ABSTRACT
In its original form the novel had stuck with extraordinary fidelity to the facts of Solzhenitsyn's imprisonment in the sharashka and the work he had been engaged on there, although it had telescoped events from his three years at Marfino into just over three days. Solzhenitsyn therefore changed the subject of the conversation to a warning to a well-known Soviet doctor not to hand over some medicine to a Western colleague on his next trip abroad, since the gift would be used against him and he could be arrested. Nevertheless, Solzhenitsyn felt constrained to show a copy of the new version to Kopelev, who with his wife, Raisa Orlova, spent two days reading it and a further day discussing it with Solzhenitsyn. Kopelev's criticism holds additional interest in that it offers a kind of commentary on the book's central motif of believing one's eyes and not one's ears.
