(1907-1982) poet, essayist
The son of a priest, Varlam Tihonovich Shalamov was born in Vologda, Russia. As a young man, Sha-lamov joined the communist cause and actively participated in the Russian Revolution. Between 1926 and 1929, Shalamov studied law at the Moscow University. In 1929, he was arrested for distribution of the so-called “Lenin’s Will,” a document that stated that Lenin opposed the appointment of Joseph Stalin to the leadership of the Communist Party and the Soviet Union. Shalamov was released in 1932 but was arrested once again in 1937 at the height of the period of Stalin’s political repressions.
Shalamov spend the next 17 years in a labor camp in Kolyma, a remote location in Siberia. After he returned in 1952, he began to publish poems in various journals. In the meantime, he secretly worked on Kolyma Tales, which appeared in dissident circles around Moscow in 1966. Kolyma Tales describes Shalamov’s experiences in Stalin’s labor camps. The stories were officially published in London in 1977. After the London publication, the collection caused a scandal for the Soviet government, and Shalamov was forced to renounce his work publicly. He died alone in a nursing home five years before Kolyma Tales was officially published in the Soviet Union.
Varlam Shalamov’s Kolyma Tales is considered by many to be a centerpiece of dissident fiction in Russia. His tales had a direct political impact in the Soviet Union, as they exposed the scandalous treatment of political prisoners in the Soviet Union and the injustices of the Soviet judicial system. Today, Shalamov is admired by many, and his work continues to bear relevance to the treatment of political prisoners by various totalitarian governments around the world.
Another Work by Varlam Shalamov
Graphite. Translated by John Glad. New York: Norton, 1981.
