 Solzhenitsyn writes in an appendix to "Cancer Ward" that the "evil man" who threw tobacco in the macaque's eyes at the zoo represents Stalin, and the monkey the political prisoner.The other zoo animals also have significance, the tiger reminiscent of Stalin and the squirrel running itself to death the proletariat.Solzhenitsyn finished "Cancer Ward" in mid-1966, and by June that year had sent the manuscript to the Russian literary magazine "Novy Mir".