I first read Solzhenitsyn's semi-autobiographical novel in the late 80s as a schoolchild, when I had been seduced by the passages that imagine Stalin in his dacha. Back then, the only edition available was a bowdlerised one, published under the title The First Circle. Solzhenitsyn's title is intended to evoke the Divine Comedy – the prisoners whose story the book tells are in hell, but it's the best kind of hell, a hell with privileges.
The prisoners live and work in a special prison in the Moscow suburb of Marfino, trying to develop a secure telephone scrambler for the party leadership. A couple of them are removed from their normal duties in order to respond to an urgent demand to develop a voiceprint capability so that the state 'organs' can identify a traitor offering secrets to the West.
As a kid, I didn't detect Solzhenitsyn's biting sarcasm and irony, which is evidence of my own lack of sophistication rather than Solzhenitsyn's subtlety. The prisoners share a frank gallows humour in the face of the largely incompetent and self-serving authorities, and the narrator is equally bitter; the entire book is dominated by this pervasive grim humour.
There are some terrific episodes in the book. For example, there is a wonderful and grimly funny vignette in which a prisoner tells the story of a stage managed visit by Eleanor Roosevelt, in which the squalid conditions in one of the KGB's prisons are swiftly improved just in advance of her visit, only to be returned to their former state as soon as she's gone. Equally fascinating – although less amusing, for obvious reasons – are the handful of chapters dedicated to Stalin brooding in his private office, issuing gnomic orders to his henchmen.
These episodes are highlights, but the remainder of the novel is somewhat less compelling. It's too long, for a start, with somewhat poor characterisation meaning that one is often unsure which guard or inmate is which. There's a great deal of the narrative that could be eliminated without loss. It's a shame, because there are many pages of sometimes poignant, sometimes funny, sometimes painful writing that are robbed of some of their impact because of this flabbiness.
Solzhenitsyn's reputation collapsed along with the USSR, and while he never deserved the exaggerated and politically motivated acclaim he received before 1991, neither does he deserve the obscurity he currently languishes in. Despite its flaws, the restored and newly translated In The First Circle is a welcome and enjoyable rediscovery.
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