fuckyeahhistorycrushes:

This is Varlam Shalamov (1907-1982) journalist, poet, writer, and survivor of Stalin’s Soviet work-camps. Shalamov was sent to a work camp (twice) for his ‘counterrevolutionary’/Trotskyist ideas: mainly the distribution of letters written by Lenin warning against Stalin’s dictatorial attitude. He wrote his accounts of the conditions inside the work-camps entitled ‘The Kolyma Tales’. He was quite handsome too, of course, with his deep-set, light eyes.

“We realized that life, even the worst life, consists of an alternation of joys and sorrows, successes and failures, and there was no need to fear the failures more than the successes.”

(via greatsunrises)