1892 - 1914
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1892 - late autumn
Grigory Panteleevich was born on the Tatarsky farm in the Vyoshenskaya village of the Don Cossack Region in a Cossack family. At the time of his birth, he was the second son and child in the family of a retired senior officer of the Life Guards Ataman Regiment. The elder brother Peter was born in 1886
1899 - approximate date
Birth of Evdokia, younger sister of Gregory and Peter
1911 - end of February
Maslenitsa
Grigory takes part in a wall-to-wall fight between the married couple and the unmarried on the side of the latter. Neighbor Astakhov felt sorry for Grigory when he ran away and did not beat him to death
1912 - May
Grigory begins attempts to get closer to Astakhov's wife, who is called up for military training.
1912 - June
Grigory and Aksinya Astakhova become lovers
1912 - July
Stepan Astakhov returns home. The fight between the Melekhov brothers and Stepan because of Aksinya
1912 - August 1 (old style)
Gregory is brought together with Natalya Korshunova, who is betrothed to him, the day of their wedding is appointed
1912 - early August
Grigory breaks off relations with Aksinya
1912 - September 28 (old style)
Grigory explains with Natalya and tells her that he does not love her and will not live with her family
1912 - early October
Grigory accidentally meets Aksinya and they realize that they cannot live without each other.
1912 - mid-December
Grigory takes the military oath in the village of Vyoshenskaya. The next day, after a stormy explanation with his father, Grigory leaves his wife and leaves his parental home. Soon he is hired as an assistant groom to the landowner Listnitsky in the Yagodny estate. Natalia goes to live with her parents
1912 - end of December
Grigory, through the sister of a friend, tells Aksinya where he is and offers to leave him from her husband. Aksinya runs away from home
1913 - April 12 (old style)
Palm Sunday
Grigory fell through the ice while crossing the Don, because of a cold, abscesses appear on his back
1913 - April 19 (old style)
Holy Sunday of Christ
Grigory refuses Natalya's request to return to her, sent through a note. Natalya tries to commit suicide, gets severe wounds and mutilation, but remains alive
1913 - May
Grigory, at the request of the son of the landowner Listnitsky, receives exemption from military training before being called up for service
1913 - July
Grigory and Aksinya have a daughter, Tanya
1913 - end of November
Natalia is recovering from her wounds
1913 - November 26 (old style)
Gregory is called up for military service. Due to boils on his back and "wildness" of facial features, Gregory is assigned to the 12th Don Cossack Regiment, and not to the Life Guards Ataman Regiment. The commission rejected Grigory's horse and he had to take on the service of his brother's horse.
1914 - early January
Grigory arrived in the regiment stationed in the town of Radzivilov, Volyn province, on the border with the Austro-Hungarian Empire. From the first days of service, he makes it clear to the sergeant that he will not allow himself to be beaten
1914 - February
The child of Peter and Daria Melekhov dies of an illness
1914 - March
Natalya Korshunova went to live with Grigory's parents
1914 - end of June
Grigory's regiment was redeployed for maneuvers in the Rivne region
1914 - July 21 (old style)
After the transfer by rail, the regiment of Gregory makes a march and at noon crosses the border of Austria-Hungary. In the area of the town of Leshniuv, the regiment enters the battle, in which Grigory kills two soldiers of the Austrian army
1914 - end of July, August, beginning of September
Gregory, as part of his regiment, participates in battles and skirmishes with the Austrian army. At the end of August, the regiment was withdrawn from the line of battle for rest and replenishment for three days.
1914 - August 29 (old style)
In the battle near Shevel, the son of the landowner Listnitsky was seriously wounded
1914 - early September
Gregory's daughter dies of scarlet fever in Yagodnoe
1914 - September 15 (old style)
In a battle with the Hungarian cavalry near the town of Kamenka-Strumilov, Grigory is wounded in the head and contused. He loses consciousness and remains surrounded on the battlefield. In part, he is considered dead and a notice is sent to his relatives. Waking up at night, Grigory finds the seriously wounded commander of the 9th Dragoon Regiment, and carries him on himself to the location of the Russian units
1914 - September 18 (old style)
Grigory arbitrarily leaves the dressing station for his unit. For saving the life of a wounded officer, he is awarded the St. George Cross of the IV degree and promoted to order *
* - rank in the Cossack troops, corresponds to the rank of corporal
1914 - September 21 (old style)
During a raid by an Austrian airplane, Grigory's eye was damaged and he was sent to Moscow for treatment.
1914 - end of September
In Yagodnoye, the son of the landowner Listnitsky comes on vacation after being wounded. Evgeny Listnitsky and Aksinya become lovers
1914 - end of September, October
Grigory is being treated at the eye clinic of Dr. Kiselyov (Moscow, Kolpachny lane, 1), then a wound on his head opens and he is transferred to a combined arms hospital
1914 - end of October
Under the influence of conversations with one of the wounded, Grigory thinks about the reasons for the ongoing war and about who benefits from it. He dares the delegation visiting the hospital with members of the imperial family and, after being discharged, receives a leave to his homeland
1914 - November 4/5 (old style)
At night, Grigory arrives in Yagodnoye and learns about Aksinya's betrayal. In the morning he beats Eugene and returns to his wife in the parental home
1914 - end of November
Grigory returns to the regiment after a vacation
"Quiet Flows the Don" by M. Sholokhov is a novel about the fate of the people in a critical era. The genius given to Sholokhov by nature, sharpened by the cruel reality in which he developed, managed to grasp the very essence of world anxiety hovering in the air, put it on the ground, as soon as possible in art, comprehend it with artistic reason and clothe it in artistic flesh - in such infinitely green the story of a simple Don Cossack Grigory Melekhov.
This courageous and open-hearted person (that’s really a personality!) fell to the lot, one might say, everything that determined the century - the world war and the civil war, revolution and counter-revolution, genocide against the Cossacks, against the peasantry ... It seems that there are no such tests for human dignity and freedom, through which, as through a system, time would not drive him away. And he is a Cossack, in his very genes carrying the memory of the former Cossack liberty, of what was done with it, turning the once freest into state serfs and guardsmen.
It is not surprising that in the human nature of Grigory Melekhov, the peculiarity of the family and the fate of the people are intertwined, a long history and being created before our eyes. After all, what we learned about the young guy Grishka from the first chapters is already a rebellion, a challenge to violence and lack of freedom. If the farm morality forbids him to love his beloved, if the strict "house-builder" of the family wants to decide his fate in his own way, then he answers them in his own way - he sends everyone to hell, slams the door of his native kuren and leaves with Aksinya to Yagodnoye, free and young who decided to live as the soul commands.
An even more cruel transpersonal power will throw him into the bloody mess of war, will try to turn him into a gray-grey slaughter animal, but even here, in a completely hopeless situation, he will show all the same indestructible pride, will boldly play with death, he is free to dispose of his own life as wants!
The revolution seemed to be a salvation for people like Melekhov, because the words of freedom were inscribed on its banners! .. And it seems that there was no greater disappointment in Melekhov's life than the reality of the red camp, where the same lack of rights reigned, and violence against the human person turned out to be the main weapon in the struggle for future happiness. Striking out all ideas about male, knightly honor in the war, on the orders of Podtelkov, the defenders of freedom, like cabbage, flog the unarmed captured with sabers. And ahead will be Commissar Malkin, who subtly mocks the Cossacks in the captured village, and the excesses of the fighters of the Tiraspol detachment of the 2nd Socialist Army, robbing farms and raping Cossack women. Yes, and Grigory Melekhov himself, as soon as he returns to his native Tatarsky to heal the wound and somehow sort out the confusion of thoughts, yesterday's comrades will poison him like a wild animal raised from his bed, they will pursue, sunbathe in a stinking dung sack.
Therefore, when the Cossack rebellion takes place, it will seem to Melekhov that everything has finally been decided - both for himself and for his native land: “We must fight with those who want to take life, the right to it” ... - he rushes into battle with “ krasnopusshi”, setting fire to the horse, even squealing with impatience; and the future appears to him as a straight path, clearly illuminated by the night moon...
Meanwhile, there are only new wrecks ahead and the ever-tightening grip of this very “historical necessity” about which scientists love to talk so much - no matter what Grigory undertakes and no matter what desperate deeds he dares to try to break out of the ring! A bitter epiphany awaits him in the rebellion, when he has to admit: “Life is going wrong, and maybe I’m to blame for this,” and already completely doomed, overtaken in the port of Novorossiysk: “Let them be bitchy, we don’t care at the moment ... ". The hope that was revived that it was possible to somehow "replay life" again, in Budyonny's cavalry would turn into another dispelled illusion, and again, for the umpteenth time, he would say with such tired humility and cordial sincerity in front of his friend from childhood, Mishka Koshev : “I'm tired of everything: both the revolution and the counter-revolution. Let all this ... let it all go to waste! I want to live near my kids…”.
No matter how! What will seem to Grigory as the final end of his entire martyr's journey and search is in fact only a short respite given to him, because it is Koshevoy and his comrades who will drive him further and further - through the Fomin gang, through new deaths, the death of the dearest creature on earth , dear Aksinya, with whom he intended to make a last attempt to escape from the next circle. Above her grave, Gregory will understand the last thing: that "they part not for long."
Here is a mockery of his truth-seeking! Is it possible that in Rus' only the robber camp is the only embodiment of free will? And yet, by the will of a man who was born free, who was not considered either before the white generals or before the red terror, he will perform his last daring act, albeit completely reckless: at least for an hour he will return to his native kuren, to the familiar Don steep, which is in this case, and indeed gives rise to the idea of the edge of the abyss. Never grown into a “Cossack-Bolshevik”, not debunked, Grigory Melekhov stood over his cliff, holding a warmly clinging boy in his arms ... “That's all ...”.
Grigory Melekhov most fully reflected the drama of the fate of the Don Cossacks. Such cruel tests fell on his lot, which a person, it would seem, is not able to endure. First the First World War, then the revolution and the fratricidal civil war, an attempt to destroy the Cossacks, the uprising and its suppression.
In the difficult fate of Grigory Melekhov, the Cossack liberty and the fate of the people merged into one. The strong disposition inherited from his father, adherence to principles and rebelliousness haunt him from his youth. Having fallen in love with Aksinya, a married woman, he leaves with her, despising public morality and his father's prohibitions. By nature, the hero is a kind, brave and courageous person, standing up for justice. The author shows his industriousness in the scenes of hunting, fishing, haymaking. Throughout the novel, in severe battles, now on one side, then on the other side of the warring parties, he is looking for the truth.
The First World War destroys his illusions. Proud of their Cossack army, of its glorious victories, in Voronezh, the Cossacks hear from a local old man a phrase thrown after them with pity: “You are my dear ... beef!” The elderly man knew that there was nothing worse than war, it was not an adventure where you could become a hero, it was dirt, blood, stench and horror. Valiant arrogance flies off Grigory when he sees his Cossack friends dying: “The cornet Lyakhovsky was the first to fall off his horse. Prokhor galloped at him... With a chisel, like a diamond on glass, he cut out the memory of Gregory and held for a long time the pink gums of Prokhorov's horse with bared teeth, Prokhor, who fell flat, trampled by the hooves of a Cossack galloping behind... More fell. The Cossacks fell and the horses."
In parallel, the author shows the events in the homeland of the Cossacks, where their families remained. “And no matter how simple-haired Cossack women run out into the alleys and look from under the palms - do not wait for those dear to your heart! No matter how many tears flow from swollen and discolored eyes, do not wash away the longing! No matter how many times you shout on the days of anniversaries and commemorations, the east wind of their cries will not carry them to Galicia and East Prussia, to the settled mounds of mass graves!
The war appears to the writer and his heroes as a series of hardships and deaths that change all foundations. War cripples from the inside and destroys all the most precious that people have. It forces the heroes to take a fresh look at the problems of duty and justice, to seek the truth and not find it in any of the warring camps. Once at the Reds, Grigory sees all the same as the Whites, cruelty, intransigence, thirst for the blood of enemies. War destroys the well-established life of families, peaceful work, takes away the last, kills love. Grigory and Pyotr Melekhov, Stepan Astakhov, Koshevoy and other heroes of Sholokhov do not understand why a fratricidal war is being waged. For whom and for what should they die in their prime? After all, life on a farm gives them a lot of joy, beauty, hopes, opportunities. War is only deprivation and death. But they see that the hardships of the war fall primarily on the shoulders of the civilian population, ordinary people, to starve and die - to them, and not to commanders.
There are also characters in the story who think differently. The heroes Shtokman and Bunchuk see the country exclusively as an arena of class battles. For them, people are tin soldiers in someone else's game, and pity for a person is a crime.
The fate of Grigory Melekhov is a life incinerated by war. The personal relationships of the characters take place against the backdrop of the most tragic history of the country. Gregory cannot forget his first enemy, an Austrian soldier whom he hacked to death with a saber. The moment of murder unrecognizably changed him. The hero has lost his foothold, his kind, just soul protests, cannot survive such violence against common sense. The Austrian's skull, cut in two, becomes an obsession for Gregory. But the war goes on, and Melekhov continues to kill. He is not alone in thinking about the terrible reverse side of military duty. He hears the words of his own Cossack: “It is easier to kill a person for someone else, which hand he has broken in this matter, than to crush a louse. A man has fallen in price for the revolution.” A stray bullet that kills the very soul of Gregory - Aksinya, is perceived as a sentence to all participants in the massacre. The war is actually being waged against all the living, it is not for nothing that Grigory, having buried Aksinya in a ravine, sees a black sky above him and a dazzling black disk of the sun.
Melekhov rushes between the two belligerents. Everywhere he encounters violence and cruelty, which he cannot accept, and therefore cannot take one side. When his mother reproaches him for participating in the execution of captured sailors, he himself admits that he became cruel in the war: “I don’t regret the child either.”
Realizing that the war kills the best people of his time and that the truth cannot be found among the thousands of deaths, Grigory throws down his weapons and returns to his native farm to work on his native land, raise children. At almost 30 years old, the hero is already almost an old man. in his immortal work raises the question of the responsibility of history to the individual. The writer sympathizes with his hero, whose life is broken: “Like a steppe scorched by fires, the life of Grigory became black ...” The image of Grigory Melekhov became a great creative success for Sholokhov.
"Quiet Don" is a work that shows the life of the Don Cossacks in one of the most difficult historical periods in Russia. The realities of the first third of the twentieth century, which turned the whole habitual way of life upside down, like caterpillars drove through the fate of the common people. Through the life path of Grigory Melekhov in the novel “Quiet Flows the Don”, Sholokhov reveals the main idea of the work, which is to depict the clash of the individual and historical events beyond his control, his wounded fate.
The struggle between duty and feelings
At the beginning of the work, the protagonist is shown as a hardworking guy with a hot temper, which he inherited from his ancestors. Cossack and even Turkish blood flowed in him. Oriental roots endowed Grishka with a bright appearance that could turn the head of more than one Don beauty, and the Cossack stubbornness, in places bordering on stubbornness, ensured the stamina and steadfastness of his character.
On the one hand, he shows respect and love for his parents, on the other hand, he does not listen to their opinion. The first conflict between Gregory and his parents happens because of his love affair with a married neighbor Aksinya. To stop the sinful relationship between Aksinya and Grigory, his parents decide to marry him. But their choice in the role of the sweet and meek Natalya Korshunova did not solve the problem, but only exacerbated it. Despite the official marriage, love for his wife did not appear, and for Aksinya, who, tormented by jealousy, was increasingly looking for a meeting with him, only flared up.
The blackmail of his father with his house and property forced the hot and impulsive Gregory to leave the farm, his wife, relatives in his hearts and leave with Aksinya. Because of his act, the proud and adamant Cossack, whose family from time immemorial cultivated their own land and grew their own bread, had to become a mercenary, which made Grigory ashamed and disgusted. But he now had to answer both for Aksinya, who had left her husband because of him, and for the child she was carrying.
War and betrayal of Aksinya
A new misfortune was not long in coming: the war began, and Gregory, who swore allegiance to the sovereign, was forced to leave both the old and the new family and recover at the front. In his absence, Aksinya remained in the master's house. The death of her daughter and news from the front about the death of Grigory crippled the woman's strength, and she was forced to succumb to the onslaught of the centurion Listnitsky.
Coming from the front and learning about Aksinya's betrayal, Grigory returns to his family again. For some period, his wife, relatives and soon appeared twins delight him. But the troubled time on the Don, associated with the Revolution, did not allow them to enjoy family happiness.
Ideological and personal doubts
In the novel "Quiet Flows the Don" Grigory Melekhov's path is full of quests, doubts and contradictions both politically and in love. He constantly rushed about, not knowing where the truth was: “Everyone has his own truth, his own furrow. People have always fought for a piece of bread, for a plot of land, for the right to life. We must fight those who want to take life, the right to it ... ". He decided to lead the Cossack division and repair the pillars of the advancing Reds. However, the longer the Civil War continued, the more Gregory doubted the correctness of his choice, the more clearly he understood that the Cossacks were waging war with windmills. Nobody was interested in the interests of the Cossacks and their native land.
The same model of behavior is typical in the personal life of the protagonist of the work. Over time, he forgives Aksinya, realizing that he cannot live without her love and takes him to the front. After he sends her home, where she is forced to once again return to her husband. Arriving on a visit, he looks at Natalya with different eyes, appreciating her devotion and loyalty. He was drawn to his wife, and this intimacy culminated in the conception of a third child.
But again the passion for Aksinya took over him. His last betrayal led to the death of his wife. Gregory drowns his remorse and the impossibility of resisting feelings in the war, becoming cruel and merciless: “I got so smeared on someone else’s blood that I didn’t have any stings left for anyone. Childhood - and I almost do not regret this one, but I don’t even think about myself. The war took everything out of me. I became terrible myself. Look into my soul, and there is blackness, as in an empty well ... ".
Alien among their own
The loss of loved ones and the retreat sobered Gregory, he understands: you need to be able to save what he has left. He takes Aksinya with him on his retreat, but due to typhus, he is forced to leave her.
He again begins to search for the truth and finds himself in the Red Army, taking command of a cavalry squadron. However, even participation in hostilities on the side of the Soviets will not wash away Grigory's past, stained by the white movement. He is threatened with execution, about which his sister Dunya warned him. Taking Aksinya, he makes an attempt to escape, during which the woman he loves is killed. Having fought for his land and on the side of the Cossacks and the Reds, he remained a stranger among his own.
The path of Grigory Melekhov's search in the novel is the fate of a simple man who loved his land, but lost everything he had and appreciated, protecting it for the life of the next generation, which in the finale personifies his son Mishatka.
Artwork test
At the beginning of the story, young Grigory - a real Cossack, a brilliant horseman, hunter, fisherman and hardworking rural worker - is quite happy and carefree. He is a rebel by nature, does not tolerate violence against himself. And now he is almost forcibly married. Grigory and Natalya live outwardly peacefully, but this is only outwardly. He is weighed down by his unloved wife, she feels it and suffers silently. But it couldn't go on like this for long. The rebellion that had been brewing in Grigory's soul from the day of the wedding broke out.
Sholokhov endows Grigory with a sensitive soul. It is revealed in the history of his relationship with two women Aksinya and Natalya. His love for Aksinya, full of dramatic moments, shocks with its strength and depth.
By the time the First World War began, we see a different Gregory. This is no longer the carefree young man. “Both that and not that,” Aksinya thinks on the night before Grigory leaves for the army. Already another person, oppressed by painful thoughts, rides in a soldier's carriage. The traditional Cossack commitment to military duty helps him out in the first tests on the bloody battlefields in 1914. He is distinguished from brothers in arms by his sensitivity to all manifestations of cruelty, to any violence against the weak and defenseless ... The war forced Gregory to take a fresh look at life: in the hospital where he is after being wounded, under the influence of revolutionary propaganda, he has doubts about loyalty to the tsar, fatherland and military duty. In the civil war, Melekhov is at first on the side of the Reds, but their murder of unarmed prisoners repels him, and when the Bolsheviks come to his beloved Don, committing robberies and violence, he fights them with cold fury. And again, Gregory's search for truth does not find an answer. They turn into the greatest drama of a man completely lost in the cycle of events. “They are all the same,” he says to his childhood friends leaning towards the Bolsheviks, “They are all a yoke on the face of the Cossacks!”
But among the white officers, Grigory feels like a stranger. In the end, he joins the cavalry of Budyonny and heroically fights with the Poles, wanting to cleanse himself of his war before the Bolsheviks. But for Gregory there is no salvation in Soviet reality, where even neutrality is considered a crime. With bitter mockery, he tells the former orderly that he envies Koshevoy and the White Guard Listnitsky: “It was clear to them from the very beginning, but everything is still unclear to me. They both have their own, straight roads, their own ends, and since 1917 I have been walking along the forks, swinging like a drunk ... "
Under the threat of arrest, and, consequently, the inevitable execution, Grigory, together with Aksinya, flees from his native farm in the hope of making his way to the Kuban and starting a new life. But their happiness is short-lived. On the way, they are caught by a horse outpost, and they rush into the night, pursued by bullets flying after them. Grigory buries his Aksinya. “Now there was no need for him to rush. It was all over…”
Speaking about the moral choice of Gregory in life, it is impossible to say unequivocally whether his choice was always really the only true and correct one. But he was almost always guided by his own principles and beliefs, trying to find a better path in life, and this desire of his was not a simple desire to "live the best." It affected the interests not only of himself, but also of many people close to him. Despite the fruitless aspirations in life, Gregory was happy, although not for a very long time. But these short moments of happiness were enough. They did not disappear in vain, just as Grigory Melekhov did not live his life in vain.
