Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn
Part one
The Cancer Ward also wore number thirteen. Pavel Nikolaevich Rusanov never was and could not be superstitious, but something sank in him when they wrote in his direction: “Thirteenth Corps.” I wasn’t smart enough to name any prosthetic or intestinal device as thirteenth.
However, in the entire republic they could not help him anywhere except this clinic.
– But I don’t have cancer, doctor? I don't have cancer, do I? – Pavel Nikolaevich asked hopefully, lightly touching his right side neck its evil tumor, growing almost every day, and the outside is still covered with harmless white skin.
“No, no, of course not,” Dr. Dontsova reassured him for the tenth time, scribbling out pages in the medical history in her flourishing handwriting. When she wrote, she put on glasses - rounded rectangular ones, and as soon as she stopped writing, she took them off. She was no longer young, and she looked pale and very tired.
This was at an outpatient appointment a few days ago. Appointed to the cancer department even for an outpatient appointment, the patients no longer slept at night. And Dontsova ordered Pavel Nikolaevich to lie down, and as quickly as possible.
Not only the disease itself, unforeseen, unprepared, falling like a squall in two weeks on the careless happy person, - but Pavel Nikolaevich was now no less depressed by the illness because he had to go to this clinic on a general basis, he no longer remembered how he was treated. They started calling Evgeny Semyonovich, and Shendyapin, and Ulmasbaev, and they, in turn, called and found out the possibilities, and whether there was a special ward in this clinic, or whether it was impossible to at least temporarily organize a small room as a special ward. But due to the cramped conditions here, nothing came of it.
And the only thing we managed to agree on through the chief physician was that it would be possible to bypass the emergency room, shared bath and a changing room.
And in their blue Muscovite, Yura drove his father and mother to the very steps of the Thirteenth Building.
Despite the frost, two women in washed cotton robes stood on the open stone porch - they shivered, but stood.
Starting with these unkempt robes, everything here was unpleasant for Pavel Nikolaevich: the cement floor of the porch, too worn out by feet; dull door handles, grasped by the hands of the sick; a lobby of people waiting with peeling paint on the floor, high olive panel walls (the olive color seemed dirty) and large slatted benches on which patients who had come from far away did not fit and sat on the floor - Uzbeks in quilted cotton robes, old Uzbek women in white scarves, and young - in purple, red and green, and all in boots and galoshes. One Russian guy lay, occupying an entire bench, with his coat unbuttoned and hanging to the floor, exhausted himself and with a swollen belly, and continuously screamed in pain. And these screams deafened Pavel Nikolaevich and hurt him so much, as if the guy was screaming not about himself, but about him.
Pavel Nikolaevich turned pale to the lips, stopped and whispered:
- Mouth guard! I'll die here. No need. We'll be back.
Kapitolina Matveevna took his hand firmly and squeezed:
- Pashenka! Where will we return?.. And what next?
- Well, maybe things will work out somehow with Moscow...
Kapitolina Matveevna turned to her husband with her wide head, still broadened by lush copper-cut curls:
- Pashenka! Moscow is maybe another two weeks, maybe it won’t be possible. How can you wait? After all, every morning it is bigger!
His wife squeezed him tightly at the wrist, conveying cheerfulness. In civil and official matters, Pavel Nikolayevich himself was unwavering - the more pleasant and calm it was for him to always rely on his wife in family matters: she decided everything important quickly and correctly.
And the guy on the bench was torn and screaming!
“Maybe the doctors will agree to go home... We’ll pay...” Pavel Nikolaevich hesitantly denied.
- Pasik! - the wife inspired, suffering together with her husband, - you know, I myself am always the first for this: to call a person and pay. But we found out: these doctors don’t come, they don’t take money. And they have equipment. It is forbidden…
Pavel Nikolaevich himself understood that it was impossible. He said this just in case.
By agreement with the head physician of the oncology dispensary, the older nurse was supposed to be waiting for them at two o'clock in the afternoon here, at the bottom of the stairs, down which the patient was now carefully descending on crutches. But, of course, the older sister was not there, and her closet under the stairs was locked.
– You can’t come to an agreement with anyone! – Kapitolina Matveevna flushed. – Why are they just getting paid a salary?
As she was, hugged on the shoulders by two silver foxes, Kapitolina Matveevna walked along the corridor, where it was written: “Entry is prohibited in outerwear.”
Pavel Nikolaevich remained standing in the lobby. Fearfully, with a slight tilt of his head to the right, he felt his tumor between the collarbone and jaw. It seemed that in the half hour since he had been home in last time I looked at her in the mirror, wrapping my muffler around her - in those half an hour she seemed to have grown even more. Pavel Nikolaevich felt weak and wanted to sit down. But the benches seemed dirty, and you also had to ask some woman in a headscarf with a greasy bag on the floor between her legs to move. Even from a distance, the stinking smell from this bag did not seem to reach Pavel Nikolaevich.
And when will our population learn to travel with clean, neat suitcases! (However, now, with the tumor, it was no longer the same.)
Suffering from the screams of that guy and from everything that his eyes saw, and from everything that entered through his nose, Rusanov stood, slightly leaning against the ledge of the wall. A man came in from outside, carrying in front of him a half-liter jar with a sticker, almost full of yellow liquid. He carried the can not hiding it, but proudly raising it, like a mug of beer standing in line. Just before Pavel Nikolaevich, almost handing him this jar, the man stopped, wanted to ask, but looked at the seal's hat and turned away, looking further, to the patient on crutches:
- Honey! Where should I take this, eh?
The legless man showed him the laboratory door.
Pavel Nikolaevich simply felt sick.
The outer door opened again - and a sister came in wearing only a white robe, not pretty, too long-faced. She immediately noticed Pavel Nikolaevich, and guessed, and approached him.
“Sorry,” she said through a puff, blushing to the color of her painted lips, she was in such a hurry. - Excuse me, please! Have you been waiting for me for a long time? They brought medicine there, I take it.
Pavel Nikolaevich wanted to answer caustically, but restrained himself. He was glad that the wait was over. Yura came up, carrying a suitcase and a bag of groceries, wearing only a suit, without a hat, as he was driving a car, very calm, with a swaying high light forelock.
- Let's go! - the older sister led to her closet under the stairs. – I know, Nizamutdin Bakhramovich told me, you will be in your underwear and brought your pajamas, just not yet worn, right?
- From the shop.
– This is mandatory, otherwise disinfection is necessary, you understand? This is where you will change clothes.
She opened the plywood door and turned on the light. There was no window in the closet with a sloping ceiling, but there were many colored pencil charts hanging.
Yura silently carried his suitcase there, went out, and Pavel Nikolaevich went in to change clothes. The older sister rushed to go somewhere else during this time, but then Kapitolina Matveevna approached:
- Girl, are you in such a hurry?
- Yes, a little...
- What is your name?
- What a strange name. Are you not Russian?
- German...
-You made us wait.
- Excuse me, please. I'm currently receiving...
- So listen, Mita, I want you to know. My husband... is an honored man, a very valuable worker. His name is Pavel Nikolaevich.
– Pavel Nikolaevich, okay, I’ll remember.
– You see, he’s generally used to being taken care of, but now he has such a serious illness. Is it possible to arrange for a permanent nurse to be on duty around him?
In “Cancer Ward,” using the example of one hospital ward, Solzhenitsyn depicts the life of an entire state. The author manages to convey the socio-psychological situation of the era, its originality on such seemingly small material as an image of the life of several cancer patients who, by the will of fate, found themselves in the same hospital building. All heroes are not easy different people With different characters; each of them is a bearer of certain types of consciousness generated by the era of totalitarianism. It is also important that all the heroes are extremely sincere in expressing their feelings and defending their beliefs, as they are faced with death.
In "Cancer Ward" two heroes collide. One, the prototype of which is to some extent the writer himself, Oleg Kostoglotov, a former front-line sergeant who was awaiting death in an oncology hospital and was miraculously saved. The other is Pavel Rusanov, a responsible worker, a professional informer, who put many innocent people in prison and built his well-being on their suffering. Remembering those whose destinies he unfairly disposed of, he does not feel remorse; in his soul there is only fear of possible retribution.
The disputes between Kostoglotov and Rusanov, their struggle for survival take place at a time when the Stalinist machine is collapsing, and for one it is a ray of light, and for the other it is the collapse of the world created bit by bit.
Literature plays a significant role in understanding what is happening. Kostoglotov thinks about Russian literature. It was no coincidence that a volume of Leo Tolstoy appeared in the ward. Writer Solzhenitsyn reminds of humanism literature of the 19th century century with its “main law” of Tolstoy - the love of man for man.
Between Rusanov and Kostoglotov is placed the “preacher of moral socialism” Shulubin. The first readers would have believed that it was he who expressed the dreams of the writer himself. But later A.I. Solzhenitsyn said: “Shulubin, who retreated and bent his back all his life, is completely opposite to the author and does not express any side of the author.”
Much closer to the author are the old men Nikolai Ivanovich and Elena Aleksandrovna Kadmin, who went through the camp and gained experience and depth of life. It was they who had Oleg after she unexpectedly, under the influence of X-rays, retreated strange disease. Kostoglotov knows that after recovery he will face eternal exile in Ush-Terek, but he seems to be learning again to appreciate what is given to man.
In “Cancer Ward,” the Gulag reality is almost invisible; it only slightly reveals itself somewhere in the distance, reminding itself of Kostoglotov’s “eternal exile.” The writer paints the everyday life of the cancer ward with calm, restrained colors. It depicts life shackled not by barbed wire, but by nature itself. The threat of death hangs over a person no longer from the state, but from within the human body, ripening like a tumor. A.I. Solzhenitsyn seems to welcome all living things, removing the cobwebs from what fills human existence, warms him up. The writer also considers the topic of love of life from the other side. Maxim Chaly’s self-satisfied love of life is as blind and cynical as Pavel Rusanov’s attitude towards life. These people are not stopped by spiritual values; they are capable of crushing everything in their path. The idea of repentance, one of the cherished ones for A.I. Solzhenitsyn, is alien to them; their conscience is asleep or absent, so their path to people, to truth, to goodness is difficult. This is partly the answer to the question asked 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 desire for a simple life is understandable. In the finale, Oleg, after doubts and hesitations, still refuses a date with Vera Gangart, which could become decisive in their difficult relationship.
He is afraid of causing discord in the already broken fate of Vera and understands that they are separated by his illness, his position as an exile. An expressive scene is when, before leaving, Oleg, at the request of Demka, a sick neighbor boy, goes to the zoo, where his experience makes him see a prototype of a tormented society. This scene is like a groan, like a scream. “The most confusing thing about imprisoning the animals was that, having taken their side and, say, having the strength, Oleg could not begin to break into the cells and free them. Because they lost the idea of freedom along with their homeland. And their sudden release could only make things worse.”
Oleg Kostoglotov, a former prisoner, independently came to reject the postulates of the official ideology. Shulubin, Russian intellectual, participant October revolution, surrendered, outwardly accepting public morality, and doomed himself to a quarter of a century of mental torment. Rusanov appears as the “world leader” of the nomenklatura regime. But, always following the party line, he often uses the power given to him for personal purposes, confusing them with public interests. The beliefs of these heroes are already fully formed and are repeatedly tested during discussions. The remaining heroes are mainly representatives of the passive majority who have accepted official morality, but they are either indifferent to it or do not defend it so zealously. The entire work represents a kind of dialogue in consciousness, reflecting almost the entire spectrum of life ideas characteristic of the era. The external well-being of a system does not mean that it is devoid of internal contradictions. It is in this dialogue that the author sees a potential opportunity to cure the cancer that has affected the entire society.
Born in the same era, the heroes of the story make different life choices. True, not all of them realize that the choice has already been made. Efrem Podduev, who lived his life the way he wanted, suddenly understands, turning to Tolstoy’s books, the entire emptiness of his existence. But this hero’s insight is too late. In essence, the problem of choice faces every person every second, but out of many decision options, only one is correct, out of all the paths in life, only one is to one’s heart. Demka, a teenager at a crossroads in life, realizes the need for choice. At school he absorbed official ideology, but in the ward he felt its ambiguity, having heard very contradictory, sometimes mutually exclusive statements from his neighbors. The clash of positions of different heroes occurs in endless disputes, affecting both everyday and existential problems. Kostoglotov is a fighter, he is tireless, he literally attacks his opponents, expressing everything that has become painful over the years of forced silence. Oleg easily fends off any objections, since his arguments are hard-won by himself, and the thoughts of his opponents are most often inspired by the dominant ideology. Oleg does not accept even a timid attempt at compromise on the part of Rusanov. And Pavel Nikolaevich and his like-minded people are unable to object to Kostoglotov, because they are not ready to defend their convictions themselves. The state has always done this for them.
Rusanov lacks arguments: he is used to being aware of his own rightness, relying on the support of the system and personal power, but here everyone is equal in the face of the inevitable and near death and in front of each other. Kostoglotov’s advantage in these disputes is also determined by the fact that he speaks from the position of a living person, while Rusanov defends the point of view of a soulless system. Shulubin only occasionally expresses his thoughts, defending the ideas of “moral socialism.” It is precisely the question of the morality of the existing system that all the disputes in the House ultimately revolve around. From Shulubin’s conversation with Vadim Zatsyrko, a talented young scientist, we learn that, in Vadim’s opinion, science is only responsible for the creation of material wealth, and the moral aspect of a scientist should not worry.
Demka’s conversation with Asya reveals the essence of the education system: from childhood, students are taught to think and act “like everyone else.” The state, with the help of schools, teaches insincerity and instills in schoolchildren distorted ideas about morality and ethics. In the mouth of Avietta, Rusanov’s daughter, an aspiring poetess, the author puts official ideas about the tasks of literature: literature must embody the image of a “happy tomorrow”, in which all hopes are realized today. Talent and writing skill, naturally, cannot be compared with ideological demands. The main thing for a writer is the absence of “ideological dislocations,” so literature becomes a craft serving the primitive tastes of the masses. The ideology of the system does not imply the creation moral values, for which Shulubin, who betrayed his convictions, but did not lose faith in them, yearns. He understands that a system with a shifted scale of life values is unviable. Rusanov's stubborn self-confidence, Shulubin's deep doubts, Kostoglotov's intransigence - different levels personality development under totalitarianism. All these life positions dictated by the conditions of the system, which thus not only forms an iron support for itself from people, but also creates conditions for potential self-destruction.
All three heroes are victims of the system, since it deprived Rusanov of the ability to think independently, forced Shulubin to abandon his beliefs, and took away freedom from Kostoglotov. Any system that oppresses an individual disfigures the souls of all its subjects, even those who serve it faithfully. 3. Thus, the fate of a person, according to Solzhenitsyn, depends on the choice that the person himself makes. Totalitarianism exists not only thanks to tyrants, but also thanks to the passive and indifferent majority, the “crowd”. Only choice true values can lead to victory over this monstrous totalitarian system. And everyone has the opportunity to make such a choice.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Cancer building
PART ONE
Not cancer at all
The Cancer Ward also wore number thirteen. Pavel Nikolaevich Rusanov never was and could not be superstitious, but something sank in him when they wrote in his direction: “Thirteenth Corps.” I wasn’t smart enough to call the thirteenth something leaky or intestinal.
However, in the entire republic they could not help him anywhere except this clinic.
But I don’t have cancer, doctor? I don't have cancer, do I? - Pavel Nikolaevich asked hopefully, lightly touching his evil tumor on the right side of his neck, growing almost every day, and on the outside still covered with harmless white skin.
“No, no, of course not,” Dr. Dontsova reassured him for the tenth time, scribbling out pages in the medical history in her flourishing handwriting. When she wrote, she put on glasses - rounded rectangular ones, and as soon as she stopped writing, she took them off. She was no longer young, and she looked pale and very tired.
This was at an outpatient appointment a few days ago. Appointed to the cancer department even for an outpatient appointment, the patients no longer slept at night. And Dontsova ordered Pavel Nikolaevich to lie down as quickly as possible.
Not only the disease itself, not foreseen, not prepared, which came like a squall in two weeks on a carefree happy person, but no less than the disease, Pavel Nikolaevich was now oppressed by the fact that he had to go to this clinic on a general basis, how he was treated, he no longer remembered when . They started calling Evgeny Semyonovich, and Shendyapin, and Ulmasbaev, and they, in turn, called and found out the possibilities, and whether there was a special ward in this clinic or whether it was possible to at least temporarily organize a small room as a special ward. But due to the cramped conditions here, nothing came of it.
And the only thing we managed to agree on through the head doctor was that it would be possible to bypass the emergency room, the general bathhouse and the changing room.
And in their little blue Muscovite, Yura drove his father and mother to the very steps of the Thirteenth Building.
Despite the frost, two women in washed cotton robes stood on the open stone porch - they shivered, but stood.
Starting with these unkempt robes, everything here was unpleasant for Pavel Nikolaevich: the cement floor of the porch, too worn out by feet; dull door handles, grasped by the hands of the sick; a lobby of people waiting with peeling paint on the floor, high olive paneled walls (the olive color seemed dirty) and large slatted benches on which patients who had come from far away did not fit and sat on the floor - Uzbeks in quilted cotton robes, old Uzbek women in white scarves, and young - in purple, red and green, and everyone in boots and galoshes. One Russian guy was lying, occupying an entire bench, with his coat unbuttoned and hanging to the floor, exhausted himself, his stomach swollen, and constantly screaming in pain. And these screams deafened Pavel Nikolaevich and hurt him so much, as if the guy was screaming not about himself, but about him.
Pavel Nikolaevich turned pale to the lips, stopped and whispered:
Mouth guard! I'll die here. No need. We'll be back.
Kapitolina Matveevna took his hand firmly and squeezed:
Pashenka! Where will we return?.. And what next?
Well, maybe things will work out somehow with Moscow...
Kapitolina Matveevna turned to her husband with her wide head, still broadened by lush copper-cut curls:
Pashenka! Moscow is maybe another two weeks, maybe it won’t be possible. How can you wait? After all, every morning it is bigger!
His wife squeezed him tightly at the wrist, conveying cheerfulness. In civil and official matters, Pavel Nikolayevich himself was unwavering - the more pleasant and calm it was for him to always rely on his wife in family matters: she decided everything important quickly and correctly.
And the guy on the bench was torn and screaming!
Maybe the doctors will agree to go home... We'll pay... - Pavel Nikolaevich answered hesitantly.
Pasik! - the wife inspired, suffering together with her husband, - you know, I myself am always the first for this: to call a person and pay. But we found out: these doctors don’t come, they don’t take money. And they have equipment. It is forbidden…
Pavel Nikolaevich himself understood that it was impossible. He said this just in case.
By agreement with the head physician of the oncology dispensary, the older nurse was supposed to be waiting for them at two o'clock in the afternoon here, at the bottom of the stairs, down which the patient was now carefully descending on crutches. But, of course, the older sister was not there, and her closet under the stairs was locked.
You can't come to an agreement with anyone! - Kapitolina Matveevna flushed. - Why do they only get paid a salary?
As she was, hugged on the shoulders by two silver foxes, Kapitolina Matveevna walked along the corridor, where it was written: “Entry is prohibited in outerwear.”
Pavel Nikolaevich remained standing in the lobby. Fearfully, with a slight tilt of his head to the right, he felt his tumor between the collarbone and jaw. It was as if in the half hour since he last looked at her in the mirror at home, wrapping his muffler around her, she seemed to have grown even more. Pavel Nikolaevich felt weak and wanted to sit down. But the benches seemed dirty and we also had to ask some woman in a headscarf with a greasy bag on the floor between her legs to move. Even from a distance, the stinking smell from this bag did not seem to reach Pavel Nikolaevich.
And when will our population learn to travel with clean, neat suitcases! (However, now, with the tumor, it was no longer the same.)
Suffering from the screams of that guy and from everything that his eyes saw, and from everything that entered through his nose, Rusanov stood, slightly leaning against the ledge of the wall. A man came in from outside, carrying in front of him a half-liter jar with a sticker, almost full of yellow liquid. He carried the can not hiding it, but proudly raising it, like a mug of beer standing in line. Just before Pavel Nikolaevich, almost handing him this jar, the man stopped, wanted to ask, but looked at the seal's hat and turned away, looking further, to the patient on crutches:
Honey! Where should I take this, eh?
The legless man showed him the laboratory door.
Pavel Nikolaevich simply felt sick.
The outer door opened again - and a sister came in wearing only a white robe, not pretty, too long-faced. She immediately noticed Pavel Nikolaevich and guessed, and approached him.
Sorry,” she said through a puff, blushing to the color of her painted lips, she was in such a hurry. - Excuse me, please! Have you been waiting for me for a long time? They brought medicine there, I take it.
Pavel Nikolaevich wanted to answer caustically, but restrained himself. He was glad that the wait was over. Yura came up, carrying a suitcase and a bag of groceries, in just a suit, without a hat, as he was driving a car - very calm, with his high light forelock swaying.
Let's go! - the older sister led to her closet under the stairs. - I know, Nizamutdin Bakhramovich told me, you will be in your underwear and brought your pajamas, just not yet worn, right?
From the shop.
This is mandatory, otherwise disinfection is needed, you understand? This is where you will change clothes.
She opened the plywood door and turned on the light. There was no window in the closet with a sloping ceiling, but there were many colored pencil charts hanging.
Yura silently carried his suitcase there, went out, and Pavel Nikolaevich went in to change clothes. The older sister rushed to go somewhere else during this time, but then Kapitolina Matveevna approached:
Girl, are you in such a hurry?
Yes a-a little...
What is your name?
What a strange name. Are you not Russian?
You made us wait.
Excuse me, please. I'm currently receiving...
So listen, Mita, I want you to know. My husband... is an honored man, a very valuable worker. His name is Pavel Nikolaevich.
Pavel Nikolaevich, okay, I'll remember.
You see, he was generally used to care, but now he has such a serious illness. Is it possible to arrange for a permanent nurse to be on duty around him?
Mita's worried, restless face became even more worried. She shook her head:
In addition to operating rooms for sixty people, we have three nurses on duty during the day. And at night two.
Well, you see! You'll die here, scream - they won't come.
Why do you think so? They approach everyone.
To “everyone”!.. If she said “to everyone”, then O explain to her?
Besides, are your sisters changing?
Yes, twelve hours.
This impersonal treatment is terrible!.. I would sit with my daughter in shifts! I would invite a permanent nurse at my own expense, they tell me - and this is not possible...?
I think it's impossible. No one has done this before. There’s not even room to put a chair in the room.
My God, I can imagine what kind of room this is! You still need to see this room! How many beds are there?
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; it speaks only of the conventionality of boundaries 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 to be correct. This book is one of those that requires returning to its pages in an attempt to understand what escaped the first acquaintance. There is no doubt about the multidimensionality of this work. “Cancer Ward” by Solzhenitsyn is a book about life, about death and about fate, but with all this, it is, as they say, “easy to read.” The everyday life 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 here. In a small oncology department, standing separately in the courtyard of the Tashkent City Hospital, those for whom fate has given a “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. The Russian writer depicted 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 room, who turned out to be equal in the face of impending death. This main character, front-line soldier, former prisoner and exile Oleg Kostoglotov, in whom the author himself can easily be discerned.
He is opposed by the petty bureaucratic Soviet careerist Pavel Rusanov, who achieved his position by fervently serving the system and writing denunciations against those who interfered with him or simply did not like him. Now these people find themselves in the same room. Hopes for recovery are very ephemeral for them. Many medicines have been tried and we can only hope for remedies traditional medicine, such as the chaga mushroom growing somewhere in Siberia on birch trees. The fates of the other inhabitants of the chamber are no less interesting, but they fade into the background before the confrontation between the two main characters. Within the cancer ward, the lives of all the inhabitants pass 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 lived for a very long time and interesting life after leaving the oncology department of the Tashkent hospital.
History of the book
Solzhenitsyn's book "Cancer Ward" was published only in 1990, at the end of perestroika. Attempts to publish it in the Soviet Union were made by the author before. Individual chapters were being prepared for publication in the magazine " New world"in the early 60s of the twentieth century, until Soviet censorship saw the conceptual artistic design books. Solzhenitsyn's "Cancer Ward" is not just a hospital oncology department, it is something much larger and sinister. To the Soviet people I had to read this work in Samizdat, but just reading it could have suffered greatly.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn's story "Cancer Ward" was written in hard times, when they strictly followed the ideas and views that were reflected in creativity. The writer touched on ideology, themes of life and death, moral issues, but in the 60s of the 20th century it was impossible to express one’s thoughts absolutely freely, so the story was not published. However, it was published in the West in Russian, and was also translated into foreign languages. And this became a real event in literature; the writer received the Nobel Prize for the story.
The events of the novel take place in the “cancer ward” - this is a department of the hospital in Tashkent, where Solzhenitsyn himself was treated. Readers are presented with different heroes, whose characters are clearly written down to the smallest detail. They are all completely different, but they have one thing in common - they all have to fight the disease. And death does not care at all who you are, how much money you have and what position you occupy in society. She doesn’t care what views you hold or who you worship.
Patients may leave to die, some may be discharged with improvements, and some may undergo long-term treatment without knowing what the outcome will be. They get into arguments, talking about ideology. This is the time when Stalin died and changes began to occur in society. How to live for those who believed in the leader of the peoples? What to believe for those who start everything with clean slate? The heroes of the novel go through a stage of rethinking their lives. The disease makes them think about morality and faith. And here, too, everyone has their own opinion.
In addition to relationships between people, the writer paid attention to the medical component of the work. It raises moral and ethical issues, treatment methods and the behavior of doctors when they know the outcome in advance. Is it possible to treat a person with promises or is it better to immediately tell the truth without leaving hope... Ambiguous and difficult questions the writer asks in this story, making readers think for a long time.
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