T he First Circle is a populous novel, crowded with zeks (prisoners), Party functionaries, and ordinary citizens whose lives become intertwined within a Mavrino, sharashka (special prison) which uses convicted engineers for research. The novel weaves a rich tapestry as Solzhenitsyn attentively develops many detailed characters.

Two of them emerge as central characters, one inside the first circle of the prison, and the other inside the first circles of Party leadership and Soviet family life.

Gleb Nerzhin is a thirty-one-year-old mathematician and zek at Mavrino. Life in the sharashka surpasses life at slave labor, but Nerzhin fears he pays too high a moral price by cooperating with the government. Various options available to Gleb are embodied in his fellow zeks. Lev Rubin remains a dedicated Communist despite imprisonment on false charges. Convinced that the system will someday correct its mistake, Rubin ceaselessly petitions Soviet courts for release. Dmitri...