SOURCE: "The Deranged Birthday Boy: Solzhenitsyn's Portrait of Stalin in The First Circle'," in Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature, Vol. XVIII, No. 3, Summer, 1985, pp. 61-72.

In the following essay, Rancour-Laferriere attempts a psychoanalytical reading of the character Stalin in Solzenicyn's The First Circle.

Since Alexander Solzhenitsyn personally experienced the concentration camps of Stalinist Russia, it is not surprising that his extended portrait of Stalin in The First Circle should be "bitter" and "sarcastic."¹ What is surprising is that this portrait nonetheless succeeds on an esthetic level and is convincing psychologically. Solzhenitsyn's Stalin is just as real and just as likely to move the reader as his Ivan Denisovich, his Matryona and his Oleg Kostoglotov.

What I propose to do is to psychoanalyze the character of Stalin created by Solzhenitsyn. Any correspondences between this character and the historical Joseph Stalin are merely coincidental for my...