Varlam Shalamov
Soviet writer, journalist, poet and Gulag survivor
AI overview
Varlam Shalamov was a Soviet writer, journalist, and poet who survived imprisonment in the Gulag labor camps and documented that brutal experience through his work. His accounts of Gulag life are historically significant because they provide a powerful firsthand testimony to the horrors of Stalin's prison system and have helped the world understand this dark chapter of Soviet history.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Person · Open Library
- Born
- 1907-07-01
- Died
- 1982-01-17
- Works
- 25
Top works
- Sketches of the Criminal World
- Sipure Ḳolimah
- אמן את החפירה
- [Sochinenii︠a︡ v 2 t.
- Vishera
via Open Library + Wikidata
Listeners · Last.fm
- Listeners
- 2
- Total plays
- 224
<a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Varlam+Shalamov">Read more on Last.fm</a>
Article
Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov (Russian: Варла́м Ти́хонович Шала́мов; 18 June 1907 – 17 January 1982), baptized as Varlaam, was a Russian writer, journalist, poet, and Gulag survivor. He spent much of the period from 1937 to 1951 imprisoned in forced-labor camps in the Arctic region of Kolyma, due in part to his support of Leon Trotsky and praise of writer Ivan Bunin. In 1946, near death, he became a medical assistant while still a prisoner. He remained in that role for the duration of his sentence, then for another two years after being released, until 1953.
From 1954 to 1978, he wrote a set of short stories about his experiences in the labor camps, which were collected and published in six volumes, collectively known as Kolyma Tales. These books were initially published in the West, in English translation, starting in the 1960s; they were eventually published in the original Russian, but only became officially available in the Soviet Union in 1987, in the post-glasnost era. The Kolyma Tales are considered Shalamov's masterpiece, and "the definitive chronicle" of life in the labor camps.