The First Circle (В круге первом, V kruge pervom) is a novel by Alexander Solzhenitsyn released in 1968, the title of which is based on a quotation from Dante. It describes three or so days in the life of the occupants of the Mavrino sharashka, many of whom are technicians or academics who have been arrested under Article 58 of the RSFSR Penal Code under Stalin in the years following the Second World War. Unlike other camps in the Gulag system. the sharashka zeks were adequately fed and enjoyed good working conditions. They work on various technical projects to assist the state security organs and generally pander to Stalin's increasing paranoia. They are all aware of how much better they are than general Gulag zeks, and some are aware of the moral dilemma, that their work is helping the system which causes so much suffering. By the end of the book, several, including Gleb Nerzhin, the autobiographical hero, choose to stop cooperating, even when this means being expelled by the sharashka and sent to much deadlier camps. Solzhenitsyn was exiled from the Soviet Union for his book The Gulag Archipelago. ... 1968 (MCMLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1968 calendar). ... Dante in a fresco series of famous men by Andrea del Castagno, ca. ... Sharashka (sometimes Sharaga or Sharazhka, Russian: шара́шка) was an informal name for secret research and development laboratories in the Soviet Gulag labor camp system. ... Article 58 of the Russian SFSR Penal Code was put in force on February 25, 1927 to arrest those suspected guilty of counter-revolutionary activities. ... State motto: Пролетарии всех стран, соединяйтесь! (Workers of the world, unite!) Official language None (Russian in practice) Capital Moscow Chairman of the Supreme Council Boris Yeltsin Area  - Total  - % water Ranked 1st in former Soviet Union 17,075,200 km² 0,5% Population  - Total (1989)  - Density Ranked 1st in the former... Joseph Stalin Iosif (Joseph) Vissarionovich Stalin (Russian: Иосиф Виссарионович Сталин), original name Ioseb Jughashvili (Georgian: იოსებ ჯუღაშვილი; see Other names section) (December 21, 18791 – March 5, 1953) was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a political leader in the Soviet Union. ... Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km into the air. ... GULAG (Russian: Glavonoye Upravleniye Lagerey, Main Camp Administration) was the branch of the Soviet secret police (the NKVD and later on the KGB) that dealt with concentration camps. ... GULAG (Russian: Glavonoye Upravleniye Lagerey, Main Camp Administration) was the branch of the Soviet secret police (the NKVD and later on the KGB) that dealt with concentration camps. ...

The book also briefly depicts several Soviet leaders of the period, including Stalin himself, who is depicted as vain and vengeful, remembering with pleasure the torture of a rival, dreaming of one day becoming emperor of the world, or listening to his subordinate Abakumov and wondering 'has the day come to shoot him yet?'

Characters:

Victor Semyonovich Abakumov: Minister of State Security.

Grigory Borisovich Adamson: A zek engineer, serving his second term.

Bobynin: Zek boss of Laboratory Number Seven at Mavrino.

Vladimir Erastovich Chelnov: Professor of Mathematics, a "transient zek," serving his eighteenth year of imprisonment.

Rostislav (Ruska) Vadimich Doronin: A zek mechanic, 23.

Ivan Selivanovich Dyrsin: A zek engineer.

Larisa Nikolayevna Emina: A free employee in the Design Office at Mavrino.

Dinera Galakhov: Daughter of the prosecutor Makarygin, wife of Nikolai Galakhov.

Nikolai (Kolya) Arkadevich Galakhov: A popular writer.

Illarion Pavlovich Gerasimovich: A zek physicist specialing in optics, a relative newcomer to Mavrino.

Natalya Pavlovna Gerasimovich: His wife.

Isaak Moiseyevich Kagan: Zek "director of the battery room."

Ilya Terentevich Khorobrov: A zek radio engineer, imprisoned for defacing his election ballot.

Lieutenant Colonel Ilya Terentevich Klimentiev: Head of the Mavrino Special Prison.

Gleb Vikentyevich Nerzhin: A zek mathematician, age 31. An autobiographical character.

Lev Grigoryevich Rubin: A zek philologist and teacher, 36, a Communist from youth.

Dmitri Aleksandrovich Sologdin: A zek designer, 36, a survivor of the northern camps now serving his second term.

External link

• The Book in Russian, 1st part - 2nd part