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The First Circle (European Classics)

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The theme of this book is not prison camps: it is nothing more narrow than life itself. And it is almost as rich in characters and stories within stories (here Solzhenitsyn is very like Tolstoy) as life: constancy in love, artistic integrity, the whimspy of fate, literacy in Medieval Novgorod, the prison in the Count of Monte Cristo, snow, how to sew, the law of unintended consequences.

A few major abiding themes run like threads throughout the book, providing unity: First, the life of the "zek," the prisoner in Stalin's camps. Second, loneliness: not just of prisoners longing for a woman or lost loved ones, or of persecuted wives trying to make lives for themselves, but ultimately of each person. Every conversation carries a different meaning for the people involved. The author "gets inside of peoples heads" in an amazing way -- from the janitor Spiridon to the "Best Friend of Counter-Intelligence Operatives," Joseph Stalin himself. Third, and on a deeper level, integrity, both artistic and moral.

Fourth, and I don't know if this was the conscious intent of the author or not, the book reminds us of the unity of Western civilization. Aside from mentions of Tolstoy, Dostoevski, Pushkin, and Lermontov, (which, I might add, also describes the company Solzhenitsyn belongs in, with honor), the book is honeycombed with references to the great thinkers and artists of European civilization -- from the ancient Greeks and the Gospels, to Dante, the Holy Grail, Bach and Beethoven. The Marxist Rubin even quotes Luther. Primarily, no doubt this is a reflection of the fact that the prisoners in the "sharashkas," the top-secret scientific work camps, were educated men, unlike, say, the hero of his shorter novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. (The contrast Solzhenitsyn draws to their well-paid Neanderthal captors is just one form of the irony that is his most distinctive and powerful stylistic weapon. But even the Neanderthals, including Stalin himself, are portrayed not as cardboard villains, but with insight and imagination.) These references also remind us that, as much as Solzhenitsyn has been accused of being a "Slavophobe," as if that were an insult, the Russian culture he loves is an integral part of Western civilization. This iconic dialogue of the ages, similiar to the works of great Chinese painters, also adds another layer of delight to the book.

The final and greatest thread that unifies this work is the idea of achieving humanity, of becoming what a person ought to be, of heroism. The prisoners are poets, eccentric, and philosophers (though there are also scoundrels, and everyone is tempted that way), beaten down by life and the forces of disolution within, trying to preserve their souls, or civilization, from the barbarians who are their masters. In describing the simple heroism of some of his characters, Solzhenitsyn achieves brilliance. In my opinion, First Circle is the greatest of his works, and one of the most powerful pieces of writing of the 20th Century, at least. And it is not about the Gulag, primarily: it is about what it means to be human, and the choices we all face.

Aside from the characters and stories, many of the scenes are wonderful (again like Tolstoy): of Rubin standing in the courtyard at night in the snow when he hears the train whistle, of the party at the prosecutor's house, of the arrest of the diplomat. If life is sometimes too strange for fiction, (and it is) there are also pieces of fiction that seem truer than life. First Circle is a marriage of style and substance made in heaven, or at least, the highest circle of hell.

author, Jesus and the Religions of Man

I was first introdced to Solzhenitsyn's works when I was a freshman in high school, far too many years ago in a little town. The book was the Volume 1 of The Gulag Archipelago. It was really an eye-opener for me in so many ways, given that it was the first "really serious" book that I'd read.

I believe that Solzhenitsyn is the best writer of the 20th century, or at least he's the top writer I've read so far (and I've read a lot of books). Maybe that's influenced by my early exposure, but I don't think so; I find his works just as compelling now as I did then.

The First Circle is one of his most "accessible" works (that is, you can just jump in and start reading) and probably one of his best. A very compelling story; his portraits of the various vile creatures of the Soviet government have been shown to be quite accurate, and the way the various plots intertwine and are resolved is wonderful.

The First Circle gives great insight into a culture totally foreign to most US citizens, as the book's a mixture of spy novel, guide to life in a Gulag camp, and brief introduction to Soviet society of the 1950s. A depressing place to be sure, but fascinating. Well worth reading.

No other book will summarize so brilliantly the absurdity of a system in which the quest for the common good was just a trap for the independence and free will of each person. All the events during the novel take place in just one week. Nevertheless during that brief period the author manages to convey the dark existence for millions of citizens of the USSR during the whole Stalinst period, so the overall impression is that the novel drags on for years and years.

The narration of the story takes place in several different fronts which seem to connect at the end, but that never happens. Each character goes on with his life, and the reader is left to wonder what happened. Oddly enough this is part of the beauty of this novel and makes a lot of sense because Solzhenitzyn will stress until the end the lack of right for any person or system to deny a person of its individuality and abrogate for itself the power to guide other's destiny. Threfore, how could he do the same to the members of its novel? So he refuses to place a final point to their development.

To put it more briefly, just read it is a great book.

Solzhenitsyn has written for the benefit of the rest of us, a work that recreates the madness that was life under Stalin. The First Circle is a story about what happens when the talents of a nation are wasted because those in power happen to be incompetent men (that tends to be generally the case, except New Zealand). At the heart of it, it is a testament to the power of a free market to value resources and direct them to where they are most valued.

Well, no, not really. Solzhenitsyn is not a capitalist at heart and his work does not disparage communism. It is a non-partisan look at a cross section of society that had to suffer the loss of lives, loved ones and youth. It is about their hope in spite of the circumstances surrounding them.

Solzhenitsyn's earlier work _One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich_ made Soviet society realize the genius that was in their midst. The First Circle cements Solzhenitsyn reputation as one of the greats of modern Russian literature. This book deserves to be in your collection.

Trust me, you will not regret reading this. A definite must read!

Drawing its title from the home of the Virtuous Pagans in Dante's Inferno, The First Circle is an epic tale of brilliant engineers and scientists imprisoned by the Soviets in a work camp.

This is not the ordinary work camp, however. Instead of the daily, torturous cold that Ivan Denisovich faces in another of Solzhenitsyn's novels, the prisoners face a subtler cruelty: they cannot return home to their families until they invent certain "tools" for the Soviets to use against alleged (and probably innocent) spies and turncoats who would in turn be imprisoned themselves.

The prisoners are thus left with this moral choice: Do they sell their souls to leave this land of no hope and return home to their families and lives? Or do they resist the call to escape back to "earth" and, as a result, end up (like Dante) being sent into the REAL hell of the GULAG?

All the while, Solzhenitsyn maintains a vitriolic wit, and the final product stands as an invective not just against the Soviet way of life but against the materialism so prevalent there and around the world, especially in the U.S.

Combine The Brothers Karamozov with Catch-22, and you have The First Circle.

The "restored" version of IN THE FIRST CIRCLE gives Anglophone readers access for the very first time to one of the three peaks of Solzhenitsyn's literary universe(the other two being the multivolume works THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO and THE RED WHEEL). The importance of this volume has nothing to do, as one reviewer inaccurately suggested, to "hype" on the part of Harper Collins. It is Solzhenitsyn who repeatedly lamented the fact that the world only knew IN THE FIRST CIRCLE, as it now properly called, in an "ersatz, truncated" form. It is he who in his "Author's Note" to this edition speaks of this edition being the only "authentic" one. His "restoration" of the original work, first published in Russian in the West in 1978, goes far beyond dramatically transforming the opening of the work. New chapters such as chapters 44, 47, and 61 deepen our understanding of Solzhenitsyn's own intellectual odyssey from Marxism to skepticism to a more robust affirmation of natural justice, conscience, and self-limitation, the hallmarks of the Solzhenitsynian intellectual and moral universe. Innokenty Volodin becomes a much more substantial figure in the course of the 96 chapter version of IFC. The great philosophical dialogue between the zeks Nerzhin, Sologdin, and Rubin is substantially fleshed out. There is a new and very suggestive chapter on Stalin making for five and not four chapters on the Soviet tyrant. Solzhenitsyn's hatred of Communism and all its works is even more pronounced in this edition, so much so that he freely countenances the legitimacy of treason against what he regards as a radically evil regime. I should add that the late Harry T. Willetts was Solzhenitsyn's preferred translator for a reason: his rich, supple, and remarkably accurate translations stand head and shoulders above the others. Those who are interested in a more detailed study of the literary, political, and philosophical significance of the 96 chapter version of In THE FIRST CIRCLE can turn to my piece on the work ("The Moral Witness of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn") in the October 2009 issue of FIRST THINGS. To a reviewer above let me add that IFC first appeared in French in 1984, not 2007--American publishers have been lamentably slow in recent decades in bringing the work of the greatest writer of the twentieth century to the attention of the reading public.--Daniel J. Mahoney

This novel is set in what passes for the best of the worst: Research duty for ex-Gulag inmates who know what misery really is. Working on idiotic deadlines set in response to Stalin's quirks, the prisoner-scientists live in a world of denial and unreality akin to Dilbert on crack. A worse fate befalls their jailer-managers, who are "free," agents of the government, and must justify repeatedly failing to meet the ridiculous deadlines that their bosses set out of fear of offending The Boss, which typically ends in either immediate execution or in joining the ranks of those in chains.
Some things that stood out as I read this book were the universality of the bureaucratic mindset: avoidance of responsibility, inertia as a policy, stonewalling, and turfmanship, all in place of actual achievement or progress in any meaningful way. Another thing is the prevalence of a false-accuser culture, where anonymus denouncements can destroy the innocent quickly, without explanation or even a trace. (Given the state of our own society today, and the risk/reward calculus that favors the accuser, this trait appeared even more ominous to me as I read the book.) The denial that gripped some of the inmates, either wholly (Rubin) or partially (Nehrzin, in the beginning, and others) about why they were in prison reminded me of "The Matrix," in that they were dreamwalking through life in a mist of Marxist/Communist mumbo-jumbo, rationalizing their fates as random chance, a mistake, the failing of the system even, but almost never as an understanding of their suffering being inherent in the System itself. As Nehrzin awakes to this, to a degree (and the author may be semi-autobiographical in his sketch of this character, like himself a decorated artillery officer imprisoned over virtually nothing), he opens his eyes to the existence of the matrix of lies, false theory supporting false gods, etc., that has fully ensnared Russia and all within her power, hostage not only to Stalin's perversity, creeping madness, and hurbis, but to a system that is itself a reflection of all of these characteristics, too. The xenophobic search for American spies undermining Motherland security under every bush, the rewriting of history to support the current lies, and the occasional mind that breaks free by rejecting those lies, as Nehrzin did, starting in his youth, reminds one of Ayn Rand's "We the Living."
Echoing "1984," the older prisoners remember things as they were before the official history filled men's minds. Things had been different than they were being told, better, materially and spiritually. The prisoners themselves were frequently veterans - those who had done the most for the State reaping an unlooked-for reward, like Belisarius blinded by a jealous Justinian, left to beg in the streets. The theme of war and survival is a thread that binds the veterans, either prisoner or "free," to each other. A bond of another kind exists between the inmates and their women - the latter mostly loyal, giving up their youth, and the possibility of starting a family, waiting for a release that may never come, sustained by the rare visit that bureaucratic stonewalling and trickery tries to prevent, their love provides a flicker of hope in the ashes of their ruined lives, where even being suspected of marriage to a political criminal was enough to make earning a living an impossibility, since the State was sole employer.
Something else that seemed relevant to America today was the culture war that Yaralov, an ex-prisoner now running a research lab as a Colonel, remembers while pondering his posible return to zek status, from his youth. He gave up the love of a Christian girl because while the Orthodox Church was legal in the 1920s, it was not politically correct. As an ambitious young man with a future, Yaralov was torn between his woman and his career. As the Church was chased out of the public square, it suffered from remembered abuses of thise in its' hierarchy, although those failures to meet the standard ignore the origin of the standard in question - the Church itself. The sellout of a certain medaeval Metropolitan to the Tartars, used as an example by Yaralov in telling his betrothed why he will not side with the Church becomes a metaphor for bureaucratic sellout - applied by her to Yaralov when he chooses the System over what they both know he knows as the truth.
Solzehenetsyn's account of life within the highest reaches of the Soviet Prison-Industrial Complex is both a fine story in its' own right and a warning to us that we can travel the same path, if we have already not begun to do so. It is also highly literate, filled with allusions to literary and historical figures from the full scope of the Western Canon, in which Russia shares, and contains very little in the way of anger - a remarkable achievement for one who emerged from the bowels of the Gulag. While anger is largely absent, satire abounds, especially comments by those on the outside about the "social origin" of others - in a supposedly classless society.
This long book is well worth the time invested in it, as it is a work of rare and tragic beauty.
-Lloyd A. Conway

This immense story amazingly spans only a few days in the lives of several people unduly imprisoned by Joseph Stalin's secret police. Unlike the senseless horror of the "gulag", The First Circle involves the incarceration of select and highly skilled prisoners in a relatively privileged Soviet prison which is really set up as a research laboratory where these skilled inmates are exploited for their expertise. Here, (after they've been arrested under any number of false pretenses) they are forced to invent and develop elaborate electronic devices which will help in the detection and arrest of any other "subversives". The main gadget that they are called upon to produce is a "phonoscopy"... a device that will be able to accurately identify a person by examining recorded conversation.

Right from the opening tense chapters, Solzhenitsyn once again had me in his grip. For me, he is the master at capturing the foreboding sense of loss of freedom. It is palpable... in some ways, worse than outright murder... because you know that whatever happens to his characters, they are going to have to LIVE through it... they aren't even afforded the luxury of dying. At one point, he used the phrases "trampled yearnings" & "soaring passion" in one sentence and it stuck with me and I feel it summarizes what his characters face here in TFC. In ch.34 the protagonist, Gleb Nerzhin is musing with a fellow inmate on the hardships of imprisonment and he concludes that, of all his deprivations, by far the worst is the loss of freedom to be with his wife. She is allowed a visit once a year, and even then, he is not allowed to kiss her. Hearing this, his cellmate Gerasimovich concludes that "there is probably only one path to invulnerability... to kill within oneself ALL attachments and to renounce ALL desires."

This book looks deeply into the process of passivity that creeps into and consumes the life of the imprisoned. Also, there are times when it reminds us of the resiliency of the human spirit in the midst of numbing regret and longing. (I am thinking of the unforgettable scene of Rubin following the guard toward the end of ch.67).

There is a passage in ch.84 which I think wonderfully capsulizes what Solzhenitsyn is telling us here in TFC: "Unfortunately for people - and fortunately for their rulers - a human being is so constituted that as long as he lives there is always something more that can be taken away from him. Even a person imprisoned for life, deprived of movement, of the sky, of family, of property, can, for instance, be transferred to a damp punishment cell, deprived of hot food, beaten with clubs, and he will feel these petty extra punishments as intensely as his earlier downfall from the heights of freedom and affluence. To avoid these final torments, the prisoner follows obediently the humiliating and hateful prison regime, which slowly kills the human being within him."

This is not a "happily-ever-after" book. We may be able to deny ourselves the luxury of exposure to Solzhenitsyn's themes, but one thing we cannot deny is the fact that his books are based upon things that actually happened in history. Because they did. And they do. Here is one of the finest writers of the 20th Century, and this is his masterpiece.

For the second time in the last fifteen years, Harper & Row (or HarperCollins now), which claims to own the world-wide publishing rights to The First Circle, has stopped printing this magnificent work. They did it once before in the mid-90's. When I protested to them that I could not find copies enough for my students in a Russian literature course, they shrugged me off. Happily, after letting the book languish for two years, they then licensed publishing rights to Northwestern University Press. But according to Northwestern University, Harper will not let them renew the license. Nor is Harper printing the novel. According to my latest phone call to them, they might-- "perhaps as early as winter, 2009." Ironic, is it not, that once censored in his own country, Solzhenitsyn now suffers the same fate because an American publisher, for reasons no one at Harper can explain, will not make it available to the reading public. I am hoping my students will be able to hunt down enough used copies to read it this spring, but . . . . Shame on Harper!

The book's title refers to the first circle of Hell in Dante's Inferno. This is the least oppressive level of Hell. The prison camp described in this book offers plenty of food to the prisoners, no backbreaking physical labor, and a warm bed. Most of Stalin's prison camps are located in Siberia where the prisoners freeze and starve. What accounts for Stalin's leniency? The prisoners are scientists working on top secret projects like a telephone for Stalin's use that can't be tapped, and a system of identifying anonymous voices on public telephones by the voice prints, similar to finger prints. In Stalin's evil country, you are not innocent until proven guilty. You are guilty as soon as you are arrested. One prisoner was put in jail because his neighbors wanted his family's apartment and made up an unsupported lie about him. They got the apartment and destroyed his life and family. Most of the prisoners were WW2 vets, POWs returning from Germany. They weren't welcomed home with appreciation and honor. They were lured home by lies, and immediately imprisoned.

There are many great characters. You'll remember Nerzhin and his wife, and wonder how things will work out for them. You'll remember Rubin, the sincere communist caught in the web of the system he believes in. You'll remember Innokenty Volodin, in trouble for doing a good deed, as innocent as his first name. When you read a mediocre book there are no characters to remember, just a predictable formulaic storyline and a group of people and events you find hard to believe. This is a rare opportunity for you to be a fly on the wall, halfway around the world, observing life in a Russian prison camp. The reason I give it only 4 stars is because I like happy endings and resolved problems. This book would make a good movie. There's plenty of room for a sequel (which hasn't been written) where we can find a satisfactory ending for some of the characters. Stalin the insane sewer rat died eventually and was denounced by Khrushchev, so maybe in time these people were allowed to live out the rest of their lives in freedom.