In the 1930’s, Josef Stalin came into control of Communist Russia. What he turned Russia into was anything but Communism, a way of life in which all people are treated the same, and competition has been eliminated because everyone feels it is necessary to work together for the greater good of the whole. Few people chose to speak out against Stalin, but some did, and they were put into work camps. Alexander Solzhenitsyn was one of these people, and he used his years in the camp to give readers an accurate view of what camp life was like in his book, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” Solzhenitsyn makes several points against communism, and through these he allows the reader to infer why a communist system will never work. Three of the goals of communism are to dehumanize and to conform society, to strip society of competition, and to strip society of religion. Solzhenitsyn makes strong attacks on all of these.

            The work camps are supposed to beat the workers up so much, that they eventually lack all semblance of human nature. We can see on page 88, when Shukhov is told to waste mortar that, “Shukhov wasn’t made that way- eight years in a camp couldn’t change his nature. He worried about anything he could make use of (Solzhenitsyn, 88).” It is obvious here that the camp hasn’t dehumanized Shukhov, even though he has been there the longest. On page 24, Shukhov is tempted to ask a fellow prisoner for a cigarette, but, “every nerve in hi body was taut, all his longing was concentrated in that cigarette butt…but he would never lower himself… he would never look at a man’s mouth (24-25).” The camp is supposed to animalize the prisoners, but Shukhov does all he can to restrain himself and act decently. The camp gives everyone numbers and make them all dress the same in order to dehumanize them, and, “From the outside, everyone in the squad looked the same- but within the squad there were great distinctions. Everyone had his grade (13).” Everyone was different from everyone else. The camp tried to make them the same, tried to make them all animals, but obviously it didn’t work. Human nature is too strong to be changed.

            Communism also attempts to eliminate competition. There are several instances, however, where we see the prisoners competing against each other for preferential treatment as well as to see who will eat first. In Ivan’s initial description of the camp, he explains to the reader how one was to get ahead in prison. He remarks, “As for squealers… those people were sure to get through camp all right. Only, they were saving their own skin at the expense of other people’s blood (4).” When a prisoner squealed, he was rewarded with more food, or even allowed to sit in the guard shack for a few days. This isn’t even the prisoners resisting communism. This is corruption happening in the camp authority. The guards are so lazy that they employ prisoners to look after their inmates and report back to them. If the people in authority aren’t willing to do even their own jobs, communism will fail.

            One final goal of communism is to remove religion from society. According to its founders, it gets in the way of progressing society. Solzhenitsyn is adamant in the book that it is much easier to get through hardships with religion than it is without. During a march, Shukhov turns his thoughts to Alyosha, a Baptist prisoner. He wonders,

“What had he to be happy about? His cheeks were sunken, he lived strictly on his rations, he earned nothing. He spent all his Sundays muttering with the other Baptists. They shed the hardships of camp like water (36).”

This point makes it very clear that when you are living for something, like religion, it is much easier to keep your chin up and muster through a bad situation. Shukhov may not have a distinct religion, but he has a set of rules that he lives by and refuses to break; we all do. When we first see him eating, it says, “Then he removed his hat from his clean-shaven head- however cold it might be, he could never bring himself to eat with his hat on (14).” Though it’s not a “religion”, it’s part of his code. Communism wants everyone to be the same, to follow the government’s code, not an individual’s. While good people like Shukhov and Alyosha are around, Communism will fail.

            Though Solzhenitsyn never makes a direct claim against communism in “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”, with a little background information one can easily see that the main theme of the book is to show the evils of this system. Solzhenitsyn was persecuted for speaking up on the topic, and from then on he had to smuggle his publications out of the country. A system that does not allow criticism of itself will never work, because there will always be opposition, and you can’t simply throw half the people in a country into a prison camp because they disagree with you. By revealing some of the hard truths of communist life to readers here on the home front, Solzhenitsyn and “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” helped to spark the anti-communism movement in America.