The theme of the tragic fate of a person in a totalitarian state in “Kolyma Tales” by V. Shalamov

I've been living in a cave for twenty years,

Burning with the only dream that

breaking free and moving

shoulders like Samson, I will collapse

stone vaults For many years

this dream.

V. Shalamov

The Stalin years are one of the tragic periods in the history of Russia. Numerous repressions, denunciations, executions, a heavy, oppressive atmosphere of lack of freedom - these are just some of the signs of life in a totalitarian state. The terrible, cruel machine of authoritarianism ruined the destinies of millions of people, their relatives and friends.

V. Shalamov is a witness and participant in the terrible events that the totalitarian country experienced. He went through both exile and Stalin's camps. Dissent was brutally persecuted by the authorities, and the writer had to pay too high a price for his desire to tell the truth. Varlam Tikhonovich summarized the experience gained from the camps in the collection “Kolyma Stories.” “Kolyma Tales” is a monument to those whose lives were ruined for the sake of the cult of personality.

Showing in his stories images of those convicted under the fifty-eighth, “political” article and images of criminals also serving sentences in camps, Shalamov reveals many moral problems. Finding themselves in a critical life situation, people showed their true selves. Among the prisoners there were traitors, cowards, scoundrels, those who were “broken” by the new circumstances of life, and those who managed to retain humanity in themselves under inhuman conditions. There were fewer of the latter.

The most terrible enemies, “enemies of the people,” for the authorities were political prisoners. They were the ones who were in the camp under the most severe conditions. Criminals - thieves, murderers, robbers, whom the narrator ironically calls “friends of the people”, paradoxically, aroused much more sympathy among the camp authorities. They had various concessions and did not have to go to work. They got away with a lot.

In the story “To the Show,” Shalamov shows a card game in which the winnings are the prisoners’ personal belongings. The author draws images of the criminals Naumov and Sevochka, for whom human life is worthless and who kill engineer Garkunov for a woolen sweater. The author's calm intonation with which he completes his story suggests that such scenes for the camp are a common, everyday occurrence.

The story “At Night” shows how people blurred the lines between good and bad, and how the main goal became to survive, no matter what the cost. Glebov and Bagretsov take off the dead man’s clothes at night with the intention of getting bread and tobacco for themselves instead. In another story, the condemned Denisov takes pleasure in pulling off the footcloths from his dying but still living comrade.

The life of the prisoners was unbearable; it was especially difficult for them in the severe frosts. The heroes of the story “The Carpenters” Grigoriev and Potashnikov, intelligent people, in order to save their own lives, in order to spend at least one day in the warmth, resort to deception. They go to work as carpenters, not knowing how to do it, which saves them from the severe frost, gets a piece of bread and the right to warm themselves by the stove.

The hero of the story " Single metering", a recent university student, exhausted by hunger, receives a single reading. He is unable to complete this task completely, and his punishment for this is execution. The heroes of the story “Tombstone Sermon” were also severely punished. Weakened by hunger, they were forced to do backbreaking labor. For Brigadier Dyukov’s request to improve food, the entire brigade was shot along with him.

The destructive influence of the totalitarian system on human personality in the story "The Parcel". Very rarely do political prisoners receive parcels. This is a great joy for each of them. But hunger and cold kill the humanity in a person. Prisoners are robbing each other! “From hunger our envy was dull and powerless,” says the story “Condensed Milk.”

The author also shows the brutality of the guards, who, having no sympathy for their neighbors, destroy miserable pieces of prisoners, break their bowlers, and beat the convicted Efremov to death for stealing firewood.

The story “Rain” shows that the work of “enemies of the people” takes place in unbearable conditions: waist-deep in the ground and under incessant rain. For the slightest mistake, each of them will die. Great joy if someone hurts himself, and then, perhaps, he will be able to avoid hellish work.

The prisoners live in inhuman conditions: “In a barracks filled with people, it was so cramped that one could sleep standing up... The space under the bunks was filled to capacity with people, you had to wait to sit down, squat down, then lean somewhere against a bunk, against a post, against someone else’s body - and fall asleep...”

Crippled souls, crippled destinies... “Everything inside was burned out, devastated, we didn’t care,” sounds in the story “Condensed Milk.” In this story, the image of the “informer” Shestakov arises, who, hoping to attract the narrator with a bank of condensed milk, hopes to persuade him to escape, and then report this and receive a “reward.” Despite extreme physical and moral exhaustion, the narrator finds the strength to see through Shestakov’s plan and deceive him. Not everyone, unfortunately, turned out to be so quick-witted. “They fled a week later, two were killed near the Black Keys, three were tried a month later.”

In the story “The Last Battle of Major Pugachev,” the author shows people whose spirit was not broken by either the fascist concentration camps or Stalin’s. “These were people with different skills, habits acquired during the war - with courage, the ability to take risks, who believed only in weapons. Commanders and soldiers, pilots and intelligence officers,” the writer says about them. They make a daring and brave attempt to escape from the camp. The heroes understand that their salvation is impossible. But for a breath of freedom they agree to give their lives.

“The Last Battle of Major Pugachev” clearly shows how the Motherland treated people who fought for it and whose only fault was that, by the will of fate, they ended up in German captivity.

Varlam Shalamov is a chronicler of the Kolyma camps. In 1962, he wrote to A.I. Solzhenitsyn: “Remember the most important thing: the camp is a negative school from first to last day for anyone. The person - neither the boss nor the prisoner - does not need to see him. But if you saw him, you must tell the truth, no matter how terrible it may be. For my part, I decided long ago that I would devote the rest of my life to this truth.”

Shalamov was true to his words. “Kolyma Tales” became the pinnacle of his work.

The first half of the 20th century became a truly bloody time for Russia. Naturally, wars, a series of revolutions, the period of collectivization, the emergence of fascist and Stalinist camps should have sharpened interest in the problem of death in literature, but the problem of the tragic was conceptualized in the literature of the Soviet period, then “ in a distorted form and largely selective“Ideological censorship also played a big role in this. G. Mitin noted a peculiar historical paradox of what was happening: “ When the era of death ended in the life of our society, only then did death enter our literature» .

One of those who were not afraid to address the topic of death in Soviet literature, was V.T. Shalamov. And it couldn’t have been any other way. It is known that the Kolyma camps, which he wrote about, were the harshest: “ To return from there alive physically and with a living soul was considered a miracle". Therefore, it is not surprising that the characters “ Kolyma stories “People became doomed. V.T. Shalamov often depicts the death of his characters, quite naturalistically describing the physiological signs of dying (his medical education had an impact), but thanks to multi-layered metaphors, symbols, intertextual connections, a philosophical subtext is created in his almost sketchy prose, which allows the author to reflect not only on physical death, but also about spiritual death, while noting that “ there is nothing in the camp that would not exist in the wild, in its social and spiritual structure". M.Ya. Geller wrote about this: “ Kolyma stories" is a book about the camp, but above all about the world that created the camp, the place of human destruction. Destruction even when a person survived."

V.T. Shalamov describes in detail the forces that killed people in Kolyma: “ Perhaps the most terrible, merciless thing was the cold... The very first frostbites: fingers, hands, nose, ears, everything that could be grabbed by the slightest movement of air". Winter for Kolyma residents is the most terrible time of the year. IN " Kolyma stories“Permafrost, cold and snow are not only a real threat to people, but also a symbol of hopelessness, loss, and death. It was in the last minutes before leaving " on an icy night... in this indecisive hustle and bustle at the slightly open doors, from which icy steam creeps, human character is revealed. One, overpowering his trembling, walked straight into the darkness, the other hastily sucked on the butt of a shag cigarette that had come from nowhere, where there was no smell or trace of shag; the third shaded his face from the cold wind; the fourth stood over the stove, holding mittens and drawing heat into them» (« Lawyers' conspiracy"). This is how V.T. described it. Shalamov's departure of man into oblivion.

In many stories, the writer shows how the cold reaches not only the bones, but also the human soul: “ The goners simply crossed the boundaries of good and evil, heat and cold» (« Glove»); « So is the soul, it is frozen, shrunk and perhaps will forever remain cold» (« Carpenters"). It is no longer the physical sensations of people that are emphasized, but the state of their soul, the existential state when a person is in “ borderline situation"between life and death.

No less terrible, killing the body and soul of a person in short term, there was hunger. V.T. In many stories, Shalamov describes with medical precision the physiological processes occurring in the body of a person exhausted by hunger: “ I understood that the body, and therefore the brain cells, were receiving insufficient nutrition, my brain had long been on a starvation diet, and that this would inevitably result in madness, early sclerosis, or something else...» (« Rain"). Because of hunger, people had difficulty speaking and their memory weakened: “ The words were pronounced slowly and difficultly - it was like a translation from foreign language. I forgot everything. I'm out of the habit of remembering", notes the hero of the story " Domino" In the story " Sherry brandy"hunger takes on additional metaphorical meaning. Shalamov describes the poet’s death from hunger: life then leaves him, then returns again, “ like poetry, like inspiration"; before death" it was given to him to know that life was an inspiration" The writer asks the question: “ What does it mean: died as a poet?" According to Shalamov, a poet dies when he cannot create. The Austrian scientist W. Frankl, who worked with concentration camp prisoners for decades, noted in his writings that it is vital for a person to be able to realize his “productive creative actions” and obtain values ​​as a result “ creative". V.T. Shalamov has repeatedly described how the camp kills people’s creative abilities, thereby deforming their psyche and killing them.

No less than cold and hunger, overwork and physical abuse destroyed a person. V.T. Shalamov describes cases when people fell dead while working and were subjected to fatal beatings, during which all the innards of the prisoners were beaten off. But even if the person was not killed, violence against the individual, constant suppression of it, was destructive. The author describes the process of dulling the feelings of a person who is at the mercy of someone else’s will: “ Nothing bothered us anymore; it was easy for us to live at the mercy of someone else’s will. We didn’t even care about saving our lives, and if we slept, we also obeyed the order, the camp daily routine", the characters in the story talk about their lives. Dry rations" The prisoner's individuality and self-esteem were suppressed, and as a result the person died as an individual. According to F. Apanovich, “ For Shalamov, force becomes synonymous with evil, metaphysical evil, permeating the entire basis of existence and at the same time putting existence under attack, trying to lead it to death, to non-existence". According to the observations of V.T. Shalamova: “ The camp was a great test of human moral strength, ordinary human morality, and ninety-nine percent of the people failed this test": many prisoners began to believe that the truth of camp life was " thugs", almost everyone learned to steal. Analyzing the behavior of prisoners in the camp, V. Esipov quotes the words of B. Betteleim (former prisoner of Dachau and Buchenwald): “ The camp was a training ground for the transformation of free and honest people not just whining slaves, but slaves who have internalized many of the values ​​of their masters» .

In identifying the causes of spiritual death of people, V.T. Shalamov is in many ways close to the existentialists, but in emotionally to death" future dead”, about which he writes, and the existential heroes of Western European philosophers and writers, significant differences can be identified. Thus, awareness of the finitude and temporality of life causes disappointment, melancholy, and boredom in the characters of Sartre and Camus. According to K. Jaspers, “ fear is intensified in the consciousness by the inevitability of disappearing like a lost point in empty space, because everything human connections significant only in time". Characters « Kolyma stories“they are striking in their indifference to death, lack of fear of it, there is no specific aura of death around them - neither horror, nor disgust, it becomes an everyday phenomenon. A.I. Bunin showed in his story “ Mister from San Francisco“, how people indifferently and casually treat the death of another person, and Shalamov’s heroes of his works treat their own death with the same indifference and doom.

Many of Shalamov’s psychological discoveries coincide with scientific research psychologists who went through concentration camps. Thus, I. Cohen and V. Frankl, describing the psychology of people who survived concentration camps, considered their lack of fear to be a kind of psychological defense mechanism. At first, a person in the camp experiences shock from the discrepancy between reality as it should be and the reality in which he finds himself (“ admission shock" or " primary reaction phase"). V.T. Shalamov in the story “ Single metering"describes Dugaev's emotions: " Everything he saw and heard here surprised him more than frightened him."; upon learning that he was being taken to be shot, “ Dugaev regretted that he had worked in vain, that he had suffered this last day in vain" Psychologists define the second phase as “ adaptation phase" Describing her, V. Frankl recalls F.M. Dostoevsky, who noted that man is a creature that gets used to everything. Cohen also noted " great» physical and spiritual adaptability of a person. According to V.T. Shalamov, man became man " because he was physically stronger, more resilient than all animals, and later because he forced his spiritual principle to successfully serve the physical principle» .

V.T. Shalamov, like V. Frankl and I. Cohen, raised the problem of suicide in the camp, noting that their number was relatively small, given the unimaginable living conditions. They all concluded that, firstly, the instinct of life plays a big role in this: “ Hungry and angry, I knew that nothing in the world would make me commit suicide. It was at this time that I began to understand the essence of the great instinct of life", stated the hero of the story " Rain"; secondly, apathy, which, like shock, is a protective reaction of the body. Almost all the characters in V.T. Shalamov, having spent considerable time in the camp, become fatalists. They don't count " your life further, like a day ahead" It all comes down to meeting immediate needs: “ Like this, mixing “star” questions in the brain(about soup, stove and cigarettes - A.A.), I waited, soaked to the skin, but calm", says a man who spent three days in a cold pit under incessant rain (" Rain"). A person begins to live by the lowest animal instincts, he is reduced to an animal state and, according to V. Frankl, “ falls into cultural hibernation" Shalamov was convinced that human culture turned out to be " extremely fragile»: « A person becomes a beast after three weeks - with hard work, cold, hunger and beatings» .

Despite all the body’s protective reactions, suicides still occurred in the camp. People voluntarily left life, having lost the meaning of existence. This psychological phenomenon was well known to Shalamov. So, in the story “ Rain"The narrator, hearing his comrade shout: " I realized that there is no meaning to life", rushes to save him, even before he attempted suicide. V. Frankl in his book cites similar observations of the military psychiatrist Nardini, who stated that the chance of surviving in prison depends on a person’s attitude to life; he must realize that “ survival is his duty, that it makes sense". Speaking about the meaning of life as a factor contributing to survival in the camp, V. Frankl noted that “ not a single psychiatrist and not a single psychotherapist - including a logotherapist - can tell a patient what the meaning is" However, he has the right to assert that “ life has meaning and even, moreover, that it retains this meaning in any conditions and under any circumstances..."[Ibid: 40]. He was convinced that " ...suffering, guilt, death... in no way detract from the meaning of life, but, on the contrary, in principle, they can always be transformed into something positive. There is no doubt that a poet will convey the essence of such a premise incomparably better and more simply than a scientist."[Ibid: 23].

« Kolyma stories» Shalamov is an artistic and philosophical study inner world a person in a death camp. In particular, they analyze the psychology of physical and spiritual dying. When creating the “poetics of death,” the writer uses the language of symbols, metaphors, allusions, and reminiscences.

List of used literature

1. Apanovich F. Philippika against force // Shalamov collection. Vologda, 1997. Vol. 2.

2. Geller M. Ya. “Kolyma Tales” or “Left Bank”? // Russian thought = La pensee russe. Paris, 1989. 22 September. No. 3794.

3. Esipov V. The norm of literature and the norm of being: Notes on writer's fate: Notes on the writing life of Varlam Shalamov // Free Thought. M., 1994. No. 4.

5. Mishin G. About life. About death. About the eternal // Literature at school. 1995. No. 3.

6. Topper P. Tragic in the art of the 20th century // Questions of literature. 2000. No. 2.

7. Shalamov V. T. Favorites. St. Petersburg, 2003.

8. Shalamov V. T. New book: Memories. Notebooks. Correspondence. Investigative cases. M, 2004.

9. Shalamov V. T. About prose // Shalamov V. Several of my lives. Prose. Poetry. Essay. M., 1996.

10. Frankl V. Man in search of meaning. M., 1990.

11. Jaspers K. The spiritual situation of the time // Jaspers K. The meaning and purpose of history. M., 1994.

The work of Varlam Shalamov belongs to Russian literature of the 20th century, and Shalamov himself is recognized as one of the most outstanding and talented writers of this century.

His works are imbued with realism and unbending courage, and “Kolyma Tales”, his main artistic heritage, represent the clearest example of all the motives of Shalamov’s creativity.

Each story included in the collection of stories is reliable, since the writer himself had to survive the Stalinist Gulag and all the torment of the camps that followed it.

Man and the totalitarian state

As said earlier, “Kolyma Tales” is dedicated to the life that an incredible number of people had to endure who went through Stalin’s ruthless camps.

Thus, Shalamov raises the main moral question of that era, reveals the key problem of that time - this is the confrontation between a person’s personality and totalitarian state, which does not spare human destinies.

Shalamov does this through depicting the life of people exiled to camps, because this is the final moment of such a confrontation.

Shalamov does not shy away from harsh reality and shows the whole reality of the so-called “life process” that devours human personalities.

Changes in human life values

In addition to the fact that the writer shows how harsh, inhuman and unfair punishment this is, Shalamov focuses on what a person is forced to turn into after the camps.

This theme is especially clearly highlighted in the story “Dry Rations”; Shalamov shows how the will and oppression of the state suppresses the personal principle in a person, how much his soul will be dissolved in this malicious state machine.

Through physical abuse: constant hunger and cold, people were turned into animals, no longer aware of anything around them, wanting only food and warmth, denying all human feelings and experiences.

The values ​​of life become elementary things that transform human soul, turn a person into an animal. All that people begin to want is to survive, all that controls them is a dull and limited thirst for life, a thirst to simply be.

Artistic techniques in “Kolyma Tales”

These almost documentary stories are permeated with a subtle, powerful philosophy and spirit of courage and courage. Many critics highlight the special composition of the entire book, which consists of 33 stories, but does not lose its integrity.

Moreover, the stories are not located in chronological order, but this does not make the composition lose its semantic purpose. On the contrary, Shalamov’s stories are arranged in a special order, which allows you to see the life of people in the camps fully, to feel it as a single organism.

The artistic techniques used by the writer are striking in their thoughtfulness. Shalamov uses laconicism in describing the nightmare that people experience in such inhuman conditions.

This creates an even more powerful and tangible effect from what is being described - after all, he speaks dryly and realistically about the horror and pain that he himself managed to endure.

But " Kolyma stories» consist of different stories. For example, the story “Funeral Word” is saturated with unbearable bitterness and hopelessness, and the story “Sherry Brandy” shows how much a person is above circumstances and that for any life is filled with meaning and truth.

For a long time, quite a long time ago, I wanted to analyze in detail, paragraph by paragraph, at least one work by such a recognized authority in the field of describing the utter horrors of the Gulag, the second master after the Great Solzhenitsyn, as Varlam Shalamov.

And then by chance I came across an issue of the New World magazine for 1989. I re-read it and finally decided that without detailed analysis can't get by. Analysis not from the point of view of literary criticism, but based on elementary logic and common sense, designed to simply answer the question: is the author honest with us, can he be trusted, is it acceptable to accept what is described in his stories as an objective historical picture?

It is enough to show with the example of one story - "Lesha Chekanov, or fellow traders in Kolyma".
But first - about " creative method"Shalamov from his own words. Here is what the author thinks about objectivity and reliability: " It is important to revive the feeling<...>, extraordinary new details are needed, descriptions in a new way, so that force believe in the story, in everything else not as information, but like an open heart wound".
And we will see that the whole story boils down to the fact that the facts described there by Shalamov himself, as such, sharply diverge from the way he seeks to “present” them. Facts are facts. And the conclusions are what Shalamov urgently invites us to draw from them, he imposes his view as a priori objective. Let's see how the first and second fit together.

So, here we go: “We were taken to Kolyma to die and from December 1937 we were thrown into Garanin executions, beatings, and starvation. The lists of those executed were read day and night.”(from RP: Why read out lists of people laid out to prisoners - after all, they don’t really know each other, especially at night?)

"They took us to Kolyma to die" - This is the leading leitmotif in all Shalamov’s stories. Expanded, this means the following: the Gulag and in particular its Kolyma branches were death camps, extermination camps, those who got there were doomed to death. This is repeated in different ways on each page many times. Therefore, our task will be to impartially, without succumbing to the author’s cries and sobs, to consider, relying only on his own words, to find out - is this really so?

“Everyone who did not die at Serpentine, the investigative prison of the Mining Department, where tens of thousands were shot under the hum of tractors in 1938, was shot according to lists, every day with an orchestra, with the carcass read twice a day at divorces - day and night shifts.”- Strange inconsistencies are already beginning to appear in such a short piece of text.

First: why was it necessary to transport tens and hundreds of thousands of prisoners to distant lands, VERY far away, to the edge of geography, to spend food on them along the way, diesel fuel and coal for locomotives and ships, food and money for the maintenance of thousands of guards, to build the camps themselves, etc. .p. - if no one interfered with the shooting of all these people (if they wanted to be shot) in the basements of the prisons in which they were put upon arrest? What was stopping you? UN? Journalists? LJ community with its gossip? This was not the case then. Nothing interfered technically.

Secondly, it is not clear what the mass execution of tens of thousands of people looked like from a legal point of view? No, I do not idealize the justice of that time. But still, a verdict is a verdict, it is passed by the court. And if the court passed a sentence - imprisonment, then how can you shoot, I emphasize, not just rot at work, starve, etc. - but officially shoot en masse? Now the stage has come for the head of the camp - 1000 people, each with his own term, his own article, his own business. And he did them all in one fell swoop! and to the hum of tractors! How will he explain to his superiors that his camp is empty? Was everyone killed while trying to escape? They were sent to him to maintain and protect them, but he scattered them all. By what right, by what order, how will he confirm that they did not run away?

(from RP: By the way, where are the graves of tens and hundreds of thousands of those executed? After all, they should be comparable in size to at least Babi Yar. During the 20 years of anti-Soviet rule, not a single such burial was found - and they should have archives and aerial photography and everything else at their disposal. But it’s simple - these graves of tens and hundreds of thousands of those executed in Kolyma do not exist. At all.)

And again, we return to the first point: why was it necessary to carry it 15,000 kilometers? What, there were no tractors in the European part of the USSR?

Third. Tractors and orchestras don't fit together at all. The tractors (if we assume that they were there and were honking) were used to hide the fact of the executions from the prisoners. And the shooting accompanied by an orchestra, in front of everyone, was to show that this will happen to everyone. How does this fit together? So that at the same time they would not know, but would tremble? Or that they would be afraid, but not suspect, of the executions?

“I “swimmed” dozens of times, wandered from the slaughterhouse to the hospital and back.”- this is about life in a death camp, destruction and total pestilence. Shalamov honestly writes that he was not allowed to die DOZENS of times. He was led or carried to the hospital, and there he was nursed. Why did they nurse him, and not just “recover”? Yes, because you can simply recover, “stick it out,” two or three times. Not dozens. An extremely exhausted body - through labor, cold, beatings - cannot survive on its own.

It's one of two things:
- either the “death camps” did not at all set themselves the goal of exterminating their prisoners, pulling them out of the grave dozens of times
- or, if Shalamov himself recovered dozens of times, then the living and working conditions were not at all as hellish as he portrays them.

"The means of physically destroying the political enemies of the state is main role foreman in production, and even in one that serves extermination camps"- here comes the sound of “extermination camps” again. But new details are emerging. It turns out that not everyone was shot (but what about a little higher, that - “everyone”, accompanied by orchestras of tractors?). It turns out that a labor process is necessary, in which the main role is given to the foreman, whose purpose is to destroy the enemies of the state (political, let's remember this).

“The crimes of the brigadiers in Kolyma are innumerable - they are the physical executors of the high politics of Moscow during the Stalin years” - and a little higher - “The foreman is, as it were, the breadwinner and drinker of the brigade, but only within the limits that are assigned to him from above. He himself is under strict control, you won’t get far on postscripts - the surveyor in the next survey will expose the fake, advanced cubes, and then the foreman is finished. Therefore The foreman follows a proven, reliable path - to knock these cubes out of hard-working goons, to knock them out in a very real physical sense - with a pick on the back.".

It turns out that the main culprits are the same forced people ( “For five people, a permanent foreman is assigned, not relieved of work, of course, but an equally hard worker.”), moreover, within certain limits, they are the breadwinners and drinkers of their brigades, whose crime is that they force their comrades to work. We'll see how later.
“That is why the exact, historically derived formula was noted in a few statistics and numerous memoirs: “A person can swim in two weeks.” This is the norm for a strongman, if he is kept in the Kolyma, at fifty to sixty degrees, in the cold for fourteen hours at hard work, beating, feeding only camp rations and not allowing you to sleep... Two weeks is the period that turns a healthy person into a goner. I knew all this, I understood that there was no salvation in work, and I wandered from the hospital to the slaughterhouse and back for eight years" .

Ah, that's the thing! Yes, our author is a malingerer!! While - as he claims - the strongmen arrive “in two weeks” (and again our main question: why was it necessary to transport them 15,000 km?), Varlam Tikhonovich wanders from the hospital to the slaughterhouse and back for 8 years. Apparently, he was warmed by the thought that while others were “swimming”, he must survive in order to tell...

But here the bullshit ends:
"The foreman has it (new foreman - approx.)immediately inquired about my labor behavior. The characterization was given negative (that’s strange! - approx.)

“Well, b...” Lesha Chekanov said loudly, looking me straight in the eyes, “do you think that if we are from the same prison, then you don’t need to work?” I don't help Philos. Earn it with hard work. Honest work.

From that day on, they began to drive me more diligently than before.”

Here it is - the immeasurable crime of an accomplice high politics of Moscow during the Stalin years.

Here, you see, Varlam Tikhonovich outlived his fellow prisoners who died in two weeks 208 times, and they began to persecute him more diligently. Let us note that he was not put in a punishment cell, his rations were not cut, his kidneys were not cut off, he was not even shot. They just started paying more attention to how he works.

Then Shalamov is sent for correction to the brigade of a fanatic, and this is what happens to him:
“Every day, in front of the entire brigade, Sergei Polupan beat me: with his feet, his fists, a piece of wood, the handle of a pick, a shovel. He knocked the literacy out of me. The beating was repeated every day. Having gotten excited, Polupan took off his jacket and remained in a padded jacket, handling the crowbar and pick even more freely . Polupan knocked out several of my teeth and broke a rib ".

I’m afraid to seem cynical, but let people with medical education correct me or correct me: Shalamov writes that they beat me for many days and weeks in a row. They beat us with a pick (that is, a pick), a crowbar, a piece of wood, and simply with their fists. Tell me, knowledgeable people, I would especially like to hear the opinion of forensic experts or pathologists: how can a person live and get away with JUST a few teeth and a broken rib, who is beaten with all his might with a CROWBAR AND KYLE - beaten for many, many days in a row???? I don’t know how much that crowbar and that pick weighed, but obviously no less than several kilograms. Please describe what happens to the bones and soft tissues of a person who is hit with the tip of a pick or a crowbar on the head, or on the arms, or simply on the body? ( From RP: Trotsky only needed one blow with an ice pick—essentially a pickaxe. One blow with a crowbar, as a rule, breaks the arm, almost always if it hits the bones of the hand, after several blows to soft tissues Moreover, caused by a “hot person”, the victim will not be able to work accurately.)

Citizen Shalamov was tenacious...
But all bad things come to an end, and now the film Shalamov goes to “The central northern department is going to the village of Yagodny, like a malicious filo, to initiate a criminal case and a new sentence”.
“In the detention center, investigators are driven to work, trying to knock out at least one working hour from the transit day, and investigators do not like this ingrained tradition of camps and transit.
But I didn’t go to work, of course, to try to knock out some kind of quota in a hole made of stone, but simply to get some air, to ask, if given, an extra bowl of soup.
In the city, even in a camp city like the village of Yagodny, it was better than in the isolation ward, where every log smelled of mortal sweat. For going to work they gave soup and bread, or soup and porridge, or soup and herring."

We continue to be amazed at the order in the “extermination camp” system. Not for the work done, but only for access to it, they give you soup and porridge, and you can even beg for an extra bowl.

For comparison, how they were fed in real extermination camps, in German ones:
“On August 6, 1941, the high command of the German army issued an order regarding the food ration of Soviet prisoners of war; according to this order, for 28 days each of them was entitled to:
6 kg of bread - 200 gr. per day
400 g meat - 15 gr. per day
440 g fat - 15 g per day and
600 g of sugar - 21 g per day."
It can be assumed that they did not provide extra bowls.
Here's how they ate in besieged Leningrad: "The fifth reduction in food standards - to 250 grams of bread per day for workers and 125 grams for others - occurred on November 20, 1941"

But how did they feed Comrade Shalamov for going to work? Like this:
"Food standard No. 1 (basic) for a Gulag prisoner in 1948 (per person per day in grams) :

1. Bread 700 (800 for those engaged in heavy work) - !!! compare with German and blockade soldering!!!
   
2. Wheat flour 10
3. Various cereals 110
4. Pasta and vermicelli 10
5. Meat 20
6. Fish 60
7. Fats 13
8. Potatoes and vegetables 650
9. Sugar 17
10. Salt 20
11. Surrogate tea 2
12. Tomato puree 10
13. Pepper 0.1
14. Bay leaf 0,1" - from here

“My investigation ended in nothing; they didn’t give me a new sentence. Someone higher decided that the state would gain little benefit by adding a new sentence to me again.”- I wonder why the state reasoned differently, shooting tens of thousands of people convicted under the same 58th article as Shalamov to the sound of tractors?.. What has changed so dramatically in the state? Or maybe Shalamov in the text above is simply lying?

And finally, the story ends with the hated monster Polupan being killed, and with the words “Back then, they cut off a lot of foreman’s heads, and on our vitamin business trip, the thugs sawed off the hated foreman’s head with a two-handed saw.” .

Remember, I asked you to remember that the brigadiers were the means of killing precisely the political enemies of the state? But in these words we see how the foreman is killed not by some political, but by thieves - they are killed cruelly and sophisticatedly - because he wanted to force him to work. Shalamov agrees with the thugs. The spirit itself didn’t have enough for anything, only for filonism, but I agree.

Here's the story. Lies upon lies. A lie seasoned with pathos and hypocrisy. Who has a different opinion?

Ukrainologist

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 story, 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 for 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". "The 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: “Name, surname, 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 simulating. 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 manage to escape after surviving the winter can escape. general work. 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 territory, 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 nursed back to health 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 hired 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.