Kolyma Tales

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excuse the hyperbole, but- "incredible" - Rated
if the guys from "waiting for godot" read this, they'd crack open the champagne...life is good!...but the poor souls who have suffered in the camps of kolyma...i can bearly get my head around it.
i used to reach for my budhist book when i started cracking up with the pressures of life, now i'll reach for this book, and reassure myself, for a "zek", my life is marvelous. this isa read which will humble all your worries, in a good way.

I Stand as Witness to the Common Lot, - Rated
Survivor of that time, that place." Anna Akhmatova, Requiem.

Varlam Shalamov was a survivor of 17 years in the work camps of that time and that place known as Kolyma. Upon his return to Moscow Shalamov crafted a series of short stories that memorialized his time in Stalin's labor camps. Those 54 stories were not published in the USSR but were circulated widely in samizdat form. They were publshed in the west as The Kolyma Tales. They are exquisitely well crafted, powerful, and moving.

Shalamov's prose style is sparse and to the point. The dry recounting of horror after horror has quite an impact on the reader. In fact, the level of passion in Shalamov's writing seems inversely proportional to the nature of the scenes he paints; the more horrific the tale the less emotional the writing. This is certainly an effective style. Some facts do not need embellishment. The stories speak for themselves.

Shalamov also does not tell the reader how to interpret a story. He simply tells a tale. Unlike Tolstoy and Solzhenitsyn, who had a tendency to tell a story and then advise the reader what lessons should be drawn from it, Shalamov simply tells a story. In that sense his stories can be compared to Anton Chekhov and Isaac Babel.

It would be impossible to summarize each individual story in a short review. However, each was compelling in its own way. I was particularly struck by a few of them. The story "In the Night" concerns two men who sneak out of their barracks at night to dig up the grave of a newly deceased fellow prisoner. Why? Because the wanted to steal his relatively new underwear so they could trade it in for bread and tobacco and perhaps live an extra day longer. In Procurator of Judea a military doctor (not a prisoner) transferred from the front lines to Kolyma in order to accelerate his pension. The stark, dry picture of surgeons performing dozens of amputations of the frostbitten limbs of prisoners arriving on a squalid vessel is only a page or two long. It skips forward 17 years and notes that the doctor could remember the names of his orderlies but could not remember the names of the ship or any of its prisoners. The story simply concludes by noting an Anatole France story. Procurator of Judea. In which "after seventeen years, Pontius Pilate cannot remember Christ." Simple words simply spoken speak volumes.

I could not help but think as I read these stories about the use of literature, of art, as a means of providing permanent testimony to man's inhumanity to man in a century that has witnessed more than its share of horrors. Elie Wiesel, a survivor of a different horror once wrote that "rejected by mankind, the condemned do not go so far as to reject it in turn. Their faith in history remains unshaken, and one may well wonder why. They do not despair. The proof: they persist in surviving not only to survive, but to testify". Varlam Shalamov not only survived but testified and in so doing left a beautifully conceived and executed testament to the lives of those men and women who never made it back home.

This is a book that should be read, and read again.

Highly recommended if you're interested in the Stalin era. - Rated
Written by Varlam Shalamov, The Kolyma Tales chronicles life in the Kolyma Labour Camp in Siberia, an area where an estimated three million people died during the Stalin era. This account of his experiences in Kolyma is as powerful and unsettling as you might expect from someone who spent 17 years there. I read the Kolyma Tales during my degree course and I haven't complained about the cold weather since. Shalamov's style; impersonal and documentary is different to fellow Stalinist victims such as Solzhenitsyn and Ginzburg but no less influential. He also selects the most concise of literary forms; the short story, which is simple to read and perhaps reflects the structured day by day routine of camp life. Throughout the book Shalamov constantly avoids making conclusions for the reader or expressing overt opinions. Instead, he adopts a studiedly dry and neutral tone, usually conducting his narrative from an objective viewpoint.
Shalamov’s struggle is largely independent and one of isolation. Although he relates many stories seen through the eyes of fellow prisoners, his emotional attachment to others is extremely limited which adds to the isolated feel of the tales. When he describes a day of work, he merely refers to “the topographer”, and never attempts to ascertain the name of his colleague. This alienation and emotional detachment, which pervades the ‘Kolyma Tales’ is further highlighted when another of his work colleagues is murdered during an argument over a card game. Shalamov’s reaction lacks any kind of emotion and his thoughts concern only himself; “Sasha stretched out the dead man’s arms, tore off his undershirt, and pulled the sweater over his head. Now I had to find a new partner to cut wood with”.

Most of Shalamov’s stories focus on just one person or incident, and even within this narrow framework, the presentation is sparing. As opposed to Ginzburg's Into the Whirlwind, physical description of people and characterisation is minimal. Psychological analysis and internal reflection are equally simple but quite deliberate, illustrating that human feelings are so blunted by cold, hunger and overwork as to allow for only the most basic of responses.
The disjointed style of the ‘Kolyma Tales’ reflects the ‘day to day’ approach that Shalamov adopts. He expresses little curiosity concerning his fate or the fate of others, and refrains from contemplating the potential arrival of release and freedom; “nothing bothered us any more…we had long since given up planning our lives more than a day in advance”.
Shalamov’s existence and the lives of those who surround him are dominated by simplistic goals, such as an extra piece of bread, (in a similar fashion to Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich) newer and cleaner clothes and the like. When he considers the act of suicide, Shalamov highlights his day to day camp-life philosophy and illustrates the extent to which his hopes extend to; “today they would promise an extra kilo of bread as a reward for good work, it would be simply foolish to commit suicide on such a day”.
The detached style that Shalamov adopts together with an understated sense of horror often succeeds in giving an even greater reality to the cruelty of the camps and the systematic criminality of the Soviet penal system than perhaps other more emotionally involved styles of communication.
The ‘Kolyma Tales’ stands as an amazing example of human survival in the face of the very worst that life can offer and I would certainly recommend it if you're interested in the Stalin Era or gulag literature in general.