SOURCE: “A Shadow of the Past,” translated by Ewa Markowska, in East Europe, Vol. 12, No. 2, February, 1963, pp. 27-9.

In the following review, originally published in Trybuna Ludu (Warsaw), the critic positively discusses the publication of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and the novel's plot and central character.

While Khrushchev inveighs against “formalism” and “abstractionism” in painting and literature, he has encouraged young writers like Yevtushenko to expose the abuses of the Stalinist era. Alexander Solzhenitsyn recently created a sensation with a short novel entitled One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, dealing with life in a Soviet concentration camp during Stalin’s time. A review of the novel appeared in the Polish party organ, Trybuna Ludu (Warsaw), Nov. 25, 1962.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich—one out of the three thousand six hundred fifty-three days he is serving—is the subject of Alexander...