What is the importance of the title, The First Circle?

The title suggests the major themes of the novel, deriving from the epic spiritual poem of the medieval Italian poet Dante, The Divine Comedy (c.1320), whose hero visits Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. Dante's hell is a tapering funnel of ten circles or levels. Its first circle, the abode of good pagans, lacks the fiery tortures of the other nine circles which entrap various kinds of sinners. Mavrino is the first circle of the hell of the labor camp system, inhabited by zeks leading relatively easy lives in exchange for being good prisoners and cooperating with the State.

The title also connotates the first circle of the Communist Party leadership, General Secretary Josef Stalin and his chief lieutenants. This circle is not as far removed from Hell as power and privileges suggest. One false step by a lieutenant — an unfulfilled assignment, a hint of ingratitude — sends him plunging down into the camp system.

This circle is also a prison of its own: For safety, Stalin lives in a small bunker encased by iron walls, as powerless to get out as potential assassins are to get in.

A third connotation of the title is the first circle of any individual, the family circle. As long as a Soviet citizen avoids prison, life is good in this circle.

Yet if any family member plunges into a sharashka (or worse), the bonds of blood or marriage torture the imprisoned and the free alike. Like life in the first circle of the party, life in the family can be materially and spiritually pleasant but precarious.

The ultimate implication of the title is that all elements of Soviet society are perched dangerously on the rim of the infernal camp system, the notorious Gulag.