Cancer ward

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Cancer ward ( Russian Раковый Корпус , Rakowy Korpus) is a novel by the Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn from 1967. It describes the meeting of various cancer patients in an Uzbek hospital in the Soviet Union in the mid-1950s. The novel is considered to be partly autobiographical because the author himself was treated in Tashkent in the 1950s for a tumor and can be recognized in one of the main characters.

action

At the beginning of the novel, Pavel Nikolajewitsch Rusanow, an arrogant, opportunistic functionary of proletarian origin, arrives at the cancer ward, where he has to be treated for a lymphoma. He is appalled to be placed in a large hospital room with about ten other patients who do not correspond to his position and to receive no preferential treatment. He regrets not having gone straight to a proper Moscow clinic, but in his ill condition he shies away from traveling and is also not sure whether his influence goes far enough to get a treatment place in Moscow.

Oleg Filimonowitsch Kostoglotow, the second main character in the novel and Solzhenitsyn's alter ego , is a middle-aged man who was sentenced to camp for political reasons and later banished to the Kazakh steppe. He is admitted to the cancer ward because of a lump in his stomach. There he developed into the adversary of his roommate Rusanow, who denounced people like Kostoglotov in his life and plunged them into ruin and now stands out with his airs.

Both Rusanov's and Kostoglotov's tumors gradually shrink with chemotherapy, radiation, and hormone therapy, but patients suffer from the side effects of treatment, including estrogen infertility. The staff leaves patients in the dark about their prognosis. However, while Rusanov accepts his therapy over time and believes in its success, Kostoglotov, who has been suspicious of years of persecution, continually questions the doctors' actions. A special relationship develops between him and the radiologist Vera Korniljewna Hangart. Kostoglotov likes to put himself in their hands. Wera Hangart, whose fiancé died in the war and who has remained single since then, also takes a liking to Kostoglotov's profound manner. The two fall in love without openly admitting it to each other.

All of this takes place against the backdrop of looming political détente two years after the death of Josef Stalin . Based on rumors, Kostoglotov is hoping for an early amnesty. Rusanov is afraid of the revenge of a former neighbor, whom he blackened at the time in order to get more living space for his family. He is also worried about his son, who recently took up a position in the public prosecutor's office, but in the eyes of his father is not acting unscrupulous enough.

Towards the end of the novel, Rusanov and Kostoglotov are released from the hospital. Rusanov is picked up by his family by car. As they drive away, they mock Kostoglotov. He made the plan to spend another day in the city of the hospital and the next day to travel back to Kazakhstan to the place of his exile. Both Wera Hangart and Soja, a medical student who works as a nurse and who got closer to Kostoglotov during her night shifts, offer him their apartment for the night. Kostoglotow strolls through the city and enjoys the unusual freedom. In a department store, however, he is repulsed by the consumption of unaffordable luxury. He then visits the zoo because he has promised a fellow patient. But in the animals he sees allegories for his own unfree existence. Visitors injured a monkey for no reason by throwing tobacco in its eyes, which deeply shook Kostoglotov. He also recognizes that the animals are so shaped by captivity that you would not do them any favors if you released them now.

Kostoglotov hastily decides to go to Wera's apartment and talk to her about a possible future together. However, he does not meet her at home. He doesn't wait for her, but goes to the station to take the next train away. In a letter he confesses to Wera that he always wanted to kiss her, but that it would be better if they didn't get together. As a politically persecuted man, marked by life, ill and unable to reproduce, he does not feel that he is the right partner for Wera.

Subject

The novel binds the areas of medicine, politics and family. The main topic is the political conditions in the former Soviet Union . In the cancer ward, favorites of Stalinism , followers and the persecuted meet and discuss their views, sometimes secretly, sometimes loudly and passionately. In addition, the doctor-patient relationship is also examined in detail. Doctors withhold their true diagnoses from patients, avoid the word "cancer" and instead speak, for example, of "polyps" in gastric cancer. The perplexed patients seek their salvation in alternative forms of therapy such as a root, which is considered a miracle cure against cancer and which they are trying to get for a lot of money.

When the discharged patients ask whether they are cured, the doctors answer incorrectly or evasively. At the same time, some doctors take self-sacrificing care of their patients and try to instill confidence in them. The conscientious head of the X-ray department, Doctor Donzowa, suffers from a presumably malignant stomach tumor herself, but for a long time refuses to admit it because she cannot imagine the change from doctor to patient role. Later she does not want to be involved in the decisions of her case and wishes to be a medical layperson herself so that she does not have to know what her illness means.

In connection with Doctor Donzowa's illness, the subjects of private medical practice and general practitioner care in Soviet communism are discussed in detail.

people

Patient

  • Oleg Filimonovich Kostoglotov - main character; Former soldier, sentenced to camp imprisonment and subsequent exile for counter-revolutionary activities
  • Pavel Nikolayevich Ruzanov - second main character; opportunistic party official who has come to power and prosperity; needs treatment for Hodgkin's lymphoma
  • Djomka - warm-hearted adolescent sarcoma patient whose leg is amputated
  • Wadim - ambitious geology student who wants to develop a new method of resource discovery; suffers from malignant melanoma
  • Schulubin - librarian with rectal cancer who regrets having kept his indignation against the Stalinist crimes secret all his life afraid
  • Asja - girl with a breast tumor who will have to undergo a mastectomy ; becomes Djomka's girlfriend

Clinic staff

  • Vera Kornilievna Hangart - radiologist who is particularly fond of Kostoglotov; still mourns her fiancé, whom she lost in the war
  • Lyudmila Afanassjewna Donzowa - head of the radiological department; developed a tumor himself
  • Soy - medical student who works as a nurse on the cancer ward; ties up with Kostoglotov
  • Nellja - cleaning lady, who is later promoted to the serving of food
  • Lev Leonidovich - capable and confident surgeon; used to work in a prison camp
  • Nisamutdin Bachramowitsch - conceited chief physician; hires doctors based on political and personal preferences, not based on their professional qualifications

Other

  • Kapitalina Matveyevna - Rusanov's wife
  • the Kadmins - couple of doctors, exiles, Kostoglotov's parental friends in Ush-Terek, Kazakhstan
  • Doctor Oreshchenkov - seventy-five- year-old doctor who still practices in his private home; Doctor Donzowa's former teacher

History of appearance

The first volume of the novel was submitted to the literary magazine Novyj mir by the author in 1966, but was not accepted for publication. Solzhenitsyn then sent the manuscript to various Soviet publishers without success. The text seeped into the underground samizdat literature, which was also the intention of the author: "The oak and the calf". In 1967 Solzhenitsyn completed the second volume, which was also rejected. At that time the existence of the novel was already known in the West; Solzhenitsyn had also mentioned it in his letter to the Writers' Union, where he called for the censorship in the Soviet Union to be lifted. The publication of the novel was further thwarted in the Soviet Union. Only after the fall of communist rule could the novel be printed in Russia. Volume 1 appeared in the West in 1967, Volume 2 in 1969. German translation Christiane Auras u. a.

Adaptations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thomas, Donald M .: Solzhenitsyn: the biography. New York 1998., p. 293 ff.
  2. ↑ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1175504
  3. ^ Cancer ward - Tobias Wellemeyer stages Alexander Solzhenitsyn's autobiographical novel at the Hans Otto Theater Potsdam