About the war. Reading books online

PUBLICISM. During the Great Patriotic War, not only poetic genres, but also prose were developed. It is represented by journalistic and essay genres, military stories and heroic stories. Journalistic genres are very diverse: articles, essays, feuilletons, appeals, letters, leaflets. Articles were written by: L. Leonov, A. Tolstoy, M. Sholokhov, V. Vishnevsky, N. Tikhonov. With their articles, they brought up high civic feelings, taught them to treat fascism with an uncompromising attitude, and revealed the true face of the "organizers of the new order." Soviet writers opposed fascist false propaganda with great human truth. Hundreds of articles cited irrefutable facts about the atrocities of the invaders, cited letters, diaries, testimonies of prisoners of war, named names, dates, numbers, made references to secret documents, orders and orders of the authorities. In their articles, they told the harsh truth about the war, supported the bright dream of victory among the people, called for steadfastness, courage and perseverance. "Not a step further!" - this is how the article by A. Tolstov “Moscow is threatened by the enemy” begins. In terms of mood and tone, military journalism was either satirical or lyrical. Fascists were subjected to ruthless ridicule in satirical articles. The pamphlet has become a favorite genre of satirical journalism. Articles addressed to the motherland and people were very diverse in genre: articles - appeals, appeals, appeals, letters, diaries. Such, for example, is L. Leonov's letter to "An Unknown American Friend." Publicism had a huge impact on all genres of literature of the war years, and above all on the essay. From the essays, the world first learned about the names of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, Lisa Chaikina, Alexander Matrosov, about the feat of the Young Guards who preceded the novel The Young Guard. Very common in 1943-1945 was an essay about the feat of a large group of people. So, there are essays about night aviation "U-2" (Simonov), about the heroic Komsomol (Vishnevsky), and many others. Essays on the heroic home front are portrait sketches. Moreover, from the very beginning, writers pay attention not so much to the fate of individual heroes, but to mass labor heroism. Most often, Marietta Shaginyan, Kononenko, Karavaeva, Kolosov wrote about the people of the rear. The defense of Leningrad and the battle near Moscow were the reason for the creation of a number of event essays, which are an artistic chronicle of military operations. Essays testify to this: “Moscow. November 1941" Lidin, "July - December" Simonov. PROSE. During the Great Patriotic War, such works were also created in which the main attention was paid to the fate of a person in the war. Human happiness and war - this is how one can formulate the basic principle of such works as "Simply Love" by V. Vasilevskaya, "It Was in Leningrad" by A. Chakovsky, "Third Chamber" by Leonidov. In 1942, a story about the war by V. Nekrasov "In the trenches of Stalingrad" appeared. This was the first work of a front-line writer unknown at that time, who rose to the rank of captain, fought all the long days and nights near Stalingrad, participated in its defense, in the terrible and overwhelming battles waged by our army. In the work, we see the author's desire not only to embody personal memories of the war, but also to try to psychologically motivate a person's actions, to explore the moral and philosophical origins of a soldier's feat. The reader saw in the story a great test, about which it is written honestly and reliably, faced with all the inhumanity and cruelty of the war. It was one of the first attempts at psychological understanding of the feat of the people. The war became a great misfortune for all. But it is at this time that people manifest their moral essence, "it (war) is like a litmus test, like a special developer." Here, for example, Valega is an illiterate person, “... reads in syllables, and ask him what a homeland is, he, by God, will not really explain. But for this homeland... he will fight to the last bullet. And the cartridges will run out - with fists, teeth ... ". The battalion commander Shiryaev and Kerzhentsev are doing everything possible to save as many human lives as possible in order to fulfill their duty. They are opposed in the novel by the image of Kaluga, who thinks only about not getting to the front line; the author also condemns Abrosimov, who believes that if a task is set, then it must be carried out, despite any losses, throwing people under the destructive fire of machine guns. Reading the story, you feel the author's faith in the Russian soldier, who, despite all the suffering, troubles, failures, has no doubts about the justice of the liberation war. The heroes of V. Nekrasov's story live by faith in a future victory and are ready to give their lives for it without hesitation. In the same harsh forty-second, the events of V. Kondratyev's story "Sasha" take place. The author of the work is also a front-line soldier, and he fought near Rzhev in the same way as his hero. And his story is dedicated to the exploits of ordinary Russian soldiers. V. Kondratiev, just like V. Nekrasov, did not deviate from the truth, spoke honestly and talentedly about that cruel and difficult time. The hero of V. Kondratyev's story, Sashka, is very young, but he has been on the front lines for two months now. The neutral zone, which is only a thousand steps, is shot through. And Sashka will crawl there at night to get his company commander boots from a dead German, because the lieutenant has such pims that they cannot be dried over the summer, although Sashka himself has even worse shoes. The best human qualities of a Russian soldier are embodied in the image of the main character, Sashka is smart, quick-witted, dexterous - this is evidenced by the episode of his capture of the "language". One of the main moments of the story is Sashka's refusal to shoot the captured German. When asked why he did not comply with the order, did not shoot at the prisoner, Sasha answered simply: "We are people, not fascists." The main character embodied the most best features national character: courage, patriotism, striving for heroism, diligence, endurance, humanism and deep faith in victory. But the most valuable thing in it is the ability to think, the ability to comprehend what is happening. Sashka understood that “they have not yet learned how to fight properly, both commanders and privates. And that learning on the go, in battles goes through Sasha's life itself. He understood and grumbled, like others, but he did not distrust and did his soldier's work as best he could, although he did not commit any special heroism. “The story of Sasha is the story of a man who found himself at the most difficult time in the most difficult place in the most difficult position - a soldier,” K. Simonov wrote about the hero Kondratiev. The theme of a man's feat in war was developed in the literature of the post-war period.

40. General characteristics of the literary life of 1930 - 1953: the most important literary events, the change in the relationship of literature with life, literature and the state, the educational function of literature

The Communist Party set about officially regulating literature with the beginning of the first five-year plan (1928-1932); it was heavily promoted by the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP). The result was an incredible amount of industrial prose, poetry and drama, which almost never rose above the level of monotonous propaganda or reporting. This invasion was anticipated by the novels of F.V. Gladkov, whose most popular work Cement (1925) described the heroic work of restoring a dilapidated factory. From prose, Pilnyak's novel about the construction of a huge dam that changes the course of the Moskva River, the Volga flows into the Caspian Sea (1930) deserves mention, where in a strange way more sympathy for the former than for the new builders is shown; two books by Leonov Sot (1930) and Skutarevsky (1933), which, like countless production novels of that time, are overloaded with excessive technical details, but the usual Leonovian interest in the "inner man" and his spiritual life is still noticeable in the characterization; and Time, go! (1932) Kataeva, where the story of the socialist competition of cement manufacturers is not without humor and entertainment. Virgin Soil Upturned (1932) by M.A. Sholokhov is far from many novels about collectivization, perhaps because its main character Davydov is a deep image, endowed with human charm and in no way similar to the schematic images of industrial prose. Stalin's strengthening of his dictatorial power in the early 1930s predetermined the complete subjugation of literature and art. In 1932, the Central Committee ordered the dissolution of all literary associations and the founding of a single nationwide Union of Soviet Writers, which was established two years later at the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers. However, given the need for international agitation in the 1930s in the spirit of the Popular Front, some tolerance was shown towards the most talented writers. So, for example, although the main characters of Fedin's excellent novel The Abduction of Europe (1933-1935) strive to be at the height of party tasks, they still cannot hide their negative attitude towards some especially ridiculous attitudes; the communist hero Kurilov in Leonov's novel Road to the Ocean (1935) sadly reflects at the end of the story how much he missed in life, devoting it entirely to sacrificial service to the party. The work, which fully complied with official instructions, was an autobiographical novel by N. A. Ostrovsky How steel was tempered (1934), which was a huge success. His hero Pavel Korchagin became a model of the "positive hero" or "new Soviet man ", but his character lacks authenticity, since the world in which he lives and fights has an unnatural black and white color. During this period, Sholokhov completed the great novel Quiet Don (1928-1940), which was recognized as a classic work of Soviet literature and awarded the Nobel Prize in 1965. This is a broad epic panorama of the events of the war, revolution and fratricidal strife, culminating in the subjugation of the Cossacks by the Red Army.Socialist realists spawned many plays devoid of drama about modern Soviet reality.Much better than others Aristocrats (1934) by N.F.Pogodin on the material of construction The White Sea-Baltic Canal by the forces of prisoners and his own two plays about Lenin: The Man with a Gun (1937) and the Kremlin Chimes (1941); Far (1935) by A.N. gardens (1938), where the ideological setting is subordinated to the task of psychological disclosure of the image. Of all the genres, poetry is the most difficult to regulate, and among the mass of poetic production of the 1930s, published by such leading Soviet poets as N. S. Tikhonov, S. P. Shchipachev, A. A. Prokofiev, M. A. Svetlov, A.A. Surkov, S.I. Kirsanov, M.V. Isakovsky, N.N. Aseev and A.T. Tvardovsky, the only significant work that seems to have retained artistic value is the Country of Ant (1936) by Tvardovsky, a long poem, the hero of which, a typical peasant Nikita Morgunok, after many misadventures enters the collective farm. Here socialist realism does not hinder the matter in any way; skillfully fused with the logic of events, it seems to contribute to their artistic plausibility. Several collections of B. L. Pasternak (1890-1960) were published in the 1930s, but they contained mostly his old poems. Since 1937, Pasternak began to give preference to poetic translations, while he himself wrote less and less. During the Stalinist repressions in the second half of the 1930s, many writers were arrested - some were shot, others spent many years in camps. After Stalin's death, some of the disappeared were posthumously rehabilitated, like Pilnyak or the remarkable poet O.E. Mandelstam; and those who were excommunicated from literature, like A.A. Akhmatova, were again allowed to publish. Many writers of the Stalin era, seeking to avoid the dangers of modern themes, took up writing historical novels and plays. The appeal to history suddenly became popular on the rise of nationalism, which the party encouraged in the face of the growing threat of war. Attention is often drawn to key moments in the glorious military past, as in S. N. Sergeev-Tsensky's Sevastopol Strada (1937-1939), a moving narrative of Russian heroism during the siege of Sevastopol in the Crimean War. The best of the historical novels of that time was Peter I (1929-1945) by A.N. Tolstoy. Immediately after the German invasion in 1941, literature was mobilized to support the warring country, and until 1945 almost every printed word contributed in one way or another to the defense of the fatherland. The work of those years was for the most part short-lived, but some works of talented writers had outstanding artistic merit. Pasternak, K.M.Simonov and O.F.Berggolts created excellent examples of lyrics. Several impressive narrative poems about the war were published, including Kirov with us (1941) by Tikhonov, Zoya (1942) by M.I. Aliger, Pulkovo meridian (1943) by V.M. the image of a Russian soldier, which has become almost legendary. Perhaps the most notable works of contemporary fiction are Simonov's Days and Nights (1944), Leonov's Capture of Velikoshumsk (1944), Kataev's Son of the Regiment (1945), and Fadeev's Young Guard (1945). Among the particularly successful wartime plays are Front (1942) by A.E. Korneichuk, where the incompetence of Soviet generals of the old school was denounced; Russian People (1943) by Simonova - depiction of the selflessness of Soviet soldiers and non-military citizens in the face of death; and two plays by Leonov, Invasion (1942) and Lenushka (1943), both about the brutal struggle of the Russian people under German occupation. Soviet writers hoped that the party would expand the limits of the relative creative freedom granted to them during the war, but the decision of the Central Committee on Literature of August 14, 1946 put an end to these hopes. Art must be inspired politically, declared the Soviet politician A.A. Zhdanov, and "party spirit" and socialist realism must be the guide for the writer. After Stalin's death in 1953, the growing dissatisfaction with strict regulation was reflected in the story of I.G. And although party henchmen severely rebuked the rebellious authors at the Second Congress of Writers (1954), the speech of the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU N.S. Khrushchev at the 20th Party Congress, where Stalin's crimes were exposed, gave rise to a wave of protest against interference in the creative process.

over a thousand writers served in the army.

two periods: 1) prose of the war years: stories, essays, stories written directly during hostilities, or rather, in short intervals between offensives and retreats; 2) post-war prose, in which there was an understanding of many painful questions, such as, for example, why did the Russian people endure such difficult trials? Why did the Russians find themselves in such a helpless and humiliating position in the first days and months of the war? Who is to blame for all the suffering?

The Great Patriotic War is reflected in Russian literature deeply and comprehensively, in all its manifestations: the army and the rear, the partisan movement and the underground, the tragic beginning of the war, individual battles, heroism and betrayal, the greatness and drama of the Victory. The authors of military prose, as a rule, are front-line soldiers; in their works they rely on real events, on their own front-line experience. In books about the war written by front-line soldiers, the main line is soldier friendship, front-line camaraderie, the severity of camp life, desertion and heroism. In their works, they express the point of view that the outcome of the war is decided by the hero, who recognizes himself as a particle of the warring people, carrying his cross and common burden. The prose of the war years is characterized by the strengthening of romantic and lyrical elements, the widespread use of declamatory and song intonations, oratorical turns, and the appeal to such poetic means as allegory, symbol, metaphor.

One of the first books about the war was the story of V.P. Nekrasov "In the trenches of Stalingrad", published immediately after the war in the Znamya magazine in 1946. Front-line writers: V.P. Astafiev, V.V. Bykov, B.L. Vasiliev, M.A. Sholokhov.

The very military situation, the course of battles required an immediate response. A new military-patriotic creativity was born. From the pages of book publications, literature moved to newspaper pages, to radio broadcasts. A new genre of Russian literature - front-line correspondence and essays.

During the four years of the war, prose underwent a significant evolution. Initially, the war was covered in a sketchy, schematic-fictional version. Such are the numerous stories and stories of the summer, autumn, and early winter of 1942. Later, the front-line reality was comprehended by writers in the complex dialectic of the heroic and the everyday. During the years of the Great Patriotic War (as well as during the years of the Civil War), the heroic, romantic story came to the fore.
The desire to reveal the harsh and bitter truth of the first months of the war, the achievements in the field of creating heroic characters are marked by Pyotr Pavlenko's "Russian Story" (1942) and Vasily Grossman's story "The People are Immortal. A characteristic sign of the military prose of 1942-1943 is the appearance of short stories, cycles of stories connected by the unity of characters, the image of the narrator or a lyrical through theme. This is exactly how the Stories of Ivan Sudarev by Alexei Tolstoy, the Soul of the Sea by L. Sobolev, and March-April by V. Kozhevnikov are constructed.
The achievements of these writers were continued and developed by K. Simonov in the story "Days and Nights" - the first major work dedicated to the battle on the Volga.

The deepening of historicism, the expansion of temporal and spatial horizons is the undoubted merit of the story of 1943-1944. Simultaneously, there was an enlargement of characters.

By the end of the war, the tendency of prose to a broad epic comprehension of reality is tangible. Two artists - M. Sholokhov and A. Fadeev - especially sensitively capture the trend of literature. “They fought for the Motherland” by Sholokhov and “The Young Guard” by Fadeev are distinguished by their social scale, opening up new ways in interpreting the theme of war.

PUBLICITY

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

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

PAmphlets and Articles by I. Ehrenburg During the war years, about 1.5 thousand articles and pamphlets of the writer were published, which amounted to four voluminous volumes under the general title "War". The first volume, published in 1942, opened cycle of pamphlets "Mad Wolves", in which the leaders of the fascist criminals are presented with merciless sarcasm: Hitler, Goebbels, Goering, Himmler. In each of the pamphlets, on the basis of reliable biographical information, the murderous characteristics of the executioners "with dull faces" and "cloudy eyes" are given. In the pamphlet "Adolf Hitler" we read: "In ancient times he was fond of painting. There was no talent, as the artist was rejected. Outraged, he exclaimed: "See, I will become famous." Justified his words. It is unlikely that you will find a more famous criminal in the history of modern times.

PATRIOTIC PUBLICISTICS A.N. TOLSTOY, in which the breadth of coverage was combined with the depth of thought, excitement and emotionality - with high artistic skill, the feeling of the Motherland prevailed in his articles over all others. Already in his first article “What we are defending”, which appeared in Pravda on June 27, 1941, the writer consistently carried out the idea that the heroism and courage of the Russian people developed historically and no one has yet been able to overcome this “wonderful force of historical resistance” . In full force, the motive of the greatness of our country sounded in his article "Motherland", published on November 7, 1941 simultaneously in "Pravda" and in "Red Star". The prophetic words of the writer “We will succeed!” became a symbol of the struggle of Soviet soldiers.

The writer repeatedly met with participants in the battles (for example, Konstantin Semenovich Sudarev).

Among the articles and essays calling for revenge on the Nazis, of particular importance was essay by M.A. Sholokhov "The Science of Hate", which appeared in Pravda on June 22, 1942.

The journalism of the wartime was distinguished by deep lyricism, selfless love for the native land, and this could not but affect readers.

One of the main themes military journalism- The liberation mission of the Red Army. The peculiarity of the journalism of the Great Patriotic War is that the traditional newspaper genres - articles, correspondence, essays - the pen of the master of the word gave the quality of artistic prose.

Problems and artistic originality of A. Akhmatova's poems "Requiem" and "Poem without a Hero". Late lyrics by A. Akhmatova.

Akhmatova 1889-1966 "Requiem"

Akhmatova began to write Requiem (1935–1940) in the autumn of 1935, when N. Punin and L. Gumilyov were arrested almost simultaneously, Facts of a personal biography in Requiem they acquired the grandeur of biblical scenes, Russia in the 1930s was likened to Dante's hell, Christ was mentioned among the victims of terror; Akhmatova called herself, "300th with a transfer," a "shooter's wife." Requiem occupies a special place among the anti-totalitarian works. Akhmatova did not pass the camp, was not arrested, but for thirty years she "lived under the wing of death", in anticipation of an imminent arrest and in constant fear for the fate of her son. AT Requiem the atrocities of the executioners or the "steep route" of the prisoner are not depicted. Requiem- a monument to Russia, in the center of the cycle - the suffering of the mother, crying for the innocent victims, the oppressive atmosphere that prevailed during the years of "Yezhovshchina". Akhmatova expressed the age-old consciousness of a Russian woman - grieving, guarding, mourning. Addressing her descendants, she bequeathed to erect a monument to her not where her happy, creative years passed, but under the “red, blinded wall” of the Crosses.

In 1938 L.N. Gumilyov was again arrested, in fact, only because he had parents objectionable to the regime. This year dates II and IV of the ten poems of the main body of the cycle-poem and the first part of the X poem - "The Crucifixion". Already in them, the heroine appears in three persons: a sick woman is somewhere on " quiet Don", which, however, has the fate of Akhmatova herself, "the Tsarskoye Selo merry sinner" (this is her past, now it seems not sad, but cheerful), and, finally, the Mother, to whom the not directly named son (Son) said: "Oh, not weep for me..." "Requiem" is both autobiographical, deeply personal, and extremely generalized - both on the scale of all folk, historical and suprahistorical life, and in terms of the sacred. The cruciform shape of the prison buildings once again motivated the use of the highest for the believer man of the symbol: even before the "Crucifixion" the white nights "About your high cross / And they talk about death" (poem VI. 1939). The heroine of the "Requiem" seeks solace from death ("VII. Towards death", 1939) and succumbs to madness ( "IX. Already madness wing ...", mad with torment 1940); great sorrow, however, makes her like a new Mother of God, extremely elevates her too. And the grief she experiences is more significant and majestic than sobs or even "petrification "Others, even close ones.

Magdalene is the only name that appears in the "Requiem" ("Magdalene fought and sobbed ...").

"Requiem" is one of the first poetic works dedicated to the victims of the Great Terror of the 1930s. This is the cycle lyric poems, and a single work - a poem of an epic scale.

The poem has a circular structure. His own, personal forms the basis of the central part, ten numbered poems, while the general is more presented in an extensive frame (epigraph, "Instead of a preface", "Dedication", "Introduction", two-part "Epilogue"), approximately equal in volume to the main part, but precisely here, for the first time, Akhmatova appears the Derzhavin-Pushkin theme of a monument that can be erected to a not many-sided lyrical heroine early creativity, but to a specific person with a real biography, whose personal grief at the same time symbolizes a huge national grief. Akhmatova not only as a mother (in "The Crucifixion"), but also as a poet takes on the role of the Mother of God - the patroness of the suffering. The prologue is followed by the first four chapters. These are the original voices of mothers from the past - the times of the Streltsy rebellion, her own voice, a chapter as if from a Shakespearean tragedy, and, finally, Akhmatova's own voice from the 10s. Chapters V and VI are the culmination of the poem, the apotheosis of the suffering of the heroine. The next four verses deal with the theme of memory.

Along with the solemn high style in the "Requiem" vernacular, folk expressions sound: "black marusi" are mentioned twice, a woman ready to "howl under the Kremlin towers", "shouts" for seventeen months, when arrested she suggests seeing "pale with fear of the house manager" (Sovietism ) - this and other specifics correspond not to the lyrical, but to the narrative, "poetic" beginning.

Late lyrics.

The impressions of the first days of the war and the blockade were reflected in the poems The first long-range in Leningrad, the Birds of death are at the zenith…, nox. At the end of September 1941 Akhmatova was evacuated outside the blockade ring. Akhmatova's poem Courage was published in Pravda and then reprinted many times, becoming a symbol of resistance and fearlessness. In 1943, Akhmatova received the medal "For the Defense of Leningrad." Akhmatova's poems of the war period are devoid of pictures of front-line heroism, written on behalf of a woman who remained in the rear. Compassion, great sorrow were combined in them with a call for courage, a civic note: pain was melted into strength.

In the last decade of his life, Akhmatova was occupied with the theme of time - his movements, his runs. "Where does time go?" - a question that sounded in a special way for the poet, who outlived almost all of his friends, pre-revolutionary Russia, the Silver Age. What is war, what is plague? - they see the end soon, / The sentence is almost pronounced for them. / But who will protect us from the horror that / Was once called the run of time? Akhmatova wrote. Such a philosophical attitude was not understood by many of her contemporaries, who focused on the bloody events of the recent past. But by no means “senile reconciliation” was inspired by Akhmatova’s last poems - what was always characteristic of her poetry came through more clearly: esoteric knowledge, faith in the priority of unknown forces over the material appearance of the world, the discovery of the heavenly in the earthly.

The later work of Akhmatova is “the procession of shadows”. In a cycle Briar blossoms, Midnight verses, Wreath of the dead Akhmatova mentally evokes the shadows of friends - the living and the dead. The word "shadow", often found in Akhmatova's early lyrics, was now filled with a new meaning: freedom from earthly barriers, partitions of time. Rendezvous with the "sweet shadows of the distant past", never met on earth by a providential lover, comprehension of the "secret of secrets" are the main motives of her "fruitful autumn".

Since 1946, many of Akhmatova's poems have been dedicated to Isaiah Berlin, an English diplomat, philologist and philosopher who visited her in 1945 at the Fountain House. Conversations with Berlin became for Akhmatova an exit into the living intellectual space of Europe, set in motion new creative forces, she mythologized their relationship, associated the beginning of their meeting with cold war»

7. Dramaturgy of the war years (on the example of one work).

During the war years, more than three hundred plays were created, but not all of them saw the light of day. We saw: “Front” by A. Korneichuk, “Invasion” by L. Leonov, “Russian people” by K. Simonov,
The theme of a number of interesting dramatic works was the life and heroic deeds of our fleet. Among them are the psychological drama A. Kron "Officer of the Navy" (1944), B. Lavreneva "Song of the Black Sea" (1943).

A prominent place in the dramaturgy of wartime was occupied by the theme of the partisan struggle of the Soviet people against the fascist invaders. "Invasion" and "Lyonushka" by L. Leonov, "Partisans in the steppes of Ukraine" by A. Korneichuk.

In addition, during the war years, plays about our heroic home front were created, for example, B. Romashov's "Noble Family".

Also, historical drama achieved certain achievements during this period. A. Tolstoy "Ivan the Terrible".

Open publicism, rapid and dynamic deployment of action, tension of dramatic situations, dialogue saturated with deep excitement and power of feelings - character traits dramaturgy of the war years.

The first plays about the Great Patriotic War - "On the Eve" by A. Afinogenov, "In the Steppes of Ukraine" by A. Korneichuk and others - appeared two or three months after it began.

The plays that appeared at the very beginning of the war and were created on the wave of pre-war sentiments turned out to be far from the tragic situation of the first months of heavy fighting. The turning point in dramaturgy was 1942.

Soviet wartime dramaturgy reached its greatest success in 1942-1943, when one after another the plays “Russian People” by K. Simonov, “Invasion” by L. Leonov, “Front” by A. Korneichuk, “Ivan the Terrible” by A. Tolstoy appeared one after another .

Drama L. Leonov "Invasion" (1943) created at the most difficult time. The small town where the events of the play unfold is a symbol of the nationwide struggle against the invaders. The significance of the author's intention is that the conflicts of the local plan are comprehended by him in a broad socio-philosophical key. The theme of the invincibility of the Soviet people, their immeasurable moral superiority over the enemy, was embodied in the form of a socio-psychological drama that included elements of satire.
The action of the play takes place in Dr. Talanov's apartment. Unexpectedly for everyone, Talanov's son Fyodor returns from prison. Almost simultaneously, the Germans enter the city. And with them appears the former owner of the house in which the Talanovs live, the merchant Fayunin, who soon became the mayor.
The intensity of the action grows from scene to scene. The honest Russian intellectual, doctor Talanov, cannot imagine his life apart from the struggle. Next to him is his wife, Anna Pavlovna, and daughter Olga. There is no question of the need to fight behind enemy lines for the chairman of the city council, Kolesnikov: he heads a partisan detachment. This is one - the central - layer of the play. However, Leonov, a master of deep and complex dramatic collisions, is not content with just this approach. Deepening the psychological line of the play, he introduces one more person - the son of the Talanovs.
The fate of Fedor turned out to be confusing, difficult. Spoiled in childhood, selfish, selfish. He returns to his father's house after a three-year imprisonment, where he was serving a sentence for an attempt on the life of his beloved woman. Fedor is gloomy, cold, wary. He is tormented by the lost trust of people, which is why Fedor is uncomfortable in the world. With their minds and hearts, the mother and the nanny understood that Fyodor hid his pain, the longing of a lonely, unhappy person under a jester's mask, but they cannot accept his former. Kolesnikov's refusal to take Fyodor into his detachment hardens the heart of young Talanov even more.
It took time for this man who once lived only for himself to become a people's avenger. Captured by the Nazis, Fyodor pretends to be the commander of a partisan detachment in order to die for him. Psychologically convincing Leonov draws Fedor's return to the people. The play consistently reveals how war, nationwide grief, suffering kindle in people hatred and a thirst for revenge, a willingness to give their lives for the sake of victory. This is how we see Fedor in the finale of the drama.
For Leonov, it is natural to be interested not only in the hero, but in human nature in all the complexity and inconsistency of his nature, which is made up of social and national, moral and psychological. Simultaneously with the identification of the patterns of struggle on the gigantic front of battles, the artist-philosopher, artist-psychologist did not leave the task of showing the struggles of individual passions, feelings and human aspirations.
The same method of non-linear representation was used by the playwright when creating images of negative characters: at first inconspicuous, vengeful Fayunin, shyly obsequious Kokoryshkin, who instantly changes his disguise when changing power, a whole gallery of fascist thugs. Loyalty to the truth makes the images vital even if they appear in a satirical, grotesque lighting.
The stage history of Leonov's works during the Great Patriotic War (besides "Invasion", the drama "Lenushka", 1943, was also widely known), which bypassed all the main theaters of the country, once again confirms the unfairness of the reproaches of individual critics who wrote about the incomprehensibility, intimacy of Leonov's plays, about the overcomplexity of images and language. In the theatrical implementation of Leonov's plays, their special dramatic nature was taken into account. So, when staging "Invasion" at the Moscow Maly Theater (1942), I. Sudakov first saw Fyodor Talanov as the main figure, but during the rehearsals the emphasis gradually shifted and Fyodor's mother, his nanny Demidievna, became in the center as the personification of the Russian mother. At the Mossovet Theatre, director Y. Zavadsky interpreted the performance as a psychological drama, the drama of an outstanding man Fyodor Talanov.

8. Ways of development of the poem in the 50-60s. (on the example of 1-2 works).

Poems 2nd floor. 50-60s imbued with the pathos of comprehension istorich. and social origins of events and characters (the cycle of poems by V. Lugovsky "The Middle of the Century", "The Wall" by J. Marcinkevičius, "Oz" by A. Voznesensky). The diversity and dissimilarity of genre varieties of P. was reflected in conflicting judgments about P. in lit. discussions about this genre.

A new stage in the development of the country and literature - the 50s-60s - was marked in the poems of Tvardovsky by further advancement in the field of lyrical epic - the lyrical epic "For the distance - the distance", the satirical poem-tale "Terkin in the other world" and lyric -tragedy poem-cycle "By the right of memory". Each of these works in its own way was a new word about the fate of time, country, people, man. Together they represent a living and integral, dynamic artistic system. So, a number of themes and motifs of "Vasily Terkin" become "cross-cutting", echo in subsequent works: for example, the very theme of war, life and death sounds in its own way in the poems "Beyond the distance - distance", "Terkin in the other world". The same applies to the theme of the family, the native Smolensk region, the image of the "friend of childhood" and the war years, the motives of "memory". All this, being components of the poetic world of the artist, testifies to his unity and integrity.

Tvardovsky is working on a satirical fairy tale poem "Terkin in the other world"(1954-1963), who portrayed the "inertness, bureaucracy, formalism" of our life. According to the author, “the poem “Terkin in the next world” is not a continuation of “Vasily Terkin”, but only refers to the image of the hero of the “Book about a fighter” to solve special problems of the satirical and journalistic genre.”

Tvardovsky laid the basis of the work on a conditionally fantastic plot. The hero of his poem of the war years, alive and not discouraged under any circumstances, Vasily Terkin now finds himself in the world of the dead, a ghostly kingdom of shadows. Everything hostile to man, incompatible with living life, is subjected to ridicule. The whole atmosphere of fantastic institutions in the “other world” emphasizes the soullessness, inhumanity, hypocrisy and falsehood that grow under the conditions of a totalitarian regime, an administrative-command system.

At first, having got into the "afterlife kingdom", which is very reminiscent of our earthly reality with a number of recognizable everyday details, Terkin does not distinguish people at all. They talk to him, look at him with state-owned and faceless clerical, bureaucratic "tables" ("Registering table", "Checking table", "Medical sanitation table", etc.), devoid of even the slightest sign of participation and understanding. And in the future, the dead people pass in front of him - “seemingly, as if people”, to match which the entire structure of the “afterlife kingdom”: “System”, “Network”, “Organs” and their derivatives - “Committee for Affairs / Perestroika Eternal” , "The Underworld Bureau", "Grobgazeta", etc.
Before us there is a whole register of imaginary, absurd, devoid of content objects and phenomena: “anhydrous shower”, “tobacco without smoke”, “afterlife rations” (“It is indicated in the menu, / But in nature there is no”)... Characteristics are indicative:, Candidate of otherworldly / Or doctor of dust-sciences”, “Inscription: “Fiery speaker” - / And a washcloth from his mouth”. Through all this realm of the dead and soulless, the soldier is led by the "force of life." In the hero of Tvardovsky, symbolizing the vitality of the people, who found himself in such an unusual situation and underwent difficult trials, his living human qualities prevailed, and he returns to this world to fight for the truth.
Tvardovsky himself waged an uncompromising struggle against the most gloomy, deadly legacy of Stalinism, with the spirit of blind obedience, inertia and bureaucracy brought to the point of absurdity. And he did it from the standpoint of affirming life, truth, humanity, a high moral ideal. In the combination of a fantastic plot and realistic everyday details in the image of the afterlife, the author’s creative principle was realized: “With a good fiction nearby / The truth is alive intact ...”

SUMMARY "Terkin in the other world" Terkin in the next world Killed in battle, Terkin is in the next world. It's clean, like a subway. The commandant orders Terkin to take shape. Accounting table, check table, pitch table. They demand a certificate from Terkin, they demand a photo card, a certificate from a doctor. Terkin is undergoing medical treatment. Everywhere signs, inscriptions, tables. Complaints are not accepted here. The editor of Grobgazeta does not even want to listen to Terkin. There aren't enough beds, they don't let you drink... Terkin meets a front-line comrade. But he doesn't seem happy to meet. He explains to Terkin: there are two other worlds - ours and the bourgeois one. And our that light is "the best and advanced." The comrade shows Terkin the Military Department, the Civil Department. Here, no one does anything, but only direct and take into account. Cut into dominoes. "Certain members" are discussing the draft of the novel. Here is the "fiery speaker". Terkin is surprised: why is all this necessary? "Nomenclature," explains a friend. A friend shows the Special Department: here are those who died in Magadan, Vorkuta, Kolyma ... The Kremlin leader himself manages this department. He is still alive, but at the same time “with them and with us”, because “during his lifetime he erects monuments to himself”. The comrade says that Terkin can receive a medal, which was awarded posthumously. He promises to show Terkin the Stereotube: it's only "for foreign assets." You can see the neighboring, bourgeois world in it. Friends treat each other with tobacco. Terkin - real, and a friend - afterlife, smokeless. Terkin remembers everything about the earth. Suddenly, a siren is heard. This means - state of emergency: alive leaked into the next world. He needs to be placed in the "waiting room" so that he becomes a "full-fledged ghoul". A friend suspects Terkin and says that he must report to his superiors. Otherwise, he can be sent to the penal battalion. He persuades Terkin to give up the desire to live. And Terkin thinks how to return to the world of the living. The comrade explains: trains take people only there, but not back. Terkin guesses that empty people are going back. A friend does not want to run away with him: they say, on earth he might not get into the nomenklatura. Terkin jumps on the empty bandwagon, they do not notice him ... But at some point, both the bandwagon and the train disappeared. And the road is still far away. Darkness, Terkin goes to the touch. All the horrors of war pass before him. Here he is already at the very border .... And then he hears through a dream: "A rare case in medicine." He is in the hospital, a doctor is above him. Behind the walls - war ... Science marvels at Terkin and concludes: "He has another hundred years to live!"

After the completion and publication of Terkin in the Other World, Tvardovsky conceives, and in the last years of his life writes a lyrical poem-cycle "By Right of Memory"(1966-1969) - a work of tragic sound. This is a social and lyrical-philosophical reflection on the difficult paths of history, on the fate of an individual, on the dramatic fate of his family: father, mother, brothers. Being deeply personal, confessional, "By the Right of Memory" at the same time expresses the people's point of view on the complex, tragic phenomena of the past.
Tvardovsky's poem could not be published during his lifetime. It appeared in print only decades later - in 1987. And the reason for this was the author's desire for uncompromising truth, as he understood it, resurrecting "living reality" and the unrelenting pain of the tragic events of our history.

"By the right of memory" is the poet's comprehension of the experience of his entire life, which reflected the heavy contradictions of the time. The very motive of the search for truth, as truth and justice, is transparent in the poem - from addressing yourself in the introductory lines: "In the face of bygone past / You have no right to prevaricate" - and to the final words about the healing infusion of "existing truth", obtained at the cost of cruel experience.
The poem develops and deepens the motives that sounded in the book "For the distance - the distance" (the theme of repression in the chapters "Friend of childhood", "So it was"), but here they become more personal. After all, all this is truly suffered by the poet, since it is about the fate of his family and his own fate.

What was it like for the poet’s father, an honest peasant-worker who earned bread with his own, in continuous corns, with his hands, to endure cruel and unfair, as the poet says, “blind and wild / For a round figure, the sentence”, according to which he and his family ended up “in those parts where frost hung / From the barracks walls and ceiling ... "The hypocrisy of the words "The son is not responsible for the father", as if by chance dropped "the fate of the earthly arbiter" - Stalin, only emphasizes and aggravates the guilt of not only him, but also those of his heirs , who - "To forget, to forget they say silently, / They want to drown in oblivion / Living reality."
And this "living story" is that the words of the "father of nations" turned into a demand to violate the basic biblical commandments. “Here Twardowski is sometimes textually accurate. The Bible says: honor your father and your mother. In the text of the poem: "Leave your father and mother." Further. Do not bear false witness against your neighbor - "bear false evidence", do not kill - "atrocity", do not make yourself an idol - "follow me". The voice of the father of nations sounds like a sermon in the poem, but the sermon is Satan's.
The painful and bitter memory of the cruel era, of the horrors and crimes of the Stalin era, the truth of the Brezhnev times that continue and cover it, full of lies and show-off, pervades Tvardovsky's last poem. This is in its own way the final and in some way the key work for all his work, including and especially - poetry.

In genre and thematic terms, this is a lyrical and philosophical reflection, a “travel diary”, with a weakened plot. The protagonists of the poem are the vast Soviet country, its people, the rapid turn of their deeds and accomplishments. The text of the poem contains a playful confession of the author - a passenger on the Moscow-Vladivostok train. Three distances the artist sees: the immensity of the geographical expanses of Russia; historical distance as the continuity of generations and awareness of the inseparable connection of times and destinies, and finally, the bottomlessness of the moral storehouses of the soul of the lyrical hero.
The poem "By the Right of Memory" was originally conceived by the author as one of the "additional" chapters to the poem "For the distance - the distance", acquired an independent character in the course of work. Although “By the Right of Memory” does not have a genre designation in the subtitle, and the poet himself, true to the concepts of literary modesty, sometimes called this work a poetic “cycle”, it is quite obvious that this is a lyric poem, the last major work of the author of Vasily Terkin. It was completed and prepared for publication by the poet himself two years before his death. In the introduction, Tvardovsky declares that these are frank lines, a confession of the soul: In the face of bygone past You have no right to prevaricate, - After all, we paid for these with the biggest payment ... The poem is compositionally divided into three parts. In the first part, the poet recalls his youthful dreams and plans with a warm feeling, a little ironically. And where, which of us will have to, In what year, in what region Behind that rooster's hoarseness Hear our youth. These dreams are pure and lofty: to live and work for the good of the Motherland. And if necessary, then give his life for her. Beautiful youthful dreams. The poet with a slight bitterness recalls that naive time and young people who could not even imagine how many difficult and severe trials fate is preparing for them: We were ready for the campaign. . And if - Then give your life ... Only from ourselves now we will add. Which is easier, yes. But what is more difficult? The second chapter "The son is not responsible for the father" is the most tragic in the poem, and in all creativity. The illegally dispossessed Tvardovsky family was exiled to Siberia. Only Alexander Trifonovich remained in Russia due to the fact that he lived separately from his family in Smolensk. He could not alleviate the fate of the exiled. In fact, he abandoned his family. This tormented the poet all his life. This non-healing wound of Tvardovsky resulted in the poem "By the Right of Memory". The end of your dashing hardships, Stay cheerful, do not hide your face. Thank the father of nations. That he forgave you father. A difficult time that philosophers cannot understand for fifty years later. And what can we say about a young man who firmly believes in official propaganda and ideology. The duality of the situation is reflected in the poem. Yes, he knew how without reservations, Suddenly - as soon as it bakes - Transfer any of his miscalculations to someone's account: To someone's enemy's distortion of That which proclaimed the covenant. To someone's dizziness From their predicted victories. The poet seeks to comprehend the course of history. Understand what was wrong repressed peoples. Who allowed such a state of affairs, when one decided the fate of peoples. And everyone was guilty before him already in the fact that they were alive. In the third chapter of the poem, Tvardovsky asserts the human right to memory. We have no right to forget anything. As long as we remember, our ancestors, their deeds and deeds are “alive”. Memory is the privilege of man, and he cannot voluntarily give up God's gift to please anyone. The poet claims: He who hides the past jealously, He is unlikely to be in harmony with the future ... This poem is a kind of repentance of Tvardovsky for his youthful deeds and mistakes. We all make mistakes in our youth, sometimes fatal ones, but this does not give rise to poems in us. For a great poet, even grief and tears pour out into brilliant verses. And you, who are now striving To return the former grace, So you call Stalin - He was God - He can stand up.

The development of literature during the Great Patriotic War and the post-war decades is one of the most important topics in Russian art. It has a number of features that distinguish it from the military literature of other countries and periods. In particular, poetry and journalism acquire a huge role in the spiritual life of the people, since a difficult, full of hardships time requires small forms from genres.

Pathetics is characteristic of all literary works of the war years. Heroic pathos and national pride have become invariable attributes of any book. In the very first days of the Nazi offensive, writers, poets, publicists and all creative people felt mobilized to the information front. This call was accompanied by very real battles, injuries and deaths, from which not a single Geneva Convention saved the Soviet intelligentsia. Of the two thousand authors who went to the front line, 400 did not return. Of course, no one counted injuries, illnesses and grief. That is why every poem, every story, every article is characterized by overflowing emotionality, drama, intensity of syllable and words, and the cordiality of a friend who is experiencing the same thing as you.

Poetry

Poetry becomes the voice of the Motherland, which appealed to her sons from posters. The most musical poems turned into songs and with teams of artists flew to the front, where they were indispensable, like medicines or weapons. The literature of the period of the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) for most Soviet people is poetry, because in the format of songs they flew around even the most remote corners of the front, announcing the fortitude and intransigence of soldiers. In addition, it was easier to declare them over the radio, diluting front-line reports. They were also published in the central and front-line press during the Great Patriotic War.

To this day, the song lyrics of M. Isakovsky, V. Lebedev-Kumach, A. Surkov, K. Simonov, O. Berggolts, N. Tikhonov, M. Aliger, P. Kogan, Vs. Bagritsky, N. Tikhonov, A. Tvardovsky. A penetrating national feeling resounds in their poems. The poets sharpened their flair, their view of their native latitudes became filial, respectful, tender. The image of the Motherland is a specific, understandable symbol that no longer needs colorful descriptions. Heroic pathos penetrated into intimate lyrics.

Melodic poetry, with its inherent emotionality and declarative oratorical speech, very soon spreads on the fronts and in the rear. The heyday of the genre is logically determined: it was necessary to epicly reflect the pictures of the heroic struggle. Military literature outgrew poems and resulted in a national epic. As an example, you can read A. Tvardovsky "Vasily Terkin", M. Aliger "Zoya", P. Antokolsky "Son". The poem "Vasily Terkin", familiar to us from school times, expresses the severity of military life and the indomitably cheerful disposition of the Soviet soldier. Thus, poetry during the Second World War acquired great importance in the cultural life of the people.

The main genre groups of military poems:

1. Lyric (ode, elegy, song)
2. satirical
3. Lyrical-epic (ballads, poems)

The most famous wartime poets:

1. Nikolai Tikhonov
2. Alexander Tvardovsky
3. Alexey Surkov
4. Olga Berggolts
5. Mikhail Isakovsky
6. Konstantin Simonov

Prose

Smaller forms of literature (such as short stories and novellas) enjoyed particular prominence. Sincere, inflexible and, in truth, people's characters inspired Soviet citizens. For example, one of the most famous works of that period, “The Dawns Here Are Quiet,” is still known to everyone from school. Its author, Boris Vasiliev, already mentioned above, in his works adhered to one main theme: the incompatibility of the natural human, life-giving and merciful principle, embodied, as a rule, in female images, and war. The tone of the work, characteristic of many writers of that time, namely the tragedy of the inevitable death of noble and disinterested souls in a collision with the cruelty and injustice of the "power", combined with the sentimental-romantic idealization of "positive" images and plot melodramatism, captivates the reader from the first pages, but leaves a deep wound to impressionable people. Probably, this textbook example gives the most complete picture of the dramatic intensity of prose during the Second World War (1941-1945).

Major works appeared only at the end of the war, after the turning point. No one doubted victory, and the Soviet government provided the writers with conditions for creativity. Military literature, namely prose, has become one of the key areas of the country's information policy. The people needed support, they needed to realize the greatness of that feat, the price of which is human lives. As examples of prose from the time of the Second World War, one can name the novel by V. Grossman "The People is Immortal", the novel by A. Beck "Volokolamsk Highway", the epic by B. Gorbatov "The Unconquered".

Notable Wartime Prose Writers:

1. A. Gaidar
2. E. Petrov
3. Y. Krymov
4. M. Jalil,
5. M. Kulchitsky
6. V. Bagritsky
7. P. Kogan
8. M. Sholokhov
9. K. Simonov

Publicism

Outstanding wartime publicists: A. Tolstoy (“What are we defending”, “Moscow is threatened by the enemy”, “Motherland”), M. Sholokhov (“On the Don”, “Cossacks”, story-essay “The Science of Hatred”), I. Ehrenburg (“Survive!”), L. Leonov (“Glory to Russia”, “Reflections near Kyiv”, “Rage”). All these are articles published in those newspapers that the soldiers received in the trenches of the front and read before the battle. Exhausted by overwork, people greedily drilled these same lines with tired eyes. Publicism of those years has a great literary, artistic and historical value. For example, articles by Boris Vasilyev calling for the establishment of the priority of national culture over politics (Vasilyev himself set an example of this, having left the CPSU in 1989, in which he had been a member since 1952, and since the early 1990s, moving away from participation in "perestroika" political actions) . His journalistic materials about the war are distinguished by a sound assessment and the greatest possible objectivity.

The main journalistic genres of wartime:

1. articles
2. essays
3. feuilletons
4. appeals
5. letters
6. leaflets

The most famous publicists:

1. Alexey Tolstoy
2. Mikhail Sholokhov
3. Vsevolod Vishnevsky
4. Nikolai Tikhonov
5. Ilya Erenburg
6. Marietta Shahinyan

The most important weapon of journalism of those years was the facts of the violence of the Nazi invaders against the civilian population. It was the journalists who sought out and systematized documentary evidence that enemy propaganda was at odds with the truth in everything. It was they who convincingly argued for the doubting patriotic position, because only in it was salvation. No deals with the enemy could guarantee the disaffected freedom and prosperity. The people should have realized this, learning the monstrous details of the massacre of children, women and the wounded, which were practiced by the soldiers of the Third Reich.

Dramaturgy

The dramatic works of K. Simonov, L. Leonov, A. Korneichuk demonstrate the spiritual nobility of the Russian people, their moral purity and spiritual strength. The origins of their heroism are reflected in the plays "Russian People" by K. Simonov and "Invasion" by L. Leonov. The history of the confrontation between the two types of military leaders is polemically played out in the play "Front" by A. Korneichuk. Dramaturgy during the Great Patriotic War is a very emotional literature, filled with heroic pathos, characteristic of the era. It breaks out of the framework of social realism, becomes closer and more understandable to the viewer. Actors no longer play, they portray their own everyday life on stage, reliving their own tragedies anew, so that people are indignant and continue their courageous resistance.

Everyone was united by the literature of the war years: in each play, the main idea was a call for the unity of all social forces in the face of an external threat. For example, in Simonov's play "Russian People" the protagonist is an intellectual, seemingly alien to the proletarian ideology. Panin, a poet and essayist, becomes a military commissar, just like the author himself once did. However, his heroism is not inferior to the courage of the battalion commander Safonov, who sincerely loves a woman, but still sends her on combat missions, because his feelings towards his homeland are no less significant and strong.

The role of literature during the war years

The literature of the period of the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) is notable for its purposefulness: all writers, as one, strive to help their people withstand the heavy burden of occupation. These are books about the motherland, self-sacrifice, tragic love for one's country and the duty that it obliges every citizen to defend the fatherland at any cost. Crazy, tragic, merciless love revealed the hidden treasures of the soul in people, and writers, like painters, exactly reflected what they saw with their own eyes. According to Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy, "in the days of the war, literature becomes a truly folk art, the voice of the heroic soul of the people."

The writers did not separate from the front-line soldiers and home front workers, they became understandable and close to everyone, since the war united the nation. The authors froze and starved at the fronts as war correspondents, cultural workers and died with soldiers and nurses. An intellectual, a worker or a collective farmer - all were at the same time. In the first years of the struggle, masterpieces were born in one day and remained in Russian literature forever. The main task of these works is the pathos of defense, the pathos of patriotism, raising and maintaining the military spirit in the ranks of the Soviet army. What is now called "on the information front" was then really needed. Moreover, the literature of the war years is not a state order. Writers like Simonov, Tvardovsky, Ehrenburg turned out by themselves, absorbing impressions on the front line and transferring them to notebooks to the sound of exploding shells. Therefore, these books really believe. Their authors suffered what they wrote and risked their lives to pass on this pain to their descendants, in whose hands the world of tomorrow was supposed to be.

List of popular books

Books will tell about the collapse of simple human happiness in military realities:

1. "Simply love" by V. Vasilevskaya,
2. "It was in Leningrad" by A. Chakovsky,
3. "Third Chamber" Leonidov.
4. “The Dawns Here Are Quiet” B. Vasiliev
5. "The Fate of a Man" by M. Sholokhov

Books about heroic deeds in the conditions of the bloodiest battles during the Second World War:

1. "In the trenches of Stalingrad" V. Nekrasov,
2. "Moscow. November 1941 "Lidina,
3. "July - December" Simonov,
4. "Brest Fortress" S. Smirnov,
5. "They fought for their homeland" M. Sholokhov

Soviet literature on betrayal:

1. "Battalions ask for fire" Y. Bondarev
2. "Sotnikov" by V. Bykov
3. "Sign of trouble" by V. Bykov
4. "Live and remember" V. Rasputin

Books dedicated to the siege of Leningrad:

1. Blockade book by A. Adamovich, D. Granin
2. "Road of Life" by N. Hodza
3. "Baltic Sky" by N. Chukovsky

About children participating in the war:

1. Young Guard: Alexander Fadeev
2. Tomorrow there was a war - Boris Vasiliev
3. Goodbye boys - Boris Balter
4. Boys with bows - Valentin Pikul

About women participating in the war:

1. War has no female face - Svetlana Alekseevich
2. Madonna with ration bread - Maria Glushko
3. Partisan Lara - Nadezhda Nadezhdina
4. Girls' team - P. Zavodchikov, F. Samoilov

Alternative view of military leadership:

1. Life and Fate - Vasily Grossman
2. Penal battalion: Eduard Volodarsky
3. In war as in war - Viktor Kurochkin

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

Ernest Hemingway

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

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


"Volokolamsk highway"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Work...


Alexander Fadeev (1901-1956)

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


"Young guard"

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

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

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


Work...


Vasily Grossman (1905-1964)

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


"People are immortal"

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

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

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

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






"Life and Destiny"

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

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

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

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

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


Work...


Yuri Bondarev (1924)

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

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

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


"Hot Snow"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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