Characters in V. Shalamov’s sketch ‘Aleksandr Konstantinovich Voronsky’ and their fate traced in the archive of the literary critic F. Levin

Abstract

The article is devoted to detailed analysis of V. Shalamov’s sketch ‘Aleksandr Konstantinovich Voronsky’ and Voronsky’s own book In Search of Living and Dead Water [Za zhivoy i myortvoy vodoy] (1970). This book owes its publication to the literary critic F. Levin. Levchenko’s article follows the fates of Voronsky, Levin, and Shalamov, as well as their close friends and acquaintances who fell victims to the 1930s’ Great Terror and whose names were for years expunged from the history of Soviet literature. Their destinies appear to be closely connected: arrested and executed in 1937, Voronsky was Shalamov’s ideal of a Marxist, writer, and human being; Shalamov met the late writer’s daughter in Kolyma. Galina Voronskaya devoted her life to the study and preservation of her father’s archive. Shalamov completed a sketch story about Voronsky’s literary career in 1958. Its publication, as well as the printing of Voronsky’s autobiographical novellas, took place thanks to F. Levin’s enthusiastic cooperation. In 2019, the book was published in a version that conforms to the author’s original concept and that Voronskaya, Shalamov, and Levin wished to see published in the Soviet Union some fifty years before.