Books in the news In The First Circle

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Alex Boyd on books in the news. A quick look at a newly published material
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and books of current interest. Your host is Alex Boyd and the cereal
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department at the University of Illinois Library.
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In Dantes Inferno. The first circle of hell is inhabited by the souls of pre-Christian
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philosophers who because they lived before the birth and death of Christ. Could not
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receive the blessings of salvation but because they had committed no sin they did
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not deserve the condemnation of hell. In the first circle.
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Alexándra soul shots these in. Published by Harper in Rome. The
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first circle stands as a metaphor for a peculiar type of prison which flourished in
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Russia during the reign of Joseph Stalin. These prisons were really scientific
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research stations equipped with materials shipped from German factories in laboratories
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during the war. The prisoners were stabbed by political prisoners although in actuality
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these men were some of the most gifted physicists mathematicians electrical engineers and other
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technicians in Russia. Where little to do with politics.
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Basically the premise by which these institutions existed was simple. In one stroke
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Stalin got rid of a large number of intellectuals always potential if not real enemies.
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And because the prisons in which these men were kept were infinitely better than the labor cab camps of
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Siberia. The basic instincts of these men to think and utilize
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the talents were not stifled. The route to these prisons were ridiculously
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easy and totally without pattern. The criminal codes in Russia were whimsical and
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all embracing depending not so much on who you were or who you knew. That's how much luck
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you possessed. Many of the prisoners in these institutions had served in
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World War Two and had missed watching to return home in a period of incredible
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mistrust and duplicity. Thousands actually went from the German front
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to the Roscoe's or to Siberia with only a stop at the Russian border.
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The most able of course to put into this Roscoe's which roughly translated means an operation
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based on bluff and deceit. All the living conditions were
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essentially good. The prisoners were continually kept on the edge of tension and uncertainty.
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They were at the mercy of a corrupt so distant system. What these men of the Seraph's
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because exhibit more than anything however is the enduring nature of the human spirit.
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In spite of the pressures of prison and prison life. It isn't fact true that in the
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years immediately after the war many of the great achievements in Russia came out of these
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very institutions. If for no other reason than that many of the most accomplished citizens inhabited
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them. More than just us a description of a vicious system however. This
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book is a major social logical document distilling many of the speeches of life under
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Stalin. It is also somewhat autobiographical since the
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author himself was a mathematician and had Sir courageously in the war when in
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1045 he was arrested on false charges and spent the next eight years in various prisons and
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camps. This book is not first of all of those
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works to reste the West. Has one day in the life of
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Yvonne. Dean easy a bitch published an English translation in
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1950 received immediate acclaim. That novel also
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consonant concerned the constant struggle between the syphon aspects of long prison
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terms and the prisoner who by ingenuity encouraged but with little real
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hope managed just stay alive day by day. In my
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brain Oh. The sheer Osco of the first circle the prisoners are made to feel that they have an
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important and interesting job to do. What they are really working on.
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Our new ways to help and circle other members of society.
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This matters little to them when they realize they are doomed. They like the spirits in the first
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circle of Dante stand on the edge of the business falling always quite easy.
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Often unexpected and sometimes inevitable. But very few ever get
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out of the rosters alist by death or to be shipped off to the hell of Siberia.
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In spite of this knowledge. But there is little real fear to happy a man must be in danger of
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losing something a someone he loves. A possibly his own life. These men no longer
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have anything else to lose. The state has seen to that. They're there for supper and die
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because they happen to be born at a time in a place when freedom and individual Wait holds
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little meaning.
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The first circle has been compared to six great novels as War and Peace and crime and punishment.
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And Saul Saat sneezy and two such great novelists as Tolstoy and dust of
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yesterday. It may be too soon to make such a firm judgment
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but what is certain is that this is a superb novel.
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And this has been books and those prepared and presented by Alex Boyd and sponsored
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by the Illinois State Library. This program was distributed by the national
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educational radio network.
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