In 1962 the Soviet literary journal Novyi Mir published Alexander Solzhenitsyn's short novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch. The editor, Alexander Tvardovsky, knew he had discovered an astonishing new writing talent with a courageous moral vision, something that hadn't appeared in print in Russia since the days of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.But then how could Tvardovsky have read such authentic Russian literature? Such writers were not only refused publication under the Communist regime, they were frequently refused the permission to live.
But there was something new in the wind that gave Tvardovsky enough confidence to take this daring manuscript to the authorities and ask for permission to publish it. Stalin, the monomaniac who had savagely murdered millions of his own people, was dead. And his eventual successor, Nikita Khrushchev, had his hands full trying to wrest control from Stalin's hard-line comrades in the Politburo. In fact, Khrushchev had already launched (within the private domains of the Soviet elite) his attack on the "cult of personality," a campaign which presented Stalin as a paranoid dictator whose excesses had actually undermined the Glorious Revolution.
Khrushchev was anything but the liberated, enlightened soul that the liberals in the West first believed. He was just another Communist thug intent on developing his own power. Discrediting Stalin, even it meant exposing some of the ugliness of Soviet history, was merely the means to get a tighter grip on the Kremlin. Khrushchev saw quickly how One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, with its heart-rending portrayal of the senselessness and brutality of a Stalinist-era forced labor camp in Siberia and its author being a former zek who lived through the hell himself, would make an effective move in the next stage of his campaign. And that was to take his attack on Stalin's "cult of personality" beyond the autocracy to the Soviet public itself...and then to the inquisitive journalists of the West.
However, Khrushchev did not understand just how powerful an influence he had launched when he permitted Tvardovsky to publish Solzhenitsyn's small book. The Stalinists around Khrushchev proved harder to defeat than he imagined. Indeed, their rage over his allowing just a few of the crimes of the Soviet Union to be published became vicious.
Instead of securing power, Khrushchev began to lose it. And even the little scent of freedom that arose from the publication of the novel (and especially Solzhenitsyn's emergence as a respected dissident voice by the West) had an intoxicating effect on the Russian populace.
Khrushchev had desired only a little light to shine. Just enough to expose Stalin's treachery to the ideals of the Communist Revolution. Just enough to illuminate his way to a more secure place at the top.
But what he got was a light that grew hotter and more brilliant than he ever imagined, one which exposed the utter wickedness and absurdity of Communism itself.
Khrushchev saw the monumental failure of his tolerance quickly and tried to reverse it with a complete suppression of Solzhenitsyn's work and reputation. But it was too late. And the comparatively mild match that was Denisovitch would eventually blaze up into torches with the publication of more detailed, more searing revelations: the Gulag Archipelago, Cancer Ward, The First Circle, and more.
Published in Western editions, Alexander Solzhenitsyn's work would destroy the Soviet Union's claims of a Communism with a moral foundation. And when that began to weaken, other heroes of freedom (Ronald Reagan, Lech Walesa, John Paul II) would follow and, by their efforts, take down the Soviet Union's tyranny over Eastern Europe.
Re-reading One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch recently proved as thrilling as ever as I contemplated how God had used this small novel as such a big voice for freedom.
The soaring of the human spirit represented in that book is inspirational on many levels. For instance, the clever sarcasm the author uses to show the foolishness of the Soviet schemes is superb while the introduction of Alyosha presents the strongest Christian character Russian literature had seen in three generations. Finally, the passion for a detailed history of how the camps were run strongly foreshadows the full exposure Solzhenitsyn would produce in his later works.
All these elements of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch (and more) show the spiritual genius as well as the bold courage of Alexander Solzhenitsyn -- a zek who quite literally and splendidly, changed the world.
