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Kolyma Stories

Varlam Shalamov,

Donald Rayfield (Contributor)

4.37 · Rating details · 4,464 ratings · 292 reviews

Life in a Russian gulag, based on the author's own years in the Gulag, chronicled in an epic masterpiece.

Kolyma Stories is a masterpiece of twentieth-century literature, composed of short fictional tales based on Russian writer Varlam Shalamov's fifteen years in the Gulag. This NYRB Classics edition (and an accompanying second volume forthcoming in 2019) is the first ...more

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ebook, 768 pages

Published April 1st 2018 by New York Review of Books (first published January 1978)

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Apr 04, 2013 Jonfaith rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: mother-rus

Kolyma Tales was my first used book purchase via Amazon. (I feel obligated to honor our benefactor at every turn now. I even touch my breast when I say Amazon.)

Emerging from a blue period, I truly had no idea how beautiful this harrowing account would be. I don't detect any tension between the sublime and Kolyma. Imre Kertész has taught me well. It is chance, it is human. Survival simply wasn't possible. Those that did emerge, were stripped of something. A loss occurred. Kolyma is a protean ...more

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Jan 04, 2013 Rowena rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Anyone interested in Russian history

Recommended to Rowena by: Vera

Shelves: favorites, banned-book-challenges, russian-lit, history

This was a tough read but one I am very glad to have read. This was a collection of stories about the conditions in Soviet forced-labour camps during the Stalinist regime. It definitely filled in many of the knowledge gaps I had of what happened in the Siberian gulags. Only someone who spent time in a Siberian labour camp could ever have come up with such a collection of short stories, stories that capture the abysmal conditions of the camps, describe what the camp does to the human psyche (both This was a tough read but one I am very glad to have read. This was a collection of stories about the conditions in Soviet forced-labour camps during the Stalinist regime. It definitely filled in many of the knowledge gaps I had of what happened in the Siberian gulags. Only someone who spent time in a Siberian labour camp could ever have come up with such a collection of short stories, stories that capture the abysmal conditions of the camps, describe what the camp does to the human psyche (both the prisoner’s and the officer’s), and the new codes the prisoners must adhere to. What I found astounding were the details included in each story. They were definitely not things most of us would consider.

“Nature in the north is not impersonal or indifferent; it is in conspiracy with those who sent us.”

The disease, hunger, violence and despair are all described in descriptive detail. The conditions beg the question: does anybody really deserve to be sent to such places, regardless of the crime they (allegedly) committed? Siberia is a place where winter temperatures are often around -60F, where temperatures of -13F was considered summery. Of course, what makes things even worse is the fact that most of the people sent to the camp weren’t even criminals, but innocent victims of the Stalinist regime. Plus, often their sentences were disproportionate to their supposed crimes.

“The arrests of the thirties were arrests of random victims on the false and terrifying theory of a heightened class struggle accompanying the strengthening of socialism.”

I liked the structure of the book; it was divided into several short stories, each dealing with different characters. Shalamov’s tone was also very matter-of-fact, so it was easier for me to handle the gruesome details.

This is definitely such an important work of literature. I can only imagine with his 17 years of living in Kolyma, Shalamov had to get everything out of his system.

To end with a quote I really liked : “Life repeats Shakespearian themes more often than we think.”

A big THANK YOU to Vera for recommending this book to me :)
...more

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Apr 20, 2014 Vit Babenco rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Kolyma Tales is a book in which every story is a dirge of sorrow…

How is a road beaten down through the virgin snow? One person walks ahead, sweating, swearing, and barely moving his feet. He keeps getting stuck in the loose, deep snow. He goes far ahead, marking his path with uneven black pits. When he tires, he lies down on the snow, lights a home-made cigarette, and the tobacco smoke hangs suspended above the white, gleaming snow like a blue cloud. The man moves on, but the cloud remains

Kolyma Tales is a book in which every story is a dirge of sorrow…

How is a road beaten down through the virgin snow? One person walks ahead, sweating, swearing, and barely moving his feet. He keeps getting stuck in the loose, deep snow. He goes far ahead, marking his path with uneven black pits. When he tires, he lies down on the snow, lights a home-made cigarette, and the tobacco smoke hangs suspended above the white, gleaming snow like a blue cloud. The man moves on, but the cloud remains hovering above the spot where he rested, for the air is motionless. Roads are always beaten down on days like these – so that the wind won’t sweep away this labor of man.

Writing his book Varlam Shalamov was this man beating a road down through the virgin snow so the others could read it and follow in the footsteps of his memory.

Supper was over. Slowly Glebov licked the bowl and brushed the breadcrumbs methodically from the table into his left palm. Without swallowing, he felt each miniature fragment of bread in his mouth coated greedily with a thick layer of saliva. Glebov couldn’t have said whether it tasted good or not. Taste was an entirely different thing, not worthy to be compared with this passionate sensation that made all else recede into oblivion. Glebov was in no hurry to swallow; the bread itself melted in his mouth and quickly vanished.

Hunger, horror, fear, humiliation: everything was used to turn a thinking man into a stupid animal.

Envy, like all our feelings, had been dulled and weakened by hunger. We lacked the strength to experience emotions, to seek easier work, to walk, to ask, to beg… We envied only our acquaintances, the ones who had been lucky enough to get office work, a job in the hospital or the stables – wherever there was none of the long physical labor glorified as heroic and noble in signs above all the camp gates.

The main task of the communist state was to turn a sentient individual into a thoughtless slave blindly obeying the dictator’s will.

The poet was dying. His hands, swollen from hunger with their white bloodless fingers and filthy overgrown nails, lay on his chest, exposed to the cold. He used to put them under his shirt, against his naked body, but there was too little warmth there now. His mittens had long since been stolen; to steal in the middle of the day all a thief needed was brazenness. A dim electric sun, spotted by flies and shackled in a round screen, was affixed to the high ceiling. Light fell on the poet’s feet, and he lay, as if in a box, in the dark depths of the bottom layer of bunks that stretched in two unbroken rows all around the walls of the room.

‘Martyr’ is derived from the Greek word ‘witness’… And Varlam Shalamov, among the millions of the silent victims, was a martyr of history too.
The main task of a human being in any inhuman conditions is to survive. ...more

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Mar 13, 2015 [P] rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: bitchin

I’ve written before about the idea of an ‘irrational attachment to life,’ which means that no matter how awful, how painful and degrading existence is one cannot forsake it. Not only that but, with a miser’s spirit, one actively clings to it. Of course it is not true of all – otherwise there would never be any suicide – but it is certainly true of many, including me. I had a very difficult childhood, and I would fantasise a lot about getting away, but at no point did I ever not want to be here. I’ve written before about the idea of an ‘irrational attachment to life,’ which means that no matter how awful, how painful and degrading existence is one cannot forsake it. Not only that but, with a miser’s spirit, one actively clings to it. Of course it is not true of all – otherwise there would never be any suicide – but it is certainly true of many, including me. I had a very difficult childhood, and I would fantasise a lot about getting away, but at no point did I ever not want to be here. Quite the opposite: I would often cry in bed at night because I was so scared of dying. There’s something very funny about that, in a way…some kid weeping…begging…please give me more of this excruciating, this horrible life!

Why do some of us cling to life, no matter how awful that life may be? You could argue that it is the masochistic impulse. I believe in that, certainly. I think we have both a sadistic and masochistic impulse [one of which may be more pronounced in some], and that these influence many of our behaviours. I’m not convinced, however, that the masochistic impulse is responsible in this case, because an attachment to life in awful circumstances need not involve actively seeking out those circumstances [which would be necessary for me to consider it masochistic]. I think the desire to stay alive is a more basic, primordial impulse. A few years ago my cat fell out of a window and smashed his legs and split the palette in his mouth in two, but rather than lie down and succumb to what must have been a strong desire to give in he actually managed to drag himself out of the way of immediate danger and under a car. His instinct for survival was, you might say, absurdly strong, but there it was, urging him to protect what was left of his pain-wracked body. It’s an extraordinary thing, although It’s not necessarily admirable.

Varlam Shalamov spent, in total, seventeen years in prison and labour camps or Gulags. After his final release he commenced work upon a collection of short stories that dealt with camp and prison life. This collection came to be called Kolyma Tales. Kolyma is the name of the region where the camp was located in which the author served ten years. As this book, and others, attest life in the Russian labour camps was extraordinarily grim, with arctic conditions, beatings, scurvy, meagre rations, and near-unendurable work being the norm; the prisons weren’t much better.

“We have to squeeze everything out of a prisoner in the first three months — after that we don’t need him anymore.” – Naftaly Frenkel, Camp commander [from Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago].

конченый
Translation: ‘goner’ or ‘doomed.’

If there is a philosophical idea behind Shalamov’s work it is what I wrote about in the opening paragraphs. Most of his characters are survivors, as was the man himself, even though the desire to survive seems absurd. Another day of this? Of starvation, misery, exhaustion? Yes. Because what else is there but another day?

On numerous occasions the author is at pains to impress upon the reader that suffering, true suffering, does not engender camaraderie or ennoble the spirit. The consequence of life in the camps is that the prisoners become animalistic, their engagement with life is reduced to that of instinct. In many of his stories the most important thing to the characters is to get warm, or attempt to; many also steal from the dead in order to give themselves a better chance of survival. However, it is, once again, important to point out that for Shalamov this survival is absolutely not heroic, it just is. This is emphasised by the author’s dispassionate or matter-of-fact style. It is a style that is reminiscent of Imre Kertesz’s Fatelessness, yet lacks the Hungarian’s subtle irony. Shalamov plays it straight, without the hint of an upraised eyebrow.

I do not want to give the impression, however, that the Russian’s stories are thinly disguised autobiography, or that they are essentially a form of documentary or reportage. To see them in this way does the writer a huge disservice. What was most impressive, for me, aside from the incredible consistency, was the literary quality of each of Shalamov’s short tales. The structure and pacing, for example, are immaculate. There is one story, In the Night, in which two men set out along a path leading to a pile of rocks. One thinks, of course, that they have been put to work, especially when they start to move the rocks. Yet the conclusion of the story reveals that what they are actually doing is digging up a deceased comrade, in order to steal his clothes. There is no unnecessary exposition, no melodrama, just a great deal of control and a sharp, quick punch in the guts at the end. In the Night is one of the earliest stories in the collection, and I knew after reading it that Shalamov was a master of the form.

In the very best short stories there is a world both inside and outside of the narrative. This is true also of Shalamov’s work. Take In the Night again where there is the actual narrated action, but also a host of unanswered questions about who the dead man is, how he died, who the two men digging him up are, how they came to be incarcerated, and so on. In this way I was reminded strongly of Raymond Carver, whose snapshots are similarly restrained and yet suggestive of a more detailed narrative that is ultimately left to your imagination. Also like Carver, and Chekhov too, Shalamov is essentially apolitical and totally non-judgemental. For Carver and Chekhov that would have would been, one imagines, an easier feat than for this writer, whose tales all deal with people arrested [often on trumped up charges] under Stalin’s government. This refusal to fully engage with politics, the distance Shalamov maintains from the political climate of the time, serves to emphasise just how isolated, how cut off, his characters are from the outside world.

Shalamov does, however, make frequent references to literature. In certain stories he writes about Pushkin and Chekhov; in others he mentions a deck of playing cards that are made out of a Victor Hugo novel and discusses how inmates who can retell well-known or published stories are called novelists. More interestingly, some of the prisoners are named after famous Russian characters, such as Tolstoy’s Vronsky; and Andrei Platonov, a real life figure, and fellow writer, also makes an appearance, even though we know, of course, that he never served time in a prison. Russian writers, it has always struck me, are the most self-referential, but Shalamov, I imagine, wasn’t merely giving shout-outs. If you take Platonov as an example, he himself was a controversial figure, who Stalin apparently disliked, and so one might argue that he could easily, on this basis, have ended up in a camp, which were full of intellectuals anyway. I think in using Platonov and Vronsky and so on, he is saying that this could literally happen to anyone, that anyone, no matter what their status is, could find themselves in this horrific situation. Furthermore, by populating his tales with well-known Russians, in pointing to the country's golden past or literary heritage, one might argue that Shalamov, whether intentionally or not, is subtly saying: look how we have come from that to this.

"I’d like to have my arms and legs cut off and become a human stump – no arms or legs. Then I’d be strong enough to spit in their faces for everything they’re doing to us."

...more

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Mar 18, 2010 DoctorM rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favourites, russia, short-story-collections

Powerful, unsettling, triumphant. The best of the Gulag literature--- darker and more precise even than "Ivan Denisovich". Tales of survival, violence, hope, revolt, resistance, love, and death there in the world of the Gulag. Sharp, concise, etched in ice and steel, and with a deep sense of human worth and the human heart. You can't do 20th-c. Russian lit without reading this book. Yes, Solzhenitsyn--- yes: read "First Circle" and "Ivan Denisovich". But read this. Just go get a copy. Shalamov's ...more

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Dec 04, 2019 Marianna Neal rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, literary-fiction, read-in-russian, short-stories-and-novellas

Dark, bleak, and soul-crushing. I have a hard time reviewing books like this, and they always leave me with questions of whether there is a limit to the horrible things humans will do to each other, and how do we let these things happen?

"Friendship is not born in conditions of need or trouble. Literary fairy tales tell of ‘difficult’ conditions which are an essential element in forming any friendship, but such conditions are simply not difficult enough. If tragedy and need brought people

...more

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Sep 02, 2015 Sunny rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: russian-literature

stunning book about a convicts 17 years in a Siberian death camp. The author who was In the camp writes some short stories of his time there. Think a day in the life of Ivan denisovic x 100 times worse. In fact Solzhenitsyn held shalamov in very high regard. This book is one of the biggest magnifying glasses into the human psyche that I have ever read. Some incredible truths in this book that feel so out of place in normal society. Some of the most interesting short stories were: shock therapy, ...more

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May 02, 2009 Laura rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Russian fans, historians

Recommended to Laura by: professor

Shelves: russian, realism-naturalism, memoir

Disturbing. In some ways, this book is actually better than Solzhenitsyn's stuff. Shalamov writes such short, concise stories that carry so much emotional punch. There is even one story that is only one paragraph long that is more disturbing than an entire novel. I love Shalamov, especially for his aesthetics.

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Jul 16, 2012 Lark Benobi rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites-of-all-time, russia, ruthless-books, europe, 20th-century-favorites, male-identified-authors

It's remarkable this book isn't better known and more widely read. Connects with you on a visceral level and instructs about life in the Gulag in a way Gulag Archipelago does not.

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Apr 12, 2012 Aaron Arnold rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, favorites, history, read-in-2010

I dare you to find a literary genre more depressing than prison literature – go on, think about it for a bit, I'll wait. Kolyma Tales is a collection of short stories set in the various mines, dormitories, and work camps that made up the vast Siberian "human sewage disposal system" that Alexander Solzhenitsyn so famously chronicled in The Gulag Archipelago. Based on an unimaginable seventeen years of the author's own personal experience with the Gulag system, this is an unforgettably bleak look ...more

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Aug 08, 2013 Donna rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

To quote Mr. Rochester, 'How tenacious we are of life.' Here is every trick in the book to hold onto life while being starved, frozen, and worked to death. Yes, it was bleak, but there was also a point where I really saw the wonder of this tenacity. Bread can be a squalid affair but it keeps us in life. History is ugly, especially for those who see its face close up rather than from a long look back.

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Aug 27, 2019 Alex Zakharov rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

A harsh book that brutally demonstrates how thin the veneer of civilization really is. All the normal human qualities, interests and motives that we take for granted, any hint of culture or intellectual pursuit, any emotional reactions or moral pontifications or hints of individuality – all of that is permanently knocked out of you in the first three weeks in a Siberian labor camp. What is left is merely an overworked animal in the shape of a human.

Despite the subject matter Shalamov’s writing ...more

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Nov 20, 2011 Preston Fleming rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Though the Soviet Gulag extended across the entire continent, arguably the worst camps were in the Russian Far East, and particularly the gold fields of the Kolyma River basin.

The port city of Magadan was the gateway to Kolyma, with Vladivostok and other ports as way stations.

I visited Magadan, Vladivostok, Vanino, Khabarovsk, Komsomolsk-on-Amur and other cities of the Russian Far East in the early 1990s when they were first opened to Western businessmen.

Our Russian guides showed us the ...more

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Oct 27, 2015 Andrew added it · review of another edition

Shelves: russian-fiction, soviet-era-fiction

Every now and then you read one of those books describing tough circumstances where the reader is almost inevitably forced to think "what would I do in this situation?" Kolyma Tales is most definitely one of those. When you're thinking of Russian prison literature, most people think of Solzhenitsyn. For my money, Shalamov was as good a literary craftsman, but rather than trying to impose an ideology-- which in Solzhenitsyn's case, was a rather nasty Orthodox conservatism-- he seemed more content ...more

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Jan 31, 2009 BC rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: russian-literature

These short stories are the best GULag literature you will ever read. They put "Ivan Denisovich" in context, and are far more depressing and terrifying. The detachment the reader senses in the narrator is a bit disconcerting. He does not use wild language, however deserved it was, to describe suffering; in fact, it appears wildly understated. He is far more matter of fact than he probably had the right to be.

The short stories allow Shalamov to explore many different aspects of the camp ...more

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Nov 02, 2012 Erik F. rated it liked it · review of another edition

Stark, brutal miniatures written by a man who spent 17 years (!) in the settings and conditions described here so bluntly and painfully. The cruelty and monotony of life in the Kolyma labor camps are enough to elevate the most mundane items (a can of condensed milk, a child's watercolor paintings) to the level of the miraculous; anything that wards off hunger or reminds the condemned of a brighter world beyond their present circumstances is an event to be cherished. Some of these tales were so ...more

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Jan 24, 2019 Miina Saarna rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: reading2019

A very difficult book to read; a collection of short stories describing the many unimaginable horrors of Soviet hard labor camps in Siberia. The author spent 17 years in Kolyma and experienced the most inhuman treatment possible. Most of the stories were absolutely depressing but all of them were beautifully written. I especially loved the 4 last stories of this book.

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Jan 12, 2016 Desi rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: death-penalty-prison-system, memoir, arctic, short-story-collections, russia-eastern-europe

Man, I need to take a break from the Gulag and the Holocaust. Maybe some post-apocalyptic fiction to cheer me up?

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Oct 17, 2018 Taka rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: russian_lit, 1-fiction-you-must-read, 2018

So good--

You don't often come across a short story collection this good (the last time was probably Alice Munro's Open Secrets I read 5 years ago). The first full story in this collection, "On Tick" blew me away, and in many ways, it's a perfect piece to begin a collection about one of the harshest gulags, with its brutality and belittlement of life that's normal for Kolyma life. And there are so many stories that are as good as the first piece, though admittedly the second half of the ...more

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Jan 28, 2013 Matt Hlinak rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Varlam Shalamov draws from firsthand experience in his depictions of suffering in his work. Unlike Primo Levi, for example, Shalamov chose not to present this suffering in the form of a nonfiction memoir. Instead, like Tim O’Brien and Tadeusz Borowski, he has fictionalized his experiences. I suspect Shalamov shared O’Brien’s belief that fiction can be just as “true” as nonfiction as long as the writer is able to accurately capture the physical details and emotions of the real-life experience.

In Varlam Shalamov draws from firsthand experience in his depictions of suffering in his work. Unlike Primo Levi, for example, Shalamov chose not to present this suffering in the form of a nonfiction memoir. Instead, like Tim O’Brien and Tadeusz Borowski, he has fictionalized his experiences. I suspect Shalamov shared O’Brien’s belief that fiction can be just as “true” as nonfiction as long as the writer is able to accurately capture the physical details and emotions of the real-life experience.

In order to succeed at this, however, a writer must establish his or her bona fides. Where, as is the case with O’Brien, the author’s personal biography is well known, this is fairly easy to do. In Shalamov’s case, however, the official suppression of Kolyma Tales and his other works made it difficult for his readers to learn anything about the author until well after the stories were leaked to the West. He thus needs to prove himself an eyewitness through the stories themselves.

“The Snake Charmer” is a good example of the way Shalamov accomplishes this feat. The story is really about Platanov’s debut as a “novelist,” yet it is told as a story within a story. The frame tale is told by an unnamed narrator, a fellow convict who “loved Platanov.” It provides some information about Platanov such as the circumstances surrounding his eventual death and the fact that “he didn’t lose interest in life beyond the blue seas and tall mountains.” These details are interesting if one wants to truly understand the life (and death) of Platanov, but they do not contribute much to the narrative of a political prisoner using his knowledge of literature to come under the protection of the criminals who had been tormenting him. In an entirely-fictional story, Shalamov would have been better off cutting the frame tale and simply telling Platanov’s story to avoid distracting readers from the main thrust of the narrative.

The frame tale is important because it establishes just how the narrator came to know Platanov’s story. Such information is not needed in an entirely-fictional story. Where as here, however, the author is presenting a “true” (if not factual) account, small details like this signal that the author was really present for events similar to the ones described. By sacrificing narrative focus in this way, Shalamov may be able to obtain the trust of his readers.

The other effect of the frame tale is to contribute to the coherence of the collection as a unified work. By telling the story from the perspective of the unnamed narrative, Shalamov connects it to the various other Kolyma Tales by the same man or someone very much like him. This further contributes to the notion that this account is “true” because of repeated aspects—such as the behavior of criminals—that appear in other stories.
...more

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Apr 23, 2013 Bjorn rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: soviet, russia

Between 1929 and 1953, Varlam Shalamov spent 20 years in Soviet labour camps as a dissident. 16 of those in Kolyma, a region in the most distant part of Siberia that at the time was essentially a prison the size of a large country, half a world away from... anything. When he was released, he started writing about it; short stories based on his and others' experiences. Stories of what it's like to survive for decades in an environment where everything is essentially trying to kill you, by Between 1929 and 1953, Varlam Shalamov spent 20 years in Soviet labour camps as a dissident. 16 of those in Kolyma, a region in the most distant part of Siberia that at the time was essentially a prison the size of a large country, half a world away from... anything. When he was released, he started writing about it; short stories based on his and others' experiences. Stories of what it's like to survive for decades in an environment where everything is essentially trying to kill you, by violence or starvation or cold or exhaustion, specifically designed to be hell.

Life in the camps is horrible; nobody ever became a better person in the camps. The experience is completely negative, every single minute of it. Man deteriorates. That is what happens, nothing else.

Kolyma Tales certainly isn't easy reading; Shalamov is a brilliant writer, but obviously it's not the sort of stories that lend themselves to affirming the best of humanity. Shalamov never tries to find beauty, heroism or transcendence in suffering, quite the opposite; he just wants to document exactly how bad it was, how bad it can be, what people are capable of surviving (not that everyone does, far from it), how it happened - there's a presence in his prose that's just amazing.

It's also remarkable how political the stories are not; Stalin is never even mentioned, and neither are, for the most part, the opinions and actions that landed him and his fellow prisoners. When he raises his eye over the daily slog of trying to stay alive, the image he paints of Stalinism isn't one of deliberate malice as much as complete arbitrariness. Many were there not because of things they had done but for opinions their family members supposedly held. Your sentence could be extended or commuted to a death sentence on a whim, and even if you were technically released you were still stuck in Kolyma with no way to get all the way back to Russia. It was a crapshoot who ended up serving 20 years and who didn't, and who survived it and who didn't. And that's the mentality that spread from the camps.

The Kolyma Tales, however well-written, are ugly. Death, starvation, oppression, the almost complete loss of hope and morality... and yet there's still always something there. It's hard to point at the little gestures of humanity between people, because they're frequently offset and overwhelmed by the complete inhumanity (if anything done by humans can be termed inhuman) of the entire situation. But the simple fact that he wrote about it, that he spent 20 years reliving hell just to tell others about it, all in this razorsharp, vivid detail, says a lot. Stalin captured them, made them non-persons, to fade away and die in the middle of nowhere. In capturing them in prose, making them real again, Shalamov sets them free. ...more

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Aug 30, 2018 Edward marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Recommended to Edward by: Stosch

Shelves: own, russia-ukraine, translated, fiction

A manuscript page from Shalamov's story "The Apostle Paul"
Introduction, by Donald Rayfield

Book One: Kolyma Stories
--Trampling the Snow
--On the Slate
--At Night
--Carpenters
--A Personal Quota
--The Parcel
--Rain
--Pushover
--Field Rations
--The Injector
--The Apostle Paul
--Berries
--Tamara the Bitch
--Cherry Brandy
--Children's Pictures
--Condensed Milk
--Bread
--The Snake Charmer
--The Tatar Mullah and Clean Air
--My First Death
--Auntie Polia
--The Necktie
--The Golden Taiga
--Vaska Denisov, Pig Rustler
--Serafim
...more

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Oct 23, 2008 Nick Black rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: likely-reread

This was pretty brilliant right here. All the goodness of The Gulag Archipelago but about 7,000 pages shorter.

---
Amazon 2008-10-23. I still don't want to buy Anne Applebaum's big book of misery, especially after The Years of Extermination (another totalitarian camp-oriented Pulitzer winner of late) left me feeling not so much educated, or entertained, but more like the contemplative minutes after one realizes the TaB you just pulled warm dregs from had been serving as an ashtray for several ...more

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Aug 05, 2012 Arhondi rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

A monument of human endurance and soul in the face of absolute evil, Shalamov's book is a testament of what makes one human. The Gulag, one of the many plagues of the 20th century, a black hole into which people disappear never to come out again - and even if they did, they were but a fraction of their old selves, provides the back drop for this heartbreaking journey of death into life. Apart from providing us with an irrefutable historical document, Shalamov proves to be one of the true masters ...more

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Apr 23, 2012 Marek rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Kolyma Tales is a collection of short stories by Russian author Varlam Shalamov. I first read this in college and have read it over again to refresh my memory. The stories are based around prisoners of gulags who suffer through the weather and harsh treatment from those in charge. Never once does he mention Stalin. Brutal, shocking and matter-of-fact, Kolyma Tales will change your life forever.

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Jul 25, 2017 Charles Finch rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Absolutely essential.

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Jul 07, 2019 Louise rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: translation, short-stories, nyrb-classics, russian, abandoned

I am quitting after 500 pages of this 708 page book of short stories based on the author's 15 years spent in a Soviet gulag. These stories are harsh and hard to stomach, each one filled with misery, treachery and starvation. 300 pages would have been plenty. 700 pages is too much.

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Apr 30, 2014 Samuel Moss rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2015, shorts-stories, classic, dark, russian

Easily among the best short stories collections I have ever read. 'Kolyma Tales' and 'Gulag Archipelago' stand as complementary parts that compose a base for Gulag fiction.

Shalamov spares nothing and provides it all with a classic Russian stoicism and humor. His writing style is bare but filling and he never forces a message or drives a point.

The brutality in some of these stories leaves writers like Chuck Palahniuk, Cormac McCarthy, Hubert Selby Jr. and Donald Ray Pollack in the dust. There is ...more

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Apr 25, 2012 Antonia rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: politics

Storied from the most merciless Stalinist repression - the Gulag.
Although brutal, the stories from 'Kolyma Tales' are full of life and struggle, revealing page after page the unimaginable endurance a human being is capable of. Varlam Shalamov is talented narrator, his writing and depiction of savage events is fluent. His profound insights on the prevailing moral decline amongst prisoners manifests as a legacy from the destitution and punishment of ordinary people imposed by the Stalinist regime. ...more

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Sep 15, 2018 Guy Salvidge rated it it was amazing

Want to read 700+ pages about life in the 'Gulag Archipelago?' This is your book, and it will have a twin next year too. This supplements and deepens my understanding of life in the far extremities of Soviet Russia, where I learned that 'Trotskyists' rarely had anything to do with Trotsky, and where a child rapist was considered a 'friend of the people' compared to the loathsome politicals. Lots of beautiful writing herein and indeed wisdom regarding the nature of the human condition to match ...more

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About Varlam Shalamov

Varlam Shalamov

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Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov (Russian: Варлам Тихонович Шаламов; June 18, 1907–January 17, 1982), baptized as Varlaam, was a Russian writer, journalist, poet and Gulag survivor.

Alternate spellings of his name:
Chalamov, Varlam
Szałamov, Warłam
Schalamow, Warlam
Shalamov, V. T.
Шаламов, Варлам Тихонович
שלאמוב , ורלאם
Sjalamov, Varlam
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Books by Varlam Shalamov

Durch den Schnee: Erzählungen aus Kolyma 1

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“Tragedy is not deep and sharp if it can be shared with friend.” — 20 likes

“Life repeats Shakespearian themes more often than we think. Did Lady Macbeth, Richard III, and King Claudius exist only in the Middle Ages? Shylock wanted to cut a pound of flesh from the body of the merchant of Venice. Is that a fairy tale?” — 11 likes

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