Kolyma Stories Quotes

“I discovered that the world should be divided not into good and bad people but into cowards and non-cowards. Ninety-five percent of cowards are capable of the vilest things, lethal things, at the mildest threat.”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Stories

“I saw that the only group of people able to preserve a minimum of humanity in conditions of starvation and abuse were the religious believers, the sectarians (almost all of them), and most priests. Party workers and the military are the first to fall apart and do so most easily.”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Stories

“Nothing could be avoided, and nothing could be foreseen. What was the point of unnecessary fear?”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Stories

“We were disciplined and obedient to authority. We realized that truth and lies were twin sisters, and that truth on earth came in thousands of different forms.”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Stories

“Not a lot of flesh was left on my bones. This flesh sufficed only for malice, the last human feeling to go. Not indifference but malice was the last human feeling, it was the closest to the bone.”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Stories

“Real friendship needed to have firm foundations laid before the conditions of everyday life had reached the extreme point beyond which human beings have nothing human about them except mistrust, anger, and lies.”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Stories

“Only one group of people kept their humanity in the camps, the believers, whether Orthodox or sectarians.”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Stories

“All my life I have been unable to make myself call a swine a decent human being. And I believe it's better not to be alive at all if you can't say a word to anyone, or if you can only say the opposite of what you think.”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Stories

“The agnosticism I had upheld throughout my conscious life had not made me a Christian. But in the camps I had not seen better people than the believers. Depravity affected everyone's souls; only the believers held out.”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Stories

“Derfelle died. He was a French communist who had served time in the stone quarries of Cayenne. Aside from hunger and cold, he was morally exhausted. He could not believe that he, a member of the Comintern, could end up at hard labor here in the Soviet Union. His horror would have been lessened if he could have seen that there were others here like him. Everyone with whom he had arrived, with whom he lived, with whom he died was like that. He was a small, weak person, and beatings were just becoming popular… Once the work-gang leader struck him, simply struck him with his fist – to keep him in line, so to speak – but Derfelle collapsed and did not get up. He was one of the first, the lucky ones to die. In Moscow he had worked as an editor at Tass. He had a good command of Russian. ‘Back in Cayenne it was bad, too,’ he told me once, ‘but here it’s very bad.’ Frits David died. He was a Dutch communist, an employee of the Comintern who was accused of espionage. He had beautiful wavy hair, deep-set blue eyes, and a childish line to his mouth. He knew almost no Russian. I met him in the barracks, which were so crowded that one could fall asleep standing up. We stood side by side. Frits smiled at me and closed his eyes. This Frits David was the first in our contingent to receive a package. His wife sent it to him from Moscow. In the package was a velvet suit, a nightshirt, and a large photograph of a beautiful woman. He was wearing this velvet suit as he crouched next to me on the floor. ‘I want to eat,’ he said, smiling and blushing. ‘I really want to eat. Bring me something to eat.’ Frits David went mad and was taken away.”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Stories

“Major Pugachiov didn’t believe Vlasov’s officers until he himself reached the Red Army units. Everything Vlasov’s men had said was true. The state didn’t want him, the state was afraid of him.”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Stories

“It was at this point that he realized that he felt no fear and that life had no value for him.”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Stories

“wasn’t going to try and get the foreman’s job, even though it gave you a chance of staying alive, for the worst thing in the camps was forcing another person, a prisoner like yourself, to bow to your will (or anyone else’s). What did it matter that I knew that Ivanov was a swine, that Petrov was a spy and Zaslavsky a false witness?”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Stories

“Well, I’ve been here since thirty-eight. I was at Elgen first. I did thirty childbirths there; before Elgen I hadn’t done any. Then came the war. My husband died in Kiev. So did my two children. Boys. A bomb. More people have died around me than in any battle in war. They died when there was no war, before there was a war. All the same. Grief is like happiness: it comes in all forms.”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Stories