Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn became and remained famous for The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Both made him – Old Believer beard and all – a mascot in the struggle against the irresistible force of the state. His work details systematic dehumanisation in Soviet labour camps, but Solzhenitsyn had carefully conceived bile for capitalists too. During his exile in the United States, he gave speeches as critical of Western-style freedom as of Soviet command and control.     

In the stories collected in Apricot Jam, first published in the 90s in Russia, he had not yet grown tired of playing conscience to his homeland and the world. Eight of the nine stories are binaries, distinct parts with only thematic or tangential connections. Setting two things next to each other for comparison is not a new or subtle trick, and there’s an unfashionable hint of moral conviction hanging around the form. The stories work, however, like twins finishing each other’s sentences during an argument. They feel more like independent war films than sermons. Characters appear out of personal histories of chance and compromise, and slot into the rush of the story. Many wither or die early deaths. Others continue into other stories, only to be shunted to a sidetrack of history by Stalin or, more likely, swallowed and corrupted in the changing times.

It might all be curmudgeonly, except that the characters are vulnerable because they are human. They love their families and want to be loved. They want to be good soldiers and good scientists with their fathers’ approval. They want to be part of something. Solzhenitsyn celebrates his characters as human beings, even as he conveys them toward the meat grinder. In Apricot Jam, the times are always changing. People are forced to change with them, and that’s where life – and these stories – get messy.

Luke Meinzen is a freelance reviewer