Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Cold War Icon, Gulag Author, Russian Nationalist?

In contrast, the literary critic Robert L. Jackson sees Ivan as an independent character, and identifies another character in the novel as Solzhenitsyn’s alter ego.[33] The “old man” whom Ivan Denisovich watches silently at the canteen—a rigid, bitter man—fits Jackson’s image of Solzhenitsyn as a harsh and acrimonious person.[34] Jackson underlines the difference between Solzhenitsyn the author and Ivan Denisovich:

The reader, of course, has no difficulty sensing Solzhenitsyn’s pain and bitterness in this work; he does not mistake the curiously well-adjusted [Ivan Denisovich] Shukhov for the author [.][35]

Jackson compares the tone of Ivan Denisovich, in particular the character of Ivan, with the authorial voice of The Gulag Archipelago. He notes that in Ivan Denisovich, Solzhenitsyn’s voice was hidden, but it was nonetheless “visible on the horizon.”[36] Ivan was a humble, well adjusted, and down-to-earth peasant. Solzhenitsyn’s “real voice”—revealed in Gulag—is a loud and bitter one.

In Ivan Denisovich language and tone are the most important means by which different points of view are marked. Nevertheless, the nuances of this distinction get slightly lost in translation, especially in the English translation by Max Hayward and Ronald Hingley, as some scholars have pointed out.[37] The earliest German translation is a translation of Hayward and Hingley’s English version. Fortunately, enough remains clear in all English translations and the German for the reader to become aware of the change in perspective.

The language of the Russian original differs from the English and German mostly in its local color, the inclusion of profanity, and the occasional archaic term. For example, the Ukrainians in the novella have an identifiable accent and Ivan speaks in archaisms and broken words intended to indicate his provincial origin—both these nuances get lost in translation. Some of the sayings in the book, such as “A man who is warm cannot understand the one who is cold” are old sayings taken from Vladimir Dahl’s dictionary of 19th century colloquial language.[38] The linguistic complexity of these sayings is ironed out in the more prosaic English and German versions. When it comes to obscene language, different translators had different approaches. In Robert Parker’s English translation, four-letter-words are either not translated or merely suggested (e.g. “f…k”). His language is described as too civilized by Irina Shapiro, who analyzed early English translations of this work.[39] Max Hayward and Ronald Hingely gave their English translation a more colloquial tone,[40] but they remained cautious when it came to obscenity. In the German version from Gerda Kurz and Siglinde Summerer, obscenities are toned down as it is Hayward’s English version they use as a source text. A poignant example of the watering down of the language is when Ivan says in Russian: “A tebe khren v rot!” which means: “may a dick be shoved in your mouth!” and is translated into German as: “Das wär’ ja wie ein Tritt in den Arsch!”[41]

Among Western scholars of Russian literature, the language of Ivan Denisovich is often praised as one of the highlights of the work. Marc Slonim sees the language as part of the work’s literary merit, but admits that it must be a nightmare for translators.[42] Other scholars saw Solzhenitsyn’s language as adding to the work’s impression of authenticity since they saw it as a more sincere form of realism. Geoffrey Hosking interprets Solzhenitsyn’s language as genuine as opposed to the “fake” sounding language of the Soviet intelligentsia often used in literature.[43] In his view, it strengthens the works adherence to realism. Marc Slonim’s praise is similar:

The realistic crudeness of the language is skilfully mitigated by the rhythm and tone of the narrative. Its masterfully controlled racy language which recalls that of Remizov, its rich texture and its ring of authenticity, which was such a relief after the false pathos of most Soviet fiction, show an artistic maturity quite surprising in a newcomer.[44]

According to Nicholas Anning, the vividness of the language and the choice of protagonist imbued Solzhenitsyn with the moral status he attained.[45] Because of its language, Ludmila Koehler eulogized the novella as a return to the “real” Russian literary tradition[46] and contrasts Solzhenitsyn’s Ivan Denisovich with other Soviet literature:

Literature was regimented into a mouthpiece of party-line propaganda and became one of the mass production tools of Soviet "soul engineering." In contrast to this Solzhenitsyn's masterpiece marks a return to the great tradition of the nineteenth century.[47]

Koehler places Solzhenitsyn in this old tradition because he uses what she sees as peasant and prison-camp slang, and because he recurs to old sayings and words from Vladimir Dahl’s dictionary, thus sounding a lot like the 19th century author Nikolai Leskov.[48] This raises the question, which Koehler does not address, of the inconsistency between presenting allegedly contemporary peasant and camp slang while using Dahl’s and Leskov’s archaic language: after all, Leskov and Dahl’s language might only have been contemporary during their lifetime. Geoffrey Hosking describes Ivan Denisovich’s language as simultaneously new and old—new in Soviet literature and old because it is reminiscent of 19th century speech.[49] Paradoxically, Hosking also places Ivan Denisovich in the tradition of “Village Prose”, a strand of Soviet literature that focused on the life of peasants without embellishment.

David Stewart Hull assesses the novella as aesthetically unremarkable and lacking experimentation beyond its language:

It belongs in that category of works which include the official anti-Stalin film Clear Skies, which it superficially resembles in its choice of protagonist. Ivan Denisovich contains little, however, of stylistic interest to distinguish it from the usual run of socialist-realist fiction, no experimentation of any kind save in the constant use of very vulgar language.[50]

The seemingly contradictory claims that Solzhenitsyn’s language is new and old—an example of literary trends of the 19th or perhaps the 20th century—can be explained by the fact that language in Russia was particularly politicized in the Soviet era. Since the foundation of the Soviet Union, purity of language was a priority—but there was no consensus over what that was. Over the years, prominent authors, politicians, and linguists fought over what proper Russian should be. Purity and closeness to linguistic “reality” were an aim when Lenin ordered the redaction of a dictionary that was to replace Dahl’s in 1920.[51] Lenin regarded Dahl’s dictionary as outdated and too regional. The new dictionary was to reflect both modern reality and classical language as written in the classics of Russian literature.[52] Years later, the “Village Prose” literary movement defended the use of provincial dialects in literature from the 1950s onwards. Solzhenitsyn had his own views as to what proper Russian was, and he became one of the most radical language “purists” of the second half of the 20th century.[53] Solzhenitsyn’s efforts began in his fiction and reached their zenith in the dictionary he published in 1990.[54] Michael Gorham describes Solzhenitsyn’s linguistic mission thus:

The idea […] is that once actively reinstated into the literary language, these words, almost regardless of how they are used, will help rescue that language (and its speakers) from its current impoverished state.[55]

Solzhenitsyn’s vision of Russian consisted of cleansing “foreign” elements such as barbarisms or words with Latin roots and replacing them with words with Slavic roots which he either took from 19th century lexica or invented himself.[56] He placed his language in opposition to what he saw as the alien sounding language of the Soviets and the use of foreign terms by ordinary Russians. By doing so, he was aligning himself with those who saw purity of the mother tongue as a nationalist priority.[57] Ultimately, his language can be seen as new—because it was not currently in use, but also old—because most of it was a re-introduction of old terms. He belonged to the Soviet tradition of striving for linguistic purity, but offered his own atavistic vision of what this should be.

Solzhenitsyn’s attitude to language and his linguistic choices in Ivan Denisovich raise serious doubts about how genuinely they portrayed the spoken Russian of the time. According to Miriam Dobson’s study of Soviet readers’ response to Ivan Denisovich, readers did not only express discomfort with the profanity, but also criticized the language as far from genuine.[58] When looking at the unusual, archaic words and sayings used in Ivan Denisovich, it is not easy to believe that peasants spoke like this in the middle of the 20th century. From today’s point of view it is difficult to render how genuine the language was, without recurring to sociolinguistic studies which in the Soviet case are not necessarily reliable. Nevertheless there is no doubt that an effect is achieved by the language used. For one thing, it marks Ivan as a simple rural person, but it also makes him sound different. In this sense, Ivan stands out rather as Solzhenitsyn’s imagined peasant than as a “real” person, in fact, strengthening an impression of fictionality and not realism in the text. The same can be said about the intellectuals in the book, who seem ridiculously disconnected from reality.[59]

As much as some Western critics may have understood the difference between the language in Ivan Denisovich and the language of earlier Socialist Realist novels as an expression of authenticity, this does not necessarily mean that it was authentic in the sense that it was the language used by people similar to the imaginary peasant Ivan Denisovich. A Western reader’s interpretation of Ivan’s language depends on the version he reads—as translators do not necessarily render the nuances of Ivan’s speech, and the Russian version might seem foreign and unusual, but it is after all a foreign tongue. An exact representation of linguistic reality does not appear to be a requirement for the perceived authenticity of Ivan Denisovich’s diegesis. The ideological motivation for Ivan’s language is generally not problematized by Russian-reading critics in the West, as it has been mostly seen as a mere turning away from what is seen as Soviet literary traditions. Moreover, Western critics seem to ignore the diverse reactions that Russian readers’ might have when reading Ivan’s obscene language. For Russian readers, the “strangeness” of Ivan’s language will always pose more of a challenge in its interpretation: is a “peasant” who speaks in 100 year old terms peppered with profanity a credible character for a witness-bearing text or not? Dobson’s study shows how numerous Russian readers who were gulag survivors could not identify with this protagonist and rejected him because they—as former victims—did not want to be considered as vulgar as he is, and/or because they didn’t think his imprisonment was wholly undeserved.[60] From a theoretical point of view, Ivan’s status as an uncouth, foul-mouthed, and uneducated peasant is not a hindrance to his role as protagonist in a work of witness literature. As it is, this apparently obscene peasant is an effective challenge to an intellectual or elitist reader who is confronted with the question of the worth of a human’s lost years in unjust imprisonment even if this person is not deemed a particularly indispensable member of society.

To sum up, the language of Ivan Denisovich in Russian reflects both Solzhenitsyn’s linguistic abilities and his ideological preferences but these are not mirrored in the early translations in the US, UK, and Germany. Hence, the language of these translations is less controversial, and easier to understand, thus helping the reader focus on the plot of the story and its details.

Ivan Denisovich is a very carefully crafted work, and its form, style, and language can be interpreted as belonging to different traditions. One of them is witness literature, as will be discussed in section 2.2. But a question that always comes up is if it is Socialist Realist or not. According to Katerina Clark, Ivan Denisovich adheres—with few exceptions—to most of the conventions of Socialist Realism of the 1960s.[61] This work’s relationship to contemporary Russian works was important in shaping its readers’ “horizon of expectations”, and because Socialist Realism was so dominant at the time it is necessary to look at how far it influenced Ivan Denisovich.

In 1934 Socialist Realism became the official style dictated as binding for Soviet writers. From that point in time, political restraints became an integral part of Soviet literature. In general, political loyalty had precedence over aesthetic refinement in Socialist Realism. Although political requirements changed often, a degree of aesthetic homogeneity was achieved by certain formal literary conventions. It lacked, however, a stringent set of rules, which is why it evolved over time. There is a marked difference between the works written in the 1930s and 40s and later works still written under Stalinism. The greatest shift, however, took place after Stalin’s death in 1953. As a long-term result of Khrushchev’s liberalization policy known as the “Thaw”, Socialist Realism evolved so greatly and gave room to such a large diversity of works that Ronald Hingley wrote:

We may say if we wish that Socialist Realism has been tacitly abandoned; or we may choose to express the same idea in different form by saying that the doctrine has come to be applied more flexibly.[62]

To say that Socialist Realism was abandoned in the Khrushchev era seems too rash, as its main aesthetic parameters continued to be applied.

Several literary conventions serve as a common platform for Socialist Realist fiction. For instance, the plot takes place in a single location, which acts as a microcosm of Soviet life. This is the case in Ivan Denisovich, which does not go far beyond the boundaries of the prison camp. As other Socialist Realist novels, Ivan Denisovich has a linear narrative, with a hard working hero, and some lazy, or evil anti-heroes.[63]

Furthermore, Socialist Realism calls for the work to be narodnyi, an adjective derived from the Russian term narod which means people. The narodnyi quality of a literary work was twofold; its subject was to reflect the life of ordinary people and the work itself was to be comprehensible to ordinary people.[64] This implied that the work had to be written in a language accessible to the majority of the Soviet people, most of which had learned to read and write only after the October Revolution. In the High Stalinist era (1930s-40s), Socialist Realist literature was expected to avoid obscene language, and slang[65]—a development which made its language appear antiseptic and unnatural. This changed slowly after Stalin’s death, and at an increasing pace during the 1960s and 70s. Solzhenitsyn’s Ivan Denisovich was part of the post-Stalinist trend in Soviet literature to break away from a homogenized Russian and use colloquial or regional terms.

Ivan Denisovich is narodnyi in both ways. Ivan is quite an ordinary man, a peasant turned soldier—like millions of other Soviet citizens of his generation—and like many other of his fellow citizens he was falsely accused and sent to a prison camp. Moreover, the predominantly undemanding literary devices in the work contribute to its accessibility, which is—perhaps paradoxically—obstructed by colloquial and archaic terms in the original Russian.