In the following essay, Zekulin evaluates several of Solzhenitsyn's stories that deal with the fate of the Russian peasantry and intelligentsia in the Soviet era, arguing that these works derive from a vital nineteenth-century tradition of critical realism in Russian literature.

In the following excerpt, Ericson studies the developing themes in Solzhenitsyn's early prose poems and stories and examines the novella Lenin in Zurich as a political work intended to demythologize the Russian leader.

In the following excerpt, Moody analyzes One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, comparing it with "Matryona's Home. " He concludes that the works "together . . . provide a picture of goodness and truth at the mercy of evil and falsehood."

In the following excerpt, Kodjak offers a survey of theme and plot in Solzhenitsyn's short fiction.

In the following essay, Spitz analyzes the significance of the structural and linguistic devices of "Matryona's Home" apropos the work's themes, ideals, and ironies.

In the following essay, Siegel argues that Solzhenitsyn's vituperative portrait of Vladimir Lenin in his Lenin in Zurich "has many of the traits of [Josef Stalin and is also in part an unconscious mirror image of Solzhenitsyn himself," but "bears little resemblance to the historical Lenin."]

In the following essay, Lottridge associates Solzhenitsyn's "Matryona's Home" and "Zakhar-the-Pouch" ("Zahar-Kalita") with nineteenth-century Russian writer Nikolai Leskov's "well-known series of stories about righteous men."

In the following essay, Jackson explores the theme of social upheaval and disorder as it is evinced in the life of the symbolic figure Matryona in "Matryona's Home. "

In the following essay, Clardy studies the importance of the "impending event" as a device used to maintain interest in Solzhenitsyn's narratives about "the revelation of character, " including "Matryona's Home," the novella One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and the novel The Cancer Ward.

Western critics have been quick to analyze Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's humanitarian concerns and brilliant development of the metaphorical novel. What has been lacking in discussions of Solzhenitsyn's works is an understanding of their relationship to Soviet literary tradition; his writings need to be placed in the context not only of the dissident movement but of Soviet literature as a whole. Solzhenitsyn's writings are neither simply an anachronistic return to critical realism with no re...

In the following essay, originally published in 1972, Dunlop examines Solzhenitsyn's short sketches, or prose poems, as works "primarily concerned with the spiritual inadequacy of modern life."

In the following essay, Koehler studies use of language in Solzhenitsyn's short fiction and contends that the author "has in terms of the Russian literary tradition broken through a barrier as an interpreter of the 'popular' mind."

In the following essay, Ragsdale associates Matryona of "Matryona's Home " with Mother Russia, and probes the cultural concerns espoused in the work, calling it "the Slavophile protest against urbanism, technology, alcohol, against the neglect of old folk values."

Alexander Solzhenitsyn has been described by different critics as both an old-fashioned writer and a genuine innovator. Paradoxically, both of these views are correct. In the early 1930s, when his fame in the Soviet Union was at its height, the official aesthetic of socialist realism, with its emphasis on optimism and education, was beginning to give way to a more candid and exploratory approach to Soviet life. Writers were being admitted to those dark areas of social and political evil which they had hithe...

Solzhenitsyn's short stories and novels … are closely linked with one another philosophically. There is, however, a significant difference between the three novels and the short stories. At least two of the novels deal directly with prison life, and the third, The Cancer Ward, alludes to it through the figure of Oleg Kostoglotov; in his short stories Solzhenitsyn does not concern himself with this feature of society. There he seems rather to be attempting to break out of the context of forced ...

The central problem of socialist realism today is to come to terms critically with the Stalin era. Naturally this is the major task of all socialist ideology. Here I will confine myself to the field of literature. If socialist realism—which in consequence of the Stalinist period became at times a disdainful term of abuse, even in the socialist countries—desires to regain the level it had reached in the nineteen-twenties, then it must rediscover the way to depict contemporary man as he actually...

The Oak and the Calf is interesting in a purely literary sense as well [as for its political and social implications]. Like a diary, it pieces itself together before the reader's eyes. Each sentence is written in an unpredictable situation with unknown consequences for the author—and for history. That the reader is to some extent already aware of the outcome only gives the work its distinct double perspective. He is unnerved by the possibility that the author may be arrested and his manuscript...

Solzhenitsyn's new book [The Oak and the Calf] is not really new. It was written in the Soviet Union, and has been revised for this English edition. It is part autobiography, part indictment of Soviet literary politics and censorship, and part onslaught on the entire Soviet system. But the largest indictment of the Soviet political establishment is not what Solzhenitsyn writes about it: it is what it has made of Solzhenitsyn himself. This book reveals it all.

Can one imagine a famous British author bringing out a poem about his wartime experiences in the style of Henry V, or Paradise Lost, or Childe Harold? And having composed it while serving a ten-year prison sentence, committing it to memory, as he could not write it down? And, most unlikely of all, that it would be a marvellous poem, with some of the fiery freshness and energy of its great originals? That, roughly speaking, is what Solzhenitsyn has done in Prusskiye Nochi, Prussian Nights. The title itself r...

As a religious man Solzhenitsyn is no doubt humble; as a writer he is sublimely conceited. Conceit rather than pride seems to be the word, for pride goes with humility, and Solzhenitsyn is still, and no doubt always will be, the fearless, intelligent, self-centered prig whom he portrayed with such endearing accuracy in "Prussian Nights."… (p. 3) There are two Solzhenitsyns, one the believer, the sublime prig, the only man in step; the other, the novelist who watches himself as acutely a...

The writer's craft begins with his language. Solzhenitsyn is undoubtedly an innovator in the field of language. His efforts to enliven the modern Russian language with the freshness and richness of popular speech, to soften the congealed bookishness, lifelessness, and platitudes in the literary language with living conversational elements, which are themselves based on the honesty and directness characteristic of common speech—these are his innovations. (p. 19)

With the publication of The Oak and the Calf, Solzhenitsyn lays claim to yet another realm—that of autobiography…. Since Solzhenitsyn clearly possesses both literary credentials and a sense of mission, it is not surprising to find his book absorbing and significant. (p. 3)

[In] The Oak and the Calf, as in Gulag Archipelago, we have in fact two Solzhenitsyns at work. While the field-marshal surveys his battle formations and issues his orders, the shrewd and sceptical novelist is standing at his side, noting down all his inconsistencies and foibles. One must never underestimate Solzhenitsyn's capacity for 'polyphony', that is to say, for assuming two or more narrative voices almost simultaneously, allowing each to reflect on and question the other. This is ...

[The Second World War] is the only major experience of Solzhenitsyn's life that has been conspicuously absent from his work. But it is the subject of Prussian Nights…. Poetically it is not very distinguished, so that as in Longfellow's poems the main interest is in the story, since the traditional metre does indeed carry the narrative effectively along…. [This] is the very reverse of a patriotic poem. While he was in East Prussia, Solzhenitsyn was arrested for criticising Stalin&...

The Oak and the Calf is not fiction; it is a political diary and must be judged on its politics. If Solzhenitsyn sees himself as the calf butting and uprooting the Soviet oak, well, fine, but why then is he so endlessly surprised that during all those years the publishing apparatchiks were less than fond of him?… Why does he not show more sympathy, or maybe even some guilt, toward Tvardovsky of Novy Mir who, though a party member, stuck out his neck for him and in the process lost first his magazine,...

["The Oak and the Calf"] is a story that should attract diverse readers. Professional students of the Soviet system will read it for what Solzhenitsyn saw inside the political and literary bureaucracies during his brief stay in official favor. Literary scholars will mine the memoirs for insights into Solzhenitsyn's artistic creativity. (They will conclude, I think, that his work belongs primarily to the genre of holocaust literature, a view disliked by more impassioned admirers who want...

Solzhenitsyn is not only a critic of Russia and Bolshevism but of the modern age itself. What does it matter if that critique proceeds from presuppositions different from mine?… Solzhenitsyn speaks from another tradition and this, for me, is impressive: his voice is not modern but ancient. It is an ancientness tempered in the modern world. His ancientness is that of the old Russian Christianity, but it is a Christianity which has passed through the central experience of our century—the dehuman...

In a small world, Solzhenitsyn sometimes appears too tall. I would not want to meet the striding Armageddon on the road, glowing as I imagine him to be with eschatological fires and accompanied by menacing dogs. Still, he is a great writer with great themes. The conditions of the retrograde Soviet Union, bad for the living writer, offer, in his case at least, a perverse propitiousness for the writing. There the world is, if nothing else, a structure. I read again … two works. One fairly short, the be...