Memory of harsh prison

On October 30, on the day of memory of the victims of political repressions in Moscow, in Pure Lane, they will open the memorial plaque to the writer Varlam Shalamov

The sculptor Georgy Frangulian worked on the image of the writer Varlam Shalamov. Moscow, 2013

This is a long -standing idea with which the Memorial made, the SHALAMOV.RU site and the New Gazeta. But only last year, when the project received the support of the Moscow Museum of the History of the Gulag, did the city authorities meet. Prior to this, Moscow, unlike Vologda, Krasnovishersk, Klin and even Kolyma, did not remember Shalamov.

The memorial plaque was created by the famous sculptor Georgy Frangulian - author of the monuments to Bulat Okudzhava and Joseph Brodsky. The board is not quite ordinary, it is rather a sculptural composition in the form of a dungeon with a portrait of Shalamov inside.

In the house No. 8, Barlam Shalamov lived relatively for long: since 1934, when he married the daughter of the famous Bolshevik Ignatius Gudzya Galina, until January 13, 1937, when he was arrested, first was taken to Butyrskaya prison, and then with a sentence under the “Trotskyist” article - to Kolyma. During these years in Moscow, Shalamov began to write and publish stories, and the latter came out when the author was already in prison. He returned to this apartment after Kolyma in 1953 and met with his family, but secretly, since he did not have the right to live closer than the 101st kilometer to the capital. The NKVD officer and faithful Stalinets Boris Gudz, brother of Galina (who died in 2006 at the age of 104), who, according to Shalamov, wrote a denunciation to him, followed these visits of the writer and reported them to the police. The informers surrounded Varlam Tikhonovich until the end of his life, now some of the denunciations have been published.

This fall, several more Shalamov events are taking place. An international scientific conference was held in Prague, which gathered researchers and translators from 14 countries. On September 26, a large exhibition called “Live or Write, in the Literary House in Berlin, was opened in Berlin. Narrator Varlam Shalamov. " The other day, a seven -volume collector’s works of the writer came out of the press, the last, seventh volume of which included previously not published texts.

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Shalamov showed how a person loses humanity and begins to live in accordance with the thieves commandment "Die you today, and I - tomorrow"

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Why is Shalamov important now? He wrote not just about the camps. It is known that Solzhenitsyn offered the author of Kolyma Stories to write “Gulag Archipelago” in co -authorship, but Shalamov categorically refused. Unlike Solzhenitsyn, he believed that “the camp is a negative experience, a negative school, corruption for everyone - for bosses and prisoners, escorts and spectators, passers -by and readers,” and also categorically did not want to participate in political games using a camp theme. Shalamov showed how a person loses humanity and begins to live in accordance with the thieves commandment "Die you today, and I - tomorrow." He wondered: “How to withdraw the law of decay? The Law of Resistance of Disruption? " - And he managed to answer this question. That is why he is a brilliant writer - and not only and not so much within the framework of one camp topic. Nowadays, when the thieves world, its habits and norms merged with an ordinary life, when not everyone has the experience of resisting violence and decay, Shalamov’s legacy and memory are necessary. It is necessary - as the experience of struggle and dignity.

The opening of the board in memory of Varlam Shalamov in Pure Lane is October 30 at 12.00. Presentation of the collected works of Varlam Shalamov in the seven volumes - November 8 at 19.00 in the Museum of the History of Gulag (Petrovka, 16).

Photo is provided by the workshop of Frangulik