The First Circle
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- For the Pat Metheny Group album, see First Circle (album).
The First Circle (В круге первом, V kruge pervom) is a novel by Alexander Solzhenitsyn released in 1968, the title of which is based on a quotation from Dante.
It describes three days in the life of the occupants of a gulag prision camp located in the Moscow suburbs, the Marfino sharashka. Many are technicians or academics who have been arrested under Article 58 of the RSFSR Penal Code in Stalin's purges following the Second World War. Unlike in other camps of the Gulag system, the sharashka zeks are adequately fed and enjoy good working conditions. The title is allegorical to Dante's first circle of Hell in The Divine Comedy- wherein the Philosophers of Greece live in a walled green garden - unable to enter heaven, but enjoying a small space of relative freedom in the heart of Hell.
The 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.
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.
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.
In Russia, the full text of the work has been published, but only a censored version exists in English. Recently, The New Yorker has published the opening of the original novel in English translation.
[edit] Film Versions
The Polish 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.
In January, 2006, Russian television aired a miniseries basesd on the novel. Solzhenitsyn himself helped adapt the novel for the screen and narrated the film. [1]
[edit] Characters:
- Victor Semyonovich Abakumov: Minister of State Security.
- Grigory Borisovich Adamson: A zek engineer, serving his second term.
- Bobynin: Zek boss of Laboratory Number Seven at Marfino.
- Vladimir Erastovich Chelnov: Professor of Mathematics, a "transient zek," serving his eighteenth year of imprisonment.
- Rostislav (Ruska) Vadimich Doronin: A zek mechanic, 23.
- Ivan Selivanovich Dyrsin: A zek engineer.
- Larisa Nikolayevna Emina: A free employee in the Design Office at Marfino.
- Dinera Galakhov: Daughter of the prosecutor Makarygin, wife of Nikolai Galakhov.
- Nikolai (Kolya) Arkadevich Galakhov: A popular writer.
- Illarion Pavlovich Gerasimovich: A zek physicist specialing in optics, a relative newcomer to Marfino.
- Natalya Pavlovna Gerasimovich: His wife.
- Isaak Moiseyevich Kagan: Zek "director of the battery room."
- Ilya Terentevich Khorobrov: A zek radio engineer, imprisoned for defacing his election ballot.
- Lieutenant Colonel Ilya Terentevich Klimentiev: Head of the Marfino Special Prison.
- Gleb Vikentyevich Nerzhin: A zek mathematician, age 31. An autobiographical character.
- Nadya Nerzhin: Gleb's wife.
- Lev Grigoryevich Rubin: A zek philologist and teacher, 36, a Communist from youth. Rubin is based on Solzhenitsyn's friend Lev Kopelev.
- 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
- Serafima Vitalyevna (Simochka): A prison guard.
- Innokentii Artemyevich Volodin: The plot catalyst, a man who makes a politically sensitive phone call at the beginning of the novel, whose voice is analyzed by the sharashka crew, and who is consequently arrested and imprisoned in the last few chapters of the novel.
