Kolyma Tales Read Free

until 1978, when it was brought out by Overseas Publications Interchange Ltd in London. To protect Shalamov from reprisals the editors always placed a note to the effect that the stories were being published without the knowledge and consent of the author.
    Although Shalamov had, in fact, consented to publication, he became angry with Goul for editing the stories and for failing to publish a separate collection. On the pages of
Literaturnaya gazeta
Shalamov published a statement claiming that the topic of
Kolyma Tales
was no longer relevant after Khrushchev’s famous de-Stalinization speech at the Twentieth Party Congress, that he had never sent any manuscript abroad for publication and that he was a loyal Soviet citizen. He inveighed against everyone previously involved in the publication of his stories in the West, shocking his former admirers so deeply that some literally removed his portrait from their homes. But even having betrayed his own major achievement,
Kolyma Tales
, he continued to write them.
    Shalamov’s stories are in the Chekhovian tradition, though they depict a far more savage era. A brief plot is devoted to one incident; an objective, dispassionate narration provides a contrast to the horror of the moment; and a
pointe
ends it. As Chekhov was compared with Tolstoy, so Shalamov has his counterpart: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The parallels go beyond brevity versus amplitude. Chekhov, a writer who respected the rights of the reader in the artistic process, consciously avoided drawing conclusions for his audience. Tolstoy, on the other hand (like Solzhenitsyn later), constantly lectures the reader.
    By his own admission, Solzhenitsyn barely touches on Kolyma in his writings. He asked Shalamov to co-author his
Gulag Archipelago
with him, but Shalamov, already old and sick, declined. Nevertheless, Solzhenitsyn writes: ‘Shalamov’s experience in the camps was longer and more bitter than my own, and I respectfully confess that to him and not me was it given to touch those depths of bestiality and despair toward which life in the camps dragged us all.’
    The British Slavist Geoffrey Hosking summed up the differences between Shalamov and Solzhenitsyn well:
    Like
Gulag Archipelago
… this volume constitutes a chronicle and indictment of labour camp life. Yet anyone who comes to it with
Gulag Archipelago
in mind is likely to be very surprised. Outwardly at least, Shalamov’s work is about as different from Solzhenitsyn’s as it is possible to imagine. Where Solzhenitsyn constructs a single vast panorama, loose and sprawling, Shalamov chooses the most concise of literary forms, the short story, and shapes it consciously and carefully, so that his overall structure is like a mosaic made of tiny pieces. Where Solzhenitsyn writes with anger, sarcasm and bitterness, Shalamov adopts a studiedly dry and neutral tone. Where Solzhenitsyn plunges into his characters’ fates, telling their story from a variety of subjective viewpoints, Shalamov takes strict control of his discourse, usually conducting his narrative from an undivided viewpoint and aiming at complete objectivity. Where Solzhenitsyn is fiercely moralistic and preaches redemption through suffering, Shalamov contents himself with cool aphorisms and asserts that real suffering, such as Kolyma imposed on its inmates, can only demoralize and break the spirit. 3

    Central to any discussion of Shalamov’s writing is the subject of genre. We have here a literary form attempting to bridge the gap between fact and fiction – something like the historical novel. Shalamov’s stories represent a fusion of art and life, and it is not possible to separate aesthetic evaluation from historical appraisal. While the stories should not be accepted as precise factual accounts, it is important to realize that the overwhelming majority of them are autobiographical in nature.
    In ‘My First Tooth’ Shalamov describes how he himself was beaten during his first sentence for