All in the Family: The Economics of Interpersonal Relationships in the Gulag
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published 03/06/2008
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Summary
The synopsis on the back cover of Alexander Solzhenistyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich claims that it is “the harrowing account of one day in the life of a man who has conceded to all things evil with patience, dignity, and enduring strength.” Like so many others, the author of this quote reads the work as an analysis of how virtuous and strong characters function despite the horrid conditions they face. A close reading of the interpersonal relationships in the text suggests that these characters behave in natural ways predictable from their ambient conditions. Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s depiction of the camps focuses on the organization of a kinship society among the workers and how camp conditions naturally lead to such an organization. The familial relationships of the prisoners within the camp, on the whole, develop in response to economic and financial constraints; Solzhenitsyn uses the inconsistency of this group behavior with the Communist Manifesto to imply the failure of implementing Marxism in the Soviet Union.
Table of Contents
- Solzhenitsyn's text continually persuades the reader that the prisoners within the camp have established social networks and hierarchies.
- The result of meager food rations and long hours of labor is the development of tightly controlled mutualisms and dependencies among the zeks.
- Solzhenitsyn successfully comments both on the atrocious conditions existent in the Siberian labor camps and on the failure of Soviet policy at large.
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