Last class, we discussed the role of winter in the plots of our various readings. In Lend-Lease from Kolyma Tales, I found that the role of winter played an especially important role in this story’s theme. Further, fate plays a key element in Lend-Lease, as it did in the stories from last class. In this story, Shalamov alludes to the importance of the physical properties of the camp more and more as the plot continues. Toward the middle, he begins to describe the stone and permafrost of the camp as keepers and revealers of secrets, a sort of documentation of the past war. He writes, “Stone keeps secrets and reveals them…The permafrost keeps and reveals secrets”, and of the corpses buried in the stone: “The corpses wait in stone, in the permafrost…The north resisted with all its strength this work of man, not accepting the corpses into its bowels. Defeated, humbled, retreating, stone promised to forget nothing, to wait and preserve its secret”. It appears from this quote that these feelings of defeat are regularly experienced in these camps – prisoners past and present, as well as the physical land – yet a glimpse of hope is present in the preservation of secrets Shalamov describes.

Shalamov’s describes the camp as horrifying, cold, and cruel places, as they were, but the theme of fate seems to lurk in his writing. While the cold led to miserable experiences of labor and frostbite, it also created this frozen earth, capable of preserving the bodies of these people lost to starvation, torture, and cold: “All of our loved ones who died in Kolyma, all those who were shot, beaten to death, sucked dry by starvation, can still be recognized even after tens of years…The corpses wait in stone, in the permafrost” (178). It seems as if being able to recognize the bodies of these people pays them the respect and admiration they deserve, making it sure that people will not forget them – because their physical bodies have not deteriorated, the camp’s history and the individual experiences of these people, too, will not be erased.