“The authors of this historical and educational book remained true patriots of their homeland despite the hardships they endured. In the first half of the twentieth century, their lives were swept into the unimaginable wilderness of Kolyma—in the far northeast of the Soviet Union—where, in temperatures of minus 50 to 60 degrees Celsius, they, together with thousands of others like themselves, mined gold known in Kolyma as the ‘yellow devil.’ In simple and accessible language, they tell of what they endured during those brutal years, whom they helped survive in times of hardship, and how they themselves lived with dignity. As one of the authors, Boris Nikolaevich, said: ‘Each person goes through life under the escort of his own conscience.’ This is indeed true. Read, learn, and remember. Live, and learn to live truly—that is, as human beings, just as Boris Nikolaevich and Nina Vladimirovna lived their lives.”

—Ivan Panikarov, Researcher of Kolyma history and founder of the Memory of Kolyma Museum, Yagodnoye, Russia

“Of all the memoirs about Shalamov that I have read, Lesnyak’s are probably the ones that

impressed me most. They struck me as offering the most authentic portrayal of Varlam.”

—Sergey Neklyudov, Professor at the Russian State University for the Humanities, folklorist, and stepson of Varlam Shalamov

“For me, as a scholar, the memoirs of Boris Lesnyak and Nina Savoyeva are a remarkable

example of the successful integration of personal recollection and clinical medicine. With the

precision of a physician, the authors depict the realities of the Kolyma Gulag, while also

revealing both the admirable and the darker sides of the people who lived through Kolyma in

the 1930s and 1940s, including the now-renowned writers Varlam Shalamov and Evgenia

Ginzburg.”

—Mikhail Y. Mikheev, Senior Research Fellow in Literary Text Studies at the Institute of the Russian Language, Moscow

“In 1991, the Medical Bulletin of Magadan—the administrative centre of the Kolyma camp system—published I Chose Kolyma, the memoirs of Dr. Nina Savoyeva. Nina was a physician who, after graduating from medical school in Moscow, voluntarily chose to devote herself to caring for prisoners in the Kolyma camps. Her memoirs offer a rare glimpse into life in Stalin's Kolyma from the perspective of someone who belonged neither to the camp administration nor to the world of the prisoners.

Boris Lesnyak, a medical student arrested in 1937 and sentenced to eight years of corrective labour for alleged membership in a fictitious counter-revolutionary student organisation, arrived in Kolyma during the Second World War. There he became an assistant to Dr. Savoyeva, who later became his wife. Lesnyak knew Evgenia Ginzburg, the author of Journey into the Whirlwind, and was closely associated with the writer and poet Varlam Shalamov.”

—Jean-Jacques Marie (b. 1937), French historian, biographer of Stalin, Lenin, and Trotsky, and the first French translator of Varlam Shalamov's Kolyma Tales

Mayya Simonova is the editor and compiler of I Came to You. I Chose Kolyma and the granddaughter of its authors. Born in Magadan, she studied law at Moscow State University and later worked as a barrister and Head of the Legal Department at the Moscow Architectural Institute (MARCHI). In preparing this volume, she conducted extensive archival research, drawing on materials from the archives of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) as well as family collections. She first compiled and edited the original Russian edition of the book, published by Vozvrashchenie under the direction of Semyon Vilensky, in 2016. She has lived in Melbourne, Australia, since 2016.

Prefatory Material

• Acknowledgements, by Mayya Simonova
• From the Translator, by Laura Kline
• A Word to the Readers, by Aleksander Loktev
• With Heads Raised High, by Ivan Panikarov
• Conversations Through the Years, by Mark Goloviznin
• Introductory Note from the Russian Edition (2016), by Semyon Vilensky 

I Came to You, by Boris Lesnyak

• Note from the Author

Chapter 1. When Everything Was Ahead of Me

• My Barefoot Childhood
• Full Face and Profile
• Whose Name Starts with the Letter “B”?
• Butyrskaya Mosaic
• Vladislavsky
• The Rout
• Panayot Kiryakovich Kirtidi
• The Speckled Hen
• Aleksey Smorodkin
• The Comintern
• The Dahurian Larch
• Tyumen
• The Zakhar Kuzmiches
• Second River

Chapter 2. Verkhny At-Uryakh

• The Woman Question
• The Bet
• Northern Lights
• The Evil Genius of the Camp
• Unfinished Arguments
• Cryogenesis
• The Company Commander’s Mule
• Superfluous People
• The Three Ds
• When Sugar Isn’t Sweet
• Stargazers
• Gray Days
• Gold
• Taras Ilyich Palyony

Chapter 3. Brushstrokes of a Portrait

• Pimynych
• The Man Who Laughed . . .
• Trench Foot
• Everything Flows
• An Unanswered Letter
• Vasya-Pasya
• “With Hitler’s Head in a Suitcase”
• The Right Hand
• To Meet Our Fate
• Kalambet

Photo Section 1: Boris Lesnyak

Chapter 4. Roots and Branches

• Stan-Utiny
• The First Breath of Freedom
• “Hello, Please!”
• Bedbugs
• Live and Learn!
• Virik
• A Farewell Visit
• An Easy Bet
• A Strongly Conditioned Reflex
• Handshakes, or “By the Fume Hood”
• Time Heals All Wounds
• Sashka Gryzlov
• Trial by Fear

Chapter 5. A Close-Up

• Hey-Pinkhas
• Iron Logic
• Militant Atheism
• “Typhoon”
• It’s a Small World!
• Encounters with Thunderstorms
• Belated Rehabilitation
• A Matryoshka in Shorts
• Excerpts from Maksim Pinkhasik’s Letters
• Repeat Offenders
• Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov
• Distinguishing Characteristics
• The Letter
• Meetings in Moscow
• Lessons in Good Manners
• Mukha
• The Dwarf Pine
• Time
• Details and Particulars
• Different Perspectives
• The Letters of Varlam Shalamov
• Evgeniya Semyonovna Ginzburg
• Intersections
• "Zeka—Beka—Eska”
• Wojciech Darzycki (Fr. Martynian)
• The First Digression
• Under One Roof, Under One Sky
• The Second Digression
• Roll Call
• A Little Chronology
• Thoughts on the Bible
• I See Fewer and Fewer Smiles, and More and More Scowls
• December 1990. A Late Afterword

• Figures D.1–D.10
• Aphorisms, by Boris Lesnyak

I Chose Kolyma (The Archives of Memory), by Nina Savoyeva-Gokinayeva

• Chapter 1. The Beginning of My Path
• Chapter 2. Belichya

Photo Section 2: Nina Savoyeva 

• Chapter 3. Magadan
• Instead of an Epilogue
• Appendix: Article 58 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (1938)

Photo Section 3: Family Photographs