In the article the author considers Gulag theme on the material of A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s short story «One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich» and the novel by M. M. Prishvin «Tsar’s Road». The main characters of both writers remain free people despite their imprisonment. Common people, bearers of public morals, kept their souls pure through hardships, they are patient and hard-working, they abstain from evil, remain internally free in the atmosphere of the absence of freedom, preserving their name and their motherland
