What I'm Reading – Kolyma Tales by Varlan Shalamov

in Hive Book Club2 years ago (edited)


From a very young age, after reading Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, I became a great admirer of Russian literature.


The enormous talent of so many legendary Russian writers is undeniable, many of whom are still unknown in the West and Russia itself due to censorship and cancellation for political reasons during the Soviet dictatorship.

Unfortunately, a country with a continuous history of totalitarianism, which remains to this day, as we can attest after the recent invasion of Ukraine, has consistently crushed and suppressed the cultural manifestations of its people.


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The six books in this series by Varlan Shalamov narrate his experiences of unprecedented brutality in almost 20 years in prison during the communist regime commanded by Joseph Stalin and should be required reading for all those who, at some point in their lives, have sympathized with the socialist project.


First arrested in 1929 for distributing copies of Lenin's letter addressed to members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party to warn them against Stalin's monopolistic tendencies.

Considered a socially dangerous element, Varlan Shalamov was sentenced for counter-revolutionary activity at this first moment to only three years in prison, given that the level of Stalinist terror had not yet reached its peak; otherwise, he would undoubtedly have been sentenced to death.


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Shortly after his release, at the height of the repression, he was again targeted by the Soviet regime. Convicted of political crimes, he spent another 17 years in detention or forced labor, most of that time in the Kolyma region in the far east of Siberia.


His autobiographical tales recount the stark reality of the gulag. The horrors of Stalin's time are described directly, accurately, and without flourishes, revealing all their terrifying and shocking brutality.

Shalamov defines his literature as a “… document of memory, emotionally marked with soul and blood, where everything is documented… a slap in the face of Stalinism…”


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Like all short, sonorous slaps, his stories are concise and objective, without sentimentality, without rhetorical excesses, always going straight to the point, a simplicity that simultaneously accentuates a deep and visceral reality.


An epic that undoubtedly represents the most important testimony of a tragedy and a phenomenon unique in Russian literature.

With each story we read, an atmosphere thickens and allows us to experience, albeit on a much less painful level, all the indifference to life and death generated by the need to survive in extreme conditions, save energy and keep fighting when everything else but it should make you give up.


Book: Contos de Kolimá – Valaram Chalamóv (Kolyma Tales by Varlan Shalamov).
Portuguese edition.
Publishing Company: Editora34
Translation by Denise Sales and Elena Vasilevich.
Presentation by Boris Schnaiderman Foreword by Irina P. Sirotínskaia.
Published with the support of the Russian Translation Institute.
East Collection.
Brazil.


Cover image: Kolyma, Siberia. – Photograph from the album Gulag by Tomasz Kizny.,
Images: Valaram Chalamov arrested in 1929 and book cover: Editora34.


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One of the best of Fyodor Dostoevsky's works without a doubt. One of the best of Fyodor Dostoevsky's works without a doubt. Although I also highlight The Gambler, The Idiot and Brothers Karamazov.

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