While serving the Red Army in World War II, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov is captured by the Germans and becomes a prisoner of war. After the war, Shukhov returned to the Soviet Union, where he was accused of collaborating with the Germans. Consequently, he was sentenced to ten years in the gulags, harsh Soviet prison camps. Now, Shukhov chronicles a single, uneventful day of life as a prisoner in the gulag.