Month: January 2015

August 1914

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August 1914 is a story of WW1 and is part of the Red Wheel series, which also includes the similarly named October 1916, March 1917, and April 1917. Solzhenitsyn originally intended for the series to continue to 1922, but that obviously didn’t happen. From the 2000 edition:

“In his monumental narrative of the outbreak of the First World War and the ill-fated Russian offensive into East Prussia, Solzhenitsyn has written what Nina Krushcheva, in The Nation, calls “a dramatically new interpretation of Russian history.” The assassination of tsarist prime minister Pyotr Stolypin, a crucial event in the years leading up to the Revolution of 1917, is reconstructed from the alienating viewpoints of historical witnesses. The sole voice of reason among the advisers to Tsar Nikolai II, Stolypin died at the hands of the anarchist Mordko Bogrov, and with him perished Russia’s last hope for reform. Translated by H.T. Willetts.

August 1914 is the first volume of Solzhenitsyn’s epic, The Red Wheel; the second is November 1916. Each of the subsequent volumes will concentrate on another critical moment or “knot,” in the history of the Revolution.”

Cover from the same edition:

August 1914

See you tomorrow! –the Daily Blini

Cancer Ward

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At least this one isn’t about Gulags. From the 1991 Straus and Giroux edition:

“Cancer Ward examines the relationship of a group of people in the cancer ward of a provincial Soviet hospital in 1955, two years after Stalin’s death. We see them under normal circumstances, and also reexamined at the eleventh hour of illness. Together they represent a remarkable cross-section of contemporary Russian characters and attitudes. The experiences of the central character, Oleg Kostoglotov, closely reflect the author’s own: Solzhenitsyn himself became a patient in a cancer ward in the mid-1950s, on his release from a labor camp, and later recovered.”

Cover from the same edition:

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See you tomorrow! –The Daily Blini

The First Circle

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ANOTHER Gulag book? Yes. From the 1997 Northwestern University Press edition:

“Set in Moscow during a three-day period in December 1949, The First Circle is the story of the prisoner Gleb Nerzhin, a brilliant mathematician. At the age of thirty-one, Nerzhin has survived the war years on the German front and the postwar years in a succession of Russian prisons and labor camps. His story is interwoven with the stories of a dozen fellow prisoners – each an unforgettable human being – from the prison janitor to the tormented Marxist intellectual who designed the Dnieper dam; of the reigning elite and their conflicted subordinates; and of the women, wretched or privileged, bound to these men. A landmark of Soviet literature, The First Circle is as powerful today as it was when it was first published, nearly thirty years ago.”

Cover of the 2009 Deckle Edge edition:

See you tomorrow! –The Daily Blini

The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956

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From the back of the Harper Collins 2002 edition:

“Drawing on his own incarceration and exile, as well as on evidence from more than 200 fellow prisoners and Soviet archives, Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn reveals the entire apparatus of Soviet repression — the state within the state that ruled all-powerfully.Through truly Shakespearean portraits of its victims — men, women, and children — we encounter secret police operations, labor camps and prisons; the uprooting or extermination of whole populations, the “welcome” that awaited Russian soldiers who had been German prisoners of war. Yet we also witness the astounding moral courage of the incorruptible, who, defenseless, endured great brutality and degradation. “The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956″ — a grisly indictment of a regime, fashioned here into a veritable literary miracle — has now been updated with a new introduction that includes the fall of the Soviet Union and Solzhenitsyn’s move back to Russia.”

I told you he wrote a lot about labor camps!

Cover from the 1973 Perennial Library edition.

See you tomorrow! –The Daily Blini

One Day in the Live of Ivan Denisovich

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From the back of the ’63 Signet Classic edition:

“This extraordinary novel is one of the most significant and outspoken literary documents ever to come out of Soviet Russia. It is both a brutally graphic picture of life in a Stalinist work camp and a moving tribute to man’s will to prevail over relentless dehumanization. A masterpiece of modern Russian fiction, One Day in the Live of Ivan Denisovich first brought to world attention the work of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, brilliant author of The Cancer Ward and The First Circle.”

Solzhenitsyn himself spent years in Soviet labor camps and draws heavily here from his experiences. Many of his books have a central topic of Gulags, and we will some of these later this week.

This is the edition that I have, and I like the cover of it a lot.

See you tomorrow! –The Daily Blini

image from x

Works of Solzhenitsyn

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Last week we looked at some Solzhenitsyn quotes. This week we’ll be giving an overview of a different famous Solzhenitsyn book every day. If there’s one you particularly want me to include, leave a comment and I’ll make a post about it!

To get started, here’s some background on Solzhenitsyn for those who aren’t familiar with him: gradesaver.com/author/solzhenitsyn

See you tomorrow! –The Daily Blini