The book also briefly depicts several Soviet leaders of the period , including Stalin himself , who is depicted as vain and vengeful , remembering with pleasure the torture of a rival , dreaming of one day becoming emperor of the world , or listening to his subordinate Viktor Abakumov and wondering : " ... has the day come to shoot him yet ? " The novel addresses numerous philosophical themes , and through multiple narratives is a powerful argument both for a stoic integrity and humanism . Like other Solzhenitsyn works , the book illustrates the difficulty of maintaining dignity within a system designed to strip its inhabitants of it
to shoot him yet
Great Purge
In the First Circle