Math Mutation 93: A Math Teacher To Remember
Recently I was looking through one of those online lists of people
who died in 2008, to see if there was anyone of mathematical
significance to mention in the podcast. One name that stood out was
Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn, the Soviet dissident who was instrumental in
publicizing the horrors of the Communist system to the outside world.
What is lesser known about him is that he was originally trained in
mathematics, and this background played a key role in enabling his
later political activities.
Solzhenitsyn was born in 1918, so came of age just in time for
World War II. While having an interest in literature from an early
age, he found in school that he had a talent for math, so studied at
the Department of Mathematics in Rostov University, graduating in
1941. Because of this background, he was sent to an artillery school,
and served in the war as an artillery officer until he was arrested
for having made remarks critical of Stalin in a private letter.
Upon his arrest, Solzhenitsyn was deported into the Soviet Union's
"Gulag", or network of concentration camps, where political prisoners
were generally put on heavy labor duty with barely any food or shelter,
until many were worked to death. But his mathematical background
saved him: he was one of the few lucky prisoners selected to serve in
the sharashkas, a kind of university system within the prison camp
network. Those prisoners were given a better level of food and
shelter, and expected to conduct advanced scientific research. In his
autobiographical novel "The First Circle", Solzhenitsyn talked about
life in these camps. He related some darkly humorous anecdotes about
the prisoners constantly trying to convince their technically
illiterate Communist masters about progress being made. In one
example, they convinced senior officials that they could look at a
voiceprint and figure out what was being said, by of course colluding
in advance about what statements to use in the test. But the stakes
were deadly serious, as any prisoner in whom the authorities lost
confidence would likely end up back in the common labor camps.
Eventually Solzhentisyn was declared 'rehabilitated' and released,
and once again his mathematical background played a key role. A
"rehabilitated" political prisoner was still living under many
restrictions and had very few choices in where or how to live. But
because he qualified to serve as a math teacher, he had had a
relatively comfortable existence for an ex-prisoner, with enough time
to write. And then he skilfully read the political winds and
submitted his novel about prison camp life, "One Day In The Life of
Ivan Denisovich", at just the right time: Krushchev was trying to
show his independence from Stalin's legacy, and allowed it to be
published, despite its stark exposure of the inhumane treatment of
prisoners. The Soviet leadership came to regret this decision,
especially after Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize and became too
famous to quietly dispose of like so many others who had criticized
the communist system.
Since this is a math podcast rather than a political one, I'll
avoid talking in too much detail about Solzhenitsyn's many important
political works, which exposed not only the treatment of political
prisoners, but the many ways in which the Communist system destroyed
the moral, political, and cultural fabric of Russian society. If you
have any interest in the topic, I do highly recommend that you pick up
"The Gulag Archipelago", his massive work based on the collected
recollections of himself and the thousands of other prisoners who
wrote to him after he became famous. You would think 1800 pages on
life in the Gulag would be dry, but I literally couldn't put it down
once I started reading.
And this has been your math mutation for today.
References:
Article
on the role of math in Solzhenitsyn's life
Sharashka at
Wikipedia
The First
Circle at Wikipedia
Solzhenitsyn
at Wikipedia
The
Gulag Archipelago at Wikipedia