Varlam Shalamov, Kolymskie rasskazy [The Kolyma Tales]

Sarah J. Young (University College London)

Ed. by Neil Cornwell, University of Bristol
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 2.2.2.00: Post-1917 Writing and Culture in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, 1917-present.
Vol. editors: Neil Cornwell (University of Bristol), Roman Koropeckyj (University of California, Los Angeles), Andrei Rogatchevski (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1954 - 1973

Places

Russia (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Story Collection

Resources

Kolymskie rasskazy [Kolyma Tales] is the name given to six collections of short stories by Varlam Shalamov (1907-1982), depicting the experiences of convicts in the Soviet labour camps of the far North East of Siberia, notorious for being the most brutal part of the Gulag in the Stalin era. Shalamov, first imprisoned in 1929 for attempting to publish Lenin’s Testament, was re-arrested as a Trotskyite Counter-Revolutionary in 1937 and spent a total of 14 years in the camps and mines of Kolyma. The stories – terse miniatures that insistently depict the cruelty of the regime in Kolyma and the loss of humanity of its inhabitants – were written between 1954, following Shalamov’s final release from exile in the region, and the 1…

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1572 words

Citation: Young, Sarah J.. "Kolymskie rasskazy". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 10 February 2011 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=24332, accessed 21 November 2024.]

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