In the 1960s and 1970s, Varlam Shalamov was one of the first to write several literary works with the aim of returning to the cultural space the names of Osip Mandelstam and Alexander Voronsky, who died during the Great Terror and whose names continued to be hushed up despite their rehabilitation. The article analyzes the intersections of literary and revolutionary traditions in 1920s Russia and reconstructs their historical context. It analyzes the ideas that Shalamov considered important when writing about figures of the recent past; the importance of this cultural heritage in the modern world is emphasized.