The life and creative path of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Village of Maltsevo, Vladimir region

The name of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, for a long time which was banned in our country, has finally rightfully taken its place in the history of Russian literature.
After the publication of “The Gulag Archipelago” in Russia (and this happened only in 1989), it seemed that there were no works left in either Russian or world literature that would pose a great danger to the Soviet regime. This book revealed the whole essence of the totalitarian regime. The veil of lies and self-deception that still obscured the eyes of many of our fellow citizens has subsided. After everything that this documentary book revealed to readers, after the monstrous, fantastic martyrology of the victims of the “building of communism” in Russia during the years of Soviet power was imprinted in the memory, it seems that nothing is surprising or scary!
Brief biography of Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn: date of birth - December 1918, place of birth - the city of Kislovodsk; the father came from peasants, the mother was the daughter of a shepherd, who later became a wealthy farmer. After high school Solzhenitsyn graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the University in Rostov-on-Don, and at the same time entered the correspondence department at the Moscow Institute of Philosophy and Literature. Without completing two courses in the last year, he went to war, from 1942 to 1945 he commanded a battery at the front, awarded with orders and medals. In February 1945, with the rank of captain, he was arrested for criticizing Stalin and sentenced to eight years (he was in the so-called general works in the political Special Security). Then he was transferred to Kazakhstan “forever”, but after the rehabilitation that followed in February 1957, he worked school teacher in Ryazan. After the publication of “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” in 1962, he was accepted into the Writers’ Union, from which he was expelled seven years later. In 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1974, in connection with the publication of the first volume of “The Gulag Archipelago,” he was forcibly expelled from the USSR. Until 1976 he lived in Zurich, then moved to the American state of Vermont, whose nature resembles central Russia.
This is not easy life path writer. Today we can say with confidence that his work has returned to his homeland.
On the eve of his 60th birthday, Solzhenitsyn began publishing a collection of works with the subtitle “Restored authentic pre-censorship texts, newly checked and corrected by the author. Other works are being published for the first time.” By 1988, eighteen volumes had already been published.
Although the writer himself claimed that the form that most attracted him in literature was “polyphonic with exact signs time and place of action”, of his five major works, it is not surprising, a novel in in every sense is only “In the First Circle,” because “The Gulag Archipelago,” according to the subtitle, is “an experience artistic research”, the epic “The Red Wheel” is a “narration in a measured period”, “Cancer Ward” is a “story” by the author’s will, and “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is a story.
The novel “In the First Circle” took thirteen years to write and has seven editions. Its plot is that diplomat Volodin calls the American embassy to say that in three days a secret will be stolen in New York atomic bomb. The conversation overheard and recorded on film is delivered to the “sharashka” - a research institution of the MGB system, in which prisoners create a voice recognition technique.
The meaning of the title of the novel is explained by the prisoner: “Sharashka is the highest, best, first circle of hell.”
Volodin gives another explanation, drawing a circle on the ground: “Do you see the circle? This is the fatherland. This is the first round. But the second one is wider. This is humanity. And the first circle is not included in the second. There are fences of prejudice here. And it turns out that there is no humanity. But only fatherland, fatherland is different for everyone...”
“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” was conceived by the author during general work in the Ekibastuz special camp. “I was carrying a stretcher with my partner and thought how it would be necessary to describe the entire camp world in one day,” recalled Alexander Isaevich.
In the story “Cancer Ward,” Solzhenitsyn put forward his version of the “incitement of cancer”: Stalinism, Red Terror, repression.
What attracts Solzhenitsyn’s work? Truthfulness, pain for what is happening, insight. A writer, a historian, he always warns us: don’t get lost in history.
“They will tell us: what can literature do against the ruthless onslaught of open violence? And let’s not forget that violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is certainly intertwined with lies,” wrote A. I. Solzhenitsyn.
I believe that writers and artists with their works help people defeat lies. This is the whole of Solzhenitsyn’s work, outstanding writer our days and a great man.

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The life and work of Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn

S. Zalygin

Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn-

man, thinker, writer

He formulated his life credo himself: “The meaning of earthly existence is not in prosperity, but in the development of the soul.” ».

He felt his unbreakable connection with the people, was demanding of himself as an artist, always fought against violence, evil and injustice: “... a writer can do a lot in his people - and should. Once you have taken up your word, you can never evade it: the writer is not an outside judge to his compatriots and contemporaries, he is a co-author of all the evil committed in his homeland or by his people.”

Roots

City of Kislovodsk

Stavropol region.

in which they passed

first 6 years of life.

Rostov-on-Don.

The house where he lived

schoolboy Sanya Solzhenitsyn

The writer’s parents: Isaac Semenovich and Taisiya Zakharovna Solzhenitsyn

Student years Rostov State University

Best friends: Kirill Simonyan and

Lida Ezherets

War

Artillery cadet

schools

Battalion Commander

Captain Solzhenitsyn

Village of Maltsevo, Vladimir region

Matryona Vasilievna Zakharova at her house. 1956

1970 Nobel Prize: Unheard of bullying

1974 Campaign against Solzhenitsyn in the Soviet press

Nobel Prize Laureate

1965-1973 “Gulag Archipelago”: « Artistic Research Experience" state system extermination of people in the USSR

Natalya Svetlova - wife, friend, irreplaceable assistant

1970

Great Russian writer

Books turned over public consciousness

Solzhenitsyn is back

Writer's meeting.

Khabarovsk and Novosibirsk.

Back in Moscow

1994

This was a truly powerful figure. Both in literature and in public life he was one of the most powerful figures in the entire history of Russia. Now that he is gone, this is understood especially. One man challenged a huge system - and won. No one, be it the most famous personalities in art, science and politics, there was no such enormous lifetime fame and popularity as Alexander Isaevich.

These days the whole world should gasp mournfully -

The great moralist, fair man, and talent is gone.

Valentin Rasputin

Story " Matrenin Dvor" written in 1959. This is Solzhenitsyn's story about the situation in which he found himself after returning from the camp. He “wanted to worm his way in and get lost in the very interior of Russia,” to find “ quiet corner Russia away from the railways."

"Matrenin's Dvor"

“ There are such born angels, they seem to be weightless, they seem to glide on top of this slurry (violence, lies, myths about happiness and legality), without drowning in it at all.”

A. I. Solzhenitsyn

After his rehabilitation in 1957, Solzhenitsyn lived in the village of Maltsevo, Kurlovsky district, Vladimir region, with the peasant woman Matryona Vasilievna Zakharova. The former camp inmate could only get hired for hard work, but he wanted to teach.

"Matrenin's Dvor"

IS THERE A PORTRAIT OF THE HEROINE IN THE STORY? WHAT DETAILS DOES THE AUTHOR HIGHLIGHT?

Matryona is endowed with a discreet appearance. It is important for the author to depict not so much external beauty a simple Russian peasant woman, how much inner light flows from her eyes, and emphasize her thought all the more clearly: “Those people always have good faces, who are at peace with their conscience.”

"Matrenin's Dvor"

HOW DO WE SEE MATRONA'S LIFE?

All her “wealth” is ficus trees, a lanky cat, a goat, mice and cockroaches. All the world Matryona in her darkish hut with a large Russian stove is a continuation of herself, a part of her life. Everything here is natural and organic: the beloved ficus trees “filled the owner’s loneliness with a silent but living crowd.”

"Matrenin's Dvor"

WHAT IS THE HEROINE'S PAST?

The heroine's life path is not easy. She had to endure a lot of grief and injustice in her lifetime: broken love, the death of six children, the loss of her husband in the war, hellish work in the village, severe illness and illness, a bitter resentment towards the collective farm, which squeezed all the strength out of her and then wrote her off as unnecessary. . The tragedy of a rural Russian woman is concentrated in the fate of one Matryona.

One day of life Matryona Vasilievna

Just not to be late

(get up at four or five in the morning)

Bowing to the forest bushes,

go back home

enlightened,

with a kind smile

Quiet, polite,

trying not to make noise

work around the house in the morning

The meaning of everyday

existence

Stock up for the winter

fuel,

constantly taking risks

go on trial

Selflessly help everyone

(relatives, neighbors, collective farm)

Feed the goat herders

giving all his best to other housewives

and driving yourself into great expense

"Matrenin's Dvor"

WHAT IS THE ATTITUDE OF THOSE AROUND TO MATRONA?

The heroes of the story fall into two unequal parts: Matryona and the author-narrator who understands and loves her, and those who use Matryona, her relatives. The boundary between them is indicated by the fact that the main thing in the consciousness and behavior of each of them is interest in common life, desire to participate in it, open sincere attitude to people or focusing only on own interests, own home, own wealth.

"Matrenin's Dvor"

What and who “is worth to the village, the city... our whole land”?

Matrena Vasilievna is a person who lives according to the commandments of Christ, who managed to preserve the purity and holiness of her soul in the most dramatic circumstances of Russian history of the twentieth century.

“We all lived next to her and did not understand that she was the very righteous person without whom, according to the proverb, the village would not stand.

Neither the city.

Neither the whole land is ours.”

conclusions

The life and fate of Matryona Vasilyevna Zakharova is a real lesson in life for us - a lesson in kindness, conscience and humanity. If only each of us could hear her quiet voice, reminding us: “You are a man, God’s greatest creation, and God lives in your soul. Remember this". We have revealed the concept of a righteous person; perhaps there is such a person in the lives of each of us. If not, it will appear. It is important to see it and recognize it in time.

The name of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, which was banned in our country for a long time, has finally rightfully taken its place in the history of Russian literature.
After the publication of “The Gulag Archipelago” in Russia (and this happened only in 1989), it seemed that there were no works left in either Russian or world literature that would pose a great danger to the Soviet regime. This book revealed the whole essence of the totalitarian regime. The veil of lies and self-deception that still obscured the eyes of many of our fellow citizens has subsided. After everything that this documentary book revealed to readers, after the monstrous, fantastic martyrology of the victims of the “building of communism” in Russia during the years of Soviet power was imprinted in the memory, it seems that nothing is surprising or scary!
Brief biography of Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn: date of birth - December 1918, place of birth - the city of Kislovodsk; the father came from peasants, the mother was the daughter of a shepherd, who later became a wealthy farmer. After high school, Solzhenitsyn graduated from the physics and mathematics department of the university in Rostov-on-Don, and at the same time entered the correspondence department at the Moscow Institute of Philosophy and Literature. Without completing the last two courses, he went to war, from 1942 to 1945 he commanded a battery at the front, and was awarded orders and medals. In February 1945, with the rank of captain, he was arrested for criticizing Stalin and sentenced to eight years (he was on so-called general labor in the political Special Security Service). Then he was transferred to Kazakhstan “forever,” but after the rehabilitation that followed in February 1957, he worked as a school teacher in Ryazan. After the publication of “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” in 1962, he was accepted into the Writers’ Union, from which he was expelled seven years later. In 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1974, in connection with the publication of the first volume of “The Gulag Archipelago,” he was forcibly expelled from the USSR. Until 1976 he lived in Zurich, then moved to the American state of Vermont, whose nature resembles central Russia.
This is the difficult life path of a writer. Today we can say with confidence that his work has returned to his homeland.
On the eve of his 60th birthday, Solzhenitsyn began publishing a collection of works with the subtitle “Restored authentic pre-censorship texts, newly checked and corrected by the author. Other works are being published for the first time.” By 1988, eighteen volumes had already been published.
Although the writer himself claimed that the form that most attracted him in literature was “polyphonic with precise signs of time and place of action,” of his five major works, it is not surprising that only “In the First Circle” is a novel in the full sense, because “ The Gulag Archipelago” according to the subtitle is “an experience in artistic research”, the epic “The Red Wheel” is “a narrative in a measured time frame”, “Cancer Ward” is a “story” by the author’s will, and “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is a story.
The novel “In the First Circle” took thirteen years to write and has seven editions. Its plot is that diplomat Volodin calls the American embassy to say that in three days the secret of the atomic bomb will be stolen in New York. The conversation overheard and recorded on film is delivered to the “sharashka” - a research institution of the MGB system, in which prisoners create a voice recognition technique.
The meaning of the title of the novel is explained by the prisoner: “Sharashka is the highest, best, first circle of hell.”
Volodin gives another explanation, drawing a circle on the ground: “Do you see the circle? This is the fatherland. This is the first round. But the second one is wider. This is humanity. And the first circle is not included in the second. There are fences of prejudice here. And it turns out that there is no humanity. But only fatherland, fatherland is different for everyone...”
“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” was conceived by the author during general work in the Ekibastuz special camp. “I was carrying a stretcher with my partner and thought how it would be necessary to describe the entire camp world in one day,” recalled Alexander Isaevich.
In the story “Cancer Ward,” Solzhenitsyn put forward his version of the “incitement of cancer”: Stalinism, Red Terror, repression.
What attracts Solzhenitsyn’s work? Truthfulness, pain for what is happening, insight. A writer, a historian, he always warns us: don’t get lost in history.
“They will tell us: what can literature do against the ruthless onslaught of open violence? And let’s not forget that violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is certainly intertwined with lies,” wrote A. I. Solzhenitsyn.
I believe that writers and artists with their works help people defeat lies. This is the whole work of Solzhenitsyn, an outstanding writer of our days and a great man.

Solzhenitsyn Alexander Isaevich (1918 -2008), Russian writer.

Born on December 11 in Kislovodsk. The writer's paternal ancestors were peasants. Father, Isaac Semenovich, received a university education. From University to First world war volunteered to go to the front. Returning from the war, he was mortally wounded while hunting and died six months before the birth of his son.

Mother, Taisiya Zakharovna Shcherbak, came from the family of a wealthy Kuban landowner.

Solzhenitsyn lived his first years in Kislovodsk, and in 1924 he and his mother moved to Rostov-on-Don.

Already in his youth, Solzhenitsyn realized himself as a writer. In 1937, he conceived a historical novel about the beginning of the First World War and began collecting materials for its creation. Later, this plan was embodied in August the Fourteenth: the first part (“node”) of the historical narrative “The Red Wheel”.

In 1941, Solzhenitsyn graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Rostov University. Even earlier, in 1939, he entered the correspondence department of the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature and Art. The war prevented him from finishing college. After studying at the artillery school in Kostroma in 1942, he was sent to the front and appointed commander of a sound reconnaissance battery.

Solzhenitsyn went through the military path from Orel to East Prussia, received the rank of captain, and was awarded orders. At the end of January 1945, he led the battery out of encirclement.

On February 9, 1945, Solzhenitsyn was arrested: military censorship drew attention to his correspondence with his friend Nikolai Vitkevich. The letters contained harsh assessments of Stalin and the order he established, spoke of the falsity of modern Soviet literature. Solzhenitsyn was sentenced to eight years in the camps and eternal exile. He served time in New Jerusalem near Moscow, then at the construction of a residential building in Moscow. Then - in the “sharashka” (a secret research institute where prisoners worked) in the village of Marfino near Moscow. He spent 1950-1953 in a camp (in Kazakhstan), doing general camp work.

After the end of his prison term (February 1953), Solzhenitsyn was sent into indefinite exile. He began teaching mathematics in the regional center of Kok-Terek, Dzhambul region of Kazakhstan. February 3, 1956 Supreme Court Soviet Union freed Solzhenitsyn from exile, and a year later declared him and Vitkevich completely innocent: criticism of Stalin and literary works was recognized as fair and not contrary to socialist ideology.

In 1956, Solzhenitsyn moved to Russia - to a small village in the Ryazan region, where he worked as a teacher. A year later he moved to Ryazan.

While still in the camp, Solzhenitsyn was diagnosed with cancer, and on February 12, 1952 he underwent surgery. During his exile, Solzhenitsyn was treated twice at the Tashkent Oncology Center and used various medicinal plants. Contrary to doctors' expectations, the malignant tumor disappeared. In his healing, a recent prisoner saw a manifestation of the Divine will - a command to tell the world about Soviet prisons and camps, to reveal the truth to those who know nothing about it or do not want to know.

Solzhenitsyn wrote his first surviving works in the camp. These are poems and satirical play Feast of the winners.

In the winter of 1950-1951, Solzhenitsyn conceived a story about one day in prison. In 1959, the story Shch-854 (One Day of One Prisoner) was written. Shch-854 is the camp number of the main character, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, a prisoner (zek) in a Soviet concentration camp.

In the fall of 1961 I became acquainted with the story Chief Editor magazine " New world» A.T. Tvardovsky. Tvardovsky received permission to publish the story personally from the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union N.S. Khrushchev. Shch-854 under the changed title - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - was published in No. 11 of the New World magazine for 1962. For the sake of publishing the story, Solzhenitsyn was forced to soften some details of the prisoners’ lives. The original text of the story was first published by the Parisian publishing house Ymcapress in 1973. But Solzhenitsyn retained the title One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

The publication of the story was a historical event. Solzhenitsyn became known throughout the country.

For the first time, the undisguised truth was told about the camp world. Publications appeared claiming that the writer was exaggerating. But an enthusiastic perception of the story prevailed. For a short time, Solzhenitsyn was officially recognized.

The action of the story fits into one day - from waking up to lights out. The narration is told on behalf of the author, but Solzhenitsyn constantly resorts to improperly direct speech: in the author’s words one can hear the voice of the main character, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, his assessments and opinions (Shukhov, a former peasant and soldier, was sentenced as a “spy” to ten years in the camps for being captured).

A distinctive feature of the poetics of the story is the neutrality of tone, when terrible, unnatural events and conditions of camp existence are reported as something familiar, ordinary, as something that should be well known to readers. Thanks to this, the “effect of presence” of the reader during the events depicted is created.

Shukhov's day described in the story is devoid of terrible, tragic events, and the character evaluates it as happy. But Ivan Denisovich’s existence is completely hopeless: in order to ensure a basic existence (to feed himself in the camp, barter for tobacco, or carry a hacksaw past the guards), Shukhov must dodge and often risk himself. The reader is forced to conclude: what were Shukhov's other days like if this one - full of dangers and humiliations - seemed happy?

Shukhov - ordinary person, not a hero. A believer, but not ready to give his life for his faith, Ivan Denisovich is distinguished by tenacity and the ability to survive in unbearable circumstances. Shukhov's behavior is not heroic, but natural, not beyond the bounds of moral commandments. He is contrasted with another prisoner, the “jackal” Fetyukov, who has lost his self-esteem and is ready to lick other people’s bowls and humiliate himself. Heroic behavior in the camp is simply impossible, as shown by the example of another character, kavtorang (captain of the second rank) Buinovsky.

One Day by Ivan Denisovich is an almost documentary work: the characters, with the exception of the main character, have prototypes among the people the author met in the camp.

Documentation - distinctive feature almost all of the writer's works. Life for him is more symbolic and meaningful than literary fiction.

In 1964, One Day of Ivan Denisovich was nominated for the Lenin Prize. But Lenin Prize Solzhenitsyn did not receive it: the USSR authorities sought to erase the memory of Stalin’s terror.

A few months after One Day of Ivan Denisovich, Solzhenitsyn’s story Matrenin Dvor was published in No. 1 of Novy Mir, 1963. Initially, the story of Matrenin Dvor was called A village is not worth it without a righteous man - according to a Russian proverb dating back to biblical book Genesis. The name Matrenin Dvor belongs to Tvardovsky. Like One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, this work was autobiographical and based on real events from the lives of people familiar to the author. Prototype main character- Vladimir peasant woman Matryona Vasilievna Zakharova, with whom the writer lived, the narration, as in a number of Solzhenitsyn’s later stories, is told in the first person, on behalf of the teacher Ignatich (the patronymic is consonant with the author’s - Isaevich), who moves to European Russia from a distant link.

Solzhenitsyn portrays a heroine living in poverty, having lost her husband and children, but spiritually not broken by hardships and grief. Matryona is contrasted with selfish and unfriendly fellow villagers who consider her a “fool.” Despite everything, Matryona did not become embittered, she remained compassionate, open and selfless.

Matryona from Solzhenitsyn's story is the embodiment of the best features of a Russian peasant woman, her face is like the face of a saint on an icon, her life is almost a life. The house, the cross-cutting symbol of the story, is correlated with the ark of the biblical righteous man Noah, in which his family is saved from the flood along with pairs of all earthly animals. In Matryona's house with animals from Noah's Ark goat and cat are associated.

But the spiritually righteous Matryona is still not ideal. Deadly Soviet ideology penetrates into life, into the house of the heroine of the story (signs of this ideology in Solzhenitsyn’s text are a poster on the wall and an ever-incessant radio in Matryona’s house).

The life of a saint must end with a happy death, uniting her with God. This is the law of the hagiographic genre. However, Matryona's death is bitterly absurd. The brother of her late husband, the greedy old man Thaddeus, who once loved her, forces Matryona to give him the upper room (log hut). At a railway crossing, while transporting logs from a dismantled upper room, Matryona falls under a train, which personifies a mechanical, inanimate force hostile to the natural principle embodied by Matryona. The death of the heroine symbolizes the cruelty and meaninglessness of the world in which she lived.

In 1963-1966, three more stories about Solzhenitsyn were published in Novy Mir: The Case at Krechetovka Station (No. 1 for 1963, the author's title - The Case at Kochetovka Station - was changed at the insistence of the editors due to the confrontation between the New World and the conservative magazine "October", headed by the writer V.A. Kochetov). After 1966, the writer’s works were not published in his homeland until the turn of 1989, when they were published in the magazine “New World” Nobel lecture and chapters from the book Gulag Archipelago.

In 1964, for the sake of publishing the novel in A.T. Tvardovsky’s “New World,” Solzhenitsyn reworked the novel, softening the criticism of Soviet reality.

In 1955, Solzhenitsyn conceived and in 1963-1966 wrote the story Cancer Ward. It reflected the author’s impressions of his stay at the Tashkent Oncology Clinic and the story of his healing.

All attempts to publish the story in Novy Mir were unsuccessful. The Cancer Corps, like In the First Circle, was distributed in samizdat. The story was published for the first time in the West in 1968.

In the mid-1960s, when an official ban was imposed on discussing the topic of repression, the authorities began to view Solzhenitsyn as a dangerous adversary. In September 1965, a search was conducted at one of the writer’s friends who kept his manuscripts. The Solzhenitsyn archive ended up in the State Security Committee. Since 1966, the writer’s works have ceased to be published, and those already published have been removed from libraries. The KGB spread rumors that during the war Solzhenitsyn surrendered and collaborated with the Germans. In March 1967, Solzhenitsyn addressed the Fourth Congress of the Union Soviet writers with a letter in which he spoke about the destructive power of censorship and the fate of his works. He demanded that the Writers' Union refute the slander and resolve the issue of publishing Cancer Corps. The leadership of the Writers' Union did not respond to this call. Solzhenitsyn's confrontation with the authorities began. He writes journalistic articles, which are published in manuscripts. From now on, journalism became as significant a part of his work for the writer as fiction. Solzhenitsyn distributes open letters with protests against human rights violations and persecution of dissidents in the Soviet Union. In November 1969, Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Writers' Union. In 1970, Solzhenitsyn became a Nobel Prize laureate. Western support public opinion made it difficult for the authorities of the Soviet Union to deal with the dissident writer. Solzhenitsyn talks about his opposition to communist power in the book A Calf Butted an Oak Tree, first published in Paris in 1975. Since 1958, Solzhenitsyn has been working on the book Gulag Archipelago - a history of repressions, camps and prisons in the Soviet Union (GULAG - Main Directorate of Camps). The book was completed in 1968. In 1973, KGB officers seized one of the copies of the manuscript. The persecution of the writer intensified. At the end of December 1973, the first volume of the Archipelago was published in the West... (the entire book was published in the West in 1973-1975). The word “archipelago” in the name refers to A.P. Chekhov’s book about the life of convicts on Sakhalin - Sakhalin Island. Only instead of one convict island of old Russia in Soviet time The Archipelago is spread out - many “islands”. The Gulag Archipelago - at the same time historical research with elements of parody ethnographic essay, and the author’s memoirs, telling about his camp experience, and the epic of suffering, and the martyrology - stories about the Gulag martyrs. The story of Soviet concentration camps focused on the text of the Bible: the creation of the Gulag is presented as the creation of the world by God “turned inside out” (a satanic anti-world is created); the seven books of the Gulag Archipelago are correlated with the seven seals of the Book from the Revelation of St. John the Theologian, by which the Lord will judge people at the end of time. In the Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn acts not so much as an author but as a collector of stories told by many prisoners. As in the story One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, the narrative is structured in such a way as to force the reader to see with his own eyes the torment of the prisoners and, as it were, to experience it for himself. On February 12, 1974, Solzhenitsyn was arrested and a day later deported from the Soviet Union to West Germany. Immediately after the writer’s arrest, his wife Natalya Dmitrievna distributed in samizdat his article “Living not by lies” - a call on citizens to refuse complicity in the lies that the authorities demand from them. Solzhenitsyn and his family settled in the Swiss city of Zurich, and in 1976 moved to small town Cavendish in the US state of Vermont. In journalistic articles written in exile, in speeches and lectures delivered to Western audiences, Solzhenitsyn critically reflected on Western liberal and democratic values. He contrasts the law, justice, multi-party system as a condition and guarantee of human freedom in society with the organic unity of people, direct popular self-government; in contrast to the ideals of a consumer society, he puts forward ideas of self-restraint and religious principles (Harvard speech, 1978, article Our Pluralists, 1982, Templeton Lecture, 1983). Solzhenitsyn's speeches caused a sharp reaction among part of the emigration, who reproached him for totalitarian sympathies, retrogradeness and utopianism. The grotesquely caricatured image of Solzhenitsyn, the writer Sim Simych Karnavalov, was created by V.N. Voinovich in the novel Moscow-2042. In exile, Solzhenitsyn was working on the epic The Red Wheel, dedicated to the pre-revolutionary years. The Red Wheel consists of four parts - “nodes”: August the Fourteenth, October the Sixteenth, March the Seventeenth and April the Seventeenth. Solzhenitsyn began writing The Red Wheel in the late 1960s and completed it only in the early 1990s. August of the Fourteenth and the chapters of October of the Sixteenth were created in the USSR. The Red Wheel is a kind of chronicle of the revolution, which is created from fragments of different genres. Among them are a report, a protocol, a transcript (a story about disputes between Minister Rittich and deputies of the State Duma; an “incident report” that analyzes street riots in the summer of 1917, fragments from newspaper articles of various political trends, etc.). Many chapters are like fragments psychological novel. They describe episodes from the life of fictional and historical characters: Colonel Vorotyntsev, his wife Alina and beloved Olda; the intellectual Lenartovich, who was in love with the revolution, General Samsonov, one of the leaders of the State Duma Guchkov and many others. The original fragments are called “screens” by the author - similarities to cinematic frames with editing techniques and zooming in or out of an imaginary film camera. "Screens" are full symbolic meaning. Thus, in one of the episodes reflecting the retreat of the Russian army in August 1914, the image of a wheel torn off from a cart, colored by fire, is a symbol of chaos, the madness of history. In the Red Wheel, Solzhenitsyn resorts to narrative techniques characteristic of modernist poetics.

The author himself noted in his interviews the significance of the novels of the American modernist D. Dos Passos for the Red Wheel. The Red Wheel is built on the combination and intersection of different narrative points of view, while the same event is sometimes presented in the perception of several characters (the murder of P.A. Stolypin is seen through the eyes of his killer - terrorist M.G. Bogrov, Stolypin himself, General P. G. Kurlov and Nicholas II). The “voice” of the narrator, designed to express author's position, often enters into dialogue with the “voices” of the characters, the true author’s opinion can only be reconstructed by the reader from the whole text. Solzhenitsyn, a writer and historian, is especially fond of the reformer, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Russia P.A. Stolypin, who was killed several years before the start of the main action of the Red Wheel. However, Solzhenitsyn dedicated a significant part of his work to him. The Red Wheel is in many ways reminiscent of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. Like Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn contrasts the acting political characters (the Bolshevik Lenin, the Socialist Revolutionary Kerensky, the cadet Miliukov, the tsarist minister Protopopov) with normal, humane, living people. The author of the Red Wheel shares Tolstoy's idea of extremely big role in the history of ordinary people. But Tolstoy's soldiers and officers made history without realizing it. Solzhenitsyn constantly puts his heroes before a dramatic choice - the course of events depends on their decisions. Solzhenitsyn, unlike Tolstoy, considers detachment and willingness to submit to the course of events not a manifestation of insight and inner freedom, but a historical betrayal. For in history, according to the author of the Red Wheel, it is not fate that acts, but people, and nothing is ultimately predetermined. That is why, while sympathizing with Nicholas II, the author still considers him inescapably guilty - the last Russian sovereign did not fulfill his destiny, did not keep Russia from falling into the abyss. Solzhenitsyn said that he would return to his homeland only when his books were returned there, when the Gulag Archipelago was published there. The New World magazine managed to obtain permission from the authorities to publish chapters of this book in 1989. In May 1994, Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia. He writes a book of memoirs, A grain caught between two millstones, appears in newspapers and on television with assessments of modern politics Russian authorities. The writer accuses them of the fact that the reforms being carried out in the country are ill-conceived, immoral and cause enormous damage to society, which caused an ambiguous attitude towards Solzhenitsyn’s journalism. In 1991, Solzhenitsyn wrote the book How to Build Russia. Strong considerations. And in 1998, Solzhenitsyn published the book Russia in Collapse, in which he sharply criticizes economic reforms. He reflects on the need to revive the zemstvo and Russian national consciousness. The book Two Hundred Years Together, dedicated to Jewish question in Russia. In the "New World" the writer regularly appears in the late 1990s with literary critical articles, dedicated to creativity Russian prose writers and poets. In the 1990s, Solzhenitsyn wrote several short stories and novellas.

A.I. Solzhenitsyn died on August 3, 2008, at the age of 90, at his dacha in Troitse-Lykovo, from acute heart failure. On August 6, his ashes were interred in the necropolis of the Donskoy Monastery behind the altar of the Church of St. John the Climacus, next to the grave of the historian V. O. Klyuchevsky.

Vital and creative path Solzhenitsyn attracted and continues to attract the attention of not only Russian but also foreign researchers.

The literary heritage of Alexander Solzhenitsyn is so monumental and multifaceted that it can and should be considered with different points vision. Daniel Mahoney's book is not a biography or an analysis artistic value works of Solzhenitsyn. The author, as a specialist in political philosophy, examines Solzhenitsyn’s works in the context of the development of Western political thought. He manages to establish a deeper connection between Solzhenitsyn and the spiritual heritage of the West than has been previously believed. For example, he finds parallels between the ideas of Solzhenitsyn and Alexis de Tocqueville, and shows that some of them go back to Aristotle.

Daniel Mahony defines Solzhenitsyn's political worldview as "liberal conservatism." He rejects as groundless the comments of some critics who found anti-democratic, monarchical and anti-Semitic tendencies in Solzhenitsyn's works. However, the author of the book forgets that Solzhenitsyn belongs primarily to cultural tradition Russia. Analysis ideological content His work outside this tradition is certainly interesting, but has severe limitations.

Solzhenitsyn's works can be divided into two main groups. They are approximately equal in volume, but not in importance. His stories and novels “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”, “Cancer Ward”, “In the First Circle”, as well as the three-volume artistic and journalistic masterpiece “The Gulag Archipelago” are great works of creative genius. They not only provided the author with an outstanding place in world literature, but made him one of the largest moral authorities. Solzhenitsyn’s call to “not live by a lie,” coupled with his own courage, inspired an entire generation of Soviet intelligentsia to moral resistance, and ultimately became a major factor in the downfall of the communist monster.

Series historical novels The Red Wheel constitutes the second main part of Solzhenitsyn's legacy. The first of these novels, published more than thirty years ago, “August 1914,” turned out to be colorless, endlessly long, filled with ethereal shadows instead of living characters, extremely loose and unclear in ideological orientation. Solzhenitsyn seemed to be trying to show that the impending revolution was a consequence of the political and moral bankruptcy of the regime of the tsarist autocracy. But at the same time, he described some events in pre-revolutionary Russia from the point of view of adherents of this regime. This became clearer in the second edition of "August 1914", where the author introduced an additional three hundred pages devoted to the assassination attempt on Russian Prime Minister P.A. Stolypin, who was mortally wounded in Kiev on September 1, 1911.

Stolypin sought to take away most political freedoms that the people and society managed to wrest from the tsar during the first Russian Revolution (1905). He dissolved two democratically elected State Dumas and then, in violation of the Constitution, changed the Election Law to create a more compliant parliament. He introduced courts-martial that sent thousands of people, most of them innocent, to their deaths. The rapid-fire Stolypin justice carried out trials and reprisals with lightning speed. The sentence, including the death sentence, was pronounced within 48 hours after the arrest of the suspect and was not subject to appeal; After another 24 hours, the condemned man was shot or hanged. However, Solzhenitsyn portrays the iron dictator as a moderate reformer and humanist. By creating a “personality cult” of Stolypin, he incredibly exaggerates his political weight and presents him as a failed Savior of Russia.

It appears that Mr. Mahoney's knowledge of Stolypin consists largely of what he read in Solzhenitsyn's novel. He takes it for granted that Stolypin was “outstanding statesman, the largest in Russia in two centuries"; that he "combined repression against revolutionary terrorism with broad reforms and tried to rule together with representatives of society elected to the Duma."

Stolypin's killer, Dmitry Bogrov, as he is presented in Solzhenitsyn's novel and in Mahoney's book, is just as far from real prototype. The real Dmitry Bogrov was a young anarchist and secret agent of the secret police. This combination was not unusual in those days. There are serious reasons to believe that terrorist attack Bogrova was organized by the Okhrana with the tacit approval of the tsar (Stolypin by that time had long been out of favor, but stubbornly did not resign). However, in Solzhenitsyn's novel vital role in Bogrov's motifs plays him Jewish origin. Although the real Dmitry Bogrov grew up in an assimilated family and did not maintain ties with the Jewish community, Solzhenitsyn’s “Mordko” Bogrov feels like “flesh of the flesh of Kyiv Jewry.” He goes to kill "at the call of a voice three thousand years ago." “Mordko” hates Russia and kills its “Savior” because he is “too good for this country” (not because he is too bad!) In other words, “Mordko” does not distinguish between Russia and the Russian despotic regime. And Solzhenitsyn himself also does not make such a distinction: the Mordko shots, he writes, “decided the fate of the government,” “the fate of the country,” “and the fate of my people.”

For Mr. Mahoney, this is a manifestation of 3,000 years of collective guilt. Jewish history, presents "a balanced analysis of Bogrov's motives." He believes that Solzhenitsyn even "pays tribute to his undeniable, albeit misdirected, heroism." Mr. Mahoney is firm and consistent in his assessments. Time and again he refuses to acknowledge that at least some of the ideas expressed in Solzhenitsyn's novel originate not with Alexis de Tocqueville or Raymond Aron, but with a subculture of Russian anti-Semitism.

Ironically, Alexander Solzhenitsyn has recently done a disservice to his apologists in the West. IN last book"Two Hundred Years Together (1795-1995): Russian-Jewish Relations" (the first of two volumes was recently published in Moscow) reinforces the most odious tendencies of the Red Wheel. Solzhenitsyn, of course, insists that his A new book is a strictly objective and balanced analysis, but most reviewers disagree. As one of them writes, “Solzhenitsyn wrote his book to demonstrate the absolute evil of the Jewish people against the background of the tolerant and even benevolent policy of the tsarist government and the good attitude of the Russian people towards the Jews.”

The name of Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn, which was banned for a long time, has now rightfully taken its place in the history of Russian literature of the Soviet period. Solzhenitsyn's work attracts the reader with truthfulness, pain for what is happening, and insight. A writer, a historian, he always warns us: don’t get lost in history. "The Gulag Archipelago" was published in 1989. After this event, there were no works left in either Russian or world literature that would pose a great danger to the Soviet regime. Solzhenitsyn's book revealed the essence of the totalitarian Stalinist state. The veil of lies and self-deception that still obscured the eyes of many of our fellow citizens has subsided. "The Gulag Archipelago" is both documentary evidence and piece of art . Here is captured a monstrous, fantastic martyrology of the victims of the “building of communism” in Russia during the years of Soviet power. Alexander Isaevich was born in December 1918 in Kislovodsk. The father came from peasants, the mother was the daughter of a shepherd, who later became a wealthy farmer. After high school, Solzhenitsyn graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the University in Rostov-on-Don, and at the same time entered the Moscow Institute of Philosophy and Literature as a correspondence student. Without completing the last two courses, he goes to war. From 1942 to 1945 he commanded a battery at the front and was awarded orders and medals. In February 1945, with the rank of captain, he was arrested due to criticism of Stalin detected in correspondence and sentenced to eight years, of which he spent almost a year on investigation and in transfer, three in a prison research institute and the four most difficult years in general work in the political Special Security Service. . Then A.I. Solzhenitsyn lived in Kazakhstan in exile “forever”, but from February 1957 rehabilitation followed. He worked as a school teacher in Ryazan. After the appearance of the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” in 1962, he was accepted into the Writers' Union. But I am forced to submit my next works to Samizdat or print them abroad. In 1969, Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Writers' Union, and in 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1974, in connection with the release of the first volume of The Gulag Archipelago, Alexander Isaevich was forcibly expelled to the West. He was put on a plane and flown to Germany. Until 1976, Solzhenitsyn lived in Zurich, then moved to the American state of Vermont, whose nature resembles central Russia. On the eve of his 60th birthday, Solzhenitsyn began publishing collected works; by 1988, 18 volumes had already been published. The writer himself claims that the form that most attracts him in literature is “polyphonic with precise signs of time and place of action.” The novel in the full sense is “In the First Circle”, “The Gulag Archipelago”, according to the subtitle, is “an experience in artistic research”, the epic “The Red Wheel” is “a narrative in a measured time frame”. “Cancer Ward” is, by the author’s will, a “story,” and “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is even a “story.” For 13 years, the writer worked on the novel “In the First Circle.” The plot is that diplomat Volodin calls the American embassy to say that in three days the secret of the atomic bomb will be stolen in New York. The conversation overheard and recorded on film is delivered to the “sharashka” - a research institution of the MGB system, in which prisoners create a voice recognition technique. The meaning of the novel is explained by the prisoner: “Sharashka is the highest, the best, the first circle of hell.” Volodin gives another explanation, drawing a circle on the ground: “Do you see the circle? This is the fatherland. This is the first round. But the second one is wider. This is humanity. And the first circle is not included in the second. There are fences of prejudice here. And it turns out that there is no humanity. But only fatherland, fatherland is different for everyone...” “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” was conceived by the author during general work in the Ekibastuz special camp. “I was carrying a stretcher with my partner and thought how it would be necessary to describe the entire camp world in one day.” In the story “Cancer Ward,” Solzhenitsyn put forward his version of the “incitement of cancer”: Stalinism, Red Terror, repression. “They will tell us: what can literature do against the ruthless onslaught of open violence? And let’s not forget that violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is certainly intertwined with lies,” wrote A. I. Solzhenitsyn. “But you need to take a simple step: do not participate in lies.” Let this come into the world and even reign in the world, but not through me.” Writers and artists have access to more: defeating lies! Solzhenitsyn was the kind of writer who defeated lies.