Tragedy of the Civil War. (M

Civil War- this is a war that is going on inside the country, forcing a father to kill his son, and a brother to kill his brother. This war brings only destruction and suffering. Why is she needed? What causes it? What is the purpose? Two works are devoted to the topic of the Civil War, about the difficult formation of a new life: “The Defeat” by A. Fadeev and “ Quiet Don» M. Sholokhov.

In M. Sholokhov's epic novel "Quiet Flows the Don" one can see the whole tragedy of a bloody civil war. The book is about the fierce struggle for the victory of Soviet power on the Don, about the life and way of life of the Don Cossacks. They lived freely on the Don: they worked on the land, were a reliable support for the Russian tsars, fought for them and for the state. All families lived at the expense of their work, in prosperity and respect. But this calm, normal life was crossed out by the war.

A very difficult time has come in the life of Russia, which brought great social and moral upheavals. Talking about the fate of Grigory Melikhov and his family, the writer shows these events not only as a misfortune for one family, but also as a tragedy for the whole people. This disaster brought with it pain, devastation and poverty. After the First World War, the Cossacks were drawn into the Civil War. Among all these events, the author especially focuses on the fate of the protagonist of the novel, Grigory Melikhov. The war hardened the peace-loving Cossack, she forced him to kill. After his first murder, when he hacked an Austrian in battle, Gregory could not recover for a long time.

He was tormented by sleepless nights and conscience. The war changed Gregory's life. His fluctuations between whites and reds speak of the infirmity of character, that he is looking for the truth in life, rushing about and does not know “whom to lean against?”. But Grigory does not find the truth either among the Bolsheviks or the White Guards. He wants a peaceful life: "My hands need to work, not fight." But the war took that away from him. The war brought divisions to family relationships Melikhovs. She broke the habitual way of life of these people. The grief and horrors of the war affected all the heroes of the novel.

Another work, A. Fadeev's novel "The Defeat", also covers the theme of the civil war. Shows people who fell into the partisan detachment. There were many truly dedicated people among them, but there were also those who got into the detachment by accident. In fact, both of them are experiencing a tragedy. Some are disappointed in their ideals, others give their lives for these ideals. Fadeev said that in a civil war “there is a selection of human material, everything that is not capable of a real revolutionary struggle is eliminated, and everything that has risen from the true roots of the revolution grows and develops in this struggle. There is a huge transformation of people." All people in the detachment are connected by the events that happen to them. Against the background of these events, the true character of the heroes is revealed. Testing a person is a choice between life and death. Frost, at the cost of his own life, warns the detachment of an ambush, and Sword, sent on patrol, saves his life in this situation: he abandons and betrays his comrades. He did not realize his place in life, and unlike him, Morozka appears to us at the end as a mature, responsible person, aware of his duty to people.

Drawing a conclusion, we can say that a civil war is a cruel and merciless war. It destroys families and destinies of people. This is the tragedy of the country and its people.

Updated: 2018-05-21

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More than 85 years ago, Russia, the former Russian Empire, lay in ruins. The 300-year rule of the Romanov dynasty ended in February, and in October the bourgeois-liberal Provisional Government said goodbye to the levers of government. Throughout the territory of a huge, once great power, which had been gathering a span since the time of the Moscow principality of Ivan Kalita, the Civil War was blazing. From the Baltic to Pacific Ocean, from White Sea bloody battles were going on up to the mountains of the Caucasus and the Orenburg steppes, and, it seems, except for a handful of provinces Central Russia, there was no volost or county where various authorities of all shades and ideological colors would not replace each other several times.

What is any civil war? Usually it is defined as an armed struggle for power between representatives of different classes and social groups. In other words, it's a fight inside countries, inside people, nation, often between fellow countrymen, neighbors, recent colleagues or friends, even close relatives. This is a tragedy that leaves an unhealed wound in the heart of the nation and fractures in its soul for a long time.

How did this dramatic confrontation proceed in Russia? What were the features our Civil war in addition to an unprecedented geographical, spatial scope?

You can learn, see, feel the whole palette of colors, thoughts, feelings of the Civil War era by studying archival documents and memoirs of contemporaries. Also, answers to piercing questions can be found in the works of literature and art of that fire era, which are testimonies before the court of History. And there are many such works, because the revolution is too huge an event in its scale not to be reflected in literature. And only a few writers and poets who were under its influence did not touch this topic in their work.

One of the best monuments of any era, as I said, is bright and talented works fiction. So it is with Russian literature about the Civil War. The creations of those poets and writers who went through the crucible of the Great Russian Troubles are very interesting. Some of them fought "for the happiness of all working people", others - "for a united and indivisible Russia". Someone made a clear moral choice for himself, someone was only indirectly involved in the deeds of one of the opposing camps. And others even tried to get up over the fight. But each of them is a personality, a phenomenon in Russian literature, a talent, sometimes undeservedly forgotten.

For many decades we have viewed our history in two colors, black and white. Black is all enemies - Trotsky, Bukharin, Kamenev, Zinoviev and others like them, white is our heroes - Voroshilov, Budyonny, Chapaev, Furmanov and others. Halftones were not recognized. If it was a civil war, then the atrocities of the Whites, the nobility of the Reds, and, as an exception, confirming the rule, the "green" who accidentally crept between them - Makhno's father, who is "neither ours nor yours."

But now we know how complex and confusing this whole process was in fact in the early 1920s, the process of selecting human material, we know that it is impossible to approach the assessment of those events and literary works in a black and white image, dedicated to them. After all, even the civil war itself, historians are now inclined to consider that it began not in the summer of 1918, but from October 25, 1917, when the Bolsheviks carried out a military coup and overthrew the legitimate Provisional Government.

Estimates of the Civil War are very dissimilar and contradictory, starting with its chronological framework. Some researchers dated it to 1918-1920, which, apparently, cannot be considered fair (here we can only talk about the war in European Russia). The most accurate dating is 1917-1922.

The civil war began, without exaggeration, "on the next day" after the seizure of power by the Bolshevik Party during October revolution.

I was interested in this topic, its embodiment in the literature of that time. I wanted to get acquainted in more detail with the various assessments of the events taking place, to find out the point of view of the writers standing on the different sides barricades, differently evaluating the events of those years.

I set myself a goal

get acquainted with some works about the civil war, analyze them and try to understand all the ambiguity of this tragedy in our country;

consider it from different sides, from different points of view: from the complete worship of the revolution ("The Defeat" by Alexander Fadeev) to harsh criticism ("Russia Washed with Blood" by Artyom Vesely);

to prove on the example of literary works that any war, in the words of Leo Tolstoy, is "an event contrary to human reason and all human nature."

I became interested in this topic after I got acquainted with the journalistic notes of Alexei Maksimovich Gorky "Untimely Thoughts", which were previously inaccessible to the reader. The writer condemns the Bolsheviks for many things, expresses his disagreement and condemnation: "The new bosses are as rude as the old ones. They yell and stomp their feet, and grab bribes, like the former bureaucrats grabbed them, and drive people in herds into prisons."

Soviet readers did not read "Cursed Days" by Ivan Alekseevich Bunin, who called the time of revolution and civil war that way, "Letters to Lunacharsky" by Valentin Galaktionovich Korolenko and other previously banned works.

As a fratricidal war ("why did they go to the brother, chopping and smashing ...."), as the destruction of the "bright culture of their homeland" perceived the civil war and the revolution, not previously included in school programs Silver Age poet Igor Severyanin.

Maximilian Voloshin sympathized with both whites and reds:

... And here and there between the rows

The same voice sounds:

Who is not for us is against us!

No indifferent! True, with us!

And I stand alone between them

In roaring flames and smoke.

And with all my strength

I pray for both.

More than eight decades have passed since the Civil War, but we are only now beginning to understand what a misfortune it was for all of Russia. More recently, heroism came to the fore in the depiction of the Civil War in literature. The prevailing idea was: Glory to the victors, shame to the vanquished. The heroes of the war were those who fought on the side of the Reds, on the side of the Bolsheviks. These are Chapaev ("Chapaev" by Dmitry Furmanov), Levinson ("Rout" by Alexander Fadeev), Kozhukh ("Iron Stream" by Alexander Serafimovich) and other soldiers of the revolution.

However, there was other literature that sympathetically depicted those who stood up to defend Russia from the Bolshevik rebellion. This literature condemned violence, cruelty, "red terror". But it is quite clear that such works were banned during the years of Soviet power.

Once the famous Russian singer Alexander Vertinsky sang a song about the junkers. For this, he was summoned to the Cheka and asked: "Are you on the side of the counter-revolution?" Vertinsky replied: "I pity them. Their lives could be useful to Russia. You can't forbid me to pity them."

"We'll forbid breathing if we find it necessary! We'll manage without these bourgeois fosterlings."

I got acquainted with various works about the civil war, both poetic and prose, and saw the different approaches of the authors to the depicted, different points of view on what is happening.

In more detail in the abstract, I will analyze three works: the novel by Alexander Fadeev "The Rout", the unfinished novel by Artyom Vesely "Russia, Washed with Blood" and the story by Boris Lavrenyov "Forty-First".

Alexander Fadeev's novel "Rout" is one of the most striking works depicting the heroism of the civil war.

The youth of Fadeev himself was spent in the Far East. There he actively participated in the events of the Civil War, fighting in the red partisan detachments. The impressions of those years were reflected in the story "Against the Current" (1923), in the story "Spill" (1924), the novel "Rout" (1927) and the unfinished epic "The Last of the Udege" (1929-1940). When Fadeev's idea for the novel "Rout" was born, the last battles in the Far Eastern outskirts of Russia still continued to blaze. “The main outlines of this topic,” Fadeev noted, “appeared in my mind as early as 1921-1922.”

The book was highly appreciated by readers and many writers. They wrote that "Rout" "opens a truly new page in our literature", that "the main types of our era" were found in it, they attributed the novel to the number of books "giving a broad, truthful and talented picture of the civil war", emphasized that "Rout" showed "what a large and serious force our literature has in Fadeev." In "Mayhem" there is no character backstory that precedes the action. But in the narrative about the life and struggle of the partisan detachment for three months, the writer, without deviating from the main plot, includes essential details from past life heroes (Levinson, Frost, Mechik, etc.), explaining the origins of their character and moral qualities.

There are about thirty characters in the novel (including episodic ones). This is unusually small for a work that tells about the civil war. This is explained by the fact that the focus of Fadeev's attention is the image human characters. He loves to study an individual for a long time and carefully, to observe him at different moments of public and private life.

Military episodes in the novel are given little space. Their description is subject to an in-depth analysis of changes in the inner world of the participants in the struggle. The main event - the military defeat of the partisan detachment - begins to play a significant role in the fate of the heroes only from the middle of the work (Chapter 10 - "The Beginning of the Defeat"). The first half of the novel is a leisurely narration about human destinies and characters, the life orientation of the characters during the years of the revolution. Then the author shows the battle as a test of people. And during the hostilities, the writer pays attention primarily to the behavior and experiences of the participants in the battles. Where he was, what he was doing, what this or that hero was thinking about - these are the questions that worry Fadeev.

"A real person awakens in his best sides when he faces a great test." This conviction of Fadeev determined his artistic technique - to complete the characterization of a person by depicting his behavior in that difficult situation that requires the highest exertion of strength.

If we take a purely external shell of the development of events in the novel "The Rout", then this is really the story of the defeat of the Levinson partisan detachment, because A.A. Fadeev uses for the story one of the most dramatic moments in the history of the partisan movement in the Far East, when the combined efforts of the White Guard and Japanese troops dealt heavy blows to the partisans of Primorye.

By the end of the novel, a tragic situation develops: the partisan detachment finds itself in an enemy environment. The way out of this situation required great sacrifices. The novel ends with the death of the best people of the detachment. Only nineteen survived. But the spirit of the fighters is not broken. The novel affirms the idea of ​​the invincibility of the people in a just war.

The system of images of The Rout, taken as a whole, reflected the real correlation of the main social forces of our revolution. It was attended by the proletariat, peasants and intelligentsia, led by the Bolshevik Party. Accordingly, in "The Rout" the "coal flame" is shown, walking in the forefront of the struggle, the peasants, the intellectual devoted to the people - the doctor Stashinsky, the Bolshevik - commander Levinson.

However, the heroes of the novel are not just "representatives" of certain social groups, but also unique individuals. Before the reader’s eyes, as if alive, are calm and reasonable Goncharenko, hot and hasty in judgments Dubov, willful and addicted Morozka, submissive and compassionate Varya, charming, combining the naivety of a young man and the courage of a Cormorant wrestler, the brave and impetuous Metelitsa, modest and strong-willed Levinson.

The images of Baklanov and Metelitsa, whose youth coincided with the revolution, open the portrait gallery of young heroes, so richly and poetically presented in Fadeev's subsequent work, and especially in his novel The Young Guard.

Baklanov, who imitated the Bolshevik Levinson in everything, becomes a true hero in the course of the struggle. Recall the lines preceding the episode of his heroic death: "... his naive high-cheeked face, slightly leaning forward, waiting for an order, burned with that genuine and greatest of passions, in the name of which the best people from their group."

The former shepherd Metelitsa stood out in the partisan detachment for his exceptional courage. His courage is admired by those around him. In intelligence, in the White Guard captivity, during brutal execution Blizzard showed a high standard of fearlessness. The vital force beat in him with an inexhaustible spring. "This man could not sit still for a minute - there was all fire and movement, and his predatory eyes always burned with an insatiable desire to catch up with someone and fight." Blizzard is a hero-nugget, formed in the elements of working life. There were many of these among the people. The revolution brought them out of obscurity and helped them to fully reveal their wonderful human qualities and capabilities. The blizzard represents their fate.

Each actor"Defeat" brings something of its own to the novel. But in accordance with the main theme of the work - the re-education of man in the revolution - the artist focused his attention, on the one hand, on the ideological leader of the detachment, the communist Levinson, and on the other, on the representative of the revolutionary masses, in need of ideological re-education, which is Morozka. Fadeev also showed those people who accidentally ended up in the camp of the revolution were not capable of a real revolutionary struggle (Mechik).

The particularly important role of Levinson, Morozka, and Mechik in the development of the plot is emphasized by the fact that the author calls them by their names, or mainly devotes many chapters of the novel to them.

With all the passion of the communist writer and revolutionary A.A. Fadeev sought to bring closer the bright time of communism. This humanistic faith in a beautiful person permeated the most difficult pictures and situations in which his heroes fell.

For Fadeev, a revolutionary is impossible without striving for a bright future, without faith in a new, beautiful, kind and pure person. The image of such a revolutionary is the commander of the partisan detachment Levinson.

This is one of the first realistically truthful types of communists in young Soviet prose who led folk wrestling on the fronts of the Civil War.

Levinson is called a man of "a special right breed." Is it so? Nothing like this. He is quite an ordinary person, with weaknesses and shortcomings. Another thing is that he knows how to conceal and suppress them. Levinson knows neither fear nor doubt? Does he always have unerringly accurate solutions in stock? And that's not true. And he has doubts, and confusion, and painful mental discord. But he "did not share his thoughts and feelings with anyone, presented ready-made "yes" and "no." It is impossible without this. The partisans who entrusted their lives to him should not know about any discord and doubts of the commander ...

The actions of the communist Levinson were guided by "an enormous, incomparable with any other desire, a thirst for a new, beautiful, strong and good man". He sought to instill such character traits in the people he led. Levinson is always with them, he is all absorbed in everyday, everyday educational work, small and imperceptible at first glance, but great in its historical significance. Therefore, the scene of the public trial of the guilty Morozka is especially indicative. Having called the peasants and partisans to discuss Morozka's misconduct, the commander told the audience: "This is a common matter, as you decide, so be it." He said - and "went down like a wick, leaving the gathering in the dark to decide the matter for himself." When the discussion of the issue assumed a disorderly character, the speakers began to get confused in trifles and it was already "nothing could be understood," Levinson quietly but distinctly said: "Come on, comrades, take turns ... Let's talk at once - we won't decide anything."

The platoon commander Dubov, in his angry and passionate speech, demanded the expulsion of Frost from the detachment. Levinson, appreciating the speaker's noble outburst of indignation and at the same time wishing to warn him and all those assembled against excessive decisions, again imperceptibly intervened in the course of the discussion:

Levinson grabbed the platoon leader by the sleeve from behind.

Dubov… Dubov…” he said calmly. - Move a little - you are blocking the people.

Dubov's charge immediately disappeared, the platoon leader stopped, blinking in confusion.

Levinson's attitude towards the masses of workers and peasants is imbued with a sense of revolutionary humanism; he always acts as their teacher and friend. In the last chapter, when the detachment has gone through severe trials, we see Levinson tired, ill, falling into a state of temporary indifference to everything around him. And only "they were still the only ones who were not indifferent, close to him, these exhausted faithful people, closer than anything else, closer even to himself, because he did not stop feeling for a second that he owed something to them ...". This devotion to the "tortured faithful people", the feeling of one's moral obligation to serve them, which makes one go with the masses and lead them to the last breath, is the highest revolutionary humanity, the highest beauty of the civic spirit, which distinguishes the communists.

But two episodes of the novel cannot but alert, namely the confiscation of a pig from a Korean and the poisoning of Frolov. AT this case Levinson operates on the principle: "The end justifies the means." In this regard, Levinson appears before us, who does not stop at any cruelty in order to save the detachment. Stashinsky, a doctor who took the Hippocratic oath, helps him in this matter! And the doctor himself and, it would seem, Levinson come from an intelligent society. To what extent it is necessary to change in order to kill a person or sentence an entire family to death by starvation! Aren't the Korean and his family the same people in the name of a bright future that a civil war is going on?

The image of Levinson should not be assessed as an ideal personification of the spiritual image of a communist leader. It is not free from some misconceptions. So, for example, he believed that "you can lead other people only by pointing out their weaknesses and suppressing them, hiding your own from them."

A communist acting in the role of a leader is characterized not only and not so much by an indication of weaknesses, but by the ability to discover the merits in the people he leads, to instill in them faith in their own strength, to encourage their initiative. And only because Levinson acted in this way in most cases does the reader recognize and recognize in him a typical representative of the Communists who worked among the masses on the fronts of the civil war.

The characterization of the Bolshevik Levinson, one of the main characters of the novel "Rout", as a person striving and believing in the best, is contained in the following quote: "... everything he thought about was the most profound and important thing he could think of, because the main meaning of his own life was in overcoming this scarcity and poverty, because there was no Levinson, but there would have been someone else, if there had not lived in him a huge thirst for the new, beautiful, strong and incomparable with any other desire. good man. But how can there be a talk about a new, beautiful man as long as huge millions are forced to live such a primitive and miserable, such an unthinkable, meager life.

The main idea of ​​the novel - the re-education of a person in the course of the revolutionary struggle - is decided mainly on the image of Frost. Partisan Morozka is a true personification of that mass of ordinary proletarians, for whom only the revolution opened the way to spiritual growth and the restoration of trampled human dignity.

The main features of his character are revealed in the very first chapter of the novel. Frost opposes the fulfillment of the commander's task, preferring a meeting with his wife to "boring government trips". But in response to the commander's demand - to hand over his weapons and get out of the detachment - he declares that it is "impossible for him" to leave the detachment, because he understands participation in the partisan struggle as his vital miner's business. Having set off on an assignment after this stern warning, Frost, risking his life, saves the wounded Swordsman on the way.

In these episodes, the essence of Morozka's nature was revealed: before us is a man with a proletarian worldview, but insufficient consciousness. The feeling of proletarian brotherhood dictates Morozka the right actions at the decisive moments of the struggle: he cannot leave the detachment, he must save a wounded comrade. But in Everyday life the hero showed indiscipline, rudeness in dealing with a woman, he could get drunk.

People like Morozka made up the mass army of the revolution, and participation in the struggle was a great school of ideological and moral re-education for them. The new reality revealed the unsuitability of the old "norms" of behavior. Partisan Frost stole the melons. From the point of view of his previous worldly experience, this is an acceptable act. And suddenly now the commander is gathering a peasant gathering to judge Morozka by public opinion. The hero received a lesson in communist morality.

In the revolutionary struggle, yesterday's slaves regained their lost sense of human dignity. Let us recall the scene at the ferry, when Morozka found himself in the role of the organizer of the crowd, frightened by the imaginary proximity of the Japanese. “Frost, having fallen into this confusion, wanted, according to an old habit (“for laughter”), to frighten even more, but for some reason changed his mind and, jumping off his horse, began to calm him down ... He suddenly felt like a big, responsible person ... rejoicing at the unusual his role." Thus, in the everyday phenomena of partisan life, Fadeev with rare insight comprehended the moral result of the revolutionary struggle, its echo in the human heart, its ennobling effect on the moral character of the individual.

Participation in big events enriched Frost's life experience. His spiritual life became deeper, the first "unusually heavy thoughts" appeared, the need to comprehend his actions and the world around him was born. Before, before the revolution, living in a mining village, he did a lot of things thoughtlessly: life seemed to him simple, uncomplicated and even "fun". After the experience in the partisan detachment, Morozok overestimated his former life, his "careless" mischief, he now tried to get on the right road, "on which people like Levinson, Baklanov, Dubov walked." In the course of the revolution, he turned into a conscious thinking person.

"The Defeat" of Alexander Fadeev, together with "Chapaev" by Dmitry Furmanov and "The Iron Stream" by Alexander Serafimovich, are bright milestones on the way to a realistic comprehension of revolutionary changes in the life and creation of the people. But for all the generality of the novels, each author has his own approach to the topic, his own style of his artistic coverage. Serafimovich depicted the process of the birth of revolutionary consciousness among the masses primarily on the basis of their own experience of the struggle. Furmanov and Fadeev spoke about great role parties in organizing the revolutionary struggle of the people and in their ideological and moral education. They showed the beauty and grandeur of the socialist revolution as the beauty and grandeur of progressive ideas that raise the self-consciousness of the masses of the people and direct their spontaneous revolutionary impulse towards a lofty goal.

But the main thing in the novel is its optimistic idea, which is also manifested in the final words: "... it was necessary to live and fulfill one's duties", - an appeal that united life, struggle and overcoming, and in the entire structure of the novel, namely in the arrangement of figures, their destinies and characters. Thanks to all this, the novel does not sound pessimistic, it is optimistic. The optimism of the novel is in the belief in the victory of the revolution.

The next work paints the revolution in completely different colors, is remembered by other characters and episodes. This is a book by Artyom Vesely "Russia, washed with blood."

Artem Vesely (real name - Nikolai Ivanovich Kochkurov) belonged to the generation of Soviet writers, whose youth fell on the years of the revolution and the Civil War. They were shaped by a time of great turmoil. The coming of Veseliy to the Reds is quite natural. The son of a Volga hooker, from childhood he "drank hard", combining work - sometimes hard and quite adult - with studies at the Samara Primary School. He became a Bolshevik already in the February Revolution; after October - a fighter of the Red Army. He fought with the White Czechs, then with Denikin, was at party work. Artyom Vesely noted in his autobiography: "Since the spring of 1917, I have been engaged in revolution. Since 1920, I have been writing."

In "Russia, washed with blood" there is no traditional single plot, held together by the history of the fate of individual heroes, there is no single intrigue. The originality and strength of the book - in the reproduction of the "image of time". The writer believed that his main task was to embody the image of a revolutionary, protesting Russia at the front, at train stations, in the steppes scorched by the sun, on village streets, in city squares. The image of time corresponds to the style and language of the narrative, its intense pace, dynamic phrase, the abundance of mass scenes with their many faces and polyphony.

"Russia, washed with blood" is one of the significant works of Russian literature. It reflects with extraordinary force and truthfulness the great upheaval in the life of Russia during the First World War, the October Revolution and the Civil War. .

Beginning with spring days 1920, when young Nikolai Kochkurov saw through the window of the car the Don and Kuban Cossacks, who were defeated by the Red Army and now, disarmed, were returning home on their horses in marching order (it was then, by his own admission, "the image of a grandiose book about the civil war "and appeared in front of him" in full growth "), and ending with the second half of the 30s, work was underway on a novel that can be called the main book of the writer.

The work took shape as a single artistic whole for a separate edition in 1932. It was then that a two-part division appeared - into “two wings”, and between the “wings” there were sketches, which the author himself interpreted as “short, one or two pages, completely independent and complete stories, connected with the main text of the novel with their hot breath, place action, theme and time ... ".

The action of the first part of the novel takes place in the south: Russian positions on the Turkish front during the First World War, return from the front, civil war in the Caucasus and near Astrakhan. The action of the second part is transferred to the middle Volga. None of the characters in the first part gets into the second: thus, there are no plot motivations that hold both parts together. Each of the two parts is a narrative that is spatially closed within itself.

Closed in space, they are closed in time. The first part covers the initial period of the civil war, when the former nationwide and general ideological institutions were being broken. This is the period when, in the words of John Reed, "the old Russia was gone": "The formless society melted, flowed like lava into the primordial heat, and from the stormy sea of ​​flame emerged a mighty and ruthless class struggle, and with it still fragile, slowly solidifying nuclei new formations". The second part covers the final stage of the civil war, when the whites were already driven away, the "cores of new formations" were structurally identified, a new one was formed. government and this power entered into difficult relations with the peasantry - relations fraught with tragic conflicts.

Consequently, the first and second parts of "Russia, washed with blood" are two moments in the development of the revolution, interconnected according to the principle of historical succession.

The country is upside down. Artem Vesely creates a sense of drama and grandeur by the activity of his speech style, the emotional tension of the plot of the story.

The chapters of the first and second parts open with the author's folklore-stylized beginnings:

"There is a revolution in Russia - the mother of the cheese-earth trembled, the white light became clouded ... ";

"There is a revolution in Russia, all of Russia is a rally";

"There is a revolution in Russia, all of Russia is at stake";

"There is a revolution in Russia - all over Raseyushka, thunderstorms are thundering, downpours are noisy";

"There is a revolution in Russia, all of Raseyushka took on fire and swam with blood";

"In Russia, the revolution - ardor, or, yar, flood, rushing water";

"There is a revolution in Russia - the villages are in the heat, the cities are in delirium";

"There is a revolution in Russia - a flame broke out and a thunderstorm passed everywhere";

"There is a revolution in Russia - from all the world the dust has risen like a pillar ...";

"There is a revolution in Russia - the country is boiling in blood, on fire ...".

Carrying in themselves the memory of the epic archaic, the beginnings give the speech style of the novel the tradition of solemn elation of the narrative, create a feeling of shock at what is happening. At the same time, the plot of the narration is not reduced to the layer of folklore stylization. The reader receives an idea of ​​how reality blown up by the revolution lives and develops from different angles, as if from different people, sometimes through the vision of a narrator close to the author.

The seventeenth - the beginning of the eighteenth year: a flood of destructive hatred spreads over Russia. There is a terrible in its simplicity story of an ordinary soldier Maxim Kuzhel about how a commander was killed at a rally, on the positions of the Turkish front: “We tore the commander’s ribs, trampled on his guts, and our atrocity was only gaining strength ...”

This is really just the beginning. Then a series of episodes will follow, in which the reprisals against people who personify the hated tsarist regime become a system, a stable line of behavior, so to speak, business as usual- so familiar that the murder of even a large crowd of curious people is not able to gather, - it’s not interesting, you see, we know:

"There are three crowds in the station garden. In one - they played toss, in the other - they killed the head of the station and in the third, the largest crowd, a Chinese girl showed tricks ... "

"A big black-bearded soldier, pushing the people aside and sucking on the last chicken leg as he went, flew like a kite to finish off the chief's station: they said that he was still breathing."

As we can see, the centrifugal tendencies of being predominate - the desire to overturn and trample on all former life. There are no values ​​left - everything goes under a negative sign.

This is still the origins - the story is just gaining height. It is characteristic, however, that in the plot of the novel the sailor ship republic appears as an episodic phenomenon, as a short-term military brotherhood, which, according to Vesely, does not have a social perspective as an independent organizing force: with the death of the fleet, the existence of the ship republic ends; under the influence of the Bolshevik locksmith Yegorov, in response to his "short and simple word", the sailors are enrolled in a detachment and sent to the front, to the ranks of the Red Army.

Artem Vesely reveals the dramatic complexity of social life in the transitional period in symmetrically corresponding episodes of the first and second parts. Contradictions separate Cossacks and settlers in the North Caucasus, rich and poor peasants in the Zavolzhsky village of Khomutovo, hungry cities and a relatively well-fed village.

The soldiers who returned from the front dream of redistributing the Kuban lands on the basis of equality, since "a rich land, a free side" accommodates the Cossack class satiety and, next to it, the humble existence of alien peasants. In the same village, Cossacks and newcomers settle separately, mutually separating themselves according to the principle: poverty - wealth.

"On the Cossack side there is a bazaar, and a cinema, and a gymnasium, and a large magnificent church, and a dry high bank, on which a brass band played on holidays, and in the evenings walking and bawling youth gathered. White huts and rich houses under tiles, planks and iron stood in strict order, hiding in the greenery of cherry orchards and acacias. Large spring water came to visit the Cossacks, under the very windows.

In the novel, it is not by chance that the final composition of the chapter "A bitter hangover" (the first part) and the chapter "Khomutovo village" (the second part) are correlated compositionally. Whites took Ivan Chernoyarov to the market square to hang: "Until the very last minute of his death, he surrounded the executioners with a red-hot obscenity and spit in their eyes." This is the result of "The Bitter Hangover". In the chapter "Khomutovo Village", a worldly bull named Anarchist, who has broken loose from his leash, enters into an absurdly desperate single combat with a grain echelon:

"The locomotive skidded, puffed tiredly, groaned, and dragged its tail with such difficulty that it seemed to advance no more than one fathom per minute. The anarchist whipped himself on the sides with his tail, heavy as a rope, with a fluffy dump at the end, threw sand with his hooves and, bending his head to the ground, with a deadly roar, swiftly rushed to meet the locomotive and thrust mighty horns into the chest of the locomotive ... The lanterns were already knocked down, the front end was crushed, but the locomotive - black and snorting - was advancing: on the rise, the driver could not stop. ... A white bone splashed out from under the cast-iron wheel. The train passed Khomutovo without stopping - on the rise, the driver could not stop ... ".

Let's pay attention to the twice repeated "on the rise, the driver could not stop" - this is a signal that the law of historical inevitability is in effect. The carriers of the new statehood come into a tragic conflict with the breadwinners of a vast country, representatives of " earth force", supporters of the" third way ". Terrible in its senselessness, the single combat of a bull with a steam locomotive prepares an episode in which the rebels forge" spears, darts, hooks and hooks, with which the chapan army was armed. "This medieval equipment is also powerless against the technically equipped new government how powerless the Anarchist bull is compared to mechanical force locomotive. The tragic finale of the fate of Ivan Chernoyarov and the death of the Anarchist under the wheels of a steam locomotive going up are symbolic: throwing a mutual reflection on each other, both episodes are at the same time projected onto the development of the epic action as a whole - they prepare the defeat of the "straw force", trying and not being able to find for itself "third way".

The ability to tell the bitter truth about the victims of the tragic conflict revealed the dialectical capacity of the artistic vision of Artyom Vesely, which incorporates both “you can’t regret it” and “you can’t not regret it”, if you use the well-known aphorism from A. Neverov’s story “Andron the Unlucky”. In how Ivan Chernoyarov, who is at a dead end, dies, how a bull with the meaningful nickname Anarchist falls under the wheels of a locomotive, how the "chapans" are defeated, the author's cross-cutting idea declares itself, allowing us to speak of "Russia, washed with blood" as a novel of tragic intensity .

Tragedy is set already in the introductory chapter "Death trampled down by death." The panoramic image of the all-Russian grief of the First World War appears here as a disaster that falls on individual human destinies:

"A hot bullet smacked the bridge of the nose of the fisherman Ostap Kalaida - and orphaned his white hut on the seashore, near Taganrog. He fell and wheezed, the Sormovo locksmith Ignat Lysachenko twitched - his zhinka with three little guys in his arms would take a dashing sip. The young volunteer Petya Kakurin, thrown up by a land mine explosion along with clods of frozen earth, fell into the ditch like a burnt match - that will be the joy of the old people in distant Barnaul when the news of their son reaches them. He poked his head into a tussock, and the Volga hero Yukhan remained lying there - no longer wave an ax at him and sing songs in the forest. Lieutenant Andrievsky, the company commander, lay down next to Yukhan, and he grew up in maternal caress.

We will not learn anything more about the dead and their families, but the rhythm is set: any war is terrible, contrary to human nature, and a civil war is doubly tragic.

The final lines of "Russia, washed with blood" are also indicative: "Native country ... Smoke, fire - there is no end to the edge!". In the context of the work, we have a novelly open ending: the plot rushes into an extensively unfolded future; life appears as fundamentally unfinished, never stopping, constantly moving forward.

In order to preserve and consolidate "Russia, washed with blood" exactly how novel unity, Artem Vesely makes a bold attempt to bring relatively completed individual destinies and separate, also relatively completed in themselves, destinies of social groups into a special section - "Etudes", which, as already mentioned, act as a kind of spacer between the first and second parts of the novel . Before us is a chain of short stories, each of which is built on an event that has been exhausted by the plot.

The grandiose metaphor in the title of the book is projected onto both the panoramic image of mass life and the close-up image of individual human destinies. Both the title and the subtitle ("Fragment") led the writer to new horizons of boundless reality, which offered new artistic tasks. It is not surprising that, having released the book in several editions, the writer continued to work on it. Artem Vesely wanted to end the novel with battles on the Polish front, the storming of Perekop, he intended to introduce the image of Lenin into the novel, episodes of the activities of the Comintern ...

It was not possible to carry out these plans: the writer, as already mentioned, fell victim to lawlessness. However, we can say with confidence: in its current, relatively unfinished form, the novel took place. He reveals to us the scope of the "popular revolution", its tragic collisions and its hopes.

Not a single writer of those years possessed such powerful confidence in his speech - speech, directly perceived from the people. Words tender and rude, menacing and spiritualized were combined in fragmentary periods, as if torn from the lips of the people. The rudeness and authenticity of some of the cries repelled lovers of the elegant prose of Turgenev's style. Therefore, the remarkable epic "Russia, washed with blood" did not cause lengthy discussions and deep assessments, serving most likely as an example of revolutionary spontaneous prowess, and not an entirely new literary phenomenon. Artyom Vesely tried, and not only tried, but also carried out a romance without a hero, or rather with a mass hero, in which such a plurality of features of the peoples that formed the population of the former Russian Empire that it was not possible to perceive these features as uniting one person. None of the writers of the past and present known to me had such freedom of expressive speech, such a reckless and at the same time strong-willed proclamation. In my opinion, Artyom Vesely could become a completely unprecedented and unheard of Soviet writer, opening the way for the whole language, all the feelings of the people without embellishment and exaggeration, without pedagogical considerations, which is allowed in the structure and style of the work.

For many years the name of Artyom Vesely was not mentioned anywhere, his books were withdrawn from state libraries, generations grew up who had never heard of this writer.

In 1988, Goslitizdat published a one-volume Artem Vesely, since then his works - and above all "Russia, washed with blood" - have been published more than once both in our country and abroad, many readers are rediscovering Artem Vesely. Valentin Rasputin wrote about this in 1988: “The prose of Artem Vesely was a revelation to me even in my student days. Today I re-read it. and in many ways a modern book."

A civil war is a fierce armed struggle for power between different social groups. A civil war is always a tragedy, turmoil, decomposition of a social organism that did not find the strength to cope with the disease that struck it, the collapse of statehood, a social catastrophe. The beginning of the war in the spring-summer of 1917, considering the July events in Petrograd and the "Kornilovism" as its first acts; others tend to associate it with the October Revolution and the coming to power of the Bolsheviks. There are four stages of the war: summer-autumn 1918 (stage of escalation: the rebellion of the White Czechs, the landings of the Entente in the North and in Japan, England, the USA - in the Far East, the formation of anti-Soviet centers in the Volga region, in the Urals, in Siberia, in the North Caucasus, Don, the execution of the family of the last Russian tsar, the announcement of the Soviet Republic as a single military camp); autumn 1918 - spring 1919 (the stage of intensifying foreign military intervention: the annulment of the Brest Treaty, the intensification of the red and white terror); spring 1919 - spring 1920 (the stage of military confrontation between the regular Red and White armies: the campaigns of the troops of A. V. Kolchak, A. I. Denikin, N. N. Yudenich and their reflection, from the second half of 1919 - the decisive successes of the Red Army); summer-autumn 1920 (the stage of the military defeat of the whites: the war with Poland, the defeat of P. Wrangel). Causes of the Civil War. Representatives of the white movement laid the blame on the Bolsheviks, who tried to destroy the age-old institutions of private property by force, overcome the natural inequality of people, and impose a dangerous utopia on society. The Bolsheviks and their supporters considered the overthrown exploiting classes to be guilty of the Civil War, which, in order to preserve their privileges and wealth, unleashed a bloody massacre against the working people. There are two main camps - red and white. In the latter, a very peculiar place was occupied by the so-called third force - "counter-revolutionary democracy", or "democratic revolution", which from the end of 1918 declared the need to fight both the Bolsheviks and the general dictatorship. The Red movement relied on the support of the main part of the working class and the poorest peasantry. The social basis of the white movement was the officers, bureaucracy, the nobility, the bourgeoisie, individual representatives of the workers and peasants. The party that expressed the position of the Reds was the Bolsheviks. The party composition of the white movement is heterogeneous: Black Hundred-monarchist, liberal, socialist parties. The program goals of the red movement are: the preservation and establishment of Soviet power throughout Russia, the suppression of anti-Soviet forces, the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a condition for building a socialist society. The program goals of the white movement were not so clearly formulated. There was a sharp struggle over questions about the future state structure (republic or monarchy), about land (restoration of landownership or recognition of the results of land redistribution). In general, the white movement advocated the overthrow of Soviet power, the power of the Bolsheviks, the restoration of a united and indivisible Russia, the convening of a people's assembly on the basis of universal suffrage to determine the future of the country, the recognition of the right to private property, holding land reform guarantee of fundamental rights and freedoms of citizens. Why did the Bolsheviks win the Civil War! On the one hand, they played a role serious mistakes On the other hand, the Bolsheviks were able to use the centuries-old dissatisfaction with the old order, mobilize the masses, subject them to a single will and control, offer attractive slogans for the redistribution of land, the nationalization of industry, the self-determination of nations, create a combat-ready armed forces, rely on economic and human potential of the central regions of Russia. Results of the civil war:

The civil war and foreign intervention that caused the red and white terror were the greatest tragedy for the people.

Consequences of the civil war:

First, the human losses were palpable. From 1917 to 1922 the population of Russia decreased by 13-16 million hours, while most of the population died from hunger and epidemics. The loss of population amounted to 25 million hours, taking into account the decline in population.

Secondly, given that out of 1.5-2 million emigrants, a significant part was the intelligentsia, => the civil war caused a deterioration in the country's gene pool.

Thirdly, the most profound social consequence was the liquidation of entire classes of Russian society—the landowners, the big and middle bourgeoisie, and wealthy peasants.

Fourthly, the economic disruption led to an acute shortage of food products.

Fifth, the card supply of food, as well as essential industrial goods, consolidated the egalitarian justice generated by communal traditions. The slowdown in the development of the country was caused by equalizing efficiency.

The victory of the Bolsheviks in the civil war led to the curtailment of democracy, the dominance of a one-party system, when the party ruled on behalf of the people, on behalf of the party the Central Committee, the Politburo and, in fact, the General Secretary or his entourage.

A civil battle, in my opinion, is the most cruel and bloody battle, because sometimes close people fight in it, who once lived in one whole, united country, who believed in one God and adhered to the same ideals. How does it happen that relatives stand on opposite sides of the barricades and how such wars end, we can trace on the pages of the novel - the epic of M. A. Sholokhov "Quiet Flows the Don".

In his novel, the author tells us how the Cossacks lived freely on the Don: they worked on the land, were a reliable support for the Russian tsars, fought for them and for the state. Their families lived by their own labor, in prosperity and respect. Cheerful, joyful, full of work and pleasant worries, the life of the Cossacks is interrupted by the revolution. And before the people there was a hitherto unfamiliar problem of choice: whose side to take, whom to believe - red, promising equality in everything, but denying faith in the Lord God; or white, those whom their grandfathers and great-grandfathers served faithfully. But does the people need this revolution and war? Knowing what sacrifices would have to be made, what difficulties would have to be overcome, the people would probably answer in the negative. It seems to me that no revolutionary necessity justifies all the victims, broken lives, destroyed families. And so, as Sholokhov announces, "in a mortal fight, brother goes against brother, son against father." Even Grigory Melekhov, the main character of the novel, who previously opposed bloodshed, easily decides the fate of others himself. Of course, the first murder of a person hits him hard and painfully, makes him spend many sleepless nights, but the battle makes him cruel. “I became terrible to myself ... Look into my soul, and there is blackness, like in an empty well,” Grigory admits. Everyone became cruel, moreover women. Recall at least the scene when Daria Melekhova without hesitation kills Kotlyarov, considering him the murderer of her husband Peter. However, not everyone thinks about what blood is shed for, what is the meaning of war. Is it really "for the need of the rich are driven to death"? Or to defend the rights common to all, the meaning of which is not very clear to the people. A simple Cossack can only see that this battle is becoming meaningless, because one cannot fight for those who rob and kill, rape women and set fire to houses. And such cases were both on the part of the whites and on the part of the reds. "They are all the same ... they are all a yoke around the neck of the Cossacks," says the main character.

In my opinion, main reason Sholokhov sees the tragedy of the Russian people, which affected literally everyone in those days, in the drama of the transition from the old, centuries-old way of life, to a new way of life. Two worlds collide: everything that used to be an integral part of people's lives, the basis of their existence, suddenly collapses, and the new one still needs to be accepted and used to it.

The civil war, in my opinion, is the most cruel and bloody war, because sometimes close people fight in it, who once lived in one whole, united country, who believed in one God and adhered to the same ideals. How does it happen that relatives stand on opposite sides of the barricades and how such wars end, we can trace on the pages of the novel - the epic of M. A. Sholokhov "Quiet Flows the Don".

In his novel, the author tells us how the Cossacks lived freely on the Don: they worked on the land, were a reliable support for the Russian tsars, fought for them and for the state. Their families lived by their own labor, in prosperity and respect. Cheerful, joyful, full of work and pleasant worries, the life of the Cossacks is interrupted by the revolution. And before the people there was a hitherto unfamiliar problem of choice: whose side to take, whom to believe - red, promising equality in everything, but denying faith in the Lord God; or white, those whom their grandfathers and great-grandfathers served faithfully. But does the people need this revolution and war? Knowing what sacrifices would have to be made, what difficulties would have to be overcome, the people would probably answer in the negative. It seems to me that no revolutionary necessity justifies all the victims, broken lives, destroyed families. And so, as Sholokhov writes, “in a mortal fight, brother goes against brother, son against father.” Even Grigory Melekhov, main character novel, previously opposed to bloodshed, he easily decides the fate of others. Of course, the first murder of a person strikes him deeply and painfully, makes him spend many sleepless nights, but war makes him cruel. “I became terrible to myself ... Look into my soul, and there is blackness, like in an empty well,” Grigory admits. Everyone became cruel, even women. Recall at least the scene when Daria Melekhova without hesitation kills Kotlyarov, considering him the murderer of her husband Peter. However, not everyone thinks about what blood is shed for, what is the meaning of war. Is it possible that “the rich are driven to death for the needs”? Or to defend the rights common to all, the meaning of which is not very clear to the people. A simple Cossack can only see that this war is becoming meaningless, because you can’t fight for those who rob and kill, rape women and set fire to houses. And such cases were both on the part of the whites and on the part of the reds. "They are all the same ... they are all a yoke around the neck of the Cossacks," says the main character.

In my opinion, the main reason for the tragedy of the Russian people, which affected literally everyone in those days, Sholokhov sees in the drama of the transition from the old, centuries-old way of life, to a new way of life. Two worlds are colliding: everything that used to be an integral part of people's lives, the basis of their existence, suddenly collapses, and the new one still needs to be accepted and used to it.