First Circle

At the height of Stalin's postwar terror Innokenty a young diplomat and scion of a corrupt ruling class discovers an earlier and more spiritual tradition than that adopted by the October Revolution the beginning of a process which is Solzhenitsyn's basic theme: the individual's experience of acquiring an immortal soul. Unwisely but generously Innokenty helps a friend in danger of arrest only to be arrested himself and sent to a special prison. This the archetype of the Gulag is described with masterful psychological insight. There are no heroes and hardly any villains; oppressors are no less victims then the oppressed. In the great tradition of the Russian novel The First Circle is both a brooding account of human nature and a scrupulously exact description of a historical period.