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The Love-Girl and the Innocent
The time is 1945. The place a Stalinist slave-labor camp like the one in which Solzhenitsyn himself served an eight-year term. This is the tragic love story of two prisoners, Rodion the "Innocent" and Lyuba the "love-girl." She teaches him that integrity as a prisoner is a passport to death. If the "Innocent" will only compromise and share Lyuba with the prison doctor who desires her, then he will have everything: extra food, a comfortable job, and the woman he loves. All he has to do is compromise.
133 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1969
About the author
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
297 books4,248 followersalso known as
Alexander Solzenitsyn (English, alternate)
Αλεξάντρ Σολζενίτσιν (Greek)
Works, including One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) and The Gulag Archipelago (1973-1975), of Soviet writer and dissident Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970, exposed the brutality of the labor camp system.
This known Russian novelist, dramatist, and historian best helped to make the world aware of the forced Gulag.
Exiled in 1974, he returned to Russia in 1994. Solzhenitsyn fathered of Ignat Solzhenitsyn, a conductor and pianist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksan...
Alexander Solzenitsyn (English, alternate)
Αλεξάντρ Σολζενίτσιν (Greek)
Works, including One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) and The Gulag Archipelago (1973-1975), of Soviet writer and dissident Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970, exposed the brutality of the labor camp system.
This known Russian novelist, dramatist, and historian best helped to make the world aware of the forced Gulag.
Exiled in 1974, he returned to Russia in 1994. Solzhenitsyn fathered of Ignat Solzhenitsyn, a conductor and pianist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksan...
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
March 5, 2017
Comrade Stalin was quite right. He said, "Personnel selection is decisive. People are our most valuable capital." I want that slogan up in the camp yard.
Unlike our pantomime morality dramas where there are villains of the first order, a Platonic form of Evil -- what this play depicts is that everyone has a jackal within. Well, almost everyone. The gulag simply brought these lesser angels to the fore, a character here calls their world Campland and one of its cardinal features is that 99 people cry and one person laughs. The titular characters are swept into a labor camp in the aftermath of the Great Patriotic War and find a fleeting human connection while they are tortured by the logic of their present existence. He a former officer in the Soviet army is the rube, unwilling to accept the human costs of his position as labor organizer. She is an orphan of Koba's wet dream of socialist perfection. He is soon demoted and she must satisfy the carnal whims of her superiors. Despite the debasement both recognize their doomed attraction as palpable. Such are the consolations of the informed.
Unlike our pantomime morality dramas where there are villains of the first order, a Platonic form of Evil -- what this play depicts is that everyone has a jackal within. Well, almost everyone. The gulag simply brought these lesser angels to the fore, a character here calls their world Campland and one of its cardinal features is that 99 people cry and one person laughs. The titular characters are swept into a labor camp in the aftermath of the Great Patriotic War and find a fleeting human connection while they are tortured by the logic of their present existence. He a former officer in the Soviet army is the rube, unwilling to accept the human costs of his position as labor organizer. She is an orphan of Koba's wet dream of socialist perfection. He is soon demoted and she must satisfy the carnal whims of her superiors. Despite the debasement both recognize their doomed attraction as palpable. Such are the consolations of the informed.
December 23, 2015
I love Russian literature, so I expected to like this, but it just isn't for me. First of all, the title doesn't accurately depict what the play is about. It's not about Lyuba and Nemov at all, really. It's about Russian work camps right after the war: the corruption, the labor, the deprivation, and the corruption again. Basically, all the workers (prisoners or not) are trying to get by and make the best out of a horrific situation. Lyuba and Nemov are just two types, not only as literary characters but even within the world of the play itself. They don't have a particularly dominant or even a particularly interesting storyline.
Second of all, the stage directions are too complex for reading. I couldn't really picture the scenes. I love reading plays, and I can usually follow along and see them in my mind, but this one was just not a well-written play. Maybe it's much better performed, but good plays are ones that can be read as fluidly as they can be seen. I love Peter Shaffer. Amadeus is just as excellent to read as it is to see (the movie, I mean; I never saw a stage production). Shaffer's stage directions are intricate; he is not a minimalist by any means. Still, I can follow his plays. I know what's happening and where.
Third of all, there are far too many characters. This is a play, not War and Peace. In a thousand-page novel that spans many years, tens or hundreds of characters make sense. In a four-act play, however, too many characters hinder character development and plot momentum.
I still own One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and would like to give it a try. I'm not sure I will want to, though. I still love Russian literature and always will. This play really isn't for me, though, so I can't recommend it.
After thinking about it some more, the number of characters makes sense. Too many people were confined to work camps, just as there are too many characters in the play. The reader/viewer isn't supposed to get to know the characters because people in the camps either died, got released, or were transferred before they could make any real connections with each other. I need to give Solzhenitsyn more credit than I initially did. That being said, I change my rating to a 2.5. It's still low because I still don't feel a connection to the play. He could have done a better job really highlighting the disconnect, the emotion, the struggle. Maybe he didn't want to because it's better to disconnect from the emotion to get by (after all, Solzhenitsyn lived in a labor camp himself, so he knew what mental labor people had to complete to keep from being "goners"), but I like character-driven literature. I can, then, recommend this to people who don't mind a more distanced view of work camp life and who don't mind plot- and setting-driven works.
Sorry to belabor this review (pun intended, of course).
Second of all, the stage directions are too complex for reading. I couldn't really picture the scenes. I love reading plays, and I can usually follow along and see them in my mind, but this one was just not a well-written play. Maybe it's much better performed, but good plays are ones that can be read as fluidly as they can be seen. I love Peter Shaffer. Amadeus is just as excellent to read as it is to see (the movie, I mean; I never saw a stage production). Shaffer's stage directions are intricate; he is not a minimalist by any means. Still, I can follow his plays. I know what's happening and where.
Third of all, there are far too many characters. This is a play, not War and Peace. In a thousand-page novel that spans many years, tens or hundreds of characters make sense. In a four-act play, however, too many characters hinder character development and plot momentum.
I still own One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and would like to give it a try. I'm not sure I will want to, though. I still love Russian literature and always will. This play really isn't for me, though, so I can't recommend it.
After thinking about it some more, the number of characters makes sense. Too many people were confined to work camps, just as there are too many characters in the play. The reader/viewer isn't supposed to get to know the characters because people in the camps either died, got released, or were transferred before they could make any real connections with each other. I need to give Solzhenitsyn more credit than I initially did. That being said, I change my rating to a 2.5. It's still low because I still don't feel a connection to the play. He could have done a better job really highlighting the disconnect, the emotion, the struggle. Maybe he didn't want to because it's better to disconnect from the emotion to get by (after all, Solzhenitsyn lived in a labor camp himself, so he knew what mental labor people had to complete to keep from being "goners"), but I like character-driven literature. I can, then, recommend this to people who don't mind a more distanced view of work camp life and who don't mind plot- and setting-driven works.
Sorry to belabor this review (pun intended, of course).
June 28, 2025
3.5 stars.
This was the first play that I have ever read.
I liked it.
This was the first play that I have ever read.
I liked it.
May 31, 2020
Three things this play taught me:
1. Life in the Gulag isn't fun. As a matter of fact, life in a socialist dictatorship seems to suck.
2. Even in a Stalinist camp (and with Solschenizyn) misogynism and bad gender roles are real. There is a reason why Nemow is mentioned in the Titel but his love interest is only "das Flittchen".
3. I do not not enjoy reading plays. Some are really good. But I am very sensitive towards character development, dialogue and subtlety, and tend to be more critical of them. Where the form is this reduced, the content needs to shine.
You can read it. But you really don't need to.
1. Life in the Gulag isn't fun. As a matter of fact, life in a socialist dictatorship seems to suck.
2. Even in a Stalinist camp (and with Solschenizyn) misogynism and bad gender roles are real. There is a reason why Nemow is mentioned in the Titel but his love interest is only "das Flittchen".
3. I do not not enjoy reading plays. Some are really good. But I am very sensitive towards character development, dialogue and subtlety, and tend to be more critical of them. Where the form is this reduced, the content needs to shine.
You can read it. But you really don't need to.
July 13, 2023
An interesting play about the prison camps in the soviet union. The blurb said it was gonna be a love story but it really wasn’t. Nevertheless enjoyed it, had a few good chuckles.
June 10, 2021
Solzhenitsyn is a mediocre man who writes mediocre plays
March 11, 2012
Originally published on my blog here in August 1998.
Like much of Solzhenitsyn's work, this play has distinct autobiographical features. The play is also known as "The Greenhorn and the Camp-Whore", which is a rather more punchy but less poetic way of translating the Russian title, Olen' i Salisovka.
The main character, and the one who clearly resembles Solzhenitsyn himself, is an army captain named Rodion Nemov. He has been sent to the camp straight from the Second World War front line for one of the political offences that were so easy to commit, and doesn't yet understand anything about how the camp system worked.
Because of his military rank, one of the first things that happens is that he is put in charge of the camp during a temporary absence of the commandant. By his naiveté and desire for justice he manages to alienate the various power structures within the camp. (These have mainly grown up through bribery, corruption, theft of materials.) He ends up accused of the very crime of corruption he has been trying to stamp out.
Assigned to the foundry, Nemov meets Lyuba Nyegnevistskaya, one of the women prisoners. She introduces him to the further degradations practiced upon the female prisoners - the one thing they can use to improve their lot is their sexuality.
The play is clearly important in Solzhenitsyn's development; it semms to be the first place that he writes about the prison camp system as another country within the Soviet Union, the theme that later turned into the multi-volume Gulag Archipelago. It's fairly early, and conforms to the trend that his early work is better and less obsessive than his later work.
Like much of Solzhenitsyn's work, this play has distinct autobiographical features. The play is also known as "The Greenhorn and the Camp-Whore", which is a rather more punchy but less poetic way of translating the Russian title, Olen' i Salisovka.
The main character, and the one who clearly resembles Solzhenitsyn himself, is an army captain named Rodion Nemov. He has been sent to the camp straight from the Second World War front line for one of the political offences that were so easy to commit, and doesn't yet understand anything about how the camp system worked.
Because of his military rank, one of the first things that happens is that he is put in charge of the camp during a temporary absence of the commandant. By his naiveté and desire for justice he manages to alienate the various power structures within the camp. (These have mainly grown up through bribery, corruption, theft of materials.) He ends up accused of the very crime of corruption he has been trying to stamp out.
Assigned to the foundry, Nemov meets Lyuba Nyegnevistskaya, one of the women prisoners. She introduces him to the further degradations practiced upon the female prisoners - the one thing they can use to improve their lot is their sexuality.
The play is clearly important in Solzhenitsyn's development; it semms to be the first place that he writes about the prison camp system as another country within the Soviet Union, the theme that later turned into the multi-volume Gulag Archipelago. It's fairly early, and conforms to the trend that his early work is better and less obsessive than his later work.
August 26, 2026
The Love-Girl and the Innocent
Summary: Skip. Read 'A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich' instead. A truly great read.
Well, the best thing about this book (and the reason I picked it up, and bought it) is undoubtedly the title. Sadly the title gives an entirely misleading idea of the focus of the play. It might more appropriately be called something like 'The Foundrymen and the Furnace'.
The 'Love-Girl' and the Innocent are two of the more interesting characters and ideas in the play, and most human, touching, but it is almost a minor plot-line rather than the focus of the play. The majority of the play is rather about life in a Gulag, and how everyone must lie and compromise any principles they have just to survive. That women might become 'love-girls' and be supported and protected by someone with some power in the group is one example of this.
Given the actual focus this play feels utterly miss-able. The characters are hard to keep track of, and ultimately I didn't bother to try, as I sensed it wasn't that important. It almost felt desultory. It describes a lot of the minutiae of the work in the foundry, and the fraudulent accounting practices that ran through these camps, and the competing interests and treatment of guards, political prisoners and the professional criminals. It is an interesting window into life in a slave camp, but ultimately one should just read 'A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich' instead, which is a much more powerful and affecting, beautiful read.
5/10
Quotes
p40 "4th Woman: She'll find her way around, that woman, inside or outside. That's the way it goes. There aren't many men around now after the war, but it's always the same. Either you have men up to here [places one hand across their throat, palm downwards] or else you don't get a touch."
p63 "But there was a woman Rubyan the storekeeper and I both wanted. So either I get him sent out to cut trees, or else he gets me sent."
Summary: Skip. Read 'A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich' instead. A truly great read.
Well, the best thing about this book (and the reason I picked it up, and bought it) is undoubtedly the title. Sadly the title gives an entirely misleading idea of the focus of the play. It might more appropriately be called something like 'The Foundrymen and the Furnace'.
The 'Love-Girl' and the Innocent are two of the more interesting characters and ideas in the play, and most human, touching, but it is almost a minor plot-line rather than the focus of the play. The majority of the play is rather about life in a Gulag, and how everyone must lie and compromise any principles they have just to survive. That women might become 'love-girls' and be supported and protected by someone with some power in the group is one example of this.
Given the actual focus this play feels utterly miss-able. The characters are hard to keep track of, and ultimately I didn't bother to try, as I sensed it wasn't that important. It almost felt desultory. It describes a lot of the minutiae of the work in the foundry, and the fraudulent accounting practices that ran through these camps, and the competing interests and treatment of guards, political prisoners and the professional criminals. It is an interesting window into life in a slave camp, but ultimately one should just read 'A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich' instead, which is a much more powerful and affecting, beautiful read.
5/10
Quotes
p40 "4th Woman: She'll find her way around, that woman, inside or outside. That's the way it goes. There aren't many men around now after the war, but it's always the same. Either you have men up to here [places one hand across their throat, palm downwards] or else you don't get a touch."
p63 "But there was a woman Rubyan the storekeeper and I both wanted. So either I get him sent out to cut trees, or else he gets me sent."
April 24, 2023
Een toneeltekst lezen was een nieuwe uitdaging, maar na een paar keer heen-en-weer snuisteren naar de lijst met personages, begon de bladspiegel vertrouwd romanesk te lijken.
"Onbenulligheid" is het woord dat over het kamp hangt. Over de arbeidsprestaties, over de aandachtspunten van de kampleiding, over de eindeloze interpretatie van artikel 58 van het strafrecht (anti-Soviet activiteiten).. het enige wat echt telde was genoeg eten om te overleven, iets wat alleen aan de oppervlakte komt in de stem van de gevangenen.
"Onbenulligheid" is het woord dat over het kamp hangt. Over de arbeidsprestaties, over de aandachtspunten van de kampleiding, over de eindeloze interpretatie van artikel 58 van het strafrecht (anti-Soviet activiteiten).. het enige wat echt telde was genoeg eten om te overleven, iets wat alleen aan de oppervlakte komt in de stem van de gevangenen.
November 17, 2018
- productivity
- compromising morality
- love
- corrupt systems and incentives
- power
- competence/incompetence
- compromising morality
- love
- corrupt systems and incentives
- power
- competence/incompetence
October 7, 2020
not bad but the main plot of the story seems to have been a side quest
May 3, 2021
Everyone has a grift, transporting
October 2, 2021
i’m sorry. no.
August 1, 2022
Very upsetting, very raw. Was definitely surprised by the lack of truly established central romance bc the rest of the character relationships were so well defined!!
April 17, 2023
A few brilliant dramatic moments (the bricklayer vs gangsters fight). And some excellent characters (the doctor and the love girl).
February 24, 2025
Would have been better as a novel instead of a play
December 25, 2024
This play by Solzhenitsyn is billed as a love story set in a Soviet prison camp, but it’s more a dramatized account of the scramble for food, clothing, tiny privileges, and yes, sometimes love. There’s a strict hierarchy in the camp, and every character but one is jockeying for position however they can.
I’m happy to have read it as another example of Solzhenitsyn, but A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is a more accessible book.
I’m happy to have read it as another example of Solzhenitsyn, but A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is a more accessible book.
January 31, 2009
This play was a very interesting look at the work-camps in soviet Russia. I learned a lot from it, but it was not an easy read because all the names are Russian so I'd get confused who was who. Also, the back of the book claims that it is a story of how the "innocent" falls in love with the "love-girl", who tries to convince him that everything will be made better for them in the camp if only he will agree to share her with the doctor there. But this part of the plot does not enter at all until almost the end! There is much more to this play than that. All in all, an interesting but difficult read, and many of the stage directions given (like the tractor-trailer truck full of people that is supposed to back onto the stage, and the hot coals that fall on the floor out of the blacksmith's kiln) seem like they would not be easily done unless this is a movie script, which it doesn't appear to be.
September 22, 2014
Good to get Solzhenitsen and the labor camps in a small dose.
February 19, 2015
You can feel the gulag archipelago taking shape.
October 30, 2019
"The Love-Girl and Innocent" is a short, dark, comedic play about life in Soviet prison camps. As with all of Solzhenitsyn's work, it is outstanding.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews