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Title: The First Circle by Thomas P. Whitney, Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn ISBN: 0810115905 Publisher: Northwestern University Press Pub. Date: October, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.05 Amazon Price(USD): $11.24 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.92857
Rating: 4
Summary: Injustice in Stalin's Soviet Union
Comment: The book's title refers to the first circle of Hell in Dante's Inferno. This is the least oppressive level of Hell. The prison camp described in this book offers plenty of food to the prisoners, no backbreaking physical labor, and a warm bed. Most of Stalin's prison camps are located in Siberia where the prisoners freeze and starve. What accounts for Stalin's leniency? The prisoners are scientists working on top secret projects like a telephone for Stalin's use that can't be tapped, and a system of identifying anonymous voices on public telephones by the voice prints, similar to finger prints. In Stalin's evil country, you are not innocent until proven guilty. You are guilty as soon as you are arrested. One prisoner was put in jail because his neighbors wanted his family's apartment and made up an unsupported lie about him. They got the apartment and destroyed his life and family. Most of the prisoners were WW2 vets, POWs returning from Germany. They weren't welcomed home with appreciation and honor. They were lured home by lies, and immediately imprisoned.
There are many great characters. You'll remember Nerzhin and his wife, and wonder how things will work out for them. You'll remember Rubin, the sincere communist caught in the web of the system he believes in. You'll remember Innokenty Volodin, in trouble for doing a good deed, as innocent as his first name. When you read a mediocre book there are no characters to remember, just a predictable formulaic storyline and a group of people and events you find hard to believe. This is a rare opportunity for you to be a fly on the wall, halfway around the world, observing life in a Russian prison camp. The reason I give it only 4 stars is because I like happy endings and resolved problems. This book would make a good movie. There's plenty of room for a sequel (which hasn't been written) where we can find a satisfactory ending for some of the characters. Stalin the insane sewer rat died eventually and was denounced by Khrushchev, so maybe in time these people were allowed to live out the rest of their lives in freedom.
Rating: 5
Summary: If you like to read...read this
Comment: I was first introdced to Solzhenitsyn's works when I was a freshman in high school, far too many years ago in a little town. The book was the Volume 1 of The Gulag Archipelago. It was really an eye-opener for me in so many ways, given that it was the first "really serious" book that I'd read.
I believe that Solzhenitsyn is the best writer of the 20th century, or at least he's the top writer I've read so far (and I've read a lot of books). Maybe that's influenced by my early exposure, but I don't think so; I find his works just as compelling now as I did then.
The First Circle is one of his most "accessible" works (that is, you can just jump in and start reading) and probably one of his best. A very compelling story; his portraits of the various vile creatures of the Soviet government have been shown to be quite accurate, and the way the various plots intertwine and are resolved is wonderful.
The First Circle gives great insight into a culture totally foreign to most US citizens, as the book's a mixture of spy novel, guide to life in a Gulag camp, and brief introduction to Soviet society of the 1950s. A depressing place to be sure, but fascinating. Well worth reading.
Rating: 5
Summary: The First Circle
Comment: What makes The First Circle such a great book (the best I've read by Solzhenitsyn) is how he reduces a political system and economic ideology to individual choices. It was a system built upon greed, jealousy, selfish pragmatism and fear, the vanity of Stalin, the petty rivalry between commanding officers, the desperate connivance of a prisoner who will turn against his fellow man in order to better his own lot. In other words, humanity.
The consequences were also human: the loss of the prime years of a man's life, a life without the love of a woman, a father worrying about the fate of his young daughter thousands of miles away. Solzhenitsyn does a masterful job of rendering the real world behind philosophy and ideology, the world the USSR lost sight of when they placed ends before means.
In the end, what is perhaps most frightening is that the face of evil is so banal.
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Title: Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn, Nicholas Bethell, David Burg ISBN: 0374511993 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: November, 1991 List Price(USD): $18.00 Amazon Price(USD): $12.60 |
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Title: The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation by Thomas P. Whitney, Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn ISBN: 0813332893 Publisher: Westview Press Pub. Date: May, 1997 List Price(USD): $25.00 Amazon Price(USD): $17.50 |
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Title: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn, Alexander Tvardovsky, Yevgeny Yevtushenko ISBN: 0451527097 Publisher: Signet Classic Pub. Date: August, 1998 List Price(USD): $5.95 Amazon Price(USD): $5.95 |
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Title: August 1914: The Red Wheel/Knot 1 by H.T. Willetts, Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn ISBN: 0374519994 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: May, 2000 List Price(USD): $25.00 Amazon Price(USD): $17.50 |
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Title: November, 1916: Red Wheel, Knot II (Solzhenisyn Aleksandr Isaevich.//Red Wheel (Paper), Vol 2) by Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn, H. T. Willetts ISBN: 0374527032 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux (Pap) Pub. Date: May, 2000 List Price(USD): $17.00 Amazon Price(USD): $11.90 |
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