The essays “Armor”, “Worker of War”, Breakthrough to the West”, “The Road to Mogilev”, “In Mogilev”, etc. appeared in the Red Star. followed, and Platonov continued to print. The themes of Platonov's military essays and stories are the heroism of the people, the exposure of fascist ideology, faith in victory over the enemy. These themes form the main content of prose collections - "Under the skies of the Motherland" (1942), "Stories about the Motherland" (1943), "Armor" (1943), "Toward the Sunset" (1945), "Soldier's Heart" (1946) . Platonov was primarily interested in the nature of the soldier's feat, the inner state, the moment of thought and feelings of the hero before the feat itself. The story “Spiritual People” (1942) was written about this - about the battle near Sevastopol, about the heroism of the marines. The unit, commanded by political instructor Filchenko, stopped the advance of fascist tanks, none of the sailors were left alive - everyone died, throwing themselves under tanks with grenades. The author writes about the enemies: “They could fight with any, even the most terrible enemy. But they did not know how to accept a fight with almighty people who blow themselves up in order to destroy the enemy. Artistically strong and expressive, but emotionally restrained narrative about "inspired", "almighty people" was the main content of the stories of the war years. Philosophical reflections on life and death, which always worried Platonov, became even more intense during the war years; he wrote: “What is a feat - death in war, if not the highest manifestation of love for one's people, bequeathed to us as a spiritual inheritance?”
A number of Platonov's stories and essays are devoted to exposing the ideology of fascism and its application in "practice" ("The Inanimate Enemy", "The Rose Girl", "The Seventh Man", "On the Graves of Russian Soldiers", etc.). The story "The Inanimate Enemy" (1943, published in 1965) is noteworthy. His idea is expressed in reflections on death and victory over it: “Death is victorious, because a living being, defending itself, becomes death for that hostile force that brings death to it. And this is the highest moment of life, when it unites with death in order to overcome it ... "
For Platonov, the author of military prose, false straightforward optimism, slogan patriotism, and simulated cheerfulness are alien. The tragic in the works of these years is revealed through the fate of the "workers of war", in the image of the hopeless grief of those who lost loved ones and relatives. At the same time, Platonov avoids both artistic frills and crude naturalism; his manner is simple and artless, for not a single false word can be said in the depiction of the suffering of the people. The story “Mother (Recovery of the Lost)” about an old woman, Maria Vasilievna, who returned to her home after wandering and lost all her children, sounds like a tragic requiem. The mother came to their grave: she again crouched on the grave's soft earth in order to be closer to her silent sons. And their silence was a condemnation of the whole world - the villain who killed them, and grief for the mother, who remembers the smell of their childish body and the color of their living eyes ... ”And“ her heart left ”from grief. Everyone's involvement in the people's suffering, Plato's "equality in suffering" sounds in the concluding phrase of the Red Army soldier: "Whoever's mother I am, I am also left an orphan without you."
The story "The Ivanov Family" (1946), later called "The Return" is a masterpiece of Platonov's late prose. But it was his publication that brought the writer bitter trials: he again had to be silent for a long time after V. Ermilov's article "The slanderous story of A. Platonov." The story revealed “the most vile slander against the Soviet people, the Soviet family”, victorious soldiers returning home, “A. Platonov’s love for all kinds of spiritual untidiness, a suspicious passion for painful - in the spirit of the worst “Dostoevism” - positions and experiences ”, the manner of“ a fool in Christ ”, etc. The image of Petrusha, an old boy who preaches morality - to forgive everything, aroused particular fury.
It would not be worth recalling this slanderous article about Platonov, if not for one detail: the critic, in essence, correctly groped for the key moments of the story, only gave them an interpretation that completely distorts the meaning. The critic wrote as if there was no terrible tragedy of the people who survived the war, as if there were no millions of destroyed families, hardened hearts, as if there were no soldiers accustomed to cruelty and with difficulty “returning” to normal human life, there were no hungry children who were saved by "traitor" mothers. According to Platonov, it was the children who suddenly grew old, innocent of anything, who carried the truth of life, only they knew the value of the family and saw the world in an undistorted light. In the “Summary of the theme of the screenplay with the code name “The Ivanov Family”, Platonov wrote that it would be “the story of one Soviet family that ... is experiencing a catastrophe and is being renewed in the fire of drama ...” He wrote about the participation of children in this update as follows : “Children who are experienced in life, judicious in mind and pure in heart come into action. Their actions - in favor of reconciliation between father and mother, for the sake of preserving the family hearth - their gentle, but stubborn strength seems to brighten and purify the dark stream of life, the dark passion of father and mother, in which children rightly feel hostile to themselves, deadly to all elements. ".
The image of Petrusha is, as it were, the completion of Platonov's creative searches, his reflections on the role of children in this world, on the responsibility of people for their destinies. And, perhaps, the most remarkable idea of the writer is the idea of the responsibility of children themselves for the fate of adults. Back in the 30s, Platonov wrote: "The genius of childhood, combined with the experience of maturity, ensures the success and safety of human life." The war laid on the thin shoulders of Petrusha unchildish worries: he became in the family instead of his father, his heart became anxious and wise in his own way, he is the keeper of the hearth. A characteristic symbolic detail is that Petrusha constantly takes care that the house is warm, and the firewood “burns well”. He himself needs almost nothing, he is used to eating little so that others get more, he slept "sensitively and alertly." It is Petrusha who expounds his philosophy of life, the Christian idea of forgiveness and kindness; the story about Uncle Khariton and his wife turned out to be one of the important moments that reveal the meaning of The Return. There is the main thing - “you need to live”, and not swear, not remember the past, forget it, as Uncle Khariton and his wife Anyuta forgot. The hot confession of the wife only offended and angered the father, "dark elemental forces" rose in the soul. The finale of the story carries the liberating power and enlightenment of the soul that has cooled down during the war. Ivanov recognized his children running across the train to slowly “returning” to the normal, already post-war world, where the main thing is love, care, human warmth: “Ivanov closed his eyes, not wanting to see the pain of fallen exhausted children, and he himself felt how hot it became in his chest, as if the heart, enclosed and languishing in him, had been beating long and in vain all his life, and only now it broke free, filling his whole being with warmth and shudder.
9.A. Platonov. The story "Return" in the context of creativity and the fate of the writer.
A. Platonov's story "The Return" originally had the title "The Ivanov Family", as if prompting the reader that the main characters of the story are people from the same family. However, the name "Return", under which we today know the famous work of Platonov, most capaciously conveys the deep philosophical meaning of the story.
At first glance, the theme of the return in the story lies on the surface - Aleksey Alekseevich Ivanov, the captain of the guard, returns home after the war. In the literature of the post-war period, there were many such works, painting in the most iridescent colors the return of defending warriors to their families, surrounded by a halo of heroism and nobility.
However, for the first time, A. Platonov has a completely different understanding of post-war life, for which the author was subjected to severe criticism during the Stalinist regime. The main character Ivanov is not at all like the ideal hero - honest, noble, selfless. This is a man whose soul is broken by the war, his heart is hardened, and his mind is led by vanity and ambition. Platonov in his story reveals the reverse side of victory, the severe wounds inflicted by the war on every family, wounds that are difficult to heal.
Ivanov has lost the habit of home life, the war and colleagues became his family and home for four years, he is not ready to return. It is no coincidence that the train that should take him to his homeland is delayed for 3 days, and then Alexei leaves it with his fellow traveler Masha, delaying his arrival home.
At home, he feels like a stranger and useless, Ivanov understands that he needs to take the life of his wife and children into his own hands, and make independent decisions, and not follow official orders. This frightens him, he thinks only about his painful ego, and, shielding himself and his desire to leave the house and the difficulties associated with it, he makes his wife and children guilty - that the wife succumbed to momentary weakness and was not faithful, the eldest son runs everything and commands in the house, and the little daughter does not recognize her father and prefers Uncle Semyon to him.
This is how it turned out for Alexei to return after the war. Did he see him like this in his dreams? Surely not, and the return did not really take place for him, he could not return in his heart and mind, so he sees only one way out - to leave his family and leave.
Why is Platonov's story called The Return? When the train, in which Ivanov leaves his family, starts moving, he sees from the window that two of his children are desperately, stumbling and falling, trying to keep up with the train and urge him to return to them with gestures. Only now he was able to overcome his pride and touch life with a “bare heart”, at that moment spiritual insight came and Ivanov’s real return to himself and to his home took place.
The story of Andrey Platonov called "The Return" was not published during the life of the writer. In the journal Novy Mir in the penultimate (double) issue for 1946 (No. 10-11), only its first version, Ivanov's Family, appeared, which was immediately subjected to severe criticism from the then authorities of Soviet literature - A. Fadeev and V. Yermilov1. After that, the author significantly improved the journal version, in particular, giving it a different name, but could not publish it. The story was first published in 1962, 11 years after the writer's death. As N. Kornienko writes in a commentary, “It was only by sheer chance that Platonov's name did not appear on the pages of the famous party resolution of 1946 on the magazines Zvezda and Leningrad. The story “The Ivanov Family” was wanted to be printed by the magazine “Zvezda”, but in the spring of 1946 Platonov took the story from “Zvezda” and transferred it to “New World””3.
The reasons for this transmission are unknown, just as it is unknown why the story was published at all. In his criticism, Fadeev - fully guided by the spirit of the Resolution - called the story "false and dirty", "growing into spitefulness", even "petty gossip that crawled out onto the pages of the press", Yermilov, who spoke before him, - filled with "gloom, cynicism, spiritual emptiness ”, “the most vile slander against the Soviet people.” According to the latter, Platonov always loved “mental slovenliness”, possessed a “dirty imagination”, he had a craving for everything “ugly and dirty”, in the spirit of bad “Dostoevism”, he turned even an 11-year-old hero “into a preacher of cynicism” (this about the story retold by Petrushka about “Uncle Khariton” and his tolerance for the betrayal of his own wife). Platonovsky Ivanov for Yermilov is “thick-skinned” and “coarse-haired”: in order to “break through” this man, restore his conscience, it took such a terrible scene as “miserable, stumbling children's figures running after the “walking” father. (But, then, after all, this scene in the story, as they say, got through to the critic himself or even “got through”! - This is partly confirmed by the fact that after almost 20 years Yermilov was forced to admit his act with reviewing the article “erroneous”. ) It seemed especially outrageous for him that the hero is shown as “just the most ordinary, “mass” person; No wonder he was given such an everyday, multimillion-dollar surname. This surname has a demonstrative meaning in the story: they say that this is exactly what many and many “Ivanovs and their families” are like.
By changing the name, Platonov only in this way met the wishes of the critic. In general, on the contrary, he somehow strengthened precisely those aspects for which he was scolded. Here are two more pathetic points of Yermilov's article: “There is no more pure and healthy family in the world than the Soviet family” (we involuntarily recall the words of Pontius Pilate from the second chapter of The Master and Margarita) and also - “The Soviet people breathe the clean air of heroic hard work and creation in the name of the great idea - communism". The thing is that there was no chanting of this in the story. Platonov's description, Yermilov summarizes, "is always only outwardly realistic, but in essence it is an imitation of concreteness" (but what, after all, should an artistic description be, if not an imitation of concreteness?).
Characteristic, perhaps, is the change in the form of the name of Ivanov's son, which occurred in the final version, and the very difference in how the narrator, mother and father call him in the story: for the first time he is called diminutively Petka - still behind the eyes, in a distant memory of his father, who did not see the children four long years and remembering his son only as a little boy. Then, on the contrary, his father calls him in an adult way - Peter (the narrator seems to be trying on how to call an 11-year-old boy), at the first meeting with him, in his eyes, the father will call his son even by his patronymic - Peter Alekseevich, partly as a joke, so that to show that it is difficult to recognize him, then twice more - Petya (here he is forced, as it were, to justify himself to his son, which will be discussed further), but then immediately and to the end only - Petrushka. By the way, that was the name of the hero and that was the second title (usually Platonov wrote it in brackets, after the main one) of the story, not published during his lifetime, in 1943, with the main title - “The Soldier's Fear”.
The mother, in direct speech, everywhere in the “Return” addresses her son affectionately - Petrusha. It must be said that in the story “The Ivanov Family” there was no form of the name Petrushka at all, instead of it everywhere - both in the address of the father and mother, and in the speech of the narrator - only Petrusha. Later, in a revised version, such an affectionately respectful form becomes more significant, remaining only in the mouth of the mother: cf. also the naming of the son Petrusha by the patriarchal parents of Pushkin's Pyotr Grinev in The Captain's Daughter. The name Petrushka, which for Russian culture is initially associated with connotations of ridicule and even mockery, in the tradition of the square theater and popular print, makes Platonov’s ordinary neutral in the story. (In total, in this form, the name is used 72 times in the story.)
10. The theme of return in post-war literature (M. V. Isakovsky, A. T. Tvardovsky, A. P. Platonov).
Characteristic of the literature of the first post-war years is the theme of the return of yesterday's soldiers to peaceful labor. This theme was born by life itself. Millions of people were returning from the fronts of the Patriotic War. They enthusiastically joined in creative work, fought for the implementation of the plans of the party and the government. plan for the restoration and further development of the national economy.
The Soviet people ardently undertook the implementation of this plan. More than 6,000 industrial enterprises were restored and rebuilt. Coal and oil extraction, steel and iron production quickly reached pre-war levels.
Turning to the present, the writers created works about the working class and the collective farm peasantry, about the Soviet intelligentsia, about a new type of person who grew up and educated under socialism. Creative work becomes the main theme of many significant works. The central place in them is occupied by the image of a man who returned from the war. Unlike bourgeois writers, who portrayed yesterday's soldier and officer as spiritually devastated, having lost faith in happiness, unable to find a place for themselves in peaceful life, Soviet writers spoke about labor pathos that inspired people who returned from the war.
Typical for the first post-war years is the image of a demobilized officer in S. Babaevsky's novel "Chevalier of the Golden Star". Hero of the Soviet Union Sergei Tutarinov, upon his return from the army, becomes the organizer of a new upsurge in the collective farm economy. This is an advanced, capable, energetic worker, passionate about his work. He encounters the chairman of the district executive committee, Khokhlakov, who has lost his sense of the new and is unable to lead the further development of the collective farm village, with the bureaucrat Khvorostyankin, whose image is given in satirical tones, and with a number of other negative characters. The depiction of Tutarinov's struggle with these people could lead the author to raise the fundamental questions of the development of the post-war collective farm economy. However, they are not reflected in the novel. To an even greater extent than in E. Maltsev, in the novel by S. Babaevsky, the problems of collective farming are limited by narrow limits and do not find an outlet in the general, complex, contradictory post-war situation.
These shortcomings were even more pronounced in the two-volume novel Light Above the Earth (1949-1950). Here, the characters, already familiar to readers from the novel The Cavalier of the Golden Star, often turn into schematic "service" figures, designed only to illustrate certain theses, and sometimes lack the inner development inherent in their characters. The author depicted with relief the overcoming of the contradictions that had arisen, passing by the real difficulties that hindered the growth of agriculture.
Such a refusal to disclose the contradictions of life, smoothing out difficulties and shortcomings were associated with the "conflict-free theory" that became widespread in those years.
Supporters of this theory proceeded from the far-fetched position that in a socialist society in which there are no antagonistic classes, no conflicts exist and are theoretically impossible, except for conflicts "between good and excellent." The denial of the facts of the struggle of socialist society against the still tenacious remnants of the past, against the shortcomings that take place in reality, led in practice to the creation of works in which the truth of life was violated, there was no intense action, lively and purposeful characters; the composition of such works, devoid of dramatic conflict, inevitably became loose and amorphous. As noted in the Pravda editorial “To overcome the backlog of dramaturgy”, in Soviet reality itself there are contradictions and shortcomings, there are conflicts between the new and the old, which literature, faithful to the truth of life, must reveal, supporting the new and advanced and mercilessly exposing everything that hinders the development of Soviet society. The article pointed out that one of the lagging genres of literature is satire, designed to ridicule negative phenomena and actively fight against them. However, this article did not reveal the main reasons why conflict-free works arose, and the literature avoided talking about contradictions. These reasons became clear only when the consequences of the cult of personality were done away with.
In connection with the theory of non-conflict, the problems of the typical and the problem of the positive hero were misinterpreted.
The idea that only the most common can be typical, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the idea of the typical as an expression of social essence led to illustrativeness, to ignoring the unique individuality of living human characters. And the thesis that the so-called “ideal” heroes, endowed with all positive qualities, have the greatest educational power, prompted the construction of speculative and schematic characters, led to the rejection of the realistic traditions of Gorky and Sholokhov, Fadeev and Ostrovsky, Makarenko and Krymov with their living and developing heroes.
The entire atmosphere of our life at the new historical stage has contributed to the fruitful resolution of all these questions and the elimination of dogmatism in the theory of socialist realism.
Books about the Great Patriotic War, written by front-line soldiers, are stories about love for the Motherland, about self-sacrifice for the sake of life, about courage, about heroism, about friendship, and, finally, about people. These books are about the cost of winning the Victory and what this war really was.
"Return". Andrey Platonov
Andrei Platonov's story "The Return" can be considered one of the most powerful works about the Great Patriotic War. Pungent, relevant, multifaceted. At one time it was not recognized and banned. More than a decade passed before Soviet writers realized that the theme of the "returnees"' adaptation to civilian life was much more important than the theme of the heroism of the Soviet soldier. After all, the "returnees" had to live here and now, while the war remained in the past.
The return from the war to civilian life is very painful, Platonov is sure. People are weaning from peaceful life, barracks, trenches, daily battles, blood become their home. To rebuild in a "peaceful way", you need hard work on yourself. A wife is not a comrade. Any nurse in this sense is much closer to a soldier. She, like a soldier, sees daily suffering and death. The heroism of the wife lies elsewhere - to save the children and the hearth.
Who is Pyotr Ivanov, the son of Alexei Ivanov, who returned from the front? This "child of war" in the story becomes a counterbalance to his father. Possessing the consciousness of an adult, he replaced the man in the house when Alexei Ivanov was at the front. And the relationship between him and his father is perhaps the most interesting thing in the work. After all, they both do not know how to live an ordinary peaceful life. Captain Ivanov forgot what it was like, and his son didn't learn it.
"Return" can be re-read many times, and the story always leaves a lasting impression. Platonic style of writing - "language inside out" - after all well reflects the essence of the story - "life inside out". Every day spent in the war, a person dreams of returning home. But four long years pass, and you no longer understand what a house is. The soldier returns and cannot find his place in this "new-old" world.
Most of us read this story in school or college. On the eve of Victory Day, it is definitely worth re-reading. At least in order to understand again why Captain Alexei Ivanov was never able to leave for his random fellow traveler Masha, but jumped off the train when he saw the children running. "The exposed heart" did not allow this to be done, fear, love or habit - the reader decides.
"Not on the list." Boris Vasiliev
The action of the story takes place at the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War in the Brest Fortress, which was one of the first to take the blow of the German army. The main character, 19-year-old Lieutenant Nikolai Pluzhnikov, who had just graduated from a military school, arrived at the fortress on the night of June 22. He has not yet been included in the military lists and, probably, he could have gone away from the war, but without hesitation he becomes the defense of the fortress, which means the Motherland and ... his bride.
This book is rightfully considered one of the best works about the war. Boris Vasiliev, himself a participant in hostilities, wrote about what was close to him - about love, courage, heroism, and, first of all, about a person. About those who lived and fought desperately in spite of everything - hunger, cold, loneliness, lack of help, who believed in victory, no matter what, about those who "can be killed, but cannot be defeated."
In an unequal battle with the enemy, Pluzhnikov defends the fortress to the last. And in these difficult conditions, love gives him strength. Love makes you hope, believe and does not give up. He did not learn about the death of his beloved, and, probably, it was the confidence that she had escaped that gave him the strength to hold out in the fortress until the spring of 1942, when it became known that the Germans had not entered Moscow.
During this year, yesterday's graduate of a military school has turned into an experienced fighter. Having matured and lost his youthful illusions, he became the last defender of the fortress, a hero to whom even German soldiers and officers gave military honors. "The Brest Fortress did not surrender, it bled," Boris Vasiliev wrote about those most terrible first days of the war. How many of them, unknown, nameless soldiers who died in this war. This book is about them - "It is not so important where our sons lie. The only thing that matters is what they died for."
"Live and remember." Valentin Rasputin
1945 Andrey Guskov returns to his native village of Atamanovka after being wounded and treated in the hospital. But this return is not at all heroic - he is a deserter, who, due to momentary weakness, fled from the front to his native places. A good man, who honestly fought back three and a half years, now lives in the taiga like a wild animal. He was able to tell only one person about his act - his wife Nastya, who is forced to hide him even from her relatives. For her, their secret, furtive, rare dates are akin to sin. And when it turns out that she is pregnant, and rumors spread around the village that her husband had not died and was hiding nearby, Nastena literally finds herself at a dead end and finds only one way out ...
“Live and Remember” is a story about how the war turned the lives of two people upside down, tearing them out of their usual way of life, about the moral issues that the war posed to people, about the spiritual rebirth that the heroes have to go through.
"Moment of Truth". Vladimir Bogomolov
1944 Belarus. A group of German agents are operating in the frontline zone, who transmit information to the enemy about Soviet troops. A small group of SMERSH scouts led by Captain Alekhine is assigned to find a detachment of scouts.
The novel is interesting primarily because it tells about the activities of the Soviet counterintelligence during the war years and is based on real events, it contains many facts confirmed by documents.
The story of how people, each with their own fate and experiences, collect information literally bit by bit, how they analyze it, and on the basis of this draw conclusions in order to find and neutralize the enemy, captures - in the middle of the 20th century there were neither computers nor CCTV cameras, no satellites, by which it was possible to find out the location of any person on Earth ...
The author shows the work of SMERSH workers from different angles, tells from the position of different heroes. Vladimir Bogomolov is a front-line soldier who happened to serve in SMERSH, which made it possible to describe with such accuracy the smallest details of counterintelligence work. In 1974, when the book was first published in the Novy Mir magazine, it became, as they would say now, a real bestseller. Since then, the book has been translated into several languages and has gone through more than 100 editions.
"Son of the Regiment" Valentin Kataev
Everyone knows the story of Vanya Solntsev, who, despite his young age, has already seen a lot of grief and death. This story is included in the school curriculum, and, perhaps, it is difficult to find the best work for the younger generation about the war. The hard fate of a smart and experienced child in military affairs, who still needs love, and care, and affection, cannot but touch. Like any boy, Vanya can not listen to adults, not thinking about what the retribution for this could be. His new family - artillery soldiers, do their best to take care of him and, to the best of their ability, caress and pamper the boy. But war is merciless. The captain, the named father of the boy, dying asks fellow soldiers to take care of the child. The commander of the artillery regiment sends Vanya to the Suvorov military school - the parting scene is the most touching in the book: the soldiers gather their son for the journey, folding his simple belongings, giving away a loaf of bread and shoulder straps of the deceased captain ...
"Son of the Regiment" became the first work when the author shows the war through the perception of a child. The story of this story began in 1943, when Kataev, in one of the military units, met a boy in a soldier's uniform, altered especially for him. The soldiers found the child in the dugout and took it with them. The boy gradually got used to it and became their real son. The writer, who worked as a front-line correspondent during the war years, said that, going to the front line, he often encountered orphans who lived in military units. That is why he managed to tell the story of Vanya Solntsev so poignantly.
I have been breathing unevenly on the work of Andrei Platonov for a long time, and recently I re-read his military stories and again drowned in the space of his images, thoughts, peculiar word and sound combinations, some completely new semantic assessments of life. It is still surprising to me that today no one writes the way Platonov did in his time (of course, there are some similarities, echoes, but all the same, Platonov remained, I think, in splendid isolation). I would compare his image in Russian literature, however strange it may seem to you, with the image of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. They are impossible to imitate. And practically no one tries to do this, and if they try, then the secondary nature immediately catches the eye. Meanwhile, in my opinion, this is the only way to write - it would seem detached, but with the deepest knowledge of the subject of the narrative and relying on a completely original, unlike speech.
Why I suddenly remembered Platonov's military stories, you can easily guess - the beginning of May, the end of the Great Patriotic War, Victory Day.
My friends, read Platonov! Out of context with military themes and totalitarian reality, through which his voice was torn, this is the greatest writer. In his military stories, I again found revelations for myself that for some reason had not been fully revealed to me before. How we, later generations, perceived the war: it was a temporary retreat, which then naturally resulted in a victorious march all the way to Berlin. At the same time, we know that our command did not particularly spare the soldiers: these were attacks under the muzzles of their own machine guns and the notorious order “Not a step back” ... Not so with Platonov.
It turns out that we had not only amazing top-level commanders and brave soldiers, but also absolutely exceptional people at the level of commanders of companies, battalions, regiments. It was they who put into practice the brilliant ideas of the command, bringing direct combat to the level of art. At the same time, what care for each soldier! What amazing humanity! What decency! And all this was multiplied by skill, calculation, estimate. How can one forget this, how can one doubt our people who have gone through the hell of war and Stalinism. Low bow to all of them. I address the last passage to those who like to gossip about the immorality of the Stalinist system and, accordingly, about the derogatory assessment of everything and everyone that happened during this period. Taking into account these unprecedented circumstances known to everyone today, you peer even more closely into the personality and work of Andrei Platonov, who surprisingly managed to coexist with the inhuman system of state genocide in relation to his own people, while remaining an artist of universal scale.
In his military stories, the writer takes us along the most advanced edge of military events, where we admire the skill of our commanders and soldiers, outplaying a very worthy enemy militarily, and along sad rear affairs, where mostly old people, women and children remained. The story is often told in the first person. And here you simply enjoy both the speech and the originality of the thoughts of the heroes, who, in the performance of Platonov, are necessarily philosophers, necessarily whole, pure natures. Through equanimity and some unusual for us, today, detachment from the horrors of military events, something big and important comes to consciousness - it seems to me that this is an understanding of life as such. Without hysteria and fuss, without excessive pathos and sentimentality, Platonov's man lives in sometimes inhuman conditions and nothing can break him and turn him into a non-human. Today, such qualities as modest dignity and inner pride seem unfashionable, shocking, courage, partying, chatter look much more familiar. Probably this also “has a place to be”, but let's remember the first one as well. Let's diversify our menu in terms of behaviors and sensations! Those who are trying to do this today will like Platonov. It is amazing how calm and in this calmness his hero is beautiful, how natural, noble his thoughts and actions are. We have a lot to learn from this, in a sense, simplicity. Simplicity - not by simplicity, but by purity of thoughts, straightforwardness, honesty and, on this basis, uncompromising conscience.
The writer has no problem with plots. But it seems to me that, nevertheless, the main advantage in his work is by no means the plot. The main, if I may say so, attention is paid to psychological collisions, the main angle of the narrative, Plato's creed - a man in military and other circumstances, his perception of life and it is not so important which century is outside the window. It seems that the military entourage is not an end in itself for the writer, but simply the circumstances in which both he and his heroes had the honor to live and create. The feeling of universality is the main delight from Plato's stories. It seems to me that the unique psychological, philosophical perception of life, the surprisingly colorful, original language of Andrei Platonov is an absolutely original phenomenon both in Russian and in world literature.
Read, read Platonov! Read it a lot and choke. Platonov is real, exactly what we sometimes really lack now. He will help! We are so entangled today in the little things and fuss ...
Children at war
based on the story by A. Platonov "Little Soldier"
Reprint from the book: Kruk N.V., Kotomtseva I.V. Library lessons in reading. Scenarios 1-9 grades: At 2 o'clock. H 2.5-9 cells / N.V. Kruk, I.V. Kotomtsev. - M.: Russian School Library Association, 2010. - 304 p.
The purpose of the lesson:
To acquaint students with the life and work of A. Platonov
Reading aloud and discussing the story
Equipment: portrait of a writer, book exhibition.
Biography of the writer.
Platonov Andrei Platonovich (1899-1951)
(pseudonym, real name - Klimentov)
He was born and spent his childhood "in the Yamskaya Sloboda, near Voronezh itself." His father is a railroad mechanic. After studying at the diocesan and city schools, at the age of 14 he began working as a messenger, foundry worker, assistant driver on a locomotive, during the Civil War - on an armored train. This is where his literary journey began. In 1922, the first book of poems, Blue Depth, was published in the Krasnodar publishing house Burevestnik, and in 1927 in Moscow, the first collection of prose, Epifan Gateways, was published. This is where the path of the young writer begins.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Platonov created his best works, which were destined to find their readers only half a century later: Pit, Chevengur, Juvenile Sea. The writer was excommunicated from literature for the story “Doubting Makar » and the chronicle "For the future" (1931), which did not agree with the "general line" chosen by the Bolshevik party in relation to the countryside. Platonov is no longer printed, they have to write “on the table”. At this time, the writer turns to children's literature.
The circle of children's reading includes mainly works created in the 40s. At this time, the writer becomes known as the author of children's stories and a collection of fairy tales. "Magic Ring" for the first time a collection of fairy tales was published in 1950. These were retellings on the plots of folk tales, written down mainly by A. Afanasyev. Creative processing and author's comprehension of traditional stories of oral folk art make Platonov's fairy tales one of the best examples of this genre, which was initiated by Russian writers of the 19th century.
During the Great Patriotic War he worked as a war correspondent in the army. Platonov's military stories were published in newspapers and magazines: Znamya, Krasnaya Zvezda, Krasnoarmeyets. Three collections of these stories were published in Moscow in separate editions. Today we will talk about one of these works, written by us in 1943.
At the front, the writer was shell-shocked, demobilized in February 1946.
At the end of his life he wrote a lot for children and about children.
Issues for discussion:
- When describing Seryozha, what do you immediately pay attention to?
Although he is only ten years old, he looks like an "experienced fighter" - dressed in a military uniform. It can be seen from his face that he fought, and had to endure a lot: “His small, weathered face ... adapted and already familiar to life ...”.
- What is the discrepancy between his appearance and behavior?
Despite the fact that he is a soldier, he is still a child: Seryozha tightly held the officer’s hand, clinging his face to his hand, he did not want to let the major go, “the bright eyes of the child clearly exposed his sadness, as if they were the living surface of his heart, he yearned ... ”, but when he realized that parting was inevitable, he began to cry.
- Why is the boy so worried about separation?
He has already experienced the bitterness of loss, he knows how painful it is to lose loved ones - "that's why he did not want separation, and his heart could not be alone. it was afraid that, left alone, it would die».
- From the second part of the story, we learn about the past of this boy. What is this life like?
Seryozha was the “son of a regiment”, he grew up with his parents in the army, “took war to heart”, went to intelligence, brought valuable information, and thus brought up a “military character” in himself. Mom, realizing that there was no place for a child in the war, wanted to send Seryozha to the rear, but he "could no longer leave the army, his character dragged him into the war." After some time, his father died, his mother soon died. Major Savelier took Seryozha to him.
- People, exhausted by the war, in some moments were infinitely happy. When did it happen?
On vacation, during sleep: “Seryozha Labkov snored in a dream, like an adult, elderly person, and his face, now moving away from sorrow and memories, became calm and innocently happy, representing himself the image of a holy childhood, from where the war took him away.
- How do you understand why Serezha is running away from Major Bakhichev?
Seryozha fell in love with Savelyev, he became the closest, most dear to him, and he does not want to come to terms with the idea that Savelyev will become another loss in his life, he runs, “tormented by the feeling of his childish heart to the person who left him, perhaps after him, perhaps, back to his father's regiment, where the graves of his father and mother were.
CONCLUSION
Many works have been written about the war, but this story is especially disturbing to the soul, since the main character is a child. War is terrible because it takes the lives of people, separates loved ones, destroys the usual way of life. She inflicts the greatest damage on the soul of a person, especially a small person, like Seryozha. Having gone through difficult trials, one must be able not to lose a person in oneself.
Literature:
Buchugina, T.G. War and children: A. Platonov's story "Little Soldier" / T.G. Buchugina // Literature at school. - 2003. - No. 3. - S. 34-38.
Children at war
Ekaterina TITOVA
METAPHYSICS OF MILITARY STORIES BY ANDREI PLATONOV
The stories of Andrei Platonov in 1941-1946, thanks to the variety of details of the fate of his heroes and at the same time eventful, epochal integrity, gave a three-dimensional picture of Russian life during the Great Patriotic War; this picture is interesting to contemporaries, often stories are performed by good readers on the Zvezda and Rossiya radios.
All of them are combined into a whole epic canvas, and they are connected into a single whole not only by the subject and personality of the author, hushed up, half-forgotten by his contemporaries, but carefully read today even in America.
When Konstantin Simonov was with the Nobel laureate Ernest Hemingway with a delegation of writers, he asked: what inspired him, a writer of war, Spanish passions and a hunter, to write The Old Man and the Sea? It's so atypical for the author of "Fiesta" ... Hemingway replied: "Your genius Platonov." And Simonov, according to him, blushed.
Platonov addressed the human heart. Yes, not simple, Russian. He sets himself the task of understanding the incomprehensible human essence, which manifests itself one way or another in moments of moral choice. To do this, Platonov places his heroes in conditions where people become either martyrs and prophets, or executioners and traitors. And animals, birds, grass and trees acquire the highest meaning of being, being involved in the cycle of the eternal idea of the incarnation of God, the transcendental truth that inspires all living things, and especially man.
This goal is served not only by specific methods of artistic representation, but also by a special philosophy. Anthropomorphism, naturomorphism and theomorphism, on which the writer's works are built, are interchanged, and the usual value system of views breaks down, the clichéd imagery system of the reader-man in the street.
Platonov teaches to look at the world in a new way, with his own eyes. The religious idea, Christian in essence, but without naming the name of Christ, largely determines Platonic poetics. He defeated the prose writers of his era, who simply and understandably serve the vital goals of only physical survival.
Reading Platonov, you become infected with his philosophy. The Platonic language is something more than just syntactic constructions on a given topic for the sake of a realistic description of people and phenomena, therefore Platonov is a narrator-prophet who takes on the feat to calmly and confidently speak about the divine essence of man. And in the era of ideological unbelief, nihilism and unbridled propaganda of building a paradise on earth without God, the writer found a method and strength in himself to work for the salvation of man in man and humanity in humanity.
In the artistic metatext of Platonov, Christian, and even pre-Christian religiosity, the basis and reason for life on earth, works. The author focuses on the images of Mother Earth, the Tree of the World, the World-Temple, Russia-Temple. (I remember Gumilyov's: “But human blood is not holier / Emerald juice of herbs…”.) This shines brightly in the stories of the war period. What drives his heroes? What is he aware of? But just as Platonov is not afraid of censorship, so he is not afraid of the torment and death of the fighters from his stories. The juice of life, the soul of the people. Blood. These are his heroes, they live in the same chronotope of his works and, like earth, like steel, they participate in the movement of the plot as a whole. That is, the inanimate in Platonov becomes alive, these are equal heroes of his works, spiritual, relatives who are fighting together with the Red Army for the freedom of their native people.
The hero of the story "Armor" is an old, lame-legged sailor, silent and contemplative Savvin, by blood - a Kursk peasant. Savvin loved the Russian land so much that from childhood he thought about protecting it. And so, when a fascist attacked his native land - the life of his blood in his ancestors, relatives buried in it - he invented a way to regenerate metal into the strongest.
This armor was until 1943 the most important problem of Stalin: the German tank armor was stronger ... But this armor will not be discussed in the story. Armor is a metaphor. Stronger than any metal - love for the land, for the homeland.
The fighter narrator and Savvin go to get notebooks with calculations hidden under the stove in the sailor's house. Hiding in vegetable gardens and bread, they witnessed the hijacking of Russian women and girls into slavery. One of them could not leave their native land, clung to it and howled. Then she turned around and walked back. The German shot at her, but she continued to walk, so strong was the Russian free soul in her. She died. But Savvin shot both German escorts, and the women fled into the forest. Continuing on to his already burning village, Savvin wrote and handed over a piece of paper with the address to the storyteller, in case he was killed. In order to save the recipe for miracle armor, its calculations.
“Some ships are not enough,” I said to the sailor. - We need more tanks, aircraft, artillery ...
Not much, Savvin agreed. - But everything came from ships: a tank is a land vessel, and an airplane is an air boat. I understand that the ship is not everything, but now I understand what is needed - we need armor, such armor that our enemies do not have. We will put ships and tanks in this armor, we will dress all military vehicles in it. This metal should be almost perfect in durability, strength, almost eternal, thanks to its special and natural structure ... Armor is the muscles and bones of war!
The muscles and bones of war are in fact the muscles and bones of the children of the earth, from which everything is made: metals, grass, trees, and children.
"Armor" - the first story that went to print, brought fame to the writer. It was published in the fall of 1942 in the Znamya magazine, along with the publication of the final poem by Alexander Tvardovsky "Vasily Terkin". This helped to gain a foothold in his name in literature, after being forgotten for years, but it was precisely this proximity to the adored by all Terkin that laid, like a bookmark, the name of the prose writer Platonov in the memory of the reader.
The earth is a helper, the earth is the hero of the story. This can be seen in many other works of Platonov.
Here is the story "The Inanimate Enemy". This is a first person story. “Recently, death approached me in a war: I was lifted into the air by an air wave from a high-explosive shell, my last breath was suppressed in me, and the world froze for me, like a silent, distant scream. Then I was thrown back to the ground and buried on top of its ruined ashes. But life was preserved in me; she left my heart and left my consciousness dark, but she took refuge in some secret, perhaps the last, refuge in my body and from there timidly and slowly spread again in me with warmth and a sense of the usual happiness of existence.
But he was not the only one buried, the earth filled up the German too. Unarmed, they grappled in hand-to-hand combat, and crush each other, littered with earth. There is a dialogue between them, and through this dialogue Platonov expressed the essence of fascism.
“Then I began to talk to the German in order to hear him.
Why did you come here? I asked Rudolf Waltz. Why are you in our land?
Now this is our land. We Germans are organizing here eternal happiness, contentment, order, food and warmth for the German people, - Waltz answered with distinct accuracy and speed.
And where will we be? I asked.
Waltz immediately answered me:
The Russian people will be killed,” he said with conviction. - And whoever remains, we will drive him to Siberia, into the snow and ice, and whoever is meek and recognizes God's son in Hitler, let him work for us all his life and pray for forgiveness on the graves of German soldiers until he dies, and after death, we will dispose of his corpse in industry and forgive him, because he will be no more.
The Russian soldier in the story always talks about the earth, and the German about the Siberian snow and ice. A Russian in a cave made of earth, and even in a grave, is gratifying: “While we tossed and turned in the fight, we crushed the damp earth around us, and we got a small comfortable cave, similar to both a dwelling and a grave, and now I was lying next to the enemy” .
In a conversation with a German, a soldier comes to the conclusion that the enemy does not have a soul, it is a deadly machine that needs to be broken. And the Russian soldier squeezed the body of Rudolf Waltz in a deadly embrace. The Russian land squeezed him, all her blood, all roots and herbs, all the bread, watered with the sweat of Russian reapers, all Russian warriors who cut down the Tatars and Teutons in these fields.
“But I, a Russian Soviet soldier, was the first and decisive force that stopped the movement of death in the world; I myself became death for my inanimate enemy and turned him into a corpse, so that the forces of living nature would grind his body into dust, so that the caustic pus of his being would soak into the ground, cleanse itself there, light up and become ordinary moisture that irrigates the roots of the grass.
The story "Spiritual people", written in the same 1942, is considered the central work of Platonov during the war years. This is a description of the battle near Sevastopol. Politruk Filchenko and four Red Navy men stand to the death: tanks are approaching...
The artistic space of the story incorporates front and rear, reality and dreams, physical and spiritual, past and present, moment and eternity. It is written in such a poetic and incomprehensible language that it cannot even be called a story in the usual sense of the word. It has the features of a song, a tale, it is poetic, it is almost a poster and almost photographic documentary, because it is based on a real fact - the feat of Sevastopol sailors who threw grenades under tanks in order to stop the enemy at the cost of their lives. Platonov wrote: "This, in my opinion, is the greatest episode of the war, and I was instructed to make a work worthy of the memory of these sailors out of it."
And again, the earth is the protagonist, the meaning and cause of the drama of the destinies unfolding on it. They run along the ground, they fall into it, trenches are dug in it, earthen cracks are clogged with fighters. Earth is everywhere: in boots, behind the collar, in the mouth. The earth is what the mortally wounded fighter sees for the last time. Here are the views of the earth: a dugout, an embankment, a field, a grave.
“At midnight, political instructor Nikolai Filchenko and Red Navy sailor Yuri Parshin came to the trench from the dugout. Filchenko conveyed the order of the command: we need to take the line on the Duvankoyskoye highway, because there is an embankment, there the barrier is stronger than this bare slope of the height, and we need to hold on there until the death of the enemy; in addition, before dawn, you should check your weapons, change them to a new one if the old one is not handy or malfunctioning, and get ammunition.
The Red Navy, retreating through a wormwood field, found the body of Commissar Polikarpov and carried it away to bury it and save it from desecration by the enemy. How else can you express love for a dead, silent comrade?
There are several heroes in the story, with their own pre-war life, unique, but such recognizable features that each of the readers can easily find prototypes in their memory. I will not list them by name, although it would be worth doing, these heroes-images are so convex, so good ... They all perish. Because the best, immortal chosen ones of God, who laid down their lives for their neighbor, perish.
In the story, children are playing funeral on the outskirts of the city. They dig graves and bury clay men. Platonov often refers to the theme of childhood, this people is firmly seated in his heart and memory. Children and teenagers are a spiritual countdown from innocence, purity. This is a litmus test: "Yushka" and "Volchek", "Pit" and "Cow", "July Thunderstorm" and "Little Soldier" ...
"The Little Soldier" is a story about orphanhood, or rather, about the strength of family ties (conditionally) restored with difficulty, so necessary for the children of the war. For the boy, the son of the regiment, the major became such a prosthetic dad, with whom the boy had to live an important stretch of the way. There was affection, love. This love is destined to test, separation. And the feeling of the boy, his grief of separation, separation, perhaps forever, was described by Platonov.
“The second major drew the child by the hand to him and caressed him, comforting him, but the boy, without removing his hand, remained indifferent to him. The first major was also saddened, and he whispered to the child that he would soon take him to him and they would meet again for an inseparable life, and now they parted for a short time. The boy believed him, however, the truth itself could not console his heart, attached to only one person and wanting to be with him constantly and near, and not far away. The child already knew what the distance and the time of war are - it is difficult for people from there to return to each other, so he did not want separation, and his heart could not be alone, it was afraid that, left alone, it would die. And in his last request and hope, the boy looked at the major, who should leave him with a stranger.
How much doom and resignation to fate. This humility is characteristic of all the defeated, who agree with the decision of the winner. Except for some rare people. Such was the woman who did not go into captivity, but was shot on the way home in "Brona". Death or separation? Or a new attachment?.. This question arises before everyone in life and not only in the war.
And the boy, Seryozha, could not. He remained true to this attachment, went off at night to no one knows where.
“Major Bakhichev dozed off and fell asleep. Seryozha Labkov snored in his sleep like an adult, an elderly person, and his face, now moving away from sorrow and memories, became calm and innocently happy, showing the image of a holy childhood, from where the war had taken him away. I also fell asleep, taking advantage of unnecessary time so that it would not pass in vain.
We woke up at dusk, at the very end of a long June day. Now there were two of us in three beds - Major Bakhichev and I, but Seryozha Labkov was not there. The major was worried, but then he decided that the boy had gone somewhere for a short time. Later, we went with him to the station and visited the military commandant, but no one noticed the little soldier in the rear of the war.
The next morning, Seryozha Labkov also did not return to us, and God knows where he went, tormented by the feeling of his childish heart for the person who left him - maybe after him, maybe back to his father's regiment, where were the graves of his father and mother " .
Andrey Platonov's prose is archetypal. Thought is the earth, animals and plants on it, as well as people and stones, accomplices and witnesses of history. Everyone is equal, everything works for historical truth and justice, there has been no chaos since the emergence of God - I, the Personality in the Universe. In the sharpest moments of a person's life, all insignificant grains of sand-images of consciousness and memory add up to a coherent and clear program of action, a map of the strategy of war against non-existence, the universal evil of chaos and lies.
However, a person who is a problem and a mystery to himself cannot fully understand and explain his existence and purpose. Only in the face of death is much revealed to him. So it was with the hero of the story "The Tree of the Motherland".
“Mother said goodbye to him on the outskirts; further Stepan Trofimov went alone. There, at the exit from the village, at the edge of a country road, which, conceived in rye, went from here to the whole world, - there grew a lonely old tree, covered with blue leaves, moist and shining with their young strength. Old people in the village have long called this tree "God's", because it was not like other trees growing in the Russian plain, because more than once in his old age he was killed by lightning from the sky, but the tree, having fallen ill a little, then came to life again and even thicker than before it was dressed with leaves, and also because birds loved this tree, they sang and lived there, and this tree in the summer dryness did not throw its children to the ground - extra wilted leaves, but the whole thing froze, sacrificing nothing, not even with whom, without parting, that grew on him and was alive.
Stepan plucked one leaf from this divine tree, put it in his bosom and went to war. The leaf was small and damp, but it warmed up on the human body, pressed against it and became imperceptible, and Stepan Trofimov soon forgot about it.
The fighter fought, was taken prisoner. He was put in a cement cell. And then I found that leaf on my chest. He stuck it to the wall in front of him. And before he died, clutching the throat of anyone who entered, he sat down to rest against the wall. This sheet for him is the boundary of his personal space. His homeland. His hut, mother and tree are on the edge of the village. Here are his boundaries. And he will die for them.
“He got up and looked again at the leaf from the god tree. The mother of this leaf was alive and grew on the edge of the village, at the beginning of the rye field. Let that tree of the motherland grow forever and safely, and Trofimov here, in captivity of the enemy, in a stone crack, will think and take care of him. He decided to strangle with his hands any enemy who looked into his cell, because if there was one enemy less, then the Red Army would become easier.
Trofimov did not want to live and languish in vain; he loved to have meaning from his life, just as from good land there is a harvest. He sat down on the cold floor and calmed down against the iron door in anticipation of the enemy.
Again, living earth is opposed to iron and dead cement. Earth is the hero of Plato's stories. Like a prayer, like a spell, the image of Mother Earth, the Tree of Life wanders from story to story...
The story was written in the same 1942. And this is not loud glory, but the truth - Platonic stories about the war are written in blood.
Another story of this period is "Mother" ("Search for the Lost").
In the prose of the war years, the image of the people as a large family appears, grows stronger and takes on flesh. A warrior is a son, a mother of a warrior who has become a brother or son to another warrior - these heroes were the reality of military literature.
In Plato's plots, an important role is played by a moment of super-realistic insight, when a person and the world around him are divinely transformed. The mystery of man in the writer's artistic world remains in his texts not called by the name of God, a hidden figure of silence - and yet allegorically designated.
Andrei Platonov is a little-studied, unlike any other mystic writer, a humanist writer. How many more happy discoveries together with him will be made by a new generation of readers, philologists, literary critics, tired of the permissiveness of the postmodern breaking of habitual norms and moral attitudes.
