The philosophy of work in the Gulag: two views in comparison

Abstract

This article is devoted to the topic of work, in the frame of the Soviet labor camp, from the point of view of two leading exponents of the lagernaya literatura: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, with his novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and Gustaw Herling-Grudzinski with the memoir A World Apart. Both authors write on the same theme, the life of a prisoner, but the focus on the work activities and the interpretation they give is completely different. The description of the working day, the consequences it makes on the everyday life of the prisoners, the struggle for the food needed for surviving the harsh climatic and detention conditions, and finally the philosophical approach used to represent the forced labor, present relevant differences. This article is meant to analyze those differences through the authors' very own words and literary studies. We start from the very raw information detectable by a thorough reading of the two works, going through a moral analysis of the events narrated. While the core narration happens within the same tragic frame, the conclusions they draw are ultimately different.