[ExI] Solzhenitsyn on tobacco

[Michael LaTorra]

Thanks for posting this quote from the only book by Aleksandr Isaaevich
Solzhenitsyn to be published in Russia during the Soviet era.

For anyone unfamiliar with this novel, I'd like to explain the context of
the story. The eponymous character (Ivan Denisovich Shukhov) was a prisoner
in the notorious Soviet GULAG system, interned in a camp somewhere on the
frozen wastes of Siberia. His life, as described matter-of-factly by former
prisoner Solzhenitsyn, who definitely knew what he was talking about, is an
ongoing horror of overwork, near-starvation, and brutality. The novel,
however, described a GOOD DAY in his life. So many things that could have
gone wrong, didn't. While the reader is moved by Solzhenitsyn's depiction of
the awful conditions in the prison camp, the main character is pleased that
everything went so well. He even got a smoke!

Regards,
Mike LaTorra,
who spent much of his undergraduate career studying Russian language,
history and literature

On Thu, Nov 26, 2009 at 8:18 AM, Robert Masters <rob4332000 at yahoo.com>wrote:

>
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> http://www.davar.net/EXTRACTS/FICTION/ONE-DAY.HTM
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> Shukhov felt pleased with life as he went to sleep.  A lot of good things
> had happened that day.  He hadn't been thrown in the hole.  The gang hadn't
> been dragged off to Sotsgorodok.  He'd swiped the extra gruel at
> dinnertime.  The foreman had got a good rate for the job.  He'd enjoyed
> working on the wall.  He hadn't been caught with the blade at the search
> point.  He'd earned a bit from Tsezar that evening.  And he'd bought his
> tobacco.
>
>
>        --Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH
>
>
>
>
> Rob Masters
> Charter member, AATF
> Americans for Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms
>
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>
>
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