the process of givingvoice to the tens of millions of victims of Sovietterror, went on secretly, even collectively. Much ofGulag was based on the hundreds of letters and memoirsthat former prisoners mailed to Solzhenitsyn after OneDay in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was published. Andropov had an intuitive sense that this new workcould do as much, in its way, to undermine Soviet poweras all the nuclear arsenals in the West. (Remnick 118)Solzhenitsyn uses the every-day occurrences of Ivan DenisovichShukhov^s life to accentuate this point about humanity. Shukhov^s day began with reveille. ^Shukhov never slept throughreveille but always got up at once. That gave him about an hourand a half to himself before the morning roll call^ (Solzhenitsyn1). This short amount of time at the beginning of the day wasprecious because it was the only time during the day, except fora few minutes in the evening, that the prisoners had tothemselves. This short amount of time provided hope for theprisoners in a number of ways. It was ^a time when anyone whoknew what was what in the camps could always scrounge a littlesomething on the side^ (Solzhenitsyn 2). For Ivan DenisovichShukhov this meant doing anything from sewing someone a cover forhis mittens out of a piece of old lining to bringing one of thebig gang bosses his dry felt boots while he was still in hisbunk. Tasks like these, done for his own personal satisfactionrather than the satisfaction of the gang bosses gave Shukhov hopeand reinforced his own personal self worth. On the one day whichSolzhenitsyn presents, however, Ivan Denisovich does not get outof his bunk at reveille. ^He^d been feeling lousy since thenight before--with aches and pains and the shivers, and he justcouldn^t manage to keep warm that night. All the time he dreadedthe morning^ (Solzhenitsyn 3). Is Solzhenitsyn foreshadowingthat because Shukhov did not get out of his bed at reveille, asusual, this will not be an average...
