One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Shukhov retrieves his trowel and joins his squad in the machine shop, where he learns that Tiurin successfully manipulated the work report. Tiurin is talking about his past; he was kicked out of the Soviet Army when it was revealed that his father was a “kulak,” one of the land-owning peasants who were viewed as a threat to communism. He was stripped of his winter uniform and discharged with no train pass or rations in November; he later learned that the regimental commander who had discharged him was shot in 1938. While listening to Tiurin, Shukhov asks Eino, one of the Estonians, for a pinch of tobacco and rolls a cigarette. Fetuikov stares expectantly at Shukhov, but Shukhov gives the last of his cigarette to Senka. Tiurin continues his story, saying he had sold enough to buy two loaves of bread. At the train station, he offered to fill a woman’s kettle but the train started moving, so they chased it and hopped on. The conductor assumed he was a soldier and didn’t push Tiurin off. The woman and her friends—”Leningrad students”—hid Tiurin in their compartment. He returned to his home and took his little brother to Frunze, where he found him a place with road workers.