The enormous talent of so many legendary Russian writers is undeniable, many of whom are still unknown in the West and Russia itself due to censorship and cancellation for political reasons during the Soviet dictatorship.
Unfortunately, a country with a continuous history of totalitarianism, which remains to this day, as we can attest after the recent invasion of Ukraine, has consistently crushed and suppressed the cultural manifestations of its people.
First arrested in 1929 for distributing copies of Lenin's letter addressed to members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party to warn them against Stalin's monopolistic tendencies.
Considered a socially dangerous element, Varlan Shalamov was sentenced for counter-revolutionary activity at this first moment to only three years in prison, given that the level of Stalinist terror had not yet reached its peak; otherwise, he would undoubtedly have been sentenced to death.
His autobiographical tales recount the stark reality of the gulag. The horrors of Stalin's time are described directly, accurately, and without flourishes, revealing all their terrifying and shocking brutality.
Shalamov defines his literature as a “… document of memory, emotionally marked with soul and blood, where everything is documented… a slap in the face of Stalinism…”
An epic that undoubtedly represents the most important testimony of a tragedy and a phenomenon unique in Russian literature.
With each story we read, an atmosphere thickens and allows us to experience, albeit on a much less painful level, all the indifference to life and death generated by the need to survive in extreme conditions, save energy and keep fighting when everything else but it should make you give up.
Book: Contos de Kolimá – Valaram Chalamóv (Kolyma Tales by Varlan Shalamov).
Portuguese edition.
Publishing Company: Editora34
Translation by Denise Sales and Elena Vasilevich.
Presentation by Boris Schnaiderman Foreword by Irina P. Sirotínskaia.
Published with the support of the Russian Translation Institute.
East Collection.
Brazil.
Cover image: Kolyma, Siberia. – Photograph from the album Gulag by Tomasz Kizny.,
Images: Valaram Chalamov arrested in 1929 and book cover: Editora34.
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