Shalamov

In Yunost, in final layout, they threw out a whole page of the best poems. They cut three poems […]. All of this without any sort of censorship, just on somebody’s initiative (but whose?).

The constitutional experiment I conduct on myself is that I don’t go out, I don’t speak or read in public, I don’t even visit friends, and no one visits me, I don’t write to anyone, and yet still I am discriminated against. They don’t print my poems, they drop my book from the printing schedule, they don’t print a single story, nor a poem, they scrutinize every comma… [My work] languished at Literaturnaya Gazeta for a year, same with Znamya and Yunost.

– Varlam Shalamov

(1971 diary entries)