle can save us, we believe in this unique, exceptional miracle! ("Cancer Ward")

The one and the wise man who is satisfied with a little.

Work is like a stick, there are two ends in it: for people you do - give quality, for the boss you do - give a show. ("One Day in Ivan Denisovich")

Art is not what, but how.

When the eyes gaze into each other incessantly, inseparably, a completely new quality appears: you will see something that does not open with a cursory glide. The eyes seem to lose their protective colored shell, and they sprinkle the whole truth without words, they cannot keep it.

... one fool will ask so many questions that a hundred smart ones will not be able to answer.

And humanity is valuable, nevertheless, not for its threatening quantity, but for its maturing quality.

There are two mysteries in the world: how I was born - I don't remember how I will die - I don't know. ("Matrenin Dvor")
Do not be afraid of the bullet that whistles, since you hear it, it means that it is no longer at you. The only bullet that will kill you, you will not hear.

There are many smart in the world, little - good

“One Day of Ivan Denisovich” is a story about a prisoner who describes one day of his life in prison, of which there are three thousand five hundred and sixty-four. Summary - below 🙂

The main character of the work, which takes place over the course of one day, is the peasant Ivan Denisovich Shukhov. On the second day after the start of the Great Patriotic War, he went to the front from his native village Temgenevo, where he left a wife with two daughters. Shukhov still had a son, but he died.

In February one thousand nine hundred and forty-two, on the North-Western Front, a group of soldiers, which included Ivan Denisovich, was surrounded by the enemy. It was impossible to help them; from hunger, the soldiers even had to eat the hooves of dead horses soaked in water. Soon Shukhov fell into German captivity, but he, together with four colleagues, managed to escape from there and get to his own. However, Soviet submachine gunners killed two former prisoners immediately. One died of wounds, and Ivan Denisovich was sent to the NKVD. As a result of a quick investigation, Shukhov was sent to a concentration camp - after all, every person who was captured by the Germans was considered an enemy spy.

Ivan Denisovich has been serving his sentence for the ninth year. For eight years he was in Ust-Izhma, and now he is in a Siberian camp. Over the years, Shukhov has grown a long beard, and his teeth have become half as many. He is dressed in a quilted jacket, on top of which is a pea jacket belted with a string. Ivan Denisovich has wadded trousers and felt boots on his feet, and under them - two pairs of footcloths. On the trousers, just above the knee, there is a patch on which the camp number is embroidered.

The most important task in the camp is to avoid starvation. The prisoners are fed a nasty gruel - a chowder of frozen cabbage and small pieces of fish. If you try, you can get an extra portion of such gruel or another ration of bread.

Some prisoners even receive parcels. One of them was Caesar Markovich (either Jew or Greek) - a man of pleasant oriental appearance with a thick, black mustache. The prisoner's mustache was not shaved off, since without them he would not have matched the photograph attached to the case. Once he wanted to become a director, but did not have time to shoot anything - he was jailed. Caesar Markovich lives with memories and behaves like a cultured person. He talks about a "political idea" as an excuse for tyranny, and sometimes publicly scolds Stalin, calling him "the mustache dad." Shukhov sees that there is a freer atmosphere in hard labor than in Ust-Izhma. You can talk about anything without fear that this will increase the term. Caesar Markovich, being a practical person, was able to adapt to a convict life: from the parcels sent to him he knows how to "put in the mouth whoever needs it." Thanks to this, he works as an assistant to the normalizer, which was pretty easy. Caesar Markovich is not greedy and shares food and tobacco from the parcels with many (especially with those who helped him in any way).

Ivan Denisovich nevertheless understands that Caesar Markovich does not yet understand anything about the camp order. Before the "shmon", he does not have time to take the package to the storage room. The cunning Shukhov managed to save the goods sent to Caesar, and he did not remain in debt to him.

Most often, Caesar Markovich shared supplies with his neighbor "on the bedside table" Kavtorang - the sea captain of the second rank Buinovsky. He walked around Europe and along the Northern Sea Route. Once Buinovsky, as a communications captain, even accompanied the English admiral. He was impressed by his high professionalism and after the war he sent a keepsake. Because of this premise, the NKVD decided that Buinovsky was an English spy. Kavtorang is in the camp not so long ago and has not yet lost faith in justice. Despite the habit of commanding people, Kavtorang does not shy away from camp work, for which he is respected by all prisoners.

There is also one in the camp whom no one respects. This is the former clerical chief Fetyukov. He does not know how to do anything at all and is only able to carry a stretcher. Fetyukov does not receive any help from home: his wife left him, after which she immediately married another. The former boss is used to eating enough and therefore begs often. This man has long since lost his self-esteem. He is constantly offended, and sometimes even beaten. Fetyukov is not in a position to fight back: "he will wipe himself out, cry and go." Shukhov believes that it is impossible for people like Fetyukov to survive in a camp where you need to be able to position yourself correctly. The preservation of self-esteem is necessary only because without it a person loses the will to live and is unlikely to be able to last until the end of the term.

Ivan Denisovich himself does not receive parcels from home, because in his native village they are already starving. He diligently stretches the ration for the whole day so as not to feel hunger. Shukhov does not shy away from the opportunity to "cut off" an extra piece from his superiors.

On the day described in the story, the prisoners work on the construction of a house. Shukhov does not shy away from work. His foreman, dispossessed Andrei Prokofievich Tyurin, at the end of the day writes out "interest" - an extra bread ration. Work helps the prisoners after getting up not to live in painful anticipation of the lights out, but to fill the day with some meaning. The joy brought by physical labor especially supports Ivan Denisovich. He is considered the best foreman in his team. Shukhov distributes his forces competently, which helps him not to overexert himself and work effectively throughout the day. Ivan Denisovich works with passion. He's glad he was able to hide a piece of the saw that can be used to make a small knife. With the help of such a homemade knife, it is easy to make money for bread and tobacco. However, the guards regularly search the prisoners. The knife can be taken away when "shmona"; this fact gives the case a kind of excitement.

One of the prisoners is the sectarian Alyosha, who was imprisoned for his faith. Alyosha the Baptist copied half of the Gospel into a notebook and made a cache for it in the wall crack. Never once during a search of Aleshino's treasure was found. In the camp, he did not lose faith. Alyosha tells everyone that they need to pray for the Lord to remove the evil scale from our hearts. In hard labor, they do not forget about religion, or art, or politics: prisoners worry not only about their daily bread.

Before going to bed, Shukhov sums up the results of the day: he was not put in the punishment cell, he was not sent to work on the construction of Sotsgorodok (in a frosty field), he hid a piece of the saw and did not get caught on the "shmon" tobacco ... It looks like an almost happy day at the camp.

And such days for Ivan Denisovich - three thousand five hundred and sixty-four.

1. The camp is a special world.
2. Shukhov is the main character and storyteller.
3. Ways to survive in the camp.
4. Features of the language of the story.

AI Solzhenitsyn's story "One Day in Ivan Denisovich" is based on real events in the life of the author himself - his stay in the Ekibastuz special camp in the winter of 1950-1951 for general work. The main character of the story, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, is an ordinary prisoner of the Soviet camp. On his behalf, it is told about one day out of three thousand six hundred and fifty-three days of the term that Ivan Denisovich received. A description of the events of one day in the life of a prisoner is enough to understand what situation reigned in the camp, what orders and laws existed. One day - and before us is a general horrifying picture of the life of prisoners. A special world appears before the reader - a camp that exists separately, usually parallel to life. Quite different laws are in force here, and people do not live according to them, but survive in spite of them. Life in the zone is shown from the inside by a person who knows about it from his personal experience. Therefore, the story is striking in its realism.

"Thank you, Lord, another day has passed!" - with these words Ivan Denisovich finishes the narration, “a day has passed, not darkened by anything, almost happy”. Indeed, this day is one of the most "successful": Shukhov's brigade was not driven to Sotsgorodok to pull the wire in the cold, without heating, the hero passed the punishment cell, escaped only by washing the floors in the supervisor's room, got an extra portion of porridge for lunch, the work went to the familiar - to put a wall on the CHP , he safely passed the shmon, brought a hacksaw to the camp, worked in the evening at Caesar's, bought two glasses of samosad from a Latvian, and most importantly, he did not get sick.

Ivan Denisovich Shukhov was sentenced to ten years in a trumped-up case: he was accused of returning from captivity with a secret German mission, and they could not come up with which one. In fact, Shukhov shared the fate of millions of other people who fought for their Motherland, and at the end of the war, they migrated from prisoners of German camps to the category of “enemies of the people”.

Solzhenitsyn also portrays another type of people - "jackals", like Fetyukov, a former high chief accustomed to commanding, who does not even hesitate to get cigarette butts out of a spittoon. Licking other people's plates, looking in the mouth of a person, expecting that something will be left for him, is a way for Fetyukov to survive. He is disgusting, convicts even refuse to work with him. He has absolutely no pride left, he cries openly when they beat him for licking plates. In the camp, everyone chooses their own way of survival. The most unworthy of these methods is the path of the informer Panteleev, who lives off denunciations of other convicts. Such people are hated in the camp, and such people do not live long.

Ivan Denisovich "was not a jackal even after eight years of general work - and the further, the stronger he was affirmed." This person tries to earn only by his own labor: he sews slippers, presents felt boots to the foreman, takes a queue for parcels, for which he receives his honestly earned. Shukhov has firm ideas about pride and honor, so he will never slide down to the level of Fetyukov. As a peasant, Shukhov is very economic: he cannot just walk past a piece of a hacksaw, knowing that he can make a knife out of it, which is an opportunity for additional income.

The former captain of the second rank, Buinovsky, who is accustomed to doing everything conscientiously, does not try to evade general work, deserves respect, "he looks at camp work as at sea service: it is said to do, then to do it." Brigadier Tyurin, who ended up in the camp only because his father was a fist, also evokes sympathy. He always tries to defend the interests of the brigade: to get more bread, a lucrative job. In the morning Tyurin gives a bribe, his people were not expelled to build Sotsgorodok. Ivan Denisovich says that "a good foreman will give a second life." This is also about Tyurin. These people have never been able to choose for themselves the path of survival of Fetyukov or Panteleev.

Alyoshka the Baptist is a pity. This person is very kind, but weak-minded, therefore "only those who do not want to command him do not command." He perceives the conclusion as the will of God, tries to see only the good in his position, says that “there is time to think about the soul here”. But Alyoshka cannot adapt to the camp conditions, and Ivan Denisovich believes that he will not last long here.

Another hero, a sixteen-year-old boy Gopchik, has a grip that Alyoshka the Baptista lacks. Gopchik is cunning, he will not miss the opportunity to snatch a piece. He received his term for carrying milk to the forest for the Bendera people. In the camp they predict a great future for him: "From Gopchik, the camp prisoner will be the right one ... less like a bread-slicer they don't predict his fate."

Caesar Markovich, a former director, is in a special position in the camp. He receives parcels from his will, he can afford many of the things that other prisoners cannot: wears a new hat and other forbidden things. The former director works in an office, avoiding general work. He avoids the rest of the prisoners, communicates only with Buinovsky. Caesar Markovich has a business acumen, knows who and how much to give. Solzhenitsyn's story is written in the language of a simple camp prisoner, which is why a lot of slang, "thieves" words and expressions are used. "Shmon", "knocking godfather", "six", "assholes", "bastard" - the usual vocabulary in the camp. The use of these words, including "unprintable" ones, is justified, since with their help the reliability of the transmission of the general atmosphere of the camp and what is happening is achieved.

Still from the film "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" (1970)

The peasant and front-line soldier Ivan Denisovich Shukhov turned out to be a "state criminal", a "spy" and ended up in one of the Stalinist camps, like millions of Soviet people, convicted without fault during the "personality cult" and mass repressions. He left home on June 23, 1941, on the second day after the start of the war with Hitler's Germany, “... in February 1942, their entire army was surrounded on the North-Western [front], and they did not throw anything from their planes, and there were no planes either. We got to the point where they planted the hooves from the horses that had died, soaked that cornea in water and ate, ”that is, the command of the Red Army abandoned its soldiers to perish in the encirclement. Together with a group of fighters, Shukhov ended up in German captivity, fled from the Germans and miraculously reached his own. The careless story of how he was in captivity led him to a Soviet concentration camp, since the state security organs indiscriminately considered all those who escaped from captivity as spies and saboteurs.

The second part of Shukhov's memories and reflections during the long camp work and a short rest in the barrack relates to his life in the village. From the fact that his relatives do not send him food (he himself refused to send parcels in a letter to his wife), we understand that people are starving in the village no less than in the camp. The wife writes to Shukhov that the collective farmers make their living by painting fake carpets and selling them to the townspeople.

Flashbacks and random information about life outside the barbed wire aside, the entire story takes exactly one day. In this short period of time, a panorama of camp life unfolds before us, a kind of "encyclopedia" of life in the camp.

First, there is a whole gallery of social types and at the same time vivid human characters: Caesar is a metropolitan intellectual, a former filmmaker, who, incidentally, leads a "lordly" life in the camp compared to Shukhov: he receives food parcels, enjoys certain benefits during work ; Kavtorang - repressed naval officer; an old convict who was still in tsarist prisons and hard labor (the old revolutionary guard, who did not find a common language with the policy of Bolshevism in the 30s); Estonians and Latvians are the so-called "bourgeois nationalists"; Baptist Alyosha - the spokesman for the thoughts and way of life of a very heterogeneous religious Russia; Gopchik is a sixteen-year-old teenager whose fate shows that the repression did not distinguish between children and adults. And Shukhov himself is a typical representative of the Russian peasantry with his special business acumen and organic mindset. Against the background of these people who suffered from repression, a figure of a different kind emerges - the head of the Volkov regime, who regulates the life of prisoners and, as it were, symbolizes the ruthless communist regime.

Secondly, a detailed picture of the camp life and work. Life in the camp remains life with its visible and invisible passions and subtlest experiences. They are mainly related to the problem of getting food. They feed little and poorly creepy gruel with frozen cabbage and small fish. A kind of art of life in the camp is to get yourself an extra ration of bread and an extra bowl of gruel, and if you're lucky - some tobacco. For this one has to go to the greatest tricks, currying favor with "authorities" like Caesar and others. At the same time, it is important to preserve your human dignity, not to become a "degraded" beggar, like, for example, Fetyukov (however, there are few of them in the camp). This is important not even out of lofty considerations, but out of necessity: a “degraded” person loses the will to live and necessarily perishes. Thus, the question of preserving the human image in oneself becomes a question of survival. The second vital issue is the attitude towards bonded labor. Prisoners, especially in winter, work hunting, almost competing with each other and the brigade with the brigade, in order not to freeze and in a peculiar way "shorten" the time from overnight stay to overnight stay, from feeding to feeding. It is on this incentive that the terrible system of collective labor is built. But it nevertheless does not completely destroy the natural joy of physical labor in people: the scene of the construction of a house by the brigade where Shukhov works is one of the most inspired in the story. The ability to work "correctly" (not overstraining, but also not shirking), as well as the ability to get yourself extra rations, is also a high art. As well as the ability to hide from the eyes of the guards a piece of saw that has turned up, from which the camp craftsmen make miniature knives for exchange for food, tobacco, warm things ... In relation to the guards who constantly conduct "shmon", Shukhov and the rest of the Prisoners are in the position of wild animals : they must be more cunning and dexterous than armed people who have the right to punish them and even shoot them for retreating from the camp regime. To deceive the guards and the camp authorities is also a high art.

The day the hero narrates about was, in his own opinion, successful - “they didn’t put in the punishment cell, the brigade wasn’t kicked out on Sotsgorodok (work in the winter in a bare field - ed.) - Ed.), the brigadier closed the interest well (the system of evaluating camp labor - ed.), Shukhov laid the wall cheerfully, he didn’t get caught with a hacksaw, did some work at Caesar’s evening and bought tobacco. And he didn't get sick, he got over it. A day passed, unclouded by anything, almost happy. There were three thousand six hundred fifty-three such days in his period from bell to bell. Because of leap years - three extra days were added ... "

At the end of the story, a short dictionary of thieves' expressions and specific camp terms and abbreviations that are found in the text is given.

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