What do you learn about Soviet governance and culture from One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich?

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is a work by Alexander Solzhenistyn, set in a Soviet labor camp in the 1950s. Solzhenistyn himself spent eight years in Soviet prison camps. The novel’s protagonist, Ivan Denisovich, is accused of being a spy and is sentenced to ten years in a labor camp. Through the novel, we learn much about the system of governance in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. When Stalin came to power in 1929, he strengthened and extended secret police forces created under Vladimir Lenin, the previous ruler. The policy of collectivization, or the forced displacement of peasants from their land onto collective, state-owned farms, meant that millions of peasants lost their land and were forced onto community farms. The penalty for resisting collectivization was steep: many peasants were sent to forced labor camps, much like the one Denisovich must endure. Stalin greatly expanded these labor camps, and millions of Soviets were sent there for minor infractions, often without any evidence that crimes of sabotage or conspiracy were committed.
Through Denisovich’s experience, we learn about the extent of repression under Stalin’s rule. While prison camps, or gulags, were not entirely new under Stalin, he expanded their reach. Stalin targeted members of the Communist party he saw as enemies, those who might have threatened his reign of absolute power. Prisoners inside the camp, as the novel details, faced punishment for challenging guards or disobeying orders. For example, the novel includes many examples of the ways in which guards used the cold to torment prisoners. Those who disobeyed were sent outside in frigid temperatures. Denying prisoners food was also a common practice during Stalin’s rule. While the novel is of course a work of fiction, it is based on true events that reveal the extent to which Stalin’s regime would go to consolidate and hold on to power.