Description
A stage work based on Varlam Šalamov'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 Kolyman kertomuksia (Kolyma Tales) is one of the most significant works of GULAG literature of the 20th century. Its author, Varlam Šalamov, spent nearly two decades in Soviet forced labour camps in North-Eastern Siberia, in Kolyma, where the cold can drop 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 Šalamov's main work, which depict life in the Kolyma camps: 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 stage density. How does Šalamov's tangible prose become theatre? When the Soviet Union collapsed at the turn of the 1980s–1990s, Russians eagerly read previously forbidden writers, namely Varlam Šalamov and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The latter became a world-famous name, while Šalamov, called the "Dostoevsky of the 20th century," has remained in the shadows. Varlam Šalamov (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 "Trotskyist 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. Šalamov 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 leading 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 from imprisonment was a matter of chance and perseverance: in his last years of labour camps, he was transferred to work as a nurse, which saved his life. After his release in 1953, Šalamov began writing poems and his main work, Kolyma Tales. He devoted his life to writing this work, but during his lifetime it was not published in the Soviet Union. Abroad, however, the book appeared (protecting the author) as an unauthorized edition already in the 1970s, and in 1981 the French PEN Club awarded Šalamov the Freedom Prize. In 1982, Šalamov died poor, forgotten, and nearly deaf and blind in a psychiatric hospital. In the Soviet Union, Kolyma Tales was published in 1989. In Finnish, the work appeared in 1991 as Ulla-Liisa Heino's skilful translation. "Precision and conciseness are the first virtues of prose." – Varlam Šalamov 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. In two and a half years, seven productions have been seen by a total of 8,870 spectators. Now Helsinki 98 brings this literary testimony to the violence of the Soviet system to the stage – as the Finnish and possibly European premiere at the Helsinki 98 stage in Vuosaari's Tilajakamo. WORKING GROUP: Author: Varlam Šalamov Translator: Ulla-Liisa Heino Director