Editing In the First Circle (section)

==Characters==
*{{em|Innokenty Volodin}}: A Ministry official whose phone call at the beginning of the book functions as a catalyst for much of the later action in the sharashka and eventually leads to his arrest.
*{{em|Gleb Nerzhin}}: A zek mathematician, 31. An autobiographical character. He is offered a position in a cryptography group, and refuses, even knowing this means he will be sent away from the sharashka.
*{{em|Nadezhda (Nadya) Nerzhina}}: Gleb's wife. Waited for eight years and became a student in Moscow because of him (Marfino is not far from Moscow) but is considering divorce because remaining married to a prisoner blocks her prospects for continuing studies or finding a job.
*{{em|Dmitry Sologdin}}: A zek designer, 36, a survivor of the northern camps now serving his second term. Sologdin is based on Solzhenitsyn's friend Dimitrii Mikhailovich Panin, who later wrote a book entitled ''The Notebooks of Sologdin''. He works on a cryptographic machine in secret, but is found out and has to develop his invention so as not to get sent back.
*{{em|Lev Rubin}}: A zek philologist and teacher, 36, a [[Communist]] from youth, but nevertheless always ready for a good joke, even about socialism. Rubin is based on Solzhenitsyn's friend [[Lev Kopelev]]. He gets a position in a new group; his first task is to identify the man who called to warn Dr. Dobrumov not to share his medical discoveries with international colleagues.
*{{em|Valentin "Valentulya" Pryanchikov}}: A zek engineer and head of the acoustic laboratory, he is not taken seriously and behaves like a child, despite the fact that he is as old as Nerzhin.
*{{em|Rostislav "Ruska" Doronin}}: A zek mechanic, 23. Loves Klara, daughter of the prosecutor Makarygin. An informer himself, albeit a reluctant one, is beaten and sent away for helping fellow inmates find out who the other informers are.
*{{em|Klara Makarygina}}: Makarygin's youngest daughter, works in the vacuum laboratory and falls in love with Ruska.