‘What men live by’: Leo Tolstoy's proverb-parable as a source for Aleksander Solzhenitsyn's novel, Cancer ward

Scholars have long agreed about a close affinity existing between the literary works of Leo Tolstoy and those of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. While relatively few studies have compared the nature of these similarities in specific works written by the two authors, this article will make a claim for a real tie between one of Tolstoy’s proverb parables, “What Men Live By”, taken from the period of his 1880’s stories for the people, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s famous novel, Cancer Ward.