In 1924 he left his native city and worked as a tanner at a tannery in Setun.

In 1926 he entered the Faculty of Soviet Law of the Moscow state university.

On February 19, 1929, Shalamov was arrested and imprisoned in the Butyrka prison for distributing Vladimir Lenin's Letter to the Congress. Sentenced to three years in the Vishera branch of the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camps.

In 1932 he returned to Moscow, where he again continued his literary work, was engaged in journalism, and collaborated in a number of small trade union magazines.

In 1936 in the magazine "October" one of his first stories "The Three Deaths of Dr. Austino".

In 1937 Shalamov's story "The Pava and the Tree" was published in the journal Literaturny Sovremennik.

In January 1937, he was arrested again and sentenced to five years in the Kolyma camps, and in 1943 to ten years for anti-Soviet agitation: he called the writer Ivan Bunin a Russian classic.

In 1951, Shalamov was released and worked as a paramedic near the village of Oymyakon.

In 1953 he settled in the Kalinin region (now the Tver region), where he worked as a technical supply agent at a peat enterprise.

In 1956, after rehabilitation, Shalamov returned to Moscow.

For some time he collaborated in the magazine "Moscow", wrote articles and notes on the history of culture, science, art, published poems in magazines.

In the 1960s, Shalamov's poetry collections "The Flint" (1961), "The Rustle of Leaves" (1964), "The Road and Fate" (1967) were published.

At the turn of the 1960s and 1970s, Shalamov wrote the autobiographical story The Fourth Vologda and the anti-novel Vishera.

The years of life spent in the camps became the basis for Shalamov to write a collection of poems "Kolyma Notebooks" (1937-1956) and the writer's main work - " Kolyma stories"(1954-1973). The latter were divided by the author into six books:" Kolyma stories"," Left Bank "," Artist of the Shovel "," Essays on the Underworld "," Resurrection of the Larch "and" Glove or KR-2. "Kolyma Tales" were distributed in samizdat. In 1978 in London large volume"Kolyma Tales" was first published in Russian. In the USSR, they were published in 1988-1990s.

In the 1970s, Shalamov's poetry collections Moscow Clouds (1972) and Boiling Point (1977) were published.

In 1972 he was admitted to the Writers' Union of the USSR.

In May 1979, Shalamov moved to the Litfond nursing home.

In 1980, the French branch of the Pen Club awarded Shalamov with the Prize of Freedom.

In Vologda, in the house where the writer was born and raised, a memorial museum of Varlam Shalamov was opened.

The writer was married twice, both marriages ended in divorce. His first wife was Galina Gudz (1910-1986), from this marriage a daughter, Elena (1935-1990), was born. From 1956 to 1966, Shalamov was married to the writer Olga Neklyudova (1909-1989).

The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources

Varlam Shalamov

COLLECTED WORKS

VOLUME 1

KOLYMA STORIES

How do they trample the road on virgin snow? A man walks ahead, sweating and swearing, barely moving his legs, constantly getting bogged down in loose deep snow. The man goes far, marking his way with uneven black pits. He gets tired, lies down on the snow, lights up, and shag smoke spreads like a blue cloud over the white shiny snow. The man has already gone further, and the cloud is still hanging where he rested - the air is almost motionless. Roads are always laid in quiet days so that the winds do not sweep away human labors. A person himself outlines landmarks for himself in the vastness of the snow: a rock, a tall tree - a person guides his body through the snow in the same way as a helmsman guides a boat along the river from cape to cape.

Five or six people in a row, shoulder to shoulder, move along the laid narrow and unreliable trail. They step near the track, but not in the track. Having reached the place planned in advance, they turn back and again go in such a way as to trample the virgin snow, the place where no human foot has yet set foot. The road has been broken. People, sleigh carts, tractors can walk along it. If you follow the path of the first track to track, there will be a noticeable, but barely passable narrow path, a stitch, and not a road - pits that are more difficult to wade through than virgin soil. The first one is the hardest of all, and when he is exhausted, another one from the same head five comes forward. Of those following the trail, everyone, even the smallest, the weakest, must step on a piece of virgin snow, and not on someone else's footprint. And not writers, but readers ride tractors and horses.

For the show

We played cards at Naumov's konogon. The guards on duty never looked into the horse barracks, rightly considering their main service in monitoring the convicts under the fifty-eighth article. Horses, as a rule, were not trusted by counter-revolutionaries. True, the practical bosses grumbled in secret: they were losing the best, most caring workers, but the instructions on this score were definite and strict. In a word, the konogons were the safest of all, and every night the thieves gathered there for their card fights.

In the right corner of the hut on the lower bunks were spread multi-colored wadded blankets. A burning “kolyma” was fastened to the corner post with a wire - a home-made light bulb on gasoline steam. Three or four open copper tubes were soldered into the lid of the can - that's all the device. In order to light this lamp, hot coal was placed on the lid, gasoline was heated, steam rose through the pipes, and gasoline gas burned, lit by a match.

There was a dirty down pillow on the blankets, and on both sides of it, partners were sitting with their legs tucked up in the Buryat style - a classic pose of a prison card battle. There was a brand new deck of cards on the pillow. These were not ordinary cards, this was a home-made prison deck, which is made by the masters of these crafts at an extraordinary speed. To make it, you need paper (any book), a piece of bread (to chew it and rub it through a rag to get starch - glue the sheets), a stub of chemical pencil (instead of printing ink) and a knife (for cutting and stenciling the suits, and the cards themselves).

Today's maps have just been cut out of a volume of Victor Hugo - the book was forgotten by someone yesterday in the office. The paper was dense, thick - the sheets did not have to be glued together, which is done when the paper is thin. In the camp, during all searches, chemical pencils were rigorously selected. They were also selected when checking the received parcels. This was done not only to prevent the production of documents and stamps (there were many artists and such), but to destroy everything that could compete with the state card monopoly. Ink was made from a chemical pencil, and patterns were applied to the card with ink through a paper stencil - ladies, jacks, tens of all suits ... The suits did not differ in color - and the player does not need a difference. The jack of spades, for example, corresponded to the image of spades in two opposite corners of the map. The arrangement and shape of the patterns have been the same for centuries - the ability to make cards with one's own hand is included in the program of the "chivalrous" education of a young blatar.

A brand new deck of cards lay on the pillow, and one of the players patted it with a dirty hand with thin, white, non-working fingers. The nail of the little finger was of supernatural length - also Blatar chic, just like the "fixes" - gold, that is, bronze, crowns worn on completely healthy teeth. There were even craftsmen - self-styled dentures, who earned a lot of money by making such crowns, which invariably found demand. As for nails, color polishing them, no doubt, would enter the life of the underworld, if it were possible to get varnish in prison conditions. A well-groomed yellow nail gleamed like a precious stone. With his left hand, the owner of the nail was sorting through sticky and dirty blond hair. He was cut "under the box" in the neatest way. A low forehead without a single wrinkle, yellow bushes of eyebrows, a bow-shaped mouth - all this gave his physiognomy an important quality of the appearance of a thief: invisibility. The face was such that it was impossible to remember it. I looked at him - and forgot, lost all features, and did not recognize at a meeting. It was Sevochka, the famous connoisseur of tertz, shtos and borax - the three classic card games, an inspired interpreter of a thousand card rules, strict observance of which is mandatory in a real battle. They said about Sevochka that he "performs excellently" - that is, he shows the skill and dexterity of a card sharper. He was a card sharper, of course; an honest game of thieves - this is a game of deception: follow and convict a partner, it is your right, be able to deceive yourself, be able to argue a dubious win.

They always played two - one on one. None of the masters humiliated themselves by participating in group games like points. They were not afraid to sit down with strong "performers" - just like in chess, a real fighter is looking for a strong opponent.

Sevochka's partner was Naumov himself, the foreman of the konogons. He was older than his partner (however, how old is Sevochka, twenty? some wanderer - a monk or a member of the famous sect "God knows", a sect that has been found in our camps for decades. This impression was increased at the sight of a gaitan with a tin cross hanging around Naumov's neck - his shirt collar was unbuttoned. This cross was by no means a blasphemous joke, whim or improvisation. At that time, all thieves wore aluminum crosses around their necks - this was an identification mark of the order, like a tattoo.

Shalamov Varlam Tikhonovich (1907-82)

SHALAMOV Varlam Tikhonovich (1907-82), Russian writer. Was repressed. In documentary-philosophical prose (Kolyma Tales, 1979; mostly published in the USSR in 1988-90) and poetry (collection Flint, 1961, Road and Fate, 1967, Moscow Clouds, 1972), he expressed the long-suffering experience of superhuman trials in Stalin's strict regime camps. Memories.

SHALAMOV Varlam Tikhonovich, prose writer, poet, author of the famous Kolyma Tales, one of the most striking artistic documents of the 20th century, which became an indictment of the Soviet totalitarian regime, one of the discoverers camp theme. Shalamov's unique voice sounded like evidence of the tragic experience of the post-revolutionary Soviet history and the collapse of the humanistic ideas of the last century, bequeathed by classical Russian literature.

Origins. First tests

Shalamov was born into the family of a priest, a well-known church and public figure in Vologda Tikhon Nikolaevich Shalamov, who also came from a hereditary priestly family. He studied at the Vologda gymnasium. In his youth, he was fond of the ideas of the Narodnaya Volya. The writer recalls what the revolution turned out to be for their family, which was repeatedly persecuted, in The Fourth Vologda. In 1924 Shalamov left his native city. For two years he worked as a tanner at a tannery in Setun, and in 1926 he entered the faculty of Soviet law at Moscow State University, took an active part in political and literary life capital Cities.

On February 19, 1929, he was arrested and imprisoned in the Butyrka prison for distributing Lenin's famous Letter to the Congress. He was sentenced to three years in prison in the Vishera branch of the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camps. In 1932 he returned to Moscow, where he again continued his literary work, was engaged in journalism, collaborated in a number of small trade union magazines (“For Mastering Technology”, etc.). One of Shalamov's first stories, The Three Deaths of Dr. Augustino, was published in issue 1 of the October magazine.

In January 1937 he was arrested again and sentenced to five years in the Kolyma camps, and in 1943 another ten years for anti-Soviet agitation (he called the writer I. Bunin a Russian classic).

Liberation. Path to literature

In 1951, Shalamov was released, but he could not leave the Kolyma, he worked as a paramedic near Oymyakon. In 1953 he settled in the Kalinin region, worked for two and a half years as a technical supply agent at a peat enterprise, and in 1956 after rehabilitation he returned to Moscow.

For some time he collaborated in the Moscow magazine, wrote articles and notes on the history of culture, science, art, published poems in magazines. In 1961 he published in the publishing house " Soviet writer"The first poetry collection" Flint ", then several more came out. The main works of Shalamov - "Kolyma stories" - were distributed in samizdat. On February 23, 1972, Shalamov's letter was published in Literaturnaya Gazeta, where he protested against the publication of his stories abroad, which was perceived by many as his abdication. In 1978 in London, for the first time, a large volume of Kolyma Tales was published in Russian.

In May 1979, Shalamov moved to a nursing home, from where in January 1982 he was forcibly sent to a boarding school for psychochronics, caught a cold on the way and soon died.

Transformed Document

The Kolyma Tales were written by Shalamov from 1954 to 1973. He himself divided them into six books: Kolyma Tales, The Left Bank, The Spade Artist, Essays on the Underworld, The Resurrection of the Larch, and Glove or KR- 2". A terrible camp experience, consisting of repeated deaths and resurrections, of immeasurable torments from hunger and cold, humiliations that turn a person into an animal - this is what formed the basis of Shalamov's prose, which he, thinking a lot about its originality, called "new".

Its main principle is the connection with the fate of the writer, who himself must go through all the torments in order to come forward with testimonies. Hence - the sketchy, documentary beginning, pioneering ethnography and naturalism, predilection for the exact figure.

The image of the camp in Shalamov's stories is the image of absolute evil. The story "Tombstone" begins like this: "Everyone died ..." The writer recalls everyone with whom he had to meet and become close in the camps. Names and some details follow. Who died and how. Scenes and episodes, like mosaics, are formed into a terrible intricate pattern - the pattern of death.

Shalamov does not seek to impress the reader, does not force intonation. On the contrary, his descriptions are emphatically everyday, slowly detailed, but almost every completely realistic detail in its ruthless expressiveness is a sign of the unreality of what is happening.

The writer shows that death in the camp world has ceased to be an event, an existential act, final chord human life. The attitude of the prisoners towards it is as indifferent as to everything else, with the possible exception of satisfying the eternal agonizing hunger. Moreover, they seek to extract at least some benefit from it. There is a catastrophic depreciation of human existence, personality, changing all concepts of good and evil.

School of Evil

Corruption is one of the most formidable words in Shalamov's verdict on the camp. From his own experience, the writer had the opportunity to make sure that the moral and, moreover, the physical forces of a person are not unlimited. In many of his stories, the image of a goner appears. -- a prisoner who has reached the ultimate degree of exhaustion. The goner lives only by elementary animal instincts, his consciousness is cloudy, his will is atrophied.

Shalamov rigidly links the extremeness of conditions with the soul, physical nature a person vulnerable to hunger, cold, disease, beatings, etc. Dehumanization begins precisely with physical torment. No one, perhaps, has described the pangs of hunger with such accuracy as Shalamov. In many of his stories, the phenomenology of this natural human need is depicted in the most detailed way, which has turned into a predatory passion, into a disease, into cruel torture.

Not just hunger or cold, unbearable slave labor or beatings, but also the corrupting consequences of these extreme conditions - a through plot of Shalamov's stories. The physiology of a slow death or an equally slow recovery of a tortured and humiliated person - in any case, it is his pain and anguish; in his tormented body, a man is like in a prison from which there is no way out.

A slap in the face of the regime

Shalamov in his prose (unlike, for example, AI Solzhenitsyn) avoids direct political generalizations and invectives. But each of his stories is nonetheless a “slap in the face,” to use his own word, to the regime, to the system that gave rise to the camps. The writer gropes for common pain points, links of one chain - the process of dehumanization.

What might not have been very noticeable "in the world", in the camp - due to the impunity of those in power and the blatars declared "socially close" - was manifested especially sharply. Humiliation, bullying, beatings, violence - a common place in camp reality, repeatedly described by Shalamov. Even encouragement in the camp, the writer considers corruption, since the entire system of interaction between superiors and subordinates is based on lies, on the awakening of the basest and meanest in a person.

From story to story, Shalamov recalls that the famous Stalinist slogan "Labor is a matter of honor, a matter of glory, valor and heroism" was hung over the gates of almost every camp. The writer vividly showed what kind of labor it really was - forced, humiliating, slavish in essence, forming the same slavish psychology. Such work simply could not be honest.

fate and chance

"Luck", "chance" are the key concepts in Shalamov's prose. Chance dominates the fate of the prisoner, invades his life with a favorable or, more often, evil will. It can be a savior case or a killer case.

Fate for Shalamov is also often tantamount to a happy or unfortunate set of circumstances. And the words “higher powers” ​​in relation to the fate of a prisoner are used by him with irony: behind them are the camp and non-camp authorities, someone’s stupid diligence, indifference or, on the contrary, revenge, behind them are intrigues, intrigues, passions that can influence fate prisoner for whom the main objective- to survive, survive.

The more he valued such people who were able to intervene in the course of circumstances, to stand up for themselves, even at the risk of their lives. Such, "who is not a dynamite cord, but an explosion," as one of his poems says. About this, in particular, one of his best stories is “The Last Fight of Major Pugachev”: about an innocent prisoner who gathered comrades with the same instinct of freedom as his own and died while trying to escape.

"Poems are pain, and protection from pain..."

Shalamov wrote poetry throughout his life. By 1953, his personal acquaintance with B. Pasternak dates back, whom Shalamov highly respected as a poet and who, in turn, highly appreciated Shalamov's poems sent to him from Kolyma. Their remarkable correspondence also remained, in which the aesthetic and moral views of the writer are clearly expressed.

One of the key motifs of his poetry is the clash of two elements: ice, cold, nothingness and, on the other hand, heat, fire, life. The image of ice appears not only in Shalamov's poems about nature. Echoes of another - a cold, windy, underground world - are heard in the habitable, warm, but disturbingly fragile world of culture, so highly valued by the writer. There is no lasting, imperishable beauty in his poems. Even where she is ready to triumph, something prevents her.

In Shalamov's poetry, the feeling of a common destiny, a common fate - nature and man - largely determines the author's attitude to the world. In nature, something is suddenly indicated that, it would seem, is characteristic only of man - an impulse, a nerve, a spasm, a tension of all forces.

Nature in Shalamov's poems, as well as in stories, often appears as "terrible landscapes", where "ash clouds knit and encircle the forest", where "skeletons of antediluvian monsters, six hundred years old poplars, stand in a crowd of rocky, weathered whiter bones" and where "mountain ridge, what is underfoot seems to be a gravestone. She may be beautiful, but there is no grace in her beauty; on the contrary, it is rather a burden and a threat.

Settling in the world

Poetry for Shalamov is not only aspiration upward, but also the acquisition of flesh by the world, building up muscles, the search for perfection. The effort of reunification, the will to wholeness of life is clearly felt in it. The reunion of the "cuts and fragments" of life for Shalamov is the habitation of the world, its domestication, to which most of the motives of his poetry converge. In his poems there is an acute need for the warmth of the hearth, in the roof, in the house.

But living for him is also creativity in the broadest sense, be it poetry, building a house, or baking bread. In creativity, a person acquires not only the joy of overcoming and a sense of his own strength, but also a sense of unity with nature. He feels himself a co-creator, whose skill is a contribution to the almost miraculous transformation of the world.

Shalamov devoted many of his essays to reflections on poetry, its nature and laws, the psychology of creativity and the works of poets close to him.

Poems

VARLAM SHALAMOV

Like Archimedes catching in the sand

A rushing shadow of imagination

On a crumpled, torn sheet

I draw the last poem.

I know myself that this is not a game,

That this is death ... But I'm for the sake of life,

Like Archimedes, I will not drop my pen,

I do not crumple an unfolded notebook.

I will break the ring of bushes,

I'll leave the field

Blind branches hit in the face,

They inflict wounds.

Cold dew flows

On hot skin

But cool your hot mouth

She can not.

All my life I walked without a path,

Almost without light.

In the forest my paths are blind

And inconspicuous.

cry? But such a question

You don't need to decide.

Flowing in a stream of bitter tears

All rivers of hell.

Extinguished wax candles

In churches not yet broken,

When I enter them for the first time

With death foam on the lips.

They carry me like a shroud

Like a light silk carpet.

Both from doctors and from the hospital

I will turn my bleary eye away.

And quietly I breathe incense

Barely wavering smoke censed.

And I don't need to think anymore

About the omnipotence of graves.

I saw everything: sand and snow,

Blizzard and heat.

What can a person take...

Everything has been experienced by me.

And the butt broke my bones,

Alien boot.

And I bet

That God won't help.

After all, God, God, why

galley slave?

And do nothing to help him

He is emaciated and weak.

I lost my bet

Risking my head.

Today, whatever you say

I am with you and alive.

TOOL

How primitive

Our simple tool:

Ten papers in ten hryvnias,

Hasty pencil -

That's all the people need

To build any

Castle, truly airy,

Over life's fate.

Everything Dante Needed

To build those gates

Which lead to the funnel of hell

Leaning into ice.

I live not by bread alone,

And in the morning, in the cold,

A piece of dry sky

Soaking in the river...

The fate of a person is predetermined, as many believe, by his character. Shalamov's biography - difficult and extremely tragic - is a consequence of his moral views and beliefs, the formation of which took place already in adolescence.

Childhood and youth

Varlam Shalamov was born in Vologda in 1907. His father was a priest, a man expressing progressive views. Perhaps the environment that surrounded the future writer, and the parental worldview gave the first impetus to the development of this extraordinary personality. Exiled prisoners lived in Vologda, with whom Varlam's father always sought to maintain relations and provided all kinds of support.

Shalamov's biography is partially displayed in his story "The Fourth Vologda". Already in his youth, the author of this work began to form a thirst for justice and the desire to fight for it at any cost. Shalamov's ideal in those years was the image of a Narodnaya Volya. The sacrifice of his feat inspired the young man and, perhaps, predetermined his entire future fate. Artistic talent manifested itself in him with early years. At first, his gift was expressed in an irresistible craving for reading. He read voraciously. The future creator of the literary cycle about the Soviet camps was interested in various prose: from adventure novels to philosophical ideas Immanuel Kant.

In Moscow

Shalamov's biography includes the fateful events that occurred during the first period of his stay in the capital. He left for Moscow at the age of seventeen. At first he worked as a tanner in a factory. Two years later he entered the university at the Faculty of Law. Literary activity and jurisprudence - directions at first glance incompatible. But Shalamov was a man of action. The feeling that the years pass in vain tormented him already in his early youth. As a student, he was a participant in literary disputes, rallies, demonstrations and

First arrest

Shalamov's biography is all about prison sentences. The first arrest took place in 1929. Shalamov was sentenced to three years in prison. Essays, articles and many feuilletons were created by the writer during that difficult period that came after returning from the Northern Urals. Survive long years his stay in the camps, perhaps, he was strengthened by the conviction that all these events were a test.

Regarding the first arrest, the writer once said in autobiographical prose that it was this event that marked the beginning of the real public life. Later, having bitter experience behind him, Shalamov changed his views. He no longer believed that suffering purifies a person. Rather, it leads to the corruption of the soul. He called the camp a school that bears exclusively negative influence on anyone from the first to the last day.

But the years that Varlam Shalamov spent on Vishera, he could not but reflect in his work. Four years later, he was arrested again. Five years in the Kolyma camps became Shalamov's sentence in the terrible year 1937.

On Kolyma

One arrest followed another. In 1943, Shalamov Varlam Tikhonovich was taken into custody only for calling the émigré writer Ivan Bunin a Russian classic. This time, Shalamov survived thanks to the prison doctor, who, at his own peril and risk, sent him to paramedic courses. On the key of Duskanya Shalamov for the first time began to write down his poems. After his release, he could not leave Kolyma for another two years.

And only after the death of Stalin, Varlam Tikhonovich was able to return to Moscow. Here he met with Boris Pasternak. Shalamov's personal life did not work out. He has been separated from his family for too long. His daughter has matured without him.

From Moscow, he managed to move to the Kalinin region and get a job as a foreman in peat extraction. Varlamov Shalamov devoted all his free time from hard work to writing. The Kolyma Tales, which were created in those years by the factory foreman and supply agent, made him a classic of Russian and anti-Soviet literature. The stories are included in world culture, have become a memorial to the countless victims

Creation

In London, Paris, and New York, Shalamov's stories were published earlier than in the Soviet Union. The plot of the works from the cycle "Kolyma stories" is a painful image of prison life. tragic fates characters are similar to each other. They became prisoners of the Soviet Gulag by the will of a merciless chance. The prisoners are exhausted and starved. Their further fate depends, as a rule, on the arbitrariness of the bosses and thieves.

Rehabilitation

In 1956 Shalamov Varlam Tikhonovich was rehabilitated. But his works still did not get into print. Soviet critics believed that there was no "labor enthusiasm" in the work of this writer, but only "abstract humanism". Varlamov Shalamov took such a review very hard. "Kolyma Tales" - a work created at the cost of the life and blood of the author - turned out to be unnecessary to society. Only creativity and friendly communication supported his spirit and hope.

Shalamov's poems and prose were seen by Soviet readers only after his death. Until the end of his days, despite his weak health, undermined by the camps, he did not stop writing.

Publication

For the first time, works from the Kolyma collection appeared in the writer's homeland in 1987. And this time, his incorruptible and stern word was necessary for readers. It was no longer possible to safely go forward and leave in oblivion in Kolyma. The fact that the voices of even deceased witnesses can be heard by all, this writer proved. Shalamov's books: "Kolyma Tales", "Left Bank", "Essays on the Underworld" and others are evidence that nothing has been forgotten.

Recognition and criticism

The works of this writer are one whole. Here is the unity of the soul, and the fate of people, and the thoughts of the author. The epic about Kolyma is the branches of a huge tree, small streams of a single stream. Story line one story flows smoothly into another. And in these works there is no fiction. They only have the truth.

Unfortunately, domestic critics were able to appreciate Shalamov's work only after his death. Recognition in literary circles came in 1987. And in 1982, after a long illness, Shalamov died. But even in postwar period he remained an uncomfortable writer. His work did not fit into the Soviet ideology, but it was also alien to the new time. The thing is that in the works of Shalamov there was no open criticism of the authorities from which he suffered. Perhaps the Kolyma Tales are too unique in ideological content for their author to be placed on a par with other figures in Russian or Soviet literature.