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First, Kolyma. Until recently, I didn't know what or where it is. Kolyma is a vast region in the far northeast of Siberia. Much of it is taken up by the basin of the Kolyma River, which flows north into the Arctic Ocean, and part of it is above the Arctic Circle. The region is notoriously frigid, with temperatures as low as sixty degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Kolyma also is an area of huge mineral resources, most notably gold. In the 1850's Tsarist Russia began using convicts to mine that gold. Under Stalin, mining Kolyma gold with prisoners became a booming growth industry. The forced-labor camps of Kolyma were the worst, the most lethal, of the camps within the Gulag Archipelago. It is estimated that between two and three million of those sent to Kolyma died there.
Next, Varlam Shalamov. From 1937 to 1951, Shalamov (b. 1907, d. 1982) was a political prisoner in Kolyma facilities, including gold mines, logging camps, and a hospital, where he worked as an orderly (a fortuitous assignment that saved his life). After his release, he began writing stories about his experiences in Kolyma. They became valued underground samizdat literature within Soviet Russia. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, younger by eleven years, admired Shalamov and asked him to collaborate on his "Gulag Archipelago", but Shalamov declined, citing old age and declining energy.
Finally, KOLYMA TALES, which is the umbrella name for the five books of stories and essays about Kolyma that Shalamov wrote. All five are included in this edition, which was edited and translated by John Glad, who had a lot to do with bringing Shalamov to the attention of the West. Shalamov's stories are much different in tone and style than Solzhenitsyn's work, so different that it is difficult to conceive how they could have successfully collaborated as co-authors. Shalamov's tales are concise, with very little editorializing or lecturing. They are matter-of-fact, seldom outwardly condemnatory or judgmental. They have been said to be in the tradition and style of Chekhov. Based almost entirely on things that Shalamov personally experienced or that he heard about during his time in the Gulag, the Kolyma tales (unfortunately) are less fictitious than all-too-many so-called books of non-fiction. If you want to know what the Gulag was like, Shalamov is as good a guide as Solzhenitsyn.
Here is a representative sampling of episodes in KOLYMA TALES: a team of prisoners pulling a stone-filled sled up an inclined mine floor by leaning into a horse collar -- a means used to construct the monuments of Ancient Egypt; collecting dwarf cedar needles in the Siberian taiga to make an extract that supposedly cured scurvy (it didn't); the "last man out" method of efficiently clearing prisoners from their barracks on the top of a steep hill in order to go to work in the mine at the bottom -- the guards would seize the last man out the door by the hands and feet and throw him down the icy hill; and the use of American "Lend-Lease" supplies during World War II, most notably bulldozers to bury frozen convict corpses in mass graves.
My only complaint is the minor amount of repetition that results from grouping together what Shalamov originally issued in five separate books. Still, there are certain themes or leitmotifs that merit repeating: the absurdity, stupidity, and cruelty of the Soviet bureaucracy; the vast gulf between the criminals and the political prisoners; the twisted configurations that the hands and fingers of Kolyma prisoners assumed after months curled around the handles of shovels and pickaxes in sub-zero weather; and the saying I have used for the title of this review, a phrase that embodies the stoicism that prisoners learned to assume.
"All human emotions -- love, friendship, envy, concern for one's fellow man, compassion, longing for fame, honesty -- had left us with the flesh that had melted from our bodies during their long fasts. * * * We had no pride, vanity, or ambition, and jealousy and passion seemed as alien to us as Mars, and trivial in addition. It was much more important to learn to button your pants in the frost. Grown men cried if they weren't able to do that. We understood that death was no worse than life, and we feared neither. We were overwhelmed by indifference."
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