Images of the Civil War as a tragedy of the people, essays and term papers. Depiction of the tragedy of the Russian people in literature dedicated to the civil war

Lesson No. 98-99.

Discipline: Literature.

Course: 1.

Group:______________________________________________________

Topic of the training session: The depiction of the civil war as a tragedy of the people in the epic novel “Quiet Don”.

Type of training session: Combined lesson

Lesson Objectives

Educational: Show how the eternal values of life are affirmed: home, work, love - in the novel by M. Sholokhov “Quiet Don”.

Developmental: To develop students’ ability to analyze, express their point of view and justify it. Develop skills in working with episodes and comparing images.

Educational: To promote such feelings as loyalty, devotion, hard work, respect for adults, love for one’s home.

Equipment:

Text of the novel “Quiet Don” - M: Bustard: Veche, 2002; presentation for the lesson; fragments from S. Gerasimov’s film “Quiet Don”; aphorisms about family, love.

During the classes:

1. Organizational moment.

2. Setting lesson goals.

The purpose of our lesson is to show how these values are affirmed in M. Sholokhov’s novel “Quiet Don”.

3. Updating.

There is a concept in literature called “eternal values”. Please explain its meaning?

(These are enduring feelings that are valued at all times and are passed on from generation to generation: love of home, family, respect for elders, hard work.)

Vocabulary work (on the board)

Zhalmerka (married woman who accompanied her husband to the service), reverence for elders, spiritual beauty, perseverance, high moral qualities, family traditions

Family is an important part of human development and formation. It is not for nothing that our state pays great attention to issues of family and motherhood. A strong family- the basis of society. For most people, the warmest and most comfortable place to live is home and family. Raising children takes place in the family. No wonder the French writer Saint-Exupery wrote: “I come from childhood.” Wherever a person is, he should know that family is the only place, where he will always be accepted and will understand where “everything begins and ends.”

Such a family in the novel is the Melekhov family, which lives in the Tatarsky farm of the village of Veshenskaya. What do we know about her?

(Portraits of all family members)

(These are proud, independent people capable of great feeling. The main qualities of the Melekhovs are goodwill, responsiveness, generosity, hard work. “A hard-working family and in delivery... The Melekhovs are glorious Cossacks,” they say about them)

- On what principles is a Cossack family built?

(Striving for independence, a kind of isolation, love of freedom, hard work, love of the land, a certain conservatism, discipline and respect for elders, deep attachment to home, to the land, to work. “My hands need to work, not fight,” - Grigory Melekhov says in his hearts, main character novel.)

Find descriptions of episodes from the lives of families.

(In the center of the story are several more families of the farm: the Korshunov, Astakhov, Mokhov, Listnitsky, Koshev families)

Reading episodes of “The History of Prokofy Melekhov.” (Part 1, Ch. 1), “Morning in the Melekhov family”, “On a fishing trip.” (Part 1, Ch. 2), “On the hayfield.” (Part 1, Ch. 9)

Analysis of the episode “In the Haymaking” according to the questions:

What is the mood of the episode?

By what artistic means is it created?

What role do collective and individual portraits play?

How is the earth depicted in the episode you read?

What feeling do the Cossacks experience from communicating with the land and with each other?

What literary associations does this episode evoke for you?

- But the most important thing in any family is love. Love is all-understanding, all-forgiving. The novel “Quiet Don” is a novel about tragic love.

How is this line revealed in the novel through the image of the main character?

(In the fate of the main character Grigory Melekhov there were two women - Aksinya and Natalya. Both were dear to him in their own way. How different, at first glance, these women seem to us. Each has their own character, their own destiny. But their lives were tightly connected by the name a loved one with whom each of them wants to create a strong family and have children.)

- How was Aksinya’s image recreated? What features of appearance does the author pay attention to?

(Aksinya is a woman of great charm, captivating external and internal beauty. She has “fiery black eyes, greedy plump lips, fluffy large rings of hair, plump shoulders, small fluffy curls on a dark, chiseled neck.” She is proud of her defiantly bright, alluring beauty .

- Many accuse Aksinya of cheating on her husband. Are they right?

(Aksinya’s life was not easy before she met Grigory. At the age of 16, her father mocked her, and a year later she was forcibly married to Stepan Astakhov. He loved to drink and go for walks, was lazy, and often raised his hand to his wife. Aksinya saw little joy in her new family: exhausting work, beatings of her husband, death of a child. The love of this written beauty for the young, brave and affectionate Gregory flared up brightly.)

Reading the episode. "Meeting by the water." Part 1. Chapter 3. (From the words “The horse tore him from the water...” to the words “... she walked away frowning and not looking back”)

(This love surprises and frightens the residents of the village, who were ashamed to look Gregory and Aksinya in the eyes. “If Gregory had gone to the poor woman Aksinya, pretending to be hiding from people, if the poor woman Aksinya had lived with Gregory, keeping it in relative secrecy, then there would be nothing unusual in this. The farm would have talked and stopped. But they lived almost openly, something big was knitting them, unlike a short connection, and therefore in the farm they decided that this was criminal, immoral, and “the farm was burned into a lousy wait: Stepan will come and untie the knot.”)

- Love changes and transforms both the characters themselves and the lives around them. The birth of this love was marked by a terrible thunderstorm that shook the Don. Then Grigory, being already married, completely leaves home, which never happened in the Tatarsky farm.

(Reading the passage Part 2. Chapter 10. from the words “Gregory, slurping cabbage soup, occasionally... to the words “... Grisha come back.”)

- “After this, Grigory and Aksinya begin to live in Yagodnoye on the Listnitsky estate. Then - compulsory military service, a senseless war. Having learned about Aksinya’s betrayal, Grigory returns to Natalya. Let's get to know Natalya better. (Portrait)

(Natalya grew up in a wealthy family that loved and understood her. The girl was not forced to choose a groom, so she married for love: “I love Grishka, but I won’t marry anyone else.” And she married a poor Turk, with sin behind her The new family loved the daughter-in-law and even spoiled her, and very soon Natalya realized that her legal husband Grisha was still attached to Aksinya: “I don’t love you, Natasha, don’t be angry! Be angry, don’t be angry, but you won’t change anything.” , - Grigory said to his wife. And Natalya, endlessly loving her husband, suffers in silence, forgives his betrayals, always waits for his return. Children are born into the family, Natalia’s feeling is transferred to the children, to her relatives.)

- We met the main characters whom Gregory loved. What role does the contrast between the images of Natalya and Aksinya play in the novel? What attracts us to each of them?

(Natalya is the embodiment of home and family. Her integrity, purity, loyalty, devotion are described by Sholokhov with love and sympathy for this heroine.

Reading passages (part 5.chapter 8. from the words “Ilyinichna carried the children in her arms... to the words “... rang with proud joy”, from the words “... Grigory put his hand” to the words “... but what about”

Aksinya’s love is expressed in boundless self-sacrifice, transferring the center of one’s life to another person. This is a deep, passionate feeling. Grigory loves both Natalya and Aksinya. Natalya amazed him with “some kind of pure inner beauty.” She is all in the element of home, family, she is a selfless and affectionate mother. Love for Aksinya is stronger than Gregory himself. Her “vicious”, “defiant beauty inexorably attracts him. This beauty is free, denies the grayness of equality.)

Watching an episode from the feature film “Quiet Don” (directed by Sergei Gerasimov). “Meeting of Aksinya and Natalya in Yagodnoye.”

- Both of these women gave Gregory their hearts, their love. They are both dear to him. But he causes grief, pain and suffering to both of them, without meaning to. The most tragic thing is that he unwittingly becomes the cause of the death of his beloved women. And his life collapses and loses its meaning with their death.

- But anyway….

(Grigory brought a lot of suffering to both Aksinya and Natalya, but he also appeared as a light, a guiding star in their lives. They themselves chose this path and selflessly followed it to the end. These women were not afraid of difficulties, for the sake of their loved one they were ready to make sacrifices. It was not for nothing that Natalya forgave his departure, and Aksinya’s dearest children after the beloved Grisha were his children - strangers to her by blood, but relatives by the familiar features of their beloved in their faces.)

- The unhappy personal life of the heroes, the death of Aksinya, when Grigory, “dead with horror, realized that everything was over, that everything that could happen in his life had already happened,” are tragic.

But life will go on. Last scene: Gregory stands “at the gates of his home,” holding his son in his arms. Here, in my father's house, on native land, all the beginnings and all the ends of life.

(excerpt from a feature film)

- Years and centuries pass, but a person will always be decorated with those qualities that are inherent in the unforgettable images of the heroes of M. Sholokhov’s novel “Quiet Don”. List them.

(Spiritual beauty, perseverance, high moral qualities, the ability for selfless and selfless love, hard work, love for one’s home, respect for adults, honesty)

3. Conclusion.

- Guys, in the future you will have your own families. I hope that these moral qualities that we talked about today will help you thoughtfully approach the creation of this “unit of society” and be happy.

Reading excerpts from students' essays about family values, about the significance of one’s father’s house in a person’s life)

(During the lesson, a presentation for the lesson and fragments from the feature film by S. Gerasimov “Quiet Don” are viewed)

4. Homework by groups.

Episode analysis:

Group I. “Punishment of Gregory by his father for an affair with Aksinya” (vol. 1. Book 1).

2nd group. “Revelry at the Wedding” (book one, part 1, chapter 21.23

3rd group. "Call for military service"(part 2, chapter 21)

PICTURE OF THE CIVIL WAR AS A TRAGEDY OF THE PEOPLE

Not only civil war, any war is a disaster for Sholokhov. The writer convincingly shows that the atrocities of the civil war were prepared by four years of the First World War.

The perception of the war as a national tragedy is facilitated by gloomy symbolism. On the eve of the declaration of war in Tatarskoye, “at night an owl roared in the bell tower. Unsteady and terrible cries hung over the farmstead, and an owl flew from the bell tower to the cemetery, fossilized by calves, moaning over the brown, grassy graves.
“It will be bad,” the old men prophesied, hearing owl calls from the cemetery.
“The war will come.”

The war burst into the Cossack kurens like a fiery tornado just during the harvest, when the people valued every minute. The messenger rushed up, raising a cloud of dust behind him. The fateful thing has come...

Sholokhov demonstrates how just one month of war changes people beyond recognition, cripples their souls, devastates them to the very bottom, makes them look at things in a new way. the world.
Here the writer describes the situation after one of the battles. There are corpses scattered all over the middle of the forest. “We were lying down. Shoulder to shoulder, in various poses, often obscene and scary."

A plane flies by and drops a bomb. Next, Yegorka Zharkov crawls out from under the rubble: “The released intestines were smoking, casting soft pink and blue.”

This is the merciless truth of war. And what a blasphemy against morality, reason, and a betrayal of humanism, the glorification of heroism became under these conditions. The generals needed a “hero”. And he was quickly “invented”: Kuzma Kryuchkov, who allegedly killed more than a dozen Germans. They even began to produce cigarettes with a portrait of the “hero.” The press wrote about him excitedly.
Sholokhov talks about the feat differently: “And it was like this: the people who collided on the field of death, who had not yet had time to break their hands in the destruction of their own kind, in the animal horror that overwhelmed them, stumbled, knocked down, delivered blind blows, mutilated themselves and their horses and fled, frightened by the shot, who killed a man, the morally crippled ones dispersed.
They called it a feat."

People at the front are cutting each other down in a primitive way. Russian soldiers hang corpses on wire fences. German artillery destroys entire regiments to the last soldier. The earth is thickly stained with human blood. There are settled hills of graves everywhere. Sholokhov created a mournful lament for the dead, and cursed the war with irresistible words.

But even more terrible in Sholokhov’s depiction is the civil war. Because she is fratricidal. People of the same culture, the same faith, the same blood began to exterminate each other on an unprecedented scale. This “conveyor belt” of senseless, horribly cruel murders, shown by Sholokhov, shakes to the core.

... Punisher Mitka Korshunov does not spare either the old or the young. Mikhail Koshevoy, satisfying his need for class hatred, kills his hundred-year-old grandfather Grishaka. Daria shoots the prisoner. Even Gregory, succumbing to the psychosis of the senseless destruction of people in war, becomes a murderer and a monster.

There are many stunning scenes in the novel. One of them is the reprisal of forty captured officers by the Podtelkovites. “Shots were fired frantically. The officers, colliding, rushed in all directions. The lieutenant with the most beautiful feminine eyes, wearing a red officer’s cap, ran, clutching his head with his hands. The bullet made him jump high, as if over a barrier. He fell and never got up. Two men chopped down the tall, brave captain. He grabbed the blades of the sabers, blood poured from his cut palms onto his sleeves; he screamed like a child, fell to his knees, on his back, rolling his head in the snow; on the face one could see only blood-stained eyes and a black mouth, drilled with a continuous scream. His face was slashed by flying bombs, across his black mouth, and he was still screaming in a thin voice of horror and pain. Stretching over him, the Cossack, wearing an overcoat with a torn strap, finished him off with a shot. The curly-haired cadet almost broke through the chain - some ataman overtook him and killed him with a blow to the back of the head. The same ataman drove a bullet between the shoulder blades of the centurion, who was running in an overcoat that had opened in the wind. The centurion sat down and scratched his chest with his fingers until he died. The gray-haired podesaul was killed on the spot; parting with his life, he kicked a deep hole in the snow and would have beaten him like a good horse on a leash if the Cossacks, who took pity on him, had not finished him off.” These mournful lines are extremely expressive, filled with horror at what is being done. WITH unbearable pain they are read with trepidation and carry within themselves the most desperate curse of fratricidal war.

No less terrible are the pages dedicated to the execution of the Podtelkovites. People, who at first “willingly” went to the execution “as if for a rare cheerful spectacle” and dressed up “as if for a holiday”, faced with the realities of a cruel and inhumane execution, are in a hurry to disperse, so that by the time of the reprisal against the leaders - Podtelkov and Krivoshlykov - there was nothing left few people.
However, Podtelkov is mistaken, arrogantly believing that people dispersed out of recognition that he was right. They could not bear the inhuman, unnatural spectacle of violent death. Only God created man, and only God can take his life.

On the pages of the novel, two “truths” collide: the “truth” of the Whites, Chernetsov and other killed officers, thrown in the face of Podtelkov: “Traitor to the Cossacks! Traitor!" and the opposing “truth” of Podtelkov, who thinks that he is protecting the interests of the “working people.”

Blinded by their “truths,” both sides mercilessly and senselessly, in some kind of demonic frenzy, destroy each other, not noticing that there are fewer and fewer of those left for whose sake they are trying to establish their ideas. Talking about the war, about the military life of the most militant tribe among the entire Russian people, Sholokhov, however, nowhere, not a single line, praised the war. It is not for nothing that his book, as noted by the famous Sholokhov scholar V. Litvinov, was banned by the Maoists, who considered the war the best way social improvement of life on Earth. “Quiet Don” is a passionate denial of any such cannibalism. Love for people is incompatible with love for war. War is always a people's disaster.

Death in Sholokhov’s perception is that which opposes life, its unconditional principles, especially violent death. In this sense, the creator of “Quiet Don” is a faithful successor of the best humanistic traditions of both Russian and world literature.
Despising the extermination of man by man in war, knowing what tests the moral sense is subjected to in front-line conditions, Sholokhov, at the same time, on the pages of his novel, painted the now classic pictures of mental fortitude, endurance and humanism that took place in the war. A humane attitude towards one's neighbor and humanity cannot be completely destroyed. This is evidenced, in particular, by many of the actions of Grigory Melekhov: his contempt for looting, the defense of the Polish woman Franya, the rescue of Stepan Astakhov.

The concepts of “war” and “humanity” are irreconcilably hostile to each other, and at the same time, against the background of bloody civil strife, the moral capabilities of a person, how beautiful he can be, are especially clearly outlined. War severely tests moral strength, unknown in days of peace. According to Sholokhov, all the good that is taken from the people, which alone can save the soul in the scorching flame of war, is exclusively real.

Ministry of General and Professional

education of the Sverdlovsk region

Department of Education of Sosvinsky Urban District

Municipal educational institution secondary school No. 1, Sosva village

Topic: "Depiction of the tragedy of the Russian people in literature dedicated to the Civil War."

Executor:

Kurskaya Ulyana,

11th grade student.

Supervisor:

V.V. Frantsuzova,

teacher of Russian language

and literature.

Sosva village 2005-2006 academic year

The Civil War in Russia is the tragedy of the Russian nation

More than 85 years ago, Russia, the former Russian Empire, lay in ruins. The 300-year reign of the Romanov dynasty ended in February, and in October the bourgeois-liberal Provisional Government said goodbye to the levers of control. Throughout the entire territory of the huge, once great power, which had been gathering inch by inch since the time of the Moscow principality of Ivan Kalita, the Civil War was blazing. From the Baltic to the Pacific, from White Sea Bloody battles took place as far as the Caucasus mountains and the Orenburg steppes, and it seems that, apart from a handful of provinces of Central Russia, there was no volost or district where they did not replace each other several times. various authorities of all shades and ideological colors.

What is any civil war? It is usually defined as an armed struggle for power between representatives of different classes and social groups. In other words, it's a fight inside countries, inside people, nation, often between fellow countrymen, neighbors, recent colleagues or friends, even close relatives. This is a tragedy that leaves for a long time non-healing wound in the heart of the nation and fractures in its soul.

How did this dramatic confrontation proceed in Russia? What were the features our A civil war in addition to its unprecedented geographical, spatial scope?

You can learn, see, and feel the whole palette of colors, thoughts, and feelings of the Civil War era by studying archival documents and memories of contemporaries. Also, answers to piercing questions can be found in works of literature and art from that time of fire, which are testimony before the court of History. And there are many such works, because a revolution is too huge an event in its scale not to be reflected in literature. And only a few writers and poets who came under her influence did not touch upon this topic in their work.

One of the best monuments of any era, as I have already said, is the bright and talented works of fiction. So it is with Russian literature about the Civil War. The works of those poets and writers who went through the crucible of the Great Russian Troubles are very interesting. Some of them fought “for the happiness of all workers,” others “for a united and indivisible Russia.” Some made a clear moral choice for themselves, while others were only indirectly involved in the actions of one of the opposing camps. And others even tried to get up above the fray. But each of them is a personality, a phenomenon in Russian literature, a talent, sometimes undeservedly forgotten.

For many decades we have viewed our history in two colors, black and white. Black are all enemies - Trotsky, Bukharin, Kamenev, Zinoviev and others like them, white are our heroes - Voroshilov, Budyonny, Chapaev, Furmanov and others. Halftones were not recognized. If we were talking about the civil war, then the atrocities of the Whites, the nobility of the Reds and, as an exception that confirms the rule, the “green” who accidentally slipped between them - Old Man Makhno, who is “neither ours nor yours.”

But now we know how complex and confusing this whole process actually was in the early 20s of the 20th century, the process of selecting human material, we know that it is impossible to approach the assessment of those events in black and white and literary works, dedicated to them. After all, historians are now inclined to consider even the civil war itself to have begun not in the summer of 1918, but on October 25, 1917, when the Bolsheviks carried out a military coup and overthrew the legitimate Provisional Government.

Assessments of the Civil War are very dissimilar and contradictory, starting with its chronological framework. Some researchers dated it to 1918-1920, which, apparently, cannot be considered fair (we can only talk about the war in European Russia). The most accurate dating is 1917-1922.

The civil war began, without exaggeration, “the day after” the Bolshevik Party seized power during the October Revolution.

I was interested in this topic, its embodiment in the literature of that time. I wanted to get acquainted in more detail with various assessments of the events taking place, to find out the point of view of writers standing on different sides of the barricades, who assessed the events of those years differently.

I set myself a goal -

get acquainted with some works about the civil war, analyze them and try to understand the ambiguity of this tragedy in our country;

consider it from different sides, from different points of view: from complete worship of the revolution ("Destruction" by Alexander Fadeev) to harsh criticism ("Russia, washed in blood" by Artyom Vesely);

to prove, using the example of literary works, that any war, in the words of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, is “an event contrary to human reason and all human nature.”

My interest in this topic arose after becoming acquainted with the journalistic notes of Alexei Maksimovich Gorky, “Untimely Thoughts,” which were previously inaccessible to the reader. The writer condemns the Bolsheviks for many things, expresses his disagreement and condemnation: “The new authorities are just as rude as the old ones. They yell and stamp their feet, and grab bribes like the old bureaucrats grabbed, and people are driven into prisons in herds.”

Soviet readers also did not read “Cursed Days” by Ivan Alekseevich Bunin, who so called the time of revolution and civil war, “Letters to Lunacharsky” by Valentin Galaktionovich Korolenko and other previously banned works.

The Silver Age poet Igor Severyanin, who had not previously been included in school curricula, perceived the civil war and revolution as a fratricidal war ("why did they go against their brother, chopping and slashing..."), as the destruction of the "bright culture of their homeland."

Maximilian Voloshin sympathized with both the Whites and the Reds:

...And here and there between the rows

The same voice sounds:

He who is not for us is against us!

No one is indifferent! Is it true,with us!

And I stand alone between them

In roaring flames and smoke.

And with all my strength

I pray for both.

More than eight decades have passed since the Civil War, but we are only now beginning to understand what a misfortune it was for all of Russia. Until recently, in literature, in the depiction of the Civil War, heroism came to the fore. The prevailing idea was: glory to the victors, shame to the vanquished. The heroes of the war were those who fought on the side of the Reds, on the side of the Bolsheviks. These are Chapaev ("Chapaev" by Dmitry Furmanov), Levinson ("Destruction" by Alexander Fadeev), Kozhukh ("Iron Stream" by Alexander Serafimovich) and other soldiers of the revolution.

However, there was other literature that sympathetically depicted those who stood up to defend Russia from the Bolshevik rebellion. This literature condemned violence, cruelty, and the “Red Terror.” But it is absolutely clear that such works over the years Soviet power were prohibited.

Once the famous Russian singer Alexander Vertinsky sang a song about cadets. For this he was summoned to the Cheka and asked: “Are you on the side of the counter-revolution?” Vertinsky replied: “I feel sorry for them. Their lives could be useful to Russia. You can’t forbid me to feel sorry for them.”

“We will prohibit breathing if we find it necessary! We will manage without these bourgeois fosterlings.”

I got acquainted with different works about the civil war, both poetic and prosaic, and saw different approaches of the authors to what was depicted, different points of view on what was happening.

In this abstract I will analyze three works in more detail: Alexander Fadeev’s novel “Destruction,” Artyom Vesely’s unfinished novel “Russia, Washed in Blood,” and Boris Lavrenev’s story “The Forty-First.”

Alexander Fadeev's novel "Destruction" is one of the most striking works depicting the heroics of the civil war.

Fadeev himself spent his youth in the Far East. There he actively participated in the events of the Civil War, fighting in the red partisan detachments. The impressions of those years were reflected in the story “Against the Current” (1923), in the story “Spill” (1924), the novel “Destruction” (1927) and the unfinished epic “The Last of the Udege” (1929-1940). When Fadeev conceived the idea for the novel “Destruction,” the last battles were still raging on the Far Eastern outskirts of Russia. “The main outlines of this topic,” Fadeev noted, “appeared in my mind back in 1921 - 1922.”

The book was highly appreciated by readers and many writers. They wrote that “Destruction” “opens a truly new page in our literature”, that “the main types of our era” were found in it, classified the novel as one of the books that “gives a broad, truthful and talented picture of the civil war”, they emphasized that “Destruction” showed "what a large and serious force our literature has in Fadeev." In Mayhem there is no character backstory leading up to the action. But in the story about the life and struggle of a partisan detachment for three months, the writer, without deviating from the main plot, includes significant details from past life heroes (Levinson, Morozka, Mechik, etc.), explaining the origins of their character and moral qualities.

There are about thirty characters in the novel (including episodic ones). This is unusually short for a work about the Civil War. This is explained by the fact that Fadeev’s focus is on the depiction of human characters. He loves to spend a long time and carefully explore separate personality, observe her at different moments in public and private life.

War episodes in the novel are given little space. Their description is subject to an in-depth analysis of changes in the inner world of the participants in the struggle. The main event - the military defeat of a partisan detachment - begins to play a noticeable role in the fate of the heroes only from the middle of the work (Chapter 10 - “The Beginning of the Defeat”). The first half of the novel is a leisurely narrative about human destinies and characters, the life orientation of the heroes during the years of the revolution. The author then shows the battle as a test of the people. And during military operations, the writer pays attention primarily to the behavior and experiences of the participants in the battles. Where he was, what he was doing, what this or that hero was thinking about - these are the questions that concern Fadeev.

“A real person awakens at his best when faced with a great challenge.” This conviction of Fadeev determined him artistic technique- complete the characterization of a person by depicting his behavior in a difficult situation that requires the highest effort.

If we take the purely external shell of the development of events in the novel “Destruction,” then this is really the story of the defeat of Levinson’s partisan detachment, because A.A. Fadeev uses for the story one of the most dramatic moments in the history of the partisan movement in the Far East, when the joint efforts of the White Guard and Japanese troops Heavy blows were dealt to the Primorye partisans.

By the end of the novel, a tragic situation develops: the partisan detachment finds itself surrounded by the enemy. The way out of this situation required great sacrifices. The novel ends with the death of the best people in the detachment. Only nineteen remained alive. But the spirit of the fighters is not broken. The novel affirms the idea of the invincibility of the people in a just war.

The system of images of "Destruction", taken as a whole, reflected the real correlation of the main social forces of our revolution. It was attended by the proletariat, peasants and intelligentsia, led by the Bolshevik Party. Accordingly, “Destruction” shows the “coal flame” at the forefront of the struggle, the peasants, the intellectual devoted to the people - the doctor Stashinsky, the Bolshevik - commander Levinson.

However, the heroes of the novel are not just “representatives” of certain social groups, but also unique individuals. The calm and reasonable Goncharenko, the hot-tempered and hasty Dubov in his judgments, the willful and enthusiastic Morozka, the submissive and compassionate Varya, the charming, combining the naivety of a young man and the courage of a fighter Baklanov, the brave and impetuous Metelitsa, the modest and strong-willed Levinson.

The images of Baklanov and Metelitsa, whose youth coincided with the revolution, open a portrait gallery of young heroes, so richly and poetically presented in Fadeev’s subsequent work, and especially in his novel “The Young Guard.”

Baklanov, who imitated the Bolshevik Levinson in everything, becomes a true hero during the struggle. Let us recall the lines preceding the episode of his heroic death: “... his naive, high-cheeked face, slightly leaning forward, waiting for an order, burned with that genuine and greatest of passions, in the name of which the best people from their detachment died.”

The former shepherd Metelitsa stood out in the partisan detachment for his exceptional courage. His courage admires those around him. In reconnaissance, in White Guard captivity, during cruel execution Metelitsa showed a high example of fearlessness. The vitality surged through him in an inexhaustible spring. “This man could not sit still for a minute - he was all fire and movement, and his predatory eyes always burned with an insatiable desire to catch up with someone and fight.” Metelitsa is a hero-nugget, formed in the elements of working life. There were a lot of people like that. The revolution brought them out of obscurity and helped them fully reveal their wonderful human qualities and capabilities. The blizzard represents their destiny.

Each actor"Destruction" brings something of its own to the novel. But in accordance with the main theme of the work - the re-education of man in the revolution - the artist focused his attention, on the one hand, on the ideological leader of the detachment - the communist Levinson, and on the other - on a representative of the revolutionary masses in need of ideological re-education, which is Morozka. Fadeev also showed those people who accidentally found themselves in the camp of the revolution were incapable of a real revolutionary struggle (Mechik).

The particularly important role of Levinson, Morozka and Mechik in the development of the plot is emphasized by the fact that the author names them or mainly devotes many chapters of the novel to them.

With all the passion of the communist writer and revolutionary A.A. Fadeev sought to bring the bright time of communism closer. This humanistic belief in a beautiful person permeated the most difficult pictures and situations in which his heroes found themselves.

For Fadeev, a revolutionary is impossible without striving for a bright future, without faith in a new, beautiful, kind and pure person. The image of such a revolutionary is the commander of the partisan detachment Levinson.

This is one of the first realistically truthful types of communists in young Soviet prose who led the people's struggle on the fronts of the Civil War.

Levinson is called a man of “a special, correct breed.” Is it so? Nothing like this. He is a completely ordinary person, with weaknesses and shortcomings. Another thing is that he knows how to hide and suppress them. Levinson knows neither fear nor doubt? Does he always have unmistakably accurate solutions in stock? And that's not true. And he has doubts, and confusion, and painful mental discord. But he “did not share his thoughts and feelings with anyone, he presented ready-made “yes” and “no.” It is impossible without this. The partisans who entrusted their lives to him should not know about any discord and doubts of the commander...

The actions of the communist Levinson were guided by “a huge thirst, incomparable to any other desire, for a new, beautiful, strong and kind person.” He sought to cultivate such character traits in the people he led. Levinson is always with them, he is completely absorbed in everyday, everyday educational work, small and imperceptible at first glance, but great in its historical significance. Therefore, the scene of the public trial of the guilty Morozka is especially indicative. Having convened peasants and partisans to discuss Morozka’s offense, the commander told those gathered: “This is a common matter, as you decide, so it will be.” He said - and “went out like a wick, leaving the gathering in the dark to decide the matter on its own.” When the discussion of the issue took on a chaotic character, the speakers began to get confused in details and “nothing could be understood,” Levinson quietly but clearly said: “Let’s, comrades, take turns... We’ll talk at once - we won’t solve anything.”

Platoon commander Dubov, in his angry and passionate speech, demanded Morozka’s expulsion from the detachment. Levinson, appreciating the speaker’s noble outburst of indignation and at the same time wanting to warn him and all those present against excessive decisions, again quietly intervened in the discussion:

“Levinson grabbed the platoon commander by the sleeve from behind.

Dubov... Dubov... - he said calmly. - Move a little - you’re blocking people.

Dubov’s charge immediately disappeared, the platoon commander stopped short, blinking in confusion.”

Levinson's attitude towards the masses of workers and peasants is imbued with a sense of revolutionary humanism; he always acts as their teacher and friend. In the last chapter, when the detachment has gone through a path of difficult trials, we see Levinson tired, sick, and fallen into a state of temporary indifference to everything around him. And only “they were the only ones who were not indifferent, close to him, these exhausted, faithful people, closer than anything else, closer even to himself, because he never for a second ceased to feel that he owed something to them...”. This devotion to the "exhausted faithful people“, the feeling of one’s moral obligation to serve them, forcing one to go with the masses and at the head of them until the last breath, is the highest revolutionary humanity, the highest beauty of the civic spirit that distinguishes communists.

But two episodes of the novel cannot but be alarming, namely the confiscation of a pig from a Korean and the poisoning of Frolov. IN in this case Levinson operates on the principle: “The end justifies the means.” In this regard, Levinson appears before us, who does not stop at any cruelty to save the squad. In this matter, he is helped by Stashinsky, a doctor who took the Hippocratic oath! And the doctor himself and, it would seem, Levinson come from an intelligent society. To what extent must one change in order to kill a person or condemn an entire family to starvation? But aren’t the Koreans and his family the very people in the name of whose bright future there is a civil war?

Levinson's image should not be assessed as an ideal personification of the spiritual image of a communist figure. He is not free from some misconceptions. So, for example, he believed that “you can lead other people only by pointing out their weaknesses and suppressing, hiding yours from them.”

A communist acting in the role of a leader is characterized not only and not so much by pointing out weaknesses, but by the ability to discover virtues in the people he leads, to instill in them faith in their own strengths, and to encourage their initiative. And only because this is what Levinson did in most cases, the reader recognizes and recognizes him as a typical representative of the communists who worked among the masses on the fronts of the civil war.

The characterization of the Bolshevik Levinson, one of the main characters of the novel “Destruction,” as a person striving and believing in the best, is contained in the following quote: “... everything he thought about was the deepest and most important thing he could think about, because in overcoming this scarcity and poverty was the main meaning of his own life, because there was no Levinson, but there would have been someone else if there had not lived in him a huge thirst for something new, beautiful, strong and incomparable with any other desire. "A good man. But what kind of conversation can there be about a new, wonderful man as long as huge millions are forced to live such a primitive and pitiful, such an unimaginably meager life."

The main idea of the novel is the re-education of a person in the course of revolutionary struggle- is decided mainly on the image of Morozka. Partisan Morozka is a true personification of that mass of ordinary proletarians for whom only the revolution opened the way to spiritual growth and restoration of trampled human dignity.

The main features of his character are revealed in the first chapter of the novel. Morozka resists fulfilling the commander’s assignment, preferring a date with his wife to “boring official travel.” But in response to the commander’s demand - to hand over his weapons and get out of the detachment - he declares that it is “in no way possible” for him to leave the detachment, because he understands participation in the partisan struggle as his lifelong mining business. Having set out on an errand after this stern warning, Morozka, on the way, risking his life, saves the wounded Mechik.

These episodes revealed the essence of Morozka’s nature: before us is a man with a proletarian worldview, but insufficient consciousness. The feeling of proletarian brotherhood dictates to Morozka the right actions at decisive moments of the struggle: he cannot leave the detachment, he must save a wounded comrade. But in everyday life, the hero showed indiscipline, rudeness in his treatment of women, and could drink.

People like Morozka made up the mass army of the revolution, and participation in the struggle was for them a great school of ideological and moral re-education. The new reality has revealed the unsuitability of the old “norms” of behavior. Partisan Morozka stole the melons. From the point of view of his previous life experience, this is an acceptable act. And suddenly now the commander is gathering a peasant gathering to judge Morozka by public opinion. The hero received a lesson in communist morality.

In the revolutionary struggle, yesterday's slaves regained their lost sense of human dignity. Let us remember the scene at the ferry, when Morozka found himself in the role of organizer of a crowd frightened by the imaginary proximity of the Japanese. “Morozka, having found himself in this confusion, wanted, out of old habit (“for fun”), to scare him even more, but for some reason he changed his mind and, jumping off his horse, began to calm him down... He suddenly felt like a big, responsible person... rejoicing in the unusual his role." Thus, in the everyday phenomena of partisan life, Fadeev with rare insight comprehended the moral result of the revolutionary struggle, its echo in the human heart, its ennobling effect on the moral character of the individual.

Participation in big events enriched Morozka’s life experience. His spiritual life became deeper, the first “unusually heavy thoughts” appeared, and the need to comprehend his actions and the world around him was born. Before, before the revolution, living in a mining village, he did a lot thoughtlessly: life seemed simple, unsophisticated and even “fun” to him. After his experience in the partisan detachment, Morozka overestimated his previous life, his “careless” mischief, he now tried to get on the right road, “on which people like Levinson, Baklanov, Dubov walked.” During the revolution, he turned into a conscious, thinking person.

“The Defeat” by Alexander Fadeev, together with “Chapaev” by Dmitry Furmanov and “The Iron Stream” by Alexander Serafimovich, are bright milestones on the path of realistic comprehension of revolutionary changes in the life and creation of the people. But for all the commonality of the novels, each author has his own approach to the topic, his own style of artistic illumination. Serafimovich depicted the process of the birth of revolutionary consciousness among the masses primarily on the basis of their own experience of struggle. Furmanov and Fadeev spoke about the great role of the party in organizing the revolutionary struggle of the people and in their ideological and moral education. They showed beauty and greatness socialist revolution as the beauty and greatness of advanced ideas that raise the self-awareness of the masses and direct their spontaneous revolutionary impulse towards a high goal.

But the main thing in the novel is its optimistic idea, which is manifested in the final words: “... it was necessary to live and fulfill one’s duties,” - a call that united life, struggle and overcoming, and in the entire structure of the novel, namely in the arrangement of figures, their destinies and characters. Thanks to all this, the novel does not sound pessimistic, it is optimistic. The optimism of the novel lies in the belief in the victory of the revolution.

The next work paints the revolution with completely different colors and is remembered by different characters and episodes. This is the book by Artyom Vesely “Russia, washed in blood.”

Artem Vesely (real name Nikolai Ivanovich Kochkurov) belonged to the generation of Soviet writers whose youth fell on the years of the revolution and the Civil War. They were shaped by a time of great unrest. Vesely’s arrival in the Reds is quite natural. The son of a Volga hooker, he had a hard time since childhood, combining work - sometimes hard and quite adult - with studying at the Samara elementary school. He became a Bolshevik already in the February Revolution; after October - a fighter in the Red Army. He fought with the White Czechs, then with Denikin, and was at party work. Artyom Vesely noted in his autobiography: “Since the spring of 1917, I have been involved in the revolution. Since 1920, I have been writing.”

In "Russia, Washed in Blood" there is no traditional single plot, held together by the history of the destinies of individual heroes, there is no single intrigue. The originality and strength of the book lies in its reproduction of the “image of the times.” The writer believed that his main task was to embody the image of revolutionary, rallying Russia at the front, at train stations, in sun-scorched steppes, on village streets, in city squares. The style and language of the narrative, its intense pace, dynamic phrases, and the abundance of crowd scenes with their diversity and polyphony correspond to the image of the times.

“Russia, washed in blood” is one of the significant works of Russian literature. It reflects with extraordinary power and truthfulness the great disruption of Russian life during the First World War, the October Revolution and the Civil War. .

Starting from the spring days of 1920, when young Nikolai Kochkurov saw through the window of a carriage the Don and Kuban Cossacks, who had been defeated by the Red Army and now, disarmed, were returning home in marching order on their horses (it was then, by his own admission, “the image of a grandiose books about the civil war" and appeared before him "in full height"), and ending with the second half of the 30s, work was underway on a novel that can be called the main book of the writer.

The work developed as a single artistic whole for a separate publication in 1932. It was then that a two-part division appeared - into “two wings”, and between the “wings” there were sketches, which the author himself interpreted as “short, one or two pages, completely independent and complete stories, connected with the main text of the novel with their hot breath, place action, theme and time..."

The action of the first part of the novel takes place in the south: Russian positions on the Turkish front during the First World War, return from the front, civil war in the Caucasus and near Astrakhan. The action of the second part is transferred to the middle Volga. None of the characters from the first part are included in the second: thus, there are no plot motivations that bind both parts together. Each of the two parts is a spatially closed narrative within itself.

Closed spatially, they are also closed in time. The first part covers the initial period of the civil war, when the previous national and general ideological institutions were being broken down. This is the period when, according to John Reed, “old Russia was no more”: “The formless society melted, flowed like lava into the primeval heat, and from the stormy sea of flame a powerful and ruthless class struggle emerged, and with it the still fragile, slowly solidifying cores new formations." The second part covers the final stage of the civil war, when the whites had already been driven away, the “nuclei of new formations” were structurally identified, a new state power was formed and this power entered into complex relations with the peasantry - relations fraught with tragic conflicts.

Consequently, the first and second parts of “Russia, Washed in Blood” are two moments in the development of the revolution, connected to each other according to the principle of historical sequence.

The country is up in arms. Artem Vesely creates a sense of drama and grandeur through the activity of his speech style and the emotional intensity of the plot of the story.

The chapters of the first and second parts open with the author's folklore stylized openings:

"There is a revolution in Russia- The mother earth trembled, the white light became clouded...";

" There is a revolution in Russia, all of Russia- rally";

" There is a revolution in Russia, all of Russia is at knifepoint";

" There is a revolution in Russia- all over Raseyushka thunderstorms are thundering, showers are noisy";

" There is a revolution in Russia, the whole Raseyushka took fire and swam with blood";

" There is a revolution in Russia- ardor, ardor, rage, flood, fitful water";

" There is a revolution in Russia- villages in the heat, cities in delirium";

" There is a revolution in Russia- the flames broke out and thunderstorms passed everywhere";

" There is a revolution in Russia- dust rose in a column from all the light...";

" There is a revolution in Russia- The country is boiling in blood, on fire...".

Carrying the memory of the epic archaic, the beginnings give the novel's speech style a tradition of solemn elation of the narrative, creating a feeling of shock at what is happening. At the same time, the plot of the story is not reduced to a layer of folklore stylization. The reader gets an idea of how the reality exploded by the revolution lives and develops from different sides, as if from different people, sometimes through the vision of a narrator close to the author.

The seventeenth - the beginning of the eighteenth year: a flood of destructive hatred spreads across Russia. A terrible in its simplicity story emerges from an ordinary soldier, Maxim Kuzhel, about how a commander was killed at a rally on the positions of the Turkish Front: “We tore the commander’s ribs, trampled on his intestines, and our atrocity only gained strength...”

This is really just the beginning. What follows will be a series of episodes in which reprisals against people who personify the hated tsarist regime become a system, a stable line of behavior, so to speak, a common thing - so common that the murder of even a large crowd of curious people is not able to gather - it’s not interesting, we see, we know:

"There are three crowds in the station garden. One- played toss, another- they killed the station chief and in the third, largest crowd, a Chinese boy showed tricks..."

" A large black-bearded soldier, pushing aside people and sucking the last chicken leg as he walked, flew like a kite to finish off the station commander: they said he was still breathing".

As we see, centrifugal tendencies of existence predominate - the desire to overturn and trample all previous life. There are no valuables left - everything is negative.

These are still the beginnings - the narrative is just gaining height. It is characteristic, however, that in the plot of the novel, the sailor ship republic appears as an episodic phenomenon, as a short-term military brotherhood, which, according to Vesely, does not have a social perspective as an independent organizing force: with the death of the fleet, the existence of the ship republic ends; Under the influence of the Bolshevik mechanic Yegorov, in response to his “short and simple word,” the sailors enlist in the detachment and are sent to the front, to join the ranks of the Red Army.

Artem Vesely reveals the dramatic complexity of social life in the transition period in symmetrically corresponding episodes of the first and second parts. Contradictions separate Cossacks and settlers in the North Caucasus, rich and poor men in the Trans-Volga village of Khomutovo, hungry cities and a relatively well-fed village.

Soldiers returning from the front dream of redistributing the Kuban lands on the basis of equality, since “a rich land, a free side” contains the Cossack class satiety and next to it the degraded existence of newcomer men. In the same village, Cossacks and newcomers settle separately, mutually separating themselves according to the principle: poverty - wealth.

"On the Cossack side- and a bazaar, and a cinema, and a gymnasium, and a large, splendid church, and a dry high bank, on which a brass band played on holidays, and in the evenings the walking and bawling youth gathered. White huts and rich houses under tiles, planks and iron stood in strict order, hiding in the greenery of cherry orchards and acacias. Great spring water came to visit the Cossacks, right under the windows".

It is no coincidence that the novel compositionally correlates the ending of the chapter “Bitter Hangover” (the first part) and the chapter “Khomutovo Village” (the second part). The whites took Ivan Chernoyarov to the market square to hang him: “Until the very last minute of his death, he surrounded the executioners with a red-hot obscenity and spat in their eyes.” This is the result of "Bitter Hangover". In the chapter “Khomutovo Village”, a worldly bull named Anarchist, unleashed from his leash, enters into an absurdly desperate single combat with a grain train:

"The locomotive skidded, panted wearily, groaned and dragged its tail with such difficulty that it seemed to move no more than one fathom per minute. The anarchist whipped himself on the sides with a tail as heavy as a rope with a fluffy tip at the end, threw sand with his hooves and, bending his head to the ground, with a deadly roar, quickly rushed to meet the locomotive And thrust his mighty horns into the chest of the locomotive... The lights had already been knocked down, the front end had been crushed, but the locomotive- black and snorting- was advancing: on the rise the driver could not stop. ...A white bone splashed out from under the cast iron wheel. The train passed Khomutovo without stopping, - on the rise the driver could not stop...".

Let us pay attention to the twice repeated “the driver could not stop on the rise” - this is a signal that the law of historical inevitability is in effect. The bearers of the new statehood come into tragic conflict with the breadwinners of a huge country, representatives of the “earth power”, and supporters of the “third way”. Terrible in its senselessness, the duel between a bull and a locomotive sets the stage for an episode in which the rebels forge “spears, darts, hooks and hooks, with which the chapan army was armed.” This medieval equipment is as powerless against the technically equipped new government as the Anarchist bull is powerless compared to the mechanical power of a steam locomotive. The tragic finale of the fate of Ivan Chernoyarov and the death of the Anarchist under the wheels of an ascending steam locomotive are symbolic: casting a mutual reflection on each other, both episodes are at the same time projected onto the development of the epic action as a whole - they prepare the defeat of the “straw force”, which is trying and cannot find for itself "third way".

The ability to tell the bitter truth about the victims of the tragic conflict revealed the dialectical capacity of Artem Vesely’s artistic vision, which incorporates both “you can’t feel sorry” and “you can’t not feel sorry,” to use the well-known aphorism from A. Neverov’s story “Andron the Unlucky.” In how Ivan Chernoyarov, who finds himself in a dead end, dies, how a bull with the meaningful nickname Anarchist falls under the locomotive wheels, how the “chapans” are defeated, the author’s through-and-through idea manifests itself, allowing us to talk about “Russia, washed in blood” as a novel of tragic intensity .

The tragedy is already set in the introductory chapter “Trampling Death on Death.” A panoramic image of the all-Russian grief of the First World War appears here as a disaster befalling individual human destinies:

"A hot bullet pecked the bridge of the nose of fisherman Ostap Kalaida- and his white hut on the seashore, near Taganrog, became orphaned. Sormovo mechanic Ignat Lysachenko fell and wheezed and twitched.- his wife will sip dashingly with three small children in her arms. Young volunteer Petya Kakurin, thrown up by a landmine explosion along with clods of frozen earth, fell into the ditch like a burnt match, - this will be the joy of the old people in distant Barnaul when the news about their son reaches them. The Volga hero Yukhan stuck his head in a mound and remained there- don't wave the ax at him anymore and don't sing songs in the forest. The company commander, Lieutenant Andrievsky, lay down next to Yukhan, - and he grew up in his mother's affection".

We learn nothing more about the victims and their families, but the rhythm is set: any war is terrible, contrary to human nature, and a civil war is doubly tragic.

The final lines of “Russia, washed in blood” are also indicative: “Native country... Smoke, fire - there is no end!” In the context of the work, we have a novel-style open ending: the plot rushes into an extensively expanded future; life appears as fundamentally incomplete, not knowing the stops, constantly moving forward.

In order to preserve and consolidate “Russia, washed in blood” exactly how novel unity, Artem Vesely makes a bold attempt to place relatively complete individual destinies and separate, also relatively complete in themselves, destinies of social groups in a special section - “Etudes”, which, as already mentioned, act as a kind of spacer between the first and second parts of the novel . Before us is a chain of short stories, each of which is built on a plot-exhausted event.

The grandiose metaphor in the title of the book is projected onto both a panoramic image of mass life and a close-up image of individual human destinies. Both the title and the subtitle (“Fragment”) led the writer to new horizons of boundless reality, which offered new artistic tasks. It is not surprising that, having published the book in several editions, the writer continued to work on it. Artem Vesely wanted to complete the novel with battles on the Polish front, the storming of Perekop, and intended to introduce into the novel the image of Lenin, episodes of the activities of the Comintern...

It was not possible to implement these plans: the writer, as already said, fell victim to lawlessness. However, we can say with confidence: even in its current, relatively unfinished form, the novel took place. He reveals to us the scope of the "common people's revolution", its tragic collisions and its hopes.

Not a single writer of those years had such powerful confidence in his speech - speech directly received from the people. Words, gentle and rough, menacing and spiritual, were combined in fragmentary periods, as if escaping from the lips of the people. The rudeness and authenticity of some of the shouts repelled lovers of the elegant prose of Turgenev's style. Therefore, the wonderful epic “Russia, washed in blood” did not cause long discussions and deep assessments, most likely serving as an example of revolutionary spontaneous prowess, and not a completely new literary phenomenon. Artem Vesely tried, and not only tried, but also carried out a novel without a hero, or rather with a mass hero, in which such a multiplicity of features of the peoples that formed the population of the former Russian Empire that it was not possible to perceive these features as uniting any one person. None of the writers of the past and present known to me had such freedom of expressive speech, such reckless and at the same time strong-willed proclamation of it. In my opinion, Artem Vesely could have become a completely unprecedented and unheard of Soviet writer, opening the way to the entire language, all the feelings of the people, without embellishment or exaggeration, without pedagogical considerations, which is allowed in the structure and style of the work.

For many years, the name of Artem Vesely was not mentioned anywhere, his books were removed from state libraries, and generations grew up who had never heard of this writer.

In 1988, Goslitizdat published a one-volume book by Artem Vesely, since then his works - and above all "Russia, Washed in Blood" - have been published more than once both in our country and abroad, many readers are rediscovering Artem Vesely. Valentin Rasputin wrote about this in 1988: “The prose of Artem Vesely was a revelation for me back in my student days. Today I re-read it. A considerable part of the Soviet classics ages very noticeably over time, this book does not face a similar fate, because it is talented and in many ways a modern book."

Works of Boris Andreevich Lavrenev (Sergeev)

The work of Boris Andreevich Lavrenev (Sergeev) also represents the Soviet branch of Russian literature in a very unique way. He is among those who sincerely saw in the whirlwind of the era the painful but inevitable birth of a new, more just world. Lavrenev's works energetically present revolutionary romance with its expectation of immediate earthly happiness. The central image is the elements running wild. As Lavrenev says, “a raging, blood-smelling, disturbing wind.” The writer masterfully mastered bright and effective words. This can be seen in his works “Wind”, “Forty-First”, “A Story about a Simple Thing”, “The Seventh Satellite”, “Urgent Freight”.

But here's what's amazing. Lavrenev’s remarkable story “The Forty-First,” written in Leningrad in November 1924, clearly shows that there are no winners in civil wars. Both “ours” and “not ours” suffer. Did the fisherwoman Maryutka, a Red Army fighter, become happier by killing the captive lieutenant, the white officer Govorukha-Otrok, whom she had managed to fall in love with?” Suddenly he heard behind him the deafening, solemn roar of the planet dying in the fire and storm.<…>She splashed her knees into the water, tried to raise her dead, mutilated head and suddenly fell on the corpse, thrashing, staining her face in crimson clots, and howled in a low, oppressive howl:

My dear! What have I done? Wake up, my sick one! Sineglaasenky!"

Here it is, the epigraph to all civil wars- crying over the body " mortal enemy"!

The story "The Forty-First" was first published in the newspaper "Zvezda" in 1924. Lavrenev became one of the popular young Soviet prose writers, and each new work of his was met with lively attention. The first editor of the Leningrad magazine "Zvezda", the later famous Soviet diplomat I.M. Maisky recalled how this story appeared in the magazine, which became close and dear to the writer. “Once, when leaving home from the editorial office, I took several manuscripts with me. I did this quite often, because it was difficult to read manuscripts in the editorial office: phones were always distracting, administrative work, and most importantly, conversations with visiting authors. After dinner, I sat down at my desk and began looking through the materials I had taken with me. Two or three manuscripts seemed boring and mediocre to me - I put them aside. At the same time I thought: “It’s a bad day - not a single pearl was found.” Hesitantly, I took up the last remaining manuscript: will it give me anything? I turned the first page and saw the headline “Forty-one” - it interested me. I remembered that the manuscript was brought by a tall, thin, brown-haired man of about thirty, who had recently arrived in Leningrad from Central Asia. I began to read, and suddenly some kind of hot wave hit my heart. Page after page ran before me, and I could not tear myself away from them. Finally I finished reading the last sentence. I was delighted and excited. Then he grabbed the phone and, although it was already about twelve o’clock at night, he immediately called Lavrenev. I congratulated him on his wonderful work and said that I would publish it in the next issue of Zvezda. Boris Andreevich was delighted and at the same time somewhat embarrassed...

“The Forty-First” appeared in the sixth issue of Zvezda and caused a sensation in Leningrad literary circles. Lavrenev once told me about this:

“I feel like a fair wind is blowing my sails.”

What is characteristic of the story “The Forty-First,” which begins with the image of a Red Army detachment breaking out of the enemy ring, and not with Maryutka’s shot on the island? The first chapter seems to be “superfluous” in the story; it appeared, according to the writer’s playfully ironic remark, “solely out of necessity.” The author needed to show the heroine as a part of the detachment, a part of the revolution. Her exceptional position in the Red Army detachment makes it possible to deeper reveal the heroine’s spiritual world, to show that under her leather jacket beats a sensitive heart, in which there is a place not only for hatred, but also for love, compassion and other human feelings.

In my opinion, the problems and intent of the story “The Forty-First,” in my opinion, helps to understand another curious fact. On August 21, 1923, the Tashkent “Red Star”, with which B. Lavrenev was closely associated, published G. Shengeli’s poem “Girl”, to the heroine who, like Maryutka, will have to make a choice between the revolution and her beloved. In this case, we are only interested in its overlap with the Forty-First. The White Guard officer depicted in the poem has some similarities with the Youth Govorukha: “He is dexterous, vigilant, devilishly smart... he has not reconciled himself.” A girl sent to find out a secret conspiracy against the revolution encountered a cunning and dangerous enemy and, to her misfortune, fell in love with him.

Everything broke, everything collapsed: because he

The enemy remains, but the beloved has become!

Betray your loved one? betray the great one?

What scales should I use to weigh them??

The girl fulfilled her duty, exposed the enemy, but could not find a way out of the conflicting feelings that gripped her and shot herself. The author does not condemn her:

Must- performed. Now let her

Be yourself for a moment.

B. Lavrenev reviewed "Turkestan Truth". It is possible that the poem to some extent influenced the design of one of Lavrenev’s best works.

Let us recall the plot of the story.

In the Aral Sea, on the way to Kazalinsk, a boat with three Red Guards escorting a captured lieutenant suffers an accident. During the accident, two guards die at sea, and the Red Guard girl Maryutka and a captured officer end up on a small island. An experienced fisherman, she quickly gets used to the deserted, empty shore, blown by icy winds, quickly finds shelter and builds a fireplace. Thus, she saves the life of the lieutenant, for whom pity suddenly awakens in her, which then develops into an even stronger feeling, previously unknown to her.

The composition of the story "The Forty-First" is clearly defined. Its main action fits into the period of time from shot to shot. For the first time in her combat life, Maryutka missed. The heroine's mistake became the author's gain. Lavrenev did not see anything worthy of attention in the heroine’s first shot. The two met on opposite sides of the barricades - one must kill the other - this is the cruel, merciless law of class struggle.

In the finale, Maryutka’s shot sounds again, sounds with stunning, tragic power. Before us are not only enemies, but also young, strong, beautiful people who have fallen in love with each other. A short remark by the author completes the story: “Dazed people looked on from the longboat that crashed into the sand.” It was people, not enemies, not White Guards, although that was exactly them. But Lavrenev emphasizes: people. They don’t yet know everything about the drama that happened on the island, but they feel this drama, which has become a tragedy for the heroine.

To realize his plan, the writer finds a successful plot and plot that develops rapidly. In order for the shot in the finale to sound with such stunning power, the heroes had to get closer. Their rapprochement occurs through mutual recognition. Initially, for Maryutka, people like Govorukha-Otrok are not people at all, they are “strangers,” they are enemies of the “poor proletariat,” and she mercilessly kills them, keeping her harsh mortal account. By the way, in the draft we discovered it was much larger: Maryutka destroyed 75 enemies with sniper shots. Maryutka's mistake gives her the opportunity to take a closer look at one of her enemies and get to know him better.

Next to Maryutka is the “crimson” commissar Evsyukov. Unpretentious, awkward, small, he is attractive because he sincerely and selflessly defends a new life. Now we need to fight for it, and Evsyukov is merciless and swift, like a swing of a blade.

Let us remember the most difficult moment for the detachment, when the detachment commissar Evsyukov decides to make his way to Kazalinsk. He does not hide from the fighters that not everyone will reach the goal, but “we must go, therefore, comrades, the revolution... for the working people of the whole world!” And he reminds the fighters of their revolutionary duty, the consciousness of which should help them overcome all obstacles. Evsyukov tries to explain not only the tasks of the struggle, but also the phenomena of the surrounding world to the fighters, pointing out that “there is no master, but everything has its own physical line.”

Let us recall another episode when Evsyukov mobilizes a camel caravan necessary for the campaign. Under other conditions, he would not have resorted to such a measure, but here he acts “out of revolutionary necessity,” and the awareness of the necessity of the step he is taking (without camels the detachment would have died) has the force of an immutable law for him.

Saving his squad from death, he is forced to take away camels from the Kirghiz (remember Levinson from Fadeev’s novel). This is unpleasant for him, but there is no other way out. “The commissioner waved it off, ran away, became furious and, wincing with pity, poked his revolver into the flat noses, into the weathered sharp cheekbones... - Yes, you understand, your oak head, that now we, too, will die without camels. I’m not robbing, but out of revolutionary necessity, for temporary use.” And then he poked the Kyrgyz with a receipt smeared on a piece of newspaper, which camel owners had no use for at all.

With a warm smile, Lavrenev talks about his heroine: “And Maryutka is special among them.” Soft irony is the main tonality of the beautiful, integral image of the “orphan fisherman”. The words found by the author in “The Forty-First” are simple and clear, and just as clear and simple for Maryutka is her only truth. The writer's irony softens his pathos and makes the images of people of modern times lively and vivid.

Maryutka was considered the best shooter in the detachment: she had already knocked out forty enemy officers from the ranks with her well-aimed, never-missing fire. And so - “Lieutenant Govorukha-Otrok should have become forty-first on Maryutka’s death account of the Guard. And he became first on the account of girlish joy. A tender craving for the lieutenant, for his thin hands, for his quiet voice, and most of all for his eyes, grew in Maryutka’s heart extraordinary blue."

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