Analysis of several stories from the series “Kolyma Stories. The theme of the tragic fate of a person in a totalitarian state in “Kolyma Tales”

LESSONS 1 – 2. V. SHALAMOV. “KOLYMA STORIES” OBJECTIVES: by analyzing the works of V. T. Shalamov, to answer the question: “What could a person oppose to this hellish colossus, grinding him with its teeth of evil?” Equipment: book exhibition: V. Shalamov. "Kolyma Tales"; A. Solzhenitsyn. "GULAG Archipelago"; O. Volkov. "Plunge into Darkness"; recording of I. Talkov’s song “Russia”. DURING THE CLASSES. 1. Introductory remarks Flipping through the pages of the works of V. Shalamov, A. Solzhenitsyn, O. Volkov, A. Zhigulin, we will feel the need to talk about the difficult, totalitarian times in our country. In many families, in the countryside and in the city, among the intelligentsia, workers and peasants, there were people who were sent to hard labor for many years for their political beliefs, where many of them died from unbearable living conditions. Shalamov, Volkov, Zhigulin, Solzhenitsyn are writers who have drunk this cup to the fullest. “How do they get to this mysterious Archipelago? Airplanes fly there every hour, ships sail, trains rumble, but not a single inscription on them indicates their destination. Both ticket cashiers and Sovturist and Intourist agents will be amazed if you ask for a ticket there. They did not know or hear of the entire archipelago as a whole, nor of any of its countless islands. ...The Universe has as many centers as there are living beings in it. Each of us is the center of the Universe, and the universe collapses when they hiss at you: “You are under arrest.” If you are already arrested, then did anything else survive this earthquake? What is an arrest? An arrest is an instantaneous, dramatic transfer, transfer, changeover from one state to another. Along the long crooked street of our life, we happily rushed or wandered unhappily past some fences - rotten, wooden, adobe duvals, brick, concrete, cast-iron fences. We didn't think about what was behind them. We did not try to look behind them either with our eyes or with our minds - and that’s where the Gulag country begins. Very close, two meters from us” (A. Solzhenitsyn. “The Gulag Archipelago”). The experience of Shalamov as a political prisoner is one of the most difficult: the work is inhumanly difficult - in a gold mine, and the sentence is extremely harsh - seventeen years. Even among prisoners, Shalamov’s fate is unusual. People who suffered from the Gulag admitted that Shalamov got much more. “Would I have withstood what Shalamov endured? I'm not sure, I don't know. Because the depth of humiliation and deprivation that he had to endure in Kolyma... of course, I did not have to experience. They never beat me, but Shalamov’s eardrums were broken,” wrote Oleg Vasilyevich Volkov. This terrible experience did not leave the writer all his life. “Covering his nose with a scented handkerchief, investigator Fedorov talked to me: “You see, you are accused of praising Hitler’s weapons. - What does it mean? - Well, the fact that you spoke approvingly of the German offensive. – I know almost nothing about this. I haven't seen a newspaper for many years. Six years. - Well, that's not the main thing. You said that the Stakhanov movement in the camp is false, a lie. – I said that this is an ugliness, in my opinion, this is a distortion of the concept of “Stakhanovite”. – Then you said that Bunin is a great Russian writer. – He is truly a great Russian writer. Can I give you time for what I said? 1 – It’s possible. He is an emigrant, an evil emigrant... You see how we treat you. Not a single rude word, no one hits you. No pressure...” (V. T. Shalamov. “My Process”). - What was the hero of the story accused of and why was he arrested? What is an arrest? Here is how A.I. Solzhenitsyn answers this question: “... an arrest: it is a blinding flash and blow, from which the present is immediately pushed into the past, and the impossible becomes a full-fledged present. This is a sharp night call, or a rude knock on the door. This is the gallant entrance of the operatives' boots that cannot be wiped clean... This is hacking, ripping, throwing from the walls, throwing onto the floor from cabinets, tables, shaking out, tearing, scattering - and littering the floor with mountains, and crunching under the boots! And nothing is sacred during a search! When locomotive driver Inokhin was arrested, there was a coffin with a recently deceased child on the table in his room. The lawyers threw the child on the floor, they searched in the coffin... And they shook the patients out of bed, and unfastened the bandages... In 1937, the institute of Doctor Kazakov was destroyed. The “commission” broke the vessels with the lysates invented by him, although healed and healed cripples were jumping around and begging to save the miraculous medicine. But according to the official version, lysates were considered poisons. So why weren’t they preserved at least as physical evidence?! Arrests are very diverse in form... You are arrested in the theater, on the way to and from the store, at the station, in a train carriage, in a taxi. Sometimes arrests even seem like a game - they contain so much imagination and well-fed energy” (A. I. Solzhenitsyn. “The Gulag Archipelago”). - Why could you get into the Archipelago? Listen to the voices of the terrible past... (Students read fragments of documents: - Railway officer Gudkov: “I had records with Trotsky’s speeches, and my wife reported them.” - Engine driver, representative of the joke telling society: “Friends gathered on Saturdays with their families and told jokes. .." Five years. Kolyma. Death... - Misha Vygon - student at the Institute of Communications: “I wrote to Comrade Stalin about everything that I saw and heard in prison.” For three years, Misha survived, madly denying himself, renouncing his close comrades, and survived the executions. He himself became a shift supervisor at the same “Partizan” site where all his comrades died and were destroyed. - Kostya and Nika. Fifteen-year-old Moscow schoolchildren who were playing football in a cell with a homemade rag ball are the “terrorists” who killed Khadzhyan. Many years later it turned out that Khadzhyan was shot in his office by Beria. And the children who were accused of his murder - Kostya and Nika - died in Kolyma in 1938. They died, although no one really forced them to work... They died from the cold... A student reads a poem by V. Shalamov. Where is life? And I’m afraid to step forward, Even if with the rustle of a leaf Step, as if into a hole, into a black forest, She would let it slip, Where memory takes the hand, But behind her there is emptiness, And there is no heaven. But behind me there is silence. - How do you feel in this poem? What does Shalamov’s human and artistic memory mark? “Despite the terrible years he spent in the mines, he retained an excellent memory. Shalamov paints the truth, strives to restore to the smallest detail all the details of his time in prison, and does not soften the colors. – Shalamov depicts torture with inhuman conditions of existence, slave overwork, terror of criminals, hunger, cold, complete vulnerability to arbitrariness. The writer's meticulous memory captures the evil of the camps. The artist’s pen reveals the truth about what he experienced. Students read an excerpt from Shalamov’s letter to Pasternak. “The camp, for a long time, since 1929, has been called not a concentration camp, but a correctional labor camp (ITL), which, of course, does not change anything - it is an extra link in the chain of lies. The first camp was opened in 1924 in Kholmogory, the homeland of M.V. Lomonosov. Mainly participants of the Kronstadt rebellion were kept there (even numbers, because odd numbers were shot immediately after the suppression of the riot). In the period from 1924 to 1929 there was one camp - Solovetsky, i.e. ELEPHANT, with branches on the islands of Kem, Ukhta-Pechora and the Urals. Then they got the hang of it, and from 1929 the business began to grow rapidly. The “reforging” of the White Sea Canal has begun; Darkness, then Dmitlag (Moscow - Volga), where in one Dmitlag there were over 800,000 people. Then the camps became countless: Sevlag, Sevvostlag, Bamlag, Irkutlag. It was densely populated. ...White, slightly bluish haze of a sixty-degree winter night, an orchestra of silver trumpets playing carcasses in front of a dead line of prisoners. The yellow light of huge gasoline torches drowning in the white haze; They read the lists of those executed for failure to comply with the norm... ...The fugitive, who was caught in the taiga and shot by operatives... cut off the fingers of both hands - after all, they need to be printed - by the morning he recovered and made it to our hut. Then he was finally shot dead. ...Those who could not go to work were tied to a drag sleigh and the sleigh dragged him for two or three kilometers...” The student reads an excerpt from B. Pasternak’s poem “Soul”: My soul, the sad one With a sobbing lyre About everyone in my circle , Mourning them, You became a tomb You, in our time, are the selfish ones of those tortured alive. For conscience and for fear, embalming their bodies, You stand like a grave urn, Dedicating a poem to them, Resting their ashes... - “All these are random pictures,” wrote Shalamov. “The main thing is not in them, but in the corruption of the mind and heart, when for the vast majority it becomes clearer day by day that it turns out that one can live without meat, without sugar, without clothes, without shoes, and most importantly without honor, duty, conscience, love! Everything is being exposed, and this last exposure is scary... After all, there has not been a single large construction site without prisoners - people whose life is an uninterrupted chain of humiliations. Time has successfully made a person forget that he is a person!” - This and much more are about Shalamov’s “Kolyma Tales”, which we will talk about. 2. Analysis of stories. I recommended in advance to read for the lesson and briefly summarize the content of Shalamov’s stories “At Night”, “At the Show”, “The Snake Charmer”, “The Last Battle of Major Pugachev”, “The Best Praise”, “Shock Therapy”, “Apostle Paul”. - Is it easy to preserve yourself and not lose yourself in the conditions described in the story “At Night”? – Many of Shalamov’s stories show how hunger, cold, and constant beatings turn a person into a pitiful creature. The desires of such people are dulled, limited to food, and sympathy for the grief of others is also dulled. Friendship is not made in hunger and cold. – What feelings, for example, might the hero of the story “Single Measurement” have? A single measurement is a measurement of personal output. Former student Dugaev is given an impossible quota. He worked so hard that his “arms, shoulders, and head ached unbearably.” But he still did not fulfill the norm (only 25%) and was shot. He is so exhausted and 3 depressed that he has no feelings. He only “regretted that he had suffered this last day in vain.” – There were moments when a person’s inflamed brain continued to desperately resist gradual dying and dullness. Shalamov speaks about this in the story “Sentence”. Shalamov’s morality is the same for everyone, universal. It is for all time, and only that which is for the good of man is moral. In the Gulag there are no moral standards to speak of. What morality is there if every minute you can be beaten for no reason, killed even without any reason. “AT NIGHT” 1954 - Briefly retell the plot of the story. (Two prisoners remove clothes from a dead man in order to survive.) - What artistic means does the author use to draw his characters? (portrait - p. 11; manner is in the camp - p. 11). - How can you characterize the action of Bagretsov and Glebov from a moral point of view? (as immoral) - What is the reason for the action? (a constant state of hunger, fear of not surviving, hence the act) - How can one morally evaluate this act? (desecration, blasphemy) - Why did they choose this particular dead man? (p.12) (it was a newcomer) - Do the heroes easily decide to do such a thing? What was simple and clear to them? (p.11 – 12) (dig up clothes, sell, survive). The author shows that these people are still alive. - What unites Bagretsov and Glebov? (hope, desire to survive at any cost) - But these are no longer people, but mechanisms. (p. 12 √√) - Why is the story called “Night”? (p. 13) (the ghostly world of the night gives hope to survive, it is contrasted with the real world of the day, which takes away this hope) Conclusion: the small hope of living another day warmed and united people even in an immoral act. The moral principle (Glebov was a doctor) was completely suppressed in the face of cold, hunger, and death. “TO THE REPRESENTATION” (debt game) 1956 - Retell the plot of the story. (Sevochka and Naumov are playing cards. Naumov lost everything and began to play for a long time, but he has nothing of his own, and the debt must be submitted within an hour. The sweater of a man who does not give it up voluntarily is lent, and he is killed). - Through what artistic means does the author introduce us to the life and everyday life of prisoners? List. (description of the barracks, portrait characteristics, behavior of the characters, their speech) - From view. composition, what element is the description of the barracks? (p.5) (exposition) - What are the cards made of? What does this mean? (p.5) (from the volume of V. Hugo, about lack of spirituality) - Read the portrait characteristics of the heroes. Find keywords in character descriptions. Sevochka (p.6), Naumov (p.7) - The game has begun. Through whose eyes are we watching her? (narrator) - What does Naumov lose to Sevochka? (suit, p.7) - At what point, from the point of view. compositions, are we coming? (commencement) 4 - What does the loser Naumov decide to do? (at the presentation, p. 9.) - Where will he borrow the thing? (p.9) - Who do we see now: a saint or a murderer looking for a victim? - Is tension increasing? (yes) - What is the name of this compositional technique? (climax) - Where is the highest point of tension: when Naumov is looking for a victim or Garkunov’s words: “I won’t take it off, only with the skin”? - Why didn’t Garkunov take off his sweater? (p. 10) (besides what the narrator says, this is also a fortress that connects Garkunov with another life; if he loses his sweater, he will die) - Which episode of the story serves as the denouement? (murder of Garkunov, p. 10√√) This is both a physical and psychological denouement. - Do you think the murderers will be punished? Why? Who is Garkunov? (No, Garkunov is an engineer, an enemy of the people, convicted under Article 58, and the murderers are criminals who were encouraged by the heads of the camps, i.e. there is mutual responsibility) “THE SNAKE CHARMER” 1954 Purpose: through artistic means to see the forms of mockery of people. - Name the forms of bullying that occur in the story. (pushed in the back, pushed into the light, raised at night, sent to sleep in a latrine, deprived of a name). -Who is the conflict between in the story? (this is a typical clash between criminals and political ones, according to Article 58) - Who is Fedechka? What is his status in the barracks? (p.81√) (nail, doing nothing is a form of life for criminals) - What was Fedechka dreaming about? (p. 81 √√) - How does speech characterize the hero? (he feels like a master, free in the life and death of these people) - Why does Platonov lose his morality? (p.82√√) Having said: “...I can squeeze,” Platonov did not rise above the thieves, but sank to their level, thereby dooming himself to death, because he will work during the day and tell novels at night. - Has Platonov’s position changed? Conclusion: in the camps there was an established system of abuse of those convicted under Article 58. Some of the scum crushed the best people, “helping” the state machine crush the best that was there. A student reads Shalamov's poem. If you can, you can comfort yourself like the ice of forest swamps and calm your sobs. It will never melt. Alas! Stronger than hopes Under black glass My memories. The icy swamps are protected by the raven, the warmth is hidden, and he himself, apparently, does not know the unspoken word. - “Alas! Stronger than hopes / My memories...” How do you understand these lines? How do you understand this poem? – The prisoners’ hopes may not be fulfilled. Most likely, they will not be fulfilled. But what is imprinted in memory will remain. – Memories have power. They have experience... - This is what Shalamov said in the story “Train”: “I was afraid of the terrible power of man - the desire and ability to forget. I saw that I was ready to forget, cross out, 20 years from my 5th life. And what years! And when I realized this, I conquered myself! I knew I wouldn’t let my memory forget everything I saw!” Conclusion. V. Shalamov himself said that in his work he conveyed “... the truth about the struggle of man with the state machine. The truth of this struggle, the struggle for oneself, within oneself, outside oneself.” Today we touched upon this truth. And I hope we will keep it in our hearts... At home: pp. 313 – 315, message about the life and work of V.M. Shukshina. Stories “Crank”, “Cut”, “Wolves”, etc. 6

The article is posted on a hard-to-reach Internet resource in a pdf extension, duplicated here.

Documentary artistry of the stories “The Parcel” by V.T. Shalamov and “Sanochki” G.S. Zhzhenova

The article is related to the topic of the Kolyma convict camps and is devoted to the analysis of the documentary and artistic world of the stories “The Parcel” by V.T. Shalamov and “Sanochki” G.S. Zhzhenova.

The exposition of Shalamov’s story “The Parcel” directly introduces the main event of the story - the receipt of a parcel by one of the prisoners: “The parcels were handed out during the shift. The foremen verified the identity of the recipient. The plywood broke and cracked in its own way, like plywood. The trees here didn’t break like that, they screamed in a different voice.” It is no coincidence that the sound of parcel plywood is compared with the sound of breaking Kolyma trees, as if symbolizing two opposite modes of human life - life in the wild and life in prison. The “multipolarity” is clearly felt in another equally important circumstance: a prisoner who has come to receive a parcel notices behind the barrier people “with clean hands in overly neat military uniforms.” From the very beginning, the contrast creates an insurmountable barrier between the powerless prisoners and those who stand above them - the arbiters of their destinies. The attitude of the “masters” to the “slaves” is also noted in the beginning of the plot, and the abuse of the prisoner will vary until the end of the story, forming a kind of event constant, emphasizing the absolute lack of rights of the ordinary inhabitant of the Stalinist forced labor camp.

The article deals with the GULAG theme. The author made an attempt to analyze the documentary and fi ction worlds of the two stories.

LITERATURE

1. Zhzhenov G.S. Sanochki // From “Capercaillie” to “Firebird”: a story and stories. - M.: Sovremennik, 1989.
2. Cress Vernon. Zecameron of the 20th century: a novel. - M.: Artist. lit., 1992.
3. Shalamov V.T. Collected works. In 4 volumes. T. 1 // comp., prepared. text and notes I. Sirotinskaya. - M.: Artist. lit., 1998.
4. Shalamov V.T. Collected works. In 4 volumes. T. 2 // comp., prepared. text and notes I. Sirotinskaya. - M.: Artist. lit., 1998.
5. Schiller F.P. Letters from a Dead House / comp., trans. with German, note, afterword V.F. Diesendorff. - M.: Society. acad. sciences grew up Germans, 2002.

NOTES

1. Let us note that dreams about food and bread do not give a hungry prisoner in the camp peace: “I slept and still saw my constant Kolyma dream - loaves of bread floating through the air, filling all the houses, all the streets, all the earth.”
2. Philologist F.P. Schiller wrote to his family in 1940 from a camp in Nakhodka Bay: “If you have not yet sent boots and an outer shirt, then do not send them, otherwise I am afraid that you will send something completely inappropriate.”
3. Shalamov recalls this incident both in “Sketches of the Underworld” and in the story “Funeral Word”: “The burkas cost seven hundred, but it was a profitable sale.<…>And I bought a whole kilogram of butter at the store.<…>I also bought bread...”
4. Due to the constant hunger of prisoners and exhausting hard work, the diagnosis of “nutritional dystrophy” in the camps was common. This became fertile ground for undertaking adventures of unprecedented proportions: “all products that exceeded their shelf life were written off to the camp.”
5. The hero-narrator of the story “Conspiracy of Lawyers” experiences something similar to this feeling: “I haven’t been pushed out of this brigade yet. There were people here who were weaker than me, and this brought some kind of calm, some kind of unexpected joy.” Kolyma resident Vernon Kress writes about human psychology in such conditions: “We were pushed by our comrades, because the sight of a survivor always irritates a healthier person, he guesses his own future in him and, moreover, is drawn to find an even more defenseless person, to take revenge on him.”<...>» .
6. Not only the Blatars loved theatricality, other representatives of the camp population also showed interest in it.

Cheslav Gorbachevsky, South Ural State University

Sections: Literature

Lesson objectives:

• introduce the tragic fate of the writer and poet Varlam Shalamov; identify the features of the plot and poetics of “Kolyma Tales”;
• develop literary analysis skills and the ability to conduct dialogue;
• to form the civic position of high school students.

Equipment: portrait of V. Shalamov, multimedia presentation

During the classes

1. Goal setting stage.

Music. "Requiem" by W. Mozart

Teacher(reads against background music)

To everyone who was branded under Article fifty-eight,
who even in a dream was surrounded by dogs, a fierce escort,
who in court, without trial, by special meeting
was doomed to a prison uniform until the grave,
who was betrothed by fate to shackles, thorns, chains
They are our tears and sorrow, our eternal memory! (T.Ruslov)

Today in class we are going to talk about political repressions in the Soviet Union, about the people who suffered from them, about the writer of amazing fate - Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov - and his prose. Open your notebooks and write down the topic of today's lesson.

(slide 1). At home you read the stories of Varlam Shalamov. What is our goal for today's lesson? (Student answers: get acquainted with the work of V. Shalamov, his biography, comprehend his works).

Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov spent almost 20 years in Soviet camps, survived, persevered and found the strength to write about it in his work “Kolyma Tales”, some of which you have already met. How did you receive these stories? What surprised, amazed, outraged? (Students' answers)

What is the mystery of "Kolyma Tales"? Why does the author himself consider his works “new prose”? These are the key questions of our lesson (slide 2).

2. Updating students' knowledge.

But in order to understand Shalamov’s prose, one must have a good understanding of the historical events of those years.

Student message "History of repressions in the USSR"

A.I. Solzhenitsyn said: “No Genghis Khan destroyed as many peasants as our glorious Organs, led by the Party.” Of course, all this could not affect the literary process. Let's remember some facts.

Student's message "Repression in literature"(The following facts should be mentioned: Alexander Blok suffocated from the lack of air of freedom in 1921. Shot: Nikolai Gumilyov in 1921 on charges of counter-revolutionary conspiracy, Boris Pilnyak in April 1938, Nikolai Klyuev and Sergei Klychkov in October 1937, Isaac Babel in January 1940. Died in a camp in 1938. Osip Mandelstam. Committed suicide, unable to withstand the fight with the totalitarian regime, Sergei Yesenin in 1925, Vladimir Mayakovsky in 1930, Marina Tsvetaeva in 1941. Ivan Bunin, Zinaida Gippius died in exile. , Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Igor Severyanin, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Konstantin Balmont, Joseph Brodsky, Alexander Galich Anna Akhmatova, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Boris Pasternak went through the GULAG Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Anatoly Zhigulin, Nikolai Zabolotsky, Yaroslav Smelyakov, Joseph Brodsky. in Moscow there is a memorial plaque in memory of those writers who died in the war - 70 people. They proposed hanging the same plaque with the names of the repressed, but then they realized that there was not enough space. All the walls will be covered with writing.)

Teacher. Let's name one more name in this mournful list - V.T. Shalamov, one of those who set it as their task to survive and tell the truth. This theme is heard in the works of A. Solzhenitsyn, and Yuri Dombrovsky, and Oleg Volkov, and Anatoly Zhigulin, and Lydia Chukovskaya, but the power of V. Shalamov’s books is simply amazing (slide 3).

In the fate of Shalamov, two principles collided: on the one hand, his character and beliefs, on the other, the pressure of time, the state, which sought to destroy this man. His talent, his passionate thirst for justice. Fearlessness, readiness to prove one's word with deeds: All this was not only not in demand by time, but also became too dangerous for it.

3. Studying new material. Work in groups to study the biography of Varlam Shalamov.

Work in groups. (Students are divided into groups in advance).

On each table there are texts with the biography of V.T. Shalamov. Read, highlight the main milestones of the biography (with a marker), be prepared to answer questions.

Questions:

1. Where and when was Shalamov born? What can you say about his family?
2. Where did V. Shalamov study?
3. When was V. Shalamov arrested and for what?
4. What was the verdict?
5. When and where did Shalamov serve his sentence?
6. When was Shalamov arrested again? What is the reason?
7. Why was his sentence extended in 1943?
8. When is Shalamov released from the camp? When does he return to Moscow?
9. In what year did he start working on “Kolyma Tales”?

(Answers to questions are accompanied by slides with photographs)

Teacher: Varlam Shalamov died on January 17, 1982, having lost his hearing and sight, completely defenseless in the Literary Fund House for the Invalids, having completely drunk the cup of non-recognition during his lifetime.

• "Kolyma Tales" is the writer's main work. He spent 20 years creating them. The reader learned 137 stories collected in 5 collections:
• "Kolyma Tales"
• "Left Coast"
• "The Shovel Artist"
• "Resurrection of Larch"
• "The Glove, or KR-2"

4. Analysis of "Kolyma Tales".

• What stories have you read? (Students' answers)

Work in pairs.

Let's make a cluster with the word "Kolyma". Try to reflect in it your perception of the world of Kolyma, what feelings prevail in it? We work in pairs and try to come to an agreement. We attach the clusters to the board and read them out.

Let's turn to the story "Funeral Word". Questions for analysis:

1. What impression does a story that begins with the words: “Everyone died:” make? Everyone: who, why, how? (answers) Yes, these are people about whom Shalamov himself will say: “This is the fate of martyrs who were not, were not able to and did not become heroes.” But they remained human under such conditions - and this means a lot. The writer shows this in few words, with just one detail. The detail is very important in Shalamov's prose. Here is, for example, a small detail: “: Brigadier Barbe is a comrade who helped me pull a large stone out of a narrow pit.” The brigadier, who is usually an enemy in the camp, a murderer, is called a comrade. He helped the prisoner, and did not kill him. What is revealed behind this? (With comradely relations, the plan was not carried out, because it could only be carried out under an inhuman, lethal load. Barbe was reported on, and he died.)

2. Scary stories, creepy stories. What do people dream about on Christmas night? (answers) And here is the voice of Volodya Dobrovoltsev (note the last name): “And I,” and his voice was calm and unhurried, “would like to be a stump. A human stump, you know, without arms, without legs. Then I would find I have the strength to spit in their faces for everything they do to us." Why does he want to be a stump?

3. What is the plot of the story? (Death). Death, non-existence is the artistic world in which the story takes place. And not only here. The fact of death precedes the beginning of the plot. Agree that this is unusual for Russian prose.

Let's work with the story "The Snake Charmer". Each group receives its own task. Group 1 - Read the beginning of the story, find words and phrases that affect the reader’s feelings. What feelings arise? Group 2 - What “thin” and “thick” questions did you have while reading the story? Group 3 - Which fragments of the story require comprehension and reflection?

In the process of analyzing the story, we will definitely pay attention to the difficult questions that you have. Let's try to figure it out together.

• Why is the story called "The Snake Charmer"? Who can be considered a snake charmer?
• Why did Platonov agree to tell novels after all? Can you blame him?
• Is Platonov’s agreement to “squeeze novels” a sign of strength or weakness?
• Why did Platonov develop heart disease?
• What is the author’s attitude towards this way of improving one’s situation? (Strongly negative)
• How is Senechka depicted? What does he represent?

(At first glance, it seems that the story is about the confrontation between political and thieves, but if you look deeper, it is no coincidence that Platonov is an intellectual film scriptwriter opposed to thieves, that is, spirituality is opposed to brute force. But there is another plan related to the theme “artist and power", "artist and society". "Squeezing novels" - this phrase from thieves' jargon is itself a powerful satirical metaphor: such "squeezing" for the sake of the powerful is an ancient and difficult to overcome feature of literature, Shalamov managed to show his negative attitude both to “snakes” and to “charmers”.)

The story "The Last Battle of Major Pugachev." Valery Esipov, a researcher of Shalamov’s work, writes that “Shalamov did not write a single word just like that.”

• What is this story about?
• Why does the author compare the arrests of the 1930s and 1940s at the beginning of the story? How were former front-line soldiers different from other prisoners?
• Tell us about the fate of Major Pugachev. What is the fate of his comrades? How did the war experience affect them?
• How did the prisoners behave during the escape?
• Why were there no wounded prisoners in the hospital? Why was Soldatov treated?
• Why does the story end with the death of Pugachev?

What feeling remains after reading the story? How is the author's attitude towards the characters manifested? (The author’s attitude towards the heroes is also indicated by the surname - Pugachev, and the fact that the author constantly calls him by rank - major, emphasizing that he is a fighter who challenged the camp authorities, and the major’s smile when remembering his fallen comrades before his own death. Shalamov will say about him - “a difficult man’s life”, before his death he will give him a tasteless lingonberry, repeat the words “the best people” twice and remember his smile, experiencing the joy that there is spiritual height in a person.)

Why did Shalamov, who claimed that there could be no successful escapes in Kolyma, glorify Major Pugachev? What is the feat of Major Pugachev? (The feat of Pugachev and his comrades is not that they defended their freedom with weapons in their hands, not that they turned their machine guns against Soviet power, not that they - every single one - preferred death to surrender. They became heroes because they refused to accept the system of thinking and feeling imposed on them. Having realized the camp as a non-human system, they refused to exist in it. The escape - from the camp to the taiga - from the Camp to the World - was undoubtedly a miracle of physical courage, but above all a brainchild. brave thought.)

Having written a fairy tale, which is very important for the writer personally, Shalamov deduces a new camp law - the law of personality preservation, and answers the question of how to get out of this world of death. At the moment when Shalamov set himself the task of “remembering and writing,” he, like Pugachev and his comrades, fought the battle according to his own rules - from a Prisoner he became a Writer, and transferred the battle with the extra-human system to a cultural territory alien to the camp and native to him.

Teacher: Guys, have we managed to get closer to solving the mystery of “Kolyma Tales?” What features of Shalamov’s prose, called “new prose,” will we note?

(The secret of “Kolyma Tales” is that, despite all the negative things, the author was able to show that people remain human even in inhuman conditions, there is a way to fight this system - not to accept its rules, to defeat it with the power of art and harmony. Features of the “new prose” Shalamov: documentary, laconic narration, presence of symbolic details.)

Let's try to make syncwines in groups on the topics: “Kolyma Stories”, “Man”, “Varlam Shalamov”, so that you can express your feelings after our lesson.

Homework: write a review of one of Shalamov’s stories using the “criticism” pyramid; watch the film "Lenin's Testament".

Literature.

2. Valery Esipov. “Dispel this fog” (Late prose of V. Shalamov: motivations and problems)// www.shalamov.ru/research/92/

3. N.L.Krupina, N.A.Sosnina. Involvement of time. - M., "Enlightenment", 1992

Let's look at Shalamov's collection, on which he worked from 1954 to 1962. Let us describe its brief content. "Kolyma Stories" is a collection whose plot is a description of the camp and prison life of Gulag prisoners, their tragic destinies, similar to one another, in which chance rules. The author’s focus is constantly on hunger and satiety, painful dying and recovery, exhaustion, moral humiliation and degradation. You will learn more about the problems raised by Shalamov by reading the summary. “Kolyma Stories” is a collection that is an understanding of what the author experienced and saw during the 17 years he spent in prison (1929-1931) and Kolyma (from 1937 to 1951). The author's photo is presented below.

Funeral word

The author recalls his comrades from the camps. We will not list their names, since we are making a brief summary. "Kolyma Stories" is a collection in which fiction and documentary are intertwined. However, all killers are given a real last name in the stories.

Continuing the narrative, the author describes how the prisoners died, what torture they endured, talks about their hopes and behavior in “Auschwitz without ovens,” as Shalamov called the Kolyma camps. Few managed to survive, and only a few managed to survive and not break morally.

"The Life of Engineer Kipreev"

Let us dwell on the following interesting story, which we could not help but describe when compiling a summary. “Kolyma Stories” is a collection in which the author, who has not sold or betrayed anyone, says that he has developed for himself a formula for protecting his own existence. It consists in the fact that a person can survive if he is ready to die at any moment, he can commit suicide. But later he realizes that he only built a comfortable shelter for himself, since it is unknown what you will become at the decisive moment, whether you will have enough not only mental strength, but also physical strength.

Kipreev, a physics engineer arrested in 1938, was not only able to withstand interrogation and beating, but even attacked the investigator, as a result of which he was put in a punishment cell. But still they are trying to get him to give false testimony, threatening to arrest his wife. Kipreev nevertheless continues to prove to everyone that he is not a slave, like all prisoners, but a human being. Thanks to his talent (he fixed a broken one and found a way to restore burnt out light bulbs), this hero manages to avoid the most difficult work, but not always. It is only by a miracle that he survives, but the moral shock does not let him go.

"To the show"

Shalamov, who wrote “Kolyma Stories,” a brief summary of which interests us, testifies that camp corruption affected everyone to one degree or another. It was carried out in various forms. Let us describe in a few words another work from the collection “Kolyma Tales” - “To the Show”. A summary of its plot is as follows.

Two thieves are playing cards. One loses and asks to play in debt. Enraged at some point, he orders an unexpectedly imprisoned intellectual, who happened to be among the spectators, to give up his sweater. He refuses. One of the thieves “finishes” him, but the sweater goes to the thieves anyway.

"At night"

Let's move on to the description of another work from the collection "Kolyma Stories" - "At Night". Its summary, in our opinion, will also be interesting to the reader.

Two prisoners sneak towards the grave. The body of their comrade was buried here in the morning. They take off the dead man's linen in order to exchange it for tobacco or bread tomorrow or sell it. Disgust for the clothes of the deceased is replaced by the thought that perhaps tomorrow they will be able to smoke or eat a little more.

There are a lot of works in the collection "Kolyma Stories". "The Carpenters", a summary of which we have omitted, follows the story "Night". We invite you to familiarize yourself with it. The product is small in volume. The format of one article, unfortunately, does not allow us to describe all the stories. Also a very small work from the collection "Kolyma Tales" - "Berry". A summary of the main and, in our opinion, most interesting stories is presented in this article.

"Single metering"

Defined by the author as slave labor in camps, it is another form of corruption. The prisoner, exhausted by it, cannot work his quota; labor turns into torture and leads to slow death. Dugaev, a prisoner, is increasingly weakened by the 16-hour work day. He pours, picks, carries. In the evening, the caretaker measures what he has done. The figure of 25% mentioned by the caretaker seems very large to Dugaev. His hands, head, and calves ache unbearably. The prisoner no longer even feels hungry. Later he is called to the investigator. He asks: “First name, last name, term, article.” Every other day, soldiers take the prisoner to a remote place surrounded by a fence with barbed wire. At night you can hear the noise of tractors from here. Dugaev realizes why he was brought here and understands that his life is over. He only regrets that he suffered an extra day in vain.

"Rain"

You can talk for a very long time about such a collection as “Kolyma Stories”. The summary of the chapters of the works is for informational purposes only. We bring to your attention the following story - "Rain".

"Sherry Brandy"

The prisoner poet, who was considered the first poet of the 20th century in our country, dies. He lies on the bunks, in the depths of their bottom row. It takes a long time for a poet to die. Sometimes a thought comes to him, for example, that someone stole bread from him, which the poet put under his head. He is ready to search, fight, swear... However, he no longer has the strength to do this. When the daily ration is placed in his hand, he presses the bread to his mouth with all his might, sucks it, tries to gnaw and tear with his loose, scurvy-infested teeth. When a poet dies, he is not written off for another 2 days. During the distribution, the neighbors manage to get bread for him as if he were alive. They arrange for him to raise his hand like a puppet.

"Shock therapy"

Merzlyakov, one of the heroes of the collection “Kolma Stories”, a brief summary of which we are considering, is a convict of large build, and in general work he understands that he is failing. He falls, cannot get up and refuses to take the log. First his own people beat him, then his guards. He is brought to camp with lower back pain and a broken rib. After recovery, Merzlyakov does not stop complaining and pretends that he cannot straighten up. He does this in order to delay discharge. He is sent to the surgical department of the central hospital, and then to the nervous department for examination. Merzlyakov has a chance to be released due to illness. He tries his best not to be exposed. But Pyotr Ivanovich, a doctor, himself a former prisoner, exposes him. Everything human in him replaces the professional. He spends most of his time exposing those who are simulating. Pyotr Ivanovich anticipates the effect that the case with Merzlyakov will produce. The doctor first gives him anesthesia, during which he manages to straighten Merzlyakov’s body. A week later, the patient is prescribed shock therapy, after which he asks to be discharged himself.

"Typhoid quarantine"

Andreev ends up in quarantine after falling ill with typhus. The patient's position, compared to working in the mines, gives him a chance to survive, which he almost did not hope for. Then Andreev decides to stay here as long as possible, and then, perhaps, he will no longer be sent to the gold mines, where there is death, beatings, and hunger. Andreev does not respond to the roll call before sending those who have recovered to work. He manages to hide in this way for quite a long time. The transit bus gradually empties, and finally it’s Andreev’s turn. But it seems to him now that he has won the battle for life, and if there are any deployments now, it will only be on local, short-term business trips. But when a truck with a group of prisoners who were unexpectedly given winter uniforms crosses the line separating long- and short-term business trips, Andreev realizes that fate has laughed at him.

The photo below shows the house in Vologda where Shalamov lived.

"Aortic aneurysm"

In Shalamov's stories, illness and hospital are an indispensable attribute of the plot. Ekaterina Glovatskaya, a prisoner, ends up in the hospital. Zaitsev, the doctor on duty, immediately liked this beauty. He knows that she is in a relationship with prisoner Podshivalov, an acquaintance of his who runs a local amateur art group, but the doctor still decides to try his luck. As usual, he begins with a medical examination of the patient, listening to the heart. However, male interest is replaced by medical concern. In Glowacka he discovers this is a disease in which every careless movement can provoke death. The authorities, who have made it a rule to separate lovers, have once already sent the girl to a penal women's mine. The head of the hospital, after the doctor’s report about her illness, is sure that this is the machinations of Podshivalov, who wants to detain his mistress. The girl is discharged, but during loading she dies, which is what Zaitsev warned about.

"The Last Battle of Major Pugachev"

The author testifies that after the Great Patriotic War, prisoners who fought and went through captivity began to arrive in the camps. These people are of a different kind: they know how to take risks, they are brave. They only believe in weapons. Camp slavery did not corrupt them; they were not yet exhausted to the point of losing their will and strength. Their “fault” was that these prisoners were captured or surrounded. It was clear to one of them, Major Pugachev, that they had been brought here to die. Then he gathers strong and determined prisoners to match himself, who are ready to die or become free. The escape is prepared all winter. Pugachev realized that only those who managed to avoid general work could escape after surviving the winter. One by one, the participants in the conspiracy are promoted to service. One of them becomes a cook, another becomes a cult leader, the third repairs weapons for security.

One spring day, at 5 am, there was a knock on the watch. The duty officer lets in the prisoner cook, who, as usual, has come to get the keys to the pantry. The cook strangles him, and another prisoner dresses in his uniform. The same thing happens to other duty officers who returned a little later. Then everything happens according to Pugachev’s plan. The conspirators burst into the security room and seize weapons, shooting the guard on duty. They stock up on provisions and put on military uniforms, holding the suddenly awakened soldiers at gunpoint. Having left the camp territory, they stop the truck on the highway, disembark the driver and drive until the gas runs out. Then they go into the taiga. Pugachev, waking up at night after many months of captivity, recalls how in 1944 he escaped from a German camp, crossed the front line, survived interrogation in a special department, after which he was accused of espionage and sentenced to 25 years in prison. He also recalls how emissaries of General Vlasov came to the German camp and recruited Russians, convincing them that the captured soldiers were traitors to the Motherland for the Soviet regime. Pugachev did not believe them then, but soon became convinced of this himself. He looks lovingly at his comrades sleeping nearby. A little later, a hopeless battle ensues with the soldiers who surrounded the fugitives. Almost all of the prisoners die, except one, who is nursed back to health after being seriously wounded in order to be shot. Only Pugachev manages to escape. He is hiding in a bear's den, but he knows that they will find him too. He doesn't regret what he did. His last shot is at himself.

So, we looked at the main stories from the collection, authored by Varlam Shalamov (“Kolyma Stories”). A summary introduces the reader to the main events. You can read more about them on the pages of the work. The collection was first published in 1966 by Varlam Shalamov. "Kolyma Stories", a brief summary of which you now know, appeared on the pages of the New York publication "New Journal".

In New York in 1966, only 4 stories were published. The following year, 1967, 26 stories by this author, mainly from the collection of interest to us, were published in translation into German in the city of Cologne. During his lifetime, Shalamov never published the collection “Kolyma Stories” in the USSR. A summary of all the chapters, unfortunately, is not included in the format of one article, since there are a lot of stories in the collection. Therefore, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with the rest.

"Condensed milk"

In addition to those described above, we will tell you about one more work from the collection “Kolyma Stories” - Its summary is as follows.

Shestakov, an acquaintance of the narrator, did not work at the mine face, because he was a geological engineer, and he was hired into the office. He met with the narrator and said that he wanted to take the workers and go to the Black Keys, to the sea. And although the latter understood that this was impracticable (the path to the sea is very long), he nevertheless agreed. The narrator reasoned that Shestakov probably wants to hand over all those who will participate in this. But the promised condensed milk (to overcome the journey, he had to refresh himself) bribed him. Going to Shestakov, he ate two jars of this delicacy. And then he suddenly announced that he had changed his mind. A week later, other workers fled. Two of them were killed, three were tried a month later. And Shestakov was transferred to another mine.

We recommend reading other works in the original. Shalamov wrote “Kolyma Tales” very talentedly. The summary ("Berries", "Rain" and "Children's Pictures" we also recommend reading in the original) conveys only the plot. The author's style and artistic merits can only be assessed by becoming familiar with the work itself.

Not included in the collection "Kolyma Stories" "Sentence". We did not describe the summary of this story for this reason. However, this work is one of the most mysterious in Shalamov’s work. Fans of his talent will be interested in getting to know him.

Varlaam Shalamov is a writer who spent three terms in the camps, survived hell, lost his family, friends, but was not broken by the ordeals: “The camp is a negative school from the first to the last day for anyone. The person - neither the boss nor the prisoner - needs to see him. But if you saw him, you must tell the truth, no matter how terrible it may be.<…>For my part, I decided long ago that I would devote the rest of my life to this truth.”

The collection “Kolyma Stories” is the main work of the writer, which he composed for almost 20 years. These stories leave an extremely heavy impression of horror from the fact that this is how people really survived. The main themes of the works: camp life, breaking the character of prisoners. All of them were doomedly awaiting inevitable death, not holding out hope, not entering into the fight. Hunger and its convulsive saturation, exhaustion, painful dying, slow and almost equally painful recovery, moral humiliation and moral degradation - this is what is constantly in the focus of the writer’s attention. All the heroes are unhappy, their destinies are mercilessly broken. The language of the work is simple, unpretentious, not decorated with means of expressiveness, which creates the feeling of a truthful story from an ordinary person, one of many who experienced all this.

Analysis of the stories “At Night” and “Condensed Milk”: problems in “Kolyma Stories”

The story “At Night” tells us about an incident that does not immediately fit into our heads: two prisoners, Bagretsov and Glebov, dig up a grave in order to remove the underwear from a corpse and sell it. Moral and ethical principles have been erased, giving way to the principles of survival: the heroes will sell their linen, buy some bread or even tobacco. The themes of life on the verge of death and doom run like a red thread through the work. Prisoners do not value life, but for some reason they survive, indifferent to everything. The problem of brokenness is revealed to the reader; it is immediately clear that after such shocks a person will never be the same.

The story “Condensed Milk” is dedicated to the problem of betrayal and meanness. The geological engineer Shestakov was “lucky”: in the camp he avoided compulsory work and ended up in an “office” where he received good food and clothing. The prisoners envied not the free ones, but people like Shestakov, because the camp narrowed their interests to everyday ones: “Only something external could bring us out of indifference, take us away from the slowly approaching death. External, not internal strength. Inside, everything was burned out, devastated, we didn’t care, and we didn’t make plans beyond tomorrow.” Shestakov decided to gather a group to escape and hand him over to the authorities, receiving some privileges. This plan was unraveled by the nameless protagonist, familiar to the engineer. The hero demands two cans of canned milk for his participation, this is the ultimate dream for him. And Shestakov brings a treat with a “monstrously blue sticker”, this is the hero’s revenge: he ate both cans under the gaze of other prisoners who were not expecting a treat, just watched the more successful person, and then refused to follow Shestakov. The latter nevertheless persuaded the others and handed them over in cold blood. For what? Where does this desire to curry favor and set up those who are worse off? V. Shalamov answers this question unequivocally: the camp corrupts and kills everything human in the soul.

Analysis of the story “The Last Battle of Major Pugachev”

If most of the heroes of “Kolyma Stories” live indifferently for unknown reasons, then in the story “The Last Battle of Major Pugachev” the situation is different. After the end of the Great Patriotic War, former military men poured into the camps, whose only fault was that they were captured. People who fought against the fascists cannot simply live indifferently; they are ready to fight for their honor and dignity. Twelve newly arrived prisoners, led by Major Pugachev, have organized an escape plot that has been in preparation all winter. And so, when spring came, the conspirators burst into the premises of the security detachment and, having shot the duty officer, took possession of the weapons. Holding the suddenly awakened soldiers at gunpoint, they change into military uniforms and stock up on provisions. Having left the camp, they stop the truck on the highway, drop off the driver and continue the journey in the car until the gas runs out. After that they go into the taiga. Despite the willpower and determination of the heroes, the camp vehicle overtakes them and shoots them. Only Pugachev was able to leave. But he understands that soon they will find him too. Does he obediently await punishment? No, even in this situation he shows strength of spirit, he himself interrupts his difficult life path: “Major Pugachev remembered them all - one after another - and smiled at each one. Then he put the barrel of a pistol in his mouth and fired for the last time in his life.” The theme of a strong man in the suffocating circumstances of the camp is revealed tragically: he is either crushed by the system, or he fights and dies.

“Kolyma Stories” does not try to pity the reader, but there is so much suffering, pain and melancholy in them! Everyone needs to read this collection to appreciate their life. After all, despite all the usual problems, modern man has relative freedom and choice, he can show other feelings and emotions, except hunger, apathy and the desire to die. “Kolyma Tales” not only frightens, but also makes you look at life differently. For example, stop complaining about fate and feeling sorry for yourself, because we are incredibly lucky than our ancestors, brave, but ground in the millstones of the system.