The First Circle

About this book

In the First Circle depicts the lives of the occupants of a sharashka (a research and development bureau made of GULAG inmates) located in the Moscow suburbs. This novel is highly autobiographical. Many of the prisoners (zeks) are technicians or academics who have been arrested under Article 58 of the RSFSR Penal Code in Joseph Stalins purges following the Second World War. Unlike inhabitants of other gulag labor camps the sharashka zeks were adequately fed and enjoyed good working conditions; however if they found disfavor with the authorities they could be instantly shipped to Siberia. The title is an allusion to Dantes first circle or limbo of Hell in The Divine Comedy wherein the philosophers of Greece and other virtuous pagans live in a walled green garden. They are unable to enter Heaven as they were born before Christ but enjoy a small space of relative freedom in the heart of Hell.