Description
A stage work based on Varlam Shalamov's short story collection of the same name. Helsinki 98 "Tales of Cold and Hunger – Helsinki 98 group's newest stage work does not shout, teach, or purify" Demokraatti Kolyma Tales is one of the most significant works of GULAG literature of the 20th century. Its author, Varlam Shalamov, spent nearly two decades in Soviet forced labor camps in Northeastern Siberia, in Kolyma, where the temperature drops to -50 degrees. From these experiences was born dense, stark, and merciless prose, a work that does not explain or moralize. It testifies. "Hiroshima, Auschwitz, and Kolyma are phenomena of the same scale." Helsinki 98 brings to the stage a selection of short stories from Shalamov's magnum opus, depicting life in the Kolyma camps: the cold, hunger, work amidst crushed stone – and moments where humanity disappears or unexpectedly flickers forth. "What remains of a person when humanity has been taken away?" The performance does not aim at historical reconstruction, but at linguistic precision and theatrical conciseness. In what way does Shalamov's tangible prose transform into theatre? When the Soviet Union collapsed at the turn of the 1980s–1990s, Russians voraciously read previously banned writers, namely Varlam Shalamov and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The latter became a world-renowned name, while Shalamov, called the "Dostoevsky of the 20th century," has remained in the shadows. Varlam Shalamov (1907–1982) was a principled and contradictory figure. Millions of people were sentenced to prison camps on arbitrary grounds, but he was sentenced under the harshest political article, on charges of "Trotskyite counter-revolutionary activity." In 1929, as a student, he distributed Lenin's so-called testament, which criticized Stalin. Today he could be called a dissident. Shalamov spent a total of about 17 years in the archipelago of prison camps, mainly in the extreme conditions of Kolyma. In the camp, he never agreed to take leadership positions, as that would have meant using violence against other prisoners. "No, I will not become a work supervisor, I would rather die." His survival of imprisonment was a matter of chance and perseverance: during his last years in the labor camps, he was transferred to work as a nurse, which saved his life. After his release in 1953, Shalamov began writing poems and his magnum opus, Kolyma Tales. He devoted his life to writing this work, but in the Soviet Union the book was not published during his lifetime. Abroad, however, the book appeared (protecting the author) as an unauthorized edition already in the 1970s, and in 1981 the French PEN Club awarded Shalamov the Freedom Prize. In 1982, Shalamov died poor, forgotten, and nearly deaf and blind in a psychiatric hospital. In the Soviet Union, Kolyma Tales was published in 1989. The Finnish translation appeared in 1991, skillfully rendered by Ulla-Liisa Heino. "Precision and conciseness are the first virtues of prose." – Varlam Shalamov Helsinki 98 is a theatre group founded in 2023 that examines the role and meaning of art in the reality that has taken shape after 24.2.2022. Over two and a half years, seven productions have been seen by a total of 8,870 audience members. Now Helsinki 98 brings this literary testimony to the violence of the Soviet system to the stage – as a Finnish and possibly European premiere at the Helsinki 98 stage in Vuosaaren Tilajakamo. WORKING GROUP: Author: Varlam Shalamov Translator: Ulla-Liisa Heino Director