He will have a hard time finding work, due to the "loss of civil rights" which is included in his sentence. Solzhenitsyn mentions "free workers" several times in the story; there are settlements of such workers close to the camp, with only minimally greater comforts than those available to the camp inmates.
This brief episode is the author's only comment on the deteriorating collective farm system. The subject, however, was of deep concern to Solzhenitsyn, who considered the traditions of the rural Russian population vital to any change in the political system. His story "Matryona's Home" (1963) is devoted solely to the topic of rural life and the innate goodness of the Russian people, a goodness which is slowly but surely being undermined by the corrupt Soviet system.
