Ivan Denisovich Shukov

The main character in Aleksander I. Solzhenitsyn's famous work "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich". Shukov, a simple peasant, is placed in a Stalinist Gulag after being accused of treason on the Eastern Front during WWII. The novel tells one day of his prison life, a theme popular to the writer who served his own sentence there under Stalin. Solzhenitsyn also wrote "The Gulag Archipelago". Living most of his life under Communist totalitarianism, much of his work went unpublished for quite sometime. However, with the rise of Khrushev's anti-Stalinist policy, much of his work moved out of the underground and into the mainstream.

Based on real life Ivan Dushnalavsky, a Ukrainian born Bolshevik who was a adjunct-major in the Red Army in the 34th infrantry in Lozovya. He was held at a gulag following the arrest of his granfather for a jewish conspiracy of collusion with the U.S., eventually fleeing the USSR along with many members of his family.
Became Commisar for Commerce and Vice Premier under Janos Kadar of the Hungarian peoples Republic.