One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich Discussion January 11

December 2013 marked two important dates in the life of the Soviet dissident and Nobel Laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. December 11 would have been his 95^th birthday and December 28 was the 40^th anniversary of the publication of “The Gulag Archipelago” in Paris. Describing the horrors of the Soviet forced labor camps, the book was translated into 40 languages and some 10 million copies were printed around the world. Two months after the book’s publication, Solzhenitsyn was arrested, stripped of his citizenship and expelled from the USSR. 

Of the 20 years he was to be exiled from his homeland, Solzhenitsyn spent almost 18 of them in Cavendish, VT.

To mark these significant events, the Cavendish Historical Society (CHS) will be screening the movie based on Solzhenitsyn’s book “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” at noon on Saturday,  January 11. Following the movie, at 2 pm, the Cavendish Fletcher Community Library (CFCC) and CHS will host a discussion of the book/movie. A Russian tea will be provided, thanks to Kata Welch, the librarian for CFCC. Meet at the Cavendish Library, on Main Street in Proctorsville, for all events.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is set in the Soviet labor camp (gulag) in the 1950’s and describes a single day of an ordinary prisoner, Ivan Denisovich Shukov. The novella was published in the magazine Novy Mir and was the first written account of  the camps. Millions of copies were circulated from hand to hand in the Soviet Union.  The West hailed the author as a “truth teller,” while the ordinary Soviet had confirmation of stories family members, who had been in the camps, had been telling.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is available at the Cavendish Library, most book stores and from ebookbrowse.

Film adaptations of the book are available at the following sites:

• 1970 Version 

• Bob Hope Presents Chrysler Theater