The work of M. Sholokhov "Quiet Don", as well as "War and Peace" by L. Tolstoy, belongs to the genre of the epic novel. In both works, the human personality is shown at the turning points of Russian history, in both the personal, family, domestic and historical plans of the narrative are boldly combined. In the Center of the novel "War and Peace" - the Patriotic War of 1812, in the "Quiet Don" events take place during the First World War and the Civil War. The psychology of a person in war is revealed in each of these works.
First of all, in both works, military reality
is reflected not through the perception of any one hero: it is important for both L. Tolstoy and M. Sholokhov to show the reaction of many people to the war and to the changes associated with it. So, in "War and Peace" we heard the proud words of Andrei Bolkonsky that he goes to war because "this life is not for me", the rumors of the Moscow and St. Petersburg world, etc. Similarly, in " On the Quiet Don, the reader at the same time or with a slight delay will learn how in different places the Cossacks meet the news of the beginning of the war: Grigory's regiment is in the Carpathians, part of Mitka Korshunov is near Vilnius, while Grigory's brother, Peter, is mobilized in the Tatar farm.
Both works reflect the people's attitude to the war: L. Tolstoy's - the nationwide, M. Sholokhov's - in his Cossack version.
In the novel "War and Peace" war for the people is hard work, blood, suffering, death. Here is a picture of the campaign before the battle of Shengraben: “On the edges of the road, fallen, skinned and not skinned horses, then broken wagons were constantly visible ... Soldiers, drowning knee-deep in mud, picked up guns and wagons in their hands, whips beat, hooves slipped, lines burst and burst into screams of the chest. Reading this description, you feel the enormous tension of human strength, the burden of labor, fatigue reaching the limit. There is nothing spectacular and ostentatious in war, people simply do their duty without thinking that they are heroes (the most striking example is the battery of Staff Captain Tushin).
Almost a hundred years have passed, and nothing seems to have changed in human behavior in war. The same blood, the same tension of human strength, the same war-distorted face of the earth: “At night, over the horizon, handy scarlet glows stretched to the sky, small towns, villages, towns blazed with lightning ... , and from a distance it looked like the trees were in torn wounds and were bleeding with ore tree blood. And there are no heroes here, but there is fear, horror to the point of loss of reason and instinctive protection of one's own life. One of the many examples of this is the episode with the Cossack Kryukov, who saved the Cossack Ivankov from death and killed several Germans who surrounded him: “... he, rearing up his horse, wobbling his whole body, fought back with a saber until it was knocked out. Having snatched a pike from a nearby German, he unfolded it, as if for training. M. Sholokhov does not deprive Kryukov of courage and combat resourcefulness, but gradually gives this fight the character of an insane fight, where people lose their human face and, “brutal with fear”, “stabbed and beaten with anything.” (“The horses, unconscious with horror, swooped down and confusedly knocked together”).
Before us is not a heroic feat, but an ordinary military episode, where ordinary people, not yet experienced in battle, were frightened of each other, entered the battle, having fulfilled their duty, and only chance decided the outcome of the fight. There are no cowards here, but there are also no miracle heroes, but the psyche of an ordinary person is shown in an inhuman situation of killing their own kind.
The murder of both L. Tolstoy and M. Sholokhov is a severe moral shock. Just as Petya Rostov in War and Peace cannot help thinking about the Frenchman he killed, so Grigory Melekhov again and again returns to the Austrian he killed. Murder is a burden that neither consciousness nor feelings can cope with.
Both L. Tolstoy and M. Sholokhov are deeply concerned about the question of humanity in war. It is clear that these two concepts are irreconcilably hostile to each other, but both writers convincingly show that it is in a situation of carnage that the true essence of a person is manifested, and if there was humanity in him, then it will only be strengthened in trials. We remember how in "War and Peace" Pierre takes a girl out of a burning house, Andrei Bolkonsky saves an unknown doctor's wife.
The situation is similar in the "Quiet Don". Grigory Melekhov, alone against a whole platoon, rushes to defend the unfortunate Franya, and then, remembering this terrible scene, he almost cries: what the war has done to people! Himself seriously wounded, he takes out an officer from the battle. He also saves his mortal enemy - Stepan Astakhov. “Saved, obeying the heart,” notes M. Sholokhov.
So, war severely examines a person for moral strength, faith and selflessness. But it also convincingly shows that a good beginning is real in a person, that compassion and mercy will help a person to save a living soul in the fire. The novels "War and Peace" by L. Tolstoy and "Quiet Flows the Don" by M. Sholokhov are imbued with faith in a person who can endure any trials.
All works are abbreviated by this author The Quiet Don Virgin Soil Upturned At the end of the penultimate Turkish campaign, the Cossack Prokofy Melekhov brought home, to the village of Veshenskaya, a captive Turkish woman. From their marriage a son was born, named Panteley, just as swarthy...
The novel by M. Sholokhov "Quiet Flows the Don" is a work of extraordinary power. The heroes of the novel reflect the historical and social upheavals of the 20th century. Sholokhov created a gallery of images that, by the strength of their expressiveness, artistic value, stood in one row ...
Mishka Koshevoy is a Cossack from the village of Tatarskaya, who went over to the side of the Bolsheviks. His character is characterized by impetuosity, great emotionality, maximalism. Taking the position of the "Reds", the hero devotes his life entirely to the fight against the whites, the enemies of the people....
Natalia is a nervous, reflective woman. She is hardworking, beautiful, kind, but unhappy. Natalya, having only learned about the matchmaking of the Melekhovs, declares: “I love Grishka, but I won’t marry anyone else! .. I don’t need others, my friend ... I won’t go, let them go and don’t marry ....
Target: show that M. Sholokhov in the epic novel “Quiet Flows the Don” affirms eternal values (home, work, love) as the basis of human life.
Tasks:
- education of humanism;
- improving the ability to conduct a dialogue with the author;
- development of creative abilities of students.
Equipment:
- Portrait of M. Sholokhov.
- Two white sheets of drawing paper.
- Marker.
- Record player.
- Audio recording of a melody for an oral journal.
- Audio recording of A. Rosenbaum's song “Draw me a house”.
- Student illustrations for the novel.
- The epic novel by L. Tolstoy “War and Peace”.
During the classes
I. Designation of the topic - problems
What do you think a person needs to be happy?
(Students answer, and the teacher writes down their answers on a piece of paper.)
- HEALTH
- LOVE
- MATERIAL WELL-BEING
- FAMILY (HOUSE)
This is a look at the happiness of the 11th "A" class in 2004. The topic of our lesson is: “What does a person need for happiness?” (According to the novel by M. Sholokhov “Quiet Flows the Don”)
(Recording the topic in a notebook).
We must find out what values a person needs for happiness, M. Sholokhov asserts in his work (addressing the portrait of the writer), what his hero, Grigory Melekhov, dreams of.
(Reading and writing the epigraph).
II. Homework survey
1. Happy scenes of family life in the novel.
At the very beginning of the novel, M. Sholokhov introduces us to the history and life of the Melekhov family. Family scenes in the novel are poeticized. Let's listen carefully to these pages and think about the question: how does the writer understand the family, and what does it mean for his characters?
Oral journal: a group of students read excerpts from a novel against the background of music.
“... Pantelei Prokofievich was the first to wake up from sleep. Buttoning up the collar of his shirt embroidered with crosses, he went out onto the porch. The haunted yard is lined with dewy silver. Let the cattle out into the alley. Daria in her underwear ran to milk the cows. Dew splashed like colostrum on the calves of her white bare feet, a smoky, crushed trail lay across the grass through the bases ...
On the windowsill of the open window, the petals of the cherry blossoms that had faded in the front garden were deathly pink.
Grigory “bent down to scoop up a handful of water - at this time the end of the rod, sticking out half an arshin from the water, weakly swayed, slowly crawled down.
- Spot it! The old man sighed...
Leading out, Grigory ... pulled the exhausted carp to the longboat.
Gathered...
- You, Grigory, that's what ... I note that you, in no way, are with Aksinya Astakhova ... Look, guy ... Stepan is our neighbor, and I won’t allow me to indulge with his woman.
“After dinner, Grigory untied the bag, began to give the family gifts.
“This is for you, mother…” He held out a warm shawl.
Ilyinichna accepted the gift, frowning and turning pink in a youthful way.
She threw it over her shoulders and turned around in front of the mirror and shrugged her shoulders so that even Pantelei Prokofievich was indignant:
- An old hag, and there - in front of the mirror! Ugh!..
“This is for you, papa…” Grigory muttered quickly, unrolling his new Cossack cap in front of everyone…
Well, save Christ! And I was poor with a cap ...
He leaned in to try on the mirror, but Ilyinichna guarded him with a look. The old man took her glance, swerved sharply, limped to the samovar. Before him and tried on, putting on his cap on one side.
“What are you doing, you old bastard? Ilyinichna pounced.
But Pantelei Prokofievich balked:
- God! Well, you are stupid! It's a samovar, not mirrors? ..
Gregory endowed his wife with a woolen cut for a skirt; handed out a pound of honey cakes to the children; Daria - silver earrings with stones; Dunyashka - on a blouse; Peter - a cigarette and a pound of tobacco ...
Petro, biting his wheat mustache, admired his father, Grigory chuckled.
“A month later, Gregory recovered ... Everything in life took on some new, innermost meaning for him, everything attracted attention. He looked at the world that had appeared to him again with slightly surprised eyes, and for a long time a simple-hearted, childish smile did not leave his lips ... Sometimes he examined some household item known to him from childhood, moving his eyebrows tensely ... a spinning wheel on all sides.”
What is a family in the understanding of M. Sholokhov and what does it mean for his heroes?
- Family, home - the place where you were born, where you are loved, where you are not alone.
- Family is where your life began, destiny: the spinning wheel is associated with the ancient Greek goddesses of fate - moira, who pulled the thread of a person's life through all obstacles and cut it off.
- A family is a community where everyone understands each other: Grigory brought a gift for each family member that matches his character.
- The family is a unity of people that cannot be destroyed.
- A house is a place where you can gain strength for later life: it was not without reason that Antey touched the earth in order to gain strength ...
Let's pay attention to illustration No. 1 to the novel: it depicts the Melekhovs' house on the banks of the Don in the spring. (The illustration is attached to the board).
“FAMILY (HOUSE)” is written on another piece of paper as a value that the writer claims.
2. Pictures of peasant labor in the novel.
The life of the Cossacks is unthinkable without peasant work. Let's remember the scene "In the hayfield". Shcherbakova Anya was given an individual task: to analyze this episode.
Student's answer.
The Melekhov family is hardworking. Hot to work Grigory. We see how he follows his father on the mowing and “lays the scythe grass”.
The heroes are happy. This is shown through epithets (what?) and artistic details (what?).
The mood that arises in the reader is akin to that which is born when reading Koltsov's "Mower".
Labor is the basis of a peaceful life, material prosperity. He unites.
Values are being written down– “WORK” and “MATERIAL WEALTH”.
III. Discussion: who does Gregory love?
One of the components of happiness you called love. M. Sholokhov agrees with you. In the novel "Quiet Don", as in other works of Russian classics, we see a love triangle: Grigory, Natalya, Aksinya.
Draw a triangle on the board.
Who does Gregory love?
Discussion: Students give evidence in the text, and the teacher puts “pluses” on the board for Aksinya or Natalya.
You yourself saw that Gregory loves... both women. Natalya struck him with "some kind of pure inner beauty." She is the embodiment of Home, Family. Love for Aksinya is a passion that is stronger than Grigory himself. The hero cannot achieve harmony in love: there is no Home for him with Aksinya, that is, a Home with Natalya, but without an all-consuming and passionate feeling.
And only for a short time at the end of the work is there a lull: we see Aksinya praying for Grigory and raising his children.
In general, the life of the heroes of The Quiet Flows the Don is tragic.
IV. M. Sholokhov's attitude to the war and ways of expressing it
In the first lesson, we talked about how much Grigory lost throughout the story: from the large Melekhov family, only Dunyashka and Mishatka remained with the hero. M. Sholokhov states: "The war was the cause of all this ...".
We have written down PEACE as a necessary component of happiness, and in doing so we have renounced war. How does the writer feel about the war? In what ways does he express his attitude towards her?
Conversation with the class.
- Contrasts pictures of peaceful labor and pictures of battle. Continuing the traditions of Russian classics, he follows L.N. Tolstoy, whose epic novel is even called “War and Peace”.
- Shows that the civil war divided the villagers, members of the same family, brought confusion into the soul of an individual;
- Refers to the pictures of nature: Don was excited when the turmoil began. At the same time, the world in nature opposes the killing of man by man: “...the little bustard female laid nine smoky-blue spotted eggs and sat on them, warming them with the warmth of her body, protecting them with a glossy feathered wing”;
– Uses direct appeals to peace: “In the time of turmoil and debauchery // Do not judge, brothers, brother…”;
- He resorts to symbolic scenes: Grigory throws weapons into the river ...
The Civil War took away almost everything from the hero: it deprived him of his family, Aksinya, Mishka Koshevoy lives in his House ...
Ashes in the hero's soul.
Let's pay attention to illustration No. 2. The illustration is attached to the board and depicts the raging Don and the burned House.
We made sure that M. Sholokhov is also for peace. The value “MIR” is recorded.
V. Composition of the novel
Have you paid attention to the fact that the composition of the novel also serves to express the author's intention. What do we learn from the history of the Melekhov family in the beginning?
- Prokofy remained with his son in his arms.
What do we see in the final?
Gregory is holding his son in his arms.
Let's pay attention to illustration No. 3. The illustration is attached to the board and depicts the House, powdered with snow, the Don, covered at the edges with an ice crust.
Rossikhina Zhenya will tell us about what her illustrations express.
Life goes in a circle: a person is born, dies and is born again... The ring composition expresses the idea of the continuity of life.
The Don, having raged and calmed down, is covered with an ice crust near the coast: nature becomes numb in order to wake up to life again in the spring.
VI. Conclusion
Did our idea of happiness coincide with Sholokhov's?
We put health in the first place: the writer does not focus on this aspect. Well, this problem escalated at the end of the twentieth century.
It is a pity that among the components of our happiness there is no concept of WORK. We are engaged in intellectual work, but we have moved away from the earth. Peasant field work, their poetry is disappearing... The modern village is in a very difficult situation. Is it not in the civil war that the causes of the current mismanagement lie?
I am very pleased that today I heard mature opinions, I saw how you have grown compared to last year, when we talked about a similar problem with L. Tolstoy. I am glad that Sholokhov's text is an open book for you, reading which you discovered the author and yourself.
Unfortunately, not everyone had time to speak during the lesson. Therefore, they have to write an essay “What is happiness?” at home. Those who were active make tests based on the novel by M. Sholokhov from 10 questions.
The humanism of Russian literature affirms eternal values (HOME, FAMILY, LOVE) as the basis of happiness. This is what each of us needs. We all dream of a Home where we are loved and where we can gain strength.
A. Rosenbaum's song “Draw me a house” sounds.
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov
When in 1925 "Don stories" by the twenty-year-old writer Mikhail Sholokhov appeared, readers immediately felt that a bright talent had come to literature. And the first and second books of The Quiet Don, published in 1928 in the magazine Oktyabr, put him among the best writers of the Soviet country.
Already in the early works of Sholokhov, the exceptional vigilance of the artist, the ability to convey what he saw in vivid, accurate images, characterizes. A deep understanding of life allowed Sholokhov to show the fate of individuals in close connection with the fate of the entire Soviet people at such important turning points in history as the October Revolution, the Civil War, collectivization, and the Great Patriotic War.
The action of Sholokhov's works, as a rule, takes place on the Don, among the Don Cossacks. In the history of the Russian people, the Cossacks play a special role. From among the Cossacks came Razin, Pugachev and other leaders of peasant uprisings. The Cossacks, who founded the "freemen" on the outskirts of Russia, defended the borders of the Russian state, and for this, by royal decrees, they were turned into a special military estate, which enjoyed a number of privileges. The tsarist government, trying to emphasize the estate privileges of the Cossacks, incited the Cossacks to "non-resident" (people living in Cossack farms and villages, but did not enjoy the right to own land), used the Cossack troops to suppress revolutionary uprisings. The Cossacks, in general, lived richer than the peasants of other regions of Russia, and this created special difficulties both in the formation of Soviet power on the Don and in carrying out the socialist reorganization of agriculture there. But the Cossacks were not homogeneous: the rich Cossacks exploited the poor; the bulk of the Cossacks belonged to the oppressed working class of Russia, and only political blindness prevented them from understanding that they needed to unite with the "muzhiks" and "non-residents" against the kulaks and landowners.
Using the example of Don's life, where the struggle for Soviet power and collectivization took on particularly acute forms, the writer revealed the main features of the change in peasant psychology during the transition from capitalism to socialism. Sholokhov traces the great historical changes in the life of the people in the numerous destinies of people, different in character and social status. The whole whirlpool of human destinies is depicted by the writer against the backdrop of nature, full of unceasing life, which the artist feels so subtly and conveys with amazing skill. Sholokhov's language, sometimes angry, sometimes tender, sometimes infectiously cheerful, absorbed all the riches of folk speech, its liveliness, imagery, apt and sharp humor.
Fighting youth. Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov was born on May 24, 1905 on the farm Kruzhilin of the village of Veshenskaya, the region of the Don Cossacks (now the Rostov region). His father, Alexander Mikhailovich Sholokhov, a native of the Ryazan province, worked for hire from a young age, wandering around the Don farms and villages. Mother Anastasia Danilovna, the daughter of a serf Ukrainian peasant in the Chernihiv province, from the age of twelve until her marriage, worked in the landowner's estate Yasenovka, located not far from the Kruzhilin farm. The illiterate woman had a sharp natural mind, lively, figurative speech, spiritual wealth, and the future writer inherited these qualities.
Mikhail Sholokhov studied at the Karginsky Primary School, then at the Bogucharov Gymnasium. But he managed to finish only four classes of the gymnasium. “In 1918, when the occupying German troops approached this city, I interrupted my studies and left for home. After that, I could not continue the exercises, since the Don region became the scene of a fierce civil war, ”wrote M.A. Sholokhov in his autobiography. As a teenager, Sholokhov joined the struggle for the establishment of Soviet power on the Don. He fought with kulak bandits, participated in the census and the eradication of illiteracy, served in the village revolutionary committee, and was a clerk in the procurement office, which was in charge of his father. At the age of 17, he was appointed food commissar to the village of Bukanovskaya, Tsaritsyn province. In 1923 M.A. Sholokhov came to Moscow, worked as a laborer, a bricklayer, a loader, an accountant in a house administration, and did not leave the dream of becoming a writer. In the Komsomol newspaper Yunosheskaya Pravda, feuilletons appear, signed with the pseudonym “M. Sholokh. Literature soon became his main profession. At the end of 1924, his first story "The Mole" was published, and then the story "The Path-Track". Sholokhov joined the Young Guard literary group, which included M. Svetlo, Yu. Lebedinsky, A. Fadeev and other writers. All of them came to literature enriched by personal experience of participation in the civil war, in the construction of a new life. “A young writer grows as a writer only when he grows as a person, as a fighter, grows together with the whole country,” said Nikolai Ostrovsky. These words can be fully attributed to Mikhail Sholokhov and his comrades in the Young Guard group.
In hot pursuit. A deep furrow passed the civil war through the pages and farms of the Don; she divided yesterday's friends, often even members of seven, into two inapplicable camps. The mortal battle between the two camps, fighters for a new life and those who would like to return the old order, determined the plot of Don Stories. The young writer, even in his early stories, describing tragic and heroic events, managed to avoid the heroic-romantic pomposity characteristic of the literature of that time. The struggle for Soviet power was sublime in its great humane tasks, but in the everyday life of the civil war there was much more cruel, unpleasant and simply ordinary than beautiful. The heroes of Sholokhov's stories usually die in the first battle, and even more often they are taken by surprise, unarmed, subjected to torment and bullying. In the family of the kulak Yakov Alekseevich (the story "Devilism") lives a twenty-year-old Komsomol member, his youngest son Styopka. The family fenced off from Styopka with a stone wall of hatred. “Even the mother and she began to look at Styopka indifferently, not seeing the looks. A piece stuck in the guy’s throat, unbidden tears burned his eyes, a muffled sob rose up like a shaft. But Styopka honestly stands for the truth: when Yakov Alekseevich hid the area of the sown land at the meeting, Styopka exposed him. For this, the father and elder brother Maxim brutally kill Stepan. Alyoshka, the hero of the story "Alyoshka's Heart", is only fourteen years old. For the fifth month he has not seen bread, he swells from hunger. His mother and younger sister died of starvation. The older sister, Polka, was killed with an iron by a wealthy neighbor, Makarchykha, because Polka climbed into her hut and began to eat cabbage soup left in the stove. Her mother sold her hut and farmstead to Makarchikhe for a few handfuls of flour and a bowl of milk.
Alyoshka was left alone, because of miserable grubs he was hired as a farm laborer to the kulak Ivan Alekseevich. The owner beat Alyoshka, exhausted him with overwork. The meek boy endured everything, but when he heard that the bandits were agreeing with his owner to attack the farm, he ran to the office to warn the political committee. The defeated bandits tried to hide behind a four-year-old girl, and Alyoshka saved the child's life by falling on his stomach on a thrown grenade.
Severe trials fell on the lot of Petka, the hero of the story "The Way-the Road". His father was beaten to death by white Cossacks. Petka set fire to the ammunition depot and fled to the Reds. Then he, the secretary of the cell of the RKSM, is captured by the Makhnovists, under the threat of execution he agrees to serve with Makhno, but after a while he persuades a hundred Makhnovists to surrender to the Reds.
Quiet Don stirred up. A year after the publication of the first story, Sholokhov began work on a detailed canvas about historical changes in the life of the Don Cossacks - the epic novel "Quiet Don", on which he worked for 15 years, finishing the last, fourth book in 1940. Among the freedom of the Don nature and hard work, the hero of the novel, Grigory Melekhov, grew up. The awkward fate of Gregory is tied up in a tight knot: love for someone else's wife Aksinya, marriage to the unloved Natalya, leaving Aksinya from his native farm ... and suddenly a war that again turned his whole life upside down. Not everything was safe on the quiet Don; class contradictions between the rich and the laboring poor grew and escalated. The Bolshevik Shtokman opens the eyes of the working Cossacks to their true position. The world war taught the Cossacks a lot. The central place in the novel is occupied by the events of the civil war on the Don, and in particular the history of the Upper Don counter-revolutionary uprising of the Cossacks. This page of the civil war before Sholokhov was poorly studied by historians. The writer did an enormous job, collecting a large number of authentic documents and recreating the real picture of the uprising. Sholokhov revealed the reasons for the uprising, which consisted, on the one hand, in the unstable nature of the peasant-seryadnyak, who succumbed to the White Guard agitation, on the other hand, in the political mistakes of some representatives of the Soviet government, having taken a position hostile to the bulk of the Cossacks. The real Bolsheviks - Koshevoy, Shtokman, Kotlyarov and others - are opposed to these "zabenders" in the novel, who, under the circumstances, could not, however, keep the Cossacks from revolting. When, with the help of the rebels, the White Army came to the Don and began to restore the old order, the Cossacks themselves realized their mistake. The writer tells historically authentically about how the Red Army stopped the advance of the Whites, and then drove them south, overturning them into the sea; how the white army decayed and melted; how Soviet power was established on the Don in the fight against bandits.
in the struggle for communism. With great love, Sholokhov paints portraits of staunch fighters for a new life. These are the son of a farm laborer, Mikhail Koshevoy, the mill operator Ivan Kotlyarov, the professional underground revolutionary Shtokman, the loyal soldier of the revolution, Bunchuk, and others. The seeds of revolutionary truth find fertile ground among the Cossack poor and working mills. Mikhail Koshevoy penetrates the ideas of the revolution and clearly realizes that in the ensuing struggle one cannot remain in the middle between the two warring camps. “There is nothing more terrible than the human heart,” he says.
"He waged an irreconcilable, merciless war with Cossack satiety, with Cossack treachery, with all that indestructible and bone way of life that had rested for centuries under the roofs of portly kurens." With boundless courage, the communists went to their deaths, defending Soviet power. Shtokman died trying to hold the rebellious regiment. When the commissar was killed, he stood alone against the angry crowd, and perhaps his heated speech would have reached the goal if it had not been interrupted by the chairman's bullet. In the novel, dozens of communists pass in front of us. Here is a Karginsky communist from out of town Pyotr Semiglazov, hacked to death in battle by Grigory Melekhov. “In the seventeenth year, he was the first to come from the German, then a twenty-four-year-old fellow, in hitherto unseen windings; brought with him Bolshevik convictions and firm front-line assertiveness. He remained a Bolshevik." Here is the company commander, having been captured by the whites. He refused to answer questions and looked with fearless mockery at the White Guard colonel seething with anger. The Red Army detachment fought selflessly, surrounded by superior white forces: “... Because of the sandy hillock, a tall, dark-faced and black-whiskered commander rose to his full height. A woman dressed in a leather jacket supported him by the arm. The commander was wounded. Dragging his broken leg, he stepped off the hillock, straightened his rifle with a stuck bayonet on his arm, and commanded hoarsely: Comrades! Forward! Bay belyakov! A bunch of brave men with the singing of the "Internationale" went on a counterattack. To death. One hundred and sixteen who fell last near the Don were all communists of the International Company.
Stranglers of the Revolution. The novel presents those who wanted to keep the old order, drown the people's power in blood. These are the rich Korshunov family of farmsteaders, the merchant Mokhov, the landowner Listnitsky, generals and officers of the White Army, and foreign invaders. The merchant Mokhov of the Revolution was the most important person in the Tatarsky farm. He also squeezed the surrounding farms into a strong fist “Whatever the yard is, Sergei Platonovich has a bill ...” Even Mokhov treated the richest Cossacks condescendingly and was friends only with the landowner Listnitsky, who lived near the farm, an officer, a staunch monarchist, who sharply hates those who rebelled against the old system people. This is a smart, evil and cruel enemy who is well aware of the danger threatening the old world, and voluntarily spies on officers and soldiers, hunts down "unreliable", writes denunciations on them. He actively helps Kornilov and Kaledin in organizing counter-revolutionary conspiracies. Listnitsky talks a lot about love for the motherland, but in reality he defends his class interests, any lofty feelings are alien to him. The anti-patriotism of the white officers is most clearly revealed by Sholokhov in a group portrait: “Rostov and Novocherkassk, which are the rear of the Volunteer Army, were teeming with officers. Thousands of them speculated, served in countless rear institutions, huddled with relatives and friends, lay in hospitals with forged documents of injury ... shot during the years of the revolution and honor and conscience, hid like jackals in the rear, dirty scum, dung floated on the surface of stormy days ... ”Portraits of Kornilov, Kaledin, Krasnov, Bogaevsky, Denikin and other White Guard generals are expressive in the novel. Like dogs fighting for a bone, they viciously denounce each other in the struggle for power. Ataman of the Don region Krasnov is a puppet in the hands of the German Kaiser, just like Denikin, who sold Russia to the Anglo-French emperors.
Foreign aid did not save the white generals. On the Don, cleared of the White Guard rabble, the construction of a new, Soviet life begins.
The People and the Revolution. The main theme of the novel "Quiet Flows the Don" is the fate of the people during the years of revolution and civil war. In the preface to the English edition of the novel The Quiet Don, Sholokhov wrote: “I would be happy if, behind the description of the life of the Don Cossacks, alien to Europeans, the English reader considered something else: those colossal shifts in everyday life, life and human psychology that occurred in result of war and revolution.
In a letter to A.M. Gorky in 1931, Sholokhov noted that he did not limit the meaning of the novel to depicting the events that took place in the Don region: the question: about the attitude towards the middle peasantry and about the behavior of the middle peasantry in the revolution, central in the novel, is of paramount importance for of all countries that, following Russia, will go to socialism. The vacillation of the Cossacks between revolution and counter-revolution revealed the dual nature of the psychology of the small proprietor, who, as V.I. Lenin, “gravitates involuntarily and inevitably now towards the bourgeoisie, now towards the proletariat. It cannot economically have an independent "line". His past draws him to the bourgeoisie, his future to the proletariat. His mind gravitates toward the latter, his prejudice (as Marx famously put it) toward the former. Among the Cossacks, the vacillations characteristic of the middle peasantry manifested themselves with particular force. If in other regions of Russia the struggle for land was the basis of the alliance between the peasantry and the proletariat, then on the Don the Cossacks, in their mass, had enough land. The White Guards intimidated the Cossacks with rumors that the Bolsheviks wanted to take away their land and give it to the "muzhiks". These provocative rumors gave rise to blind hatred among the Cossacks, pushed them to fight for their "plot of land." Provoked by the whites into an uprising against Soviet power, the Cossacks thought longingly about spring plowing, about the abandoned economy, and refused to stray far from their native farms. Both the soul of the worker and the psychology of the owner manifested themselves in the attachment of the Cossacks to their household. Feelings of fatigue, guilt and irritation are especially strong in the Cossacks after they join with the White Army that has broken through to the Don. Even the economic Panteley Prokofievich, the true guardian of the Cossack spirit, who until recently inspired his sons to go to war with the Bolsheviks, changes his mood dramatically. “The war ruined him, deprived him of his former zeal for work, took away his eldest son from him, brought discord and confusion into the family. She passed over his life like a storm over a plot of wheat, but even after the storm the wheat rises and flaunts under the sun, but the old man could no longer get up. Mentally, he waved his hand at everything - come what may! The Cossacks increasingly moved away from the white command, and after the defeat of the white army, the survivors began to return to their native farms. Not everyone recognized Soviet power at once. At first, many supported the bandits and helped them in the fight against food detachments, but gradually the Cossacks realized that by doing this they were interfering with the establishment of a normal life, and resolutely took the side of the Soviets. Life itself shattered the illusions of the Cossacks. The absurdity of the idea to organize "their own republic of ten villages" became clear to them. Either return to the old life: reach out in front of the officers, bend your back to the kulaks and landlords, or follow the Bolsheviks. There is no third way. And the vast majority of the Cossacks turned the way to build a new life.
Alien to everyone. The hero of the novel, Grigory Melekhov, is a representative of the middle Cossacks. He grew up in a family that had a strong economy, always lived in abundance, but never used hired labor. Hard peasant labor was a common thing for the Melekhov family. Personal qualities - a remarkable natural mind, courage, dexterity, willpower, depth of feelings, stormy, indomitable nature - Grigory stood out sharply among fellow countrymen. But for all the sharpness of his mind, Gregory could not independently understand the complex interweaving of social contradictions, and the circumstances of his life did not entangle him with a reliable political leader. That is why Gregory is so helpless in disputes with white officers. How many times did it happen that he vaguely felt the truth, but did not know how to prove it and was forced to obey what he internally disagreed with. “I, brother, I feel that you are talking wrong here,” he says to his chief of staff, officer Kopylov, “but I don’t know how to pin you down ... Let's drop it. Don't confuse me, I'm confused without you! When Grigory lay in the hospital, his bedmate, the Bolshevik Garanzha, opened his eyes to the true meaning of the imperialist war. I. Gregory hated the war, his former ideas about the tsar, about the Cossack military duty collapsed. But, having returned home from the front, finding himself in the atmosphere of his native Cossack life, Grigory hesitated in his new, not firmly assimilated views. In addition, the old man appeared before him disguised in a new robe: Izvarin entangles him with the idea of creating an independent Cossack state. True, Grigory does not believe Izvarin’s slander, he says: “... I don’t understand anything ... It’s hard for me to figure it out ... I’m blowing like a snowstorm in the steppe ...” A month later, Grigory met with the Bolshevik Fedor Podtelkov and heard that Cossack autonomy is the same power of the whites generals. Grigory joined the Reds, commanded a hundred, then a division. During the attack, as a result of which a large formation of whites was broken, Grigory was even, having spent a week in the infirmary, he went home. When the Whites announced mobilization in the farm, Grigory rejected Koshevoy's offer to run to the Reds. “I fought then, let others try it,” he replied, hoping to sit at home. But he was not allowed to sit. Reluctantly, in the last row of the detachment formed on the farm, Grigory rode to the war against the Reds. In battle, he heard the sounds of the “Internationale” coming from the Red Army chain and “felt how, breaking loose, sharply, intermittently, his heart beat…”
Gregory turned out to be a stranger to everyone. The Cossacks did not trust him, because he used to be a Red commander, and when he arbitrarily left the White Front, the Reds who came to the farm also did not trust him, because he was a White officer. A double past, like a curse followed him. During the counter-revolutionary rebellion of the Cossacks, Grigory commanded an insurgent division. It seemed to him that he was fighting for his native cause, but the white army came, restoring the pre-revolutionary order, and Grigory realized how cruelly he was mistaken. The officer environment was still alien and hateful to him, and the officers, despite his high rank and undoubted military talent, looked at him as a simple, uneducated Cossack. “In matters of decency and literacy, you are just a cork!” Kapylov tells him. “I’m your cork, but wait, give me time, I’ll move on to the red ones, so I’ll be heavier than lead. Then do not come across to me decent and educated parasites.
I will take out my soul right with the giblets!” Turning now to the whites, now to the reds, Gregory cannot find his true place. But he wants to escape from the maelstrom of military events: together with Akseninya, he flees from his native farm to the Kuban to start a new life there. But Aksinya dies on the way, and Grigory, completely broken, returns home. “... A lot has come true that Grigory dreamed about during sleepless nights. He stood at the gates of his native house, holding his son in his arms... It was all that was left in his life...” In the image of Grigory Melekhov, Sholokhov’s characteristic desire was most clearly manifested not to simplify life, but to show it in all its complexity and inconsistency. He does not have a primitive division of people into "bad" and "good"; he shows that a person with good qualities - honest, principled, courageous - can commit a crime against the people if his consciousness is entangled in lies.
Don Cossacks. A large place in the novel is given to a Cossack woman: her hard work in the field and at home, her grief, her generous heart. Do not forget the image of Grigory's mother - Ilyinichna. Her whole life was spent in work. She received a lot of beatings from her violent and wayward husband, she knew a lot of anxieties, she brought many losses during the years of imperialist and civil wars. This modest hardworking woman has a wise mind, a courageous and strong character, a big, loving heart. She also managed to curb Pantelei Prokofievich: imperceptibly, but firmly, she leads him. It was under her influence that Pantelei Prokofievich did not let Natalya's brother Mitka Korshunov into the house, having learned that he had massacred the family of Mikhail Koshevoy. "I don't want you to trash my house! And more so that your foot does not set foot on me. We, the Melekhovs, are not related to the executioners, that's it! - decisively declared the old man, guided by the stern look of Ilyinichna.
Ilyinichna had the most burning love for her youngest son Grisha. She had been waiting for him until the last minute since the war, having lost both her husband, her eldest son, and both daughters-in-law. Before her death, having gathered the last of her strength, she left the hut at night. “The last month shone. A breeze blew from the steppe. From the butt of straw, a thick shadow fell on the bare current beaten out by stone rollers ...
Ilyinichna looked for a long time into the twilight blue of the steppe, and then, not loudly, as if he were standing right next to her, she called: Grishenka! My dear - she was silent and said quietly - My little blood! ... ” Natalya loves Gregory faithfully. Her love is submissive, but Natalya will not understand the heavy thoughts that torment Grigory all the time. But Grigory finds a kindred spirit in Aksenya, and just when Natalya begins to reproach Aksenya for taking children away from her father. Aksenya is a simple, illiterate Cossack woman, she has a rich soul.
The high artistic merits of the novel "Quiet Don" were the first to be appreciated by A, M, Gorky and A.S. Sirofimovich wrote in Pravda that the heroes of the novel appeared before the readers as a "living sparkling crowd" and the author managed to endow each hero with "his own traits, create a unique face, a unique inner human structure." In the novel Quiet Don, Sholokhov combines the epic depiction of great historical events with the amazing lyricism of the narration, the transfer of the subtlest intimate experiences of people, the disclosure of their innermost feelings of thought.
Art history of collectivization. The first book of Virgin Soil Upturned was published in 1932. It was written in hot pursuit of the great transformations in the countryside. In 1932-1933, an extremely difficult situation developed in the Veshensky region on the Don. The leadership of the North Caucasus Territory, instead of correcting the mistakes made during collectivization, unreasonably accused the leaders of the region, the chairmen of collective farms, of wrecking; mass arrests, illegal dispossession of kulaks, and confiscation of grain from collective farmers followed. The writer boldly stood up for the innocent victims. According to his letter to the Central Committee, a special commission was created. As a result of the investigation, those arrested were released, those expelled from the party were reinstated, and confiscated property was returned. Busy with the struggle for people's lives, the writer temporarily stopped working on the second book of Virgin Soil Upturned. During the Great Patriotic War, all the archives of the writer were destroyed. After the war, Sholokhov began writing the second book again and finished it at the end of 1959. The novel "Virgin Soil Upturned" is the most profound work of art on the collectivization of the economy.
Like "Quiet Flows the Don", "Virgin Soil Upturned" is a novel about the life of the people. And in this work, Sholokhov traces the process of changing folk psychology, overcoming age-old prejudices, turning simple workers to new forms of life. This process is accompanied by a hard struggle. But if in "The Quiet Don" the first stage of the clarification of the people's consciousness is shown in the conditions of an acute armed class struggle, often accompanied by tragic mistakes, then in "Virgin Soil Upturned" the action takes place in the conditions of the established Soviet system, when the consciousness of the main part of the Cossacks has grown significantly, understanding of the advantages of the new life more easily penetrates the masses, and the anti-Soviet agitation of the enemies of the people finds ever fewer supporters. The psychology of the Cossacks is most vividly depicted in such mass scenes as a meeting on the organization of a collective farm, it is interesting to compare the behavior of the people in the scene of a “women's revolt”, the first time Davydov almost lost his life, the second, he quite easily persuaded women to return to work. To Nagulny’s warning about the danger of going to the brigade, Davydov replied: “The people have become much more conscious compared to the first months of collectivization, a fact!” Davydov correctly noted the turning point in the minds of the people: people grew up, they turned from private owners into builders of the socialist world. Sholokhov wrote "Virgin Soil Upturned" on the rich material of the real life surrounding him. The fact of life prompted the writer - and he truthfully depicted this in the novel - that the turn in the people's consciousness did not occur immediately and not easily.
If at the beginning of collectivization the Gremyanchens were ready to senselessly slaughter cattle just because “now it is not ours”, then after a few months they already have a sense of responsibility for collective farm property. Istin Rykalin indignantly tells Davydov about how he fought with his neighbors from the Tubyansky farm, who at night, thieves, took away the Gremyache hay. Davydov listened to him, laughed at the joyful thought: “It’s just a beauty that you, my dear Ustin, got into a fight for collective farm hay, and not for your personal, your own. It's just a touching fact!
A great historical turn in the consciousness of the peasantry took place as a result of the organizational and educational work of the Communist Party.
There are three communists in the center of the novel: Semyon Davydov, a 25,000-strong worker, Makar Nagulnov, secretary of the party cell of the Gremyachy Log farm, and Andrey Razmertnov, chairman of the village council. But behind them stands a party whose mighty support is constantly felt by the Gremyachny communists. Even in the most difficult moments, they always felt like a part of the invincible Communist Party, which gave them extraordinary stamina.
The correct policy of the Party is the basis for the success of the socialist transformation of agriculture. This thought permeates the entire novel. The decisions of the party indicated that the main task was to draw the middle class into the collective-farm movement. The question of the attitude towards the middle peasantry was also the main one during the period described in The Quiet Don, but then it was decided by force of arms on the fronts of the civil war. During the period of collectivization, the main methods of solving this problem were perception and persuasion. The novel criticizes the formal bureaucratic methods of leadership of the secretary of the district committee of the party Korchzhinsky. He is opposed by the new secretary Nesterenko, who is cordial and sensitive to people. Nesterenko goes to the field to the brigades, delves into everything, gives practical advice. On the field, Davydov also made his first acquaintance with the new secretary of the district committee. “With a small but strong hand, Nesterenko squeezed Davydov’s elbow even tighter. Looking sideways at the simple, open face of the secretary, Davydov suddenly felt so light and free that a smile involuntarily touched his hard lips. For a long time, no one from the party leadership spoke to him in such a friendly, simple and humanly good way ... "
Another experienced party fighter, the head of the campaign column, Osip Kondratko. In a short conversation with Davydov, he gives not only valuable advice on organizing the collection of seed grain, but also a clear example of the ability to work with people. “... Davydov, smilingly looking at the crimson veined face of the turner Kontradko, at the slanderous brilliance of his deep-set eyes, thought: “What a devil you are, clever girl! He does not want to take our initiative, as if he is advising, but start and object to his correct placement - he will just turn you smoothly in his own way, a fact! I've seen them, honestly!"
The leader must be able to look into the heart of each person, to find something of his own that distinguishes him from other people. In teaching the difficult art of leading people, Davydov received invaluable help from elderly collective farmers Ippolit Shaly, Ivan Arzhanov and others, who generously shared their rich life experience with them. Having told Davydov the story of his life, Arzhanov, in response to Davydov’s words: “But still, Uncle Ivan, you are a man with a weirdo,” answered: “Why, a weirdo - how can I tell you ... Here a cherry tree grows, there are many different branches on it. I came and cut off one branch to make a whip, - a whip is more reliable from a cherry, - it grew, dear, also with a weirdo - in knots, in leaves, in its beauty, and I cut it, this branch, and here it is ... Nothing to look at! So is a man: he is naked and miserable without a weirdo, like this whip ...
Arzhanov pulled Davydov's whip, said, still smiling thoughtfully: Hold it in your hands, think, maybe it will clear up in your head ... "
The strength of the party lies in its close connection with the people, the success of the party's policy is explained by the fact that it protects the interests of the people.
The collectivization of agriculture met the interests of the working peasantry. Pavel Lyubishnik and former Budyonovite Kondrat Maidannikov spoke about this already at the first meetings on the organization of the collective farm. When this truth reached the level of the majority of peasants, the collective-farm movement won.
Party messenger. Mikhail Sholokhov himself directly participated in collectivization, actively helped to build and strengthen the first collective farms on the Don. He knew well the naval mechanic Plotkin, the Putilov fitter Bayukov, and other twenty-five thousand workers who organized collective farms in the Veshensky district. Observing their work, Sholokhov saw how the alliance between the working class and the peasantry was actually carried out, how the working class was leading the peasantry along the path of the socialist reorganization of life. In the novel Virgin Soil Upturned, the creation of a collective farm is led by a twenty-five thousand worker Semyon Davydov.
Davydov has a difficult life behind him. He was nine years old when his father was fired from the factory and exiled to Siberia for participating in strikes. Soon, Semyon himself began working at the same factory, a teenager had to do everything when an unbearable need brought his mother to the grave. Then Davydov served in the navy, fought on the fronts of the civil war, and after demobilization, he worked for nine years as a mechanic at the Putilov factory. From here he went to the call of the party to work in the countryside; Their connection was not interrupted even after Davydov's arrival in the village. Excitingly sorting out the parcel sent to his comrade, he said to Razmentov: “You understand, I’m the devil, like a rootless one: no wife, no one, a fact! And then - bang, and here it is, the package. A touching fact... Look how many signatures there are in the letter.” Davydov remembers all the time that he is a worker, and tries to keep the authority of the working class - the vanguard of the revolution - "at the highest level." A well-known imprint on the character, behavior and language of Davydov was also left by his service in the Navy. Sholokhov did not accidentally make Davydov a former sailor: the writer observed these people during the civil war and peaceful construction, saw that everywhere they brought their good revolutionary maritime traditions to life. A great school for the formation of Davydov's character was the civil war, in which his steadfastness and courage were tempered. Other communists and collective farm activists also went through the civil war school: Nesterenko, Kondratko, Nagulnov, Razmetnov, Maidannikov, Lyubishki. Collectivization was also carried out by people who defended Soviet power with weapons in their hands; collectivization was opposed by those who were on the side of the whites during the civil war. The exception is Tit Borodin, who was transferred from the Red Guard to the kulaks. But from the episode narrated by Nagulnov about how Borodin took off his boots from the dead, it is clear that already at that time the poison of possessiveness was deeply ingrained in him. Davydov and other real communists are opposed not only by direct enemies of the Soviet power, but also by such bureaucrats as Korzhinsky and Khomutov. It is no coincidence that characterizing them, Nagulnov recalls that in the twenty-first year, Khomutov threw his party card out of fear of the Fomin gang. Davydov is distinguished by directness, honesty, integrity of nature. He firmly follows the chosen path. Raised by the Communist Party, Davydov deeply realized the correctness of its policy, unconditionally devoted his whole life to building socialism. He is firm and principled in lagging behind the interests of the people.
After listening to the story of Tit Borodin, Davydov replies: “Why are you presenting pitiful stories to us there? What kind of talk can there be? Davydov is not very literate, he did not have to study, but he diligently reads political literature, persistently tries to understand public life, and in this he is well helped by his class proletarian instinct. Already in the first conversation with Korzhinsky, Davydov saw that he was "limping on his right leg," and contrary to his instructions, decisively led the poor and middle peasants to the fist. The meeting of the poor in Gremyachiy Log convinced Davydov of the correctness of this policy. Davydov firmly believes in the strength of the people and builds his work on the basis of the masses; It was not easy for a person who grew up among sincere friends in a worker's and sailor's team to understand the complex and contradictory soul of the peasant. The farm with its secrets of human souls was for Davydov "a complex engine of a new design", which he definitely had to figure out. And the Bolshevik perseverance helped him to do it. Overcoming mistakes, breaking the wall of distrust, he managed to find the keys to human hearts, create a team from a mass of disunited people and become its soul. The burning heart and instruction of the working person, making up for the lack of experience, suggested to him the correct behavior. The most indicative in this regard is the episode of the "Woman's Revolt", which became the culminating moment in the struggle for the creation of a collective farm. Incited by their fists, the enraged Cossack women almost tore Davydov to pieces, but the next day they realized their own guilt, and the greatness of the communist who opposed them. Seeing that this man did not harbor evil towards them, that he was a stranger to everything personal and cared only about them, the Cossacks were imbued with complete confidence in Davydov and recognized him as their own. Gradually, Davydov also acquired the experience of an economic manager. Thanks to his ability to practically approach the solution of each issue, he singled out the main one from the sea of problems surrounding him, which at this stage determined the solution of others. Having succumbed to Nagulnov's persuasion and having carried out a generalization of small livestock and poultry, Davydov himself later, before the decision of the Central Committee on this issue, realized the fallacy of this step. Davydov knows how to lead the masses and lead them along. When plowing was not going well in Lyubishkin's brigade, Davydov, who had not held a plow handle before, mastered this work under the guidance of Kondrat Maidannikov, inspiring the whole brigade to shock work. Davydov knows that he is working to build a happy life, to save the people from hard physical labor and poverty. Looking at little Fedotka, he thinks about the time when machines will do all the hard work. Giving all your time and energy to work. Davydov failed to arrange his personal life. Simple and unsophisticated, he easily fell into the nets prudently placed by Luzhka and was seriously carried away by her. Davydov saw well how alien Lushka's interests were, but he naively hoped that he would be able to re-educate her: “I will involve her in social work, I will beg or force her to do self-education, she will be of some use. Even when he realized that Lushka did not love him, but only flattered his vanity with this victory, that the situation in which he found himself aroused shameful pity for him among the collective farmers, he did not immediately manage to tear Lushka out of his heart. Otherwise, Davydov's relationship with Varya Kharlamova developed. At first, he drove away his love for this young girl, but the real feeling took its toll. Davydov realized that he was hiding from himself and had long loved this girl.
Davydov died as heroically as he lived. The Gremyachinsky communists, having learned that the White Guards were hiding near Ostrovnov, decided to capture them, not thinking about how many of them and how they were armed. This operation cost Davydov and Nagulnov their lives. Perhaps in vain they hastened to enter Ostronov's house, but excessive caution was not in the nature of either Davydov or Nagulnov. Gorky could finish Sholokhov's story about Davydov and Nagulnov dear to his heart. And one more analogy with the works of Gorky suggests itself when reading the novel Virgin Soil Upturned.
A tough fighter and dreamer. Sholokhov's great artistic success was a vivid portrait of the communist Makar Nagulnov. Nagulnov is a complex person by nature. He, like Davydov, is boundlessly devoted to the cause of the revolution, but his sharp, impulsive character, lack of tact and restraint sometimes prevent him from correctly pursuing the policy of the party. A fierce hatred for the enemies of the revolution burns in Nagulnov, a burning pain for the cause of building a new life, intolerance for the prejudices of the past, an unstoppable striving for the future, and in their increase they cannot understand those who do not share his views or in whom there is still a struggle between the old and new. The ugly commitment to property, which Nagulnov observed from childhood in his native home, caused a protest in his sensitive and noble soul. From a wealthy family, he went to the laborers, and returned from the imperialist war as a Bolshevik. Nagulnov firmly grasped the basic idea of the teachings of Marx and Engels, that all evil on earth comes from private property. He is outraged that "even under Soviet rule, people, like pigs at the trough, fight, fight, because of this damned infection." The news of the consciousness of collective farms filled Makara's heart with joy. “This is a very true idea: to gather everyone into a collective farm,” he says at the first meeting with Davydov, who arrived in Gremyachiy Log. It will be the charm of life! During the civil war, Nagulnov "cut bastards mercilessly!" He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner, and now he took collectivization as a new call to battle. Nagulnov is a romantic, inspired by the lofty dream of a world revolution, he reminds us of the hero of Svetlov's Grenada. But in pursuit of this dream Makar sometimes from reality. When Davydov said that one should not be shot for slaughtering cattle. Nagulnov experiences a deep sense of international solidarity, which never leaves him, and cannot but arouse warm sympathy. Nagulnov was also wrong on the question of the socialization of small livestock and poultry, but his ardent agitation was for the fact that even the Gremyanchen women came to an agreement. Nagulnov is firmly convinced of the correctness of his thoughts, and this confidence, combined with some hatred and innocence, is the basis for the warm humor with which his author draws. Is it possible to read without a smile the “receipt,” which, at gunpoint, he forces Bannik to write: “... although I am a hidden counter, but the Soviet government, which is dear to all working people and obtained with the great blood of the working people, I will not harm orally , not in writing, not by deeds. I will not scold her and wait for the world revolution, which will bring all of us - her enemies on a global scale - to the freezing point. Nagulnov sometimes makes gross political mistakes that harm the cause of collectivization. The reason for such actions is not only his political illiteracy, but also the provocative conduct of the enemies of the collective farm system. A clear mistake on the part of Nagulnov was threats and coercion to backfill the seed fund.
But we must not forget that Nagulny's outburst of anger was caused by Bannik's threat that it would be better to give seed bread to the pigs than to fill it in a public barn. Firm in his revolutionary convictions, Nagulnov cannot deduce when he hears insults and ridicule against what is dearer to the mind than life. Collectivization was a great school for Nagulnov. He not only condemned his own mistakes, began to better understand the methods of leadership, but also learned to more consciously approach the instructions of the district committee and the district committee. He correctly assessed that not giving livestock and equipment to those leaving the collective farm means carrying out the same forced collectivization: “It’s clear: he has nothing to do with life, nowhere to go, he again climbs into the collective farm. He squeaks, but climbs, now Nagulnov himself calls not to chase after an inflated percentage of collectivization, but to strengthen the collective farm, clearing it of those who do not want to work. Davydov's comradely help played an important role in Nagulnov's political education. Davydov warned Nagulnov against extremes, taught him to be more sensitive and attentive to people. The characterization would be incomplete if the author showed only his political activities. A number of episodes were introduced into the novel, revealing Nagulnov in his personal life. He has a deep feeling for Lushka, although he hides it behind ascetic severity. Nagulnov arrested Lushka, but then released her and gave her the opportunity to evade responsibility. The final touch that characterizes Makar Nagulnov from this side is the scene of farewell to Lushka. “Makar, descending from the steps of the porch, casually nodded to her in parting, and Lushka, seeing him off with her eyes, left a long look on him, bowed her proud head low in a bow. Perhaps, during this last meeting in their life, she always presented herself as a stern and somewhat unsociable person.
Chairman of the board. The chairman of the Council Andrey Razmetov sharply differs in character from the secretary of the party cell. He had to see a lot of grief in life, but he retained a childishly pure gullibility and innocence. With frank sympathy, the author describes his appearance in front of Davydov: “A dense Cossack man came out of the next room in a gray goat hat, shaved at the back of his head, in a jacket made of overcoat cloth and Cossack trousers with stripes, tucked into white woolen stockings. He examined Davydov with naive impudence, often blinking his eyes as clear as the summer sky. On his swarthy face, which had not been shaved for a long time, with a blue scar obliquely girdling his forehead, one could clearly see impatient expectation. Andrei Razmetov grew up in a poor Cossack family. "From the late father left, as a legacy, one grandfather's checker in a shabby scabbard that has lost its gloss." When he was called up for military service, the static rule for a horse and uniform took his piece of land. And the field of his departure to the Red Army, the white Cossacks committed atrocious reprisals against his wife; without a mother, a small child also died. Andrei wanted to take revenge on the family of the rapist, but pity for the children left him. Love for his dead wife, the memory of his dead son Andrei carried through his whole life. In moments of spiritual relief, he goes to his native graves, “so that, clasping his short, strong fingers and clenching his teeth, he looks with narrowed eyes beyond the misty edge of the horizon, as if trying to discern his unforgettable youth, his short-lived happiness in a smoky haze.”
Razmetnov, like Davydov and Nagulnov, is devoted to the party, but he does not always have the strength of character.
Razmetnov better Nagulnova understands party discipline and legality Andrei pays close attention to the people, he does not reproach the poor Borshchev who refused to vote for the dispossession of Lapshinov, but wants to understand the motives for such behavior. Razmetnov's good nature is evident both in his speech and in the way he listens to others. He has a special sympathy for grandfather Shchukar and stands up for him when, at a meeting, Nagulnov asks Shchukar to shut up. Razmetov's softness does not prevent him from vigilantly guarding the interests of the party and Soviet power: he raised the alarm when the mass slaughter of cattle began; seeing Lukashka's knife in the dark, he disarmed him, assuming an attempt on Davydov's life. Razmetnov is a modest ordinary fighter of the party, honestly, selflessly and disinterestedly serves the great cause of transforming life.
Not an easy life. The transition from a single economy to a collective one was not easy for the peasant. Kondrat Maidannikov, a former Budyonovite, is one of the most conscientious Cossacks, but he also had to overcome heartache, parting with property acquired through hard work. In terms of the level of economy, Maidannikovaov is a middle peasant, a representative of the bulk of the Cossacks, and his example was important in influencing the rest of the Cossacks. Therefore, Sholokhov, against the backdrop of the whole life of the farm, highlights the story of Kondrat Maidannikov in close-up. Poverty surrounded Kondrat Maidannikov. Poverty surrounded Kondrat from childhood, he recalls how his mother inspired him that the poor should not cry, so as not to rot God even more, and Kondrat prayed and rubbed his eyes dry so that the angry god could not even see a tear. Kondrat also thought about the fact that his father flogged and hacked with a saber the striking Ivano-Voznesensk weavers, protecting the interests of the manufacturers, ”and he chopped the White Poles and Wrangelites, defending his Soviet Power. The power of the same Ivanovo-Voznesensk weavers, from the invasion of manufacturers and their hirelings. After the civil war, Kondrat took over the household. I put all my strength into it to somehow get out of need. Kondrat understands the difficulties that the whole country is going through. His daughter, Khristishka, is completely barefoot. Thinking about how difficult it is for his native country to break the road to socialism alone, he mentally turns to Western workers: “You sold us for a good salary from your masters!” Maitsdannikov understood well that there was only one collective farm out of a poor peasant; he proved this circumstance with numbers in his hands to the Gremenians at the meeting. And don’t suck a chick on a boob - live in this world! Today I will sit down on the collective farm to write an application and I urge others to do so. Kondrat worries whether everyone will understand the way he does that one must work conscientiously on the collective farm so that the economy does not fall apart. Maidannikov shows an example of selfless work and caring attitude towards the collective farm. Every fact of mismanagement and dishonesty arouses indignation in him, he enters into a fight with Atamanchukov, who, under the pretext of fulfilling the plowing norm, almost ruined the collective farm bulls. The path of Kondrat Maidannikov is the birth of the formation of a new person, the builder of socialism, this is a typical manifestation of the social process that is symbolically outlined in the title of the novel.
The victory of the collective farm system. The victory of the working people over class enemies was predetermined by the cold of historical development.
But victory does not come by itself: it has been achieved as a result of the Party's enormous, most strenuous work. Not only Davydov was engaged in agriculture for the first time, the whole country carried out collectivization, so mistakes in the political line were inevitable. Enemies used the slightest difficulty in carrying out collectivization. It was on the confusion in the ranks of the communists that they counted, arranging riots. Incited by the enemies of the people, the enraged Cossacks, having severely beaten Razmetnov and Davydov, take away the seed bread. The steadfastness, courage of Davydov, Nagulnov and Razmetnov, their boundless devotion to the cause of the party and the people, rallying around their honest collective farmers decided the outcome of the matter. The price of an open party meeting is one of the central ones in the novel; it sums up not only the political victory of the collective farm movement over its enemies, it marks the victory of humanism over bestial individualism. The novel "Virgin Soil Upturned" showed the final collapse of the old world and the victory in the people's consciousness of the principles of humanism, camaraderie, collectivism. This is how the political and ethical content of the novel intertwine.
The Science of Hate. During the Great Patriotic War, the moral ideals affirmed by Sholokhov acquired special significance. In his military correspondence, the essays "On the Don", "In the South", "Prisoners of War", "In the Cossack Collective Farms", "Cossacks", in the story "The Science of Hatred", the anti-human nature of the war unleashed by the Nazis is exposed, the heroism of the Soviet people, love for the Motherland , all-conquering humanism. The attitude of the Soviet people towards the Nazis is characterized by a conversation that the writer conveys in the essays “In the South”. During a skirmish with a surrounded German unit, the young fighter said: “It can be seen that these are ideological fascists, Comrade Lieutenant. Look, they don’t want to give up, but let’s kill them then and see what their idea is, the lieutenant answered. After the battle, bales with children's shoes, cuts of cloth, women's coats and other loot were found in the captured convoy. On the killed territory of the enemy, the lieutenant saw the hostages of the Nazis and was stunned by the manifestation of unheard of misanthropy. “Villages burned to the ground, hundreds of executed women, children, old people, the mutilated corpses of captured Red Army soldiers, raped and brutally murdered women, girls and teenage girls ...” And next to them are student notebooks and textbooks covered in blood ...
Gerasimov endured indescribable torment when the Nazis took him prisoner. But he endured everything, escaped from captivity and returned to duty. To take revenge on the enemies to the bitter end. In the midst of the Great Patriotic War, the writer began work on a new novel - "They fought for the Motherland." Since 1943, the chapters of the novel were published first in newspapers, and then came out as a separate edition. The published chapters of the novel describe the first period of the war, when the Soviet Army retreated under the onslaught of superior enemy forces. Russian soldiers withdrew with heavy fighting, they stood to death on the outskirts of Stalingrad. The novel simply and truthfully reproduces the heroism of Soviet soldiers, the front-line life of a comradely conversation, and indestructible friendship sealed with blood. The reader closely got to know and fell in love with the worker - miner Pyotr Lopakhin, combine operator Ivan Zvyagintsev, agronomist Nikolai Streltsov, Siberian armor-piercer Akim Borzykh, corporal Kochetov, lieutenant Goloshchekov, cook Pyotr Lisichko.
In the novel "They fought for the Motherland" the Russian national character is deeply revealed, which is clearly manifested in the days of severe trials. Remembering how during the war the Nazis mockingly called the Soviet soldier "Russian Ivan". Sholokhov wrote in one article: “The symbolic Russian Ivan is a man dressed in a gray overcoat who, without hesitation, gave the last piece of bread and thirty grams of front-line sugar to a child orphaned in the terrible days of the war, a man who selflessly covered his comrade with his body, saving him from certain death.
The heroism of the Russian people in the novel appears before us in a modest attire of the ordinary. Such an image of the war leads the reader to the conclusion that the heroic is not in the individual exploits of Soviet soldiers, that all front-line life is a feat.
Communist writer. In the work of M.A. Sholokhov inextricably combines communist party spirit and high artistic skill. With his works, the writer not only responds to the phenomena of our time, but also influences them. The novel "Virgin Soil Upturned" played a great role in explaining the policy of collectivization, both in our country and in the fraternal socialist countries. The works of the period of the Great Patriotic War contributed to the victory over the enemy. Sholokhov teaches writers to be part of the party in their work. The cause of the party, the cause of the people, Sholokhov cleans up not only with works of art, but also with the pen of a publicist. In his articles, he covers the most pressing issues of our time, something that worries millions of ordinary people. Mikhail Sholokhov is a prominent figure in the global peace movement, a Nobel Prize winner, his voice in defense of peace resonated throughout the planet. Swedish film critics, after watching the film "The Fate of a Man", said that this film "not only arouses hatred for the war, but also makes you think about the question: what are you doing to prevent a new war? Speaking in the summer of 1961 in Stockholm at the Session of the World Peace Council, Sholokhov called on all the people of the Earth to unite their actions in order to block the way to atomic war. Sholokhov, the hero of Socialist labor, a true folk artist, penetrates into the psychology of the people, he shows the depth of the soul of a simple person.
The great master of socialist realism, Sholokhov traces the history of the people, the pattern of change and development of the national character, on reviews of individuals. Sholokhov teaches writers to have a serious, truthful conversation with the reader, without the slightest falsehood.
Bibliography
Biryukov. F. Artistic discoveries of Mikhail Sholokhov 1980.
Khvatov. A.I. Artistic world of Sholokhov 1978.
Yakimenko. L. Creativity M.A. Sholokhov 1982.
Tamakhin. V.M. Roman M.A. Sholokhov "Virgin Soil Upturned" Stavropol 1971.
Sofronov. A. Sholokhovskoe 1975.
Soifer. M. Sholokhov's skill. Tashkent 1976.
Andriasov. M. Veshensky were 1975.
Zhuravleva A.A. Mikhail Sholokhov 1975.
Kovalev. A.N. World significance of Mikhail Sholokhov's creativity 1976.
Petelin. V. Essay on life and work 1974.
For the preparation of this work, materials from the site http://www.ed.vseved.ru/
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Sholokhov "Quiet Flows the Don"
written by the greatest writer of the 20th century, who gained worldwide fame. It was for this novel that Sholokhov was awarded the Nobel Prize. Quiet Don.
The epic novel Quiet Flows the Don, on which the writer worked from 1925 to 1940, reflects the fate of a man who went through the First World War and the Civil War.
Several families are at the center of Sholokhov's narrative: the Melekhovs, the Korshunovs, the Mokhovs, the Koshevs, and the Listnitskys. This is no coincidence: the patterns of the era are revealed not only in historical events, but also in family relationships, where the power of traditions is especially strong and any break in them gives rise to sharp, dramatic conflicts.
The story about the fate of the Melekhov family begins with the story of Prokofy Melekhov, who amazed the farmers with his "outlandish act." From the Turkish war, he brought a Turkish wife. He loved her, in the evenings, when the “dawns wither”, carried her in his arms on the top of the mound, “sat next to her, and for a long time they looked at the steppe.” And when the angry crowd approached their house, Prokofy with a saber stood up for his beloved wife.
From the first pages appear proud, with an independent character, people capable of great feeling. So from the story of grandfather Gregory, the beautiful and at the same time tragic enters the novel "Quiet Flows the Don". And for Gregory, love for Aksinya will become a serious test of life. “I wanted to talk about the charm of a person in Grigory Melekhov,” Sholokhov admitted. The writer was also under the influence of the charm of Natalya, Ilyinichna, Aksinya, Dunyashka. The main values of the Melekhovs are moral, human: benevolence, responsiveness, generosity and, most importantly, diligence.
In the Cossack environment, a person was valued in relation to work. “He is a fiance at least somewhere,” Natalya’s mother says about Grigory, “and their family is very hardworking ... A hardworking family and in abundance.” “The Melekhovs are glorious Cossacks,” Grishak’s grandfather echoes her. “In his heart, Miron Grigorievich liked Grishka for his Cossack prowess, for his love for housekeeping and work. The old man singled him out from the crowd of stanitsa guys even when Grishka took the first prize for trick riding at the races.
The chronological framework of the novel is clearly marked: May 1912 - March 1922. The writer captured "the people's life of Russia at a historical turning point."
"The monstrous absurdity of war" in the image of Sholokhov. The antithesis of peaceful life in the Quiet Don will be war, first World War I, then civil war. These wars will go through farms and villages, each family will have victims. Sholokhov's family will become a mirror reflecting the events of world history in a peculiar way.
In the third part of the novel, the date appears for the first time: "In March 1914 ..." This is a significant detail in the work: the historical date will separate the world from the war. Rumors about her went around the farms: “The war will overtake ...”, “There will be no war, you can see by the harvest”, “But how is the war?”, “War, uncle!” The news of her caught the Cossacks at their usual work - they mowed down the corn (part three, ch. 3). The Melekhovs saw: a horse was walking with a “catchy name”; the rider, jumping up, shouted: “Scream!” Disturbing news gathered a crowd in the square (ch. 4). "One word in a diverse crowd: mobilization."
Sholokhov, in his own way, solves the collision "a man at war." In "The Quiet Don" we will not find descriptions of exploits, admiration for heroism, military courage, rapture in battle, which would be natural in a story about the Cossacks. Sholokhov is interested in something else - what war does to a person.
Getting acquainted with the heroes of the novel, we will notice that everyone has their own ability to experience and comprehend the war, but everyone will feel the “monstrous absurdity of war”. Through the eyes of the Cossacks, we will see how “the cavalry trampled the ripened bread”, how a hundred “knead bread with iron horseshoes”, how “a black marching column unfolded into a chain between the brown, unharvested rolls of mowed bread”, how “the first shrapnel covered the rows of unharvested wheat”. And each, looking at the "unharvested shafts of wheat, at the bread lying under the hooves," remembered his tithes and "hardened in heart."
The novel strongly expresses a moral protest against the senselessness of war, its inhumanity. Drawing episodes of baptism of fire, Sholokhov reveals the state of mind of a person who shed someone else's blood. In a chain of similar episodes, the scene “Gregory kills an Austrian. An Austrian was running along the garden fence. Melekhov caught up with him. “Inflamed by the madness that was going on around, he raised his saber,” lowered it on the temple of an unarmed soldier. “Elongated by fear”, his face “blackened cast iron”, “skin hung like a red flap”, “blood fell in a crooked stream” - this “frame” was shot as if in slow motion. Grigory met the Austrian's gaze. Eyes drenched in mortal horror stared at him… Grigory, squinting, waved his saber. A blow with a long pull split the skull in two. The Austrian fell, clasping his hands, as if slipping; thumped on the stone of the pavement half of the skull.
The details of this scene are terrible! They don't let Gregory go. He, “I don’t know why myself,” went up to the Austrian soldier he had hacked to death. “He was lying there, by the playful braid of the lattice fence, stretching out his dirty brown palm, as if for alms. Gregory looked him in the face. It seemed to him small, almost childish, despite the drooping mustache and the tormented - whether by suffering, or by the former joyless life - twisted, stern mouth ...
Grigory ... stumbling over to the horse. His step was confused and heavy, as if he were carrying an unbearable load behind his shoulders; I bend and bewilderment crumpled my soul.
A terrible picture in all its details will long stand before Grigory's eyes, painful memories will disturb him for a long time. When meeting with his brother, he confesses: “I, Petro, have worn out my soul. I’m so unfinished all at once… It’s as if I’ve been under the millstones, they crumpled and spat out… My conscience is killing me. I stabbed one with a lance near Leshniuv. In the heat of the moment. It was impossible otherwise... And why did I cut down this entogo? Dreaming at night…”.
Gregory watched with interest the changes that took place with his comrades in a hundred ... Changes were made on every face, each in his own way nurtured and grew the seeds sown by the war.
The changes in Gregory himself were striking: he was "bent ... by the war, sucked the blush from his face, painted him with bile." And inside he became completely different : “Grigory firmly cherished the Cossack honor, caught the opportunity to show selfless courage, took risks, went crazy, went disguised to the rear of the Austrians, removed the outposts without blood, jigitirovat the Cossack and felt that the pain over the person that crushed him in the first days of the war had gone forever . His heart hardened, hardened, like a salt marsh in a drought, and just as a salt marsh does not absorb water, so Gregory's heart did not absorb pity. With cold contempt he played with someone else's life and with his own; that's why he was known as brave - he served four St. George's crosses and four medals. At rare parades he stood at the regimental banner, fanned by the powder smoke of many wars; but he knew that he would not laugh again, as before, he knew that his eyes had sunken in and his cheekbones were sharply sticking out; he knew that it was difficult for him, kissing a child, to openly look into clear eyes; Gregory knew what price he had paid for the full bow of crosses and production”(part four, ch. 4).
Sholokhov diversifies the visual means, showing the Cossacks at war. Here they write off "Prayer from the gun", "Prayer from the battle", "Prayer during the raid." The Cossacks kept them under underwear shirts, attached to bundles with a pinch of their native land. “But death stained those who carried prayers with them.”
The voice of the author breaks into the epic narrative: "They imperiously pulled their native kurens to themselves, and there was no such force that could keep the Cossacks from spontaneous attraction home." Everyone wanted to be at home, "just look with one eye." And, as if fulfilling this desire, Sholokhov draws a farm, "like a widow's bloodless", where "life went on sale - like hollow water in the Don."
So through the battle scenes, through the sharp experiences of the heroes, through landscape sketches, lyrical digressions, Sholokhov leads us to comprehend the "monstrous absurdity of war."
How does Sholokhov paint the world torn apart by the revolution? One of the author's favorite techniques is the story-preliminary. Thus, at the end of the first chapter of the fifth part of the novel, we read: “Until January, they lived quietly on the Tatarsky farm. The Cossacks who returned from the front rested near their wives, ate, did not feel that at the thresholds of kurens they were guarded by bitter misfortunes and hardships than those that they had to endure in the war they had gone through.
"The worst troubles" are a revolution and a civil war that broke the usual way of life. The essence of the events depicted in the novel is truly tragic, they affect the fate of vast sections of the population. More than seven hundred characters, main and episodic, named by name and nameless, act in The Quiet Don; and the writer is concerned about their fate.
There is a name for what happened on the Don during the years of the civil war - “cossackization of the Cossacks”, accompanied by mass terror, which caused retaliatory cruelty. "Black rumors" about extraordinary commissions and revolutionary tribunals spread around the farms, the court of which was "simple: an accusation, a couple of questions, a sentence - and under a machine-gun burst." The author writes about the atrocities of the Red Army in the farms (part six, ch. 16). Just as cool were the courts-martial of the Don Cossacks. We see Reds cut down with special cruelty. Informing the facts with great persuasiveness, Sholokhov cites documents: a list of those executed from the Podtelkov detachment (part five, ch. 11) and a list of the executed hostages of the Tatarsky farm (part six, ch. 24).
How do the Cossacks themselves perceive this time?
Petro Melekhov: “Look how the people were divided, bastards! It was as if they had ridden with a plow: one in one direction, the other in the other, as if under a plowshare. Damn life, and terrible time! One does not guess the other...
“Here you are,” he abruptly translated the conversation, “you are my brother, but I don’t understand you, by God!” I feel that you are somehow leaving me ... I'm telling the truth? - and answered himself: - The truth. You're getting muddled... I'm afraid you'll go over to the Reds... You, Grishatka, haven't found yourself yet.
- Did you find it? asked Gregory.
- Found. I fell into my furrow ... You can’t draw me to the red lasso. The Cossacks are against them, and I am against them.”
“Miron Grigorievich spoke in a new way, with ripened anger:
- And through what life collapsed? Who is the cause? What a damn power!.. I worked all my life, wheezing bent, then washed, and in order for me to live equally with the entim, what finger did not stir to get out of poverty? No, we’ll wait a little! .. "
"People pitted"- Gregory will think about what is happening. “The people have grown mad, they have become rabid,” the author adds on his own behalf. He does not forgive cruelty to anyone: neither Polovtsev, who hacked Chernetsov and ordered the killing of forty more captured officers, nor Grigory Melekhov, who hacked to death the captured sailors. He does not forgive Mikhail Koshevoy, who killed Pyotr Melekhov, shot grandfather Grishaka in Tatarsky, burned Korshunov's hut, and then set fire to seven more houses; does not forgive Mitka Korshunov, who "slaughtered the entire Koshevoy family."
"People pitted", - we recall when we read about the execution of the commander of the Likhachev detachment, captured by the rebels: “He was not shot ... Seven miles from Veshenskaya, in sandy, sternly frowning breakers, he was brutally hacked to death by escorts. They gouged out his eyes while alive, cut off his hands, ears, nose, and scratched his face with checkers. They unbuttoned their pants and abused, defiled a large, courageous, beautiful body. They abused the bleeding stump, and then one of the escorts stepped on the flimsy trembling chest, on the body prostrated on its back and with one blow obliquely cut off the head ”(part six, ch. 31).
"People pitted"- these words about how they killed twenty-five communists, led by Ivan Alekseevich Kotlyarov? “The escorts beat them, driving them into a heap, like sheep, they beat them for a long time and cruelly ... Then everything was as if in a heavy fog. For thirty versts they walked through continuous farmsteads, met at each farmstead by crowds of torturers. Old men, women, teenagers beat, spat on the swollen, blood-drenched ... faces of captured communists.
And one more execution - Podtelkov and his detachment.
The harsh time confronted them all with the need to make a choice.
What side are you on?
- You seem to have accepted the red faith?
- Were you in white? White! Officer, huh?
These questions were asked to the same person - Grigory Melekhov, and he himself could not answer them to himself. "To whom to lean?" - a question that excites the consciousness of the hero Sholokhov, about this his anxiety and thought, conveyed through an internal monologue:
“He also broke his fatigue, acquired in the war. I wanted to turn away from everything seething with hatred, hostile and incomprehensible world. There, behind, everything was confused, contradictory. It was difficult to grope for the right path, and there was no certainty whether he was following the right path. He was drawn to the Bolsheviks - he walked, led others, and then he took thought, his heart went cold. “Is Izvarin really right? Whom to lean on?" Grigory thought about this indistinctly, leaning against the back of his purse. But, when he imagined how he would prepare harrows for spring, weave a manger out of red steel, and when the earth undresses and dries, he will leave for the steppe; holding on to the chipigi with hands bored with work, he will go after the plow, feeling its lively movement and jolts; imagining how he would inhale the sweet spirit of young grass and black soil raised by plowshares, it warmed his soul. I wanted to clean up cattle, throw hay, breathe in the withered smell of sweet clover, wheatgrass, and the spicy smell of manure. I wanted peace and silence, - that’s why Grigory cherished shy joy in his stern eyes, looking around ... Sweet and thick, like hops, life seemed at that time here, in the wilderness.(part five, ch. 13).
On one fate, the whole fracture of society is shown. Even though he is a Cossack, he is still primarily a peasant, a farmer. He is the breadwinner. And now the breaking of this breadwinner is the whole civil war.
Gregory's dream to live as a peaceful worker and family man was constantly destroyed by the cruelty of the civil war. Emotional contrast is used by Sholokhov as a means of expressing the mood of the hero: “Grigory would have a rest, sleep off! And then walk along the soft arable furrow with a plow, whistle at the bulls, listen to the crane's blue trumpet call, gently remove the alluvial silver cobwebs from the cheeks and inseparably drink the wine smell of the earth raised by the plow.
And in return for this - bread cut by the blades of the road. On the roads there are crowds of undressed, corpse-black from the dust of prisoners ... In the farms, amateurs search the families of the Cossacks who left with the Reds, flog the wives and mothers of the apostates ... Discontent, fatigue, anger accumulated ”(part six, ch. 10).
“The fate of Grigory Melekhov”, “The tragedy of Grigory Melekhov. Why was Grigory Melekhov chosen for the role of the central character. Indeed, why did the author's choice not fall on Mikhail Koshevoy, Pyotr Melekhov or Evgeny Listnitsky, Podtelkov or Bunchuk? There are explanations for this: they are in the moral values that the characters profess, in the peculiarities of their emotional and psychological make-up.
Grigory Melekhov, unlike other heroes of The Quiet Flows the Don, is a bright personality, a unique individuality, a whole, extraordinary nature. He is sincere and honest in his thoughts and actions (this is especially evident in his relationship with Natalya and Aksinya: Grigory's last meeting with Natalya (part seven, ch. 7), Natalya's death and the experiences associated with it (part seven, ch. 16 -18), the death of Aksinya (part eight, ch. 17). Gregory is distinguished by a sharp emotional reaction to everything that happens, he has a heart that is responsive to the impressions of life. He has a developed sense of pity, compassion, this can be judged by such scenes, for example , as “At the hayfield”, when Grigory accidentally cut a wild duckling (part one, ch. 9), the scene with the murdered Austrian (part three, ch. 10), the reaction to the news of the execution of Ivan Alekseevich Kotlyarov (part six).
Always remaining honest, morally independent and straightforward in character, Gregory showed himself as a person capable of action. The following episodes can serve as an example: a fight with Stepan Astakhov because of Aksinya (part one, ch. 12), leaving with Aksinya to Yagodnoye (part two, ch. 11-12), a collision with a sergeant-major (part three, ch. 11) , a break with Podtelkov (part three, ch. 12), a clash with General Fitskhalaurov (part seven, ch. 10), a decision, without waiting for an amnesty, to return to the farm (part eight, ch. 18). Bribes the sincerity of his motives - he never lied to himself, in his doubts and throwing. We are convinced of this by his internal monologues (part six, ch. 21, 28). Note that he is the only character who is given the right to monologues - "thoughts" that reveal his spiritual beginning.
Gregory's deep attachment to the house, to the land remains his strongest spiritual movement throughout the novel. “I won’t touch the ground anywhere. There is a steppe here, there is something to breathe ... ”This confession of Aksinye echoes another:“ My hands need to work, not fight. The whole soul was sick during these months.
"Hero and time", "hero and circumstances", the search for oneself as a person - the eternal theme of art has become the main one in "Quiet Don". In this search - the meaning of the existence of Grigory Melekhov in the novel. “I am looking for a way out,” he says of himself. At the same time, he always faces the need for a choice that was not easy and simple. The very situations in which the hero found himself prompted him to act. So, the entry of Gregory into the rebel detachment is to some extent a forced step. It was preceded by the excesses of the Red Army men who came to the farm, their intention to kill Melekhov.
His relations with friends sharply worsened: Koshevoy, Kotlyarov. The scene of the night dispute in the executive committee is indicative, where Grigory “according to old friendship came to talk, to say that he was boiling in his chest.” The dispute turned out to be sharp, the positions were irreconcilable. Kotlyarov threw in the face of Grigory: “... you have become a stranger. You are an enemy of the Soviet government!.. The Cossacks have nothing to stagger, they stagger anyway. And don't get in our way. Stop!.. Farewell!” Shtokman, who became aware of this collision, said: “Melekhov, although temporarily, slipped away. It is he who should be taken into action! .. The conversation that he had with you in the executive committee is the conversation of tomorrow's enemy ... Either they are us, or we are them! There is no third". This is how those who asserted Soviet power on the Don defined their line.
This meeting essentially marked a turning point in the fate of Grigory Melekhov. Sholokhov defines its significance as follows: “Gregory walked, feeling as if he had stepped over the threshold, and what seemed unclear suddenly rose with the utmost brightness ... And because he was on the verge of a struggle between two principles, denying both of them, a deaf, incessant irritation was born.”
He "painfully tried to sort out the turmoil of thoughts." His "soul rushed about" like "a wolf flagged on a raid in search of a way out, in resolving contradictions." Behind him were days of doubt, "heavy internal struggle", "search for the truth." In it, "its own, Cossack, sucked with mother's milk throughout life, prevailed over great human truth." He knew the "truth of Garangi" and anxiously asked himself: "Is Izvarin really right?" He himself says about himself: “I am thrashing like in a snowstorm in the steppe…” But Grigory Melekhov is “thrashing”, “looking for the truth”, not from emptiness and thoughtlessness. He yearns for such a truth, "under the wing of which everyone could warm up." And, from his point of view, neither the Whites nor the Reds have such a truth: “There is no one truth in life. It can be seen whoever defeats whom will devour him ... And I was looking for the bad truth. My soul ached, it swayed back and forth ... ”These searches, according to him, turned out to be“ in vain and empty. And this also determined the tragedy of his fate.
Let's highlight the episodes that became a catharsis for the hero: "Grigory chopped the sailors", "Last meeting with Natalya", "Natalya's death", "Aksinya's death". Any episode of The Quiet Flows the Don reveals the multidimensionality and high humanity inherent in Sholokhov's text. Grigory Melekhov evokes deep sympathy, compassion as a hero of a tragic fate.
Sholokhov was born on May 14, 1905 in the village of Kruzhilinsky in the village of Veshenskaya, Don District. Childhood years were spent in the farm Kruzhilinsky. He studied in Kargin, Moscow, Boguchar and Veshenskaya. He graduated from four classes of the gymnasium. At the time of the Great October Socialist Revolution, he studied at the men's gymnasium in one of the county towns of the Voronezh province. In 1918, when the occupying troops approached this city, he interrupted his studies and went home. From 1918 to the beginning of 1920, the Sholokhov family was alternately in the villages of Yelanskaya and Karginskaya in the Verkhnedonsky district. It was a difficult time: white and red waves swept the Don region - a civil war was raging. Teenager Misha "absorbed" the events taking place: battles, executions, poverty. Whites against reds, reds against whites, Cossacks against Cossacks. The stories are one scarier than the other.
The future writer not only eagerly listened to the stories of experienced Cossacks; he went to watch those returning from the front, saw the emaciated, bloodless faces of wounded soldiers, read newspapers and leaflets. Memory recorded faces, names, facts, the expression of human eyes, the reflection on the faces of joy, grief, fear, hope, deathly torment. An unprecedented trace was left by the terrible incident of those years in the soul of an impressionable young man, incredible pictures were painted by his mighty imagination. In the events of the civil war, in the acute class conflicts, in the stanitsa and peasant farmers who separated themselves, in the exploits that the Bolsheviks performed, in the cruel habits of the defenders of the old world, life opened up before the keen eye and inquisitive thought of an early ripe young man. The desire to tell about what he saw and experienced was forced to take up the pen. Although the little stories that he sent to the Komsomol newspapers and Ogonyok back in 1922 were not published, Sholokhov firmly decided to devote himself to literature. In the winter of 1924, in Moscow, he was interrupted by odd jobs in newspapers. Life was difficult: during the day - wandering around the editorial offices, at night - working on the manuscript.
Sholokhov's first story appeared on December 14, 1924 in the newspaper Molodoy Leninets. It was "Motherland". They discover a large cycle of Don stories, which was created by the writer in a year. The civil war for Sholokhov is a catastrophe in which human ties are destroyed. There are no right and wrong here, which means there can be no winners. The author’s position turns out to be wider than any socio-political concepts, as evidenced by the landscape crowning the story: “And in the evening, when horsemen loomed behind the copse, the wind brought voices, horse snorting and the ringing of stirrups, a vulture kite reluctantly fell off the ataman’s shaggy head .
At first glance, it may seem that the story "Rodinka" is based on a social class conflict between the Red Army men, who establish Soviet power on the Don, and a gang that takes bread from peaceful Cossacks. Moreover, the drama of the depicted situation is aggravated by the fact that the class struggle demarcated not only the Don, but also the Cossack families: father and son find themselves on opposite sides of the barricade. However, in the state of mind of implacable enemies there is much in common. The life of the squadron commander Nikolka Koshevoy, like the life of the chieftain of the gang, got out of the usual norm. This is evidenced by the portraits and author's characteristics of the characters. In the portrait of Nikolka, Sholokhov emphasizes the contradiction between his young age and the harsh life experience that the civil war gave him: “Nikolka is broad-shouldered, looks beyond his years. His eyes are aging in radiant wrinkles and his back, stooped like an old man ”(the hero is 18 years old).
The main theme of the "Don Tales" can be defined as follows: the dehumanization of both the Reds and the Whites during the civil war and rare moments of the triumph of a very difficult reverse process - incarnation. At the same time, traditional Christian values, at first glance, are not taken into account by the author, but, nevertheless, the content of the inner spiritual life of the characters is built in accordance with the gospel commandments. It must be admitted that the best stories from the Don cycle, such as "The Foal" and "Strange Blood", are variations on biblical themes.
The conflict between the Reds and the bandits, in the work of Sholokhov, is increasingly giving way to a more important conflict - between the centuries-old norms of human life and the inhumanity of fratricidal war. Starting the conversation with an analysis of the senselessness and suicidality of the confrontation of the parties in the civil war ("Mole"), M. Sholokhov comes to the idea of the need to remove this mutual support by the New Testament morality: love your enemies. And this idea reaches its artistic peak in the story “Alien Blood”.
Approximately the same concept Sholokhov adheres to in the epic The Quiet Flows the Don. Working on it, Sholokhov proceeded from the fact that the people are the main driving force of history. This concept was deeply artistically embodied in the novel: in the depiction of the people's life, life and work of the Cossacks, in the depiction of the participation of the people in historical events. Sholokhov showed that the path of the people in the revolution and civil war was difficult, tense, tragic. When he was awarded the Nobel Prize for the novel Quiet Flows the Don, Sholokhov spoke about the greatness of the historical path of the Russian people.
The First World War is portrayed by Sholokhov as a national disaster, and the old soldier, confessing Christian wisdom, advises young Cossacks: “Remember one thing: if you want to be alive, get out of a mortal battle, you must observe human truth ...” Sholokhov describes with great skill the horrors of war that cripples people both physically and mentally. Death, suffering awaken sympathy and unite soldiers: people cannot get used to war. Sholokhov writes in the second book that the news of the overthrow of the autocracy did not evoke joyful feelings among the Cossacks, they reacted to it with restrained anxiety and expectation. The Cossacks are tired of the war. They dream of finishing it. How many of them have already died: not one Cossack widow grieved for the dead. The Cossacks did not immediately understand the historical events. Having returned from the fronts of the world war, the Cossacks did not yet know what tragedy of the fratricidal war they would have to endure in the near future. The Upper Don uprising appears in the image of Sholokhov as one of the central events of the civil war on the Don. There were many reasons. The Red Terror, the unjustified cruelty of the representatives of the Soviet authorities on the Don in the novel are shown with great artistic power. Numerous executions of Cossacks carried out in the villages - the murder of Miron Korshunov and grandfather Trishka, who personified the Christian principle, preaching that all power is given by God, the actions of Commissar Malkin, who gave orders to shoot bearded Cossacks. Sholokhov showed in the novel that the Upper Don uprising reflected a popular protest against the destruction of the foundations of peasant life and the age-old traditions of the Cossacks, traditions that became the basis of peasant morality and morality, which developed over the centuries, and passed down from generation to generation. The writer also showed the doom of the uprising. Already in the course of events, the people understood and felt their fratricidal character. One of the leaders of the uprising, Grigory Melekhov, declares: “But I think that we got lost when we went to the uprising.” The life of the Cossacks is determined by two concepts - they are warriors and grain growers at the same time. It must be said that historically the Cossacks developed on the borders of Russia, where enemy raids were frequent, so the Cossacks were forced to defend their land with weapons in their hands, which was distinguished by its special fertility and rewarded a hundredfold for the work invested in it. Later, already under the rule of the Russian Tsar, the Cossacks existed as a privileged military class, which largely determined the preservation of ancient customs and traditions among the Cossacks. Sholokhov shows the Cossacks as very traditional. For example, from an early age they get used to the horse, which serves them not just as an instrument of production, but as a true friend in battle and a comrade in labor (the description of the crying hero Christoni takes the description of the funnel taken away by the Reds by the heart). All Cossacks are brought up in respect for their elders and unquestioning obedience to them (Pantelei Prokofievich could punish Grigory even when hundreds and thousands of people were under the latter's command). The Cossacks are controlled by the ataman, elected by the military Cossack Circle, where Pantelei Prokofievich is sent to Sholokhov.
War and peace - these two states of life of the human community, erected by Leo Tolstoy into the title formula of his great novel, to which the author of The Quiet Flows the Don oriented himself (he constantly read War and Peace at the time of thinking and working on the epic, he took with him and to the front of the Great Patriotic War), in fact, for Sholokhov, they are the two main layers of the people's existence, the two points of human reference. Tolstoy's influence on Sholokhov, especially in his view of the war, has been noted more than once, but still the author of The Quiet Flows the Don has his own in-depth understanding of the peaceful and military status of life, coming from greater proximity to the natural type of existence, the root feeling of being in general .
Sholokhov's world war, revolution, civil war in many ways only condenses to a terrible, repulsive concentrate what exists in a peaceful state, in the very nature of man and things in this world: impulses of separation, displacement, passionate selfhood, mockery of man, malice and murder . The world is twisted by its bundle of contradictions and struggle - having heated up, they will come out in a civil confrontation, they will reach the Homeric “bloodshed”, violent mutual extermination, the complete destruction of the former way of life. Peace and war are states of relative, visible health (with a chronicity driven inside) and acute illness of one organism. The diagnosis of both phases of the disease, by and large, is the same: it is determined by that central ideological opposition of the Quiet Don, which Fedorov defined as relatedness, unrelatedness despite the fact that kinship is both the most naturally deep and irrevocable relationship between people, children of one father, heavenly and earthly, and at the same time the most distorted, up to its opposite, even in its warm and intimate core - the family and the community. It is in the fratricidal civil confrontation, ironically and mercilessly backed by ideology, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, by the instinct of physical survival and protection of one’s home and well-being, that all the suicidality and mutual extermination of the “tit for tat” principle is untiringly exposed, one might say, blatantly. fed by poisoned revengeful passion - to the last enemy and offender! Sholokhov does not get tired of clearly demonstrating how, inflaming more and more, the passionate indulgence in hatred, evil, murder is aggravated, how it hits its bearers with a boomerang. Here, in the soul of Petro Melekhov, who was forced to dance to the common tune, currying favor with Fomin, “hatred pounded fitfully and his hands convulsed with a cramp from an itchy desire to hit, kill.” When the opportunity arises, no one is holding back either hatred or this desire. Bitterness, frenzy - mutually and it is growing in degrees. The installation is for the complete physical destruction of the enemy, there is no question of some kind of disassembly-sorting of people, their disposal, transformation: “Shovel this evil spirits from the ground” and that’s it! An officer of the Don Army harshly, coldly, like a breeder, signs the final verdict to the captured Red Army soldiers: “This bastard, which is a breeding ground for all sorts of diseases, both physical and social, must be exterminated. There is nothing to babysit them!” The same is mirrored in the thoughts and speeches of Mishka Koshevoy: camaraderie and unanimity by cutting down the rebellious, wavering human material!
The discovery of the Don cycle by M. Sholokhov was that he showed the criminality of the civil war, its disastrous destructive consequences both for the fate of the Quiet Don and for Russia as a whole. Don writers before Sholokhov do not have this soul-shattering senselessness and sinfulness of fratricide. R. Kumov, S. Arefin, P. Krasnov only approached this topic, and M. Sholokhov developed it and deepened it. Very early in his life, the idea matures that both sides are wrong in this war, for which he sometimes received the label of a dubious fellow traveler.
