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The First Circle
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The First Circle or In the First Circle - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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The theme of Soviet era legal institutions and what it means to be human when one is imprisoned in a work camp or specifically in an intellectual electrical engineer's camp is well explored in this long novel. The book is framed by the case of Volodin, a career diplomat who is driven by his internal sense of moral behavior to attempt to warn a doctor not to do something that would be considered traitorous behavior. He fails to get the warning across and spends most of the book worried about being arrested. However, he is hardly the center of the book. Rather the zek engineers of a 'sharashka' are the focus of the book. We see them through their own point of view and then through other zek's point of view and this narrative technique works well to explore the various philosophical attitudes that the prisoners adopt to survive as best they can. We are also introduced to many of the guards, the security officers and the soviet leaders. Personally, I found the chapters about the guards and security personnel to be the least interesting because they tended to lean toward caricature. The character of Gleb Nerzhin was the most fully developed one and it is said that it reflects the situation of the author. I felt that the book did not need to be as long as it was with many of the chapters focused on people not key to the main themes, but I did appreciate his looking at some of the "free" women and the horrible limbo conditions of the wives. I have to say that I have preferred other works by this author.
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The title is an allusion to Dante's first circle, or limbo of Hell in The Divine Comedy, wherein the philosophers of Greece, and other virtuous pagans, live in a walled green garden. They are unable to enter Heaven, as they were born before Christ, but enjoy a small space of relative freedom in the heart of Hell.
The novel is about friendship, complicity and conscience. Themes include stoic integrity and humanism. The author shares how hard it is to maintain dignity while in a system designed to rob you of dignity.
3 Stars
This is a really tough one as when I was reading it I appreciated what the author was doing and the message about justice vs punishment and what it meant to live under Stalin and then as soon as I put it down whoosh everything went out of my head, I couldn’t keep track of characters and so I am left with an overall impression rather than a detailed knowledge of the book.
This is a really tough one as when I was reading it I appreciated what the author was doing and the message about justice vs punishment and what it meant to live under Stalin and then as soon as I put it down whoosh everything went out of my head, I couldn’t keep track of characters and so I am left with an overall impression rather than a detailed knowledge of the book.
4 stars. I really do love Solzhenitsyn's ability to create a beautiful joyful sense of humanity out of mundane common experiences- and how they still thrive in the worst imaginable circumstances.His ability to make characters that are usually homogenized as a mass of suffering- like prisoners- into such compelling complicated people with unique viewpoints and life experiences is great as always.
I found the Stalin pov chapters to also be a really interesting choice.
Solzhenitsyn writes from experience in a Soviet labour camp in Russia during the era of Stalin. I am not sure if he ever was imprisoned in a sharashka, where political prisoners were forced to work for the benefit of the state, but he writes vividly about what it was like to be confined in this way. His characters discuss things such as ethics in a patently unethical situation; loyalty to one's friends, political ideals or family; and the various mechanisms of learning to cope in difficult circumstances. It is extremely thought-provoking and definitely deserves to be on the 1001 list, but I found it excruciating to read and struggled for four months to finish it.
The novel depicts the lives of the occupants of a sharashka (a research and development bureau made of Gulag inmates) located in the Moscow suburbs. This novel is highly autobiographical. Many of the prisoners (zeks) are technicians or academics who have been arrested under Article 58 of the RSFSR Penal Code in Joseph Stalin's purges following the Second World War. Unlike inhabitants of other Gulag labor camps, the sharashka zeks were adequately fed and enjoyed good working conditions; however, if they found disfavor with the authorities, they could be instantly shipped to Siberia.
The title is an allusion to Dante's first circle, or limbo of Hell in The Divine Comedy, wherein the philosophers of Greece, and other virtuous pagans, live in a walled green garden. They are unable to enter Heaven, as they were born before Christ, but enjoy a small space of relative freedom in the heart of Hell. (from wikipedia).
Characters
Innokenty Volodin: A Ministry official whose phone call at the beginning of the book functions as a catalyst for much of the later action in the sharashka and eventually leads to his arrest.
Gleb Nerzhin: A zek mathematician, 31. An autobiographical character. He is offered a position in a cryptography group, and refuses, even knowing this means he will be sent away from the sharashka.
Nadezhda (Nadya) Nerzhina: Gleb's wife. Waited for eight years and became a student in Moscow because of him (Marfino is not far from Moscow) but is considering divorce because remaining married to a prisoner blocks her prospects for continuing studies or finding a job.
Dmitry Sologdin: A zek designer, 36, a survivor of the northern camps now serving his second term. Sologdin is based on Solzhenitsyn's friend Dimitrii Mikhailovich Panin, who later wrote a book entitled The Notebooks of Sologdin. He works on a cryptographic machine in secret, but is found out and has to develop his invention so as not to get sent back.
Lev Rubin: A zek philologist and teacher, 36, a Communist from youth, but nevertheless always ready for a good joke, even about socialism. Rubin is based on Solzhenitsyn's friend Lev Kopelev. He gets a position in a new group; his first task is to identify the man who called to warn Dr. Dobrumov not to share his medical discoveries with international colleagues.
Valentin "Valentulya" Pryanchikov: A zek engineer and head of the acoustic laboratory, he is not taken seriously and behaves like a child, despite the fact that he is as old as Nerzhin.
Rostislav "Ruska" Doronin: A zek mechanic, 23. Loves Klara, daughter of the prosecutor Makarygin. An informer himself, albeit a reluctant one, is beaten and sent away for helping fellow inmates find out who the other informers are.
Klara Makarygina: Makarygin's youngest daughter, works in the vacuum laboratory and falls in love with Ruska.