The theme of the camp in the work of Solzhenitsyn. Presentation on the topic "A

"camp theme in the work of Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov.

One of the most terrible and tragic themes in Russian literature is the theme of the camps.
The publication of works on such topics became possible only after the 20th Congress of the CPSU, at which Stalin's personality cult was debunked.
TO camp prose include the works of A. Solzhenitsyn "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" and "The Gulag Archipelago", "Kolyma Tales" by V. Shalamov, "Faithful Ruslan" by G. Vladimov, "Zone" by S. Dovlatov and others.
In his famous story "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" A. Solzhenitsyn described only one day of the prisoner - from rising to lights out, but the narrative is structured in such a way that the reader can imagine the camp life of the forty-year-old peasant Shukhov and his entourage in its entirety. By the time the story was written, its author was already very far from socialist ideals. This story is about the illegality, the unnaturalness of the very system created by the Soviet leaders.
Prototypes central hero steel Ivan Shukhov, former soldier artillery battery of Solzhenitsyn, and the writer himself, a prisoner, and thousands of innocent victims of monstrous lawlessness. Solzhenitsyn is sure that Soviet camps were the same death camps as the Nazis, they only killed their own people there.
Ivan Denisovich got rid of illusions a long time ago, he does not feel himself Soviet man. The camp authorities, the guards are enemies, non-humans with whom Shukhov has nothing in common. Shukhov, the bearer of universal human values, which failed to destroy the party-class ideology in him. In the camp, this helps him to survive, to remain a man.
Prisoner Shch-854 - Shukhov - is presented by the author as a hero of another life. He lived, went to war, fought honestly, but was captured. From captivity, he managed to escape and miraculously break through to "his own". "Shukhov was beaten a lot in counterintelligence. And Shukhov's calculation was simple: if you don't sign it - a wooden pea coat, if you sign it, you'll live a little. I signed it."
In the camp, Shukhov tries to survive, controls every step, tries to earn money wherever possible. He is not sure that he will be released on time, that they will not add another ten years to him, but he does not allow himself to think about it. Shukhov does not think about why he and many other people are in prison, he is not tormented eternal questions no answers. According to the documents, he sits for treason. For the fact that he carried out the task of the Nazis. And what task, neither Shukhov nor the investigator could come up with.
By nature, Ivan Denisovich belongs to natural, natural people who appreciate the very process of life. And the convict has his own little joys: to drink hot gruel, smoke a cigarette, eat a ration of bread, snuggle up somewhere warmer, and take a nap for a minute.
In the camp, Shukhov is saved by work. He works enthusiastically, he is not used to hacking, he does not understand how one can not work. In life he is guided common sense based on peasant psychology. He "strengthens" in the camp without dropping himself.
Solzhenitsyn describes other prisoners who did not break down in the camp. The old Yu-81 sits in prisons and camps, how much Soviet power costs. Another old man, X-123, is a fierce champion of the truth, deaf Senka Klevshin, a prisoner of Buchenwald. Survived torture by the Germans, now in a Soviet camp. Latvian Jan Kildigs, who has not yet lost the ability to joke. Alyoshka is a Baptist who firmly believes that God will remove "evil scum" from people. Captain of the second rank Buinovsky is always ready to stand up for people, he has not forgotten the laws of honor. Shukhov, with his peasant psychology, sees Buynovsky's behavior as a senseless risk.
Solzhenitsyn consistently depicts how patience and hardiness help Ivan Denisovich survive in the inhuman conditions of the camp. The story "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" was published at the time of " Khrushchev thaw"in 1962, caused a great resonance in the reader's environment, revealed to the world the terrible truth about the totalitarian regime in Russia.
In the book created by V. Shalamov " Kolyma stories"The whole horror of the camp and camp life is revealed. The writer's prose is amazing. Shalamov's stories saw the light after the books of Solzhenitsyn, who, it would seem, wrote everything about camp life. And at the same time, Shalamov's prose literally turns the soul, is perceived as a new word in the camp theme. In the style and author's view of the writer, the height of the spirit with which the stories are written, the author's epic comprehension of life are striking.
Shalamov was born in 1907 in the family of a Vologda priest. He began writing poetry and prose in early years. Studied at Moscow University. Shalamov was first arrested in 1929 on charges of distributing an allegedly false political testament of V. Lenin. The writer spent three years in camps in the Urals. In 1937 he was arrested again and sent to Kolyma. He was rehabilitated after the XX Congress of the CPSU. Twenty years in prisons, camps and exile!
Shalamov did not die in the camp in order to create a kind of Kolyma epic, impressive in terms of its psychological impact, to tell the merciless truth about life - "not life" - "anti-life" of people in the camps. The main theme of the stories: a man in inhuman conditions. The author recreates the atmosphere of hopelessness, moral and physical impasse, in which people find themselves for many years, whose condition is approaching the "transhuman" state. "Hell on earth" can engulf a person at any moment. The camp robs people of everything: their education, experience, connections to normal life, principles and moral values. Here they are no longer needed. Shalamov writes: "The camp is a completely negative school of life. No one can take anything useful, necessary from there, neither the prisoner himself, nor his boss, nor his guards, nor unwitting witnesses - engineers, geologists, doctors - neither superiors nor subordinates "Every minute of camp life is a poisoned minute. There is much that a person should not know, and if he has seen it, it is better for him to die."
The tone of the narrator is calm, the author knows everything about the camps, remembers everything, is devoid of the slightest illusions. Shalamov argues that there is no such measure to measure the suffering of millions of people. What the author is talking about seems impossible at all, but we hear the objective voice of a witness. He tells about the life of the campers, their slave labor, the struggle for bread rations, illnesses, deaths, executions. His cruel truth is devoid of anger and powerless exposure, there is no longer the strength to be indignant, feelings have died. The reader shudders at the realization of how "far" mankind has gone in the "science" of inventing torture and torment of their own kind. Writers of the 19th century never dreamed of the horrors of Auschwitz, Majdanek and Kolyma.
Here are the words of the author, spoken on his own behalf: "The prisoner learns to hate work there - he cannot learn anything else there. He learns flattery, lies, petty and big meanness there, becomes an egoist. Moral barriers have moved somewhere to the side. It turns out , you can do meanness and still live ... It turns out that a person who has committed meanness does not die ... He values ​​\u200b\u200bits suffering too highly, forgetting that every person has his own grief. he just doesn't understand him, doesn't want to understand... He's learned to hate people."
In poignant and scary story"Vaska Denisov, the thief of pigs" describes the state to which hunger can bring a person. Vaska sacrifices his life for food.
The fear that corrodes the personality is described in the story "Typhoid Quarantine". The author shows people who are ready to serve the leaders of the bandits, to be their lackeys and slaves for the sake of a bowl of soup and a crust of bread. The hero of the story, Andreev, sees in the crowd of such lackeys Captain Schneider, a German communist, an educated person, an excellent connoisseur of Goethe's work, who now plays the role of a "heel scratcher" for the thief Senechka. After that, the hero does not want to live.
The camp, according to Shalamov, is a well-organized state crime. All social and moral categories are deliberately replaced by opposite ones. Good and evil for the camp are naive concepts. But still there were those who retained their soul and humanity, innocent people, reduced to a bestial state. Shalamov writes about people "who weren't, didn't know how, and didn't become heroes." In the word "heroism" there is a shade of splendor, brilliance, short duration of an act, and they have not yet come up with a word to define the long-term torture of people in camps.
Shalamov's work became not only a documentary evidence of great power, but also a fact of philosophical understanding of an entire era, a common camp: a totalitarian system.

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"One day of Ivan Denisovich" is connected with one of the facts of the author's biography - the Ekibastuz special camp, where in the winter of 1950-1951 general works this story was created. The main character is Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, an ordinary prisoner of the Stalinist camp. On behalf of his hero, the author tells about only one day out of almost four thousand days of the term of Ivan Denisovich. But even this is enough to understand what kind of situation prevailed in the camp, what orders and laws existed, what life was like for prisoners. The camp in the work is a special world that exists separately, parallel to the world of the free. There are other laws here, everyone here survives in their own way. The place of detention is shown from the inside of a person who knows about it in his own way. personal experience. Perhaps that is why the story is striking in its realism.

"Glory to you, Lord, another day has passed!" - Ivan Denisovich finishes his story. - "The day passed, nothing marred, almost happy." On that day, Shukhov was really lucky: the brigade was not sent to Sotsgorodok to pull wire in the cold without heating, he passed the punishment cell - he got off with only washing the floors in the supervisor's room, received an extra portion of porridge for lunch, and got the familiar job - laying a wall at the thermal power station. He laid it cheerfully, brought a hacksaw to the camp, worked part-time with Caesar in the evening, bought two glasses of self-garden from a Latvian. And most importantly, I didn't get sick.

Ivan Denisovich does not beg, he does not humiliate himself. He tries to earn everything only by his own labor: he sews slippers, brings felt boots to the foreman, takes a queue for parcels, for which he receives honestly earned money. Shukhov retained the notions of pride and honor, so he will never slide down to the level of Fetyukov, because he just earns money, and does not try to serve. Like any peasant, Shukhov is a surprisingly economic person: he cannot just pass by a piece of a hacksaw, knowing that a knife can be made from it, and this is an opportunity to earn extra money. The former captain of the second rank Buinovsky also deserves respect, who "look at the camp work as at the naval service: if you say to do it, then do it." He does not try to evade common work, he is used to doing everything conscientiously, not in an escapist way. Shukhov says that he "looked up tightly behind last month Buynovsky cannot come to terms with the arbitrariness of the guard, therefore he starts a dispute with Volkovsky about an article of the criminal code, for which he received ten days in the punishment cell. , like a father, always tries to defend the interests of the brigade: to get more bread, profitable job. Ivan Denisovich's words that "a good foreman will give a second life" are completely suitable for characterizing Tyurin as a foreman. These people, in spite of everything, survive at the expense of their labor. They would never have been able to choose for themselves the path of survival of Fetyukov or Panteleev. Alyoshka the Baptist evokes pity. He is very kind, but very weak-hearted - "only he who does not want does not command him." The conclusion for him is the will of God, he sees only the good in his conclusion, he himself says that "there is time to think about the soul." But Alyoshka cannot adapt to camp conditions and, according to Ivan Denisovich, he will not last long here. The grip that Alyoshka the Baptist lacks is possessed by Gopchik, a sixteen-year-old boy who is cunning and does not miss the opportunity to "grab" a piece. He was convicted for carrying milk to the forest for the Bandera people.

Cesar Markovic, a former director, who did not have time to shoot his first film before he ended up in the camp, is in a special position in the camp. He receives parcels, so he can afford a lot of things that other prisoners cannot: wear a new hat and other forbidden things, work in an office, avoid general work. Although Caesar has been in this camp for quite a long time, his soul is still in Moscow: he discusses with other Muscovites the premieres in theaters, the cultural news of the capital. He avoids the rest of the prisoners, sticks only to Buinovsky, remembering the existence of others only when he needs their help. Largely due to his detachment from real world and parcels from the outside, he manages to survive in these conditions. He has business acumen, knows with whom to maintain relationships.

The story is written in the language of a simple camp prisoner, which is why a lot of "thieves" words and expressions are used. "Shmon, knock godfather, six, fool, bastard" - all this can often be found in the daily speech of prisoners. Unprintable words are also found in abundance throughout the text. To show life in the camp, the prevailing order and atmosphere, it was simply impossible to ignore them.

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Memory is the most precious thing in the hearts of people. But there are moments in life that cannot be remembered without tears. Tragic events leave a big imprint on the lives and destinies of people, nations, so these pages of history must be studied with special attention. Political repression is one of the most tragic pages in our history. But this is our history, and studying it is a sign of memory and a tribute to the innocent victims. Knowledge of all the facts of our past, especially the tragic ones, gives us a complete picture of ourselves, of our present.
In the modern Russian school, the topic of political repression is hushed up and practically not considered. Suffice it to say that in school curricula approved by the Russian Ministry of Education, this topic is given no more than two hours, and in school textbooks recommended by the Ministry of Education, one or two pages of text.
We were faced with the following tasks: to deepen general idea students about repression, to consider how the theme of repression is revealed in the work of Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov; find out their characteristics narrative style; develop the ability to build oral and written statements in connection with the studied work; participate in a dialogue on read works, develop interpretation skills prose text, comparative analysis creativity of several writers, work with the primary source; to instill in students a sense of responsibility to other people, to their country; the ability to resist the power of evil, respect for people who have become victims of repression.
At the preliminary stage, the main direction of work was determined (independent search work with information sources), a research plan was outlined, sources of information (artistic texts of works V. Shalamova, A. Solzhenitsyn, materials of the Penza branch of the society "Memorial", feature film "Lenin's Testament", Internet materials). Groups of students in grades 11, reading the works of V. Shalamov, A. Solzhenitsyn, analyzed them from the point of view of the characteristics of the depiction of camp life, correlated the work of writers with historical and political events in the country.
The lesson began with watching a fragment from the feature film "Lenin's Testament", based on the stories of V. Shalamov, which helped to introduce students to the historical era, emotionally set them up for the perception of the lesson material. During the lesson, students were asked to record the main points of the lecture in accordance with the plan. Next, the teacher gave historical commentary era.
Before discussing the features of the embodiment of the camp theme in the works of Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov, it is advisable to tell students about the most highlights life and work of Alexander Isaevich and Varlam Tikhonovich.
At the next stage, group work is organized, during which students briefly retell the works they read, discuss them, during which they fill out a comparative table.
On final stage lesson we find out , why we discussed the camp theme in the work of Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov. And in general, did Solzhenitsyn, Shalamov and other writers have the right to discuss this topic at the world level, because these are not the brightest pages of our history?
We suggest that the children continue their reflection on this issue at home in the process of creating their own essay “Soul and Barbed Wire”.

Goals:

• to deepen the general understanding of students about repression, to consider how the theme of repression is revealed in the work of Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov;
• find out the features of their narrative manner;
• develop the ability to build oral and written statements in connection with the studied work;
• participate in a dialogue on the works read, develop the skills of interpreting a prose text, comparative analysis of the work of several writers, working with a primary source;
• to instill in students a sense of responsibility to other people, to their country; the ability to resist the power of evil, respect for people who have become victims of repression, a sense of citizenship and responsibility for the fate of the Motherland.

Equipment:

• portraits of writers A.I. Solzhenitsyn and V. Shalamov, I.V. Stalin
• exhibition of books by A.I. Solzhenitsyn and V. Shalamov,
• artistic texts,
• multimedia equipment for demonstration slide presentation, fragment of a feature film.

Methodological substantiation: lesson-generalization on the work of A.I. Solzhenitsyn and V.T. Shalamova; except program works the lesson discusses independently read chapters from the Gulag Archipelago, the story Cancer Ward, the novel In the First Circle.

Board layout.

Soul and barbed wire.(Reflection of the camp theme in the works of A.I. Solzhenitsyn and V.T. Shalamov)

I don't want revenge, I don't want judgment.
I want people to know and remember how it all happened.

Akmal Ikramov Kamil, writer, shot in 1938

Lecture plan:

1. political repression.

a) What is repression? Victims of the "Great Madness".
B) The theme of repression in literature.

1. A.I. Solzhenitsyn and V.T. Shalamov. camp universities.

A) V.T. Shalamov is a martyr who failed to become a hero. What formed the basis of "Kolyma Tales"?
B) A.I. Solzhenitsyn. Autobiography of his work.

1. What is the peculiarity of the image of the camp theme in the work of A.I. Solzhenitsyn and V.T. Shalamova?
2. What way of revealing this topic turned out to be historically justified?

On the desks of students there are materials for lexical work, texts, cards for independent work in groups, a lecture plan.

DURING THE CLASSES

I. Organizing moment

– Hello. Today we have an unusual lesson. In class, you should take notes of the main points of the lecture in accordance with the plan. There are dictionaries on the tables that you will need during today's discussion. Let's start by watching a video clip, after which you must answer the question:
What historical era is illustrated?

II. Viewing a video clip

– What era is being referred to in this passage? What is repression?
(Repression - punitive measures, punishments applied by state bodies in order to suppress or intimidate their opponents, both real and imaginary.)
- We will watch the feature film "Lenin's Testament", based on the work of V. Shalamov "Kolyma Tales".

III. Historical commentary(teacher's word)

- Behind recent decades of the last century, many books have been published that tell the truth about Stalin and Stalin's repressions. The main figure of these works is Stalin. Terrible figure. His victims are innumerable. He personally knew only a small part of them. The years when I.V. Stalin was in power brought many dark days to our country. The most terrible thing in this time is repression. Thousands of people were arrested and sent to settlements and camps. Thousands of illegally convicted people.
In Western literature, the events of those years in our country are often called the "great terror", sometimes the "great madness", i.e. action with no explanation.
From 1921 to 1954, 3,777,380 people were convicted across the country for the so-called "counter-revolutionary actions", including 642,980 people sentenced to capital punishment, 2,369,220 people to detention in camps and prisons for a term of 25 years or less , sent to exile 765.880 people.
The Gulag system by 1940 included 53 camps, 425 correctional labor colonies and 50 juvenile colonies, therefore
A.I. Solzhenitsyn introduces the concept of "archipelago": "the camps are scattered throughout the Soviet Union in small islands and more. All this together cannot be imagined otherwise, compared with something else, not with the archipelago. They are torn from each other as if by a different environment - the will, that is, not the camp world. And at the same time, these islets in a multitude form, as it were, an archipelago.
– In Russian prose of the 1970s–90s, as well as in “returned” literature, a significant place is occupied by works that recreate the tragedy of the people who survived mass repressions in Stalin era. The camp theme was reflected in the prose of V. Shalamov, A. Solzhenitsyn, Yu. Dombrovsky, Yu. Grossman, O. Volkov and other authors who experienced the hell of the Gulag. Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov were among the first in modern literature to speak openly on this subject.
– The theme of our lesson is “The Soul and the Barbed Wire”. Today we will talk about how the camp theme was embodied in the work of Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov.

IV. A.I. Solzhenitsyn and V.T. Shalamov. camp universities

1. A story about the biography and work of V.T. Shalamova

– What is Kolyma? How did Kolyma enter the life of V. Shalamov?
“My life has always been divided into two parts, two sides, from the most distant childhood ...
The first is art, literature. I was sure that I was destined to have my say ... and it was in literature, in fiction, in poetry. The second was participation in public comparisons of those times, the inability to get away from them, with my main credo - the correspondence of word and deed.
The words of Varlam Shalamov sound in a special way: “I learned from my father the strength of my soul.” About his mother, he wrote: "I owe her poetry."
Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov was born on June 18 (June 5, old style) in 1907 in the northern provincial city of Vologda.
The writer's father, Tikhon Nikolaevich, a hereditary priest, was a prominent person in the city, since he not only served in the church, but was also engaged in active social activities, he maintained ties with the exiled revolutionaries
“1918 was a collapse for our entire family… The dark forces broke in like a storm, they could not calm down and get enough.”
In 1924, he forever leaves the "city of his youth", the house where he was born and raised. “It was a windy rainy autumn… In the fall of hawthorn…”. In 1926, V. Shalamov entered the Moscow University at the Faculty of Soviet Law.
V. Shalamov “actively participated in the events of 1927, 1928 and 1929. on the side of the opposition… those who tried to be the very first, selflessly giving their lives, to hold back that bloody flood that went down in history under the name of the cult of Stalin.” On February 19, 1929, he was arrested for distributing the “Will of V.I. Lenin ""... I consider this day and hour the beginning of my social life ..."
V.T. Shalamov was sentenced to three years in camps and sent to the Vishera camp (Northern Ural)
“He returned to Moscow in 1932 and stood firmly on all fours, began to work in magazines, wrote a lot.
On January 12, 1937, Varlam Shalamov "as a former "oppositionist" was again arrested and sentenced for "counter-revolutionary Trotskyist activities" to five years in camps using heavy physical work. In 1943, a new term - 10 years for anti-Soviet agitation: he called I. Bunin, who was in exile, "a great Russian classic." V. Shalamov was saved from death by his acquaintance with the camp doctors. Thanks to their help, he completed medical assistant courses and worked in the central hospital for prisoners until his release from the camp. He returned to Moscow in 1953, but, having not received a residence permit, he was forced to work at one of the peat enterprises in the Kalinin region.
Rehabilitated V.T. Shalamov was in 1954. He later wrote: “I was over 45 years old, I tried to get ahead of time and wrote poems and stories day and night. Each of my stories is a slap in the face of Stalinism… Each of my stories is the absolute authenticity of the document…”
The further lonely life of the writer proceeded in hard literary work. However, during the life of V.T. Shalamov's Kolyma Tales were not printed. Of the poems, a very small part of them was published, and even then often in a distorted form ...
Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov died on January 17, 1982, having lost his hearing and sight, completely defenseless in the House for the Invalids of the Litfond, having drunk the cup of non-recognition to the end during his lifetime.
"Kolyma Tales" - the main work of the writer V.T. Shalamova.
He devoted 20 years to their creation.
20 years of life passed in the icy hell of Vishera and Kolyma.
The amazing quality of "Kolyma Tales" is their compositional integrity with seemingly incoherent plots at first glance. The Kolyma epic consists of 6 books, the first of which is called “Kolyma stories”, and the books “Left Bank”, “Artist of the Shovel”, “Essays on the Underworld”, “Resurrection of the Larch”, “Glove, or KR” adjoin it. -2". The book "Kolyma Tales" consists of 33 stories in a strictly defined, but not chronological order. This order allows you to see the Stalinist camps as a living organism, with its own history and development. The story is constantly told in the third person, but the protagonist of most of the stories, speaking under different surnames (Andreev, Golubev, Krist), is extremely close to the author.
- Describe in one word the first impression of acquaintance with the stories of this collection ..
- How does V. Shalamov portray the camp? (Reading a piece of literary text)
– And this is understandable. For "Kolyma Tales" is pain, suffering, horror, the atrocities of a man who experienced this for 17 years.

2. A story about the biography and work of A.I. Solzhenitsyn

– The fate of Solzhenitsyn is no less unique, which is expressed in the severity of the trials that fell to his lot: the war with fascism, Stalin's camps, the cancer corps, the sudden fame associated with the publication of One Day in Ivan Denisovich, then silence, bans, expulsion from the country and again acquisition of the Russian reader.
The biography of Alexander Isaevich is almost identical to the biography of post-revolutionary Russia.
Year of birth - 1918 . Civil war, famine, terror and childhood without a father who died a few months before Sasha's birth.
The year of manhood is the 41st. A graduate of the Physics and Mathematics Department of Rostov University goes to an officer school, then to the front. Solzhenitsyn in command of an artillery battery. At the end of the war, he had the rank of captain, was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War of the 2nd degree and the Red Star.
In February 45th - a break in fate : Solzhenitsyn was arrested for criticizing Stalin in a letter to a childhood friend, which was viewed by counterintelligence. 8 years in labor camps "for anti-Soviet agitation and an attempt to create an anti-Soviet organization."
1947 - transferred as a mathematician to the Marfa "Sharashka" - Research Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs-KGB, where he stayed until 1950. Later, this "sharashka" will be described in the novel "In the First Circle". Since 1950 in the Ekibastuz camp (experience of general work
recreated in the story "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich"). Here he gets cancer. In the camps he works as a laborer, a bricklayer, and a foundry worker.
1953 - Solzhenitsyn at the "eternal exile settlement" in the village of Kok-Terek (Dzhambul region, Kazakhstan). Twice he was treated in Tashkent for cancer; on the day of discharge from the hospital in 1955, a story about a terrible illness was conceived - the future "Cancer Ward" (1963–1966). It reflects the author's impressions of his stay in the Tashkent Oncological Dispensary and the history of his healing. The life story of the protagonist Oleg Kostoglotov recalls the fate of Solzhenitsyn himself: having served time in the camps on trumped-up charges, he is now an exile.
In the year the thaw began - the 56th - he was rehabilitated. Solzhenitsyn settles in central Russia with the heroine of the future story "Matryona Yard" , teaches mathematics and physics at a rural school. And he is working on his first novels. The prototype of the main character is the Vladimir peasant woman Matrena Vasilievna Zakharova, with whom the writer lived, the narration, as in a number of Solzhenitsyn's later stories, is told in the first person, on behalf of the teacher Ignatich (patronymic is consonant with the author's - Isaevich), who moves to European Russia from far links.
1959 - the story “Sch-854 (One day of one convict)” was written in three weeks, which in 1961 was submitted to the journal “ New world". Directly from Khrushchev, Tvardovsky seeks permission to publish the story, called "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich."
1962 - the year of a breakthrough: against the backdrop of a short-term flourishing of freedom in the USSR, Alexander Solzhenitsyn's story "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" is published for the first time. The magazine "New World" becomes the first circle of fame of the writer. Image Ivan Denisovich was formed from the appearance and habits of the soldier Shukhov, who fought in the battery of A.I. Solzhenitsyn in the Soviet-German war (but never sat), from the general experience of the post-war stream of “captives” and the author’s personal experience in the Special Camp as a bricklayer. The rest of the characters in the story are all taken from camp life, with their true biographies. The author knows Ivan Denisovich himself in his own way, he essentially creates him, transfers to him a significant part of his life experience: for example, the entire famous wall-laying scene is clearly an episode from the writer's biography.
"One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" shocked readers with knowledge of the forbidden - camp life under Stalin. One of the countless islands of the Gulag archipelago has opened for the first time. Behind him was the state itself, a ruthless totalitarian system that suppresses man.
The circle closed in the 65th: the end of the thaw, the KGB seizes Solzhenitsyn's archive. Harassment, letters of condemnation, under which everyone is forced to sign, a ban on publications. "In the First Circle" and "Cancer Ward" are published only abroad.
1967/68 - completed "Archipelago" , which the author himself defined as "our petrified tear." Gulag archipelago(the subtitle of the book is “the experience of artistic research”) – at the same time historical research with elements of a parody ethnographic essay, and the author's memoirs, telling about his camp experience, and the epic of suffering, and martyrology - stories about the martyrs of the Gulag. With strict documentation, this is quite a work of art.
IN " Gulag Archipelago" Solzhenitsyn acts as not so much an author as a collector of stories told by many prisoners (227 co-authors, without names, of course). As in the story One day of Ivan Denisovich, the narrative is structured in such a way as to make the reader see the torment of the prisoners with their own eyes and, as it were, experience them for themselves. In the novel The Gulag Archipelago, A. Solzhenitsyn shows what kind of people ended up in the camp. There were mixed Mensheviks and Trotskyists, "saboteurs" and representatives of religion, deviators and non-Party people, many, many of all those who were not lucky enough to hide from the terrible network of the NKVD. People behave differently. Some broke right away, others are ready to imprison hundreds of people, to give any testimony. But there were some that didn't break. For some prisoners, to whom the author himself primarily refers, being in the hell of the Gulag meant taking spiritual and moral heights. People were internally cleansed and began to see clearly, so Solzhenitsyn can repeatedly meet incomprehensible at first glance words of gratitude to the prison .
And the Solzhenitsyn hard labor camp, one of the Gulag archipelago, despite the terrible and undoubted reality of its existence in our history, in the fate of millions of people, is also a kind of sign of the clouding of the soul and mind, a perversion of the meaning of the life of the people and society. A mediocre, dangerous, cruel machine that grinds everyone who gets into it ...
1969 - Solzhenitsyn is expelled from the Writers' Union . In 1974, the writer was expelled from the country: KGB officers discovered the manuscript of the Gulag Archipelago.
Second circle links. Life outside the homeland began with the Nobel Prize awarded to Solzhenitsyn back in 1970. Fame becomes worldwide.
Both in Germany and in the States, the writer is working hard. From his pen comes not only prose, but also journalistic essays, and a great historical work - The Red Wheel. The dying Soviet Union continues to fight Solzhenitsyn - now in absentia.
Alexander Isaevich perceives the beginning of perestroika with caution, speaks of the danger of a “new February”, fraught with a “new October”. But in 1989, along with the opening of the Congress of People's Deputies - the first signs of a new democracy - several chapters from the Archipelago were published and again in the New World. And in 1990 Solzhenitsyn was given citizenship.
The return to normal took place only in the 94th. Alexander Isaevich has already arrived in a new country. And again work, active participation in public life. And again public disagreement. Disagreement, standing on three pillars - principles, faith and unbending spirit.
- In "One Day in Ivan Denisovich" and in "The Gulag Archipelago" there are many examples of human baseness, meanness, hypocrisy. Nevertheless, Solzhenitsyn notes that it was mainly those people who had already been prepared for this in the wild that succumbed to moral corruption in the camp. One can learn flattery, lies, “small and big meanness” everywhere, but a person must remain a person even in the most difficult and cruel conditions. Moreover, Solzhenitsyn shows that humiliation and trials awaken inner reserves in the individual and spiritually free him.

3. Formulation of the conclusion

Both Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov experienced first hand what it means to be repressed. Both devoted their works to this theme. Solzhenitsyn A.I. told the world and his homeland about the inhuman system of violence and lies that kept the tyrannical regime in power for more than seven decades. In him, Russian culture discovered within itself the source of its salvation, liberation, rebirth. Solzhenitsyn, all the way through the hellish abysses of the Archipelago, is driven by the hope of resurrection.
- A distinctive feature of Shalamov's work is universal hopelessness. The writer never evaluates anything. He claims that his stories "depict people in an extremely important, as yet undescribed state, when a person is approaching a state of beyond-humanity."
– Creativity of Shalamov and Solzhenitsyn is united by a common concept – enemies of the people. Who are these writers, the enemies of the people? What are they convicted of?

V. Reflection of the camp theme in the works of Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov

1. Work in groups, filling in the table

2. Discussion of student responses

VI. Summarizing

- What is the purpose of our lesson? Why did we discuss today the camp theme in the work of S. and Sh.? And in general, did Solzhenitsyn, Shalamov and others have the right to discuss this topic at the world level, because these are not the brightest pages of our history?

Final word from the teacher.“I don’t want revenge, I don’t want trial. I want people to know and remember how it all happened.” These words were spoken by Akmal Ikramov Kamil, a writer who was shot in 1938.
- Finishing our conversation, I would like to say that all innocent victims have the right to our memory, our grief, the right to immortality. On any graveyard, you want to be silent, to be alone with your thoughts for at least a minute. We will pray too. (Moment of silence)
- The worst thing in life is to change yourself, to live according to the formula “what do you want?”. The biggest loss in life is the loss of one's own freedom.
Today's lesson is not about the past, it's about the future. For, as Yevgeny Yevtushenko said, “we must know how it happened so that no one can ever steal our future again. The study of the past is the salvation of the future, its guarantor.”

VII. Homework

Essay "Soul and barbed wire".

The camp theme is explored by Solzhenitsyn at the level of different genres - a story, a documentary narrative of a large volume (" artistic research"by definition of the writer himself), dramatic work and screenplay and occupies a particularly significant place in his work, opening it to the reader "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" and placing it in the center of the "Gulag Archipelago". This place is determined by the fact that the camp is the most capacious symbol of Russian life in the post-revolutionary period.

With the unity of the theme different genres, being in special ways comprehension of life, require a different selection of material, create a different type of conflict, differ in the possibilities of expressing the author's position.

The "Gulag Archipelago", with all the unusualness of its artistic form, turns out to be the most characteristic expression of Solzhenitsyn - an artist and a man who refuses to accept traditional classifications and divisions both in literature and in life. His "artistic research", from a modern point of view, belongs to journalism, if you look at it from other, more ancient cultures, say, antiquity, which includes in the artistic circle historical narrative, oratorical prose, aesthetic and philosophical works, - of course, literature, artistry, which in its indivisibility corresponds to the global nature of the task.

"Archipelago ..." made it possible to solve two tasks necessary for Solzhenitsyn - the fullness of the volume, which is expressed both in the desire for a versatility in the study of camp life (everything), and in the large number of participants (everyone), and the most direct expression of the author's position, the direct sound of one's own voice .

Solzhenitsyn's turn to dramatic form (The Republic of Labour, which is part of the dramatic trilogy 1945 as the third part) seems completely natural precisely because the play, which ideally requires embodiment on the stage, which limits the depicted world by the size of the stage platform, by its very nature, it tends to see this world as a kind of integrity (the name of Shakespeare's theater "Globe" directly indicates this). The direct and strong emotional impact of the theater on the viewer also serves as an argument in choosing a form. But on the other hand, the image of the world, in which a person is limited in the manifestation of his personal activity, contradicts the very nature of a dramatic plot based on free action-choice. Apparently, it was precisely this, and not that inexperience of a beginner, unfamiliar with the capital's theatrical practice, which Solzhenitsyn himself speaks of in the book "A Calf Butted with an Oak", led to an artistic failure.

Only one turn of the camp theme is initially saturated with drama (conflict manifested through action), and this is an attempt to gain freedom. The motives of life, death, loyalty, betrayal, love, retribution require dramatic realization, while the brute and inhuman force of pressure and destruction ("tank" - at the same time as real image and as a capacious symbol of this power) is most vividly embodied by means of epic depiction. Hence the scenario form of the tragedy "Tanks Know the Truth!" literary work, where the use of two screens or an assembly joint, specified by the author at the very beginning, is nothing more than the exposure of an epic switching device (spatial, temporal or emotional). Any exposure of the technique stimulates the consciousness of the reader/viewer's perception, in this case, either by enhancing the expressiveness of a single action by means of a montage dividing it into elements (in the scenes of the murder of informers, a change of large frames: a chest - a hand brandishing a knife - a blow), or by creating a system of contrasts - from the contrast of time and place (restaurant orchestra in the initial scenes of the frame, the present - the camp orchestra, returning to the past), the contrast of the inhabitants of these two worlds (pure restaurant public- dirty camp prisoners) to the contrast of lies and truth, given visibly (the political instructor tells the soldiers horrors about monsters, pests and anti-Soviet - the botanist Mezheninov, Mantrov and Fedotov, - and in the dark lower corner of the screen, a small frame flashes simultaneously with a peacefully darning sock a botanist, with bright-faced boys).

It seems that there can be nothing more opposite in solving the camp theme than this script and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Let us note only some of the most noticeable cases: first of all, the opposite in the selection of events (the death of prisoners littered with earth; a failed escape; undermining; murders of informers; murder of Gavronsky by informers; storming of the prison; liberation of the women's barracks; tank attack; execution of the survivors), - events that are exceptional in the script, and routinely ordinary in the story: here even the little that can distinguish a day from a number of ordinary ones (release from work due to illness or a punishment cell for misconduct) is given only as possible (in desired in one case, terrible in another), but not realized.

Another important problem, which we will only outline here, is the problem of the author's voice. If in “One day ...” the voice of the author, separated from the voice of the hero, appears only a few times (the sign indicating the presence of the author’s point of view is the ellipsis, which at the beginning of the paragraph introduces the voice of the author, and at the beginning of one of the following paragraphs returns us to the point of view of the hero): in the story about Kolya Vdovushkin, who is engaged in "incomprehensible" for Shukhov literary work, or about Caesar who smokes, “to arouse a strong thought in himself and let it find something” - and each time this is a way beyond the understanding or awareness of the hero. At the same time, there is no conflict between the points of view of the author and the hero. This is especially noticeable in the author's digression about the dinner captain: “He was recently in the camp, recently at general work. Minutes like now were (he did not know this) moments of particular importance for him, turning him from an imperious sonorous naval officer into a sedentary prudent prisoner, only by this inactivity and able to overcome the twenty-five years of prison he had been given, ”changing the usual improperly direct speech: “And according to Shukhov, it’s right that they gave it to the captain. The time will come, and the captain will learn to live, but so far he does not know how. The author's side note about Buynovsky: "He did not know this ..." - contrasts the captain at the same time common knowledge both the author and Shukhov.

In the script, the author's voice has a different function. What is important here is not the combination or, on the contrary, the difference between the vision-knowledge of the author and the characters (in the “film”, the author, as it were, sees and tells everything that happens in front of him), but the general point of view of the author and the conditional viewer. Therefore, the author peers into the picture, as someone sitting in the hall peers into it, selects more precise words, clarifies the matter for himself and us: “And suddenly from the last row - a hefty guy with a stupid face - no, with a hunted face! - no, with a maddened with horror!<…>". Under the muzzles of machine guns, people fall on the road: “<…>maybe killed someone? - ignorance and intense expectation unite the narrator and the reader. And the folklore-song tonality of the experience becomes common: “As the wind lays down bread, so did a wave of prisoners. Into the dust! on the road! (maybe it killed someone?) Everyone is lying!”

But if it is important to establish a common author-reader field of emotional tension, then it is even more important to see what is happening, as with you, or rather, what is happening with us: “<…>Flying motorcycles. There are eight of them. Behind each is a submachine gunner. All on us!<…>They are moving to the right and to the left to surround us with a ring.

Bute. Here, in the auditorium, they beat!”

What a tragedy, by itself classic device as if remote from ordinary life(characters are heroes of myths and history, kings and princes, religious ascetics and great criminals; events are disastrous and exceptional) is most directly related to the life of everyone, the founders of the genre, the Greeks, also knew. In the famous fourth of Stasimesophocles' Oedipus Rex, after the terrible truth of his life was revealed to the hero and the choir, and once again the crimes were remembered - the murder of the father, copulation with the mother - which no one has ever done - the choir sings about the common share of people:

People, people! O mortal race!

Life on earth, alas, is vain!

O wretched Oedipus! your rock

Now that I understand, I will say:

There are no happy people in the world.

(Translated by S.V. Shervinsky)

The combination of "there" and "then" and "here" and "now", "camp" and " auditorium"- the way Solzhenitsyn found to express common destiny those who survived the camp tragedy, and those who were spared from it. Spared, but not freed from involvement in it.

In "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" it is impossible to imagine anything like this. The narration here is unaddressed, there is not and cannot be a direct appeal to the outside. The type of narration, closed by the consciousness of the hero, is adequate to the picture of the world created in the story. The image of the camp, given by reality itself as the embodiment of maximum spatial isolation and isolation from big world is carried out in the story in the same closed time structure of one day. The stunning truthfulness that everyone who writes about this masterpiece of Solzhenitsyn speaks of is set not only at the level of statements or events, but also at the very depth of the work - at the level of the chronotope.

The space and time of this world show their peculiarity in contrasting comparison with another or other worlds. So, the main properties of the camp space - its fenced off, closeness and visibility (the sentry standing on the tower sees everything) are opposed to the openness and infinity of the natural space - the steppe. Inside their units of closed space - barracks, camp, work facilities. The most characteristic camp space - a barrier (with constant details of its structure: a solid fence - pointed poles with lanterns, double gates, wire, near and far towers - we meet here, both in the play and in the script), and therefore, when mastering new object "before you do anything there, you need to dig holes, put up poles and pull barbed wire from yourself - so as not to run away." The structure of this phrase accurately reproduces the order and meaning of the image of space: first, the world is described as closed, then as not free, and it is on the second part (not for nothing that it is emphasized by intonation) that the main emphasis falls.

We are faced with a seemingly clear opposition between the camp world with a set of its inherent features (closed, observable, not free) and the external world with its features of openness, infinity and - consequently - freedom. This opposition is framed at the speech level in the naming of the camp as a "zone", and the big world as "will". But in reality there is no such symmetry. “The wind whistles over the bare steppe - dry windy in summer, frosty in winter. From birth, nothing grew in that steppe, and even more so between the four wires. Steppe (in Russian culture, the image-symbol of the will, reinforced by the same traditional and the same in a meaningful way wind) turns out to be equated with the unfree, barbed space of the zone: here and there this life is not there - “nothing has grown since birth”. The opposition is also removed in the case when the big, outside world is endowed with the properties of a camp: “From the stories of free drivers and excavators, Shukhov sees that the direct road to people was blocked<…>“.and, on the contrary, the camp world suddenly acquires alien and paradoxical properties: “What is good in a hard labor camp is freedom from the belly here.”

We are talking here about freedom of speech - a right that ceases to be a socio-political abstraction and becomes a natural necessity for a person to speak as he wants and what he wants, freely and without restriction: “And in the room they yell:

The mustachioed father will take pity on you! He won’t believe his brother, let alone you mugs!”

Words unthinkable in the wild.

Big Soviet world shows new properties - he is deceitful and cruel. He creates a myth about himself as a realm of freedom and abundance, and mercilessly punishes for infringement on this myth: “In Ust-Izhma<лагере>you say in a whisper that there are no matches outside, they put you in jail, they rivet a new ten. In the small world of the camp there is more cruelty, less lies, and the lie itself is different here - not politically abstract, but humanly understandable, associated with confrontation and hatred within the camp, on the one hand, the camp people, prisoners, on the other, all those who above them, from the head of the camp to the soldiers-escorts.

The main lies of the sentences and testimonies (“It is considered in the case that Shukhov sat down for treason”) remained there, outside the camp, and here the authorities seem to have no need for it, but it is characteristic that the prisoners feel that everything here is arranged on a lie and that this lie is directed against them. The thermometer is lying, not delivering degrees that could free them from work: “- Yes, it is wrong, it always lies,” someone said. “Will they hang the right one in the zone?” AND own lie convicts are a necessary part of survival: the rations Shukhov hid in his mattress, the two extra bowls he stole at dinner, the bribes that the foreman takes to the contractor so that the brigade gets a better job, window dressing instead of work for the authorities - all this is drawn up in a firm conclusion: “Otherwise, everyone would have died a long time ago, it’s a well-known thing.”

Other properties of the camp world are found in the second component of the chronotopic characteristic - the characteristic of time. Its importance is given both in the very title of the story, and in the compositional symmetry of the beginning and end - the very first phrase: "At five o'clock in the morning<…>« -- precise definition the beginning of the day and - at the same time - the story. And in the last one: “A day passed, not overshadowed by anything, almost happy” - the end of the day and the story itself coincide. But this phrase is not quite the last, it is the last in the plot-event series. The final paragraph, separated by two empty lines, structurally recreates the image of time given in the story. The finale is divided into two parts: the first: “There were three thousand six hundred and fifty three such days in his term from bell to bell” - as if it embodies the unimaginable abstraction of the term “ten years”, translating it into a number of units that is equally worldly unimaginable for a person. in the second: “Because of leap years, three extra days were added ...” - the respectful allocation of three days (such a small number compared to thousands!) determines the attitude to the day as the concentration of a whole life.

The antithesis "abstract time - real-human time" is not the only one; the even more important opposition "someone else's - one's own" partially coincides with it. "Own" time has a sensual concreteness - seasonality ("<…>Shukhov still has a lot to sit, winter-summer and winter-summer”) or the certainty of the daily routine - getting up, divorce, lunch, lights out. The exact time measured by the clock is a bare abstraction: "None of the prisoners ever sees a clock in the eye, and what is the point of a clock?", and therefore unreliable; the actual accuracy is questioned like a rumor: “Everyone says that the evening check is at nine.<…>And at five o'clock, they say, rise "

The maximum expression of not one's own time is "term". It is measured in abstract “dozens” that do not depend on the case of the convicted person (“This streak used to be so happy: everyone was given ten a comb. measured in moments, minutes, hours, days, seasons; “term” is not subject to the basic law of time - flow, movement: “How many times did Shukhov notice: the days in the camp are rolling - you won’t look back. And the term itself - does not go at all, it does not diminish at all.

The opposition of "one's own - someone else's" is one of the main ones in the story. It can also be spatial (for Ivan Denisovich, “his” space is, first of all, the place in the barracks where his 104th brigade is located; in the medical unit, he sits on the very edge of the chair, “involuntarily showing that the medical unit is alien to him”) , and spatio-temporal: past and native home- the integrity of his life - irretrievably distant and alienated from him. Now to write home - “what to throw into the pool of dense pebbles. What has fallen, what has sunk - there is no response to that. The former home space ceases to be native, it is perceived as strange, fabulous - like the life of those peasant painters, whom the wife tells about in a letter: “they travel all over the country and even fly in airplanes<…>and money is being raked in by the thousands, and carpets are being painted everywhere.”

A house is a necessary given for a person - it is not “there and then”, but “here and now”, and therefore the camp barrack becomes a home - after working in the cold, it’s not scary to unbutton your clothes for a search:

«<…>we go home.

That's what everyone says - "home".

About another house in a day and there is no time to remember.

Just as the concept of “home” leads to the concept of “family” (family: “She is the family, the brigade,” Ivan Denisovich calls the brigade), so the spatio-temporal antithesis of “friends and foes” naturally becomes an antithesis within the world of people. It is set on several levels. Firstly, this is the most predictable opposition between the prisoners and those who are assigned to manage their lives, from the head of the camp to guards, guards and escorts (hierarchy is not very important - for prisoners any of them is a “citizen boss”). The confrontation of these worlds, socio-political in nature, is reinforced by what is given at the natural-biological level. The constant comparisons of the guards with wolves and dogs cannot be accidental: Lieutenant Volkovoi ("God marks the rogue," Ivan Denisovich will say) "does not look otherwise than the wolf," the guards "aroused, rushed like animals," "only look out so that they don’t rush to your throat, ”here are the dogs, count again!” - about them, “yes, tear you in the forehead, why are you barking?” - about the head of the guard.

The zeks are a defenseless herd. They are counted by head:

« <…>even from behind, even from the front, look: five heads, five backs, ten legs ”; “- Stop! - noises the watchman. - Like a flock of sheep. Figure it out in five! ”; lad Gopchik - “affectionate calf”, “he has a thin little voice, like a kid”; Cavalry officer Buinovsky "locked the stretcher like a good gelding".

This opposition of wolves and sheep is easily superimposed in our minds on the usual fable-allegorical opposition of strength and defenselessness ("The Wolf and the Lamb"), or, as in Ostrovsky's, prudent cunning and innocence, but here another, more ancient and more general semantic layer is more important. - the symbolism of the victim associated with the image of a sheep. For the camp theme, the general plot of which is life in the realm of non-life and the possibility (Solzhenitsyn) or impossibility (Shalamov) for a person to escape in this non-life, the very ambivalence of the symbol of the victim, which combines the opposite meanings of death and life, death and salvation, turns out to be unusual capacious. The content value of the opposition lies in its connection with the problem of moral choice: whether to accept the “law of wolves” for oneself depends on the person, and the one who accepts it acquires the properties of dogs or jackals serving the wolf tribe (Der, “foreman from the zeks, bastard good, she chases her brother zek worse than dogs, ”a prisoner, the head of the canteen, who, together with the warden, scatters people, is defined by the same word with the warden: “Without guards, regiments are managed”).

Prisoners turn into wolves and dogs not only when they obey the camp law of the survival of the strong: “Whoever can, he gnaws at him”, not only when, betraying their own, they serve the camp authorities, but also when they give up their personality, becoming a crowd - - this is the most difficult case for a person, and no one is guaranteed here from transformation. Thus, the zeks waiting in the cold for a recount turn into an angry crowd ready to kill the culprit - a fallen asleep Moldavian who overslept the test: “Now he<Шухов>chill with everyone, and savage with everyone, and, it seems, if this Moldavian would hold them for half an hour, let the escort give it to the crowd - they would tear apart a calf like wolves! (for the Moldavian - the victim - the former name "calf" remains). The cry with which the crowd greets the Moldavian is a wolf's howl:

"A-ah-ah! yelled the zeks! “Whoo!”

Another system of relations is between prisoners. On the one hand, this is a hierarchy, and camp terminology - "morons", "sixes", "goal" - clearly defines the place of each category. “Outside, the brigade is all in the same black pea jackets and the numbers are the same, but inside it’s very unequal - it’s going up the steps. You can’t make Buinovsky sit with a bowl, and Shukhov won’t take any job, there is less. The antithesis of “one’s own versus theirs” turns out in this case to be the opposition of the top and the bottom in the camp society (“Shukhov was in a hurry and still answered decently (the pom-brigade leader is also the authorities, it even depends more on him than on the head of the camp)”; paramedic Kolya He calls Vdovushkin Nikolai Semenych and takes off his hat, "as before the authorities").

Another case is the singling out of informers, who are opposed to all campers as not quite people, as some separate organs - functions that the authorities cannot do without. There are no informers - there is no way to see and hear what is happening among people. "We've had our eyes gouged out! They cut off our ears!” shouts Lieutenant Bekech in the script, explaining exactly what informers are.

And, finally, the third and, perhaps, the most tragically important case for Solzhenitsyn of internal opposition is the opposition of the people and the intelligentsia. This problem, cardinal for the entire nineteenth century - from Griboyedov to Chekhov, is by no means removed in the twentieth century, but few people raised it with such sharpness as Solzhenitsyn. His point of view is the fault of that part of the intelligentsia, which does not see the people. Speaking of the terrible stream of arrests of peasants in 1929-1930, which was hardly noticed by the liberal Soviet intelligentsia of the sixties, who focused on the Stalinist terror of 1934-1937. - on the destruction of his own, he pronounces as a sentence: "Meanwhile, Stalin (and you and I) did not have a crime more difficult." In “One day…” Shukhov sees the intellectuals (“Muscovites”) as a foreign people: “And they mumble quickly, quickly, who will say more words. And when they babble like that, Russian words are so rare to come across, listening to them is the same as Latvians or Romanians. In the same way, more than a century ago, Griboyedov spoke of nobles and peasants as different nations: “If by any chance a foreigner was brought here<…>he, of course, would have concluded from the sharp contrast of morals that our gentlemen and peasants come from two different tribes that have not yet had time to mix up customs and mores. The sharpness of the opposition is especially felt because Solzhenitsyn's traditional national alienation has been practically removed: a common destiny leads to human closeness, and Ivan Denisovich understands the Latvian Kildigs, the Estonians, and the western Ukrainian Pavlo. The brotherhood of man is created not in spite of, but rather because of national distinction, which gives fullness and brightness big life. And one more motive (albeit maximally realized only in the script) - the motive of retribution - requires a multinational connection of people: in "Tanks" an unofficial tribunal condemning informers to death is the Caucasian Mohammed, the Lithuanian Antonas, the Ukrainian Bogdan, the Russian Klimov.

“An educated conversation” - a dispute about Eisenstein between Caesar and the old convict X-123 (he is heard by Shukhov, who brought Caesar porridge) - models a double opposition: firstly, within the intelligentsia: the esthete-formalist Caesar, whose formula is “art - - it's not what, but how", is opposed to the supporter of the ethical understanding of art X-123, for whom "to hell with your "how", if it does not awaken good feelings in me!", And "Ivan the Terrible" is "the most vile political idea-- the justification of individual tyranny", and, secondly, the opposition of the intelligentsia - the people, and in it Caesar and X-123 are equally opposed to Ivan Denisovich. In the small space of the episode - the whole page of a book text - Solzhenitsyn shows three times - Caesar does not notice Ivan Denisovich: “Caesar is smoking a pipe, lounging at his table. His back is to Shukhov, he does not see.<…>Caesar turned around, stretched out his hand for porridge, at Shukhov and did not look, as if the porridge itself had arrived through the air<…>. <…>Caesar did not remember him at all, that he was here, behind his back. But also " good feelings"the old convict is directed only at his own - as a keepsake" three generations Russian intelligentsia”, and Ivan Denisovich is invisible to him.

This is unforgivable blindness. Ivan Denisovich in Solzhenitsyn's story is not just the main character - he has the highest authority of the narrator, although, due to his modesty, he does not at all claim this role. The main narrative device, which the writer refuses for the sake of the author's speech only a few times, and for a very short time, is indirect speech that makes us see the depicted world primarily through Shukhov's eyes and understand this world through his consciousness. And that's why central problem story, coinciding with the problems of the whole new (with early XIX century) of Russian literature, the acquisition of freedom, comes to us through the problem that Ivan Denisovich recognizes as the main one for his life in the camp - survival.

The simplest survival formula: "own" time + food. This is a world where “two hundred grams rule life”, where a scoop of cabbage soup after work occupies the highest place in the hierarchy of values ​​(“This scoop is for him now dearer than will, dearer than life all past and all future life”), where it says about dinner: “Here it is a short moment, for which the prisoner lives!” The soldering hidden near the heart is symbolic. Time is measured by food: “The most satisfying time for a camper is June: every vegetable ends and is replaced with cereals. The worst time is July: nettles are whipped into a cauldron. Attitude to food as a super-valuable idea, the ability to focus entirely on it determine the possibility of survival. “He eats porridge with an insensible mouth, it is not for the future,” says the old Katarian intellectual. Shukhov really feels every spoonful, every bite he swallows. The story is full of information about what magara is, why oats are valuable, how to hide rations, how to eat porridge with a crust, what is the use of bad fats.

Life -- supreme value, a human duty is to save oneself, and therefore the traditional system of prohibitions and restrictions ceases to operate: bowls of porridge stolen by Shukhov are not a crime, but a merit, a convict’s dashing, Gopchik eats his parcels at night alone - and here this is the norm, “the right there will be a camp.

Another thing is striking: although moral boundaries change, they continue to exist, and moreover, they serve as a guarantee of human salvation. The criterion is simple: it is impossible to change - neither to others (like informers saving themselves "on someone else's blood"), nor to themselves.

The persistence of moral habits, whether it be Shukhov’s inability to “jack off” or give bribes, or “extortion” and conversion “at home,” from which Western Ukrainians cannot be weaned, turns out not to be external, easily washed away by the conditions of existence, but internal, natural stability of a person. . This stability determines the measure human dignity as internal freedom in a situation of its maximum external absence. And almost the only means helping to realize this freedom and - consequently - allowing a person to survive, is work, labor. "<…>this is how (my italics - T.V.) Shukhov is arranged in a stupid way, and they can’t wean him in any way: he regrets every thing and every work, so that they don’t waste it in vain. Work defines people: Buinovsky, Fetyukov, Alyoshka the Baptist are judged by how they are in common work. Work saves from illness: “Now that Shukhov has been given a job, it seems that the breaking has stopped.” Work turns “official” time into “own” time: “What the hell, is the working day so short?” Work destroys the hierarchy: “<…>now he has equaled his work with the brigadier. And most importantly, it destroys fear:<…>Shukhov, even though there is now an escort with dogs, ran back along the site, looked.

Freedom, measured not by the height of human achievement (“Tanks know the truth!”), but by the simplicity of daily routine, is comprehended with all the more convincingness as a natural vital necessity.

Thus, in the story of one day in the life of a Soviet prisoner, two great themes of Russian classical literature- the search for freedom and the sanctity of people's labor.

In his work, he reflected the theme of camps in Russian literature. Amazingly accurately and reliably, the writer reveals the whole nightmare of camp life in the book "Kolyma Tales". Shalamov's stories are piercing and invariably leave a painful impression on readers. The realism of Varlam Tikhonovich is not inferior to the skill of Solzhenitsyn, who wrote earlier. It would seem that he has sufficiently revealed the topic, nevertheless, Shalamov's manner of presentation is perceived as a new word in camp prose.
Future Writer Shalamov was born in 1907 in the family of a Vologda priest. As a teenager, he began to write. Shalamov graduated from Moscow University. The writer spent many years in prisons, camps and exile. He was first arrested in 1929, accused of distributing a false political testament of V. Lenin. This accusation was enough to get into the judicial machine for twenty years. At first, the writer spent three years in camps in the Urals, and then from 1937 he was sent to Kolyma. After the XX Congress of the CPSU, Shalamov was rehabilitated, but this did not compensate wasted years life.
The idea to describe camp life and create its epic, amazing in terms of its impact on the reader, helped Shalamov survive. unique merciless truth about the life of people in the camps. Ordinary people, close to us in ideals and moods, innocent and deceived victims.
main topic"Kolyma Tales" - the existence of man in inhuman conditions. The writer reproduces the situations he has repeatedly seen and the atmosphere of hopelessness, moral impasse. The state of Shalamov's heroes is approaching "beyond human". Prisoners lose every day physical health and risk parting with the psychic. The prison takes away from them everything “superfluous” and unnecessary for this scary place: their education, experience, connections with normal life, principles and moral values. Shalamov writes: “The camp is a negative school of life entirely. Nothing useful, necessary, no one will take out from there, neither the prisoner himself, nor his boss, nor his guards, nor unwitting witnesses - engineers, geologists, doctors - neither superiors, nor subordinates. Every minute of camp life is a poisoned minute. There are many things that a person should not know, and if he saw it, it would be better for him to die.
Shalamov thoroughly knows camp life. He has no illusions and does not inspire them in the reader. The writer feels the full depth of the tragedy of everyone with whom his fate has collided over the long twenty years. He uses all his impressions and experiences to create the characters of Kolyma Tales. He argues that there is no such measure to measure the suffering of millions of people. For an unprepared reader, the events of the author's works seem phantasmagoric, unreal, impossible. Nevertheless, we know that Shalamov adheres to the truth, considering distortions and excesses, the wrong placement of accents, as unacceptable in this situation. He tells about the life of prisoners, their sometimes unbearable suffering, labor, struggle for food, illness, death, death. He describes events that are terrible in their static nature. His cruel truth is devoid of anger and powerless exposure, there is no longer the strength to be indignant, feelings have died.
The material for Shalamov's books and the problems arising from it would be envied 19th realist writers century. The reader shudders at the realization of how "far" mankind has gone in the "science" of inventing torture and torment of their own kind.
Here are the words of the author, spoken in his own name: “The prisoner learns there to hate labor – he cannot learn anything else there. He learns there flattery, lies, petty and big meanness, becomes an egoist. Returning to freedom, he sees that not only has he not grown up during the camp, but that his interests have narrowed, become poor and rude. Moral barriers have been pushed aside. It turns out that you can do meanness and still live ... It turns out that a person who has committed meanness does not die ... He values ​​\u200b\u200bhis suffering too highly, forgetting that every person has his own grief. He has forgotten how to treat other people's grief with sympathy - he simply does not understand him, does not want to understand ... He has learned to hate people.
In the story "Sentence", the author, like a doctor, analyzes the state of a person whose only feeling is anger. The most terrible thing in the camp, more terrible than hunger, cold and disease, is the humiliation that reduces a person to the level of an animal. It brings the hero to a state where all feelings and thoughts are replaced by "semi-consciousness". When death recedes and consciousness returns to the hero, he happily feels that his brain is working, and the forgotten word “maxim” emerges from the subconscious.
The fear that turns a person into a slave is described in the story "Typhoid Quarantine". The heroes of the work agree to serve the leaders of the bandits, to be their lackeys and slaves, in order to satisfy such a need familiar to us - hunger. The hero of the story sees in the crowd of such serfs Captain Schneider, a German communist, an educated person, an excellent connoisseur of creativity, who now plays the role of a “scratcher of heels” for the thief Senechka. Such metamorphoses, when a person loses his appearance, affect those around him. The main character of the story does not want to live after what he sees.
"Vaska Denisov, the thief of pigs" is a story about hunger and about the state to which it can bring a person. The main character Vaska sacrifices his life for food.
Shalamov claims and tries to convey to the reader that the camp is a well-organized state crime. Here there is a deliberate substitution of all categories familiar to us. There is no place for naive reasoning about good and evil and philosophical disputes. The main thing is to survive.
Despite all the horror of camp life, the author of Kolyma Tales also writes about innocent people who were able to save themselves in truly inhuman conditions. He affirms the special heroism of these people, sometimes bordering on martyrdom, for which no name has yet been invented. Shalamov writes about people “who weren’t, who didn’t know how and didn’t become heroes,” because the word “heroism” has a hint of splendor, brilliance, and short duration of an act.
Shalamov's stories became, on the one hand, piercing documentary evidence of the nightmares of camp life, on the other hand, a philosophical understanding of an entire era. The totalitarian system appears to the writer as the same camp.