Yu Bondarev hot snow. Roman Yu

© Bondarev Yu. V., 1969

© Mikhailov O., introductory article, 2004

© Durasov L., illustrations, 2004

© Design of the series. Publishing house "Children's Literature", 2004

The text is printed according to the edition: Bondarev Yu. V. Collection. cit.: in 8 volumes. M.: Voice: Russian Archive, 1993. T. 2

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Brief information about the author

In 1931 the family moved to Moscow. After graduating from school (1941), the main test in life was the Great Patriotic War. From Stalingrad it was a long way to Czechoslovakia. Wounded twice. Returning from the war, he graduated from the M. Gorky Literary Institute, began publishing in 1949, and has been a member of the USSR Writers' Union since 1951. The first collection of stories, “On the Big River,” was published in 1953. Then the novels were published: “Silence” (1962), “Two” (1964), “ Hot Snow"(1969), "Shore" (1975), "Choice" (1980), "Game" (1985), "Temptation" (1991), "Non-resistance" (1996), " Bermuda Triangle"(1999); stories: “Youth of Commanders” (1956), “Battalions Ask for Fire” (1957), “Last Salvos” (1959), “Relatives” (1969); collections of lyrical and philosophical miniatures “Moments” (1977, 1979, 1983, 1987, 1988, 2001 ( full meeting miniatures), books of stories, literary articles.

Three Collected Works were published in the Soviet Union and Russia: 1973–1974 (4 volumes), 1984–1986 (6 volumes), 1993–1996 (9 volumes).

Translated into more than 70 languages, including English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Dutch, Danish, Finnish, Polish, Turkish, Romanian, Czech, Slovak, Serbian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Greek, Arabic, Hindi , Chinese and others. In total, from 1958 to 1980, 150 publications were published abroad.

Several monographs are devoted to the writer’s work. Among them: O. Mikhailov “Yuri Bondarev” (1976), E. Gorbunova “Yuri Bondarev” (1980), V. Korobov “Yuri Bondarev” (1984), Y. Idashkin “Yuri Bondarev” (1987), N. Fed "Bondarev's Artistic Discoveries" (1988).

Filmed based on the works of Yu. Bondarev art films: “Last Salvos”, “Silence”, “Shore”, “Choice”, film epic “Liberation” together with Yu. Ozerov and O. Kurganov. Member of the Union of Cinematographers.

From 1990 to 1994 - Chairman of the Writers' Union of Russia. For eight years - co-chairman, then member of the executive committee of the International Society of Writers' Unions.

He was elected as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR of the 9th–10th convocations, and was Deputy Chairman of the Council of Nationalities of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (1984–1989).

Currently – Chairman of the Award Committee International Prize named after M. Sholokhov. Full member of the Russian, International Slavic, Petrine and Pushkin academies, as well as the Academy Russian literature. Honorary Professor of the Moscow State Open Pedagogical University named after M.

A. Sholokhova.

Hero of Socialist Labor, laureate Lenin Prize, two State awards USSR, State Prize of the RSFSR, Leo Tolstoy Prize, International Prize named after M. Sholokhov, All-Russian Prize "Stalingrad", Prize named after Alexander Nevsky, Prize named after V. Trediakovsky. Awarded two Orders of Lenin, Orders of the Red Banner of Labor, October revolution, "Badge of honor", Patriotic War I degree, two medals “For Courage”, a medal “For the Defense of Stalingrad”, “For Victory over Germany”, as well as the order “ Big Star Friendship of Peoples" (GDR).

Lives and works in Moscow.

By the very essence of existence

Yuri Vasilievich Bondarev is the largest Russian writer of the 20th century, included in Soviet literature How bright representative"war generation" He created an epic panorama of the feat of our people in the Great Patriotic War, at the same time - and more deeply with each new work - conducting moral and philosophical quests in the high traditions of Leo Tolstoy and Ivan Bunin. As already noted in criticism, the writer finds a reflection of the fate of the nation in the private fate of the individual.

In one of his novels, which acutely raises moral and civil issues, affirming the concepts of honor, duty, conscience in a peaceful post-war, but deceptively quiet time, which has just begun its countdown, which is called “Silence” (1962), Yuri Bondarev confronts the buffet counter of two young people: one is a former Katyusha driver, sergeant, and now simply disabled, Pavel, the other is artillery captain Sergei Vokhmintsev, who has returned to Moscow. Surprised by his title, Paul asks:

“Are you the captain? When did you have time? Since what year? Your face...

“Since the twenty-fourth,” Sergei answered.

“Happy and lucky,” Pavel drawled and repeated firmly: “Lucky... Lucky.”

- Why lucky?

“Brother, I’ve become familiar with these doctors and commissions,” Pavel spoke with gloomy gaiety. - “From twenty fourth year? - they ask. - You are lucky. “They say, “rarely anyone comes to us from the twenty-fourth to the twenty-third.”

Going through the names of many of Bondarev’s memorable and beloved heroes - artillery captain Boris Ermakov (“Battalions Ask for Fire,” 1957), battery commander Dmitry Novikov (“Last Salvos,” 1959), Lieutenant Kuznetsov (“Hot Snow,” 1969), the heroes of the tetralogy about the Russian intelligentsia - the writer Nikitin ("The Shore", 1975), the artist Vasilyev ("Choice", 1980), the film director Krymov ("The Game", 1985), the scientist Drozdov ("Temptation", 1991), we can easily notice that they belong to the same generation as Vokhmintsev. To the generation that encountered the war at the age of eighteen and suffered the greatest damage from its deadly sickle.

Twenty-four is the year of birth of Yuri Bondarev.

He was born on March 15, 1924 in the Urals, in Orsk, in the family of a people's investigator; as an eight-year-old boy he moved with his parents to Moscow. The ten-year school was replaced by the school of war.

His youth, scorched by the war, having learned something that no other person would know throughout his entire life (“We were then twenty years old and forty at the same time,” he said about his generation), is so dramatic that it seems By virtue of this alone, it demanded to be imprinted in words, it demanded comprehension of those terrible and heroic events that our Motherland experienced for almost five years.

Three percent of this generation survived! And these few, who survived the fiery tornadoes, delegated to literature an impressive number of writers, marked by a bright moral and artistic gift. I will name only a few from the extensive list: Vladimir Bogomolov, Yuri Bondarev, Vasil Bykov, Konstantin Vorobyov, Yuri Goncharov, Evgeniy Nosov.

Starting from the bitter winter of 1942, when he was wounded on the outskirts of Stalingrad, Yu. Bondarev throughout the subsequent years of fire was a warrior, not a chronicler, but a participant in what was happening, the commander of an anti-tank gun, a possible hero of the front-line essays and correspondence written then.

In the rich work of the writer, a special place is occupied by the novel about the Stalingrad epic “Hot Snow”.

In it, Y. Bondarev was attracted (in the words of Leo Tolstoy) by “folk thought.” However, it would be simply impossible to write differently about Stalingrad, where the fate of the Great Patriotic War was decided. This “folk thought” gave novelty to the work in three aspects at once: firstly, it changed dramatically scale storytelling; secondly, the writer for the first time focused his attention on how the character of the young commander, Nikolai Kuznetsov, is born and formed before our eyes (before that we met Ermakov and Novikov, who were already established and, as it were, “solidified” in their perception of the war); finally, that innovative aesthetic system in the depiction of the war, the foundations of which were laid by the writer in the stories “The Battalions Ask for Fire” and “The Last Salvos.”

At one time, the fundamental innovation of Leo Tolstoy was the “double” artistic vision, as if the vision of an eagle, allowing the writer in the epic “War and Peace” to cover with his gaze a huge space, say, the entire Borodino field of a thousand fathoms, while simultaneously discerning the smallest details in his heroes. “Pettiness” and “generalization,” as the writer himself called it, are inextricably united. This one here general principle instant change of focus, free floating over the map of events and quick switching to “private” psychology was fruitfully used by a number of writers of the 20th century. But before “Hot Snow,” it was believed that this Tolstoy discovery could only be the property of a lengthy epic.

In the novel by Yu. Bondarev, division commander Deev, member of the Military Council Vesnin, army commander Bessonov, and finally Supreme Commander-in-Chief Stalin appear (although the action is still confined to the tight framework of one day, and in the center of the story is one artillery battery standing at the forefront). The fruitful principle of “double vision” manifested itself in a renewed way in a certain “bipolarity” of a small novel, which thanks to this absorbed the content of an entire epic. In other words, in “Hot Snow” there is a constant switching between two visions of the grandiose battle with Manstein’s divisions trying to break through to the encircled group of Paulus - large-scale, all-encompassing - of Army Commander Bessonov and “trench”, limited to the tight space of a patch occupied by an artillery battery - of Lieutenant Kuznetsov .

The thought of Stalingrad becomes the axial, mainline one in the novel “Hot Snow,” subjugating the fates of all the characters, influencing their actions and thoughts. Yu. Bondarev shows those heroes of the Red Army - infantrymen and artillerymen - at whom the tip of the blow of Manstein's tank avalanche was directed, who fought to the death on the southern bank of the Myshkovka River, were crushed, trampled by a German steel boot, who finally stepped onto the northern bank, and that's all -they continued to live, resist, and destroy the enemy. Even General Bessonov, the brain of the army, its will condensed into one lump, the military leader who, back in 1941, burned out all pity and condescension in himself, is amazed at the feat of the survivors there, in the rear of the enemy, who broke through, but thanks to their inhuman resistance, lost offensive strength, pressure, and was finally stopped and turned back.

The enemy faced like this a resistance that seemed to surpass any idea of ​​human capabilities. With some kind of surprised respect, many of those who were on the side of the Nazis in that war recall the fortitude of the Soviet soldiers, their decisive contribution to the victory. So, passed through the fields Russia and who found himself in the West at the end of the war, Bruno Winzer says in his book “Soldier of Three Armies”: “Just a few days ago we fought against the Red Army, and it defeated us, this is indisputable. But these ones here? I didn’t think the British were the winners.” And it was no coincidence that the elderly and now retired Field Marshal Manstein refused to meet with Yu. Bondarev, having learned that he was working on a book about the Battle of Stalingrad.

Who stopped Manstein’s tank ram then, in the fierce winter of 1942? Who accomplished this feat?

The writer introduces us to the soldiers and officers (more precisely, commanders, since the rank of “officer” came into force only in February of the following, victorious for Stalingrad 1943) of one artillery battery, in which there are four classmates at once, graduates of the same school, an exemplary combat soldier , demanding, smart, battalion commander Lieutenant Drozdovsky, platoon commanders Kuznetsov and Davlatyan, senior sergeant Ukhanov, who was not given a rank for AWOL committed just before production.

We manage already in the first pages of the novel, during the deadly long march across the icy steppe, unbearable due to the severe December cold and fatigue - from the railway station to the combat positions - to get acquainted with other heroes who will have to perform their feat. With the gunner of the first gun, Sergeant Nechaev, with the young Kazakh Kasymov, with the small and pitiful Chibisov, who was captured, with the battery foreman Skorik, with two riders - “thin, pale, with a frightened face of a teenager” Sergunenkov and the elderly Rubin, a distrustful, ruthless peasant. With the battery medical instructor Zoya Elagina (“in a flirtatious white sheepskin coat, in neat white felt boots, in white embroidered mittens, not military, all, it seemed, festively clean, winter, coming from another, calm, distant world”).

Bondarev’s skill as a portrait painter has grown so much in comparison with the stories “Battalions Ask for Fire” and “The Last Salvos” that already in the exhibition he outlines the characters everyone participants in the upcoming mortal battle, expressively capturing a certain spiritual dominant of each of them. Consider, for example, the episode when, while lowering a gun into a ravine, a horse broke its front legs. Crying Sergunenkov in last time feeds her with a hidden handful of oats, the horse with human acuteness senses the inevitable approach of his death, and Rubin indifferently, no, even with pleasure, with some kind of vengeful cruelty, undertakes to shoot her and does not kill her with one shot. And now Ukhanov, with hatred, snatches the rifle from him and, his face white, ends the animal’s suffering.

We should immediately add (and this again new feature for Bondarev’s prose), which we will recognize more than once in those familiar to us - side! – the characters are new and seemingly completely unexpected for them, but in fact psychologically convincing features that significantly change the first impression. If they suddenly turn to us with their a new facet the secondary characters, then the leading ones - Kuznetsov, Davlatyan, Drozdovsky - immediately, clearly and definitely tune the reader to their “main wave”. They are interesting enough in themselves that they need to be re-evaluated somehow. We dive into the depth of their characters and, during the trials they endure, we only clarify the routes of travel of their souls.

Only to a superficial observer may Drozdovsky seem like a “knight without fear and reproach,” a new Ermakov or Novikov. Already the first meeting with the battery commander forces the reader to peer warily at him: there is too much ostentation, demonstrativeness, panache and pose. However, not only superficial, but also a loving glance. When, at the moment of the attack on the Messer station, Drozdovsky runs out of the car and sends burst after burst from a light machine gun at the enemy fighters, medical instructor Zoya irritably says to Kuznetsov: “Eh, Lieutenant Kuznetsov? Why don't you shoot at planes? Are you a coward? Only Drozdovsky?..”

Undoubtedly, close to the spectacular, coldly impenetrable and, as it were, charged with risk, Drozdovsky’s feat, Kuznetsov looks too “everyday”, “humane”, “domestic”. The qualities of a soldier and commander will be revealed in him only later, during the day of the terrible battle with tanks at Myshkovka, during his self-education in the feat. While the “Moscow boy”, yesterday’s tenth grader, still lives indestructibly within him, this is how he is seen by the broken Ukhanov, and the gloomily silent Rubin, and Zoya Elagina herself (who, together with Drozdovsky, hides from everyone that they are husband and wife: there is no time at the front marital tenderness).

But if Zoya Elagina has to slowly, painfully re-evaluate these two heroes - Drozdovsky and Kuznetsov, then the reader will discover much earlier potential strength each of them.

Talking about the creation of the novel “Hot Snow,” Yu. Bondarev defined the concept of heroism in war as follows: “It seems to me that heroism is the constant overcoming in one’s consciousness of doubts, uncertainty, and fear. Imagine: frost, icy wind, one cracker for two, frozen grease in the shutters of the machine guns; fingers in frosty mittens do not bend from the cold; anger at the cook who was late to the front line; disgusting sucking in the pit of the stomach at the sight of Junkers entering a dive; the death of comrades... And in a minute you have to go into battle, towards everything hostile that wants to kill you. The whole life of a soldier is compressed into these moments; these minutes - to be or not to be - are the moment of overcoming oneself. This is “quiet” heroism, seemingly hidden from prying eyes, heroism in itself. But he determined victory in the last war, because millions fought.”

The heroism of millions permeated the entire thickness of the Red Army, which appears in the novel as a deep and full expression Russian character, as the embodiment of the moral imperative of the multinational Soviet people. The armored fascist fist of four hundred tanks was opposed by people who not only carried out their military duty. No, having already completed it, they continued to make inhuman efforts, as if refusing to die, fighting, it seems, beyond the line of death. Here the great patience of the Russian people was revealed, for which Stalin raised a toast in the victorious spring of 1945.

This long-suffering and endurance are manifested every moment and hour - in the “quiet” heroism of Kuznetsov and his comrades Ukhanov, Nechaev, Rubin, Zoya Elagina and in the wise waiting of Bessonov, who decided not to spray, to hold on until the last, turning point two cases that should fit. Like a focused beam, the word “Stalingrad” burns through, forcing everyone to feel like a part of a common monolith, animated by one idea: to survive.

Compared to this general “quiet” heroism, the behavior of Lieutenant Drozdovsky looks especially theatrical and absurd. However, in order for the theatrical scenery erected by his egoistic fantasy to finally collapse, and for him to discover the true face of war - as a rough, hard, everyday “rough” job, for him to feel the collapse and pitifulness of his desire for personal triumph, he must lose his Zoya. To lose her, so to speak, physically, because spiritually and morally he had already lost her before, when his romantic image was destroyed and melted away in the “hot snow” of war.

Zoya Elagina - another and completely new one female image in a number of military works by Bondarev, where, if you look closely, there is a prospect of weakening sensual and predominance spiritual began in showing love in war: from the completely “earthly” Shura, who does not hide her infidelity to Ermakov in “Battalions...” to the girlish, ardent Lena in “The Last Salvos,” and then to Zoya Elagina, who is so moral and pure that she frightens the very possibility of touching her, wounded, strangers male hands. At the end of the novel, Zoya is wounded in the stomach and commits suicide herself.

The artist’s yearning for an ideal, especially important when in our time ideals are subject to systematic destruction, systematic “weathering,” gave rise to the desire to depict a sublime and pure soul, as if to highlight the ideal feminine principle. The very “decrystallization” of love for Drozdovsky and the vague, as if still “premonition” for Kuznetsov do not carry in themselves anything “modest,” roughly earthly, physiological. However, Kuznetsov himself cannot and does not want to cross the threshold of pure, childishly disinterested attraction to Zoya. Kuznetsov and Zoya had only one intimacy - the proximity of death under direct blows from tank guns.

Having survived and withstood inhuman trials, Kuznetsov gains folk attitude towards death, first of all towards one’s own death, simply without thinking about it. “The essence of grace is from those who stand here, who have not tasted death...” (“There are those standing here who do not know death,” says the Gospel). Death retreats from him, giving him the mournful opportunity to bury others: junior sergeant Chubarikov, “with a naively long neck, like the stem of a sunflower”; gunner Evstigneev, “with a sinuous stream of blood caked near his ear”; bloody, wide-cheeked Kasymov; Zoya, who will be carried on his, Kuznetsov’s, overcoat.

In the depiction of war and man at war in the novel “Hot Snow” we see a new beginning for Bondarev, one might say, a Sholokhov-esque beginning. This Sholokhov beginning led Bondarev the prose writer to the depths of the epic and made it possible to compress a huge number of human destinies, characters, and events into a single whole, into a kind of artistic monolith. It also had a significant impact on Bondarev’s aesthetics in depicting war.

Already in the stories “The Battalions Ask for Fire” and “The Last Salvos” Yu. Bondarev showed us a kind of new aesthetics in conveying the details of the battle. Colorful pictures of battle, striking with the power of external imagery - dive bombers, tank attacks, artillery duels - stood out from the entire huge mass of what was written about the Great Patriotic War, by a certain “animation” of these man-made creatures, like giant metal insects - crawling, jumping , flying. However, in this fruitful (and innovative) trend there was a danger of being carried away by the visual side of showing war, which could be called the danger excesses of skill.

It is in “Hot Snow” that Yu. Bondarev’s prose finally loses the glimmer of dapperness, loses some of the writer’s desire to demonstrate his visual possibilities. He seems to be carrying out artistic practice Suvorov's fighting principle is straight to the target, approach, fight! Words explode, suffer, suffer, like living people. There is no technique, no mastery: there is a fluid, living life that hypnotizes us.

Losing the redundancy of colors, Bondarev’s aesthetics in showing war becomes stricter and from this only increases its internal pictorial power. This allows the author in a “bipolar novel” to use rapid changes in plans, image scales, and move from deep psychological analysis to a free epic manner, where events are viewed as if from a great height.

The action of the work takes place in war time. Colonel Deev's division is sent to Stalingrad to repel the enemy group. Many days and nights there is a battle going on. During the battle, many German and Soviet soldiers die.

The new army is led by General Bessonov, Cruel person. He thinks that his son died during the battle and blames himself for this. Vesnin learns that the general's son is alive and is in a German hospital, but does not dare to inform Bessonov about this. Vesnin dies and the general does not know the truth about his child. Soviet soldiers still managed to repel the enemies. The general presented orders and medals to the soldiers for the courage and heroism they showed in battle.

The work teaches that it is necessary to remain human in any situation, to have a feeling of pity even in wartime. Teaches patriotism, devotion, camaraderie.

Read the summary Bondarev's Hot Snow

The events of the work unfold during the Great Patriotic War in 1942. Colonel Deev's division was constantly sent to guard Stalingrad. The division included a battery under the close leadership of Lieutenant Drozdovsky. The platoon was led by Kuznetsov, who had previously studied with Drozdov at the same school.

The platoon consisted of 12 soldiers, among whom Nechaev, Chibisov and Ukhanov stood out.

Sergeant Ukhanov worked in the police before the war, then received his education at the Aktobe School, where his commanders studied. Once Ukhanov left the platoon without permission and returned through the toilet window; the head of his division personally saw all this. After this, one could no longer dream of becoming an officer. Drozdovsky neglected Ukhanov, but Kuznetsov treated him well.

Nechaev was a sailor in peacetime and did not miss a single skirt. Even while in the service, he shows sympathy for Zoya Elagina, the medical instructor of the battery. The girl was pretty and attracted the attention of many men. Especially during wartime, when there was a shortage of women.

Chibisov was captured by the Nazis, so many do not trust him and cast contemptuous glances at him.

One day he arrived at Deev’s platoon with some unfamiliar general. Later it turned out that this was General Bessonov Pyotr Aleksandrovich.

Since the military kitchen lagged behind the soldiers, the military was forced to use snow instead of water.

By order of Stalin, the division under the leadership of Deev was to be sent south to fight the German military group "Goth". Bessonov P.A. was appointed commander-in-chief of the new army.

The lieutenant general was very worried after the death of his only son, who died at the front. His wife Olga repeatedly urged him to take his son into her service, but the father did not want to impose himself. After what happened, of course, he was very sorry.

In November, the battle of the Stalingrad and Don fronts against the Nazis was fought. Hitler ordered Operation Winter Storm to begin. Its essence was to German troops They surrounded Don. After half a month, the enemies were 45 km from the city. Now Bessonov wanted to detain the Germans, who were very close to Stalingrad. The general's army received support from a tank division.

Deev's division was diligently preparing for the meeting with the fascists. Kuznetsov felt nostalgia for his native land, for close people. He imagined how he would bring Zoya to his cozy house.

The girl was left alone with Drozdovsky. There was love between them, but the commander carefully hid his relationship from others. Because he was afraid that Zoya might betray him, like his late parents did. He wanted his beloved to prove her devotion to him, but Zoya simply could not do some things.

Many of our soldiers died in the first battle. Despite this, General Bessonov ordered not to retreat, but to fight until victory, while he did not send new troops, leaving them in reserve to finish off the enemy. Vesnin now understood why Bessonov was considered a cruel person.

The general was informed that domestic army surrounded by fascist troops.

A man came from counterintelligence and gave Vesnin a letter from the Germans, which contained a photo of Bessonov’s son and indicated that he was in their hospital. But Vesnin could not believe the young man’s betrayal and did not yet convey the message to the lieutenant general.

Vesnin died while performing his official duties, and Bessonov never found out that his son was alive.

The battle began again. Chibisov killed a man, mistaking him for an enemy. Then it turned out that it was our intelligence officer.

After some time, Drozdovsky arrived with Zoya and Rubin. All together they went to help the scout. They were noticed by the Nazis, who began shelling. As a result, Zoya was injured, and Drozdovsky was shell-shocked. They wanted to save the girl, but did not have time. Kuznetsov was upset, he cried and blamed the commander for what happened.

In the evening, the general learned from a German intelligence officer that they had exhausted all their reserves. On the same day, Bessonov learned of Vesnin’s death.

The general gave the order to attack the Germans. At that moment, one of the soldiers found a photograph of Victor, Bessonov’s son, but was afraid to give it away.

The finishing moment has arrived. The Nazis began to retreat back, and Soviet troops surrounded them. Bessonov took the awards and went to present them to those heroes who courageously fought for their Motherland. All fighters of Kuznetsov's platoon received medals.

The fight continued. Kuznetsov’s friends sat and drank alcoholic drinks, putting medals in them...

Picture or drawing Hot snow

Yuri Vasilievich Bondarev "Hot snow"

1. Biography.

2. Place and time of action of the novel "Hot Snow".

3. Analysis of the work. A. The image of the people. b. The tragedy of the novel. With. Death is the greatest evil. d. The role of the heroes' past for the present. e. Portraits of characters.

f. Love in the work.

g. Kuznetsov and people.

b. Drozdovsky.

V. Ukhanov.

h. The closeness of the souls of Bessonov and Kuznetsov

Yuri Vasilievich Bondarev was born on March 15, 1924 in the city of Orsk. During the Great Patriotic War, the writer, as an artilleryman, traveled a long way from Stalingrad to Czechoslovakia. After the war from 1946 to 1951 he studied at Literary Institute named after M. Gorky. Began publishing in 1949. And the first collection of stories, “On the Big River,” was published in 1953.

The writer of the story became widely famous

"Youth of Commanders", published in 1956, "Battalions

asking for fire" (1957), "Last Salvos" (1959).

These books are characterized by drama, accuracy and clarity in the description of the events of military life, and the subtlety of the psychological analysis of the heroes. Subsequently, his works “Silence” (1962), “Two” (1964), “Relatives” (1969), “Hot Snow” (1969), “Shore” (1975), “Choice” were published "(1980), "Moments" (1978) and others.

Since the mid-60s, the writer has been working on

creating films based on their works; in particular, he was one of the creators of the script for the epic film "Liberation".

Yuri Bondarev is also a laureate of the Lenin and State Prizes of the USSR and the RSFSR. His works have been translated into many foreign languages.

Among Yuri Bondarev's books about the war, "Hot Snow" occupies a special place, opening up new approaches to solving moral and psychological problems posed in his first stories - "Battalions Ask for Fire" and "The Last Salvos". These three books about the war represent a holistic and developing world, which in “Hot Snow” reached its greatest completeness and imaginative power. The first stories, independent in all respects, were at the same time a kind of preparation for a novel, perhaps not yet conceived, but living in the depths of the writer’s memory.

The events of the novel "Hot Snow" take place near Stalingrad, south of the blockaded Soviet troops The 6th Army of General Paulus, in the cold December 1942, when one of our armies withstood in the Volga steppe the attack of the tank divisions of Field Marshal Manstein, who sought to break through a corridor to Paulus’s army and lead it out of encirclement. The outcome of the Battle of the Volga and maybe even the timing of the end of the war itself largely depended on the success or failure of this operation. The duration of the novel is limited to just a few days, during which Yuri Bondarev’s heroes selflessly defend a tiny patch of land from German tanks.

In "Hot Snow" time is compressed even more tightly than in the story "Battalions Ask for Fire." “Hot Snow” is the short march of General Bessonov’s army disembarking from the echelons and the battle that decided so much in the fate of the country; these are cold frosty dawns, two days and two endless December nights. Knowing no respite and lyrical digressions, as if the author’s breath was taken away from constant tension, the novel “Hot Snow” is distinguished by its directness, direct connection of the plot with the true events of the Great Patriotic War, with one of its decisive moments. The life and death of the novel's heroes, their very destinies are illuminated with an alarming light true history, as a result of which everything acquires special weight and significance.

In the novel, Drozdovsky's battery absorbs almost all the reader's attention; the action is concentrated primarily around a small number of characters. Kuznetsov, Ukhanov, Rubin and their comrades are a particle great army, they are the people, the people to the extent that the typified personality of the hero expresses the spiritual, moral traits of the people.

In “Hot Snow” the image of a people who have risen to war appears before us in a completeness of expression previously unknown in Yuri Bondarev, in the richness and diversity of characters, and at the same time in integrity. This image is not limited to the figures of young lieutenants - commanders of artillery platoons, nor the colorful figures of those who are traditionally considered to be people from the people - like the slightly cowardly Chibisov, the calm and experienced gunner Evstigneev, or the straightforward and rude driver Rubin; nor by senior officers, such as the division commander, Colonel Deev, or the army commander, General Bessonov. Only collectively understood and accepted emotionally as something unified, despite all the differences in ranks and titles, do they form the image of a fighting people. The strength and novelty of the novel lies in the fact that this unity is achieved as if by itself, captured without special effort the author - living, moving life. The image of the people, as the result of the entire book, perhaps most of all feeds the epic, novelistic beginning of the story.

Yuri Bondarev is characterized by a desire for tragedy, the nature of which is close to the events of the war itself. It would seem that nothing corresponds to this artist’s aspiration more than the most difficult time for the country at the beginning of the war, the summer of 1941. But the writer’s books are about a different time, when the defeat of the Nazis and the victory of the Russian army are almost certain.

The death of heroes on the eve of victory, the criminal inevitability of death contains a high tragedy and provokes a protest against the cruelty of the war and the forces that unleashed it. The heroes of “Hot Snow” die - battery medical instructor Zoya Elagina, shy Edova Sergunenkov, member of the Military Council Vesnin, Kasymov and many others die... And the war is to blame for all these deaths. Even if the callousness of Lieutenant Drozdovsky is to blame for the death of Sergunenkov, even if the blame for Zoya’s death falls partly on him, but no matter how great Drozdovsky’s guilt, they are, first of all, victims of war.

The novel expresses an understanding of death as a violation of the highest justice and harmony. Let us remember how Kuznetsov looks at the murdered Kasymov: “now a shell box lay under Kasymov’s head, and his youthful, mustacheless face, recently alive, dark, had become deathly white, thinned by the eerie beauty of death, looked in surprise with damp cherry half-open eyes at his chest, at a padded jacket torn to shreds, as if even after death he did not understand how it killed him and why he was never able to stand at the gunpoint. In this unseeing squint of Kasymov there was a quiet curiosity about his unlived life on this earth and at the same time a calm secret death, into which he was knocked down by the red-hot pain of the fragments when he tried to rise to the sight."

Kuznetsov feels even more acutely the irreversibility of the loss of his driver Sergunenkov. After all, the very mechanism of his death is revealed here. Kuznetsov turned out to be a powerless witness to how Drozdovsky sent Sergunenkov to certain death, and he, Kuznetsov, already knows that he will forever curse himself for what he saw, was present, but was unable to change anything.

In "Hot Snow", with all the tension of events, everything human in people, their characters are revealed not separately from the war, but interconnected with it, under its fire, when, it seems, they cannot even raise their heads. Usually the chronicle of battles can be retold separately from the individuality of his participants - fight in “Hot Snow” cannot be retold otherwise than through the fate and characters of people.

The past of the characters in the novel is significant and significant. For some it is almost cloudless, for others it is so complex and dramatic that the former drama is not left behind, pushed aside by the war, but accompanies the person in the battle southwest of Stalingrad. Past events determined military fate Ukhanova: a gifted officer, full of energy, who should command a battery, but he is only a sergeant. Ukhanov’s cool, rebellious character also determines his movement within the novel. Chibisov's past troubles, which almost broke him (he spent several months in German captivity), resonated with fear in him and determine a lot in his behavior. One way or another, the novel reveals the past of Zoya Elagina, Kasymov, Sergunenkov, and the unsociable Rubin, whose courage and loyalty to soldier’s duty we will be able to appreciate only by the end of the novel.

The past of General Bessonov is especially important in the novel. The thought of a son caught in German captivity, complicates his position both at Headquarters and at the front. And when a fascist leaflet informing that Bessonov’s son was captured falls into the hands of Lieutenant Colonel Osin from the counterintelligence department of the front, it seems that a threat has arisen to Bessonov’s service.

All this retrospective material fits into the novel so naturally that the reader does not feel it separate. The past does not require a separate space for itself, separate chapters - it merged with the present, revealed its depths and the living interconnectedness of one and the other. The past does not burden the story of the present, but gives it greater dramatic poignancy, psychologism and historicism.

Yuri Bondarev does the same with character portraits: appearance and the characters of his heroes are shown in development, and only towards the end of the novel or with the death of the hero does the author create a complete portrait of him. How unexpected in this light is the portrait of the always smart and collected Drozdovsky on the very last page - with a relaxed, sluggish gait and unusually bent shoulders.

and spontaneity in the perception of characters, sensations

their real, living people, in whom it always remains

the possibility of mystery or sudden insight. Before us

the whole person, understandable, close, and yet we are not

leaves the feeling that we have only touched

the edge of his spiritual world - and with his death

you feel that you have not yet fully understood him

inner world. Commissioner Vesnin, looking at the truck,

thrown from the bridge onto the river ice, says: “What a monstrous destruction war is. Nothing has a price.” The monstrosity of war is most expressed - and the novel reveals this with cruel directness - in the murder of a person. But the novel also shows the high price of life given for the Motherland.

Of all the works about the Great Patriotic War, Bondarev’s novel “Hot Snow” stands out for its scale. It is dedicated to the Battle of Stalingrad - one of the most important battles that turned the tide of the war. It is known that the work is based on real events.

The focus is on military units. They were commanded by fellow students - officers who studied at the same military school. Lieutenant Drozdovsky commanded the battery, and the two platoons included in it were headed by lieutenants Davlayatyan and Kuznetsov. Drozdovsky, already during his studies, stood out for his imperious character and love for strict discipline.

Now, it seems, the time has come for Drozdovsky to test his education in action. His rifle battery received a responsible task: to gain a foothold on the river and resist attacks by German divisions. It was necessary to contain them because they were trying to save General Paulus, a serious fighting unit of the Nazis, from the army.

Kuznetsov’s unit included a certain Chibisov, who had previously been captured by the Germans. Such people were treated unkindly, so Chibisov tried to curry favor in order to prove his devotion to the fatherland. Kuznetsov also disliked Chibisov, believing that he should have shot himself, but he was over 40, and he also had children who needed to be provided for.

Another member of the platoon is Sergeant Ukhanov, who peaceful life served as a policeman. He was supposed to receive an officer rank, but as a result of the scandal he lost this opportunity. Returning from AWOL, he decided to climb into the building through the window in the toilet, and when he saw the commander sitting on the toilet there, he involuntarily laughed. Because of this, Drozdovsky did not like the sergeant, but he and Kuznetsov were friends.

The next participant, a certain Nechaev, worked as a sailor in peacetime. What distinguished him was passionate love to the female sex: he did not abandon this habit even during hostilities, at every opportunity trying to look after the nurse Zoya. However, it soon became clear that Zoya herself preferred to communicate not with him, but with Drozdovsky.

Colonel Deev's division, where the said battery was located, traveled in train, making regular stops. At the last of them, the division unloaded and met with the colonel himself. Near Deev there was a very old general with a sad look. As it turns out, he has his own sad story. His son, who was eighteen years old, went missing at the front, and now the general remembers his son every time he sees some young fighter.

The division continued its further journey on horseback. At night we decided to take a break. Kuznetsov, it seemed to him, was ready for combat, but did not imagine that he would soon face a huge enemy armored division.

At this time, Drozdovsky suddenly became too domineering. It seemed to Kuznetsov that the commander simply enjoyed his power and used it to humiliate his colleagues. Internal resistance grew in his soul. The commander himself strictly responded to Kuznetsov’s remarks and complaints that now he must obey him unquestioningly, since the time when they studied and were equal was over.

The soldiers at that moment had to starve, because the field kitchen was too behind. This is what displeased Kuznetsov. But the division stubbornly moved on - towards the enemy.

This large unit was part of the impressive army formed by Stalin and sent towards the fascist tank group "Goth". This army was commanded by the same old general named Bessonov. It turned out that he was a rather gloomy and withdrawn person, but he was sincere in his intentions. He didn’t want to seem kind and pleasant to everyone, he was just himself.

Meanwhile, Deev's division approached the Myshkova River and entrenched itself on it; a command post was located in the nearest village. During preparations for hostilities, many disagreements arose between the soldiers, officers and sent commissars.

General Bessonov did not trust the commissars, who, as it seemed to him, were assigned to watch him: Bessonov had some acquaintance with General Vlasov, a traitor who went over to the side of the enemy; Bessonov’s missing son also served with him. Drozdovsky and Kuznetsov looked at each other unkindly because of the nurse Zoya: the battery commander wanted her to belong only to him, but Zoya herself decided who she should be friends with.

A long battle began, during which everyone characters tested for strength. Drozdovsky again turns out to be a tough, domineering and not entirely fair commander; So, he sent a young and inexperienced soldier to blow up a German self-propelled gun, but he was unable to carry out the order and died.

During the Great Patriotic War, the writer, as an artilleryman, went a long way from Stalingrad to Czechoslovakia. Among Yuri Bondarev’s books about the war, “Hot Snow” occupies a special place, opening up new approaches to solving moral and psychological problems posed in his first stories “Battalions Ask for Fire” and “The Last Salvos”. These three books about the war are a holistic and developing world, which in “Hot Snow” reached its greatest completeness and imaginative power.
The events of the novel “Hot Snow” unfold near Stalingrad, south of the 6th Army of General Paulus, blocked by Soviet troops, in the cold December 1942, when one of our armies held back in the Volga steppe the attack of the tank divisions of Field Marshal Manstein, who sought to break through a corridor to Paulus’s army and get her out of the encirclement. The outcome of the Battle of the Volga and, perhaps, the timing of the end of the war itself largely depended on the success or failure of this operation. The duration of the novel is limited to just a few days, during which Yuri Bondarev’s heroes selflessly defend a tiny patch of land from German tanks.
In “Hot Snow,” time is compressed even more tightly than in the story “Battalions Ask for Fire.” “Hot Snow” is a short march of General Bessonov’s army disembarking from the echelons and a battle that decided so much in the fate of the country; these are cold frosty dawns, two days and two endless December nights. Without lyrical digressions, as if the author’s breath was caught from constant tension, the novel “Hot Snow” is distinguished by its directness, direct connection of the plot with the true events of the Great Patriotic War, with one of its decisive moments. The life and death of the novel's heroes, their very destinies are illuminated by the disturbing light of true history, as a result of which everything acquires weight and significance.
In the novel, Drozdovsky's battery absorbs almost all the reader's attention; the action is concentrated primarily around a small number of characters. Kuznetsov, Ukhanov, Rubin and their comrades are a part of the great army, they are the people, the people to the extent that the typified personality of the hero expresses the spiritual, moral traits of the people.
In “Hot Snow,” the image of the people who have risen to war appears before us in a completeness of expression previously unknown in Yuri Bondarev, in the richness and diversity of characters, and at the same time in integrity. This image is not limited to the figures of young lieutenants - artillery and platoon commanders; nor the colorful figures of those who are traditionally considered to be people from the people - the seemingly slightly cowardly Chibisov, the calm and experienced gunner Evstigneev, the straightforward and rough rider Rubin; nor by senior officers such as the division commander, Colonel Deev, or the army commander, General Bessonov. Only together, with all the difference in ranks and titles, they form the image of a fighting people. The strength and novelty of the novel lies in the fact that this unity is achieved as if by itself, captured without much effort by the author - with living, moving life.
The death of heroes on the eve of victory, the criminal inevitability of death contain a high level of tragedy and provoke a protest against the cruelty of the war and the forces that unleashed it. The heroes of “Hot Snow” die - battery medical instructor Zoya Elagina, shy rider Sergunenkov, member of the Military Council Vesnin, Kasymov and many others die... And the war is to blame for all these deaths. Let the callousness of Lieutenant Drozdovsky be to blame for the death of Sergunenkov, and let the blame for Zoya’s death fall partly on him, but, no matter how great Drozdovsky’s guilt, they are, first of all, victims of war.
The novel expresses the understanding of death as a violation of the highest justice and harmony. Let us remember how Kuznetsov looks at the murdered Kasymov: “Now a shell box lay under Kasymov’s head, and his youthful, mustacheless face, recently alive, dark, had become deathly white, thinned by the eerie beauty of death, looked in surprise with damp cherry half-open eyes at his chest , at the torn into shreds, dissected padded jacket, even after death he did not understand how it killed him and why he was never able to stand at the gunpoint.”
Kuznetsov feels even more acutely the irreversibility of the loss of his driver Sergunenkov. After all, the very mechanism of his death is revealed here.
Kuznetsov turned out to be a powerless witness to how Drozdovsky sent Sergunenkov to certain death, and he, Kuznetsov, already knows that he will forever curse himself for what he saw, was present, but was unable to change anything.
Probably the most mysterious thing in the world of human relationships in the novel is the love that arises between Kuznetsov and Zoya. The war, its cruelty and blood, its timing, overturning the usual ideas about time - it was precisely this that contributed to such a rapid development of this love. After all, this feeling developed in those short hours march and battle, when there is no time to think and analyze your feelings. And it all begins with Kuznetsov’s quiet, incomprehensible jealousy of the relationship between Zoya and Drozdovsky. And soon - so little time passes - Kuznetsov is already bitterly mourning deceased Zoya, and it is from these lines that the title of the novel is taken: when Kuznetsov wiped his face wet from tears, “the snow on the sleeve of his quilted jacket was hot from his tears.”
One of the most important conflicts in the novel is the conflict between Kuznetsov and Drozdovsky. A lot of space is given to this conflict; it is exposed very sharply and can be easily traced from beginning to end. At first there is tension between the characters, going back to the background of the novel; inconsistency of characters, manners, temperaments, even style of speech: the soft, thoughtful Kuznetsov seems to find it difficult to endure Drozdovsky’s abrupt, commanding speech. Long hours of battle, the senseless death of Sergunenkov, the mortal wound of Zoya, for which Drozdovsky was partly to blame - all this forms a gap between the two young officers, the moral incompatibility of their existences.
The highest ethical philosophical thought the novel, as well as its emotional intensity reaches in the finale, when Bessonov warmly rewards the soldiers in a fatherly way, all his warm feelings are with them, with these war workers. There is a rapprochement between Bessonov and Kuznetsov. This closeness turns out to be more sublime: it is the closeness of thought, spirit, and outlook on life. Separated by the disproportion of responsibilities, Lieutenant Kuznetsov and the army commander, General Bessonov, are moving towards one goal - not only military, but also spiritual. Suspecting nothing about each other's thoughts, they think about the same thing and seek the truth in the same direction. Both of them demandly ask themselves about the purpose of life and whether their actions and aspirations correspond to it. They are separated by age and related, like father and son, or even like brother and brother, love for the Motherland and belonging to the people and humanity in the highest sense of these words.