second term. Sologdin is based on Solzhenitsyn’s friend Dimitrii Mikhailovich Panin, who later wrote a book entitled The Notebooks of Sologdin. He works on a cryptographic machine in secret, but is found out and has to develop his invention so as not to get sent back.
Lev Rubin: A zek philologist and teacher, 36, a Communist from youth, but nevertheless always ready for a good joke, even about socialism. Rubin is based on Solzhenitsyn’s friend Lev Kopelev. He gets a position in a new group; his first task is to identify the man who called to warn Dr. Dobrumov not to share his medical discoveries with international colleagues.
Valentin “Valentulya” Pryanchikov: A zek engineer and head of the acoustic laboratory, he is not taken seriously and behaves like a child, despite the fact that he is as old as Nerzhin.
Rostislav “Ruska” Doronin: A zek mechanic, 23. Loves Klara, daughter of the prosecutor Makarygin. An informer himself, albeit a reluctant one, is beaten and sent away for helping fellow inmates find out who the other informers are.
Klara Makarygina: Makarygin’s youngest daughter, works in the vacuum laboratory and falls in love with Ruska.
Editions
Solzhenitsyn first wrote this book with 96 chapters. He felt he could never get this version published in the USSR, so he produced a “lightened” version of 87 chapters. In the long version, the diplomat Volodin’s phone call (chapter 1) was to the US embassy, warning them of a Soviet attempt to get atomic bomb secrets.
In the short version this call is to an old family doctor warning him not to share a new medicine with some French doctors he will visit. Another difference, in the long version Sologdin is a Roman Catholic, while in the short version his faith is not described.
Shortly after One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was published, Solzhenitsyn submitted his “lightened” version for publication in the USSR, but it was never accepted.
This version was first published abroad in 1968. An English version was first published in Great Britain by Collins and the Harvill Press in 1968.
A paperback edition, still consisting of 87 chapters was published in 1988, translated from the Russian by Max Hayward, Manya Harari and Michael Glenny.
The complete 96 chapter version (with some later revisions) was published in Russian by YMCA Press in 1978, and has been published in Russia as part of Solzhenitsyn’s complete works. Excerpts from the full 96 chapter version were published in English by The New Yorker and in The Solzhenitsyn Reader.
An English translation of the full version was published by Harper Perennial in October 2009, entitled In the First Circle rather than The First Circle.
Adaptations
The Polish director Aleksander Ford made an English language film based on the novel in 1973, The First Circle. While it adhered closely to Solzhenitsyn’s plot, the film was a critical and commercial failure.
The 1992 TV movie based on the novel, The First Circle, won Canada’s Gemini Award for Best Photography in a Dramatic Program or Series, awarded to Ron Orieux. Directed by Larry Sheldon, it received nominations for best dramatic miniseries, best actor, best actress, and best writing in the category.
It starred Victor Garber as the protagonist, Christopher Plummer, Robert Powell and Dominic Raacke, with F. Murray Abraham as Stalin. It was released on DVD.
In January 2006, the Rossiya Telekanal aired a miniseries directed by Gleb Panfilov. Solzhenitsyn helped adapt the novel for the screen and narrated the film.
Translations
Henry Carlisle and Olga Carlisle Michael Guybon (1968) Thomas P. Whitney (Harper & Row, 1968)
