The First Circle
Encyclopedia
In the First Circle is a novel by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
released in 1968. A fuller version of the book was published in English in 2009.
The novel depicts the lives of the occupants of a sharashka
(a R&D bureau made of gulag
inmates) located in the Moscow
suburbs. This novel is highly autobiographical. Many of the prisoners (zeks) are technicians or academics who have been arrested under Article 58 of the RSFSR Penal Code in Joseph Stalin
's purges following the Second World War. Unlike inhabitants of other gulag labor camp
s, the sharashka zeks were adequately fed and enjoy good working conditions; however if they found disfavor with the authorities, they could be instantly shipped to Siberia.
The title is an allusion to Dante
's first circle of Hell
in The Divine Comedy
, wherein the philosophers of Greece
, and other non-Christians, live in a walled green garden. They are unable to enter Heaven
, as they were born before Christ, but enjoy a small space of relative freedom in the heart of Hell.
The sharashka prisoners work on technical projects to assist state security agencies and generally pander to Stalin's increasing paranoia. While most are aware of how much better off they are than "regular" Gulag prisoners, some are also conscious of the overwhelming moral dilemma of working to aid a system that is the cause of so much suffering. Lev Rubin is tasked with identifying the voice in the recorded phone call, he examines printed spectrographs of the voice and compares them with recordings of Volodin and five other suspects. He narrows it down to Volodin and one other suspect, both of whom are arrested.
By the end of the book, several zeks, including Gleb Nerzhin, the autobiographical hero, choose to stop cooperating, even though their choice means being sent to much deadlier camps.
Volodin, initially crushed by the ordeal of his arrest, begins to find encouragement at the end of his first night in prison.
The book also briefly depicts several Soviet leaders of the period, including Stalin himself, who is depicted as vain and vengeful, remembering with pleasure the torture of a rival, dreaming of one day becoming emperor of the world, or listening to his subordinate Viktor Abakumov
and wondering: "[...]has the day come to shoot him yet?"
The novel addresses numerous philosophical themes, and through multiple narratives is a powerful argument both for a stoic
integrity and humanism
. Like other Solzhenitsyn works, the book illustrates the difficulty in maintaining dignity within a system designed to strip its inhabitants of it.
Shortly after One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
was published, Solzhenitsyn submitted his "lightened" version for publication in the USSR, but it was never accepted. This version was first published abroad in 1968. The complete 96 chapter version (with some later revisions) was published in Russian by YMCA Press in 1978, and has been published in Russia as part of Solzhenitsyn's complete works. Excerpts from the full 96 chapter version were published in English by The New Yorker
and in The Solzhenitsyn Reader. An English translation of the full version was published by Harper Perennial in October 2009, entitled In the First Circle rather than The First Circle.
director Aleksander Ford
made an English-language film based on the novel in 1973
. While it hewed closely to Solzhenitsyn's plot, the film was a critical and commercial failure.
The 1992 TV movie based on the novel, The First Circle, won Canada
's Gemini Award for Best Photography in a Dramatic Program or Series, awarded to Ron Orieux. Directed by Larry Sheldon, it received nominations for best dramatic miniseries, best actor, best actress, and best writing in the category. It starred Victor Garber
as the protagonist, Christopher Plummer
, Robert Powell
and Dominic Raacke with F. Murray Abraham
as Stalin. It was released on DVD.
In January 2006, the RTR TV aired a miniseries
directed by Gleb Panfilov
. Solzhenitsyn helped adapt the novel for the screen and narrated the film.
The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings, 1947-2005: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Edward E. Ericson, Jr., Daniel J. Mahoney.
The Oak And The Calf - Sketches Of Literary Life in The Soviet Union, (memoir) by Alexandr I. Solzhenitsyn.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was aRussian and Soviet novelist, dramatist, and historian. Through his often-suppressed writings, he helped to raise global awareness of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system – particularly in The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of...
released in 1968. A fuller version of the book was published in English in 2009.
The novel depicts the lives of the occupants of a sharashka
Sharashka
Sharashka was an informal name for secret research and development laboratories in the Soviet Gulag labor camp system...
(a R&D bureau made of gulag
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
inmates) located in the Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
suburbs. This novel is highly autobiographical. Many of the prisoners (zeks) are technicians or academics who have been arrested under Article 58 of the RSFSR Penal Code in Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
's purges following the Second World War. Unlike inhabitants of other gulag labor camp
Labor camp
A labor camp is a simplified detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons...
s, the sharashka zeks were adequately fed and enjoy good working conditions; however if they found disfavor with the authorities, they could be instantly shipped to Siberia.
The title is an allusion to Dante
DANTE
Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe is a not-for-profit organisation that plans, builds and operates the international networks that interconnect the various national research and education networks in Europe and surrounding regions...
's first circle of Hell
Hell
In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...
in The Divine Comedy
The Divine Comedy
The Divine Comedy is an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature...
, wherein the philosophers of Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
, and other non-Christians, live in a walled green garden. They are unable to enter Heaven
Heaven
Heaven, the Heavens or Seven Heavens, is a common religious cosmological or metaphysical term for the physical or transcendent place from which heavenly beings originate, are enthroned or inhabit...
, as they were born before Christ, but enjoy a small space of relative freedom in the heart of Hell.
Plot summary
Innokentii Volodin, a diplomat, makes a telephone call he feels obligated to his conscience to make, even though he knows he risks arrest. His call was taped and the NKVD seek to identify who made the call.The sharashka prisoners work on technical projects to assist state security agencies and generally pander to Stalin's increasing paranoia. While most are aware of how much better off they are than "regular" Gulag prisoners, some are also conscious of the overwhelming moral dilemma of working to aid a system that is the cause of so much suffering. Lev Rubin is tasked with identifying the voice in the recorded phone call, he examines printed spectrographs of the voice and compares them with recordings of Volodin and five other suspects. He narrows it down to Volodin and one other suspect, both of whom are arrested.
By the end of the book, several zeks, including Gleb Nerzhin, the autobiographical hero, choose to stop cooperating, even though their choice means being sent to much deadlier camps.
Volodin, initially crushed by the ordeal of his arrest, begins to find encouragement at the end of his first night in prison.
The book also briefly depicts several Soviet leaders of the period, including Stalin himself, who is depicted as vain and vengeful, remembering with pleasure the torture of a rival, dreaming of one day becoming emperor of the world, or listening to his subordinate Viktor Abakumov
Viktor Abakumov
Viktor Semyonovich Abakumov , was a high level Soviet security organs official, from 1943 to 1946 the head of SMERSH in the USSR People's Commissariat of Defense, and from 1946 to 1951 Minister of State Security or MGB . Abakumov was a notoriously brutal official who was known to torture prisoners...
and wondering: "[...]has the day come to shoot him yet?"
The novel addresses numerous philosophical themes, and through multiple narratives is a powerful argument both for a stoic
STOIC
STOIC was a variant of Forth.It started out at the MIT and Harvard Biomedical Engineering Centre in Boston, and was written in the mid 1970s by Jonathan Sachs...
integrity and humanism
Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....
. Like other Solzhenitsyn works, the book illustrates the difficulty in maintaining dignity within a system designed to strip its inhabitants of it.
Characters
- Rostislav (Ruska) Vadimich Doronin: A zek mechanic, 23. Loves Klara, daughter of the prosecutor Makarygin. An informer himself, albeit a reluctant one, is beaten and sent away for helping fellow inmates find out who the other informers are.
- Klara Petrovna Makarygina: Makarygin's youngest daughter, works in the vacuum laboratory and falls in love with Ruska.
- Gleb Vikentyevich Nerzhin: A zek mathematician, age 31. An autobiographical character. He is offered a position in a cryptography group, and refuses, even knowing this means he will be sent away from the sharashka.
- Nadya Ilinichna Nerzhina: Gleb's wife. Waited for eight years and became a student in Moscow because of him (Marfino is not far from Moscow) but is considering divorce because remaining married to a prisoner blocks her continuing studies or finding a job.
- Valentin Martinevich Pryanchikov: A zek engineer and head of the acoustic laboratory, "Walentulya" is not taken seriously and behaves like a child, despite the fact that he is as old as Nerzhin.
- Lev Grigoryevich Rubin: A zek philologist and teacher, 36, a Communist from youth, but nevertheless always ready for a good joke, even about socialism. Rubin is based on Solzhenitsyn's friend Lev KopelevLev KopelevLev Zalmanovich Kopelev was a Soviet author and a dissident.- Biography :...
. He gets a position in a new group; his first task is to identify the man who called the American embassy. - Dmitri Aleksandrovich Sologdin: A zek designer, 36, a survivor of the northern camps now serving his second term. Sologdin is based on Solzhenitsyn's friend Dimitrii Mikhailovich Panin, who later wrote a book entitled "The Notebooks of Sologdin". He works on a cryptographic machine in secret, but is found out and has to develop his invention so as not to get sent back.
- Innokentii Artemyevich Volodin: A Ministry official whose phone call at the beginning of the book functions as a catalyst for much of the later action in the sharashka and eventually leads to his arrest.
Editions
Solzhenitsyn first wrote this book with 96 chapters. He felt he could never get this version published in the USSR, so he produced a "lightened" version of 87 chapters. In the long version, the diplomat Volodin's phone call (chapter 1) was to the US embassy, warning them of a Soviet attempt to get atomic bomb secrets. In the short version this call is to an old family doctor warning him not to share a new medicine with some French doctors he will visit. Another difference, in the long version Sologdin is a Roman Catholic, while in the short version his faith is not described.Shortly after One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is a novel written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, first published in November 1962 in the Soviet literary magazine Novy Mir . The story is set in a Soviet labor camp in the 1950s, and describes a single day of an ordinary prisoner, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov...
was published, Solzhenitsyn submitted his "lightened" version for publication in the USSR, but it was never accepted. This version was first published abroad in 1968. The complete 96 chapter version (with some later revisions) was published in Russian by YMCA Press in 1978, and has been published in Russia as part of Solzhenitsyn's complete works. Excerpts from the full 96 chapter version were published in English by The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
and in The Solzhenitsyn Reader. An English translation of the full version was published by Harper Perennial in October 2009, entitled In the First Circle rather than The First Circle.
Adaptations
The PolishPoland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
director Aleksander Ford
Aleksander Ford
Aleksander Ford born Mosze Lifszyc was a Polish film director; and head of the Polish People's Army Film Crew in the Soviet Union. Ford became director of the nationalized "Film Polski" company at the end of World War II...
made an English-language film based on the novel in 1973
1973 in film
The year 1973 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*The Marx Brothers' Zeppo Marx divorces his second wife, Barbara Blakely. Blakely would later marry actor/singer Frank Sinatra....
. While it hewed closely to Solzhenitsyn's plot, the film was a critical and commercial failure.
The 1992 TV movie based on the novel, The First Circle, won Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
's Gemini Award for Best Photography in a Dramatic Program or Series, awarded to Ron Orieux. Directed by Larry Sheldon, it received nominations for best dramatic miniseries, best actor, best actress, and best writing in the category. It starred Victor Garber
Victor Garber
Victor Joseph Garber is a Canadian film, stage and television actor and singer. Garber is known for playing Jesus in Godspell, Jack Bristow in the television series Alias, Max in Lend Me a Tenor, and Thomas Andrews in James Cameron's Titanic.-Early life:Born in London, Ontario, Canada, Garber is...
as the protagonist, Christopher Plummer
Christopher Plummer
Arthur Christopher Orne Plummer, CC is a Canadian theatre, film and television actor. He made his film debut in 1957's Stage Struck, and notable early film performances include Night of the Generals, The Return of the Pink Panther and The Man Who Would Be King.In a career that spans over five...
, Robert Powell
Robert Powell
Robert Powell is an English television and film actor, probably most famous for his title role in Jesus of Nazareth and as the fictional secret agent Richard Hannay...
and Dominic Raacke with F. Murray Abraham
F. Murray Abraham
Fahrid Murray Abraham is an American actor. He became known during the 1980s after winning the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Antonio Salieri in Amadeus. He has appeared in many roles, both leading and supporting, in films such as All the President's Men and Scarface...
as Stalin. It was released on DVD.
In January 2006, the RTR TV aired a miniseries
The First Circle (TV miniseries)
The First Circle is a 2006 Russian miniseries directed by Gleb Panfilov, with ten 44-minute episodes. It is based on The First Circle, the novel written by the late Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn based on his experiences in Joseph Stalin's gulags.The series was first broadcast in the Russia on RTR-Russia...
directed by Gleb Panfilov
Gleb Panfilov
Gleb Anatolyevich Panfilov is an internationally acclaimed Russian film director noted for a string of mostly historical films starring his wife, Inna Churikova:...
. Solzhenitsyn helped adapt the novel for the screen and narrated the film.
Sources
The First Circle, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (author), Thomas P. Whitney (translator), European Classics, pb.The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings, 1947-2005: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Edward E. Ericson, Jr., Daniel J. Mahoney.
The Oak And The Calf - Sketches Of Literary Life in The Soviet Union, (memoir) by Alexandr I. Solzhenitsyn.
