Works during the Second World War. Literature of the period of the Great Patriotic War

It is very dangerous to write the truth about the war, and it is very dangerous to seek the truth... When a person goes to the front in search of the truth, he can find death instead. But if twelve go and only two return, the truth that they bring with them will be the truth, and not the distorted rumors that we pass off as history. Whether it is worth the risk to find this truth is for the writers themselves to judge.

Ernest Hemingway

According to the encyclopedia "The Great Patriotic War", more than a thousand writers served in the army, out of eight hundred members of the Moscow writers' organization, two hundred and fifty went to the front in the first days of the war. Four hundred and seventy-one writers did not return from the war - these are big losses. They are explained by the fact that writers, most of whom became front-line journalists, sometimes happened not only to engage in their direct correspondent duties, but to take up arms - this was how the situation developed (however, bullets and fragments did not spare even those who did not fall into such situations) . Many simply ended up in the ranks - they fought in army units, in the militia, in partisans!

Two periods can be distinguished in military prose: 1) prose of the war years: stories, essays, novels written directly during hostilities, or rather, in short intervals between offensives and retreats; 2) post-war prose, in which there was an understanding of many painful questions, such as, for example, why did the Russian people endure such difficult trials? Why did the Russians find themselves in such a helpless and humiliating position in the first days and months of the war? Who is to blame for all the suffering? And other questions that arose with closer attention to the documents and memories of eyewitnesses in a distant time. But still, this is a conditional division, because the literary process is sometimes a contradictory and paradoxical phenomenon, and understanding the topic of war in the post-war period was more difficult than during the period of hostilities.

The war was the greatest test and test of all the forces of the people, and they passed this test with honor. The war was a serious test for Soviet literature as well. During the Great Patriotic War, literature, enriched with the traditions of Soviet literature of previous periods, not only immediately responded to the events, but also became an effective weapon in the fight against the enemy. Noting the intense, truly heroic creative work of writers during the war, M. Sholokhov said: “They had one task: if only their word would strike the enemy, if only it would hold our fighter under the elbow, ignite and not let the burning in the hearts of Soviet people fade away hatred for enemies and love for the motherland. The theme of the Great Patriotic War still remains extremely modern.

The Great Patriotic War is reflected in Russian literature deeply and comprehensively, in all its manifestations: the army and the rear, the partisan movement and the underground, the tragic beginning of the war, individual battles, heroism and betrayal, the greatness and drama of the Victory. The authors of military prose, as a rule, are front-line soldiers; in their works they rely on real events, on their own front-line experience. In books about the war written by front-line soldiers, the main line is soldier friendship, front-line camaraderie, the severity of camp life, desertion and heroism. Dramatic human destinies unfold in war, sometimes life or death depends on a person’s act. Front-line writers are a whole generation of courageous, conscientious, experienced, gifted individuals who have endured military and post-war hardships. Front-line writers are those authors who in their works express the point of view that the outcome of the war is decided by the hero, who recognizes himself as a particle of the warring people, who carries his cross and common burden.

Based on the heroic traditions of Russian and Soviet literature, the prose of the Great Patriotic War reached great creative heights. The prose of the war years is characterized by the strengthening of romantic and lyrical elements, the widespread use by artists of declamatory and song intonations, oratorical turns, and the appeal to such poetic means as allegory, symbol, metaphor.

One of the first books about the war was the story of V.P. Nekrasov "In the trenches of Stalingrad", published immediately after the war in the magazine "Znamya" in 1946, and in 1947 the story "Star" by E.G. Kazakevich. One of the first A.P. Platonov wrote the dramatic story of the return of a front-line soldier home in the story "Return", which was published in the "New World" already in 1946. The hero of the story, Alexei Ivanov, is in no hurry to go home, he has found a second family among his fellow soldiers, he has lost the habit of being at home, of his family. The heroes of Platonov's works "... were now going to live for the first time, vaguely remembering themselves as they were three or four years ago, because they turned into completely different people ...". And in the family, near his wife and children, another man appeared, who was orphaned by the war. It is difficult for a front-line soldier to return to another life, to children.

The most reliable works about the war were created by front-line writers: V.K. Kondratiev, V.O. Bogomolov, K.D. Vorobyov, V.P. Astafiev, G.Ya. Baklanov, V.V. Bykov, B.L. Vasiliev, Yu.V. Bondarev, V.P. Nekrasov, E.I. Nosov, E.G. Kazakevich, M.A. Sholokhov. On the pages of prose works, we find a kind of chronicle of the war, authentically conveying all the stages of the great battle of the Soviet people with fascism. Front-line writers, contrary to the tendencies that developed in the Soviet era to gloss over the truth about the war, portrayed the harsh and tragic military and post-war reality. Their works are true evidence of the time when Russia fought and won.

A great contribution to the development of Soviet military prose was made by the writers of the so-called "second war", front-line writers who entered the great literature in the late 1950s and early 1960s. These are such prose writers as Bondarev, Bykov, Ananiev, Baklanov, Goncharov, Bogomolov, Kurochkin, Astafiev, Rasputin. In the work of writers-front-line soldiers, in their works of the 50-60s, in comparison with the books of the previous decade, the tragic accent in the depiction of the war intensified. The war in the image of front-line prose writers is not only and not even how much spectacular heroic deeds, outstanding deeds, how much tedious everyday work, hard work, bloody, but vital. And it was in this everyday work that the writers of the "second war" saw the Soviet man.

The distance of time, helping front-line writers to see the picture of the war much more clearly and in a larger volume, when their first works appeared, was one of the reasons that determined the evolution of their creative approach to the military theme. Prose writers, on the one hand, used their military experience, and on the other hand, their artistic experience, which allowed them to successfully realize their creative ideas. It can be noted that the development of prose about the Great Patriotic War clearly shows that among its main problems, the main one, which has been at the center of the creative search of our writers for more than sixty years, has been and is the problem of heroism. This is especially noticeable in the work of front-line writers, who showed in their works the heroism of our people, the resilience of soldiers in close-up.

Front-line writer Boris Lvovich Vasiliev, author of the books loved by all "The Dawns Here Are Quiet" (1968), "Tomorrow there was a war", "He was not on the lists" (1975), "Aty-baty soldiers were walking", which were filmed in the Soviet time, in an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta dated May 20, 2004, he noted the demand for military prose. On military stories B.L. Vasiliev brought up a whole generation of young people. Everyone remembers the bright images of girls who combined love of truth and steadfastness (Zhenya from the story "The Dawns Here Are Quiet...", Spark from the story "Tomorrow there was a war", etc.) and sacrificial devotion to a high cause and loved ones (the heroine of the story "In was not listed, etc.). In 1997, the writer was awarded the Prize. HELL. Sakharov "For Civil Courage".

The first work about the war by E.I. Nosov was the story "Red Wine of Victory" (1969), in which the hero met Victory Day on a state bed in the hospital and received, along with all the suffering wounded, a glass of red wine in honor of this long-awaited holiday. "A genuine comfrey, an ordinary fighter, he does not like to talk about the war ... The wounds of a fighter will speak more and more strongly about the war. You can’t ruffle the holy words in vain. As well, you can’t lie about the war. And it’s a shame to write badly about the suffering of the people." In the story "Khutor Beloglin" Alexey, the hero of the story, lost everything in the war - he had no family, no home, no health, but, nevertheless, remained kind and generous. Yevgeny Nosov wrote a number of works at the turn of the century, about which Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn said, presenting him with an award in his own name: with grief Nosov closes the half-century wound of the Great War and everything that has not been told about it even today. Works: "Apple Savior", "Commemorative Medal", "Fanfares and Bells" - from this series.

In 1992 Astafiev V.P. published the novel Cursed and Killed. In the novel Cursed and Killed, Viktor Petrovich conveys the war not in "correct, beautiful and brilliant formation with music and drums, and battle, with flying banners and prancing generals", but in "its real expression - in blood, in suffering, in of death".

The Belarusian front-line writer Vasil Vladimirovich Bykov believed that the military theme "leaves our literature for the same reason ... why valor, honor, self-sacrifice have gone ... The heroic has been expelled from everyday life, why do we still need a war, where is this inferiority most obvious?" Incomplete truth" and outright lies about the war for many years belittle the meaning and significance of our military (or anti-war, as they sometimes say) literature." The depiction of the war by V. Bykov in the story "Swamp" causes protest among many Russian readers. It shows the ruthlessness of Soviet soldiers towards the locals. The plot is this, judge for yourself: in the rear of the enemy, in occupied Belarus, paratroopers landed in search of a partisan base, having lost their bearings, they took a boy as a guide ... and they kill him for reasons of safety and secrecy of the task. No less terrible story by Vasil Bykov - "On the swamp stitch" - is the "new truth" about the war, again about ruthless and cruel partisans who dealt with a local teacher just because she asked them not to destroy the bridge, otherwise the Germans would destroy the entire village . The teacher in the village is the last savior and protector, but she was killed by partisans as a traitor. The works of the Belarusian front-line writer Vasil Bykov cause not only controversy, but also reflections.

Leonid Borodin published the story "The Detachment Left". The military story also depicts another truth about the war, about partisans, the heroes of which are soldiers surrounded by the first days of the war, in the German rear in a partisan detachment. The author takes a fresh look at the relationship between the occupied villages and the partisans, whom they must feed. The commander of the partisan detachment shot the headman of the village, but not the traitor headman, but his own man for the villagers, with only one word against. This story can be put on a par with the works of Vasil Bykov in depicting a military conflict, a psychological struggle between good and bad, meanness and heroism.

It was not for nothing that front-line writers complained that not the whole truth about the war had been written. Time passed, a historical distance appeared, which allowed us to see the past and experienced in the true light, the necessary words came, other books about the war were written, which will lead us to spiritual knowledge of the past. Now it is difficult to imagine modern literature about the war without a large amount of memoir literature created not just by participants in the war, but by outstanding commanders.

Alexander Beck (1902-1972)

Born in Saratov in the family of a military doctor. In Saratov, he spent his childhood and youth, and there he graduated from a real school. At the age of 16, A. Beck volunteered for the Red Army during the Civil War. After the war, he wrote essays and reviews for national newspapers. Beck's essays and reviews began to appear in Komsomolskaya Pravda and Izvestiya. Since 1931, A. Beck collaborated in the editorial offices of Gorky's History of Factories and Plants. During World War II he was a war correspondent. He gained wide popularity with the story "Volokolamsk Highway" about the events of the defense of Moscow, written in 1943-1944. In 1960 he published the novels A Few Days and General Panfilov's Reserve.

In 1971, the novel "The New Appointment" was published abroad. The author finished the novel in mid-1964 and submitted the manuscript to the editors of Novy Mir. After lengthy ordeals in various editions and instances, the novel was never published in the homeland during the author's lifetime. According to the author himself, already in October 1964 he gave the novel to friends and some close acquaintances to read. The first publication of the novel at home was in the Znamya magazine, N 10-11, in 1986. The novel describes the life path of a major Soviet statesman who sincerely believes in the justice and productivity of the socialist system and is ready to serve it faithfully, despite any personal difficulties and troubles.


"Volokolamsk highway"

The plot of Alexander Beck's "Volokolamsk Highway": after heavy fighting in October 1941 near Volokolamsk, the battalion of the Panfilov division breaks through the enemy ring and joins with the main forces of the division. Beck closes the story with a single battalion. Beck is documentary accurate (this is how he characterized his creative method: "Searching for heroes active in life, long-term communication with them, conversations with many people, patient collection of grains, details, relying not only on one's own observation, but also on the vigilance of the interlocutor .. . "), and in the "Volokolamsk Highway" he recreates the true history of one of the battalions of the Panfilov division, everything corresponds to what was in reality: geography and chronicle of battles, characters.

The narrator is the battalion commander Baurjan Momysh-Uly. Through his eyes we see what happened to his battalion, he shares his thoughts and doubts, explains his decisions and actions. The author recommends himself to readers only as an attentive listener and "a conscientious and diligent scribe", which cannot be taken at face value. This is nothing more than an artistic device, because, talking with the hero, the writer inquired about what seemed important to him, Beck, and assembled from these stories both the image of Momysh-Ula himself and the image of General Panfilov, "who knew how to manage, influence not by shouting , but in the mind, in the past, an ordinary soldier who retained a soldier's modesty until his death" - this is how Beck wrote in his autobiography about the second hero of the book, very dear to him.

"Volokolamsk Highway" is an original documentary work associated with the literary tradition that personifies in the literature of the 19th century. Gleb Uspensky. “Under the guise of a purely documentary story,” Beck admitted, “I wrote a work subject to the laws of the novel, did not constrain the imagination, created characters, scenes to the best of my ability ...” Of course, both in the author’s declarations of documentary quality, and in his statement that that he did not constrain the imagination, there is some slyness, they seem to have a double bottom: it may seem to the reader that this is a trick, a game. But Beck's naked, demonstrative documentary is not a stylization well known to literature (let's recall, for example, "Robinson Crusoe"), not poetic clothes of a sketch-documentary cut, but a way of comprehending, researching and recreating life and man. And the story "Volokolamsk Highway" is distinguished by impeccable reliability (even in small things - if Beck writes that on the thirteenth of October "everything was covered in snow", there is no need to turn to the archives of the meteorological service, there is no doubt that this was the case in reality), it is peculiar, but an accurate chronicle of the bloody defensive battles near Moscow (as the author himself defined the genre of his book), revealing why the German army, having reached the walls of our capital, could not take it.

And most importantly, because of what "Volokolamsk Highway" should be listed as fiction, and not journalism. Behind the professional army, military concerns - discipline, combat training, battle tactics, which Momysh-Uly is absorbed in, for the author there are moral, universal problems, exacerbated to the limit by the circumstances of the war, constantly putting a person on the verge between life and death: fear and courage, selflessness and selfishness, loyalty and betrayal. In the artistic structure of Beck's story, a polemic with propaganda stereotypes, with battle cliches, a controversy overt and hidden, occupies a considerable place. Explicit, because such is the nature of the protagonist - he is sharp, not inclined to bypass sharp corners, does not even forgive himself for weaknesses and mistakes, does not tolerate idle talk and pomp. Here is a typical episode:

"Thinking, he said:" Knowing no fear, the Panfilovites rushed into the first battle ... What do you think: a suitable start?
"I don't know," I said hesitantly.
“So the corporals of literature write,” he said harshly. - In these days that you live here, I purposely ordered you to take you to such places where two or three mines sometimes burst, where bullets whistle. I wanted you to experience fear. You don't have to confirm, I know without admitting that you had to suppress fear.
So why do you and your fellow writers imagine that some kind of supernatural people are fighting, and not just like you? "

The hidden, authorial controversy that permeates the entire story is deeper and more comprehensive. It is directed against those who demanded that literature "serve" today's "requests" and "instructions", and not serve the truth. In Beck's archive, a draft of the author's preface has been preserved, which states this unambiguously: "The other day I was told: - We are not interested in whether you wrote the truth or not. We are interested in whether it is useful or harmful ... I did not argue. It happens, probably, that a lie is useful. Otherwise, why would it exist? I know that this is how many people who write, my comrades in the shop, act. Sometimes I want to be the same. But at the desk, talking about our cruel and beautiful century, I forget about this intention. At my desk, I see nature in front of me and lovingly copy it, - the way I know it. "

It is clear that Beck did not publish this preface, it exposed the position of the author, it contained a challenge that he would not have gotten away with so easily. But what he talks about has become the foundation of his work. And in his story, he was true to the truth.


Work...


Alexander Fadeev (1901-1956)

Fadeev (Bulyga) Alexander Alexandrovich - prose writer, critic, literary theorist, public figure. Born on December 24 (10), 1901 in the village of Kimry, Korchevsky district, Tver province. He spent his early childhood in Vilna and Ufa. In 1908 the Fadeev family moved to the Far East. From 1912 to 1919, Alexander Fadeev studied at the Vladivostok Commercial School (he left without completing the 8th grade). During the years of the civil war, Fadeev took an active part in the hostilities in the Far East. In the battle near Spassk he was wounded. Alexander Fadeev wrote the first completed story "Spill" in 1922-1923, the story "Against the Current" - in 1923. In 1925-1926, while working on the novel "Rout", he decided to engage in literary work professionally.

During the Great Patriotic War, Fadeev worked as a publicist. As a correspondent for the newspaper Pravda and the Soviet Information Bureau, he traveled to a number of fronts. On January 14, 1942, Fadeev published in Pravda a correspondence titled "Destroying Fiends and Creators," in which he spoke about what he saw in the region and the city of Kalinin after the expulsion of the fascist occupiers. In the autumn of 1943, the writer traveled to the city of Krasnodon, liberated from enemies. Subsequently, the material collected there formed the basis of the novel "The Young Guard".


"Young guard"

During the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. Fadeev writes a number of essays, articles about the heroic struggle of the people, creates the book "Leningrad in the days of the blockade" (1944). Heroic, romantic notes, more and more strengthened in the work of Fadeev, sound with special force in the novel "The Young Guard" (1945; 2nd edition 1951; State Prize of the USSR, 1946; film of the same name, 1948) , which was based on the patriotic affairs of the Krasnodon underground Komsomol organization "Young Guard". The novel glorifies the struggle of the Soviet people against the Nazi invaders. The bright socialist ideal was embodied in the images of Oleg Koshevoy, Sergei Tyulenin, Lyubov Shevtsova, Ulyana Gromova, Ivan Zemnukhov and other Young Guardsmen. The writer paints his characters in romantic light; the book combines pathos and lyricism, psychological sketches and author's digressions. In the 2nd edition, taking into account criticism, the writer included scenes showing the connections of Komsomol members with senior underground communists, the images of which deepened, made more embossed.

Developing the best traditions of Russian literature, Fadeev created works that have become classic examples of the literature of socialist realism. Fadeev's last creative idea - the novel "Black Metallurgy", dedicated to modernity, remained unfinished. Fadeev's literary-critical speeches are collected in the book "For thirty years" (1957), showing the evolution of the literary views of the writer, who made a great contribution to the development of socialist aesthetics. Fadeev's works have been staged and screened, translated into the languages ​​of the peoples of the USSR, many foreign languages.

In a state of mental depression, he committed suicide. For many years, Fadeev was in the leadership of writers' organizations: in 1926-1932. one of the leaders of the RAPP; in 1939-1944 and 1954-1956 - Secretary, in 1946-1954. - General Secretary and Chairman of the Board of the USSR Writers' Union. Vice President of the World Peace Council (since 1950). Member of the Central Committee of the CPSU (1939-1956); at the 20th Congress of the CPSU (1956) he was elected a candidate member of the Central Committee of the CPSU. Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the 2nd-4th convocations and the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR of the 3rd convocation. He was awarded 2 orders of Lenin, as well as medals.


Work...


Vasily Grossman (1905-1964)

Grossman Vasily Semenovich (real name - Grossman Iosif Solomonovich), prose writer, playwright, was born on November 29 (December 12) in the city of Berdichev in the family of a chemist, which determined the choice of his profession: he entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University and graduated from it in 1929. Until 1932 he worked in the Donbass as a chemical engineer, then he began to actively collaborate in the journal "Literary Donbass": in 1934 his first story "Glukauf" (from the life of Soviet miners) appeared, then the story "In the city of Berdichev". M. Gorky drew attention to the young author, supported him by publishing "Glyukauf" in a new edition in the anthology "Year XVII" (1934). Grossman moves to Moscow, becomes a professional writer.

Before the war, the writer's first novel "Stepan Kolchugin" (1937-1940) was published. During the Patriotic War, he was a correspondent for the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper, having gone with the army all the way to Berlin, he published a series of essays on the struggle of the people against the fascist invaders. In 1942, the "Red Star" published the story "The People is Immortal" - one of the most successful works about the events of the war. The play "According to the Pythagoreans", written before the war and published in 1946, caused sharp criticism. In 1952 he began to publish the novel "For a Just Cause", which was also criticized because it did not correspond to the official point of view on the war. Grossman had to revise the book. The continuation - the novel "Life and Fate" was confiscated in 1961. Fortunately, the book survived and in 1975 came to the West. In 1980, the novel saw the light of day. In parallel, Grossman has been writing another since 1955 - "Everything flows", also confiscated in 1961, but the version, completed in 1963, was published through samizdat in 1970 in Frankfurt am Main. V. Grossman died on September 14, 1964 in Moscow.


"People are immortal"

Vasily Grossman began to write the story "The People is Immortal" in the spring of 1942, when the German army was driven away from Moscow and the situation at the front stabilized. It was possible to try to put in some order, to comprehend the bitter experience that burned the souls of the first months of the war, to identify what was the true basis of our resistance and inspired hopes for victory over a strong and skillful enemy, to find an organic figurative structure for this.

The plot of the story reproduces a very common front-line situation of that time - our units caught in the encirclement, in a fierce battle, suffering heavy losses, break through the enemy ring. But this local episode is considered by the author with an eye on Tolstoy's "War and Peace", moves apart, expands, the story acquires the features of a "mini-epos". The action is transferred from the headquarters of the front to the ancient city, which was attacked by enemy aircraft, from the front line, from the battlefield - to the village captured by the Nazis, from the front road - to the location of the German troops. The story is densely populated: our fighters and commanders - and those who turned out to be strong in spirit, for whom the beating trials became a school of "great hardening and wiser heavy responsibility", and bureaucratic optimists who always shouted "Hurrah", but broken by defeats; German officers and soldiers, intoxicated with the strength of their army and their victories; townspeople and Ukrainian collective farmers - both patriotic and ready to become servants of the invaders. All this is dictated by the "thought of the people", which for Tolstoy in "War and Peace" was the most important, and in the story "The People is Immortal" it is brought to the fore.

“Let there be no word more majestic and holy than the word “people!” writes Grossman. It is no coincidence that he made the main characters of his story not military personnel, but civilians - a collective farmer from the Tula region Ignatiev and a Moscow intellectual, historian Bogarev. They are significant detail - those who were drafted into the army on the same day symbolize the unity of the people in the face of the fascist invasion. The ending of the story is also symbolic: "From where the flame burned out, two people walked. Everyone knew them. They were Commissar Bogarev and Red Army soldier Ignatiev. Blood was running down their clothes. They walked, supporting each other, stepping heavily and slowly.

Symbolic and martial arts - "as if the ancient times of fights were revived" - Ignatiev with a German tankman, "huge, broad-shouldered", "passed through Belgium, France, trampling the land of Belgrade and Athens", "whose chest Hitler himself decorated with the" iron cross ". It reminds later described by Tvardovsky, Terkin’s fight with a “well-fed, shaved, cared for, gratuitously well-fed” German: As on an ancient battlefield, Instead of thousands, two fight, Chest to chest, like a shield to a shield, - As if the fight will decide everything. "Semyon Ignatiev, - writes Grossman, - he immediately became famous in the company. Everyone knew this cheerful, tireless man. He was an amazing worker: every instrument in his hands seemed to play, have fun. And he possessed an amazing ability to work so easily, cordially, that a person who even looked at him for a minute wanted to take up an ax, a saw, a shovel himself, in order to do the work just as easily and well, as Semyon Ignatiev did. He had a good voice, and he knew a lot of old songs... "How much Ignatiev and Terkin have in common. Even Ignatiev's guitar has the same function as Terkin's accordion. And the relationship of these heroes suggests that Grossman discovered the features of modern Russian folk character.






"Life and Destiny"

The writer managed to reflect in this work the heroism of people in the war, the fight against the crimes of the Nazis, as well as the full truth about the events that took place then inside the country: exile to Stalin's camps, arrests and everything related to this. In the fates of the main characters of the work, Vasily Grossman captures the inevitable suffering, loss, and death during the war. The tragic events of this era give rise to internal contradictions in a person, violate his harmony with the outside world. This can be seen in the example of the fate of the heroes of the novel "Life and Fate" - Krymov, Shtrum, Novikov, Grekov, Evgenia Nikolaevna Shaposhnikova.

People's suffering in the Patriotic War in Grossman's "Life and Fate" is more painful and profound than in previous Soviet literature. The author of the novel leads us to the idea that the heroism of a victory won in spite of Stalin's arbitrariness is more weighty. Grossman shows not only the facts and events of the Stalin era: camps, arrests, repressions. The main thing in the Stalinist theme of Grossman is the influence of this era on the souls of people, on their morality. We see how brave men turn into cowards, kind people into cruel ones, and honest and steadfast people into cowards. We are no longer even surprised that the closest people are sometimes permeated with distrust (Evgenia Nikolaevna suspected Novikov of denunciation of her, Krymov - Zhenya).

The conflict between man and the state is conveyed in the thoughts of the heroes about collectivization, about the fate of the "special settlers", it is felt in the picture of the Kolyma camp, in the thoughts of the author and the heroes about the thirty-seventh year. The truthful story of Vasily Grossman about the tragic pages of our history that were previously hidden gives us the opportunity to see the events of the war more fully. We notice that the Kolyma camp and the course of the war, both in reality and in the novel, are interconnected. And it was Grossman who was the first to show this. The writer was convinced that "a part of the truth is not the truth."

The heroes of the novel relate differently to the problem of life and fate, freedom and necessity. Therefore, they have a different attitude to responsibility for their actions. For example, Sturmbannfuehrer Kaltluft, the executioner at the stoves, who killed five hundred and ninety thousand people, is trying to justify himself by order from above, by the power of the Fuhrer, by fate (“fate pushed ... onto the path of the executioner”). But then the author says: "Fate leads a person, but a person goes because he wants, and he is free not to want." Drawing a parallel between Stalin and Hitler, the fascist concentration camp and the Kolyma camp, Vasily Grossman says that the signs of any dictatorship are the same. And its influence on the personality of a person is destructive. Having shown the weakness of a person, the inability to resist the power of a totalitarian state, Vasily Grossman at the same time creates images of truly free people. The significance of the victory in the Great Patriotic War, won in spite of Stalin's dictatorship, is more weighty. This victory became possible precisely thanks to the inner freedom of a person who is capable of resisting everything, no matter what fate has in store for him.

The writer himself fully experienced the tragic complexity of the conflict between man and the state in the Stalin era. Therefore, he knows the price of freedom: “Only people who have not experienced the similar power of an authoritarian state, its pressure, are able to be surprised at those who submit to it. a broken word, a timid, quick gesture of protest.


Work...


Yuri Bondarev (1924)

Bondarev Yury Vasilyevich (born March 15, 1924 in Orsk, Orenburg Oblast), Russian Soviet writer. In 1941 Yu.V. Bondarev, together with thousands of young Muscovites, participated in the construction of defensive fortifications near Smolensk. Then there was an evacuation, where Yuri graduated from the 10th grade. In the summer of 1942, he was sent to study at the 2nd Berdichev Infantry School, which was evacuated to the city of Aktyubinsk. In October of the same year, the cadets were sent to Stalingrad. Bondarev was enlisted as the commander of the mortar crew of the 308th regiment of the 98th rifle division.

In the battles near Kotelnikovsky, he was shell-shocked, received frostbite and a slight wound in the back. After treatment in the hospital, he served as a gun commander in the 23rd Kiev-Zhytomyr division. Participated in the crossing of the Dnieper and the liberation of Kyiv. In the battles for Zhytomyr he was wounded and again ended up in a field hospital. From January 1944, Y. Bondarev fought in the ranks of the 121st Red Banner Rylsko-Kyiv Rifle Division in Poland and on the border with Czechoslovakia.

Graduated from the Literary Institute. M. Gorky (1951). The first collection of short stories - "On the big river" (1953). In the stories "Battalions Ask for Fire" (1957), "The Last Volleys" (1959; film of the same name, 1961), in the novel "Hot Snow" (1969) Bondarev reveals the heroism of Soviet soldiers, officers, generals , the psychology of participants in military events. The novel "Silence" (1962; film of the same name, 1964) and its sequel novel "Two" (1964) depict post-war life in which people who went through the war are looking for their place and vocation. The collection of short stories "Late in the evening" (1962), the story "Relatives" (1969) are dedicated to modern youth. Bondarev is one of the co-authors of the script for the film "Liberation" (1970). In the books of literary articles "The Search for Truth" (1976), "A Look into the Biography" (1977), "Keepers of Values" (1978), also in Bondarev's works of recent years "Temptation", "Bermuda Triangle" talent prose writing opened up new facets. In 2004, the writer published a new novel called Without Mercy.

Awarded with two Orders of Lenin, Orders of the October Revolution, Orders of the Red Banner of Labour, Orders of the Patriotic War of the 1st degree, "Badge of Honor", two medals "For Courage", medals "For the Defense of Stalingrad", "For the Victory over Germany", the Order of the Big Star of Friendship of Peoples "(Germany), "Order of Honor" (Pridnestrovie), gold medal A.A. Fadeev, many awards from foreign countries. Winner of the Lenin Prize (1972), two State Prizes of the USSR (1974, 1983 - for the novels "Coast" and "Choice"), the State Prize of the RSFSR (1975 - for the script of the film "Hot Snow").


"Hot Snow"

The events of the novel "Hot Snow" unfold near Stalingrad, south of the 6th Army of General Paulus, blockaded by Soviet troops, in the cold December 1942, when one of our armies withstood the blow of the tank divisions of Field Marshal Manstein in the Volga steppe, who sought to break through the corridor to the army of Paulus and get her out of the way. The outcome of the battle on the Volga, and maybe even the timing of the end of the war itself, largely depended on the success or failure of this operation. The duration of the novel is limited to just a few days, during which the heroes of Yuri Bondarev selflessly defend a tiny patch of land from German tanks.

In "Hot Snow" time is squeezed even tighter than in the story "Battalions ask for fire." "Hot Snow" is a short march of General Bessonov's army unloaded from the echelons and a battle that decided so much in the fate of the country; these are cold frosty dawns, two days and two endless December nights. Knowing no respite and lyrical digressions, as if the author's breath was caught from constant tension, the novel "Hot Snow" is distinguished by its directness, direct connection of the plot with the true events of the Great Patriotic War, with one of its decisive moments. The life and death of the heroes of the novel, their very destinies are illuminated by the alarming light of true history, as a result of which everything acquires special weight and significance.

In the novel, Drozdovsky's battery absorbs almost all of the reader's attention, the action is concentrated mainly around a small number of characters. Kuznetsov, Ukhanov, Rubin and their comrades are a part of the great army, they are a people, a people, to the extent that the typified personality of the hero expresses the spiritual, moral traits of the people.

In "Hot Snow" the image of the people who went to war appears before us in a fullness of expression, unprecedented before in Yuri Bondarev, in the richness and diversity of characters, and at the same time in integrity. This image is not exhausted either by the figures of young lieutenants - commanders of artillery platoons, or by the colorful figures of those who are traditionally considered to be people from the people - like the slightly cowardly Chibisov, the calm and experienced gunner Yevstigneev, or the straightforward and rude riding Rubin; nor by senior officers, such as the division commander, Colonel Deev, or the army commander, General Bessonov. Only collectively understood and accepted emotionally as something unified, with all the difference in ranks and ranks, they constitute the image of a fighting people. The strength and novelty of the novel lies in the fact that this unity is achieved as if by itself, imprinted without any special efforts of the author - a living, moving life. The image of the people, as the result of the whole book, perhaps most of all nourishes the epic, novelistic beginning of the story.

Yuri Bondarev is characterized by aspiration for tragedy, the nature of which is close to the events of the war itself. It would seem that nothing answers this aspiration of the artist so much as the most difficult time for the country to start the war, the summer of 1941. But the writer's books are about a different time, when the defeat of the Nazis and the victory of the Russian army are almost certain.

The death of heroes on the eve of victory, the criminal inevitability of death, contains a high tragedy and provokes a protest against the cruelty of the war and the forces that unleashed it. The heroes of "Hot Snow" are dying - the medical officer of the battery Zoya Elagina, the shy eedov Sergunenkov, a member of the Military Council Vesnin, Kasymov and many others are dying ... And the war is to blame for all these deaths. Let Lieutenant Drozdovsky’s heartlessness be blamed for Sergunenkov’s death, even if the blame for Zoya’s death falls partly on him, but no matter how great Drozdovsky’s fault, they are, first of all, victims of the war.

The novel expresses the understanding of death as a violation of higher justice and harmony. Recall how Kuznetsov looks at the murdered Kasymov: “now there was a shell box under Kasymov’s head, and his youthful, beardless face, recently alive, swarthy, turned deathly white, thinned by the terrible beauty of death, looked in surprise with moist cherry half-open eyes at his chest , on a torn to shreds, excised quilted jacket, as if even after death he did not comprehend how it killed him and why he could not get up to the sight. the calm mystery of death, into which the burning pain of the fragments overturned him when he tried to rise to the sight.

Even more acutely Kuznetsov feels the irreversibility of the loss of the driver Sergunenkov. After all, the mechanism of his death is revealed here. Kuznetsov turned out to be a powerless witness to how Drozdovsky sent Sergunenkov to certain death, and he, Kuznetsov, already knows that he will curse himself forever for what he saw, was present, but failed to change anything.

In "Hot Snow", with all the intensity of events, everything human in people, their characters are not revealed separately from the war, but interconnected with it, under its fire, when, it seems, one cannot even raise one's head. Usually the chronicle of battles can be retold separately from the individuality of its participants - a battle in "Hot Snow" cannot be retold except through the fate and characters of people.

The past of the characters in the novel is essential and weighty. For some it is almost cloudless, for others it is so complex and dramatic that the former drama is not left behind, pushed aside by the war, but accompanies a person in the battle southwest of Stalingrad. The events of the past determined Ukhanov's military fate: a gifted, full of energy officer who would have commanded a battery, but he is only a sergeant. The cool, rebellious character of Ukhanov also determines his movement within the novel. Chibisov's past troubles, which almost broke him (he spent several months in German captivity), echoed in him with fear and determine a lot in his behavior. One way or another, the past of Zoya Elagina, and Kasymov, and Sergunenkov, and the unsociable Rubin slips in the novel, whose courage and loyalty to soldier's duty we will be able to appreciate only by the end of the novel.

The past of General Bessonov is especially important in the novel. The thought of his son being taken prisoner by the Germans makes his position both at Headquarters and at the front difficult. And when a fascist leaflet announcing that Bessonov's son was taken prisoner falls into the counterintelligence of the front in the hands of Lieutenant Colonel Osin, it seems that there is a threat to Bessonov's service.

All this retrospective material enters the novel so naturally that the reader does not feel its separateness. The past does not require a separate space for itself, separate chapters - it has merged with the present, opened its depths and the living interconnectedness of one and the other. The past does not burden the story about the present, but gives it great dramatic sharpness, psychologism and historicism.

Yuri Bondarev does exactly the same with portraits of characters: the appearance and characters of his characters are shown in development, and only by the end of the novel or with the death of the hero does the author create a complete portrait of him. How unexpected in this light is the portrait of the always taut and collected Drozdovsky on the very last page - with a relaxed, broken-sluggish gait and unusually bent shoulders.

Such an image requires from the author special vigilance and immediacy in the perception of the characters, the feeling of them as real, living people, in whom there always remains the possibility of a mystery or sudden insight. Before us is the whole person, understandable, close, and meanwhile we are not left with the feeling that we have touched only the edge of his spiritual world, and with his death you feel that you have not had time to fully understand his inner world. Commissar Vesnin, looking at the truck thrown from the bridge onto the river ice, says: "What a monstrous destruction war is. Nothing has a price." The enormity of war is expressed most of all - and the novel reveals this with brutal frankness - in the murder of a person. But the novel also shows the high price of life given for the Motherland.

Probably the most mysterious of the world of human relations in the novel is the love that arises between Kuznetsov and Zoya. The war, its cruelty and blood, its terms, overturning the usual ideas about time - it was she who contributed to such a rapid development of this love. After all, this feeling developed in those short periods of march and battle, when there is no time for reflection and analysis of one's feelings. And it all starts with a quiet, incomprehensible jealousy of Kuznetsov for the relationship between Zoya and Drozdovsky. And soon - so little time passes - Kuznetsov is already bitterly mourning the dead Zoya, and it is from these lines that the title of the novel is taken, when Kuznetsov wiped his face wet from tears, "the snow on the sleeve of the quilted jacket was hot from his tears."

Having been deceived at first in Lieutenant Drozdovsky, then the best cadet, Zoya, throughout the novel, opens up to us as a moral person, whole, ready for self-sacrifice, capable of embracing the pain and suffering of many with her heart ... Zoya's personality is known in a tense, as if electrified space, which is almost inevitable arises in the trench with the appearance of a woman. She seems to go through many trials, from intrusive interest to rude rejection. But her kindness, her patience and sympathy reach out to everyone, she is truly a sister to the soldiers. The image of Zoya somehow imperceptibly filled the atmosphere of the book, its main events, its harsh, cruel reality with a feminine principle, affection and tenderness.

One of the most important conflicts in the novel is the conflict between Kuznetsov and Drozdovsky. A lot of space has been given to this conflict, it is exposed very sharply, and is easily traced from beginning to end. At first, tension that goes back to the background of the novel; the inconsistency of characters, manners, temperaments, even the style of speech: it seems difficult for the soft, thoughtful Kuznetsov to endure the jerky, commanding, indisputable speech of Drozdovsky. The long hours of battle, the senseless death of Sergunenkov, the mortal wound of Zoya, in which Drozdovsky is partly to blame - all this forms an abyss between the two young officers, the moral incompatibility of their existence.

In the finale, this abyss is marked even more sharply: the four surviving gunners consecrate the newly received orders in a soldier's bowler hat, and the sip that each of them takes is, first of all, a funeral sip - it contains bitterness and grief of loss. Drozdovsky also received the order, because for Bessonov, who awarded him, he is the surviving, wounded commander of a standing battery, the general does not know about Drozdovsky's grave guilt and most likely will never know. This is also the reality of war. But it is not for nothing that the writer leaves Drozdovsky aside from those gathered at the honest soldier's bowler hat.

It is extremely important that all Kuznetsov's connections with people, and above all with people subordinate to him, are true, meaningful and have a remarkable ability to develop. They are extremely non-service, in contrast to the emphatically service relations that Drozdovsky puts so strictly and stubbornly between himself and the people. During the battle, Kuznetsov fights next to the soldiers, here he shows his composure, courage, lively mind. But he also grows spiritually in this battle, becomes fairer, closer, kinder to those people with whom the war brought him together.

The relationship between Kuznetsov and senior sergeant Ukhanov, the gun commander, deserves a separate story. Like Kuznetsov, he had already been fired on in the difficult battles of 1941, and in terms of military ingenuity and decisive character he could probably be an excellent commander. But life decreed otherwise, and at first we find Ukhanov and Kuznetsov in conflict: this is a collision of a sweeping, sharp and autocratic nature with another - restrained, initially modest. At first glance, it might seem that Kuznetsov will have to fight both the soullessness of Drozdovsky and the anarchist nature of Ukhanov. But in reality, it turns out that without yielding to each other in any principled position, remaining themselves, Kuznetsov and Ukhanov become close people. Not just people fighting together, but knowing each other and now forever close. And the absence of author's comments, the preservation of the rough context of life makes their brotherhood real, weighty.

The ethical, philosophical thought of the novel, as well as its emotional intensity, reaches its highest height in the finale, when Bessonov and Kuznetsov suddenly approach each other. This is a rapprochement without close proximity: Bessonov rewarded his officer on an equal basis with others and moved on. For him, Kuznetsov is just one of those who stood to death at the turn of the Myshkov River. Their closeness turns out to be more sublime: it is the closeness of thought, spirit, outlook on life. For example, shocked by the death of Vesnin, Bessonov blames himself for the fact that, due to his lack of sociability and suspicion, he prevented friendly relations between them from developing (“the way Vesnin wanted, and the way they should be”). Or Kuznetsov, who could not help the calculation of Chubarikov, who was dying before his eyes, tormented by the piercing thought that all this, "it seemed, should have happened because he did not have time to get close to them, understand everyone, fall in love ...".

Divided by the disproportion of duties, Lieutenant Kuznetsov and the army commander, General Bessonov, are moving towards the same goal - not only military, but also spiritual. Unaware of each other's thoughts, they think about the same thing and seek the truth in the same direction. Both of them demandingly ask themselves about the purpose of life and about the correspondence of their actions and aspirations to it. They are separated by age and have in common, like father and son, and even like brother and brother, love for the Motherland and belonging to the people and to humanity in the highest sense of these words.

Terminological minimum Keywords: periodization, essay, "general's" prose, "lieutenant's" prose, memoirs, epic novel, "trench" literature, writer's diaries, memoirs, genre of documentary prose, historicism, documentary.

Plan

1. General characteristics of the literary process during the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945).

2. The theme of the war as the main one in the development of the literary process of the late 1940s - early 1960s. (the opposition of "general" and "lieutenant" prose).

3. "Trench Truth" about the war in Russian literature.

4. Memoirs and fiction in the literature about the Great Patriotic War.

Literature

Texts to study

1. Astafiev, V.P. Cursed and killed.

2. Bondarev Yu. V. Hot snow. Coast. The battalions are asking for fire.

3. Bykov, V. V. Sotnikov. Obelisk.

4. Vasiliev, B. L. Tomorrow was the war. Didn't appear on the list.

5. Vorobyov, K. D. This is us, Lord!

6. Grossman, V. S. Life and destiny.

7. Kataev, V.P. The son of the regiment.

8. Leonov, L. M. Invasion.

9. Nekrasov, V.P. In the trenches of Stalingrad.

10. Simonov, K. M. Living and dead. Russian character.

11. Tvardovsky, A. T. Vasily Terkin.

12. Fadeev, A. A. Young Guard.

13. Sholokhov, M.A. They fought for the Motherland. The fate of man.

Main

1. Gorbachev, A. Yu. The military theme in the prose of the 1940s–90s. [Electronic resource] / A. Yu. Gorbachev. – Access mode: http://www. bsu.by>Cache /219533/.pdf (date of access: 04.06.2014)

2. Lagunovsky, A. General characteristics of the literature of the period of the Great Patriotic War [Electronic resource] / A. Lagunovsky. – Access mode: http://www. Stihi.ru /2009/08/17/2891 (date of access: 06/02/2014)

3. Russian literature of the XX century / ed. S. I. Timina. - M. : Academy, 2011. - 368 p.

Additional

1. Bykov, V. “These young writers saw the sweat and blood of war on their tunic”: correspondence between Vasily Bykov and Alexander Tvardovsky / V. Bykov; intro. Art. S. Shaprana // Questions of Literature. - 2008. - No. 2. - S. 296-323.

2. Kozhin, A. N. On the language of military documentary prose / A. N. Kozhin // Philological Sciences. - 1995. - No. 3. - P. 95–101.

3. Chalmaev, V. A. Russian prose 1980–2000: At the crossroads of opinions and disputes / V. A. Chalmaev // Literature at school. - 2002. - No. 4. - P. 18–23.

4. Man and war: Russian fiction about the Great Patriotic War: bibliographic list / ed. S. P. Bavin. - M. : Ipno, 1999. - 298 p.

5. Yalyshkov, V. G. Military stories of V. Nekrasov and V. Kondratiev: experience of comparative analysis / V. G. Yalyshkov // Moscow University Bulletin. - Ser. 9. Philology. - 1993. - No. 1. - S. 27-34.

1. The Great Patriotic War is an inexhaustible theme in Russian literature. The material, the author's tone, plots, heroes change, but the memory of the tragic days lives on in books about it.

More than 1,000 writers went to the front during the war. Many of them directly participated in battles with the enemy, in the partisan movement. For military merit, 18 writers received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. About 400 members of the Writers' Union did not return from the battlefields. Among them were both young, who published one book each, and experienced writers known to a wide range of readers: E. Petrov, A. Gaidar
and etc.

A significant part of professional writers worked in newspapers, magazines, mass media. A war correspondent is the most common position for representatives of fiction.

Lyrics turned out to be the most "mobile" type of literature. Here is a list of publications that appeared already in the first days of the war: on June 23, on the first page of Pravda, A. Surkov's poem “We swear by victory” appeared, on the second - by N. Aseev “Victory will be ours”; June 24 Izvestia publishes The Holy War by V. Lebedev-Kumach; June 25 Pravda publishes A. Surkov's Song of the Brave; On June 26, the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper begins to publish a series of essays by I. Ehrenburg; On June 27, Pravda opens its journalistic cycle with the article “What We Defend”
A. Tolstoy. Such dynamics is indicative and reflects the demand for artistic material.

It is noteworthy that the theme of the lyrics has changed dramatically since the very first days of the war. Responsibility for the fate of the Motherland, the bitterness of defeat, hatred of the enemy, steadfastness, patriotism, loyalty to ideals, faith in victory - that was the leitmotif of all poems, ballads, poems, songs.

The lines from A. Tvardovsky's poem "To the Partisans of the Smolensk Region" became indicative: "Arise, all my land desecrated, against the enemy!" The "Holy War" by Vasily Lebedev-Kumach conveyed a generalized image of time:

May noble rage

Rip like a wave

- There is a people's war

Holy War![p.87]7

Odic verses, expressing the anger and hatred of the Soviet people, were an oath of allegiance to the Fatherland, a guarantee of victory, reflecting the inner state of millions of Soviet people.

The poets turned to the heroic past of the motherland, drew historical parallels, so necessary to raise morale: “The Word about Russia” by M. Isakovsky, “Rus” by D. Bedny, “The Thought of Russia”
D. Kedrina, "Field of Russian Glory" by S. Vasiliev.

The organic connection with Russian classical lyrics and folk art helped the poets to reveal the features of the national character. Such concepts as "Motherland", "Rus", "Russia", "Russian heart", "Russian soul", often placed in the title of works of art, acquired unprecedented historical depth and strength, poetic volume and imagery. So, revealing the character of the heroic defender of the city on the Neva, a Leningrader during the siege, O. Bergholz states:

You are Russian - by breath, blood, thought.

You were not united yesterday

Peasant patience Avvakum

And the royal fury of Peter [p.104].

A number of poems convey the feeling of a soldier's love for his "small homeland", for the house in which he was born, for the family that remained far away, for those "three birches" where he left part of his soul, his pain, hope, joy ( "Motherland" by K. Simonov).

The mother woman, a simple Russian woman, who accompanied her brothers, husband and sons to the front, experienced the bitterness of irreparable loss, endured inhuman hardships, hardships and hardships on her shoulders, but did not lose faith, the most touching lines of many writers of this time are dedicated.

Memorized every porch

Where did you have to go

I remembered all the women in the face,

Like my own mother.

They shared bread with us -

Whether wheat, rye, -

They took us to the steppe

Hidden path.

They hurt our pain,

Own misfortune does not count [p.72].

M. Isakovsky's poems "To the Russian Woman", lines from K. Simonov's poem "Do you remember, Alyosha, the roads of the Smolensk region ..." sound in the same key.

The truth of time, faith in victory permeate the poems of A. Prokofiev (“Comrade, have you seen ...”), A. Tvardovsky (“The Ballad of a Comrade”) and many other poets.

The work of a number of major poets is undergoing a serious evolution. So, the lyrics of A. Akhmatova reflect the high citizenship of the poetess, purely personal feelings received a patriotic sound. In the poem "Courage", the poetess finds words, images that embodied the irresistible stamina of the fighting people:

And we will save you, Russian speech,

Great Russian word.

We will carry you free and clean.

And we will give to our grandchildren, and we will save from captivity

Forever! [p.91].

The fighting people equally needed both angry lines of hatred and sincere poems about love and fidelity. Examples of this are the poems by K. Simonov “Kill him!”, “Wait for me, and I will return ...”, A. Prokofiev “Comrade, you saw ...”, his poem “Russia”, full of love for the Motherland.

Front-line songs occupy a special place in the history of the development of Russian verse. Thoughts and feelings set to music create a special emotional background and perfectly reveal the mentality of our people (“Dugout” by A. Surkov, “Dark Night” by V. Agatov, “Spark”
M. Isakovsky, “Evening on the roadstead” by A. Churkin, “Roads” by L. Oshanin, “Here the soldiers are coming” by M. Lvovsky, “Nightingales” by A. Fatyanov, etc.).

We find the embodiment of the socio-moral, humanistic ideals of a struggling people in such a large epic genre as a poem. The years of the Great Patriotic War became for the poem no less fruitful period than the era of the 1920s. "Kirov with us" (1941) N. Tikhonova, "Zoya" (1942) M. Aliger, "Son" (1943) P. Antakolsky, "February Diary" (1942) O. Bergholz, "Pulkovo Meridian" (1943)
V. Inber, "Vasily Terkin" (1941-1945) by A. Tvardovsky - these are the best examples of poetic creativity of that period. A distinctive feature of the poem as a genre at this time is pathos: attention to specific, easily recognizable details, synthesis of personal thoughts about family, love and great history, about the fate of the country and the planet, etc.

The evolution of the poets P. Antakolsky and V. Inber is indicative. From the glut of associations and reminiscences of pre-war poetry
P. Antakolsky moves from thinking about the fate of a particular person to all of humanity as a whole. The poem "Son" captivates with a combination of lyricism with high pathos, heartfelt sincerity with a civil beginning. Here, the poignantly personal turns into the general. High civil pathos, socio-philosophical reflections determine the sound of V. Inber's military poetry. "Pulkovo Meridian" is not only a poem about the humanistic position of the Russian people, it is a hymn to the feelings and feat of every person who fights for the Motherland and freedom.

The poem of the war years was distinguished by a variety of stylistic, plot and compositional solutions. It synthesizes the principles and techniques of the narrative and lofty romantic style. So, M. Aliger's poem "Zoya" is marked by an amazing fusion of the author with the spiritual world of the heroine. It inspiredly and accurately embodies moral maximalism and integrity, truth and simplicity. Moscow schoolgirl Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, without hesitation, voluntarily chooses a harsh share. The poem "Zoya" is not so much a biography of the heroine as a lyrical confession on behalf of a generation whose youth coincided with a formidable and tragic time in the history of the people. At the same time, the three-part construction of the poem conveys the main stages in the formation of the spiritual image of the heroine. At the beginning of the poem, with light but precise strokes, only the appearance of the girl is outlined. Gradually, a great social theme enters into the beautiful world of her youth (“We lived in the world light and spacious ...”), a sensitive heart absorbs the anxieties and pain of the “shocked planet”. The final part of the poem becomes the apotheosis of a short life. About the inhuman torture that Zoya is subjected to in the fascist dungeon, it is said sparingly, but strongly, journalistically sharp. The name and image of the Moscow schoolgirl, whose life ended so tragically early, have become a legend.

A. T. Tvardovsky's poem "Vasily Terkin" became world famous - the largest, most significant poetic work of the era of the Great Patriotic War. Tvardovsky achieved a synthesis of the particular and the general: the individual image of Vasily Terkin and the image of the Motherland are different in the artistic concept of the poem. This is a multifaceted poetic work, covering not only all aspects of front-line life, but also the main stages of the Great Patriotic War. In the immortal image of Vasily Terkin, the features of the Russian national character of that era were embodied with special force. Democracy and moral purity, grandeur and simplicity of the hero are revealed by means of folk poetic creativity, the structure of his thoughts and feelings is related to the world of images of Russian folklore.

The era of the Great Patriotic War gave rise to poetry, remarkable in its strength and sincerity, angry journalism, harsh prose, and passionate dramaturgy.

During the war years, more than 300 plays were created, but few were lucky enough to survive their time. Among them: "Invasion" by L. Leonov, "Front" by A. Korneichuk, "Russian people" by K. Simonov, "Officer of the Navy" by A. Kron, "Song of the Black Sea" by B. Lavrenev, "Stalingraders" by Y. Chepurin and others .

Plays were not the most mobile genre of that time. The turning point in dramaturgy was 1942.

Drama L. Leonov "Invasion" was created in the most difficult time. The small town where the events of the play unfold is a symbol of the nationwide struggle against the invaders. The significance of the author's intention lies in the fact that the conflicts of the local plan are comprehended by him in a broad socio-philosophical key, the sources that feed the power of resistance are revealed. The action of the play takes place in Dr. Talanov's apartment. Unexpectedly for everyone, Talanov's son Fyodor returns from prison. Almost simultaneously, the Germans enter the city. And with them appears the former owner of the house in which the Talanovs live, the merchant Fayunin, who soon became the mayor. The intensity of the action grows from scene to scene. The honest Russian intellectual, doctor Talanov, cannot imagine his life apart from the struggle. Next to him is his wife Anna Pavlovna and daughter Olga. There is no question of the need to fight behind enemy lines for the chairman of the city council, Kolesnikov: he heads a partisan detachment. This is one - the central - layer of the play. However, Leonov, a master of deep and complex dramatic collisions, is not content with just this approach. Deepening the psychological line of the play, he introduces one more person - the son of the Talanovs. The fate of Fedor turned out to be confusing, difficult. Spoiled as a child, selfish, selfish, he returns to his father's house after a three-year imprisonment as punishment for an attempt on the life of his beloved. Fedor is gloomy, cold, wary. The words of his father spoken at the beginning of the play about the nationwide grief do not touch Fyodor: personal adversity overshadows everything else. He is tormented by the lost trust of people, which is why Fedor is uncomfortable in the world. With their minds and hearts, the mother and the nanny understood that Fyodor hid his pain, the longing of a lonely, unhappy person under a jester's mask, but they cannot accept his former. Kolesnikov's refusal to take Fyodor into his detachment hardens the heart of young Talanov even more. It took time for this man who once lived only for himself to become a people's avenger. Fedor, captured by the Nazis, pretends to be the commander of a partisan detachment in order to die for him. Psychologically convincing Leonov draws Fedor's return to the people. The play consistently reveals how war, nationwide grief, suffering kindle in people hatred and a thirst for revenge, a willingness to give their lives for the sake of victory. This is how we see Fedor in the finale of the drama.

For Leonov, the interest in the human character in all the complexity and inconsistency of his nature, which is made up of social and national, moral and psychological, is natural. The stage history of Leonov's works during the Great Patriotic War (except for "Invasion", the drama "Lenushka", 1943, was also widely known), which bypassed all the main theaters of the country, once again confirms the skill of the playwright.

If L. Leonov reveals the theme of heroic deed and indestructibility of the patriotic spirit by means of in-depth psychological analysis, then K. Simonov in the play "Russian People" (1942), posing the same problems, uses the techniques of lyrics and journalism of open folk drama. The action in the play takes place in the autumn of 1941 on the Southern Front. The focus of the author's attention is both the events in Safonov's detachment, located not far from the city, and the situation in the city itself, where the occupiers are in charge. “Russian People” is a play about the courage and steadfastness of ordinary people who had very peaceful professions before the war: about the driver Safonov, his mother Marfa Petrovna, nineteen-year-old Valya Anoshchenko, who drove the chairman of the city council, paramedic Globa. They would build houses, teach children, create beautiful things, love, but the cruel word "war" dispelled all hopes. People take rifles, put on overcoats, go into battle.

The play "Russian People" in the summer of 1942, during the most difficult time of the war, was staged in a number of theaters. The success of the play was also due to the fact that the playwright showed the enemy not as a primitive fanatic and sadist, but as a sophisticated conqueror of Europe and the world, confident in his impunity.

The theme of a number of interesting dramatic works was the life and heroic deeds of our fleet. Among them: psychological drama
A. Kron "Officer of the Navy" (1944), lyrical comedy Vs. Azarova,
Sun. Vishnevsky, A. Kron "The wide sea spread" (1942), oratorio by B. Lavrenev "Song of the Black Sea" (1943).

Certain achievements were achieved during this period by the historical drama. Such historical plays were written as V. Solovyov's tragedy "The Great Sovereign", A. Tolstoy's dilogy "Ivan the Terrible" and others. Turning stages, difficult times of the Russian people - this is the main component of such dramas.

However, journalism reaches its peak during the Great Patriotic War. The largest masters of the artistic word - L. Leonov, A. Tolstoy, M. Sholokhov - also became outstanding publicists. The bright, temperamental word of I. Ehrenburg enjoyed popularity at the front and in the rear. An important contribution to the journalism of those years was made by A. Fadeev, V. Vishnevsky, N. Tikhonov.

A. N. Tolstoy (1883–1945) wrote more than 60 articles and essays during the period 1941–1944. (“What We Defend”, “Motherland”, “Russian Warriors”, “Blitzkrieg”, “Why Hitler Must Be Defeated”, etc.). Turning to the history of the motherland, he convinced his contemporaries that Russia would cope with a new disaster, as it happened more than once in the past. "Nothing, we'll do it!" - that's the keynote journalism of A. Tolstoy.

L. M. Leonov also constantly turned to national history, but he spoke with particular poignancy about the responsibility of every citizen, because only in this he saw the guarantee of the coming victory (“Glory to Russia”, “Your brother Volodya Kurylenko”, “Rage”, “Massacre ", "Unknown American Friend", etc.).

The central theme of the military journalism of I. G. Ehrenburg is the defense of universal culture. He saw fascism as a threat to world civilization and emphasized that representatives of all nationalities of the USSR were fighting for its preservation (the articles “Kazakhs”, “Jews”, “Uzbeks”, “Caucasus”, etc.). The style of Ehrenburg's journalism was distinguished by the sharpness of colors, the suddenness of transitions, and metaphor. At the same time, the writer skillfully combined documentary materials, a verbal poster, a pamphlet, and a caricature in his works. Ehrenburg's essays and journalistic articles were compiled in the collection "War".

The second most mobile after the journalistic article was the military feature article . Documentaryism has become the key to the popularity of publications
V. Grossman, A. Fadeev, K. Simonov - writers whose words, created in hot pursuit, were awaited by readers at the front and in the rear. He owns descriptions of military operations, portrait travel sketches.

Leningrad became the main theme of V. Grossman's essay writing. In 1941, he was enrolled in the staff of the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper. Grossman kept records throughout the war. His Stalingrad essays, harsh, devoid of pathos (“Through Chekhov's Eyes”, etc.), formed the basis for the idea of ​​a large work, which later became the dilogy “Life and Fate”.

Since most of the short stories, which were few in those years, were built on a documentary basis, the authors most often resorted to the psychological characteristics of the characters, described specific episodes, and often kept the names of real people. So, during the days of the war, a certain hybrid form appeared in Russian literature. essay-story. This type of works includes "The Honor of the Commander" by K. Simonov, "The Science of Hatred" by M. Sholokhov, the cycles "Stories of Ivan Sudarev"
A. Tolstoy and "Sea Soul" L. Sobolev.

The art of journalism has gone through several major stages in four years. If in the first months of the war she was characterized by a nakedly rationalistic manner, often abstractly schematic ways of depicting the enemy, then at the beginning of 1942 journalism was enriched with elements of psychological analysis. In the fiery word of the publicist, both a meeting note and an appeal to the spiritual world of a person sound. The next stage coincided with a turning point in the course of the war, with the need for an in-depth socio-political examination of the fascist front and rear, ascertaining the root causes of the impending defeat of Hitlerism and the inevitability of just retribution. These circumstances caused an appeal to such genres as pamphlet and review.

At the final stage of the war, there was a tendency towards documentary. For example, in "Windows TASS", along with the graphic design of posters, the method of photomontage was widely used. Writers and poets introduced diary entries, letters, photographs and other documentary evidence into their works.

Publicism of the war years is a qualitatively different stage in the development of this martial and effective art compared to previous periods. The deepest optimism, unshakable faith in victory - that's what supported publicists even in the most difficult times. Their speeches were especially powerful due to the appeal to history, the national origins of patriotism. An important feature of the journalism of that time was the widespread use of leaflets, posters, and cartoons.

Already in the first two years of the war, more than 200 stories were published. Of all the prose genres, only the essay and the short story could compete in popularity with the short story. The story is a genre that is very characteristic of the Russian national tradition. It is well known that in the 1920s and 1930s psychological-everyday, adventure and satirical-humorous varieties of the genre dominated. During the Great Patriotic War (as well as during the Civil War), the heroic, romantic story came to the fore.

The desire to reveal the harsh and bitter truth of the first months of the war, the achievements in the field of creating heroic characters are marked by "The Russian Story" (1942) by Pyotr Pavlenko and the story by V. Grossman "The People are Immortal". However, there are differences between these works in the way the theme is implemented.

A characteristic feature of the military prose of 1942-1943. - the emergence of short stories, cycles of stories connected by the unity of characters, the image of the narrator or a lyrical cross-cutting theme. This is how the “Stories of Ivan Sudarev” by A. Tolstoy, “Sea Soul” by L. Sobolev, “March-April” by V. Kozhevnikov are constructed. The drama in these works is set off by a lyrical and at the same time sublimely poetic, romantic feature that helps to reveal the spiritual beauty of the hero. Penetration into the inner world of a person deepens. The socio-ethical origins of patriotism are revealed more convincingly and artistically.

By the end of the war, the tendency of prose to a broad epic comprehension of reality is tangible, which is convincingly proved by two famous writers - M. Sholokhov (the novel that the author never managed to finish - "They fought for the Motherland") and A. Fadeev ("The Young Guard" ). The novels are notable for their social scale, the discovery of new ways in the interpretation of the theme of war. So, M. A. Sholokhov makes a bold attempt to portray the Great Patriotic War as a truly national epic. The very choice of the main characters, ordinary infantry - the grain grower Zvyagintsev, the miner Lopakhin, the agronomist Streltsov - indicates that the writer seeks to show different sectors of society, to trace how the war was perceived by different people and what paths led them to a huge, truly national Victory.

The spiritual and moral world of Sholokhov's heroes is rich and diverse. The artist paints broad pictures of the era: sad episodes of retreats, scenes of violent attacks, the relationship between soldiers and civilians, short hours between battles. At the same time, the whole gamut of human experiences is traced - love and hate, severity and tenderness, smiles and tears, tragic and comic.

If the novel by M. A. Sholokhov was not completed, then the fate of other works was remarkable, they, like in a mirror, reflected the era. For example, the autobiographical story by K. Vorobyov “This is us, Lord!” was written in 1943, when a group of partisans, formed from former prisoners of war, was forced to go underground. Exactly thirty days in the Lithuanian city of Siauliai, K. Vorobyov wrote about what he had experienced in fascist captivity. In 1946, the manuscript was received by the editors of the Novy Mir magazine. At that moment, the author had submitted only the first part of the story, so the issue of its publication was postponed until the end appeared. However, the second part was never written. Even in the personal archive of the writer, the whole story was not preserved, but some of its fragments were included in some other works of Vorobyov. Only in 1985 the manuscript “This is us, Lord!” was discovered in the Central State Archive of Literature and Art of the USSR, where it was handed over together with the archive of the "New World". In 1986, the story of K. Vorobyov finally saw the light of day. The protagonist of the work, Sergei Kostrov, is a young lieutenant who was captured by the Germans in the first year of the war. The whole story is devoted to describing the life of Soviet prisoners of war in German camps. In the center of the work is the fate of the protagonist, which can be described as "the path to freedom."

If the work of K. Vorobyov is a tracing paper of his life, then A. Fadeev relies on specific facts and documents. At the same time, Fadeev's "Young Guard" is romantic and revealing, just like the fate of the author of the work.

In the first chapter, a distant echo of anxiety sounds, in the second, a drama is shown - people leave their native places, mines are blown up, a sense of folk tragedy permeates the narrative. There is a crystallization of the underground, the connections of the young fighters of Krasnodon with the underground workers appear and grow stronger. The idea of ​​the continuity of generations determines the basis of the plot construction of the book and is expressed in the image of the underground (I. Protsenko, F. Lyutikov). Representatives of the older generation and Young Guard Komsomol members act as a single people's force opposing Hitler's "new order".

First completed the novel about the Patriotic War was "The Young Guard" by A. Fadeev, published in 1945 (the second book - in 1951). After the liberation of Donbass, Fadeev wrote an essay on the death of Krasnodon youth "Immortality" (1943), and then conducted a study of the activities of an underground youth organization that independently operated in the town occupied by the Nazis. Severe and austere realism coexists with romance, objectified narration is interspersed with agitated lyrics of the author's digressions. When recreating individual images, the role of the poetics of contrast is also very significant (Lyutikov’s strict eyes and the sincerity of his nature; Oleg Koshevoy’s emphatically boyish appearance and not at all childish wisdom of his decisions; Lyubov Shevtsova’s dashing carelessness and impudent courage of her actions, invincible will). Even in the appearance of the heroes, Fadeev does not deviate from his favorite trick: Protsenko's “clear blue eyes” and “demonic sparks” in them; the "severely tender expression" of Oleg Koshevoy's eyes; white lily in Ulyana Gromova's black hair; "blue children's eyes with a hard steel tint" in Lyubov Shevtsova.

The history of the existence of the novel in world literature is remarkable. The fate of the work is indicative of the literary samples of the Soviet era.

Application of brainstorming technology

Terms and conditions: performance of the pre-lecture task, division into groups (4-5 people).

Technology name	Technology options	Terms holding / exercise	predictable result
Changing point of view	Points of view of different people		Revealing the difference and commonality of views of literary critics and public figures. Conclusion about the pressure on the author of the novel
Grouping changes	Knowledge of the texts of the novel by A. A. Fadeev "The Rout" and the abstract of O. G. Manukyan	To consolidate the idea of ​​the inner world of writers, to compare the difference between the perception of the writer and critics
autowriting		A letter to yourself about the perception of the information contained in the abstract
Curtsy		Assumes the reproduction of the exact opposite of the stated position in the conclusions of the abstract	Promotes flexibility of the mind, the emergence of original ideas, understanding of the author's position and empathy

If in the 1945 edition, A. A. Fadeev did not dare to write about the existence in Krasnodon of another - non-Komsomol - anti-fascist underground, then in the new version of the novel (1951) an ideologically conditioned slyness is added to this default: the author claims that the creators and Communists were the leaders of the organization of the Young Guard. Thus, Fadeev denies his beloved heroes an important initiative. In addition, this book served as the basis for criminal prosecution, often unfounded, of real people who became the prototypes of negative characters.

And yet, in our opinion, it should be noted that to this day this novel has not lost its relevance, including pedagogical.

2. The theme of the Great Patriotic War occupies a special place in Russian multinational literature. In the 1940s and 1950s, it developed a tradition of portraying the war as a heroic period in the life of the country. With this angle, there was no room to show her tragic aspects. Throughout the 1950s. in the literature about the war, a tendency to panorama of the depiction of the events of the past in large artistic canvases is clearly revealed. The appearance of epic novels is one of the characteristic features of Russian literature of the 1950s–1960s.

The turning point occurred only with the beginning of the “thaw”, when the novels of front-line writers saw the light of day: “Battalions ask for fire” (1957) by Y. Bondarev, “South of the main blow” (1957) by G. Baklanov, “Crane cry” (1961), “ The Third Rocket (1962) by V. Bykov, Starfall (1961) by V. Astafyeva, One of Us (1962) by V. Roslyakov, Scream (1962), Killed near Moscow (1963) by K. Vorobyov and others. Such a surge of interest in the military theme predetermined the emergence of a whole trend called "lieutenant prose."

"Lieutenant's prose" is the work of writers who went through the war, survived and brought to the reader's judgment their combat experience in one form or another. As a rule, this is fiction, most of which has an autobiographical character. The aesthetic principles of "lieutenant prose" had a noticeable impact on the entire literary process of the second half of the 20th century. However, to date there is no generally accepted definition of this literary movement. It is interpreted in different ways: as prose created by front-line soldiers who went through the war with the rank of lieutenants, or as prose, the main characters of which are young lieutenants. The “general's prose” is characterized in a similar way, which refers to works created in the “general's” (epic novel) format by the “generals” of literature (for example, K. Simonov).

Speaking about the works created by front-line writers who explore the formation of a young participant in the war, we will resort to the concept of "lieutenant's prose" as the most widely used. At its origins was the novel by V. Nekrasov "In the trenches of Stalingrad." The author, having himself gone through the war as an officer of a sapper battalion, was able to show in artistic form the “trench truth”, in which the heroes were a simple soldier, a simple officer. And the victory was won by ordinary people - the people. This theme became central to the best military prose of the 1950s and 1960s.

In this regard, the following authors and their works can be mentioned. The story of K. Vorobyov (1919-1975) "Killed near Moscow" (1963) is written very emotionally, but realistically. Plot: A company of Kremlin cadets under the command of a slender, fit captain Ryumin was sent to defend Moscow. A company of soldiers and the defense of Moscow! The company died, and Captain Ryumin shot himself - he put a bullet in his heart, as if atoning for his sin for the death of inexperienced boys. They, the Kremlin cadets, are slender, one hundred and eighty-three centimeters tall, everything is just right and they are sure that the command values ​​them, because they are a special unit. But the cadets are abandoned by their command, and Captain Ryumin leads them into a deliberately unequal battle. There was practically no battle, there was an unexpected and stunning attack by the Germans, from which it was impossible to escape anywhere - they were controlled by the NKVD troops from behind.

Y. Bondarev in the novel "Hot Snow" (1965-1969) tried to develop the traditions of "lieutenant's prose" at a new level, entering into a covert polemic with its characteristic "Remarqueism". Moreover, by that time, “lieutenant prose” was experiencing a certain crisis, which was expressed in a certain monotony of artistic techniques, plot moves and situations, and in the repetition of the very system of images of works. The action of the novel by Yu. Bondarev fits into a day, during which the battery of Lieutenant Drozdovsky, which remained on the south coast, repelled the attacks of one of the tank divisions of the Manstein group, rushing to help Marshal Paulus's army, which was encircled near Stalingrad. However, this particular episode of the war turns out to be the turning point from which the victorious offensive of the Soviet troops began, and for this reason alone the events of the novel unfold, as it were, on three levels: in the trenches of an artillery battery, at the headquarters of the army of General Bessonov, and, finally, at the headquarters of the Supreme Commander, where the general, before being appointed to the active army, has to endure the most difficult psychological duel with Stalin himself. Battalion commander Drozdovsky and the commander of one of the artillery platoons, Lieutenant Kuznetsov, personally meet General Bessonov three times.

Describing the war as a “test of humanity”, Y. Bondarev only expressed what determined the face of the military story of the 1960s–1970s: many battle prose writers focused in their works on the depiction of the inner world of the characters and the refraction of the experience of war in it. , on the transfer of the very process of a person's moral choice. However, the writer's predilection for favorite characters was sometimes expressed in the romanticization of their images - a tradition set by A. Fadeev's novel The Young Guard (1945). In this case, the character of the characters did not change, but only revealed as clearly as possible in the exceptional circumstances in which the war placed them.

This trend was most clearly expressed in the stories of B. Vasiliev "The Dawns Here Are Quiet" (1969) and "I Was Not on the Lists" (1975). The peculiarity of the writer's military prose is that he always chooses episodes that are insignificant from the point of view of global historical events, but speak a lot about the highest spirit of those who were not afraid to oppose the superior forces of the enemy and won. Critics saw a lot of inaccuracies and even “impossibility” in B. Vasiliev’s story “The Dawns Here Are Quiet”, the action of which develops in the forests and swamps of Karelia (for example, the White Sea-Baltic Canal, which is targeted by a sabotage group, has not been operating since the autumn of 1941 ). But the writer was not interested in historical accuracy here, but in the situation itself, when five fragile girls, led by foreman Fedot Baskov, entered into an unequal battle with sixteen thugs.

The image of Baskov, in essence, goes back to Lermontov's Maxim Maksimych - a man, perhaps poorly educated, but whole, wise in life and endowed with a noble and kind heart. Vaskov does not understand the intricacies of world politics or fascist ideology, but he feels with his heart the bestial essence of this war and its causes, and cannot justify the death of five girls with any higher interests.

In the image of anti-aircraft gunners, the typical fates of women of the pre-war and war years were embodied: different social status and educational level, different characters, interests. However, with all the accuracy of life, these images are noticeably romanticized: in the image of the writer, each of the girls is beautiful in her own way, each is worthy of her biography. And the fact that all the heroines die underlines the inhumanity of this war, affecting the lives of even the most distant people from it. The fascists are opposed by the contrast to the romanticized images of girls. Their images are grotesque, deliberately reduced, and this expresses the main idea of ​​the writer about the nature of a person who has embarked on the path of murder. This thought illuminates with particular clarity that episode of the story in which Sonya Gurvich's dying cry sounds, which escaped because the knife was intended for a man, but fell on a woman's chest. With the image of Liza Brichkina, a line of possible love is introduced into the story. From the very beginning, Vaskov and Liza liked each other: she was to him - figure and sharpness, he to her - male solidity. Lisa and Vaskov have a lot in common, but the heroes did not succeed in singing together, as the foreman promised: the war destroys the nascent feelings in the bud. The end of the story reveals the meaning of its title. The work closes with a letter, judging by the language, written by a young man who became an accidental witness to the return of Vaskov to the place of death of the girls, along with his adopted son, Rita Albert. Thus, the return of the hero to the place of his feat is shown through the eyes of a generation whose right to life was defended by people like Vaskov. Such a symbolization of images, a philosophical understanding of situations of moral choice are very characteristic of a military story. Prose writers thus continue the reflections of their predecessors on the "eternal" questions about the nature of good and evil, the degree of human responsibility for actions seemingly dictated by necessity. Hence the desire of some writers to create situations that, in their universality, semantic capacity and categorical moral and ethical conclusions, would approach a parable, only colored by the author's emotion and enriched with quite realistic details.

It was not for nothing that the concept of “philosophical story about the war” was even born, associated primarily with the work of the Belarusian prose writer Vasil Bykov, with such stories as “Sotnikov” (1970), “Obelisk” (1972), “Sign of Trouble” (1984) . V. Bykov's prose is often characterized by a too straightforward opposition of a person's physical and moral health. However, the inferiority of the soul of some heroes is not revealed immediately, not in everyday life: a “moment of truth” is needed, a situation of categorical choice that immediately reveals the true essence of a person. Rybak, the hero of V. Bykov's story "Sotnikov", is full of vitality, knows no fear, and Rybak's comrade, ailing, not distinguished by power, with "thin hands" Sotnikov gradually begins to seem like a burden to him. Indeed, largely due to the fault of the last sortie of two partisans ended in failure. Sotnikov is a purely civilian person. Until 1939 he worked at a school, his physical strength was replaced by stubbornness. It was stubbornness that prompted Sotnikov three times to try to get out of the encirclement in which his defeated battery found itself, before the hero got to the partisans. Whereas Rybak, from the age of 12, was engaged in hard peasant labor and therefore endured physical stress and hardship more easily. It is also noteworthy that Rybak is more prone to moral compromises. So, he is more tolerant of the elder Peter than Sotnikov, and does not dare to punish him for serving the Germans. Sotnikov, on the other hand, is not inclined to compromise at all, which, however, according to V. Bykov, testifies not to the limitations of the hero, but to his excellent understanding of the laws of war. Indeed, unlike Rybak, Sotnikov already knew what captivity was, and managed to pass this test with honor, because he did not compromise with his conscience. The "moment of truth" for Sotnikov and Rybak was their arrest by the police, the scene of interrogation and execution. The fisherman, who has always found a way out of any situation before, tries to outwit the enemy, not realizing that, embarking on such a path, he will inevitably come to betrayal, because he has already placed his own salvation above the laws of honor and camaraderie. Step by step, he yields to the enemy, refusing first to think about saving the woman who sheltered them with Sotnikov in the attic, then about saving Sotnikov himself, and then his own soul. Finding himself in a hopeless situation, Rybak, in the face of imminent death, chickened out, preferring animal life to human death.

The change in the approach to conflicts in military prose can also be traced when analyzing the works of different years of one writer. Already in the first stories, V. Bykov sought to free himself from stereotypes when depicting war. In the field of view of the writer is always extremely tense situations. Heroes are faced with the need to make their own decisions. So, for example, it was with Lieutenant Ivanovsky in the story “To Live Until Dawn” (1972) - he risked himself and those who went on a mission with him and died. The warehouse with weapons for which this sortie was organized was not found. In order to somehow justify the sacrifices already made, Ivanovsky hopes to blow up the headquarters, but he could not be found either. In front of him, mortally wounded, a convoy appears, into which the lieutenant, having collected the remaining forces, throws a grenade. V. Bykov made the reader think about the meaning of the concept of "feat".

At one time, there were disputes about whether teacher Frost in Obelisk (1972) can be considered a hero if he did not do anything heroic, did not kill a single fascist, but only shared the fate of the dead students. Characters and other stories of V. Bykov did not correspond to the standard ideas about heroism. Critics were embarrassed by the appearance of a traitor in almost every one of them (Rybak in Sotnikov, 1970; Anton Golubin in Go and Not Return, 1978, etc.), who until the fateful moment was an honest partisan, but gave in when he had to take risks for the sake of saving your own life. For V. Bykov, it was not important from which observation point the observation was being made, it was important how the war was seen and portrayed. He showed the versatility of actions performed in extreme situations. The reader was given the opportunity, not rushing to condemn, to understand those who were clearly wrong.

In the works of V. Bykov, the connection between the military past and the present is usually emphasized. In The Wolf Pack (1975), a former soldier recalls the war, having come to the city to look for the baby he once saved and make sure that such a high price was not paid for his life in vain (his father and mother died, and he, Levchuk, became disabled) . The story ends with a premonition of their meeting.

Another veteran, Associate Professor Ageev, is digging up a quarry (Quarry, 1986), where he was once shot, but miraculously survived. The memory of the past haunts him, makes him rethink the past again and again, ashamed of thoughtless fears about those who, like the priest Baranovskaya, bore the label of the enemy.

In the 1950s–1970s several major works appear, the purpose of which is an epic coverage of the events of the war years, understanding the fate of individuals and their families in the context of the nation's fate. In 1959, the first novel "The Living and the Dead" of the trilogy of the same name by K. Simonov was published, the second novel "Soldiers Are Not Born" and the third "Last Summer" were published, respectively, in 1964 and 1970-1971. In 1960, the draft of V. Grossman's novel "Life and Fate", the second part of the dilogy "For a Just Cause" (1952), was completed, but a year later the manuscript was arrested by the KGB, so that the general reader at home could get acquainted with the novel only in 1988 G.

In the first book of K. Simonov's trilogy "The Living and the Dead" the action takes place at the beginning of the war in Belarus and near Moscow in the midst of military events. War correspondent Sintsov, leaving the encirclement with a group of comrades, decides to leave journalism and join the regiment of General Serpilin. The human history of these two heroes is the focus of the author's attention, not disappearing behind the large-scale events of the war. The writer touched on many topics and problems that were previously impossible in Soviet literature: he spoke about the country's unpreparedness for war, about the repressions that weakened the army, about the mania of suspicion, and the inhumane attitude towards man. The writer's success was the figure of General Lvov, who embodied the image of a Bolshevik fanatic. Personal courage and faith in a happy future are combined in him with a desire to mercilessly eradicate everything that, in his opinion, interferes with this future. Lvov loves abstract people, but is ready to sacrifice people, throwing them into senseless attacks, seeing in a person only a means to achieve lofty goals. His suspicion extends so far that he is ready to argue with Stalin himself, who freed several talented military men from the camps. If General Lvov is the ideologist of totalitarianism, then his practitioner, Colonel Baranov, is a careerist and a coward. Speaking loud words about duty, honor, courage, writing denunciations against his colleagues, he, being surrounded, puts on a soldier's tunic and "forgets" all the documents. Telling the harsh truth about the beginning of the war, K. Simonov at the same time shows the people's resistance to the enemy, depicting the feat of the Soviet people who stood up to defend their homeland. These are also episodic characters (artillerymen who did not abandon their cannon, dragging it in their arms from Brest to Moscow; an old collective farmer who scolded the retreating army, but at the risk of his life saved the wounded in his house; Captain Ivanov, who collected frightened soldiers from broken units and leading them into battle), and the main characters are Serpilin and Sintsov.
General Serpilin, conceived by the author as an episodic person, did not accidentally gradually become one of the main characters of the trilogy: his fate embodied the most complex and at the same time the most typical features of a Russian person of the 20th century. A participant in the First World War, he became a talented commander in the Civil War, taught at the academy and was arrested on the denunciation of Baranov for telling his listeners about the strength of the German army, while all the propaganda insisted that in the event of war we would defeat the small blood, and we will fight on foreign territory. Released from the concentration camp at the beginning of the war, Serpilin, by his own admission, "forgot nothing and did not forgive anything", but he realized that it was not the time to indulge in insults - it was necessary to save the Motherland. Outwardly stern and laconic, demanding of himself and his subordinates, he tries to take care of the soldiers, suppresses any attempts to achieve victory at any cost. In the third book of the novel, K. Simonov showed the ability of this person to great love. Another central character in the novel, Sintsov, was originally conceived by the author solely as a war correspondent for one of the central newspapers. This made it possible to throw the hero to the most important sectors of the front, creating a large-scale chronicle novel. At the same time, there was a danger of depriving him of his individuality, making him only a mouthpiece for the author's ideas. The writer quickly realized this danger and already in the second book of the trilogy he changed the genre of his work: the novel-chronicle became a novel of destinies, in the aggregate recreating the scale of the people's battle with the enemy. And Sintsov became one of the acting characters, who suffered injuries, encirclement, participation in the November parade of 1941 (from where the troops went straight to the front). The fate of the war correspondent was replaced by a soldier's lot: the hero went from a private to a senior officer.

Having finished the trilogy, K. Simonov sought to supplement it, to emphasize the ambiguity of his position. This is how Different Days of the War appeared (1970–1980), and after the writer's death Letters about the War (1990) were published.

Quite often, the epic novel by K. Simonov is compared with the work of V. Grossman "Life and Fate". The war, the Battle of Stalingrad are only one of the components of the grandiose epic of V. Grossman "Life and Fate", although the main action of the work takes place precisely in 1943 and the fate of most of the heroes is somehow connected with the events taking place around the city on the Volga. The image of a German concentration camp in the novel is replaced by scenes in the dungeons of the Lubyanka, and the ruins of Stalingrad are replaced by the laboratories of an institute evacuated to Kazan, where the physicist Strum is struggling with the mysteries of the atomic nucleus. However, it is not “folk thought” or “family thought” that determines the face of the work - in this the epic of V. Grossman is inferior to the masterpieces of L. Tolstoy and M. Sholokhov. The writer is focused on something else: the concept of freedom becomes the subject of his thoughts, as evidenced by the title of the novel. V. Grossman contrasts fate as the power of fate or objective circumstances that dominate a person with life as a free realization of the personality, even in conditions of its absolute lack of freedom. The writer is convinced that one can arbitrarily dispose of the lives of thousands of people, essentially remaining a slave like General Neudobnov or Commissar Getmanov. And you can die unconquered in the gas chamber of a concentration camp: this is how military doctor Sofya Osipovna Levinton dies, until the last minute only caring about how to alleviate the torment of the boy David.

The latent thought of V. Grossman, that the source of freedom or lack of freedom of the individual is in the personality itself, explains why the defenders of the House of Grekov, doomed to death, turn out to be much freer than Krymov, who came to judge them. Krymov's consciousness is enslaved by ideology, he is in a sense a "man in a case", albeit not as blinkered as some other heroes of the novel. Even I. S. Turgenev in the image of Bazarov, and then F. M. Dostoevsky convincingly showed how the struggle between “dead theory” and “living life” in the minds of such people often ends in the victory of theory: it is easier for them to recognize the “wrongness” of life than unfaithfulness "the only true" idea, designed to explain this life. And therefore, when Obersturmbannfuehrer Liss convinces the old Bolshevik Mostovsky in a German concentration camp that there is much in common between them (“We are a form of a single entity - a party state”), Mostovsky can only answer his enemy with silent contempt. He almost feels with horror how “dirty doubts” suddenly appear in his mind, not without reason called by V. Grossman “dynamite of freedom”. The writer still sympathizes with such “hostages of the idea” as Mostovsky or Krymov, but he is sharply rejected by those whose ruthlessness towards people stems not from loyalty to established beliefs, but from the absence of such. Commissar Getmanov, once secretary of the regional committee in Ukraine, is a mediocre warrior, but a talented whistleblower of "deviators" and "enemies of the people", sensitively picking up any fluctuation in the party line. For the sake of receiving a reward, he is able to send tankers who have not slept for three days into the offensive, and when the commander of the tank corps Novikov, in order to avoid unnecessary casualties, delayed the start of the offensive for eight minutes, Getmanov, kissing Novikov for his victorious decision, immediately wrote a denunciation of him to the Headquarters.

3. Among the works about the war that have appeared in recent years, two novels attract attention: “Cursed and Killed” by V. Astafiev (1992–1994) and “The General and His Army” by G. Vladimov (1995).

Works that restore the truth about the war cannot be bright - the theme itself does not allow, their goal is different - to awaken the memory of descendants. The monumental novel by V. Astafiev "Cursed and Killed" deals with the military theme in an incomparably tougher way. In its first part, The Devil's Pit, the writer tells the story of the formation of the 21st Infantry Regiment, in which, even before being sent to the front, those who were beaten to death by a company commander or shot for unauthorized absence die, those who are called upon to defend the Motherland will soon be maimed physically and spiritually. The second part of the Bridgehead, dedicated to the crossing of the Dnieper by our troops, is also full of blood, pain, descriptions of arbitrariness, bullying, and theft that flourish in the army. Neither the invaders nor the homegrown monsters can be forgiven by the writer for his cynically callous attitude towards human life. This explains the angry pathos of the author's digressions and transcendental in their ruthless frankness descriptions in this work, whose artistic method is not without reason defined by critics as "cruel realism".

The fact that G. Vladimov himself was still a boy during the war determined both the strengths and weaknesses of his sensational novel The General and His Army (1995). The experienced eye of a front-line soldier will see in the novel many inaccuracies and overexposures, including unforgivable even for a work of art. However, this novel is interesting as an attempt to look at the events that once became a turning point for the entire world history from a "Tolstoy" distance. No wonder the author does not hide the direct echoes of his novel with the epic "War and Peace" (for more information about the novel, see the chapter of the textbook "Modern Literary Situation"). The very fact of the appearance of such a work suggests that the military theme in literature has not exhausted itself and will never exhaust itself. The key to this is the living memory of the war among those who know about it only from the lips of its participants and from history books. And a considerable merit in this belongs to the writers who, having gone through the war, considered it their duty to tell the whole truth about it, no matter how bitter it may be.

Warning of warrior writers: “whoever lies about the past war brings the future war closer” (V.P. Astafiev). Comprehension of trench truth is a matter of honor for any person. War is terrible, and in the body of a new generation a stable gene must be developed to prevent such a thing from happening again. After all, it was not in vain that V. Astafiev chose the saying of the Siberian Old Believers as the epigraph of his main novel: “It was written that everyone who sows unrest, wars and fratricide on earth will be cursed and killed by God.”

4. During the Great Patriotic War, it was forbidden to keep diaries at the front. After analyzing the creative activity of front-line writers, it can be noted that such writers as A. T. Tvardovsky, V. V. Vishnevsky, V. V. Ivanov gravitated towards diary prose, and G. L. Zanadvorov kept a diary during the occupation. The specific features of the poetics of the writers' diary prose - the synthesis of lyrical and epic principles, aesthetic organization - are confirmed in many memoirs and diaries. Despite the fact that writers keep diaries for themselves, works require artistic skill from the creators: diaries have a special style of presentation, characterized by the capacity of thought, aphoristic expression, and accuracy of the word. Such features allow the researcher to call the writer's diaries independent micro-works. Emotional impact in the diaries is achieved by the author through the selection of specific facts, author's commentary, subjective interpretation of events. The diary is based on the transmission and reconstruction of the real through the author's personal ideas, and the emotional background depends on his state of mind.

Along with the obligatory structural components of diary prose, specific artistic samples may contain specific mechanisms for expressing attitudes towards reality. The diary prose of the writers of the period of the Great Patriotic War is characterized by the presence of such inserted plots as poems in prose, short stories, landscape sketches. Memoirs and diaries of the Great Patriotic War are confessional and sincere. Using the potential of wartime memoirs and diaries, the authors of memoirs and diaries were able to express the mood of the era, create a vivid picture of life in the war.

An important role in the study of the Great Patriotic War is played by the memoirs of military leaders, generals, officers, and soldiers. They were written by direct participants in the war, and, therefore, are quite objective and contain important information about the course of the war, its operations, military losses, and so on.

Memoirs were left by I. Kh. Bagramyan, S. S. Biryuzov, P. A. Belov,
A. M. Vasilevsky, K. N. Galitsky, A. I. Eremenko, G. K. Zhukov,
I. S. Konev, N. G. Kuznetsov, A. I. Pokryshkin, K. K. Rokossovsky and others. Collections of memoirs devoted to a specific topic (battle or branch of service), such as, for example, “In for Transcarpathia", "Stalingrad epic", "Liberation of Belarus" and so on. Memoirs were also left by the leaders of the partisan movement: G. Ya. Bazima,
P. P. Vershigor, P. K. Ignatov and others.

Many books of memoirs of military leaders have special appendices, diagrams, maps that not only explain what was written, but are in themselves an important source, as they contain features of military operations, lists of commanding officers and methods of warfare, as well as the number of troops and some other information. .

Most often, events in such memoirs are arranged in chronological order.

Many military figures based their diaries not only on personal memories, but also actively used elements of a research nature (referring to archives, facts, and other sources). So, for example, A. M. Vasilevsky in his memoir “The Work of All Life” indicates that the book is based on factual material, well known to him and confirmed by archival documents, a significant part of which has not yet been published.

Such memoirs become more reliable and objective, which, of course, increases their value for the researcher, since in this case there is no need to check every stated fact.

Another feature of memoirs written by military people (as well as other memoirs of the Soviet period, by the way) is the strict control of censorship over the facts described. The presentation of military events required a special approach, since the official and stated versions should not have discrepancies. The memoirs about the war should have indicated the leading role of the party in defeating the enemy, facts “shameful” for the front, miscalculations and mistakes of the command, and, of course, top secret information. This must be taken into account when analyzing a particular work.

Marshal of the Soviet Union G.K. Zhukov left a rather significant memoir “Memories and Reflections”, which tells not only about the Great Patriotic War, but also about the years of his youth, the Civil War, and military clashes with Japan. This information is extremely important as a historical source, although it is often used by researchers only as illustrative material. The memoirs of four times Hero of the Soviet Union G.K. Zhukov “Memories and Reflections” were first published in 1969, 24 years after the victory in the Great Patriotic War. Since then, the book has been very popular not only among ordinary readers, but also among historians, as a source of quite important information.

In Russia, the memoirs were reprinted 13 times. The 2002 edition (used in writing the work) was dedicated to the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Moscow and the 105th anniversary of the birth of G.K. Zhukov. The book has also been published in thirty foreign countries, in 18 languages, with a circulation of more than seven million copies. Moreover, on the cover of the edition of memoirs in Germany it is indicated: "One of the greatest documents of our era."

Marshal worked on "Memoirs and Reflections" for about ten years. During this period, he was in disgrace and was ill, which affected the speed of writing memoirs. In addition, the book was heavily censored.

For the second edition, G.K. Zhukov revised some chapters, corrected errors and wrote three new chapters, as well as introduced new documents, descriptions and data, which increased the volume of the book. The two-volume edition was published after his death.

When comparing the text of the first edition (published in 1979) and subsequent ones (published after his death), distortion and the absence of some places are striking. In 1990, a revised edition was published for the first time, based on Marshal's own manuscript. It differed significantly from others in the presence of sharp criticism of government agencies, the army and the policy of the state as a whole. The 2002 edition consists of two volumes. The first volume includes 13 chapters, the second - 10.

Questions and tasks for self-control

1. Determine the periodization of the theme of the Great Patriotic War in the history of the development of Russian literature, supporting your opinion with an analysis of works of art by 3-4 authors.

2. Why do you think in the period 1941-1945. writers did not cover the horrors of war? What pathos prevails in the works of art of this period?

3. In the school literature course on the Great Patriotic War, it is proposed to study "The Son of the Regiment" (1944) by V. Kataev about the serene adventures of Vanya Solntsev. Do you agree with this choice? Determine the author of the school curriculum in literature.

4. Determine the dynamics of the image of the Russian character in different periods of the development of the topic in literature. Have the dominants of behavior and the main character traits of the hero changed?

5. Suggest a list of literary texts about the Great Patriotic War, which can become the basis of an elective course for students in the 11th grade of a comprehensive school.

7 Military lyrics of the Great War. - M .: Hood. lit., 1989. - 314 p.

Grossman, V. S. Life and fate / V. S. Grossman. – M.: Hood. lit., 1999. - S. 408.

After the revolutionary era of 1917-1921. The Great Patriotic War was the largest and most significant historical event that left the deepest, indelible mark on the memory and psychology of the people, in its literature.

In the very first days of the war, writers responded to the tragic events. At first, the war was reflected in operational small genres - an essay and a story, individual facts, cases, individual participants in the battles were captured. Then came a deeper understanding of events and it became possible to depict them more fully. This led to the emergence of stories.

The first stories "Rainbow" by V. Vasilevskaya, "The Unconquered" by B. Gorbatov were built on the contrast: the Soviet Motherland - fascist Germany, a just, humane Soviet man - a murderer, a fascist invader.

Two feelings possessed writers - love and hatred. The image of the Soviet people appeared as a collective, undifferentiated, in the unity of the best national qualities. The Soviet man, fighting for the freedom of the motherland, was portrayed in a romantic light as an exalted heroic personality, without vices and shortcomings. Despite the terrible reality of the war, already the first stories were filled with confidence in victory, optimism. The romantic line of the depiction of the feat of the Soviet people later found its continuation in the novel by A. Fadeev "The Young Guard".

Gradually, the idea of ​​war, of its way of life, of the not always heroic behavior of a person in difficult military conditions, deepens. This made it possible to reflect the war time more objectively and realistically. One of the best works that objectively and truthfully recreates the harsh everyday life of the war was the novel by V. Nekrasov "In the trenches of Stalingrad", written in 1947. The war appears in it in all its tragic grandeur and dirty bloody everyday life. For the first time, she is shown not as a “person from the outside”, but through the perception of a direct participant in the events, for whom the absence of soap may be more important than the presence of a strategic plan somewhere in the headquarters. V. Nekrasov shows a person in all his manifestations - in the greatness of a feat and the baseness of desires, in self-sacrifice and cowardly betrayal. A man in war is not only a fighting unit, but mainly a living being, with weaknesses and virtues, passionately thirsting for life. In the novel, V. Nekrasov reflected the life of the war, the behavior of army representatives at different levels.

In the 1960s, writers of the so-called "lieutenant" conscription came to literature, creating a large layer of military prose. In their works, the war was depicted from the inside, seen through the eyes of an ordinary warrior. More sober and objective was the approach to the images of the Soviet people. It turned out that this was not at all a homogeneous mass, seized by a single impulse, that Soviet people behave differently in the same circumstances, that the war did not destroy at all, but only muffled natural desires, obscured some and sharply revealed other qualities of character . Prose about the war of the 1960s and 1970s for the first time put the problem of choice at the center of the work. By placing their hero in extreme circumstances, the writers forced him to make a moral choice. Such are the stories "Hot Snow", "Coast", "Choice" by Y. Bondarev, "Sotnikov", "Go and not return" by V. Bykov, "Sashka" by V. Kondratiev. The writers explored the psychological nature of the heroic, focusing not on the social motives of behavior, but on the internal ones, determined by the psychology of a warring person.

The best stories of the 1960s and 1970s depict not large-scale, panoramic events of the war, but local events that, it would seem, cannot radically affect the outcome of the war. But it was from such “private” cases that the general picture of wartime was formed, it was the tragedy of individual situations that gives an idea of ​​​​the unthinkable trials that befell the people as a whole.

The literature of the 1960s and 1970s about the war expanded the notion of the heroic. The feat could be accomplished not only in battle. V. Bykov in the story "Sotnikov" showed heroism as the ability to resist the "terrible force of circumstances", to preserve human dignity in the face of death. The story is built on the contrast of external and internal, physical appearance and the spiritual world. The main characters of the work are contrasting, in which two options for behavior in extraordinary circumstances are given.

Rybak is an experienced partisan, always successful in battle, physically strong and hardy. He does not particularly think about any moral principles. What goes without saying for him is completely impossible for Sotnikov. At first, the difference in their attitude to seemingly unprincipled things slips through in separate strokes. In the cold, Sotnikov goes on a mission in a cap, and Rybak asks why he didn’t take a hat from some peasant in the village. Sotnikov, on the other hand, considers it immoral to rob those men whom he is supposed to protect.

Once captured, both partisans try to find some way out. Sotnikov is tormented that he left the detachment without food; The fisherman only cares about his own life. The true essence of each is manifested in an extraordinary situation, in front of the threat of death. Sotnikov does not make any concessions to the enemy. His moral principles do not allow him to retreat before the Nazis even a single step. And he goes to the execution without fear, suffering only because he could not complete the task, which caused the death of other people. Even on the verge of death, conscience, responsibility to others do not leave Sotnikov. V. Bykov creates the image of a heroic personality who does not accomplish an obvious feat. He shows that moral maximalism, unwillingness to compromise one's principles even in the face of the threat of death, is tantamount to heroism.

Rybak behaves differently. Not an enemy by conviction, not a coward in battle, he turns out to be cowardly when faced with the enemy. The absence of conscience as the highest measure of actions makes him take the first step towards betrayal. The fisherman himself does not yet realize that the path he has set foot on is irreversible. He convinces himself that, having escaped, having escaped from the Nazis, he will still be able to fight them, take revenge on them, that his death is inappropriate. But Bykov shows that this is an illusion. Having taken one step on the path of betrayal, Rybak is forced to go further. When Sotnikov is executed, Rybak essentially becomes his executioner. Ry-baku no forgiveness. Even death, which he so feared before and which he now longs for in order to atone for his sin, departs from him.

The physically weak Sotnikov turned out to be spiritually superior to the strong Rybak. At the last moment before his death, the eyes of the hero meet the eyes of a boy in Budyonovka in a crowd of peasants driven to execution. And this boy is a continuation of life principles, Sotnikov's uncompromising position, a guarantee of victory.

In the 1960s and 1970s, military prose developed in several directions. The trend towards a large-scale depiction of the war was expressed in K. Simonov's trilogy The Living and the Dead. It covers the time from the first hours of hostilities to the summer of 1944, the period of the Belarusian operation. The main characters - political officer Sin-tsov, regiment commander Serpilin, Tanya Ovsyannikova - go through the whole story. In the trilogy, K. Simonov traces how an absolutely civilian Sintsov becomes a soldier, how he matures, hardens in the war, how his spiritual world changes. Serpilin is shown as a morally mature, mature person. This is a smart, thinking commander who went through a civil war, well, an academy. He protects people, does not want to throw them into a senseless battle just for the sake of reporting to the command about the timely capture of the point, that is, according to the Staff plan. His fate reflected the tragic fate of the whole country.

The "trench" point of view on the war and its events is expanded and supplemented by the view of the military leader, objectified by the author's analysis. The war in the trilogy appears as an epic co-existence, historical in meaning and nationwide in scope of resistance.

In the military prose of the 1970s, the psychological analysis of characters placed in extreme conditions deepened, and interest in moral problems intensified. The strengthening of realistic tendencies is complemented by the revival of romantic pathos. Realism and romance are closely intertwined in the story “The Dawns Here Are Quiet…” by B. Vasiliev, “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess” by V. Astafiev. High heroic pathos permeates the work of B. Vasiliev, terrible in its naked truth, “He was not on the lists”. material from the site

Nikolai Pluzhnikov arrived at the Brest garrison on the evening before the war. He had not yet been added to the lists of personnel, and when the war began, he could have left with the refugees. But Pluzhnikov fights even when all the defenders of the fortress are killed. For several months, this courageous young man did not allow the Nazis to live in peace: he blew up, shot, appeared in the most unexpected places and killed enemies. And when, deprived of food, water, ammunition, he came out of the underground casemates into the light, a gray-haired, blinded old man appeared before the enemies. And on this day, Kolya turned 20 years old. Even the Nazis bowed to the courage of the Soviet soldier, giving him military honor.

Nikolai Pluzhnikov died unconquered, death is right death. B. Vasiliev does not wonder why, knowing that Nikolai Pluzhnikov is fighting the enemy so stubbornly, knowing that he is not a warrior alone in the field, he is still a very young man who has not had time to live. He draws the very fact of heroic behavior, seeing no alternative to it. All defenders of the Brest Fortress fight heroically. B. Vasilyev continued in the 1970s the heroic-romantic line that originated in military prose in the first years of the war (Rainbow by V. Vasilevskaya, Invictus by B. Gorbatov).

Another trend in the depiction of the Great Patriotic War is associated with artistic and documentary prose, which is based on tape recordings and eyewitness accounts. Such “tape-recorded” prose originated in Belarus. Her first work was the book “I am from a fiery village” by A. Adamovich, I. Bryl, V. Kolesnikov, which recreates the tragedy of Khatyn. The terrible years of the Leningrad siege in all their undisguised cruelty and naturalism, making it possible to understand how it was, what a hungry person felt, when he could still feel, stood on the pages of A. Adamovich and D. Granin's "Blockade Book". The war that went through the fate of the country did not spare either men or women. About women's destinies - a book by S. Aleksievich "War does not have a woman's face."

Prose about the Great Patriotic War is the most powerful and largest thematic branch of Russian and Soviet literature. From the external image of the war, she came to comprehend the deep internal processes that took place in the mind and psychology of a person placed in extreme military circumstances.

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The Great Patriotic War is an ordeal that befell the Russian people. The literature of that time could not remain aloof from this event.

So on the first day of the war, at a rally of Soviet writers, the following words were heard: "Every Soviet writer is ready to give everything, his strength, all his experience and talent, all his blood, if necessary, to the cause of a holy people's war against the enemies of our Motherland." These words were justified. From the very beginning of the war, the writers felt "mobilized and called." About two thousand writers went to the front, more than four hundred of them did not return. These are A. Gaidar, E. Petrov, Yu. Krymov, M. Jalil; M. Kulchitsky, V. Bagritsky, P. Kogan died very young.

Frontline writers fully shared with their people both the pain of retreat and the joy of victories. Georgy Suvorov, a front-line writer who died shortly before the victory, wrote: “We lived our good age as people, and for people.”

Writers lived one life with the fighting people: they froze in the trenches, went on the attack, performed feats and ... wrote.

Oh book! Treasured friend!

You're in a fighter's duffel bag

Went all the way victorious

Until the very end.

your big truth

She led us along.

We went to battle together.

Russian literature of the period of the Second World War became the literature of one theme - the theme of war, the theme of the Motherland. The writers felt like "trench poets" (A. Surkov), and all literature as a whole, in the apt expression of A. Tolstov, was "the voice of the heroic soul of the people." The slogan "All forces - to defeat the enemy!" related directly to writers. The writers of the war years owned all sorts of literary weapons: lyrics and satire, epic and drama. Nevertheless, the first word was said by the lyricists and publicists.

Poems were published by the central and front-line press, broadcast on the radio along with information about the most important military and political events, sounded from numerous impromptu scenes at the front and in the rear. Many poems were copied into front-line notebooks, memorized. The poems "Wait for me" by Konstantin Simonov, "Dugout" by Alexander Surkov, "Spark" by Isakovsky gave rise to numerous poetic responses. The poetic dialogue between writers and readers testified to the fact that during the war years a cordial contact was established between the poets and the people, unprecedented in the history of our poetry. Intimacy with the people is the most remarkable and exceptional feature of the lyrics of 1941-1945.

Homeland, war, death and immortality, hatred of the enemy, military brotherhood and comradeship, love and loyalty, the dream of victory, reflection on the fate of the people - these are the main motives of military poetry. In the poems of Tikhonov, Surkov, Isakovsky, Tvardovsky one can hear anxiety for the fatherland and merciless hatred of the enemy, the bitterness of loss and the consciousness of the cruel necessity of war.

During the war, the feeling of homeland intensified. Cut off from their favorite occupations and native places, millions of Soviet people, as it were, took a fresh look at their familiar native lands, at the house where they were born, at themselves, at their people. This was also reflected in poetry: heartfelt poems about Moscow by Surkov and Gusev, about Leningrad by Tikhonov, Olga Berggolts, and Isakovsky about the Smolensk region appeared.

The character of the so-called lyrical hero also changed in the lyrics of the war years: first of all, he became more earthly, closer than in the lyrics of the previous period. Poetry, as it were, entered the war, and the war, with all its battle and everyday details, into poetry. The "landing" of the lyrics did not prevent the poets from conveying the grandeur of events and the beauty of the feat of our people. Heroes often endure severe, sometimes inhuman hardships and suffering:

It's time to raise ten generations

The weight we have lifted.

(Wrote in his poetry A. Surkov)

Love for the fatherland and hatred for the enemy - this is the inexhaustible and only source from which our lyrics drew their inspiration during the Second World War. The most famous poets of that time were: Nikolai Tikhonov, Alexander Tvardovsky, Alexei Surkov, Olga Berggolts, Mikhail Isakovsky, Konstantin Simonov.

In the poetry of the war years, three main genre groups of poems can be distinguished: lyrical (ode, elegy, song), satirical and lyric-epic (ballads, poems).

During the Great Patriotic War, not only poetic genres, but also prose were developed. It is represented by journalistic and essay genres, military stories and heroic stories. Journalistic genres are very diverse: articles, essays, feuilletons, appeals, letters, leaflets.

Articles were written by: Leonov, Alexei Tolstoy, Mikhail Sholokhov, Vsevolod Vishnevsky, Nikolai Tikhonov. By their articles they instilled lofty civic feelings, taught them to take an uncompromising attitude towards fascism, and revealed the true face of the "organizers of the new order." Soviet writers opposed fascist false propaganda with great human truth. Hundreds of articles cited irrefutable facts about the atrocities of the invaders, cited letters, diaries, testimonies of prisoners of war, named names, dates, numbers, made references to secret documents, orders and orders of the authorities. In their articles, they told the harsh truth about the war, supported the bright dream of victory among the people, called for steadfastness, courage and perseverance. "Not one step further!" - so begins the article by Alexei Tolstov "Moscow is threatened by the enemy."

In terms of mood and tone, military journalism was either satirical or lyrical. Fascists were subjected to ruthless ridicule in satirical articles. The pamphlet has become a favorite genre of satirical journalism. Articles addressed to the motherland and people were very diverse in genre: articles - appeals, appeals, appeals, letters, diaries. Such, for example, is Leonid Leonov's letter to "An Unknown American Friend."

Publicism had a huge impact on all genres of literature of the war years, and above all on the essay. From the essays, the world first learned about the immortal names of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, Lisa Chaikina, Alexander Matrosov, about the feat of the Young Guards, who preceded the novel The Young Guard. Very common in 1943-1945 was an essay about the feat of a large group of people. So, essays about night aviation "U-2" (Simonov), about the heroic Komsomol (Vishnevsky), and many others appear. Essays on the heroic home front are portrait sketches. Moreover, from the very beginning, writers pay attention not so much to the fate of individual heroes, but to mass labor heroism. Most often, Marietta Shaginyan, Kononenko, Karavaeva, Kolosov wrote about the people of the rear.

The defense of Leningrad and the battle near Moscow were the reason for the creation of a number of event essays, which are an artistic chronicle of military operations. Essays testify to this: "Moscow. November 1941" by Lidin, "July - December" by Simonov.

During the Great Patriotic War, such works were also created in which the main attention was paid to the fate of a person in the war. Human happiness and war - this is how one can formulate the basic principle of such works as "Simply Love" by V. Vasilevskaya, "It Was in Leningrad" by A. Chakovsky, "Third Chamber" by Leonidov.

In 1942, a story about the war by V. Nekrasov "In the trenches of Stalingrad" appeared. This was the first work of a front-line writer unknown at that time, who rose to the rank of captain, fought all the long days and nights near Stalingrad, participated in its defense, in the terrible and overwhelming battles waged by our army. In the work, we see the author's desire not only to embody personal memories of the war, but also to try to psychologically motivate a person's actions, to explore the moral and philosophical origins of a soldier's feat. The reader saw in the story a great test, about which it is written honestly and reliably, faced with all the inhumanity and cruelty of the war. It was one of the first attempts at psychological understanding of the feat of the people.

The war became a great misfortune for all. But it is at this time that people manifest their moral essence, "it (war) is like a litmus test, like a special developer." Here, for example, Valega is an illiterate person, “... reads in syllables, and ask him what a homeland is, he, by God, will not really explain. But for this homeland... he will fight to the last bullet. And the cartridges will run out - with fists, teeth ... ". The battalion commander Shiryaev and Kerzhentsev are doing everything possible to save as many human lives as possible in order to fulfill their duty. They are opposed in the novel by the image of Kaluga, who thinks only about not getting to the front line; the author also condemns Abrosimov, who believes that if a task is set, then it must be carried out, despite any losses, throwing people under the destructive fire of machine guns.

Reading the story, you feel the author's faith in the Russian soldier, who, despite all the suffering, troubles, failures, has no doubts about the justice of the liberation war. The heroes of the story by V.P. Nekrasov live by faith in a future victory and are ready to give their lives for it without hesitation.

In the same harsh forty-second, the events of V. Kondratyev's story "Sasha" take place. The author of the work is also a front-line soldier, and he fought near Rzhev in the same way as his hero. And his story is dedicated to the exploits of ordinary Russian soldiers. V. Kondratiev, just like V. Nekrasov, did not deviate from the truth, spoke honestly and talentedly about that cruel and difficult time. The hero of the story by V. Kondratyev, Sashka, is very young, but he has been on the front lines for two months already, where “just to dry, warm up is already a lot of luck” and “... it’s bad with bread, there’s no fat. Half a pot ... millet for two - and be healthy.

The neutral zone, which is only a thousand steps, is shot through. And Sashka will crawl there at night to get his company commander boots from a dead German, because the lieutenant has such pims that they cannot be dried over the summer, although Sashka himself has even worse shoes. The best human qualities of a Russian soldier are embodied in the image of the main character, Sashka is smart, quick-witted, dexterous - this is evidenced by the episode of his capture of the "language". One of the main moments of the story is Sashka's refusal to shoot the captured German. When asked why he did not comply with the order, did not shoot at the prisoner, Sasha answered simply: "We are people, not fascists."

The main character embodied the best features of the national character: courage, patriotism, the desire for a feat, diligence, endurance, humanism and a deep faith in victory. But the most valuable thing in it is the ability to think, the ability to comprehend what is happening. Sashka understood that “they have not yet learned how to fight properly, both commanders and privates. And that learning on the go, in battles goes through Sasha's life itself. "Understood and grumbled, like others, but did not disbelieve and did his soldier's business as best he could, although he did not commit any special heroism."

“The story of Sasha is the story of a man who found himself at the most difficult time in the most difficult place in the most difficult position - a soldier,” wrote K. M. Simonov about Kondratyev’s hero.

The theme of a man's feat in war was developed in the literature of the post-war period.

References:

Ø History of Russian Soviet literature. Under the editorship of prof. P.S. Vykhodtseva. Publishing house "Higher School", Moscow - 1970 Ø For the sake of life on earth. P. Toper. Literature and war. Traditions. Solutions. Heroes. Ed. third. Moscow, "Soviet Writer", 1985

Ø Russian literature of the twentieth century. Ed. "Astrel", 2000

Essays on the history of Soviet publishing. M., 1952, p. 233. 16. Vasiliev V.I. Publishing and printing complex and publishing repertoire of the Academy of Sciences during the war. - Science and scientists of Russia during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. M., 1996, p. 221-235; his own. To the Periodization of the History of Russian Academic Book Publishing: Publishing Repertoire of the Great Patriotic War Period

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Great battles and the fate of ordinary heroes are described in many works of fiction, but there are books that cannot be passed by and that must not be forgotten. They make the reader think about the present and the past, about life and death, about peace and war. AiF.ru has prepared a list of ten books dedicated to the events of the Great Patriotic War, which are worth re-reading during the holidays.

“The Dawns Here Are Quiet…” Boris Vasiliev

“The Dawns Here Are Quiet…” is a warning book that makes you answer the question: “What am I ready for for the sake of my Motherland?”. The plot of Boris Vasiliev's story is based on a truly accomplished feat during the Great Patriotic War: seven selfless soldiers prevented a German sabotage group from blowing up the Kirov railway, which was used to deliver equipment and troops to Murmansk. After the battle, only one commander of the group survived. Already while working on the work, the author decided to replace the images of the fighters with female ones in order to make the story more dramatic. The result is a book about female heroes that amaze readers with the veracity of the story. The prototypes of the five female volunteers entering into an unequal battle with a group of fascist saboteurs were peers at the school of the writer-front-line soldier, and the features of radio operators, nurses, intelligence officers whom Vasiliev met during the war years are also guessed in them.

"The Living and the Dead" Konstantin Simonov

Konstantin Simonov is better known to a wide range of readers as a poet. His poem “Wait for me” is known and remembered by heart not only by veterans. However, the veteran's prose is in no way inferior to his poetry. One of the writer's most powerful novels is the epic The Living and the Dead, which consists of the books The Living and the Dead, Soldiers Are Not Born, and Last Summer. This is not just a novel about the war: the first part of the trilogy practically reproduces the personal front-line diary of the writer, who, as a correspondent, visited all fronts, passed through the lands of Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Poland and Germany, and witnessed the last battles for Berlin. On the pages of the book, the author recreates the struggle of the Soviet people against the fascist invaders from the very first months of the terrible war to the famous "last summer". Simonovsky's unique look, the talent of a poet and publicist - all this made The Living and the Dead one of the best works of art in its genre.

"The Fate of Man" Mikhail Sholokhov

The story "The Fate of a Man" is based on a real story that happened to the author. In 1946, Mikhail Sholokhov accidentally met a former soldier who told the writer about his life. The fate of the man so impressed Sholokhov that he decided to capture it on the pages of the book. In the story, the author introduces the reader to Andrei Sokolov, who managed to maintain his fortitude, despite difficult trials: injury, captivity, escape, family death and, finally, the death of his son on the happiest day, May 9, 1945. After the war, the hero finds the strength to start a new life and give hope to another person - he adopts an orphaned boy, Vanya. In The Fate of a Man, a personal story against the backdrop of terrible events shows the fate of an entire people and the firmness of the Russian character, which can be called a symbol of the victory of Soviet troops over the Nazis.

"Cursed and Killed" Victor Astafiev

Viktor Astafiev volunteered for the front in 1942, was awarded the Order of the Red Star and the medal "For Courage". But in the novel "Cursed and Killed" the author does not sing of the events of the war, he speaks of it as a "crime against reason". On the basis of personal impressions, the front-line writer described the historical events in the USSR that preceded the Great Patriotic War, the process of preparing reinforcements, the life of soldiers and officers, their relationship with themselves and their commanders, and military operations. Astafiev reveals all the filth and horrors of the terrible years, thereby showing that he sees no point in the huge human sacrifices that fell to the lot of people during the terrible war years.

"Vasily Terkin" Alexander Tvardovsky

Tvardovsky's poem "Vasily Terkin" received national recognition back in 1942, when its first chapters were published in the Western Front's newspaper Krasnoarmeyskaya Pravda. The soldiers immediately recognized the protagonist of the work as a role model. Vasily Terkin is an ordinary Russian guy who sincerely loves his Motherland and his people, perceives any hardships of life with humor and finds a way out of even the most difficult situation. Someone saw in him a comrade in the trench, someone an old friend, and someone guessed himself in his features. The image of the national hero was so fond of the readers that even after the war they did not want to part with it. That is why a huge number of imitations and "sequels" of "Vasily Terkin" were written, created by other authors.

"War has no woman's face" Svetlana Aleksievich

“War does not have a woman’s face” is one of the most famous books about the Great Patriotic War, where the war is shown through the eyes of a woman. The novel was written in 1983, but was not published for a long time, as its author was accused of pacifism, naturalism, and debunking the heroic image of a Soviet woman. However, Svetlana Aleksievich wrote about something completely different: she showed that girls and war are incompatible concepts, if only because a woman gives life, while any war kills first of all. In her novel, Aleksievich collected the stories of front-line soldiers to show what they were like, girls of the forty-first year, and how they went to the front. The author led the readers along the terrible, cruel, unfeminine path of war.

"The Tale of a Real Man" Boris Polevoy

"The Tale of a Real Man" was created by a writer who went through the entire Great Patriotic War as a correspondent for the Pravda newspaper. During these terrible years, he managed to visit partisan detachments behind enemy lines, participated in the Battle of Stalingrad, in the battle on the Kursk Bulge. But the world fame Polevoy brought not military reports, but a work of art written on the basis of documentary materials. The prototype of the hero of his "Tale of a Real Man" was the Soviet pilot Alexei Maresyev, who was shot down in 1942 during the offensive operation of the Red Army. The fighter lost both legs, but found the strength to return to the ranks of active pilots and destroyed many more Nazi aircraft. The work was written in the difficult post-war years and immediately fell in love with the reader, because it proved that there is always a place for a feat in life.