Shukhov and Platon Karataev. Report: Alexander Solzhenitsyn through the looking glass of Karataevism

The personification of the entire Russian people, its quintessence best qualities, became the image of Platon Karataev in the novel. Despite the fact that he appears very briefly, this character carries a huge semantic load and is one of the main ones in the work.

Platon Karataev is a Russian soldier whom Pierre Bezukhov met after being captured by the French. For Bezukhov, who lived side by side with him for about a month in inhumane conditions, Plato forever remained a vivid, unforgettable memory, the embodiment of the philosophical depth and wisdom of the Russian people.

Platon Karataev was a peasant in the past and was married. He entered the army due to an unfair court decision for cutting down the master's forest. But, despite all the injustice of life and hardships military service, Plato did not become embittered. He loves all people, including the French, every Living being, the whole world, feeling like an integral part of it. And this love helps him accept all the blows of fate humbly and with wisdom, which is reflected in the folk sayings and jokes he constantly uses. In words, voice, and sympathy, Karataev knew how to console everyone who needed consolation.

Pierre Bezukhov met Platon Karataev at a moment of deep mental crisis. Seeing how the French shot prisoners, Pierre lost faith in humanity, in the meaningfulness of his actions. The words spoken by Plato at the time of their first communication contained folk wisdom about the finiteness of suffering and that life is longer than it. By what instinct did this illiterate peasant guess the only true tone that desperate Pierre needed so much? Perhaps his words and actions were the result of internal harmony, based on faith in the justice and expediency of everything that happens in the world, for everything is God’s will? The simple peasant philosophy of patience, submission to fate, willingness to suffer for people and faith in the triumph of justice made an internal revolution in Pierre’s mind.

The man and the master, being captured as equals, were subordinated to one goal - to survive, to survive, while remaining human. Bezukhov learned this from Platon Karataev. In the person of Karataev, the entire Russian people became a support for Pierre, a source of strength and subsequent internal rebirth. Plato's death became that deep inner shock that forever changed his worldview. This is the huge semantic load of the image of Platon Karataev in the novel “War and Peace”.

L. N. Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace” is an extensive historical painting, in which the fates of numerous characters unfold against the backdrop of an epic panorama of the war against the Napoleonic invasion. And, despite the fact that most of the characters in the novel belong to the noble class, the main character of the work is still the people. Patriotism and courage, unity in the face of the enemy, great power national unity is what became the key to Russia’s victory over Napoleon.

Option 2

The external and internal appearance of Platon Karataev in the novel “War and Peace” by Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy is especially bright and attractive. Plato is interesting and significant character, a man of “his era”, in him the car reveals the whole essence of humanity inner world and the meaning of his life on earth. Although his role in the novel is not so great, it was this man who left an important imprint in the life of Pierre Bezukhov.

Platon Karataev is a simple peasant of fifty years old, his parents were poor, and therefore he was not taught to read and write. Despite the low social status and lack of education and high education, Plato's reasoning is wise and instructive, unlike the aristocratic Pierre. His knowledge is mainly based on experiences from his life and the lives of the peasants around him.

Karataev’s inner world is good-natured and sincere, disposes and attracts people around him. He exudes warmth and positive emotions. Plato's appearance is as radiant as his character. He is short, chubby, with kind brown eyes and a pleasant smile. The man constantly gives those around him his sweet smile, revealing his straight white teeth. Despite his old age, the man’s movements are smooth, calm, not giving away his real origin, his hair is still untouched by gray. Plato prefers clothes with a free cut that does not restrict movement.

Before Plato entered the service, he was married, he had a daughter, but she died early. The man, despite his humble origins, was not a poor peasant. One fine moment, Plato was caught in a crime - he was cutting down someone else's forest, and then he was sent to serve in the army. He misses his home, but still continues to smile and lift the spirits of others.

Platon Karataev is kind and fair man, he perfectly understands all the hardships and complexities of life, considers most current situations inevitable. Plato's open character helps to find mutual language with any interlocutor. He knows a lot of sayings interesting stories and proverbs. They differ significantly from the rude statements of soldiers.

Plato loves to sing and does it as if the song passes through his soul; the man’s voice is like the trills of birds. In the army, he meets the aristocrat Pierre Bezukhov and, out of the kindness of his heart, helps him in every possible way. Either he will put a patch on his shirt, or he will treat you to baked potatoes. Plato always adheres to his principle - if you promise, help.

Despite the fact that it is easy for him to communicate with any person, Plato rarely becomes truly attached to him. For those around him, he is an open, non-conflict person, and will always lend a helping hand if someone is having a hard time.

Having been captured, Karataev’s previously acquired cold worsens again, the disease does not subside, the man has a constant, persistent fever, the French do not need such a prisoner and they decide to kill him.

Platon Karataev, despite short communication with Pierre Bezukhov, taught young man look at many things differently, look for happiness within yourself, solve difficult life problems without losing fortitude, and always be positive and open.

Essay on the topic Platon Karataev

In the novel “War and Peace” the writer described many images. Despite minor role, the image of Platon Karataev is important. Karataev played important role in the life of Pierre Bezukhov. With his help, Bezukhov realized the meaning of life.

The author described Platon Karataev as good-natured and peaceful, at the same time common man. Its simplicity is expressed in its appearance, in movements, gestures, manner of speaking. He put a lot of effort into any task and performed his work with special skill. Having been captured by enemies, the hero threw away everything alien from himself and decided to return to his former self. peasant way of life. IN free time Plato loved to tell stories and fairy tales, and also to sing. But most of all he loved to listen to stories taken from life. Telling different stories, Karataev decorated his words with smart and affectionate proverbs.

In Karataev, readers can see the inner harmony of the soul, which is manifested by faith in God. The hero believed that sooner or later good and justice would triumph. Therefore, he did not resist the current situation, but took it for granted. For him, life had no meaning. He perceived his life as a part of something whole.

Before meeting Plato, Pierre was under severe stress. Karataev helped Bezukhov regain a sense of resistance to current events. This feeling was based on mutual understanding and love. With the help of such a mentor, Bezukhov felt joy and was completely freed from the search for his goal and the meaning of life. He realized that the meaning of life is life itself. The hero began to believe in God, who protects every person. Thanks to Karataev’s instructions, Pierre believed in God and began to appreciate life.

The image of Platon Karataev has a more developed character and occupies a special place in the novel. The author introduced Karataev into his creation because he wanted to show Pierre’s spiritual re-education. Thus, Tolstoy created an idealized hero possessing kindness, meekness, love and self-denial. Such qualities have a positive effect on Bezukhov. For other prisoners Plato was a simple soldier, who carried out every assignment.

Lesson 2. Special Hero Solzhenitsyn

Heuristic conversation and group work. Creating tables and working with them

I. What are your impressions of the hero? What is surprising about it? What repels? What inspires respect? What do you like? Let’s put emphasis: I like it in a person, I like it in the way the author portrays him. This is necessary to distinguish between a person and artistic image; This is also the path for subsequent study of how the author’s intention is realized.

II. Let's ask for the opinions of other readers. Is the idea of ​​the writer Yu.O. correct? Dombrovsky about Ivan Denisovich: “Platon Karataev in the camp”? Why? If it hasn't sounded completely yet, now the time has come. Where are the grounds for comparison? First, we’ll interview a lot of people, then we’ll move straight to talking about the table.

Children do not always cope with their homework - a whole table. Them preparation is more important those who managed at least partially. So, or based on the completed individual tasks, or based on the records of the majority, we compile a general table.

Let's talk about what knowledge the students and the teacher use.

For students, Platon Karataev is often an incomprehensible hero: he is very patient and humble. For example, his inability to repeat the expressed thought twice in the same way clearly demonstrates the unconsciousness of his being, and not the living sense of the fluidity of life, which is so dear to the writer. However, if the teacher was able to emphasize the issue of the author’s intention during the study, then this hero is interpreted by the students as one of the most important in connection with the topic national mentality and character, folk morality, in connection with the role in the life and consciousness of the main character of “War and Peace” - Pierre Bezukhov.

Let us ask the question of how it happened that it was Bezukhov’s Karataev-like attitude towards life that helped him in captivity gain a sense of inner freedom? Without delving into the text of the epic novel, let us remember Pierre’s long, “fat” laugh, which surprised those around him: “...The soldier didn’t let me in. They caught me, locked me up... Who am I?.. Me - my immortal soul!..” (vol. IV, part 2, chapter 14). He realized the worldview that he developed under the influence of the popular perception of the world as a whole, extended in infinite time and space, harmonious unity - “perfect inner freedom.” It is this awareness that, perhaps, will give support to Count Pyotr Kirillovich Bezukhov in all later life?

But Platon Karataev himself, with his peacefulness, harmony of movements, humble tenderness before God’s plan human existence, which is especially noticeable in his favorite parable stories, is regrettable and does not become an example of human dignity for high school students. This hero seemed to adapt to death itself, which seemed especially blissful to Tolstoy. Is it necessary to teach children today that “it is most difficult and most blissful to love this life in one’s suffering, in the innocence of suffering,” which is what Pierre learned in captivity with Karataev? In any case, this is hardly the task of a literature teacher.

If in a conversation about “War and Peace” it is advisable to emphasize the task of L. Tolstoy, who not accidentally exalted the “little man” with a “swarm” national consciousness, who became the support of “big” Pierre, then now it is probably more important to remember the bitterness with which thought and wrote about the “swarm of men” M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin 9. And today the topic of dignity, “human independence” is the most important.

Working with the text of the story and the table “Platon Karataev and Ivan Shukhov,” we read and discuss our observations and author’s comments. We write down additions and conclusions in a notebook. Partially or completely the table can be drawn up on the board. What could happen?

Ivan Denisovich Shukhov and Platon Karataev
(From homework for lesson 2 or for compilation in class.)

9 “...through provincial town An emerging swarm of men flew and showered the entire market square. Now this grace has been taken away, put in a whip and sent to the district.” ("Wild Landowner")

From the book “The Time of Gethsemane,” which is being prepared for publication by the Vremya publishing house.

In memory of Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn

Russian literature gave the world images of “prisoners”, likeningcThis world is a camp barracks. But literary heroes who, thanks to their great authors, received everythingpeaceful fame - these are two that turned out to be fatal for Russia and its history, the hypostases of the Russian person - the correct prisoner and the spiritual slave.

“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is a thing of direct confrontation. There are explosions, they are called “directed”, such a “directed explosion”, in the sense of the release of energy, was this story, charged from Russian life, as if from a giant living turbine, which was set into rotation by rivers, and winds, and all human life, measured in horsepower. This machine, colossus, moloch was a camp barrack likened to the world.

Much in “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” coincides in details, outline, and circumstances with Tolstoy’s legend about Platon Karataev, so that sometimes it seems that the coincidences are directed, conscious. However, here it is important to separate conscious coincidences in the images of Shukhov and Karataev from unconscious ones - what is in such a hero is no longer even typical, but archetypal (after all, this, we repeat, atom of a person, that is, not a type taken from life, observed in life and generalized, it is an archetype, generalized by nature, history).

Archetypal, unconscious coincidence - in circumstances. This is the main circumstance - barracks. We meet both Ivan Denisovich Shukhov and Platon Karataev in the barracks. This man, whom Tolstoy and Solzhenitsyn looked at each of their centuries, was not a slave, not just oppressed, but a prisoner, imprisoned even while moving. Imprisonment, barracks, such lack of freedom, turning people into one continuous faceless mass of bodies squeezed together? - this is the environment where the atom of a person is carved out of the mass, which, according to Tolstoy, does not think of itself separately, but has meaning only as a particle of the whole, so that “his every word and every action was a manifestation of an activity unknown to him, which was his life.” ; and according to Solzhenitsyn, he does not believe in either heaven or hell, considering them a deception? and, not wanting eternal life, immortality of the soul, does not understand his interest in life, except for the fulfillment of the simplest needs, so that “he did not know whether he wanted the will or not.” This man, in captivity, found himself and unexpectedly revealed his natural features - in the dampness of the barracks a seed sprouted that should have sprouted if earthly life had been his will. This man is absurdly becoming a man in the barracks, in captivity. And a Christian-peasant seed sprouted in him, but slavishly ugly. Slavery gave him false freedom, hopeless freedom, freedom secret action. In Dostoevsky’s “Notes from the House of the Dead,” where in the dungeon of penal servitude he discovers a gallery of faces and souls from the people, there is also exactly such an atom - Chekunov, a man with such a soul and face, even habits, as those of Shukhov and Karataev. This is the voluntary slave who tried to serve the hero of the Notes in prison - like a spiritual slave, because he tried to serve out of his own free will. The images of spiritual slaves then double and triple in Dostoevsky - this is Akulkin’s husband, and Smerdyakov, and the peasant Marey... But, I repeat, this human atom was not spied on and was not painted as if from life; it was he, no longer as a type, but as an archetype of the Russian person, who gave birth to a complex and somehow deeply heavy, burdensome attitude towards himself - that same serious sight. The seriousness of the relationship in turn gave rise to the effect, as if a piece of clay stuck to the hands, and from this piece they began to sculpt, sculpt a figure in their own opinion - the effect of transferring one’s own hidden personality onto the figure. inner meaning, so the figurine became magical, mystical, already had a special hidden meaning. The figurine began to have such a hidden meaning in Russian literature. soul slave; in the commonly used bashful understanding - a figurine little person.

Metaphorical " small man“At first, Tolstoy persistently uses Karataev’s figure to designate only the figure, knowing that the Karataev in Russia are not at all people in their own rights, but serf slaves. Solzhenitsyn was also unconsciously directed to find in the camp barracks, likened to the world, the magical figurine of a little man, also, however, knowing that the Shukhovs in Soviet Russia are slaves; but it is precisely the human, and not the slavish, that Solzhenitsyn wants to see in the convulsions of survival and in the habits of a Soviet camp slave.

Conscious coincidences between Shukhov and Karataev are given in detail. It is the details that can be easily changed, replaced with others, but Solzhenitsyn seems to consciously pit Shukhov against Karataev with details, and only with his outline does he continue the lines hidden or unfinished by Tolstoy, giving his further version of Karataevism, but wittingly or unwittingly only exposing , what was hidden behind the phantom, behind the understatement.

The very beginning of “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is a revelation of all the details dropped by Tolstoy in mid-sentence. He said that Karataev went to pick up other people’s parcels, without explaining why he needed it, and Shukhov, as if on purpose, starts the day with this thought, and from the first page Solzhenitsyn explains to us: this little man runs to get the parcel to serve, this is one of “camp part-time work,” but only those “who know camp life” can earn extra money. To earn extra money: “...to sew someone a mitten cover from an old lining; give the rich brigade worker dry felt boots directly on his bed, so that he doesn’t have to trample barefoot around the pile, and doesn’t have to choose; or run through the quarters, where someone needs to be served, sweep or offer something; or go to the dining room to collect bowls from the tables and take them in piles into the dishwasher - they will also feed you...” Karataev masters this craft - from details this craft of survival, which was given to Tolstoy, is already unfolding picture camp life, Solzhenitsyn’s very survival.

Not soon, but one more coincides important detail: we learn that Shukhov is not some prisoner, but a soldier, and that his barracks now are, in fact, a continuation of captivity. So Karataev is a soldier; and he is imprisoned in the booth as a prisoner, and this condition implies - innocent. Not for their sins, but at the behest of fate, two Russian soldiers were imprisoned in a barracks - fragments of two greatest wars for their centuries. This fate of war has deprived him of his personal destiny, and the soldier is entirely at his mercy. There is no destiny. Life, where the roots of this fate were, ceased - this is what made this human atom involuntarily “part of the whole.” Another detail is in the description: Shukhov and Karataev are effeminate, they speak sweetly softly; “with the tenderly melodious caress with which old Russian women speak.” If a man is not served by a woman, a wife, and because of their military service they have forgotten their wives, then the feminine appears in his character. All servants are effeminate in one way or another, but their spoiled, well-groomed masters are imbued with unexpectedly manly brute strength. The lordship is outwardly militant, strong as a man, and therefore they serve him. And Solzhenitsyn also reads another unexpected thought: his Ivan Denisovich could never be the owner, could not be the master in his family, because he could not honestly earn enough money to support it. And again, if not the owner, not the master, even though he is already in the family, then male power decreases. The gentleness and meekness in Ivan Denisovich and Karataev seems to come from mental strength, but from mental weakness. “Is Shukhov afraid of the younger worker”; But Karataev gets scared in the booth like a woman, when Pierre is loudly indignant about those shot: “Tch, tch...” said the little man. “It’s a sin, it’s a sin,” he quickly added...” What sin? Who is he afraid of? There are our own people all around, and even then they are snoring side by side, and the French from the convoy will not understand Russian speech. This means that he is afraid of himself, with an already unconscious fear, with the fear of his weakness, voluntarily oppressing himself with fear, when there is not even a reason for it.

The barracks and slave life in Russia destroyed, first of all, the universe of the family. The women became for the men - there, in them, there is that strength that slavishly waned in their husbands; what kind of power this is - Solzhenitsyn will investigate in “Matryonin’s Dvor”, and Tolstoy - in all his female images, which attracted him because in a Russian woman he unconsciously felt another hidden will to live, a preserved reserve of the soul, where it was still possible to escape from the mustiness of the booth, the barracks.

Both Tolstoy and Solzhenitsyn also introduced legends within the narrative human destinies, where there are generalizations similar to biblical parables, - fate is already God’s will, temporal causality is already revealed as eternal causality. The legend of the innocent merchant is a catharsis according to Tolstoy, a catharsis that allows existence for Platon Karataev. And also about the innocently guilty - this is the tale of Brigadier Tyurin, the legend of the platoon commander, and this is catharsis, but different. The merchant, slandered for murder, tormented for someone else’s sin, understands that he is tormented for his own sins and by the will of God, because “we are all, he says, sinners of God”; A real murderer meets him in hard labor and repents, but when the order came to release the innocent merchant into freedom, they began to look for him, but he died - “God has already forgiven him.” Tyurin, convicted as the son of a kulak, after his not torment, but ordeal, continuing to live, recalls that he later learned about the fate of his commanders-judges: “...they were shot in '37. There they were either proletarians or kulaks. They had a conscience or they didn’t... I crossed myself and said: “Still you exist, Creator, in heaven. You endure for a long time, but you hit hard.”

Solzhenitsyn once directly expressed his personal version of Karataev. How decisive was she for him in his own work, that is, whether she had the same direct influence on her - there are no statements about this. He did not agree with Tolstoy as if Karataev belonged not to Tolstoy’s epic, but to life itself: he, Karataev, is not at all an all-forgiving person and not such a simple-minded “round”, so Solzhenitsyn argued, he is cunning, cunning, understanding in his own way , what in this world and how much... What is hidden in Karataev, what kind of soul is this? All the spiritual qualities of Karataevism manifest themselves clearly, sharply in Shukhov, acquiring a completely different meaning.

It is not a righteous person who appears, but a “correct prisoner.” There is no righteousness, but there are rules, unwritten slave camp laws: “Work hard for your conscience - there is only salvation.” But in what Karataev did for the sake of salvation, fulfilling the rules of life in the barracks, Tolstoy saw through the eyes of another of his heroes, Bezukhov, - the meaningfulness and righteousness of an ant that drags and drags its straw into a common pile, creating peace and life. Bezukhov distinguished the peasant in the barracks by the smell, but the peasant, without a mistake, recognized in the semi-darkness, in the man who had lost his class clothes, the master - no less, after all, also by the smell: “Did you see a lot of need, master? A? - the little man suddenly said.” Then he shares with him the “important” potato from the soup, but where did he get it from? why suddenly master fed?

The whole point is that here before us are two naturally Russian people, a gentleman and a peasant; one who does not know how to earn anything for himself, and who will always earn money for himself, to whom “money came only from honest work.” Serving is the honest work of a spiritual slave, and in order to work and survive, he needs a spiritual master, a master.

There is no longer one atom, but two, in their combination: Karataev - Bezukhov, Shukhov - Caesar. The men were still soldiers a hundred years later, and the gentlemen changed their profession; Caesar is neither a count nor noble class, and, apparently, from the creative intelligentsia, but this Soviet intellectual is a gentleman. Surprisingly, there is no lordly air from the convoy or from the authorities, but from Caesar, even though he is the same prisoner in the barracks as Ivan Denisovich. Shukhov is attracted precisely to Caesar like a magnet; like a magnet attracts a man to a master in the pitch darkness of a barracks. Between these two people, these atoms, there is this attractive force even in the barracks, because Caesar was “allowed” to wear a clean city hat, and Bezukhov was “allowed” to choose in which booth, with officers or with soldiers, to sit. The French guard would also never share tobacco with Karataev, but with Bezukhov he has something to talk about, he treats Bezukhov as an equal. And that is why the master becomes so important to the peasant that only through the master can a crumb of tobacco awaken for him: the forbidden beckons, that real, obvious freedom, the will, which in itself exists only as a secret action, beckons.

But Caesar does what Ivan Denisovich, a hard worker, is no longer morally capable of: Caesar built a semi-barracks life for himself in the barracks because he “was able to butter up the authorities” and was not at all ashamed to take his own kind into the service, to place himself in everyone in senses higher than fellow brigade members like himself, higher than the Shukhovs. And on what basis? And on the fact, even externally, that he “had nothing to talk to them about,” that he had no thoughts in common with them and so on, say, about art. Of all of them, Caesar is close only to the captain, the rest are no match, and if he gives Ivan Denisovich a cigarette butt, it will be for service, and not for his soul.

Shukhov, a camp slave, is capable of suddenly feeling sorry for Caesar without any benefit. Platosha Karataev is capable of feeling the same pity for Bezukhov. But Bezukhov had nothing to talk about with Karataev - he was only his listened. If Bezukhov had found himself in Stalin’s penal servitude, he, like Caesar, would have been a moron and would also have been sitting in a flooded office. Even when Karataev should be shot like a dog, Pierre has nothing to say and no significant pity for the dying soldier; that’s why there’s no pity, that’s why he doesn’t regret that he’s weaker than this guy - even dying as a goner, he turns out to be stronger in spirit than the master. It turns out that the master in Russia is mentally weaker than his slave! But Karataev waited no differently, just as Ivan Denisovich waited, standing in front of Caesar, that Bezukhov would notice him and “treat him to smoke,” but also about him - didn't remember.

Another mystery - why does a barracks become like a home for a man? For him, work is freedom. What does Shukhov think in the camp? his- everything that I touched with my labor. He also builds the camp wall as his own. He feels sorry for the broken saw, and he risks his life for it, because he already feels sorry for his own. Whether it’s will or not, it’s as if nothing is being taken away from him. But individuality, on the other hand, to the same Shukhov in his thoughts about the collective farm men who do not go to general work, for the sake of my garden and so on, for some reason it disgusts me. He perceives what is common as his own - that’s the answer. He does for people, that is, in the name general as for yourself. And for the master, his own is what he has separated for himself from the general. Only Caesar has his own office, and he doesn’t go to camp meetings. general work, because he can only work individually, only for himself.

But at the same time, in the gentry there is an unexpected moral superiority over the peasant: what cannot be earned honestly, Ivan Denisovich or Karataev will steal, steal - an extra piece of money or scraps for windings. So Platosha feeds the “important potato” to Bezukhov, and he eats it with the delight of life, without sinning, but it could have been the potato that Karataev would have stolen, stolen from the cauldron, as Ivan Denisovich does it without a twinge of conscience - from him , with a Russian peasant, it will turn out that “he was guarding a bowl and caught potatoes out of it.” This is how a Russian peasant feeds a sinless Russian gentleman with stolen potatoes, prolonging his lordly life!

But catching on the fly is “correct” for a peasant, because there are no thoughts of righteousness in his head, but there is precisely a simple-minded thought that the world does not belong to anyone, and if it belongs, then to everyone - and this is the correct, fair state of the world . Karataev ends up as a soldier as a punishment because he was caught logging in someone else's forest, understand that in the master's forest. So, for a master, a sin is when a man chops firewood in his forest. But the man will not even think that he is sinning; for him, latently, this master’s forest has always been no one’s, common, all-human. And you can’t make a man suffer for such sins. Therefore, there is a lie in the fact that Karataev is moved when God gave him death, as if he had forgiven his sins, but there is no lie in the fact that Ivan Denisovich is baptized when he needs to fly over death, but is no longer baptized “with gratitude” for salvation.

Tolstoy wanted to see religious type in Karataevo; In Shukhov, Solzhenitsyn saw the honest earthly peasant faith without embellishment, saying that Ivan Denisovich was not suffering for God, and his main question was: for what?! So Bezukhov doesn’t understand: why?! Why do innocent people suffer? And this is a question that almost abolishes God in Russia. Returns " happy ticket“to the Kingdom of God, Ivan Denisovich, but this is also Karamazov’s question, a question already for a man enlightened and educated like a master. In Russia, it’s as if no one—neither men, nor bars—is able to believe in such a God as he is, but like spiritual slaves, they already, in the highest order, spiritually thirst for the Master, the Master above them: they thirst another God with such power that they already serve and believe in him, as if this place were not empty, as if somewhere there he already exists, that creator who endures for a long time and hits painfully! The question “for what?!” is resolved almost by the Old Testament revenge of life; such orphanhood, such schismaticism that all life goes into a barracks, where everyone’s sins are piled up into one sin, into one sinful mess: “I’m not against God, you understand. I willingly believe in God. But I don’t believe in heaven and hell. Why do you consider us fools and promise us heaven and hell?”

Solzhenitsyn had mercy on Ivan Denisovich - he did not execute him. He becomes close to him in soul, leaves unsaid things here and there so that he has room to grow, but he honestly describes that he can only grow - from now to now. Shukhov is almost freed, he has almost served his sentence, but he will go free - to do, as in a camp factory, the same as a prisoner, “cheap painted rugs”... “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is not a camp seen through the eyes of a peasant; this is the camp seen through the eyes of the Writer. Solzhenitsyn was mistaken when he claimed that Tolstoy wrote free,– due to their circumstances, these two writers nevertheless deeply hid their most secret views, casting a deceptive shadow from the secret. Although this man was intimate with Tolstoy, he made him stupid, humiliated him with a lilac bow-legged dog.

Solzhenitsyn, it seems, in his story it was not only Ivan Denisovich who was hidden, but also the man who flashed at the very end of the story, and who flashed no other than the shadow of Ivan Denisovich: “Now Shukhov examined him closely. Of all the hunched backs of the camp, his back was extremely straight, and at the table it seemed as if he had put something under him on top of the bench. There was nothing to cut on his bare head for a long time - the hair had all come out from a good life. The old man’s eyes did not follow everything that was going on in the dining room, but instead rested unseeingly on Shukhov’s own. He ate the empty gruel at regular intervals with a chipped wooden spoon, but did not bury his head in the bowl like everyone else, but carried the spoons high to his mouth. He had no teeth either above or below: his ossified gums chewed bread by his teeth. His face was all exhausted, but not to the weakness of a disabled wick, but to the point of a hewn, dark stone. And from his hands, large, cracked and black, it was clear that he had not had much time to sit around like a moron in all his years. But it’s stuck in him and won’t be reconciled: he doesn’t put his three-hundred-gram note, like everyone else, on an unclean table in spills, but on a washed rag.”

Only in half a word are details given, only a silent glance indicates - here it is! The one who knows why he suffers. But his patience is not forgiveness, but patience in disobedience, in resistance to surrounding impurities and evil. This is the person in whom human dignity has been preserved. Not a slave and not a master - a man. The one who did not submit to the common evil and did not live by the same rules as everyone else. But neither Tolstoy nor Solzhenitsyn fully confessed and said free that Karataev and Shukhov were deprived of all human rights and were exemplary slaves.

Compassionate for the slaves, wanting to see in the slavish, captivity-born features of the Russian man not darkness and corruption, but a suffering light, the entire class of Russian writers was voluntarily deceived. This whole class - free - instead of cursing slavery both in man and in life, the bezukhovs and Caesars repented of their lordship, and the Karataevs and Shukhovs overcame guilt for the freedom of their position in front of the enslaved Russian peasant. This class did not condemn or curse the slave in Russia, but pitied and loved it, making slavery itself a religious, transcendental state of some kind, seeing holiness and righteousness in slaves. Ivan Denisovich, according to Solzhenitsyn, in the end also turns out to be a righteous man, for his righteousness he forgives him everything, but from behind the shoulder of this righteous man he pointed out to us not a slave, but a man - the one who “doesn’t lay down his three hundred grams, like everyone else, on an unclean table." This stoic, a prisoner of his conscience, is the same Russian phenomenon, as a spiritual servant. Solzhenitsyn wrote this image to help Ivan Denisovich, wanting to see these two Russian people - the righteous man and the stoic - as the basis, the firmament. But what does Ivan Denisovich hold together with his spiritual slavery? It seems that only slavery makes him stronger in his soul.

So are they on their way?

Solzhenitsyn, endowing Shukhov with a piece of his soul and past, did not himself turn into this same charming slavery with his fate: loving the Shukhovs, compassionate with the Shukhovs, and in his life he “doesn’t lay down his three hundred grams, like everyone else, on an unclean table.” But, on the other hand, Solzhenitsyn wrote already in that era when for the majority of Russian people the concept of the Motherland, the concept of their Russianness and community as a people had dissolved. Some had nothing in their souls except their Soviet present. Those who called for a rise from the bestial state had a strong conviction that people lived in Soviet time not on your own native land, but in the “system”, in the “communist empire”, as if from birth you need to know that the land where you were born by the will of God is not your homeland, but a “systemic” education alien to you, where it is already hidden in your own people the inner enemy, the strangler of your freedom.

This mirror reflection of the Soviet Jesuit spirit fostered in free-thinking people the same foreignness as among the homeless - that they had nothing native and sacred except this notorious “freedom.” It was sacred to Solzhenitsyn in Ivan Denisovich that this man kept within himself a feeling of homeland... Everything around him was dear, even if bestial. It’s scary to rebel – it’s scary to destroy what’s dear. It's scary to run because there is nowhere to run from your homeland. “But people live here too.” Solzhenitsyn felt the catastrophe in the fact that there was no one to love Russia, as if the Russian people did not have it or a homeland. The catastrophe is the Russian camp people without their land and a sense of homeland, and the Russian camp people without their people, which has long been no longer a homeland for anyone. And with this simple-minded love for his homeland, for everything dear to him, Ivan Denisovich unexpectedly becomes a stoic and the main person for Solzhenitsyn, his atom of restoration.

Where does the Russian man find peace, spiritual harmony with the world, where is his “happy day” - this became the denouement of both creations, but Russian history itself did not end with their ending... And what is history there... And if next time Ivan Denisovich does not deceive hesitant, bringing something forbidden into the zone? Circles diverge and diverge - it was not for nothing that Dostoevsky conceived “The Life of a Great Sinner”, because nothing ever ended in the fate of a Russian person with the first circle, but rather, on the contrary, the first circle only gave acceleration fatal fate. The “Red Wheel” was supposed to take us all these circles, but the circles blurred further and further; As soon as one circle of history was overcome, a new one arose - the wheel did not roll, but wrapped itself in the hoop of its fatal endless ring. But Solzhenitsyn in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich showed what lies inside these circles.

On the pages of the novel "War and Peace" even, it would seem, minor characters do not appear by chance. The characterization of Platon Karataev occupies an important place. Let's try to remember what this hero was like.

Meeting of Pierre Bezukhov with Platon Karataev

The characterization of Platon Karataev in the great work of L.N. Tolstoy begins from the moment he met Pierre. This meeting takes place during a difficult period in Bezukhov’s life: he managed to avoid execution, but saw the death of other people. The main character has lost faith in the possibility of a better world and in God. overcome this crucial moment Pierre's life is helped by a person from the Platosha people.

People's philosopher

Platon Karataev, whose characterization is the topic of this article, is the man who was able to introduce Pierre Bezukhov to the people's principles and wisdom ordinary people. He is a real philosopher. It is no coincidence that L.N. Tolstoy gave Karataev the name Plato. His speech is full folk sayings, this seemingly ordinary soldier exudes wise calm.

The meeting with Platon Karataev became one of the most significant in life for Pierre. Even many years later, the already aging Bezukhov evaluates his actions and thoughts according to the principles that he learned for himself while communicating with this casual acquaintance.

"Round" start

The characterization of Platon Karataev, which takes shape in our minds, is very unusual thanks to the author’s figurative speech. Tolstoy mentions the “circular” and controversial movements of the folk philosopher. Platon Karataev's hands are folded as if he is about to hug something. His kind brown eyes and pleasant smile sink into your soul. There was something soothing and pleasant in his whole appearance, in his movements. Platon Karataev was a participant large quantity military campaigns, but, having been captured, abandoned everything “soldierly” and returned to the warehouse of a native of the people.

Why does Tolstoy endow his hero with roundness of movements? Probably, Lev Nikolaevich emphasizes the peaceful nature of Platon Karataev. Modern psychologists they say that circles are usually drawn by soft, charming, flexible people who are active and relaxed at the same time. The circle is a symbol of harmony. It is unknown whether the author of the great novel knew about this, but intuitively, of course, he felt it. Characteristics of Platon Karataev - unconditional confirmation life wisdom Tolstoy.

Platosha's speech

Speech can tell a lot about such a hero as Platon Karataev. “War and Peace” is a characteristic of the psychological world of the characters, since in this novel Tolstoy pays a lot of attention to the peculiarities of the language and behavior of those whom he wants to talk about in more detail.

The first words with which our hero addressed Bezukhov are filled with simplicity and affection. Platon Karataev's speech is melodious, it is permeated folk sayings and sayings. His words not only reflect his own thoughts, but also express folk wisdom. “To endure an hour, but to live a century,” said Platon Karataev.

It is impossible to characterize this character without mentioning his story about a merchant who was sentenced to hard labor for someone else's crime.

The speech of Platon Karataev, his statements are a reflection of the ideas of the Christian faith about humility and justice.

About the meaning of life

The characterization of Platon Karataev in the novel “War and Peace” is given by the author in order to show a different type of person, not the same as Pierre Bezukhov and Andrei Bolkonsky. This simple soldier, unlike the aforementioned main characters, does not think about the meaning of life, he simply lives. Platon Karataev does not fear death, he believes that his life is in control high power. This hero looks at his life not as something separate, but as part of the whole. The essence of Karataev's nature is the love that he feels for everything in the world.

In conclusion, it should be said that L.N. Tolstoy, by creating the image of Platon Karataev, wanted to show how important a person is not in himself, but as a member of society who achieves common goals. Only by participating in public life, you can realize your desires. This is the only way to achieve harmony. All this became clear to Pierre after meeting Platon Karataev. In accordance with this idea, I would like to add that this one, of course, is interesting to us in itself. However, much more important is the role he played in the life of Pierre Bezukhov. Thanks to this meeting, main character was able to find inner harmony and agreement with the world and people.

The image of Platon Karataev is soulful folk origin, limitless harmony, which is given only through faith in God, in his will for everything that happens in life. This hero loves everyone around him, even the French to whom he was captured. Thanks to conversations with the “folk philosopher,” Pierre Bezukhov comes to the understanding that the meaning of life is to live, realizing the divine origin of everything that happens in the world.

So, we have characterized Platon Karataev. This is a native of the people who managed to bring into the life of the main character, Pierre Bezukhov, an understanding of the wisdom of ordinary people.

From the very moment of his appearance in literature, the writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn was announced as the “new Tolstoy”, and to this day they adapt him to the “new Tolstoy” or blame him for the “new Tolstoy”, which he allegedly never became. But those who were waiting for this second coming - they never did, seeing the egoism of the self-appointed messiah only in Solzhenitsyn's seclusion - and then they passed off the visible as the invisible. At their core, Tolstoy and Solzhenitsyn as individuals have nothing in common except for the ordinary coincidence of human traits. Whether it is self-restraint or strong-willed awareness of one’s goals in Tolstoy and Solzhenitsyn, these are not muscles strained by the messianic calling, but character traits; human traits, innate or nurtured, that is, they appeared, perhaps even before the moment they actually became writers.

But measuring the personalities of Tolstoy and Solzhenitsyn is like measuring earth with air or water with fire. This is not just and new - these are mutually repelling creative elements. Solzhenitsyn is a fighter. Tolstoy is a contemplator. One called to live not by lies, which implied struggle and indignation. Another professed, at the end of his life, non-resistance to evil and humility. The core of Tolstoy’s personality lies in a painful attitude towards all the institutions of contemporary Russian society, be it property or marriage, in which he dreamed of finding, first of all, moral harmony, while the core of Solzhenitsyn’s personality is outcast. Tolstoy believed in the will of the world, and embodied this faith in “War and Peace”; Solzhenitsyn - in the "Red Wheel" he tore the will of the world into fragments and destinies, dissolved it in an almost hourly chronicle historical events. Tolstoy believed that he was bringing some kind of suffering to his people. Solzhenitsyn - what saves his people from suffering. In other words, one felt alien and alone in his beliefs, while the other wrote on behalf of millions.

But there is no doubt that Tolstoy already lived in Solzhenitsyn’s mind as an artist. Ivan Denisovich - from the same substance as Platon Karataev. For the first and only time, in the piece written by his debut, Tolstoy was reflected in Solzhenitsyn in the form in which only he could be reflected - in the image of a hero and the spirit of the narrative; and “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” was considered a spiritual and artistic continuation of Tolstoy’s prose - the beginning of a “new Tolstoy.” But as has already happened in Russian literature, they grabbed the wrong person with delight and carried him to the wrong place. Solzhenitsyn stated his view on this image: he did not continue Tolstoy, but argued with Tolstoy.

"One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" is a thing of direct confrontation. There are explosions, they are called “directed”, such a “directed explosion”, in the sense of the release of energy, was this story, charged from Russian life, as if from a giant living turbine, which was set into rotation by rivers, and winds, and all human life, measured per horsepower. This machine, this colossus, this moloch, was a camp barrack that had been loved by the world. Patriotic War or, to put it another way, the redivision of the world in 1812 gave energy of the same quality, on which Tolstoy wrote not a story, but an epic, but it is important to understand that both the story and the epic here were only the sphere of this very energy - the energy of the disintegration of the world.

The writer as a person, refracting this energy within himself, must not collapse - he must withstand the force of its tension in himself. The disintegration of the world is not yet the disintegration of a person, a human personality, but if the world disintegrates, then it disintegrates into atoms and these atoms are people. Or these atoms destroy everything, life is deprived of meaning - and “everything fell into a heap of meaningless rubbish,” when “it was as if the spring on which everything was held and seemed alive was suddenly pulled out” (Tolstoy, “War and Peace”); or, after all, something gives life meaning, that same spring. The writer, as a conductor, is embodied in one of the atoms of human matter - in the one where he feels that the energy of decay is transformed by this atom, this human personality into the energy of life. Therefore, for Russian literature there is an inevitable hero.

This hero was inevitable for Tolstoy and for Solzhenitsyn in the sense that a Russian writer inevitably becomes a conductor of the national metaphysical energy of catastrophe, decay, resisting which spiritually, he will inevitably obtain this atom of restoration of the world. Solzhenitsyn also inevitably wrote Ivan Denisovitch, just as Tolstoy wrote his inevitable hero. In other words, he might not have known anything about Platon Karataev, but Ivan Denisovich Shukhov would have appeared on time, although he would not have been like that. It came out the same way because it was directed no other way than from the mirror of Karataevism; but directed does not mean “reflected”. He came straight out of this mirror, stepped out of it as if from another reality, hatching into the light from the looking glass of Karataevism, like a chick from a shell.

Platon Karataev, “Karataevism” - this is where Tolstoy was directed, but at the same time he found in this peasant not the basis of the Russian universe, but gave birth to a giant phantom. The explosion occurred, but it was that explosion, with such a direction that compressed from almost cosmic grains of sand and dust the universe of man and people that were born not from life, but from a vacuum, from Tolstoy’s “energy of delusion.” This man born out of chaos, Tolstoy, his very creator, did not touch at all: Tolstoy portrayed him in the spirit in which he presented his animal shadow - a long, “lilac little dog” on short legs. Just as this little dog “ran very quickly and very deftly on three legs,” so Platosha runs cheerfully and deftly, with only “two” paws, between the absurdity of a bloody war and the popular-sunny mirages of the world. In the description of the little dog, Tolstoy already gave an ironic view of the personification of “everything Russian, kind and round,” which, however, in the end grows to the tragic: the howling of the little dog over the place where the French convoy shot the goner soldier, from where Pierre Bezukhov recoiled further down the road, as if from the kingdom of the dead. Tolstoy left his plateau in that kingdom of the dead, but the purple dog - the next day it catches up with the convoy and is declared alive.

But Tolstoy looked at Karataev quite seriously. For moments you clearly feel this serious, suffering look of his, which he only hides in an ironic grin. When speaking to an aristocrat about love for a peasant in the mid-nineteenth century, one must be careful, with a grin - Pierre distinguishes Karataev in the semi-darkness of a barracks by smell, and so, by smell, they distinguished peasant Russia back then: Tolstoy grins, deceives for the sake of decency with a “little dog”, so as not to it hit him in the nose and did not turn him away from reading, but he himself indecently admired this Russian peasant - his paganism, as he prays to Frol and Laurus on the “horse holiday”; sophisticated words; his innocent sufferings... He admires the righteous, which are among the people and on which Russia must stand, but they are not in his simple-minded noble class.

All classes in Russia feed on the flesh of this righteous man: this peasant Easter is what Tolstoy and I celebrate. The foundation of our universe rests on the sacrificial blood of the Russian peasant. Willy-nilly, Tolstoy erects this temple in Karataevo - the temple of the peasant on blood, in which he will soon see no place for God. And according to the Gospel of Tolstoy, the Russian intelligentsia believes. That special class of people believes, which has voluntarily taken upon itself the mission of serving the common, that is, ultimately the most impersonally common that exists in Russia - a people that does not belong to itself.

Much in “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovch” coincides in details, outline, and circumstances with Tolstoy’s legend about Platon Karataev, so that sometimes it seems that the coincidences are directed, conscious. However, here it is important to separate the conscious coincidences in Shukhov and Karataev from the unconscious ones - what is in such a hero is no longer even typical, but archetypal (after all, this, we repeat, is a person, that is, not a type taken from life, in life, observed and generalized - this is an archetype, generalized by nature, history).

Archetypal, unconscious coincidence - in circumstances. This is the main circumstance - the barracks. We meet both Ivan Denisovich Shukhov and Platon Karataev in the barracks. This man, whom Tolstoy and Solzhenitsyn looked at each of their centuries, was not forced, not simply oppressed, but a prisoner, deprived of freedom even in movement. Conclusion, barracks, such lack of freedom, turning people into one continuous faceless mass of bodies squeezed together - this is the environment where the atom of a person is cut out of the mass, which, according to Tolstoy, does not think of itself separately, but has meaning only as a particle of the whole, so that “his every word and every action was a manifestation of an activity unknown to him, which was his life”; and according to Solzhenitsyn, he does not believe in either heaven or hell, considering them a deception and, not wanting eternal life, immortality of the soul, does not understand his interest in life, except for the fulfillment of the simplest needs, so that “he did not know whether he wanted the will or not". This man, in captivity, found himself and unexpectedly revealed himself in his natural features - in the dampness of the barracks a seed sprouted that should have sprouted if earthly life had been his will. This man is absurdly becoming a man in the barracks, in captivity. And a Christian-peasant seed sprouted in him, but slavishly ugly. Slavery gave him false freedom, hopeless freedom, freedom of secret action. Dostoevsky in "Notes from dead house"Where in the dungeon of hard labor he discovers a gallery of faces and souls from the people, he also meets exactly such an atom - Chekunov; a man with such a soul and face, even habits, like those of Shukhov and Karataev. This is the voluntary slave who tried to serve the hero" Zapisok" in prison is like a spiritual slave, because he tried to serve out of his own free will. The images of spiritual slaves then double and triple in Dostoevsky - this is Akulkin's husband, and Smerdyakov, and the peasant Marey... But, I repeat, this atom of a person they didn’t look at him and didn’t paint him as if from life; it was he, no longer as a type, but as an archetype of the Russian person, who gave birth to a complex and somewhat heavy, burdensome attitude towards himself - that very serious look The seriousness of the relationship in turn gave rise to the effect, as if a piece of clay stuck to the hands and from this piece they began to sculpt, sculpt a figurine in their own opinion - the effect of transferring their own hidden inner meaning to the figurine, so that the figurine became magical, mystical, had has a special hidden meaning. The figure of the SOUL SLAVE began to have such a hidden meaning in Russian literature; in the commonly used bashful understanding - a figurine of a SMALL MAN.

The metaphorical “little man,” at first, to designate only the figure of Karataev, is persistently used by Tolstoy, knowing that the Karataevs in Russia are not at all people in their own rights, but serfs. Solzhenitsyn was also unconsciously directed to find in the camp barracks, likened to the world, the magical figurine of a little man, also, however, knowing that the Shukhovs in Soviet Russia were slaves; but it is precisely the human, and not the slavish, that Solzhenitsyn wants to see in the convulsions of survival and in the habits of a Soviet camp slave.

Conscious coincidences between Karataev and Shukhov are

details. It is the details that can be easily changed, replaced with others, but Solzhenitsyn seems to be consciously pitting Shukhov against Karataev with details, and only with his outlining does he continue the lines hidden or unfinished by Tolstoy, giving his further version of Karataevism, but wittingly or unwittingly only exposing what was hidden behind the phantom, behind the understatement.

The very beginning of “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is a revelation of all the details dropped by Tolstoy in mid-sentence. He said that Karataev went to pick up other people’s parcels, without explaining why he needed it, and Shukhov, as if on purpose, starts the day with this thought and from the first page Solzhenitsyn explains to us: this little man runs to get the parcel to serve, this is one of “camp part-time work,” but only those “who know camp life” can earn extra money. To earn extra money: "... to sew someone a mitten cover from an old lining; give a rich brigade worker dry felt boots straight to his bed, so that he doesn’t have to trample barefoot around the pile, pick things out, or run through the quarters where someone needs to be served, sweep or bring anything; go to the dining room to collect bowls from the tables and carry them in piles into the dishwasher - they will also feed you..." Karataev masters this craft - from the details of this craft of survival, which were given by Tolstoy, he already unrolls the car t and n of camp life, Solzhenitsyn’s very survival.

Not soon, but another important detail coincides: we learn that Shukhov is not some prisoner, but a soldier, and that his barracks now are essentially a continuation of captivity. So Karataev is a soldier; and he is imprisoned in the booth as a prisoner, and this condition implies - innocent. Not for their sins, but at the behest of fate, two Russian soldiers were imprisoned in a barracks - fragments of two greatest wars for their centuries. This fate of war has deprived him of his personal destiny, and the soldier is entirely at his mercy. There is no destiny. Life, where the roots of this fate were, ceased - this is what made this human atom involuntarily “part of the whole.” Another detail, in the description - Shukhov and Karataev are effeminate, they speak sweetly softly; "with the tenderly melodious caress with which old Russian women speak." If a man is not served by a woman, a wife, and because of their military service they have forgotten their wives, then the feminine appears in his character. All servants are effeminate in one way or another, but their spoiled, well-groomed masters are imbued with unexpectedly manly brute strength. The lordship is outwardly militant, strong like a man, that’s why they serve him. And Solzhenitsyn also reads another unexpected thought: his Ivan Denisovich could never be the owner, could not be the master in his family, because he could not honestly earn enough money to support it. And again, if not the owner, not the master, even though he is already in the family, then male power decreases. The gentleness and meekness in Ivan Denisovich and Karataev seems to come not from spiritual strength, but from mental weakness. “Is Shukhov afraid of the younger worker”; but Karataev gets scared in the booth like a woman, when Pierre is loudly indignant about the executed: “Tch, tch...” said the little man. “It’s a sin, it’s a sin,” he quickly added...” What a sin ? Who is he afraid of? There are our own people all around, and even then they are snoring side by side, and the French from the convoy will not understand Russian speech. This means that he is afraid of himself, with an already unconscious fear, with the fear of his weakness, voluntarily oppressing himself with fear, when there is not even a reason for it.

The barracks and slave life in Russia destroyed, first of all, the universe of the family. The women became for the men - there, in them, there is that strength that slavishly waned in their husbands; what kind of power is this - Solzhenitsyn will investigate in " Matrenin's yard", and Tolstoy - in all his female images, which attracted him because in a Russian woman he unconsciously felt another hidden will to life, a preserved reserve of the soul, where it was still possible to escape from the mustiness of the booth, the barracks.

Inside the narrative, both Tolstoy and Solzhenitsyn also introduced legends of human destinies, but where there are generalizations similar to biblical parables, fate is already God’s will, temporal causality is already revealed as eternal causality. The legend of the innocent merchant is a catharsis according to Tolstoy, a catharsis that allows existence for Platon Karataev. And also about the innocently guilty - this is the tale of Brigadier Tyurin, the legend of the platoon commander, and this is catharsis, but different in detail. The merchant, slandered for murder, tormented for someone else's sin, understands that he is tormented for his own sins and by the will of God, because “we are all, he says, sinners of God”; A real murderer meets him in hard labor and repents, but when the order came to release the innocent merchant into freedom, they began to look for him, but he died - “God has already forgiven him.” Tyurin, convicted as the son of a kulak, after his not torment, but ordeal, continuing to live, recalls that he later learned about the fate of his commanders-judges: "... were shot in '37. There they were proletarians or kulaks. They had whether they had a conscience or not... I crossed myself and said: “Yet you exist, Creator, in heaven. You endure for a long time, but you hit hard."

Solzhenitsyn once directly expressed his personal version of Karataev. How decisive it was for him in his own work, that is, whether it had the same direct influence on it - he has no statements about this. He did not agree with Tolstoy as if Karataev belonged not to Tolstoy’s epic, but to life itself: he, Karataev, is not at all an all-forgiving person and not such a simple-minded “round”, so Solzhenitsyn argued, he is cunning, cunning, understanding in his own way , what in this world and for what... What is hidden in Karataev, what kind of soul is this? All the spiritual qualities of Karataevism manifest themselves clearly, sharply in Shukhov, taking on a completely different meaning.

It is not a righteous person who appears, but a “correct prisoner.” There is no righteousness, but there are rules, unwritten slave camp laws: “Work hard for your conscience - there is only salvation.” But in what Karataev did for the sake of salvation, fulfilling the rules of life in the barracks, Tolstoy saw through the eyes of another of his heroes, Bezukhov - the meaningfulness and righteousness of an ant that drags and drags its straw into a common pile, creating peace and life. Bezukhov distinguished the peasant in the barracks by the smell, but the peasant, without a mistake, distinguished in the semi-darkness, in the man who had lost his class clothes, the master - no less, after all, also by the smell: “Did you see a lot of need, master? Eh?” the little one suddenly said Human". Then he shares with him the “important” potato from the soup, but where did he get it from? why did he suddenly feed the lord?

The whole point is that here before us are two naturally Russian people, a gentleman and a peasant; one who does not know how to get anything for himself, and who will always earn money for himself, to whom “money came only from honest work.” Serving is the honest work of a spiritual slave, and in order to work and survive he needs a spiritual master, a master.

There is no longer one atom, but two, in their combination: Karataev - Bezukhov, Shukhov - Caesar. The men were still soldiers a hundred years later, and the gentlemen changed their profession; Caesar is not a count or a noble nightingale, but, apparently, from the creative intelligentsia, but this Soviet intellectual is a gentleman. Surprisingly, there is no lordly air from the convoy or from the authorities, but from Caesar, even though he is the same prisoner in the barracks as Ivan Denisovich. Shukhov is attracted precisely to Caesar like a magnet; like a magnet attracts a man to a master in the pitch darkness of a barracks. Between these two people, these atoms, there is such an attractive force even in the barracks, because Caesar was “allowed” to wear a clean city hat, and Bezukhov was “allowed” to choose in which booth, with officers or with soldiers, to sit. The French guard would also never share tobacco with Karataev, but with Bezukhov he has something to talk about, he treats Bezukhov as an equal. And therefore the master becomes so important to the peasant that only through the master can a crumb of tobacco awaken for him: the forbidden beckons, the real obvious freedom, the will, which in itself exists only as a secret action, beckons.

The man seems to be reproducing his dream of freedom in serving the slave master.

But Caesar does what Ivan Denisovich, a hard worker, is already morally incapable of: Caesar arranged a semi-barracks life for himself and in the barracks because he “was able to butter up the authorities,” and also because he was not at all ashamed to take his own kind into service, to put yourself in every sense above the same people as members of the self-employed brigade - above the Shukhovs. And on what basis? And on the fact, even externally, that he “had nothing to talk to them about,” that he had no thoughts in common with them and so on, say, about art. Of all of them, Caesar is close only to the captain, the rest are no match, and if he gives Ivan Denisovich a cigarette butt, it will be for service, and not for his soul.

Shukhov, a camp slave, is capable of suddenly feeling sorry for Caesar without any benefit. Platosha Karataev is capable of feeling the same pity for Bezukhov. But Bezukhov had nothing to talk about with Karataev - he only listened to him. If Bezukhov had found himself in Stalin’s penal servitude, he, like Caesar, would have been an idiot and would have also been sitting in a flooded office. Even when Karataev should be shot like a dog, Pierre has nothing to say and no significant pity for the dying soldier; That’s why there’s no pity, that’s why he doesn’t regret that he’s weaker than this guy - even when he dies as a goner, he turns out to be stronger in spirit than the master. It turns out that the master in Russia is much weaker than his slave! But it was no different that Karataev waited, just as Ivan Denisovich waited, standing in front of Caesar, that Bezukhov would notice him and “treat him to smoke,” but they didn’t remember about him either.

Another mystery - why does a barracks become like a home for a man? For him, work is freedom. What Shukhov considers in the camp with in about and m - everything that he touched with his work. He also builds the camp wall as his own. He feels sorry for the broken saw and he risks his life with it, because he already feels sorry for his own. Whether it’s will or not, it’s as if nothing is being taken away from him. But for some reason, individualism, on the other hand, disgusts the same Shukhov in his thoughts about the collective farm peasants who do not go to common work for the sake of their garden and so on. He generally perceives it as his own - that’s the answer. He does for people, that is, in the name of the common, as for himself. For the master, his own is what he has separated for himself from the general. Only Caesar has his own office, and he does not go to general camp work, because he can only work individually, only for himself.

But at the same time, in the gentry there is an unexpected moral superiority over the peasant: what cannot be earned honestly, Ivan Denisovich or Karataev will steal, steal - an extra piece of money or scraps for windings. So Platosha feeds the “important potato” to Bezukhov, and he eats it with the delight of life, without sinning, but it could have been the potato that Karataev would have stolen, stolen from the cauldron, as Ivan Denisovich does it without a twinge of conscience - from him , with a Russian peasant, it will turn out that “he was guarding a bowl and fished potatoes out of it.” This is how a Russian peasant feeds a sinless Russian gentleman with stolen potatoes, prolonging his lordly life!

But catching on the fly is “correct” for a peasant, because there are no thoughts of righteousness in his head, but there is that simple, ingenuous thought that the world belongs to no one, and if it belongs, then to everyone - and this is correct, fair state of the world. Karataev ends up as a soldier as a punishment because he was caught logging in someone else's forest, understand that in the master's forest. So, for a master, a sin is when a man chops firewood in his forest. But the man will not even think that he is sinning; for him, latently, this master’s forest has always been no one’s, common, all-human. And you can’t make a man suffer for such sins. Therefore, there is a lie in the fact that Karataev is moved when God gave him death, as if he had forgiven his sins, but there is no lie in the fact that Ivan Denisovich is baptized when he needs to fly over death, but is no longer baptized “with gratitude” for salvation.

Tolstoy wanted to see a religious type in Karataev; Solzhenitsyn in Shukhov saw the honest earthly peasant faith without embellishment, saying that Ivan Denisovich was not suffering for God and his main question was: for what?! So Bezukhov doesn’t understand: why?! Why do innocent people suffer? And this is a question that almost abolishes God in Russia. Ivan Denisovich returns the “lucky ticket” to the kingdom of God, but this is also Karamazov’s question, a question for a man enlightened and educated in the Lord’s way. In Russia, it is as if no one - neither the peasants, nor the bar - is able to believe in such a God as he is, but like spiritual slaves, in the highest order, they thirst spiritually for the Master, the Master over themselves: they thirst for another God with such power that they already serve and believe in him, as if this place were not empty - as if somewhere there he already exists, that creator who endures for a long time and hits painfully! The question is - for what?! - is resolved almost by the Old Testament revenge of life; such orphanhood, such schismaticism that all life goes into a barracks, where the sins of everyone are piled up into one sin, into one sinful mess; “I’m not against God, you understand. I willingly believe in God. But I don’t believe in heaven and hell. Why do you consider us fools, promising us heaven and hell?”

Solzhenitsyn had mercy on Ivan Denisovich - he did not execute him. He becomes close to him in soul, leaves unsaid things here and there so that he has room to grow, but he honestly describes that he can only grow - from now to now. Shukhov is almost freed, he has almost served his sentence, but he will go free - to do, as in a camp factory, like a prisoner, “cheap painted rugs”... “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is not a camp seen through the eyes of a peasant; this is the camp seen through the eyes of the Writer. Solzhenitsyn was mistaken when he claimed that Tolstoy wrote freely - due to their circumstances, these two writers nevertheless deeply hid their most secret views, casting a deceptive shadow from the secret. Although this man was intimate with Tolstoy, he made him stupid, humiliated him with a lilac bow-legged dog.

To Solzhenitsyn, it seems that in his story it was not only Ivan Denisovich who was hidden, but also the man who flashed at the very end of the story - and flashed no other than the shadow of Ivan Denisovich: “Now Shukhov looked at him closely. Of all the hunched backs of the camp, his back is excellent was straight, and at the table it seemed as if he had put something under himself on top of the bench. There was no need to cut his bare head for a long time - his hair had come out from a good life. The old man’s eyes did not play with everything that was happening in the dining room, but over Shukhov blindly rested his head on his own. He ate the empty gruel at regular intervals with a chipped wooden spoon, but did not bury his head in the bowl like everyone else, but carried the spoon high to his mouth. He had no teeth either above or below: his ossified gums chewed bread by the teeth. His face was all worn out, but not to the weakness of a disabled wick, but to a hewn, dark stone. And from his large hands, in the cracks and blackness, it was clear that he had not had much time in all his years to sit around like a moron. But it stuck - yet in it, he will not reconcile: he does not place his three-hundred-gram mark, like everyone else, on an unclean table in spills, but on a washed rag."

Only in half a word are details given, only a silent glance indicates - here it is! The one who knows what he suffers for. But his patience is not forgiveness, but patience in disobedience, in resistance to surrounding impurities and evil. This is the person in whom human dignity has been preserved. Not a slave and not a master - a man. The one who did not submit to the common evil and did not live by the same rules as everyone else. But neither Tolstoy nor Solzhenitsyn fully admitted and said freely that Karataev and Shukhov were deprived of all human rights and were exemplary slaves.

Compassionate for the slaves, wanting to see in the slavish, captive-born features of the Russian man not darkness and corruption, but a suffering light, the entire class of Russian writers was voluntarily deceived. This whole class - free - instead of cursing slavery both in man and in life, the bezukhovs and Caesars repented of their lordship, and the Karataevs and Shukhovs felt guilty for the freedom of their position in front of the enslaved Russian peasant. This class did not condemn and curse the slave in Russia, but pitied and loved it, making slavery itself a religious, transcendental state of some kind, seeing holiness and righteousness in slaves. Ivan Denisovich, according to Solzhenitsyn, in the end also turns out to be a righteous man, for his righteousness he forgives him everything, but from behind the shoulder of this righteous man he pointed out to us not a slave, but a man - the one who “his three hundred grams does not lie down on an unclean table like everyone else.” This stoic, a prisoner of his conscience, is as much a Russian phenomenon as a spiritual slave. Solzhenitsyn wrote this image to help Ivan Denisovich, wanting to see these two Russian people - the righteous man and the stoic - as the basis, the firmament. But what does Ivan Denisovich hold together with his spiritual slavery? It seems that only slavery makes him stronger in his soul.

So are they on their way?

Solzhenitsyn, endowing Shukhov with a piece of his soul and past, did not himself turn into this charming slavery with his fate: loving the Shukhovs, compassionate with the Shukhovs, and in his life he “does not lay down his three hundred grams, like everyone else, on an unclean table.” But, on the other hand, Solzhenitsyn wrote already in that era when, like sugar in boiling water, for the majority of Russian people the concept of the Motherland, the concept of their Russianness and community as a people dissolved. Some had nothing in their souls except their Soviet present. Those who called for a rise from the bestial state - the Stoics - had strong conviction that all of them lived in Soviet times not on their native land, but in the “system”, in the “communist empire”, as if from birth you need to know that the land where you were born by the will of God is not your homeland, but something alien to you “systemic” education, where the internal enemy, the strangler of your freedom, is already hidden in your own people.

This mirror reflection of the Soviet Jesuit spirit instilled in free-thinking people the same foreignness as among the homeless - that they had nothing dear and sacred except this notorious “freedom.” It was sacred to Solzhenitsyn in Ivan Denisovich that this man kept within himself a feeling of homeland... Everything around him was dear, even if bestial. It's scary to rebel - it's scary to destroy what's dear. It's scary to run because there is nowhere to run from your homeland. “But people live here too.” Solzhenitsyn carried this pebble into literature in his bosom, making up for both of them with “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” as a peasant. Solzhenitsyn felt the catastrophe in the fact that there was no one to love Russia, as if the Russian people did not have it, a homeland. The catastrophe is the Russian camp people without their land and a sense of homeland, and the Russian camp people without their people, which has long been no one’s homeland. And with this simple-minded love for his homeland, for everything dear to him, Ivan Denisovich unexpectedly becomes a stoic and the main person for Solzhenitsyn, his atom of restoration.

Where does the main Russian man find peace, spiritual harmony with the world, where is his “happy day” - this became the denouement of both creations, that power has only within their fragile, created limits. What if Bezukhov ends up among the Decembrists? What if next time Ivan Denisovich the guard doesn’t deceive him by bringing something forbidden into the zone? Circles diverge and diverge - it was not for nothing that Dostoevsky conceived “The Life of a Great Sinner”, because nothing in the fate of a Russian man ever ended with the first circle, but rather, on the contrary, the first circle only gave acceleration to fate. The “red wheel” was supposed to lead us in all these circles, but the circles blurred further and further; As soon as one circle of history was overcome, the knots cracked and something that was not expected appeared on the horizon - the wheel did not roll, but wrapped itself in the hoop of its fatal endless ring.

But Solzhenitsyn in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich showed what lies inside these circles. He dared to show all the inconsistency of spiritual power, how duplicitous the intelligentsia is, which imposes moral prohibitions on nature, so that they themselves in the moral and social status elevate above the nature of the common people. Solzhenitsyn did not create a spiritual teaching, because his ENERGY OF RESISTANCE and his loneliness of an unreconciled person could not attract a crowd, even zealots and associates. Literature is the main work of his life, the sphere of his duty and responsibility as an artist, but not the pinnacle of influence... A believer who had acquired faith, he did not preach the spiritual power of the Church. Power itself was not refracted in his personality. He remained at a distance from her, not getting close to her, even to fight. “Letter to the leaders”, “How can we organize Russia”, his political prose- this is not a bid for Power, but a civil message to it from a man who, due to his love for Russia, is far from any politics.

Solzhenitsyn is a Russian man in the twentieth century, and he was not the only one; that Russian man who found in this century truth, freedom, and faith. I found, like a ray of light, my clear and straight path.

Article by Oleg Olegovich Pavlov