The Oak and the Calf: A Memoir

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Richard Brown (Narrator)

In this autobiographical work, Solzhenitsyn tells of his ten-year war to outwit Russia's rulers and get his works published in his own country.

The great Russian novelist and historian here reveals his round-by-round personal account of what it was like to be a writer in a Communist regime. He tells of his ten-year war to outwit Russia's rulers and get his works published in his own country.
During his lengthy stay in the Gulag, Solzhenitsyn spent considerable time writing in total secrecy. In the 60s he was released and found himself a fairly free man. Soon thereafter, Khrushchev denounced Stalin, hope emerged briefly, and the underground writer decided to surface. The result was the publication in Russia of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and with it, the first public exposure of the truth about the prison camps. From this point, as would be expected, the KGB pursued him and Solzhenitsyn here tells of his clever strategy to foil their attempts to re-arrest him.

©1975 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn; (P)1989 by Blackstone Audiobooks

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, Russia, Memoir, Russian Literature, Politics

Audiobook

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

also known as
Alexander Solzenitsyn (English, alternate)
Αλεξάντρ Σολζενίτσιν (Greek)

Works, including One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) and The Gulag Archipelago (1973-1975), of Soviet writer and dissident Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970, exposed the brutality of the labor camp system.

This known Russian novelist, dramatist, and historian best helped to make the world aware of the forced Gulag.

Exiled in 1974, he returned to Russia in 1994. Solzhenitsyn fathered of Ignat Solzhenitsyn, a conductor and pianist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksan...

Reviews

[Jeff Bursey · Rating 5 out of 5]

A riveting account ranging from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s, from Solzhenitsyn's pre-Denisovich days to his sudden expatriation from the ussr. Harrowing would be one word to describe life in a punitive state and the tactics he needed to adopt to keep his writing from being seized by the KGB; uplifting would be another, and here I mean the example (with Sakharov's work also presented) of resistance and bravery despite the threat of death or imprisonment always in the air. (It would not be close to Salman Rushdie's situation, who had the state protecting him from killers; it would be closer to that of Pramoedya Ananta Toer's The Mute's Soliloquy, where the state was the killer.)

When I read this the first time I was impressed by the strategies Solzhenitsyn chose and the closeness of those who assisted him, whose names and roles he could not talk about in this book or only reveal a bit (later memoirs have gone into greater depth without risk to those involved). His arrogance was also understood, and his mistakes (that he freely admits to) made his achievements more remarkable.

The book itself, in translation, is very well written and set out. Highly recommended on many levels.

[Thomé Freyre · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ideal para quem quiser ficar a saber o quão difícil era publicar um livro na U.R.S.S.

[Max Nemtsov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Типичный образчик "вторичной" литературы, о которой с самого начала говорит сам автор, я и сам такое тоже читать полюбляю: это стыдное наслаждение, вроде подглядывания за великими, конечно. "Теленка" же я читал когда-то в журнальной версии, получил свою долю удовольствия. Сейчас, кажется, пора перечесть - как и "Архипелаг", это вновь актуально: творчество из-под спуда, вопреки репрессиям, конспирация и "write by W.A.S.T.E.", когда литература и книгоиздание быстро становятся трусливыми и незаметно переходят тот рубеж, за которым их продукция уже никому не нужна (примеры в редакции имеются), а уродский интерфейс "взаимодействия" художника и власти возникает вновь. Вот это, к примеру, разумеется, очень созвучно:

"Существовавшая и трубившая литература, её десяток толстых журналов, две литературные газеты, её безчисленные сборники, и отдельные романы, и собрания сочинений, и ежегодные премии, и натужные радиоинсценировки  – раз и навсегда были признаны мною ненастоящими, и я не терял времени и не раздражался за ними следить: я заранее знал, что в них не может быть ничего достойного. Не потому, чтобы там не могло зародиться талантов, – наверное, они были там, но там же и гибли."

Так что копаться в "окаменевшем дерьме" клоаки русско-советской литературы сейчас особой охоты у меня нет по-прежнему. "По полю тому ничего вырасти не может" (до сих пор, кстати).

Страницы о "Новом мире" и его кухне - даже в тот период, который единогласно считается "звездным часом" журнала, - отнюдь не героизация издания; поразительно, конечно, удостоверяться, какое это было УГ, рядящееся в либеральную личину и направляемое посредством пустой риторики:

"Мне скажут, что «Новый мир» долгие годы был для читающей российской публики окошком к чистому свету. Да, был. Да, окошком. Но окошком кривым, прорубленным в гнилом срубе и забранным не только цензурной решёткой, но ещё собственным добровольным идеологическим намордником  – вроде бутырского армированного мутного стекла…"

Какое всё же говно правило ссср-ом, всё без исключения. Непонятно, из каких глубин наивности или глупости можно было вообще с этой сволочью разговаривать. И по-прежнему непонятно, как писатель, столько лет блюдший чистоту своих имени и помыслов, не сотрудничавший с системой ни в какой малости и не веривший ей ни на грош, так доблестно ломавший систему, проебал чекистскую гниду и в старости с нею лобзался чуть ли в десны.

"Разве настоящий арестант – «тонкий, звонкий и прозрачный», смеет поверить хоть на грош, хоть на минуту – советскому прокурору или советскому президенту?"

Совсем, видать, плох стал, хотя в конце 60х был сутяжник высшей пробы: его беседы с чиновной совецкой сволочью при всей их зряшности, коли не вранье, - образец троллинга очень высокого уровня. А впоследствии и сам скатился к тому, что поначалу так презирал и ненавидел: к "мычанью тоски по смутно вспомненной национальной идее".  Но поначалу-то сарказм бил ключом:

"...Добролюбов и КПСС разъяснили, что надо быть привязанным к большой родине (так, чтобы границы любви точно совпадали с границами государственной власти, этим упрощается и армейская служба)".

Видимо, во всем этом должен быть какой-то урок: вот куда выруливает, как он сам его называл, "позорное православно-патриотическое направление". ...Что стало в старости с Натальей, кстати, тоже другой вопрос, мне не понятный: то же целование плюгавого в "крымнаш". Может, с продолжением этой книги станет ясно, пока же (начало 70х) она вполне героиня.

На продолжение, кстати, я очень рассчитываю, потому что покамест отношение автора и его персонажей к условному "Западу" больше всего напоминает какое-то кваканье из тины русской хтонической трясины, тонким слоем прикрытой совецким жидким говном. Даже в то время, когда наш автор "тряс систему", слышалась в нем, помимо надрывных причитаний, еще и эта надроченная "любовь к родине" (и тяга к разметке дат по православному "календарю", не несущему в себе никакого смысла).

...-ей-кляту так и хочется переименовать мемуар в "Ебала жаба гадюку"... кстати, бандитские методы воздействия на Солжа в самом начале 70х только оттачивались, это сейчас они общее место, а тогда были даже трогательными (ну, если не считать новочеркасского укола - эта практика, как видим, изменений не претерпела за полвека, хотя все остальные методы борьбы с диссидой и в 70е выглядели нелепо, потому что их применяли в 30е, а теперь эти идиоты используют их вновь).

Отдельная комедия положений - в истории подписания совком Женевской конвенции в 1973 году _только_ для того, чтобы попытаться остановить печатание работ Солжа на западе (посредством учреждения воровского ВААПа). Но только полные идиоты могли считать, что это поможет; Солженицын же идиотом не был и систему тогда расшатывал знатно; как минимум, ничего не подписывал. Ему мы и должны быть благодарны за то, что россия хотя бы ненадолго стала частью цивилизованого издательского пространства. Он вообще в какой-тотпериод был чуть ли не единственным голосом здравости и разума в охуевшей от лжи и безнаказанности этой лжи стране.

А ключ-камень к нынешним временам, конечно: оккупация Чехословакии в 1968м, когда "стыдно быть советским" (в лагере ему, конечно, не стыдно было). После 68го года, напомню, и журнал "Новый мир" стал тем говном, которое не спасла потом даже "перестройка и гласность" (стоило ли его читать до 68го - другой вопрос, я не могу на него ответить, ибо был мал; помню лишь некоторые официальные заметки, в которых эта фамилия значилась рядом с фамилией Сахарова).

Не без стилистических фо-па: "охватывает скучающее чувство", "_вкусная_ манера изложения", "голубоглазое лицо", "этюды к  «Руси уходящая»" (что?) - хотя о порче языка пишет сам:

"...более всех испортили русский язык социалисты в своих неряшливых брошюрах, и особенно – Ленин."

Нелепая поясняющая ссылка: что такое "надир" (зачем? там много разных слов, непонятных крестьянству, они же не объясняются). Несуществующие имена "Вильбор", "Самуэль" ну и прочее по мелочи.

[Danielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intriguing peak under the permafrosted layers of the crypto-literary underground of Stalinist Russia, the memorization of books in prison camps, the division of scraps and films and fragments of manuscripts in walls and light sockets and immigree's apartments...of publishing and sudden fame and wrangling with the egos of editors and political elites, of censorship and crises of conscience and artistic integrity...of human integrity...Solzhenitsyn is unflagging and fearless and still shocked he hasn't been taken to an alley to be shot. The world is markedly enriched for his stubborn refusal to die.

[Carol Bakker]

I read 62 pages — about how A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was published in the USSR — and read the final chapter where Solzhenitsyn was escorted out of the country by an air flight to exile. The details bogged me down. I like and admire Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, but I was impatient with the pace.

[Olga Vainshtok · Rating 4 out of 5]

Больше всего мне понравилась часть про его высылку из СССР. А вообще произведение очень актуально для нынешнего времени. Хотя стиль тяжеловатый

[Tom Schulte · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is my second reading of this memoir by Solzhenitsyn. I enjoyed it much less than my recollection of my first reading. His path through a censored press to publish his only work in the Soviet Union, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, in the periodical Novy Mir ends up being a bitchy recollection of how he outsmarted, out-willed, and largely stayed one step ahead of dimension-less bureaucrats. Although we have here a gifted novelist, he seems unable to get past his own crowing to explore contradictory motivations and nuances in the thought processes of his adversaries. This book tells us how his manipulations allowed him to publish in the West Cancer Ward (1968), August 1914 (1971), and The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956 (1973). Solzhenitsyn was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature".[ This book covers how Solzhenitsyn maximized the PR benefit for him while not going Stockholm to receive his award for fear that he would not be allowed to reenter. He was eventually “expatriated” suddenly from the Soviet Union to Frankfurt, West Germany and stripped of his Soviet citizenship.in 1974. That mysterious plane trip is the most dramatic part of the work here, but still he can’t help but showing off one-upping his minders, such as to peremptorily go to the restroom.

I was hoping to get more about life in the Soviet era and particularly the effects of the state police apparatus. This is covered mostly in their organized phone harassment, but I feel I had a better picture drawn for me in the novels [book:We the Living|668], Darkness at Noon, and even the fanciful 1984.

[Jerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

…they had discovered that royalties may take the form of barred windows and barbed wire.

This is an incredible glimpse into the life of a very stubborn writer in Soviet Russia. By training a mathematician, the narrative begins after his time in the camps, leading “a life of modest comfort and degrading conformity” as a teacher in Central Russia. When Kruschev’s Twenty-second Congress featured an attack on Stalin’s camps and a hint by Novy Mir editor Aleksandr Trifonovich Tvardovsky that they would be open to submissions about the camps, Solzhenitsyn took the chance to submit One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, then titled Shch-854.

From there, Solzhenitsyn chronicles the extremely short window of opportunity for literature in the Soviet Union, and his attempts to maneuver around the bureaucracy and confound the censors.

Rather than explaining special euphemisms and cultural references as they come up, such terms are asterisked and can be looked up in the back by page number; for example, “special settlers*” leads to:

special settlers: “Special settler” is a Soviet euphemism for a person banished to a remote area of the U.S.S.R.

And “Shevardino*” leads to:

Shevardino: The Shevardino redoubt was the site of a brief but significant clash between Russian and French forces on the eve of the battle of Borodino in 1812.

As his opportunities for public speaking dwindled, he cherished those that remained, mostly what seem to be lesser organizations such as the “Lazarev Institute of Oriental Studies” where he read portions of Cancer Ward and then fought back against the slanders of state-sponsored media.

You would have to live through a long life of slavery, bowing and scraping to authority from childhood up, springing to your feet to join with the rest in hypocritical applause, nodding assent to patent lies, never entitled to answer back—all this as slave and citizen, then later as slave and zek: hands behind your back! don’t look around! don’t break ranks!—to appreciate that hour of free speech from a platform with an audience of five hundred people, also intoxicated with freedom.

He was frustrated by the timidity of his editors; at one point, arguing about the “Soviet regime”, Tvardovsky accuses Solzhenitsyn of refusing “to forgive the Soviet regime anything.”

“You refuse to forget anything! You have much too good a memory!”

He does later, for a different argument, apologize—or at least explain himself—to Tvardovsky that “This is a different age” than that in which Tvardovsky had grown up, and that “different skills are needed”.

I belong to the Russian convict world no less, and owe no less to it, than I do to Russian literature. I got my education there, and it will last forever… I feel that my whole life is a process of rising gradually from my knees…

In one Animal House-like scene, when he describes the gutting of Novy Mir’s editorial staff, including Tvardovsky, Solzhenitsyn appears to take them to task. The Soviet bureaucracy was slow, and there were weeks between their forced resignation and their replacement, during which they turned to samizdat yet produced only two half-assed “panegyrics”, so “exceptionally orthodox” that “you could have submitted every word of this to Pravda, so why the anonymity?”

He is often just as critical of the West’s timidity:

During my time in the camps I had got to know the enemies of the human race quite well: they respect the big fist and nothing else; the harder you slug them, the safer you will be. (People in the West simply will not understand this, and are forever hoping to mollify them with concessions.)

In one parenthetical, he indicts the “whole Party apparat” as an…

…immense strata of educated mediocrities, this educated rabble which has usurped the title of the intelligentsia…

There are also occasionally humorous episodes worthy of a farce, such as when the censors allowed several friendly letters through after the publication of The Gulag Archipelago. One of the publishers had given the author’s address without the apartment number. These letters, being basically mislabeled, went into a different sorting box and ended up bypassing the censors!

Less humorous are the threats from the Soviet regime disguised as or laundered through thugs and mobs, which Solzhenitsyn labels a “bandit masquerade”.

This kind of bandit masquerade is not altogether a novelty to KGB personnel. There are cases of hooligans going unpunished, hooligans who have beaten up undesirable dissidents in the streets, who have snatched briefcases from Western correspondents, who have broken windows of foreign cars. After the failure of the campaign to slander me behind my back, a bandits’ masquerade is just what you would expect.

But most of this book is about a life of writing under repression, the secrecy, the safeguards and redundancies to ensure work is not lost, and the importance of timing for when works should be released either internally as samizdat or outside the Soviet Union completely.

Reading this book makes me want to get cracking on Cancer Ward and The Gulag Archipelago. The background on how they were written, safeguarded, and finally published is itself compelling.

Fate was not seeking its victim: the victim had set out to meet his fate.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is Solzhenitsyn’s most intimate, most combustible work of nonfiction—a memoir written like a battle report, a diary of intellectual trench warfare in a state that believed literature should be obedient, ornamental, and strictly house-trained.

Instead, Solzhenitsyn writes like a man chiselling through stone with his bare hands. The title itself, drawn from a Russian proverb, captures the absurd heroism at the heart of the book: a calf repeatedly butting its head against an immovable oak.

The oak is the Soviet state; the calf is the writer who refuses to stop pushing.

What emerges is a portrait of an artistic life lived under surveillance, censorship, and the constant threat of obliteration.

But Solzhenitsyn refuses self-pity. His narrative is sharp, unsentimental, and often darkly comic.

He moves through the corridors of Soviet literary institutions—the editorial offices, the writers’ union meetings, the bureaucratic labyrinths—with a mixture of grim clarity and anthropological fascination.

He dissects the psychology of censorship not as an abstract political mechanism but as a moral infection that corrodes everyone it touches: writers who censor themselves before the state ever needs to; editors who wield their small powers like scalpels; officials who pretend to protect literature even as they strangle it.

The memoir is structured not as a linear autobiography but as a series of encounters, collisions, and revelations.

Solzhenitsyn chronicles the long, perilous path to getting One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich published in Novy Mir, and the even longer path to keeping his other works alive in manuscript form—hidden, copied secretly, smuggled abroad, guarded like contraband spiritual currency.

The book becomes a record of literary resistance: the invisible networks of typists, readers, and friends who helped keep the words alive when the system tried to kill them.

One of the most compelling aspects of the memoir is the interplay between Solzhenitsyn’s solitude and the colossal forces arrayed against him. His adversaries are not faceless—they are editors, bureaucrats, and fellow writers—yet they all operate inside the same gravitational pull of fear.

The result is a landscape where cowardice and courage constantly change places, where moral clarity is destabilized by necessity, and where even trivial decisions can carry enormous risks.

Solzhenitsyn’s refusal to bend becomes both a principle and a survival strategy.

Stylistically, the book is fierce, ironic, and relentless. Solzhenitsyn writes with the crispness of someone who has no interest in cultivating myth about himself. His prose is lean, controlled, and occasionally explosive.

He knows when to step back and when to strike.

The memoir reads like a series of revelations delivered in the quiet voice of someone who has already paid for every sentence.

In the end, The Oak and the Calf is not simply a memoir of a writer’s struggle against an authoritarian regime.

It is a meditation on the power of the individual conscience, the fragility of truth, and the improbable endurance of words in a system determined to erase them.

The oak may be vast, but the calf never stops pushing—and sometimes, impossibly, the oak cracks.

Most recommended.

[Bry · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I read Cancer Ward by Solzhenitsyn about 7 years ago, I had no clue about the historical significance of it that the Oak and the Calf brings to light. It is a fascinating window into the life of a man who survived the gulag and became a literary dissident who existed to challenged the orthodoxy of the hardline Soviet regime. It provides also a peripheral into the "socialist realism" cannon of literature that was a product of the USSR, a genre the author did not have much love for.

This book is a good comparative companion to understanding the same old east vs west mentality that exists in Russia today, as Putin rabidly utilizes the anti-Western sentiments in order to attempt to justify his fascist, power-hungry fantasies of being a new age Tsar. It's always complex to evaluate and determine the difference between being a "foreign agent" and simply being a human of the international order. Independent artists, writers and journalists today may receive grants and funding from organizations that could implicate them in political drama. It does not, of course, always mean that there is some sort of ulterior motive or make them a traitor. It's an important reminder today to sharpen your analysis skills so you may determine yourself who and what is your enemy -- any government could turn into a witch hunting, repressive regime that attempts to control social order by accusing people who speak up and do work to expose corruption as foreign agents. It would do well for those interested in protecting their freedom of thought and expression to learn more and always be weary of people who try to force you to hate others.

Although, as contentious political stories always do, this book caused negative reactions from those who defended the USSR when the worst repression was taking place, it really is an illuminating read. It is all the more important in 2024 as we see various political battles taking place over our rights to freedom of expression. We see this happening now in the context of a new frontier of disinformation that is able to seep through social media channels in novel ways we are scrambling to catch up with to fully understand. We see this also happening now in the dawn of the AI revolution, which we can only imagine what will bring to communications and the information empire.

What new types of censorship and information manipulation -- propaganda -- will you read today as you sit locked to your screen, scrolling through the enclosed circuits of communication?

[Jan Kjellin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Inte hade jag väl föreställt mig att Alexander Solsjenitsyn var en slags haverist, ändå. Jag menar... Dissident, javisst, men haverist? Nej, det var inte riktigt på kartan.
Ändå är de första två tredjedelarna en odyssé av klagomål och gnäll och något slags byråkratiskt stångande nästan för sakens skull (även om den insatte mycket väl förstår vad som står på spel för Solsjenitsyn och kanske förmår ha lite mer förståelse för skildringarna). Han framställer sig helt enkelt som en riktigt jobbig jävel på det där riktigt jobbiga jävelsättet, snarare än det där "sparkar uppåt med finess"-sättet.
Förvisso ska man inte låta ens fördomar styra omdömet, men jag hade nog ändå fått ut mer av en skildring av det underjordiska författarskapets vedermödor, än den (i egen uppfattning) rättfärdige och samhällsomstörtande författarens torra redogöranden (med lika torra bilagor) om officiell publicering/icke publicering av verk han samtidigt sprider via samizdat och utomlands. Om hans baktankar (fast det kan ju ses som uppfriskande ärligt, förstås) med Nobelpris och andra offentliga uppträdanden. Och korrespondens med statens olika representanter samt utländsk media.

Egentligen hade de räckt att läsa (fast nej, det hade det förstås inte) boken från skildringen av iscensättandet av hans deportering. Där, i detta omtumlande skeende, händer något med hans språk och berättarskärpa som är närmare besläktat med hans sätt att skildra GULAG-systemet i "GULAG-arkipelagen", eller den mer skönlitterärt utformade "En dag i Ivan Denisovitsjs Liv" och som griper mig om strupen och väser "Läs! Läs!" i mitt öra.

Jag misstänker att boken främst riktar sig till hans samtida sovjetiska läsare. De som följt hans kamp, känner (till) dess spelare och med andra ord vet vad sjutton han pratar om. För oss andra blir det mer eller mindre outhärdligt för det mesta.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

An amazing prediction of the fall of the Soviet Union, at a time when that seemed impossible.

[Pamela · Rating 5 out of 5]

It makes you laugh and cry at the same time. Tvardovsky is tragic. Solzhenitsyn was a master at his craft. This is a book I go back to every few years.

[Drew Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book in high school and was blown away by the singularity of Solzhenitsyn's mind and his perspective on life in the USSR.

[Vagabond of Letters, DLitt · Rating 4 out of 5]

7.5/10

[John Wiswell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a severe man. Cuffing his hands behind his back emboldened him, because he associated dangling arms freely with the listlessness of camp prisoners. His is a fascinating memoir of Soviet publishing. He takes you from his first days trying to get anything published, through getting politics into his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, and into his hectic escape from the country. You meet the major magazine men of post-Stalin Russia, witness all the mysterious disappearances and unlicensed publications of a man’s books, and get his sense of frustration with a Europe and America that would not help where it was desperately needed.

Despite his fast beliefs and morals, seldom in the 500+ pages does he sermonize. You may get a page aside on the core of Marxism, but that is the limit of tangential judgment. Rather he spends the memoir on all the specific events that marked his career and the literary landscape, shaping facts to expose his views. Especially today when non-fiction is glutted with books of opinion, this reads like a virtue. Further to his credit, Solzhenitsyn still turns phrase in aggressive language, giving you lines to mull over on the train. In the middle of a fateful drive with the police who are likely to incarcerate him, he wonders where they will send him, then asks, "If you're going to jail, does it matter which one?"

The memoir moves faster than most novels. In doing so he treats most people casually; many readers will have to look up who Malenkov or Bulgakov were. Yet he defines people by their angles: this editor espoused these anti-religious opinions; this secretary stole that manuscript; Sartre wanted this out of a public dinner with him. By treating it that way even casual readers will be able to digest people. I wouldn’t advise taking Solzhenitsyn’s portrayal of anyone as unerring truth, but it always suffices to suffuse opinion and necessary fact. I may have never read so brisk a memoir, and certainly no memoir of this length.

[José Van Rosmalen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solzhenitsyn schreef deze uitgebreide memoires van 1967 tot 1974. Hij was een Russische schrijver die in eigen land onder druk stond en in het buitenland steeds meer furore maakte. Hij had te maken met tegenwerking en uitsluiting en ook met bedreiging. Hij publiceerde onder meer over zijn opsluiting in een kamp in zijn boeken over de Goelag archipel. In 1970 kreeg hij de Nobelprijs voor literatuur. Hij kon deze niet in Stockholm in ontvangst nemen. Hij schrijft vol ironie over de machinaties van de overheid. Toen was er een communistisch systeem maar ook onder Poetin lijkt dit allemaal nog niet veranderd. Solzhenitsyn was een conservatieve man. Qua toon doet hij me denken aan Willem Frederik Hermans of Karel van het Reve. Daarmee kun je ook zeggen dat er literair wel wat te genieten valt aan zijn formuleringen en redeneringen. Het is wel een flinke kluif om te lezen, zo’n 450 bladzijden met kleine lettters. Het geeft wel wat meer inzicht in de rijkdom van de Russische literatuur, die vaak tegen de verdrukking in heeft kunnen gedijen. Toen de auteur naar het westen ging werd hij opgevangen door de gastvrije Heinrich Boll. Op zijn oude dag keerde hij naar Rusland terug.

[Beth]

I enjoyed learning the details of writing and publishing controversial books in the old Soviet Union--or the art of getting them published elsewhere. There are people struggling to write the truth under dictators all around the world. Just reading this book will give you a sense of what they are up against. Beth

[Adam Shields · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short review: I have been working on this for almost 3 months. I am giving up. There is some good insights into writing and politics. But the audio is bad, I don't have enough background in the era and I have too many other books. So I am giving up. But there really were some good things in what I read.

My longer review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/oak-calf-solzhenitsyn/

[Martha]

I was telling Angie about goodreads and told her I would post her recommendations. She loved this book because it gave such a detailed picture of what it took for Solzhenitsyn to get his books published and to overcome the attempts of the Soviet state to suppress his work.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rated: C

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't read this yet but this sounds like a good book.
Joking more like a awesome book.
I hope I get a chance to read this.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my favorite of all his books. Since I read it in the 70's, I don't remember why, but since it was about him as a writer, that's probably the reason I liked it.

[Mamari]

Ich habe ein Buch bei BookCrossing.com registriert!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/12295526

[Derek · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exciting, well-told tale of a great literary and moral adventure. After Gulag Archipelago, this is my favorite Solzhenitsyn. And of course it’s lighter fare, though still no picnic.

[Will]

Memoir of author's 10-year battle to outwit Soviet authorities and get his works published.

[Jan Zelinka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hvězdičku dolů za míru pompéznosti, na kterou nejsem zvyklý. Jinak si není na co ztěžovat.

[Marko]

I have the german translation.