Denisovich – by Leanne Rutter

I’ve been reading The Second World War (Antony Beaver) and been astounded at the magnitude of the suffering and hardship of the people that were caught up the the conflict. I had never known how unspeakably evil the likes of Hitler, Stalin and the leaders of the Imperial Army of Japan were until reading the details of their atrocities. It kind of shakes my faith in human decency to realize that these evil few were able to perpetrate the murder of millions with good propaganda and artful manipulation of people that all knew better. It’s not exactly light reading, so I took a break by reading an inspiring work by a man that lived through these horrors and came through with his faith intact.

Fifty years ago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn published One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and let the light of day shine on the injustices of the Soviet GULAG (here for a related post). This book was almost impossible for me to put down and it still has me thinking. In the final minutes of his day, Ivan Denisovich chats with his bunkmate, Alyosha the Baptist. In a world of injustice and suffering, Alyosha was the one man in the camp that was at peace; his faith in Christ gave him hope for the world to come. Even though Alyosha’s faith, hope and love were evident, his life remained hard–Ivan Denisovich thought it even harder than the other ‘zeks’. Yet Ivan Denisovich concluded: “His voice and his eyes left no doubt that he was happy in prison.” He may have been the only one.