Шаламов и Солженицын: арьергардные бои за читателя

V. Shalamov and A. Solzhenitsyn are two famous representatives of the camp prose in Russian literature of the 20th century. Modern perception of these writers and their works is associated with complex problems analyzed in this report. A number of facts show the general cooling of readers to the personality and works of Solzhenitsyn, despite the support of his authority at first by the Western community, and then – by the new Russian government. On the other hand, the facts demonstrate the growing readers’ interest to the personality and creativity of Shalamov, who never had official support and was in the shadow of Solzhenitsyn. The report analyzes social and the political reasons for this situation with the involvement of little-known information from biographies two writers and polemics, which they conducted among themselves during their lifetime.