Aleksandr Konstantinovich Sokolenko was born September 11, 1907 in the village of Ovoshchi, in Stavropol Gubernia. In his youth, he worked on a farm, helping his grandfather, who owned a large farmstead that produced wheat. He was graduated from the Rostov Pedagogical Institute. For some time (in 1941), he worked at the Semipalatinsk Pedagogical Institute, where he headed the Russian language department and wrote a dissertation on esthetics in literature. In 1944, upon arriving in Shakhty, Rostov Oblast, he was arrested and sentenced to serve a 7-year sentence (under article 58-10, for so-called anti-Soviet propaganda). He was exonerated in 1956.
Camp living conditions experienced by A. K. Sokolenko varied a great deal. He performed hard labor on a timber drive down mountain rivers; he also worked as the chief agronomist or manager of a production detachment in a large agricultural camp. While the timber drive along the Chilik river was actually absolute hell, the conditions at the agricultural camp in northern Kazakhstan were fully tolerable.
After his release in 1951 and to the end of his life in 1970, A. K. Sokolenko lived in the exiles' village of Issyk, in Alma-Ata Oblast, and taught school to young workers. Besides his principal occupation, he studied the history of the Issyk village and authored a small volume on the subject.
When A. K. Sokolenko understood that he was terminally ill, he wrote four sketches about his tenure in the camps, Order of the Red Banner, The Ordeal, Captain Ivanov's Crime, and Encounter on the Island of Tears. These are portrait-like sketches. Only the last of these has been previously published in the 1989 issue of Yenisey magazine.
