Varlam Shalamov
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov (Russian: Варла́м Ти́хонович
Шала́мов; June 18, 1907–January 17, 1982), baptized as Varlaam,
was a Russian writer, journalist, poet and Gulag survivor.
Early life
Varlam Shalamov was born in Vologda, Vologda Governorate, a
Russian city with a rich culture famous for its wooden
architecture, to a family of a hereditary Russian Orthodox
priest and teacher, Father Tikhon Nikolayevich Shalamov, a
graduate of the Vologda Seminary. At first young Shalamov was
named and baptized after the patron of Vologda, Saint Varlaam
Khutinskiy (1157-1210); Shalamov later changed his name to the
more common Varlam. Shalamov's mother, Nadezhda (Nadia)
Aleksandrovna, was a teacher as well. She also enjoyed poetry,
and Varlam speculated that she could have become a poet if not
for her family. His father worked as a missionary in Alaska for
12 years from 1892, and Varlam's older brother, Sergei, grew up
there (he volunteered for World War I and was killed in action
in 1917); they returned as events were heating up in Russia by
1905. In 1914, Varlam entered the gymnasium of St. Alexander's
and graduated in 1923. After the October Revolution the Soviet
regime confiscated Shalamov's house that stands right behind the
local church to this day.
Upon his graduation it became clear that the Regional
Department of People's Education (RONO, Regionalnoe Otdelenie
Narodnogo Obrazovania) would not support his further education
because Varlam was a son of a priest. Therefore he found a job
as a tanner at the leather factory in the settlement of Kuntsevo
(since 1960 part of the Moscow city). In 1926, after having
worked for two years, he was accepted into the department of
Soviet Law at Moscow State University through open competition.
While studying there Varlam was intrigued by the oratory skills
displayed during the debates between Anatoly Lunacharsky and
Metropolitan Alexander Vvedensky. At that time Shalamov was
convinced that he would become a literature specialist.
First arrest
Shalamov joined a Trotskyist-leaning group and on February 19,
1929, was arrested and sent to Butyrskaya prison for solitary
confinement. He was later sentenced to three years of
correctional labor in the town of Vizhaikha, convicted of
distributing the "Letters to the Party Congress" known as
Lenin's Testament, which were critical of Stalin, and of
participating in a demonstration marking the tenth anniversary
of the Soviet revolution with the slogan "Down with Stalin."
Courageously he refused to sign the sentence branding him a
criminal. By train he was taken to the former Solikamsk
monastery (Solikamsk), which was transformed into a militsiya
headquarters of the Visher department of Solovki ITL OGPU (VishLAG).
It was here that Shalamov truly realized what the Soviet
government was all about and it was here the security guards
returned him to the reality of life from the revolutionary
euphoria that took Russia as a hostage. Shalamov was released in
1931 and worked in the new town of Berezniki, Perm Oblast at the
local chemical plant construction site. He was given the
opportunity to travel to Kolyma for colonization. Sarcastically,
Shalamov said that he would go there only under enforced escort,
but, ironically, fate would hold him to his promise later. He
returned to Moscow in 1932, where he worked as a journalist and
managed to see some of his essays and articles published,
including his first short story "The three deaths of Doctor
Austino" (1936).
Second arrest
At the outset of the Great Purge, on January 12, 1937, Shalamov
was arrested again for "counter-revolutionary Trotskyist
activities" and sent to Kolyma, also known as "the land of white
death," for five years. He was already in jail awaiting
sentencing when one of his short stories was published in the
literary journal Literary Contemporary. In 1943 he was sentenced
to another term, this time for 10 years, under Article 58
(anti-Soviet agitation): the crime was calling Ivan Bunin a
"classic Russian writer." The conditions he endured were
extreme, first in gold mining operations, and then in coal
mining. He was repeatedly sent to punishment zones, both for his
political "crimes" and for his attempt to escape. There he
managed to survive while sick with typhus of which Shalamov was
not aware until he became well. At that time as he recollects in
his writings that he did not care much about his survival.
In 1946, while becoming a dokhodyaga (an emaciated and
devitalized state), in Russian literally means the one who's
moving towards the ultimate end, his life was saved by a
doctor-inmate A.I. Pantyukhov, who risked his own life to get
Shalamov a place as a camp hospital attendant. The new "career"
allowed Shalamov to survive and concentrate on a poetry.
After release
In 1951 Shalamov was released from the camp, and continued
working as a medical assistant for the forced labor camps of
SevvostokLAG while still writing. In 1952 he sent his poetry to
Boris Pasternak, who praised Shalamov's work. After his release
he was faced with the dissolution of his former family,
including a grown-up daughter who now refused to recognize her
father.
Shalamov was allowed to leave Magadan in November 1953
following the death of Stalin in March of that year, and was
permitted to go to the village of Turkmen in Kalinin Oblast,
near Moscow, where he worked as a supply agent.
Life as Novelist and 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.
Retraction controversy and death
The Western publishers always provided the disclaimer that
Shalamov's stories were being published without the author's
knowledge or consent. Surprisingly, in 1972 Shalamov retracted
the Tales, most likely being forced to do so by the Soviet
regime. As his health deteriorated, he spent the last three
years of his life in a house for elderly and disabled literary
workers in Tushino. Shalamov died on January 17, 1982, and was
interred at Kuntsevo Cemetery, Moscow.
The book was finally published on Russian soil in 1987, as a
result of Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost policy. Selections from
Kolyma Tales are now mandatory reading for high school children
in the Russian Federation.
Legacy
In 1980s his family's house still was standing next to the
town's cathedral. Since 1991 the house has been turned into the
Shalamov's Memorial Museum as well as the local picture gallery.
The cathedral's hill in Vologda is called Shalamov's in his
memory.
One of his Kolyma short stories, "The Final Battle of Major
Pugachoff," was made into a film (Последний бой майора Пугачёва)
in 2005.
A minor planet 3408 Shalamov discovered by Soviet astronomer
Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh in 1977 is named after him. A
memorial to Shalamov was erected in Krasnovishersk in June 2007,
the site of his first labor camp.
His funeral was attended by some 150 people. At his burial
site the Shalamov's friend, Fedot Fedotovich Suchkov, has
erected a monument, which in the year of 2000 was destroyed by
somebody unknown. The criminal case was closed as uncompleted.
With the help of some workers from SeverStal the monument was
reestablished in 2001.
Thanks to the Soviet regime the name of Shalamov is now
illogically associated with something of a former outlaw while
he was, in fact, the son of a hereditary priest. The gratitude
should also be extended for the state's support for his goal in
life. Due to that his works contain an enormous deal of
bitterness towards people and the government.
