Varlam Shalamov biography. Interesting facts from the life of Varlam Shalamov. Letter to Literaturnaya Gazeta

Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov(June 5, 1907 - January 17, 1982) - Russian prose writer and poet of the Soviet era. Creator of one of the literary cycles about Soviet camps.

Biography
Family, childhood, youth
Varlam Shalamov born June 5 (June 18), 1907 in Vologda in the family of priest Tikhon Nikolaevich Shalamov, a preacher in the Aleutian Islands. Varlam Shalamov's mother, Nadezhda Aleksandrovna, was a housewife. In 1914 he entered the gymnasium, but completed his secondary education after the revolution. In 1924, after graduating from the Vologda second-level school, he came to Moscow and worked for two years as a tanner at a tannery in Kuntsevo. From 1926 to 1928 he studied at the Faculty of Soviet Law of Moscow State University, then was expelled “for concealing his social origin” (he indicated that his father was disabled, without indicating that he was a priest).
In his autobiographical story about his childhood and youth, “The Fourth Vologda,” Shalamov told how his beliefs developed, how his thirst for justice and his determination to fight for it strengthened. The Narodnaya Volya became his youthful ideal - the sacrifice of their feat, the heroism of resistance to the full might of the autocratic state. Already in childhood, the boy’s artistic talent is evident - he passionately reads and “plays” for himself all the books - from Dumas to Kant.
Repression
February 19, 1929 Shalamov was arrested for participation in an underground Trotskyist group and for distributing an addition to Lenin's Testament. Out of court, he was sentenced to three years in the camps as a “socially dangerous element.” He served his sentence in the Vishera camp ( Northern Urals). In 1932, Shalamov returned to Moscow, worked in departmental magazines, published articles, essays, and feuilletons.
In January 1937 Shalamova arrested again for “counter-revolutionary Trotskyist activities.” He was sentenced to five years in the camps and spent this term in Kolyma (SVITL). Shalamov went through taiga “business trips”, worked at the mines “Partizan”, “Black Lake”, Arkagala, Dzhelgala, and several times found himself in a hospital bed due to the difficult conditions of Kolyma. As Shalamov later wrote:
From the first minute in prison it was clear to me that there were no mistakes in the arrests, that there was a systematic extermination of an entire “social” group - everyone who remembered from Russian history of recent years something that was not what should be remembered from it.
On June 22, 1943, he was again sentenced to ten years for anti-Soviet agitation, which, according to the writer himself, consisted of calling I. A. Bunin a Russian classic: “...I was condemned to war for declaring that Bunin was a Russian classic”.
In 1951 Shalamov was released from the camp, but at first could not return to Moscow. Since 1946, having completed an eight-month paramedic course, he began working at the Central Hospital for Prisoners on the left bank of the Kolyma in the village of Debin and on a forest “business trip” for lumberjacks until 1953. The appointment to the position of paramedic is due to the doctor A. M. Pantyukhov, who personally recommended Shalamov for paramedic courses. Then he lived in the Kalinin region, worked in Reshetnikov. The results of the repression were family breakdown and poor health. In 1956, after rehabilitation, he returned to Moscow.

Creation
In 1932 Shalamov returned to Moscow after his first term and began publishing in Moscow publications as a journalist. Published several stories. One of the first major publications was the story “The Three Deaths of Doctor Austino” in the magazine “October” (1936).
In 1949, on the Duskanya key, for the first time in Kolyma, while a prisoner, he began to record his poems.
After liberation in 1951 Shalamov returned to literary activity. However, he could not leave Kolyma. It was only in November 1953 that permission to leave was received. Shalamov came to Moscow for two days, met with B. L. Pasternak, his wife and daughter. However, he could not live in large cities, and he left for the Kalinin region (the village of Turkmen, now the Klinsky district of the Moscow region), where he worked as a peat mining foreman and a supply agent. All this time he was writing one of his main works - “ Kolyma stories" The writer created “Kolyma Stories” from 1954 to 1973. They were published as a separate publication in London in 1978. In the USSR they were mainly published in 1988-1990. The writer himself divided his stories into six cycles: “Kolyma Tales”, “Left Bank”, “Shovel Artist”, “Sketches of the Underworld”, “Resurrection of Larch” and “The Glove, or KR-2”. They are fully collected in the two-volume “Kolyma Stories” in 1992 in the series “The Way of the Cross of Russia” by the publishing house “Soviet Russia”.
In 1962, he wrote to A.I. Solzhenitsyn:
Remember, the most important thing: camp is a negative school from first to last day for anyone. The person - neither the boss nor the prisoner - needs to see him. But if you saw him, you must tell the truth, no matter how terrible it may be. For my part, I decided long ago that I would devote the rest of my life to this truth.
He met with Pasternak, who spoke highly of Shalamov's poems. Later, after the government forced Pasternak to refuse to accept Nobel Prize, their paths diverged.
He completed the collection of poems “Kolyma Notebooks” (1937-1956).
Since 1956, Shalamov lived in Moscow, first on Gogolevsky Boulevard, from the late 1950s - in one of the writers' wooden cottage houses on Khoroshevskoye Shosse (house 10), since 1972 - on Vasilyevskaya Street (house 2, building 6). He was published in the magazines “Yunost”, “Znamya”, “Moscow”, communicated with N. Ya. Mandelstam, O. V. Ivinskaya, A. I. Solzhenitsyn (relations with whom later turned into polemics); was a frequent guest in the house of the philologist V.N. Klyueva. Both in prose and in Shalamov’s poems (the collection “Flint”, 1961, “Rustle of Leaves”, 1964, “Road and Fate”, 1967, etc.), which expressed the difficult experience of Stalin’s camps, the theme of Moscow also sounds (the collection of poems “ Moscow clouds", 1972). He was also involved in poetic translations. In the 1960s he met A. A. Galich.
In 1973 he was admitted to the Writers' Union. From 1973 until 1979, when Shalamov moved to live in the Home for the Disabled and Elderly, he kept workbooks, the analysis and publication of which continued until his death in 2011. I. P. Sirotinskaya, to whom Shalamov transferred the rights to all his manuscripts and essays.
Letter to Literaturnaya Gazeta
On February 23, 1972, Literaturnaya Gazeta published a letter from Shalamov, which, in particular, stated that “problems Kolyma stories life has long removed it.” The main content of the letter is a protest against the publication of his stories by the emigrant publications “Posev” and “New Journal”. This letter was received ambiguously by the public. Many believed that it was written under pressure from the KGB, and Shalamov lost friends among former camp inmates. Participant dissident movement Pyotr Yakir expressed in the 24th issue of the Chronicle of Current Events “pity for the circumstances” that forced Shalamov to sign this letter. Modern researchers note, however, that the appearance of this letter is due to the painful process of Shalamov’s divergence from literary circles and a feeling of powerlessness from the inability to make his main work accessible to a wide range of readers in his homeland.
It is possible that we need to look for subtext in Shalamov’s letter. ...it uses the typically Bolshevik accusatory epithet “smelly” in relation to emigrant publications, which in itself is shocking, because “olfactory” characteristics, both metaphorical and literal, are rare in Shalamov’s prose (he had chronic rhinitis). To Shalamov’s readers, the word must have been offensive to the eyes as if it were alien - a lexical unit sticking out from the text, a “bone” thrown to the guards of the readers (editors, censors) in order to divert attention from the true purpose of the letter - to sneak the first and last mention of the “Kolyma” into the official Soviet press stories" - along with their exact name. In this way, the true target audience of the letter is informed that such a collection exists: readers are encouraged to think about where to get it. Understanding perfectly what is hidden behind the toponym “Kolyma,” those who read the letter will ask the question: ““Kolyma stories?” Where is it?”

Recent years
The last three years of the life of a seriously ill patient Shalamov spent in the House for the Disabled and Elderly of the Literary Fund (in Tushino). What the home for the disabled was like can be judged from the memoirs of E. Zakharova, who was next to Shalamov in the last six months of his life:
This kind of establishment is the most terrible and most undoubted evidence of the deformation of human consciousness that occurred in our country in the 20th century. A person is deprived not only of the right to a dignified life, but also to a dignified death.
- E. Zakharova. From a speech at the Shalamov Readings in 2002.
However, even there Varlam Tikhonovich, whose ability to move correctly and clearly articulate his speech was impaired, continued to compose poetry. In the fall of 1980, A. A. Morozov somehow incredibly managed to disassemble and write down these last poems by Shalamov. They were published during Shalamov’s lifetime in the Parisian magazine “Vestnik RHD” No. 133, 1981.
In 1981, the French branch of the Pen Club awarded Shalamov the Freedom Prize.
On January 15, 1982, after a superficial examination by a medical commission, Shalamov was transferred to a boarding school for psychochronic patients. During transportation, Shalamov caught a cold, contracted pneumonia and died on January 17, 1982.
According to Sirotinskaya:
A certain role in this transfer was played by the noise that a group of his well-wishers raised around him in the second half of 1981. Among them, of course, there were really kind people, and there were also those who worked out of self-interest, out of a passion for sensation. After all, it was because of them that Varlam Tikhonovich had two posthumous “wives” who, with a crowd of witnesses, besieged the official authorities. His poor, defenseless old age became the subject of the show.
On June 16, 2011, E. Zakharova, who was next to Varlam Tikhonovich on the day of his death, in her speech at a conference dedicated to the fate and work of Varlam Shalamov, said:
I came across some texts that mention that before the death of Varlam Tikhonovich, some unscrupulous people came to him for some selfish interest. How should one understand this, in what selfish interests?! This is a home for the disabled! You are inside a Bosch painting - without exaggeration, I am a witness of this. This is dirt, stench, decaying half-dead people around, what the hell is medicine there? An immobilized, blind, almost deaf, twitching person is such a shell, and inside it lives a writer, a poet. From time to time several people come, feed, water, wash, hold hands, Alexander Anatolyevich also talked and wrote down poems. What kind of selfish interests can there be here?! What is this even about? ... I insist - this must be interpreted correctly. It is impossible for this to remain unmentioned and unknown.
Despite the fact that Shalamov was an unbeliever all his life, E. Zakharova insisted on his funeral service. The funeral service for Varlam Shalamov was conducted by Archpriest Alexander Kulikov, who was later rector of the Church of St. Nicholas in Klenniki (Maroseyka). The funeral for Varlam Tikhonovich was organized by the philosopher S. S. Khoruzhy.
Shalamov is buried at the Kuntsevo cemetery in Moscow. About 150 people attended the funeral. A. Morozov and F. Suchkov read Shalamov’s poems.

Family
Varlam Shalamov was married twice. The first time was with Galina Ignatievna Gudz (1909-1956), who in 1935 gave birth to his daughter Elena (Shalamova Elena Varlamovna, married to Yanushevskaya, died in 1990). With his second marriage (1956-1965) he was married to Olga Sergeevna Neklyudova (1909-1989), also a writer, whose son from her first marriage (Sergei Yuryevich Neklyudov) is a famous Russian folklorist, Doctor of Philology.

Memory
Asteroid 3408 Shalamov, discovered on August 17, 1977 by N. S. Chernykh, was named in honor of V. T. Shalamov.
At Shalamov’s grave, a monument was erected by his friend Fedot Suchkov, who also went through Stalin’s camps. In June 2000, the monument to Varlam Shalamov was destroyed. Unknown people tore off and carried away the bronze head, leaving a lonely granite pedestal. This crime did not cause widespread resonance and was not solved. Thanks to the help of metallurgists from Severstal JSC (the writer’s fellow countrymen), the monument was restored in 2001.
Since 1991, the exhibition has been operating in Vologda in the Shalamov House - in the building where Shalamov was born and raised and where the Vologda Regional Art Gallery is now located. In the Shalamov House, memorial evenings are held every year on the writer’s birthday and death, and there have already been 5 (1991, 1994, 1997, 2002 and 2007) International Shalamov readings (conferences).
In 1992, the Literary and Local Lore Museum was opened in the village of Tomtor (Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)), where Shalamov spent the last two years (1952-1953) in Kolyma.
Part of the exhibition of the Museum of Political Repression in the village of Yagodnoye in the Magadan Region, created in 1994 by local historian Ivan Panikarov, is dedicated to Shalamov.
In 2005, a room-museum of V. Shalamov was created in the village of Debin, where the Central Hospital of Prisoners of Dalstroy (Sevvostlag) operated and where Shalamov worked in 1946-1951.
On July 21, 2007, a memorial to Varlam Shalamov was opened in Krasnovishersk, the city that grew up on the site of Vishlag, where he served his first term.
On October 30, 2013, in Moscow, in house No. 8 on Chisty Lane, where the writer lived for three years before his arrest in 1937, a memorial plaque to Varlam Shalamov was unveiled
On July 20, 2012, a memorial plaque was unveiled on the building of the hospital in the village of Debin (former central hospital USVITL) in Kolyma (Yagodninsky district of the Magadan region).

Until 1904 in one of the Russian dioceses Orthodox Church, on the island of Kodiak, which belongs to Alaska, the priest Father Tikhon (Shalamov) served. In any weather, on dogs or in a small boat, he traveled around his parishioners, spreading the Orthodox faith among the Aleuts.

He fought against the arbitrariness of US companies that bought furs and fish from the aborigines for vodka and trinkets. Realizing that they could not do anything with the Russian “priest,” they even attempted to kill him. But everything was useless. The character was passed on to Tikhon Nikolaevich’s son, who was already born in Vologda. As a boy, he accompanied his blind father when he was already in Soviet Russia, went to defend the faith in debates with atheists.

Beginning of adulthood

In 1924, Varlam left his hometown. He, who already read Ovid as a child and graduated from school as one of the best, was unable to enter the university. There was no way for the priest's son to go there. Well, he began to study life in a tannery, working as a tanner. But in 1926 he still entered Moscow State University. It was the Faculty of Soviet Law. Apparently, the thirst for justice took its toll.

Three years for Lenin's letter

The times were cruel, but adapting to reality was not his thing. Stalin's only real opponent at that time was Leon Trotsky, and Varlam Shalamov joined his supporters. An underground printing house, participation in demonstrations under the slogans of the need to overthrow the dictator. There were more than enough reasons for the arrest. And he didn’t keep himself waiting. In February 1929, V.T. Shalamov was sentenced to three years in forced labor camps for distributing “Letter to the Congress” by V.I. Lenin. The life universities of the future chronicler of the Kolyma Hell began.

Slaughter for five years

Literature was perceived by him as a calling with teenage years. In the 20s, Varlam joined the “Young LEF” circle, participated in literary debates, and met Mayakovsky, Lunacharsky, and Pasternak. After returning from the camp he worked in trade union magazines, his stories and essays were published. But they didn’t forget about him. The sentence on January 12, 1937 was imposed for “counter-revolutionary Trotskyist activities.” Five years with “use in heavy physical work.” It was a death sentence. No one survived more than a few weeks in the gold and coal mines. And then chance came into play. He later wrote a lot about the influence of accidents on the life of a convict in his stories.

Court again

Due to constant bullying, hunger and backbreaking work in 50-degree frost, he is taken to Magadan for another trial. He did not take this as luck, because he understood that execution was inevitable. And again luck. The “lawyers’ file” is closed, and it is sent for forwarding. There, in the typhus barracks, there is an opportunity to at least somehow get food, wash, and sleep. But the coal face in the penalty zone, where he is sent after this, also quickly turns a person into a working animal. It is unlikely that Varlam Shalamov could have survived there. The new trial saved us. One of the accusations is “slanderous fabrications about the policy of the Soviet government in the field of development of Russian culture.” In fact, everything was simpler. In a conversation, he called Ivan Bunin a Russian classic.

Return to life

The new sentence, oddly enough, became a salvation. “Anti-Soviet agitation” did not mean inevitable death, unlike “counter-revolutionary activity.” An opportunity arose to get a “criminal” job. After completing paramedic courses, prisoner Shalamov became a paramedic at the Central Hospital for Prisoners. It was there, in 1949, that he began writing poetry again. The first sketches of what would become “Kolyma Tales” also appeared.

Even after liberation, returning to mainland Russia was impossible. After Stalin's death, his residence permit was limited to towns with a population of no more than 10 thousand people. He lives in a small village and works as a supply agent. During the remaining years of his life, Shalamov wrote a chronicle of his “walk through torment.” This is his duty to those who remained forever in Kolyma.

About "Kolyma Tales"

It would seem that a parallel can be drawn between the work of the hero of this article and Solzhenitsyn. But this is only at first glance. For Shalamov, the camp represents a negative experience for everyone, be it a prisoner or a guard. This evil cannot be overcome; it inevitably corrupts a person. It’s not for nothing that the heroes of “Kolyma Tales” are people without a biography. They have neither past nor future, only the present, where they must either die or survive.

In addition, in Shalamov’s prose there is no journalism, any generalizations or digital calculations. This is a document of much greater power, because it was written in blood, albeit in a figurative sense. Of course, there was no question of publishing the stories in the Soviet Union. The only one of them that reached the reader during the author’s lifetime is called “Stlanik”. Dedicated to a very unpretentious but tenacious plant, common in the north.

Prose of life and death in a boarding school

Rehabilitation followed in 1956. No crime was found in his actions. Fifteen years simply disappeared from life. But negative experiences also enrich a person. Shalamov transfers it to paper. However, it is possible to publish only poems, and even those that are neutral in content. They appear in “Banner”, “Rural Youth”, “Youth”.

He called his first tiny collection of poetry “Flint.” And the stories spread thanks to Samizdat. Spreading spontaneously between people, they end up abroad, where they are published in many magazines and read on the radio. In our homeland, four more poetry collections were published, and even then in scanty quantities.

In 1979, Varlam Tikhonovich moved to a home for the disabled and elderly. Despite everything, he continues to write poetry. But they didn’t let me live out the rest of my days in peace. The writer was forcibly sent to a boarding school for psychochronic patients. There, in 1982, he found peace that he had not known during his lifetime.

VARLAM TIKHONOVICH SHALAMOV

This man had a rare feature: one of his eyes was nearsighted, the other farsighted. He was able to see the world up close and at a distance at the same time. And remember. His memory was amazing. He remembered a lot historical events, small everyday facts, persons, surnames, names, life stories ever heard.

V. T. Shalamov was born in Vologda in 1907. He never said, but I got the idea that he was born and raised in a clergy family or in a very religious family. He knew Orthodoxy in detail, its history, customs, rituals and holidays. He was not without prejudices and superstitions. He believed in palmistry, for example, and read his own palms. He spoke about his superstition more than once in both poetry and prose. At the same time, he was well educated, well read, and loved and knew poetry to the point of oblivion. All this coexisted in him without noticeable conflicts.

We met him in the early spring of 1944, when the sun was already warming up and walking patients, having dressed themselves, went out onto the porches and rubble of their departments.

In the central hospital of Sevlag, seven kilometers from the village of Yagodnoye, the center of the Northern mining region, I worked as a paramedic in two surgical departments, clean and purulent, was an operating room brother in two operating rooms, was in charge of a blood transfusion station and in fits and starts organized a clinical laboratory, which did not exist in the hospital. I performed my functions every day, around the clock and seven days a week. Relatively little time passed before I escaped from the slaughter and was extremely happy, having found a job to which I was going to devote my life, and, in addition, I gained hope of preserving this life. The laboratory space was allocated in the second therapeutic department, where Shalamov had been staying for several months with a diagnosis of nutritional dystrophy and multivitaminosis.

There was a war going on. The gold mines of Kolyma were “workshop number one” for the country, and gold itself was then called “metal number one.” The front needed soldiers, the mines needed labor. This was a time when the Kolyma camps were no longer replenished as generously as before, in pre-war times. The replenishment of the camps from the front has not yet begun, the replenishment of prisoners and repatriates has not begun. For this reason, great importance was attached to the restoration of the labor force in the camps.

Shalamov had already slept in the hospital, warmed up, and some meat appeared on his bones. His large, lanky figure, wherever he appeared, caught the eye and teased his superiors. Shalamov, knowing this peculiarity of his, was intensely looking for ways to somehow get hold of him, to linger in the hospital, to push back the return to the wheelbarrow, pickle and shovel as far as possible.

Once Shalamov stopped me in the corridor of the department, asked something, inquired about where I was from, what my article was, my sentence, what I was accused of, whether I liked poetry, whether I was interested in it. I told him that I lived in Moscow, studied at the Third Moscow Medical Institute, and that poetic youth gathered in the apartment of the then honored and famous photographer M. S. Nappelbaum (Nappelbaum’s youngest daughter studied in the first year of the poetry department of the Literary Institute). I was in this company where my own and other people’s poems were read. All these guys and girls - or almost all - were arrested and accused of participating in counter-revolutionary student organization. My charge included reading poems by Anna Akhmatova and Nikolai Gumilyov.

We immediately found Shalamov common language, I liked it. I easily understood his worries and promised how I could help.

The head physician of the hospital at that time was a young, energetic doctor, Nina Vladimirovna Savoeva, a graduate of the 1st Moscow Medical Institute in 1940, a person with a developed sense of medical duty, compassion and responsibility. During the distribution, she voluntarily chose Kolyma. In a hospital with several hundred beds, she knew every seriously ill patient by sight, knew everything about him and personally monitored the progress of treatment. Shalamov immediately fell into her field of vision and did not leave it until he was brought to his feet. A student of Burdenko, she was also a surgeon. We met with her every day in operating rooms, at dressing changes, and on rounds. She was friendly towards me, shared her concerns, and trusted my assessments of people. When among the goners I found good, skillful, hard-working people, she helped them, if she could, she found them jobs. With Shalamov everything turned out to be much more complicated. He was a man who fiercely hated any physical labor. Not just forced, forced, camp - everyone. This was its organic property. There was no clerical work in the hospital. No matter what chore he was assigned to, his partners complained about him. He visited a team that collected firewood, mushrooms, and berries for the hospital, and caught fish intended for the seriously ill. When the harvest ripened, Shalamov was a caretaker in the hospital’s large vegetable garden, where potatoes, carrots, turnips, and cabbage were already ripening in August. He lived in a hut and could do nothing around the clock, was well-fed and always had tobacco (the central Kolyma highway ran next to the garden). He was also a cult organizer in the hospital: he walked around the wards and read the camp’s large-circulation newspaper to the patients. Together with him, we published a hospital wall newspaper. He wrote more, I designed it, drew cartoons, collected material. I still have some of those materials to this day.

While training his memory, Varlam wrote down poems by Russian poets of the 19th and early 20th centuries in two thick homemade notebooks and presented the notebooks to Nina Vladimirovna. She keeps them.

The first notebook opens with I. Bunin, the poems “Cain” and “Ra-Osiris”. This is followed by: D. Merezhkovsky - “Sakia-Muni”; A. Blok - “In the restaurant”, “Night, street, lantern, pharmacy...”, “The Petrograd sky was clouded...”; K. Balmont - “The Dying Swan”; I. Severyanin - “It was by the sea...”, “A girl was crying in the park...”; V. Mayakovsky - “Nate”, “Left March”, “Letter to Gorky”, “At the top of my voice”, “ Lyrical digression", "Epitaph to Admiral Kolchak"; S. Yesenin - “I don’t regret, I don’t call, I don’t cry...”, “I’m tired of living in native land...”, “Everything alive has a special purpose...”, “Don’t wander, don’t crush...”, “Sing to me, sing!..”, “The golden grove dissuaded...”, “Goodbye, friend my...", "The evening raised black eyebrows..."; N. Tikhonov - “The Ballad of Nails”, “The Ballad of a Soldier on Leave”, “Gulliver Plays Cards...”; A. Bezymensky - from the poem “Felix”; S. Kirsanov - “Bullfight”, “Autobiography”; E. Bagritsky - “Spring”; P. Antokolsky - “I don’t want to forget you...”; I. Selvinsky - “The Thief”, “Motka Malkhamuves”; V. Khodasevich - “I play cards, drink wine...”

In the second notebook: A.S. Pushkin - “I loved you...”; F. Tyutchev - “I met you, and all the past...”; B. Pasternak - “Deputy”; I. Severyanin - “Why?”; M. Lermontov - “Mountain Peaks...”; E. Baratynsky - “Do not tempt me...”; Beranger - “The Old Corporal” (translation by Kurochkin); A.K. Tolstoy - “Vasily Shibanov”; S. Yesenin - “Don’t twist your smile...”; V. Mayakovsky - (pre-mortem), “To Sergei Yesenin”, “Alexander Sergeevich, allow me to introduce myself - Mayakovsky”, “To Lilechka instead of a letter”, “Violin and a little nervously”; V. Inber - “Centipedes”; S. Yesenin - “Letter to Mother”, “The road was thinking about the red evening...”, “The fields are compressed, the groves are bare...”, “I am wandering through the first snow...”, “Don’t wander, don’t crush.. .”, “I have never been to the Bosphorus...”, “You are my Shagane, Shagane!..”, “You said that Saadi...” ; V. Mayakovsky - “Camp “Nit Gedayge”; M. Gorky - “Song of the Falcon”; S. Yesenin - “In the land where the yellow nettles are...”, “You don’t love me, you don’t feel sorry...”.

As a provincial boy, such poetic erudition and amazing memory for poetry amazed and deeply excited me. I felt sorry for this gifted man, thrown out of life by the play of evil forces. I truly admired him. And I did everything in my power to delay his return to the mines, these destruction sites. Shalamov stayed at Belichya until the end of 1945. More than two years of respite, rest, accumulation of strength, for that place and that time - this was a lot.

At the beginning of September, our chief physician Nina Vladimirovna was transferred to another department - South-West. A new chief doctor came - a new owner with a new broom. On November 1st I was finishing my eight-year sentence and was awaiting release. By this time, doctor A.M. Pantyukhov was no longer in the hospital. I found Koch bacilli in his sputum. X-ray confirmed the active form of tuberculosis. He was sacked and sent to Magadan for release from the disability camp, with subsequent transfer to the “mainland”. This talented doctor lived the second half of his life with one lung. Shalamov had no friends left in the hospital, no support left.

On the first of November, with a small plywood suitcase in my hand, I left the hospital in Yagodny to receive a release document - “form twenty-fifth” - and begin a new “free” life. Varlam accompanied me until halfway. He was sad, worried, depressed.

After you, Boris,” he said, “my days here are numbered.”

I understood him. It seemed like the truth... We wished each other good luck.

I didn’t stay long in Yagodnoye. Having received the document, he was sent to work at the hospital of the Uta gold mining plant. Until 1953, I had no news about Shalamov.

Special features

Marvelous! The eyes into which I looked so often and for a long time were not preserved in my memory. But I remember their inherent expressions. They were light gray or light brown, planted deep and looked out from the depths carefully and vigilantly. His face was almost devoid of hair. He constantly wrinkled his small and very soft nose and turned it to one side. It seemed that the nose was devoid of bones and cartilage. The small and mobile mouth could extend into a long thin strip. When Varlam Tikhonovich wanted to concentrate, he raked his lips with his fingers and held them in his hand. When he indulged in memories, he threw his hand out in front of him and carefully examined the palm, while his fingers curved sharply towards the back. When he proved something, he threw both hands forward, unclenching his fists, and, as it were, brought his arguments to your face on open palms. Given his great stature, his arm and hand were small and did not contain even small traces of physical labor and tension. Her squeeze was limp.

He often rested his tongue on his cheek, then on one, then on the other, and ran his tongue along the cheek from the inside.

He had a soft, kind smile. The eyes and slightly noticeable mouth and its corners smiled. When he laughed, and this happened rarely, strange, high-pitched sounds burst from his chest, like sobbing sounds. One of his favorite expressions was: “Get out of them!” At the same time, he chopped the air with the edge of his palm.

He spoke difficultly, searching for words, peppering his speech with interjections. In his everyday speech much remained of his camp life. Perhaps it was bravado.

“I bought new wheels!” - he said, pleased, and one by one showed his feet in new shoes.

“Yesterday I was stuck all day. I’ll take a couple sips of buckthorn and fall back onto the bed with this book. I finished reading it yesterday. Great book. This is how you should write! - He handed me a thin book. - Don’t know? Yuri Dombrovsky, “Keeper of Antiquities.” I give it to you."

“They’re darkening things, you bastards, they’re scattering black stuff,” he said about someone.

“Are you going to eat?” - he asked me. If I didn't mind, we went to the common kitchen. He pulled out a box with the remains of a Surprise waffle cake from somewhere, cut it into pieces, saying: “Excellent food! Don't laugh. Tasty, satisfying, nutritious and no cooking required.” And there was breadth, freedom, even a certain daring in his action with the cake. I involuntarily remembered Belichya, he ate differently there. When we got something to chew, he began this task without a smile, very seriously. He took small bites, slowly, chewed with feeling, carefully examined what he was eating, bringing it close to his eyes. At the same time, in his entire appearance - face, body - one could discern extraordinary tension and alertness. This was especially felt in his leisurely, calculated movements. Every time it seemed to me that if I did something sharp, unexpected, Varlam would retreat with lightning speed. Instinctively, subconsciously. Or he will also instantly throw the remaining piece into his mouth and slam it shut. This kept me busy. Perhaps I myself ate the same way, but I did not see myself. Now my wife often reproaches me for eating too quickly and enthusiastically. I don't notice it. This is probably true, it’s probably “from there”...

Letter

In the February 1972 issue of Literaturnaya Gazeta, a letter from Varlam Shalamov was printed in the lower right corner of the page in a black mourning frame. To talk about the letter, you need to read it. This is an amazing document. It should be reproduced in full so that works of this kind are not forgotten.

“TO THE EDITORIAL OF THE LITERARY NEWSPAPER.” I learned that the anti-Soviet magazine in Russian “Posev” published in West Germany, as well as the anti-Soviet emigrant “New Journal” in New York, decided to take advantage of my honest name as a Soviet writer and Soviet citizen and publish my “Kolyma Stories” in their slanderous publications "

I consider it necessary to state that I have never entered into cooperation with the anti-Soviet magazine “Posev” or “New Journal,” as well as with other foreign publications engaged in shameful anti-Soviet activities.

I did not provide them with any manuscripts, I did not enter into any contacts and, of course, I do not intend to enter into any.

I am an honest Soviet writer; my disability does not give me the opportunity to take an active part in public activities.

I am an honest Soviet citizen, well aware of the significance of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party in my personal life and the life of the entire country.

The vile method of publication used by the editors of these stinking magazines - a story or two per issue - is intended to create in the reader the impression that I am their permanent employee.

This disgusting, serpentine practice of the gentlemen from Posev and Novy Zhurnal requires a scourge, a brand.

I am aware of the dirty goals that the gentlemen from Posev and their equally well-known owners are pursuing with such publishing maneuvers. The long-term anti-Soviet practice of the Posev magazine and its publishers has a completely clear explanation.

These gentlemen, filled with hatred for our great country, its people, its literature, are ready for any provocation, any blackmail, any slander in order to discredit and tarnish any name.

Both in past years and now, Posev was, is and remains a publication deeply hostile to our system, our people.

Not a single self-respecting Soviet writer will lose his dignity or tarnish the honor of publishing his works in this stinking anti-Soviet leaflet.

All of the above applies to any other White Guard publications abroad.

Why did they need me at sixty-five years old?

The problems of “Kolyma Stories” have long been removed by life, and the gentlemen from “Posev” and “New Journal” and their masters will not be able to present me to the world as an underground anti-Soviet, an “internal emigrant”!

Sincerely

Varlam Shalamov.

When I came across this letter and read it, I realized that another violence, rude and cruel, had been committed against Varlam. It was not the public renunciation of “Kolyma Tales” that struck me. It was not difficult to force an old, sick, exhausted man to do this. The language amazed me! The language of this letter told me everything that happened, it is irrefutable evidence. Shalamov could not express himself in such language, did not know how, was not capable. The person who owns the words cannot speak in such a language:

Let me be ridiculed

And consigned to the fire,

Let my ashes be scattered

In the mountain wind,

There is no sweeter fate

More desirable than the end

Than the ashes knocking

Into people's hearts.

This is how the last lines of one of the best poems Shalamov, which is of a very personal nature, “Abakkuk in Pustozersk.” This is what the “Kolyma Tales” meant to Shalamov, which he was forced to publicly renounce. And as if foreseeing this fatal event, in the book “Road and Fate” he wrote the following:

I'll be shot at the border

The border of my conscience,

And my blood will flood the pages,

What worried my friends so much?

Let it be unnoticed, cowardly

I'll approach the scary zone,

The arrows will aim obediently.

As long as I stay in sight.

When I enter such a zone

An unpoetic country

They will act according to the law

The law of our side.

And so that the torment would be shorter,

To die for sure

I'm left in my own hands

Like in the hands of the best shooter.

It became clear to me: Shalamov was forced to sign this amazing “work.” This is at best...

Paradoxically, the author of “Kolyma Tales”, a man who from 1929 to 1955 was dragged through prisons, camps, transfers through illness, hunger and cold, never listened to Western “voices”, did not read “samizdat”. I know this for sure. He did not have the slightest idea about emigrant magazines and it is unlikely that he heard their names before there was a fuss about their publication of some of his stories...

Reading this letter, one might think that for years Shalamov was a subscriber to “stinking magazines” and conscientiously studied them from cover to cover: “Both in past years and now, Posev was, is and remains...”

The most terrible words in this message, and for Shalamov they are simply murderous: “The problematic of “Kolyma Tales” has long been removed by life...”

The organizers of the mass terror of the thirties, forties and early fifties would very much like to close this topic, to silence its surviving victims and witnesses. But this is a page of our history that cannot be torn out, like a leaf from a book of complaints. This page would have been the most tragic in the history of our state if it had not been covered by the even greater tragedy of the Great Patriotic War. And it is very possible that the first tragedy largely provoked the second.

For Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov, who went through all the circles of hell and survived, “Kolyma Stories,” addressed to the world, was his sacred duty as a writer and citizen, was the main work of his life, preserved for this, and given to these stories.

Shalamov could not voluntarily renounce the Kolyma Tales and their problematics. It was tantamount to suicide. His words:

I'm like those fossils

What appear by chance

To deliver to the world intact

Geological mystery.

On September 9, 1972, having said goodbye to Magadan, my wife and I returned to Moscow. I went to V.T. as soon as the opportunity arose. He was the first to talk about the ill-fated letter. He was waiting for a conversation about him and seemed to be preparing himself for it.

He began without any circumstance or approach to the question, almost without a greeting, from the threshold.

Don't think that someone forced me to sign this letter. Life forced me to do this. What do you think: I can live on a seventy-ruble pension? After the stories were published in Posev, the doors of all Moscow editorial offices were closed to me. As soon as I enter any editorial office, I hear: “What do you need, Varlam Tikhonovich, our rubles! You are now a rich man, you get money in foreign currency...” They didn’t believe me that I got nothing but insomnia. You bastards, they let the stories go on tap and take away. If only they had published it as a book! There would be a different conversation... Otherwise, one or two stories. And there is no book, and all the roads here are closed.

“Okay,” I told him, “I understand you.” But what is written there and how is it written? Who will believe that you wrote this?

No one forced me, no one raped me! As I wrote, so I wrote.

Red and white spots appeared on his face. He rushed around the room, opening and closing the window. I tried to calm him down and said that I believed him. I did everything to avoid this topic.

It’s hard to admit that you’ve been raped, it’s hard even to admit it to yourself. And it's hard to live with this thought.

This conversation left both of us - he and I - with a heavy aftertaste.

V.T. did not tell me then that in 1972 she was preparing to leave new book his poems “Moscow Clouds” in the publishing house “ Soviet writer" It was signed for publication on May 29, 1972...

Shalamov really did not enter into any relations with these magazines, there is no doubt about that. By the time the stories were published in Posev, they had long been circulating around the country. And there is nothing surprising in the fact that they also found their way abroad. The world has become small.

It is surprising that Shalamov’s honest, truthful, largely autobiographical Kolyma stories, written with the blood of his heart, were not published at home. It was reasonable and necessary to do this to illuminate the past, so that one could move calmly and confidently into the future. Then there would be no need to spray saliva in the direction of “smelly magazines.” Their mouths would be shut, their “bread” would be taken away. And there was no need to break the spine of an old, sick, tormented and amazingly gifted person.

We tend to kill our heroes before we exalt them.

Meetings in Moscow

After Shalamov arrived from Baragon to us in Magadan in 1953, when he made his first attempt to escape from Kolyma, we did not see him for four years. We met in 1957 in Moscow by chance, not far from the monument to Pushkin. I went out from Tverskoy Boulevard onto Gorky Street, he went down from Gorky Street onto Tverskoy Boulevard. It was late May or early June. The bright sun shamelessly blinded my eyes. A tall, summer-dressed man walked towards me with a light, springy gait. Perhaps I would not have held my gaze on him and walked past if this man had not spread his arms wide and exclaimed in a high, familiar voice: “Bah, what a meeting!” He was fresh, cheerful, joyful and immediately told me that he had just managed to publish an article about Moscow taxi drivers in Evening Moscow. He considered this a great success for himself and was very pleased. He talked about Moscow taxi drivers, about editorial corridors and heavy doors. This is the first thing he told about himself. He said that he lives and is registered in Moscow, that he is married to the writer Olga Sergeevna Neklyudova, and with her and her son Seryozha he occupies a room in a communal apartment on Gogolevsky Boulevard. He said that his first wife (if I’m not mistaken, nee Gudz, the daughter of an old Bolshevik) abandoned him and raised their common daughter Lena to dislike her father.

I met Olga Sergeevna V.T. in Peredelkino, where I stayed for some time, coming from my “one hundred and first kilometer,” as I think, to see Boris Leonidovich Pasternak.

I remember that Lena, V.T.’s daughter, was born in April. I remember because in 1945, on Belichaya, it was in April, he told me very sadly: “Today is my daughter’s birthday.” I found a way to celebrate the occasion, and he and I drank a beaker of rubbing alcohol.

At that time, his wife wrote to him often. It was a difficult, wartime time. The wife’s profile was, frankly, crappy, and her life with the child was very unhappy, very difficult. In one of her letters, she wrote to him something like the following: “...I entered an accounting course. This profession is not very profitable, but it is reliable: with us, we always and everywhere count something.” I don’t know if she had any profession before and, if so, what it was.

According to V.T., his return from Kolyma did not make his wife happy. She met him with extreme hostility and did not accept him. She considered him the direct culprit of her ruined life and managed to instill this in her daughter.

At that time I was passing through Moscow with my wife and daughter. The big northern vacation didn't allow us to save much time. We stayed in Moscow to help my mother, who left the camp as an invalid and was rehabilitated in 1955, in her efforts to return her living space. We stayed at the Severnaya Hotel in Maryina Roshcha.

Varlam really wanted to introduce us to Olga Sergeevna and invited us to his place. We liked Olga Sergeevna: a sweet, modest woman who, apparently, was not very spoiled by life either. It seemed to us that there was harmony in their relationship, and we were happy for Varlam. A few days later, Varlam and O.S. came to our hotel. I introduced them to my mother...

Since that meeting in 1957, regular correspondence has been established between us. And every time I came to Moscow, Varlam and I met.

Even before 1960, Varlam and Olga Sergeevna moved from Gogolevsky Boulevard to house 10 on Khoroshevskoye Shosse, where they received two rooms in a communal apartment: one of medium size, and the second very small. But Sergei now had his own angle to general joy and satisfaction.

In 1960, I graduated from the All-Union Correspondence Polytechnic Institute and lived in Moscow for more than a year, passing my final exams, coursework and diploma projects. During this period, we saw Varlam often - both at his place in Khoroshevka and at my place in Novogireevo. I was then living with my mother, who, after much hassle, got a room in a two-room apartment. Later, after my defense and return to Magadan, Varlam visited my mother without me and corresponded with her when she went to Lipetsk to visit her daughter, my sister.

In the same 1960 or early 1961, I somehow found a man at Shalamov’s who was about to leave.

Do you know who it was? - Varlam said, closing the door behind him. “Sculptor,” and said the name. - Wants to do sculptural portrait Solzhenitsyn. So, he came to ask me for mediation, for protection, for recommendations.

V. T.’s acquaintance with Solzhenitsyn was extremely flattering. He didn't hide it. Not long before, he visited Solzhenitsyn in Ryazan. He was received with restraint, but favorably. V.T. introduced him to “Kolyma Tales”. This meeting, this acquaintance inspired V.T., helped his self-affirmation, strengthened the ground under him. Solzhenitsyn's authority for V.T. was great at that time. Shalamov was impressed by both Solzhenitsyn’s civic position and his writing skills.

In 1966, while in Moscow, I chose a free hour and called V.T.

Vali, come! - he said. “Just quickly.”

“Here,” he said when I arrived, “he was going to the Soviet Writer publishing house today.” I want to leave it there. Let them not print, to hell with them, but let them have it.

On the table lay two typewritten sets of “Kolyma Tales”.

I already knew many of his Kolyma stories; about two dozen were given to me by him. Knew when and how some of them were written. But I wanted to see together everything he selected for the publishing house.

Okay,” he said, “I’ll give you a second copy for a day.” I have nothing left but drafts. Day and night are at your disposal. I can't put it off any longer. And this is a gift for you, the story “Fire and Water.” - He handed me two school notebooks.

V.T. lived on Khoroshevskoe Highway in a cramped room, in a noisy apartment. And by this time we had an empty two-room apartment in Moscow. I said why don’t he put a table and chair there, he could work in peace. He liked this idea.

Most of the residents of our cooperative building (the Severyanin housing cooperative) have already moved to Moscow from Kolyma, including the board of the housing cooperative. All of them were very jealous and sensitive towards those who still remained in the North. The general meeting made a decision prohibiting renting, sharing, or simply letting anyone into empty apartments in the absence of the owners. All this was explained to me by the board when I came to notify that I was giving the key to the apartment to V.T. Shalamov, my friend, poet and journalist, who lives and is registered in Moscow and is waiting for his apartment conditions to improve. Despite the protest of the board, I left a written statement addressed to the chairman of the housing cooperative. I have kept this statement with the reasoning for the refusal and the signature of the chairman. Considering the refusal illegal, I turned to the head of the passport office of the 12th police department, Major Zakharov. Zakharov said that the issue I am addressing is being decided by the general meeting of shareholders of the housing cooperative and is beyond its competence.

This time I could not help Varlam even in such a trivial matter. It was summer. Collect general meeting, but on one issue it was not possible. I returned to Magadan. And the apartment stood empty for another six years until we paid off the debts for its purchase.

In the sixties, Varlam began to sharply lose his hearing, and coordination of movements was impaired. He was undergoing examination at the Botkin hospital. A diagnosis was made: Minière's disease and sclerotic changes in the vestibular apparatus. There were cases when V.T. lost his balance and fell. Several times on the subway he was picked up and sent to the sobering center. Later, he obtained a stamped doctor’s certificate, and it made his life easier.

V.T.’s hearing got worse and worse, and by the mid-seventies he stopped answering the phone. Communication and conversation cost him a lot of nervous tension. This affected his mood and character. His character became difficult. V.T. became withdrawn, suspicious, distrustful and therefore uncommunicative. Meetings, conversations, contacts, which could not be avoided, required enormous efforts on his part and exhausted him, putting him out of balance for a long time.

In his last lonely years of life, household chores, self-care heavy load lay on him, emptying him internally, distracting him from his desk.

V.T.'s sleep was disturbed. He could no longer sleep without sleeping pills. His choice settled on Nembutal - the cheapest drug, but sold strictly according to a doctor’s prescription, with two seals, triangular and round. The validity of the prescription was limited to ten days. I believe that he developed an addiction to this drug, and he was forced to increase the dose. Getting Nembutal also took up his time and energy. At his request, even before our return from Magadan to Moscow, we sent him Nembutal itself and undated prescriptions.

The vigorous clerical activity of that time penetrated into all periods of life, making no exception to medicine. Doctors were required to have personal seals. Along with the seal medical institution the doctor was obliged to put his personal stamp. The forms of prescription forms changed frequently. If earlier the doctor received prescription forms with a triangular stamp of the clinic, then later the patient himself had to go from the doctor to the sick leave window to put a second stamp. The doctor often forgot to tell the patient about this. The pharmacy did not dispense medications. The patient was forced to go or go to his clinic again. This style still exists today.

My wife, a surgeon by profession, in Magadan for the last few years before retiring, worked in a physical education clinic, where they do not prescribe medications, and providing V.T. with Nembutal also became a difficult problem for us. Varlam was nervous and wrote irritated letters. This sad correspondence has been preserved. When we moved to Moscow, and my wife no longer worked in Moscow, the problem of prescriptions became even more complicated.

Good manners lessons

At the end of the sixties I was in Moscow four times. And, of course, on every visit I wanted to see Varlam Tikhonovich. Once from the Likhachev Automobile Plant, where I came to exchange experiences, I drove to V.T. on Khoroshevka. He greeted me warmly, but expressed regret that he could not give me much time, since he had to be at the publishing house in an hour. We exchanged our main news while he got dressed and got ready. Together we walked to the bus stop and parted ways. different sides. Saying goodbye, V.T. told me:

Call me when you can come so you can be sure to find me at home. Call, Boris, and we will agree.

Getting on the bus, I began to replay in my memory the fresh impressions of our meeting. Suddenly I remembered: on my last visit to Moscow, our first meeting with V.T. was very similar to today. I thought about the coincidence, but didn't dwell on it for long.

In the year seventy-two or three (at that time V.T. was already living on Vasilyevskaya Street, and we returned to Moscow), being somewhere very close to his house, I decided to drop in and visit him. V.T. opened the door and said, throwing up his hands, that he could not receive me now, since he had a visitor with whom he would have a long and difficult business conversation. He asked to be excused and insisted:

You come, I'm always glad to see you. But you call, please call, Boris.

I went outside a little confused and embarrassed. I tried to imagine myself in his place, how I would return him from the threshold of my house. It seemed impossible to me then.

I remembered 1953, the end of winter, late evening, a knock on the door and on the threshold Varlam, with whom we had not seen or communicated since November 1945, more than seven years.

“I’m from Oymyakon,” Varlam said. - I want to bother about leaving Kolyma. I want to settle some matters. I need to stay in Magadan for ten days.

We then lived next to the bus station on Proletarskaya Street in a dormitory for medical workers, where the doors of twenty-four rooms opened onto a long and dark corridor. Our room served us as a bedroom, a nursery, a kitchen, and a dining room. We lived there with my wife and three-year-old daughter, who was then ill, and hired a nanny for her, a Western Ukrainian who had served a long sentence in camps for her religious beliefs. At the end of her term, she was left in Magadan in a special settlement, like other evangelists. Lena Kibich lived with us.

For me and my wife, Varlam’s unexpected appearance did not cause any doubt or confusion for a second. We became even more dense and began to share shelter and bread with him.

Now I thought that Shalamov could write about his arrival in advance or give a telegram. We would come up with something more convenient for all of us. Then such a thought did not occur to him or to us.

Varlam lived with us for two weeks. He was refused permission to leave. He returned to his taiga medical post on the border with Yakutia, where he worked as a paramedic after his release from the camp.

Now that I write about it, I understand it very much. I've understood it for a long time. Now I am older than Varlam was in the sixties. Both my wife and I are not very healthy. Thirty-two and thirty-five years in Kolyma were not in vain for us. Unexpected guests now make us very uncomfortable. When we open the door to an unexpected knock and see on the threshold very distant relatives who climbed to the seventh floor on foot, despite a working elevator, or long-time acquaintances who arrived in Moscow towards the end of the month or quarter, we involuntarily say the words: “What are you, dear, didn’t you write about your intention to come, didn’t you call? They might not have found us at home...” Even the arrival of neighbors without warning makes it difficult for us, often finds us out of shape and sometimes makes us angry. This is despite all the goodwill towards people.

And so - a comrade in the camp, where everyone was naked to the limit, the person with whom you shared bread and gruel, rolled one cigarette for two... Warning about the arrival, coordinating meetings - it did not occur to me! It didn't come for a long time.

Now I often remember Varlam and his lessons in good manners, or more precisely, the simplest norms of hostel life. I understand his impatience, his rightness.

Before, in our other life, the starting points were different.

Fly

When Varlam Tikhonovich separated from Olga Sergeevna, but still remained under the same roof with her, he swapped places with Seryozha: Seryozha moved into his mother’s room, and V. T. occupied the small room. Under the narrow window, in a plywood box on the nightstand next to Varlam, she settled black sleek cat with smart green eyes. He called her Fly. The fly led a free, independent lifestyle. I did all my natural recovery on the street, leaving the house and returning through the open window. And she gave birth to kittens in a box.

V.T. was very attached to Mukha. For a long time winter evenings, when he was sitting at his desk, and the Fly was lying on his lap, free hand he kneaded her soft, mobile scruff and listened to her peaceful cat purring - a symbol of freedom and home, which, although not your fortress, is not a cell or a barracks, in any case.

In the summer of 1966, Mucha suddenly disappeared. V.T., without losing hope, looked for her throughout the area. On the third or fourth day he found her body. Near the house where V.T. lived, they opened a trench and changed the pipes. In this trench he found Mukha with a broken head. This made him insane. He went on a rampage and attacked the repair workers, young, healthy men. They looked at him with great surprise, like a cat looks at a mouse rushing at it, and tried to calm him down. The whole block was brought to its feet.

I don’t think I’m exaggerating if I say that this was one of his biggest losses.

chipped lyre,

Cat's cradle -

This is my apartment

Schiller gap.

Here is our honor and place

In the world of people and animals

Let's protect together

With my black cat.

For a cat - a plywood box.

I have a wobbly table

Shreds of rustling poems

The floor was covered with snow.

A cat named Mukha

Sharpens pencils.

All - hearing strain

In the dark silence of the apartment.

V.T. buried Mukha and remained in a dejected, depressed state for a long time.

I once photographed Varlam Tikhonovich with Mukha on my lap. In the photo, his face radiates peace and tranquility. Varlam called this photograph his favorite of all the photographs of post-camp life. By the way, this photo with Mucha had duplicates. In one of them, Mukha looked like he had double eyes. V.T. was terribly intrigued by this. He could not understand how this could happen. But this misunderstanding seemed funny to me, given his versatility and gigantic erudition. I explained to him that when shooting in a dimly lit room, I was forced to increase the exposure and shutter speed. Reacting to the click of the device, the cat blinked, and the device fixed her eyes in two positions. Varlam listened with disbelief, and it seemed to me that he was dissatisfied with the answer...

I photographed V.T. many times both at his request and at my own request. When his book of poems “Road and Fate” was being prepared for publication (I consider this collection one of the best), he asked to film it for the publishing house. It was cold. Varlam was wearing a coat and a hat with earflaps with dangling ribbons. Courageous, democratic appearance in this photo. V.T. gave it to the publishing house. Unfortunately, well-intentioned retouching has smoothed out the harsh features. I compare the original with the portrait on the dust jacket and see how much has been lost.

As for the Fly, as for the Cat, she has always been for Varlam a symbol of freedom and home, the antipode “ dead house", where hungry, feral people ate the eternal friends of their hearth - dogs and cats.

I first learned from Shalamov that the Spartak banner featured a cat’s head as a symbol of love of freedom and independence.

Cedar elfin wood

Cedar, or dwarf cedar, is a bushy plant with powerful tree-like branches reaching a thickness of ten to fifteen centimeters. Its branches are covered with long dark green needles. In summer, the branches of this plant stand almost vertically, directing their lush needles towards the not very hot Kolyma sun. The dwarf branch is generously strewn with small cones, also filled with small but tasty real pine nuts. This is what cedar is like in summer. With the onset of winter, it lowers its branches to the ground and presses against it. The northern snows cover it with a thick coat and protect it from the severe Kolyma frosts until spring. And with the first rays of spring it breaks through its snow cover. All winter it creeps along the ground. That is why cedar is called dwarf pine.

There is not such a large gap between the spring sky and the autumn sky above our land. And therefore, as one would expect, the not very tall, not very showy, not very lush northern flora is in a hurry, in a hurry to bloom, flourish, bear fruit. Trees are in a hurry, shrubs are in a hurry, flowers and herbs are in a hurry, lichens and mosses are in a hurry, everyone is in a hurry to meet the deadlines allotted to them by nature.

A great lover of life, the elfin tree pressed tightly to the ground. The snow has fallen. The gray smoke from the chimney of the Magadan bakery changed direction - it reached towards the bay. Summer is over.

How they are greeted in Kolyma New Year? With a Christmas tree, of course! But spruce does not grow in Kolyma. The Kolyma “Christmas tree” is made like this: a larch of the required size is cut down, the branches are chopped off, the trunk is drilled, and dwarf branches are inserted into the holes. And the miracle tree is placed in the cross. Lush, green, fragrant, filling the room with the tart smell of warm resin, christmas tree- great joy for children and adults.

Kolyma residents who returned to the “mainland” cannot get used to a real Christmas tree; they fondly remember the composite Kolyma “Christmas tree”.

Shalamov has written a lot about dwarf cedar in poetry and prose. I’ll tell you about one episode that brought to life two works by Varlam Shalamov - prosaic and poetic - a story and a poem.

IN flora In Kolyma, two symbolic plants are dwarf cedar and larch. It seems to me that dwarf cedar is more symbolic.

On New Year's Day 1964, I sent Varlam Tikhonovich by air parcel from Magadan to Moscow several freshly cut dwarf branches. He guessed to put the elfin wood in the water. Stlanik lived in the house for a long time, filling the home with the smell of resin and taiga. In a letter dated January 8, 1964, V.T. wrote:

“Dear Boris, the severe flu does not give me the opportunity to thank you in a proper way for your excellent gift. The most amazing thing is that the dwarf dwarf tree turned out to be an unprecedented beast for Muscovites, Saratov residents, and Vologda residents. They smelled it, and most importantly they said: “It smells like a Christmas tree.” And dwarf dwarf smells not like a Christmas tree, but like pine needles in its generic meaning, where there is pine, spruce, and juniper.”

A prose work inspired by this New Year's gift, - story. It was dedicated to Nina Vladimirovna and me. It is appropriate to say here that Nina Vladimirovna Savoeva, the former chief physician of the hospital on Belichaya, became my wife in 1946, a year after my release.

When Varlam Tikhonovich recounted the content of the future story he had thought out, I did not agree with some of its provisions and details. I asked them to remove them and not to mention our names. He heeded my wishes. And a story was born that we now know as “The Resurrection of the Larch.”

I am not medicinal herbs,

I keep it in the table

I don't touch them for fun

A hundred times a day.

I keep amulets

Within Moscow.

Folk magic items -

Pieces of grass.

On your long journey,

On your childish journey

I took it to Moscow -

Like that Prince of Polovtsian

Emshan-grass, -

I take a branch of dwarf with me

Brought here

To control your destiny

From the kingdom of ice.

So sometimes an insignificant occasion evokes in the imagination of a master artistic image, gives birth to an idea, which, taking flesh, begins long life like a work of art.

Time

In 1961, the publishing house “Soviet Writer” published the first book of Shalamov’s poems, “Flint,” in a circulation of two thousand copies. Varlam sent it to us with the following inscription:

“To Nina Vladimirovna and Boris with respect, love and deepest gratitude. Belichya - Yagodny - Left Bank - Magadan - Moscow. May 14, 1961. V. Shalamov."

My wife and I really enjoyed this book and read it to friends and acquaintances. We were proud of Varlam.

In 1964, the second book of poems, “The Rustle of Leaves,” was published with a circulation ten times larger. Varlam sent it. I wanted the entire Kolyma camp to know that a person who has gone through all its millstones has not lost the ability to think high and deep feeling. I knew that not a single newspaper would publish what I would like and could tell about Shalamov, but I really wanted to let people know about him. I wrote a review, naming both books, and suggested them to Magadan Pravda. It was published. I sent several copies to Varlama in Moscow. He asked to send as many more issues of this newspaper as possible.

A small response to “The Rustle of Leaves” by Vera Inber in “Literature” and mine in “Magadan Pravda” - that was all that appeared in print.

In 1967, V.T. published his third book of poems, “Road and Fate,” like the previous ones, in the publishing house “Soviet Writer.” Every three years - a book of poems. Stability, regularity, thoroughness. Mature, wise poems are the fruits of thought, feeling, and extraordinary life experience.

After the second book, people with names worthy of respect offered him their recommendations to the Writers' Union. V.T. himself told me about the proposal of L.I. Timofeev, a literary critic, corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In 1968, Boris Abramovich Slutsky told me that he also offered his recommendation to Shalamov. But V.T. did not want to join the joint venture then. He explained this to me by saying that he couldn’t afford to put his signature on the declaration of this union; he considered it impossible to take upon himself dubious obligations, as it seemed to him. This was his position at that time.

But time, to put it pompously, is impassive, and its effect on us is inevitable and destructive. Both age and the whole crazy, inaccessible to the understanding of a normal person, Shalamov’s terrible prison-camp odyssey manifested itself more and more noticeably.

Once I stopped by Khoroshevskoye, 10. Varlam Tikhonovich was not at home, Olga Sergeevna greeted me cordially, as always. It seemed to me that she was glad of my arrival. I was the person who knew their relationship with V.T. from the very beginning. I turned out to be the one in front of whom she could throw out all her melancholy, bitterness and disappointment.

The flowers she placed on the table made her sadder, more melancholy. We sat opposite each other. She spoke, I listened. From her story, I understood that she and Varlam are no longer husband and wife, although they continue to live under the same roof. His character became intolerable. He is suspicious, always irritated, intolerant of everyone and everything that contradicts his ideas and desires. He terrorizes the saleswomen of stores in the surrounding area: he rehangs the products, carefully counts the change, writes complaints to all authorities. Closed, embittered, rude.

SHALAMOV Varlam SHALAMOV Varlam (poet, writer: “Kolyma Stories”, etc.; died on January 17, 1982 at the age of 75). Shalamov was 21 years old when he was arrested in February 1929 for distributing anti-Stalin leaflets and sent to the Gulag. He stayed there for two years. However

V.T. Shalamov - N.Ya. Mandelstam Moscow, June 29, 1965 Dear Nadezhda Yakovlevna, on the very night when I finished reading your manuscript, I wrote a long letter about it to Natalya Ivanovna, caused by my always-present need for immediate and, moreover, written “return.”

V.T. Shalamov - N.Ya. Mandelstam Moscow, July 21, 1965 Dear Nadezhda Yakovlevna! I wrote after you so as not to interrupt the conversation, but I didn’t think to write down the Vereisky address when I was in Lavrushinsky, and my damned deafness delayed my telephone searches for more than a day. A

Marchenko Anatoly Tikhonovich From Tarusa to Chuna From the author When I left the camp in 1966, I believed that writing and making public what I witnessed was my civic duty. This is how the book “My Testimonies” appeared. Then I decided to try my hand at the artistic genre.

Varlam Shalamov and Boris Pasternak: on the history of one poem The first to whom Varlam Shalamov turned with his poems, back from Kolyma, and the first to whom he came on November 13, 1953, the day after his arrival in Moscow after eighteen years of camps and exile , was Boris

GLUKHOV Ivan Tikhonovich Ivan Tikhonovich Glukhov was born in 1912 in the village of Kuznetsky, Argayash district, Chelyabinsk region, into a peasant family. Russian. Before being drafted into the army, he worked at the Karabash copper smelter as a crusher. Since August 1941 in the ranks of the Soviet Army.

KAZANTSEV Vasily Tikhonovich Vasily Tikhonovich Kazantsev was born in 1920 in the village of Sugoyak, Krasnoarmeysky district, Chelyabinsk region, into a peasant family. Russian. He worked as a tractor driver on his native collective farm. In 1940 he was drafted into the Soviet Army. From the first days of the Great

Volynkin Ilya Tikhonovich Born in 1908 in the village of Upertovka, Bogoroditsky district, Tula region, into a peasant family. After graduating from a rural school, he worked on his father’s farm, and from 1923 to 1930 as a laborer at the Bogoroditsky Agricultural Technical School. In 1934 he graduated from Bogoroditsky

Polukarov Nikolai Tikhonovich Born in 1921 in the village of Bobrovka, Venevsky district, Tula region, into a peasant family. Until 1937 he lived and studied in the village. After completing two courses at the Stalinogorsk Chemical Technical School, he entered the Taganrog Military Aviation Pilot School.

June 18. Varlam Shalamov was born (1907) Eligible Probably Russian literature - which in this sense is difficult to surprise - did not know more terrible biography: Varlam Shalamov was first arrested in 1929 for distributing Lenin’s “Letter to the Congress”; he served three years in prison.

Varlam Shalamov was born in Vologda into the family of priest Tikhon Nikolaevich Shalamov. He received his secondary education at the Vologda gymnasium. At the age of 17, he left his hometown and went to Moscow. In the capital, the young man first got a job as a tanner at a tannery in Setun, and in 1926 he entered Moscow State University at the Faculty of Soviet Law. The independently thinking young man, like all people with such a character, had a hard time. Quite rightly fearing the Stalinist regime and what it might entail, Varlam Shalamov began distributing V. I. Lenin’s “Letter to the Congress.” For this, the young man was arrested and sentenced to three years in prison. Having fully served his prison term, the aspiring writer returned to Moscow, where he continued literary activity: worked in small trade union magazines. In 1936, one of his first stories, “The Three Deaths of Doctor Austino,” was published in the magazine “October.” The writer's love of freedom, read between the lines of his works, haunted the authorities, and in January 1937 he was arrested again. Now Shalamov has been sentenced to five years in the camps. Freed, he began writing again. But his stay at liberty did not last long: after all, he attracted the closest attention of the relevant authorities. And after the writer called Bunin a Russian classic in 1943, he was sentenced to another ten years. In total, Varlam Tikhonovich spent 17 years in the camps, and most of this time in Kolyma, in the harshest conditions of the North. The prisoners, exhausted and suffering from illness, worked in the gold mines even in forty-degree frosts. In 1951, Varlam Shalamov was released, but was not allowed to leave Kolyma immediately: he had to work as a paramedic for another three years. Finally, he settled in the Kalinin region, and after rehabilitation in 1956 he moved to Moscow. Immediately upon returning from prison, the series “Kolyma Stories” was born, which the writer himself called “an artistic study of a terrible reality.” Work on them continued from 1954 to 1973. The works created during this period were divided by the author into six books: “Kolyma Tales”, “Left Bank”, “Shovel Artist”, “Sketches of the Underworld”, “Resurrection of Larch” and “The Glove, or KR-2”. Shalamov’s prose is based on the terrible experience of the camps: numerous deaths, the pangs of hunger and cold, endless humiliation. Unlike Solzhenitsyn, who argued that such an experience can be positive, ennobling, Varlam Tikhonovich is convinced of the opposite: he argues that the camp turns a person into an animal, into a downtrodden, despicable creature. In the story "Dry Rations" a prisoner who, due to illness, was transferred to more light work, cuts off his fingers - just so that he is not returned to the mine. The writer is trying to show that moral and physical strength people are not limitless. In his opinion, one of the main characteristics of the camp is molestation. Dehumanization, says Shalamov, begins precisely with physical torment - this idea runs like a red thread through his stories. The consequences of extreme conditions of a person turn him into a beast-like creature. The writer superbly shows how camp conditions affect different people: creatures with a low soul sink even more, but freedom-loving ones do not lose their presence of mind. In the story "Shock Therapy" the central image is of a fanatical doctor, a former prisoner, who makes every effort and knowledge in medicine to expose the prisoner, who, in his opinion, is a malingerer. At the same time, he is absolutely indifferent to future fate unfortunate man, he is pleased to demonstrate his professional qualifications. A completely different character in spirit is depicted in the story " Last Stand Major Pugachev." It is about a prisoner who gathers around him freedom-loving people like him and dies while trying to escape. Another theme of Shalamov’s work is the idea of ​​the camp being similar to the rest of the world. "Camp ideas only repeat the ideas of will transmitted by order of the authorities. .. The camp reflects not only the struggle of political cliques replacing each other in power, but the culture of these people, their secret aspirations, tastes, habits, suppressed desires." Unfortunately, during his lifetime the writer was not destined to publish these works in his homeland. Even in During the Khrushchev thaw, they were too bold to be published. But since 1966, Shalamov’s stories began to appear in emigrant publications. In May 1979, the writer himself moved to a nursing home, from where in January 1982 he was forcibly sent to a boarding school for psychochronic patients. to his last exile. But he failed to reach his destination: the writer caught a cold and dies on the way. “Kolyma Stories” was first published in our country only five years after the author’s death, in 1987.