“Look how the people were divided, bastards! As if they drove with a plow: one - in one direction, the other - in the other, as if under a plowshare. Devil's life and a terrible time!
All lie side by side
Don't break the line.
Look: soldier
Where is yours, where is someone else's?
White was - became red:
Blood stained.
Was red - became white:
Death whitened.
M. Tsvetaeva
K. Fedin highly appreciated the work of M. Sholokhov in general and the novel "Quiet Don" in particular. “Mikhail Sholokhov’s merit is enormous,” he wrote, “in the courage that is inherent in his works. He never avoided the contradictions inherent in life ... His books show the struggle in the fullness of the past and present. And I involuntarily recall Leo Tolstoy’s precept given to himself even in his youth, a covenant not only not to lie directly, but not to lie negatively - silently. Sholokhov does not remain silent, he writes the whole truth".
The second volume of the epic novel by Mikhail Sholokhov tells about the civil war. It includes chapters about the Kornilov rebellion from the book "Donshchina", which the writer began to create a year before the "Quiet Flows the Don". This part of the work is accurately dated: late 1916 - April 1918.
The slogans of the Bolsheviks attracted the poor who wanted to be free masters on their land. But the civil war poses new questions for the protagonist Grigory Melekhov. Each side, white and red, seeks its own truth by killing each other. Once at the Reds, Grigory sees cruelty, intransigence, thirst for the blood of enemies. War destroys everything: the well-established life of families, peaceful work, takes away the last, kills love. The heroes of Sholokhov, Grigory and Pyotr Melekhov, Stepan Astakhov, Koshevoy, almost the entire male population are drawn into battles, the meaning of which they do not understand. For whom and for what should they die in their prime? Life on the farm gives them a lot of joy, beauty, hopes, opportunities. War is only deprivation and death.
The Bolsheviks Shtokman and Bunchuk see the country exclusively as an arena of class battles, where people are like tin soldiers in someone else's game, where pity for a person is a crime. The burdens of war fall primarily on the shoulders of the civilian population, ordinary people; to starve and die - to them, not to the commissars. Bunchuk arranges lynching of Kalmykov, and in his defense he says: “They are us or we are them!.. There is no middle ground.” Hatred blinds, no one wants to stop and think, impunity unties hands. Grigory witnesses how Commissar Malkin sadistically mocks the population in the captured village. Sees scary pictures robbery of fighters of the Tiraspol detachment of the 2nd Socialist Army, who rob farms and rape women. As it is sung in an old song, you have become muddy, Father Quiet Don. Gregory understands that in fact, people who are distraught with blood are not looking for the truth, but a real turmoil is going on in the Don.
It is not by chance that Melekhov rushes between the two belligerents. Everywhere he encounters violence and cruelty, which he cannot accept. Podtelkov orders the execution of the prisoners, and the Cossacks, forgetting about military honor, cut down unarmed people. They obeyed the order, but when Grigory realized that he was chopping prisoners, he fell into a frenzy: “Who did he hack! .. Brothers, I have no forgiveness! Cut to death, for God's sake ... mother God ... Death ... betray! Khristonya, dragging the “enraged” Melekhov away from Podtelkov, bitterly says: “Lord God, what is happening to people?” And the captain Shein, who has already understood the essence of what is happening, prophetically promises Podtelkov that "the Cossacks will wake up - and they will hang you." Mother reproaches Gregory for participating in the execution of captured sailors, but he himself admits how cruel he became in the war: “I don’t regret even that child.” Leaving the Reds, Grigory rushes to the Whites, where he sees the execution of Podtelkov. Melekhov tells him: “Do you remember under the Deep Battle? Do you remember how they shot officers?.. They shot at your order! A? Now you're burping! Well, don't worry! You are not the only one to tan other people's skins! You departed, chairman of the Don Council of People's Commissars!
The civil war, like any other, tests the essence of man. decrepit grandfather, participant Turkish war, instructing the young, he advised: “Remember one thing: if you want to be alive, get out of a mortal battle whole, you must observe human truth *. “Human truth” is an order that has been verified by the Cossacks for centuries: “Do not take someone else's in the war - once. God forbid touching women, and you need to know such a prayer. But in a civil war, all these commandments are violated, once again emphasizing its anti-human nature. Why were these horrific murders committed? Why did brother go against brother, and son against father? Some killed in order to live on their land as they were used to, others - to establish new system, which seemed to them more correct and fair, still others - performed their military duty, forgetting about the main human duty to life itself - just to live; there were those who killed for the sake of military glory and careers. Was the truth on either side? Sholokhov in his work shows that both Reds and Whites are equally cruel and inhuman. The scenes depicting the atrocities of both seem to mirror and balance each other.
War embitters and divides people. Gregory notices that the concepts of "brother", "honor", "fatherland" disappear from consciousness. The strong community of Cossacks is disintegrating for centuries. Now - every man for himself and for his family. Koshevoi, using his power, decided to execute the local wealthy Miron Korshunov. Miron's son, Mitka, avenges his father and kills Koshevoy's mother. Koshevoy kills Pyotr Melekhov, his wife Daria shot Ivan Alekseevich. Koshevoi for the death of his mother is already taking revenge on the entire Tatarsky farm: leaving, he sets fire to "seven houses in a row." Blood is looking for blood.
Peering into the past, Sholokhov recreates the events of the Upper Don uprising. When the uprising began, Melekhov perked up, decided that now everything would change for the better: “We must fight those who want to take life, the right to it ...” Having almost driven his horse, he rushes to fight the Reds. The Cossacks protested against the destruction of their way of life, but, striving for justice, they tried to solve the problem with aggression and conflict, which led to the opposite result. And here Gregory was disappointed. Attached to Budyonny's cavalry, Gregory does not find an answer to bitter questions. He says: "I'm tired of everything: both the revolution and the counter-revolution ... I want to live near my kids."
The writer shows that there can be no truth where there is death. The truth is one, it is not “red” or “white”. War kills the best. Realizing this, Grigory throws down his weapons and returns to his native farm to work for native land raising children. The hero is not yet 30 years old, but the war turned him into an old man, took away, burned him the best part souls. Sholokhov in his immortal work raises the question of the responsibility of history to the individual. The writer sympathizes with his hero, whose life is broken: “Like a steppe scorched by fires, the life of Gregory became black ...”
In the epic novel, Sholokhov created a grandiose historical painting detailing the events civil war on the Don. The writer became for the Cossacks national hero by creating artistic epic about the life of the Cossacks in the tragic time of historical change.
Conclusion
Boris Vasiliev saw in The Quiet Don a reflection of the main thing in the civil war: “monstrous fluctuations, throwing normal, calm family man. On one fate, the whole fracture of society is shown. Let him be a Cossack, anyway he is, first of all, a peasant, a farmer. He is the breadwinner. And the breaking of this breadwinner is the whole civil war.
From episode to episode, the tragic discrepancy between the inner aspirations of Grigory Melekhov and the life around him is growing.
V. Kozhinov writes that Quiet Flows the Don was most often interpreted as a recreation deadly battle red and white. Sholokhov was accused of the White Guard. Yagoda signed a decree on the execution of Cossack Kharlampiy Ermakov, the chief real prototype Grigory Melekhov. The third book of The Quiet Don, dedicated to the Upper Don uprising of the Cossacks in 1919, was refused to be published: to pity the "reactionaries" as a living part of the united people, pity their families, their children were not supposed to.
Sholokhov met and talked with Stalin, who demanded that the image of Kornilov be "hardened", accused Sholokhov of sympathizing with the White Guards. True, Stalin agreed with the writer that “the depiction of the course of events in the third book of The Quiet Don works for us” (the depiction of the defeat of the White Guards in the Don and Kuban).
They tried to recommend Sholokhov to “re-educate”, “re-forge” Grigory Melekhov into a Bolshevik, to bring him together with the proletariat, as Aleksey Tolstoy “re-educated” his hero, the white officer Vadim Roshchin, in “Walking through the torments”. The author of the novel "Quiet Flows the Don" showed steadfastness and courage, defending the artistic and life truth. The novel was completed in 1940 and awarded the State Prize.
The novel is addressed not to today's, but to eternal confrontation, V. Kozhinov believes. The eternal "battle of the devil with God" escalates during the revolution, which is the exposure of the tragic basis of human life. The cruel, monstrous face of the Revolution appears in the novel. Moreover, this cruelty is shown as a natural reality of human life in a revolutionary era.
Novel Quiet Don unusual already in that the image of the Civil War is given "through the eyes of whites", although Mikhail Sholokhov- no doubt a communist writer. He seeks to justify the revolution by showing the gradual disintegration in the ranks of the Cossacks.
It would seem that, Melekhovs — prominent representatives Cossacks, but, oddly enough, the author treats them with obvious sympathy. Grigory Melekhov is a potential communist, so to speak. The author shows how his fate collapses, because he never managed to get on the path assigned to him. Both wars (World War I and Civil War), their turning points, victories and defeats are shown in the projection on fate Grigory Melekhov. He is not separate person, but the embodiment of the "average" Cossacks and his fate.
In the tenth years of the 20th century, Germany openly went to war, planned the redistribution of the world, the mass destruction and enslavement of peoples. In 1914, the long-awaited war began. In the perception of Sholokhov war is criminal from beginning to end, it tramples on the principles of humanism. Therefore, the beginning of a nationwide disaster - war - corresponds to a gloomy symbolism: the roar of an owl is interpreted by the old people as an omen that "war will overtake" soon. And the war really "caught" very soon. This happened in the summer, in the very time of suffering, when it is very difficult to lose any pair of hands in the household. But the war has its own laws, all the men of the Tatarsky farm are taken to the front.
Shot from the film "Quiet Flows the Don". Grigory - P. Glebov; Aksinya - E. Bystritskaya, 1958
Grigory Melekhov, who also went into the army, deeply protests in his soul against the senselessness of the war. He painfully experiences the first blood that he happened to shed at the front. But already a month spent in the war left an indelible imprint on him: Grigory "was somehow charred, turned black." All the Cossacks became hardened very quickly. Grigory himself becomes hardened, but at the same time, a natural nobility remains in him, which does not allow him to engage in looting and forces him to defend the unfortunate raped Franya.
Talking about the first days of the war, Sholokhov mentions a certain Kuzma Kryuchkov. This man allegedly accomplished a feat. Newspapers and magazines wrote about him. But in fact, the headquarters of the division, the officers and the emperor just needed a "hero". And he appeared in the face of Kuzma Kryuchkov. This does not mean that Sholokhov affirms the idea that there were no heroes in that war. With this episode, the author seeks to expose the "ceremonial" exploits that mask the horror, blood and dirt of a true war.
Sholokhov showed the savage treatment of soldiers, dirt, lice, looting, poor and disgusting food - the whole wrong side of the war, which some try to cover up beautiful phrases and "bloated" feats imaginary heroes. War cannot be beautiful. Sholokhov also shows the mediocrity and irresponsibility of the command. Often at the head of the army are careerists, accustomed to mindlessly dispose of thousands of other people's lives. First of all, they were exposed and condemned by Sholokhov.
The army was falling apart, but the rear was also falling apart without workers. From the fronts of the imperialist war, the Cossacks began to return only in the autumn of 1917. But not all returned. The author emphasizes the grief of those who have lost relatives. So, he shows the widow of Prokhor Shamil, gnawing the floor, looking at the brother of her late husband who returned from the war. The Melekhov family was stricken with the same grief when they received the news of Grigory's death. Only a few days later they learned that, fortunately, it turned out to be false.
First World War ends, but events continue to develop further. Tsarism is overthrown, but the class struggle flares up. The working people are seized by the idea of peace, freedom and equality. Inevitably, a long-smoldering civil war flares up. Horror civil war consists in the fact that on it a father kills a son, a brother kills a brother, a friend kills a friend. This is what happens in the novel Quiet Flows the Don. After all, once the Melekhovs, Koshevoy, Ivan Alekseevich Kotlyarov were neighbors. Grigory was hiding at Mishka Koshevoy when he left home to take Aksinya to Yagodnoye.
The war separated these people different sides barricade. Mishka kills Peter Melekhov, Daria - Kotlyarova; later Koshevoy will force Grigory to leave home. Everything was mixed up. And if in the heart of Gregory there still lives pity for former friends and neighbors (remember how he hurries to save Kotlyarov and Mishka from cruel reprisals), then Koshevoy simply threw out of his heart all the memories of their former friendship.
During the years of the fratricidal civil war, the land was generously watered with soldiers' blood, and mothers and widows were forced to harvest terrible crops later ... War cripples morally: “don't think that there are people made of iron. We are all cast from the same material… There is no one in life who is not afraid in war…” There is truth in these words of Bunchuk. War is alien to the Russian heart, it is disgusting, especially if there is no end in sight, no end, some result, a fair outcome. But no matter how hard it would be to leave home, close people, such “simple Russian people” go to defend their Fatherland, because they once promised to serve their land.
The writer shows us the war from the side revolution, and from the side counterrevolutions. Face to face two worlds, two forces. Their struggle is a test of whose idea is stronger, whose political program will win. On the outskirts of Petrograd, front-line soldiers and Kornilovites clash, on the Don, Red Army soldiers and Kaledinites clash. And the advantage is on the side white guards. They are better armed, organized, they have courage and perseverance. Red Guards on the contrary, they have practically no military experience.
Sholokhov shows how the spirit of the Red Army is gradually getting stronger, how it is gaining strength. The Red Army soldiers have one important advantage over the White Guards - self-righteousness, a clear understanding of one's goal. Symbolically, Sholokhov demonstrates this in the episode where the captive musicians, at first, on orders, singly and sluggishly perform "God Save the Tsar", and then cheerfully and loudly - "Internationale".
The White Guard movement, as Sholokhov shows, could not overcome internal strife and disunity, which is once again seen in the example of the same Grigory Melekhov. It is not the thirst for blood and hatred for the communists that makes Grigory Melekhov, Don Cossack serve first in the White Guard. So did his grandfather and his father, who were "in the service" of the tsarist government. Many Cossacks Soviet era became “hostages” of politics: they had to defend their native “Donshchina”.
The Red Army soldiers are increasingly rallying their ranks. By the way, Gregory always wanted to get into the camp of the Reds. So Sholokhov gradually brings us to the final - the victory of the Red Army. Only separate gangs remain of the White Guard, no longer engaged in defending vital interests, but in robberies and murders.
Quiet Flows the Don is a book about the war through the eyes of a man who has been in the war. Although the fact is known that the writer was too young in those years when the civil war was going on, the Quiet Flows the Don gives the impression of a book written “according to an eyewitness”. The novel still remains an unsurpassed work about those terrible events that shook our country at the beginning of the 20th century.
Based on the novel by Sholokhov "Quiet Flows the Don" famous director Sergei Gerasimov directed the film of the same name. Starring many famous actors: P. Glebov, B. Novikov, Z. Kirienko, L. Khityaeva and others.
The second volume of the epic novel by Mikhail Sholokhov tells about the civil war. It includes chapters about the Kornilov rebellion from the book "Donshchina", which the writer began to create a year before the "Quiet Flows the Don". This part of the work is precisely dated: the end of 1916 - April 1918.
The slogans of the Bolsheviks attracted the poor who wanted to be free masters on their land. But the civil war poses new questions for the protagonist Grigory Melekhov. Each side, white and red, seeks its own truth by killing each other. Once at the Reds, Grigory sees cruelty, intransigence, thirst for the blood of enemies. War destroys everything: the well-established life of families, peaceful work, takes away the last, kills love. The heroes of Sholokhov, Grigory and Pyotr Melekhov, Stepan Astakhov, Koshevoy, almost the entire male population are drawn into battles, the meaning of which they do not understand. For whom and for what should they die in their prime? Life on the farm gives them a lot of joy, beauty, hopes, opportunities. War is only deprivation and death.
The Bolsheviks Shtokman and Bunchuk see the country exclusively as an arena of class battles, where people are like tin soldiers in someone else's game, where pity for a person is a crime. The hardships of war fall primarily on the shoulders of the civilian population, ordinary people; to starve and die - to them, not to the commissars. Bunchuk arranges lynching of Kalmykov, and in his defense he says: “They are us or we are them!.. There is no middle ground.” Hatred blinds, no one wants to stop and think, impunity unties hands. Grigory witnesses how Commissar Malkin sadistically mocks the population in the captured village. He sees terrible pictures of the robbery of the fighters of the Tiraspol detachment of the 2nd Socialist Army, who rob farms and rape women. As it is sung in an old song, you have become muddy, Father Quiet Don. Gregory understands that in fact, people who are distraught with blood are not looking for the truth, but a real turmoil is going on in the Don.
It is not by chance that Melekhov rushes between the two belligerents. Everywhere he encounters violence and cruelty, which he cannot accept. Podtelkov orders the execution of the prisoners, and the Cossacks, forgetting about military honor, cut down unarmed people. They obeyed the order, but when Grigory realized that he was chopping prisoners, he fell into a frenzy: “Who did he hack! .. Brothers, I have no forgiveness! Cut to death, for God's sake ... mother God ... Death ... betray! Khristonya, dragging the “enraged” Melekhov away from Podtelkov, bitterly says: “Lord God, what is happening to people?” And the captain Shein, who has already understood the essence of what is happening, prophetically promises Podtelkov that "the Cossacks will wake up - and they will hang you." Mother reproaches Gregory for participating in the execution of captured sailors, but he himself admits how cruel he became in the war: “I don’t regret even that child.” Leaving the Reds, Grigory rushes to the Whites, where he sees the execution of Podtelkov. Melekhov tells him: “Do you remember under the Deep Battle? Do you remember how they shot officers?.. They shot at your order! A? Now you're burping! Well, don't worry! You are not the only one to tan other people's skins! You departed, chairman of the Don Council of People's Commissars!
War embitters and divides people. Gregory notices that the concepts of "brother", "honor", "fatherland" disappear from consciousness. The strong community of Cossacks is disintegrating for centuries. Now - every man for himself and for his family. Koshevoi, using his power, decided to execute the local wealthy Miron Korshunov. Miron's son, Mitka, avenges his father and kills Koshevoy's mother. Koshevoy kills Pyotr Melekhov, his wife Daria shot Ivan Alekseevich. Koshevoi for the death of his mother is already taking revenge on the entire Tatarsky farm: leaving, he sets fire to "seven houses in a row." Blood is looking for blood.
Looking into the past, recreates the events of the Upper Don uprising. When the uprising began, Melekhov perked up, decided that now everything would change for the better: “We must fight those who want to take life, the right to it ...” Having almost driven his horse, he rushes to fight the Reds. The Cossacks protested against the destruction of their way of life, but, striving for justice, they tried to solve the problem with aggression and conflict, which led to the opposite result. And here Gregory was disappointed. Attached to Budyonny's cavalry, Gregory does not find an answer to bitter questions. He says: "I'm tired of everything: both the revolution and the counter-revolution ... I want to live near my kids."
The writer shows that there can be no truth where there is death. The truth is one, it is not “red” or “white”. War kills the best. Realizing this, Grigory throws down his weapons and returns to his native farm to work on his native land, raise children. The hero is not yet 30 years old, but the war turned him into an old man, took away, burned out the best part of his soul from him. Sholokhov, in his immortal work, raises the question of the responsibility of history to the individual. The writer sympathizes with his hero, whose life is broken: “Like a steppe scorched by fires, the life of Gregory became black ...”
In the epic novel, Sholokhov created a grandiose historical canvas, describing in detail the events of the civil war on the Don. The writer became a national hero for the Cossacks, having created an artistic epic about the life of the Cossacks in a tragic time of historical change.
IMAGE OF THE CIVIL WAR. Rise above the everyday and see clearly historical distances means to become the master of the thoughts of your time, to embody the main conflicts and images of a vast historical period by touching the so-called " eternal themes". M. A. Sholokhov declared himself not only in Russian, but also in world literature, reflecting the era in his work more strongly and more dramatically than many other writers were able to do.
In 1928, Mikhail Sholokhov published the first book of The Quiet Flows the Don, the second in 1929, the third in 1933, and the fourth in early 1940. In the epic novel of Sholokhov, Tolstoy dominates epic principle: "capture everything". On the pages of Sholokhov's narrative, various layers of Russian society are represented: poor Cossacks and the rich, merchants and the intelligentsia, the nobility and professional military. Sholokhov wrote: “I would be happy if, behind the description ... of the life of the Don Cossacks, the reader ... considered something else: the colossal shifts in everyday life, life and human psychology that occurred as a result of the war and revolution». The Sholokhov epic reflects a decade of Russian history (1912-1922) at one of its steepest breaks. Soviet authority brought with it a terrible, incomparable tragedy - a civil war. A war that leaves no one behind cripples human fates and souls. A war that forces a father to kill his son, a husband to raise his hand against his wife, against his mother. The blood of the guilty and the innocent flows like a river.
In the epic novel by M. Sholokhov "The Quiet Don" one of the episodes of this war is shown - the war on the Don land. It was on this land that the history of the civil war reached that drama and clarity that makes it possible to judge the history of the entire war.
According to M. Sholokhov, the natural world, the world of people living freely, loving and working on earth, is beautiful, and everything that destroys this world is terrible, ugly. No violence, the author believes, can be justified by anything, even by the most seemingly just idea in the name of which it is committed. Everything that is connected with violence, death, blood and pain cannot be beautiful. He has no future. Only life, love, mercy have a future. They are eternal and significant at all times. Therefore, the scenes describing the horrors of the civil war, scenes of violence and murders are so tragic in the novel. The struggle of the Whites and the Reds on the Don, captured by Sholokhov in the epic novel, is full of even more tragedy and senselessness than the events of the First World War. Yes, it could not be otherwise, because now those who grew up together, were friends, whose families had lived side by side for centuries, whose roots had long been intertwined, were killing each other.
The civil war, like any other, tests the essence of man. A decrepit grandfather, a participant in the Turkish war, instructing the young, advised: “Remember one thing: if you want to be alive, get out of a mortal battle whole, you must observe human truth.” “Human truth” is an order that has been verified by the Cossacks for centuries: “Do not take someone else's in the war - once. God forbid touching women, and you need to know such a prayer *. But in a civil war, all these commandments are violated, once again emphasizing its anti-human nature. Why were these horrific murders committed? Why did brother go against brother, and son against father? Some killed in order to live on their land as they were used to, others - in order to establish a new system that seemed to them more correct and fair, still others - performed their military duty, forgetting about the main human duty to life itself - just to live; there were also those who killed for the sake of military glory and career. Was the truth on either side? Sholokhov in his work shows that both Reds and Whites are equally cruel and inhuman. The scenes depicting the atrocities of both seem to mirror and balance each other.
Moreover, this applies not only to the description of the military operations themselves, but also to pictures of the destruction of prisoners, looting and violence against the civilian population. There is no truth on either side - Sholokhov emphasizes again and again. And that is why the fate of young people involved in bloody events is so tragic. That is why the fate of Grigory Melekhov is so tragic - typical representative the young generation of the Don Cossacks - painfully deciding "whom to be with" ...
The family of Grigory Melekhov appeared in the novel as that microcosm in which, as in a mirror, both the tragedy of the entire Cossacks and the tragedy of the whole country were reflected. The Melekhovs were a typical Cossack family, they possessed all the typical qualities inherent in the Cossacks, unless these qualities manifested themselves more clearly in them. In the Melekhov family, everyone is wayward, stubborn, independent and courageous. They all love work, their land and their quiet Don. The civil war breaks into this family when both sons, Peter and Grigory, are taken to the front. Both of them are real Cossacks, in which diligence, military courage and valor are harmoniously combined. Peter has a simpler view of the world. He wants to become an officer, he does not disdain to deprive the vanquished of anything that can be useful in the economy. Gregory, on the other hand, is endowed with a heightened sense of justice, he will never allow the weak and defenseless to be abused, to appropriate “trophies” for himself, senseless murder is disgusting to his being. Gregory is definitely central figure in the Melekhov family, and the tragedy of his personal fate is intertwined with the tragedy of his relatives and friends.
During the civil war, the Melekhov brothers tried to step aside, but were forced into this bloody action. The whole horror lies in the fact that there was no timely force that could explain the current situation to the Cossacks: divided into two warring camps, the Cossacks, in essence, fought for the same thing - for the right to work on their land in order to feed their children, and not shed blood on the holy Don land. The tragedy of the situation is also in the fact that the civil war and general devastation destroyed the Cossack world not only from the outside, but also from the inside, introducing disagreements into family relationships. These disagreements also affected the Melekhov family. The Melekhovs, like many others, do not see a way out of this war, because no power - neither white nor red, can give them land and freedom, which they need like air.
The tragedy of the Melekhov family is not limited to the tragedy of Peter and Grigory. The fate of the mother, Ilyinichna, who lost her son, husband, and both daughters-in-law, is also sad. Her only hope is her son Gregory, but deep down she feels that he has no future either. The moment is full of tragedy when Ilyinichna sits at the same table with the murderer of her son, and how unexpectedly she forgives and accepts Koshevoy, whom she hates so much!
But the most tragic in the Melekhov family, of course, is the fate of Grigory. He, possessing a heightened sense of justice, experiencing the contradictions of the world more than others, had a chance to experience all the fluctuations of the average Cossacks in the civil war. Fighting on the side of the whites, he feels his inner alienation from those who lead them, the reds are also alien to him by nature. The only thing he strives for with all his soul is peaceful labor, peaceful happiness in his land. But military honor and duty oblige him to take part in the war. Gregory's life is a continuous chain of bitter losses and disappointments. At the end of the novel, we see him devastated, exhausted by the pain of loss, without hope for the future.
For many years, criticism convinced readers that in depicting the events of those years, Sholokhov was on the side of the revolution, and the writer himself fought, as you know, on the side of the Reds. But the laws artistic creativity forced him to be objective and say in the work what he denied in his public speeches: the civil war unleashed by the Bolsheviks, which broke strong and hardworking families, broke the Cossacks, was only a prologue to that great tragedy into which the country will plunge for many years.
K. Fedin highly appreciated the work of M. Sholokhov in general and the novel "Quiet Don" in particular. “The merit of Mikhail Sholokhov is enormous,” he wrote, “in the courage that is inherent in his works. He never avoided the inherent contradictions of life ... His books show the struggle in the fullness of the past and present. And I involuntarily recall Leo Tolstoy's covenant given to himself in his youth, a covenant not only not to lie directly, but also not to lie negatively - silently. Sholokhov is not silent, he writes the whole truth.
Lesson 3
in the image of Sholokhov
The purpose of the lesson: show development humanistic traditions Russian literature in the depiction of war and its influence on man.
Lesson equipment : World War I in figures and facts (table).
Methodical methods: repetition of the studied material, conversation, analysis of episodes, use of interdisciplinary connections with history.
During the classes
I. Teacher's word
War - first World War I, then civil - is shown by Sholokhov as the antithesis of peaceful life. "The monstrous absurdity of war" passes through farms and villages, bringing grief to every family. The family becomes a mirror, uniquely reflecting the events of world history.
II. Conversation on 3-4 parts of the book of the novel
What role does the epigraph to the first book play in the third part of the novel?
How does Sholokhov portray the events of the First World War?
The tragic motif of an epigraph from an old Cossack song echoes the pages of the second part of the novel. The date appears for the first time: "In March 1914 ...". This year separates peace from war. The news of the war finds the Cossacks at their usual work - they mowed down the corn. And at the gathering, people have one anxiety - mobilization, one thought - “let them go to war, but we have unharvested bread!” The terrible word “war” is an expressive remark of an old railroad worker in relation to recruits: “You are my dear ... beef!” (book one, part 3, ch. 4).
How does war affect the people involved in combat?
The first deaths are ridiculous, forever engraved in memory. Sholokhov reveals state of mind a person who shed someone else's blood. Gregory is most shocked by his murder of an Austrian (end of ch. 5, part 3). This torments him, does not allow him to live in peace, breaks, cripples his soul (part 3, ch. 10). The changes are striking: he was "bent by the war, sucked the blush from his face, painted it with bile."
The scene of the collision of the Cossacks with the Germans resembles the pages of Tolstoy's works. The war in the image of Sholokhov is completely devoid of a touch of romance, a heroic halo. The people didn't do the work. This skirmish of people distraught with fear was “called a feat” (see part 3, ch. 9):
“But it happened like this: people collided on the field of death, who had not yet had time to break their hands in the destruction of their own kind, in the animal horror that declared them, they stumbled, knocked together, inflicted blind blows, mutilated themselves and horses and fled, frightened by a shot that killed a man, dispersed morally crippled. They called it a feat."
Let us recall the scene of Napoleon awarding a randomly selected Russian soldier (“War and Peace”). It was an "explosion of bestial enthusiasm," as it was written in the diary of a murdered Cossack (entry dated September 2, part 3, ch. 11), over whose life the staff clerks laughed. By the way, this diary just mentions "War and Peace", where Tolstoy "talks about the line between two enemy troops - the line of uncertainty, as if separating the living from the dead."
How does Listnitsky behave in the regiment? (Listnitsky writes to his father: “I want a lively business and ... if you want - a feat ... I’m going to the front” (part 3, ch. 14). Listnitsky went on a counterattack with the regiment (part 3, ch. 15). On the Southwestern Front, during an attack near Listnitsky, a horse was killed, he himself received two wounds (part 3, ch. 22. That is, Listnitsky is a man of honor, a brave officer.)
Describe the image of Chubaty. (The figure of the Cossack Uryupin, nicknamed Chubaty, is terrible (“Kill, cut, don’t think!” - part 3, ch. 12). Let us recall Bek-Agamalov like him and Captain Osadchy from Kuprin’s “Duel”. Chubaty, whom all horses are afraid of, who "cut down" a captured German, agrees that he has a wolf's heart.")
How is the feat of Gregory different from the "feat" of the Cossacks in a skirmish with the Germans? (Gregory saves human life. (See part 3, ch. 20).)
What is the purpose of depicting Sholokhov battle scenes? (Battle scenes in themselves are of no interest to Sholokhov. He is worried about something else - that the war is against a person. A moral protest against the senselessness of the inhumanity of war is clearly expressed. life, that’s why he was known as brave - he served four St. George crosses and four medals ”(Part 4, Ch. 4).)
Let's analyze the scene of Grigory's feelings about the killed Austrian soldier (T. 1, part 3, chapter 10). What can you say? (Killing a person, even an enemy in battle, is contrary to the humane nature of Gregory. With love for everything, thrill someone else's pain, the ability to compassion - this is the essence of the character of Sholokhov's hero. The madness of a war in which innocent people die (meaningless sacrifices laid on the altar of someone's ambition) - that's what the hero thinks about.)
What figurative means does the author use? (Visual means Sholokhov are diverse: he shows how the Cossacks write off "Prayer from the gun", "Prayer from the battle", "Prayer during the raid"; gives pages of the diary of one of the Cossacks, letters from the front; scenes around the fire are lyrically painted - the Cossacks sing "The Cossack went to a foreign land far away ..."; the voice of the author bursts into the epic narrative, addressing the widows: “Tear, dear, the collar of the last shirt on yourself! Tear your hair, which is liquid from a bleak, hard life, bite your blood-bitten lips, break your hands mutilated by work and fight on the ground at the threshold of an empty hut!
What qualities of Gregory are shown in the scene in the hospital? (Pride, independence, anger for everything that the war did, broke out of Gregory in a daring trick (Part 3, Ch. 23).)
How does the war affect the lives of civilians? (“The monstrous absurdity of the war does not spare the non-military either. The Melekhovs receive news that Grigory “fell the death of the brave” - “the invisible dead man huddled in the Melekhov kuren.” The war also destroys the “illegal” family of Grigory and Aksinya.)
III. Making notebooks: recording conclusions from the conversation
Following the traditions of Russian literature, through battle scenes, through the sharp experiences of the characters, through landscape sketches, digressions(the campfire scene is a soldier's song) Sholokhov leads to an understanding of the alienness, unnaturalness, inhumanity of war.
IV. Homework(according to book two)
How did the events of the World War affect the peaceful life of the Cossacks?
The new government and the attitude of the Cossacks towards it.
Civil war as a tragedy of the people (pick up episodes).
Additional material for the teacher
World War I. In her image, the analytical talent of the artist, who is well aware of the demand of the time, manifested itself. The novel was written between the two wars. Before the bonfires of the First had been covered with ashes, the imperialists began preparing a new one, the same thing that happened on the eve of the 14th was repeated - militaristic frenzy, nationalist hysteria, hopes for the most weighty "arguments" - bombs and shells ... A program was being developed for a new redivision of the world. That is why the theme of the last war became the most important for those who, using its memorable material, exposed the bloody consequences of militarism, and - with another goal - for the torchbearers of the now total extermination battle - fascist cutthroats who drew their lessons from the recent defeat of Germany.
The war was studied by historians and military strategists, politicians and economists, diplomats and intelligence officers, scientists and artists, doctors and psychologists. Events were traced day by day, decisive operations - by hours and minutes.
A lot of exciting works have been written about that war. Many writers of the world - Russians, Germans, Bulgarians, French, Italians, British, Poles, Austrians, Hungarians, Yugoslavs, Americans - said their word of damnation. Anger is filled with the memories of those who visited the damp trenches under fire, survived the tenth or twentieth of the military unit.
Sholokhov also has much in common with this prose. But his achievements, even against the very impressive background of the skill of A. Barbusse, B. Kellermann, E. Remarque, R. Aldington, R. Rolland, J. Giono, A. Zweig, K. Fedin, are outstanding in terms of the coverage of reality, the scale of generalizations of the visibility of paintings front battles.
If the hero of a military novel was most often an intellectual - honest, suffering, confused, then Sholokhov's in the foreground are the sons of deep labor Russia, cut off from urgent matters on earth.
Sholokhov's truth about the war - here it is. Russian soldiers hang like corpses on barbed wire fences. German artillery mows down entire regiments. The wounded crawl through the stubble. The earth groans deafly, “crucified by many hooves,” when the distraught horsemen rush into cavalry attacks and fall flat with their horses. Neither a prayer from a gun, nor a prayer during a raid helps the Cossack. “They attached them to gaitans, to maternal blessings, to bundles with a pinch of native land, and death stained those who carried prayers with them.”
The first blows with a sword on a person, the first murders - this remains in the memory for a lifetime. The pain for the land is inescapable: “the cavalry trampled the ripened bread”, “where there were battles, shells blew up the gloomy face of the earth with smallpox: rusted in it, longing for human blood, fragments of iron and steel.”
Just a month of war, and how it crippled people. Get old before your eyes. They are being obscene. They go berserk. They go crazy.
The semi-feudal regime that existed in the country became even more embittered during the war. In the army, humiliation, insults, bullying, surveillance, starvation rations have become the norm.
The mediocrity and irresponsibility of the command ... Decay in the royal court, the impotence of ministers and generals to improve things ...
The rear collapsed. “Together with the second stage, the third one also left. The villages, the farms were depopulated, as if the whole Donshchina had gone to rest for suffering.
It was necessary to take the pain of the Russian land very close to my heart in order to say so mournfully about it: “Many Cossacks were missing, they were lost on the fields of Galicia, Bukovina, East Prussia, the Carpathian region, Romania, they lay down as corpses and decayed under a gun memorial service, and now the high hills are overgrown with weeds mass graves, crushed them with rains, covered with quicksand snow.
Exposing power-hungry careerists and adventurers who are accustomed to controlling other people's destinies, all those who drive their people against other nations, right into minefields and under a machine-gun fan of bullets, strongly protesting against any encroachment on a person's right to live on earth, Sholokhov contrasted the horrors of war with beauty human feelings, the happiness of earthly existence. Pages dedicated to friendship, trust, kindred feelings, love - everything truly lofty, strengthen faith in the victory of a good beginning.
Monarchists, bourgeois democrats, supporters of military dictatorship, separatists, Bolsheviks act in the novel. Everyone has their own views, plans, programs. The material of the novel is, as it were, included in our modern reflections on the fate of the Motherland: what could have happened if the power of the monarch had continued, if Kerensky had continued to hold on, if the Kornilov putsch had ended in victory, if the plans of separatists like Yefim Izvarin had come true, if events on October 25? Or questions of a different order: if Generals Markov and Kaledin had not committed suicide, Kornilov had not been killed in 1918, and Alekseev had not died then?
According to Sholokhov, only that program is real, which does not diverge from the interests of the majority of the people. The situation was as follows: “The front was close. The armies were breathing death fever, there was not enough ammunition, food; the armies reached out with many hands to the ghostly word "peace"; the armies greeted the provisional ruler of the republic, Kerensky, in different ways and, urged on by his hysterical cries, stumbled in the June offensive; in the armies, ripened anger melted and boiled like water in a spring, swept out by deep springs ... "
This mood of the front-line soldiers and most of the working people in the rear, reaching out for peace, determined the attitude towards programs and slogans. Fraternization on the fronts testified that the soldiers different countries they became internationalists, they were looking for “one language”, that they hated war as a relic of barbarism, that they were for a system that would save life and give freedom. Therefore, the demand for an exit from the war turned out to be closer to the people than calls for its continuation to a victorious end, and even with the threat of using death penalty.
Sholokhov himself is on the side of those who fought against militarism. The novel serves as a revealing document, the pictures of bloodshed - and there are a lot of them - are given in all details and with such convincing clarity that you shudder.
But the world war for Russia is the first circle of hell. She survived even more unnatural - civil strife. A huge area was on fire. "Quiet Flows the Don" - a story about that tragedy. Their own killed their own, inventing sophisticated methods for this. Robbery and violence. Bandit invasions. Binges, the shattered psyche of people, the free behavior of stingers. Typhus epidemic. Death away from home. Orphaned families.
