Language means in the work Corpus Cancer. Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward. Autobiographical novel. The storyline and the main characters of the work

THE PROBLEM OF THE STORY OF A. I. SOLZHENITSYN "CANCER HOUSING"

It is scary to touch the work of the great genius, the Nobel Prize laureate, the man about whom so much has been said, but I cannot help but write about his story "Cancer Ward" - a work to which he gave, albeit a small, but part of his life, which

they tried to deprive him of the swarm for many years. But he clung to life and endured all the hardships of the concentration camps, all their horror; he brought up in himself his own views on what is happening around him, not borrowed from anyone; these views he set forth in his story.

One of her themes is that, no matter what kind of person, good or bad, who has received a higher education or, on the contrary, is uneducated; no matter what position he occupies, when an almost incurable disease befalls him, he ceases to be a high-ranking official, turns into an ordinary person who just wants to live. Solzhenitsyn described life in a cancer building, in the most terrible of hospitals, where people doomed to die lie. Along with the description of a person's struggle for life, for the desire to simply coexist without pain, without suffering, Solzhenitsyn, always and under any circumstances distinguished by his thirst for life, raised many problems. Their range is quite wide: from the meaning of life, the relationship between a man and a woman to the purpose of literature.

Solzhenitsyn confronts people of different nationalities, professions, committed to different ideas in one of the chambers. One of these patients was Oleg Kostoglotov, an exile, a former convict, and the other was Rusanov, the complete opposite of Kostoglotov: a party leader, "a valuable worker, a distinguished person," loyal to the party. Having shown the events of the story first through the eyes of Rusanov, and then through the perception of Kostoglotov, Solzhenitsyn made it clear that the government would gradually change, that the Rusanovs with their "questionnaire economy", with their methods of various warnings, would cease to exist, and the Kostoglotovs, who did not accept such concepts as "The remnants of bourgeois consciousness" and "social origin". Solzhenitsyn wrote the story, trying to show different views on life: from the point of view of Bega, and from the point of view of Asya, Dema, Vadim and many others. In some ways, their views are similar, in some ways they differ. But basically Solzhenitsyn wants to show the wrong of those who reflect, like Rusanov's daughter, Rusanov himself. They are used to looking for people somewhere below; think only about yourself, not thinking about others. Kostoglotov is the spokesman for Solzhenitsyn's ideas; through Oleg's disputes with the chamber, through his conversations in the camps, he reveals the paradox of life, or rather, the fact that there was no meaning in such a life, just as there is no meaning in the literature that Avieta extols. According to her concepts, sincerity in literature is harmful. “Literature is to entertain us when we are in a bad mood,” says Avieta, not realizing that literature is really a teacher of life. And if it is necessary to write about what should be, then it means that there will never be truth, since no one can say for sure what exactly will be. And not everyone can see and describe what is, and it is unlikely that Avieta will be able to imagine at least a hundredth part of the horror when a woman ceases to be a woman, but becomes a workhorse, which subsequently cannot have children. Zoya reveals to Kostoglotov the horror of hormone therapy; and the fact that he is deprived of the right to continue himself terrifies him: “At first I was deprived of my

your own life. Now they are also deprived of the right ... to continue oneself. Who and why will I be now? .. The worst of the freaks! On mercy? .. On charity? .. ”And no matter how much they argue about the meaning of life, Ephraim, Vadim, Rusanov, no matter how much they talk about him, for everyone he will remain the same - to leave someone behind. Glotov went through everything, and this left its mark on his value system, on his concept of life.

The fact that Solzhenitsyn spent a long time in the camps also influenced his language and style of writing the story. But the work only benefits from this, since everything that he writes about becomes available to a person, he is, as it were, transferred to a hospital and takes part in everything that happens. But hardly any of us will be able to fully understand Kostoglotov, who sees the prison everywhere, tries to find everything and finds a camp approach, even in the zoo. The camp crippled his life, and he realizes that it is unlikely that he will be able to start his old life, that the way back is closed to him. And millions more of the same lost people were thrown into the vastness of the country, people who, communicating with those who did not touch the camp, understand that there will always be a wall of incomprehension between them, just as Lyudmila Afanasyevna Kostoglotova did not understand.

We grieve that these people who have been crippled by life, disfigured by the regime, who have shown such an irrepressible thirst for life, have experienced terrible suffering, are now forced to endure the rejection of society. They have to give up the life they have longed for, the life they deserve.

The theme of illness in the work of A. I. Solzhenitsyn "Cancer Ward" in the context of Russian prose of the twentieth century

Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn- a world-famous writer, a person with a short biography, a bright personality who entered into a single combat with the political system of an entire state and deserved respect and recognition of the whole world. Studying the life and work of an outstanding writer means familiarizing yourself with the history of your homeland, getting closer to understanding the reasons that led society to a political, economic and moral crisis.
A.I. Solzhenitsyn was born into a family of wealthy peasants. He did not receive a special literary education, but for the last two pre-war years he studied at the philological faculty of the Moscow Institute of Philosophy and Literature. Was drafted into the army, graduated from an artillery school. Shortly before the end of the war, in February 1945, in East Prussia, Captain A. Solzhenitsyn was already arrested, imprisoned and imprisoned. The camp period ended on the day of Stalin's death, and cancer was immediately discovered; by the order of the doctors, less than a month remained to live. In the nearness of death, in anticipation of his fate, he saw the possibility of raising the most important, last questions of human existence. First of all - about the meaning of life. The disease does not take into account social status, it is indifferent to ideological convictions, it is terrible for its suddenness and the fact that it makes everyone equal before death. But AI Solzhenitsyn did not die, despite the advanced malignant tumor, and believed that "the life returned to him since then has an embedded purpose." After being discharged from the Tashkent Oncological Dispensary in 1955, A.I.Solzhenitsyn decided to write a story about people on the verge of death, about their last thoughts and actions. The idea was realized only almost ten years later. Attempts to publish "Cancer Ward" in the "New World" magazine were not crowned with success, and the story was published in 1968 abroad.
All were gathered by this terrible building - the thirteenth, cancer. Persecuted and persecutors, silent and vigorous, hard workers and money-grubbing - he gathered and depersonalized everyone, all of them are now only seriously ill, torn from their familiar surroundings, rejected and rejected everything familiar and familiar.
One of the themes of the novel "Cancer Ward" is that no matter what a person is, good or bad, having a higher education or, conversely, uneducated; no matter what position he occupies, when an almost incurable disease befalls him, he ceases to be a high-ranking official, turns into an ordinary person who just wants to live.
L. Durnov, academician of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, professor notes that the interest of writers to extreme conditions in which a sick person falls has clearly increased in recent years. Rush hour reveals good and bad in a person. Just as in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the "literature of tuberculosis" dominated (one has only to remember "Flowers belated") by A.P. Chekhov or "Life on loan" by Remarque), today the "literature of cancer" prevails. The atmosphere of hopelessness, fatality, prevailing around cancer, is largely created by writers.
The academician notes: “Reading The Cancer Ward, one never ceases to admire how Solzhenitsyn subtly, tactfully describes the patient's psychological state. The sick person begins to feel lonely:“ ... everything is left on the other side of the tumor. And for this - Pavel Nikolaevich Rusanov. One".
"For a moment, the wire dangled to the outer world - and broke off. And again the whole world was closed by a tumor the size of a fist, placed under the jaw."
"The happiness of Pavel Nikolaevich was to sit here with his wife more, and not to go to the ward." The patient becomes more and more dependent on others. The theme of illness among writers is associated with loneliness, which helps to comprehend everything that happened, evaluate and find rational ways to get out of the borderline situation.
In "Cancer Ward" two characters collide and disperse. The image of Rusanov as a typical Soviet official of the Stalinist era is contrasted with the image of Oleg Kostoglotov - an exile, somewhat reminiscent of Solzhenitsyn himself.

In the "Cancer Ward" the Gulag reality is almost invisible, it only slightly reveals itself somewhere in the distance, reminds of itself by the "eternal exile" of Kostoglotov. The writer paints the everyday life of the cancer building with calm, restrained colors. It depicts a life chained not by barbed wire, but by nature itself. The threat of human death looms no longer from the state, but from within the human body, ripening with a tumor. A.I.Solzhenitsyn seems to greet all living things, removing the cobweb from that which fills human existence, warms it. The writer considers the theme of love of life from the other side. The self-satisfied vitality of Maxim Chaly is as blind and cynical as the attitude towards the life of Pavel Rusanov. These people do not recognize spiritual values. The idea of ​​repentance is alien to them, one of the cherished for A, I, Solzhenitsyn, they are sleeping or conscience is completely absent, therefore their path to people, to truth, to good is difficult. This is partly an answer to the question posed by Oleg Kostoglotov: "What is the upper price of life? How much can you pay for it, and how much can you not?" For Oleg, the hospital ward became a school. His craving for a simple life is understandable.

The state of the sick doctor Dontsova, who works in oncology, is described in a very interesting way. The doctor, without ceasing to be a doctor, at the same time adopts the psychology of the patient.
By her recognition of the disease, she excluded herself from the noble class of doctors and puts herself in the place of the patient. I remember the wonderful lines of B. Pasternak: "I feel for them, for everyone - as if I have been in their shoes, I melt myself, like the snow melts, I myself, like morning, frown, frown."
But on the other hand, Solzhenitsyn very correctly noted that, after all, Dontsova, who is ill, remains a doctor even in her illness - she compares her feelings with the experience of her medical life and, perhaps, it is harder for her from this knowledge.

And it seems that Alexander Isaevich lived in the "Cancer Ward" for each of his heroes, endured everything that they endured, and gave each of them, like a doctor, a piece of his soul.
Literature plays a significant role in understanding what is happening. Kostoglotov thinks about Russian literature. It is no coincidence that a volume of Leo Tolstoy appeared in the ward. The writer Solzhenitsyn recalls the humanism of 19th century literature with its "main law" of Tolstoy - the love of man for man.
Cancer equalizes the sick. If for Rusanov's illness is retribution, which he himself did not realize, then for some, as for Ephraim and Shulubin, it is an approach to a painful insight.
Kostoglotov knows that after his recovery he will be exiled to Ush-Terek forever, but he seems to be learning anew to appreciate what is given to a person.
Deprived of the opportunity to start a family (Kostoglotova was injected with hormonal drugs), he leaves the thirteenth cancerous building healed physically; Rusanov, falsely hoping for a recovery, is taken away by his family by car.

Solzhenitsyn is close to the concept of the late Tolstoy. "Cancer Corps" is more of a philosophical tale. Here, as in Leo Tolstoy's story "The Death of Ivan Ilyich," the author puts his heroes face to face with death and forces everyone to look back at the life he has lived and think about its meaning. Above the meaning of life - our own and common.
In the story of L, N, Tolstoy "The Death of Ivan Ilyich", the hero of which also sees a "lie" in his lived life, and his true meaning is revealed to him, that "general idea" that explains everything in the world. It is curious that there are coincidences in the figurative structure of the philosophical and epistemological artistic generalizations of the two writers.

Officials by profession (Rusanov and Ilya Ilyich) belong to the milieu of wealthy people, where a thing ("curtain") becomes almost synonymous with life, and the mention of a soul seems like a ridiculous prejudice, gradually devastated the souls of the heroes. Accustomed to privileges, fenced off from life, they love the "people", but are disgusted with people. Rusanov is guilty of grave sins: he denounced a comrade, identified relatives of prisoners among the workers and forced them to renounce innocent convicts. Ivan Ilyich was always encouraged by the "opportunity to put everyone in prison." And suddenly they notice that doctors treat them in the same way as they themselves treated people. During the period of illness, Rusanov feels like a second-class person, but does not change his attitude towards life. this is an example of a static hero. Ilya Ilyich Tolstoy is a dynamic hero, whose death is full of greater meaning than a life full of deeds. For the Tolstoy hero, illness is a revelation.

The problem of human crisis states is extremely urgent.
Every day, thousands of Ivanov Ilyichs die on the planet, but people also continue to marry and marry for convenience, hate each other and raise children. Everyone thinks that they are capable of a feat. And exploits lie in the most ordinary life, if it is illuminated, permeated with love and care for others.

Fear as a result of not understanding the causes of a sudden illness opens up the world of works of art by Russian writers of both the 19th and 20th centuries. A person who finds himself near the death line protests, not understanding why he should die, and not someone else for whom death, perhaps, is a natural fate. It is on the threshold of death, not wishing to accept the fate of “everyone,” a person turns, sometimes for the first time, to God in order to call him to answer the question - why? why me? And this moment of awareness of death becomes the starting point for a person to acquire himself as a particle of God or the world whole. In other words, death reveals the greatest mystery of revelation: what a person is and what his purpose is. It was this humanistic task that Russian literature tried to fulfill, reflecting on the fate of man and the world on the verge of illness or death.

Tolstoy's heroes, as a rule, who think least of all about death during their life, become "decent" people just on the eve of their death. The author seems to be deliberately destroying them in order to make it possible to "resurrect" in a new transformed essence even before the physical end. After all, his heroes, by and large, are not people until they fall into the borderline situation is disease. All of them before this important, frank life event were anyone - decent employees, officials, parents, spouses - but not people in the true sense of the word. When they get into a situation "to be or not to be", in them the human essence awakens. The disease, as a punishment, came, it turns out, because I lived "not as it should", "wrong", "indecent". The beginning of the disease is nostalgia for the divine in man and the question "why?" always has its addressee - God. The death of a person is a return to the true understanding of faith, which, together with reflections on the end of life, is least of all worried during life.
Humility before the inevitability of illness, and then death, attunes a person to accept this thought with great patience.

Realists believed that in order to heal a society, one must first heal a person. And Solzhenitsyn's cancer is a symbol of that malignant disease that has penetrated the flesh and blood of society.
"Repentance (repentance) is the first inch underfoot, from which alone it is possible to move forward ... only with repentance can spiritual growth begin," writes Solzhenitsyn in 1973 in his article "Repentance and Self-Restriction." Sins, from which one should get rid of and of which one must repent, is a cross-cutting theme of his work. These are national sins - serfdom, the destruction of historical Russia by the communists; these are personal sins - lies, violence, irresponsibility, cruelty, etc.
The "Cancer Corps" warns us against social apathy, life by inertia, participation in lies, leading both to spiritual illnesses of the whole society and to physical illnesses of a particular person, helps to develop a civic position.
The work of A.I.Solzhenitsyn is most fully revealed only in the context of classical Russian literature, since his philosophical reflections are a continuation of the philosophy of Russian humanists.
In my opinion, the study of A.I.Solzhenitsyn's work in literature lessons in high school on the basis of a comparative analysis ("The Death of Ivan Ilyich" by Leo Tolstoy) is the most productive.

The novel was originally planned to be published in Novy Mir magazine in the mid-1960s. However, in those years, the book was never officially published in the Soviet Union. A little later, the novel began to be printed in samizdat and distributed throughout the USSR. In addition, the book was published in other countries in Russian and in translations. The novel became one of the greatest literary successes of A. Solzhenitsyn. The work becomes the basis for awarding the Nobel Prize to the author. In 1990, the novel was officially published in the Soviet Union in the Novy Mir magazine.

The action takes place in a hospital at the clinic of the Tashkent Medical Institute (TashMi). In the thirteenth ("cancer") building gathered people, struck by one of the most terrible diseases, undefeated by humanity to the end. With no other occupation, patients spend their time in numerous debates about ideology, life and death. Each inhabitant of the gloomy corps has its own fate and its own way out of this terrible place: some are discharged home to die, others are improved, and still others are transferred to other departments.

Characteristics of the characters

Oleg Kostoglotov

The protagonist of the novel is a former front-line soldier. Kostoglotov (or as his comrades in misfortune call him - Ogloed) went to prison, and then was sentenced to eternal exile in Kazakhstan. Kostoglotov does not consider himself dying. He does not trust "scientific" medicine, preferring folk remedies to it. The ogloeater is 34 years old. Once he dreamed of becoming an officer and getting a higher education. However, none of his wishes came true. He was not accepted as an officer, and he will no longer enter the institute, since he considers himself too old to study. Kostoglotov likes the doctor Vera Gangart (Vega) and the nurse Zoya. The moron is full of desire to live and take everything from life.

Informer Rusanov

Before getting to the hospital, a patient named Rusanov held a "responsible" position. He was an adherent of the Stalinist system and made more than one denunciation in his life. Rusanov, like Ogloed, does not intend to die. He dreams of a decent pension, which he earned with his hard "work". The former informer does not like the hospital in which he finds himself. A man like him, Rusanov believes, should undergo treatment in better conditions.

Dyomka is one of the youngest patients in the ward. The boy managed to go through a lot during his 16 years. His parents broke up because his mother "got sick". There was no one to bring up Dyomka. He became an orphan with living parents. The boy dreamed of getting on his own feet, getting a higher education. The only joy in Demka's life was football. But it was his favorite sport that took his health away from him. After hitting the leg with a ball, the boy developed cancer. The leg had to be amputated.

But even this could not break the orphan. Demka continues to dream of higher education. He perceives the loss of a leg as a blessing. After all, now he does not have to waste time on sports and dance floors. The state will pay the boy a life pension, which means he will be able to study and become a writer. Demka met his first love, Asenka, in the hospital. But both Asenka and Demka understand that this feeling will not continue outside the walls of the "cancer" building. The girl's breasts were amputated, and life lost all meaning for her.

Efrem Podduvaev

Efrem worked as a builder. Once a terrible illness had already "let go" of him. Podduvaev is sure that this time everything will be okay. Shortly before his death, he read a book by Leo Tolstoy, which made him think about many things. Ephraim is discharged from the hospital. After a while, he was gone.

Vadim Zatsyrko

The thirst for life is also great in the geologist Vadim Zatsyrko. Vadim was always afraid of only one thing - inaction. And now he has been in the hospital for a month. Zatsyrko is 27 years old. He's too young to die. At first, the geologist tries to ignore death, continuing to work on a method for determining the presence of ores from radioactive waters. Then, self-confidence begins to gradually leave him.

Alexey Shulubin

Librarian Shulubin managed to tell a lot in his life. In 1917 he became a Bolshevik, then took part in the civil war. He had no friends, his wife died. Shulubin had children, but they have long forgotten about his existence. Illness was the last step to loneliness for the librarian. Shulubin does not like to speak. He is much more interested in listening.

Character prototypes

Some of the characters in the novel had prototypes. The prototype of the doctor Lyudmila Dontsova was Lydia Dunaeva, head of the radiation department. The author named the treating doctor Irina Meike in his novel Vera Gangart.

The "Cancer" building has united a huge number of different people with dissimilar destinies. Perhaps they would never have met outside the walls of this hospital. But then something that united them appeared - a disease, from which it is not always possible to be cured even in the progressive XX century.

Cancer has made people of different ages and social backgrounds equal. The disease behaves in the same way with both the high-ranking Rusanov and the former prisoner Ogloed. Cancer does not spare those who have already been offended by fate. Left without parental care, Dyomka loses his leg. The librarian Shulubin, forgotten by his loved ones, does not expect a happy old age. Disease relieves society of old and feeble people no one needs. But why, then, does she take away young, beautiful, full of life and plans for the future? Why should a young scientist-geologist leave this world before he reaches the age of thirty, without having time to give humanity what he wanted? Questions remain unanswered.

Only after finding themselves far from the hustle and bustle of everyday life, the inhabitants of the "cancer" building finally got the opportunity to think about the meaning of life. All their lives, these people were striving for something: they dreamed of higher education, family happiness, to have time to create something. Some patients, such as Rusanov, were not too picky about the methods of achieving their goals. But the moment came when all the successes, achievements, sorrows and joys ceased to have any meaning. On the verge of death, the tinsel of being loses its luster. And only then a person realizes that the main thing in his life was life itself.

The novel contrasts 2 methods of cancer treatment: scientific, in which Dr. Dontsova unconditionally believes, and folk, which Kostoglotov prefers. In the post-revolutionary years, the confrontation between official and traditional medicine became especially acute. Oddly enough, but even by the middle of the century, the doctor's prescriptions could not overcome the "grandmother's" recipes. Space flights and scientific and technological progress did not crush the faith of many people in the healer's prayers.

The secret of traditional medicine is that it does not heal the disease, but the patient, while the official, "scientific" medicine is trying hard to influence the disease. The treatment suggested by the doctor kills the cancer cells while killing the person at the same time. By getting rid of cancer, the patient gets new health problems. Traditional medicine invites people to return to nature and themselves, to believe in their own strengths, capable of providing greater healing than any modern medicine.

Treatment of Alexander Solzhenitsyn in oncology in Tashkent in 1954 was reflected in the novel "Cancer Ward".

The novel gained fame thanks to samizdat and foreign editions in Russian and in translations in Western publishing houses.

The novel was one of the reasons for awarding Solzhenitsyn the Nobel Prize. Novy Mir published the work only in 1990.

The storyline and the main characters of the work

The action takes place within the walls of the 13th oncological building of the city hospital at the Tashkent Medical Institute.

A terrible fate decides the fate of the main characters, sending some to die, others seem to be discharged from the hospital with improvement or transferred to other departments.

Before fate, everyone is equal, schoolboy Demka, a boy with an adult look, and Kostoglotov, a former prisoner at the front, and Pavel Rusanov, an employee, a professional personnel officer and an unspoken informer.

The main event in the book is the opposition of the heroes of the writer himself, deduced in the work under the name of Oleg Kostoglotov and the former informer Rusanov, both of them on the verge of death and both fighting for life at a time when the seemingly indestructible Stalinist machine is crumbling.

Vadim Zatsyrko is standing on the threshold between life and death and in spite of everything, working on scientific work, the result of his entire life, although a month in a hospital bed no longer gives him confidence that he can die a hero who has accomplished a feat.

A lonely librarian Alexei Shubin, who despises his own silent life, but nevertheless defends socialist ideas of morality in a dispute with Kostoglotov and other seemingly completely simple people who think about their lives and their own moral behavior. All of them are in constant dispute and are fighting with each other and with the disease, and with their own morality and soul.

The main thing in the book

The story is terrible, unusually poignant, the heroes literally balance on the verge of everyday life and their own despair. It does not matter when and where the action takes place, what is important is what is going on in the heads of hospital patients who are on the verge of death, what happens in the soul, how the body is tormented, and how to exist with all this. The author focuses on the feelings of the heroes, their fears of a state of doom, where hope for a miracle, for recovery, is barely glimmering. And what's next, and then that's all - the point, the reader himself thinks out the end of the fate of the heroes.

After reading this book, I want to destroy it, so as not to incur the misfortunes that prevail in the work on myself and my loved ones, and, perhaps, it is better not to touch on a too terrible book at all. In addition to all these experiences, there is a second bottom in the book, the work makes a sharp comparison of the doom of cancer patients with those who fell under investigation, victims. And a seemingly cured illness and suddenly acquired freedom can turn into an unexpected side to a person and illness, and the arrest, together with the investigation, can return back.

In addition to all this seemingly hopeless, painful moral experience, the book does not forget the theme of love, a man's love for a woman, a doctor for his hard work for his patients. The author to his heroes, so recognizable and so extraordinary. The story makes it clear the meaning of life, raises questions of good and evil, truth and falsehood. The book teaches the concept of the value of life, teaches to be responsible.

The author himself preferred to call his book a story. And the fact that in modern literary criticism Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward is most often called a novel, speaks only of the conventionality of the boundaries of literary forms. But too many meanings and images turned out to be tied in this narrative into a single vital knot to consider the author's designation of the genre of the work correct. This book is one of those that require going back to its pages in an attempt to understand what eluded the first acquaintance. There is no doubt about the multidimensionality of this work. Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward is a book about life, death and fate, but with all this it is, as they say, "easy to read." The everyday and plot lines here do not in any way contradict the philosophical depth and figurative expressiveness.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Cancer Ward. Events and people

Doctors and patients are at the center of the story. In a small oncology department, which stands apart in the courtyard of the Tashkent city hospital, those who have been given the "black mark" of cancer, and those who are trying to help them, come together. It's no secret that the author himself went through everything that he describes in his book. Solzhenitsyn's small two-story cancer building still stands in the same place in the same city to this day. The Russian writer portrayed him from life in a very recognizable way, because this is a real part of his biography. The irony of fate brought together obvious antagonists in one chamber, who were equal in the face of impending death. This is the main character, front-line soldier, former prisoner and exiled Oleg Kostoglotov, in which the author himself is easily guessed.

He is opposed by the petty bureaucratic Soviet careerist Pavel Rusanov, who achieved his position by earnestly serving the system and writing denunciations against those who interfered with him or simply did not like him. Now these people are in the same ward. Their hopes for recovery are very ephemeral. Many medicines have been tried and we can only hope for traditional medicine, such as the chaga mushroom growing somewhere in Siberia on birches. The fates of the other inhabitants of the chamber are no less interesting, but they recede into the background before the confrontation between the two main characters. Within the cancer enclosure, the life of all inhabitants passes between despair and hope. And the author himself managed to defeat the disease even when it seemed that there was nothing more to hope for. He still lived a very long and interesting life after leaving the oncology department of the Tashkent hospital.

History of the book

"Cancer Ward" was published only in 1990, at the end of perestroika. Attempts to publish it in the Soviet Union were undertaken by the author earlier. Separate chapters were being prepared for publication in the Novy Mir magazine in the early 1960s, until the Soviet censorship discerned the conceptual artistic design of the book. Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward is not just the oncology department of a hospital, it is something much larger and more sinister. Soviet people had to read this work in Samizdat, but just reading it could have suffered greatly.