Biography
In the tragic choir of votes, chasing the horrors of Stalin camps, Vamlam Shalamov performs one of the first parties. Autobiographical "Kolyma Stories" tells about inhuman tests that have fallen out to the share of a whole generation. Having survived the circles of hell of totalitarian repression, the writer prevented them through the prism of the artistic word and stood in a number of classics of Russian literature of the 20th century.Childhood and youth
Vamlam Tikhonovich Shalamov was born in Vologda on June 5, 1907. He came from the hereditary family of priests. His father, as grandfather and uncle, was a shepherd of the Russian Orthodox Church. Tikhon Nikolayevich was engaged in missionary, preached by Aleutian tribes at the distant islands (now the territory of Alaska) and perfectly knew English. The writer's mother was engaged in raising children, and in the last years of life worked at school. Varlam was a fifth child in the family.
The boy learned to read in 3 years and greedily absorbed everything that came across the family library. Literary addictions with age became more complicated: he passed from adventure to philosophical essays. The future writer possessed a subtle artistic taste, critical thinking and desire for justice. Under the influence of books in it, ideals close to People's People were early formed.
Already in childhood, Varlam writes the first poems. At 7 years old, the boy is given to the gymnasium, but education is interrupted by the revolution, so he will finish school only in 1924. The experience of children's and youth years writer summarizes in the "fourth Vologda" - a story about the early years of life.
After graduating from school, the guy goes to Moscow and flows into the ranks of the metropolitan proletariat: he goes to the plant and 2 years is honing the skill of a tanner in leather production. And from 1926 to 1928, herself receives higher education in Moscow State University, studying the Soviet law. But from the university, it is excluded, having learned classmates from the denunciations about "socially disagreeable" origin. So the repressive car first invades the biography of the writer.
In the student years, Shalamov visits the literary circle organized by the magazine "New Lef", where he gets acquainted and communicates with progressive writing youth.
Arrests and conclusions
In 1927, Shalamov participates in protest shares dedicated to the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution. As part of the group of underground trotskistov, stands with slogans "Down with Stalin!" And calls back to the true covenants of Ilyich. In 1929, for participation in the activities of the Trotskyist group, Vamlam Shalamov was first taken into custody and "without trial" leaves for 3 years in correctional camps as a "socially harmful element".
From this time, his perennial artantic mitardia, protracted until 1951 begin. The first term writer is serving in Vishaga, where in April 1929 comes with stage from Butyrsk prison. In the north of the Urals, prisoners participate in the largest construction site of the first five-year plan - the chemical plant of all-union value in Berezniki is erected.
Freed in 1932, Shalamov returns to Moscow and earns a living by writing work, cooperating with production newspapers and magazines. However, in 1936, a man again recall the "dirty Trotskyist's dirty" and accused of counter-revolutionary activities. This time he is condemned for 5 years and in 1937 they are sent to the stern Magadan to the hardest work - gold mining supports.
The sentence ended in 1942, but prisoners refused to produce until the end of the Great Patriotic War. In addition, Shalamov constantly "sewed" new terms in different articles: here is the camp "case of lawyers", and "anti-Soviet statements". As a result, the writer's term has grown to 10 years.
Over the years, he managed to change the five mines in Krymsky camps, nomaded in villages and mines as a designer, logger and excavation. He had a chance to lie down in medical barracks as "dotting", which is no longer capable of any physical work. In 1945, exhausting from unbearable conditions, with a group of prisoners trying to escape, but only aggravates the situation and the punishment is determined in the penalty area.
Once again in the hospital, Shalamov remains there an assistant there, and after receiving the direction for the courses of the paramedics. After graduating from 1946, Varlam Tikhonovich to the end of the prison period works in the camp hospitals of the Far East. Having received liberation, but being struck in rights, the writer works for another a year and a half in Yakutia and sails money to a ticket to Moscow, where it returns only in 1953.
Creation
Departing the first term of concluding, Shalamov worked as a journalist in Moscow trade union publications. In 1936 his first artistic story was published on the pages of October. 20-year expulsion influenced the work of the writer, although in the camps he does not leave attempts to record his poems that will form the basis of the Kolyma Notebook cycle.
Kolyma stories are considered to be the programatic work of Shalamov. This collection is dedicated to the abused years of Stalin camps on the example of the life of the prisoners of SevVostlak and consists of 6 cycles ("left bank", "artist shovel", "essays of the criminal world, etc.).
In it, the artist describes the life experience of people broken by the system. Defined freedom, supports and hopes, exhausted hunger, cold and unbearable work, a person loses his face and the most humanity - in this writer deeply convinced. In prisoner, the ability to friendship, compassion and mutual respect, when the survival issue goes to the fore.
As opposed to the author of the "Gulam Archipelago", Shalamov was convinced that the camp is a disgusting school for everyone and everyone, and often responded about Solzhenitsyn in a negative key, believing that he made a name for himself, speculating on the topic of the camps.
Shalamov was against the publication of "Kolyma stories" by a separate publication, and in the complete meeting they were published in Russia only posthumously. Based on the work in 2005, the film was shot.
In 1960-70, Vamlam Tikhonovich produces poems collections, writes memories of childhood (the story "Fourth Vologda") and the experience of the first camp conclusion (Vishera Antioman).
The last cycle of poems is coming out in 1977.
Personal life
The fate of the eternal arrestant did not prevent the writer to build a personal life. With his first wife Galina Ignatievna Goodz Shalamov gets acquainted in the Vishero camp. There, according to him, he "beat" her with another prisoner, whom the girl came to visit. In 1934, the couple got married, and a year later, Elena's daughter was born.
With the second arrest of the writer, the repressions were subjected to the repression: Galina was exiled to the remote village of Turkmenistan, where she lived until 1946. The family meets together only in 1953, when Shalamov returns from the Far Eastern settlements to Moscow, but in 1954 the spouses are bred.
The second wife of Varlam Tikhonovich was Olga Sergeevna Neklyudova, a member of the Union of Soviet writers. Shalamov became the fourth and last her husband. Marriage lasted 10 years, there were no children from the couple.
After the divorce in 1966 and until the death of the writer remains lonely.
Death
In recent years of life, the state of the writer's health was extremely difficult. Decades of exhausting works at the limit of human resources were not in vain. In the late 1950s, he transfers the grave attacks of the Meniere disease, and in the 70s hearing and vision is gradually deprived.
A man is not able to coordinate his own movements and moves with difficulty, and in 1979, friends and colleagues transport him to the house of persons with disabilities. Testing difficulties with speech and coordination, Shalamov leaves no attempts to write poems.
In 1981, the Writer had a stroke, after which the decision was made to send him to the boarding house for people suffering from chronic mental illness. There he dies on January 17, 1982, the cause of death is the bruboral inflammation of the lungs.
The son of the priest, Shalamov always considered himself unbelievers, but he was sent according to Orthodox ritual and buried in the Kuntsevsky cemetery of Moscow. Preserved photos from the funeral of the writer.
The named after Shalamov is devoted to several museums and expositions located in different parts of the country: in Vologda, in the author's small homeland, on Kolyma, where he worked as a paramedic, in Yakutia, where the writer was serving his last exile days.
Bibliography
- 1936 - "Three Death of Dr. Austino"
- 1949-1954 - "Kolyma Notebook"
- 1954-1973 - "Kolym Stories"
- 1961 - "Floor"
- 1964 - "Ruest Leaf"
- 1967 - "Road and Fate"
- 1971 - "Fourth Vologda"
- 1972 - "Moscow clouds"
- 1973 - "Vishera"
- 1973 - "Fedor Raskolnikov"
- 1977 - "Boiling point"