Warlam Schalamow

Varlam Shalamov (1907–1982) was a Russian writer. He was born in Vologda in northern Russia, the son of an Orthodox clergyman, and studied Soviet law in Moscow. In 1929, he was sentenced to imprisonment in a labor camp in the Urals for “counter-revolutionary agitation.” After returning to Moscow, he was arrested again in 1937 and deported to the Kolyma region in northeastern Siberia. He was allowed to return to Moscow in 1956. Shalamov drew on his experiences of the Soviet camp system in his literary works.