Literature during the Civil War. The theme of revolution and civil war in Russian literature. II. Introductory speech of the teacher
Volgograd 2004
Literature abstract
« The Civil War in the Works of Russian Writers
XX century"
Completed:
11A student
Arkhipov Alexey
Teacher:
Skorobogatova O.G.
Introduction………………………………………………………………….3
in the work of Russian writers.
1.1. A.A. Fadeev - "the most important initiator of Soviet literature
Tours, singer of the youth of the new world and the new man.
The novel "The Defeat"………………………………………………__
1.2. The contradictions inherent in life in the epoch of class struggle,
depicted in the novel by M.A. Sholokhov "Quiet Flows the Don"…….__
1.3. The conflict between the human destiny of the intelligentsia and
the course of history in the works of M.M. Bulgakov "Days
Turbinnykh" and "White Guard"………………………………__
1.4. Cavalry by I.E. Babel - "chronicle of everyday atrocities",
times of revolution and civil war…………………...__
Conclusion……………………………………………………………….__
Bibliography………………………………………………………__
Introduction
Here God is fighting the devil,
and the battlefield is people's hearts!
F. M. Dostoevsky
The civil war of 1918-1920 is one of the most tragic periods in the history of Russia; it claimed the lives of millions, forced the masses of people of different classes and political views, but of one faith, one culture and history, to face in a cruel and terrible struggle. War in general, and civil war in particular, is an action that is initially unnatural, but after all, at the origin of any event is a Man, his will and desire: even L. N. Tolstoy argued that an objective result in history is achieved by adding the wills of individual people into a single whole, in one result. Man is a tiny, sometimes invisible, but at the same time irreplaceable detail in the vast and complex mechanism of war. Domestic writers, who reflected the events of 1918-1920 in their works, created a number of vital, realistic and vivid images, putting the fate of a Man in the center of the story and showing the impact of war on his life, inner world, scale of norms and values.
Any extreme situation puts a person in extremely difficult conditions and forces him to show the most significant and deepest properties of character; in the struggle between good and evil principles, the soul wins the strongest, and the act performed by a person becomes the result and consequence of this struggle.
The revolution is too huge an event in its scale not to be reflected in literature. And only a few writers and poets who were under its influence did not touch this topic in their work.
It must also be borne in mind that the October Revolution, a most important stage in the history of mankind, gave rise to the most complex phenomena in literature and art.
A lot of paper was written in response to the revolution and counter-revolution, but only a little that came out from the pen of the creators of stories and novels could fully reflect everything that moved the people in such difficult times and exactly in the direction in which it is necessary. was the highest posts, not having a single person. Also, the moral breakdown of people who have fallen into the most difficult position of the beast of the revolution is not everywhere described. And the one who stirred up, unleashed a war ... Did they feel better? No! They, too, ended up in the hands of the monster that they themselves gave birth to. These people are from high society, the flower of the entire Russian people - the Soviet intelligentsia. They were subjected to the most difficult trials by the second, most of the population of the country, who intercepted the progress, the further development of the war. Some of them, especially young people, broke down...
Many writers have used various methods of embodying and conveying all their thoughts about the revolution in full and in the form that they themselves experienced while being in the very centers of the civil war.
For example, A.A. Fadeev was the same person of revolutionary cause as his heroes. His whole life and its circumstances were such that A.A. Fadeev was born into a family of rural progressive-minded intellectuals. And immediately after school, he rushed into battle. About such times and the same young guys drawn into the revolution, he wrote: “So we all parted for the summer, and when we came back in the fall of 18, a white coup had already taken place, a bloody battle was already going on, in which the whole people, the world was drawn into split ... Young people whom life itself led directly to the revolution - such were we - did not look for each other, but immediately recognized each other by voice; the same thing happened to young people who went into the counter-revolution. The one who did not understand who was going with the flow, carried away by fast or slow, sometimes even muddy waves unknown to him, he grieved, offended why he was so far from the shore, on which yesterday still close people were still visible ... "
But the choice did not yet determine fate. Among those who left with A.A. Fadeev to the partisans, there were also "falconers", there were also those who "came not to fight, but simply to hide from the possibility of being mobilized into Kolchak's army."
Another example is M.A. Bulgakov "a man of amazing talent, internally honest and principled and very intelligent" makes a great impression. It should be said that he did not immediately accept and understand the revolution. He, like A.A. Fadeev, saw a lot during the revolution, he happened to go through a difficult period of the civil wave, which was later described in the novel "The White Guard", the plays "Days of the Turbins", "Running" and numerous stories, including the Hetmanate and Petliurism in Kiev, the decomposition of Denikin's army. There is a lot of autobiographical in the novel "The White Guard", but it is not only a description of one's life experience during the years of the revolution and the civil war, but also an insight into the problem of "Man and the epoch"; it is also the study of an artist who sees the inextricable link between Russian history and philosophy. This is a book about the fate of classical culture in the formidable era of the scrap of age-old traditions. The problems of the novel are extremely close to Bulgakov, he loved The White Guard more than his other works. Bulgakov fully accepted the revolution and could not imagine life without a cultural upsurge, he worked constantly, intensely and selflessly, contributed to the development of literature and art, became a major Soviet writer and playwright.
Finally I.E. Babel, working as a correspondent for the newspaper "Red Cavalryman" under the pseudonym K. Lyutov in the First Cavalry Army, wrote a cycle of stories "Cavalry" based on diary entries.
Literary critics note that I.E. Babel is very complex in human and literary understanding, in connection with which he was persecuted during his lifetime. After his death, the question of the works created by him is still not resolved, so the attitude towards them is not unambiguous.
We agree with the opinion of K. Fedin: “If the artist’s biography serves as a concrete channel for his idea of the world, then Sholokhov’s worldly lot fell to one of the most turbulent, deepest currents that the social revolution in Russia knows.”
Path of B. Lavrenev: in the fall I went to the front with an armored train, stormed Petliura's Kiev, went to the Crimea. Gaidar's words are also known: "When they ask me how it could happen that I was such a young commander, I answer: this is not an ordinary biography for me, but the time was extraordinary."
Thus, it is clear that many writers could not stand aside from the events of their homeland, among the many social, political, spiritual differences and the reigning confusion, but always honestly fulfilled their literary and civic duty.
How, in what centuries, the stages of the movement of art differ? features of the conflict? The emergence of previously undeveloped plots, genres? The progress of artistic technique, finally?
Of course, all this, and many others too. But, above all, the emergence of a new type of personality, expressing the leading features of the time, embodying the people's desire for the future, for the ideal.
A person in history, literature, philosophy, art is always a priority, more weighty than everything else, relevant at all times. It is from this position that we regard the increase in the relevance of the topic under study, because on the fronts of the civil war, at the head, first of all, people described in works of art - Chapaev, Klychkov, Levinson, Melekhov ...
Literature in vivid images captured the features of real heroes, created collective figures of writers' contemporaries, reflecting the thoughts, aspirations, ideological ordeals and worldview of a whole generation of Russian society, from which its mentality is formed.
These literary aspects allow descendants to substantiate many historical processes, explain the spiritual potential, psychology of the current generation.
That is why this topic is significant and relevant.
We have set the following tasks:
To reveal the formation of a historical idea of the literary process, revealing the theme of the revolution and the civil war in Russia, the significance of the historical conditionality of this subject and issues in Russian literature.
To study and analyze the theme of revolution and civil war in the works of A.A. Fadeev, M.A. Sholokhov, I.E. Babel, M.A. Bulgakov, the views and assessment of literary critics on the reflection of the historical problem by these authors.
Create an idea and identify the most characteristic personality traits of this period, the main socio-spiritual conflicts and values reflected in the literature about the revolution and the civil war.
The value of the works of art we are considering lies in the truthful depiction of the revolution and the civil war, those who, drawn into the era, made the revolution and fought on the fronts.
What was a man like during the revolution and civil war? Why did he go into battle? What was he thinking? How has his attitude changed? People of our generation are interested to know how this person changed, what was new in him, how those qualities that the cruel, bloody time demanded of them were strengthened and established in him, what lessons of history have learned from the experienced humanity.
To this end, we proceed to the presentation of the study.
Chapter 1. The theme of revolution and civil war
in the work of Russian writers.
1.1. A.A. Fadeev is "the most important initiator of Soviet literature, the singer of the youth of the new world and the new man." The novel "Destruction"
Where is he, god? -
lame man chuckled. -
There is no god ... no, no,
no, vigorous louse!
A.A. Fadeev,
A novel that is still in circulation and has stood the test of time is A.A. Fadeev. In the novel, “the cramped little world of a partisan detachment is an artistic miniature of a real picture of a large historical scale. The system of images of The Defeat, taken as a whole, reflected the real-typical correlation of the main social forces of our revolution. It is no coincidence that the core of the partisan detachment was made up of workers, miners, the "coal tribe" constituted the most organized and conscious part of the detachment. These are Dubov, Goncharenko, Baklanov, selflessly devoted to the cause of the revolution. All partisans are united by a single goal of struggle.
With all his passion as a communist writer and revolutionary A.A. Fadeev sought to bring closer the bright time of communism. This humanistic faith in a beautiful person permeated the most difficult pictures and situations in which his heroes fell.
For A.A. Fadeev, a revolutionary is not possible without this striving for a brighter future, without faith in a new, beautiful, kind and pure person.
The characterization of the Bolshevik Levinson, the hero of the novel "Rout", 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 of, because in overcoming this poverty 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 a new, beautiful, strong and kind person, incomparable with any other desire. But how can there be talk about a new, beautiful person as long as huge millions are forced to live such a primitive and miserable, such an inconceivably meager life.
If we take a purely external shell, the development of events, then this is really the story of the defeat of Levinson's partisan detachment. But A.A. Fadeev uses to narrate one of the most dramatic moments in the history of the partisan movement on Far East, when the combined efforts of the White Guard and Japanese troops inflicted heavy blows on the partisans of Primorye.
The optimistic idea of "The Defeat" is not in the final words: "... it was necessary to live and fulfill one's duties", not in this appeal, which united life, struggle and overcoming, but in the entire structure of the novel, precisely in the arrangement of the figures, their destinies and their characters.
You can pay attention to one feature in the construction of "The Rout": each of the chapters not only develops some kind of action, but also contains a complete psychological development, an in-depth description of one of the actors. Some chapters are named after the names of the heroes: "Frost", "Sword", "Levinson", "Intelligence Snowstorm". But this does not mean that these persons act only in these chapters. They take an active part in all events in the life of the entire detachment. Fadeev, as a follower of Leo Tolstoy, explores their characters in all difficult and sometimes compromising circumstances. At the same time, creating more and more new psychological portraits, the writer seeks to penetrate into the innermost corners of the soul, trying to foresee the motives and actions of his characters. With each turn of events, new sides of character are revealed.
To determine the main meaning of the novel, I chose the method of finding the main character of the work. Thus, one can see how the children of the revolution grow up from ordinary, everyday children, as from normal workers who do not differ from each other in any way.
But it is not so easy to answer such a seemingly naive question. One main character can be seen in the commander of the partisan detachment Levinson. Another personality can be imagined by merging together the images of Levinson and Metelitsa, because with their special features they together embody the true heroism of the struggle. The third compositional coloring of the novel lies in the conscious opposition of two images: Frost and Mechik, and in connection with such an intention of the writer, the personality of Morozka comes to the fore. There is even such an option where the true hero of the novel becomes a team - a partisan detachment, composed of many more or less detailed characters.
But all the same, the theme of such a multi-heroic novel is "led" by Levinson, he is given a voice in the most important reflections on the goals of the revolution, on the nature of the relationship between the leaders and the people. Almost all the main characters are correlated, compared and contrasted with him.
For the young Baklanov, the “heroic assistant” to the commander of the detachment, Levinson is “a person of a special, correct breed”, from whom one should learn and follow: “... he knows only one thing - business. Therefore, it is impossible not to trust and not obey such a right person ... ”Imitating him in everything, even in external behavior, Baklanov at the same time quietly adopted valuable life experience - wrestling skills. Morozka refers to the same people of the “special, correct breed” the platoon commander of the miner Dubov, the demolition worker Goncharenko. For him, they become an example worthy of emulation.
In addition to Baklanov, Dubov and Goncharenko, who consciously and purposefully participate in the struggle, the image of Metelitsa, a former shepherd, who “was all fire and movement, and his predatory eyes always burned with an insatiable desire to catch up with someone and fight” is also associated with Levinson. According to Baklanov, the possible path of Metelitsa is also outlined: “How long have you been pasturing horses, and in two years, look, he will be in command of all of us ...” This is a person for whom the revolution is the goal and meaning of existence.
Frost and Mechik are also correlated with the image of Levinson - the two most important figures in the novel. As A.A. Fadeev: “As a result of a revolutionary test, it turned out that Morozka is a higher human type than Mechik, because his aspirations are higher - they determine the development of his personality as higher.”
As for the young Sword, he had one of the main moments in choosing a life path. And as a young and inexperienced man, he chose the romantic path for him. About such moments in the life of A.A. Fadeev said: “... a white coup had already taken place, a bloody battle was already underway, into which all the people were drawn, the world was split, before each young man, not figuratively, but vitally, the question arose: “In which camp to fight?”
A.A. Fadeev, putting Mechik in various positions, shows that his drama is not in the collision of a romantic dream with the harsh reality of life. Sword's consciousness perceives only the external, superficial side of phenomena and events.
The last thing to understand the young man and his fate is a night conversation with Levinson. By this time, quite a few grievances had accumulated. The sword turned out to be little adapted to partisan life. As an outsider, looking at the detachment from the side, he tells Levinson with the utmost, bitter frankness: “Now I don’t trust anyone ... I know that if I were stronger, they would obey me, they would be afraid of me, because everyone here is only with this is considered, everyone is only looking to fill his belly, at least to steal from his comrade for this, and no one cares about everything else ... It even seems to me sometimes that if they got to Kolchak tomorrow, they would also would have served Kolchak and dealt with everyone just as cruelly, but I can’t, and I can’t do that! .. ”
A.A. has Fadeev and another idea: "The end justifies the means." In this regard, Levinson appears before us, who does not stop at any cruelty in order to save the detachment. Stashinsky, who took the Hippocratic oath, helps him in this matter! And the doctor himself and, it would seem, Levinson come from an intelligent society. To what extent you need to change to kill a person. This process of “breaking” a person can be observed, taking into account how Mechik is transformed: “People are different here, I need to break somehow…”
At the end of the novel, we have before us a weeping Levinson, the commander of a defeated partisan detachment:
“... he sat looking down, slowly blinking his long wet eyelashes, and tears rolled down his beard ... Every time Levinson managed to forget himself, he began to look around again in confusion and, remembering that Baklanov was not there, he began to cry again.
So they left the forest - all nineteen.
Sam A.A. Fadeev, defined the main theme of his novel: “In the civil war, the selection of human material takes place, everything hostile is swept away by the revolution, everything incapable of real revolutionary struggle, accidentally falling into the camp of the revolution, is eliminated, and everything that has risen from the true roots of the revolution, from the millions of people, hardens, grows, develops in this struggle. There is a huge transformation of people."
In the main theme of the re-education of man in the revolution, more fully than in others, the ideological content of the novel is expressed; this is reflected in all elements of the work: composition, individual images, the entire figurative system. Emphasizing this idea, ?A. Bushnin? writes: “Each of the main characters of “The Rout” has its own finished, individually expressed image. At the same time, the cohesion of human figures in the novel, the totality of all social, cultural, ideological and moral varieties (Bolshevik Levinson, workers - Morozka, Dubov, Goncharenko, Baklanov, peasants - Metelitsa, Kubrak, intellectuals - Stashinsky, Mechik, etc.) form a complex "contradictory picture of the spiritual formation of a new man, a Soviet citizen, in the practice of revolution"
The invincibility of the revolution lies in its vitality, in the depth of penetration into the consciousness of people who were often the most backward in the past. Like Frost, these people rose to conscious action for the highest historical goals. In Morozok, Fadeev showed a generalized image of a man from the people, the re-education of people in the fire of revolution and civil war, the “reworking of human material”, gave a history of the development of a new consciousness experienced by millions of people in the first years of the new government.
A. Fadeev wrote: “Morozka is a man with a difficult past. He could steal, he could swear rudely, he could treat a woman rudely, he did not understand a lot in life, he could lie, drink. All these traits of his character are undoubtedly his great shortcomings. But in difficult, decisive moments of the struggle, he did what was necessary for the revolution, overcoming his weaknesses. The process of his participation in the revolutionary struggle was the process of the formation of his personality. This was the main optimistic idea of the tragic novel "The Rout", which even now makes it possible to turn to the question of revolutionary humanism, which, having absorbed the progressive ideas of the past, was a new degree of moral development of mankind.
Summing up all the above, it can be noted that the writer in the novel "The Defeat" asserted the triumph of the revolutionary cause, linking it with a truthful, historically concrete reproduction of reality, which he portrayed with all its contradictions, showing the struggle of the new with the old, while showing special interest to show the process of the birth of a new person in the conditions of the new time.
Describing this feature of the novel, K. Fedin wrote: “... in the twenties, A. Fadeev was one of the first who set himself the task of fundamental importance for all literature - the creation of a positive hero - and completed this task in the novel “The Rout” ... "
Concretizing this idea, one can cite the statement of A. Fadeev himself, who, characterizing his creative method, said that he sought, first of all, to more fully “transmit the processes of change in ________ that occur in people, in their desires, aspirations, to show what influences these changes, to show through what stages the development, the formation of the new man of socialist culture takes place.
"The Rout" was a significant event in the history of early Soviet prose, becoming for a time the focus of heated debate about the future fate of literature. The success of Fadeev's novel, an innovative work, is based on high ideological and artistic merits. Having talentedly depicted the process of the formation of a new person, in revolution and civil war, Fadeev established himself as an excellent master of psychological analysis, a thoughtful, penetrating artist who adopted the traditions of classical literature.
1.2. The contradictions inherent in the life of the era of the class struggle, depicted in the novel by M.A. Sholokhov "Quiet Flows the Don"
"I would like my books
helping people become better
become purer in soul, awaken
love for a person, striving actively
fight for the ideas of humanism and human progress.
M.A. Sholokhov
M.A. Sholokhov came to literature with the theme of the birth of a new society in the heat and tragedies of the class struggle. His novels The Quiet Flows the Don and Virgin Soil Upturned received the unanimous and wide recognition of millions of people as a true artistic chronicle of the historical destinies, social aspirations and spiritual life of the people who made a revolution and built a new society. The writer sought to embody the heroism and drama of the revolutionary era, to reveal the strength and wisdom of his native people, to convey to readers "the charm of humanity, and the disgusting essence of cruelty and treachery, meanness and money-grubbing as a terrible creation of a vicious world.
During the Civil War, Sholokhov lived on the Don, served in the food detachment, and participated in the fight against white gangs. After the end of the civil war, Sholokhov worked as a bricklayer, laborer, statistician, accountant.
Sholokhov belongs to the generation of Soviet writers who were shaped by the revolution and the civil war.
In The Quiet Don, Sholokhov appears, first of all, as a master of epic narration. The artist unfolds a vast historical panorama of turbulent dramatic events widely and freely. ²Quiet Don² covers a period of ten years - from 1912 to 1922. Those were years of unprecedented historical saturation: the First World War, the February coup, the October Revolution, the civil war. From the pages of the novel, a holistic image of the era of the greatest changes, revolutionary renewal emerges. Heroes live the life that is the ideal of millions and millions of people. Who are they? Cossacks, workers, farmers and warriors. They all live in the Tatarsky farm, located on the high bank of the Don. A considerable distance separates this farm from the nearest city, news from the big world does not immediately reach the Cossack huts. But it was the farm with its way of life and traditions, mores and customs, it was the restless soul, the “simple and ingenuous mind” of Grigory Melekhov, the fiery heart of Aksinya, the impatient and angular nature of Mishka Koshevoy, the kind soul of the Cossack Christoni, that were for the artist the mirror in which they reflected events of great history and changes in the way of life, consciousness and psychology of people.
The Quiet Don dispelled the legend of class solidity, social and caste isolation of the Cossacks. The same laws of social stratification and class differentiation operate on the Tatar farm as in any place in peasant Russia. Narrating the life of the farm, Sholokhov, in essence, gives a social cross-section of modern society with its economic inequality and class contradictions.
History inevitably “walks” through the pages of the Quiet Don, and the fates of dozens of characters who find themselves at the crossroads of the war are drawn into the epic action. Thunderstorms rumble, warring camps collide in bloody battles, and in the background the tragedy of mental throwing of Grigory Melekhov, who turns out to be a hostage of war, is played out: he is always in the center of terrible events. The action in the novel develops in two plans - historical and domestic, personal. But both plans are given in inseparable unity. Grigory Melekhov is at the center of The Quiet Don, not only in the sense that more attention is paid to him: almost all the events in the novel either take place with Melekhov himself or are somehow connected with him. “Our era is the era of the intensification of the struggle for the Melekhovs ... in the context of the worldwide popularity of the Sholokhov epic, the inaccuracy and limited approach to the image of Melekhov as the image of a renegade, a morally degrading person who is supposedly waiting for inevitable death are especially striking. This contradicts the attitude of the author himself and the majority of readers towards him. Sholokhov teaches the wise combination of political insight and adherence to principles with humanity and sensitivity,” these words belong to A.I. Metchenko, who highly appreciated Sholokhov's epic novel in his articles " Great strength words" and "The Wisdom of the Artist". Sholokhov, with Shakespearean depth, sculpts an image that nowhere and never loses such a human quality as the charm of personality. A.I. Metchenko argues that we have before us not only the image of a Don Cossack lost at the crossroads of history, but also the type of era and that common psychological and political situation in which a person must make his choice: past or future, already experienced and experienced or unknown, unclear.
Recently, the opinion has been expressed that "the educational impact of the image of Melekhov is increasing." What is it, first of all? Probably, in frenzied truth-seeking, in ethical uncompromisingness. In our opinion, this book is instructive and important for young readers because it reminds of the right and obligation of everyone to make their own choice. Despite the fact that Grigory Melekhov is seriously mistaken in his actions, he never prevaricates. The greatness of Melekhov lies in the fact that there is no “second person” in him.
Melekhov is characterized in the novel in many ways. Youth years it is shown against the backdrop of the life and life of the Cossack village. Sholokhov truthfully depicts the patriarchal structure of the life of the village. The character of Grigory Melekhov is formed under the influence of conflicting impressions. The Cossack village instills in him courage, straightforwardness, courage from an early age, and at the same time she inspires him with many prejudices that are passed down from generation to generation. Grigory Melekhov is smart and honest in his own way. He passionately strives for truth, for justice, although he does not have a class understanding of justice. This person is bright and large, with large and complex experiences. It is impossible to fully understand the content of the book without understanding the complexity of the path of the protagonist, generalizing the artistic power of the image.
The combination of the epic depiction of great historical events with the amazing lyricism of the narration, the transfer of the most subtle intimate experiences of people, the disclosure of their most intimate feelings and thoughts, and to a greater extent this applies to the description of the female images of ordinary Russian women gives considerable merit to the novel "Quiet Flows the Don".
From a young age he was kind, sympathetic to someone else's misfortune, in love with all living things in nature. Once, in a hayfield, he accidentally slaughtered a wild duckling and “with a sudden feeling of acute pity, he looked at the dead lump lying in his palm.” The writer makes us remember Gregory in harmony with the natural world.
As a tragedy, Gregory experienced the first human blood shed by him. In the attack, he killed two Austrian soldiers. One of the murders could have been avoided. The realization of this weighed heavily on my soul. The mournful appearance of the dead man appeared later in a dream and caused "internal pain." Describing the faces of the Cossacks who got to the front, the writer found an expressive comparison: they resembled “stalks of mowed, withering and changing grass.” Grigory Melekhov also became such a beveled withering stem: the need to kill deprived his soul of moral support in life.
Grigory Melekhov many times had to observe the cruelty of both the Whites and the Reds, so the slogans of class hatred began to seem fruitless to him: “I wanted to turn away from everything seething with hatred, hostile and incomprehensible world ... I was drawn to the Bolsheviks - I walked, led others, and then took thought, cold at heart.
Civil strife exhausted Melekhov, but the human in him did not fade away. The more Melekhov was drawn into the whirlpool of the civil war, the more desirable his dream of peaceful labor. From the grief of loss, wounds, throwing in search of social justice, Melekhov aged early, lost his former prowess. However, he did not lose the "human in man", his feelings and experiences - always sincere - were not dulled, but perhaps aggravated.
The manifestations of his responsiveness and sympathy for people are especially expressive in the final parts of the work. The hero is shocked by the spectacle of the dead: “baring his head, trying not to breathe, carefully,” he circles a dead old man, stretched out on scattered golden wheat. Passing through the places where the chariot of war rolled, he sadly stops in front of the corpse of a tortured woman, straightens her clothes, and invites Prokhor to bury her. He buried the innocently killed, kind, hardworking grandfather Sashka under the same poplar tree where the latter had buried him and Aksinya's daughter. In the scene of Aksinya's funeral, we see a grief-stricken man who has drunk a full cup of suffering to the brim, a man who has grown old before his term, and we understand that only a great, albeit wounded heart could feel the grief of loss with such deep strength.
In the final scenes of the novel, Sholokhov reveals the terrible emptiness of his hero. Melekhov lost his most beloved person - Aksinya. Life has lost all meaning and meaning in his eyes. Even earlier, realizing the tragedy of his position, he says: “I fought off the whites, didn’t stick to the reds, and I swim like manure in an ice hole ...”. There is a great typical generalization in the image of Gregory. The impasse in which he found himself, of course, did not reflect the processes that took place in the entire Cossacks. The typical character is not that. The fate of a man who has not found his way in life is tragically instructive. The life of Grigory Melekhov was not easy, his journey ends tragically in the Quiet Don. Who is he? A victim of delusions, who experienced the full burden of historical retribution, or an individualist who broke with the people and became a pitiful renegade? The tragedy of Grigory Melekhov was often perceived by critics as the tragedy of a man who broke away from the people, who became a renegade, or as a tragedy of historical error. It would seem that such a person cannot cause anything but hostility and contempt. The reader is left with the impression of Grigory Melekhov as a bright and strong person; not without reason in his image the writer sought not only to show the perniciousness of decisions and actions due to the illusions of the possessive world, but also to convey the "charm of man."
In the difficult situation of the civil war, Gregory cannot find the right path due to the strength of political illiteracy, the prejudices of his country. Sholokhov, depicting the path of painful searches for the truth that Grigory followed, drawing the roads that led him to the camp of the enemies of the revolution, and severely condemning the hero for the crime against the people and humanity, nevertheless constantly reminds that, according to his inner inclinations, deeply rooted moral aspirations, this original a man of the people was constantly drawn to those who fought in the camp of the revolution. Therefore, it is no coincidence that his short stay with the Reds was accompanied by the acquisition of peace of mind, moral stability.
The image of Gregory cannot be understood by analyzing only his actions and not taking into account the state of his inner world, those motives that explain his actions.
The path of the hero in the novel ends tragically, and the motif of suffering grows stronger and more tense, our desire for a successful outcome of his fate becomes more relentless. This motive reaches a special tension in the scene of Aksinya's death. The psychologically penetrating portrait of Gregory and the image of the infinite cosmic world, before which he appeared one on one, conveys the depth of the tragedy.
But still, the tragedy does not obscure the motive of historical optimism in the novel, the idea of a real possibility of overcoming tragic conflicts in the course of historical cataclysms. This is precisely the pathos of the "Quiet Don" as an epic of folk life at a steep historical turn. Sholokhov showed that the process of any renewal, restructuring, requires the exertion of all forces, brings hardships, gives rise to sharp conflicts and confusion among the masses. This is reflected in the fate of Grigory Melekhov. His image acts as the personification of high human capabilities, which, due to tragic circumstances, did not receive their full implementation.
Grigory Melekhov showed extraordinary courage in the search for the truth. But for him, she is not just an idea, some idealized symbol of a better human existence. He is looking for its embodiment in life. Coming into contact with many small particles of truth, and ready to accept each one, he discovers their failure when faced with life.
The internal conflict is resolved for Gregory by the rejection of war and weapons. Heading to his native farm, he threw it away, "thoroughly wiped his hands on the floor of his greatcoat."
Manifestations of class hostility, cruelty, bloodshed, the author of the novel contrasts the eternal dream of a person about happiness, about harmony between people. He consistently leads his hero to the truth, which contains the idea of the unity of the people as the basis of life.
What will happen to the man, Grigory Melekhov, who did not accept this hostile world, this “bewildered existence”? What will happen to him if he, like a female little bustard, which is not able to frighten off volleys of guns, having gone through all the roads of war, stubbornly strives for peace, life, work on earth? The author does not answer these questions. The tragedy of Melekhov, intensified in the novel by the tragedy of all his relatives and dear people, reflects the drama of the whole region, which has undergone a violent "class alteration". The revolution and civil war tore and distorted the life of Grigory Melekhov. The memory of this terrible mess will be an unhealed wound on the soul of Gregory.
"Quiet Flows the Don" is an epic of people's life in historically significant years, reproduced by the writer with its heroism and tragedy. Sholokhov showed how, in the course of revolution and civil war, the possibility opens up for the realization of the highest ideals of humanity, the age-old aspirations of the people. Sholokhov portrayed this era as a historical action, covered with heroism and tragedy.
1.3. The conflict between the human destiny of the intelligentsia and the course of history in the works of M.A. Bulgakov "Days of the Turbins" and "White Guard"
And why don't the days go by for a long time
Turbins" by playwright Bulgakov?
I.V. Stalin
In 1934, in connection with the 500th performance of The Days of the Turbins, M. Bulgakov’s friend PS Popov wrote: “The Days of the Turbins is one of those things that somehow enter into one’s own life and become an epoch for oneself.” The feeling expressed by Popov was experienced by almost all the people who had the good fortune to see the performance that was going on at the Art Theater from 1926 to 1941.
The leading theme of this work was the fate of the intelligentsia in the context of civil war and general savagery. The surrounding chaos here, in this play, was opposed by a stubborn desire to preserve a normal life, “a bronze lamp under a lampshade”, “a white tablecloth”, “cream curtains”.
The play "Days of the Turbins" by M.A. Bulgakov initially had the goal of showing how the revolution changes people, to show the fate of people who accepted and did not accept the revolution. In the center is the tragic fate of an intelligent family against the backdrop of the collapse of the White Guard, the flight of the hetman, and the revolutionary events in Ukraine.
In the center of the play is the house of the Turbins. His prototype was largely the Bulgakovs' house on Andreevsky Spusk, which has survived to this day, and the prototypes of the heroes were people close to the writer. So the prototype of Elena Vasilievna was the sister of M. Bulgakov, Varvara Afanasievna Karum. All this gave Bulgakov's work that special warmth, helped to convey that unique atmosphere that distinguishes the Turbins' house. Their house is the center, the center of life, and unlike the writer's predecessors, for example, romantic poets, symbolists of the early 20th century, for whom comfort and peace were a symbol of philistinism and vulgarity, M. Bulgakov's House is the center of spiritual life, he fanned with poetry, its inhabitants value the traditions of the House and even in difficult times try to preserve them. In the play "Days of the Turbins" a conflict arises between human destiny and the course of history. The civil war breaks into the Turbins' house and destroys it. The "cream curtains" mentioned more than once by Lariosik become a capacious symbol - it is this line that separates the house from the world engulfed in cruelty and enmity. Compositionally, the play is built according to the circular principle: the action begins and ends in the Turbins' house, and between these scenes, the place of action becomes the office of the Ukrainian hetman, from which the hetman himself flees, leaving people to their fate; the headquarters of the Petlyura division, which enters the city; the lobby of the Alexander Gymnasium, where the junkers gather to repulse Petlyura and defend the city.
It is these events of history that drastically change life in the Turbins' house: Alexei is killed, Nikolka is crippled, and all the inhabitants of the Turbine house face a choice.
The Days of the Turbins is, of course, a psychological play. Together with a strongly pronounced lyrical beginning, humor makes itself felt in the depiction of the exposure of the hetman, the bandit existence of the Petliurites. And the tragic end ends with the collapse of the convictions of an honest and strong man - Alexei Turbin. old world collapses and the remaining characters of the play face the problem of choice.
Let us dwell in more detail on the heroes of this immortal play. The Turbin family, a typical intelligent military family, where the older brother is a colonel, the younger is a cadet, and the sister is married to Colonel Talberg. And all friends are military. A large apartment, where there is a library, where they drink wine at dinner, where they play the piano, and, having drunk, they sing the Russian anthem out of tune, although there has been no tsar for a year, and no one believes in God. You can always come to this house. Here they will wash and feed the frozen captain Myshlaevsky, who scolds the Germans, and Petlyura, and the hetman. Here, they will not be very surprised at the unexpected appearance of the “cousin from Zhytomyr” Lariosik and “shelter and warm him”. This is a friendly family, everyone loves each other, but without sentimentality.
For eighteen-year-old Nikolka, thirsty for battles, the elder brother is the highest authority. Alexey Turbin, in our current opinion, is very young: at the age of thirty he is already a colonel. Behind him is the just ended war with Germany, and talented officers are quickly promoted in the war. He is a smart, thinking leader. Bulgakov succeeded in giving a generalized image of a Russian officer in his face, continuing the line of Tolstoy, Chekhov, Kuprin officers. Turbin is especially close to Roshchin from "Walking through the torment". Both of them are good, honest, smart people rooting for the fate of Russia. They served the Motherland and want to serve it, but there comes a moment when it seems to them that Russia is perishing, and then there is no point in their existence.
There are two scenes in the play when Alexei Turbin appears as a character. The first - in the circle of friends and relatives, behind the "cream curtains" that cannot hide from wars and revolutions. Turbin talks about what worries him; despite the “seditiousness” of his speeches, Turbin regrets that earlier he could not foresee “what Petliura is.” He says that it is a "myth", a "fog". In Russia, according to Turbin, there are two forces: the Bolsheviks and the former tsarist military. The Bolsheviks will come soon, and Turbin is inclined to think that victory will be theirs. In the second climactic scene, Turbin is already in action. He commands. Turbin disbands the division, orders everyone to remove their insignia and immediately go home. Turbin says bitter things: the hetman and his henchmen fled, leaving the army to its fate. Now there is no one to protect. And Turbin makes a difficult decision: he no longer wants to participate in “this booth”, realizing that further bloodshed is pointless. Pain and despair grow in his soul. But the commanding spirit is strong in him. “Don't dare!” - he shouts when one of the officers suggests that he run to Denikin on the Don. Turbin understands that there is the same “headquarters mob” that forces officers to fight with their own people. And when the people win and “split the heads” of the officers, Denikin will also run away abroad. Turbin cannot push one Russian person against another. The conclusion is this: the white movement is over, the people are not with it, they are against it.
But how often in literature and cinema the White Guards were portrayed as sadists with a painful penchant for villainy! Alexey Turbin, having demanded that everyone take off their shoulder straps, remains in the division until the end. Nikolai, brother, correctly understands that the commander "waits death from shame." And the commander waited for her - he dies under the bullets of the Petliurists. Aleksey Turbin is a tragic image, he is a solid, strong-willed, strong, brave, proud man who fell victim to the deceit and betrayal of those for whom he fought. The system collapsed and killed many of those who served it. But, dying, Turbin realized that he had been deceived, that those who were with the people had strength.
Bulgakov had a great historical sense and correctly understood the alignment of forces. For a long time they could not forgive Bulgakov for his love for his heroes. In the last act, Myshlaevsky shouts: “Bolsheviks?.. Magnificent! I'm tired of portraying manure in the hole... Let them mobilize. At least I will know that I will serve in the Russian army. The people are not with us. The people are against us." Rude, loud-voiced, but honest and direct, a good comrade and a good soldier, Captain Myshlaevsky continues in the literature a well-known type of Russian military man - from Denis Davydov to the present day, but he is shown in a new, unprecedented yet civil war. He continues and finishes the thought of the elder Turbin about the death of the white movement, an important thought leading to the play.
There is a “rat running from the ship” in the house - Colonel Thalberg. At first, he gets frightened, lies about a “business trip” to Berlin, then about a business trip to the Don, makes hypocritical promises to his wife, followed by a cowardly flight.
We are so accustomed to the name "Days of the Turbins" that we do not think about why the play is called that. The word "Dni" means time, those few days in which the fate of the Turbins, the whole way of life of this Russian intelligent family was decided. It was the end, but not a broken, ruined, destroyed life, but a transition to a new existence in new revolutionary conditions, the beginning of life and work with the Bolsheviks. People like Myshlaevsky will serve well in the Red Army, the singer Shervinsky will find an appreciative audience, and Nikolka will probably study. The finale of the piece sounds major. We would like to believe that all the wonderful heroes of Bulgakov's play will really become happy, that they will bypass the fate of many intellectuals of the terrible thirties, forties, fifties of our difficult century.
M.A. Bulgakov masterfully conveyed the events that took place in Kyiv and, first of all, the most difficult experiences of the Turbins, Myshlaevsky, Studzinsky, Lariosik. Coups, unrest and similar incidents aggravate the situation, after which we see not only the fate of intelligent people who are drawn into these events and are forced to decide the question: to accept or not to accept the Bolsheviks? - but also that crowd of people who opposed the revolution - the Hetmanate, its owners - the Germans. As a humanist, Bulgakov does not accept Petlyura's wild beginnings, and angrily rejects Bolbotun and Galanba. Also M.A. Bulgakov ridicules the hetman and his "subjects". He shows to what baseness and dishonor they reach, betraying the Motherland. Human meanness has its place in the play. Such events are the flight of the hetman, his baseness before the Germans. In the scene with Bolbotun and Galanba, the author, with the help of satire and humor, reveals not only an anti-human attitude, but also rampant nationalism.
Bolbotun says to the Sich deserter: “Do you know what German officers and commissars are doing to our grain growers? They bury the living near the ground! Chuv? So I'll bury you yourself at the grave! Himself!”
The dramatic action in Days of the Turbins develops with great speed. And the driving force is the people who refuse to support the "Hetman of All Ukraine" and Petliura. And the fate of the hetman, and the fate of Petliura, and the fate of honest intellectuals, including white officers - Alexei Turbin and Viktor Myshlaevsky, depend on this main force.
Through the rumble, confusion and confusion of the junkers and students, the voice of reason breaks through. Aleksey Turbin refuses to participate in the "booth" that began as early as three in the morning, does not want to lead the division to the Don, to Denikin, as Captain Studzinsky and some cadets suggest, because he hates the "staff bastard" and tells the junkers openly that on the Don they will meet "the same generals and the same staff mob." As an honest and deeply reflective officer, he realized that the white movement had come to an end. It remains only to emphasize that the main motive that moved Turbin was his awareness of one event: “The people are not with us. He is against us."
Aleksey also tells the cadets and students about Denikin's men: "They will force you to fight with your own people." He predicts the inevitable death of the white movement: “I tell you: the end of the white movement in Ukraine. He will end in Rostov-on-Don, everywhere! The people are not with us. He is against us. So it's over! Coffin! Lid!.."
Looking into the history of the civil war, we noticed an interesting statement by General Pyotr Wrangel, who wrote about the offensive of Anton Denikin: “The population, who met the army during its advancement with sincere enthusiasm, suffered from the Bolsheviks and longed for peace, soon began to again experience the horrors of robberies, violence and arbitrariness. As a result - the collapse of the front and the uprising in the rear "...
The play ends with a tragic despair. Petliurists leave Kiev, the Red Army enters the city. Each of the characters decides how to be. Myshlaevsky clashes with Studzinsky. The latter is going to run to the Don and fight the Bolsheviks there, while the other one objects to him. Myshlaevsky, like Alexei, is sure of the collapse of the white movement as a whole - he is ready to go over to the side of the Bolsheviks: “Let them mobilize! At least I will know that I will serve in the Russian army. The people are not with us. The people are against us. Alyosha is right!
It is no coincidence that special attention was paid to Myshlaevsky in the conclusion. Viktor Viktorovich's confidence that there is truth behind the Bolsheviks, that they are capable of building new Russia, - this conviction, which characterizes the choice of a new path for the hero, expresses the ideological meaning of the play. Therefore, the image of Myshlaevsky turned out to be so close to M.A. Bulgakov.
Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov is a complex writer, but at the same time he clearly and simply sets out the highest philosophical questions in his works. His novel The White Guard tells about the dramatic events unfolding in Kiev in the winter of 1918-1919. The writer speaks dialectically about the deeds of human hands: about war and peace, about human enmity and wonderful unity - “the family, where only you can hide from the horrors of the surrounding chaos.”
In an epigraph from Pushkin's The Captain's Daughter, Bulgakov emphasized that we are talking about people who were overtaken by the storm of revolution, but who were able to find the right path, maintain courage and a sober view of the world and their place in it. The second epigraph is biblical. And with this, Bulgakov introduces us into the zone of eternal time, without introducing any historical comparisons into the novel.
The motive of the epigraphs is developed by the epic beginning of the novel: “The year was great and terrible after the birth of Christ 1918, from the beginning of the second revolution. It was abundant in summer with sun, and in winter with snow, and two stars stood especially high in the sky: the shepherd's star Venus and red trembling Mars. The beginning style is almost biblical. Associations make you remember eternal book being, which in itself
uniquely materializes the eternal, as well as the image of the stars in heaven. The specific time of history is, as it were, soldered into the eternal time of being, framed by it. The confrontation of the stars, the natural series of images related to the eternal, at the same time symbolizes the collision of historical time. In the beginning of the work, majestic, tragic and poetic, there is a grain of social and philosophical problems associated with the opposition of peace and war, life and death, death and immortality. The very choice of the stars makes it possible to descend from the cosmic distance to the world of the Turbins, since it is this world that will resist enmity and madness.
In The White Guard, the sweet, quiet, intelligent Turbin family suddenly becomes involved in great events, becomes a witness and participant in terrible and amazing things. The days of the Turbins absorb the eternal charm of calendar time: “But the days in both peaceful and bloody years fly like an arrow, and the young Turbins did not notice how white, shaggy December came in a hard frost.
The House of the Turbins is opposed to the outside world, in which destruction, horror, inhumanity, and death reign. But the House cannot separate, leave the city, it is a part of it, like a city is a part of the earthly space. And at the same time, this earthly space of social passions and battles is included in the expanses of the World.
The city, according to Bulgakov's description, was "beautiful in the frost and in the fog on the mountains, above the Dnieper." But its appearance changed dramatically, “... industrialists, merchants, lawyers, public figures fled here. Journalists fled, Moscow and St. Petersburg, corrupt and greedy, cowardly. Cocottes, honest ladies from aristocratic families...” and many others. And the city began to live with “a strange, unnatural life...” The evolutionary course of history is suddenly and menacingly disrupted, and man finds himself at its breaking point.
The image of a large and small space of life grows in Bulgakov in opposition to the destructive time of war and the eternal time of Peace.
You can’t sit out a hard time, shutting yourself off from him like the landlord Vasilisa is “an engineer and a coward, a bourgeois and unsympathetic”. This is how Lisovich is perceived by Turbines, who do not like petty-bourgeois isolation, narrow-mindedness, hoarding, isolation from life. No matter what happens, they will not count the coupons, hiding in the dark, like Vasily Lisovich, who only dreams of surviving the storm and not losing the accumulated capital. Turbines meet a formidable time differently. They do not change themselves in anything, they do not change their way of life. Every day, friends gather in their house, who are met by light, warmth, and a laid table. Nikolkin's guitar rings with brute force - desperation and defiance even before an impending catastrophe.
Everything honest and pure, like a magnet, is attracted by the House. Here, in this coziness of the House, Myshlaevsky, deadly frozen, comes from the terrible World. A man of honor, like Turbins, he did not leave the post under the city, where in a terrible frost forty people waited for a day in the snow, without fires, to change,
which would never have come if Colonel Nai-Turs, also a man of honor and duty, could not, despite the disgrace that is happening at the headquarters, bring two hundred junkers, perfectly dressed and armed through the efforts of Nai-Turs. Some time will pass, and Nai-Tours, realizing that he and his cadets have been treacherously abandoned by the command, that his children are destined for the fate of cannon fodder, will save his boys at the cost of his own life. The lines of the Turbins and Nai-Tours will intertwine in the fate of Nikolka, who witnessed the last heroic minutes of the colonel's life. Admired by the feat and humanism of the colonel, Nikolka will do the impossible - he will be able to overcome the seemingly insurmountable in order to give Nai-Turs his last duty - to bury him with dignity and become a close person for the mother and sister of the deceased hero.
The fates of all truly decent people are contained in the world of the Turbins, whether they are the courageous officers Myshlaevsky and Stepanov, or deeply civilian by nature, but not deviating from what befell him in the era of hard times, Alexei Turbin, or even the completely, it would seem, ridiculous Lariosik . But it was Lariosik who managed to quite accurately express the very essence of the House, opposing the era of cruelty and violence. Lariosik spoke about himself, but many could subscribe to these words, “that he suffered a drama, but here, at Elena Vasilyevna’s, his soul comes to life, because this is an absolutely exceptional person Elena Vasilyevna and their apartment is warm and comfortable, and especially wonderful cream curtains on all windows, thanks to which you feel cut off from the outside world ... And he, this outside world ... you will agree yourself, formidable, bloody and meaningless.
There, outside the windows - the merciless destruction of everything that was valuable in Russia.
Here, behind the curtains, there is an unshakable belief that everything beautiful must be protected and preserved, that it is necessary under any circumstances, that it is feasible. “... Hours, fortunately, are completely immortal, both the Saardam Carpenter and the Dutch tile are immortal, like a wise scan, life-giving and hot in the most difficult time.”
And outside the windows - "the eighteenth year is flying to an end and every day it looks more menacing, bristly." And Aleksey Turbin thinks with anxiety not about his possible death, but about the death of the House: “Walls will fall, an alarmed falcon will fly off from a white mitten, the fire will go out in a bronze lamp, and the Captain’s Daughter will be burned in the furnace.”
But, perhaps, love and devotion are given the power to protect and save, and the House will be saved?
There is no clear answer to this question in the novel.
There is a confrontation between the center of peace and culture to the Petliura gangs, which are being replaced by the Bolsheviks.
One of the last sketches in the novel is a description of the armored train “Proletary”. Horror and disgust emanates from this picture: “He hissed softly and angrily, something oozed in the side shots, his blunt snout was silent and squinted into the Dnieper forests. From the last platform, a wide muzzle in a deaf muzzle was aimed at the heights, black and blue, for twenty versts and straight at the midnight cross. Bulgakov knows that in old Russia there were many things that led to the tragedy of the country. But people who point the muzzles of their guns and rifles at their fatherland are no better than those staff and government scoundrels who sent the best sons of the fatherland to certain death.
History will inevitably sweep away murderers, criminals, robbers, traitors of all ranks and stripes, and their names will be a symbol of dishonor and shame.
And the House of Turbins as a symbol of imperishable beauty and truth the best people Russia, its nameless heroes, humble workers, keepers of goodness and culture, will warm the souls of many generations of readers and prove with every manifestation that a real person remains a person even at the turn of history.
Those who violated the natural course of history committed a crime in front of everyone, including the tired and frozen sentry at the armored train. In torn felt boots, in a torn overcoat, brutally, inhumanly, a chilled person falls asleep on the go, and he dreams of his native village and his neighbor walking towards him. “And immediately a formidable guard voice in his chest tapped out three words:
“Sorry... sentry... you will freeze...”
Why is this man given up to a meaningless nightmare?
Why are thousands and millions of others given to this?
One can not be sure that little Petka Shcheglov, who lived in the wing and had a wonderful dream about a sparkling diamond ball, will wait for what the dream promised him - happiness?
Who knows? In an era of battles and upheavals, an individual human life is more fragile than ever. But the strength of Russia is that there are people in it for whom the concept of “living” is tantamount to the concepts of “love”, “feel”, “comprehend”, “think”, be faithful to duty and honor. These people know that the walls of the House are not just a dwelling, but a place of connection between generations, a place where soulfulness is preserved in incorruptibility, where the spiritual principle never disappears, the symbol of which is the main part of the House - bookcases filled with books.
And as at the beginning of the novel, in its epilogue, looking at the bright stars in the frosty sky, the author makes us think about eternity, about the life of future generations, about responsibility to history, to each other: “Everything will pass. Suffering, torment, blood, hunger and pestilence. The sword will disappear, but the stars will remain, when the shadow of our bodies and deeds will not remain on the earth.”
1.4. Cavalry I.E. Babel - a chronicle of everyday atrocities" during the revolution and civil war.
This chronicle of everyday atrocities,
which oppresses me tirelessly,
like a heart defect.
I.E. Babel
The last book belongs to I.E. Babel. This legacy, which has come down to our times, has become a notable event in the literary life of the first post-revolutionary decade.
According to N. Berkovsky: "Cavalry" is one of the significant phenomena in fiction about the civil war.
The idea of this novel is to reveal and show all the flaws of the revolution, the Russian army and the immorality of man.
Roman I.E. Babel's Cavalry is a series of seemingly unrelated episodes that line up in huge mosaic canvases. In Cavalry, despite the horrors of the war, the ferocity of those years is shown - faith in the revolution and faith in man. The author draws the piercingly dreary loneliness of a man in the war. I.E. Babel, seeing in the revolution not only strength, but also "tears and blood", "twisted" a person this way and that, analyzed him. In the chapters "Letter" and "Berestechko" the author shows the different positions of people in the war. In the “Letter”, he writes that on the scale of the hero’s life values, the story of how they “finished” first brother Fedno, and then dad, takes second place. This is the author's own protest against the assassination. And in the chapter "Berestechko" I.E. Babel tries to get away from reality because it is unbearable. Describing the characters of the heroes, the boundaries between their states of mind, unexpected actions, the author draws the infinite heterogeneity of reality, the ability of a person to be sublime and ordinary, tragic and heroic, cruel and kind, giving birth and killing at the same time. I.E. Babel skillfully plays with transitions between horror and delight, between beautiful and terrifying.
Behind the pathos of the revolution, the author saw its face: he understood that the revolution is an extreme situation that reveals the secret of man. But even in the harsh everyday life of the revolution, a person who has a sense of compassion will not be able to reconcile himself to murder and bloodshed. Man, according to I.E. Babel, alone in this world. He writes that the revolution is “like lava, scattering life” and leaving its imprint on everything it touches. I.E. Babel feels like "at a big ongoing memorial service." The hot sun is still dazzlingly shining, but it already seems that this “orange sun is rolling across the sky like a severed head”, and the “gentle light” that “lights up in the gorges of the clouds” can no longer relieve anxiety, because it’s not just a sunset , and "the standards of sunset are blowing over our heads ..." The picture of victory before our eyes acquires unusual cruelty. And when, following the "standards of sunset", the author writes the phrase: "The smell of yesterday's blood and dead horses drips into the evening coolness", - with this metamorphosis, if he does not overthrow, then, in any case, he will greatly complicate his initial triumphant chant. All this prepares the finale, where in a hot dream the narrator sees fights and bullets, and in reality the sleeping Jewish neighbor turns out to be a dead old man, brutally stabbed by the Poles.
All Babel's stories are filled with memorable, vivid metamorphoses, reflecting the drama of his worldview. And we cannot but grieve about his fate, not sympathize with his inner torments, but admire his creative gift. His prose has not faded with time. His heroes have not faded. His style is still mysterious and irreproducible. His depiction of the revolution is perceived as an artistic discovery. He expressed his position on the revolution, became a "lonely man" in a world that is rapidly changing and teeming with change.
V. Polyansky noted that in Cavalry, as well as in L. Tolstoy’s Sevastopol Tales, “in the end, the hero is “truth” ... the rising peasant element, rising to the aid of the proletarian revolution, communism, albeit peculiarly understood” .
Cavalry by I.E. Babel at one time caused a huge commotion in censorship, and when he brought the book to the Press House, after listening to sharp criticisms, he calmly said: “What I saw at Budyonny is what I gave. I see that I didn’t give a political worker there at all, I didn’t give much at all about the Red Army, I’ll give it further if I can” ...
From the blood spilled in battles
From dust turned to dust
From the torments of the executed generations,
From souls baptized in blood
Of hateful love
Of crimes, frenzy
Righteous Rus' will arise.
I pray for her...
M. Voloshin
The last epigraph by no means accidentally fit into the general picture of discussions about the revolution. If we consider only Rus' - Russia, then, of course, we can agree with M.A. Bulgakov, who accepted, preferred the best path for our country. Yes, almost everyone agrees so, but not everyone thinks about the mysterious curve of the Leninist straight line. The fate of the country is in the hands of the country itself. But as the people themselves said, that from it is like from a wooden log, depending on who processes it ... Or Sergius of Radonezh, or Emelyan Pugachev. Although the second name is more suitable for the hetman, Kolchak and Denikin, as well as all those "staff bastards" who unleashed the very bloody massacre of the revolution, which was originally meant as "direct". But, in general, out of all the turmoil, “out of blood”, “ashes”, “torments” and “souls”, “righteous Rus'” arose! This is what M.A. Bulgakov, exclaiming through his heroes. I agree with his opinion. But we should not forget about M.A. Sholokhov and I.E. Babel, they showed practically all that “curve”, everything that arose “out of crimes”, “out of hating love”, everything that “in the end” was the Truth.
Conclusion
Having deeply studied a wide range of literary and artistic works of the last century, having analyzed literary criticism, it can be argued that the theme of revolution and civil war has long become one of the main themes of Russian literature of the 20th century. These events not only dramatically changed the life of the Russian Empire, redrawn the entire map of Europe, but also changed the life of every person, every family. Civil wars are usually called fratricidal. Any war is fratricidal in its essence, but in the civil war this essence of it is revealed especially sharply.
From the works of Bulgakov, Fadeev, Sholokhov, Babel, we have revealed: Hatred often brings together people who are related by blood in it, and the tragedy here is extremely naked. Awareness of the civil war as a national tragedy has become decisive in many works of Russian writers, brought up in the traditions of the humanistic values of classical literature. This awareness sounded, perhaps not even fully understood by the author, already in A. Fadeev's novel "The Rout", and no matter how much they look for an optimistic beginning in it, the book is primarily tragic - in terms of the events and fates of people described in it. Philosophically comprehended the essence of events in Russia at the beginning of the century years later B. Pasternak in the novel "Doctor Zhivago". The hero of the novel turned out to be a hostage of history, which mercilessly intervenes in his life and destroys it. The fate of Zhivago is the fate of the Russian intelligentsia in the 20th century. In many ways close to the poetry of B. Pasternak is another writer, playwright, for whom the experience of the civil war became his personal experience - M. Bulgakov, whose works ("Days of the Turbins" and "The White Guard") became a living legend of the twentieth century and reflected the impressions the author from life in Kiev in the terrible years of 1918-19, when the city passed from hand to hand, shots were fired, the course of history decided the fate of a person.
In the process of research, we discovered general trends that are characteristic of almost all literary works about the revolution and the civil war, which allowed us to draw the following conclusions.
The fate of a person in a period of severe historical upheavals and trials is subject to a painful search for his place and destination in new circumstances. The innovation and merit of the authors considered by us (Fadeev, Sholokhov, Bulgakov, Babel) lies in the fact that they gave the reader's world examples of personalities, restless, doubting, hesitant, for whom the old, well-established world collapses overnight, and they are captured by a wave of rapid innovative events which put the heroes in a situation of moral, political choice of their path. But these circumstances do not harden the heroes, they do not have malice, unaccountable hostility to everything indiscriminately. This is the manifestation of the enormous spiritual strength of man, his inflexibility before destructive forces, opposition to them.
In the works of Fadeev, Sholokhov, Bulgakov, Babel, one can clearly see how history breaks into people's lives, how the 20th century tempers them. Behind their thunderous tread, the voice of an individual is not heard, devalued his life. Like the era, so the person faces the problem of moral choice in the literature of this time. This is Levinson, and Melekhov, and Myshlaevsky ... The tragic outcome of this choice repeats the tragic course of history. The choice that Alexei Turbin faced at the moment when the cadets subordinate to him were ready to fight was cruel - either to remain faithful to the oath and officer honor, or to save the lives of people. And Colonel Turbin gives the order: "Tear off your shoulder straps, throw away your rifles and immediately go home." The choice made by him is given to a regular officer, "who has endured the war with the Germans", as he himself says, is infinitely difficult. He utters words that sound like a sentence to himself and the people of his circle: "The people are not with us. They are against us." It is hard to admit this, to back down from the military oath and betray the honor of an officer is even harder, but Bulgakov's hero decides to do this in the name of the highest value - human life. It is this value that turns out to be the highest in the minds of Alexei Turbin and the author of the play himself. Having made this choice, the commander feels complete hopelessness. In his decision to stay in the gymnasium, there is not only a desire to warn the outpost, but also a deep motive, unraveled by Nikolka: "You, the commander, are waiting for death from shame, that's what!" But this expectation of death is not only from shame, but also from complete hopelessness, the inevitable death of that Russia, without which such people cannot imagine life. Similar reflections on the tragic nature of the heroes were noted in the considered works. Therefore, fiction about the revolution and civil war has become one of the most profound artistic comprehension of the tragic essence of man in the era of revolution and civil war. At the same time, each hero experienced the evolution of his worldview, attitude to what is happening, his assessment and, in connection with this, his further actions in this world.
The characteristic position of the authors themselves is also interesting. These works are largely autobiographical or connected with their relatives, comrades-in-arms in combat operations. All writers, without exception, are captivated by reasoning about the enduring values of our world - duty to the Motherland, friends, family. It was difficult for the authors themselves at that time to figure out who to follow, whom to oppose, on whose side the truth is, they often, like their heroes, turned out to be hostages of their own oath and sense of honor, were subjected to the conditions of growing Soviet censorship, which did not give them the opportunity to to clearly and directly indicate their position in the works, to speak out to the end. Indicative in this respect is the end of any considered work, where there is no clear logical conclusion in its problematics. So the novel by M. Bulgakov “The White Guard” ends with the words: “Everything will pass. Suffering, torment, blood, hunger and pestilence. The sword will disappear, but the stars will remain, when the shadow of our bodies and deeds will not remain on earth. There is not a single person who does not know this. So why don't we want to turn our attention to them? Why? “There are eternal values that do not depend on the outcome of the civil war. Stars are a symbol of such values. It was in serving these eternal values that the writer Mikhail Bulgakov, like Mikhail Sholokhov, and Alexander Fadeev, and Isaac Babel saw his duty.
The best books about the revolution and the civil war, which are “Rout”, “Quiet Don”, “Cavalry”, “Days of the Turbins”, “White Guard” are still widely read, in demand, are not only of interest, but also contain educational aspects for the formation of humanism, patriotism, a sense of duty, love for one's neighbor, political vigilance, the ability to find one's place and vocation in any life circumstances, the ability to make the right decision that does not contradict universal moral values among young people.
LIST OF USED LITERATURE.
1. Babel I.E. Works. In 2 vols. T. 2: Cavalry; Stories 1925-1938; Plays; Memoirs, portraits; Articles and speeches; Screenplays / Comp. And prepare. Text by A. Pirozhkva; Comment. S. Povartsova; Artistic V. Veksler.-M.: Artist. Lit., 1990.- 574 p.
2. Bulgakov M.A. Plays. - M .: Soviet writer, 1987. - 656 p.
3. Bulgakov M.A. "And the dead were judged...": Novels. Tale. Plays. Essay / Comp., cr. Biochronika, approx. B.S. Myagkova; Intro. Art. V.Ya. Lakshina.- M.: Shkola-Press, 1994.- 704 p.
4. Fadeev A.A. Novels./ Ed. Krakovskaya A.- M.: Khudozh. Literature, 1971. - 784 p.
5. Fadeev A.A. Letters. 1916-1956 / Ed. Platonova A.- M.: Artist. Literature, 1969. - 584 p.
6. A. Dementiev, E. Naumov, L. Plotkin "Russian Soviet Literature" - M.: Uchpedgiz, 1963. - 397 p.
Lessons #1,2 LESSON-RESEARCH
Topic: "Civil War and its comprehension in the literature of the 20-30sXX century." Grade 11.
Target: help students understand the concept of civil war in
works by A. Fadeev, I. Babel, A. Vesely and M. Sholokhov;
partial analysis of poetics of works;
development of skills of dialogic and monologue speech of students;
education in children of humane feelings, tolerance, the need to determine their position in relation to a particular historical event or literary phenomenon, responsibility for their actions.
Lesson equipment:
1. On the board on the left are portraits of the commanders of the Red and White armies.
2. On the board on the right From the dictionary:
Civil war is an organized armed
struggle for state power between
various classes of social groups
inside the country.
3. On the board in the center is the topic of the lesson;
portraits of A. Fadeev, M. Sholokhov, I. Babel, A. Vesely;
epigraph to the lesson:
“In a civil war, there are no right and wrong, there are no just and unjust, there are no angels and no demons, just as there are no winners. It has only the vanquished - all of us, all the people, all of Russia. You cannot celebrate victory by killing your own brother, driving your father out of the Fatherland. A tragic catastrophe gives rise only to losses ... ”(B. Vasiliev)
4. On the stand "Today at the lesson" reproductions of paintings:
"Cavalry attack", "Tachanka", "The next day in the village of Platovskaya" by B. Grekov, "Death of the Commissar" by K. Petrov-Vodkin.
5. On separate sheets (for each table)
memoirs of the civil war officers and commanders of the Red and White armies.
6. On the stand "Write correctly" the words: humanism, humanity, tragedy, conception, objectivity, subjectivity.
7. Exhibition of books about the civil war: fiction and historical literature.
8. Recordings of songs about the civil war: "There, in the distance, across the river ...", "Oh, roads ...".
Lessons are designed for two academic hours.
Before the lesson, students worked in creative groups, each of which analyzed a specific work, collected materials and prepared answers to questions.
The students sit in groups.
On the tables are pre-printed documents:
From the memoirs of E. I. Kovtyukh, the commander of the 1st column of the Taman army, and then the entire army, the prototype of the protagonist of the novel by A.S. Serafimovich "The Iron Stream":
The Germans and Turks left Novorossiysk and went to Sevastopol. The Whites occupied the city and took up reprisals against the Red Army soldiers and sailors who remained there, of which there were 800 ...
They were driven under escort to the head of the garrison, who ordered the prisoners to be taken out of the city and await orders. They were taken outside the city. Soon the colonel also appeared; Approaching the convoy, he ordered all the prisoners to be lined up in two lines, twenty paces apart from one another, face to face. When the rebuilding was completed, he gave the command to all the prisoners to kneel and tilt their heads forward, and to chop off the convoy "these tramps of the head", which the convoy did. The colonel ordered not to remove a few corpses
days to warn the local population.
From "Essays on Russian Troubles" by A.I. Denikin:
The moral character of the army. "Black Pages".
The armies overcame incredible obstacles, fought heroically, meekly suffered the heaviest losses and, step by step, liberated vast territories from the power of the Soviets. It was the front side of the struggle, its heroic epic.
Some phenomena corroded the soul of the army and undermined its power. I have to stop on them.
The troops were poorly supplied with supplies and money. Hence the spontaneous desire for self-supply, for the use of military booty. Enemy warehouses, stores, carts, the property of the Red Army soldiers were sorted out randomly, without a system. ... The limits of meeting the vital needs of the armies, the legal norms that define the concept of "military booty", all this moved apart, received slippery outlines, and was refracted in the minds of the military masses, touched by the nation's ills. All this was perverted in the crucible of a civil war, surpassing in hostility and cruelty any international war.
Beyond the line where "war booty" and "requisition" ends, a gloomy abyss of moral decline opens up: VIOLENCE AND PILLAGE.
Truly, the thunder of heaven was needed to make all look back at yourself and your paths.
From the essay by V.V. Shulgin "New Year's Eve". 1920.
(Shulgin is a publicist, one of the main ideologists of the White Army.)
I want to think it's a lie. But I was told by people who need to be trusted.
In one hut, they hung up by the hands ... a "commissar" ... They laid a fire over them. And they slowly fried... a man...
And all around a drunken gang of "monarchists" ... howled: "God save the king."
If this is true, if they exist in the world, if the hand of Nemesis did not strike them with a death worthy of them, let the terrible curse be done on them, which we do to them, to them and to those like them, corrupters of the white army ... traitors to the White Cause .. to the killers of the White Dream...
So I thought on a lonely New Year's Eve ..
I. organizational part.
The beginning of the song "Oh, dears ..." sounds.
II. Introduction by the teacher.
The epigraph to our lesson is not accidental, since the topic "Civil War and its comprehension in the literature of the 20-30s of the XX century" requires thoughtful study and knowledge of history, so let's first turn to the facts.
III . Historical part.
So, what is a civil war from the point of view of historians?
What is common in the statements about the civil war by the commanders of the Red and White armies? (The statements are printed in advance on the sheets.)
What is the difference?
What is your attitude to those historical facts that you read about?
IV . Continuation of the conversation with the teacher of literature.
Yes, the civil war forced everyone to make a tough choice: who am I with? who am I for? Some people found it difficult to determine their position, and they went through a tragic path in search of it. We learn about this in M. Sholokhov's novel "Quiet Don".
(The melody of the song "Eh, roads" sounds softly.)
Writers and poets who were eyewitnesses of those distant events comprehended what was happening in different ways, they depicted the civil war in their works in different ways. After all, they also had to make a choice.
On the one hand, poetization of a feat in the name of a revolutionary idea, justification of violence and bloodshed. On the other hand, there is a "chronicle of everyday atrocities": the depreciation of human life, cruelty, which has become the norm in war. Tragedy of fratricidal war. War gives lessons in hate and love. Finally, a prayer "for both"
In the midst of the internecine war, in 1920, the poet M. Voloshin, who was at Wrangel's headquarters, wrote a poem about two irreconcilable fighting camps.
Listen to it and think: what worries the poet?
student reads M. Voloshin's poem "Civil War".
The guys express their opinion about the feelings of the poet.
The teacher corrects the answers: The poem reflected the essence of the civil war. The worst thing for the poet is that "the war breathed" into people "anger, greed, the gloomy drunkenness of revelry." She drew everyone into her whirlpool, forced people to determine their position. But what about those who are against murder, violence? Lyrical hero poem stands between enemies and prays for the salvation of the country and for the preservation of genuine human values, sympathy, mercy, kindness, love. In the poem there is a tragic image of "the golden splendors of horses trampled reapers." And during the war years, the soul of a peasant fighter ached about the land on which it was not necessary to fight, but to grow bread.
V. The work of creative groups.
You have read several Civil War novels. Name them.
What choice did writers and poets make?
How do they relate to those distant events?
These and other questions that you were asked to think about at home, we will be able to answer in the course of a conversation about the content of the artistic features of the works that are now familiar to you.
A word to the 1st and 2nd groups, who worked together on the novels "Rout" and "Cavalry". Share with us your observations and conclusions. (Students write their conclusions in their literature notebooks.)
Question for everyone : What is common between the novels "Defeat" and "Cavalry"?
Questions on the novel by A. Fadeev "Defeat":
1. What events of the civil war is the novel dedicated to?
2. What is the center of the story?
3. In the process of reading the novel, we begin to compare the two characters. Who are they? Why do you think the writer encourages us readers to compare these characters?
4. What do you think prevents Mechik from merging with the squad? What episodes do you see it in?
7. Why does the writer lead Mechik to betrayal?
8. What is your position in relation to the problem posed by Fadeev in the novel "The Rout"?
Questions about the novel by I. Babel "Cavalry":
1. What kind of work in terms of genre is I. Babel's novel "Cavalry"?
What is at the heart of the plot conflict?
2. Who is Lyutov? Did Lyutov become a full-fledged fighter of the Cavalry?
3. Was it only the wild morals that prevailed in the active troops that turned Lyutov's life into a "chain of horrifying events"? Is it possible to accuse the hero of "softness" and "purity" that do not fit into an atmosphere saturated with cruelty and violence?
4. Why did Babel need a narrator?
5. Why does Babel describe the horrors of war? Why is there almost no description of battle scenes in a book about the war?
6. What is one of the most important problems of the novel?
Is the problematic of the novel connected only with Lyutov?
7. How do pathos and the world of the heroes of the novel interact?
8. Is it possible to resist the conditions of war on the principles of humanism?
9. In Cavalry, Babel creates several situations similar to those in Defeat (Death of Dolgushov). How to evaluate the actions of the characters here?
10. Why didn't Babel include in his work the idea of hatred for the war?
11. What traits of Babel's personality and events connected with his biography were reflected in Cavalry?
The children answer questions based on the text, using their notes made on the basis of observations (the study was homework for all creative groups).
The reasoning of the guys in the process conversations about F. Fadeev's novel "Rout".
1. The events in Fadeev's novel reproduce the fate of one of the partisan detachments in the Far East. The novel is dedicated not to victory, but to the defeat of the Red Army. The most critical, dramatic moments are depicted. The writer, apparently, is interested in the motives of people's behavior, the prospects for the development of personality, the moral qualities of the characters, because they often find themselves in a situation of choice.
2. One of the centers of the story is the confrontation with the Sword of Frost. Fadeev is a proletarian writer, it is probably important for him to contrast the heroes as representatives of different classes: Frost is a worker, and Mechik is an intellectual. Frost really relates to reality, and Mechik is a romantic, overflowing with book knowledge: "... people in the hills, familiar to him only from newspapers, stood before his eyes as if they were alive in clothes made of powder smoke and heroic deeds"; "The swordsman had a very vague idea of what awaited him."
Fadeev, as it were, “programs” in advance the place of each of the characters in the plot and predetermines the denouement. This happens already during the first meeting of Frost and Sword: "Telling the truth... ...cannot be trusted."
3. Mechik is prevented from merging with the detachment by his "inconstancy", lack of will, selfishness, and individualism. He constantly separates himself from others and opposes himself to those around him, because inwardly he cannot submit to what seems to him rude, cruel, ugly, which almost everyone around takes for granted.
It seems that Fadeev deliberately leads his hero to betrayal. This can be seen in the episode with the photo of the "girl in blond curls", which Varya accidentally steps on with her foot, and Mechik is ashamed to ask that the photo be lifted and given to him. The negative qualities of this hero are also manifested in the episode with the Korean, who was deprived of a pig and thereby doomed his family to starvation: Mechik's heart sank with pity for the unfortunate man, but he ate the pig along with everyone. Here the unscrupulousness of the Mechik affected.
The hero resists evil, cruelty, but somehow sluggishly. He failed to remain silent when Levinson and Stashinsky sentenced the seriously wounded Frolov to death, but he also failed to defend him.
The sword dooms his savior Frost to death and becomes a traitor.
The reason for Sword's unreliability is his individualism. Frost also had this trait, but he overcame it, and Swordsman did not even try to do it.
5 . So, the bearer of individualism in the novel is an intellectual. This means that the position of the author in the novel is class. Fadeev justifies the fact that Levinson sanctioned Frolov's death with the highest expediency, the need to save the detachment. And the author condemns Mechik for his inability to understand this.
6. Fadeev's position is class-based, but perhaps the writer specifically showed that a person's inability to determine his choice in a brutal civil war can lead to betrayal?
7 . Many researchers believe that Fadeev's position in the novel is class. But the dignity of the work is the writer's interest in the individual, the study of human nature. This allows us to single out another problem in the novel - the problem of a person in a war, which is still relevant.
Yes, Fadeev really separated his heroes into different poles, forced to resolve the issue either "for" or "against" the third is not given. Perhaps the writer deliberately led us to the idea that war is too difficult a test for a person and that the very problem of choice in a civil war is already a tragedy.
Answers of students based on the novel by I. Babel "Cavalry":
1." Cavalry" is a typical novel in short stories for the literature of the 1920s and 1930s, which are united by one hero - the narrator.
The protagonist is a candidate of law from St. Petersburg University, seconded to the headquarters of one of their divisions of the First Cavalry Kirill Vasilievich Lyutov. In the novel, he is the narrator.
In addition to the image of the protagonist, all the chapters of the novel are connected by the image of the road, traditional for Russian literature: it unites all the short stories and is a symbol of movement, path, search, choice.
The plot conflict is based on Lyutov's attempts to become a full-fledged fighter of the Cavalry, to turn into a real red cavalryman who would not stand out in the general mass of horsemen with his clumsiness, even some kind of "alienity" to the rest. Hence the ordeal of the hero.
In the short story “My first goose, Lyutov, trying to assert himself, twists the goose’s neck. And the other fighters immediately recognize the new one: “The guy is suitable for us.” But Lyutov cannot sleep for a long time and feels like “the heart, stained with murder, creaked and flowed.”
Lyutov is a well-educated, intelligent person, in many respects an idealist and a romantic. He falls (and quite consciously), firstly, into a circle of poorly educated, ignorant people who have gone wild from many years of slaughter, and secondly, into a combat situation that naturally put him before a choice: either leave or merge with the rest. In the chapter "The Road to Brody" he thinks: "The chronicle of everyday atrocities presses me indefatigably, like a heart defect."
2. Lyutov's desire to become a full-fledged fighter of the Cavalry was crowned with success, although at a certain moment he despaired: "... I am sick, it seems that the end has come to me, and I am tired of living in our Cavalry ..." ("Evening").
This episode is the culmination of the novel, since after it the affairs of Lyutov are slowly but surely moving towards a positive conclusion: he is gaining authority among the cavalrymen. They call him "Lutych", turn to him in case of any difficulties as an arbitrator.
But the innate moral norm does not allow him to kill people, and Lyutov begs from fate "the simplest ability to kill a person." Still, it's hard for a man in a war! Lyutov finds the courage to resist the execution of prisoners in a tense combat situation, moreover, he achieved his goal. This is the denouement: the hero overcame, of course, to a certain limit, the abyss that separated him from the fighters of the First Cavalry.
But he still did not merge with them. "I was alone among these people, whose friendship I failed to achieve" ("Argamak").
3. Lyutov is trying to reconcile in his mind the aversion to violence and the idea of the inevitability of violence, that "the International... is eaten with gunpowder and seasoned with the best blood ..." This turns Lyutov's life into a "chain of terrifying suffering."
4. Babel needs a narrator not only for composition. Before the short story "My First Goose" there is no narrator Lyutov. So, the writer needed him for another reason. Babel, apparently, needed to show the character of an intellectual who went to war, to show his attitude to what was happening.
Thus, the fate of the hero is not a particular case concerning a single intellectual, but a colossal generalization of the most important problem in the work of the intelligentsia and the revolution.
5. The depiction in the horror novel of war is subordinated to the main goal of showing how the human soul rushes about in an unjust, bleeding world. Show that such a state is unnatural for a person!
6. In the novel, the main thing is not the image of battles, but the image of a person in war.
Lyutov understands what unrighteous and terrible things are happening around, nevertheless, he strives to ensure that "the Cossacks stop following him and his horse with their eyes", and passionately wants to "beg fate ... the ability to kill a man."
7. If we consider the question of the interaction of pathos and the world of the heroes of the novel, we can determine one of the most important problems that Babel posed and solved in Cavalry. This is the problem of man in war.
There is no heroic halo in the novel. The writer, on the contrary, reveals the horrific face of war. The characters and plots of Cavalry do not fit into the stereotypes of the civil war that readers of the 1920s and 1930s were accustomed to. Babel's cavalrymen were more reminiscent of Blok's reckless "badness", which is "without the name of a saint", which is "ready for anything."
We are far from thinking that all these people deserve condemnation, because it is not their fault that they are what they are: after all, culture and morality are not given with birth, they are developed throughout life. And what kind of life these cavalrymen had was perfectly clear from Babel's book.
8. Babel shows that, getting into the cruel world of war, even a cultured person is not able to fully stand on the principles of humanism. On the one hand, Lyutov protests against the killing of prisoners and insulting the religious feelings of Catholics, and on the other hand, he sets fire to a pile of straw on the floor of the house in order to force the hostess to feed him. This means that war is morally disastrous for both belligerents.
9. In Fadeev's novel, we drew attention to two episodes: the death of the seriously wounded Frolov and the confiscation of a pig from a poor Korean, thereby dooming him to starvation. Commentary on these events was unequivocal, according to Levinson: they are justified by the Higher goal for which his detachment is fighting. And Mechik's experiences on this occasion were recognized as hypocritical and vicious.
There are several similar situations in Babel's Cavalry. Let us dwell on one of them: the episode of Dolgushov's death. Telephonist Dolgushov had his stomach vomited by a projectile, "the intestines crawled onto his knees, heartbeats were visible." Dolgushov, remaining conscious, asks Lyutov to “spend” a cartridge on him, because “the gentry will jump in and make a mockery,” but Lyutov refuses to fulfill the request of the doomed. "At this time, Afonya Bida happened nearby," and he finishes off the dying Dolgushov, and then almost kills Lyutov because the "bespectacled man took pity" on the unfortunate one.
Here is a test for humanism in pure form! What choice to make? It is impossible not to finish off Dolgushov, but Lyutov cannot do this. This is what Bida does.
Which of them is more humane? We believe that in this situation there is not even a hint of humanism. Lyutov and Afonka both act inhumanly, but they cannot do otherwise. The situation is initially inhumane, which means that it is impossible to resolve it in a humane way. We again came to the idea of the inhuman essence of any war!
10. Babel called his diaries "I hate war", but this idea was not clearly carried out in his work. The fact is that the war and those who take part in it are given through the prism of Lyutov's perception, and his view is subjective. Moreover, such a reflection of events allowed Babel to give the only possible interpretation of the war: it is absolutely unbelievable that a person, fighting in one camp or another, managed to maintain an indifferent look at what is happening before his eyes daily and hourly. This further exacerbates the wild unnaturalness of war.
In other words, Babel as a person, as a writer, as a humanist rejects the war, but, not wanting to give up the truth, presents a picture of events in the form in which it is perceived by their direct participant. However, Lyutov's consciousness is being ground in the cruel and bloody millstones of the massacre. And this violence that is committed against a person, even more strongly affirms the author's position in the minds of readers: "There is no war!"
Man and war are mutually exclusive concepts, like life and death. But death cannot be undone. And the war? Babel's book denies war, because humanity pays too high a price for fratricidal wars, destroying everything that has been cultivated by mankind for centuries.
11. Isaac Babel is an extraordinary personality. For eight years (1917-1925) he was a soldier at the front, a Chekist, an employee of the People's Commissariat for Education, a member of the food expeditions of 1918, a participant in the fight against Yudenich as part of the Northern Army, a participant in the war with the White Poles as part of the First Cavalry, was also a graduate in 7th Soviet printing house in Odessa, a reporter in Petrograd and Tiflis.
Everything he writes about is absolutely real facts.
People who knew the writer personally recall his purely childish curiosity: he was interested in everything "that exceeds the norm", he was interested in life, not simplified, not embellished, but primordial, feelings not invented, but sincere.
Teacher. So, you saw that A. Fadeev and I. Babel have different attitudes towards the civil war. But both writers showed how difficult it was for an individual to make a choice. You have seen situations in which the question of the humanity of people already sounds inhumane. You came to the conclusion that war is unnatural for a person.
Many writers and poets perceived and portrayed the Civil War as a national tragedy. (The song "There, far away, beyond the river" sounds quietly.) The essence of this tragedy was reflected in her poem "The Swan Camp" by M. Tsvetaeva.
The student recites an excerpt from the poem:
Oh my mushroom
mushroom, white mushroom!
That, staggering, wails in
Rus' field:
Help on unsteady legs!
Clouded me blood-ore!
All lie side by side
Don't break the line.
Look: soldier
Where is yours, where is someone else's?
White was red became:
Blood stained.
Red was white became:
Death whitened.
Question: Who among the writers of the 1920s and 1930s is close to Babel in depicting the war?
The guys call the novel by A. Vesely "Russia, washed with blood" and "Don stories" by M. Sholokhov.
Let's give the floor to the creative groups that worked with these works.
Questions on the novel by A. Vesely "Russia washed with blood" (homework for the 3rd group):
1. What do you know about Artem Vesely?
2. What is common in the works of A. Vesely and I. Babel?
3. What is the difference between A. Vesely's novel and Cavalry?
5 What is the concept of civil war in the novel?
6. How do you understand the meaning of the title of the novel?
Student responses:
1. Artem Cheerful pseudonym of Nikolai Ivanovich Kochkurov. He was born in Samara, but is related to our region. In 1918-1919. worked in Melekesse (now Dimitrovgrad) as editor of the newspaper "The Banner of Communism". And in 1919 he volunteered for the Red Army to fight Denikin.
Many events from the Melekesian life were reflected in his story "Native Country", which was included in the novel "Russia Washed with Blood".
Artyom Vesely, like Babel, suffered during the years of Stalinist repressions for a true depiction of life: both writers were shot. A. Vesely was accused of slandering the heroic struggle for Soviet power by his “Russia, washed with blood”.
2. At the heart of the novel by A. Vesely, as well as the novel "Cavalry", are also real events. A. Vesely collected letters from participants in the civil war for several years, he himself walked along the retreat path of the 11th Army through the Astrakhan sands.
"Russia, washed with blood" is a novel in short stories. Here, as in Babel, the inhuman actions of "ideological" bandits on both sides are condemned, compassion for their victims sounds. Life in "Russia washed with blood" is depicted, as in "Cavalry", with all its contradictions.
3. Unlike Babel's novel, there is no single plot in the novel by Artyom Vesely, there is no single hero who would connect all the short stories.
"Russia, washed with blood" epic novel, although not finished by the writer. The author's task was to create a grandiose panorama of Russia during the revolution and civil war. It is no coincidence that in the title of the novel its main image is the image of Russia, and the epigraphs for each chapter convey the rapid movement of the revolution and the civil war, its elemental force:
"In Russia, the revolution shook the mother earth, the white light was clouded...",
"There is a revolution in Russia, all of Russia is at stake",
"There is a revolution in Russia, all of Russeyushka took on fire and swam with blood,"
"In Russia, the revolution is seething, the country is in blood, on fire."
A. Vesely is generally concerned about the fate of the whole people, all of Russia, the fate of a person in these cruel conditions.
In the chapter "Black shoulder strap" the writer introduces us to the intellectual Kulagin, a White Guard officer. Kulagin is confused before the cruelties of the civil war: "Everything that makes a person alive is trampled and spat ... under fire." When someone tells him that he is defending the happiness of Russia, he bitterly replies, pointing to the gallows: "What happiness is there, you beat the simple people, they hang over there ..."
In the chapter "Feasting Winners" we see the already opposing side of the Red Army, we see their uncompromisingness: "Once an officer is a counterman. Hit with a poke, hit on the fly, hit backhand."
The writer is worried about the cruelty that the revolution and the civil war engendered in people: if the cadets and former high school students in the White Guard trained in the felling of peasants near the village of Lezhanka, so that there would be something to tell later, then Vaska the Red Army soldier boasts: “There are enough rings for weddings, we chopped rings with the fingers of the Kornilov officers ... In all churches, weddings are around the clock ... "
Cruelty breeds cruelty. We are warned about this by all the works of Russian literature about the war that are familiar to us: Gogol's Taras Bulba, Tolstoy's Hadji Murat, and works about the war of the Soviet period.
The writer is worried about the ignorance, rudeness of the Red Army. Let's remember how Timoshkin, looking at the portrait of Tolstoy on the wall in the teacher's room, asks her daughter: "Daddy?"
Artyom Vesely showed in his novel the cruelty of both the Reds and the Whites. In the chapter "A Bitter Hangover" he writes "The Reds burned the farms and villages of the rebellious Cossacks, the Whites smashed the peasant villages and workers' settlements."
The novel ends with the bitter exclamation of the writer: "Native country ... Smoke, fire, no end to the edge!"
5. Artyom Vesely denies the war. He is objective in her portrayal. Being on the side of the Soviet government, he speaks with bitter irony about ignorance, about the limitations of the former peasants of the Red Army, sincerely worries that in the civil war all the people: both the whites and the reds wake up cruelty, humanity disappears. It is no coincidence that a simple fisherman says: "War, war ... And who invented it on our mountain? Darkness-darkness of the people is dying."
Depicting cruelty to naturalism accurately, A. Vesely affirms the need for humanism and the uselessness of war, especially fratricidal.
6. The very title of the novel reflects, in our opinion, the position of the author in relation to the civil war.
Russia is the whole country, all the people. Russia, free, happy, is the dream, the goal of all those who fought in the civil war for their liberation from slavery.
The word "washed" in V. Dal's dictionary means "purified", but you can't wash a dream with blood. In the Phraseological Dictionary, "to wash with blood" has two meanings: 1. To bleed. About a person who was beaten in the face. (Hit in the face to wash with blood.) 2. Fight, fight, defending something. ("Both of you wash yourself with blood for the Soviet power". A.N. Tolstoy. "Bread".)
It turns out that Russia in the civil war is both beaten and deceived, and in the face, and deceived, and unhappy. For the writer, the civil war is the tragedy of the whole nation.
How did M. Sholokhov portray the civil war? What is his position towards her? Members of the 4th creative group share the results of their research.
Questions for working with "Don stories" by M. Sholokhov:
1. What stories from this collection have you read? What position does the writer take in relation to the civil war?
3. In "Don Stories", as in Russia, washed with blood, "there are also many cruel scenes. How are Sholokhov's heroes different?
4. What is the concept of the civil war in "Don stories"?
Student responses.
1. Almost all the stories in the collection have been read. The most striking impression was made on the children by the stories "Birthmark", "Alien Blood", "Food Commissioner", "Shibalkovo Seed" and others.
In our opinion, M. Sholokhov showed the criminality of the civil war, its disastrous, destructive consequences both for the fate of the Pacific Don and for Russia as a whole.
Sholokhov believes that both sides are wrong in this war. For this, the writer received the label of "doubtful companion".
Sholokhov, like the writers we talked about today, saw in the civil war a human tragedy.
2. This idea of the writer is especially strong in the story "The Mole".
The protagonists are father and son Koshevoy, who the revolution placed on opposite sides of the barricades. Nikolka hardly remembers his father, a Cossack, he only remembers how he taught him to ride. Nikolka wants to study, and here is "blood again", a gang. "I'm tired of living like this," he says.
Nikolka's father, the chieftain of the gang, also experiences a mortal yearning for a different life. In an effort to win a happy future for his son, the father kills him in battle. I learned that the commander of the detachment was his son, when he had already killed, by a mole. The father realized that he had committed a sin, and he pronounced a sentence on himself and shot himself.
3. There are a lot of cruel scenes in Sholokhov's stories. The writer, in our opinion, tries to help his characters either to preserve their humanity, or to help them realize their cruelty and somehow atone for it. Moreover, the author does this regardless of the ideology of his characters.
For example, in the story "Shibalkovo Seed" the Red Army soldiers advise the protagonist to kill the child he is babysitting, because this child was adopted by a White Guard spy. And Shibalok says: "But I feel sorry for the shooter to the extreme." It's a pity, probably, because the child, because the native, because Shibalok has not yet lost his human qualities.
In the story "Food Commissar" Sholokhov showed a Bolshevik son who went against the father of a wealthy Don Cossack, who did not want to give bread for free, and killed him. Sholokhov does not justify this fanaticism: repentance makes his hero atone for his guilt by his death.
Sholokhov believes that in a civil war, both Reds and Whites can be both animals and people. In the story "Alien Blood", for example, we learn about how a Don Cossack, who hates the Bolsheviks, who lost his son in the war against the new government, saved a nineteen-year-old Red Army soldier, went out and fell in love like a son.
The writer shows that only the path of mutual forgiveness can save people from the senselessness of bloodshed.
4. Civil war is a crime for Sholokhov. In no story did he sing of the war. The civil war, according to the writer, is a national tragedy, a catastrophe in which there can be no winners. And this is not only the truth of life. "Don Stories" is Sholokhov's warning for the future. We believe that they are still very relevant today.
VI. Summing up, conclusions.
So, we got acquainted with the research of creative groups, with their observations and conclusions.
What is the general conclusion on the topic of the lesson? Read your notes that you made during the lesson.
The teacher corrects the children's answers.
The civil war in the history and literature of the 20-30s, and in modern literature, was interpreted in different ways. Some saw in it only the heroic, others the tragedy of the whole people.
1. A. Fadeev in the novel "The Rout" showed a class position: he believes that in the revolution and civil war there is a "selection of human material", and gives preference to workers and peasants. But, justifying cruelty with "higher" expediency, he, like a true artist, could not but show the tormenting doubts of a person who must determine his place in the revolution and civil war.
2. I. Babel in "Cavalry" showed that in a brutal civil war, even a cultured person is not able to stand on the principles of humanism. This means that war is morally equally destructive for both belligerents (remember the statements about the war by the commanders of the Red and White armies).
Thus, Babel denies war, especially fratricidal.
3. A. Vesely in his novel "Russia, washed with blood" showed that in the civil war, all the belligerents, both the whites and the reds, awaken cruelty, humanity disappears. Depicting the horrors of war, A. Vesely denies war and affirms humanism. For him, the war is a tragedy for the whole people.
4. For Sholokhov, a civil war is a crime, a national tragedy, a war in which there can be no winners.
All the writers who portrayed the war, as we have seen, are concerned about the fate of Russia, the fate of the people, the fate of every person, they are concerned about the preservation of universal human values.
We turned over the "pages covered in blood" to learn from them and remember a kind of testament that calls us to humanity:
In a time of turmoil and depravity
Do not judge, brothers, brother.
The consciousness of people has changed over the years since the civil war. It is no coincidence that a new holiday, the Day of Reconciliation and Accord, has appeared in our country.
Humanist writers, through their works, urge us to remember the cruel lessons of history for our own good.
Kalyakina G. V. - teacher of Russian language and literature, MBOU Gaginskaya secondary school.
Volgograd 2004
Literature abstract
« The Civil War in the Works of Russian Writers
Completed:
11A student
Arkhipov Alexey
Teacher:
Skorobogatova O.G.
Introduction………………………………………………………………….3
1.1. A.A. Fadeev - "the most important initiator of Soviet literature
Tours, singer of the youth of the new world and the new man.
The novel "The Defeat"………………………………………………__
1.2. The contradictions inherent in life in the epoch of class struggle,
depicted in the novel by M.A. Sholokhov "Quiet Flows the Don"…….__
1.3. The conflict between the human destiny of the intelligentsia and
the course of history in the works of M.M. Bulgakov "Days
Turbinnykh" and "White Guard"………………………………__
1.4. Cavalry by I.E. Babel - "chronicle of everyday atrocities",
times of revolution and civil war…………………...__
Conclusion……………………………………………………………….__
Bibliography………………………………………………………__
Introduction
Here God is fighting the devil,
and the battlefield is people's hearts!
F. M. Dostoevsky
The civil war of 1918-1920 is one of the most tragic periods in the history of Russia; it claimed the lives of millions, forced the masses of people of different classes and political views, but of one faith, one culture and history, to face in a cruel and terrible struggle. War in general, and civil war in particular, is an action that is initially unnatural, but after all, at the origin of any event is a Man, his will and desire: even L. N. Tolstoy argued that an objective result in history is achieved by adding the wills of individual people into a single whole, in one result. Man is a tiny, sometimes invisible, but at the same time irreplaceable detail in the vast and complex mechanism of war. Domestic writers, who reflected the events of 1918-1920 in their works, created a number of vital, realistic and vivid images, putting the fate of a Man in the center of the story and showing the impact of war on his life, inner world, scale of norms and values.
Any extreme situation puts a person in extremely difficult conditions and makes him show the most significant and deepest character traits; in the struggle between good and evil principles, the soul wins the strongest, and the act performed by a person becomes the result and consequence of this struggle.
The revolution is too huge an event in its scale not to be reflected in literature. And only a few writers and poets who were under its influence did not touch this topic in their work.
It must also be borne in mind that the October Revolution, a most important stage in the history of mankind, gave rise to the most complex phenomena in literature and art.
A lot of paper was written in response to the revolution and counter-revolution, but only a little that came out from the pen of the creators of stories and novels could fully reflect everything that moved the people in such difficult times and exactly in the direction in which it is necessary. was the highest posts, not having a single person. Also, the moral breakdown of people who have fallen into the most difficult position of the beast of the revolution is not everywhere described. And the one who stirred up, unleashed a war ... Did they feel better? No! They, too, ended up in the hands of the monster that they themselves gave birth to. These people from high society, the color of the entire Russian people is the Soviet intelligentsia. They were subjected to the most difficult trials by the second, most of the population of the country, who intercepted the progress, the further development of the war. Some of them, especially young people, broke down...
Many writers have used various methods of embodying and conveying all their thoughts about the revolution in full and in the form that they themselves experienced while being in the very centers of the civil war.
For example, A.A. Fadeev was the same person of revolutionary cause as his heroes. His whole life and its circumstances were such that A.A. Fadeev was born into a family of rural progressive-minded intellectuals. And immediately after school, he rushed into battle. About such times and the same young guys drawn into the revolution, he wrote: “So we all parted for the summer, and when we came back in the fall of 18, a white coup had already taken place, a bloody battle was already going on, in which the whole people, the world was drawn into split ... Young people whom life itself led directly to the revolution - such were we - did not look for each other, but immediately recognized each other by voice; the same thing happened to young people who went into the counter-revolution. The one who did not understand who was going with the flow, carried away by fast or slow, sometimes even muddy waves unknown to him, he grieved, offended why he was so far from the shore, on which yesterday still close people were still visible ... "
But the choice did not yet determine fate. Among those who left with A.A. Fadeev to the partisans, there were also "falconers", there were also those who "came not to fight, but simply to hide from the possibility of being mobilized into Kolchak's army."
Another example is M.A. Bulgakov "a man of amazing talent, internally honest and principled and very intelligent" makes a great impression. It should be said that he did not immediately accept and understand the revolution. He, like A.A. Fadeev, saw a lot during the revolution, he happened to go through a difficult period of the civil wave, which was later described in the novel "The White Guard", the plays "Days of the Turbins", "Running" and numerous stories, including the Hetmanate and Petliurism in Kiev, the decomposition of Denikin's army. There is a lot of autobiographical in the novel "The White Guard", but it is not only a description of one's life experience during the years of the revolution and the civil war, but also an insight into the problem of "Man and the epoch"; it is also the study of an artist who sees the inextricable link between Russian history and philosophy. This is a book about the fate of classical culture in the formidable era of the scrap of age-old traditions. The problems of the novel are extremely close to Bulgakov, he loved The White Guard more than his other works. Bulgakov fully accepted the revolution and could not imagine life without a cultural upsurge, he worked constantly, intensely and selflessly, contributed to the development of literature and art, became a major Soviet writer and playwright.
Finally I.E. Babel, working as a correspondent for the newspaper "Red Cavalryman" under the pseudonym K. Lyutov in the First Cavalry Army, wrote a cycle of stories "Cavalry" based on diary entries.
Literary critics note that I.E. Babel is very complex in human and literary understanding, in connection with which he was persecuted during his lifetime. After his death, the question of the works created by him is still not resolved, so the attitude towards them is not unambiguous.
We agree with the opinion of K. Fedin: “If the artist’s biography serves as a concrete channel for his idea of the world, then Sholokhov’s worldly lot fell to one of the most turbulent, deepest currents that the social revolution in Russia knows.”
Path of B. Lavrenev: in the fall I went to the front with an armored train, stormed Petliura's Kiev, went to the Crimea. Gaidar's words are also known: "When they ask me how it could happen that I was such a young commander, I answer: this is not an ordinary biography for me, but the time was extraordinary."
Thus, it is clear that many writers could not stand aside from the events of their homeland, among the many social, political, spiritual differences and the reigning confusion, but always honestly fulfilled their literary and civic duty.
How, in what centuries, the stages of the movement of art differ? features of the conflict? The emergence of previously undeveloped plots, genres? The progress of artistic technique, finally?
Of course, all this, and many others too. But, above all, the emergence of a new type of personality, expressing the leading features of the time, embodying the people's desire for the future, for the ideal.
A person in history, literature, philosophy, art is always a priority, more weighty than everything else, relevant at all times. It is from this position that we regard the increase in the relevance of the topic under study, because on the fronts of the civil war, at the head, first of all, people described in works of art - Chapaev, Klychkov, Levinson, Melekhov ...
Literature in vivid images captured the features of real heroes, created collective figures of writers' contemporaries, reflecting the thoughts, aspirations, ideological ordeals and worldview of a whole generation of Russian society, from which its mentality is formed.
These literary aspects allow descendants to substantiate many historical processes, explain the spiritual potential, psychology of the current generation.
That is why this topic is significant and relevant.
We have set the following tasks:
To reveal the formation of a historical idea of the literary process, revealing the theme of the revolution and the civil war in Russia, the significance of the historical conditionality of this subject and issues in Russian literature.
To study and analyze the theme of revolution and civil war in the works of A.A. Fadeev, M.A. Sholokhov, I.E. Babel, M.A. Bulgakov, the views and assessment of literary critics on the reflection of the historical problem by these authors.
Create an idea and identify the most characteristic personality traits of this period, the main socio-spiritual conflicts and values reflected in the literature about the revolution and the civil war.
The value of the works of art we are considering lies in the truthful depiction of the revolution and the civil war, those who, drawn into the era, made the revolution and fought on the fronts.
What was a man like during the revolution and civil war? Why did he go into battle? What was he thinking? How has his attitude changed? People of our generation are interested to know how this person changed, what was new in him, how those qualities that the cruel, bloody time demanded of them were strengthened and established in him, what lessons of history have learned from the experienced humanity.
To this end, we proceed to the presentation of the study.
Chapter 1. The theme of revolution and civil war
in the work of Russian writers.
1.1. A.A. Fadeev is "the most important initiator of Soviet literature, the singer of the youth of the new world and the new man." The novel "Destruction"
Where is he, god? -
lame man chuckled. -
There is no god ... no, no,
no, vigorous louse!
A.A. Fadeev,
A novel that is still in circulation and has stood the test of time is A.A. Fadeev. In the novel, “the cramped little world of a partisan detachment is an artistic miniature of a real picture of a large historical scale. The system of images of The Defeat, taken as a whole, reflected the real-typical correlation of the main social forces of our revolution. It is no coincidence that the core of the partisan detachment was made up of workers, miners, the "coal tribe" constituted the most organized and conscious part of the detachment. These are Dubov, Goncharenko, Baklanov, selflessly devoted to the cause of the revolution. All partisans are united by a single goal of struggle.
With all his passion as a communist writer and revolutionary A.A. Fadeev sought to bring closer the bright time of communism. This humanistic faith in a beautiful person permeated the most difficult pictures and situations in which his heroes fell.
For A.A. Fadeev, a revolutionary is not possible without this striving for a brighter future, without faith in a new, beautiful, kind and pure person.
The characterization of the Bolshevik Levinson, the hero of the novel "Rout", 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 of, because in overcoming this poverty 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 a new, beautiful, strong and kind person, incomparable with any other desire. But how can there be talk about a new, beautiful person as long as huge millions are forced to live such a primitive and miserable, such an inconceivably meager life.
Novels by A.A. Fadeev became huge events in literary life, disputes often arose around them, and they did not leave anyone indifferent. And "Rout" is no exception to this polemical list.
If we take a purely external shell, the development of events, then this is really the story of the defeat of Levinson's partisan detachment. But 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 combined efforts of the White Guard and Japanese troops dealt heavy blows to the partisans of Primorye.
The optimistic idea of "The Defeat" is not in the final words: "... it was necessary to live and fulfill one's duties", not in this appeal, which united life, struggle and overcoming, but in the entire structure of the novel, precisely in the arrangement of the figures, their destinies and their characters.
You can pay attention to one feature in the construction of "The Rout": each of the chapters not only develops some kind of action, but also contains a complete psychological development, an in-depth description of one of the characters. Some chapters are named after the names of the heroes: "Frost", "Sword", "Levinson", "Intelligence Snowstorm". But this does not mean that these persons act only in these chapters. They take an active part in all events in the life of the entire detachment. Fadeev, as a follower of Leo Tolstoy, explores their characters in all difficult and sometimes compromising circumstances. At the same time, creating more and more new psychological portraits, the writer seeks to penetrate into the innermost corners of the soul, trying to foresee the motives and actions of his characters. With each turn of events, new sides of character are revealed.
To determine the main meaning of the novel, I chose the method of finding the main character of the work. Thus, one can see how the children of the revolution grow up from ordinary, everyday children, as from normal workers who do not differ from each other in any way.
But it is not so easy to answer such a seemingly naive question. One main character can be seen in the commander of the partisan detachment Levinson. Another personality can be imagined by merging together the images of Levinson and Metelitsa, because with their special features they together embody the true heroism of the struggle. The third compositional coloring of the novel lies in the conscious opposition of two images: Frost and Mechik, and in connection with such an intention of the writer, the personality of Morozka comes to the fore. There is even such an option where the true hero of the novel becomes a team - a partisan detachment, composed of many more or less detailed characters.
But all the same, the theme of such a multi-heroic novel is "led" by Levinson, he is given a voice in the most important reflections on the goals of the revolution, on the nature of the relationship between the leaders and the people. Almost all the main characters are correlated, compared and contrasted with him.
For the young Baklanov, the “heroic assistant” to the commander of the detachment, Levinson is “a person of a special, correct breed”, from whom one should learn and follow: “... he knows only one thing - business. Therefore, it is impossible not to trust and not obey such a right person ... ”Imitating him in everything, even in external behavior, Baklanov at the same time quietly adopted valuable life experience - wrestling skills. Morozka refers to the same people of the “special, correct breed” the platoon commander of the miner Dubov, the demolition worker Goncharenko. For him, they become an example worthy of emulation.
In addition to Baklanov, Dubov and Goncharenko, who consciously and purposefully participate in the struggle, the image of Metelitsa, a former shepherd, who “was all fire and movement, and his predatory eyes always burned with an insatiable desire to catch up with someone and fight” is also associated with Levinson. According to Baklanov, the possible path of Metelitsa is also outlined: “How long have you been pasturing horses, and in two years, look, he will be in command of all of us ...” This is a person for whom the revolution is the goal and meaning of existence.
Frost and Mechik are also correlated with the image of Levinson - the two most important figures in the novel. As A.A. Fadeev: “As a result of a revolutionary test, it turned out that Morozka is a higher human type than Mechik, because his aspirations are higher - they determine the development of his personality as higher.”
As for the young Sword, he had one of the main moments in choosing a life path. And as a young and inexperienced man, he chose the romantic path for him. About such moments in the life of A.A. Fadeev said: “... a white coup had already taken place, a bloody battle was already underway, into which all the people were drawn, the world was split, before each young man, not figuratively, but vitally, the question arose: “In which camp to fight?”
A.A. Fadeev, putting Mechik in various positions, shows that his drama is not in the collision of a romantic dream with the harsh reality of life. Sword's consciousness perceives only the external, superficial side of phenomena and events.
The last thing to understand the young man and his fate is a night conversation with Levinson. By this time, quite a few grievances had accumulated. The sword turned out to be little adapted to partisan life. As an outsider, looking at the detachment from the side, he tells Levinson with the utmost, bitter frankness: “Now I don’t trust anyone ... I know that if I were stronger, they would obey me, they would be afraid of me, because everyone here is only with this is considered, everyone is only looking to fill his belly, at least to steal from his comrade for this, and no one cares about everything else ... It even seems to me sometimes that if they got to Kolchak tomorrow, they would also would have served Kolchak and dealt with everyone just as cruelly, but I can’t, and I can’t do that! .. ”
A.A. has Fadeev and another idea: "The end justifies the means." In this regard, Levinson appears before us, who does not stop at any cruelty in order to save the detachment. Stashinsky, who took the Hippocratic oath, helps him in this matter! And the doctor himself and, it would seem, Levinson come from an intelligent society. To what extent you need to change to kill a person. This process of “breaking” a person can be observed, taking into account how Mechik is transformed: “People are different here, I need to break somehow…”
At the end of the novel, we have before us a weeping Levinson, the commander of a defeated partisan detachment:
“... he sat looking down, slowly blinking his long wet eyelashes, and tears rolled down his beard ... Every time Levinson managed to forget himself, he began to look around again in confusion and, remembering that Baklanov was not there, he began to cry again.
So they left the forest - all nineteen.
Sam A.A. Fadeev, defined the main theme of his novel: “In the civil war, the selection of human material takes place, everything hostile is swept away by the revolution, everything incapable of real revolutionary struggle, accidentally falling into the camp of the revolution, is eliminated, and everything that has risen from the true roots of the revolution, from the millions of people, hardens, grows, develops in this struggle. There is a huge transformation of people."
In the main theme of the re-education of man in the revolution, more fully than in others, the ideological content of the novel is expressed; this is reflected in all elements of the work: composition, individual images, the entire figurative system. Emphasizing this idea, ?A. Bushnin? writes: “Each of the main characters of “The Rout” has its own finished, individually expressed image. At the same time, the cohesion of human figures in the novel, the totality of all social, cultural, ideological and moral varieties (Bolshevik Levinson, workers - Morozka, Dubov, Goncharenko, Baklanov, peasants - Metelitsa, Kubrak, intellectuals - Stashinsky, Mechik, etc.) form a complex "contradictory picture of the spiritual formation of a new man, a Soviet citizen, in the practice of revolution"
The invincibility of the revolution lies in its vitality, in the depth of penetration into the consciousness of people who were often the most backward in the past. Like Frost, these people rose to conscious action for the highest historical goals. In Morozok, Fadeev showed a generalized image of a man from the people, the re-education of people in the fire of revolution and civil war, the “reworking of human material”, gave a history of the development of a new consciousness experienced by millions of people in the first years of the new government.
A. Fadeev wrote: “Morozka is a man with a difficult past. He could steal, he could swear rudely, he could treat a woman rudely, he did not understand a lot in life, he could lie, drink. All these traits of his character are undoubtedly his great shortcomings. But in difficult, decisive moments of the struggle, he did what was necessary for the revolution, overcoming his weaknesses. The process of his participation in the revolutionary struggle was the process of the formation of his personality. This was the main optimistic idea of the tragic novel "The Rout", which even now makes it possible to turn to the question of revolutionary humanism, which, having absorbed the progressive ideas of the past, was a new degree of moral development of mankind.
Summing up all the above, it can be noted that the writer in the novel "The Defeat" asserted the triumph of the revolutionary cause, linking it with a truthful, historically concrete reproduction of reality, which he portrayed with all its contradictions, showing the struggle of the new with the old, while showing special interest to show the process of the birth of a new person in the conditions of the new time.
Describing this feature of the novel, K. Fedin wrote: “... in the twenties, A. Fadeev was one of the first who set himself the task of fundamental importance for all literature - the creation of a positive hero - and completed this task in the novel “The Rout” ... "
Concretizing this idea, one can cite the statement of A. Fadeev himself, who, characterizing his creative method, said that he sought, first of all, to more fully “transmit the processes of change in ________ that occur in people, in their desires, aspirations, to show what influences these changes, to show through what stages the development, the formation of the new man of socialist culture takes place.
"The Rout" was a significant event in the history of early Soviet prose, becoming for a time the focus of heated debate about the future fate of literature. The success of Fadeev's novel, an innovative work, is based on high ideological and artistic merits. Having talentedly depicted the process of the formation of a new person, in revolution and civil war, Fadeev established himself as an excellent master of psychological analysis, a thoughtful, penetrating artist who adopted the traditions of classical literature.
1.2. The contradictions inherent in the life of the era of the class struggle, depicted in the novel by M.A. Sholokhov "Quiet Flows the Don"
"I would like my books
helping people become better
become purer in soul, awaken
love for a person, striving actively
fight for the ideas of humanism and human progress.
M.A. Sholokhov
M.A. Sholokhov came to literature with the theme of the birth of a new society in the heat and tragedies of the class struggle. His novels The Quiet Flows the Don and Virgin Soil Upturned received the unanimous and wide recognition of millions of people as a true artistic chronicle of the historical destinies, social aspirations and spiritual life of the people who made a revolution and built a new society. The writer sought to embody the heroism and drama of the revolutionary era, to reveal the strength and wisdom of his native people, to convey to readers "the charm of humanity, and the disgusting essence of cruelty and treachery, meanness and money-grubbing as a terrible creation of a vicious world.
During the Civil War, Sholokhov lived on the Don, served in the food detachment, and participated in the fight against white gangs. After the end of the civil war, Sholokhov worked as a bricklayer, laborer, statistician, accountant.
Sholokhov belongs to the generation of Soviet writers who were shaped by the revolution and the civil war.
In The Quiet Don, Sholokhov appears, first of all, as a master of epic narration. The artist unfolds a vast historical panorama of turbulent dramatic events widely and freely. ²Quiet Don² covers a period of ten years - from 1912 to 1922. Those were years of unprecedented historical saturation: the First World War, the February coup, the October Revolution, the civil war. From the pages of the novel, a holistic image of the era of the greatest changes, revolutionary renewal emerges. Heroes live the life that is the ideal of millions and millions of people. Who are they? Cossacks, workers, farmers and warriors. They all live in the Tatarsky farm, located on the high bank of the Don. A considerable distance separates this farm from the nearest city, news from the big world does not immediately reach the Cossack huts. But it was the farm with its way of life and traditions, mores and customs, it was the restless soul, the “simple and ingenuous mind” of Grigory Melekhov, the fiery heart of Aksinya, the impatient and angular nature of Mishka Koshevoy, the kind soul of the Cossack Christoni, that were for the artist the mirror in which they reflected events of great history and changes in the way of life, consciousness and psychology of people.
The Quiet Don dispelled the legend of class solidity, social and caste isolation of the Cossacks. The same laws of social stratification and class differentiation operate on the Tatar farm as in any place in peasant Russia. Narrating the life of the farm, Sholokhov, in essence, gives a social cross-section of modern society with its economic inequality and class contradictions.
History inevitably “walks” through the pages of the Quiet Don, and the fates of dozens of characters who find themselves at the crossroads of the war are drawn into the epic action. Thunderstorms rumble, warring camps collide in bloody battles, and in the background the tragedy of mental throwing of Grigory Melekhov, who turns out to be a hostage of war, is played out: he is always in the center of terrible events. The action in the novel develops in two plans - historical and domestic, personal. But both plans are given in inseparable unity. Grigory Melekhov is at the center of The Quiet Don, not only in the sense that more attention is paid to him: almost all the events in the novel either take place with Melekhov himself or are somehow connected with him. “Our era is the era of the intensification of the struggle for the Melekhovs ... in the context of the worldwide popularity of the Sholokhov epic, the inaccuracy and limited approach to the image of Melekhov as the image of a renegade, a morally degrading person who is supposedly waiting for inevitable death are especially striking. This contradicts the attitude of the author himself and the majority of readers towards him. Sholokhov teaches the wise combination of political insight and adherence to principles with humanity and sensitivity,” these words belong to A.I. Metchenko, who praised Sholokhov's epic novel in his articles "The Great Power of the Word" and "The Wisdom of the Artist". Sholokhov, with Shakespearean depth, sculpts an image that nowhere and never loses such a human quality as the charm of personality. A.I. Metchenko argues that we have before us not only the image of a Don Cossack lost at the crossroads of history, but also the type of era and that common psychological and political situation in which a person must make his choice: past or future, already experienced and experienced or unknown, unclear.
Recently, the opinion has been expressed that "the educational impact of the image of Melekhov is increasing." What is it, first of all? Probably, in frenzied truth-seeking, in ethical uncompromisingness. In our opinion, this book is instructive and important for young readers because it reminds of the right and obligation of everyone to make their own choice. Despite the fact that Grigory Melekhov is seriously mistaken in his actions, he never prevaricates. The greatness of Melekhov lies in the fact that there is no “second person” in him.
Melekhov is characterized in the novel in many ways. His youthful years are shown against the backdrop of the life and life of the Cossack village. Sholokhov truthfully depicts the patriarchal structure of the life of the village. The character of Grigory Melekhov is formed under the influence of conflicting impressions. The Cossack village instills in him courage, straightforwardness, courage from an early age, and at the same time she inspires him with many prejudices that are passed down from generation to generation. Grigory Melekhov is smart and honest in his own way. He passionately strives for truth, for justice, although he does not have a class understanding of justice. This person is bright and large, with large and complex experiences. It is impossible to fully understand the content of the book without understanding the complexity of the path of the protagonist, generalizing the artistic power of the image.
The combination of the epic depiction of great historical events with the amazing lyricism of the narration, the transfer of the most subtle intimate experiences of people, the disclosure of their most intimate feelings and thoughts, and to a greater extent this applies to the description of the female images of ordinary Russian women gives considerable merit to the novel "Quiet Flows the Don".
From a young age he was kind, sympathetic to someone else's misfortune, in love with all living things in nature. Once, in a hayfield, he accidentally slaughtered a wild duckling and “with a sudden feeling of acute pity, he looked at the dead lump lying in his palm.” The writer makes us remember Gregory in harmony with the natural world.
As a tragedy, Gregory experienced the first human blood shed by him. In the attack, he killed two Austrian soldiers. One of the murders could have been avoided. The realization of this weighed heavily on my soul. The mournful appearance of the dead man appeared later in a dream and caused "internal pain." Describing the faces of the Cossacks who got to the front, the writer found an expressive comparison: they resembled “stalks of mowed, withering and changing grass.” Grigory Melekhov also became such a beveled withering stem: the need to kill deprived his soul of moral support in life.
Grigory Melekhov many times had to observe the cruelty of both the Whites and the Reds, so the slogans of class hatred began to seem fruitless to him: “I wanted to turn away from everything seething with hatred, hostile and incomprehensible world ... I was drawn to the Bolsheviks - I walked, led others, and then took thought, cold at heart.
Civil strife exhausted Melekhov, but the human in him did not fade away. The more Melekhov was drawn into the whirlpool of the civil war, the more desirable his dream of peaceful labor. From the grief of loss, wounds, throwing in search of social justice, Melekhov aged early, lost his former prowess. However, he did not lose the "human in man", his feelings and experiences - always sincere - were not dulled, but perhaps aggravated.
The manifestations of his responsiveness and sympathy for people are especially expressive in the final parts of the work. The hero is shocked by the spectacle of the dead: “baring his head, trying not to breathe, carefully,” he circles a dead old man, stretched out on scattered golden wheat. Passing through the places where the chariot of war rolled, he sadly stops in front of the corpse of a tortured woman, straightens her clothes, and invites Prokhor to bury her. He buried the innocently killed, kind, hardworking grandfather Sashka under the same poplar tree where the latter had buried him and Aksinya's daughter. In the scene of Aksinya's funeral, we see a grief-stricken man who has drunk a full cup of suffering to the brim, a man who has grown old before his term, and we understand that only a great, albeit wounded heart could feel the grief of loss with such deep strength.
In the final scenes of the novel, Sholokhov reveals the terrible emptiness of his hero. Melekhov lost his most beloved person - Aksinya. Life has lost all meaning and meaning in his eyes. Even earlier, realizing the tragedy of his position, he says: “I fought off the whites, didn’t stick to the reds, and I swim like manure in an ice hole ...”. There is a great typical generalization in the image of Gregory. The impasse in which he found himself, of course, did not reflect the processes that took place in the entire Cossacks. The typical character is not that. The fate of a man who has not found his way in life is tragically instructive. The life of Grigory Melekhov was not easy, his journey ends tragically in the Quiet Don. Who is he? A victim of delusions, who experienced the full burden of historical retribution, or an individualist who broke with the people and became a pitiful renegade? The tragedy of Grigory Melekhov was often perceived by critics as the tragedy of a man who broke away from the people, who became a renegade, or as a tragedy of historical error. It would seem that such a person cannot cause anything but hostility and contempt. The reader is left with the impression of Grigory Melekhov as a bright and strong person; not without reason in his image the writer sought not only to show the perniciousness of decisions and actions due to the illusions of the possessive world, but also to convey the "charm of man."
In the difficult situation of the civil war, Gregory cannot find the right path due to the strength of political illiteracy, the prejudices of his country. Sholokhov, depicting the path of painful searches for the truth that Grigory followed, drawing the roads that led him to the camp of the enemies of the revolution, and severely condemning the hero for the crime against the people and humanity, nevertheless constantly reminds that, according to his inner inclinations, deeply rooted moral aspirations, this original a man of the people was constantly drawn to those who fought in the camp of the revolution. Therefore, it is no coincidence that his short stay with the Reds was accompanied by the acquisition of peace of mind, moral stability.
The image of Gregory cannot be understood by analyzing only his actions and not taking into account the state of his inner world, those motives that explain his actions.
The path of the hero in the novel ends tragically, and the motif of suffering grows stronger and more tense, our desire for a successful outcome of his fate becomes more relentless. This motive reaches a special tension in the scene of Aksinya's death. The psychologically penetrating portrait of Gregory and the image of the infinite cosmic world, before which he appeared one on one, conveys the depth of the tragedy.
But still, the tragedy does not obscure the motive of historical optimism in the novel, the idea of a real possibility of overcoming tragic conflicts in the course of historical cataclysms. This is precisely the pathos of the "Quiet Don" as an epic of folk life at a steep historical turn. Sholokhov showed that the process of any renewal, restructuring, requires the exertion of all forces, brings hardships, gives rise to sharp conflicts and confusion among the masses. This is reflected in the fate of Grigory Melekhov. His image acts as the personification of high human capabilities, which, due to tragic circumstances, did not receive their full implementation.
Grigory Melekhov showed extraordinary courage in the search for the truth. But for him, she is not just an idea, some idealized symbol of a better human existence. He is looking for its embodiment in life. Coming into contact with many small particles of truth, and ready to accept each one, he discovers their failure when faced with life.
The internal conflict is resolved for Gregory by the rejection of war and weapons. Heading to his native farm, he threw it away, "thoroughly wiped his hands on the floor of his greatcoat."
Manifestations of class hostility, cruelty, bloodshed, the author of the novel contrasts the eternal dream of a person about happiness, about harmony between people. He consistently leads his hero to the truth, which contains the idea of the unity of the people as the basis of life.
What will happen to the man, Grigory Melekhov, who did not accept this hostile world, this “bewildered existence”? What will happen to him if he, like a female little bustard, which is not able to frighten off volleys of guns, having gone through all the roads of war, stubbornly strives for peace, life, work on earth? The author does not answer these questions. The tragedy of Melekhov, intensified in the novel by the tragedy of all his relatives and dear people, reflects the drama of the whole region, which has undergone a violent "class alteration". The revolution and civil war tore and distorted the life of Grigory Melekhov. The memory of this terrible mess will be an unhealed wound on the soul of Gregory.
"Quiet Flows the Don" is an epic of people's life in historically significant years, reproduced by the writer with its heroism and tragedy. Sholokhov showed how, in the course of revolution and civil war, the possibility opens up for the realization of the highest ideals of humanity, the age-old aspirations of the people. Sholokhov portrayed this era as a historical action, covered with heroism and tragedy.
1.3. The conflict between the human destiny of the intelligentsia and the course of history in the works of M.A. Bulgakov "Days of the Turbins" and "White Guard"
And why don't the days go by for a long time
Turbins" by playwright Bulgakov?
I.V. Stalin
In 1934, in connection with the 500th performance of The Days of the Turbins, M. Bulgakov’s friend PS Popov wrote: “The Days of the Turbins is one of those things that somehow enter into one’s own life and become an epoch for oneself.” The feeling expressed by Popov was experienced by almost all the people who had the good fortune to see the performance that was going on at the Art Theater from 1926 to 1941.
The leading theme of this work was the fate of the intelligentsia in the context of civil war and general savagery. The surrounding chaos here, in this play, was opposed by a stubborn desire to preserve a normal life, “a bronze lamp under a lampshade”, “a white tablecloth”, “cream curtains”.
The play "Days of the Turbins" by M.A. Bulgakov initially had the goal of showing how the revolution changes people, to show the fate of people who accepted and did not accept the revolution. In the center is the tragic fate of an intelligent family against the backdrop of the collapse of the White Guard, the flight of the hetman, and the revolutionary events in Ukraine.
In the center of the play is the house of the Turbins. His prototype was largely the Bulgakovs' house on Andreevsky Spusk, which has survived to this day, and the prototypes of the heroes were people close to the writer. So the prototype of Elena Vasilievna was the sister of M. Bulgakov, Varvara Afanasievna Karum. All this gave Bulgakov's work that special warmth, helped to convey that unique atmosphere that distinguishes the Turbins' house. Their house is the center, the center of life, and unlike the writer's predecessors, for example, romantic poets, symbolists of the early 20th century, for whom comfort and peace were a symbol of philistinism and vulgarity, M. Bulgakov's House is the center of spiritual life, he fanned with poetry, its inhabitants value the traditions of the House and even in difficult times try to preserve them. In the play "Days of the Turbins" a conflict arises between human destiny and the course of history. The civil war breaks into the Turbins' house and destroys it. The "cream curtains" mentioned more than once by Lariosik become a capacious symbol - it is this line that separates the house from the world engulfed in cruelty and enmity. Compositionally, the play is built according to the circular principle: the action begins and ends in the Turbins' house, and between these scenes, the place of action becomes the office of the Ukrainian hetman, from which the hetman himself flees, leaving people to their fate; the headquarters of the Petlyura division, which enters the city; the lobby of the Alexander Gymnasium, where the junkers gather to repulse Petlyura and defend the city.
It is these events of history that drastically change life in the Turbins' house: Alexei is killed, Nikolka is crippled, and all the inhabitants of the Turbine house face a choice.
The Days of the Turbins is, of course, a psychological play. Together with a strongly pronounced lyrical beginning, humor makes itself felt in the depiction of the exposure of the hetman, the bandit existence of the Petliurites. And the tragic end ends with the collapse of the convictions of an honest and strong man - Alexei Turbin. The old world is collapsing and the remaining characters of the play face the problem of choice.
Let us dwell in more detail on the heroes of this immortal play. The Turbin family, a typical intelligent military family, where the older brother is a colonel, the younger is a cadet, and the sister is married to Colonel Talberg. And all friends are military. A large apartment, where there is a library, where they drink wine at dinner, where they play the piano, and, having drunk, they sing the Russian anthem out of tune, although there has been no tsar for a year, and no one believes in God. You can always come to this house. Here they will wash and feed the frozen captain Myshlaevsky, who scolds the Germans, and Petlyura, and the hetman. Here, they will not be very surprised at the unexpected appearance of the “cousin from Zhytomyr” Lariosik and “shelter and warm him”. This is a friendly family, everyone loves each other, but without sentimentality.
For eighteen-year-old Nikolka, thirsty for battles, the elder brother is the highest authority. Alexey Turbin, in our current opinion, is very young: at the age of thirty he is already a colonel. Behind him is the just ended war with Germany, and talented officers are quickly promoted in the war. He is a smart, thinking leader. Bulgakov succeeded in giving a generalized image of a Russian officer in his face, continuing the line of Tolstoy, Chekhov, Kuprin officers. Turbin is especially close to Roshchin from "Walking through the torment". Both of them are good, honest, intelligent people who are rooting for the fate of Russia. They served the Motherland and want to serve it, but there comes a moment when it seems to them that Russia is perishing, and then there is no point in their existence.
There are two scenes in the play when Alexei Turbin appears as a character. The first - in the circle of friends and relatives, behind the "cream curtains" that cannot hide from wars and revolutions. Turbin talks about what worries him; despite the “seditiousness” of his speeches, Turbin regrets that earlier he could not foresee “what Petliura is.” He says that it is a "myth", a "fog". In Russia, according to Turbin, there are two forces: the Bolsheviks and the former tsarist military. The Bolsheviks will come soon, and Turbin is inclined to think that victory will be theirs. In the second climactic scene, Turbin is already in action. He commands. Turbin disbands the division, orders everyone to remove their insignia and immediately go home. Turbin says bitter things: the hetman and his henchmen fled, leaving the army to its fate. Now there is no one to protect. And Turbin makes a difficult decision: he no longer wants to participate in “this booth”, realizing that further bloodshed is pointless. Pain and despair grow in his soul. But the commanding spirit is strong in him. “Don't dare!” - he shouts when one of the officers suggests that he run to Denikin on the Don. Turbin understands that there is the same “headquarters mob” that forces officers to fight with their own people. And when the people win and “split the heads” of the officers, Denikin will also run away abroad. Turbin cannot push one Russian person against another. The conclusion is this: the white movement is over, the people are not with it, they are against it.
But how often in literature and cinema the White Guards were portrayed as sadists with a painful penchant for villainy! Alexey Turbin, having demanded that everyone take off their shoulder straps, remains in the division until the end. Nikolai, brother, correctly understands that the commander "waits death from shame." And the commander waited for her - he dies under the bullets of the Petliurists. Aleksey Turbin is a tragic image, he is a solid, strong-willed, strong, brave, proud man who fell victim to the deceit and betrayal of those for whom he fought. The system collapsed and killed many of those who served it. But, dying, Turbin realized that he had been deceived, that those who were with the people had strength.
Bulgakov had a great historical sense and correctly understood the alignment of forces. For a long time they could not forgive Bulgakov for his love for his heroes. In the last act, Myshlaevsky shouts: “Bolsheviks?.. Magnificent! I'm tired of portraying manure in the hole... Let them mobilize. At least I will know that I will serve in the Russian army. The people are not with us. The people are against us." Rude, loud-voiced, but honest and direct, a good comrade and a good soldier, Captain Myshlaevsky continues in the literature a well-known type of Russian military man - from Denis Davydov to the present day, but he is shown in a new, unprecedented yet civil war. He continues and finishes the thought of the elder Turbin about the death of the white movement, an important thought leading to the play.
There is a “rat running from the ship” in the house - Colonel Thalberg. At first, he gets frightened, lies about a “business trip” to Berlin, then about a business trip to the Don, makes hypocritical promises to his wife, followed by a cowardly flight.
We are so accustomed to the name "Days of the Turbins" that we do not think about why the play is called that. The word "Dni" means time, those few days in which the fate of the Turbins, the whole way of life of this Russian intelligent family was decided. It was the end, but not a broken, ruined, destroyed life, but a transition to a new existence in new revolutionary conditions, the beginning of life and work with the Bolsheviks. People like Myshlaevsky will serve well in the Red Army, the singer Shervinsky will find an appreciative audience, and Nikolka will probably study. The finale of the piece sounds major. We would like to believe that all the wonderful heroes of Bulgakov's play will really become happy, that they will bypass the fate of many intellectuals of the terrible thirties, forties, fifties of our difficult century.
M.A. Bulgakov masterfully conveyed the events that took place in Kyiv and, first of all, the most difficult experiences of the Turbins, Myshlaevsky, Studzinsky, Lariosik. Coups, unrest and similar incidents aggravate the situation, after which we see not only the fate of intelligent people who are drawn into these events and are forced to decide the question: to accept or not to accept the Bolsheviks? - but also that crowd of people who opposed the revolution - the Hetmanate, its owners - the Germans. As a humanist, Bulgakov does not accept Petlyura's wild beginnings, and angrily rejects Bolbotun and Galanba. Also M.A. Bulgakov ridicules the hetman and his "subjects". He shows to what baseness and dishonor they reach, betraying the Motherland. Human meanness has its place in the play. Such events are the flight of the hetman, his baseness before the Germans. In the scene with Bolbotun and Galanba, the author, with the help of satire and humor, reveals not only an anti-human attitude, but also rampant nationalism.
Bolbotun says to the Sich deserter: “Do you know what German officers and commissars are doing to our grain growers? They bury the living near the ground! Chuv? So I'll bury you yourself at the grave! Himself!”
The dramatic action in Days of the Turbins develops with great speed. And the driving force is the people who refuse to support the "Hetman of All Ukraine" and Petliura. And the fate of the hetman, and the fate of Petliura, and the fate of honest intellectuals, including white officers - Alexei Turbin and Viktor Myshlaevsky, depend on this main force.
In the famous scene, when Alexei Turbin disbands the artillery battalion, consisting of cadets and students, the action reaches its highest state. Everything is ready to explode. Junkers are ready to tear apart, to kill Alexei Turbin. But suddenly he directly asks: “Who do you want to protect?” And he answers: “Hetman? Great! Today at three o'clock in the morning, the hetman, leaving the army to the mercy of fate, fled, disguised as a German officer, in a German train, to Germany ... Simultaneously with this canal, another canal was running in the same direction - His Excellency, the commander of the army, Prince Belokurov ... "
Through the rumble, confusion and confusion of the junkers and students, the voice of reason breaks through. Aleksey Turbin refuses to participate in the "booth" that began as early as three in the morning, does not want to lead the division to the Don, to Denikin, as Captain Studzinsky and some cadets suggest, because he hates the "staff bastard" and tells the junkers openly that on the Don they will meet "the same generals and the same staff mob." As an honest and deeply reflective officer, he realized that the white movement had come to an end. It remains only to emphasize that the main motive that moved Turbin was his awareness of one event: “The people are not with us. He is against us."
Aleksey also tells the cadets and students about Denikin's men: "They will force you to fight with your own people." He predicts the inevitable death of the white movement: “I tell you: the end of the white movement in Ukraine. He will end in Rostov-on-Don, everywhere! The people are not with us. He is against us. So it's over! Coffin! Lid!.."
Looking into the history of the civil war, we noticed an interesting statement by General Pyotr Wrangel, who wrote about the offensive of Anton Denikin: “The population, who met the army during its advancement with sincere enthusiasm, suffered from the Bolsheviks and longed for peace, soon began to again experience the horrors of robberies, violence and arbitrariness. As a result - the collapse of the front and the uprising in the rear "...
The play ends with a tragic despair. Petliurists leave Kiev, the Red Army enters the city. Each of the characters decides how to be. Myshlaevsky clashes with Studzinsky. The latter is going to run to the Don and fight the Bolsheviks there, while the other one objects to him. Myshlaevsky, like Alexei, is sure of the collapse of the white movement as a whole - he is ready to go over to the side of the Bolsheviks: “Let them mobilize! At least I will know that I will serve in the Russian army. The people are not with us. The people are against us. Alyosha is right!
It is no coincidence that special attention was paid to Myshlaevsky in the conclusion. Victor Viktorovich's confidence that there is truth behind the Bolsheviks, that they are capable of building a new Russia - this conviction characterizing the hero's choice of a new path expresses the ideological meaning of the play. Therefore, the image of Myshlaevsky turned out to be so close to M.A. Bulgakov.
Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov is a complex writer, but at the same time he clearly and simply sets out the highest philosophical questions in his works. His novel The White Guard tells about the dramatic events unfolding in Kiev in the winter of 1918-1919. The writer speaks dialectically about the deeds of human hands: about war and peace, about human enmity and wonderful unity - “the family, where only you can hide from the horrors of the surrounding chaos.”
In an epigraph from Pushkin's The Captain's Daughter, Bulgakov emphasized that we are talking about people who were overtaken by the storm of revolution, but who were able to find the right path, maintain courage and a sober view of the world and their place in it. The second epigraph is biblical. And with this, Bulgakov introduces us into the zone of eternal time, without introducing any historical comparisons into the novel.
The motive of the epigraphs is developed by the epic beginning of the novel: “The year was great and terrible after the birth of Christ 1918, from the beginning of the second revolution. It was abundant in summer with sun, and in winter with snow, and two stars stood especially high in the sky: the shepherd's star Venus and red trembling Mars. The beginning style is almost biblical. Associations make you remember the eternal Book of Genesis, which in itself
uniquely materializes the eternal, as well as the image of the stars in heaven. The specific time of history is, as it were, soldered into the eternal time of being, framed by it. The confrontation of the stars, the natural series of images related to the eternal, at the same time symbolizes the collision of historical time. In the beginning of the work, majestic, tragic and poetic, there is a grain of social and philosophical problems associated with the opposition of peace and war, life and death, death and immortality. The very choice of the stars makes it possible to descend from the cosmic distance to the world of the Turbins, since it is this world that will resist enmity and madness.
In The White Guard, the sweet, quiet, intelligent Turbin family suddenly becomes involved in great events, becomes a witness and participant in terrible and amazing things. The days of the Turbins absorb the eternal charm of calendar time: “But the days in both peaceful and bloody years fly like an arrow, and the young Turbins did not notice how white, shaggy December came in a hard frost.
The House of the Turbins is opposed to the outside world, in which destruction, horror, inhumanity, and death reign. But the House cannot separate, leave the city, it is a part of it, like a city is a part of the earthly space. And at the same time, this earthly space of social passions and battles is included in the expanses of the World.
The city, according to Bulgakov's description, was "beautiful in the frost and in the fog on the mountains, above the Dnieper." But its appearance changed dramatically, “... industrialists, merchants, lawyers, public figures fled here. Journalists fled, Moscow and St. Petersburg, corrupt and greedy, cowardly. Cocottes, honest ladies from aristocratic families...” and many others. And the city began to live with “a strange, unnatural life...” The evolutionary course of history is suddenly and menacingly disrupted, and man finds himself at its breaking point.
The image of a large and small space of life grows in Bulgakov in opposition to the destructive time of war and the eternal time of Peace.
You can’t sit out a hard time, shutting yourself off from him like the landlord Vasilisa is “an engineer and a coward, a bourgeois and unsympathetic”. This is how Lisovich is perceived by Turbines, who do not like petty-bourgeois isolation, narrow-mindedness, hoarding, isolation from life. No matter what happens, they will not count the coupons, hiding in the dark, like Vasily Lisovich, who only dreams of surviving the storm and not losing the accumulated capital. Turbines meet a formidable time differently. They do not change themselves in anything, they do not change their way of life. Every day, friends gather in their house, who are met by light, warmth, and a laid table. Nikolkin's guitar rings with brute force - desperation and defiance even before an impending catastrophe.
Everything honest and pure, like a magnet, is attracted by the House. Here, in this coziness of the House, Myshlaevsky, deadly frozen, comes from the terrible World. A man of honor, like Turbins, he did not leave the post under the city, where in a terrible frost forty people waited for a day in the snow, without fires, to change,
which would never have come if Colonel Nai-Turs, also a man of honor and duty, could not, despite the disgrace that is happening at the headquarters, bring two hundred junkers, perfectly dressed and armed through the efforts of Nai-Turs. Some time will pass, and Nai-Tours, realizing that he and his cadets have been treacherously abandoned by the command, that his children are destined for the fate of cannon fodder, will save his boys at the cost of his own life. The lines of the Turbins and Nai-Tours will intertwine in the fate of Nikolka, who witnessed the last heroic minutes of the colonel's life. Admired by the feat and humanism of the colonel, Nikolka will do the impossible - he will be able to overcome the seemingly insurmountable in order to give Nai-Turs his last duty - to bury him with dignity and become a close person for the mother and sister of the deceased hero.
The fates of all truly decent people are contained in the world of the Turbins, whether they are the courageous officers Myshlaevsky and Stepanov, or deeply civilian by nature, but not deviating from what befell him in the era of hard times, Alexei Turbin, or even the completely, it would seem, ridiculous Lariosik . But it was Lariosik who managed to quite accurately express the very essence of the House, opposing the era of cruelty and violence. Lariosik spoke about himself, but many could subscribe to these words, “that he suffered a drama, but here, at Elena Vasilyevna’s, his soul comes to life, because this is an absolutely exceptional person Elena Vasilyevna and their apartment is warm and comfortable, and especially wonderful cream curtains on all windows, thanks to which you feel cut off from the outside world ... And he, this outside world ... you will agree yourself, formidable, bloody and meaningless.
There, outside the windows - the merciless destruction of everything that was valuable in Russia.
Here, behind the curtains, there is an unshakable belief that everything beautiful must be protected and preserved, that it is necessary under any circumstances, that it is feasible. “... Hours, fortunately, are completely immortal, both the Saardam Carpenter and the Dutch tile are immortal, like a wise scan, life-giving and hot in the most difficult time.”
And outside the windows - "the eighteenth year is flying to an end and every day it looks more menacing, bristly." And Aleksey Turbin thinks with anxiety not about his possible death, but about the death of the House: “Walls will fall, an alarmed falcon will fly off from a white mitten, the fire will go out in a bronze lamp, and the Captain’s Daughter will be burned in the furnace.”
But, perhaps, love and devotion are given the power to protect and save, and the House will be saved?
There is no clear answer to this question in the novel.
There is a confrontation between the center of peace and culture to the Petliura gangs, which are being replaced by the Bolsheviks.
One of the last sketches in the novel is a description of the armored train “Proletary”. Horror and disgust emanates from this picture: “He hissed softly and angrily, something oozed in the side shots, his blunt snout was silent and squinted into the Dnieper forests. From the last platform, a wide muzzle in a deaf muzzle was aimed at the heights, black and blue, for twenty versts and straight at the midnight cross. Bulgakov knows that in old Russia there were many things that led to the tragedy of the country. But people who point the muzzles of their guns and rifles at their fatherland are no better than those staff and government scoundrels who sent the best sons of the fatherland to certain death.
History will inevitably sweep away murderers, criminals, robbers, traitors of all ranks and stripes, and their names will be a symbol of dishonor and shame.
And the House of Turbins, as a symbol of the imperishable beauty and truth of the best people of Russia, its nameless heroes, humble workers, keepers of goodness and culture, will warm the souls of many generations of readers and prove with each of its manifestations that a real person remains a person even at the turn of history.
Those who violated the natural course of history committed a crime in front of everyone, including the tired and frozen sentry at the armored train. In torn felt boots, in a torn overcoat, brutally, inhumanly, a chilled person falls asleep on the go, and he dreams of his native village and his neighbor walking towards him. “And immediately a formidable guard voice in his chest tapped out three words:
“Sorry... sentry... you will freeze...”
Why is this man given up to a meaningless nightmare?
Why are thousands and millions of others given to this?
One can not be sure that little Petka Shcheglov, who lived in the wing and had a wonderful dream about a sparkling diamond ball, will wait for what the dream promised him - happiness?
Who knows? In an era of battles and upheavals, an individual human life is more fragile than ever. But the strength of Russia is that there are people in it for whom the concept of “living” is tantamount to the concepts of “love”, “feel”, “comprehend”, “think”, be faithful to duty and honor. These people know that the walls of the House are not just a dwelling, but a place of connection between generations, a place where soulfulness is preserved in incorruptibility, where the spiritual principle never disappears, the symbol of which is the main part of the House - bookcases filled with books.
And as at the beginning of the novel, in its epilogue, looking at the bright stars in the frosty sky, the author makes us think about eternity, about the life of future generations, about responsibility to history, to each other: “Everything will pass. Suffering, torment, blood, hunger and pestilence. The sword will disappear, but the stars will remain, when the shadow of our bodies and deeds will not remain on the earth.”
1.4. Cavalry I.E. Babel - a chronicle of everyday atrocities" during the revolution and civil war.
This chronicle of everyday atrocities,
which oppresses me tirelessly,
like a heart defect.
I.E. Babel
The last book belongs to I.E. Babel. This legacy, which has come down to our times, has become a notable event in the literary life of the first post-revolutionary decade.
According to N. Berkovsky: "Cavalry" is one of the significant phenomena in fiction about the civil war.
The idea of this novel is to reveal and show all the flaws of the revolution, the Russian army and the immorality of man.
Roman I.E. Babel's Cavalry is a series of seemingly unrelated episodes that line up in huge mosaic canvases. In Cavalry, despite the horrors of the war, the ferocity of those years is shown - faith in the revolution and faith in man. The author draws the piercingly dreary loneliness of a man in the war. I.E. Babel, seeing in the revolution not only strength, but also "tears and blood", "twisted" a person this way and that, analyzed him. In the chapters "Letter" and "Berestechko" the author shows the different positions of people in the war. In the “Letter”, he writes that on the scale of the hero’s life values, the story of how they “finished” first brother Fedno, and then dad, takes second place. This is the author's own protest against the assassination. And in the chapter "Berestechko" I.E. Babel tries to get away from reality because it is unbearable. Describing the characters of the heroes, the boundaries between their states of mind, unexpected actions, the author draws the infinite heterogeneity of reality, the ability of a person to be sublime and ordinary, tragic and heroic, cruel and kind, giving birth and killing at the same time. I.E. Babel skillfully plays with transitions between horror and delight, between beautiful and terrifying.
Behind the pathos of the revolution, the author saw its face: he understood that the revolution is an extreme situation that reveals the secret of man. But even in the harsh everyday life of the revolution, a person who has a sense of compassion will not be able to reconcile himself to murder and bloodshed. Man, according to I.E. Babel, alone in this world. He writes that the revolution is “like lava, scattering life” and leaving its imprint on everything it touches. I.E. Babel feels like "at a big ongoing memorial service." The hot sun is still dazzlingly shining, but it already seems that this “orange sun is rolling across the sky like a severed head”, and the “gentle light” that “lights up in the gorges of the clouds” can no longer relieve anxiety, because it’s not just a sunset , and "the standards of sunset are blowing over our heads ..." The picture of victory before our eyes acquires unusual cruelty. And when, following the "standards of sunset", the author writes the phrase: "The smell of yesterday's blood and dead horses drips into the evening coolness", - with this metamorphosis, if he does not overthrow, then, in any case, he will greatly complicate his initial triumphant chant. All this prepares the finale, where in a hot dream the narrator sees fights and bullets, and in reality the sleeping Jewish neighbor turns out to be a dead old man, brutally stabbed by the Poles.
All Babel's stories are filled with memorable, vivid metamorphoses, reflecting the drama of his worldview. And we cannot but grieve about his fate, not sympathize with his inner torments, but admire his creative gift. His prose has not faded with time. His heroes have not faded. His style is still mysterious and irreproducible. His depiction of the revolution is perceived as an artistic discovery. He expressed his position on the revolution, became a "lonely man" in a world that is rapidly changing and teeming with change.
V. Polyansky noted that in Cavalry, as well as in L. Tolstoy’s Sevastopol Tales, “in the end, the hero is “truth” ... the rising peasant element, rising to the aid of the proletarian revolution, communism, albeit peculiarly understood” .
Cavalry by I.E. Babel at one time caused a huge commotion in censorship, and when he brought the book to the Press House, after listening to sharp criticisms, he calmly said: “What I saw at Budyonny is what I gave. I see that I didn’t give a political worker there at all, I didn’t give much at all about the Red Army, I’ll give it further if I can” ...
From the blood spilled in battles
From dust turned to dust
From the torments of the executed generations,
From souls baptized in blood
Of hateful love
Of crimes, frenzy
Righteous Rus' will arise.
I pray for her...
M. Voloshin
The last epigraph by no means accidentally fit into the general picture of discussions about the revolution. If we consider only Rus' - Russia, then, of course, we can agree with M.A. Bulgakov, who accepted, preferred the best path for our country. Yes, almost everyone agrees so, but not everyone thinks about the mysterious curve of the Leninist straight line. The fate of the country is in the hands of the country itself. But as the people themselves said, that from it is like from a wooden log, depending on who processes it ... Or Sergius of Radonezh, or Emelyan Pugachev. Although the second name is more suitable for the hetman, Kolchak and Denikin, as well as all those "staff bastards" who unleashed the very bloody massacre of the revolution, which was originally meant as "direct". But, in general, out of all the turmoil, “out of blood”, “ashes”, “torments” and “souls”, “righteous Rus'” arose! This is what M.A. Bulgakov, exclaiming through his heroes. I agree with his opinion. But we should not forget about M.A. Sholokhov and I.E. Babel, they showed practically all that “curve”, everything that arose “out of crimes”, “out of hating love”, everything that “in the end” was the Truth.
Conclusion
Having deeply studied a wide range of literary and artistic works of the last century, having analyzed literary criticism, it can be argued that the theme of revolution and civil war has long become one of the main themes of Russian literature of the 20th century. These events not only dramatically changed the life of the Russian Empire, redrawn the entire map of Europe, but also changed the life of every person, every family. Civil wars are usually called fratricidal. Any war is fratricidal in its essence, but in the civil war this essence of it is revealed especially sharply.
From the works of Bulgakov, Fadeev, Sholokhov, Babel, we have revealed: Hatred often brings together people who are related by blood in it, and the tragedy here is extremely naked. Awareness of the civil war as a national tragedy has become decisive in many works of Russian writers, brought up in the traditions of the humanistic values of classical literature. This awareness sounded, perhaps not even fully understood by the author, already in A. Fadeev's novel "The Rout", and no matter how much they look for an optimistic beginning in it, the book is primarily tragic - in terms of the events and fates of people described in it. Philosophically comprehended the essence of events in Russia at the beginning of the century years later B. Pasternak in the novel "Doctor Zhivago". The hero of the novel turned out to be a hostage of history, which mercilessly intervenes in his life and destroys it. The fate of Zhivago is the fate of the Russian intelligentsia in the 20th century. In many ways close to the poetry of B. Pasternak is another writer, playwright, for whom the experience of the civil war became his personal experience - M. Bulgakov, whose works ("Days of the Turbins" and "The White Guard") became a living legend of the twentieth century and reflected the impressions the author from life in Kiev in the terrible years of 1918-19, when the city passed from hand to hand, shots were fired, the course of history decided the fate of a person.
In the process of research, we discovered general trends that are characteristic of almost all literary works about the revolution and the civil war, which allowed us to draw the following conclusions.
The fate of a person in a period of severe historical upheavals and trials is subject to a painful search for his place and destination in new circumstances. The innovation and merit of the authors considered by us (Fadeev, Sholokhov, Bulgakov, Babel) lies in the fact that they gave the reader's world examples of personalities, restless, doubting, hesitant, for whom the old, well-established world collapses overnight, and they are captured by a wave of rapid innovative events which put the heroes in a situation of moral, political choice of their path. But these circumstances do not harden the heroes, they do not have malice, unaccountable hostility to everything indiscriminately. This is the manifestation of the enormous spiritual strength of man, his inflexibility before destructive forces, opposition to them.
In the works of Fadeev, Sholokhov, Bulgakov, Babel, one can clearly see how history breaks into people's lives, how the 20th century tempers them. Behind their thunderous tread, the voice of an individual is not heard, devalued his life. Like the era, so the person faces the problem of moral choice in the literature of this time. This is Levinson, and Melekhov, and Myshlaevsky ... The tragic outcome of this choice repeats the tragic course of history. The choice that Alexei Turbin faced at the moment when the cadets subordinate to him were ready to fight was cruel - either to remain faithful to the oath and officer honor, or to save the lives of people. And Colonel Turbin gives the order: "Tear off your shoulder straps, throw away your rifles and immediately go home." The choice made by him is given to a regular officer, "who has endured the war with the Germans", as he himself says, is infinitely difficult. He utters words that sound like a sentence to himself and the people of his circle: "The people are not with us. They are against us." It is hard to admit this, to back down from the military oath and betray the honor of an officer is even harder, but Bulgakov's hero decides to do this in the name of the highest value - human life. It is this value that turns out to be the highest in the minds of Alexei Turbin and the author of the play himself. Having made this choice, the commander feels complete hopelessness. In his decision to stay in the gymnasium, there is not only a desire to warn the outpost, but also a deep motive, unraveled by Nikolka: "You, the commander, are waiting for death from shame, that's what!" But this expectation of death is not only from shame, but also from complete hopelessness, the inevitable death of that Russia, without which such people cannot imagine life. Similar reflections on the tragic nature of the heroes were noted in the considered works. Therefore, fiction about the revolution and civil war has become one of the most profound artistic comprehension of the tragic essence of man in the era of revolution and civil war. At the same time, each hero experienced the evolution of his worldview, attitude to what is happening, his assessment and, in connection with this, his further actions in this world.
The characteristic position of the authors themselves is also interesting. These works are largely autobiographical or connected with their relatives, comrades-in-arms in combat operations. All writers, without exception, are captivated by reasoning about the enduring values of our world - duty to the Motherland, friends, family. It was difficult for the authors themselves at that time to figure out who to follow, whom to oppose, on whose side the truth is, they often, like their heroes, turned out to be hostages of their own oath and sense of honor, were subjected to the conditions of growing Soviet censorship, which did not give them the opportunity to to clearly and directly indicate their position in the works, to speak out to the end. Indicative in this respect is the end of any considered work, where there is no clear logical conclusion in its problematics. So the novel by M. Bulgakov “The White Guard” ends with the words: “Everything will pass. Suffering, torment, blood, hunger and pestilence. The sword will disappear, but the stars will remain, when the shadow of our bodies and deeds will not remain on earth. There is not a single person who does not know this. So why don't we want to turn our attention to them? Why? “There are eternal values that do not depend on the outcome of the civil war. Stars are a symbol of such values. It was in serving these eternal values that the writer Mikhail Bulgakov, like Mikhail Sholokhov, and Alexander Fadeev, and Isaac Babel saw his duty.
The best books about the revolution and the civil war, which are “Rout”, “Quiet Don”, “Cavalry”, “Days of the Turbins”, “White Guard” are still widely read, in demand, are not only of interest, but also contain educational aspects for the formation of humanism, patriotism, a sense of duty, love for one's neighbor, political vigilance, the ability to find one's place and vocation in any life circumstances, the ability to make the right decision that does not contradict universal moral values among young people.
LIST OF USED LITERATURE.
1. Babel I.E. Works. In 2 vols. T. 2: Cavalry; Stories 1925-1938; Plays; Memoirs, portraits; Articles and speeches; Screenplays / Comp. And prepare. Text by A. Pirozhkva; Comment. S. Povartsova; Artistic V. Veksler.-M.: Artist. Lit., 1990.- 574 p.
2. Bulgakov M.A. Plays. - M .: Soviet writer, 1987. - 656 p.
3. Bulgakov M.A. "And the dead were judged...": Novels. Tale. Plays. Essay / Comp., cr. Biochronika, approx. B.S. Myagkova; Intro. Art. V.Ya. Lakshina.- M.: Shkola-Press, 1994.- 704 p.
4. Fadeev A.A. Novels./ Ed. Krakovskaya A.- M.: Khudozh. Literature, 1971. - 784 p.
5. Fadeev A.A. Letters. 1916-1956 / Ed. Platonova A.- M.: Artist. Literature, 1969. - 584 p.
6. A. Dementiev, E. Naumov, L. Plotkin "Russian Soviet Literature" - M.: Uchpedgiz, 1963. - 397 p.
The theme of revolution and civil war became one of the main themes of Russian literature of the 20th century for a long time. These events not only dramatically changed the life of Russia, redrawn the entire map of Europe, but also changed the life of every person, every family. Civil wars are usually called fratricidal. This is essentially the nature of any war, but in a civil war this essence of it comes to light especially sharply. Hatred often brings together people who are related by blood in it, and the tragedy here is extremely naked. Awareness of the civil war as a national tragedy has become decisive in many works of Russian writers, brought up in the traditions of the humanistic values of classical literature.
This realization sounded, perhaps not even fully understood by the author himself, already in A. Fadeev's novel "The Rout". And no matter how much critics and researchers look for an optimistic beginning in it, the book is primarily tragic - according to the events described in it and the fate of people, B. Pasternak philosophically comprehended the essence of events in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century years later in the novel "Doctor Zhivago". The hero here turned out to be a hostage of history, which mercilessly interferes with his life and destroys it. The fate of Zhivago is the fate of the Russian intelligentsia in the 20th century.
In many ways close to B. Pasternak is another writer, playwright, for whom the experience of the civil war became his personal experience. This is M. Bulgakov. His play Days of the Turbins became a living legend of the 20th century. The play was born unusually. In 1922, having found himself in Moscow (after Kyiv and Vladikavkaz, after the experience of working as a doctor), M. Bulgakov learns that his mother died in Kiev. This death served as an impetus for the start of work on the novel The White Guard, and only then a play was born from the novel.
The novel and the play reflect the personal impressions of M. Bulgakov. In the terrible winter of 1918-1919, the writer lived in Kyiv, his hometown, which passed from hand to hand. The fate of man was decided by the course of history. In the center of the play is the house of the Turbins. His prototype was largely the Bulgakovs' house on Andreevsky Spusk, which has survived to this day, and the prototypes of the heroes were people close to the writer. So, the prototype of Elena Vasilievna was the sister of M. Bulgakov. This gave Bulgakov's work a special warmth, helped to convey the unique atmosphere that distinguishes the Turbins' house.
Their house is the center, the center of life, and unlike the writer's predecessors, for example, romantic poets, symbolists of the early 20th century, for whom comfort and peace were a symbol of philistinism and vulgarity, M. Bulgakov's house is the center of spiritual life, it is fanned poetry, its inhabitants value the traditions of the house and even in difficult times try to preserve them.
In the play "Days of the Turbins" a conflict arises between human destiny and the course of history. The civil war breaks into the Turbins' house and destroys it. The "cream curtains" mentioned more than once by Lariosik become a capacious symbol of peaceful life - it is this line that separates the house from the world engulfed in cruelty and enmity. Compositionally, the play is built according to the circular principle: the action begins and ends in the Turbins' house, and between these scenes, the place of action becomes the office of the Ukrainian hetman, from which the hetman himself flees, leaving people to their fate; the headquarters of the Petlyura division, which enters the city; the lobby of the Alexander Gymnasium, where the junkers gather to repulse Petlyura and defend the city.
It is these events of history that drastically change life in the Turbins' house: Alexei is killed, Nikolka is crippled, and all the inhabitants of the Turbine house face a choice. The last scene of the play sounds bitter irony. Christmas tree in the house, Christmas Eve 18. Red troops enter the city. It is known that in real history these two events did not coincide in time - the Red troops entered the city later, in February, but M. Bulgakov needed a Christmas tree on the stage, a symbol of the most domestic, most traditional family holiday, which only makes it more to feel the imminent collapse of this house and all the beauty that has been created over the centuries and the doomed world. Myshlaevsky’s remark also sounds bitter irony: after Lariosik pronounces the words from Chekhov’s play “Uncle Vanya”: “We will rest, we will rest ...” distant cannon strikes are heard, in response to them follows the ironic words said by Myshlaevsky: “So! Rest!..” This scene clearly shows how history breaks into people’s lives, how the 19th century, with its traditions, way of life, complaints of boredom and non-event, replaces the 20th century, filled with stormy and tragic events. Behind their thunderous tread, the voice of an individual is not heard, his life is devalued. So, through the fate of the Turbins and people of their circle, M. Bulgakov reveals the drama of the era of revolution and civil war.
Special attention should be paid to the problem of moral choice in the play. Before such a choice is main character works - Colonel Alexei Turbin. His leading role is preserved in the play to the end, although he is brought to the murdered at the end of the third act, and the entire last fourth act takes place after his death. In it, the colonel is invisibly present, in it, as in life, he acts as the main moral guide, the personification of the concept of honor, a guide for others.
The choice that Alexei Turbin faced at the moment when the cadets subordinate to him were ready to fight was cruel - either to remain faithful to the oath and officer honor, or to save the lives of people. And Colonel Turbin gives the order: "Tear off your shoulder straps, throw your rifles and immediately go home." Such a choice, made by him, is given to a career officer, "who endured the war with the Germans", as he himself says, is infinitely difficult. He utters words that sound like a sentence to himself and the people of his circle: “The people are not with us. He is against us." It is hard to admit this, to back down from the military oath and betray the honor of an officer is even harder, but Bulgakov's hero decides to do this in the name of the highest value - human life. It is this value that turns out to be the highest in the minds of Alexei Turbin and the author of the play himself. Having made this choice, the commander feels complete hopelessness. In his decision to stay in the gymnasium, there is not only a desire to warn the outpost, but also a deep motive, unraveled by Nikolka: “You, commander, are waiting for death from shame, that’s what!” But this expectation of death is not only from shame, but also from complete hopelessness, the inevitable death of that Russia, without which such people as Bulgakov's heroes cannot imagine life.
The play by M. Bulgakov became one of the most profound artistic comprehension of the tragic essence of man in the era of revolution and civil war.
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- The combination of music and poetry gave rise in the Middle Ages to such a genre as the ballad. Russian romanticism, which arose in the first half of the 19th century, turned to this genre and introduced a lot of new things into it. Batiushkov and Zhukovsky became major romantic poets in Russian literature. In their work, they turned to the experience of European poets, whose romanticism was in its heyday. An outstanding man of his era, V. A. Zhukovsky gave his romantic poems a deeply personal character. He believed that “life and poetry are […]
- The question of the relationship between fathers and children is as old as the world. In another of the ancient Egyptian papyri, an entry was found in which the author complains that children have ceased to respect their fathers, their religion and customs, and the world is collapsing. The problem of relationships between generations will never become obsolete, because the culture that brings up one generation will be incomprehensible to another. This problem was reflected in the work of many Russian writers of the 19th and 20th centuries. It also worries us, the generation of the 21st century. And, of course, relevant […]
- At the sight of a rich house, a hospitable host, elegant guests, one involuntarily admires them. I would like to know what these people are like, what they talk about, what they are fond of, what is close to them, what is alien. Then you feel how the first impression is replaced by bewilderment, then - contempt both for the owner of the house, one of the Moscow "aces" Famusov, and for his entourage. There are other noble families, heroes of the war of 1812, Decembrists, great masters of culture came out of them (and if great people came out of such houses, as we see in comedy, then […]
- N. A. Nekrasov can rightly be considered a folk poet, because it is no coincidence that the motifs of his lyrics, so diverse and complex in their artistic structure, are united by the theme of the people. The poems tell about the life of peasants and the urban poor, about the hard lot of women, about nature and love, about high citizenship and the poet's appointment. Nekrasov's mastery consisted primarily in realism, in a truthful depiction of reality and in the poet's involvement in folk life, affection and love for Russian […]
Terminological minimum Key words: themes, problems, pathos, realism, genre, image, character, canon, literary process, form, content, myth, social order.
Plan
1. General characteristics of the literary process of the post-revolutionary period: three branches of Russian literature of the Soviet era.
2. The theme of revolution and civil war from the point of view of representatives of official literature (A. Fadeev, N. Ostrovsky).
3. Negative image of revolution and civil war
(I. Bunin, I. Babel, B. Pilnyak).
4. Gravitation in the image to the inclusiveness of events in the works of M. Bulgakov, A. N. Tolstoy and others.
Literature
Texts to study
1. Bunin, I. A. Cursed days.
2. Babel, I. Cavalry.
3. Ostrovsky, N. A. How steel was tempered.
4. Pilnyak, B. Naked Year.
5. Tolstoy, A. N. Going through the throes.
6. Fadeev, A. A. Razgrom.
7. Shmelev, I. S. The sun of the dead.
8. Sholokhov, M. A. Don stories.
Main
1. History of Russian literature of the twentieth century: textbook. allowance: in 2 volumes / ed.
V. V. Agenosov. – M. : Yurayt, 2013.
2. Kormilov, S. I. History of Russian literature of the XX century (20–90s): main names / S. I. Kormilov. - M. : Publishing House of Moscow State University, 2010. - 480 p.
3. Russian literature of the XX century: textbook. allowance: in 2 volumes / under. ed. L. P. Krementsova. – M. : Academy, 2012.
Additional
1. Anninsky, L. A . "How the steel was tempered" by Nikolai Ostrovsky / L. A. Anninsky. - M. : Education, 1971. - 276 p.
2. Russian literature of the 20th century: patterns of historical development. New artistic strategies / otv. ed. N. L. Leiderman. - Yekaterinburg: Uro RAN, 2005. - 465 p.
3. Russian writers of the twentieth century from Bunin to Shukshin: textbook. allowance / ed. N. N. Belyakova, M. M. Glushkova. - M. : Flinta: Nauka, 2008. - 440 p.
4. Sokolov, B. V. Bulgakov Encyclopedia / B. V. Sokolov. - M. : Veko, 1998. - 348 p.
5. Sheshukov, S. I . Alexander Fadeev: essay on life and work / S. I. Sheshukov. - M. : Education, 1990. - 298 p.
1. Starting a conversation about the theme of revolution and civil war in Russian literature, it should be noted that it is these events that are traditionally considered to be milestones that gave rise to all subsequent literature of the Soviet period.
Turning to the study of the literary process of those years as a whole and the artistic heritage of its individual representatives, it must be taken into account that the old Soviet dogmas collapsed long ago and it became obvious that fiction cannot be measured mainly by ideological standards. However, it is also true that they cannot be completely ignored either. Due to the grandiose political events of that period, the once unified Russian classical literature was divided into three branches: Soviet literature, which is in the service of the new government, the literature of the Russian diaspora, whose representatives, not accepting it, were forced to emigrate, and literature, which turned out to be persecuted inside the country (later it will be called "hidden", "forbidden").
The stratification of the literary process in this form with rare deviations and changes (for example, in the era of the “thaw”) lasted for quite a long time, until the early 2000s. And if the ban within the country on a number of works is lifted in the late 1980s - early 1990s, then the reunification of the entire literary process is usually attributed to the moment of entry into force federal law"On Citizenship Russian Federation(July 1, 2002). Most of the writers, having found themselves abroad for one reason or another, got the opportunity to be citizens of Russia. A. Solzhenitsyn, V. Voinovich,
A. Aksenov. Thus, from that moment on, there is no need to talk about the literature of the Russian Diaspora, since the ideological opposition has been removed and it has become possible to publish banned works in Russia.
Russian post-revolutionary literature is a period, although short in length, but very important in its cultural and historical essence. And although from a purely literary point of view it was nothing more than a direct continuation of the literature of previous years, qualitatively new features appeared in it, which later became the reason for its split in the 1920s.
The history of literature testifies that 1921 became a fateful year for new Russian literature in this respect; it marked the appearance of two journals that opened the Soviet period in it. The journals Krasnaya Nov and Pechat i Revolyutsiya were a kind of attempt to revive the so-called "thick" journals that had become traditional for Russian literature of the 19th century.
The literary process of that time has its own characteristics. On the basis of the Silver Age, which had not yet completely forgotten, a grandiose social upsurge gave rise to exceptional enthusiasm and creative energy among not only supporters of the revolution, but also representatives of the old Russian intelligentsia. In this regard, the literature of the 1920s as a whole, and to a large extent of the decade that followed, turned out to be extremely rich.
However, one cannot fail to say that in 1921 A. Blok died and N. Gumilyov was shot. In 1922, the last complete collection of poems by A. Akhmatova was published, the flower of the Russian intelligentsia was expelled from the country, I. Bunin, M. Tsvetaeva, V. Khodasevich G. Ivanov and others left Russia. A little later, I. Shmelev, B. Zaitsev, M. Osorgin, M. Gorky.
One of the signs of that time was the massive closure of magazines. Under the ban were “Notes of Dreamers”, “Culture and Life”, “Chronicle of the House of Writers”, “Literary Notes”, “Beginnings”, “Pass”, “Mornings”, “Annals”, “Rosehip”, “Literary Thought”, "Russian Contemporary" and others. And this tragic trend continued in one form or another until the end of the 1950s.
Divided in the early 1920s. in parts, Russian literature in many respects still remained united, although there were both Russian diaspora and their own Soviet literature. Therefore, Russian culture until the end of the 1980s was considered literary-centric. At all times, it has largely replaced the Soviet person and philosophy, and history, and psychology, and other humanitarian spheres. It was not surprising that in order to promote their ideological postulates, the government resorted to the help of writers and poets loyal to it. Thus, through literature, the strongest ideological indoctrination of the Soviet person was carried out. People represented the revolution and events related to it according to the poems of V. Mayakovsky and A. Tvardovsky, collectivization - according to the novel “Virgin Soil Upturned” by M. Sholokhov, the novels by A. Fadeev “The Young Guard” and B. Polevoy “The Tale of a Real Man” reflected the events Patriotic War etc.
The theme of the revolution and the Civil War for a long time became one of the main ones in the work of many bright Russian writers. Each of them understood that these events irrevocably changed not only the life of Russian state but also the fate of every person, every family. In their works, no matter what political platforms they stood on, they called these events fratricidal. The civil war has become a kind of example of inhumane behavior of man and society. Awareness of it as a great national tragedy has become decisive in many works of Russian writers, brought up in the traditions of following humanistic values in Russian classical literature.
2. The civil war destroyed not only the age-old foundations of family and cultural relations. Each writer also had to make his own moral choice, which dictated artistic tasks. The main problem it became possible to reflect the ongoing events in an unbiased way or, focusing on one or another ideological platform, to reproduce the situation from a certain point of view.
The works about the Civil War differ in their artistic merit and the choice of situations in which the idea is realized. Among the many, the works of A. A. Blok, S. A. Yesenin and
V. V. Mayakovsky, for whom the theme of the revolution after 1917 became one of the main ones. These poets had different attitudes to the changes that had taken place in the country, covered them in different ways, and artistically embodied them in their works. V. Mayakovsky had the most straightforward positive attitude towards the revolution. He fully accepted all the events that took place in his country, sided with the Bolsheviks. Moreover, V. V. Mayakovsky subordinated all of himself, all his work to the service of the cause of the socialist revolution.
The attitude of A. A. Blok and S. A. Yesenin to the revolution of 1917 was not so unambiguous. It is known that Blok enthusiastically accepted it as an update, a change, a step towards something new, better. But at the same time, he was well aware that this complex process cannot proceed completely smoothly, without losses, blood and suffering.
Unlike V. V. Mayakovsky and A. A. Blok, S. Yesenin was the most difficult to accept the events that had taken place. He saw in the revolution, first of all, the loss of his homeland, the former Rus', which was replaced by a completely different country, where the poet no longer has a place.
In the field of drama, in our opinion, we should talk about the creation of the Soviet myth, utopia, idealization of reality. Art captures not only a deformed society, a world of destroyed humanistic values, generated by ideology, subordinated to it and called upon to serve the new regime. It also seeks to know the individual, the world of the individual, which must also be subject to ideology. The utility of art is caused by necessity (the so-called social order). The old and the new, the true and the false, the official Soviet and those opposed to ideological totalitarianism collide. The conflict of beliefs, genuine creativity and unified thinking of the new art lies at the heart of this complex fusion of life and art. And, although in the dramaturgy of the 1920s. there is little hard truth, the analysis of literary texts makes it possible to reconstruct the type of thinking of a person of that time, the ideology of culture, the relationship of the state and Soviet art to the main categories of being (time, space, man, nature, life, etc.). Plays of the first years of the revolution "Roar, China!" S. Tretyakova, “Love Yarovaya” by K. Trenev, “Storm” by V. Bill-Belotserkovsky, “Rift” by B. Lavrenev, “Crimson Island” by M. Bulgakov, comedies by V. Mayakovsky have a common goal - to show what is happening with point of view of an eyewitness and a participant in the events. The same applies to novel art, such works as the texts of A. Serafimovich "The Iron Stream", A. Vesely "Russia, Washed with Blood", "The Rupture" by B. Lavrenev, etc.
A revolutionary understanding of the situation was also expressed in A. Fadeev's novel "The Rout", which primarily describes the tragedy of events and the fate of people. Years later, N. Ostrovsky in the novel "How the Steel Was Tempered" tried to give a philosophical assessment of the events of the beginning of the century.
A. A. Fadeev, who wrote the novel "The Rout", which was highly appreciated by both critics and readers, defined the idea of "remaking human material in the crucible of the revolution." This explains artistic features works. The writer's attention is directed to how his characters behave in the proposed historical conditions, whether they accept the demands of the time, the revolution. For members of the partisan detachment there is no choice. They fight for the future, which is not very clear to them, they only know for sure that it will be better than the past and the present.
In this regard, the image of Frost, one of the heroes of the novel, is interesting. Actually, his presence in the center of the work is explained by the fact that he is a model of a new person undergoing a remake. Speaking about the selection of "human material", the writer had in mind not only those who turned out to be necessary for the revolution. People "unsuitable" for the construction of a new society are ruthlessly discarded. Such a hero in the novel is Sword. It is no coincidence that this person, by social origin, belongs to the intelligentsia and consciously joins the partisan detachment, guided by the idea of the revolution as a great romantic event.
The spontaneity, sung by many in those years, does not at all attract Fadeev. Members of the detachment often allow themselves hooligan acts (stealing melons from the chestnut, for example), which are evidence of their low consciousness, proof of the need to remake a person for a new life. The story of the theft of melons is described at the very beginning of the novel, when we still have the former Frost in front of us.
Even the life of an individual - partisan Frolov, mortally wounded and therefore interfering with the advance of the detachment - can be sacrificed to the interests of the team.
Almost all the characters of "The Rout" are people with whom the author fought, lived in poverty, and made the most difficult taiga crossings in battles. Of course, he did not copy them entirely from life. Much in them conjectured and generalized.
The best die in battles: Metelitsa, Baklanov. Remains in the ranks is not the most worthy - Chizh.
The creative success of A. Fadeev was considered the image of Levinson. Fadeev dreamed of creating the image of such a hero ever since he picked up a pen. This dream united in him both a politician and an artist, and just an interested person. After all, he saw in himself a growing, more and more conscious leader. To show the Bolshevik leader in such a way that the reader would believe in him, follow him, be convinced of his special right to power, was for Fadeev both a vital interest and an exciting task - political and artistic in equal measure. It is not for nothing that Spill begins with Neretin, Against the Current, with Commissar Chelnokov. These were, however, only sketches for an image that sooner or later had to take shape. Levinson is the first great creative success of the writer. In order to attract the reader to the figure of this hero, Fadeev did not endow him with either stone cheekbones or iron jaws, like A. Serafimovich of his Kozhukha in Iron Stream, or a fanatical faith in revolution, like B. Lavrenev Evsyukova in Forty-First, nor a martyr's crown, like Yu. Libedinsky a whole group of characters in "The Week" or Vs. Ivanov Peklevanova in Armored Train. He relied on frankness and openness to the reader.
Levinson is quite an ordinary person, with weaknesses and shortcomings. Another thing is that he knows how to conceal and suppress them. 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” or “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. Levinson's art of leading people is captivating. There is no deceit in it, no demagogy.
With the advent of The Defeat, it became clear that all the other Bolshevik heroes, who managed to quite densely "populate" literature, are noticeably inferior to Levinson, written both more lively and deeper than any of them.
The main issue around which the life of all the heroes of the work revolves is their attitude to revolutionary events. This is what the novel by N. A. Ostrovsky “How the Steel Was Tempered”, which became a cult for the Soviet era, is dedicated to.
At the end of 1930, the seriously ill N. Ostrovsky began to write the novel How the Steel Was Tempered. Initially, the text was created by hand, but due to illness, the line found itself on the line, it was difficult to parse what was written, the pace of writing did not satisfy the writer. The novel began to be written from dictation.
The manuscript sent to the journal "Young Guard" received a devastating review: the derived types are unrealistic. However, Ostrovsky managed to get a second review of the manuscript, which was given the direction of the party organs. After that, it was actively edited by the deputy editor-in-chief of the Young Guard M. Kolosov and the executive editor A. Karavaeva, a well-known writer of that time. Ostrovsky acknowledged the great participation of Karavaeva in working with the text of the novel; he also noted the participation of A. Serafimovich.
“How the Steel Was Tempered” is quite often called the “tracing paper of the era”, and Korchagin’s predecessor can be called his namesake, Pavel Vlasov. Both of them, as a historical type, arise at the moment when the eternal search for an idea is combined with the movement of the masses.
Seriousness is inherent in Paul, a sense of meaningfulness of each step. It combines characteristic and its philosophical meaning. The hero resolves all the issues of the generation with an extremely complete approach. If for senior communists there is a question of ends and means (in the scene of the hijacking of a steam locomotive by Artem and the elder Bruzzak), then Seryozha Bruzzak, without thinking, goes to kill in order to bring closer the day when there will be no murders on earth at all. The author knowingly puts Korchagin in a love situation. The secret of Korchagin's attitude to love: he cannot love to the detriment of an idea, to sacrifice it. Pavel gives himself up to love for Tae Kyutsam, finding in her a friend and support, only when nothing threatens the idea.
Nevertheless, the generation of Pavel Korchagin cannot be called ascetic. They feel the fullness of life, their exploits cannot be called sacrificial: they feel their place in life, and hence their self-confidence and conviction that they are doing a great job. There are many episodes in the book in which any of his brothers in the generation could behave like Paul. But there are times when you need it. These are situations when a strong, unified will must defeat vulgarity.
However, the heroism of this generation is connected with tragedy. People believed in the idea recklessly, they were ready to die for it.
3. The Revolution and the Civil War were portrayed in different ways: as an element, a blizzard, a whirlwind (Pilnyak’s “Hungry Year”), the end of culture and history (“Cursed Days” by Bunin, Shmelev’s “Sun of the Dead”), as the beginning of a new world (“The Defeat Fadeev, Serafimovich's Iron Stream). The writers who accepted the revolution filled their works with heroic-romantic pathos. Those who saw in it the unbridled elements portrayed it as an apocalypse, reality appeared in a tragic tone.
The main theme of the writers of the 1920s. revolution and civil war. It was the main nerve of the works of both Russian writers abroad and those who worked in Soviet Russia.
Ideologically, there were two lines in the depiction of the civil war. Some writers perceived the October Revolution as an illegal coup, and the civil war as bloody, fratricidal. The hatred for the Soviet regime and everything it creates was manifested especially clearly in the Cursed Days by I. Bunin, the novels The Ice Campaign by R. Gul, and The Sun of the Dead by I. Shmelev.
Born of personal grief (the shooting of the son of Sergei by the Bolsheviks), the book "The Sun of the Dead" is a terrible mosaic of the revolution. Shmelev shows the revolutionary leaders as a blind force. These red-star "renewers of life" can only kill. From the standpoint of Christian morality, they have no justification. The victims are spiritually superior to them. Their suffering, the pain of their souls, is shown by Shmelev as the suffering of the entire Russian people, not poisoned by ideology. In the novel, which consists of separate stories, the leitmotif is the image of the dead sun - tragic.
Bunin cursed October revolution with fierce hatred. His position as an opponent of the Bolsheviks took shape during the Civil War. However, there was no political struggle in the writer's activities, he did not belong to any groups, in addition, he denied Bolshevism not so much from the ideological side (the writer was independent of ideologies), but from a moral, aesthetic, emotional point of view. Despite this, Bunin desperately sought to comprehend the events of 1917–1919. in the context of world history. The writer understood that the country needed changes, on the eve of the revolution, he talked about the renewal of life and believed that the revolution was salvation for us and that the new system would lead to the flourishing of the state, he admitted that in Rasputin's time he longed for revolution. However, the course of history led Bunin to the conclusion that this philosophy is not good for hell.
Before the revolution, he could not be called a political writer. However, in the conditions of 1917 it became obvious that he was a deeply civic, progressive-minded person. Revolution for Bunin is a consequence of the irreversibility of the historical process, the manifestation of cruel instincts. The writer understood that without bloodshed, the power in the country would not change. However, he could not in any way imagine that the revolution would be carried out exactly as it did. “I was not one of those who were taken by surprise by it, for whom its size and atrocities were a surprise, but nevertheless reality surpassed all my expectations: what the Russian revolution soon turned into, no one who has not seen it will understand. This spectacle was sheer horror for anyone who had not lost the image and likeness of God, and hundreds of thousands of people fled from Russia after the seizure of power by Lenin, who had the slightest opportunity to escape. According to Bunin, the death of Russia as a great state and empire began with the revolution. It was then that base and wild instincts began to appear in society. I. A. Bunin called the October Revolution "cursed days."
"Cursed Days" consists of two parts: Moscow, 1918, and Odessa, 1919. Bunin writes down the facts he saw on the streets of cities. In the first part, there are more street scenes, the writer walks around Moscow, passing on fragments of dialogues, newspaper reports and even rumors. The voice of the author himself appears in the second part, Odessa, where Bunin reflects on the fate of Russia, experiences something personal, thinks about his own dreams and reminisces. Bunin wrote a diary for himself, and at first the writer had no thoughts about publishing it, but circumstances forced him to make the opposite decision.
The unusual nature of B. Pilnyak's novel The Naked Year (1920) immediately after the appearance of this text became the subject of lively discussion in modern criticism. If we now temporarily take out the problems of the work, then we can say that the main points that aroused the greatest interest of critics were the following: the unusual architectonics of The Naked Year, the absence of a plot in the usual sense of the word and, on this basis, the uncertainty of the genre of the work.
The novel by B. A. Pilnyak "The Naked Year" has become a remarkable phenomenon of "ornamental" prose and a kind of artistic document about the revolutionary state of the world, which is imprinted both in individual and in the mass consciousness. The work is built on the correlation of what is happening before the eyes of contemporaries with Russian history.
In the first part of the work (“Ordynin-city”), preceding the main presentation, the main ways of updating the documentary beginning in the narrative are outlined. The documentary discourse depicts the existence of the old merchant town of Ordynin in the past and in the revolutionary present.
With documentary, chronicle scrupulousness, signs of the centuries-old history of provincial folk life are recreated here, which are reflected in the local topography, and sometimes in curious semi-literate city signs. However, through the peacefully inert course of life, in contrast to the encouraging chronicle evidence of how rich the Horde lands are in fuel stone and magnetic ore, to which iron sticks, irrational rhythms of history break through: in 1914, the war broke out, and after it in 1917 - revolution. Epochal catastrophic upheavals, which in an incredible way accelerate and carry away the course of human life into oblivion, are paired in Pilnyak's novel with documented phenomena in the individual and social frame of mind.
In the main part of the author's narrative, elements of a historical chronicle are found, designed to document the outlines of being, which has entered a state of unstoppable, catastrophic variability. The author likens his own narration to a kind of “transcript” of modernity, in which the sound of a new language deformed by the onset of the era and the spirit of the revolution are felt.
The text generated by the author is conceived by him as a document about himself. In the documentary discourse of Pilnyak's novel, the multidirectional fermentations of the people's consciousness are artistically recreated, which sometimes lead into the age-old jungle of anarchist-sectarian worldview.
Babel became known to a wide circle of readers in 1924, when several short stories by the young author were published. Shortly thereafter, Cavalry was published. It was translated into 20 languages, and Babel became known far beyond the borders of the country. For Soviet and foreign readers, he was one of the most remarkable writers of his time. Babel was like no other. He always wrote about his own and in his own way; He was distinguished from other authors not only by a peculiar writing style, but also by a special perception of the world. All his works were born of life, he was a realist in the most precise sense of the word. He noticed what others passed by, and spoke in such a way that his voice surprised. Babel spoke unusually about the unusual. The long life of a person, in which the exceptional, like the essence of water, is diluted with everyday life, and the tragedy is softened by habit, Babel showed briefly and pathetically. Of all, man is most exposed, perhaps that is why the themes of love passion and death are repeated with such persistence in his books.
With a few exceptions, his books show two worlds that struck him - pre-revolutionary Odessa and the campaign of the First Cavalry Army, in which he was a participant.
Most of the Cavalry is written in the manner of a personal narrative - on behalf of a witness and participant in the events. Only in four cases is he named Lyutov. In the rest of the short stories, it's just "I" with biographical details that do not always match.
In seven short stories, Babel demonstrates the classic tale style. Before us is the word of the hero, a picturesque paradoxical character, created not just by action, but also by purely linguistic means. In fact, the late “Kiss” adjoining the book turns out to be a foreign word, the hero of which is usually considered Lyutov. In fact, the character-narrator has significant differences from the "bespectacled" and should be considered as an objective hero with an intelligent, rather than colloquial tale. In the short story "Prischepa", the narrator refers to the hero's story, but reproduces it from himself, depicting the consciousness, but not the speech of the central character.
Finally, three short stories (“Head of the Store”, “Cemetery in Kozin”, “Widow”) do without a personal narrator and narrator at all. They are performed in an objective manner, in the third person. But here, too, the pure anecdote about the cunning Dyakov (the brightest and "problemless" short story in the book) differs sharply from a prose poem, a lyrical sigh in a Jewish cemetery (the shortest and plotless short story).
Babel mobilizes the hidden possibilities of the small genre, tests it for strength, diversity, and depth.
In 34 short stories, 12 deaths are given in close-up, others, mass ones, are mentioned in passing. Most of the book's pages are colored in the brightest red. That is why the sun here looks like a severed head, and the glow of the sunset reminds of impending death, and the autumn trees sway at the crossroads like naked dead people. Behind the pathos of the revolution, the author saw its face: he realized that the revolution is an extreme situation that reveals the secret of man. But even in the harsh everyday life of the revolution, a person who has a sense of compassion will not be able to reconcile himself to murder and bloodshed. Man, according to Babel, is alone in this world.
4. From a general humanist position, the civil war is depicted in the novels of M. A. Bulgakov “The White Guard”, A. N. Tolstoy “Sisters” (one of the parts of “The Path of Torment”).
In the novel "The White Guard" the surrounding chaos, inconstancy, and ruin are opposed by the stubborn desire to preserve their Home with "cream curtains", a tiled stove, and the warmth of a family hearth. External signs of the past have no material value, they are symbols of the former stable and indestructible life.
The Turbin family - military and intellectuals - is ready to defend their House to the end; in a broad sense - the city, Russia, Motherland. These are people of honor and duty, real patriots. Bulgakov shows the events of 1918, when Kiev passed from hand to hand, as apocalyptic, tragic events. The biblical prophecy “and there was blood” comes to mind when pictures of the wild atrocities of the Petliurists arise, scenes of the massacre of the “pan kurenny” with his defenseless victim. In this world standing on the edge of the abyss, the only thing that can keep from falling is love for the Home, for Russia.
Bulgakov portrayed his White Guard heroes from a humanistic position. He sympathizes and sympathizes with honest and pure people plunged into the chaos of the Civil War. With pain, he shows that the most worthy, the color of the nation, are dying. And this, in the context of the entire novel, is regarded as the death of all of Russia, the past, history. The novel tells about a family of Russian intellectuals and their friends who are experiencing the social cataclysm of the civil war. The novel is largely autobiographical, almost all characters have prototypes - relatives, friends and acquaintances of the Bulgakov family. The scenery of the novel was the streets of Kiev and the house where the writer's family lived in 1918. Although the manuscripts of the novel have not been preserved, the Bulgakov scholars traced the fate of many prototype characters and proved the almost documentary accuracy and reality of the events and characters described by the author.
The work was conceived by the author as a large-scale trilogy covering the period of the Civil War. Part of the novel was first published in the Rossiya magazine in 1925. The novel in its entirety was first published in France in 1927–1929. Criticism of the novel was perceived ambiguously: the Soviet side condemned the writer's glorification of class enemies, the emigrant side condemned Bulgakov's loyalty to the Soviet regime.
The work served as a source for the play "Days of the Turbins" and several subsequent film adaptations. This performance became a favorite production of V. G. Stalin, who often revised it.
The action of the novel takes place in 1918, when the Germans who occupied Ukraine leave the City and Petliura's troops capture it. The author describes the complex, multifaceted world of a family of Russian intellectuals and their friends. This world is breaking down under the onslaught of a social cataclysm and will never happen again.
Alexey Turbin, Elena Turbina-Talberg and Nikolka are involved in the cycle of military and political events. The city, in which Kyiv is easily guessed, is occupied by the German army. As a result of the signing of the Brest Peace, it does not fall under the rule of the Bolsheviks and becomes a refuge for many Russian intellectuals and military men who flee from Bolshevik Russia. Officer combat organizations are being created in the city under the auspices of Hetman Skoropadsky, an ally of the Germans, recent enemies of Russia. Petliura's army advances on the City. By the time of the events of the novel, the Compiègne truce has been concluded and the Germans are preparing to leave the City. In fact, only volunteers defend him from Petliura. Understanding the complexity of their situation, the Turbins console themselves with rumors about the approach of French troops who allegedly landed in Odessa (in accordance with the terms of the armistice, they had the right to occupy the occupied territories of Russia up to the Vistula in the west). Aleksey and Nikolka Turbins, like other residents of the City, volunteer to join the defenders, and Elena guards the house, which becomes a refuge for former officers of the Russian army. Since it is impossible to defend the city on its own, the hetman's command and administration leave it to its fate and leave with the Germans (the hetman himself disguises himself as a wounded German officer). Volunteers - Russian officers and cadets - unsuccessfully defend the City without command against superior enemy forces (the author created a brilliant heroic image of Colonel Nai-Turs). Some commanders, realizing the futility of resistance, send their fighters home, others actively organize resistance and perish along with their subordinates. Petlyura occupies the City, arranges a magnificent parade, but after a few months he is forced to surrender it to the Bolsheviks.
The story of M. Sholokhov "The Mole", one of the first included in his book "Don Stories", is also dedicated to the events of the period of the civil war. There are two very different main characters in the work, each fighting for their own truth. The first hero is the red commander Nikolka Koshevoy, and the second is the battered ataman of the Cossack gang. The author tells the story of each of them in turn, introduces the reader to their past and present.
The young commander of the red horsemen is only eighteen years old. He had an ordinary farm childhood, but he early learned the bitterness of loss, having lost his mother and father. And Nikolka himself has been fighting for a new government for more than a year, dreaming of its speedy end.
Another hero is an old Cossack chieftain. M. Sholokhov shows in detail his difficult fate. For more than seven years he was not in his native places, did not know about the fate of his loved ones.
The culmination of the story is the very mortal battle in which father and son meet without recognizing each other. The most exciting episode of the story is the brutal confrontation between the two closest people. The young commander attacks the ataman of the gang and falls down, amazed by the swing of his saber.
As you can see, the fatal confrontation between the Reds and the Whites turns into a terrible tragedy: the father kills his own son. The absurd nonsense of war destroys the most sacred family ties. Recognizing his own son in the Red Army soldier he killed, the ataman turns to the already dead body: “Son! .. Nikolushka! .. My little blood ...”. These are the main words of Sholokhov's story. Having no reason to live anymore, the ataman shoots himself. The worst thing is that the true cause of their death is another war - the First World War. If in 1914 his father had not gone to the German front, then perhaps he and his son would not have ended up on opposite sides of the barricades and this tragedy would not have happened. Most of the writer's works are imbued with such anti-war pathos.
A. N. Tolstoy, the author of the trilogy "Walking through the torments", began to write this work in the 1920s, while in exile. With thoughts about the Motherland, he began his novel "Sisters", the first part of a trilogy. This is the artist's confession to himself, to the court of his people. The plot is based on the fate of the Bulavin sisters, Ekaterina Dmitrievna and Dasha, the story of their love, joys and sorrows. Their poetic images reflect the most bright sides the human soul opening up to happiness. The philosophy of personal happiness is given in the novel in Katya's love for officer Roshchin and Dasha for engineer Telegin. Their small egoistic world includes events of a large, historical scale - First World War and the beginning of the revolution, which overturned, along with all the usual way of bourgeois existence, the heroes' own ideas about the meaning of life. Tolstoy clearly shows the spiritual collapse of the Russian intelligentsia, cut off from the interests of the people, in the images of the lawyer Smokovnikov and the poet Bessonov, the historical doom of all old Russia, its classes hostile to the people, with their decline in culture and art. The revolutionary storm scattered over the earth, like dry leaves, this "intellectual aristocracy of the country", adherents of religious and philosophical doctrines and habitues of country restaurants. Roshchin thinks at first that his great Russia ceased to exist from the moment the people threw down their weapons. He is sure that years will pass, wars will subside, revolutions will make no noise, and only the meek, tender heart of his Katya will remain incorruptible, and peace will again come without worries and struggle.
In 1927, the writer began the second novel of the trilogy "Walking through the torments" - "The Eighteenth Year". The new novel brought to the fore the idea of the happiness of the people and the motherland as a symbol of the highest historical justice. The events of the revolution become the center of the novel. In the way the fate of the main characters of this work organically merges with the fate of the motherland and people, how the scope of the image of the revolutionary events themselves is widely expanded, the new scope of A. Tolstoy's epic talent is reflected.
Through the stormy year of 1918, the writer's heroes pass, transforming themselves in the fertile thunderstorm of the revolution. Engineer Ivan Ilyich Telegin finds his place in the ranks of the people, deeply believing in the words of the St. Petersburg worker Vasily Rublev, that Russia alone will be saved by the Soviet government and that now there is nothing in the world more important than our revolution.
With all her tender and meek heart, Ekaterina Dmitrievna Bulavina feels the greatness of what is happening. And only Roshchin wanders the animal paths of the enemy of the revolution, linking his fate with the white army. Only after Roshchin understands that the great future of Russia is in the people, and not in the decayed Kornilov-Denikin army, will he find the courage to break with the counter-revolution and start a new life. Repentance will come, and with it cleansing. On a broad epic scale and detailed pictures shows Tolstoy's life in the eighteenth year.
In the 1930s the writer worked on the novel "Gloomy Morning", which ended the trilogy "Walking through the torments" - this is an artistic chronicle of the revolutionary renewal of Russia. The trilogy has been in the making for over twenty years. Tolstoy considered it the main work in all his work. The writer said that the theme of the trilogy is the lost and returned homeland. It is noteworthy that Tolstoy ends his novel with excited patriotic words.
Thus, completing the conversation about the theme of revolution and civil war in Russian literature, we can state that such writers as A. Fadeev, B. Pasternak, M. Bulgakov, B. Lavrenev, M. Sholokhov, although they held different political convictions, sought to objectively highlight the great tragedy that befell Russia in the early 1920s, to truthfully show that in this fratricidal massacre there are no and cannot be right and wrong, but only people who are losing what is dear to them.
However, contrary to existing opinions that the formation and development of Russian literature during the years of revolution and civil war took place in a situation of chaos, we can safely state that the literary process - and especially in the field of prose - had obvious ideological and aesthetic dominants, allowing us to talk about October 1917 year as the beginning of the development of a new literary and artistic chronology.
Questions and tasks for self-control
1. List the characteristic features of the image of the revolution and the Civil War in Russian literature of the 1920s–1930s. Literary Criticism in the Thaw.
2. Suggest a basic diagram-summary of the functioning of the three branches of Russian literature.
3. What are the interpretive foundations for studying A. N. Tolstoy's trilogy "Walking through the torments"?
Lecture 4
"Hidden Literature": the main representatives
