Word: mavrino
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Solzhenitsyn believes that his mathematics saved him: he was next sent to Mavrino, a prison research institute outside Moscow. Mavrino is the setting of The First Circle. The title comes from Dante's Inferno, where the first circle of hell is peopled by the great men of antiquity?Homer, Socrates, Plato?who, too valuable to be thrown into the pit, were consigned to limbo. Mavrino is an institute carrying out KGB research projects, and as a prison it is bearable. There is meat. There is some comfort. There are even women. Yet this is still slave labor of the mind...
Into four days at Mavrino a dozen parallel lives are laid. The characters are borne along on the conveyor belts of terror. They are tormented by problems of conscience, and by the knowledge that if they make the morally right choice?to support a friend, to oppose a foolish order?they will be crushed in the machinery...
...think there must be some great, unknown poet in the secret police, a new Pushkin," writes Solzhenitsyn. "He's not quite up to a full-length poem, but he gives these wonderful poetic names to concentration camps." These passages obviously parallel Solzhenitsyn's own experiences; after his years in Mavrino, he was sent to such a camp in Kazakhstan, part of a complex called Karlag, which was indeed as large as France. So many prisoners were in the camps that it was widely fantasied among them that no free men were left outside...
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