If you adhere to proper nutrition, then avocados are probably in ...
The plot of the stories of V. Shalamov is a painful description of the prison and camp life of the prisoners of the Soviet Gulag, their similar tragic destinies, in which chance, merciless or sweet, reigns. -stevey, assistant or murderer, arbitrariness of bosses and thieves. Hunger and its convulsive saturation, exhaustion, painful dying, slow and almost equally painful recovery, moral humiliation and moral degradation - that's what is constantly in the center of attention of the writer.
Gravestone
The author recalls by name his comrades in the camps. Calling to mind a mournful martyrologist, he tells who died and how, who suffered and how, who hoped for what, who and how behaved in this Auschwitz without stoves, as Shalamov called Kolyma th camps. Few managed to survive, few managed to survive and remain morally unbroken.
Life of engineer Kipreev
Having betrayed and sold no one, the author says that he has developed for himself a formula for actively protecting his existence: a person can only consider himself a man and survive if at any moment he is ready to commit suicide, ready to death. However, later he realizes that he only built himself a comfortable shelter, because it is not known what you will be like at the decisive moment, whether you just have enough physical strength, and not just mental. Arrested in 1938, engineer-physicist Kipreev not only withstood the beating during interrogation, but even rushed at the investigator, after which he was put in a punishment cell. However, they are still trying to get him to sign false testimony, intimidating him with the arrest of his wife. Nevertheless, Kipreev continued to prove to himself and others that he was a man, and not a slave, as all prisoners are. Thanks to his talent (he invented a way to restore burned-out electric light bulbs, repaired an x-ray machine), he manages to avoid the most heavy work, however, not always. He miraculously survives, but the moral shock remains in him forever.
Pre-bet
Camp corruption, Shalamov testifies, to a greater or lesser extent concerned everyone and took place in the most different forms. Two thieves are playing cards. One of them loses in fluff and asks to play for a “pre-bet”, that is, in debt. At some point, razzed by the game, he unexpectedly orders an ordinary prisoner from intellectuals, having accidentally found himself among the spectators of their game, to give the woolen pullover. He refuses, and then one of the thieves “finishes” him, and the thieves still get the sweater.
At night
Two prisoners sneak to the grave, where the body of their deceased comrade was buried in the morning, and take off the linen from the dead man in order to sell it or exchange it for bread or tobacco the next day. The initial disdain for taking off their clothes is replaced by a pleasant thought that tomorrow they might be able to eat a little more and even smoke.
Single metering
Camp labor, unequivocally defined by Shalamov as slave labor, for the writer is a form of the same corruption. A profitable prisoner is not able to give a percentage rate, so labor becomes torture and slow killing. Zek Dugaev is gradually weakening, unable to endure the six-on-dza-ty-cha-so-working day. He drives, kailits, pours, again carries and again kilits, and in the evening the caretaker appears and measures what Dugaev has done with a tape measure. The mentioned figure - 25 percent - seems to Dugaev to be very large, his calves are aching, his hands, shoulders, head are unbearably sore, he even lost his sense of hunger. A little later, he is called to the investigator, who asks the usual questions: name, surname, article, term. And a day later, the soldiers take Dugaev to a remote place, fenced off by a high fence with barbed wire, from where at night the sound of tractors can be heard. Dugaev guesses why he was brought here and that his life is over. And he regrets only that the last day was in vain.
Rain
Rozovsky, who is working in the pit, suddenly, despite the menacing gesture of the guard, calls out to the narrator, who is working nearby, to share his soul-time -di-ra-revelation: “Listen, listen! I've been thinking! And I realized that there is no meaning to life ... No ... "But before Rozovsky, for whom life has now lost value, manages to rush to the escorts, the narrator manages to run up to him and, saving him from a reckless and disastrous act, tell the approaching convoys that he was sick. A little later, Rozovsky pre-pri-ni-makes an attempt at suicide, throwing himself under the car-net. He is tried and sent to another place.
Sherry Brandy
A prisoner-poet dies, who is called the first Russian poet of the twentieth century. It lies in the dark depths of the bottom row of solid two-story bunks. He dies for a long time. Sometimes a thought comes - for example, that they stole bread from him, which he put under his head, and it is so terrible that he is ready to swear, fight, search ... But he no longer has the strength for this, and the thought of bread also weakens. When a daily ration is put into his hand, he presses the bread with all his might to his mouth, sucks it, tries to tear and gnaw with his scurvy, shaky teeth. When he dies, they don’t write him off for another two days, and inventive neighbors manage to get bread on the dead as if alive: they make him, like a mari-o doll - No, raise your hand.
Shock therapy
Prisoner Merz-lyakov, a man of large body build, having found himself at general work, feels that he is gradually losing. One day he falls, cannot get up immediately and refuses to drag the log. He is beaten first by his own, then by the guards, they bring him to the camp - he has a broken rib and pain in his lower back. And although the pains quickly passed, and the rib grew together, Merzlyakov continues to complain and pretends that he cannot straighten up, trying to delay his discharge to work at any cost. He is sent to the central hospital, to the surgical department, and from there to the nervous department for research. He has a chance to be activated, that is, written off due to illness at will. Remembering the mine, aching cold, a bowl of empty soup, which he drank, without even using a spoon, he concentrates all his will so as not to be caught cheating and sent to a penal mine. However, the doctor Pyotr Ivanovich, himself a prisoner in the past, was not a blunder. The professional displaces the human in him. Most he spends his time precisely on disclosing simulants. This amuses his vanity: he is an excellent specialist and is proud that he has retained his qualifications, despite a year of general work. He immediately understands that Merz-lyakov is a simulant, and anticipates the theatrical effect of the new revelation. First, the doctor gives him roush anesthesia, during which Merz-la-kov’s body manages to be unbent, and a week later, the procedure of the so-called shock therapy, the effect of which is similar to an attack of violent madness or an epileptic seizure. After it, the prisoner himself asks to be discharged.
Typhoid Quarantine
Prisoner Andreev, ill with typhus, gets into quarantine. Compared to general work in the mines, the position of the patient gives a chance to survive, which the hero almost no longer hoped for. And then he decides, by all rights or wrongs, to stay here as long as possible in transit, and there, perhaps, he will no longer be sent to the golden mines, where there is hunger, beatings and death. At the roll call before the next dispatch to work of those who are considered to have recovered, Andreev does not respond, and thus he manages to hide for quite a long time. The transit is gradually emptying, and the line finally reaches Andreev as well. But now it seems to him that he has won his battle for life, that now the taiga is saturated, and if there are dispatches, then only to nearby, local commands. However, when a truck with a selected group of prisoners, who were unexpectedly given winter uniforms, passes the line separating near from distant commands, it understands that fate cruelly laughed at him.
aortic aneurysm
Illness (and the emaciated state of the “goal” prisoners is quite equivalent to a serious illness, although it was not officially considered as such) and the hospital - in the stories of Shalamov, an indispensable attribute of the plot tics. The prisoner Ekaterina Glovatskaya gets into the hospital. Beauty, she immediately took a liking to the doctor on duty Zaitsev, and although he knows that she is in close relations with his acquaintance, the prisoner Podshi-va-lov, the leader As a member of a circle of artistic self-de-I-tality (“fortress theatre,” as the head of the hospital jokes), nothing prevents him from trying his luck in his turn. He starts, as usual, with a medical examination of Glovatskaya, with listening to the heart, but his male intrigue is quickly replaced by a purely medical concern -chen-no-stu. He finds an aortic aneurysm in Glovatsky, a disease in which any careless movement can cause death. The authorities, who took it as an unwritten rule to separate lovers, already once sent Glovatskaya to a penal women's mine. And now, after the doctor's report about dangerous disease prisoner, the head of the hospital is sure that this is nothing more than the machinations of the same Podshi-va-lov, trying to detain his mistress. Glovatskaya is discharged, but already when loading into the car, what Dr. Zaitsev warned about happens - she dies.
Major Pugachev's last fight
Among the heroes of Shalamov's prose there are those who not only strive to survive at any cost, but are also able to intervene in the course of circumstances, to stand up for themselves, even risking their lives. According to the author, after the war of 1941-1945. prisoners who fought and passed German captivity began to arrive in the northeastern camps. These are people of a different temper, “with courage, the ability to take risks, who believed only in weapons. Commanders and soldiers, pilots and scouts ... ". But most importantly, they possessed the instinct of freedom that the war awakened in them. They shed their blood, they sacrificed their lives, they saw death face to face. They were not corrupted by camp slavery and were not yet exhausted to the point of losing their strength and will. Their “guilt” consisted in the fact that they were surrounded or captured. And it is clear to Major Pugachev, one of these people who have not yet been broken: “they were brought to their deaths - to replace these living dead people” whom they met in Soviet camps. Then the former major collects just as resolute and strong, to match, prisoners who are ready to either die or become free. In their group - pilots, scout, paramedic, tanker. They realized that they were innocently doomed to death and that they had nothing to lose. All winter they are preparing an escape. Pugachev realized that only those who bypassed the general work could survive the winter and then run away. And the participants in the conspiracy, one by one, are promoted to the service: someone becomes a cook, someone is a kul-bargainer who repairs weapons in the security detachment. But spring is coming, and with it the appointed day.
At five o'clock in the morning there was a knock on the watch. The duty officer let in the camp cook-prisoner, who, as usual, came for the keys to the pantry. A minute later, the duty officer turns out to be strangled, and one of the prisoners changes into his uniform. The same thing happens with the other, who returned a little later on duty. Then everything goes according to Pugachev's plan. The conspirators burst into the premises of the guard detachment and, having shot the duty officer, take charge of the weapon. Holding suddenly awakened fighters at gunpoint, they change into military uniform and stock up on provisions. Leaving the camp, they stop a truck on the highway, drop off the driver and continue on their way in the car until the gas runs out. After that, they go to the taiga. At night - the first night at liberty after long months of captivity - Pugachev, waking up, recalls his escape from the German camp in 1944, crossing the front line, interrogation in a special department, accusation of espionage Even the sentence is twenty-five years in prison. He also recalls the visits to the German camp of the emissaries of General Vlasov, who recruited Russian soldiers, convincing them that for the Soviet authorities all of them, who were captured, were traitors to the Motherland. Pugachev did not believe them until he could see for himself. He looks with love at the sleeping comrades who believe in him and stretch out their hands to freedom, he knows that they are "the best, worthy of all." And a little later, a battle begins, the last hopeless battle between the fugitives and their surrounding soldiers. Almost all of the fugitives die, except for one, seriously wounded, who is cured to be shot later. Only Major Pugachev manages to escape, but he knows, huddled in a bear's lair, that they will find him anyway. He doesn't regret what he did. His last shot is to himself.
Reading time: 15–20 min.
The plot of V. Shalamov's stories is a painful description of the prison and camp life of the prisoners of the Soviet Gulag, their tragic destinies similar to one another, in which chance, merciless or merciful, helper or murderer, arbitrariness of bosses and thieves dominate. Hunger and its convulsive satiety, exhaustion, painful dying, a slow and almost equally painful recovery, moral humiliation and moral degradation - this is what is constantly in the center of the writer's attention.
The author recalls by name his comrades in the camps. Calling to mind a mournful martyrology, he tells who died and how, who suffered and how, who hoped for what, who and how behaved in this Auschwitz without stoves, as Shalamov called the Kolyma camps. Few managed to survive, few managed to survive and remain morally unbroken.
Life of engineer Kipreev
Having never betrayed or sold anyone, the author says that he has developed for himself a formula for actively protecting his existence: a person can only consider himself a person and survive if he is ready to commit suicide at any moment, ready to die. However, later he realizes that he only built himself a comfortable shelter, because it is not known what you will be like at a decisive moment, whether you just have enough physical strength, and not just mental. Arrested in 1938, the engineer-physicist Kipreev not only withstood the beating during interrogation, but even rushed at the investigator, after which he was put in a punishment cell. However, they still try to get him to sign false testimony, intimidating him with the arrest of his wife. Nevertheless, Kipreev continued to prove to himself and others that he was a man, and not a slave, as all prisoners are. Thanks to his talent (he invented a way to restore burnt out light bulbs, repaired an X-ray machine), he manages to avoid the most difficult work, but not always. He miraculously survives, but the moral shock remains in him forever.
For the show
Camp corruption, Shalamov testifies, affected everyone to a greater or lesser extent and took place in a variety of forms. Two thieves are playing cards. One of them is played down and asks to play for a "representation", that is, in debt. At some point, irritated by the game, he unexpectedly orders an ordinary intellectual prisoner, who happened to be among the spectators of their game, to hand over a woolen sweater. He refuses, and then one of the thieves “finishes” him, and the thieves still get the sweater.
Two prisoners sneak to the grave where the body of their deceased comrade was buried in the morning, and remove the linen from the dead man in order to sell or exchange it for bread or tobacco the next day. The initial squeamishness about the removed clothes is replaced by a pleasant thought that tomorrow they might be able to eat a little more and even smoke.
Camp labor, unequivocally defined by Shalamov as slave labor, is for the writer a form of the same corruption. A goner-prisoner is not able to give a percentage rate, so labor becomes torture and slow mortification. Zek Dugaev is gradually weakening, unable to withstand the sixteen-hour working day. He drives, turns, pours, again drives and again turns, and in the evening the caretaker appears and measures Dugaev's work with a tape measure. The mentioned figure - 25 percent - seems to Dugaev to be very large, his calves are aching, his arms, shoulders, head are unbearably sore, he even lost his sense of hunger. A little later, he is called to the investigator, who asks the usual questions: name, surname, article, term. A day later, the soldiers take Dugaev to a remote place, fenced with a high fence with barbed wire, from where the chirring of tractors can be heard at night. Dugaev guesses why he was brought here and that his life is over. And he regrets only that the last day was in vain.
Sherry Brandy
A prisoner-poet, who was called the first Russian poet of the twentieth century, dies. It lies in the dark depths of the bottom row of solid two-story bunks. He dies for a long time. Sometimes a thought comes - for example, that they stole bread from him, which he put under his head, and it is so scary that he is ready to swear, fight, search ... But he no longer has the strength for this, and the thought of bread too weakens. When a daily ration is put into his hand, he presses the bread to his mouth with all his strength, sucks it, tries to tear and gnaw with scurvy loose teeth. When he dies, they don’t write him off for another two days, and inventive neighbors manage to get bread for the dead man as if it were alive during the distribution: they make him raise his hand like a puppet doll.
Prisoner Merzlyakov, a man of large build, finds himself at common work, feels that he is gradually losing. One day he falls, cannot get up immediately and refuses to drag the log. He is beaten first by his own people, then by the escorts, they bring him to the camp - he has a broken rib and pain in the lower back. And although the pain quickly passed, and the rib grew together, Merzlyakov continues to complain and pretends that he cannot straighten up, trying to delay his discharge to work at any cost. He is sent to the central hospital, to the surgical department, and from there to the nervous department for research. He has a chance to be activated, that is, written off due to illness at will. Remembering the mine, aching cold, a bowl of empty soup that he drank without even using a spoon, he concentrates all his will so as not to be convicted of deceit and sent to a penal mine. However, the doctor Pyotr Ivanovich, himself a prisoner in the past, did not miss. The professional replaces the human in him. He spends most of his time exposing the fakers. This amuses his vanity: he is an excellent specialist and is proud that he has retained his qualifications, despite the year of general work. He immediately understands that Merzlyakov is a simulator and looks forward to the theatrical effect of a new exposure. First, the doctor gives him roush anesthesia, during which Merzlyakov's body can be straightened, and a week later, the procedure of the so-called shock therapy, the effect of which is similar to an attack of violent madness or an epileptic seizure. After it, the prisoner himself asks to be discharged.
Typhoid Quarantine
Prisoner Andreev, ill with typhus, is quarantined. Compared with general work in the mines, the position of the patient gives a chance to survive, which the hero almost no longer hoped for. And then he decides, by hook or by crook, to stay here as long as possible, in transit, and there, perhaps, he will no longer be sent to the gold mines, where there is hunger, beatings and death. At the roll call before the next dispatch to work of those who are considered recovered, Andreev does not respond, and thus he manages to hide for quite a long time. The transit is gradually emptying, and the line finally reaches Andreev as well. But now it seems to him that he has won his battle for life, that now the taiga is full, and if there are shipments, then only for nearby, local business trips. However, when a truck with a selected group of prisoners who were unexpectedly given winter uniforms passes the line separating short trips from long ones, he realizes with an internal shudder that fate has cruelly laughed at him.
aortic aneurysm
Illness (and the emaciated state of the "goal" prisoners is quite tantamount to a serious illness, although officially it was not considered as such) and the hospital - in Shalamov's stories indispensable attribute plots. Ekaterina Glovatskaya, a prisoner, is admitted to the hospital. Beauty, she immediately liked the doctor on duty Zaitsev, and although he knows that she is in close relations with his acquaintance, the prisoner Podshivalov, the head of the amateur art circle, (“the serf theater,” as the head of the hospital jokes), nothing prevents him in turn try your luck. He begins, as usual, with a medical examination of Głowacka, with listening to the heart, but his male interest is quickly replaced by a purely medical concern. He finds an aortic aneurysm in Glovatsky, a disease in which any careless movement can cause death. The authorities, who took it as an unwritten rule to separate lovers, had already once sent Glovatskaya to a penal female mine. And now, after the doctor's report about the prisoner's dangerous illness, the head of the hospital is sure that this is nothing more than the machinations of the same Podshivalov, who is trying to detain his mistress. Glovatskaya is discharged, but already when loading into the car, what Dr. Zaitsev warned about happens - she dies.
Major Pugachev's last fight
Among the heroes of Shalamov's prose there are those who not only strive to survive at any cost, but are also able to intervene in the course of circumstances, to stand up for themselves, even risking their lives. According to the author, after the war of 1941-1945. prisoners who fought and passed German captivity began to arrive in the northeastern camps. These are people of a different temper, “with courage, the ability to take risks, who believed only in weapons. Commanders and soldiers, pilots and scouts…”. But most importantly, they possessed the instinct of freedom, which the war awakened in them. They shed their blood, sacrificed their lives, saw death face to face. They were not corrupted by camp slavery and were not yet exhausted to the point of losing their strength and will. Their “guilt” was that they were surrounded or captured. And Major Pugachev, one of these people who has not yet been broken, is clear: “they were brought to their deaths - to change these living dead,” whom they met in Soviet camps. Then the former major gathers just as determined and strong, to match, prisoners who are ready to either die or become free. In their group - pilots, scout, paramedic, tanker. They realized that they were innocently doomed to death and that they had nothing to lose. All winter they are preparing an escape. Pugachev realized that only those who bypassed the general work could survive the winter and then run away. And the participants in the conspiracy, one by one, advance into the service: someone becomes a cook, someone a cultist who repairs weapons in the security detachment. But spring is coming, and with it the day ahead.
At five o'clock in the morning there was a knock on the watch. The attendant lets in the prisoner camp cook, who has come, as usual, for the keys to the pantry. A minute later, the duty officer is strangled, and one of the prisoners changes into his uniform. The same thing happens with another, who returned a little later on duty. Then everything goes according to Pugachev's plan. The conspirators break into the premises of the security detachment and, having shot the guard on duty, take possession of the weapon. Keeping the suddenly awakened fighters at gunpoint, they change into military uniforms and stock up on provisions. Leaving the camp, they stop the truck on the highway, drop off the driver and continue on their way in the car until the gas runs out. After that, they go to the taiga. At night - the first night at liberty after long months of captivity - Pugachev, waking up, recalls his escape from the German camp in 1944, crossing the front line, interrogation in a special department, accusation of espionage and sentence - twenty-five years in prison. He also recalls the visits to the German camp of the emissaries of General Vlasov, who recruited Russian soldiers, convincing them that for the Soviet authorities all of them, who were captured, are traitors to the Motherland. Pugachev did not believe them until he could see for himself. He looks lovingly at the sleeping comrades who believe in him and stretch out their hands to freedom, he knows that they are "the best, worthy of all." A little later, a fight breaks out, the last hopeless fight between the fugitives and the soldiers surrounding them. Almost all of the fugitives die, except for one, seriously wounded, who is cured and then shot. Only Major Pugachev manages to escape, but he knows, hiding in a bear's lair, that he will be found anyway. He doesn't regret what he did. His last shot was at himself. Retold by E. A. Shklovsky
Bibliography
All the masterpieces of world literature in summary. Plots and characters. Russian literature of the XX century / Ed. and comp. V. I. Novikov. - M. : Olimp: ACT, 1997. - 896 p.
Consider Shalamov's collection, on which he worked from 1954 to 1962. Let's describe it summary. "Kolyma stories"- a collection, the plot of the stories of which is a description of the camp and prison life of the Gulag prisoners, their tragic destinies, similar to each other, in which chance rules. The author's attention is constantly on hunger and satiety, painful dying and recovery, exhaustion, moral humiliation and degradation. You will learn more about the problems raised by Shalamov by reading the summary. "Kolyma Tales" is a collection that is a reflection on what the author experienced and saw over the 17 years he spent in prison (1929-1931) and Kolyma (from 1937 to 1951. Photo of the author is presented below.
Gravestone
The author recalls his comrades from the camps. We will not list their names, as we are compiling a summary. "Kolyma stories" is a collection in which artistry and documentary are intertwined. However, all the murderers are given real names in the stories.
Continuing the story, the author describes how the prisoners died, what torments they endured, speaks of their hopes and behavior in "Auschwitz without ovens", as Shalamov called the Kolyma camps. Few managed to survive, but few survived and did not break morally.
"The Life of Engineer Kipreev"
Let us dwell on the following curious story, which we could not help but describe, making up a summary. "Kolyma Tales" is a collection in which the author, who has not sold or betrayed anyone, says that he has worked out a formula for protecting his own existence. It consists in the fact that a person can survive if he is ready to die at any moment, he can commit suicide. But later he realizes that he only built a comfortable shelter for himself, since it is not known what you will become at a decisive moment, whether you will have enough not only mental strength but also physical.
Kipreev, an engineer-physicist arrested in 1938, not only was able to withstand the interrogation with a beating, but even attacked the investigator, as a result of which he was put in a punishment cell. But all the same, they are trying to get him to give false testimony, threatening to arrest his wife. Nevertheless, Kipreev continues to prove to everyone that he is not a slave, like all prisoners, but a man. Thanks to his talent (he fixed the broken one and found a way to restore burnt out light bulbs), this hero manages to avoid the most difficult work, but not always. It is only by a miracle that he survives, but the moral shock does not let him go.
"For the show"
Shalamov, who wrote the Kolyma Tales, a summary of which interests us, testifies that the camp corruption affected everyone to one degree or another. It was carried out in various forms. Let us describe in a few words one more work from the collection "Kolyma stories" - "On the show". A summary of his story is as follows.
Two thieves play cards. One loses and asks to play on credit. Exasperated at some point, he orders an unexpectedly imprisoned intellectual, who happened to be among the spectators, to hand over his sweater. He refuses. One of the thieves "finishes" him, and the thieves get the sweater anyway.
"At night"
We turn to the description of another work from the collection "Kolyma stories" - "At night". A brief summary of it, in our opinion, will also be interesting to the reader.
Two prisoners sneak to the grave. The body of their comrade was buried here in the morning. They take off the dead man's linen in order to exchange it tomorrow for tobacco or bread, or sell it. Disgust for the clothes of the deceased is replaced by the thought that perhaps tomorrow they will be able to smoke or eat a little more.
There are a lot of works in the collection "Kolyma stories". "Carpenters", the summary of which we have omitted, follows the story "Night". We invite you to familiarize yourself with it. The product is small in size. The format of one article, unfortunately, does not allow describing all the stories. Also, a very small work from the collection "Kolyma stories" - "Berries". A summary of the main and most interesting, in our opinion, stories is presented in this article.
"Single freeze"
Defined by the author as slave camp labor - another form of corruption. The prisoner, exhausted by him, cannot work out the norm, labor turns into torture and leads to slow death. Dugaev, the convict, is getting weaker and weaker because of the 16-hour working day. He pours, kaylit, carries. In the evening, the caretaker measures what he has done. The figure of 25%, named by the caretaker, seems very large to Dugaev. His hands, head, aching calves are unbearable. The prisoner does not even feel hunger anymore. Later, he is called to the investigator. He asks: "Name, surname, term, article." The soldiers take the prisoner every other day to a remote place surrounded by a fence with barbed wire. At night, the sound of tractors can be heard from here. Dugaev guesses why he was brought here, and understands that life is over. He regrets only that he suffered in vain for an extra day.
"Rain"
You can talk for a very long time about such a collection as Kolyma Tales. A summary of the chapters of the works is for informational purposes only. We bring to your attention the following story - "Rain".
"Sherri Brandy"
The poet-prisoner, who was considered the first poet of the 20th century in our country, dies. He lies on the bunk, in the depths of their bottom row. The poet dies for a long time. Sometimes a thought comes to him, for example, that someone stole bread from him, which the poet put under his head. He is ready to seek, fight, swear... However, he no longer has the strength to do so. When a daily ration is put into his hand, he presses bread to his mouth with all his strength, sucks it, tries to gnaw and tear with loose scurvy teeth. When a poet dies, he is not written off for another 2 days. During the distribution, the neighbors manage to get bread for him as if it were alive. They arrange for him to raise his hand like a puppet.
"Shock therapy"
Merzlyakov, one of the heroes of the collection "Kolmysk Stories", a summary of which we are considering, a convict of large build, understands that he is failing at general work. He falls, cannot get up and refuses to take the log. First, he is beaten by his own, then by the escorts. He is brought to the camp with lower back pain and a broken rib. After recovering, Merzlyakov does not stop complaining and pretends that he cannot straighten up. He does this in order to delay the discharge. He is sent to the surgical department of the central hospital, and then to the nervous one for research. Merzlyakov has a chance to be written off due to illness. He tries his best not to be exposed. But Pyotr Ivanovich, a doctor, himself a former convict, exposes him. Everything human in him replaces the professional. He spends the bulk of his time precisely exposing those who feign. Pyotr Ivanovich is looking forward to the effect that the case with Merzlyakov will produce. The doctor first makes him anesthetized, during which he manages to unbend Merzlyakov's body. A week later, the patient is prescribed shock therapy, after which he asks to be discharged himself.
"Typhoid Quarantine"
Andreev enters quarantine, having contracted typhus. The position of the patient compared to the work in the mines gives him a chance to survive, which he hardly hoped for. Then Andreev decides to stay here as long as possible, and then, perhaps, he will no longer be sent to the gold mines, where death, beatings, hunger. Andreev does not respond to the roll call before sending the recovered to work. He manages to hide in this way for quite a long time. The transit line is gradually emptying, and finally Andreev's turn comes. But now it seems to him that he has won the battle for life, and if now there will be dispatches, then only for local, close business trips. But when a truck with a group of prisoners who were unexpectedly given winter uniforms crosses the line separating long-distance and short-range business trips, Andreev realizes that fate has laughed at him.
In the photo below - on the house in Vologda, where Shalamov lived.
"Aortic Aneurysm"
In Shalamov's stories, illness and hospital are an indispensable attribute of the plot. Ekaterina Glovatskaya, a prisoner, is taken to the hospital. This beauty immediately attracted Zaitsev, the doctor on duty. He knows that she is in a relationship with the convict Podshivalov, his acquaintance, who leads the local amateur art circle, the doctor still decides to try his luck. As usual, he begins with a medical examination of the patient, with auscultation of the heart. However, male interest is replaced by medical concern. In Glovatsky, he discovers This is a disease in which every careless movement can provoke death. The authorities, who made it a rule to separate lovers, once sent the girl to a penal female mine. The head of the hospital, after the doctor's report about her illness, is sure that these are the machinations of Podshivalov, who wants to detain his mistress. The girl is discharged, but she dies during loading, which Zaitsev warned about.
"Major Pugachev's last fight"
The author testifies that after the Great Patriotic War prisoners began to arrive in the camps, who fought and went through captivity. These people are of a different temper: able to take risks, courageous. They only believe in weapons. Camp slavery did not corrupt them, they were not yet exhausted to the point of losing their will and strength. Their "guilt" was that these prisoners were captured or surrounded. It was clear to one of them, Major Pugachev, that they had been brought here to die. Then he gathers strong and determined, to match himself, prisoners who are ready to die or become free. Escape is prepared all winter. Pugachev realized that after surviving the winter, only those who managed to bypass the common work could escape. One by one, the participants in the conspiracy are moving into service. One of them becomes a cook, the other becomes a cult trader, the third repairs weapons for the guards.
One spring day, at 5 am, they knocked on the watch. The attendant admits the prisoner-cook, who, as usual, came for the keys to the pantry. The cook strangles him, and another prisoner changes into his uniform. The same thing happens with other attendants who returned a little later. Then everything happens according to Pugachev's plan. The conspirators burst into the security room and take possession of the weapon, shooting the guard on duty. They stock up on provisions and put on military uniforms, holding suddenly awakened fighters at gunpoint. Leaving the territory of the camp, they stop the truck on the highway, drop the driver off and drive until the gas runs out. Then they go to the taiga. Pugachev, waking up at night after many months of captivity, recalls how in 1944 he escaped from a German camp, crossed the front line, survived interrogation in a special department, after which he was accused of espionage and sentenced to 25 years in prison. He also recalls how emissaries of General Vlasov came to the German camp, who recruited Russians, convincing them that the captured soldiers for the Soviet regime were traitors to the Motherland. Then Pugachev did not believe them, but soon he himself was convinced of this. He looks lovingly at his comrades sleeping beside him. A little later, a hopeless battle ensues with the soldiers who surrounded the fugitives. Almost all of the prisoners die, except for one, who is cured after a severe wound in order to be shot. Only Pugachev manages to escape. He is hiding in a bear den, but he knows that they will find him too. He does not regret what he did. His last shot is to himself.
So, we examined the main stories from the collection, authored by Varlam Shalamov ("Kolyma stories"). The summary introduces the reader to the main events. You can read more about them on the pages of the work. The collection was first published in 1966 by Varlam Shalamov. "Kolyma Tales", a summary of which you now know, appeared on the pages of the New York edition of "New Journal".
In New York in 1966, only 4 stories were published. The following year, 1967, 26 stories by this author, mostly from the collection we are interested in, were translated into German in the city of Cologne. During his lifetime, Shalamov never published the collection "Kolyma Tales" in the USSR. The summary of all chapters, unfortunately, is not included in the format of one article, since there are a lot of stories in the collection. Therefore, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with the rest.
"Condensed milk"
In addition to those described above, we will tell about one more work from the collection "Kolyma Stories" - Its summary is as follows.
Shestakov, an acquaintance of the narrator, did not work at the mine in the face, since he was a geological engineer, and he was taken to the office. He met with the narrator and said that he wanted to take the workers and go to the Black Keys, to the sea. And although the latter understood that this was not feasible (the path to the sea is very long), he nevertheless agreed. The narrator reasoned that Shestakov probably wants to hand over all those who will participate in this. But the promised condensed milk (to overcome the path, it was necessary to eat) bribed him. Going to Shestakov's, he ate two cans of this delicacy. And then suddenly he said that he had changed his mind. A week later, other workers fled. Two of them were killed, three were tried a month later. And Shestakov was transferred to another mine.
We recommend reading other works in the original. Shalamov wrote Kolyma Tales very talentedly. The summary ("Berries", "Rain" and "Children's Pictures" we also recommend reading in the original) conveys only the plot. The author's style, artistic merits can only be appreciated by getting acquainted with the work itself.
Not included in the collection "Kolyma stories" "Sentence". We did not describe the summary of this story for this reason. However, this work is one of the most mysterious in Shalamov's work. Fans of his talent will be interested to get acquainted with him.
The plot of V. Shalamov's stories is a painful description of the prison and camp life of the prisoners of the Soviet Gulag, their tragic destinies similar to one another, in which chance, merciless or merciful, helper or murderer, arbitrariness of bosses and thieves dominate. Hunger and its convulsive satiety, exhaustion, painful dying, a slow and almost equally painful recovery, moral humiliation and moral degradation - this is what is constantly in the center of the writer's attention.
FUNERAL WORD
The author recalls by name his comrades in the camps. Calling to mind a mournful martyrology, he tells who died and how, who suffered and how, who hoped for what, who and how behaved in this Auschwitz without stoves, as Shalamov called the Kolyma camps. Few managed to survive, few managed to survive and remain morally unbroken.
THE LIFE OF ENGINEER KIPREEVA
Having never betrayed or sold anyone, the author says that he has developed for himself a formula for actively protecting his existence: a person can only consider himself a person and survive if he is ready to commit suicide at any moment, ready to die. However, later he realizes that he only built himself a comfortable shelter, because it is not known what you will be like at a decisive moment, whether you just have enough physical strength, and not just mental. Arrested in 1938, the engineer-physicist Kipreev not only withstood the beating during interrogation, but even rushed at the investigator, after which he was put in a punishment cell. However, they still try to get him to sign false testimony, intimidating him with the arrest of his wife. Nevertheless, Kipreev continued to prove to himself and others that he was a man, and not a slave, as all prisoners are. Thanks to his talent (he invented a way to restore burnt out light bulbs, repaired an X-ray machine), he manages to avoid the most difficult work, but not always. He miraculously survives, but the moral shock remains in him forever.
FOR A PRESENTATION
Camp corruption, Shalamov testifies, affected everyone to a greater or lesser extent and took place in a variety of forms. Two thieves are playing cards. One of them is played down and asks to play for a "representation", that is, in debt. At some point, irritated by the game, he unexpectedly orders an ordinary intellectual prisoner, who happened to be among the spectators of their game, to hand over a woolen sweater. He refuses, and then one of the thieves “finishes” him, and the thieves still get the sweater.
Two prisoners sneak to the grave where the body of their deceased comrade was buried in the morning, and remove the linen from the dead man in order to sell or exchange it for bread or tobacco the next day. The initial squeamishness about the removed clothes is replaced by a pleasant thought that tomorrow they might be able to eat a little more and even smoke.
SINGLE MEASUREMENT
Camp labor, unequivocally defined by Shalamov as slave labor, is for the writer a form of the same corruption. A goner-prisoner is not able to give a percentage rate, so labor becomes torture and slow mortification. Zek Dugaev is gradually weakening, unable to withstand the sixteen-hour working day. He drives, turns, pours, again drives and again turns, and in the evening the caretaker appears and measures Dugaev's work with a tape measure. The mentioned figure - 25 percent - seems to Dugaev to be very large, his calves are aching, his arms, shoulders, head are unbearably sore, he even lost his sense of hunger. A little later, he is called to the investigator, who asks the usual questions: name, surname, article, term. A day later, the soldiers take Dugaev to a remote place, fenced with a high fence with barbed wire, from where the chirring of tractors can be heard at night. Dugaev guesses why he was brought here and that his life is over. And he regrets only that the last day was in vain.
The plot of V. Shalamov's stories is a painful description of the prison and camp life of the prisoners of the Soviet Gulag, their tragic destinies similar to one another, in which chance, merciless or merciful, helper or murderer, arbitrariness of bosses and thieves dominate. Hunger and its convulsive satiety, exhaustion, painful dying, a slow and almost equally painful recovery, moral humiliation and moral degradation - this is what is constantly in the center of the writer's attention.
FUNERAL WORD
The author recalls by name his comrades in the camps. Calling to mind a mournful martyrology, he tells who died and how, who suffered and how, who hoped for what, who and how behaved in this Auschwitz without stoves, as Shalamov called the Kolyma camps. Few managed to survive, few managed to survive and remain morally unbroken.
THE LIFE OF ENGINEER KIPREEVA
Having betrayed and sold no one, the author says that he has developed for himself a formula for actively protecting his existence: a person can only consider himself a person and survive if he is ready to commit suicide at any moment, ready to die. However, later he realizes that he only built himself a comfortable shelter, because it is not known what you will be like at a decisive moment, whether you just have enough physical strength, and not just mental. Arrested in 1938, the engineer-physicist Kipreev not only withstood the beating during interrogation, but even rushed at the investigator, after which he was put in a punishment cell. However, they still try to get him to sign false testimony, intimidating him with the arrest of his wife. Nevertheless, Kipreev continued to prove to himself and others that he was a man, and not a slave, as all prisoners are. Thanks to his talent (he invented a way to restore burnt out light bulbs, repaired an X-ray machine), he manages to avoid the most difficult work, but not always. He miraculously survives, but the moral shock remains in him forever.
FOR A PRESENTATION
Camp corruption, Shalamov testifies, affected everyone to a greater or lesser extent and took place in a variety of forms. Two thieves are playing cards. One of them is played down and asks to play for a "representation", that is, in debt. At some point, irritated by the game, he unexpectedly orders an ordinary intellectual prisoner, who happened to be among the spectators of their game, to hand over a woolen sweater. He refuses, and then one of the thieves “finishes” him, and the thieves still get the sweater.
AT NIGHT
Two prisoners sneak to the grave where the body of their deceased comrade was buried in the morning, and remove the linen from the dead man in order to sell or exchange it for bread or tobacco the next day. The initial squeamishness about the removed clothes is replaced by a pleasant thought that tomorrow they might be able to eat a little more and even smoke.
SINGLE MEASUREMENT
Camp labor, unequivocally defined by Shalamov as slave labor, is for the writer a form of the same corruption. A goner-prisoner is not able to give a percentage rate, so labor becomes torture and slow mortification.
