In late fall of 1987 I met with Sergey Zalygin, editor-in-chief of Russia’s most renowned magazine, Novy mir. Zalygin spoke with great optimism about reform in the Soviet Union. I countered that Kolyma Tales still could not be published. He seemed genuinely intrigued by my comment and promised to give the matter serious consideration; before a year had passed he brought out a selection of the Kolyma Tales in his magazine.
In 1989, for the first time in sixteen years, I was issued a visa to visit the Soviet Union. As I crossed a street, using one of Moscow’s broad underground passageways, I saw a long line of people queuing up. Since consumer goods are scarce in today’s Russia and queues are a part of life, I was about to walk past without taking any notice until I saw that it was not oranges or shampoo being sold but… Kolyma Tales. The man standing at the head of the line purchased three copies. The woman standing behind him bought six.
I wish to express my deep gratitude to Abraham Brumberg, Diana Glad, Leonard Meyers, Karen McDermott, Cynthia Rosenberger, Emily Tall and Josephine Woll for their help in preparing this volume.
I owe a special debt to the very talented Susan Ashe for her numerous suggestions on style.
In April 1990 Iraida Sirotinskaya, Shalamov’s heir, arrived to visit Washington and provided me with much of the autobiographical information provided here.
The work on the book was made possible in part through support from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent federal agency.
John Glad
Washington, DC
Kolyma Tales
Through the Snow
How is a road beaten down through the virgin snow? One person walks ahead, sweating, swearing, and barely moving his feet. He keeps getting stuck in the loose, deep snow. He goes far ahead, marking his path with uneven black pits. When he tires, he lies down on the snow, lights a home-made cigarette, and the tobacco smoke hangs suspended above the white, gleaming snow like a blue cloud. The man moves on, but the cloud remains hovering above the spot where he rested, for the air is motionless. Roads are always beaten down on days like these – so that the wind won’t sweep away this labor of man. The man himself selects points in the snow’s infinity to orient himself – a cliff, a tall tree. He steers his body through the snow in the same fashion that a helmsman steers a riverboat from one cape to another.
Five or six persons follow shoulder-to-shoulder along the narrow, wavering track of the first man. They walk beside his path but not along it. When they reach a predetermined spot, they turn back and tramp down the clean virgin snow which has not yet felt the foot of man. The road is tramped down. It can be used by people, sleighs, tractors. If they were to walk directly behind the first man, the second group would make a clearly defined but barely passable narrow path, and not a road. The first man has the hardest task, and when he is exhausted, another man from the group of five takes his place. Each of them – even the smallest and weakest – must beat down a section of virgin snow, and not simply follow in another’s footsteps. Later will come tractors and horses driven by readers, instead of authors and poets.
On Tick
They were playing cards on Naumov’s berth in the barracks for the mine’s horse-drivers. The overseer on duty never looked into that barracks, since he considered that his main duty was to keep an eye on prisoners convicted according to Article 58 of the Criminal Code – political prisoners. In a word, the horse-drivers’ barracks was the safest place to be, and every night the criminal element in the camp gathered there to play cards.
In a corner of the barracks on the lower cots quilts of various colors were spread. To the corner post was wired a burning kolymka – a home-made lamp that worked on gas fumes. Three or four open-ended copper tubes were soldered to the lid of a tin can. It was a very simple device. When hot coals were placed on the lid, the gas heated up and fumes rose along the pipes, burning at the pipe ends when lit by a match.
On the blankets lay a dirty feather pillow and on either side of it the players sat, their legs tucked under them. A new deck of cards lay on the pillow. These were not ordinary cards, but a home-made prison deck made with amazing deftness by the local wizards. They needed only paper, a piece of bread (chewed and pressed through a rag, it produced starch to glue the sheets together), an indelible pencil stub, and a knife (to cut stencils for the card suits and the cards themselves).
Today’s cards were cut from a book by Victor Hugo; someone had forgotten the book the day before in the office. It had heavy thick paper, so there was no need to glue sheets together.
A dirty hand with the slender white fingers of a non-working man was patting the deck on the pillow. The nail of the little finger was of unusual length – a fashion among the criminals just like their gold, that is, bronze crowns put on completely healthy teeth. As for the fingernails, nail polish would unquestionably have become popular in the ‘criminal world’ if it were possible to obtain polish in prison circumstances.
The owner of the deck was running his left hand through his sticky, dirty, light-colored hair, which was meticulously cut with a square back. Everything in his face – the low unwrinkled forehead, yellow bushy brows, and pursed lips – provided him with the impression valued most in a thief: inconspicuousness. He had the kind of face no one remembered. One had but to glance at him to forget his every feature and not recognize him at the next meeting. This was Seva, a famous expert on such classic card games as Terz, Stoss, and Bura, the inspired interpreter of a thousand card rules to be rigidly followed. It was said of Seva that he was a ‘great performer’, that is, he could demonstrate the dexterity of a card-sharp. Of course, he was a card-sharp, since an honest thief’s game is a game of deceit: watch your partner – that’s your right; know how to cheat; know how to talk your way out of a dubious loss.
They always played in pairs – one on one. None of the experts would lower himself to participate in group games such as Twenty-One. Seva’s partner was Naumov, the brigade leader of the horse-drivers. He was older than his partner (but then, just how old was Seva? Twenty? Thirty? Forty?). Naumov had black hair and deep-set black eyes that gave the impression of a martyr. If I hadn’t known he was a railroad thief from the Kuban region I would have taken him for a member of the religious sect God Knows that had been cropping up for decades in the camps. This impression was deepened by the lead cross that hung from a cord around Naumov’s neck – the collar of his shirt was unbuttoned. Nothing blasphemous was intended in the cross. At the time all the thieves wore aluminum crosses around their necks; it was a kind of symbol, like a tattoo.
In the twenties the thieves wore trade-school caps; still earlier, the military officer’s cap was in fashion. In the forties, during the winter, they wore peakless leather caps, folded down the tops of their felt boots, and wore a cross around the neck. The cross was usually smooth but if an artist was around, he was forced to use a needle to paint it with the most diverse subjects: a heart, cards, a crucifixion, a naked woman… Naumov’s cross was smooth. It hung on his bare chest, partially blocking the tattoo which was a quote from Esenin, the only poet the ‘criminal world’ recognized: