Varlam Shalamov read all works. Biography

“I managed to find a form of life that is very simple and, in its simplicity, honed by the experience of generations of the Russian intelligentsia. A Russian intelligentsia without prison, without prison experience, is not quite a Russian intelligentsia.”

June 18, 1907 year in the city of Vologda, a son, Varlaam (Varlam), was born into the family of priest Tikhon Nikolaevich Shalamov and his wife Nadezhda Alexandrovna.

1914- enters the gymnasium named after Alexander the Blessed in Vologda.

1923- graduates from the second-level unified labor school No. 6, located in the former gymnasium.

1924- leaves Vologda and goes to work as a tanner at a tannery in the city of Kuntsevo, Moscow region.

1926- enrolls from the plant to the 1st year of the Moscow Textile Institute and at the same time, through free admission, to the Faculty of Soviet Law of Moscow State University. Chooses Moscow State University.

1927 (November 7)- participates in the opposition demonstration for the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution, held under the slogans “Down with Stalin!” and “Let’s fulfill Lenin’s will!”

1928- visiting the literary circle at the magazine “New LEF”.

February 19, 1929- arrested during a raid on an underground printing house while printing leaflets called “Lenin’s Testament.” For this, as a “socially dangerous element,” he receives 3 years of imprisonment in camps.

April 13, 1929- after being kept in the Butyrka prison, he arrives with a convoy to the Vishera camp (Northern Urals). Works on the construction of the Berezniki chemical plant under the leadership of E.P. Berzin, the future head of the Kolyma Dalstroy. In the camp he meets Galina Ignatievna Gudz, his future first wife.

October 1931- released from a forced labor camp and restored to rights. He earns money to leave the Berezniki chemical plant.

1932- returns to Moscow and begins working in the trade union magazines “For Shock Work” and “For Mastering Technology.” Meets with G.I. Gudz.

1933- comes to Vologda to visit his parents.

1934 - 1937- works in the magazine “For Industrial Personnel”.

1936- publishes the first short story “The Three Deaths of Doctor Austino” in the magazine “October” No. 1.

January 13, 1937- Arrested for counter-revolutionary Trotskyist activities and again placed in Butyrka prison. At a special meeting he was sentenced to 5 years of imprisonment in forced labor camps with heavy labor.

August 14, 1937- with a large party of prisoners, he arrives on a ship at Nagaevo Bay (Magadan).

August 1937 - December 1938- works in the gold mining faces of the Partizan mine.

December 1938- arrested in the camp “lawyers’ case.” He is in a remand prison in Magadan (“Vaskov House”).

December 1938 - April 1939- is in typhoid quarantine in the Magadan transit prison.

April 1939 - August 1940- works in a geological exploration party at the Chernaya Rechka mine - as a digger, boiler operator, and assistant topographer.

August 1940 - December 1942- works in the coal faces of the Kadykchan and Arkagala camps.

December 22, 1942 - May 1943- works in general work at the Dzhelgala penal mine.

May 1943- arrested following a denunciation by fellow prisoners “for anti-Soviet statements” and for praising the great Russian writer I.A. Bunin.

June 22, 1943- at the trial in the village. Yagodny was sentenced to 10 years in the camps for anti-Soviet agitation.

Autumn 1943- in a state of “goneer” he ends up in the camp hospital “Belichya” near the village. Berry.

December 1943 - summer 1944- works in a mine at the Spokoiny mine.

Summer 1944- is arrested on the basis of a denunciation with the same incrimination, but does not receive a sentence, because is serving under the same article.

Summer 1945 - autumn 1945- seriously ill patients are in the Belichya hospital. With the help of sympathetic doctors, he emerges from his dying state. He remains temporarily in the hospital as a cult organizer and auxiliary worker.

Autumn 1945- works with lumberjacks in the taiga in the Diamond Key area. Unable to withstand the load, he decides to escape.

Autumn 1945 - spring 1946- as punishment for escaping, he is again sent to general work at the Dzhelgala penal mine.

Spring 1946- on general work at the Susuman mine. Suspected of dysentery, he is again admitted to the Belichya hospital. After recovery with the help of a doctor, A.M. Pantyukhova is sent to study for paramedic courses at the camp hospital 23 kilometers from Magadan.

December 1946- after completing the courses, he is sent to work as a medical assistant in the surgical department at the Central Hospital for Prisoners “Left Bank” (Debin village, 400 km from Magadan).

Spring 1949 - summer 1950- works as a paramedic in the lumber camp “Klyuch Duskanya”. He begins to write poetry, which was later included in the “Kolyma Notebooks” cycle.

1950 - 1951- works as a paramedic in the emergency room of the Left Bank hospital.

October 13, 1951- end of the term of imprisonment. In the next two years, in the direction of the Dalstroy trust, he worked as a paramedic in the villages of Baragon, Kyubyuma, Liryukovan (Oymyakonsky district, Yakutia). The goal is to earn money to leave Kolyma. He continues to write poetry and sends what he has written through his friend, the doctor E.A. Mamuchashvili, to Moscow, to B.L. Pasternak. Receives an answer. A correspondence between the two poets begins.

November 13, 1953- meets with B.L. Pasternak, who helps establish contacts with literary circles.

November 29, 1953- gets a job as a foreman in the Ozeretsko-Neklyuevsky construction department of the Tsentrtorfstroy trust in the Kalinin region (the so-called “101st kilometer”).

June 23, 1954 - summer 1956- works as a supply agent at the Reshetnikovsky peat enterprise in the Kalinin region. Lives in the village of Turkmen, 15 km from Reshetnikov.

1954- begins work on the first collection “Kolyma Stories”. Divorces his marriage with G.I. Gudz.

July 18, 1956- receives rehabilitation for lack of corpus delicti and is dismissed from the Reshetnikovsky enterprise.

1956- moves to Moscow. Marries O.S. Neklyudova.

1957- works as a freelance correspondent for the magazine “Moscow”, publishes the first poems from the “Kolyma Notebooks” in the magazine “Znamya”, No. 5.

1957 - 1958- suffers a serious illness, attacks of Meniere's disease, is treated at the Botkin hospital.

1961- publishes the first book of poems “Ognivo”. Continues to work on “Kolyma Stories” and “Essays on the Underworld.”

1962 - 1964- works as a freelance internal reviewer for the New World magazine.

1964- publishes a book of poems “The Rustle of Leaves”.

1964 - 1965- completes the collections of stories from the Kolyma cycle “Left Bank” and “The Shovel Artist”.

1966- divorces O.S. Neklyudova. Meets I.P. Sirotinskaya, at that time an employee of the Central State Archive of Literature and Art.

1966 - 1967- creates a collection of stories “Resurrection of Larch”.

1967- publishes a book of poems “Road and Fate”.

1968 - 1971- working on the autobiographical story “The Fourth Vologda”.

1970 - 1971- working on “Vishera anti-novel”.

1972- learns about the publication in the West, in the Posev publishing house, of his “Kolyma Stories”. Writes a letter to Literaturnaya Gazeta protesting against unauthorized illegal publications that violate the author's will and rights. Many fellow writers perceive this letter as a rejection of “Kolyma Tales” and break off relations with Shalamov.

1972- publishes a book of poems “Moscow Clouds”. Accepted into the USSR Writers' Union.

1973 - 1974- works on the cycle “The Glove, or KR-2” (the final cycle of “Kolyma Tales”).

1977- publishes a book of poems “Boiling Point”. In connection with his 70th anniversary, he was nominated for the Order of the Badge of Honor, but did not receive the award.

1978- in London, the Overseas Publications publishing house publishes the book “Kolyma Stories” in Russian. The publication was also carried out outside the will of the author. Shalamov's health is deteriorating sharply. He begins to lose hearing and vision, and attacks of Meniere's disease with loss of coordination of movements become more frequent.

1979- with the help of friends and the Writers' Union, he is sent to a boarding house for the elderly and disabled.

1980- received news that he had been awarded a prize from the French Pen Club, but never received the prize.

1980 - 1981- suffers a stroke. In moments of getting up, he reads poetry to A. A. Morozov, a poetry lover who visited him. The latter publishes them in Paris, in the “Bulletin of the Russian Christian Movement”.

January 14, 1982- based on the conclusion of the medical commission, he is transferred to a boarding house for psychochronic patients.

January 17, 1982- dies from lobar pneumonia. He was buried at the Kuntsevo cemetery in Moscow.

The biography was compiled by I.P. Sirotinskaya, clarifications and additions were made by V.V. Esipov.

In addition to this brief biographical summary, you can read about Shalamov’s fate in his autobiography “My Several Lives”, as well as Irina Sirotinskaya’s book “My Friend Varlam Shalamov”. Read other biographical materials in the “Memories” section.

All rights to distribute and use the works of Varlam Shalamov belong to A.L.. Use of materials is possible only with the consent of the editors of ed@site. The site was created in 2008-2009. funded by the Russian Humanitarian Foundation grant No. 08-03-12112v.

Shalamov Varlam Tikhonovich

And - let him not live in the world -
I am a petitioner and plaintiff
Incessant grief.
I am where the pain is, I am where the groan is,
In the eternal litigation of two sides,
In this ancient dispute. /“Atomic Poem”/

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

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

In 1914, Shalamov entered the Alexander the Blessed gymnasium. In 1923, he graduated from the Vologda school of the 2nd level, which, as he wrote, “did not instill in me a love for poetry or fiction, did not develop 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 was positively assessed by N. Aseev, participated in the work of literary circles, attended O. Brik’s literary seminar, various poetry evenings and debates.
Shalamov sought to actively participate in the public life of the country. He established contact with the Trotskyist organization at Moscow State University, participated in the opposition demonstration for the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution 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 truly a surprise, he knew why: he was among those who distributed Lenin’s so-called testament, his famous “Letter to the Congress.” In this letter, Lenin, seriously ill and virtually removed from work, gives brief characteristics of his closest party comrades, in whose hands by this time the main power was concentrated, and, in particular, points out the danger of concentrating it with Stalin - due to his unsightly human qualities. It was this letter, which was hushed up in every possible way at that time, and declared a fake after Lenin’s death, that refuted the intensely propagated myth about Stalin as the only, indisputable and most consistent successor to the leader of the world proletariat.

In Vishera, Shalamov wrote: “After all, I was a representative of those people who opposed Stalin - no one ever believed 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 into the fight against 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 “Vishera Anti-Novel” (1970–1971, unfinished), Shalamov wrote: “I consider this day and hour the beginning of my public life - the first true test in harsh conditions.”

Varlam Shalamov was imprisoned in Butyrka prison, which he later described in detail in an essay of the same name. And he perceived his first imprisonment, and then a three-year term in the Vishera camps, as an inevitable and necessary test given to him to test his moral and physical strength, to test himself as an individual: “Do I have enough moral strength to go my way as a certain unit - that’s what I was thinking about in cell 95 of the men’s solitary building of the Butyrka prison. There were excellent conditions for thinking about life, and I thank the Butyrka prison for the fact that in search of the necessary formula for my life, I found myself alone in a prison cell.” The image of prison in Shalamov’s biography may even seem attractive. For him, this was truly a new and, most importantly, feasible experience, which instilled in his soul confidence in his own strengths and the unlimited possibilities of internal spiritual and moral resistance. Shalamov will emphasize the fundamental difference between a prison and a camp.
According to the writer, prison life in 1929 and 1937, at least in Butyrki, remained much less cruel compared to the camp. There was even a library functioning here, “the only library in Moscow, and perhaps the country, that did not experience all sorts of seizures, destruction and confiscations that during Stalin’s time forever destroyed the book collections of hundreds of thousands of libraries” and prisoners could use it. Some studied foreign languages. And after lunch, time was allocated for “lectures”; everyone 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 carriage was either uncoupled or attached to trains going either north or northeast. We were standing in Vologda - my father and my mother lived there, a twenty-minute walk away. I did not dare to leave the note. The train went south again, then to Kotlas, Perm. It was clear to the experienced - we were going to the 4th department of USLON on Vishera. The end of the railway track is Solikamsk. It was March, Ural March. In 1929, there was only one camp in the Soviet Union - SLON - Solovetsky Special Purpose Camps. They took us to the 4th department of SLON on Vishera. In the 1929 camp there were a lot of “products”, a lot of “suckers”, a lot of positions that were not at all necessary for a good owner. But the camp of 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 nothing more could be asked of a prisoner. There were no records of working days, but every year, following the example of the Solovetsky “unloading”, lists for release were submitted by the camp authorities themselves, depending on the political wind that was blowing that year - either the murderers were released, then the White Guards, then the Chinese. These lists were considered by a Moscow commission. In 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 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 on Kolyma and died in Magadan prison... The lists examined and prepared by the visiting commission were taken to Moscow, and it approved or did not approve, sending a response several months later. "Unloading was the only way to get early release at that time."
In 1931 he was released and restored to rights.
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 Mastery of Technology,” and “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 re-arrested “for counter-revolutionary Trotskyist activities” and sentenced to 5 years of imprisonment in camps with heavy physical labor. Shalamov was already in a pre-trial detention center when his story “Paheva and the Tree” was published in the magazine Literary Contemporary. Shalamov’s next publication (poems in the magazine “Znamya”) took place twenty years later - in 1957.
Shalamov said: “In 1937 in Moscow, during the second arrest and investigation, during the first interrogation, trainee investigator Romanov was confused by my questionnaire. I had to call some colonel, who explained to the young investigator that “back then, in the twenties, they gave it like this, don’t be embarrassed,” and, turning to me:
- What exactly are you arrested for?
- For printing Lenin's will.
- Exactly. Write this in the protocol and put it in a memorandum: “I printed and distributed a forgery known as Lenin’s Testament.”
The conditions in which the prisoners were kept in Kolyma were designed for rapid physical destruction. Shalamov worked in the faces of a gold mine in Magadan, suffered from typhus, ended up doing excavation work, in 1940–1942 he worked in a coal face, in 1942–1943 - at a penal mine in Dzhelgal. In 1943, Shalamov received a new 10-year sentence “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 and as a lumberjack, tried to escape, and then ended up in the penalty zone. His life often hung in the balance, but people who treated him well helped him. This became for him Boris Lesnyak, also a prisoner, who worked as a paramedic at the Belichya hospital of the Northern Mining Administration, and Nina Savoeva, the chief physician of the same hospital, whom the patients called Black Mama.

Here, in Belichaya, Shalamov ended up as a goner in 1943. His condition, according to Savoeva, 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, “Kolyma Stories” would have been written if their future author had not ended up in Nina Vladimirovna’s hospital.
In the mid-40s, Savoeva and Lesnyak helped Shalamov remain at the hospital as a cult organizer. Shalamov remained at the hospital while his friends were there. After they left her and Shalamov was again threatened with hard labor, which he was unlikely to survive, in 1946 the doctor Andrei Pantyukhov saved Shalamov from the prison and helped him get a paramedic 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 a lumberjack village.
In 1949, Shalamov began recording poems that formed the collection “Kolyma Notebooks” (1937–1956). The collection consisted of 6 sections entitled “Blue Notebook”, “Postman’s Bag”, “Personally and Confidentially”, “Golden Mountains”, “Fireweed”, “High Latitudes” by Shalamov.

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 the enemy's skull,
as Svyatoslav did.
Arrange this funeral feast
in the old Slavic taste
More expensive than all the afterlife,
any posthumous glory.

In 1951, Shalamov was released from the camp as having served his sentence, but for another two years he was forbidden to leave Kolyma, and he worked as a paramedic at a camp camp and left only in 1953. His family had broken up by that time, his adult daughter did not know her father, his health had been 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 at peat mining in the village of Turkmen, Kalinin region.

In 1952, Shalamov sent his poems to Boris Pasternak, who praised them. In 1954, Shalamov began work on the stories that made up 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”, “Sketches of the Underworld”, “Resurrection of Larch”, “The Glove, or KR-2”.
All stories have a documentary basis, they contain an author - either under his own name, or called Andreev, Golubev, Krist. However, these works are not limited to camp memoirs. Shalamov considered it unacceptable to deviate from the facts in describing the living environment in which the action takes place, but he created the inner world of the heroes not through documentary, but through artistic means. The author has spoken more than once about the confessional nature of the Kolyma Tales. He called his narrative style “new prose,” emphasizing that “it is important for him to revive the feeling, extraordinary new details, descriptions in a new way are needed to make you believe in the story, in everything else not as information, but as an open heart wound.” . The camp world appears in “Kolyma Stories” as an irrational world.

In 1956, Shalamov was rehabilitated for lack of evidence of a crime, moved to Moscow and married Olga Neklyudova. In 1957, he became a freelance correspondent for the Moscow magazine, and his poems were published at the same time. At the same time, he became seriously ill and became disabled. In 1961, a book of his poems “Flint” 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, but he was facing psychiatric treatment.

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

This letter was perceived in intellectual circles as a renunciation. The image of the unbending author of the widely circulated “Kolyma Stories” was crumbling. Shalamov was not afraid of losing his leadership position - he had never had such a thing; he was not afraid of losing his income - he got by with a small pension and infrequent fees. But to say that he had nothing to lose is difficult.

Any person always has something to lose, and Shalamov turned sixty-five in 1972. He was a sick, rapidly aging man who had been robbed of the best years of his life. Shalamov wanted to live and create. He wanted and dreamed that his stories, paid for with his own blood, pain, and torment, would be published in his native country, which had experienced and suffered so much.
In 1966, the writer divorced Neklyudova. Many considered him already dead.
And Shalamov walked around Moscow in the 70s - he was met on Tverskaya, where he sometimes went out to buy groceries from his closet. His appearance was terrible, he staggered like a drunken man, he fell. The police were on alert, Shalamov was raised, and he, who had not taken a gram of alcohol into his mouth, took out a certificate of his illness - Meniere's disease, which worsened after the camps and was associated with impaired coordination of movements. Shalamov began to lose his hearing and vision
In May 1979, Shalamov was placed in a home for the disabled and elderly on Vilisa Latsis Street in Tushino. His official pajamas made him look very much like a prisoner. Judging by the stories of the people who visited him, he again felt like a prisoner. He perceived the nursing home as a prison. Like forced isolation. He didn't want to talk to the staff. He tore the linen off the bed, slept on the bare mattress, tied a towel around his neck as if it might be stolen from him, rolled up the blanket and rested his hand on it. But Shalamov was not crazy, although he probably could have given such an impression. Doctor D.F. Lavrov, a psychiatrist, recalls that he was going to Shalamov’s nursing home, to whom he was invited by the literary critic A. Morozov, who was visiting the writer.
Lavrov was struck not by Shalamov’s condition, but by his position - the conditions in which the writer was. As for the condition, there were speech and motor disorders, a severe neurological disease, but he did not find dementia in Shalamov, which alone could give rise to a person being moved to a boarding school for psychochronic patients. 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 them - and then A. Morozov and I. Sirotinskaya wrote them down after him, in the full sense they took them from his lips. It was not an easy job. Shalamov repeated a word several times 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 “The Unknown Soldier” and expressed the wish that it be included in magazines. Morozov walked around and suggested. To no avail.
The poems were published abroad in the “Bulletin of the Russian Christian Movement” with a note by Morozov about Shalamov’s situation. There was only one goal - to attract public attention to help, to find a way out. The goal was achieved in a sense, but the effect was the opposite. After this publication, foreign radio stations started talking about Shalamov. Such attention to the author of “Kolyma Stories,” 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. At the beginning of September 1981, a commission met to decide whether it was possible to continue keeping the writer 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 them, as he knew how to do. But the diagnosis was made to him - exactly the one that Shalamov’s friends feared: senile dementia. In other words - dementia. Friends who visited Shalamov tried to hedge their bets: telephone numbers were left for the medical staff. A. Morozov celebrated New Year 1982 in a nursing home together with Shalamov. It was then that the last photograph of the writer was taken. On January 14, eyewitnesses said that when Shalamov was being transported, there was a scream. He still tried to resist. They rolled him out in a chair, loaded him half-dressed into a cold car and through the entire snowy, frosty, January Moscow - a long way lay from Tushino to Medvedkovo - he was sent to boarding school for psychochronic patients No. 32.
Elena Zakharova left memories of the last days of Varlam Tikhonovich: “..We approached Shalamov. He was dying. It was obvious, but still I took out a phonendoscope. V.T. died of pneumonia and developed heart failure. I think it was simple - stress and hypothermia. He lived in prison, and they came for him. And they drove him through the whole city, in winter, he had no outerwear, he couldn’t go outside. So, most likely, they threw a blanket over their pajamas. He probably tried to struggle and threw off the blanket. I knew well what the temperature was in the transport trucks; I traveled there myself for several years, working in an ambulance.
On January 17, 1982, Varlam Shalamov died of lobar pneumonia. It was decided not to organize a civil funeral service in the Writers' Union, which had turned its back on Shalamov, but to hold a funeral service for him, as 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, 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, the monument to Varlam Shalamov was destroyed. Unknown people tore off and carried away the bronze head of the writer, leaving a lonely granite pedestal. Thanks to the help of fellow metallurgists of Severstal JSC, the monument was restored in 2001.
A documentary film was made about Varlam Shalamov.
Andrey Goncharov //

SHALAMOV, VARLAM TIKHONOVICH(1907–1982), Russian Soviet writer. Born on June 18 (July 1), 1907 in Vologda in the family of a priest. Memories of parents, impressions of childhood and youth were later embodied in autobiographical prose Fourth Vologda (1971).

In 1914 he entered the gymnasium, in 1923 he graduated from the Vologda school of the 2nd level. In 1924 he left Vologda and got a job as a tanner at a tannery in Kuntsevo, Moscow region. In 1926 he entered Moscow State University at the Faculty of Soviet Law.

At this time, Shalamov wrote poetry, participated in literary circles, attended O. Brik’s literary seminar, various poetry evenings and debates. He sought to actively participate in the public life of the country. Established contact with the Trotskyist organization at Moscow State University, participated in the opposition demonstration for the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution under the slogans “Down with Stalin!” On February 19, 1929 he was arrested. In autobiographical prose Vishera anti-novel(1970–1971, unfinished) wrote: “I consider this day and hour the beginning of my public life - the first true test in harsh conditions.”

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

On January 12, 1937, Shalamov was arrested “for counter-revolutionary Trotskyist activities” and sentenced to 5 years of imprisonment in camps with physical labor. He was already in a pre-trial detention center when his story was published in the magazine Literary Contemporary Pava and tree. Shalamov’s next publication (poems in the magazine “Znamya”) took place in 1957.

Shalamov worked in the faces of a gold mine in Magadan, then, being sentenced to a new term, he ended up doing earthworks, in 1940–1942 he worked in a coal face, in 1942–1943 at a penal mine in Dzhelgal. In 1943, he received a new 10-year sentence “for anti-Soviet agitation,” worked in a mine and as a lumberjack, tried to escape, and then ended up in a penalty zone.

Shalamov’s life was saved by the doctor A.M. Pantyukhov, who sent him to paramedic courses at a hospital for prisoners. After completing the courses, Shalamov worked in the surgical department of this hospital and as a paramedic in a lumberjack village. In 1949, Shalamov began writing poetry, which formed a collection Kolyma notebooks(1937–1956). The collection consists of 6 sections entitled Shalamov Blue notebook, Postman's bag, Personally and confidentially, Golden Mountains, Fireweed, High latitudes.

In his poems, Shalamov considered himself the “plenipotentiary” of the prisoners, whose anthem the poem became 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 is capable, even in camp conditions, of thinking about love and fidelity, about good and evil, about history and art. An important poetic image of Shalamov is dwarf dwarf - a Kolyma plant that survives in harsh conditions. The cross-cutting theme of his poems is the relationship between man and nature ( Praise for dogs, Ballad of the Elk Calf and etc.). Shalamov's poetry is permeated with biblical motifs. Shalamov considered the poem one of his main works Avvakum in Pustozersk, in which, according to the author’s commentary, “the historical image is combined with both the landscape and the features of the author’s biography.”

In 1951, Shalamov was released from the camp, but for another two years he was forbidden to leave Kolyma; he worked as a paramedic at a camp and left only in 1953. His family fell apart, 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 at peat mining in the village. Turkmen Kalinin region. In 1954 he began work on the stories that formed the collection Kolyma stories(1954–1973). This main work of Shalamov’s life includes six collections of stories and essays - Kolyma stories, Left Coast, Shovel Artist, Sketches of the Underworld, Resurrection of larch, Glove, or KR-2. All stories have a documentary basis, they contain an author - either under his own name, or called Andreev, Golubev, Krist. However, these works are not limited to camp memoirs. Shalamov considered it unacceptable to deviate from the facts in describing the living environment in which the action takes place, but he created the inner world of the heroes not through documentary, but through artistic means. The writer's style is emphatically antipathetic: terrible life material demanded that the prose writer embody it exactly, without declamation. Shalamov's prose is tragic in nature, despite the presence of a few satirical images in it. The author has spoken more than once about the confessional character Kolyma stories. He called his narrative style “new prose,” emphasizing that “it is important for him to revive the feeling, extraordinary new details, descriptions in a new way are needed to make you believe in the story, in everything else not as information, but as an open heart wound.” . The camp world appears in Kolyma stories like an irrational world.

Shalamov denied the need for suffering. He became convinced that in the abyss of suffering, it is not purification that occurs, but the 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, and his poems were published at the same time. A book of his poems was published in 1961 Flint. In 1979, in serious condition, he was placed in a boarding house for the disabled and elderly. He lost his sight and hearing and had difficulty moving.

Books of Shalamov's poems were published in the USSR in 1972 and 1977. Kolyma stories published in London (1978, in Russian), in Paris (1980–1982, in French), in New York (1981–1982, in English). After their publication, Shalamov gained worldwide fame. In 1980, the French branch of the Pen Club awarded him the Freedom Prize.

18.06.1907 – 17.01.1982

Writer Varlam Shalamov was born in Vologda in the family of priest Tikhon Nikolaevich Shalamov and his wife Nadezhda Alexandrovna. In 1914 he entered the gymnasium named after Alexander the Blessed in Vologda. In 1923 he graduated from the second-level unified labor school No. 6, located in the former gymnasium. In 1924 he left Vologda and went to work as a tanner at a tannery in the city of Kuntsevo, Moscow region.

In 1926, he entered the 1st year of the Moscow Textile Institute from the plant and at the same time, through free admission, entered the Faculty of Soviet Law of Moscow State University. Chooses Moscow State University.

On February 19, 1929, he was arrested during a raid on an underground printing house while printing leaflets entitled “Lenin’s Testament.” For this, as a “socially dangerous element,” he receives 3 years of imprisonment in camps. After being kept in the Butyrka prison, he arrives with a convoy to the Vishera camp (Northern Urals). Works on the construction of the Berezniki chemical plant under the leadership of E.P. Berzin, the future head of the Kolyma Dalstroy. In the camp he meets Galina Ignatievna Gudz, his future first wife (they got married in 1934).

In October 1931, he was released from a forced labor camp and his rights were restored. In 1932 he returned to Moscow and began working in the trade union magazines “For Shock Work” and “For Mastering Technology”, and from 1934 - in the magazine “For Industrial Personnel”.

In 1936, Shalamov published his first short story, “The Three Deaths of Doctor Austino,” in the magazine “October” No. 1.

On January 13, 1937, the writer was arrested for counter-revolutionary Trotskyist activities and again placed in Butyrka prison. At a special meeting he was sentenced to 5 years of imprisonment in forced labor camps with heavy labor. On August 14, with a large party of prisoners, the ship arrives in Nagaevo Bay (Magadan). Until December 1938 he worked in the gold mining faces of the Partizan mine. In December 1938, he was arrested in the camp “lawyers’ case.” He is in a remand prison in Magadan (“Vaskov House”), after which he was transferred to the typhoid quarantine of the Magadan transit prison. From April 1939 to May 1943 he worked in a geological exploration party at the Chernaya Rechka mine, in the coal faces of the Kadykchan and Arkagala camps, and in general work at the Dzhelgala penal mine.

In May 1943, he was arrested following a denunciation by fellow prisoners “for anti-Soviet statements” and for praising the writer I.A. Bunina. June 22, 1943 at the trial in the village. Yagodny was sentenced to 10 years in the camps for anti-Soviet agitation. In the fall of 1943, in a state of “gone”, he ended up in the Belichya camp hospital near the village. Berry. After discharge, he works in a mine at the Spokoiny mine. In the summer of 1945, he was seriously ill in the Belichya hospital. With the help of sympathetic doctors, he emerges from his dying state. He remains temporarily in the hospital as a cult organizer and auxiliary worker.

In the fall of 1945, he worked with lumberjacks in the taiga in the Diamond Key zone. Unable to withstand the load, he decides to escape. As punishment, he is sent to general work at the Dzhelgala penal mine. In the spring of 1946 he was doing general work at the Susuman mine. Suspected of dysentery, he is again admitted to the Belichya hospital. After recovery with the help of doctor A.M. Pantyukhova is heading to a paramedic course at a camp hospital 23 kilometers from Magadan. After completing the courses, he is sent to work as a medical assistant in the surgical department at the Central Hospital for Prisoners “Left Bank” (Debin village, 400 km from Magadan). He will work as a paramedic in the lumber camp “Klyuch Duskanya”. He begins to write poetry, which was later included in the “Kolyma Notebooks” cycle. In 1950 – 1951 works as a paramedic in the emergency room of the Left Bank hospital.

On October 13, 1951, the prison term ended. In the next two years, in the direction of the Dalstroy trust, he works as a paramedic in the villages of Baragon, Kyubyuma, Liryukovan (Oymyakonsky district, Yakutia) in order to earn money to leave Kolyma. He continues to write poetry and sends what he has written through a friend, doctor E.A. Mamuchashvili to Moscow to B.L. Pasternak. Receives an answer. A correspondence between the two poets begins.

November 12, 1953 returns to Moscow and meets with his family. Immediately meets with B.L. Pasternak, who helps to establish contacts with literary circles. In 1954, Shalamov began work on his first collection, Kolyma Stories. The divorce from G.I. Gudz dates back to the same time.

In 1956 he moved to Moscow and married O.S. Neklyudova. Works as a freelance correspondent for the magazine “Moscow”, publishes the first poems from the “Kolyma Notebooks” in the magazine “Znamya”, No. 5. In 1957 - 1958 suffers from a serious illness, attacks of Meniere's disease, and is treated at the Botkin Hospital.

In 1961 he published his first book of poems, Flint. Continues to work on “Kolyma Stories” and “Essays on the Underworld.” In 1964 he published a book of poems, “The Rustle of Leaves.” A year later, he completed the collections of short stories from the Kolyma cycle, “The Left Bank” and “The Shovel Artist.”

In 1966, Shalamov divorced O.S. Neklyudova. Meets I.P. Sirotinskaya, at that time an employee of the Central State Archive of Literature and Art.

In 1966 – 1967 creates a collection of short stories “Resurrection of Larch”. In 1967 he published a book of poems, “The Road and Fate.” In 1968 – 1971 working on the autobiographical story “The Fourth Vologda”. In 1970 - 1971 - on “Vishera anti-novel”.

In 1972, Kolyma Stories was published in the West, by the Posev publishing house. Shalamov writes a letter to Literaturnaya Gazeta protesting against unauthorized illegal publications that violate the author's will and rights. Many fellow writers perceive this letter as a rejection of “Kolyma Tales” and break off relations with the writer.

In 1972, Shalamov published a book of poems “Moscow Clouds”. Accepted into the USSR Writers' Union. In 1973 – 1974 works on the cycle “The Glove, or KR-2” (the final cycle of “Kolyma Tales”). In 1977 he published a book of poems, “Boiling Point”. In connection with his 70th anniversary, he was nominated for the Order of the Badge of Honor, but did not receive the award.

In 1978, in London, Overseas Publications published the book “Kolyma Stories” in Russian. The publication was also carried out outside the will of the author. Shalamov's health is deteriorating sharply. He begins to lose hearing and vision, and attacks of Meniere's disease with loss of coordination of movements become more frequent. In 1979, with the help of friends and the Writers' Union, he was sent to a boarding house for the elderly and disabled.

In 1980, he received news that he had been awarded a prize from the French Pen Club, but he never received the prize. In 1980 - 1981 - suffers a stroke. In moments of getting up, he reads poetry to the visiting poetry lover A.A. Morozov. The latter publishes them in Paris, in the “Bulletin of the Russian Christian Movement”.

On January 14, 1982, based on the conclusion of the medical board, he was transferred to a boarding house for psychochronic patients. January 17, 1982 dies of lobar pneumonia. He was buried at the Kuntsevo cemetery in Moscow.

Biography compiled by I.P. Sirotinskaya, clarifications and additions by V.V. Esipov.

Plus

In the tragic chorus of voices chanting the horrors of Stalin's camps, Varlam Shalamov performs one of the first roles. The autobiographical “Kolyma Tales” tell of the inhuman trials that befell an entire generation. Having survived the circles of hell of totalitarian repression, the writer refracted them through the prism of artistic expression and stood among the classics of Russian literature of the 20th century.

Childhood and youth

Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov was born in Vologda on June 5, 1907. He came from a hereditary family of priests. His father, like his grandfather and uncle, was a pastor of the Russian Orthodox Church. Tikhon Nikolaevich was engaged in missionary work, preached to the Aleut tribes on distant islands (now the territory of Alaska) and knew English perfectly. The writer's mother raised children, and in the last years of her life she worked at a school. Varlam was the fifth child in the family.

The boy learned to read at the age of 3 and greedily devoured everything he came across in the family library. Literary passions became more complex with age: he moved from adventures to philosophical writings. The future writer had a subtle artistic taste, critical thinking and a desire for justice. Under the influence of books, ideals close to those of the People's Will were formed early in him.

Already in childhood, Varlam wrote his first poems. At the age of 7, the boy is sent to a gymnasium, but his education is interrupted by the revolution, so he finishes school only in 1924. The writer summarizes the experience of childhood and adolescence in “The Fourth Vologda” - a story about the early years of life.

After graduating from school, the guy goes to Moscow and joins the ranks of the capital's proletariat: he goes to a factory and spends 2 years honing his tanner's skills in a leather production. And from 1926 to 1928 he received higher education at Moscow State University, studying Soviet law. But he is expelled from the university, having learned from denunciations of fellow students about his “socially objectionable” origin. This is how the repressive machine for the first time invades the biography of the writer.

During his student years, Shalamov attended a literary circle organized by the magazine “New LEF”, where he met and communicated with progressive young writers.

Arrests and imprisonments

In 1927, Shalamov took part in a protest dedicated to the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution. As part of a group of underground Trotskyists, he speaks with the slogans “Down with Stalin!” and calls for a return to the true covenants. In 1929, for participation in the activities of the Trotskyist group, Varlam Shalamov was first taken into custody and “without trial” was sent to correctional camps for 3 years as a “socially harmful element.”

From this time on, his long-term ordeal as a prisoner began, which lasted until 1951. The writer served his first term in Vishlag, where he arrived in April 1929 from Butyrka prison. In the north of the Urals, prisoners are participating in the largest construction project of the first five-year plan - they are building a chemical plant of all-Union significance in Berezniki.

Released in 1932, Shalamov returned to Moscow and made a living as a writer, collaborating with industrial newspapers and magazines. However, in 1936, the man was again reminded of his “dirty Trotskyist past” and accused of counter-revolutionary activities. This time he was sentenced to 5 years and in 1937 he was sent to harsh Magadan for the hardest work - gold mining.

The sentence ended in 1942, but the prisoners were refused to be released until the end of the Great Patriotic War. In addition, Shalamov was constantly being given new sentences under various articles: here was the camp “lawyers’ case” and “anti-Soviet statements.” As a result, the writer's term increased to 10 years.

Over the years, he managed to change five mines in the Kolyma camps, wandered around the villages and mines as a miner, lumberjack and digger. He had to stay in the medical barracks as a “walker” who was no longer capable of any physical labor. In 1945, exhausted from unbearable conditions, he tries to escape with a group of prisoners, but only aggravates the situation and, as punishment, is sent to a penal mine.

Once again in the hospital, Shalamov remains there as an assistant, and then receives a referral to a paramedic course. After graduating in 1946, Varlam Tikhonovich worked in camp hospitals in the Far East until the end of his prison term. Having received his release, but having lost his rights, the writer worked in Yakutia for another year and a half and saved money for a ticket to Moscow, where he would return only in 1953.

Creation

After serving his first prison term, Shalamov worked as a journalist in Moscow trade union publications. In 1936, his first fiction story was published on the pages of “October”. The 20-year exile influenced the writer’s work, although even in the camps he did not give up trying to write down his poems, which would form the basis of the “Kolyma Notebooks” series.

“Kolyma Tales” is rightfully considered Shalamov’s programmatic work. This collection is dedicated to the powerless years of Stalin’s camps using the example of the life of prisoners of Sevvostlag and consists of 6 cycles (“Left Bank”, “Shovel Artist”, “Essays on the Underworld”, etc.).

In it, the artist describes the life experiences of people broken by the system. Deprived of freedom, support and hope, exhausted by hunger, cold and overwork, a person loses his face and very humanity - the writer is deeply convinced of this. The prisoner's capacity for friendship, compassion and mutual respect atrophies when the issue of survival comes to the fore.

Shalamov was against the publication of “Kolyma Stories” as a separate edition, and in the complete collection they were published in Russia only posthumously. A film was made based on the work in 2005.

In the 1960s and 70s, Varlam Tikhonovich published collections of poetry, wrote memoirs about his childhood (the story “The Fourth Vologda”) and the experience of his first camp imprisonment (the anti-novel “Vishera”).

The last cycle of poems was published in 1977.

Personal life

The fate of an eternal prisoner did not prevent the writer from building his personal life. Gudz Shalamov met his first wife Galina Ignatievna in the Vishera camp. There, he said, he “took” her away from another prisoner whom the girl came to visit. In 1934, the couple got married, and a year later their daughter Elena was born.

During the second arrest of the writer, his wife was also subjected to repression: Galina was exiled to a remote village in Turkmenistan, where she lived until 1946. The family gets together only in 1953, when Shalamov returns from the Far Eastern settlements to Moscow, but already in 1954 the couple divorces.

Varlam Tikhonovich's second wife was Olga Sergeevna Neklyudova, a member of the Union of Soviet Writers. Shalamov became her fourth and last husband. The marriage lasted 10 years, the couple had no children.

After the divorce in 1966 and until his death, the writer remained single.

Death

In the last years of his life, the writer’s health condition was extremely difficult. Decades of exhausting work at the limit of human resources were not in vain. Back in the late 1950s, he suffered severe attacks of Meniere's disease, and in the 70s he gradually lost his hearing and vision.

The man is unable to coordinate his own movements and has difficulty moving, and in 1979, friends and colleagues transport him to the Invalides Home. Experiencing difficulties with speech and coordination, Shalamov does not give up trying to write poetry.

In 1981, the writer suffered a stroke, after which a decision was made to send him to a boarding house for people suffering from chronic mental illness. There he dies on January 17, 1982, the cause of death is lobar pneumonia.

The son of a priest, Shalamov always considered himself an unbeliever, but he was buried according to the Orthodox rite and buried at the Kuntsevo cemetery in Moscow. Photos from the writer's funeral have been preserved.

Several museums and exhibitions located in different parts of the country are dedicated to Shalamov’s name: in Vologda, in the author’s small homeland, in Kolyma, where he worked as a paramedic, in Yakutia, where the writer served his last days of exile.

Bibliography

• 1936 - “The Three Deaths of Doctor Austino”
• 1949-1954 - “Kolyma notebooks”
• 1954-1973 - “Kolyma Stories”
• 1961 - “Flint”
• 1964 - “The Rustle of Leaves”
• 1967 - “Road and Destiny”
• 1971 - “Fourth Vologda”
• 1972 - “Moscow Clouds”
• 1973 - “Vishera”
• 1973 - “Fedor Raskolnikov”
• 1977 - “Boiling Point”