The first published Soviet work of its kind, the novella centers on the concentration camps in which millions died under dictator Joseph Stalin.
Ivan Denisovich, which initially seemed to signal the beginning of relaxed Soviet censorship, instead contributed to the political demise of Premier Nikita Khrushchev, who supported de-Stalinization before being deposed in 1964. There followed a decade of creativity and conflict for Solzhenitsyn. Ultimately, this was to the chagrin of Soviet authorities, who deported him in 1974.
An appraisal of Solzhenitsyn's life and work must address irresolvable paradoxes--he has acquired fame as a protest writer, but at heart he is an aesthete. His moral and spiritual authority come from the way he has borne witness to twentieth-century totalitarianism, but his dislike of publicity and his reclusiveness makes him an anachronism. Solzhenitsyn's work needs to be discussed in relation to the tradition from which it comes, for he responds to Socialist Realism, which was proclaimed in 1932 as the only acceptable form of art in the then-Soviet Union. Socialist Realism literature resembles many Western best-sellers in its accessible style, positive heroes, and happy endings; but as such, it cut off Russian literature from its rich heritage of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
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