Terminological minimum Key words: themes, problems, pathos, realism, genre, image, character, canon, literary process, form, content, myth, social order.
Plan
1. general characteristics of the literary process of the post-revolutionary period: three branches of Russian literature of the Soviet era.
2. The theme of revolution and civil war from the point of view of representatives of official literature (A. Fadeev, N. Ostrovsky).
3. Negative image of revolution and civil war
(I. Bunin, I. Babel, B. Pilnyak).
4. Gravitation in the image to the inclusiveness of events in the works of M. Bulgakov, A. N. Tolstoy and others.
Literature
Texts to study
1. Bunin, I. A. cursed days.
2. Babel, I. Cavalry.
3. Ostrovsky, N. A. How steel was tempered.
4. Pilnyak, B. Naked Year.
5. Tolstoy, A. N. Going through the throes.
6. Fadeev, A. A. Razgrom.
7. Shmelev, I. S. sun of the dead.
8. Sholokhov, M. A. Don stories.
Main
1. History of Russian literature of the twentieth century: textbook. allowance: in 2 volumes / ed.
V. V. Agenosov. – M. : Yurayt, 2013.
2. Kormilov, S. I. History of Russian literature of the XX century (20–90s): main names / S. I. Kormilov. - M. : Publishing House of Moscow State University, 2010. - 480 p.
3. Russian literature of the XX century: textbook. allowance: in 2 volumes / under. ed. L. P. Krementsova. – M. : Academy, 2012.
Additional
1. Anninsky, L. A . "How the steel was tempered" by Nikolai Ostrovsky / L. A. Anninsky. - M. : Education, 1971. - 276 p.
2. Russian literature of the 20th century: regularities historical development. New artistic strategies / otv. ed. N. L. Leiderman. - Yekaterinburg: Uro RAN, 2005. - 465 p.
3. Russian writers of the twentieth century from Bunin to Shukshin: textbook. allowance / ed. N. N. Belyakova, M. M. Glushkova. - M. : Flinta: Nauka, 2008. - 440 p.
4. Sokolov, B.V. Bulgakov Encyclopedia/ B. V. Sokolov. - M. : Veko, 1998. - 348 p.
5. Sheshukov, S. I . Alexander Fadeev: essay on life and work / S. I. Sheshukov. - M. : Education, 1990. - 298 p.
1. Starting a conversation about the theme of revolution and civil war in Russian literature, it should be noted that it is these events that are traditionally considered to be milestones that gave rise to all subsequent literature of the Soviet period.
Turning to the study of the literary process of those years in general and artistic heritage its individual representatives, it must be borne in mind that the old Soviet dogmas collapsed long ago and it became obvious that fiction cannot be measured primarily by ideological yardsticks. However, it is also true that they cannot be completely ignored either. Due to the grandiose political events of that period, the once united Russian classic literature was divided into three branches: Soviet literature, which is in the service of the new government, the literature of the Russian diaspora, whose representatives, not accepting it, were forced to emigrate, and literature, which turned out to be persecuted within the country (later it will be called "secret", "forbidden").
The stratification of the literary process in this form with rare deviations and changes (for example, in the era of the “thaw”) lasted for quite a long time, until the early 2000s. And if the ban within the country on a number of works is lifted in the late 1980s - early 1990s, then the reunification of the entire literary process is usually attributed to the moment of entry into force federal law"On Citizenship of the Russian Federation" (July 1, 2002). Most of the writers, having found themselves abroad for one reason or another, got the opportunity to be citizens of Russia. A. Solzhenitsyn, V. Voinovich,
A. Aksenov. Thus, from that moment on, there is no need to talk about the literature of the Russian Diaspora, since the ideological opposition has been removed and it has become possible to publish banned works in Russia.
Russian post-revolutionary literature is a period, although short in length, but very important in its cultural and historical essence. And although from a purely literary point of view, it was nothing but a direct continuation of the literature of previous years, qualitatively new features appeared in it, which later became the reason for its split in the 1920s.
The history of literature testifies that 1921 became a fateful year for new Russian literature in this respect; it marked the appearance of two journals that opened the Soviet period in it. The magazines Krasnaya Nov and Print and Revolution were a kind of attempt to revive the so-called "thick" magazines that became for the Russian literature XIX century traditional.
The literary process of that time has its own characteristics. On the basis of the Silver Age, which had not yet completely forgotten, a grandiose social upsurge gave rise to exceptional enthusiasm and creative energy among not only supporters of the revolution, but also representatives of the old Russian intelligentsia. In this regard, the literature of the 1920s as a whole, and to a large extent of the decade that followed, turned out to be extremely rich.
However, one cannot fail to say that in 1921 A. Blok died and N. Gumilyov was shot. In 1922 the last complete compilation poems by A. Akhmatova, the flower of the Russian intelligentsia was expelled from the country, I. Bunin, M. Tsvetaeva, V. Khodasevich G. Ivanov and others leave Russia. A little later, I. Shmelev, B. Zaitsev, M. Osorgin, M. Bitter.
One of the signs of that time was the massive closure of magazines. Under the ban were “Notes of Dreamers”, “Culture and Life”, “Chronicle of the House of Writers”, “Literary Notes”, “Beginnings”, “Pass”, “Mornings”, “Annals”, “Rosehip”, “ literary thought”, “Russian Contemporary”, etc. And this tragic trend continued in one form or another until the end of the 1950s.
Divided in the early 1920s. in parts, Russian literature in many respects still remained united, although there were both Russian diaspora and their own Soviet literature. Therefore, Russian culture until the end of the 1980s was considered literary-centric. At all times, it has largely replaced the Soviet person and philosophy, and history, and psychology, and other humanitarian spheres. It was not surprising that in order to promote their ideological postulates, the government resorted to the help of writers and poets loyal to it. Thus, through literature, the strongest indoctrination was carried out. Soviet man. People represented the revolution and events related to it according to the poems of V. Mayakovsky and A. Tvardovsky, collectivization - according to the novel “Virgin Soil Upturned” by M. Sholokhov, the novels by A. Fadeev “The Young Guard” and B. Polevoy “The Tale of a Real Man” reflected the events Patriotic War etc.
The theme of the revolution and the Civil War for a long time became one of the main ones in the work of many bright Russian writers. Each of them understood that these events irrevocably changed not only the life of Russian state but also the fate of every person, every family. In their works, no matter what political platforms they stood on, they called these events fratricidal. The civil war has become a kind of example of inhumane behavior of man and society. Awareness of it as a great national tragedy has become decisive in many works of Russian writers, brought up in the traditions of following humanistic values in Russian classical literature.
2. The civil war destroyed not only the age-old foundations of family, cultural relations. Each writer also had to make his own moral choice, which dictated artistic tasks. The main problem it became possible to reflect the ongoing events in an unbiased way or, focusing on one or another ideological platform, to reproduce the situation from a certain point of view.
The works about the Civil War differ in their artistic merit and the choice of situations in which the idea is realized. Among the many, the works of A. A. Blok, S. A. Yesenin and
V. V. Mayakovsky, for whom the theme of the revolution after 1917 became one of the main ones. These poets had different attitudes to the changes that had taken place in the country, covered them in different ways, and artistically embodied them in their works. Most Straightforward positive attitude By the revolution, V. Mayakovsky had. He fully accepted all the events that took place in his country, sided with the Bolsheviks. Moreover, V. V. Mayakovsky subordinated all of himself, all his work to the service of the cause of the socialist revolution.
The attitude of A. A. Blok and S. A. Yesenin to the revolution of 1917 was not so unambiguous. It is known that Blok enthusiastically accepted it as an update, a change, a step towards something new, better. But at the same time, he was well aware that this complex process cannot proceed completely smoothly, without losses, blood and suffering.
Unlike V. V. Mayakovsky and A. A. Blok, S. Yesenin was the most difficult to accept the events that had taken place. He saw in the revolution, first of all, the loss of his homeland, the former Rus', which was replaced by a completely different country, where the poet no longer has a place.
In the field of drama, in our opinion, we should talk about the creation of the Soviet myth, utopia, idealization of reality. Art captures not only a deformed society, a world of destroyed humanistic values, generated by ideology, subordinate to it and designed to serve the new regime. It also seeks to know the individual, the world individual person, which must also be subordinated to ideology. The utility of art is caused by necessity (the so-called social order). The old and the new, the true and the false, the official Soviet and those opposed to ideological totalitarianism collide. The conflict of beliefs, genuine creativity and unified thinking of the new art lies at the heart of this complex fusion of life and art. And, although in the dramaturgy of the 1920s. little hard real truth, analysis literary texts makes it possible to reconstruct the type of thinking of a person of that time, the ideology of culture, the relations of the state and Soviet art to the main categories of being (time, space, man, nature, life, etc.). Plays of the first years of the revolution "Roar, China!" S. Tretyakova, “Love Yarovaya” by K. Trenev, “Storm” by V. Bill-Belotserkovsky, “Rift” by B. Lavrenev, “Crimson Island” by M. Bulgakov, comedies by V. Mayakovsky have a common goal - to show what is happening with point of view of an eyewitness and a participant in the events. The same applies to novel art, such works as the texts of A. Serafimovich "The Iron Stream", A. Vesely "Russia, Washed with Blood", "The Rupture" by B. Lavrenev, etc.
A revolutionary understanding of the situation was also expressed in A. Fadeev's novel "The Rout", which primarily describes the tragedy of events and the fate of people. Years later, N. Ostrovsky in the novel "How the Steel Was Tempered" tried to give a philosophical assessment of the events of the beginning of the century.
A. A. Fadeev, who wrote the novel "The Rout", which was highly appreciated by both critics and readers, defined the idea of "remaking human material in the crucible of the revolution." This explains artistic features works. The writer's attention is directed to how his characters behave in the proposed historical conditions whether they accept the demands of the time, the revolution. For members of the partisan detachment there is no choice. They fight for the future, which is not very clear to them, they only know for sure that it will be better than the past and the present.
In this regard, the image of Frost, one of the heroes of the novel, is interesting. Actually, his presence in the center of the work is explained by the fact that he is a model of a new person undergoing a remake. Speaking about the selection of "human material", the writer had in mind not only those who turned out to be necessary for the revolution. People "unsuitable" for the construction of a new society are ruthlessly discarded. Such a hero in the novel is Sword. It is no coincidence that this man social background belongs to the intelligentsia and consciously joins the partisan detachment, driven by the idea of the revolution as a great romantic event.
The spontaneity, sung by many in those years, does not at all attract Fadeev. Members of the detachment often allow themselves hooligan acts (stealing melons from the chestnut, for example), which are evidence of their low consciousness, proof of the need to remake a person for a new life. The story of the theft of melons is described at the very beginning of the novel, when we still have the former Frost in front of us.
Even the life of an individual - partisan Frolov, mortally wounded and therefore interfering with the advance of the detachment - can be sacrificed to the interests of the team.
Almost all the characters of "The Rout" are people with whom the author fought, lived in poverty, and made the most difficult taiga crossings in battles. Of course, he did not copy them entirely from nature. Much in them conjectured and generalized.
The best die in battles: Metelitsa, Baklanov. Remains in the ranks is not the most worthy - Chizh.
The creative success of A. Fadeev was considered the image of Levinson. Fadeev dreamed of creating the image of such a hero ever since he picked up a pen. This dream united in him both a politician and an artist, and simply interested party. After all, he saw in himself a growing, more and more conscious leader. To show the Bolshevik leader in such a way that the reader would believe in him, follow him, be convinced of his special right to power, was for Fadeev both a vital interest and an exciting task - political and artistic in equal measure. It is not for nothing that Spill begins with Neretin, Against the Current, with Commissar Chelnokov. These were, however, only sketches for an image that sooner or later had to take shape. Levinson is the first great creative success of the writer. In order to attract the reader to the figure of this hero, Fadeev did not endow him with either stone cheekbones or iron jaws, like A. Serafimovich of his Kozhukha in Iron Stream, or a fanatical faith in revolution, like B. Lavrenev Evsyukova in Forty-First, nor a martyr's crown, like Yu. Libedinsky a whole group of characters in "The Week" or Vs. Ivanov Peklevanova in Armored Train. He relied on frankness and openness to the reader.
Levinson is quite an ordinary person, with weaknesses and shortcomings. Another thing is that he knows how to conceal and suppress them. And he has doubts, and confusion, and painful mental discord. But he did not share his thoughts and feelings with anyone, he presented ready-made “yes” or “no”. It is impossible without this. The partisans who entrusted their lives to him should not know about any discord and doubts of the commander. Levinson's art of leading people is captivating. There is no deceit in it, no demagogy.
With the advent of The Defeat, it became clear that all the other Bolshevik heroes, who managed to quite densely "populate" literature, are noticeably inferior to Levinson, written both more lively and deeper than any of them.
The main issue around which the life of all the heroes of the work revolves is their attitude to revolutionary events. This is what the novel by N. A. Ostrovsky “How the Steel Was Tempered”, which became a cult for the Soviet era, is dedicated to.
“How the Steel Was Tempered” is quite often called the “tracing paper of the era”, and Korchagin’s predecessor can be called his namesake, Pavel Vlasov. Both of them are like historical type arise at the moment when the eternal search for an idea is combined with the movement of the masses.
Seriousness is inherent in Paul, a sense of meaningfulness of each step. It combines characteristic and its philosophical meaning. The hero resolves all the issues of the generation with an extremely complete approach. If for senior communists there is a question of ends and means (in the scene of the hijacking of a steam locomotive by Artem and the elder Bruzzak), then Seryozha Bruzzak, without thinking, goes to kill in order to bring closer the day when there will be no murders on earth at all. The author knowingly puts Korchagin in a love situation. The secret of Korchagin's attitude to love: he cannot love to the detriment of an idea, to sacrifice it. Pavel gives himself up to love for Tae Kyutsam, finding in her a friend and support, only when nothing threatens the idea.
Nevertheless, the generation of Pavel Korchagin cannot be called ascetic. They feel the fullness of life, their exploits cannot be called sacrificial: they feel their place in life, and hence their self-confidence and conviction that they are doing a great job. There are many episodes in the book in which any of his brothers in the generation could behave like Paul. But there are times when you need it. These are situations when a strong, unified will must defeat vulgarity.
However, the heroism of this generation is connected with tragedy. People believed in the idea recklessly, they were ready to die for it.
3. The Revolution and the Civil War were portrayed in different ways: as an element, a blizzard, a whirlwind (Pilnyak’s “Hungry Year”), the end of culture and history (“Cursed Days” by Bunin, Shmelev’s “Sun of the Dead”), as the beginning of a new world (“The Defeat Fadeev, Serafimovich's Iron Stream). The writers who accepted the revolution filled their works with heroic-romantic pathos. Those who saw in it the unbridled elements portrayed it as an apocalypse, reality appeared in a tragic tone.
The main theme of the writers of the 1920s. revolution and civil war. It was the main nerve of the works of both Russian writers abroad and those who worked in Soviet Russia.
Ideologically, there were two lines in the depiction of the civil war. Some writers perceived the October Revolution as an illegal coup, and the civil war as bloody, fratricidal. The hatred for the Soviet regime and everything it creates was manifested especially clearly in the Cursed Days by I. Bunin, the novels The Ice Campaign by R. Gul, and The Sun of the Dead by I. Shmelev.
Born of personal grief (the shooting of the son of Sergei by the Bolsheviks), the book "The Sun of the Dead" is a terrible mosaic of the revolution. Shmelev shows the revolutionary leaders as a blind force. These red-star "renewers of life" can only kill. From positions Christian morality they have no excuse. The victims are spiritually superior to them. Their suffering, the pain of their souls, is shown by Shmelev as the suffering of the entire Russian people, not poisoned by ideology. In the novel, which consists of separate stories, the leitmotif is image of the dead the sun is tragic.
Bunin cursed the October Revolution with fierce hatred. His position as an opponent of the Bolsheviks took shape during the Civil War. However, there was no political struggle in the writer's activities, he did not belong to any groups, in addition, he denied Bolshevism not so much from the ideological side (the writer was independent of ideologies), but from a moral, aesthetic, emotional point of view. Despite this, Bunin desperately sought to comprehend the events of 1917–1919. in the context of world history. The writer understood that the country needed changes, on the eve of the revolution, he talked about the renewal of life and believed that the revolution for us is salvation and that new system will lead to the flourishing of the state, he admitted that in Rasputin's time he yearned for a revolution. However, the course of history led Bunin to the conclusion that this philosophy is not good for hell.
Before the revolution, he could not be called a political writer. However, in the conditions of 1917, it became obvious that he was a deeply civic, progressive-minded person. Revolution for Bunin is a consequence of irreversibility historical process, the manifestation of cruel instincts. The writer understood that without bloodshed, the power in the country would not change. However, he could not in any way imagine that the revolution would be carried out exactly as it did. “I was not one of those who were taken by surprise by it, for whom its size and atrocities were a surprise, but nevertheless reality surpassed all my expectations: what the Russian revolution soon turned into, no one who has not seen it will understand. This spectacle was sheer horror for anyone who had not lost the image and likeness of God, and hundreds of thousands of people fled from Russia after the seizure of power by Lenin, who had the slightest opportunity to escape. According to Bunin, the death of Russia as a great state and empire began with the revolution. It was then that base and wild instincts began to appear in society. I. A. Bunin called the October Revolution "cursed days."
"Cursed Days" consists of two parts: Moscow, 1918, and Odessa, 1919. Bunin writes down the facts he saw on the streets of cities. In the first part street scenes more, the writer spends around Moscow, passing on fragments of dialogues, newspaper reports and even rumors. The voice of the author himself appears in the second part, Odessa, where Bunin reflects on the fate of Russia, experiences something personal, thinks about his own dreams and reminisces. Bunin wrote a diary for himself, and at first the writer had no thoughts about publishing it, but circumstances forced him to make the opposite decision.
The unusual nature of B. Pilnyak's novel The Naked Year (1920) immediately after the appearance of this text became the subject of lively discussion in contemporary criticism. If we now temporarily take out the problems of the work, then we can say that the main points that caused the greatest interest critics, were the following: the unusual architectonics of The Naked Year, the lack of a plot in in the usual sense words and on this basis the uncertainty genre affiliation works.
The novel by B. A. Pilnyak "The Naked Year" has become a remarkable phenomenon of "ornamental" prose and a kind of artistic document about the revolutionary state of the world, which is imprinted both in individual and in the mass consciousness. The work is built on the correlation of what is happening before the eyes of contemporaries with Russian history.
In the first part of the work (“Ordynin-city”), preceding the main presentation, the main ways of updating the documentary beginning in the narrative are outlined. The documentary discourse depicts the existence of the old merchant town of Ordynin in the past and in the revolutionary present.
With documentary, chronicle scrupulousness, signs of the centuries-old history of the provincial folk life, which is reflected in the local topography, and sometimes in curious semi-literate city signs. However, through the peacefully inert course of life, in contrast to the encouraging chronicle evidence of how rich the Horde lands are in fuel stone and magnetic ore, to which iron sticks, irrational rhythms of history break through: in 1914 the war broke out, and after it in 1917 - revolution. Epochal catastrophic upheavals, which in an incredible way accelerate and carry away the course of human life into oblivion, are paired in Pilnyak's novel with documented phenomena in the individual and social frame of mind.
In the main part of the author's narrative, elements are found historical chronicle, designed to document the outlines of being, which has entered a state of unstoppable, catastrophic variability. The author likens his own narration to a kind of “transcript” of modernity, in which the sound of a new language deformed by the onset of the era and the spirit of the revolution are felt.
The text generated by the author is conceived by him as a document about himself. In the documentary discourse of Pilnyak's novel, the multidirectional fermentations of the people's consciousness are artistically recreated, which sometimes lead into the age-old jungle of anarchist-sectarian worldview.
Babel became known to a wide circle of readers in 1924, when several short stories by the young author were published. Shortly thereafter, Cavalry was published. It was translated into 20 languages, and Babel became known far beyond the borders of the country. For Soviet and foreign readers, he was one of the most remarkable writers of his time. Babel was like no other. He always wrote about his own and in his own way; He was distinguished from other authors not only by a peculiar writing style, but also by a special perception of the world. All his works were born of life, he was a realist in the most precise sense of the word. He noticed what others passed by, and spoke in such a way that his voice surprised. Babel spoke unusually about the unusual. The long life of a person, in which the exceptional, like the essence of water, is diluted with everyday life, and the tragedy is softened by habit, Babel showed briefly and pathetically. Of all, man is most exposed, perhaps that is why the themes of love passion and death are repeated with such persistence in his books.
With a few exceptions, his books show two worlds that struck him - pre-revolutionary Odessa and the campaign of the First Cavalry Army, in which he was a participant.
Most of the Cavalry is written in the manner of a personal narrative - on behalf of a witness and participant in the events. Only in four cases is he named Lyutov. In the rest of the short stories, it's just "I" with biographical details that do not always match.
In seven short stories, Babel demonstrates the classical fabulous manner. Before us is the word of the hero, a picturesque paradoxical character, created not just by action, but also by purely linguistic means. In fact, the late “Kiss” adjoining the book turns out to be a foreign word, the hero of which is usually considered Lyutov. In fact, the character-narrator has significant differences from the "bespectacled" and should be considered as an objective hero with an intelligent, rather than colloquial tale. In the short story "Prischepa", the narrator refers to the hero's story, but reproduces it from himself, depicting the consciousness, but not the speech of the central character.
Finally, three short stories (“Head of the Store”, “Cemetery in Kozin”, “Widow”) do without a personal narrator and narrator at all. They are performed in an objective manner, in the third person. But here, too, a pure anecdote about the sly Dyakov (the brightest and "problemless" short story in the book) differs sharply from a prose poem, a lyrical sigh in a Jewish cemetery (the shortest and fabulous short story).
Babel mobilizes the hidden possibilities of the small genre, tests it for strength, diversity, and depth.
In 34 short stories close-up 12 deaths are given, others, mass ones, are mentioned in passing. Most of the book's pages are colored in the brightest red. Therefore, the sun here is like a severed head, and the glow of the sunset resembles impending death, and autumn trees swinging at the crossroads like the naked dead. Behind the pathos of the revolution, the author saw its face: he realized that the revolution is an extreme situation that reveals the secret of man. But even in the harsh everyday life of the revolution, a person who has a sense of compassion will not be able to reconcile himself to murder and bloodshed. Man, according to Babel, is alone in this world.
4. From a general humanist position, the civil war is depicted in the novels of M. A. Bulgakov “ white guard”, A. N. Tolstoy “Sisters” (one of the parts of “Walking through the torments”).
In the novel "The White Guard" the surrounding chaos, inconstancy, and ruin are opposed by the stubborn desire to preserve their Home with "cream curtains", a tiled stove, and the warmth of a family hearth. External signs of the past have no material value, they are symbols of the former stable and indestructible life.
The Turbin family - military and intellectuals - is ready to defend their House to the end; in a broad sense - the city, Russia, Motherland. These are people of honor and duty, real patriots. Bulgakov shows the events of 1918, when Kiev passed from hand to hand, as apocalyptic, tragic events. The biblical prophecy “and there was blood” comes to mind when pictures of the wild atrocities of the Petliurists arise, scenes of the massacre of the “pan kurenny” with his defenseless victim. In this world standing on the edge of the abyss, the only thing that can keep from falling is love for the Home, for Russia.
Bulgakov portrayed his White Guard heroes from a humanistic position. He sympathizes and sympathizes with honest and pure people plunged into the chaos of the Civil War. With pain, he shows that the most worthy, the color of the nation, are dying. And this, in the context of the entire novel, is regarded as the death of all of Russia, the past, history. The novel tells about a family of Russian intellectuals and their friends who are experiencing the social cataclysm of the civil war. The novel is largely autobiographical, almost all characters have prototypes - relatives, friends and acquaintances of the Bulgakov family. The scenery of the novel was the streets of Kyiv and the house where the writer's family lived in 1918. Although the manuscripts of the novel have not been preserved, the Bulgakov scholars traced the fate of many prototype characters and proved the almost documentary accuracy and reality of the events and characters described by the author.
The work was conceived by the author as a large-scale trilogy covering the period of the Civil War. Part of the novel was first published in the Rossiya magazine in 1925. The novel in its entirety was first published in France in 1927–1929. Criticism of the novel was perceived ambiguously: the Soviet side condemned the writer's glorification of class enemies, the emigrant side condemned Bulgakov's loyalty to the Soviet regime.
The work served as a source for the play The Days of the Turbins and several subsequent film adaptations. This performance became a favorite production of V. G. Stalin, who often revised it.
The action of the novel takes place in 1918, when the Germans who occupied Ukraine leave the City and Petliura's troops capture it. The author describes the complex, multifaceted world of a family of Russian intellectuals and their friends. This world is breaking down under the onslaught of a social cataclysm and will never happen again.
Alexey Turbin, Elena Turbina-Talberg and Nikolka are involved in the cycle of military and political events. The city, in which Kyiv is easily guessed, is occupied by the German army. As a result of the signing of the Brest Peace, it does not fall under the rule of the Bolsheviks and becomes a refuge for many Russian intellectuals and military men who flee from Bolshevik Russia. Officer combat organizations are being created in the city under the auspices of Hetman Skoropadsky, an ally of the Germans, recent enemies of Russia. Petliura's army advances on the City. By the time of the events of the novel, the Compiègne truce has been concluded and the Germans are preparing to leave the City. In fact, only volunteers defend him from Petliura. Understanding the complexity of their situation, Turbins console themselves with rumors about the approach of French troops, who allegedly landed in Odessa (in accordance with the terms of the armistice, they had the right to occupy the occupied territories of Russia up to the Vistula in the west). Aleksey and Nikolka Turbins, like other residents of the City, volunteer to join the defenders, and Elena guards the house, which becomes a refuge for former officers of the Russian army. Because to defend the City on your own impossible, the command and administration of the hetman leave him to his fate and leave with the Germans (the hetman himself disguises himself as a wounded German officer). Volunteers - Russian officers and cadets - unsuccessfully defend the City without command against superior enemy forces (the author created a brilliant heroic image of Colonel Nai-Turs). Some commanders, realizing the futility of resistance, send their fighters home, others actively organize resistance and perish along with their subordinates. Petlyura occupies the City, arranges a magnificent parade, but after a few months he is forced to surrender it to the Bolsheviks.
The story of M. Sholokhov "The Mole", one of the first included in his book "Don Stories", is also dedicated to the events of the period of the civil war. There are two very different main characters in the work, each fighting for their own truth. The first hero is the red commander Nikolka Koshevoy, and the second is the battered ataman of the Cossack gang. The author tells the story of each of them in turn, introduces the reader to their past and present.
The young commander of the red horsemen is only eighteen years old. He had an ordinary farm childhood, but he early learned the bitterness of loss, having lost his mother and father. And Nikolka himself has been fighting for a new government for more than a year, dreaming of its speedy end.
Another hero is an old Cossack chieftain. M. Sholokhov shows in detail his difficult fate. For more than seven years he was not in his native places, did not know about the fate of his loved ones.
The culmination of the story is the very mortal battle in which father and son meet without recognizing each other. The most exciting episode of the story is the brutal confrontation between the two closest people. The young commander attacks the ataman of the gang and falls down, amazed by the swing of his saber.
As you can see, the fatal confrontation between the Reds and Whites turns into terrible tragedy: father kills own son. Ridiculous nonsense war destroys the most sacred family bonds. Recognizing his own son in the Red Army soldier he killed, the ataman turns to dead body: "Son! .. Nikolushka! .. My little blood ...". These are the main words of Sholokhov's story. Having no reason to live anymore, the ataman shoots himself. The worst thing is that the true cause of their death is another war - the First World War. If in 1914 his father had not gone to the German front, then perhaps he and his son would not have been different sides barricades and this tragedy did not happen. Most of the writer's works are imbued with such anti-war pathos.
A. N. Tolstoy, the author of the trilogy "Walking through the torments", began to write this work in the 1920s, while in exile. With thoughts about the Motherland, he began his novel "Sisters", the first part of a trilogy. This is the artist's confession to himself, to the court of his people. The plot is based on the fate of the Bulavin sisters, Ekaterina Dmitrievna and Dasha, the story of their love, joys and sorrows. The brightest sides are reflected in their poetic images. human soul opening towards happiness. The philosophy of personal happiness is given in the novel in Katya's love for officer Roshchin and Dasha for engineer Telegin. Their small egoistic world includes events of a large, historical scale - First World War and the beginning of the revolution, which overturned, along with all the usual way of bourgeois existence, the heroes' own ideas about the meaning of life. Tolstoy clearly shows the spiritual collapse of the Russian intelligentsia, cut off from the interests of the people, in the images of the lawyer Smokovnikov and the poet Bessonov, the historical doom of all old Russia, its classes hostile to the people, with their decline in culture and art. The revolutionary storm scattered over the earth, like dry leaves, this "intellectual aristocracy of the country", adherents of religious and philosophical doctrines and habitues of country restaurants. Roshchin thinks at first that his great Russia ceased to exist from the moment the people threw down their weapons. He is sure that years will pass, wars will subside, revolutions will make no noise, and only the meek, tender heart of his Katya will remain incorruptible, and peace will again come without worries and struggle.
In 1927, the writer began the second novel of the trilogy "Walking through the torments" - "The Eighteenth Year". New romance brought to the fore the idea of the happiness of the people and the motherland as a symbol of the highest historical justice. The events of the revolution become the center of the novel. In how the fate of the main characters of this work organically merges with the fate of the motherland and people, how widely the boundaries of the image of the revolutionary events, affects the new scope of the epic talent of A. Tolstoy.
Through the stormy year of 1918, the writer's heroes pass, transforming themselves in the fertile thunderstorm of the revolution. Engineer Ivan Ilyich Telegin finds his place in the ranks of the people, deeply believing in the words of the St. Petersburg worker Vasily Rublev, that Russia alone will save Soviet authority and that there is nothing in the world more important than our revolution.
With all her tender and meek heart, Ekaterina Dmitrievna Bulavina feels the greatness of what is happening. And only Roshchin wanders the animal paths of the enemy of the revolution, linking his fate with the white army. Only after Roshchin understands that the great future of Russia is in the people, and not in the decayed Kornilov-Denikin army, will he find the courage to break with the counter-revolution and start new life. Repentance will come, and with it cleansing. On a broad epic scale and detailed pictures shows Tolstoy's life in the eighteenth year.
In the 1930s the writer worked on the novel "Gloomy Morning", which ended the trilogy "Walking through the torments" - this is an artistic chronicle of the revolutionary renewal of Russia. The trilogy has been in the making for over twenty years. Tolstoy considered it the main work in all his work. The writer said that the theme of the trilogy is the lost and returned homeland. It is noteworthy that Tolstoy ends his novel with excited patriotic words.
Thus, completing the conversation about the theme of revolution and civil war in Russian literature, we can state that such writers as A. Fadeev, B. Pasternak, M. Bulgakov, B. Lavrenev, M. Sholokhov, although they held different political convictions, attempted to objectively elucidate great tragedy, which befell Russia in the early 1920s, to truthfully show that in this fratricidal massacre there are no and cannot be right and wrong, but there are only people who lose what is dear to them.
However, despite opinions that the formation and development of Russian literature during the years of revolution and civil war took place in a situation of chaos, we can safely state that the literary process - and especially in the field of prose - had obvious ideological and aesthetic dominants, allowing us to speak of October 1917 as the beginning of development of a new literary and artistic chronology.
Questions and tasks for self-control
1. List the characteristic features of the image of the revolution and the Civil War in Russian literature of the 1920s–1930s. literary criticism in a "thaw" setting.
2. Suggest basic outline diagram functioning of the three branches of Russian literature.
3. What are the interpretive foundations for studying A. N. Tolstoy's trilogy "Walking through the torments"?
The revolution is too large an event not to be reflected in literature, and a rare writer who survived it did not touch it in any way in his work.
There are different approaches to this topic. For example, Babel's "Konarmiya" or Sholokhov's "Don Stories" are a series of episodes that are not very interconnected, lining up in huge mosaic canvases, and Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov's "White Guard" is a classic novel. Different writers present events from different points of view: Serafimovich in Iron Stream - from the point of view of the people, Bulgakov and most emigre writers - from the point of view of the nobility. In general, Sholokhov does not investigate the struggle between the oppressors and the oppressed, but the contradictions that arise within the people themselves in the course of a fratricidal war. There is another approach to the topic - historical. Mark Aldanov in the novel "The Ninth Thermidor" describes not our revolution, but the French one. Revolution for this author is not just a change of power or even a social formation, but an explosion of animal instincts, the return of humanity to a brutal state. He writes: "The revolution is terrible not against the monarchy, but against the handkerchief," that is, against culture.
And yet, among the many opinions, two main approaches to this topic can be distinguished. It will be most convenient to analyze this process on the example of two novels - "The Defeat" by Fadeev and "The White Guard" by Bulgakov.
Bulgakov's characters are the Russian intelligentsia, the nobility, officers, and the events are presented from their point of view. The heroes of Fadeev, on the other hand, are people from the people (the only one who, at the very least, can be called an "intellectual" - Mechik, is presented as a representative of the "petty bourgeoisie"). These two writers are in different camps and, accordingly, Bulgakov has representatives common people, "peasants - God-bearers Dostoevsky" are presented negatively. These people do not care where the whites are, where the reds are, they only care about themselves, and the intelligentsia appears before us as the custodian of the people's memory, great culture and strong moral principles. With Fadeev, the opposite is true. A cultured and educated Mechik turns out to be a traitor, he does not have the inner strength to follow and serve the people. Frost, as the personification of the common people, although somewhat impulsive, but intuitively feels the truth.
Fadeev also has another idea: "The end justifies the means." The image of Levinson, who does not stop at any cruelty in order to save the squad, is indicative. He can be compared with Khludov from Bulgakov's "Run", but at the end of the drama Khludov realizes his mistake, realizes the perniciousness of this idea. Levinson, on the other hand, is convinced that he is right, and Fadeev justifies him.
Naturally, from all of the above it is clear that Fadeev and Bulgakov have diametrically opposed views on the revolution itself. If Fadeev presented this event as necessary and natural, which liberated the people (and in general, despite the tragic fate of the heroes, the novel “The Rout” is an optimistic thing), then for Bulgakov the revolution is a prototype of the apocalypse, the death of old Russia, the destruction of culture and everything which is dear to man.
We see that such a grandiose event could not leave anyone indifferent. There may be different opinions about this, but the way the revolution was reflected in various works different writers, can help us, descendants, to understand everything, to understand and comprehend our history ...
The theme of revolution and civil war in the works of the 20th century.
Humanism and cruelty in the works of A. Fadeev, and Babel,
B. Lavreneva, D. Furmanova.
Goal: 1. Expand students' understanding of the attitude of writers of the 20th century
to revolution and civil war.
Educational: 1. Know the biography of A. Fadeev, I. Babel, D. Furmanov,
B. Lavreneva.
2. Know the content of the works. ("Rout", "Cavalry",
"Chapaev", "Forty-first").
Developing: 1. Be able to compare, analyze works,
episodes.
2. Be able to characterize the characters, analyze them
actions to draw conclusions.
Educational: 1. Education of morality, a sense of justice.
2. To cultivate respect for one's past
states.
Lesson progress: 1. The word of the teacher.
Any war is terrible, because it brings death, grief, pain, but
civil war is doubly terrible and inhuman, since this war
fratricidal. Revolution and civil war dramatically changed Russia,
entered the life of every person, breaking, maiming, mutilating human bodies and souls.
We will start today's lesson with a poem by V. Mayakovsky “Ode
revolution."
reading a poem (slide No. 2,3);
Continuing the tradition of high civic poetry, Mayakovsky uses
ode genre. He switched the pathos of the ode to political topic, to show
destructive and creative force, ruthlessness and humanism of the people
revolution.
find epithets confirming this;
We see that the revolution for Mayakovsky was humane and cruel.
The image of the civil war and its condemnation has become one of the main topics
Russian literature of the 20th century, the literature of a country that went through a terrible
experiment.
let's turn to history (slide No. 4,5,6);
Of course, those who wrote about the war had their own clearly expressed position. For
Bolshevik writers (Serafimovich, Sholokhov, Furmanov, Fadeev)
the war is just, waged against the enemies of Soviet power,
the characters in their works are clearly divided into their own and others. Their enmity
irreconcilable.
For writers of non-party orientation (Russian intellectuals - And
Shmelev, M. Bulgakov, B. Pasternak)
fratricidal war,
the power of the Bolsheviks brings destruction, destroys people,
but White's actions are no less terrible.
All Russian writers agree on one thing: war is cruel, man is at war
becomes hardened, he has to transgress universal moral
laws.
Let's turn to the terms (slide No. 7,8)
group work: each group talks about the writer, about his
political orientation during the civil war; (slide No. 9, 10,11,12);
How did a person feel in the era of revolution and fratricidal
war? (slide number 13)
2. In the novel "Cavalry" there is a short story called "Gedali" (reasoning
the old Jew about the revolution) the answer of the students of the third group;
The tragic reality of the civil war is the main theme of the collection
Babel's short stories Cavalry. Behind the pathos of the revolution, the writer saw
its other face: he realized that the revolution is an extreme situation,
revealing the secret of man. The characters of his heroes are paradoxical, the actions
unexpected. What has become permissible in an extreme situation, a revolution
leaves a seal on future people. The author would like to justify and understand
their heroes. But there was no excuse.
Novella "Letter" 3rd group. (scale life values brother murder,
father and a request to slaughter a boar is the morality of a natural person,
this morality is alien to the author. (slide number 15)
Novella "Salt" cruelty towards a woman, deceit on her part,
to survive.
Which side is the truth on?
3. The tragedy of the civil war was first shown in his novel "Defeat"
A. Fadeev. in this work there are no loud speeches, no voiced
revolutionary phrases, no oaths of fidelity to ideals. There is blood, mud,
irritation., the death of a partisan detachment, squeezed by the enemy in a ring.
It is the unsmoothed image of the events of the civil war, the tragedy of it
led to the novel's long life and popularity.
Can humanism be abstract?
Who is Levinson? Sadist? Humane, a kind person?
episode "Frolov's Death" word to group 1.
A similar situation can be traced in the short story "The Death of Dolgushov" (Babel)
words 3 group;
What is the right thing to do in these situations? Where is humanism, and where
cruelty?
Levinson lives a bright dream of a wonderful future. And for a great purpose
in his opinion, much can be allowed.
episode "With a Korean" word 1 group.
We see that in extreme situations, during the war, a person thinks
completely different, he has other priorities.
How does the hero feel?
The novel "The Rout" is not only a confirmation of the victory of Bolshevism, but also
demonstration of evil, blood, suffering, death.
4. The way the war of fate and the consciousness of people is crippled is reflected in the story “Forty
the first "B. Lavrenev.
Why is the work called that?
Maryutka and Govoruha-Otrok were happy, but this happiness lasted
not for long. Under what circumstances could they be together?
Why does Maryutka kill her happiness? word to group 4;
5. In the novel "Chapaev" before us main character appears as legendary
hero of the revolution. Before us is a man with a complex and strong character, V
The novel emphasizes that he is undoubtedly a folk hero.
What decisions does Chapaev make? Are they always true? How does it manifest
humanism and cruelty in this work? word 2 group.
(slide number 14);
Conclusion:
Can there be one opinion on revolution and civil war?
The revolution and civil war was a tragedy for the entire nation. Each of
writers expressed this in their own way in the artistic fabric of their
works, but one thing is clear: it is impossible to build happiness on blood and suffering,
it is impossible to resolve blood according to conscience, without a serious reflection on the past
it is impossible to build a fair future.
D/W: write an essay
“Since childhood, I have imagined the civil war as a fight between “good” reds and “bad” whites,” the 11th grade graduate began her essay. - In that fairy tale, the truth was always on the side of the Reds, and ours certainly won. Somehow I didn’t even think about the people on the other side of the barricades. But they also fought for their truth. Having lost everything, many of them, even in exile, kept Russia in their hearts. IN Lately I'm with special interest I read the books of those who, for some reason, did not accept the revolution, but remained a patriot of their country. I want to understand what these people were like, how they lived, what ideas they stood for. But I think that those works whose authors accepted the new world as their own have not lost their significance either. It is rightly said that without comparing different points of view, it is impossible to understand such a complex event as revolution and civil war.
Indeed, the publication of “Untimely Thoughts” by M. Gorky, letters by V.G. Korolenko to Lunacharsky, diaries of I.A. Bunin (“Cursed Days”), the works of V. Veresaev and M. Bulgakov, B. Pilnyak and A. Platonov, V. Zazubrin and E. Zamyatin, books of emigrants I. Shmelev, B. Zaitsev, V. Ropshin returned to the literary process , R. Gulya helped to overcome the one-sided idea of the revolutionary era and the history of literature of the 20th century.
Standing next to classical works Soviet literature (« Quiet Don” by M. Sholokhov, “Iron Stream” by A. Serafimovich, “Chapaev” by D. Furmanov, “The Defeat” by A. Fadeev), these books showed that in the 20s literature captured a complex, extremely contradictory image of time. It reflected the diversity of ideas about what happened before the eyes of writers. historical events(Pilnyak called them "historical rewiring"). At the same time, despite the intransigence of political convictions, natural for that period, writers rose in their the best works over purely political passions for universal, humanitarian problems.
Artists did not just create a chronicle of events, they posed truly sore questions that Russian thought has long struggled with: about revolution and evolution, about humanism and cruelty, about goals and means, about the price of progress, about the right to use violence in the name of high purpose about the uniqueness and significance of a particular human life. The revolution sharpened all these problems, moved them from the realm of theoretical, philosophical reflections into a practical plan, made the life and death of a person, the fate of Russia, the entire world civilization dependent on their decision. The revolution led to a reassessment of moral norms, everything that people lived, what they believed in, and this was a difficult, sometimes painful process, which literature also told about. Since literature, by its nature, is primarily addressed to the fate of a particular person, history appeared in the works of various authors in faces, in intense searches for thought and spirit, in a variety of conflicts, human characters and aspirations.
In the country of the victorious revolution, a natural and sincere response to the grandiose transformation of the world was the creation heroic epic. The masses of people set in motion by the revolution—detachments, armies, "sets" steadily moving towards their goal, overcoming unprecedented difficulties along the way—such is the collective hero of B. Pilnyak's Naked Year, A. Malyshkin's The Fall of the Daire, "Iron Stream" by A. Serafimovich, "Cavalry" by I. Babel. The image of the people is at the center of the works of various literary genera: poems by A. Blok "The Twelve" and V. Mayakovsky "150000000", plays by V. Vishnevsky "The First Horse". The authors of these books captured not only heroics, but also the pangs of the birth of a new world, reflected all the cruelty and intransigence of class confrontation, the complex relationship between organization and anarchist freemen, destruction and craving for creation, the birth of a sense of unity, community.
The revolutions of 1917 and the Civil War that followed them are a bloody and tragic time in the history of Russia. Millions of people died, millions were maimed, millions were deprived of their homeland or freedom. “Rus faded away in two days,” Rozanov wrote. Came in her place Soviet Union with a fundamentally different ideology and policy.
Already in the early 1920s, the first novels and stories about the Civil War appeared. The authors of these works, as a rule, were either active participants or witnesses of those events. Some of them had a pronounced ideological connotation (like the exemplary works of Fadeev, Serafimovich or Furmanov), but some writers managed to avoid "agitation" and create real masterpieces of Russian literature - not just to document what is happening, but to comprehend the bloody changes that have occurred with the country.
We have selected seven such books.
Quiet Don. Mikhail Sholokhov
Quiet Flows the Don is one of the main Russian novels of the last century. And one of the main literary riddles. The question of whether Sholokhov himself wrote it is still being raised by researchers of his work. It was for this epic that the writer received the Nobel Prize in Literature with the wording "For the artistic power and integrity of the epic about the Don Cossacks at a turning point for Russia." The novel is undoubtedly the most famous work about the Civil War, and the image of the main character, Grigory Melekhov, has become a kind of symbol of that bloody and controversial period of Russian history.
Doctor Zhivago . Boris Pasternak
"Doctor Zhivago" - a novel about the beginning of the 20th century, about the revolution of 1905-1907, followed by the First World War, February and October Revolution. The novel ends with a foreboding omen of World War II and the Gulag, but the fateful events of 1917 take center stage here.
Several families, several estates and the history of one talented person, who visited both whites and reds, lost two beloved women and slowly went crazy along with his country, hanging between the past and the future. "Doctor Zhivago" is metaphorical, and it was precisely for this that Boris Pasternak suffered, who never managed to fully recover from the persecution that began after the publication of the work abroad and the award to him Nobel Prize in literature (which the writer was forced to abandon).
White Guard. Michael Bulgakov
The first novel by Mikhail Bulgakov and one of the few works that accurately describes the events of the Civil War in Ukraine. "White Guard" became a requiem for the Russian intelligentsia and the way of life in which the Bulgakov family and his friends existed.
Almost every character in this book has a real prototype. Even the house where the Turbins live is the same house where the Bulgakovs lived until 1918. a separate hero here appears the semi-mystical revolutionary Kyiv, which throughout the novel is simply called "the City".
The Road to Calvary . Alexey Tolstoy
The trilogy "Walking through the torments" Alexey Nikolayevich Tolstoy created more than 20 years (from 1919 to 1941). He began work on "Sisters" in exile, "The Eighteenth Year" and "Gloomy Morning" he wrote after returning to his homeland.
The first book reflected the life of the Russian intelligentsia of the Silver Age: literary circles and salons, disputes between writers and poets, everyday life in Petrograd, Moscow, Samara and other cities of the country in 1914-1917. The second and third novels of the cycle are devoted to the events of the Civil War. Together with the heroes of Tolstoy, the reader wanders through the blood-drenched expanses of Russia and Ukraine, meets Nestor Makhno and his anarchists, is next to General Kornilov on the day of his assassination, watches the assault on Yekaterinoslav and becomes an eyewitness to many other events of those terrible years.
The writer managed to create a truly epic panorama of the life of the country in one of the most difficult periods national history.
Sun of the Dead. Ivan Shmelev
At the center of the novel by the famous Russian émigré writer, author of Praying Man and The Summer of the Lord, lies the confrontation in the Crimea. His "Sun of the Dead" is called one of the most truthful and scary works about the Russian Civil War. Shmelev saw with his own eyes the atrocities that the Bolsheviks committed with the defeated troops of General Wrangel and local residents during the Red Terror. At the same time, the 25-year-old son of the writer was shot. Ivan Sergeevich himself miraculously managed to escape. He fled from the peninsula to Moscow, and in 1924 left the country forever.
Russia washed with blood. Artem Vesely
Artem Vesely (real name Nikolai Kochkurov) was born in the same year as Olesha, Nabokov and Platonov. In terms of the style of his work, he was close to Pilnyak. His most famous work is considered to be the novel “Russia, washed with blood”, the name of which speaks for itself. Vesely fought on the Denikin front, then served as a Chekist for some time, so he had no problems with the material. At times Great terror the writer was arrested and shot. His closest relatives were also repressed.
Red horse. Alexey Cherkasov and Polina Moskvitina
"The Red Horse" is the second part of the epic trilogy "Tales of the People of the Taiga", written by Alexei Cherkasov and Polina Moskvitina in 1972. The book is a direct continuation of the novel Khmel, which tells about the life of the Siberian Old Believers in the 19th and early 20th centuries (until 1917).
"Red Horse" covers the events that took place in the south of the Yenisei province during the Civil War. It describes the revolutionary Krasnoyarsk and Minusinsk, the Kolchak massacre of railway workers, the bloody struggle of the peasants against the White Cossacks, the terror and robberies of the Czechoslovak Corps, and many others. terrible events those years. The plot is based on the story of the Tashtyp Cossack Noah Lebed, who took the side of the Reds in a fratricidal war.
