A marble plaque placed on the house displays a supposed date of construction – that being the end of the 18^th century.  However, in the memoirs of the Archpriest of St. Sophia Cathedral, Vasily Ivanovich Nordov (1797-1883), who oversaw the development of the housing for the cathedral’s clergy, the dating of the construction is indicated as being between the years of 1842 to 1844.

The house, a fourplex built by order of the Bishop of Vologda and Ustuzhina – Bishop Irinarkh (Popov), was constructed as a residence for the senior clergy of the cathedral.  Upon its completion, the Archpriest Vasily I. Nordov and his family settled in one of the apartments within the house.

Archpriest Vasily Ivanovich Nordov was born in the town of Veliky Ustyug (north of Vologda) and graduated from the Vologda Theological Seminary.  After he completed his studies in Vologda, he continued his education at the Moscow Theological Academy.  Upon the commencement of his theological training, he acted as rector of the Nikolsk Seminary School.  In 1824, the year of Vasily’s ordination and completion of his Master of Divinity Degree, he was appointed to service at the Vologda Spassobudenaya Vsegradskaya Church (“The Everyday Cathedral of the Savior.)  From the years between 1833 and 1841 Vasily Nordov returned to his native Veliky Ustyug as Archpriest of the Uspensky Sobor (“Dormition Cathedral”) and rector of the Veliky Ustyug Seminary School.  In 1841 he was appointed rector of the Vologda Cathedral; a post he kept for the remainder of his life.  During this same period, he acted as rector of the Vologda Seminary School from 1842 – 1857.  Vasily Nordov authored twelve books of theological or spiritual significance.  One of which, A Brief Overview of the Church Charter, was, beginning in 1865, designated by the Holy Synod as a required text “in the teaching of episcopal rules in every seminary or religious school.”  Upon his death, Vasily Ivanovich Nordov was awarded with the Order of St. Anna, 1^st and 2^nd Degree, in addition to being presented with the Order of St. Vladimir, 1^st Degree.  He is buried in the churchyard of St. Sophia Cathedral in Vologda.

It is in this house, the former residence of Archpriest Nordov, that the great Russian writer and poet Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov, spent his youth.  Varlam’s father, Tikhon Nikolaiovich Shalamov – a graduate of the Vologda Theological Seminary, had served several years in service with the Russian Orthodox Mission in Alaska; which at that time was headed by the future Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia Tikhon (Belavin).  After returning to Vologda in 1904, Tikhon Shalamov was appointed as a priest at St. Sophia Cathedral.

Varlam Shalamov was born in Vologda, Russia on the 5^th of June 1907 (in accordance with the Julian calendar which was observed in pre-revolutionary Russia; 18^th of June 1907 in the present-day, western calendar.)  In 1923 he graduated with honors from United Labor School no. 6.  In 1926 Shalamov entered the Moscow State University taking a major course of study in Soviet Law but was expelled in 1928 for having concealed his family’s ties to the church.

Shalamov was initially arrested in 1929 for the crime of anti-Stalin activity:  the printing and distribution of “Lenin’s Testament” (one of Lenin’s last letters to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union – CPSU; a letter which was somewhat critical of Stalin.) After he was arrested he was incarcerated at the Vishersky corrective labor camp in the Northern Ural Mountains.  After his release in 1932 Shalamov found work in Moscow as a journalist.  He also managed to return to Vologda twice during the early thirties; in 1933 for his father’s (Tikhon Nikolaiovich Shalamov) funeral and then again in the following year to see his mother, Nadezhda Alexandrovna Shalamova, laid to rest.  Three years later, in January of 1937, Varlam Shalamov was arrested once again and sentenced to five years imprisonment for “counter-revolutionary Trotskyist activity.”  He was arrested for a third and final time in 1943 and sentenced to 10 years in the frozen expanse of Kolyma for the crime of “anti-Soviet propaganda.” Upon the completion of his ten-year sentence in Kolyma he was released into the population in 1953.  In 1956 he was exonerated of the charges that led to the arrests of 1937 and 1943 and by 1972 was admitted to the prestigious Union of Soviet Writers.  In 2000 he was posthumously exonerated of the charges that led to his first arrest in 1929.  Shalamov spent the remainder of his life in Moscow.  He passed away in 1982.

Starting from the outset of the 1930’s Shalamov dedicated himself to literary activity – writing both poetry and prose.  Shalamov’s most famous work is his book of short stories about life in the camps, The Kolyma Tales.  He also wrote a number of works that are influenced by the memories of his youth in Vologda.  These include:  Pava and Drevo (Pava and the Tree), Vtoraya Rapsodiya Lista (The Second Rhapsody Sheet), Krest (Cross), Belka (The Squirrel), Examen (The Exam), and the autobiographical novel Chetvyortaya Vologda (The Fourth Vologda).

In 1990, on the main façade of the building in which Varlam T. Shalamov spent his youth, a marble memorial plaque containing a cast bronze bas-relief portrait of the writer was placed.  The plaque is inscribed with the words: “The great Russian writer Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov (1907-1982) was born in this house on June 18, 1907 and resided here until 1924.”

The designer of the plaque, Fedot Fedotovich Suchkov (1915-1991), a Moscow writer and sculptor, had also survived imprisonment in the Stalin-era labor camps.  The only portrait of Shalamov created within his own lifetime was also done by Fedot Suchkov (Wood, 1966, located at the Sakharov Museum and Public Hall.)  Suchkov also designed Shalamov’s bronze tombstone located at the Kuntsevo Cemetery in Moscow. 

Presently, a section of the Vologda Regional Art Gallery (and former residence of Archpriest Nordov as well as the Shalamov family) is dedicated as The Shalamov House – in memory and admiration for the author’s life and work.  The first official memorial exhibition dedicated to Shalamov and his family first opened in 1991 on the first floor of the Shalamov House.  This particular apartment is described by Sharlamov in his autobiographical novel The Fourth Vologda (1968).  The coordinators of the first exhibition (which consisted of one room only) were Art Historian M.N. Vorono, Artist A.V. Pakhomov, and Photographer S.V. Donin.  In 1994 the Hall was converted into a chamber room by the designer S.M. Iyevlev under the direction of M.N. Vorono.  On the central wall of the anteroom is a large tree-trunk fragment brought from Kolyma by the Vologda-based journalist V.V. Esipov.  Shalamov said of the tree fragment:  “It is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; it is the tree of Kolyma – a symbol and witness to the end of the camps.”  The donation of a neighboring hall in the Shalamov House by the Vologda Art Gallery has helped to expand exhibition space.  In 2007, in honor of what would have been Shalamov’s 100^th birthday, Art Gallery employees and designers R.A. Rozhina and A.V. Rozhina took to renovating the Shalamov exhibition.  They left the chamber room untouched but the Shalamov exhibits in the neighboring room were renovated and an addition to the writer’s exhibition was placed on the ground floor hallway.  At present the total area of the V.T. Shalamov exhibition is 27 square meters (approximately 290 square feet.)  The exhibition includes photographs of the writer, biographical material – material concerning family and friends, some personal belongings of the writer, copies of his books, and a number of items from the time he served in the camps.  The majority of the items found in the exhibition were given to the museum by Shalamov’s friend and muscovite I.P. Sirotinskaya – the official heir and keeper of Shalamov’s archives and copyrights.

In addition to the memorial exhibition the Shalamov house (within the Vologda Regional Art Gallery) has, since 1988, provided space for the regular exhibition of Russian and Western European Art.