Varlam Shalamov - The Kolyma Tales

The Kolyma Tales

Beginning in 1954, and continuing until 1973, he worked on his book of short stories of labour camp life, Kolyma Tales.

During the Khrushchev thaw, enormous numbers of inmates were released from the GULAG and rehabilitated, many posthumously. Shalamov was allowed to return to Moscow after having been officially rehabilitated in 1956. In 1957, he became a correspondent for the literary journal Moskva, and his poetry began to be published. His health, however, had been broken by his years in the camps, and he received an invalid's pension.

Shalamov proceeded to publish poetry and essays in the major Soviet literary magazines while writing his magnum opus, Kolyma Tales. He was acquainted with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Boris Pasternak, and Nadezhda Mandelstam. The manuscripts of Kolyma Tales were smuggled abroad and distributed via samizdat. The translations were published in the West in 1966. The complete Russian-language edition was published in London in 1978, and reprinted thereafter both in Russian and in translation. Kolyma Tales is considered to be one of the great Russian collections of short stories of the twentieth century.

Gospodin Solzhenitsyn, I willingly accept Your funeral joke on the account of my death. With the feeling of honor and pride I consider myself the first Cold War victim which have fallen from Your hand … From the undispatched letter of V.T.Shalamov to A.I.Solzhenitsyn

In addition, he wrote a series of autobiographical essays that vividly bring to life Vologda and his life before prison.

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