At this point, it is obvious that almost all of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich will be concerned with life in a prison labor camp. Very little is mentioned about life in Soviet Russia outside of the camps. This particular episode, therefore, is important because, in it, Solzhenitsyn gives detailed attention to one of the prized institutions of the Soviet system — the collective farm, or kolkhoz. Here, the author uses Ivan's daydreams during the march to the worksite as a device to show the depressing facts of an institution which has been deserted by the people charged with making it the mainstay of Soviet agricultural production. Most of the older men have not returned to the kolkhoz after the war, and the younger men prefer to work in the towns or in factories, and so the collective farm, administered by corrupt and incompetent officials, is left to women and old men.
The pride which the Russian rural population once had in quality craftsmanship has given way to the desire to make easy money with cheap commercial products — in this case, the three kinds of stenciled carpets, for which there is such a heavy demand because the general population cannot afford quality craftsmanship any longer.
Ivan, like Solzhenitsyn, deplores this disappearance of traditional Russian pride in honest quality work and is determined not to follow the modern trend after his release. But then he remembers that he will be, at best, a "free worker" — that is, a former prisoner who, after serving his sentence, is not allowed to return to his former place of residence.
