Kolyma tales
It is estimated that some three million people died in the Soviet forced-labour camps of Kolyma, in the northeastern area of Siberia. Shalamov himself spent seventeen years there, and in these stories he vividly captures the lives of ordinary people caught up in terrible circumstances, whose hopes and plans extended to further than a few hours This new enlarged edition combines two collections previously published in the United States as Kolyma Tales and Graphite.
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What Hacker News says
- Kolyma tales. It's a collection of essays from Varlam Shalamov, a Russian writer and reporter, who was imprisoned in the Gulag for nearly two decades. It was a shocking first hand account of human suffering and depravity.
- Here are some books that pop bubbles, but must be read with humility to avoid becoming its own new bubble, as the world is complex and contains contradictions:
Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States
Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel
Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma
Ayn Rand's the Fountainhead
Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics
Julian Jaynes's the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
Iain McGilchrist's the Master and his Emmisary
Varlam Sharlamov's the Kolyma Tales
Jacques Ellul's Propaganda: the Formation of Men's Attitudes (or alternatively Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death)
- The history of Stalin times in Soviet Union is trully horrific. It's worth knowing just to be aware what kind of hell can be arranged on a mass scale by an evil dictator. It should be taught in all schools across the world, along with the deeds of other XX century evil mega mass murders.
For learning more, I personally recommend starting with "Kolyma Tales" by Varlam Shalamov. Aside from the educational part, it's a great piece of literature.
- If you found the Gulag Archipelago insightful (the word 'enjoyed' seems wrong in this context), I highly recommend The Kolyma Tales[1] by Varlam Shalamov. Shalamov spent 17 years in 'hard labour' camps, in total. His work is more like a historical novel, akin to "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", but more raw and visceral.
- In Shalamov's "Kolyma Tales" there are some fascinating accounts of how the criminal underworld operated in the Soviet era, and its brutal contact with the political prisoners in the Gulag. 'On Tick' is particularly memorable.
The wikipedia page "Thief in law" is very interesting and a serious time sink if it prompts you to read more about all these characters, and so is https://en.crimerussia.com/
- I also recommend to read "The Kolyma tales" by Varlam Shalamov:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kolyma_Tales
http://www.amazon.com/Penguin-Twentieth-Century-Classics-ebo...
