WWII in prose of the 20th century. The theme of the Great Patriotic War in the prose of the 20th century

The first novels about revolution and civil society. war.

Traditional realism survived at the turn of the century. a crisis. But by the 20s. gained realism. new life in new literature. Character motivation changes, understanding of the environment expands. As a typical the circumstances are already history, global. historical processes. A person (lit. hero) finds himself face to face with history, and his private, individual existence is under threat. Man is drawn into the cycle of history. events, often against their will. And these new conditions renew realism. Now not only the character is influenced by the environment and circumstances, but also vice versa. A new concept of personality is being formed: a person does not reflect, but creates, realizes himself not in private intrigue, but in the public field. The prospect of re-creating the world has opened before the hero and the artist => the literary swarm is affirmed, including the right to violence. This is connected with the revolution. transforming the world: justifying the revolution. violence was necessary. not only in relation to to a person, but also in relation to to history. 20s - post-war years, people came to literature who, in one way or another, accepted. participation in hostilities => a large number of novels about civilians appeared. war (Pilnyak “The Naked Year”, Blyakhin “Red Little Devils”, Zazubrin “Two Worlds” etc.). The first 2 novels about gr. appeared in the war 1921 - It's novel Zazubrin "Two Worlds" and novel Pilnyak "The Naked Year". In Pilnyak's novel the revolution. - this is the time of returning to the original, the original. from time to time, first nature triumphs in this novel, woven from various stories, like patchwork. blanket. Zazubrin will read the first part of the novel. Lunacharsky and very praised him. Pilnyak, on the contrary, called the novel a slaughterhouse. However, this is not a slaughterhouse, but a personal experience. Pilnyak did not participate. in the military own, and Zazubrin was mobilized. first to Kolchakovsk. army, but fled from there to the Reds, seeing the abuse of the Reds by the Kolchakites. About Kolchak. Z.'s army and story. in the novel (he described the Red Army later in story "Sliver").

In general, the topic is civil. war is the leading theme of prose, drama and poetry of the 20s. A huge number of different types are being created. works, novels, stories, stories, essays, all from different points of view, because There is no strict censorship yet, because authors need to capture this very recent moment in history. These are attempts to understand war as a phenomenon, presenting. characteristics of people who got into trouble. into the wheel of history. In the 20s in Russia, novels, novellas, and stories about the war are written by: Serafimovich (“Iron Stream”), Furmanov (“Chapaev”), Babel (“Cavalry”), Fedin (“Cities and Years”), Leonov (“Badgers”), Sholokhov (“Don Stories”, “Azure Steppe”, the beginning of “Quiet Don”, finished in the 30s), Fadeev (“Destruction”), Malyshkin (“The Fall of Dair”), Bulgakov (“The White Guard”), Lavrenev (stories ), Platonov (“The Hidden Man”, “Chevengur”).

In exile Citizen. war and revolution are also reflected. in prose: “Cursed Days” by Bunin, “Swirled Rus'” by Remizov, “Sun of the Dead” by Shmelev, stories by Gazdanov and “Evening at Claire’s”, etc. In emigration, revolution and civil. war is perceived more unambiguously: it is a disaster.

Fadeev. "Destruction." Novel (1927). Among the characters, represented. in the novel, stood out as unique. triangle: Levinson on top, Mechik and Morozka. Levinson is the ideal leader of a partisan detachment (it seems to every fighter that his distinguishing feature is that he commands their detachment). He is calm, self-possessed, resilient (he does not sleep at night, but stays in the saddle and thinks that the partisans should not see his fatigue), he is not dedicated. partisans in the details of his personal biography, no one knows about his hesitations in choosing the right decision (how to lead the detachment away from the Japanese) except Doctor Stashitsky from the field (or rather, foresthospital, because Levinson “thought that you can lead other people , only pointing out their weaknesses and suppressing them, hiding his own from them." It is probably no coincidence that Levinson, as the core of the detachment, remains alive. Only at the end of the novel does he show weakness: he cries about the death of his young assistant. Baklanov (Baklanov imitates Levinson in everything), but the novel does not end with this, but with the fact that Levinson stops crying, because “he had to live and fulfill his duties.” Morozka, the son of a miner, is a miner himself, in contrast . from Levinson, all in sight, he is open, impulsive, there is something recklessly rebellious in him: “He did everything thoughtlessly: life seemed to him simple and unsophisticated, like a round Murom cucumber from the Suchansky towers.” There is something in the image of Morozka destructive both for himself and for everyone around him. If you think about it, it is he who saves and brings Mechik to the detachment, whose cowardice becomes the cause of the death of almost the entire detachment. Mechik is an intellectual. boy, “clean”, “yellow-faced”, just after high school. Romantic ideas about the heroic. The partisans bring him into a detachment of maximalists who mock him, “over his city jacket, over his correct speech, over the fact that he does not know how to clean a rifle.” After being wounded, he got hit. to Levinson's detachment. He has long been cursing himself for going to the partisans, in contrast. from Levinson and Morozka does not see the point in what he is doing, but sees only that he is being offended. Levinson, after a conversation with Mechik, thinks about “how weak, lazy, weak-willed Mechik is, and how sad it really is that such people are still breeding in the country - worthless and beggars,” “worthless barren flowers.” As a result. Mechik, concerned only with his own existence, when he is sent as a sentinel ahead of the detachment, stumbles upon the Cossacks and saves his own. life, instead of warning. squad and die. When he realizes that he has done something mean, he feels sorry for not dying. because of him, people, and himself as before, “so good and honest, who did not wish harm to anyone.” Kr. content. Partisan commander. detachment Levinson orders. orderly Morozka to take the package to another detachment. Morozka doesn’t want to go, he suggested. send someone else; Levinson calmly ordered. orderly hand over your weapons and go to all 4 directions. Morozka, having come to his senses, takes the letter and sets off, noting that he cannot “leave the detachment” in any way. What follows is the backstory of Morozka, who was a 2nd generation miner, did everything in life thoughtlessly - thoughtlessly married a walking hauler Varya, thoughtlessly left in 1918 to defend the Soviets. On the way to Shaldyba’s detachment, where the orderly was taking the package, he sees a battle between the partisans and the Japanese; The partisans flee, leaving the wounded boy in the city. jacket Morozka picks up the wounded man and returns to Levinson’s detachment. The wounded man's name was Pavel Mechik. He woke up already in the forest infirmary, saw Doctor Stashinsky and nurse Varya (Morozka’s wife). The little guy is getting a bandage. In previous Mechik reported that, living in the city, he wanted to be heroic. exploits and therefore went to the partisans, but when he got to them, he was disappointed. In the infirmary, he tries to talk with Stashinsky, but he, having learned that Mechik was close mainly with the maximalist Socialist-Revolutionaries, is not in the mood to talk with the wounded man. Morozka didn’t like Mechik right away, and he didn’t like it later, when Morozka visited his wife in the infirmary. On the way to the detachment, Morozka tries to steal melons from the village chairman Ryabets, but, caught by the owner, he is forced to retreat. Ryabets complains to Levinson, who orders Morozka’s weapons to be taken away. A village meeting is scheduled for the evening to discuss the orderly's behavior. Levinson, having jostled between the men, finally understands that Japanese. getting closer and he and his squad need to retreat. To appointment About an hour the partisans gather, and Levinson sets out the essence of the matter, inviting everyone to decide what to do with Morozka. Partisan Dubov, a former miner, proposes to expel Morozka from the detachment; this had such an effect on Morozka that he gave his word that he would never disgrace the title of partisan and former partisan. miner On one of his trips to the infirmary, Morozka realizes that his wife and Mechik have some kind of special interest. relationship, and Varya, who has never been jealous of anyone, this time feels anger towards both his wife and “mama’s boy,” as he calls Mechik. Everyone in the detachment considers Levinson a man of “a special, correct breed.” It seems to everyone that the commander knows everything and understands everything, although Levinson tested it. doubts and hesitations. Having collected information from all sides, the commander ordered. squad to retreat. Recovered Mechik joins the squad. Levinson ordered to give him a horse - he gets the “tearful, mournful mare” Zyuchikha; the offended Mechik does not know how to deal with Zyuchikha; not being able to get along with the partisans, he does not see the “main springs of the detachment mechanism.” Together with Baklanov, he was sent on reconnaissance; in the village they came across a Japanese. patrol and killed three in a shootout. Having discovered the main Japanese forces, the scouts return to the detachment. The detachment needs to retreat, it needs evacuees. hospital, but you can’t take death with you. wounded Frolov. Levinson and Stashinsky decide to give the patient poison; Mechik accidentally overhears their conversation and tries to interfere with Stashinsky - he shouts at him, Frolov understands that he is being offered a drink and agrees. The detachment retreats, Levinson goes to check the guards during the night and talks. with Mechik, one of the sentries. Mechik tries to explain to Levinson how bad he (Mechik) is in the detachment, but the commander is left with the impression from the conversation that Mechik is an “impenetrable confusion.” Levinson sends Metelitsa on reconnaissance, he makes his way to the village where the Cossacks are standing, climbs into the courtyard of the house where the leader lives. squadron. Having discovered him. The Cossacks put him in a barn, interrogating him the next morning. and lead to the square. There, a man in a vest comes forward, leading by the hand a frightened shepherd boy, to whom Metelitsa had left a horse the day before in the forest. Cossack beginning wants to interrogate the boy “in his own way,” but Snowstorm rushes at him, trying to strangle him; he shoots, and Metelitsa dies. The Cossack squadron set off along the road, was discovered by partisans, ambushed and converted. Cossacks flee. During the battle, Morozka's horse is killed; Having occupied the village, the partisans, on Levinson’s orders, shot the man in the vest. At dawn, the enemy heads into the village. Cavalry, Levinson's thinned detachment retreats into the forest, but stops because... there is a quagmire ahead. The commander orders the swamp to be cleared. Having crossed the road, the detachment heads to the bridge, where the Cossacks set up an ambush. Mechik was sent on patrol, but he was discovered. Cossacks, is afraid to warn the partisans and flees. Morozka, who was riding behind him, manages to shoot 3 times, as agreed, and dies. The detachment rushes to break through, 19 people remain alive.

Bulgakov. "White Guard". Novel (1923-1924). Conceived in 1921, main work - 1923-1925. 08/31/1923 M.B. writes to the prose writer Yu. Slezkin that the novel is roughly finished: “I finished the novel, but it has not yet been rewritten, it lies in a heap, over which I think a lot. I’ll fix something.” Publ. not completely in the magazine “Russia” (chief editor I.G. Lezhnev). After the closure of the journal, the last chapters were published. only in 1929 in Paris Publishing house "Concord". A trilogy was conceived, and “The White Guard” was the original. called the "Midnight Cross" (or "White Cross"). The action of the 2nd part should have taken place. on the Don, and in the 3rd Myshlaevsky was supposed to end up in the Red Army. Dedicated Lyubov Evgenievna Bulgakova (Belozerskaya), the writer’s second wife (married from 1924 to 1932). Dedicated to her. “Heart of a Dog”, “Cabal of the Saints”. Previous works: the story “Tribute of Admiration”, the play “The Turbine Brothers” (lost), the story “The Extraordinary Adventures of the Doctor”. Some thematic similarities are I Killed (1926). In neok. story “To a Secret Friend” - episode, connection. with the beginning of the creation of "B.Gv." Turbiny is the maiden name of M.B.’s grandmother. on the mother's side - Anfisa Ivanovna. The Turbins' house is the house in which the Bulgakovs lived in 1906-1919, Kyiv, Andreevsky Spusk (in the novel - Alekseevsky), no. 13. Prototypes: 1. Elena Vasilievna Turbina-Talberg - sister of M.B., Varvara. 2. Talberg – Varvara’s husband. 3. Nikolka – brother of M.B., Nikolai. 4. Myshlaevsky - Nikolai Syngaevsky, Syngaevsky - Kyiv friends of the Bulgakovs. 5. Mikhail Semenovich Shpolyansky - possibly, Viktor Shklovsky, writer. The time of death of the Turbins’ mother was the spring of 1918, at which time the mother of M.B. remarried. Motifs and characters subsequently developed in other works: 1. emigration (“Running”) - Thalberg’s flight, reading “The Gentleman from San Francisco”); 2. plays “Days of the Turbins”, “Zoyka’s Apartment”; 3. the image of the god-fighting poet, syphilitic Rusakov, later Ivanushka Bezdomny. Unlike Fadeev's Mechik, a cowardly intellectual, Bulgakov's novel displays a number of images that are radically different from him. This is the Turbin family, family friends - Myshlaevsky, Karas, Shervinsky, Colonel Nai-Tours, for whom honor is most important. I won’t tell you for a long time, everyone already knows everything about the “White Guard”. I will only note that there are also “bad” guys here: Talberg, Shpolyansky, etc. Kr. content. Valid novel of origin in the winter of 1918/19 in a certain City, in which Kyiv was clearly guessed. The city is occupied by Germans. occupier troops, the hetman of “all Ukraine” is in power. However, any day now Petlyura’s army may enter the City - fighting is already taking place 12 km from the City. The city lives in a strange, unnatural way. life: it is full of visitors from Moscow and St. Petersburg - bankers, businessmen, journalists, lawyers, poets - who flocked there from the moment the hetman was elected, in the spring of 1918. In the dining room of the Turbins' house at dinner, Alexei Turbin, a doctor, his younger brother Nikolka, non-commissioned officer -officer, their sister Elena and family friends - lieutenant. Myshlaevsky, second lieutenant. Stepanov, nicknamed Karas and the lieutenant. Shervinsky, adjutant at the headquarters of Prince Belorukov, commander. all military forces of Ukraine, - excitedly discussed. the fate of their beloved City. The elder Turbin believes that the hetman and his Ukrainization are to blame for everything: until the very last moment he did not allow the formation of the Russian. army, and if this had happened on time, it would have been formed. selected an army of cadets, students, high school students and officers, of whom there are thousands, would not only have defended the City, but Petliura would not have been in spirit in Little Russia, moreover, they would have marched on Moscow and saved Russia. Elena's husband, captain general. headquarters Sergei Ivanovich Talberg, announced. to his wife that the Germans are leaving the City and he, Thalberg, is being taken on the headquarters train leaving tonight. Talberg is confident that within 3 months he will return to the City with Denikin’s army, which is now forming on the Don. In the meantime, he cannot take Elena into the unknown, and she will have to stay in the City. To protect against attacking Petliura's troops in the City begin to form a Russian army. military conn. Karas, Myshlaevsky and A. Turbin are on the teams. formative mortar division to Colonel Malyshev and enter the service: Karas and Myshlaevsky - as officers, Turbin - as divisions. doctor However, the next night - from December 13 to 14 - the hetman and general Belorukov flee from the City to Germany. train, and Colonel Malyshev disbands the newly formed. division: he has no one to protect, there is no legal authority in the City. Colonel Nai-Tours finished by December 10th. formation of the 2nd department of the 1st squad. Considering waging war without winter equipment for soldiers impossible, Colonel Nai-Tours, threatening the head of the supply department with a Colt, received felt boots and hats for his 150 cadets. On the morning of December 14, Petliura attacks the City; Nai-Tours receives an order to guard the Polytechnic. highway and, if the enemy appears, take the fight. Nai-Tours, entering the battle from the front lines. enemy detachments, sends 3 cadets to find out where the hetman is. parts. Those sent returned with the message that there were no units anywhere, there was machine-gun fire in the rear, but they were not welcome. cavalry enters the City. Nai realizes that they are trapped. An hour earlier, Nikolai Turbin receives an order to lead the team along the route. Arriving at the destination. place, Nikolka sees with horror the fleeing cadets and hears the command of Colonel Nai-Tours, ordering. all cadets - both their own and those from Nikolka's team - rip off their shoulder straps, cockades, throw away their weapons, tear up documents, run and hide. The colonel himself covers the retreat of the cadets. Nikolka died before his eyes. the wounded colonel dies. Shocked. Nikolka, leaving Nai-Tours, made his way through the courtyards and alleys to the house. Meanwhile, Alexey, who was not informed about the dissolution of the division, having appeared, as he was ordered, at 2 o’clock, finds an empty building with abandoned guns. Having found Colonel Malyshev, he receives an explanation of what is happening: The city was taken by Petliura’s troops. Alexei, having torn off his shoulder straps, went home, but came across Petlyura’s soldiers, who, recognizing him as an officer (in his haste, he forgot to take off the badge from his hat), pursued him. Covering Alexei, who was wounded in the arm. in his house is a woman he doesn’t know named Julia Reiss. On the trail. day, after dressing Alexei in civilian dress, Yulia takes him home in a cab. Simultaneously Talberg's cousin Lariosik, who survived, comes to the Turbins from Zhitomir with Alexey. personal drama: his wife left him. Lariosik really likes it in the Turbins' house, and all the Turbins find him very nice. Vasily Ivanovich Lisovich, nicknamed Vasilisa, is the owner of the house in which the Turbins live. in the same house, 1st floor, Turbins live in the 2nd floor. On the eve of the day when Petlyura entered the City, Vasilisa built. a hiding place in which one hides money and jewelry. However, through a gap in a loose curtain. An unknown person is watching Vasilisa's actions in the window. The next day, three armed men come to Vasilisa. people with a search warrant. The first thing they do is open the cache, and then take Vasilisa’s watch, suit and shoes. After the “guests” leave, Vasilisa and his wife realize that they were bandits. Vasilisa runs to the Turbins, and Karas goes to them to protect them from a possible new attack. The usually stingy Vanda Mikhailovna, Vasilisa’s wife, does not skimp here: there is cognac, veal, and marinov on the table. mushrooms. Happy Crucian dozes, listening to Vasilisa’s plaintive speeches. After 3 days, Nikolka, having learned the address of Nai-Turs’s family, went to the colonel’s relatives. He tells Nai's mother and sister the details of his death. Together with the colonel's sister Irina, Nikolka finds the body of Nai-Tours in the morgue, and that same night in the chapel at the anatomical site. The funeral service is being held at the Nai-Tours Theater. After several For days, Alexei’s wound becomes inflamed, and in addition, he has typhus: high fever, delirium. According to the conclusion of the consultation, the patient is hopeless; On December 22, the agony begins. Elena locks herself in the bedroom and passionately prays to the Most Holy Theotokos, begging her to save her brother from death. “Let Sergei not return,” she whispers, “but do not punish this with death.” To the amazement of the man on duty. With the doctor there, Alexey regains consciousness - the crisis is over. After 1.5 months I finally recovered. Alexei goes to Julia Reiss, who saved him from death, and gives her his late mother’s bracelet. Alexey asks Yulia for permission to visit her. After leaving Yulia, he meets Nikolka, returning from Irina Nai-Tours. Elena receives a letter from a friend from Warsaw, in which she informs her about Talberg's upcoming marriage to their mutual friend. Elena, sobbing, remembers her prayer. On the night of February 2-3, the release of petliurs begins. troops from the City. You can hear the roar of Bolshevik guns approaching the City.

Babel. "Cavalry". Enriched by real life experience, having actually seen in the revolution. not only strength, but also “tears and blood”, B. in his stories answered the question that in the days of the Polish. during the campaign he wrote in his diary: “What is our Cossack?” Finding in the Cossacks both “junk,” and “revolution,” and “animal cruelty,” B. in “Cavalry” melted everything in one crucible, and the Cossacks appeared as bad. characters with the indissolubility of their internally intertwined contradictions. St. The dominant feature was the depiction of the cavalrymen's characters from the inside, with the help of their own. votes. The writer was interested in their self-awareness. The short stories “Salt”, “Betrayal”, “Biography of Pavlichenka, Matvey Rodionovich”, “Letter”, etc. were written in such a fantastic style. Many short stories were written on behalf of intellectuals. narrator Lyutov. His loneliness, his alienation, his heart shuddering at the sight of cruelty, his desire to merge with the masses, which are rougher than him, but also more victorious, his curiosity, his appearance - all this is biographical. resembled B. 1920. The duet of voices - the author and Lyutov - is organized in such a way that the reader always feels the overtone directly. voices of a real author. Confessional intonation in a statement. 1st person perspective enhances the illusion of intimacy and promotes identification of the narrator with the author. And it is no longer clear who - Lyutov or B. - says about himself: “I was exhausted and, buried under the grave crown, I went forward, begging fate for the simplest of skills - the ability to kill a person.” B. sympathy. How can I sympathize with Lyutov? the same person as before. However, B. already has an aloof and ironic attitude towards his rum. This creates a distance between Lyutov and the author. There is also a distance between Lyutov and the cavalrymen. Thanks to the illumination in different mirrors - the mirror of self-expression, self-knowledge, in the mirror of another consciousness - the characters of the cavalrymen and Lyutov acquire a greater volume than if each of them were only alone with their “I”. It becomes clear that the origins of the behavior of cavalrymen lie in the sphere of everyday life, physiological, socio-historical, in the experience of centuries-old history and in the situation of war and revolution. B. wanted to find a form for embodying the temporary and eternal in revolution, to understand the connection between the individual, social and existential. He found it in the complexity of the parable with its allegories. the meaning hidden in the depths of the story, with its philosophizing, which, at first glance, seems unpretentious. and naive (“Gedali”, “Pan Apolek”, “The Path to Brody”, etc.). Like many others, B. will perceive. revol. as "the intersection of the millionth primitiveness" and the "mighty, powerful stream of life." But tragic. running through the background throughout “Cavalry” is the impossibility of merging and identifying with the new force. That is why the bitter phrase of the narrator, “The chronicle of everyday atrocities presses me tirelessly, like a heart defect,” was perceived by readers as a groan escaping from the soul of the writer himself.

Lavrenev's stories of the 20s. (“41”, “7th satellite”).

Boris Lavrenev (information from his autobiography “A Short Story about Myself”). Genus. in Kherson, 07/18/1891, in a family of teachers. L. story. family history. maternal grandmother the line was from the wealthy. Cossack the Esaulov family, the only daughter, heiress of a huge estates. The grandmother was married off to Lieutenant Ksavely Tsekhnovich, who lost a fortune at cards and ran away, leaving his wife and daughter Masha. Grandma acted. housekeeper in the manager's house. Zhuravsky courtyard. Masha (L.’s mother) was sent to Poltavsk at the age of 10. Institute of Blagr. girls, after which she received. place of study in the town of Berislav, where you will meet. with father L. Father L. was found in a sleigh on which, besides him, there were 2 more children + the bodies of the robbed. and killed men. and women without documents. The children were taken in by an official. Kherson customs Sergeev. raised and brought into the people. After getting married, L.'s parents moved to Kherson, where L.'s father was an assistant. Director of Sirotsk Houses. L.'s godfather was Mich. Evgenievich Bekker, Tolstoy's colleague in Sevastopol. Thanks to Becker's support, the city was created. library in which L. had free. subscription and read everything. I was especially interested in books about discoveries and travels, especially. marine. He knew geography amazingly and loved the sea. Thanks to the same godfather I was able to visit. all performances of the local theater (in those days, school students were allowed to attend only children's matinees and certain plays with patriotic content). “Closeness with the theater for children and young people. years later it was very useful. in dramaturgy work." L. studied first. at home (with his father), then at the gymnasium (from 1901). Father along with school discipline training L. physical labor, turning and carpentry (the father himself was a craftsman; most of the furniture in L.’s house was made by his hands). When moving from 5th to 6th grade, L. receives. 2 in algebra, there was a re-exam coming up, and, offended by my father’s remark: “You’ll be a tramp like your grandfather!” - L. ran away from home and went abroad. flight from Odessa to the steamer. "Athos". In Alexandria, he got off the ship, intending. to join a ship as a sailor, going. to Honolulu, but there were no such ships, L. ate the money and carried bananas at the market. Then he got lucky, a certain French mechanic. steamer (steamer) gave him a job as a deck cabin boy, after 2 months. he was removed from the ship. carabinieri and sent to Russia (the story of this escape was included in the story “Marina”). A year later, L. tried to enroll. to sea body, but was not accepted by sight. I studied it myself. midshipman program classes, in the summer I swam for training. schooner. In 1909 – legal. fact Mosk. University, graduating in 1915. He goes to war as an artilleryman. Feb. revol. met in Moscow, was the commandant of the headquarters of the revolution. Moscow troops garrison, then adjutant to the commandant of Moscow. October and everything that followed it, in its own right. L. confessed, unsettled him. He couldn't understand what to do. Having reached Kherson with difficulty in 1918, L. returned. for advice to his father, and he advised: “Go with the people and for the people to the end!” And L. went. Entry into the ranks of Kr. army, participation. in battles in Ukraine, in Crimea, he was wounded, then sent. on the Turkfront, was deputy. ed. fronts. newspapers and managers. lit. department “Turkestansk. truth." Worked under Nick. Ilyich Podvoisky, Mikhail Vas. Frunze. In 1924 he was demobilized and considered this moment the beginning of his writing. biographies (this is where the story ends, although he started writing earlier).

"Forty-first"(1924). I wouldn't call it a story, more like a short story. story, because It's even divided into chapters. However, all his stories are like this: large, divided into chapters, almost stories. Kr. content In battle in Turkestan. 25 Red Army soldiers remain alive in the desert: “crimson commissar Evsyukov, twenty-three and Maryutka.” They break out of the whites’ encirclement, and the whites don’t finish off, like they themselves will die in the desert. Why is Evsyukov raspberry? Because black paint for leather jackets ran out in Turkestan, and the commissar was given raspberries. leather jacket, crimson pants, and his face is also crimson. And it all looks like Easter. egg (on the back there is a bandage with the letter X (), but she does not believe in Easter or in Christ, but believes in the Soviet. in the International, in the check and in the revolver. Maryutka is a 19-year-old fisherman girl, she once came to enroll in the Kr. .army, they drove her, but she, persistent, still achieved her goal. They accepted, but took from her a subscription “about renouncing the woman’s way of life and, by the way, childbearing until the final victory of labor over capital.” Maryutka is a dreamer, writes poetry like: “Lenin is our proletarian hero, // We’ll put up your statues in half. // You overthrew that royal palace // And became a foot in labor." She brings this crap to the editorial office, everyone there chuckles and advises her to improve it. But the main bonus - this is that Maryutka shoots coolly, without missing. She keeps count of the officers, she has already shot 40 of them. Maryutka is loved in the squad (with platonic love) and cherished. Well, in short, they escaped from the encirclement. While spending the night in the desert, they think, where to go. They decide to go to the Aral Sea, eat supplies along the way, and when they run out - camels (there are 6 of them left). The people are upset, Evsyukov says, like, we have to go, we have a revolution. They eat pilaf and go to bed. Then Maryutka Evsyukova wakes up, saying that the caravan is approaching, we need to capture it. They are raising the fighters, but, alas, one has already fallen ill. They attack the caravan, and there is an officer and 5 more people who shoot back. Maryutka wants to shoot the officer, his 41st, but misses due to the cold, and he shot the cartridges and waves a white handkerchief, like, I surrender. Our heroes take him prisoner and take away camels from the Kirghiz. Now there are 44 camels! Super! The Kirghiz are willing to give money: let the camels go, we will die without them. But Evsyukov is adamant. The captured officer turned out to be a handsome blue-eyed man named Govorukha-Otrok. They find documents on him that he is a big shot, even though he is a guard lieutenant: Kolchak’s representative under the Trans-Caspian government of General Denikin. The ambassador is almost (In short, Evsyukov interrogates him, but he only mocks. And he cannot be shot, because it is a valuable booty. Evsyukov entrusts this treasure to Maryutka. They spend the night on the shore of a small lake. Maryutka ties the officer tightly. At night the sentry falls asleep, and the camels are taken away by the Kirghiz. Everyone. Arctic fox. They go without camels, almost without food. There are 11 people left from the detachment. Those who could not walk in the morning were humanely shot by Evsyukov with a revolver. But they finally reach the Aral Sea, some Kyrgyzstan. villages Everyone eats pilaf and sleeps. Only Maryutka writes poetry, and the lieutenant approaches her. He entices the girl to “read poetry” and even manages not to laugh. only says that the poems are raw, unskilled, but expressive. Maryutka suddenly begins to respect the officer, asks him for advice and even unties his hands. Yevsyukov finds the boat on the shore in full working order and decides to go to Kazalinsk, where the headquarters is. Four people are traveling with Evsyukov’s report: the lieutenant, Maryutka and two more. On the Aral Sea they get caught in a storm, the two who were with the lieutenant and Maryutka are washed overboard. Maryutka and the officer get to Barsy Island. Like, Robinson Happy Friday. They find fishing sheds, light a fire of salted fish, dry their clothes, and things move toward mutual sympathy. But the lieutenant falls ill, the bot takes him away, and Maryutka falls head over heels for the blue-eyed patient. The lieutenant is delirious, in his delirium he sees a general with cat legs and eyes, then it turns out that these are Maryutka’s eyes. In short, she took him out, and when he asked for a smoke, she gave him terry and, instead of tissue paper, her poems. And then he asks him all about his eyes: where does this color come from, so dangerous for women? Well, I fell in love, the stump is clear. He also asked her: why are you bothering with me? Am I the enemy? And she: since I didn’t shoot you right away, I missed the first one, it means my fate is to mess with you until the end. In general, they live on the island, wait for the fishermen, move to a more convenient barn, and find flour there. Well, it’s clear, love is a carrot, he tells her about Robinson, she says why are all the fairy tales about the rich, but not about the poor. So, they say, after the war I’ll learn. I’ll write about the poor myself. Then they quarrel when the lieutenant tells her about his desire to throw everything to hell and run away from the front to where it is calmer: he has a dacha in the Caucasus. calls Maryutka there, like, to study and all that. In short, Masha is in his face, but then they reconcile, he calls her the queen of the Amazon, but, he says, I won’t retire, otherwise “if we sit down for books and leave you the land in full possession, you’ll do such a thing on it.” that five generations will howl with tears of blood.” And finally, the sail is on the horizon. Maryutka tells the lieutenant to give a signal from his rifle, but when the ship comes closer, Maryutka realizes that they are white. And shoots the lieutenant in the head. The eye knocked out by the shot looks at her in bewilderment and pity. Maryutka tears her tunic on her chest and sobs: “What have I done? Wake up, my sick one! Sinegla-azenki! Well, in general, the language is cool, the speech characteristics of the characters are excellent (I almost forgot: Maryutka’s favorite saying is the curse word “fish cholera”), the difference between the lieutenant and Maryutka is very clear in terms of speech, the portrait details are very clear. memorable. Everything is juicy and in color. The chapters have funny subtitles, like: “Chapter nine, in which it is proven that although there is no law to the heart, consciousness is still determined by being.” Mina liked it.

"The Seventh Satellite"(1926-1927). Kr. content The action took place. in 1918-1919, in St. Petersburg and the surrounding area. Ch. the hero of the story, Evgeny Pavlovich Adamov, is an elderly man, former. general, professor of law academy. Lives with nanny Pelageya. His son died in the war, his wife died. During a hungry time, he goes to the market to sell cufflinks and sees a decree on persecution on the wall. ex in retaliation for the assassination attempt. on Lenin (appeal on the Red Terror). On the same day he is taken to the arrest house. E.P. not that supportive. Bolsheviks, but he accepts the new government, does not consider it illegal, in a conversation with his neighbor Arandarenko calls himself an observer of history. In the arrest house, he becomes the headman, a witness. how everyone is taken away. day to shoot the same “formers” like him. Eventually the commission arrives. and it turns out that once E.P. refused to judge two minors. terrorists, and now 1 of them is in this very commission (as I understand). E.P. released., he goes home, but the house committee has already placed people there, and personal papers, letters, diaries - everything that was presented. for E.P. valuable, burned. Depressed, he asks permission to take his wife’s portrait and goes to his friend Priklonsky. But he thinks that E.P. escaped from the arrest house, does not believe in the story. E.P. E.P. asks that he be released. leave, like, he has children. E.P. returning to the commissioner of the arrest house, and he takes him to work as a laundress (for double rations!), because E.P. Since childhood he has loved to do laundry, and the commissioner saw how E.P. this works out great. year E.P. works as a laundress. Then another commissioner comes with an inspection and finds out that E.P. lawyer, was a prosecutor, and a proposal. to work in his specialty. E.P. becoming an investigator at a military tribunal. Yudenich's offensive on St. Petersburg began. E.P. he works, travels around the surrounding villages, around the region, and one day he, the chairman of the revolutionary committee and the Red Army soldier Rybkin are attacked by whites. Rybkin and E.P. escaping from the chase at the unity. nag, but then they get out on the whites themselves, because... the whites hang a red flag over the hut. Having learned that E.P. - professor, general, white officers proposal. go to their side. When he refused, he was shot. together with Rybkin.

In these two stories L. is deducedimage of a military intellectual . But these are the intellectuals who did it. different choice. Lieutenant Govorukha-Otrok fights on the side of Kolchak, and cannot think of anything else. He fell in love with Maryutka in his own way (she saved his life, and all that), and indulges in dreams of a quiet existence somewhere behind books. He doesn't see the point either. in war, nor in revolution, he does not see his homeland behind the bloody events, he believes that the true homeland of a person is thought: “I remembered books, I want to go to them and bury myself, beg forgiveness from them, live with them, and for humanity his homeland, for the revolution, for the damn rot - I don’t give a damn about his mug.” But he, so smart and selfishly philosophical, cannot overcome the opposition between the upper and lower classes, he does not accept either the old or the new power. But he also despises the new one. It is not for nothing that he finally says that the struggle is not over yet, that he (read - people like him): “still needs to live, grind his teeth, bite like a wolf, so that everyone around can smell his fangs!... Since culture is against culture, that’s it to the end.” Another thing is E.P. He realizes, on the one hand, that “everything has become crooked,” but on the other hand, he speaks of the new government, “We don’t judge, lest they judge us either,” it seems to him that some kind of husk is flying from the city, from the streets, but at the same time the city is similar not for the sick, but for the recovering. It is not for nothing that, obeying some unaccountable feeling, he diligently glues the tear-off sheet with the appeal (“Long live the Red Terror!”), Feeling that he is doing something right. It's not like he recognizes owls. power: “I can’t say that I recognize it the way I recognized the old, but I won’t go against it either. And I won’t become an enemy. I am passing by... observing." But it seems to me that there is nothing decadent in this position, even at first. This is similar to Lavrenev’s own confusion after Oct. revol. and how L.’s father says to his son: “Go with the people and for the people to the end!” - so, it seems to me, is E.P. decides for himself. This becomes clear when he answers. to the commissioner when asked why he didn’t try to find a more suitable occupation than doing laundry: “You may not believe it, but for the first time in my life I felt truly needed.” For E.P. not creatures. Possible escape to books. He could have gone abroad, he himself talks about it, but he couldn’t. He has a homeland, and this homeland is Russia. That’s why he refused to join Yudenich’s army. He is “drawn” into the orbit of Russia: “You won’t understand this... You won’t be able to understand... When a huge body flies in world space, small bodies are pulled into its orbit, even against their will. So some seventh satellite appeared...” Something more than personal like or dislike guides him. Like this. It's interesting that L. shows. this is without any special pathos. In general, his characters are very alive and real. You can believe in them.

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Writing the truth about war is very dangerous and it is very dangerous to seek the truth... When a person goes to the front to seek the truth, he may find death instead. But if twelve go, and only two return, the truth that they bring with them will really be the truth, and not distorted rumors that we pass off as history. Is it worth the risk to find this truth? Let the writers themselves judge that.

Ernest Hemingway

Born in Saratov in the family of a military doctor. His childhood and youth years passed in Saratov, and there he graduated from a real school. At the age of 16, A. Beck volunteered for the Red Army during the Civil War. After the war, he wrote essays and reviews for central newspapers. Beck's essays and reviews began to appear in Komsomolskaya Pravda and Izvestia. Since 1931, A. Beck collaborated in the editors of Gorky’s “History of Factories and Plants.” During the Great Patriotic War he was a war correspondent. The story "Volokolamsk Highway" about the events of the defense of Moscow, written in 1943-1944, became widely known. In 1960 he published the stories “A Few Days” and “The Reserve of General Panfilov.”

In 1971, the novel "New Assignment" was published abroad. The author finished the novel in mid-1964 and handed over the manuscript to the editors of Novy Mir. After lengthy ordeals through various editors and authorities, the novel was never published in the homeland during the author’s lifetime. According to the author himself, already in October 1964, he gave the novel to friends and some close acquaintances to read. The first publication of the novel in his homeland was in the magazine "Znamya", N 10-11, in 1986. The novel describes the life path of a major Soviet statesman who sincerely believes in the justice and productivity of the socialist system and is ready to serve it faithfully, despite any personal difficulties and troubles.


"Volokolamsk highway"

The plot of "Volokolamsk Highway" by Alexander Bek: after heavy fighting in October 1941 near Volokolamsk, a battalion of the Panfilov division was surrounded, breaks through the enemy ring and unites with the main forces of the division. Beck closes the narrative within the framework of one battalion. Beck is documentarily accurate (this is how he characterized his creative method: “Searching for heroes active in life, long-term communication with them, conversations with many people, patient collection of grains, details, relying not only on one’s own observation, but also on the vigilance of the interlocutor.. . "), and in "Volokolamsk Highway" he recreates the true history of one of the battalions of Panfilov's division, everything in him corresponds to what happened in reality: geography and chronicle of battles, characters.

The narrator is battalion commander Baurdzhan Momysh-Uly. Through his eyes we see what happened to his battalion, he shares his thoughts and doubts, explains his decisions and actions. The author recommends himself to readers only as an attentive listener and “a conscientious and diligent scribe,” which cannot be taken at face value. This is nothing more than an artistic device, because, talking with the hero, the writer inquired about what seemed important to him, Bek, and compiled from these stories both the image of Momysh-Ula himself and the image of General Panfilov, “who knew how to control and influence without shouting.” , but with the mind, in the past of an ordinary soldier who retained a soldier’s modesty until his death,” - this is what Beck wrote in his autobiography about the second hero of the book, very dear to him.

"Volokolamsk Highway" is an original artistic and documentary work associated with the literary tradition that it personifies in the literature of the 19th century. Gleb Uspensky. “Under the guise of a purely documentary story,” Beck admitted, “I wrote a work subject to the laws of the novel, did not constrain the imagination, created characters and scenes to the best of my ability...” Of course, both in the author’s declarations of documentary, and in his statement that that he did not constrain the imagination, there is a certain slyness, they seem to have a double bottom: the reader may think that this is a technique, a game. But Beck’s naked, demonstrative documentary is not a stylization, well known to literature (let’s remember, for example, “Robinson Crusoe”), not poetic clothes of an essay-documentary cut, but a way of comprehending, researching and recreating life and man. And the story “Volokolamsk Highway” is distinguished by impeccable authenticity (even in small details - if Beck writes that on October thirteenth “everything was in snow”, there is no need to turn to the archives of the weather service, there is no doubt that this was the case in reality), it is a unique, but an accurate chronicle of the bloody defensive battles near Moscow (this is how the author himself defined the genre of his book), revealing why the German army, having reached the walls of our capital, could not take it.

And most importantly, why “Volokolamsk Highway” should be considered fiction and not journalism. Behind professional army, military concerns - discipline, combat training, battle tactics, which Momysh-Uly is absorbed in, for the author there arise moral, universal problems, aggravated to the limit by the circumstances of war, constantly putting a person on the brink between life and death: fear and courage, selflessness and selfishness, loyalty and betrayal. In the artistic structure of Beck's story, a significant place is occupied by polemics with propaganda stereotypes, with battle cliches, open and hidden polemics. Explicit, because such is the character of the main character - he is harsh, not inclined to go around sharp corners, does not even forgive himself for weaknesses and mistakes, does not tolerate idle talk and pomp. Here is a typical episode:

“After thinking, he said: “Knowing no fear, Panfilov’s men rushed into the first battle... What do you think: a suitable start?”
“I don’t know,” I said hesitantly.
“That’s how corporals write literature,” he said harshly. “During these days that you are living here, I deliberately ordered you to be taken to places where sometimes two or three mines burst, where bullets whistle. I wanted you to feel fear. You don’t have to confirm it, I know without even admitting it that you had to suppress your fear.
So why do you and your fellow writers imagine that some supernatural people are fighting, and not people like you? "

The hidden, authorial polemic that permeates the entire story is deeper and more comprehensive. It is directed against those who demanded that literature “serve” today’s “demands” and “instructions”, and not serve the truth. Beck’s archive contains a draft of the author’s preface, in which this is stated unequivocally: “The other day they told me: “We are not interested in whether you wrote the truth or not. We are interested in whether it is useful or harmful... I didn’t argue. It probably happens.” that a lie is also useful. Otherwise, why would it exist? I know that this is how they argue, this is what many writers, my fellow workers, do. Sometimes I want to be the same. But at my desk, talking about our cruel and beautiful century, I forget about this intention. At the desk I see nature in front of me and lovingly sketch it, as I know it."

It is clear that Beck did not print this preface; it exposed the position of the author, it contained a challenge that he could not easily get away with. But what he talks about has become the foundation of his work. And in his story he turned out to be true to the truth.


Work...


Alexander Fadeev (1901-1956)

During the Great Patriotic War, Fadeev worked as a publicist. As a correspondent for the newspaper Pravda and the Sovinformburo, he traveled to a number of fronts. On January 14, 1942, Fadeev published a correspondence in Pravda, “Monster Destroyers and People-Creators,” in which he spoke about what he saw in the region and the city of Kalinin after the expulsion of the fascist occupiers. In the fall of 1943, the writer traveled to the city of Krasnodon, liberated from enemies. Subsequently, the material collected there formed the basis of the novel “The Young Guard.”


"Young guard"

During the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. Fadeev writes a number of essays and articles about the heroic struggle of the people, and creates the book “Leningrad in the Days of the Siege” (1944). Heroic, romantic notes, increasingly strengthened in Fadeev’s work, sound with particular force in the novel “The Young Guard” (1945; 2nd edition 1951; USSR State Prize, 1946; film of the same name, 1948) , which was based on the patriotic deeds of the Krasnodon underground Komsomol organization "Young Guard". The novel glorifies the struggle of the Soviet people against the Nazi invaders. The bright socialist ideal was embodied in the images of Oleg Koshevoy, Sergei Tyulenin, Lyubov Shevtsova, Ulyana Gromova, Ivan Zemnukhov and other Young Guards. The writer paints his characters in a romantic light; The book combines pathos and lyricism, psychological sketches and author's digressions. In the 2nd edition, taking into account the criticism, the writer included scenes showing the connections of Komsomol members with senior underground communists, whose images he deepened and made more prominent.

Developing the best traditions of Russian literature, Fadeev created works that have become classic examples of the literature of socialist realism. Fadeev’s latest creative idea, the novel “Ferrous Metallurgy,” is dedicated to modern times, but remained unfinished. Fadeev's literary critical speeches are collected in the book "For Thirty Years" (1957), showing the evolution of the literary views of the writer, who made a great contribution to the development of socialist aesthetics. Fadeev's works have been staged and filmed, translated into the languages ​​of the peoples of the USSR, and many foreign languages.

In a state of mental depression, he committed suicide. For many years Fadeev was in the leadership of writers' organizations: in 1926-1932. one of the leaders of RAPP; in 1939-1944 and 1954-1956 - Secretary, 1946-1954 - General Secretary and Chairman of the Board of the USSR Joint Venture. Vice-President of the World Peace Council (since 1950). Member of the CPSU Central Committee (1939-1956); At the 20th Congress of the CPSU (1956) he was elected a candidate member of the CPSU Central Committee. Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the 2nd-4th convocations and the Supreme Council of the RSFSR of the 3rd convocation. Awarded 2 Orders of Lenin, as well as medals.


Work...


Vasily Grossman (1905-1964)

Before the war, the writer's first novel, "Stepan Kolchugin" (1937-1940), was published. During the Patriotic War, he was a correspondent for the newspaper "Red Star", traveling with the army to Berlin, and published a series of essays about the people's struggle against the fascist invaders. In 1942, the story “The People is Immortal” was published in “Red Star” - one of the most successful works about the events of the war. The play "If You Believe the Pythagoreans", written before the war and published in 1946, aroused sharp criticism. In 1952, he began publishing the novel “For a Just Cause,” which was also criticized because it did not correspond to the official point of view on the war. Grossman had to rework the book. Continuation - the novel "Life and Fate" was confiscated in 1961. Fortunately, the book was preserved and in 1975 it came to the West. In 1980, the novel was published. In parallel, Grossman has been writing another since 1955 - “Everything Flows”, also confiscated in 1961, but the version completed in 1963 was published through samizdat in 1970 in Frankfurt am Main. V. Grossman died on September 14, 1964 in Moscow.


"The people are immortal"

Vasily Grossman began writing the story “The People Are Immortal” in the spring of 1942, when the German army was driven away from Moscow and the situation at the front had stabilized. We could try to put it in some order, to comprehend the bitter experience of the first months of the war that seared our souls, to identify what was the true basis of our resistance and inspired hopes of victory over a strong and skillful enemy, to find an organic figurative structure for this.

The plot of the story reproduces a very common front-line situation of that time - our units, who were surrounded, in a fierce battle, suffering heavy losses, break through the enemy ring. But this local episode is considered by the author with an eye on Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”; it moves apart, expands, and the story acquires the features of a “mini-epic”. The action moves from the front headquarters to the ancient city, which was attacked by enemy aircraft, from the front line, from the battlefield - to a village captured by the Nazis, from the front road - to the location of German troops. The story is densely populated: our soldiers and commanders - both those who turned out to be strong in spirit, for whom the trials that befell became a school of “great tempering and wise heavy responsibility”, and official optimists who always shouted “hurray”, but were broken by defeats; German officers and soldiers, intoxicated by the strength of their army and the victories won; townspeople and Ukrainian collective farmers - both patriotically minded and ready to become servants of the invaders. All this is dictated by “people's thought,” which was the most important for Tolstoy in “War and Peace,” and in the story “The People are Immortal” it is highlighted.

“Let there be no word more majestic and holy than the word “people!” writes Grossman. It is no coincidence that the main characters of his story were not career military personnel, but civilians - a collective farmer from the Tula region Ignatiev and a Moscow intellectual, historian Bogarev. They are a significant detail - those drafted into the army on the same day symbolize the unity of the people in the face of the fascist invasion. The ending of the story is also symbolic: “From where the flame was burning out, two people walked. Everyone knew them. These were Commissar Bogarev and Red Army soldier Ignatiev. Blood ran down their clothes. They walked, supporting each other, stepping heavily and slowly."

The combat is also symbolic - “as if the ancient times of duels were revived” - Ignatiev with a German tank driver, “huge, broad-shouldered”, “who marched through Belgium, France, trampled the soil of Belgrade and Athens”, “whose chest Hitler himself decorated with the “iron cross”. It reminds Terkin’s fight with a “well-fed, shaved, careful, freely fed” German described later by Tvardovsky: Like on an ancient battlefield, Instead of thousands, two fight, Chest to chest, like shield to shield, - As if the fight will decide everything." Semyon Ignatiev, - writes Grossman, “he immediately became famous in the company. Everyone knew this cheerful, tireless man. He was an amazing worker: every instrument in his hands seemed to be playing and having fun. And he had the amazing ability to work so easily and cordially that a person who looked at him for even a minute wanted to take up an ax, a saw, a shovel himself, in order to do the work as easily and well as Semyon Ignatiev did. He had a good voice, and he knew a lot of old songs... "Ignatiev has so much in common with Terkin. Even Ignatiev’s guitar has the same function as Terkin’s accordion. And the kinship of these heroes suggests that Grossman discovered the features of modern Russian folk character.






"Life and Fate"

The writer was able to reflect in this work the heroism of people in the war, the fight against the crimes of the Nazis, as well as the complete truth about the events that took place within the country at that time: exile in Stalin’s camps, arrests and everything related to this. In the destinies of the main characters of the work, Vasily Grossman captures the suffering, loss, and death that are inevitable during war. The tragic events of this era give rise to internal contradictions in a person and disrupt his harmony with the outside world. This can be seen in the fate of the heroes of the novel “Life and Fate” - Krymov, Shtrum, Novikov, Grekov, Evgenia Nikolaevna Shaposhnikova.

The people's suffering in the Patriotic War in Grossman's Life and Fate is more painful and profound than in previous Soviet literature. The author of the novel leads us to the idea that the heroism of the victory won in spite of Stalin's tyranny is more significant. Grossman shows not only the facts and events of Stalin's time: camps, arrests, repressions. The main thing in Grossman’s Stalinist theme is the influence of this era on the souls of people, on their morality. We see how brave people turn into cowards, kind people into cruel ones, and honest and persistent people into cowardly ones. We are no longer even surprised that the closest people are sometimes riddled with distrust (Evgenia Nikolaevna suspected Novikov of denouncing her, Krymov suspected Zhenya of denouncing her).

The conflict between man and the state is conveyed in the thoughts of the heroes about collectivization, about the fate of the “special settlers”; it is felt in the picture of the Kolyma camp, in the thoughts of the author and the heroes about the year thirty-seven. Vasily Grossman's truthful story about the previously hidden tragic pages of our history gives us the opportunity to see the events of the war more fully. We notice that the Kolyma camp and the course of the war, both in reality itself and in the novel, are interconnected. And it was Grossman who was the first to show this. The writer was convinced that “part of the truth is not the truth.”

The heroes of the novel have different attitudes to the problem of life and fate, freedom and necessity. Therefore, they have different attitudes towards responsibility for their actions. For example, Sturmbannführer Kaltluft, the executioner at the furnaces, who killed five hundred and ninety thousand people, tries to justify himself by an order from above, by the power of the Fuhrer, by fate (“fate pushed... on the path of the executioner”). But then the author says: “Fate leads a person, but a person goes because he wants, and he is free not to want.” Drawing a parallel between Stalin and Hitler, the fascist concentration camp and the camp in Kolyma, Vasily Grossman says that the signs of any dictatorship are the same. And its influence on a person’s personality is destructive. Having shown the weakness of man, the inability to resist the power of a totalitarian state, Vasily Grossman at the same time creates images of truly free people. The significance of the victory in the Great Patriotic War, won despite the dictatorship of Stalin, is more significant. This victory became possible precisely thanks to the inner freedom of a person who is capable of resisting whatever fate has in store for him.

The writer himself fully experienced the tragic complexity of the conflict between man and the state in the Stalin era. Therefore, he knows the price of freedom: “Only people who have not experienced the similar power of an authoritarian state, its pressure, are able to be surprised by those who submit to it. People who have experienced such power themselves are surprised by something else - the ability to flare up, even for a moment, with anger. a broken word, a timid, quick gesture of protest."


Work...


Yuri Bondarev (1924)

In the battles near Kotelnikovsky, he was shell-shocked, received frostbite and was slightly wounded in the back. After treatment in the hospital, he served as a gun commander in the 23rd Kiev-Zhitomir Division. Participated in the crossing of the Dnieper and the liberation of Kyiv. In the battles for Zhitomir he was wounded and again ended up in a field hospital. Since January 1944, Yu. Bondarev fought in the ranks of the 121st Red Banner Rylsko-Kyiv Rifle Division in Poland and on the border with Czechoslovakia.

Graduated from the Literary Institute named after. M. Gorky (1951). The first collection of stories is “On the Big River” (1953). In the stories “Battalions Ask for Fire” (1957), “The Last Salvos” (1959; film of the same name, 1961), in the novel “Hot Snow” (1969) Bondarev reveals the heroism of Soviet soldiers, officers, generals , psychology of participants in military events. The novel “Silence” (1962; film of the same name, 1964) and its sequel, the novel “Two” (1964), depict post-war life in which people who went through the war are looking for their place and calling. The collection of stories “Late in the Evening” (1962) and the story “Relatives” (1969) are dedicated to modern youth. Bondarev is one of the co-authors of the script for the film “Liberation” (1970). In the books of literary articles “Search for Truth” (1976), “A Look at Biography” (1977), “Keepers of Values” (1978), also in Bondarev’s works of recent years “Temptation”, “Bermuda Triangle” talent the prose writer opened up new facets. In 2004, the writer published a new novel called “Without Mercy.”

Awarded two Orders of Lenin, the Orders of the October Revolution, the Red Banner of Labor, the Patriotic War, 1st degree, the Badge of Honor, two medals "For Courage", medals "For the Defense of Stalingrad", "For Victory over Germany", the order "Big Star of Peoples' Friendship" " (Germany), "Order of Honor" (Transnistria), gold medal of A.A. Fadeev, many awards from foreign countries. Winner of the Lenin Prize (1972), two USSR State Prizes (1974, 1983 - for the novels "The Shore" and "Choice"), the State Prize of the RSFSR (1975 - for the screenplay of the film "Hot Snow").


"Hot Snow"

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

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

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

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

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

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

The novel expresses the understanding of death as a violation of the highest justice and harmony. Let us remember how Kuznetsov looks at the murdered Kasymov: “now a shell box lay under Kasymov’s head, and his youthful, mustacheless face, recently alive, dark, had become deathly white, thinned by the eerie beauty of death, looked in surprise with damp cherry half-open eyes at his chest , at the torn into shreds, dissected padded jacket, as if even after death he did not understand how it killed him and why he could not stand up to the gun sight. In this unseeing squint of Kasymov there was a quiet curiosity about his unlived life on this earth and at the same time the calm mystery of death, into which the red-hot pain of the fragments threw him as he tried to rise to the sight."

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

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

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

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

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

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

Such an image requires from the author special vigilance and spontaneity in perceiving the characters, feeling them as real, living people, in whom there is always the possibility of mystery or sudden insight. Before us is the whole person, understandable, close, and yet we are not left with the feeling that we have only touched the edge of his spiritual world - and with his death you feel that you have not yet managed to fully understand his inner world. Commissioner Vesnin, looking at the truck thrown from the bridge onto the river ice, says: “What a monstrous destruction war is. Nothing has a price.” The monstrosity of war is most expressed - and the novel reveals this with brutal directness - in the murder of a person. But the novel also shows the high price of life given for the Motherland.

Probably the most mysterious thing in the world of human relationships in the novel is the love that arises between Kuznetsov and Zoya. The war, its cruelty and blood, its timing, overturning the usual ideas about time - it was precisely this that contributed to such a rapid development of this love. After all, this feeling developed in those short periods of march and battle when there is no time to think and analyze one’s feelings. And it all begins with Kuznetsov’s quiet, incomprehensible jealousy of the relationship between Zoya and Drozdovsky. And soon - so little time passes - Kuznetsov is already bitterly mourning the deceased Zoya, and it is from these lines that the title of the novel is taken, when Kuznetsov wiped his face wet from tears, “the snow on the sleeve of his quilted jacket was hot from his tears.”

Having initially been deceived by Lieutenant Drozdovsky, the best cadet at that time, Zoya throughout the novel reveals herself to us as a moral person, whole, ready for self-sacrifice, capable of embracing with her heart the pain and suffering of many... Zoya’s personality is recognized in a tense, as if electrified space, which is almost inevitable arises in a trench with the appearance of a woman. She seems to go through many tests, from annoying interest to rude rejection. But her kindness, her patience and compassion reach everyone; she is truly a sister to the soldiers. The image of Zoya somehow imperceptibly filled the atmosphere of the book, its main events, its harsh, cruel reality with the feminine principle, affection and tenderness.

One of the most important conflicts in the novel is the conflict between Kuznetsov and Drozdovsky. A lot of space is given to this conflict, it is exposed very sharply, and is easily traced from beginning to end. At first there is tension, going back to the background of the novel; inconsistency of characters, manners, temperaments, even style of speech: the soft, thoughtful Kuznetsov seems to find it difficult to endure Drozdovsky’s abrupt, commanding, indisputable speech. Long hours of battle, the senseless death of Sergunenkov, the mortal wound of Zoya, for which Drozdovsky was partly to blame - all this forms a gap between the two young officers, the moral incompatibility of their existences.

In the finale, this abyss is indicated even more sharply: the four surviving artillerymen consecrate the newly received orders in a soldier’s bowler hat, and the sip that each of them takes is, first of all, a funeral sip - it contains bitterness and grief of loss. Drozdovsky also received the order, because for Bessonov, who awarded him, he is a survivor, a wounded commander of a surviving battery, the general does not know about Drozdovsky’s grave guilt and most likely will never know. This is also the reality of war. But it’s not for nothing that the writer leaves Drozdovsky aside from those gathered at the soldier’s honest bowler hat.

It is extremely important that all of Kuznetsov’s connections with people, and above all with the people subordinate to him, are true, meaningful and have a remarkable ability to develop. They are extremely non-official - in contrast to the emphatically official relations that Drozdovsky so strictly and stubbornly establishes between himself and people. During the battle, Kuznetsov fights next to the soldiers, here he shows his composure, courage, and lively mind. But he also matures spiritually in this battle, becomes fairer, closer, kinder to those people with whom the war brought him together.

The relationship between Kuznetsov and Senior Sergeant Ukhanov, the gun commander, deserves a separate story. Like Kuznetsov, he had already been fired upon in difficult battles in 1941, and due to his military ingenuity and decisive character, he could probably be an excellent commander. But life decreed otherwise, and at first we find Ukhanov and Kuznetsov in conflict: this is a clash of a sweeping, harsh and autocratic nature with another – restrained, initially modest. At first glance, it may seem that Kuznetsov will have to fight both Drozdovsky’s callousness and Ukhanov’s anarchic nature. But in reality it turns out that without yielding to each other in any fundamental position, remaining themselves, Kuznetsov and Ukhanov become close people. Not just people fighting together, but people who got to know each other and are now forever close. And the absence of author’s comments, the preservation of the rough context of life makes their brotherhood real and significant.

The ethical and philosophical thought of the novel, as well as its emotional intensity, reaches its greatest heights in the finale, when an unexpected rapprochement between Bessonov and Kuznetsov occurs. This is rapprochement without immediate proximity: Bessonov awarded his officer along with others and moved on. For him, Kuznetsov is just one of those who stood to death at the turn of the Myshkova River. Their closeness turns out to be more sublime: it is the closeness of thought, spirit, and outlook on life. For example, shocked by the death of Vesnin, Bessonov blames himself for the fact that, due to his unsociability and suspicion, he prevented friendly relations from developing between them (“the way Vesnin wanted and the way they should be”). Or Kuznetsov, who could do nothing to help Chubarikov’s crew, which was dying before his eyes, tormented by the piercing thought that all this “seemed to have happened because he did not have time to get close to them, to understand each one, to love them...”.

Separated by the disproportion of responsibilities, Lieutenant Kuznetsov and the army commander, General Bessonov, are moving towards one goal - not only military, but also spiritual. Suspecting nothing about each other’s thoughts, they think about the same thing and seek the truth in the same direction. Both of them demandly ask themselves about the purpose of life and whether their actions and aspirations correspond to it. They are separated by age and related, like father and son, or even like brother and brother, love for the Motherland and belonging to the people and to humanity in the highest sense of these words.

Non-literary factors

influencing changes in the perception and evaluation of literature about the war.
For a long time, the war years were perceived as the only tragic years of modern history. Today, the revision of the history of the modern period has actually been completed, as a result of which it is all presented as a people's tragedy (p. 36).

Events related to the war itself are assessed differently. The conclusion of a non-aggression pact with Hitler, previously seen as a necessary measure for a temporary reprieve, is now defined as an absolute mistake. The actions of the Soviet Army in the Baltic states, Western Ukraine and Belarus are perceived as occupation (the fate of the partisans in the Baltic states, the ashes of N. Kuznetsov from Lvov).

Recently, there has been an active effort to clarify the question: at what cost did we get our victory? The lists of career officers who were repressed just before the war, as a result of which the army was beheaded, are more than impressive, as is the fact that the life of a junior lieutenant in the first months of the war “on the front line” was... 9 minutes. The activities of SMERSH and the incompetence of the headquarters, the ever-increasing number of our losses - all this forced V. Astafiev to say in a bitter moment: “Victory at such a price is defeat.”
In addition to non-literary ones, there are also

intraliterary factors,

which also influenced the change in attitude towards the Great Patriotic War.
Recently, numerous sensational revelations of “imaginary heroes of the Great Patriotic War” have appeared on the pages of newspapers: Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, Young Guards, Alexander Matrosov, who became heroes of literature, but, it turns out, were not impeccable heroes in life. A very wise piece of advice turned out to be forgotten: it’s either good or nothing about the dead. As a result, a whole layer of literature appears to the general reader as fake.

During the Great Patriotic War, works were created that were characterized by a heroic beginning and an almost obligatory final chord, characterized by high pathos and oath intonation ("Holy War" by V. Lebedev-Kumach, etc.). For this time, the emphasis on the beauty of feat and even the beauty of death in the name of the freedom of the Motherland was important.

In the 60-70s, the style discovered by the book “In the Trenches of Stalingrad” by V. Nekrasov prevailed. War is not only a feat, but also the hardest, everyday work, mortal work. The prose of Yu. Bondarev, V. Bykov, V. Kondratiev is even characterized by some deheroization of the feat. In the 80-90s, works were published that introduced the reader to an unconventional view of the events of the Great Patriotic War. This is V. Grossman’s novel “Life and Fate”: fascism, according to Grossman’s artistic concept, is absolutely adequate to socialism. This is K. Vorobyov’s story “It’s us, Lord!”, written in 1943, published in 1986, a story about the fate of those captured by Germans. This is Lev Razgon's "Uninvented" - a look at the war of a prisoner of Soviet camps. This is also V. Astafiev’s novel “Cursed and Killed” (New World magazine, 1992, No. 10-12), where the author talks about the murder of his own.

Conclusion: in order to give your own assessment of the events of 1941-1945, you need to read these works yourself and enter into a dialogue with the author.

V.P. Astafiev realized his story “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess” was “...more difficult and painful than all.”
In “The Staff of Memory” he notes: “It seems to me that in “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess” I overcame myself, a tradition created for myself... While overcoming my tradition in “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess,” I at the same time returned to some very dear traditions of Russian literature, in particular, to the Tolstoyan tradition.”

V.P. Astafiev wrote: “What would I like to see in prose about war? - The truth. All the cruel but necessary truth, without which it is impossible to understand the meaning of the feat of the Soviet soldier.”
In the military story, the author claims that “war is both the defense of the Fatherland, therefore, a sacred duty and necessity, and a phenomenon contrary to human nature” (Tolstoy traditions).

"...But how to write about all this? The events of that time cannot be desecrated by an inexperienced, timid touch. And if we start talking, then we must say everything to the end!" – Olga Kozhukhova states in her story “Don’t Throw Words to the Wind.”

Our task:

The history of the story

V. Astafiev worked from 1967 to 1971. “I carried this little story inside me for 14 years, wrote and rewrote for several years...”; published in 1971, has the subtitle "Modern Pastoral" . The story "The Shepherd and the Shepherdess" was unexpected for literary criticism. Why? V. Astafiev first addressed the topic of war; The already established image of V. Astafiev as a storyteller, working in the genre of social and everyday narration, changed before our eyes, acquiring the features of a writer striving for a generalized perception of the world, for symbolic images. What was your first perception of the story?

Pastoral as a genre

The 1983 SES gives the following definition of pastoral: from the French pastorale... from the Latin pastoralis - pastoral: a genre variety of modern European literature of the 14th-17th centuries, associated with idyllic perception; opera, pantomime or ballet, the plot of which is associated with an idealized depiction of shepherd life; vocal or instrumental work drawing paintings of nature or scenes of rural life.

Ozhegov's dictionary (1990) gives a more laconic definition: pastoral - in European art of the 14th-18th centuries, a dramatic or musical work, idyllically depicting the life of shepherds and shepherdesses in the lap of nature.

Pastoral in art

In the early Renaissance, humanistic ideas were expressed in pastorals and glorified earthly love, the feeling of nature was conveyed- F. Sacchetti “Mountain Shepherdesses”, G. Boccaccio “Fiesolan Nymphs.”

During the crisis of Renaissance humanism (15-16 centuries), pastoralism was penetrated ideas about preserving the inner peace of the individual, aristocratic tendencies are intensifying. Singing serene life, sublime feelings, refined pleasures in the lap of nature(M. Cervantes “Galatea”, F. Cindy “Arcadia”).

At the end of the 16th century, the musical pastoral “Daphne” by the poet Rinuccini and composer J. Peri appeared in Italy, which laid the foundation for opera. In the 17th century, pastoral became one of the characteristic genres of aristocratic literature, exquisite feelings accessible only to a select few are glorified. Nature turns into an elegant setting for gallant disputes between “shepherds” - aristocrats.

Pastoral images are also found in the literature of the 18th century, interpreted mainly in the manner of sentimentalism.

In Russia, pastoral appears in the 18th century and is predominantly of a song nature).

Our task:

find out in what ways the writer remains faithful to the traditions of the pastoral genre, in what ways he deviates from them, and for what purpose he does this.

The work will proceed according to the following plan:

1. Chronotope (time and space) of pastoral.
2. Features of the plot and composition.
3. System of images.
4. The ideological originality of the story by V.P. Astafiev "The Shepherd and the Shepherdess".

1. Pastoral chronotope. Pastoral in art.

Time and space in the artistic world of Astafiev

It has signs of the real world: the author talks about the events of 1944, about the defeat of the German group near the Korsun-Shevchenkovsky point “Our troops were finishing off an almost strangled group of German troops, whose command, as at Stalingrad, refused to accept the ultimatum of unconditional surrender.” It was during this period of the war that the enemy became different: “The Germans are different: hungry, demoralized by the environment and the cold.”
Unlike the traditional pastoral, in V. Astafiev’s pastoral duration of action - night, winter night.“The roar of guns overturned and crushed the silence of the night. Cutting through clouds of snow and darkness, flashes of guns flashed, and under our feet the disturbed earth swayed, trembled, and moved, along with the snow, with people pressing their chests to it.”

By using alliteration and assonance, the author gives us the opportunity hear the sounds of battle: [o], [a], [e] characterize sounds of flying shells; help to hear the whistle of shells cutting through the air; [zh],[w],[h"] transmit trembling of the earth, awakened by the night battle.

Seems, the whole world is in motion. The abundance of nouns denoting specific items(animate: signalmen, SR men, infantry, rear - and inanimate: "Katyusha" - “the cars themselves seemed to crouch on their paws before jumping...”; the trunks of our little fur babies ), And an abundance of verbs conveying the dynamics of the battle: cars... rushed about, signalmen cursed, missiles flared up.

This description is surprisingly reminiscent of the description of the Battle of Poltava in the poem “Poltava” by A.S. Pushkin:

Throwing piles of bodies upon piles,
Cast iron balls everywhere
They jump between them, strike,
They dig up ashes and hiss in blood
Swede, Russian - stabs, chops, cuts,
Drumming, clicks, grinding,
The thunder of guns, stomping, neighing, groaning,
And death and hell on all sides.

The image of a night torn to shreds; road image, along which soldiers walk and crawl, defending their home, their native nature; image of the steppe, snow-covered or dusted with grass seeds; the image of someone else’s house, where you can “take a nap” for a couple of hours, if possible; finally, image of a whirlpool of battle - a funnel, which draws in everything living and inanimate, breaks the usual connections, pulls into the abyss - all this works to create a different model of the universe - CHAOS, a picture of universal destruction.
The color scheme enhances the feeling of contrast with the traditional pastoral: “Black anger, black hatred, black blood suffocated and flooded everything around: night, snow, earth, time and space.”

2. Features of the plot and composition.

Plot is the basic outline of events in the sequence of their development. The plot is based on an artistic conflict. Conflict is a clash of characters and circumstances, views and principles of life. The conflict can occur between the individual and society, between characters, in the mind of the hero; can be obvious or hidden. We characterized the chronotope of the pastoral as idyllic, that is, depicting an idealized, serene life in which there are no and cannot be conflicts. The feelings that the heroes experience are joyful and bright. Absence of conflict is ideal.

In the process of development of the pastoral genre, the love conflict appears more and more clearly, the love plot is further developed in Antoine Watteau’s painting “A Difficult Proposal” from 1716.
In music pastoral plot used in the 19th century by composer P.I. Tchaikovsky in the opera “The Queen of Spades” builds the composition of the pastoral scene like this:

Overture
1 hour - "Expectation"
2h. - "Date"
The final

V. Astafiev's pastoral also has a clear composition.

The love plot, it would seem, is concluded in two parts: “Date” and “Farewell”, but, besides them, the author gives two more parts: “Fight” and “Assumption”. For what? To show that the love plot was surrounded by a fiery ring of war, highlighting the catastrophic nature of the meeting of lovers(“I’ll come to meet you in a white dress” - and then “None of this will happen”). Each part has an epigraph. Let's consider what its role is.

The role of epigraphs

Rapture is a state of delight, admiration. The content of Part I serves as a refutation of this phrase. Fight is anger, black hatred, moral and physical death - cannot be beautiful. We see people who have lost their human appearance: “Mokhnakov threw one, then another skinny German over himself, but then another one came out of the darkness, and with a squeal, like a dog, he bit into the foreman’s leg, and they rolled in a ball into the trench, where the wounded were swarming in the snow and clods of earth, in pain and howling and rushing at each other in blind rage." The episode on the battlefield, when Boris tries to blow up a German tank, makes his way over the still warm bodies of his comrades crushed by this tank, or the scene in the medical battalion, where the doctor “stands knee-deep in blood” removing body parts that have become unnecessary, amazes with its naturalism, and the question arises : “Why do people suffer so much? Why war? Death?” And you involuntarily remember the words of L.N. Tolstoy that “war is an unnatural state for humanity.” It is no coincidence that in Astafiev’s story there appears the image of a huge man who "moving with a huge shadow and a torch fluttering behind him, he moved, flew on fiery wings to the trench, crushing everything in his path with an iron crowbar. ... It seemed that this prophet of heaven with a growing spear had fallen to the ground to punish people for their barbarity, to bring them to reason ".

IIch. "Date" - “And you came, having heard the expectation...” (Ya. Smelyakov). The epigraph gives a romantic mood: young creatures living in anticipation of the miracle of love, the miracle of meeting. But the first sentence of part II does not live up to hope, it is deliberately mundane: "The soldiers drank moonshine". The entire chapter is devoted to a description of the rest of B. Kostyaev’s platoon in Lucy’s house. Everything in life turns out to be not as beautiful as in books, paintings or movies: soldiers steam their clothes to kill lice; relieve tension after a fight by drinking moonshine; They sleep side by side on straw thrown on the dirt floor. The interior of the hut before and after the soldiers spend the night, the dialogue of the soldiers at the table, the portrait of Lucy and Boris, the skirmish with Mokhnakov - this is the structure of Part II.

III part. "Farewell" -

Bitter tears clouded my vision,
A gloomy morning sneaks like a thief, following the night.
Cursed be the day
Time takes you and me into the gray dawn.

(From the lyrics of the Vagants).

They cannot leave us indifferent and

lines of lyrical digression dedicated to mothers:

"... Mothers, mothers: why did you submit to the wild human memory, reconcile yourself with violence and death? After all, you suffer more than anyone, most courageously, in your primitive loneliness, in your sacred and bestial longing for your children. You cannot be purified by suffering for thousands of years, buy them off and hope for a miracle. There is no God. There is no faith. Death rules over the world. Who will pay for your torment? How will you pay for it? When? And what should we hope for, mothers?" It's sad that these questions remain unanswered today...

IVh. "Assumption" –

And there is no end to life
And the end of torment.

Petrarch.

Conclusion:

Thus we see that the composition of the modern pastoral by V. Astafiev made it possible to combine different stylistic streams: generalized philosophical, realistic - everyday and lyrical. The war was presented either as a hyperbolic picture of universal barbarity and destruction, or as an incredibly hard soldier’s work, or as an image of hopeless human suffering in the author’s lyrical digressions. Unlike the traditional pastoral, the plot and composition of Astafiev’s story allow us to characterize the conflict.

The moral aspect of the conflict concerned the relations between soldiers, between people. The philosophical conflict was realized in the confrontation pastoral love motif and monstrous the scorching elements of war.

3. The system of pastoral images in art.

The characters are quite happy, they live in harmony with themselves, with each other, with the world. There are no unresolved issues, no sharp corners - even the frame of the picture is given in the form of a medallion. The composition of the painting is such that the disorder located in the lower right corner does not introduce disharmony into the overall mood of the painting. Pastoral images of a shepherd and a shepherdess are also used by P.I. Tchaikovsky in the opera "The Queen of Spades". In the third scene of the opera, he gives an extended scene “The Sincerity of the Shepherdess”, in which the main characters: Prilepa and Milovzor - perform a duet. This scene also includes a chorus of shepherdesses and shepherdesses and the Sarabande dance of the shepherdesses and shepherdesses. The chorus sums up the whole scene: “the end of the torment has come,” which marks the victory of love. Announcing the victory of love, Cupid and Hymen (characters from ancient Greek mythology) appear on the stage to crown Prilepa and Milovzor. Love gives joy.

Astafiev’s system of images of modern pastoral.

The Russian army, represented by Kostyaev’s platoon, Astafiev “laid out” on

certain types traditional for the rural world:

• sage-scribe (Lantsov);
• hard worker-patient (Karyshev, Malyshev);
• Shkalik, who looks like a holy fool;
• a “dark” man, almost a robber (Pafnutyev, Mokhnakov);
• righteous man, keeper of the moral law (Kostyaev).

The role of shepherd and shepherdess is played by the platoon commander Boris Kostyaev and the mistress of the house Lyusya.

They are young (she is 21, he is 20), the need to love and be loved awakens in them. Love illuminates everyday life at the front with a bright flash. He and she. What are they, these heroes?

As in the traditional pastoral, Astafiev gives

portrait of Boris:

“The lieutenant’s blond hair, naturally wavy, became curly. His eyes would have washed out too. The rubbed abrasion on his thin neck turned brighter red.” This boy with a sinless look looks more like yesterday's schoolboy, boyishly embarrassed, but for all that he is a trench commander who has gone through many battles, seriously wounded, finally realizing that “it’s not the soldiers who are behind him - he’s behind the soldiers!”

Portrait of Lucy

created with skillful strokes: a swollen lower lip, a straight nose with narrow flaps, oatmeal eyes covered with curled eyelashes. “When the hostess opened her eyes, dark, seemingly elongated pupils were revealed from under these doll-like eyelashes. The eyes became mysteriously changeable,”- this is how Boris perceives Lucy. A woman with iconic eyes - this is how she will remain in his memory. A certain picture image - and the destruction of this image that arose in Boris’s soul by its everyday life: nose stained with soot, apron. At the moment of farewell, Lyusya will remind Boris of a schoolgirl, touching and funny, with a ribbon in her magnificent braid.

Little time is allotted to the beloved: the first signs of attention, the first declaration of love, and memories of their past. Getting to know each other. Well-mannered, affectionate, attentive - like a mother; persistent, honest, straightforward - like his father Boris. Lucy hardly talks about her past (she studied at a music school), but she involuntarily shares with Boris the bitterness of what she experienced during the days of occupation: “The dog was set on a person... it bit the girl’s throat like it was a bird...” Boris did not recognize that Lucy, enthusiastic, changeable in mood...

Conclusion:

War and love, death and thirst for life. What will win? Unlike the traditional pastoral, Astafiev’s heroes live in a different world and they themselves are different: “There was something like this and that in this lieutenant... You could sense the dreaminess and romance in him. Romantics are impetuous people! They are the ones who die first. This young knight of a sad image, absolutely sure - they love only once in a life, and there is no better woman in the world with whom he was with and there will never be..." Without love, the soul burns out: "...To live on? Why? For what? Kill or be killed? No-no! Enough!"

4. The ideological originality of the story by V.P. Astafieva
"The Shepherd and the Shepherdess."

Military prose of the second half of the 20th century. What are the most important features of this literary movement? (Using 1-2 works as an example.)

The most important theme of the 1960-1980s was military. Understanding the events of the Great Patriotic War and artistic ways of solving the topic changed significantly during this period. The “trench truth” of war, events that are not particularly large-scale, and moral conflicts on our side of the front are of increasing interest to writers.

Yuri Vasilyevich Bondarev (b. 1924) is one of the recognized representatives of the so-called “lieutenant’s prose.” Bondarev knows how to transport the reader into the very center of the battle. The sounds, fire of explosions and gunshots, cries of anger, despair, pain in the writer’s verbal pictures are combined with the ability to tell about what real participants in the battle are experiencing. All this leaves the reader with a burning sensation from touching the reality of war. This impression is especially strong because in terrible battles and inhuman trials it is often not supermen and heroes who act, but very young, ordinary, even weak “boys”, soldiers and officers. The front became a harsh school of courage and moral tests for yesterday's students and schoolchildren. Moral purity, humanity, the ability to understand people, make friends and love - unexpectedly turn out to be the main qualities that the fight against death, the enemy, requires.

Officers Ermakov (“Battalions Ask for Fire”) and Novikov (“Last Salvos”) are also very young people. Their human development is not yet complete, and they are already forced to think more about others than about themselves. A close-up depicts a person's experiences of war in an extreme situation.

The novel “Hot Snow” (1969) testified to the creative maturity of the writer.

The historical basis of the plot of the novel is the attempt of Manstein’s tank army in the winter of 1942 to break through to the encircled group of Field Marshal Paulus. The artillerymen had to stop the tanks in the wide steppe. General Bessonov gives a stern order: “Stand on the occupied lines until the last. For everyone, without exception, there can be one objective reason for leaving a position - death...” And the soldiers fight to the death, destroying German tanks.

Yu. Bondarev creates a whole gallery of portraits of soldiers and officers: from the artillery battery commander Drozdovsky and platoon commander Kuznetsov to the army commander Bessonov, from the very young riding Sergunenkov, sent by Drozdovsky to a senseless death in an unequal battle one-on-one with a tank, to a humane member of the Military Council Vesnin, who always cared about preserving the lives of soldiers and died in a short-lived battle simply, not at all heroically, by accident - like a soldier.

This is not a faceless mass, but bright personalities, characters unlike each other. Drozdovsky outwardly wins, he is distinguished by his commanding position, his readiness to make decisions and accept responsibility. But it gradually becomes clear that he is selfish, strives to show everyone his courage and make a career in the war. And at the decisive moments of the battle he gives up. The writer does not talk about outright cowardice, but he also does not show any real contribution of Drozdovsky to the victory, the only thing that measures the measure of what a soldier or officer accomplished in battle. Kuznetsov, on the contrary, is modest and at first not very confident in himself. But in the end his moral superiority is revealed. This is precisely what prevents Kuznetsov from looking at his subordinates as material for achieving military goals. He himself continues to fight with tanks until the last shell, and at the most dangerous moments of the battle he finds himself in the right place.

* This work is not a scientific work, is not a final qualification work and is the result of processing, structuring and formatting the collected information intended for use as a source of material for independent preparation of educational works.

by subject:

"Literature"

“The Great Patriotic War in the prose of the 20th century”

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pupil ****

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Introduction………………………………………………………. 3.

A man at war in K. Simonov’s trilogy “The Living and the Dead”…………………………………………………… 6.

A man at war (based on the story “Sotnikov” by Vasily Bykov)……………………………………………………………9.

The fate of a man in the era of wars and revolutions in Vasily Grossman’s novel “Life and Fate”………………........... 11.

Conclusion………………………………………………………. 14.

List of references…………………………….....16.

Introduction

During the war, Soviet literature becomes truly folk art, the voice of the heroic soul, the soul of the people.

A. TOLSTOY

The outstanding victory of the Soviet Union over Nazi Germany was a world-historical event of enormous international significance. Fascism was defeated. The Soviet Army defeated and destroyed over 500 German divisions and about 100 German satellite divisions. To understand the meaning of these figures, it is enough to remember that only 100 fascist divisions took part in the massacre of Western Europe.

History has never known such a cruel, bloody and destructive war as the Second World War. This war was especially difficult and destructive for the Soviet people. The Nazi invasion brought enormous disasters to our country, the death of millions of people. The four years of battles of the Soviet Army with the fascist invaders were the most intense during the Second World War.

“We didn’t need the war. But when it began, the great Soviet people courageously entered into a mortal battle with the aggressors” 1.

The war was the greatest test and test of all the strength of the people, and the socialist social system and the Soviet people passed this test with honor.

Despite the fact that the events of the war are now a thing of the past and have become history, the theme of the Great Patriotic War remains extremely modern. It is the subject of an acute ideological struggle between two worlds, causing a clash of different points of view, fierce polemics in the field of history, ethics, philosophy, and art.

The war was also a serious test for Soviet literature. During the Great Patriotic War, literature, enriched with the traditions of Soviet literature of previous periods, not only immediately responded to the events taking place, but also became an effective weapon in the fight against the enemy. Noting the intense, truly heroic creative work of writers during the war, M. Sholokhov said: “They had one task: if only their word would strike the enemy, if only it would hold our fighter under the elbow, ignite and not let the burning fire in the hearts of the Soviet people fade away.” hatred for enemies and love for the Motherland" 2.

Post-war literature, reflecting the heroic feat of the people in the fight against fascism, is provided with new and new works every year.

Writers and poets of the Soviet country joined the ranks of the defenders of the Fatherland. Over a thousand writers were on the war fronts, more than two hundred of them died for the freedom and independence of their homeland. M. Sholokhov, A. Fadeev, K. Fedin, A. Tolstoy, L. Leonov, I. Erenburg, A. Surkov, L. Sobolev, K. Simonov, A. Tvardovsky, took a direct part in the Great Patriotic War with their artistic creativity. B. Polevoy, B. Gorbatov and others.

Many writers received government awards. Eighteen word artists were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

An important stage in the development of literature about war is the 60-70s. During these years, new names emerged among writers of heroic themes: K. Simonov, V. Bykov, V. Grossman and many others.

Now it is difficult to imagine modern literature about the war without a large number of memoirs created not just by participants in the war, but by outstanding commanders.

The words are addressed to our contemporaries about the participants in the Great Patriotic War, about a feat that we have no right to forget: “And today, many years after the battles, among many things we must constantly remember those who went through the war. Surrounding them with care and attention, helping them in everyday affairs is the moral duty of the authorities, of all citizens, this is the law of our life.”

Man at War in the trilogy

K. Simonov “The Living and the Dead”

Konstantin Simonov is considered the founder of the “panoramic” novel about the Great Patriotic War. Such famous authors as Yu. Bondarev, V. Bykov, A. Ananyev, G. Baklanov, V. Bogomolov and others who spoke in traditional genres dedicated their works to the theme of the Patriotic War. However, Simonov’s trilogy “The Living and the Dead”, due to the breadth of coverage of events and reflection of the fate of people in the war, received a special name - a “panoramic” novel or an event novel. “War” and “Moscow, 41st” by I. Stadnyuk, “Blockade” by A. Chakovsky are placed on a par with the Simonov trilogy.

Simonov himself admitted that the central thing in his novel is a man at war. “It seems to me that in The Living and the Dead I in vain paid tribute to the imaginary obligation for a novel to have family lines in it. And this turned out to be the weakest in my book,” admits K. Simonov. The author's main task was to depict the truth of the war. This required the introduction of a large number of characters - over 200. Moreover, the fate of many of them remains unfinished. Thus, Simonov shows one of the main dramas of the war - when people went missing. “I cut short these destinies deliberately,” says the author of the trilogy. At the same time, even Simonov’s episodic characters are distinguished by their individuality.

This is how the most fearless of the division commanders, who dies a little earlier than Serpilin, is presented in the novel: “Talyzin, turquoise by nature and who seemed at first impression to be poorly educated, was in fact well read, knew the service and commanded his division, although not infallibly, but honestly: did not inflate successes and did not hide failures. And in general, according to Serpilin’s opinion, he was a man of high integrity...” Further, in a few sentences, Simonov reveals literally everything about this person. In 1941, together with several other generals, he was court-martialed on the Western Front. Talyzin was charged with cowardice and loss of control of the division.

For this he was sentenced to death, commuted to ten years in prison. From the camp he asked to go to the front and in the summer of '42 he was sent again as deputy regiment commander.

Simonov’s man at war is practically a real person, taken from life. The fate of Talyzin is an artistic embodiment of real events in the novel. The same can be said about most of the fates of the novel's heroes.

When writing a trilogy. K. Simonov adhered to the principle of historicism. In his work, he relied on documents, eyewitness accounts, and his own experience.

I think that the theme of the essay can be most broadly revealed using the example of the image of Serpilin, which is one of the central ones in the narrative. The image of Serpilin, who during the war went from regimental commander to army commander, is considered Simonov's discovery. With this image, people of tragic fate enter into military prose - those who were subjected to repression in the 30s. Fyodor Serpilin was sentenced without trial to ten years, despite the fact that he did not admit the charges against him.

“The figure of brigade commander Serpilin was formed in my mind from two kinds of memories,” Simonov wrote, - firstly, I remember several meetings in different years of the war with people who fought excellently and had... the same difficult biography... secondly, I Some episodes of the defense of Mogilev in July 1941 and the appearance of the commander of one of the regiments were etched in my memory... a man who did not want to retreat. Both the external and internal appearance of this man formed the basis of the image of Serpilin.”

Man at war

(based on the story “Sotnikov” by Vasily Bykov)

The theme of the Great Patriotic War occupies an important place in the work of Vasily Bykov. Honor, conscience, human dignity, fidelity to one's duty - these are the problems addressed by the writer. But still, the main theme of Bykov’s work remains, of course, the theme of heroism. Moreover, the writer is interested not so much in its external manifestation, but in how a person comes to feat, to self-sacrifice, why, in the name of what he performs a heroic act.

A characteristic feature of Bykov's war stories is that in the center of the image there is a person in an experimental situation, and the situation is such that the hero must immediately make a choice: heroic death or the shameful life of a traitor. And it is not by chance that the author resorts to this technique, because in an ordinary setting a person’s character cannot be fully revealed. In this regard, the story “Sotnikov” is no exception.

On the first pages of the story, we are presented with two fighters from one of the partisan detachments - Sotnikov and Rybak, who set out on a mission on a frosty, windy night. They are tasked with obtaining food for their tired, exhausted comrades at all costs. But we see that the fighters are in an unequal position: Sotnikov goes on a mission with a severe cold. And to Rybak’s question why he didn’t refuse to go if he was sick, he answers: “That’s why he didn’t refuse, because others refused.” These words of Sotnikov tell us about his highly developed sense of duty, consciousness, courage, and endurance.

The fate of a man in the era of wars and revolutions in Vasily Grossman’s novel “Life and Fate”

Vasily Semenovich Grossman depicted the Great Patriotic War in the novel “Life and Fate” as a historical event that decided the fate of not only Russia, but the whole world. The writer was able to reflect in this work the heroism of people in the war, the fight against the crimes of the Nazis, as well as the complete truth about the events that took place within the country at that time: exile in Stalin’s camps, arrests and everything related to this.

In the destinies of the main characters of the work, Vasily Grossman captures the suffering, loss, and death that are inevitable during war. The tragic events of this era give rise to internal contradictions in a person and disrupt his harmony with the outside world. This can be seen in the example of the fate of the heroes of the novel “Life and Fate” - Krymov, Shtrum, Novikov, Grekov, Evgenia Nikolaevna Shaposhnikova.

The people's suffering in the Patriotic War in Grossman's Life and Fate is more painful and profound than in previous Soviet literature. The author of the novel leads us to the idea that the heroism of the victory won in spite of Stalin's tyranny is more significant. Grossman shows not only the facts and events of Stalin's time: camps, arrests, repressions. The main thing in Grossman's Stalinist theme is the influence of this era on the souls of people, on their morality. We see how brave people turn into cowards, kind people into cruel ones, and honest and persistent people into cowardly ones. We are no longer even surprised that the closest people are sometimes permeated by distrust (Evgenia Nikolaevna suspected Novikov of denouncing her, Krymov - Zhenya).

The conflict between man and the state is conveyed in the thoughts of the heroes about collectivization, about the fate of the “special settlers”; it is felt in the picture of the Kolyma camp, in the thoughts of the author and the heroes about the year thirty-seven. Vasily Grossman's truthful story about the previously hidden tragic pages of our history gives us the opportunity to see the events of the war more fully. We notice that the Kolyma camp and the course of the war, both in reality itself and in the novel, are interconnected. And it was Grossman who was the first to show this. The writer was convinced that “part of the truth is not the truth.”

The heroes of the novel have different attitudes to the problem of life and fate, freedom and necessity. Therefore, they have different attitudes towards responsibility for their actions. For example, Sturmbannführer Kaltluft, the executioner at the furnaces, who killed five hundred and ninety thousand people, tries to justify himself by an order from above, by the power of the Fuhrer, by fate (“fate pushed... on the path of the executioner”). But then the author says: “Fate leads a person, but a person goes because he wants, and he is free not to want.” Drawing a parallel between Stalin and Hitler, the fascist concentration camp and the camp in Kolyma, Vasily Grossman says that the signs of any dictatorship are the same. And its influence on a person’s personality is destructive.

Having shown the weakness of man, the inability to resist the force of a totalitarian state, Vasily Grossman at the same time creates images of truly free people. The significance of the victory in the Great Patriotic War, won in spite of the dictatorship of Stalin, is more significant. This victory became possible precisely thanks to the internal freedom of a person capable of resisting whatever fate has in store for him

The writer himself fully experienced the tragic complexity of the conflict between man and the state in the Stalin era. Therefore, he knows the price of freedom: “Only people who have not experienced the similar power of an authoritarian state, its pressure, are able to be surprised by those who submit to it. People who have experienced such power are surprised by something else - the ability to flare up even for a moment, at least one angry word, a timid, quick gesture of protest.”

Conclusion

Four decades have passed since the end of the Great Patriotic War. But no matter how many years pass, the feat accomplished by our people will not fade, will not be erased in the memory of grateful humanity.

The fight against fascism was not easy. But even in the most difficult days of the war, in its most critical moments, the confidence in victory did not leave the Soviet people, for its origins, as was said at the solemn meeting dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the Victory, “are in the nature of socialism, the Soviet way of life, in the national character Great Patriotic War. The war, as the greatest test, confirmed with extraordinary clarity and reality that it is the masses of the people that are the decisive force of history. Showing massive heroism in battles and labor, Soviet people of different nationalities defended and defended their socialist homeland. They were united and inspired by the great Russian people, whose courage, endurance and unbending character were an inspired example of the indestructible will to Victory” 3.

Both today and our future are largely determined by May 1945. The Great Victory salute instilled in millions of people faith in the possibility of peace on earth. “The most important thing, the most valuable thing that Victory gave us was the opportunity to live and work in peace” 4.

Literature about the Great Patriotic War is usually called military literature. The term is conditional and, of course, not entirely accurate, not reflecting all the diversity, all the richness, life content, ideas, problems, conflicts, characters of works about the national feat. And if we start from the word “war” as a derivative, then this is rather literature: anti-war, for she was always alien to the spirit of war frenzy, the militaristic psychosis that overwhelms the art of the West.

Bibliography

K. Simonov “The Living and the Dead”;

V. Bykov “Sotnikov”;

Vasily Grossman "Life and Fate"

Brezhnev L.I. Small land. – “New World”, 1978, No. 2, p. 6

5. Sholokhov M. Speech at the II Congress of Soviet Writers of the USSR in 1954 - In the book: II Congress. Verbatim report. M., 1956, p. 374.

1 Brezhnev L.I. Small land. – “New World”, 1978, No. 2, p. 6.

2 Sholokhov M. Speech at the II Congress of Soviet Writers of the USSR in 1954 - In the book: II Congress. Verbatim report. M., 1956, p. 374.