Hungry and still feeling ill, Ivan daydreams about a letter that he considers writing to his wife — while all the time marching along, automatically, toward the power plant, his gang's worksite. He is allowed to write two letters yearly, but there is not much he can write about that might interest his wife. The letters that he has received from her have left him puzzled.
According to her letters, his former kolkhoz, the collective work farm of the Soviet agricultural system, is in total disarray. Many of the men did not return to the kolkhoz after the war, and those who did return only "live" there; they earn their money somewhere else. Most of the young people have left the kolkhoz to work in the towns and in the factories. The agricultural work is done almost entirely by women. Carpentry and basket weaving, once the specialities of his village, have been abandoned in favor of painting cheap commercial carpets from stencils. The collective farm is suffering because everybody is earning easier and better money with these carpets. There is a great demand for them, since most Russians cannot afford real carpets. Ivan's wife hopes that he'll return and become a carpet painter.
Ivan does not like these new developments, and he resents his wife's urging him to take up carpet painting after his release from prison. He wants to work with his hands, either making stoves or doing carpentry. But then he remembers, just as his column arrives at the gates of the worksite, that he cannot go home — even after his release from camp. Nobody will hire a man "convicted with loss of civil rights."
