Shalamov Varlam Tikhonovich was born in Vologda into a priestly family. After graduating from school and entering Moscow University, Shalamov actively writes poetic works, works in literary circles. For participating in a rally against the leader of the people he was sentenced to three years, and after his release he was imprisoned several more times. In total, Shalamov spent seventeen years in prison, about which he creates his collection “ Kolyma stories”, which is an autobiographical episode of the author’s experiences behind barbed wire.
To the show
This story is about card game, where two thieves play. One of them loses and asks to play in debt, which was not obligatory, but Sevochka did not want to deprive the losing thug of the last chance to win back, and he agrees. There is nothing to bet at stake, but the player who has gone into a frenzy is no longer able to stop; with his gaze he selects one of the convicts who happened to be here by chance and demands to take off his sweater. The prisoner, caught in the hot hand, refuses. Immediately, one of Seva’s sixes, with a subtle movement, throws his hand in his direction, and the prisoner falls to the side dead. The sweater goes into the use of the thug.
At night
After a meager prison dinner, Glebov and Bagretsov went to a rock located behind a distant hill. It was a long way to go, and they stopped to rest. Two friends, brought here at the same time on the same ship, were going to dig up the corpse of a comrade, buried only this morning.
Throwing aside the stones that covered the dead body, they pull the dead man out of the hole and pull off his shirt. Having assessed the quality of the long johns, the friends steal them too. Having removed the things from the dead man, Glebov hides them under his quilted jacket. Having buried the corpse in place, the friends go back. Their rosy dreams are warmed by anticipation tomorrow, when they will be able to exchange something edible for these, or even shag.
Carpenters
It was bitterly cold outside, causing your saliva to freeze in mid-flight.
Potashnikov feels that his strength is running out, and if something doesn’t happen, he will simply die. With all his exhausted body, Potashnikov passionately and hopelessly wants to meet death on a hospital bed, where he will be given at least a little human attention. He is disgusted by death with the disregard of those around him, who look with complete indifference at the death of their own kind.
On this day, Potashnikov was fabulously lucky. Some visiting boss asked the foreman for people who knew how to do carpentry. The foreman understood that with such an article as the convicts of his brigade, there could not be people with such a specialty, and he explained this to the visitor. Then the chief turned to the brigade. Potashnikov stepped forward, followed by another prisoner. Both followed the visitor to their place new job. On the way, they found out that neither of them had ever held a saw or an ax in their hands.
Having seen through their trick for the right to survive, the carpenter treated them humanely, giving the prisoners a couple of days of life. And two days later it became warm.
Single metering
After the end of the working day, the warden warns the prisoner that tomorrow he will work separately from the brigade. Dugaev was only surprised by the reaction of the foreman and his partner who heard these words.
The next day, the overseer showed the place of work, and the man obediently began to dig. He was even glad that he was alone, and there was no one to urge him on. By evening, the young prisoner was exhausted to such an extent that he did not even feel hungry. Having measured the work done by the man, the caretaker said that a quarter of the norm had been done. For Dugaev this was a huge number; he was surprised how much he had done.
After work, the investigator called the convict, asked the usual questions, and Dugaev went to rest. The next day he was digging and digging with his brigade, and at night the soldiers took the prisoner to a place where they no longer came from. Having finally realized what was about to happen, Dugaev felt sorry that he had worked and suffered in vain that day.
Berries
A team of people who worked in the forest goes down to the barracks. Everyone has a log on their shoulder. One of the prisoners falls, for which one of the guards promises to kill him tomorrow. The next day, the prisoners continued to collect in the forest everything that could be used to heat the barracks. On last year's withered grass one comes across rose hips, bushes of overripe lingonberries and blueberries.
One of the prisoners collects shriveled berries in a jar, after which he exchanges them for bread from the detachment cook. The day was approaching evening, and the jar was not yet filled when the prisoners approached the forbidden strip. One of them offered to return, but his comrade had a great desire to get an extra piece of bread, and he stepped into the restricted area, immediately receiving a bullet from the guard. The first prisoner picked up the jar that had rolled to the side; he knew who he could get bread from.
The guard regretted that the first one had not crossed the line, he wanted so much to send him to the next world.
Sherry brandy
A man who was predicted to have a great future on the literary path is dying on a bunk; he was a talented poet of the twentieth century. He died painfully and for a long time. Various visions flashed through his head, dream and reality were confused. Coming to consciousness, the man believed that people needed his poetry, that it gave humanity an understanding of something new. Until now, poems were born in his head.
The day came when he was given a ration of bread, which he could no longer chew, but simply chewed on his rotting teeth. Then his cellmates began to stop him, convincing him to leave a piece for next time. And then everything became clear to the poet. He died that same day, but the neighbors managed to use his dead body for two more days to obtain extra rations.
Condensed milk
The writer’s cellmate in Butyrka prison, engineer Shestakov, worked not at the mine, but in a geological office. One day he saw with what lust he was looking at the loaves fresh bread at the grocery store. This allowed him to invite his friend to first smoke and then escape. It immediately became clear to the narrator what price Shestakov decided to pay for his dusty position in the office. The prisoner knew very well that none of the convicts could overcome the huge distance, but Shestakov promised to bring him condensed milk, and the man agreed.
All night the prisoner thought about an impossible escape and about cans of canned milk. The whole working day was spent waiting for the evening; after waiting for the beep, the writer went to the engineer’s barracks. Shestakov was already waiting for him on the porch, with the promised cans in his pockets. Sitting down at the table, the man opened the cans and drank the milk. He looked at Shestakov and said that he had changed his mind. The engineer understood.
The prisoner could not warn his cellmates, and two of them lost their lives a week later, and three received new term. Shestakov was transferred to another mine.
Shock therapy
Merzlyakov worked at one of the mines. While a person could steal oats from horse feeders, he still somehow supported his body, but when he was transferred to general work, he realized that he would not be able to endure it for long, and death scared him; the man really wanted to live. He began to look for any way to get to the hospital, and when the convict was severely beaten, breaking a rib, he decided that this was his chance. Merzlyakov lay bent over all the time, the hospital did not have the necessary equipment, and he managed to deceive the doctors for a whole year.
Eventually, the patient was sent to the central hospital, where he could be x-rayed and diagnosed. A former prisoner who had once held the position of associate professor at one of the leading medical institutions served as a neuropathologist at the hospital. Unable to help people in the wild, improving his skills, he honed his skills by exposing convicts feigning illness in order to somehow alleviate their fate. The fact that Merzlyakov was a malingerer became clear to Pyotr Ivanovich from the first minute, and the more he wanted to prove it in the presence of high authorities and experience a sense of superiority.
First, the doctor straightens the bent body with the help of anesthesia, but when the patient continues to insist on his illness, Pyotr Ivanovich uses the method of shock therapy, and after a while the patient himself asks to leave the hospital.
Typhoid quarantine
Years of work in the mines undermined Andreev’s health, and he was sent to typhus quarantine. With all his might, trying to survive, Andreev tried to stay in quarantine as long as possible, delaying the day of returning to severe frosts and inhuman labor. By adapting and getting out, he was able to hold out for three months in the typhoid barracks. Most of the inmates have already been sent from quarantine to long-distance transfers. There were only about three dozen people left, Andreev already thought that he had won, and he would be sent not to the mines, but to the next business trip, where he would spend the rest of his term. Doubts crept in when they were given winter clothes. And when the last close business trips remained far away, he realized that fate had outplayed him.
This does not end the cycle of stories by the great Russian writer V. T. Shalamov, but own experience who endured 17 years of hard labor and managed not only to remain human in the camps, but also to return to his former life. All the hardships and suffering he experienced affected the writer’s health: he lost his sight, stopped hearing, and could hardly move, but reading his stories, you understand how important the desire for life is, for preserving human qualities in oneself.
Pride and dignity, honor and nobility should be an integral feature of a real person.
Picture or drawing of Shalamov - Kolyma stories
Other retellings for the reader's diary
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The plot of V. Shalamov’s stories is a painful description of the prison and camp life of prisoners of the Soviet Gulag, their similar tragic destinies, in which chance, merciless or kind, rules -stivy, assistant or killer, arbitrariness of bosses and thieves. Hunger and its convulsive satiation, exhaustion, painful dying, slow and almost equally painful recovery, moral humiliation and moral degradation - that’s what we find constantly in the center of attention of the writer.
Funeral word
The author remembers the names of his comrades in the camps. Evoking the mournful martyrology in his memory, he tells who died and how, who suffered and how, who hoped for what, who and how behaved in this Auschwitz without ovens, as Shalamov called Kolym -skie camps. Few managed to survive, few managed to survive and remain morally unbroken.
Life of engineer Kipreev
Having not betrayed or sold out to anyone, the author says that he has developed for himself a formula for the active defense of his existence: a person can only consider himself a human being and survive if at any moment he is ready to commit suicide, ready to death. However, later he realizes that he only built himself a comfortable shelter, because it is unknown what you will be like at the decisive moment, whether you simply have enough physical strength, and not just mental strength. Engineer-physicist Kipreev, who was arrested in 1938, not only withstood a beating during interrogation, but even rushed at the investigator, after which he was put in a punishment cell. However, they still force him to sign for false testimony, threatening him with the arrest of his wife. Nevertheless, Kipreev continued to prove to himself and others that he was a man and not a slave, as all prisoners are. Thanks to his talent (he invented a method for restoring over-burnt light bulbs, repaired an X-ray machine), he manages to avoid the most difficult work, but far not always. He miraculously survives, but moral shock remains in him forever.
For pre-bet
Camp molestation, Shalamov testifies, affected everyone to a greater or lesser extent and occurred in the most different forms. Two thieves are playing cards. One of them loses like crazy and asks to play for a “pre-bet”, that is, on credit. At some point, infuriated by the game, he unexpectedly orders an ordinary prisoner of intellectuals, who happened to be among the spectators of their game, to give a woolen sweater. He refuses, and then one of the thieves “finishes” him, and the sweater still goes to the thieves.
At night
Two prisoners sneak to the grave where the body of their dead comrade was buried in the morning, and remove the dead man’s underwear to sell or exchange for bread or tobacco the next day. The initial disdain for removing clothes is replaced by the pleasant thought that tomorrow they may be able to eat a little more and even smoke.
Single metering
Camp labor, unambiguously defined by Shalamov as slave labor, for the writer is a form of the same corruption. The income-earning prisoner is not able to give the percentage rate, so labor becomes torture and slow death. Zek Dugaev is gradually weakening, unable to withstand six-ten-hour days of work. He drives, picks, pours, carries again and picks again, and in the evening the supervisor appears and measures with a tape measure what Dugaev has done. The mentioned figure - 25 percent - seems very high to Dugaev, his calves ache, his arms, shoulders, head hurt unbearably, he even lost the feeling of hunger. A little later, he is summoned to the investigator, who asks the usual questions: name, surname, article, term. And a day later, the soldiers take Dugaev to a remote place, fenced with a high fence with barbed wire, from where the whirring of tractors can be heard at night. Dugaev guesses why he was brought here and that his life is over. And he only regrets that he suffered the last day in vain.
Rain
Rozovsky, working in the pit, suddenly, despite the threatening gesture of the guard, calls out to the narrator working nearby to share his soul. - with a revealing revelation: “Listen, listen! I thought for a long time! And I realized that there is no meaning to life... No..." But before Rozovsky, for whom life has now lost its value, manages to rush at the guards, the narrator manages to run up to him and, saving him from a reckless and disastrous act, tell the approaching guards that he was sick. A little later, Rozovsky attempts suicide by throwing himself under a trolley. He is tried and sent to another place.
Sherry Brandy
A prisoner-poet, who was called the first Russian poet of the twentieth century, dies. It lies in the dark depths of the bottom row of solid two-story bunks. He takes a long time to die. Sometimes some thought comes - for example, that the bread he put under his head was stolen, and it’s so scary that he’s ready to swear, fight, search... But he no longer has the strength for this, and the thought of bread also weakens. When the daily ration is placed in his hand, he presses the bread to his mouth with all his might, sucks it, tries to tear and gnaw with his scurvy, wobbly teeth. When he dies, they don’t write him off for two more days, and the resourceful neighbors manage to distribute bread for the dead man as if he were alive: they make him look like a Marie-o doll. -No, raises her hand.
Shock therapy
Prisoner Merz-lyakov, a man of large build, finding himself in general work, feels that he is gradually giving up. One day he falls, cannot get up immediately and refuses to drag the log. He is beaten first by his own people, then by his guards, and they bring him to the camp - he has a broken rib and pain in his lower back. And although the pain quickly passed and the rib has healed, Merzlyakov continues to complain and pretends that he cannot straighten up, trying to delay his release to work at any cost. He is sent to the central hospital, to the surgical department, and from there to the nervous department for research. He has a chance to be activated, that is, written off due to illness and released into freedom. Remembering the mine, the pinching cold, the bowl of empty soup that he drank without even using a spoon, he concentrates all his will so as not to be caught in deception and sent to a penal mine. However, the doctor Pyotr Ivanovich, himself a former prisoner, was not a mistake. The professional displaces the human in him. He spends most of his time precisely on unraveling the simulators. This pleases his pride: he is an excellent specialist and is proud that he has retained his qualifications, despite a year of general work. He immediately understands that Merz-lyakov is a malingerer, and anticipates the theatrical effect of the new revelation. First, the doctor gives him raush anesthesia, during which Merz-la-kov’s body can be straightened, and after another week the procedure is so-called shock therapy, the effect of which is like an attack of violent madness or an epileptic seizure. After this, the prisoner himself asks to be released.
Typhoid quarantine
Prisoner Andreev, having fallen ill with typhus, ends up in quarantine. Compared to general work in the mines, the patient’s position provides a chance to survive, which the hero almost no longer hoped for. And then he decides, by hook or by crook, to stay here in transit for as long as possible, and then, perhaps, he will no longer be sent to the gold mines, where there is hunger, beatings and death. At the roll call before the next sending to work of those who are considered recovered, Andreev did not respond, and thus he managed to hide for quite a long time. The transit is gradually emptying, and Andreev’s turn finally reaches. But now it seems to him that he has won his battle for life, that now the taiga has become saturated and if there are any dispatches, it will be only to nearby, local command posts. However, when a truck with a selected group of prisoners, who were unexpectedly given winter uniforms, passes the line separating the near command posts from the distant ones, he with an internal shudder He understands that fate has cruelly laughed at him.
Aortic aneurysm
Illness (and the exhausted state of the prisoners, the “goons”, is quite equivalent to a serious illness, although officially it was not considered such) and the hospital are an indispensable attribute of the plot in Shalamov’s stories. tics. Prisoner Ekaterina Glovatskaya ends up in the hospital. A beauty, the doctor on duty Zaitsev immediately liked her, and although he knows that she is in close relations with his acquaintance, the prisoner Podshi-valov, the head of the department. The head of the circle of artistic self-activity, (“the serf theater,” as the head of the hospital jokes), nothing prevents him, in turn, from trying his luck. He begins, as usual, with a medical examination of Glowacka, with listening to the heart, but his male curiosity quickly gives way to purely medical concern. -chen-no-stu. He finds Glowacka has an aortic aneurysm - a disease in which any careless movement can cause death. The authorities, who have made it an unwritten rule to separate lovers, have already sent Glovatskaya to a penal women's mine once. And now, after the doctor’s report about the prisoner’s dangerous illness, the head of the hospital is sure that this is nothing more than the machinations of the same Podshi-va-lov, trying to detain his mistress. Glovatskaya is discharged, but already when loading into the car, what Dr. Zaitsev warned about happens - she dies.
The last battle of Major Pugachev
Among the heroes of Shalamov’s prose there are those who not only strive to survive at any cost, but are also able to intervene in the course of circumstances, stand up for themselves, even risking their lives. According to the author, after the war of 1941–1945. Prisoners who had fought and survived German captivity began to arrive in the northeastern camps. These are people of a different temperament, “with courage, the ability to take risks, who believed only in weapons. Commanders and soldiers, pilots and intelligence officers...” But most importantly, they had an instinct for freedom, which the war awakened in them. They shed their blood, sacrificed their lives, saw death face to face. They were not corrupted by camp slavery and were not yet exhausted to the point of loss of strength and will. Their “guilt” was that they were surrounded or in captivity. And it is clear to Major Pugachev, one of these not yet broken people: “they were brought to death - to replace these living dead” whom they met in Soviet camps. Then the former major gathers equally determined and strong prisoners to match himself, ready to either die or become free. Their group included pilots, a scout, a paramedic, and a tankman. They realized that they were innocently doomed to death and that they had nothing to lose. They've been preparing their escape all winter. Pugachev realized that only those who avoid general work could survive the winter and then escape. And the participants in the conspiracy, one after another, are promoted to servants: someone becomes a cook, someone is a cult merchant, someone repairs weapons in the security detachment. But then spring comes, and with it the planned day.
At five o'clock in the morning there was a knock on the watch. The duty officer lets in the camp cook-prisoner, who has come, as usual, to get the keys to the pantry. A minute later, the duty officer finds himself strangled, and one of the prisoners changes into his uniform. The same thing happens with the other duty officer who returned a little later. Then everything goes according to Pugachev’s plan. The conspirators break into the premises of the security detachment and, having shot the duty officer, take possession of weapons. Holding the suddenly awakened soldiers at gunpoint, they change into military uniforms and stock up on provisions. Having left the camp, they stop the truck on the highway, drop off the driver and continue the journey in the car until the gas runs out. After that they go into the taiga. At night - the first night of freedom after long months of captivity - Pugachev, waking up, remembers his escape from a German camp in 1944, crossing the front line, interrogation in a special department, being accused of being a spy. And the sentence is twenty-five years in prison. He also remembers the visits of General Vlasov’s emissaries to the German camp, recruiting Russian soldiers, convincing them that for the Soviet government, all of them who were captured were traitors to the Motherland. Pugachev did not believe them until he could see for himself. He looks lovingly at his sleeping comrades who believed in him and stretched out their hands to freedom; he knows that they are “the best, the most worthy of all.” And a little later, a battle breaks out, the last hopeless battle between the fugitives and the soldiers around them. Almost all of the fugitives die, except for one, seriously wounded, who is treated and then shot. Only Major Pugachev manages to escape, but he knows, hiding in the bear’s den, that they will find him anyway. He doesn't regret what he did. His last shot was at himself.
Let's look at Shalamov's collection, on which he worked from 1954 to 1962. Let us describe its brief content. "Kolyma Stories" is a collection, the plot of which is a description of the camp and prison life of Gulag prisoners, their tragic destinies, similar to one another, in which chance rules. The author’s focus is constantly on hunger and satiety, painful dying and recovery, exhaustion, moral humiliation and degradation. You will learn more about the problems raised by Shalamov by reading the summary. “Kolyma Stories” is a collection that is an understanding of what the author experienced and saw during the 17 years he spent in prison (1929-1931) and Kolyma (from 1937 to 1951). The author's photo is presented below.
Funeral word
The author recalls his comrades from the camps. We will not list their names, since we are making a brief summary. "Kolyma Stories" is a collection in which fiction and documentary are intertwined. However, all killers are given a real last name in the stories.
Continuing the narrative, the author describes how the prisoners died, what torture they endured, talks about their hopes and behavior in “Auschwitz without ovens,” as Shalamov called the Kolyma camps. Few managed to survive, and only a few managed to survive and not break morally.
"The Life of Engineer Kipreev"
Let us dwell on the following interesting story, which we could not help but describe when compiling a summary. “Kolyma Stories” is a collection in which the author, who has not sold or betrayed anyone, says that he has developed for himself a formula for protecting his own existence. It consists in the fact that a person can survive if he is ready to die at any moment, he can commit suicide. But later he realizes that he only built a comfortable shelter for himself, since it is unknown what you will become at the decisive moment, whether you will have enough not only mental strength, but also physical strength.
Kipreev, a physics engineer arrested in 1938, was not only able to withstand interrogation and beating, but even attacked the investigator, as a result of which he was put in a punishment cell. But still they are trying to get him to give false testimony, threatening to arrest his wife. Kipreev nevertheless continues to prove to everyone that he is not a slave, like all prisoners, but a human being. Thanks to his talent (he fixed a broken one and found a way to restore burnt out light bulbs), this hero manages to avoid the most difficult work, but not always. It is only by a miracle that he survives, but the moral shock does not let him go.
"To the show"
Shalamov, who wrote “Kolyma Stories,” a brief summary of which interests us, testifies that camp corruption affected everyone to one degree or another. It was carried out in various forms. Let us describe in a few words another work from the collection “Kolyma Tales” - “To the Show”. Summary its plot is as follows.
Two thieves are playing cards. One loses and asks to play in debt. Enraged at some point, he orders an unexpectedly imprisoned intellectual, who happened to be among the spectators, to give up his sweater. He refuses. One of the thieves “finishes” him, but the sweater goes to the thieves anyway.
"At night"
Let's move on to the description of another work from the collection "Kolyma Stories" - "At Night". Its summary, in our opinion, will also be interesting to the reader.
Two prisoners sneak towards the grave. The body of their comrade was buried here in the morning. They take off the dead man's linen in order to exchange it for tobacco or bread tomorrow or sell it. Disgust towards the clothes of the deceased is replaced by the thought that perhaps tomorrow they will be able to smoke or eat a little more.
There are a lot of works in the collection "Kolyma Stories". "Carpenters", a summary of which we have omitted, follows the story "Night". We invite you to familiarize yourself with it. The product is small in volume. The format of one article, unfortunately, does not allow us to describe all the stories. Also a very small work from the collection "Kolyma Tales" - "Berry". A summary of the main and, in our opinion, most interesting stories is presented in this article.
"Single metering"
Defined by the author as slave labor in camps, it is another form of corruption. The prisoner, exhausted by it, cannot work out his quota; labor turns into torture and leads to slow death. Dugaev, a prisoner, is becoming increasingly weaker due to the 16-hour working day. He pours, picks, carries. In the evening, the caretaker measures what he has done. The figure of 25% mentioned by the caretaker seems very large to Dugaev. His hands, head, and calves ache unbearably. The prisoner no longer even feels hungry. Later he is called to the investigator. He asks: “First name, last name, term, article.” Every other day, soldiers take the prisoner to a remote place surrounded by a fence with barbed wire. At night you can hear the noise of tractors from here. Dugaev realizes why he was brought here and understands that his life is over. He only regrets that he suffered an extra day in vain.
"Rain"
You can talk for a very long time about such a collection as “Kolyma Stories”. The summary of the chapters of the works is for informational purposes only. We bring to your attention the following story - "Rain".
"Sherry Brandy"
The prisoner poet, who was considered the first poet of the 20th century in our country, dies. He lies on the bunks, in the depths of their bottom row. It takes a long time for a poet to die. Sometimes a thought comes to him, for example, that someone stole bread from him, which the poet put under his head. He is ready to search, fight, swear... However, he no longer has the strength to do this. When the daily ration is placed in his hand, he presses the bread to his mouth with all his might, sucks it, tries to gnaw and tear with his loose, scurvy-infested teeth. When a poet dies, he is not written off for another 2 days. During the distribution, the neighbors manage to get bread for him as if he were alive. They arrange for him to raise his hand like a puppet.
"Shock therapy"
Merzlyakov, one of the heroes of the collection "Kolma Stories", a brief summary of which we are considering, is a convict of large build, and in general work he understands that he is failing. He falls, cannot get up and refuses to take the log. First his own people beat him, then his guards. He is brought to camp with lower back pain and a broken rib. After recovery, Merzlyakov does not stop complaining and pretends that he cannot straighten up. He does this in order to delay discharge. He is sent to the surgical department of the central hospital, and then to the nervous department for examination. Merzlyakov has a chance to be released due to illness. He tries his best not to be exposed. But Pyotr Ivanovich, a doctor, himself a former prisoner, exposes him. Everything human in him replaces the professional. He spends most of his time exposing those who are faking it. Pyotr Ivanovich anticipates the effect that the case with Merzlyakov will produce. The doctor first gives him anesthesia, during which he manages to straighten Merzlyakov’s body. A week later, the patient is prescribed shock therapy, after which he asks to be discharged himself.
"Typhoid quarantine"
Andreev ends up in quarantine after falling ill with typhus. The patient's position, compared to working in the mines, gives him a chance to survive, which he almost did not hope for. Then Andreev decides to stay here as long as possible, and then, perhaps, he will no longer be sent to the gold mines, where there is death, beatings, and hunger. Andreev does not respond to the roll call before sending those who have recovered to work. He manages to hide in this way for quite a long time. The transit bus gradually empties, and finally it’s Andreev’s turn. But it seems to him now that he has won the battle for life, and if there are any deployments now, it will only be on local, short-term business trips. But when a truck with a group of prisoners who were unexpectedly given winter uniforms crosses the line separating long- and short-term business trips, Andreev realizes that fate has laughed at him.
The photo below shows the house in Vologda where Shalamov lived.
"Aortic aneurysm"
In Shalamov's stories, illness and hospital are an indispensable attribute of the plot. Ekaterina Glovatskaya, a prisoner, ends up in the hospital. Zaitsev, the doctor on duty, immediately liked this beauty. He knows that she is in a relationship with prisoner Podshivalov, an acquaintance of his who runs a local amateur art group, but the doctor still decides to try his luck. As usual, he begins with a medical examination of the patient, listening to the heart. However, male interest is replaced by medical concern. In Glowacka he discovers this is a disease in which every careless movement can provoke death. The authorities, who have made it a rule to separate lovers, have once already sent the girl to a penal women's mine. The head of the hospital, after the doctor’s report about her illness, is sure that this is the machinations of Podshivalov, who wants to detain his mistress. The girl is discharged, but during loading she dies, which is what Zaitsev warned about.
"The Last Battle of Major Pugachev"
The author testifies that after the Great Patriotic War Prisoners who fought and went through captivity began to arrive at the camps. These people are of a different kind: they know how to take risks, they are brave. They only believe in weapons. Camp slavery did not corrupt them; they were not yet exhausted to the point of losing their will and strength. Their “fault” was that these prisoners were captured or surrounded. It was clear to one of them, Major Pugachev, that they had been brought here to die. Then he gathers strong and determined prisoners to match himself, who are ready to die or become free. The escape is prepared all winter. Pugachev realized that only those who managed to avoid general work could escape after surviving the winter. One by one, the participants in the conspiracy are promoted to service. One of them becomes a cook, another becomes a cult leader, the third repairs weapons for security.
One spring day, at 5 am, there was a knock on the watch. The duty officer lets in the prisoner cook, who, as usual, has come to get the keys to the pantry. The cook strangles him, and another prisoner dresses in his uniform. The same thing happens to other duty officers who returned a little later. Then everything happens according to Pugachev’s plan. The conspirators burst into the security room and seize weapons, shooting the guard on duty. They stock up on provisions and put on military uniforms, holding the suddenly awakened soldiers at gunpoint. Having left the camp, they stop the truck on the highway, disembark the driver and drive until the gas runs out. Then they go into the taiga. Pugachev, waking up at night after many months of captivity, recalls how in 1944 he escaped from a German camp, crossed the front line, survived interrogation in a special department, after which he was accused of espionage and sentenced to 25 years in prison. He also recalls how emissaries of General Vlasov came to the German camp and recruited Russians, convincing them that the captured soldiers were traitors to the Motherland for the Soviet regime. Pugachev did not believe them then, but soon became convinced of this himself. He looks lovingly at his comrades sleeping nearby. A little later, a hopeless battle ensues with the soldiers who surrounded the fugitives. Almost all of the prisoners die, except one, who is cured after being seriously wounded in order to be shot. Only Pugachev manages to escape. He is hiding in a bear's den, but he knows that they will find him too. He doesn't regret what he did. His last shot is at himself.
So, we looked at the main stories from the collection, authored by Varlam Shalamov (“Kolyma Stories”). A summary introduces the reader to the main events. You can read more about them on the pages of the work. The collection was first published in 1966 by Varlam Shalamov. "Kolyma Stories", a brief summary of which you now know, appeared on the pages of the New York publication "New Journal".
In New York in 1966, only 4 stories were published. The following year, 1967, 26 stories by this author, mainly from the collection of interest to us, were published in translation into German in the city of Cologne. During his lifetime, Shalamov never published the collection “Kolyma Stories” in the USSR. A summary of all the chapters, unfortunately, is not included in the format of one article, since there are a lot of stories in the collection. Therefore, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with the rest.
"Condensed milk"
In addition to those described above, we will tell you about one more work from the collection “Kolyma Stories” - Its summary is as follows.
Shestakov, an acquaintance of the narrator, did not work at the mine face, because he was a geological engineer, and he was taken into the office. He met with the narrator and said that he wanted to take the workers and go to the Black Keys, to the sea. And although the latter understood that this was impracticable (the path to the sea is very long), he nevertheless agreed. The narrator reasoned that Shestakov probably wants to hand over all those who will participate in this. But the promised condensed milk (to overcome the journey, he had to refresh himself) bribed him. Going to Shestakov, he ate two jars of this delicacy. And then he suddenly announced that he had changed his mind. A week later, other workers fled. Two of them were killed, three were tried a month later. And Shestakov was transferred to another mine.
We recommend reading other works in the original. Shalamov wrote “Kolyma Tales” very talentedly. The summary ("Berries", "Rain" and "Children's Pictures" we also recommend reading in the original) conveys only the plot. The author's style and artistic merits can only be assessed by becoming familiar with the work itself.
Not included in the collection "Kolyma Stories" "Sentence". We did not describe the summary of this story for this reason. However this work is one of the most mysterious in Shalamov’s work. Fans of his talent will be interested in getting to know him.
Reading time: 15–20 min.
The plot of V. Shalamov's stories is a painful description of the prison and camp life of prisoners of the Soviet Gulag, their similar tragic destinies, in which chance, merciless or merciful, an assistant or a murderer, the tyranny of bosses and thieves rule. Hunger and its convulsive saturation, exhaustion, painful dying, slow and almost equally painful recovery, moral humiliation and moral degradation - this is what is constantly in the focus of the writer’s attention.
Funeral word
The author remembers his camp comrades by name. Evoking the mournful martyrology, he tells who died and how, who suffered and how, who hoped for what, who and how behaved in this Auschwitz without ovens, as Shalamov called the Kolyma camps. Few managed to survive, few managed to survive and remain morally unbroken.
Life of engineer Kipreev
Having not betrayed or sold out to anyone, the author says that he has developed for himself a formula for actively defending his existence: a person can only consider himself human and survive if at any moment he is ready to commit suicide, ready to die. However, later he realizes that he only built himself a comfortable shelter, because it is unknown what you will be like at the decisive moment, whether you simply have enough physical strength, and not just mental strength. The engineer-physicist Kipreev, who was arrested in 1938, not only withstood a beating during interrogation, but even rushed at the investigator, after which he was put in a punishment cell. However, they still force him to sign false testimony, threatening him with the arrest of his wife. Nevertheless, Kipreev continued to prove to himself and others that he was a man and not a slave, like all prisoners. Thanks to his talent (he invented a way to restore burnt-out light bulbs and repaired an X-ray machine), he manages to avoid the most difficult work, but not always. He miraculously survives, but the moral shock remains in him forever.
To the show
Camp molestation, Shalamov testifies, affected everyone to a greater or lesser extent and occurred in a variety of forms. Two thieves are playing cards. One of them is lost to the nines and asks you to play for the “representation”, that is, in debt. At some point, excited by the game, he unexpectedly orders an ordinary intellectual prisoner, who happened to be among the spectators of their game, to give up a woolen sweater. He refuses, and then one of the thieves “finishes” him, but the sweater still goes to the thieves.
Two prisoners sneak to the grave where the body of their dead comrade was buried in the morning, and remove the dead man’s underwear to sell or exchange for bread or tobacco the next day. The initial disgust at taking off their clothes gives way to the pleasant thought that tomorrow they might be able to eat a little more and even smoke.
Single metering
Camp labor, which Shalamov clearly defines as slave labor, is for the writer a form of the same corruption. The poor prisoner is not able to give the percentage, so labor becomes torture and slow death. Zek Dugaev is gradually weakening, unable to withstand a sixteen-hour working day. He drives, picks, pours, carries again and picks again, and in the evening the caretaker appears and measures what Dugaev has done with a tape measure. The mentioned figure - 25 percent - seems very high to Dugaev, his calves ache, his arms, shoulders, head hurt unbearably, he even lost the feeling of hunger. A little later, he is called to the investigator, who asks the usual questions: first name, last name, article, term. And a day later, the soldiers take Dugaev to a remote place, fenced with a high fence with barbed wire, from where the whirring of tractors can be heard at night. Dugaev realizes why he was brought here and that his life is over. And he only regrets that he suffered the last day in vain.
Sherry Brandy
A prisoner-poet, who was called the first Russian poet of the twentieth century, dies. It lies in the dark depths of the bottom row of solid two-story bunks. He takes a long time to die. Sometimes some thought comes - for example, that his bread, which he put under his head, was stolen, and it is so scary that he is ready to swear, fight, search... But he no longer has the strength for this, and neither does the thought of bread weakens. When the daily ration is placed in his hand, he presses the bread to his mouth with all his might, sucks it, tries to tear it and gnaw it with his scurvy, loose teeth. When he dies, he is not written off for another two days, and inventive neighbors manage to distribute bread for the dead man as if for a living one: they make him raise his hand like a puppet doll.
Shock therapy
Prisoner Merzlyakov, a man of large build, finds himself in general labor and feels that he is gradually giving up. One day he falls, cannot get up immediately and refuses to drag the log. He is beaten first by his own people, then by his guards, and they bring him to the camp - he has a broken rib and pain in the lower back. And although the pain quickly passed and the rib has healed, Merzlyakov continues to complain and pretends that he cannot straighten up, trying to delay his discharge to work at any cost. He is sent to the central hospital, to the surgical department, and from there to the nervous department for examination. He has a chance to be activated, that is, released due to illness. Remembering the mine, the pinching cold, the empty bowl of soup that he drank without even using a spoon, he concentrates all his will so as not to be caught in deception and sent to a penal mine. However, the doctor Pyotr Ivanovich, himself a former prisoner, was not a mistake. The professional replaces the human in him. He spends most of his time exposing malingerers. This pleases his pride: he is an excellent specialist and is proud that he has retained his qualifications, despite a year of general work. He immediately understands that Merzlyakov is a malingerer, and anticipates the theatrical effect of the new revelation. First, the doctor gives him Rausch anesthesia, during which Merzlyakov’s body can be straightened, and after another week the procedure of so-called shock therapy, the effect of which is similar to an attack of violent madness or an epileptic seizure. After this, the prisoner himself asks to be discharged.
Typhoid quarantine
Prisoner Andreev, having fallen ill with typhus, is quarantined. Compared to general work in the mines, the position of the patient gives a chance to survive, which the hero almost no longer hoped for. And then he decides, by hook or by crook, to stay here as long as possible, in the transit train, and then, perhaps, he will no longer be sent to the gold mines, where there is hunger, beatings and death. At the roll call before the next sending to work of those who are considered recovered, Andreev does not respond, and thus he manages to hide for quite a long time. The transit is gradually emptying, and Andreev’s turn finally reaches. But now it seems to him that he has won his battle for life, that now the taiga is saturated and if there are any dispatches, it will be only for short-term, local business trips. However, when a truck with a selected group of prisoners, who were unexpectedly given winter uniforms, passes the line separating short-term missions from long-distance ones, he realizes with an internal shudder that fate has cruelly laughed at him.
Aortic aneurysm
Illness (and the emaciated state of the “gone” prisoners is quite equivalent to a serious illness, although it was not officially considered such) and the hospital are an indispensable attribute of the plot in Shalamov’s stories. Prisoner Ekaterina Glovatskaya is admitted to the hospital. A beauty, she immediately attracted the attention of the doctor on duty Zaitsev, and although he knows that she is on close terms with his acquaintance, the prisoner Podshivalov, the head of an amateur art group (“serf theater,” as the head of the hospital jokes), nothing prevents him in turn try your luck. He begins, as usual, with a medical examination of Glowacka, with listening to the heart, but his male interest quickly gives way to purely medical concern. He finds Glowacka has an aortic aneurysm - a disease in which any careless movement can cause death. The authorities, who have made it an unwritten rule to separate lovers, have already once sent Glovatskaya to a penal women's mine. And now, after the doctor’s report about the prisoner’s dangerous illness, the head of the hospital is sure that this is nothing more than the machinations of the same Podshivalov, trying to detain his mistress. Glovatskaya is discharged, but as soon as she is loaded into the car, what Dr. Zaitsev warned about happens - she dies.
The last battle of Major Pugachev
Among the heroes of Shalamov’s prose there are those who not only strive to survive at any cost, but are also able to intervene in the course of circumstances, stand up for themselves, even risking their lives. According to the author, after the war of 1941-1945. Prisoners who fought and were captured by Germans began to arrive in the northeastern camps. These are people of a different temperament, “with courage, the ability to take risks, who believed only in weapons. Commanders and soldiers, pilots and intelligence officers...” But most importantly, they had an instinct for freedom, which the war awakened in them. They shed their blood, sacrificed their lives, saw death face to face. They were not corrupted by camp slavery and were not yet exhausted to the point of losing strength and will. Their “fault” was that they were surrounded or captured. And Major Pugachev, one of these not yet broken people, is clear: “they were brought to their death - to replace these living dead” whom they met in Soviet camps. Then the former major gathers equally determined and strong prisoners to match himself, ready to either die or become free. Their group included pilots, a reconnaissance officer, a paramedic, and a tankman. They realized that they were innocently doomed to death and that they had nothing to lose. They've been preparing their escape all winter. Pugachev realized that only those who avoid general work could survive the winter and then escape. And the participants in the conspiracy, one after another, are promoted to servants: someone becomes a cook, someone a cult leader, someone who repairs weapons in the security detachment. But then spring comes, and with it the planned day.
At five o'clock in the morning there was a knock on the watch. The duty officer lets in the prisoner camp cook, who has come, as usual, to get the keys to the pantry. A minute later, the guard on duty finds himself strangled, and one of the prisoners changes into his uniform. The same thing happens to the other duty officer who returned a little later. Then everything goes according to Pugachev’s plan. The conspirators break into the premises of the security detachment and, having shot the duty officer, take possession of the weapon. Holding the suddenly awakened soldiers at gunpoint, they change into military uniforms and stock up on provisions. Having left the camp, they stop the truck on the highway, drop off the driver and continue the journey in the car until the gas runs out. After that they go into the taiga. At night - the first night of freedom after long months of captivity - Pugachev, waking up, remembers his escape from a German camp in 1944, crossing the front line, interrogation in a special department, being accused of espionage and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. He also remembers the visits of General Vlasov’s emissaries to the German camp, recruiting Russian soldiers, convincing them that for the Soviet regime, all of them who were captured were traitors to the Motherland. Pugachev did not believe them until he could see for himself. He looks lovingly at his sleeping comrades who believed in him and stretched out their hands to freedom; he knows that they are “the best, the most worthy of all.” And a little later a battle breaks out, the last hopeless battle between the fugitives and the soldiers surrounding them. Almost all of the fugitives die, except for one, seriously wounded, who is cured and then shot. Only Major Pugachev manages to escape, but he knows, hiding in the bear’s den, that they will find him anyway. He doesn't regret what he did. His last shot was at himself. Retold by E. A. Shklovsky
References
All the masterpieces of world literature in summary. Plots and characters. Russian literature of the 20th century / Ed. and comp. V. I. Novikov. - M.: Olympus: ACT, 1997. - 896 p.
Varlam Shalamov
Single metering
In the evening, while winding up the tape measure, the caretaker said that Dugaev would receive the next day single metering. The foreman, who was standing nearby and asked the caretaker to lend him “a dozen cubes until the day after tomorrow,” suddenly fell silent and began to look at the evening star flickering behind the crest of the hill. Baranov, Dugaev’s partner, who was helping the caretaker measure the work done, took a shovel and began to clean up the face that had been cleaned long ago.
Dugaev was twenty-three years old, and everything he saw and heard here surprised him more than frightened him.
The brigade gathered for roll call, handed over their tools and returned to the barracks in uneven prison formation. The difficult day was over. Without sitting down, Dugaev drank a portion of liquid cold cereal soup over the side of the bowl. The bread was given in the morning for the whole day and was eaten long ago. I wanted to smoke. He looked around, wondering who he could ask for a cigarette butt. On the windowsill, Baranov collected shag grains from an inside out pouch into a piece of paper. Having collected them carefully, Baranov rolled up a thin cigarette and handed it to Dugaev.
“You can smoke it for me,” he suggested. Dugaev was surprised - he and Baranov were not friends. However, with hunger, cold and insomnia, no friendship can be formed, and Dugaev, despite his youth, understood the falsity of the saying about friendship being tested by misfortune and misfortune. In order for friendship to be friendship, it is necessary that its strong foundation be laid when conditions and everyday life have not yet reached the final limit, beyond which there is nothing human in a person, but only mistrust, anger and lies. Dugaev remembered well the northern proverb, the three prison commandments: do not believe, do not be afraid and do not ask...
Dugaev greedily sucked in the sweet tobacco smoke, and his head began to spin.
“I’m getting weaker,” he said.
Baranov remained silent.
Dugaev returned to the barracks, lay down and closed his eyes. Lately he slept poorly, hunger did not allow him to sleep well. The dreams were especially painful - loaves of bread, steaming fatty soups... Oblivion did not come soon, but still, half an hour before getting up, Dugaev had already opened his eyes.
The crew came to work. Everyone went to their own slaughterhouses.
“Wait,” the foreman said to Dugaev. - The caretaker will put you in charge.
Dugaev sat down on the ground. He had already become so tired that he was completely indifferent to any change in his fate.
The first wheelbarrows rattled on the ramp, shovels scraped against the stone.
“Come here,” the caretaker told Dugaev. - Here's your place. “He measured the cubic capacity of the face and put a mark - a piece of quartz. “This way,” he said. - The ladder operator will carry the board for you to the main ladder. Take it where everyone else goes. Here's a shovel, a pick, a crowbar, a wheelbarrow - take it.
Dugaev obediently began work.
“Even better,” he thought. None of his comrades will grumble that he is working poorly. Former grain farmers are not required to understand and know that Dugaev is a newcomer, that immediately after school he began studying at the university, and exchanged his university bench for this slaughter. Every man for himself. They are not obliged, should not understand that he is exhausted and hungry for a long time, that he does not know how to steal: the ability to steal is the main northern virtue in all its forms, starting from the bread of a comrade and ending with issuing thousands of bonuses to the authorities for non-existent, non-existent achievements. Nobody cares that Dugaev cannot stand a sixteen-hour working day.
Dugaev drove, picked, poured, drove again and again picked and poured.
After the lunch break, the caretaker came, looked at what Dugaev had done and silently left... Dugaev again kicked and poured. The quartz mark was still very far away.
In the evening the caretaker appeared again and unwound the tape measure. He measured what Dugaev did.
“Twenty-five percent,” he said and looked at Dugaev. - Twenty-five percent. Can you hear?
“I hear,” said Dugaev. He was surprised by this figure. The work was so hard, so little stone could be picked up with a shovel, it was so difficult to pick. The figure - twenty-five percent of the norm - seemed very large to Dugaev. My calves ached, my arms, shoulders, and head ached unbearably from leaning on the wheelbarrow. The feeling of hunger had long since left him.
Dugaev ate because he saw others eating, something told him: he had to eat. But he didn't want to eat.
“Well, well,” said the caretaker, leaving. - I wish you good health.
In the evening, Dugaev was summoned to the investigator. He answered four questions: first name, last name, article, term. Four questions that are asked to a prisoner thirty times a day. Then Dugaev went to bed. The next day he again worked with the brigade, with Baranov, and on the night of the day after tomorrow the soldiers took him behind the conbase and led him along a forest path to a place where, almost blocking a small gorge, there stood a high fence with barbed wire stretched across the top, and from there at night the distant whirring of tractors could be heard. And, realizing what was the matter, Dugaev regretted that he had worked in vain, that he had suffered this last day in vain.