Russian writer. Born into the family of a priest. Memories of parents, impressions of childhood and adolescence were subsequently embodied in the autobiographical prose of the Fourth Vologda (1971).

In 1914 he entered the gymnasium, in 1923 he graduated from the Vologda secondary school. In 1924 he left Vologda and got a job as a tanner at a tannery in the city of Kuntsevo, Moscow Region. In 1926 he entered the Faculty of Soviet Law at Moscow State University.

At this time, Shalamov wrote poetry, participated in the work of literary circles, attended the literary seminar of O. Brik, various poetry evenings and disputes. He strove to actively participate in the public life of the country. He established contact with the Trotskyist organization of Moscow State University, participated in the opposition demonstration for the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution under the slogan "Down with Stalin!" On February 19, 1929 he was arrested. In his autobiographical prose, Vishersky's anti-novel (1970-1971, incomplete) wrote: "I consider this day and hour the beginning of my social life - the first true test in harsh conditions."

Shalamov was sentenced to three years, which he spent in the northern Urals in the Vishersky camp. In 1931 he was released and reinstated. Until 1932 he worked on the construction of a chemical plant in the city of Berezniki, then returned to Moscow. Until 1937 he worked as a journalist in the magazines For Shock Work, For Mastering Technique, For Industrial Personnel. In 1936 his first publication took place - the story Three Deaths of Doctor Austino was published in the magazine "October".

On January 12, 1937, Shalamov was arrested "for counter-revolutionary Trotskyist activities" and sentenced to 5 years in prison camps using physical labor. He was already in the remand prison when his story Pava and the Tree was published in the Literaturny Sovremennik magazine. Shalamov's next publication (poems in the Znamya magazine) took place in 1957.

Shalamov worked in the face of a gold mine in Magadan, then, being sentenced to a new term, he got to earthworks, in 1940–1942 he worked in a coal face, in 1942–1943 at a penalty mine in Dzhelgal. In 1943 he received a new 10-year term "for anti-Soviet agitation", worked in a mine and as a lumberjack, tried to escape, after which he ended up in the penalty area.

The life of Shalamov was saved by the doctor A.M. Pantyukhov, who sent him to medical assistant courses at the hospital for prisoners. After completing the courses, Shalamov worked in the surgical department of this hospital and as a paramedic in the village of woodcutters. In 1949, Shalamov began writing poetry, which compiled the collection Kolyma Notebooks (1937-1956). The collection consists of 6 sections entitled Shalamov Blue Notebook, Postman's Bag, Personally and Confidentially, Golden Mountains, Cyprus, High Latitudes.

In his poems, Shalamov considered himself the "plenipotentiary" of the prisoners, whose hymn was the poem Toast to the Ayan-uryakh River. Subsequently, researchers of Shalamov's work noted his desire to show in poetry the spiritual strength of a person who, even in a camp, is capable of thinking about love and fidelity, about good and evil, about history and art. An important poetic image of Shalamov is the elfin, a Kolyma plant that survives in harsh conditions. The cross-cutting theme of his poems is the relationship between man and nature (Glorification to dogs, Ballad about a calf, etc.). Shalamov's poetry is permeated with biblical motives. One of the main works of Shalamov considered the poem Avvakum in Pustozersk, in which, according to the author's commentary, "the historical image is combined with the landscape and with the peculiarities of the author's biography."

In 1951 Shalamov was released from the camp, but for two more years he was forbidden to leave Kolyma, he worked as a medical assistant at the camp and left only in 1953. His family broke up, his adult daughter did not know her father. His health was undermined, he was deprived of the right to live in Moscow. Shalamov managed to get a job as a supply agent for peat extraction in the village. Turkmen of the Kalinin region In 1954 he began work on the stories that compiled the collection Kolyma Stories (1954-1973). This main work of Shalamov's life includes six collections of stories and essays - Kolyma Tales, Left Bank, Shovel Artist, Essays on the Underworld, Resurrection of a Larch, Glove, or KR-2. All stories have a documentary basis, the author is present in them - either under his own name, or called Andreev, Golubev, Christ. However, these works are not limited to camp memoirs. Shalamov considered it inadmissible to deviate from the facts in describing the living environment in which the action takes place, but the inner world of the heroes was created by him not by documentary, but by artistic means. The writer's style is emphatically antipathetic: the terrible material of life demanded that the prose writer embody it evenly, without declamation. Shalamov's prose is tragic in nature, despite the presence of a few satirical images in it. The author has repeatedly spoken about the confessional character of the Kolyma stories. He called his narrative style "new prose", emphasizing that it is important for him to resurrect feeling, extraordinary new details, descriptions in a new way are needed to make one believe in the story, everything else is not as information, but as an open heart wound " ... The camp world appears in the Kolyma stories as an irrational world.

Shalamov denied the need for suffering. He became convinced that in the abyss of suffering there is not purification, but corruption of human souls. In a letter to AI Solzhenitsyn, he wrote: "The camp is a negative school from the first to the last day for anyone."

In 1956 Shalamov was rehabilitated and moved to Moscow. In 1957 he became a freelance correspondent for the Moscow magazine, at the same time his poems were published. In 1961, a book of his poems Ognivo was published. In 1979, in serious condition, he was placed in a boarding house for the disabled and the elderly. Lost sight and hearing, could hardly move.

Books of poetry by Shalamov were published in the USSR in 1972 and 1977. Kolyma stories were published in London (1978, in Russian), in Paris (1980–1982, in French), and in New York (1981–1982, in English). After their publication, Shalamov became world famous. In 1980, the French branch of the Pen Club awarded him the Freedom Prize.

Most of his works were published posthumously. Varlam Shalamov, who spent more than 17 years in Stalin's camps, is known not only as a writer of prison life, but also as a master of words, philosopher and thinker. And also - as a writer who left amazing portraits of his time and hometown in prose. This is a whole series of stories and the story "The Fourth Vologda", which is considered one of his most significant works.

And - even if it is not a tenant in the world -
I am a petitioner and a plaintiff
Inevitable grief.
I am where the pain is, I am where the groan is,
In the eternal litigation of two parties,
In the old days of this dispute.
"Atomic Poem"

Childhood Varlama Shalamova passed in the shadow. In the shadow - literally and figuratively, because the clerk's house, where the writer was born, was literally "behind the back" of the St. Sophia Cathedral, in its shadow, and the first memories of the future author of "Kolyma Tales" are associated with the Cold Cathedral, as the Vologda residents called Sophia ...

About Varlam Shalamov's parent - father Tikhon

Varlam Shalamov was born on June 5/18, 1907 in the family of the priest of the Sophia Cathedral, Father Tikhon Shalamov and his wife Nadezhda Alexandrovna. Priest Fr. Tikhon Shalamov was not quite ordinary. And the point is not even that he wore cropped robes, but in his peculiar view of the role of the priesthood in Russian history.

Obviously, lofty ideas about his own destiny arose in the head of Father Tikhon after he was ordained, for, in fact, no other paths were open to him: the son of a poor priest from a remote Zyryansk village, he could hardly count on any other field, except "Hereditary". But he started it very extravagantly: he went to missionary work in Alaska. There were born Varlam's older brothers and sisters, and he himself was born in Vologda, in the homeland of his mother, where Fr. Tikhon moved his family in 1905, attracted by "fresh revolutionary trends."

Son of a priest

Perhaps there is a certain amount of bias in Varlam Tikhonovich's attitude to his father. Old childhood grievances - the grievances of the youngest late son, and not even for himself, but for the mother, "whose fate was trampled by the father," - and ooze from the pages of "Fourth Vologda". In this bitter autobiographical story about childhood in three cramped rooms of the clergy's house, the writer constantly settles scores with his father and himself. Nevertheless, even adjusted for filial grievance, Fr. Tikhon Shalamov was an exotic figure against the background of the then clergy, not to say more, as evidenced by the circle of his acquaintances: the revolutionaries exiled to Vologda, as well as the future Renovationist Metropolitan Alexander (Vvedensky) (later Father Tikhon himself switched to Renovationism). At the same time, the relationship with the priesthood did not develop with the priest, and when his son Sergei was expelled from the gymnasium, he attributed this to the intrigues of enemies.

Varlaam (and in childhood Shalamov was called that way, by the correct name; he threw out the "extra" letter from him, already becoming an adult), on the contrary, studied excellently in the gymnasium. But my father had his own explanation for this. “They’re afraid of me,” he said, leafing through his son’s diary, speckled with fives.

Writer Varlam Shalamov - "Social-Dangerous Element"

Shalamov did not graduate from the gymnasium of Alexander the Blessed, which he entered in 1914, but from the Unified Labor School of the second stage No. 6. It was 1923. And the next year he left Vologda forever to build his own life. Not believing in God, the young man did not want to become a priest. He did not want to study medicine either, although his father insisted on this. Arriving in Moscow, he got a job as a tanner at a tannery. In 1926 he entered the faculty of Soviet law on a free enrollment. The next year, being opposed to the existing government, he took part in a rally under the slogan "Down with Stalin!" and "Let's fulfill Lenin's testament!", timed to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the revolution. It is strange for us now to imagine that then there could still be rallies, but - indeed, there could have been. The political atmosphere of the 1920s and 1930s differed greatly.

The first arrest of a writer

Already in 1928, student Shalamov felt the tightening grip of the "young Soviet regime": for concealing his social origin (in the questionnaire he did not indicate that his father was a priest, having written that he was disabled, although by that time it was the latter that was true - Father Tikhon was completely blind) he was expelled from the university. And in 1929 the first arrest followed. Shalamov was caught during a raid in an underground printing house, where the leaflets "Lenin's Testament" were printed. As a "socially dangerous element" the priest's son received three years in the camps. He served his sentence in Vishlag, in the Northern Urals, building the Berezniki chemical plant.

Varlam Shalamov in Solikamsk

On the wall of the Solikamsk Holy Trinity Monastery, which he ruled until his martyrdom, a plaque was installed in memory of one of the most famous prisoners of the Stalinist Gulag, the writer Varlam Shalamov. Presumably, the cell where Shalamov "sat" for some time was in the basement of the Trinity Cathedral.

Shalamov was arrested for the first time in February 1929, long before the repression became widespread. The system of camps was just being created then, so at that time there was only a transit prison in Solikamsk. Later, in the 1930s, the city will become part of Usollag, and the number of prisoners in it will be several times greater than the indigenous population.

Shalamov spent a little time in Solikamsk. He was held together with a hundred other prisoners in terrible cramped conditions in a small room. One night, the writer was forced to undress, go outside and stand in the snow for a long time, not allowing him to sit down or try to warm up. It was a punishment, on the other hand, that he stood up for one of the inmates, who was beaten by the warders. Soon all the prisoners were sent further, to Vishera.

There are many dark spots in the camp history of Solikamsk. According to some historians, the plaque on the wall of the Trinity Monastery was installed by mistake, because the prison in it was set up only in the second half of the 1930s. In this case, the church turned into a prison, through which the future author of the Kolyma Tales passed, most likely should be the Church of St. John the Baptist in Krasnoye Selo.

Second arrest of Varlam Shalamov

In 1932, Shalamov returned to Moscow. He wrote prose, poetry, collaborated with the trade union magazines "For shock work", "For mastering technology", "For industrial personnel", met with his future wife Galina Gudz, whom he met in the camp. Life seemed to be getting better. It was overshadowed only by the events caused by the natural course of time: in 1933, the writer's father died, in 1934 - his mother. Six months before her death, Shalamov married, but Nadezhda Alexandrovna never saw his granddaughter, born in April 1935.

Shalamov recalled:

“I was gaining strength. Poems were written, but not read to anyone. First of all, I had to achieve an uncommon expression. A book of stories was being prepared. The plan was as follows. In 1938, the first book of prose. Then - the second book - a collection of poems.

On the night of January 12, 1937, there was a knock on my door: - We are looking for you. It was the collapse of all hopes ... My wife's brother wrote a denunciation against me.

From the first minute in prison it was clear to me that there were no mistakes in the arrests, that a systematic extermination of an entire “social” group - everyone - who remembered from Russian history in recent years something that should have been remembered in it, was going on. The cell was packed with soldiers, old communists turned into "enemies of the people." Everyone thought that everything was a nightmare, morning would come, everything would dissipate and everyone would be invited to the old position with an apology. "

A special meeting condemned Shalamov to 5 years of forced labor camps using hard labor. On August 14, 1937, a steamer brought a large party of prisoners to the Nagaev Bay (Magadan). Among them was Varlam Shalamov.

Kolyma stretched out for Shalamov for 16 years

Five years of hard work stretched out for fourteen. Even sixteen - if you count all the years spent by the writer in Kolyma, and not just the camp. Although this era in Shalamov's life gave him material for creativity, he did not consider - unlike, for example, A.I. Solzhenitsyn - that she had enriched him with some at least partially useful experience. “The author of the Kolyma stories,” wrote Shalamov upon his return to the “mainland,” “considers the camp a negative experience for a person - from the first to the last hour. A person should not know, should not even hear about him. No person gets better or stronger after the camp. The camp is a negative experience, a negative school, corruption for everyone - for the bosses and prisoners, guards and spectators, passers-by and readers of fiction. "

Death was on his heels. Arkagala, Dzhelgala, Kadykchan, Yagodnoe, Susuman - all these names, which speak a lot to the experienced Kolyma resident, names with shackle chains entangled his biography. Scurvy and dystrophy stained teeth, obscured the eyes with a foul fog. Some relief of fate followed in 1946, when the doctor A.M. Pantyukhov, who sympathized with Shalamov, helped him go to the courses of paramedics in Magadan. Until the end of the term of imprisonment (in 1951), the prisoner Shalamov worked as a medical assistant - first in the hospital for prisoners "Left Bank", then in the village of woodcutters "Klyuch Duskanya". During this period, he began to write poetry, which then entered the cycle "Kolyma Notebooks".

Return from imprisonment and death

Shalamov's term of imprisonment ended in 1951. But for two more years he worked as a paramedic in Yakutia, earning money to move. He sent his poems to Moscow to B.L. Pasternak. Correspondence began between them.

Varlam Tikhonovich, like many, managed to return to Moscow only in 1956. Over the years away from home, his family fell apart. Love could not "step over" such a long separation.

Kolyma also broke Shalamov's soul. Even after becoming a member of the Writers' Union, having settled in Moscow, he constantly expected to be "thrown out" from here, he was afraid to be left without a registration. More frequent attacks of Meniere's disease, accompanied by loss of coordination. In the Soviet Union, Shalamov's Kolyma prose was not published, only collections of poetry were published. The stories were published only in the West, but Shalamov, hoping to see them published in his homeland, protested against these publications, which became the reason for his break with many dissident writers.

And now - a lonely old age. Pension for the elderly and disabled. Awarded the Paris Pen Club Prize. Stroke. On January 14, 1982, Shalamov was transferred to a boarding school for psychochronists. And on January 17, transient pneumonia drove him to the grave.

Varlam Shalamov was born on June 18, 1907 in the family of the Vologda priest Tikhon Shalamov and Nadezhda Alexandrovna, a former housewife. At one time, before the birth of Varlam, Tikhon Nikolaevich served for ten years as a preacher in the distant Aleutian Islands. His ancestors belonged to the Russian Orthodox clergy, while he believed in his Zyryan roots, since he spent his childhood among the people of this nationality. The writer's grandfather, priest Nikolai Ioannovich, married to the daughter of a sexton, served in the Votchinsky parish of the Ust-Sysolsk district of the Vologda province, on the territory of the present-day Komi Republic.

Biographical data from the childhood of this remarkable writer are scanty: in 1914 he entered a gymnasium, and completed his secondary education after the revolutions of 1917, graduating in 1923 from the unified labor school of the 2nd stage No. 6, arranged by the Soviet authorities in the same building. This was the end of the Vologda period of Varlam Shalamov's life: ahead of him were a job as a tanner at a tannery in Kuntsevo near Moscow, the faculty of Soviet law at Moscow State University, exclusion because of his father - "for hiding social origin", and entering the period of maturity. But childhood always lived in his memory, and he often dreamed of his hometown at night.

The future author of "Kolyma Tales" had no shortage of books. Before the revolution, their family did not live in poverty, moreover, there was a tradition in Vologda from time immemorial: each of the exiles sent here to settle by the tsar Themis, having served his term, before leaving, donated his personal library to the book fund of the City Public Book Depository ... A variety of people were exiled here, from the rebellious and philosopher Berdyaev to the Socialist-Revolutionary Savinkov and Maria Ulyanova. Shalamov called the classic cycle of the Russian liberation movement the scheme: Petersburg - prison - Vologda - abroad - Petersburg - prison - Vologda.

Therefore, Vologda residents have always been rightfully proud of their huge public library. And also in the city there were libraries in the districts and public reading rooms. It is no coincidence that Shalamov, by his own admission, acquired a taste for his native language and the literary word in Vologda. “On one of the streets there is a wooden church - the value of architecture, equal to Kizham - the Church of Varlaam Khutynsky, the patron saint of Vologda. In honor of this saint, I was also named, who was born in 1907. Only I voluntarily turned my name - Varlaam - into Varlam. For sound reasons, this name seemed to me more successful, without the extra letter "a" ".

The Shalamovs lived in a small state-owned apartment of the cathedral house for a clergyman, three rooms for seven people. Fate saved this building on Sobornaya Gorka due to its proximity to the state-protected architectural complex of the Ivan the Terrible Cathedral, as in the time of the writer the townspeople called it.

The head of the family wore expensive fur coats with boron collars, and even his robes were silk, expensive cut. At the same time, the elder Shalamov brought the experience of a hunter and a fisherman from Alaska; in the courtyard of the house, he made boats with his own hands, since the river is nearby. According to the recollections of Varlam Tikhonovich, all the inhabitants of their house for the clergy had sheds and vegetable gardens, worked in their free time on the ground, leading a life far from idle.

Nowadays, the Shalamovs' house houses the museum of the camp painter of everyday life. In his autobiographical pages, he often recalled the night searches of Soviet times, endless sharing, seals and, finally, the expulsion of his parents in 1929 from the now former house of the church clergy.

Prior to that, the life and home of the Shalamovs were akin to the then patriarchal Vologda, which sought to reach for the capitals. A home museum with Aleutian arrows - and a simple reproduction of Rubens' work with the face of Christ, at the icon, consecrated as the main icon of the family. The stone cannonballs found by Varlam in the Vologda Kremlin - and the famous local butter and milk, top-notch even in times of economic crises.

The writer, according to him, had three Vologda: historical, regional, exiled and his, Shalamovskaya - the fourth, as in the story of the same name.

“In this book I am trying to combine three times: past, present and future - in the name of the fourth time - art. What is more in it? Of the past? Real? Future? Who will answer this? "

The article is devoted to a short biography of Shalamov, a Russian writer and poet who became famous for his description of life in the Soviet camps.

Biography of Shalamov: early years and first term

Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov was born in 1907. In 1923 he graduated from school and began working at the plant. Three years later he passed the entrance exams at Moscow State University.

Shalamov is actively involved in public life. He attends literary evenings, makes a wide circle of acquaintances among cultural youth. Shalamov writes his own poems. Participation in political life was expressed in support of the opposition.

In 1929, Shalamov was arrested and sentenced to three years in prison. After his release, he worked at a construction site for some time, then came to Moscow and got a job as a journalist. In 1936 Shalamov's first story was published.

Biography of Shalamov: "Kolyma" period

The era of the "Great Purge" began in the Soviet Union. Naturally, she could not pass by the side of the former political prisoner. Shalamov was again sentenced to five years in labor camps. The writer was in general physical work, his term was extended. For an attempt to escape, he was transferred to the penalty area.
It is not known whether Shalamov would have survived if it had not been for the help of one doctor, who managed to arrange the writer for the medical assistant courses formed at the camp. Shalamov graduated from them and moved to the more privileged position of a camp medical assistant. Over the long years of imprisonment, Shalamov wrote a cycle of poems that made up the collection "Kolyma Notebooks". Spiritual education has left its mark on the poet's work. His poems are full of biblical motives.

In general, Shalamov's camp poetry is aimed at finding everything that is good and humane that could be preserved in prisoners. Terrifying pictures of ruthless physical reprisals, "animal" way of life are combined with the image of incredibly touching and spiritualized personalities who can not be broken by any troubles and hardships. Shalamov believes in the ultimate triumph of truth and justice.

Biography of Shalamov: period of maturity

In 1951, Shalamov was released, but for two more years he was obliged to work as a medical assistant in the camp. After that, he was finally able to leave. Shalamov worked in the Kalinin region. His family was no longer there, the writer's health was significantly undermined by the years of imprisonment. At this time, Shalamov is engaged in the main business of his life - autobiographical memoirs "Kolyma Tales". In this series of works all the impressions of the writer about his life in the camp are set forth. Shalamov leads the story either under his own name or under a pseudonym. But everything that is described in the cycle is strictly documentary information, significantly enriched by the artistic skill of the author.

The harsh truth of camp life is portrayed by Shalamov without unnecessary bright phrases and beautiful phrases. The works of the cycle are distinguished by restraint. But this is precisely where their incredible impact on the reader lies, who literally plunges into the atmosphere of the life of an ordinary prisoner. Shalamov practically refrains from any criticism of the current situation; he invites the reader to draw his own conclusions from the narrative.

Unlike the views of some prisoners (mainly of a clerical rank), Shalamov does not consider the suffering he suffered as a means for purifying the soul. He claims that being in a camp is an evil that destroys all the best features in a person.

In 1956, Shalamov was rehabilitated and he was able to return to Moscow. After a while, the poet and writer got a job as a freelance correspondent. Some of his poems were published. In the 70s. Shalamov's collections were published. At the turn of the 70-80s. "Kolyma stories" were published in several foreign publishing houses. After that, the world fame came to the writer.

The difficult years affected the writer's health. In 1979 he was placed in a boarding house in a very serious condition. He could no longer write, but continued to work, dictating his works. In 1982, Shalamov died.
Perestroika revived interest in the writer's work. His works began to appear in print, which had not been censored in the past. They are very popular. Shalamov's works preserve in the memory of the descendants of those people who innocently endured incredible suffering, while remaining Human.

SHALAMOV, VARLAM TIKHONOVICH (1907−1982), Russian Soviet writer. Born June 18 (July 1) 1907 in Vologda in the family of a priest. Memories of parents, impressions of childhood and adolescence were subsequently embodied in the autobiographical prose of the Fourth Vologda (1971).
In 1914 he entered the gymnasium, in 1923 he graduated from the Vologda secondary school. In 1924 at. e. Hal from Vologda and got a job as a tanner at a tannery in the city of Kuntsevo, Moscow Region. In 1926 he entered the Faculty of Soviet Law at Moscow State University.
At this time, Shalamov wrote poetry, participated

In the work of literary circles, he attended the literary seminar of O. Brik, various poetry evenings and debates. He strove to actively participate in the public life of the country. He established contact with the Trotskyist organization of Moscow State University, participated in the opposition demonstration for the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution under the slogan "Down with Stalin!" On February 19, 1929 he was arrested. In his autobiographical prose, Vishersky's anti-novel (1970-1971, not completed) wrote: “I consider this day and hour the beginning of my social life - the first true test in harsh conditions”.
Shalamov was sentenced to three years, which he spent in the northern Urals in the Vishersky camp. In 1931 he was released and reinstated. Until 1932 he worked at the construction of a chemical plant in the city of Berezniki, then returned to Moscow. Until 1937 he worked as a journalist in the magazines For Shock Work, For Mastering Technique, For Industrial Personnel. In 1936 his first publication took place - the story The Three Deaths of Doctor Austino was published in the October magazine.
On January 12, 1937, Shalamov was arrested "for counter-revolutionary Trotskyist activities" and sentenced to 5 years in prison camps using physical labor. He was already in the remand prison when his story Pava and the Tree was published in the Literaturny Sovremennik magazine. Shalamov's next publication (poems in the Znamya magazine) took place in 1957.
Shalamov worked in the face of a gold mine in Magadan, then, being sentenced to a new term, he got to earthworks, in 1940-1942 he worked in a coal face, in 1942-1943 at a penalty mine in Dzhelgal. In 1943 he received a new 10-year term "for anti-Soviet agitation", worked in a mine and as a lumberjack, tried to escape, after which he ended up in the penalty area.
Doctor A.M. Pantyukhov saved Shalamov's life and sent him to medical assistant courses at the hospital for prisoners. After completing the courses, Shalamov worked in the surgical department of this hospital and as a paramedic in the village of woodcutters. In 1949, Shalamov began writing poetry, which compiled the collection Kolyma Notebooks (1937-1956). The collection consists of 6 sections entitled Shalamov Blue Notebook, Postman's Bag, Personally and Confidentially, Golden Mountains, Cyprus, High Latitudes.
In his poems, Shalamov considered himself the “plenipotentiary” of the prisoners, whose hymn was the poem Toast to the Ayan-uryakh River. Subsequently, researchers of Shalamov's work noted his desire to show in poetry the spiritual strength of a person who, even in a camp, is capable of thinking about love and fidelity, about good and evil, about history and art. An important poetic image of Shalamov is the elfin, a Kolyma plant that survives in harsh conditions. The cross-cutting theme of his poems is the relationship between man and nature (Glorification to dogs, Ballad about a calf, etc.). Shalamov's poetry is permeated with biblical motives. One of the main works of Shalamov considered the poem Avvakum in Pustozersk, in which, according to the author's commentary, "the historical image is combined with the landscape and with the peculiarities of the author's biography."
In 1951 Shalamov was released from the camp, but for two more years he was forbidden to leave Kolyma, he worked as a medical assistant at the camp and left only in 1953. His family broke up, his adult daughter did not know her father. His health was undermined, he was deprived of the right to live in Moscow. Shalamov managed to get a job as a supply agent for peat extraction in the village. Turkmen of the Kalinin region In 1954 he began work on the stories that compiled the collection Kolyma Stories (1954−1973). This main work of Shalamov's life includes six collections of stories and essays - Kolyma Tales, Left Bank, Shovel Artist, Essays on the Underworld, Resurrection of a Larch, Glove, or KR-2. All stories have a documentary basis, the author is present in them - either under his own name, or called Andreev, Golubev, Christ. However, these works are not limited to camp memoirs. Shalamov considered it inadmissible to deviate from the facts in describing the living environment in which the action takes place, but the inner world of the heroes was created by him not by documentary, but by artistic means. The writer's style is emphatically antipathetic: the terrible material of life demanded that the prose writer embody it evenly, without declamation. Shalamov's prose is tragic in nature, despite the presence of a few satirical images in it. The author has repeatedly spoken about the confessional character of the Kolyma stories. He called his narrative style “new prose”, emphasizing that it is important for him to resurrect feeling, extraordinary new details, descriptions in a new way are needed to make one believe in the story, everything else is not as information, but as an open heart wound ” ... The camp world appears in the Kolyma stories as an irrational world.
Shalamov denied the need for suffering. He became convinced that in the abyss of suffering there is not purification, but corruption of human souls. In a letter to A. I. Solzhenitsyn, he wrote: "The camp is a negative school from the first to the last day for anyone."
In 1956 Shalamov was rehabilitated and moved to Moscow. In 1957 he became a freelance correspondent for the Moscow magazine, at the same time his poems were published. In 1961, a book of his poems Ognivo was published. In 1979, in serious condition, he was placed in a boarding house for the disabled and the elderly. Lost sight and hearing, could hardly move.
Books of poems by Shalamov were published in the USSR in 1972 and 1977. Kolyma stories were published in London (1978, in Russian), in Paris (1980-1982, in French), in New York (1981-1982, in English). After their publication, Shalamov became world famous. In 1980, the French branch of the Pen Club awarded him the Freedom Prize.
Shalamov died in Moscow on January 17, 1982.

Option 2

Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov (1907-1982) - Soviet writer, a native of Vologda. In his autobiographical work “The Fourth Vologda” (1971), the writer portrayed memories of childhood, youth and family.

First he studied at the gymnasium, then at the Vologda school. From 1924 he worked at a tannery in the city of Kuntsevo (Moscow region) as a tanner. Since 1926 he studied at the Moscow State University at the faculty of "Soviet law". Here he began to write poetry, take part in literary circles, actively taking part in the public life of the country. In 1929 he was arrested and sentenced to 3 years, which the writer served in the Vishera camp. After his release and restoration of his rights, he worked at the construction site of a chemical plant, then returned to Moscow, where he worked as a journalist in various magazines. The October magazine published his first story “The Three Deaths of Dr. Austino” on its pages. 1937 - the second arrest and 5 years of labor camp in Magadan. Then they added a 10-year term “for anti-Soviet agitation”.

Thanks to the intervention of the doctor A.M. Pantyukhov (sent to the courses), Shalamov became a surgeon. His poems 1937-1956 were added to the collection "Kolyma notebooks".

In 1951 the writer was released, but he was banned from leaving Kolyma for another 2 years. Shalamov's family fell apart, his health was undermined.

In 1956 (after his rehabilitation) Shalamov moved to Moscow and worked as a freelance correspondent for the Moscow magazine. In 1961 his book "Fire" was published.

In recent years, having lost his sight and hearing, he lived in a boarding house for the disabled. The publication of Kolyma Tales made Shalamov famous all over the world. Awarded in 1980 with the Freedom Prize.

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Shalamov Varlam Tikhonovich

And - even if it is not a tenant in the world -
I am a petitioner and a plaintiff
Inevitable grief.
I am where the pain is, I am where the groan is,
In the eternal litigation of two parties,
In the old days of this dispute. / "Atomic Poem" /

Varlam Shalamov was born on June 18 (July 1) 1907 in Vologda.
Shalamov's father, Tikhon Nikolayevich, a cathedral priest, was a prominent figure in the city, since he not only served in the church, but was also engaged in active social activities. According to the writer's testimony, his father spent eleven years in the Aleutian Islands as an Orthodox missionary, was a European educated man, adhering to free and independent views.
The relationship of the future writer with his father was not easy. The youngest son in a large family with many children often did not find a common language with the categorical father. “My father was from the darkest forest of the Ust-Sysolsk wilderness, from a hereditary priestly family, whose ancestors had recently been Zyryan shamans for several generations, from a shamanic clan, imperceptibly and naturally replaced the tambourine with a censer, all still in the power of paganism, the shaman himself and a pagan in the depths of his Zyryan soul ... "- this is how V. Shalamov wrote about Tikhon Nikolaevich, although the archives testify to his Slavic origin.

Shalamov's mother, Nadezhda Alexandrovna, was busy with the household and kitchen, but she loved poetry, and was closer to Shalamov. A poem is dedicated to her, beginning like this: "My mother was a savage, dreamer and cook."
In his autobiographical story about childhood and adolescence, The Fourth Vologda, Shalamov told how his beliefs were formed, how his thirst for justice and his determination to fight for it were strengthened. People's will became his ideal. He read a lot, especially highlighting the works of Dumas before Kant.

In 1914, Shalamov entered the gymnasium of Alexander the Blessed. In 1923, he graduated from the Vologda Second Stage School, which, as he wrote, “did not instill in me a love of poetry or fiction, did not cultivate taste, and I made discoveries myself, moving in zigzags - from Khlebnikov to Lermontov, from Baratynsky to Pushkin, from Igor Severyanin to Pasternak and Blok. "
In 1924, Shalamov left Vologda and got a job as a tanner at a tannery in Kuntsevo. In 1926, Shalamov entered the Faculty of Soviet Law at Moscow State University.
At this time, Shalamov wrote poetry, which were positively assessed by N. Aseev, participated in the work of literary circles, attended the literary seminar of O. Brik, various poetry evenings and disputes.
Shalamov strove to actively participate in the public life of the country. He established contact with the Trotskyist organization of Moscow State University, participated in a demonstration of opposition to the 10th anniversary of October under the slogans "Down with Stalin!", "Let's fulfill Lenin's will!"

On February 19, 1929, he was arrested. Unlike many for whom the arrest was really a surprise, he knew why: he was among those who circulated Lenin's so-called testament, his famous "Letter to the Congress." In this letter, gravely ill and practically suspended from affairs, Lenin gives brief characteristics to his closest associates in the party, in whose hands the main power was concentrated by that time, and, in particular, points out the danger of concentrating it in Stalin, due to his unsightly human qualities. It was this letter, which was then hushed up in every possible way, declared a fake after Lenin's death, which refuted the intensely implanted myth of Stalin as the only, indisputable and most consistent successor to the leader of the world proletariat.

In Vishera, Shalamov wrote: "I was, after all, a representative of those people who opposed Stalin - no one ever thought that Stalin and Soviet power were one and the same." And then he continues: “Lenin's will, hidden from the people, seemed to me a worthy application of my strength. Of course, I was still a blind puppy then. But I was not afraid of life and boldly entered the struggle with it in the form in which the heroes of my childhood and youth — all Russian revolutionaries — fought with life and for life. " Later, in his autobiographical prose "Visher's Anti-Novel" (1970-1971, not completed) Shalamov wrote: "I consider this day and hour the beginning of my social life - the first true test in harsh conditions."

Varlam Shalamov was imprisoned in the Butyrka prison, which he later described in detail in the essay of the same name. And his first imprisonment, and then a three-year term in the Vishera camps, he perceived as an inevitable and necessary test given to him for a test of moral and physical strength, to test himself as a person: “Do I have enough moral strength to go my way as a certain unit - that's what I was thinking about in the 95th cell of the male solitary block of the Butyrka prison. There were excellent conditions for thinking about life, and I thank Butyrka prison for the fact that, in search of the right formula for my life, I found myself alone in a prison cell. " The image of a prison in Shalamov's biography may even seem attractive. For him, it was really new and, most importantly, a feasible experience that instilled in his soul confidence in his own strengths and unlimited possibilities of internal spiritual and moral resistance. Shalamov will emphasize the fundamental difference between a prison and a camp.
According to the writer's testimony, prison life both in 1929 and in 1937, in any case, in Butyrki remained much less cruel than in the camp. There even functioned a library, "the only library in Moscow, and maybe even a country that has not experienced all kinds of seizures, destruction and confiscations that, in Stalin's time, forever destroyed the book collections of hundreds of thousands of libraries" and prisoners could use it. Some have studied foreign languages. And in the afternoon, time was allotted for "lectures", each had the opportunity to tell something interesting to others.
Shalamov was sentenced to three years, which he spent in the Northern Urals. He later said: “Our car was either uncoupled or attached to trains going north or northeast. We stood in Vologda - my father and my mother lived there, twenty minutes away. I didn’t dare to drop a note. The train went south again, then to Kotlas, to Perm. Experienced it was clear - we are going to the 4th department of the USLON on Vishera. The end of the railway line is Solikamsk. It was March, Ural March. In 1929, there was only one camp in the Soviet Union - the SLON - the Solovetsky special purpose camps. They took us to the 4th department of the ELEPHANT to Vishera. In the camp of 1929 there were many "products", many "suckers", many positions that were not at all necessary for a good owner. But the camp at that time was not a good host. Work was not asked at all, only a way out was asked, and it was for this way out that the prisoners received their rations. It was believed that more could not be asked from a prisoner. There were no offsets for working days, but every year, following the example of the Solovetsky "unloading", lists were submitted for release by the camp authorities themselves, depending on the political wind that blew that year - either the killers were released, then the White Guards, then the Chinese. These lists were reviewed by a Moscow commission. On Solovki, such a commission was headed from year to year by Ivan Gavrilovich Filippov, a member of the NKVD board, a former Putilov turner. There is such a documentary film "Solovki". In it, Ivan Gavrilovich is filmed in his most famous role: the chairman of the unloading commission. Subsequently, Filippov was the head of the camp on Vishera, then in Kolyma and died in the Magadan prison ... The lists examined and prepared by the visiting commission were taken to Moscow, and the latter approved or did not approve, sending an answer a few months later. "Unloading" was the only way of early release at the time. "
In 1931 he was released and reinstated.
Shalamov Varlam Shalamov 5
Until 1932 he worked on the construction of a chemical plant in the city of Berezniki, then returned to Moscow. Until 1937 he worked as a journalist in the magazines For Shock Work, For Mastering Technique, For Industrial Personnel. In 1936 his first publication took place - the story "The Three Deaths of Doctor Austino" was published in the magazine "October".
On June 29, 1934, Shalamov married G.I. Gudz. On April 13, 1935, their daughter Elena is born.
On January 12, 1937, Shalamov was arrested again "for counter-revolutionary Trotskyist activities" and sentenced to 5 years in prison camps with heavy physical labor. Shalamov was already in a pre-trial detention center when his story “The Pave and the Tree” was published in the Literaturny Sovremennik magazine. Shalamov's next publication (poems in the Znamya magazine) took place twenty years later - in 1957.
Shalamov said: “In 1937, in Moscow, during the second arrest and investigation, at the very first interrogation of the trainee investigator Romanov, my profile was embarrassed. I had to call some colonel, who explained to the young investigator that “then, in the twenties, they gave it this way, don't be embarrassed,” and turning to me:
- What exactly are you arrested for?
- For printing Lenin's will.
- Exactly. So write in the minutes and put in the memorandum: "He printed and distributed a fake known as" Lenin's Testament. "
The conditions in which the prisoners were in Kolyma were calculated for imminent physical destruction. Shalamov worked in the face of a gold mine in Magadan, fell ill with typhus, ended up in excavation work, in 1940-1942 he worked in a coal mine, in 1942-1943 - at a penalty mine in Dzhelgal. In 1943, Shalamov received a new 10-year term "for anti-Soviet agitation," calling Bunin a Russian classic. He ended up in a punishment cell, after which he miraculously survived, worked in a mine as a lumberjack, tried to escape, and then ended up in the penalty area. His life often hung in the balance, but people who treated him well helped him. Such were for him Boris Lesnyak, also a prisoner who worked as a paramedic at the Belichya hospital of the Northern Mining Administration, and Nina Savoyeva, the head physician of the same hospital that patients called Black Mama.

Here, in Squirrel, Shalamov turned out to be like a goner in 1943. His condition, according to Savoyeva, was deplorable. As a man of large build, he always had a particularly difficult time on the more than meager camp rations. And who knows, the Kolyma Tales would have been written if their future author had not been in the hospital of Nina Vladimirovna.
In the mid-40s, Savoyeva and Lesnyak helped Shalamov to remain at the hospital as a cultural worker. Shalamov remained at the hospital while his friends were there. After they left her and Shalamov was again threatened with hard labor, in which he would hardly have survived, in 1946 the doctor Andrei Pantyukhov saved Shalamov from the stage and helped to get a medical assistant course at the Central Hospital for prisoners. After completing the courses, Shalamov worked in the surgical department of this hospital and as a paramedic in the village of woodcutters.
In 1949, Shalamov began to write down poems that compiled the collection "Kolyma Notebooks" (1937-1956). The collection consisted of 6 sections, entitled by Shalamov "Blue Notebook", "Postman's Bag", "Personally and Confidentially", "Golden Mountains", "Fireweed", "High Latitudes".

I swear until I die
take revenge on these vile bitches.
Whose vile science I have fully comprehended.
I will wash my hands with the blood of the enemy,
When this blessed moment comes.
Publicly, in Slavic
I'll drink from the skull,
From an enemy skull
as Svyatoslav did.
Arrange this funeral
in the former Slavic taste
More expensive than all the afterlife,
any posthumous glories.

In 1951, Shalamov was released from the camp as having served his sentence, but for another two years he was forbidden to leave the Kolyma, and he worked as a medical assistant at the camp and only left in 1953. By that time, his family had disintegrated, the adult daughter did not know her father, his health was undermined by the camps, and he was deprived of the right to live in Moscow. Shalamov managed to get a job as a supply agent for peat extraction in the village of Turkmen, Kalinin region.

In 1952, Shalamov sent his poems to Boris Pasternak, who praised them highly. In 1954, Shalamov began work on the stories that compiled the collection "Kolyma Stories" (1954-1973). This main work of Shalamov's life includes six collections of stories and essays - "Kolyma Tales", "Left Bank", "Shovel Artist", "Essays on the Underworld", "Resurrection of the Larch", "Glove, or KR-2".
All stories have a documentary basis, the author is present in them - either under his own name, or called Andreev, Golubev, Christ. However, these works are not limited to camp memoirs. Shalamov considered it inadmissible to deviate from the facts in describing the living environment in which the action takes place, but the inner world of the heroes was created by him not by documentary, but by artistic means. The author has repeatedly spoken about the confessional nature of the Kolyma Tales. He called his narrative manner "new prose", emphasizing that it is important for him to resurrect feeling, extraordinary new details, descriptions in a new way are needed to make one believe in the story, everything else is not as information, but as an open heart wound " ... The camp world appears in the "Kolyma Tales" as an irrational world.

In 1956, Shalamov was rehabilitated for lack of corpus delicti, moved to Moscow and married Olga Neklyudova. In 1957 he became a freelance correspondent for the Moscow magazine, at the same time his poems were published. At the same time, he fell seriously ill and received a disability. In 1961, a book of his poems "Fire" was published. The last decade of his life, especially the very last years, were not easy and cloudless for the writer. Shalamov had an organic lesion of the central nervous system, which predetermined the irregular activity of the limbs. He needed treatment - neurological, and he was in danger of psychiatric.

On February 23, 1972, Literaturnaya Gazeta, where international information would be obstructed, published a letter from Varlam Shalamov, in which he protested against the appearance abroad of his Kolyma Tales. The philosopher Yuri Schrader, who met with Shalamov a few days after the letter appeared, recalls that the writer himself treated this publication as a clever trick: he seemed to have deceived everyone, deceived his superiors and thereby was able to protect himself. "Do you think it's that easy to appear in the newspaper?" - he asked, either really sincerely, or checking the impression of the interlocutor.

This letter was perceived in intellectual circles as a renunciation. The image of the unyielding author of the “Kolyma stories” that appeared on the lists was crumbling. Shalamov was not afraid of losing a leading post - he had never had such a position; he was not afraid of losing his income - he got along with a small pension and infrequent fees. But to say that he had nothing to lose - does not turn his tongue.

Any person always has something to lose, and Shalamov in 1972 turned sixty-five. He was a sick, rapidly aging man from whom the best years of his life were taken away. Shalamov wanted to live and create. He wanted and dreamed that his stories, paid for with his own blood, pain, anguish, would be published in his native country, which had gone through so much and suffered so much.
In 1966, the writer divorced Neklyudova. Many believed he was already dead.
And Shalamov in the 70s walked around Moscow - he was met on Tverskaya, where he sometimes went out for food from his closet. He looked terrible, he staggered like a drunk, he fell. The police were on the alert, Shalamov was raised, and he, who did not take a single gram of alcohol in his mouth, took out a certificate of his illness - Meniere's disease, aggravated after the camps and associated with impaired coordination of movements. Shalamov began to lose his hearing and sight
In May 1979, Shalamov was placed in a home for the disabled and the elderly on Vilis Latsis Street in Tushino. The bureaucratic pajamas made him look very much like a prisoner. Judging by the stories of people who visited him, he again felt like a prisoner. He perceived the home for the disabled as a prison. Like violent isolation. He didn't want to talk to the staff. He ripped the linen out of bed, slept on a bare mattress, tied a towel around his neck, as if it could be stolen from him, rolled the blanket and leaned on it with his hand. But Shalamov was not insane, although he could probably have made such an impression. Doctor D.F. Lavrov, a psychiatrist, recalls that he went to the nursing home to Shalamov, to whom he was invited by the literary critic A. Morozov who visited the writer.
It was not Shalamov's condition that struck Lavrov, but his position - the conditions in which the writer was. As for the condition, there were speech, movement disorders, a serious neurological disease, but he did not find dementia, which alone could give a reason for the transfer of a person to a boarding school for psychochronists, in Shalamov. He was finally convinced of this diagnosis by the fact that Shalamov - in his presence, right before his eyes - dictated two of his new poems to Morozov. His intellect and memory were intact. He composed poems, memorized - and then A. Morozov and I. Sirotinskaya wrote down after him, in the full sense removed from his lips. It was not an easy job. Shalamov repeated a word several times in order to be understood correctly, but in the end the text came together. He asked Morozov to make a selection of the recorded poems, gave it the name "Unknown Soldier" and expressed a wish to be taken to magazines. Morozov went and offered. To no avail.
The poems were published abroad in the "Bulletin of the Russian Christian Movement" with a note by Morozov on the situation of Shalamov. There was only one goal - to attract public attention to help, to find a way out. In a sense, the goal was achieved, but the effect was the opposite. After this publication, foreign radio stations started talking about Shalamov. Such attention to the author of the Kolyma Tales, a large volume of which was published in Russian in 1978 in London, began to worry the authorities, and the relevant department began to take an interest in Shalamov's visitors.
Meanwhile, the writer suffered a stroke. In early September 1981, a commission met to decide whether the writer could continue to be kept in a nursing home. After a short meeting in the director's office, the commission went up to Shalamov's room. Elena Khinkis, who was present there, says that he did not answer questions - most likely he simply ignored, as he knew how. But he was diagnosed with exactly the one that Shalamov's friends feared: senile dementia. In other words, dementia. Friends who visited Shalamov tried to play it safe: phone numbers were left to the medical staff. New, 1982 A. Morozov met in a nursing home together with Shalamov. At the same time, the last picture of the writer was taken. On January 14, eyewitnesses said that when Shalamov was transported, there was a cry. He still tried to resist. He was rolled out in a chair, half-dressed, loaded into a chilled-out car, and across all snow-covered, frosty, January Moscow - a long way from Tushino to Medvedkovo - he was sent to boarding school for psychochronists No. 32.
Elena Zakharova left memories of the last days of Varlam Tikhonovich: “... We approached Shalamov. He was dying. It was obvious, but I took out the phonendoscope anyway. V.T. died of pneumonia, heart failure developed. I think it was all simple - stress and hypothermia. He lived in prison, they came for him. And they drove through the whole city, in winter, he did not have outerwear, he could not go out into the street. So, most likely, they threw a blanket over the pajamas. He probably tried to fight, he threw off the blanket. I knew very well what the temperature was in the rafiks working on transportation, I myself went for several years, working in an ambulance.
On January 17, 1982, Varlam Shalamov died of croupous pneumonia. It was decided not to arrange a civil funeral service in the Writers' Union, which turned away from Shalamov, but to perform a funeral service for him, like the son of a priest, according to the Orthodox rite in the church.
The writer was buried at the Kuntsevo cemetery, not far from the grave of Nadezhda Mandelstam, in whose house he often visited in the 60s. There were many who came to say goodbye.
In June 2000, in Moscow, at the Kuntsevo cemetery, a monument to Varlam Shalamov was destroyed. Unknown persons tore off and carried away the bronze head of the writer, leaving a lonely granite pedestal. Thanks to the help of compatriots-metallurgists of JSC "Severstal" in 2001, the monument was restored.
A documentary was made about Varlam Shalamov.
Andrey Goncharov //