Shalamov, the memory of the Gulag

It is difficult to comment on a work as terrible and as admirable as that of Chalamov. Each sentence weighs so insupportable weight of grief that would just be quiet and meditate.

How, in the abomination of the communist prison, such a masterpiece he has been born? Perhaps because Chalamov one of the greatest writers and the greatest poets and also because his spirit was stronger than barbarism and death.

Kolyma. Who knows the name? Few people, I think. Yet we should know as we know Kolyma Auschwitz. But there are crimes, such as those of the Soviet state, which remain unpunished, denied, buried, ignored.

There was no road to reach the Kolyma Mountains in the far northeast of Siberia, where the temperature drops to minus sixty degrees in winter. For convicts, after the terrible journey, the mine, the deck, cold, hunger, beatings, bullets watchmen death.

The stories are Chalamov memory from this hell, the voice of the martyrs, and they will haunt you forever.

Twenty-two years of camp and Shalamov, the survivor, has kept its soul intact. Night of the gulag, his word has come down to us. And he gave us one of the greatest works of literature.

If you believe in the "duty of memory" you will read stories from Kolyma.

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