Cancer Ward (Rakovy Korpus) is a semi-autobiographical novel by Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, first published in 1967, and banned in the Soviet Union in 1968.
The novel tells the story of a small group of cancer patients in Uzbekistan in 1955, in the post-Stalinist Soviet Union. It explores the moral responsibility — symbolized by the patients' malignant tumors — of those implicated in the suffering of their fellow citizens during Stalin...
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Cancer Ward (Rakovy Korpus) is a semi-autobiographical novel by Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, first published in 1967, and banned in the Soviet Union in 1968.
The novel tells the story of a small group of cancer patients in Uzbekistan in 1955, in the post-Stalinist Soviet Union. It explores the moral responsibility — symbolized by the patients' malignant tumors — of those implicated in the suffering of their fellow citizens during Stalin's Great Purge, when millions were killed, sent to labor camps, or exiled.
One of the patients fears that a man he helped to jail, now released, will seek revenge, while others come to realize that their passive involvement, their failure to resist, renders them as guilty as any other. "You haven't had to do much lying, do you understand?" Shulubin tells the main character, Oleg Kostoglotov, who was in a labor camp. "At least you haven't had to stoop so low — you should appreciate that! You people were arrested, but we were herded into...
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