2. The Great Patriotic War in Russian literature of the 40-90s.
Literature of the war years 1941-1945. Journalism.
The main weakness of wartime journalism: it was too “one-dimensional” and too “strained,” even in the most lively articles. This journalism drowned out the strongest creative impulses of the 40s. High rhetorical style. Headlines: “Only victory and life!” A. Tolstoy; “We will stand!” I. Ehrenburg.
The best: M. Sholokhov “On the way to the front”": "The nature of the Smolensk region is alien to me, a resident of the almost treeless Don steppes. I watch the unfolding landscapes with interest. On the sides of the road there are pine forests like a green wall. They exude coolness and a strong resinous smell. There, in the thick of the forest, it’s semi-dark even during the day, and there’s something ominous in the twilight silence, and this land seems unkind to me.” "People of the Red Army": The scout carefully examines me with his brown, sharp eyes, smiling, and says: “For the first time I see a living writer. I’ve read your books, seen portraits of various writers, but this is the first time I’ve seen a living writer.” I look with no less interest at a man who went behind German lines sixteen times, who risks his life every day, who is impeccably brave and resourceful. I’m also meeting a representative of this military profession for the first time.” "Letter to American Friends." A little naive, but very, very good. A. Platonov. The publication of Platonov's works was permitted in the years Patriotic War, when the prose writer worked as a front-line correspondent for the newspaper “Red Star” and wrote stories on military topics. American friends." A little naive, but very, very good. Essays: "Nikodim Maximov": “Nikodim Maksimov smiled: the light stood and stood, people frighten children with states. A soldier begins with thoughts about the fatherland. Where did you realize such a truth or heard, or something, from whom?.. In war, Ivan Efimovich, learning happens quickly... I’m not a special person, but this is how I live and think.” "Girl Rose":“Whoever saw Rose said that she was beautiful and so good, as if she was deliberately invented by melancholy, sad people for their joy and consolation. she had already been executed once, and after the execution she fell to the ground, but remained alive; the corpses of other fallen people were placed on top of her body, then they covered the dead with straw, doused them with gasoline and burned the dead; Rose was not dead then, two bullets only harmlessly damaged the skin on her body, and she, covered from above by the dead, did not burn in the fire, she was saved and came to her senses, and in the dark time of the night she got out from under the dead and went free through the ruins of the prison fence destroyed by an aerial bomb. But in the afternoon, Rosa was again captured by the Nazis in the city and taken to prison. And she again began to live in prison, expecting her death a second time.”
Prose during the Second World War
1942 – Vasily Grossman’s story “The People Are Immortal”. In August 1941, the death of Gomel. The story of V. Vasilevskaya “Rainbow” - female images. V. Gorbatov's story “The Unconquered” is an occupied territory. Romantic-pathetic style. L. Leonov's story “The Capture of Velikoshumsk” (1944). The first completed novel about the Second World War was Fadeev’s novel “The Young Guard” (1945). Historical novels developed patriotic ideas. A. Beck “Volokolamsk Highway” (1943-1944). The psychological state of the characters, their relationships. Formation of a person’s personality in conditions of war. M. Sholokhov, excerpts from the novel “They Fought for the Motherland.” War through the eyes of a simple Russian soldier.
K. Vorobyov “This is us, Lord!” He worked on the story during the war. In 1943, his partisan group was forced to take refuge underground; he sat in the attic of a house in Siauliai and was in a hurry to leave people his memory of his experience in the fascist camps. Lieutenant Sergei Kostrov. Three years - from camp to camp, from captivity to captivity - these are the young years of Sergei. The main character of the story and his entourage had to endure a lot. He was captured by the Germans, escaped, was caught again, and taken to a concentration camp. “The barracks are filled with an eerie silence. It’s rare that someone turns to a friend in a whisper with a request or a question. The vocabulary of the doomed consisted of ten to twenty words. Only later did Sergei find out that this was a painful attempt by people to save energy. Movements were also strictly used. Thirty slow steps a day was considered the norm for a healthy walk.” In the “Valley of Death” the Germans created an unrivaled system for keeping people in a half-dead state. This is not how Sergei dreamed of dying. It is no coincidence that the epigraph to the story is taken from “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”: “It is better to be killed by swords than to be killed at the hands of the filthy!” The hero thinks about death: “... he then realized that, in essence, he was not afraid of it, only... he just wanted to die beautifully!” If death, then death worthy of a person. Having written in 1943 “This is us, Lord!” Evgeny Nosov: “The story is impossible to read in one gulp: written immediately after fascist captivity, it bleeds with every line. Write the naked truth. The voice of a boy in captivity: “Six miles to the house... If only my mother had known... I would have brought some boiled potatoes.” full of lice. Seventeen slices of bread, which were given to the child of a Lithuanian prisoner. The story remained in the editorial archive, of course, not because it was not finished, but, most likely, because of the fate of those who were in captivity, even if only. through no fault of its own, has long remained a taboo topic in literature.
Nekrasov “In the trenches of Stalingrad” (1946) . With the beginning of the Patriotic War, Nekrasov went to the front, walking the path from Rostov to Stalingrad. He was an engineer in the sapper troops and commanded a battalion. Came to literature after the war. Appearance in the magazine “Znamya” of V. Nekrasov’s story “In the Trenches of Stalingrad.” The literary community was at a loss: the author is a simple officer, unknown to anyone, in the story itself there is not a word about partita and only a few mentions about Stalin. Someone told Stalingrad resident Nekrasov that he “didn’t have the guts” to write about Stalingrad). But Nekrasov’s story attracted attention and was remembered by the theme itself, the restraint of tone, which hid deep pain, and the truthful story about one of the most important battles of the war. Nekrasov: “But in war you never see anything except what’s going on right under your nose.” The story is largely autobiographical. The main character, on whose behalf the story is told, is Lieutenant Yuri Kerzhentsev, like Nekrasov, a native of Kyiv, graduated from an architectural institute, and was fond of philately. Once in the war, he became a sapper. The book is, first of all, about those who managed to survive and win - about people. In war conditions, people's characters manifest themselves in different ways. At first glance, it seems that the writer does not evaluate what is happening, but the intonation itself puts everything in its place. Nekrasov talks about death every time with pain from its everyday routine. Nekrasov refutes the opinion that in war one gets used to the fear of death: there is a famous moment when a deceased person’s cigarette butt was still smoking on his lip. Nekrasov said that it was the most terrible thing he saw before and after during the war. Kerzhentsev finds salvation from the horrors of war in memories of pre-war life. The war became the border between what was and what is. Today - the bitterness of retreats, losses, trenches, death. And in the past “neatly trimmed linden trees surrounded by trellises”, “large milky white lanterns”, “centenary elms of the palace garden”, “Dnieper, blue distances, huge sky”. In war, the color of gray dust is everywhere. Nekrasov describes the events of the Battle of Stalingrad as he himself saw them, without embellishment: “We’re shooting again. The machine gun is shaking as if in a fever. Ahead is a nasty gray land. Only one, gnarled bush, like a hand with gouty fingers. Then he disappears - the machine gun cuts him off.” Compressed time. Kerzhentsev is often surprised that he lives years in minutes. Heroes. All people are different and came to the front in different ways, but everyone is concerned with the question: how did it happen that since the beginning of the war the army has only been retreating. Nekrasov himself only once tries to answer this question: “You and I relied on others.” Kerzhentsev: “Swearing won’t help matters.” The story ends with the proposed offensive in the Stalingrad area. The story was awarded the Stalin Prize. The story "In the Hometown". Published in Znamya. A year after the publication of the story, the magazine “Znamya” was destroyed: the editor-in-chief V. Vishnevsky was removed, and Kazakevich’s story was added. Nekrasov later began to be published abroad, and he was expelled from the party for this. They took away, you bastards, the medal “For the Defense of Stalingrad.” Since 1974, Nekrasov settled in Paris. Died in 1987. The theme of Stalingrad was also explored in the works of V. Grossman (For a Just Cause), K. Simonov (Soldiers Are Not Born), Yu. Bondarev (Hot Snow), etc. After Nekrasov, there was a whole stream of “lieutenant prose”: G. came to literature. Baklanov, Y. Bondarev, V. Bykov. They, like Nekrasov, knew the war from personal experience. Their generation discovered a new type of hero. They were interested in the process of character formation in the tragic circumstances of war. Confessional intonation of the authors. The moral aspect is the main one. Bondarev: “Battalions Ask for Fire” and “Last Salvos”, “Crane Cry” by V. Bykov, “Killed near Moscow” by Vorobyov, “Ivan”, “Zosya”, “In August forty-four” by Bogomolov. Andrey Platonov. Prose. Stories. "Spiritual people." Platonov did not shy away from journalism in his military prose. But she was very far from the poster. His contemporaries so often tried to write about “lofty ideas,” but all they got was “about the mundane.” He wrote, in essence, about the earthly - and went into completely different spaces. Platonov wrote his first story about the war even before the front, during the evacuation. Then he became a correspondent at the front. His tasks: “To depict what is essentially killed is not just bodies. A great picture of life and lost souls, possibilities. Peace is given as it would have been during the activities of the dead - a better peace than the real one: this is what perishes in war.” "Return".
Poetry. War lyrics 1941-1945.
It is important that wartime poets did not observe the war from the sidelines, but lived it. Of course, the extent of their personal participation in the war varied. For example, Yulia Drunina volunteered to go to the front in 1941 and fought until victory. Some poets and writers were privates and officers in the army during the war. Others are war correspondents, others are participants in some individual events. During the war, poetry united people and did a great job. Surkov wrote that “never in the entire history of poetry has such direct, close, cordial contact been established between writers and readers as in the days of the Patriotic War.” Nikolai Chukovsky recalled that during the siege Leningrad lived an intensely spiritual life. There was a surprising amount of reading there. We read it everywhere. And they wrote a lot of poetry. Poems suddenly acquired extraordinary importance, and even those who would not have thought of doing so in normal times wrote them. There is a special need for poetry during times of disaster. As a form of literature, poetry occupied a dominant position in wartime. Tikhonov: “The verse received a particular advantage: it was written quickly, did not take up much space in the newspaper, and immediately went into service.” Poetry of the war years is poetry of extraordinary intensity. During the war years, many of its genres became more active. Now we are interested in the lyrics. Wartime lyric poetry reflected a thirst for humanity. Separation from loved ones, from loved ones, trials in war - all this made people bitter and they wanted humanity, love, fidelity. Here is the famous poem by K. Simonov “Wait for me” (1941). It was published in various front-line newspapers and sent to each other in letters. Thanks to this poem, the genre of the poetic message came to life.
Tvardovsky's poetry is lyrical, lyricism is even recognized as the basis of his talent. Of course, this quality manifests itself more freely in poems than in individual poems. Tvardovsky’s general attraction to the genre of the poem may be connected with this. During the war years - theme of small (Smolensk region) and big homeland. During the war, the memory of home became persistent and close to everyone, wherever he was. The theme of a small homeland is always connected with the theme of a large homeland - all of Russia. The Motherland is always a length, always a path, a road (About the Motherland, The Path Not Traveled). Poems dedicated to cruel memory of the war. The most impressive, of course, is “I was killed near Rzhev” (1945-46). This poem was supposed to be included in the “book about a fighter” (V.T.) - in the author’s plan in part 2 it was written: “a song through the mouth of a soldier killed in the first days of the war.” But this poem was not included in the poem, and became a separate poem, speaking on behalf of the fallen warrior. Everything a soldier killed in war could say if he could speak. "The day the war ended." The poem was written on behalf of those who survived. Sadness about how they leave dead friends. This motif is constant in Tvardovsky’s lyrics. In another 20 years he will be in the poem “I know, it’s not my fault.” Part of the collection “Last Poems” (1952) is devoted to the military theme. Victory in the war, faith in the strength and capabilities of the people. Theme of literary creativity. “I know this better than anyone in the world - living and dead, only I know.” No one will say it the way he says it himself. "A word about words." Late 50s Thaw. Philosophical topics. “I don’t know how I would love.” "You and me". "About Existence."
Theme of mother's love and son's love for mother passed through all of his work, and in the last poems - the cycle “In Memory of the Mother”. Consciousness of a life lived with dignity - “On the day of my life.”
M.V. Isakovsky (1900-1973). Born into a peasant family in the Smolensk region. Lit. His activities began in a newspaper in the city of Yelnya (not far from Smolensk). He himself considers 1924 to be the beginning of his poetic creativity, although he began writing poetry very early. Isakovsky’s first collection, “Wires in Straw,” was published in 1927. The collection was noticed by Gorky: “His poems are simple, good, very moving with their sincerity.” Isakovsky in Russian poetry is one of the direct followers of Nikolai Nekrasov. Isakovsky is also not a peasant poet, but a folk one. Isakovsky worked in many genres, but special success achieved in the lyrics, in the song genre. His poems: Katyusha, Farewell, Ogonyok, Migratory birds are flying, etc. Tvardovsky's remark about his songs: “The words of Isakovsky’s songs are poems that have independent meaning and sound, a living poetic organism, which itself presupposes the melody with which it is destined to merge and exist together. Isakovsky is not a lyricist or a songwriter; he is a poet whose poems are initially characterized by the beginning of songfulness, and this has always been one of the important features of Russian lyrics.” Isakovsky himself believed that you need to be able to speak even about the most complex things in the most ordinary words and phrases - ordinary, but at the same time succinct, precise, colorful, poetically convincing. It seems that the main reason for the success and universal love for his work is the complete fusion of thoughts and feelings of the poet and the people. In the forest near the front, Oh, my fogs. In the post-war years, Isakovsky began to work a lot as a translator. Most often he translated Ukrainian and Belarusian poets Kupala, Shevchenko, and Ukrainka.
Prose about the Great Patriotic War. Its beginning lies in 1941. The last works, it seems, have not yet been completed. And yet the century is ending. And “revaluation of values” is an eternal inevitability. What ancestors cried over often seems false and insincere to descendants. But things that were noticed only “in passing” suddenly become necessary after half a century or a century. Contemporaries habitually divided prose about the war according to established headings (here is what prose writers of the older generation who were at the front as military correspondents wrote, here is the prose of those who went through the war almost as a boy - or, if you “switch the register”: here is a “panoramic” novel, here story, story, essay...). Time “enlarges” the vision and makes us look with different eyes: what the 40s, the 50s, the 60s told us - and further, further, walking for decades. And in every ten years, find the most important thing, without which Russian literature of the 20th century simply cannot be imagined.
Prose of the 40s. Wartime prose could not do without journalistic pressure. And that is why not only “Rainbow” by Vasilevskaya or “The Unconquered” by Gorbatov, but also “The Capture of Velikoshumsk”, and “Stories of Ivan Sudarev”, and “Days and Nights”, and immediately, “in hot following”, included in the “modern classics” and immediately sent “for revision” to “Young Guard”. Expressive pieces and monstrous failures, carefully included by literary historians of that time in the “artistic originality of Alexander Fadeev’s novel” - tens, hundreds of pages, written in a newspaper style (“The peculiarity of Lyutikov, as well as this type of leaders in general ...”) and at times reminiscent of the style of denunciation (“Of all the people who inhabited the city of Krasnodon, Ignat Fomin was the most terrible person, especially terrible because he had not been a person for a long time”). And even though the best pages of A. Bek’s “Volokolamsk Highway” still exist, even though Vorobyov’s story “This is us, Lord!” appeared in 1943, which anticipated all the “lieutenant’s prose,” even though Mikhail Sholokhov began publishing excerpts from his war novel, nevertheless, the main prose about the war in the 40s was written by Andrei Platonov.
Song lyrics.
Alexey Fatyanov. “The artisans also sang Russian songs,” this is how Yaroslav Smelyakov described him. Alexey Ivanovich comes from the village of Maloye Petrino, in the Vladimir region. He took a lot from the natural beauty of these places. Here the origins of his song and poetic gift are easily and unmistakably guessed. In the late twenties, the Fatyanov family moved to the Moscow region. Fatyanov becomes a studio member of the theater school named after. HELL. Popov at the Central Theater of the Red Army. Soon introduced into performances. And in 1938-1939 he already toured with the theater around the country (right up to the Far East). Since 1940, he served in the ensemble of the Oryol Military District. He was a certified actor. During these same years, he began to write a lot, published his first essays and poems in the Oryol regional Molodezhka, and became its permanent correspondent. In June 1941 The ensemble finds itself in an air garrison near Bryansk. This is where the war found him. Already the first days determined the military place of Private Fatyanov. In addition to two or three daily performances in front of the fighters, he has to write topical, satirical ditties and sketches, poems and songs. Fatyanov repeatedly appeals to the command with a request to let him go to the front. But all his requests were denied. However, by and large there was no place to let go: the ensemble was already a front-line ensemble. Why were his songs heard on all fronts? Everything in them is clear and understandable: what needs to be defended, who to fight for, and with what attitude to go into battle. And in general, after his songs, it seems that Russians win wars only when they defend their own and their own. And here they defeat everyone and always. Alexey Fatyanov had the opportunity to work with many composers. His most famous songs were written with Vasily Solovyov-Sedy: “We haven’t been home for a long time”, “Where are you, my garden?”, “Because we are pilots”, “Golden lights”, “Where are you now, fellow soldiers ?", "The accordion sings over Vologda", "Road-road". At the very height of the war, in 1942, in the same community, one of the most “important” and popular songs of the Great Patriotic War, “Nightingales,” was born, both at the front and in the rear.
3. The compositional role of details (details) in works of literary literature Attention to detail from the tendency to match the word with the phenomenon of reality as accurately as possible. The use of details is one of the techniques for constructing a literary text. Like any technique, it can be successful and unsuccessful. Unsuccessful are those details that clutter the text and do not carry a semantic, aesthetic load.
A truly artistic detail depicts the general in the particular, the concrete, and in this sense it is always figurative. Pushkin has many precise details, unmistakably found, selected from reality. Sticky leaves. Chekhov - original details. Thick and thin. What did someone smell like?
By compositional role parts can be divided into two main types:
1) Descriptive Details, - depicting, painting a picture, setting, character
At the moment. Above: Chekhov and Pushkin. 2) Narrative details - indicating movement, a change in the picture, setting, character. A gun that will shoot. Narrative details are necessarily repeated in the text at least twice, and often appear in modified form in different episodes of the story. highlighting the development of the plot.
Ticket 24
Terminological minimum: periodization, essay, “general’s” prose, “lieutenant’s” prose, memoirs, epic novel, “trench” literature, writers’ diaries, memoirs, documentary prose genre, historicism, documentary.
Plan
1. General characteristics literary process period of the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945).
2. The theme of war as the main one in the development of the literary process of the late 1940s - early 1960s. (opposition between “general’s” and “lieutenant’s” prose).
3. “Trench Truth” about the war in Russian literature.
4. Memoirs and fiction in literature about the Great Patriotic War.
Literature
Texts to study
1. Astafiev, V.P. Cursed and killed.
2. Bondarev, Yu. V. Hot snow. Shore. The battalions are asking for fire.
3. Bykov, V.V. Sotnikov. Obelisk.
4. Vasiliev, B. L. Tomorrow there was a war. Didn't appear on the lists.
5. Vorobyov, K. D. This is us, Lord!
6. Grossman, V. S. Life and Fate.
7. Kataev, V. P. Son of the regiment.
8. Leonov, L. M. Invasion.
9. Nekrasov, V. P. In the trenches of Stalingrad.
10. Simonov, K. M. Living and dead. Russian character.
11. Tvardovsky, A. T. Vasily Terkin.
12. Fadeev, A. A. Young Guard.
13. Sholokhov, M. A. They fought for their homeland. The fate of man.
Main
1. Gorbachev, A. Yu. Military theme in prose of the 1940–90s. [Electronic resource] / A. Yu. Gorbachev. – Access mode: http://www. bsu.by>Cache /219533/.pdf (access date: 06/04/2014)
2. Lagunovsky, A. General characteristics of literature during the Great Patriotic War [Electronic resource] / A. Lagunovsky. – Access mode: http://www. Stihi.ru /2009/08/17/2891 (date of access: 06/02/2014)
3. Russian literature of the 20th century / ed. S.I. Timina. – M.: Academy, 2011. – 368 p.
Additional
1. Bykov, V. “These young writers saw the sweat and blood of war on their tunic”: correspondence between Vasily Bykov and Alexander Tvardovsky / V. Bykov; entry Art. S. Shaprana // Questions of literature. – 2008. – No. 2. – P. 296–323.
2. Kozhin, A. N. About the language of military documentary prose / A. N. Kozhin // Philological Sciences. – 1995. – No. 3. – P. 95–101.
3. Chalmaev, V. A. Russian prose 1980–2000: At the crossroads of opinions and disputes / V. A. Chalmaev // Literature at school. – 2002. – No. 4. – P. 18–23.
4. Man and War: Russian fiction about the Great Patriotic War: bibliographic list / ed. S. P. Bavina. – M.: Ipno, 1999. – 298 p.
5. Yalyshkov, V. G. Military stories of V. Nekrasov and V. Kondratiev: experience of comparative analysis / V. G. Yalyshkov // Bulletin of Moscow University. - Ser. 9. Philology. – 1993. – No. 1. – P. 27–34.
1. The Great Patriotic War is an inexhaustible topic in Russian literature. The material, the author's tone, plots, and characters change, but the memory of the tragic days lives on in the books about her.
More than 1,000 writers went to the front during the war. Many of them directly participated in battles with the enemy, in the partisan movement. For military services, 18 writers received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. About 400 members of the Writers' Union did not return from the battlefields. Among them were young people who published one book each, and experienced writers, famous to a wide circle readers: E. Petrov, A. Gaidar
and etc.
A significant part of professional writers worked in newspapers, magazines, and the mass press. War correspondent is the most common position of representatives fiction.
Lyrics turned out to be the most “mobile” type of literature. Here is a list of publications that were published already in the first days of the war: on June 23, A. Surkov’s poem “We swear by victory” appeared on the first page of Pravda, and on the second page, N. Aseev’s “Victory will be ours”; On June 24, Izvestia publishes “The Holy War” by V. Lebedev-Kumach; On June 25, Pravda publishes “Song of the Brave” by A. Surkov; On June 26, the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper begins publishing a series of essays by I. Ehrenburg; On June 27, Pravda opens its journalistic cycle with the article “What We Defend.”
A. Tolstoy. This dynamics is indicative and reflects the demand for artistic material.
It is noteworthy that the theme of the lyrics changed dramatically from the very first days of the war. Responsibility for the fate of the Motherland, the bitterness of defeat, hatred of the enemy, perseverance, patriotism, loyalty to ideals, faith in victory - this was the leitmotif of all poems, ballads, poems, songs.
The lines from A. Tvardovsky’s poem “To the Partisans of the Smolensk Region” were indicative: “Rise up, my whole desecrated region, against the enemy!” “The Holy War” by Vasily Lebedev-Kumach conveyed a generalized image of time:
May the rage be noble
Boils like a wave
- There is a people's war going on,
Holy war![p.87]7
Odic poems, expressing the anger and hatred of the Soviet people, were an oath of allegiance to the Fatherland, a guarantee of victory, and reflected the internal state of millions of Soviet people.
The poets turned to the heroic past of their homeland, drew historical parallels that were so necessary to raise morale: “The Tale of Russia” by M. Isakovsky, “Rus” by D. Bedny, “The Thought of Russia”
D. Kedrina, “Field of Russian Glory” by S. Vasiliev.
Organic connection with Russian classical lyrics and folk art helped poets reveal their traits national character. Concepts such as “Motherland”, “Rus”, “Russia”, “Russian heart”, “Russian soul”, often included in the titles of works of art, acquired unprecedented historical depth and strength, poetic volume and imagery. Thus, revealing the character of the heroic defender of the city on the Neva, a Leningrad woman during the siege, O. Berggolts states:
You are Russian – with your breath, your blood, your thoughts.
They united in you not yesterday
Avvakum's manly patience
And Peter’s royal fury[p.104].
A number of poems convey the soldier’s feeling of love for his “small homeland”, for the house in which he was born, for the family that remained far away, for those “three birches” where he left part of his soul, his pain, hope, joy ( “Motherland” by K. Simonov).
The most touching lines of many writers of this time are dedicated to the woman-mother, a simple Russian woman who saw off her brothers, husband and sons to the front, who experienced the bitterness of an irreparable loss, who bore on her shoulders inhuman hardships, deprivations and hardships, but did not lose faith.
I remembered every porch,
Where did you have to go?
I remembered all the women's faces,
Like your own mother.
They shared bread with us -
Is it wheat, rye, -
They took us out to the steppe
A secret path.
Our pain hurt them, -
Your own misfortune does not count [p.72].
M. Isakovsky’s poems “To a Russian Woman” and lines from K. Simonov’s poem “Do you remember, Alyosha, the roads of the Smolensk region...” sound in the same key.
The truth of the times, faith in victory permeate the poems of A. Prokofiev (“Comrade, have you seen…”), A. Tvardovsky (“The Ballad of a Comrade”) and many other poets.
The creativity of a number of major poets. Thus, A. Akhmatova’s lyrics reflect the high citizenship of the poetess; purely personal experiences received a patriotic sound. In the poem “Courage,” the poetess finds words and images that embody the invincible resilience of the fighting people:
And we will save you, Russian speech,
Great Russian word.
We will carry you free and clean.
We will give it to our grandchildren and save us from captivity
Forever! [p.91].
The fighting people needed both angry lines of hatred and heartfelt poems about love and fidelity in equal measure. Examples of this are K. Simonov’s poems “Kill him!”, “Wait for me, and I will return...”, A. Prokofiev’s “Comrade, have you seen...”, his poem “Russia”, filled with love for the Motherland.
Front-line songs occupy a special place in the history of the development of Russian poetry. Thoughts and feelings set to music create a special emotional background and reveal the mentality of our people in the best possible way (“Dugout” by A. Surkov, “Dark Night” by V. Agatov, “Ogonyok”
M. Isakovsky, “Evening on the roads” by A. Churkin, “Roads” by L. Oshanin, “Here the soldiers are coming” by M. Lvovsky, “Nightingales” by A. Fatyanov, etc.).
We find the embodiment of the social, moral, humanistic ideals of the fighting people in such a large epic genre like a poem. The years of the Great Patriotic War became no less fruitful for the poem than the era of the 1920s. “Kirov with us” (1941) by N. Tikhonova, “Zoya” (1942) by M. Aliger, “Son” (1943) by P. Antakolsky, “February Diary” (1942) by O. Berggolts, “Pulkovo Meridian” (1943)
V. Inber, “Vasily Terkin” (1941–1945) by A. Tvardovsky - these are the best examples of poetic creativity of that period. A distinctive feature of the poem as a genre at this time is pathos: attention to specific, easily recognizable details, a synthesis of personal thoughts about family, love and big history, about the fate of the country and the planet, etc.
The evolution of the poets P. Antakolsky and V. Inber is indicative. From oversaturation with associations and reminiscences of pre-war poetry
P. Antakolsky moves from thinking about the fate of a particular person to all of humanity as a whole. The poem “Son” captivates with its combination of lyricism with high pathos, soulful sincerity with a civic principle. Here the painfully personal turns into the general. High civic pathos and social and philosophical reflections determine the sound of V. Inber’s military poetry. “Pulkovo Meridian” is not only a poem about the humanistic position of the Russian people, it is a hymn to the feelings and feats of every person fighting for the Motherland and freedom.
The poem of the war years was distinguished by a variety of stylistic, plot and compositional solutions. It synthesizes the principles and techniques of narrative and sublimely romantic style. Thus, M. Aliger’s poem “Zoe” is marked by the amazing unity of the author with the spiritual world of the heroine. It inspiredly and accurately embodies moral maximalism and integrity, truth and simplicity. Moscow schoolgirl Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, without hesitation, voluntarily chooses a harsh fate. The poem “Zoya” is not so much a biography of the heroine as a lyrical confession on behalf of a generation whose youth coincided with a formidable and tragic time in the history of the people. At the same time, the three-part structure of the poem conveys the main stages in the formation of the heroine’s spiritual appearance. At the beginning of the poem, with light but precise strokes, the girl’s appearance is only outlined. Gradually, a large social theme, a sensitive heart absorbs the worries and pain of the “shocked planet.” The final part of the poem becomes the apotheosis of a short life. The inhuman torture that Zoya is subjected to in a fascist dungeon is spoken sparingly, but powerfully, with journalistic poignancy. The name and image of the Moscow schoolgirl, whose life was cut short so tragically early, have become a legend.
The poem “Vasily Terkin” by A. T. Tvardovsky became world famous - the largest, most significant poetic work era of the Great Patriotic War. Tvardovsky achieved a synthesis of the particular and the general: the individual image of Vasily Terkin and the image of the Motherland are of different sizes in the artistic concept of the poem. This is a multifaceted poetic work, covering not only all aspects of front-line life, but also the main stages of the Great Patriotic War. IN immortal image Vasily Terkin embodied with particular force the features of the Russian national character of that era. Democracy and moral purity, greatness and simplicity of the hero are revealed through the means of folk poetry, the structure of his thoughts and feelings is akin to the world of images of Russian folklore.
The era of the Great Patriotic War gave birth to poetry of remarkable strength and sincerity, angry journalism, harsh prose, and passionate drama.
Over 300 plays were created during the war years, but few were lucky enough to survive their time. Among them: “Invasion” by L. Leonov, “Front” by A. Korneichuk, “Russian People” by K. Simonov, “Fleet Officer” by A. Kron, “Song of the Black Sea Men” by B. Lavrenev, “Stalingraders” by Yu. Chepurin, etc. .
Plays were not the most mobile genre of that time. The year 1942 became a turning point in drama.
L. Leonov's drama “Invasion” was created at the most difficult time. The small town where the events of the play unfold is a symbol of the national struggle against the invaders. The significance of the author's plan lies in the fact that he interprets local conflicts in a broad socio-philosophical manner, revealing the sources that feed the force of resistance. The play takes place in Dr. Talanov's apartment. Unexpectedly for everyone, Talanov’s son Fedor returns from prison. Almost simultaneously the Germans entered the city. And along with them appears the former owner of the house in which the Talanovs live, the merchant Fayunin, who soon became the mayor of the city. The tension of the action increases from scene to scene. The honest Russian intellectual, doctor Talanov, does not imagine his life apart from the struggle. Next to him are 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 only this approach. Deepening the psychological line of the play, he introduces another person - the Talanovs' son. Fedor's fate turned out to be confusing and difficult. Spoiled in childhood, selfish, selfish, he returns to his father's house after three years in prison as punishment for an attempt on the life of his beloved woman. Fyodor is gloomy, cold, wary. The words of his father spoken at the beginning of the play about the nation's grief do not touch Fyodor: personal adversity obscures everything else. He is tormented by the lost trust of people, which is why Fyodor feels uncomfortable in the world. With their minds and hearts, the mother and nanny understood that under the buffoon mask Fyodor hid his pain, the melancholy of a lonely, unhappy person, but they could not accept him as before. Kolesnikov’s refusal to take Fedor into his squad hardens the heart of young Talanov even more. It took time for this man, who once lived only for himself, to become the people's avenger. Captured by the Nazis, Fyodor poses as the commander of a partisan detachment in order to die for him. Leonov paints a psychologically convincing picture of Fedor’s return to people. The play consistently reveals how war, national grief, and suffering ignite in people hatred and a thirst for revenge, a willingness to give their lives for the sake of victory. This is exactly how we see Fedor at the end of the drama.
For Leonov, there is a natural interest in human character in all the complexity and contradictions of his nature, consisting of social and national, moral and psychological. Stage history Leonov’s works of the period of the Great Patriotic War (except for “Invasion”, the drama “Lenushka”, 1943, was also widely known), which went around all the main theaters of the country, once again confirming the skill of the playwright.
If L. Leonov reveals the theme of heroic deeds and the indestructibility of the patriotic spirit by means of in-depth psychological analysis, then K. Simonov in the play “Russian People” (1942), posing the same problems, uses the techniques of lyricism and open journalism folk drama. The action in the play takes place in the autumn of 1941 on the Southern Front. The author's attention is focused on both the events in Safonov's detachment, located not far from the city, and the situation in the city itself, where the occupiers are in charge. “Russian People” is a play about the courage and resilience of ordinary people who had very peaceful professions before the war: about the driver Safonov, his mother Marfa Petrovna, nineteen-year-old Valya Anoshchenko, who drove the chairman of the city council, and paramedic Globa. They should build houses, teach children, create beautiful things, love, but cruel word The “war” dispelled all hopes. People take rifles, put on greatcoats, and go into battle.
The play “Russian People” already in the summer of 1942, during the most difficult time of the war, was staged on the stage of a number of theaters. The success of the play was also explained by the fact that the playwright showed the enemy not as a primitive fanatic and sadist, but as a sophisticated conqueror of Europe and the world, confident in his impunity.
The topic of a number of interesting dramatic works became the life and heroic deeds of our fleet. Among them: psychological drama
A. Krona “Fleet Officer” (1944), lyrical comedy by Vs. Azarova,
Sun. Vishnevsky, A. Kron “The Wide Sea Spreads Out” (1942), B. Lavrenev’s oratorio “Song of the Black Sea People” (1943).
Historical drama achieved certain achievements during this period. Such historical plays were written as the tragedy of V. Solovyov “The Great Sovereign”, the dilogy of A. Tolstoy “Ivan the Terrible”, etc. Turning points, difficult times of the Russian people - this is the main component of such dramas.
However, journalism reached its greatest flourishing during the Great Patriotic War. The greatest masters of artistic expression - L. Leonov, A. Tolstoy, M. Sholokhov - also became outstanding publicists. The bright, temperamental words of I. Ehrenburg were popular at the front and in the rear. An important contribution to the journalism of those years was made by A. Fadeev, V. Vishnevsky, N. Tikhonov.
A. N. Tolstoy (1883–1945) owns more than 60 articles and essays created during the period 1941–1944. (“What We Defend”, “Motherland”, “Russian Warriors”, “Blitzkrieg”, “Why Hitler Must Be Defeated”, etc.). Turning to the history of his homeland, he convinced his contemporaries that Russia would cope with a new disaster, as it had happened more than once in the past. “Nothing, we can handle it!” - this is the leitmotif journalism by A. Tolstoy.
L. M. Leonov also constantly turned to national history, but with particular poignancy he spoke about the responsibility of every citizen, because only in this he saw the guarantee of the coming victory (“Glory to Russia”, “Your brother Volodya Kurylenko”, “Rage”, “Massacre” ", “To an unknown American friend”, etc.).
The central theme of I. G. Ehrenburg’s military journalism is the defense of universal human culture. He saw fascism as a threat to world civilization and emphasized that representatives of all nationalities of the USSR were fighting for its preservation (articles “Kazakhs”, “Jews”, “Uzbeks”, “Caucasus”, etc.). Ehrenburg's style of journalism was distinguished by sharp colors, sudden transitions, and metaphor. At the same time, the writer skillfully combined documentary materials, verbal posters, pamphlets, and caricatures in his works. Ehrenburg's essays and journalistic articles were compiled in the collection “War”.
The second most mobile after a journalistic article was a military man
feature article .
Documentary art has become the key to the popularity of publications
V. Grossman, A. Fadeev, K. Simonov are writers whose words, created in hot pursuit, were awaited by readers at the front and in the rear. He owns descriptions of military operations and portrait travel sketches.
Leningrad became main theme essays by V. Grossman. In 1941, he joined the staff of the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper. Grossman kept notes throughout the war. His Stalingrad essays, harsh, devoid of pathos (“Through the Eyes of Chekhov”, etc.), formed the basis of the plan for a large work, which later became the dilogy “Life and Fate.”
Since most of the stories, the few in those years, were built on a documentary basis, the authors most often resorted to the psychological characteristics of the heroes, described specific episodes, and often retained their surnames real people. Thus, during the days of the war, a certain hybrid form appeared in Russian literature
essay-story. This type of work includes “The Commander’s Honor” by K. Simonov, “The Science of Hate” by M. Sholokhov, and the cycles “Stories of Ivan Sudarev”
A. Tolstoy and “Sea Soul” by L. Sobolev.
The art of journalism has gone through several main stages in four years. If in the first months of the war it was characterized by a nakedly rationalistic manner, often abstract and schematic ways of depicting the enemy, then at the beginning of 1942 journalism was enriched with elements of psychological analysis. The fiery word of the publicist contains both a rallying note and an appeal to the spiritual world of a person. The next stage coincided with a turning point in the course of the war, with the need for an in-depth socio-political examination of the fascist front and rear, clarification of the root causes of the approaching defeat of Hitlerism and the inevitability of fair retribution. These circumstances prompted the use of such genres as pamphlets and reviews.
At the final stage of the war, a tendency towards documentary appeared. For example, in TASS Windows, along with the graphic design of posters, the method of photomontage was widely used. Writers and poets included diary entries, letters, photographs and other documentary evidence into their works.
Journalism during 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 the publicists even in the most difficult times. Their appeal to history and the national origins of patriotism gave their speeches special power. An important feature of journalism of that time was the widespread use of leaflets, posters, and caricatures.
Already in the first two years of the war, over 200 stories were published. Of all the prose genres, only the essay and story could compete in popularity with the story. The story is a genre that is very characteristic of the Russian national tradition. It is well known that in the 1920–1930s. psychological-everyday, adventure and satirical-humorous varieties of the genre dominated. During the Great Patriotic War (as well as during the Civil War), the heroic, romantic story came first.
The desire to reveal the harsh and bitter truth of the first months of the war and achievements in the field of creating heroic characters are marked by “The Russian Tale” (1942) by Pyotr Pavlenko and V. Grossman’s story “The People are Immortal.” However, there are differences between these works in the way the theme is embodied.
A characteristic feature of military prose of 1942–1943. - the appearance of short stories, cycles of stories connected by the unity of characters, the image of the narrator or a lyrical cross-cutting theme. This is exactly how “Stories of Ivan Sudarev” by A. Tolstoy, “Sea Soul” by L. Sobolev, “March - April” by V. Kozhevnikov are constructed. The drama in these works is shaded by a lyrical and at the same time sublimely poetic, romantic feature, which helps to reveal the spiritual beauty of the hero. Penetration into the inner world of a person deepens. The socio-ethical origins of patriotism are revealed more convincingly and artistically.
By the end of the war, the prose’s gravitation towards a broad epic understanding of reality is noticeable, which is convincingly proven by two famous writers– M. Sholokhov (a novel that the author never managed to finish - “They Fought for the Motherland”) and A. Fadeev (“Young Guard”). The novels are distinguished by their social scope and the opening of new paths in the interpretation of the theme of war. Thus, M.A. Sholokhov makes a bold attempt to depict the Great Patriotic War as a truly national epic. The very choice of the main characters, private infantry - grain grower Zvyagintsev, miner Lopakhin, agronomist Streltsov - indicates that the writer seeks to show different layers of society, to trace how the war was perceived by different people and what paths led them to a huge, truly popular Victory.
The spiritual and moral world of Sholokhov’s heroes is rich and diverse. The artist paints broad pictures of the era: sad episodes of retreats, scenes of violent attacks, relationships between soldiers and civilians, short hours between battles. At the same time, the whole gamut of human experiences can be traced - love and hatred, severity and tenderness, smiles and tears, tragic and comic.
If M. A. Sholokhov’s novel was not completed, then the fate of other works was remarkable; they reflected the era, like in a mirror. For example, autobiographical story K. Vorobyova “It’s us, Lord!” was written in 1943, when a group of partisans formed from former prisoners of war was forced to go underground. Exactly thirty days in the Lithuanian city of Siauliai, K. Vorobyov wrote about what he experienced in fascist captivity. In 1946, the manuscript was received by the editors of the journal New world" At that moment, the author presented only the first part of the story, so the question of its publication was postponed until the ending appeared. However, the second part was never written. Even in the writer’s personal archive, the entire story was not preserved, but some of its fragments were included in some of Vorobyov’s other works. Only in 1985 the manuscript “This is us, Lord!” was discovered in the Central State Archive of Literature and Art of the USSR, where it was deposited along with the archive of the “New World”. In 1986, K. Vorobyov’s story finally saw the light of day. The main character of the work, Sergei Kostrov, is a young lieutenant who was captured by the Germans in the first year of the war. The whole story is dedicated to describing the life of Soviet prisoners of war in German camps. At the center of the work is the fate of the main character, which can be described as “the path to freedom.”
If K. Vorobyov’s work is a tracing of his life, then A. Fadeev relies on specific facts and documents. At the same time, Fadeev’s “Young Guard” is romantic and revealing, like the fate of the author of the work himself.
In the first chapter there is a distant echo of anxiety, in the second the drama is shown - people leave their homes, mines are blown up, a sense of national tragedy permeates the narrative. The underground is crystallizing, connections between the young fighters of Krasnodon and the underground are becoming stronger. The idea of continuity of generations determines the basis of the plot structure of the book and is expressed in the depiction of underground workers (I. Protsenko, F. Lyutikov). Representatives of the older generation and Komsomol Young Guard members act as a single popular force opposing Hitler’s “new order.”
First completed The novel about the Patriotic War was “The Young Guard” by A. Fadeev, published in 1945 (the second book - in 1951). After the liberation of Donbass, Fadeev wrote an essay about the death of the Krasnodon youth “Immortality” (1943), and then conducted a study of the activities of an underground youth organization that independently operated in the town occupied by the Nazis. Severe and strict realism coexists with romance, the objectified narrative is interspersed with the excited lyricism of the author's digressions. When recreating individual images, the role of the poetics of contrast is also very significant (Lyutikov’s stern eyes and the sincerity of his nature; the emphatically boyish appearance of Oleg Koshevoy and the not at all childish wisdom of his decisions; the dashing carelessness of Lyubov Shevtsova and the daring courage of her actions, indestructible will). Even in the appearance of the heroes, Fadeev does not deviate from his favorite technique: Protsenko’s “clear blue eyes” and “demonic sparks” in them; “severe-tender expression” of Oleg Koshevoy’s eyes; white lily in Ulyana Gromova’s black hair; “blue children’s eyes with a hard steel tint” from Lyubov Shevtsova.
The history of the novel's existence in world literature is remarkable. The fate of the work is indicative of literary examples of the Soviet era.
Application of brainstorming technology
Conditions: completing a pre-lecture task, dividing into groups (4–5 people).
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Conditions conducting / exercise |
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Changing your point of view |
Different people's points of view |
Identification of the differences and commonality of views of literary scholars and public figures. Conclusion about the pressure on the author of the novel |
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Grouping of changes made |
Knowledge of the texts of A. A. Fadeev’s novel “Destruction” and O. G. Manukyan’s abstract |
To consolidate an idea of the inner world of writers, to compare the difference in perception of the writer and critics |
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A letter to yourself regarding the perception of the information contained in the abstract |
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Curtsy |
Involves reproducing the exact opposite of the stated position in the conclusions of the abstract |
Promotes flexibility of mind, the emergence of original ideas, understanding of the author's position and empathy |
If in the 1945 edition A. A. Fadeev did not dare to write about the existence in Krasnodon of another - non-Komsomol - anti-fascist underground, then in the new version of the novel (1951) ideologically determined cunning is added to this default: the author claims that the creators and The leaders of the Young Guard organization were communists. Thus, Fadeev denies his favorite heroes an important initiative. In addition, this book served as the basis for criminal prosecution, often unfounded, of real people who became prototypes of negative heroes.
And yet, in our opinion, it should be noted that to this day this novel has not lost its relevance, including pedagogical.
2. The theme of the Great Patriotic War occupies a special place in Russian multinational literature. In the 1940s–1950s, it developed a tradition of depicting the war as a heroic period in the life of the country. With this angle, there was no room to show its tragic aspects. Throughout the 1950s. In the literature about the war, a tendency towards a panoramic depiction of past events in large artistic canvases is clearly revealed. The appearance of epic novels is one of the characteristic features of Russian literature of the 1950s–1960s.
The turning point occurred only with the beginning of the “thaw”, when the stories of front-line writers were published: “Battalions Ask for Fire” (1957) by Yu. Bondarev, “South of the Main Strike” (1957) by G. Baklanov, “Crane Cry” (1961), “ The Third Rocket" (1962) by V. Bykova, "Starfall" (1961) by V. Astafiev, "One of Us" (1962) by V. Roslyakov, "Scream" (1962), "Killed near Moscow" (1963) by K. Vorobyov etc. Such a surge of interest in the military topic predetermined the emergence of a whole movement called “lieutenant prose.”
“Lieutenant's Prose” is the work of writers who went through the war, survived and brought their combat experience to the reader's attention in one form or another. As a rule, this is fiction, most of which is autobiographical in nature. Aesthetic principles"Lieutenant's prose" had a noticeable influence on the entire literary process of the second half of the 20th century. However, today there is no generally accepted definition of this literary movement. It is interpreted in different ways: as prose created by front-line soldiers who went through the war with the rank of lieutenants, or as prose in which the main characters are young lieutenants. “General’s prose” is characterized in a similar way, which means works created in the “general’s” (epic novel) format by the “generals” of literature (for example, K. Simonov).
Speaking about works created by front-line writers exploring the development of a young war participant, we will resort to the concept of “lieutenant prose” as the most widely used one. Its origins lay in V. Nekrasov’s novel “In the Trenches of Stalingrad.” The author, having himself gone through the war as an officer in a sapper battalion, was able to artistic form show the “truth of the trenches”, in which the heroes were a simple soldier, a simple officer. And the victory was won by ordinary people - the people. This theme became central to the best war fiction of the 1950s and 1960s.
In this regard, the following authors and their works may be mentioned. The story by K. Vorobyov (1919–1975) “Killed near Moscow” (1963) is written very emotionally, but realistically. Plot: a company of Kremlin cadets under the command of the slender, fit captain Ryumin was sent to defend Moscow. A company of soldiers and the defense of Moscow! The company died, and Captain Ryumin shot himself - he put a bullet in his heart, as if atonement for his sin for the death of inexperienced boys. They, the Kremlin cadets, are slender, one meter one hundred and eighty-three centimeters tall, they look perfect, and they are sure that the command values them, because they are a special unit. But the cadets are abandoned by their command, and Captain Ryumin leads them into an obviously unequal battle. There was practically no fighting, there was an unexpected and stunning attack by the Germans, from which there was no escape anywhere - the NKVD troops controlled them from behind.
Yu. Bondarev, in the novel “Hot Snow” (1965–1969), tried to develop the traditions of “lieutenant prose” at a new level, entering into a hidden polemic with its characteristic “remarqueism”. Moreover, by that time “lieutenant prose” was experiencing a certain crisis, which was reflected in some monotony artistic techniques, plot moves and situations, and in the repeatability of the very system of images of the works. The action of Y. Bondarev's novel takes place within 24 hours, during which Lieutenant Drozdovsky's battery, which remained on the southern bank, repelled the attacks of one of the tank divisions of Manstein's group, eager to help Marshal Paulus's army, which was encircled at Stalingrad. However, this particular episode of the war turns out to be the turning point from which the victorious offensive of the Soviet troops began, and for this reason the events of the novel unfold as if on three levels: in the trenches of an artillery battery, at the army headquarters of General Bessonov and, finally, at the headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, where Before being assigned to the active army, the general has to endure a very difficult psychological duel with Stalin himself. Battalion commander Drozdovsky and the commander of one of the artillery platoons, Lieutenant Kuznetsov, personally meet with General Bessonov three times.
By characterizing the war as a “test of humanity,” Yu. Bondarev only expressed what determined the face of the military story of the 1960–1970s: many prose-battle writers placed emphasis in their works on depicting the inner world of the heroes and refracting the experience of war in it , on the transfer of the very process of human moral choice. However, the writer’s partiality for his favorite characters was sometimes expressed in the romanticization of their images - a tradition set by A. Fadeev’s novel “The Young Guard” (1945). In this case, the character of the characters did not change, but was only revealed extremely clearly in the exceptional circumstances in which the war placed them.
This tendency was most clearly expressed in the stories of B. Vasiliev “And the Dawns Here Are Quiet” (1969) and “Not on the Lists” (1975). The peculiarity of the writer’s military prose is that he always chooses episodes that are insignificant from the point of view of global historical events, but speak a lot about the highest spirit of those who were not afraid to oppose the superior forces of the enemy and won victory. Critics saw many inaccuracies and even “impossibilities” in B. Vasiliev’s story “The Dawns Here Are Quiet,” which takes place in the forests and swamps of Karelia (for example, the White Sea-Baltic Canal, which the sabotage group was targeting, has not been operational since the fall of 1941 ). But the writer was not interested in historical accuracy here, but in the situation itself, when five fragile girls, led by foreman Fedot Baskov, entered into an unequal battle with sixteen thugs.
The image of Baskov, in essence, goes back to Lermontov’s Maxim Maksimych - a man, perhaps poorly educated, but whole, wise in life and endowed with a noble and kind heart. Vaskov does not understand the intricacies of world politics or fascist ideology, but in his heart he feels the bestial essence of this war and its causes and cannot justify the death of five girls by any higher interests.
The image of female anti-aircraft gunners embodied the typical destinies of women of the pre-war and war years: different social status and educational level, different characters, interests. However, for all their life-like accuracy, these images are noticeably romanticized: in the writer’s depiction, each of the girls is beautiful in her own way, each worthy of her own life story. And the fact that all the heroines die emphasizes the inhumanity of this war, which affects the lives of even the people furthest from it. The fascists are contrasted with romanticized images of girls using the technique of contrast. Their images are grotesque, deliberately reduced, and this expresses the writer’s main idea about the nature of a person who has taken the path of murder. This thought illuminates with particular clarity that episode of the story in which the death cry sounds Sonya Gurvich, escaped because the blow of the knife was intended for a man, but landed in a woman’s chest. With the image of Liza Brichkina, a line of possible love is introduced into the story. From the very beginning, Vaskov and Lisa liked each other: she liked her figure and sharpness, he liked her masculine thoroughness. Lisa and Vaskov have a lot in common, but the heroes never managed to sing together, as the foreman promised: the war destroys nascent feelings at the root. The ending of the story reveals the meaning of its title. The work closes with a letter, judging by the language, written by a young man who became an accidental witness of Vaskov’s return to the place of the girls’ deaths along with Rita’s adopted son Albert. Thus, the hero’s return to the place of his feat is shown through the eyes of a generation whose right to life was defended by people like Vaskov. Such symbolization of images and philosophical understanding of situations of moral choice are very characteristic of a military story. Prose writers thereby continue the reflections of their predecessors on the “eternal” questions about the nature of good and evil, the degree of human responsibility for actions seemingly dictated by necessity. Hence the desire of some writers to create situations that, in their universality, semantic capacity and categorical moral and ethical conclusions, would approach a parable, only colored by the author’s emotion and enriched with completely realistic details.
It is not for nothing that the concept of a “philosophical tale of war” was even born, associated primarily with the work of the Belarusian prose writer-front-line soldier Vasil Bykov, with such stories as “Sotnikov” (1970), “Obelisk” (1972), “Sign of Trouble” (1984) . V. Bykov’s prose is often characterized by a too straightforward opposition between a person’s physical and moral health. However, the inferiority of the soul of some heroes is not revealed immediately, not in everyday life: a “moment of truth” is needed, a situation of categorical choice that immediately reveals the true essence of a person. The fisherman, the hero of V. Bykov’s story “Sotnikov,” is full of vitality, knows no fear, and Rybak’s comrade, sick, not very strong, with “thin hands,” Sotnikov gradually begins to seem to him only a burden. Indeed, largely due to the fault of the latter, the foray of the two partisans ended in failure. Sotnikov is a purely civilian man. Until 1939, he worked at a school; his physical strength was replaced by stubbornness. It was stubbornness that prompted Sotnikov three times to try to get out of the encirclement in which his destroyed battery found himself, before the hero fell into the hands of the partisans. Whereas Rybak, from the age of 12, was engaged in hard peasant labor and therefore endured it more easily physical exercise and deprivation. It is also noteworthy that Rybak is more inclined to moral compromises. Thus, he is more tolerant of the elder Peter than Sotnikov, and does not dare to punish him for his service to the Germans. Sotnikov, on the other hand, is not inclined to compromise at all, which, however, according to V. Bykov, testifies not to the hero’s limitations, but to his excellent understanding of the laws of war. Indeed, unlike Rybak, Sotnikov already knew what captivity was and was able to pass this test with honor because he did not compromise with his conscience. The “moment of truth” for Sotnikov and Rybak was their arrest by the police, the scene of interrogation and execution. The fisherman, who has always found a way out of any situation, tries to outwit the enemy, not realizing that, having taken such a path, he will inevitably come to betrayal, because he has already put his own salvation above the laws of honor and camaraderie. He yields to the enemy step by step, refusing first to think about saving the woman who hid him and Sotnikov in the attic, then about saving Sotnikov himself, and then his own soul. Once in hopeless situation, The fisherman, in the face of imminent death, became cowardly, preferring animal life to human death.
The change in approach to conflicts in military prose can also be traced when analyzing works different years one writer. Already in his first stories, V. Bykov sought to free himself from stereotypes when depicting war. The writer always has extremely tense situations in his field of vision. The heroes are faced with the need to make their own decisions. So, for example, it happened with Lieutenant Ivanovsky in the story “To Live Until Dawn” (1972) - he risked himself and those who went on a mission with him and died. There was no warehouse with weapons for which this sortie was organized. In order to somehow justify the sacrifices already made, Ivanovsky hopes to blow up the headquarters, but it was not possible to find it either. In front of him, mortally wounded, a transport worker appears, at whom the lieutenant, having gathered his remaining strength, throws a grenade. V. Bykov made the reader think about the meaning of the concept of “feat”.
At one time, there were debates about whether teacher Moroz could be considered a hero in “Obelisk” (1972), if he did not do anything heroic, did not kill a single fascist, but only shared the fate of the dead students. The characters in other stories by V. Bykov did not correspond to standard ideas about heroism. Critics were embarrassed by the appearance of a traitor in almost every one of them (Rybak in Sotnikov, 1970; Anton Golubin in Go and Not Return, 1978, etc.), who until the fateful moment was an honest partisan, but gave in when he had to take risks for the sake of conservation own life. For V. Bykov, it did not matter from which observation point the observation was carried out, it was important how the war was seen and depicted. He showed the multi-motivation of actions performed in extreme situations. The reader was given the opportunity, without rushing to judgment, to understand those who were clearly wrong.
In the works of V. Bykov, the connection between the military past and the present is usually emphasized. In “The Wolf Pack” (1975), a former soldier remembers the war, having come to the city to look for the baby he once saved and make sure that such a high price was not paid for his life in vain (his father and mother died, and he, Levchuk, became disabled) . The story ends with a premonition of their meeting.
Another veteran, Associate Professor Ageev, is excavating a quarry (“Quarry”, 1986), where he was once shot, but miraculously survived. The memory of the past haunts him, forces him to rethink the past again and again, to be ashamed of thoughtless fears regarding those who, like priest Baranovskaya, were labeled an enemy.
In the 1950s–1970s. Several major works appear, the purpose of which is to epically cover the events of the war years, to comprehend the fate of individuals and their families in the context of the national fate. In 1959, the first novel “The Living and the Dead” of K. Simonov’s trilogy of the same name was published, the second novel “Soldiers Are Not Born” and the third “The Last Summer” were published, respectively, in 1964 and 1970–1971. In 1960, a draft of V. Grossman’s novel “Life and Fate”, the second part of the dilogy “For a Just Cause” (1952), was completed, but a year later the manuscript was arrested by the KGB, so the general reader at home was able to get acquainted with the novel only in 1988 G.
In the first book of K. Simonov’s trilogy “The Living and the Dead,” the action takes place at the beginning of the war in Belarus and near Moscow at the height of military events. War correspondent Sintsov, leaving encirclement with a group of comrades, decides to leave journalism and join General Serpilin’s regiment. Human history These two heroes are the focus of the author's attention, without disappearing behind the large-scale events of the war. The writer touched on many topics and problems that were previously impossible in Soviet literature: he spoke about the country’s unpreparedness for war, about the repressions that weakened the army, about the mania of suspicion, and the inhumane attitude towards people. The writer’s success was the figure of General Lvov, who embodied the image of a Bolshevik fanatic. Personal courage and faith in a happy future are combined in him with the desire to mercilessly eradicate everything that, in his opinion, interferes with this future. Lvov loves abstract people, but is ready to sacrifice people, throwing them into meaningless attacks, seeing in a person only a means to achieve high goals. His suspicion extends so far that he is ready to argue with Stalin himself, who freed several talented military men from the camps. If General Lvov is an ideologist of totalitarianism, then its practitioner, Colonel Baranov, is a careerist and a coward. Having uttered loud words about duty, honor, courage, and written denunciations against his colleagues, he, finding himself surrounded, puts on a soldier’s tunic and “forgets” all the documents. Telling the harsh truth about the beginning of the war, K. Simonov simultaneously shows the people's resistance to the enemy, depicting the feat of the Soviet people who stood up to defend their homeland. These are episodic characters (artillerymen who did not abandon their cannon, dragging it in their hands from Brest to Moscow; an old collective farmer who scolded the retreating army, but at the risk of his life saved a wounded woman in his house; Captain Ivanov, who gathered frightened soldiers from broken units and leading them into battle), and the main characters are Serpilin and Sintsov.
It is no coincidence that General Serpilin, conceived by the author as an episodic character, gradually became one of the main characters of the trilogy: his fate embodied the most complex and at the same time the most typical features of a Russian person of the 20th century. A participant in the First World War, he became a talented commander in the Civil War, taught at the academy and was arrested by Baranov’s denunciation for telling his listeners about the strength of the German army, while all the propaganda insisted that in the event of a war we would win with a small one blood, but we will fight on foreign territory. Liberated from a concentration camp at the beginning of the war, Serpilin, by his own admission, “forgot nothing and forgave nothing,” but realized that this was not the time to indulge in grievances - he had to save his homeland. Outwardly stern and taciturn, demanding of himself and his subordinates, he tries to take care of the soldiers and suppresses any attempts to achieve victory at any cost. In the third book of the novel, K. Simonov showed this man’s capacity for great love. Another central character of the novel, Sintsov, was originally conceived by the author solely as a war correspondent for one of the central newspapers. This made it possible to throw the hero into the most important sectors of the front, creating a large-scale chronicle novel. At the same time, there was a danger of depriving him of his individuality and making him only a mouthpiece for the author’s ideas. The writer quickly realized this danger and already in the second book of the trilogy he changed the genre of his work: the chronicle novel became a novel of destinies, which together recreate the scale of the people’s battle with the enemy. And Sintsov became one of acting characters, who suffered injuries, encirclement, and participation in the November 1941 parade (from where the troops went straight to the front). The fate of the war correspondent was replaced by a soldier's fate: the hero went from a private to a senior officer.
Having completed the trilogy, K. Simonov sought to complement it, to emphasize the ambiguity of his position. This is how “ Different days war" (1970–1980), and after the writer's death, "Letters about War" (1990) were published.
Quite often, K. Simonov’s epic novel is compared with V. Grossman’s work “Life and Fate.” The war and the Battle of Stalingrad are only one of the components of V. Grossman’s grandiose epic “Life and Fate,” although the main action of the work takes place in 1943 and the fates of most of the heroes are in one way or another connected with the events taking place around the city on the Volga. The image of a German concentration camp in the novel is replaced by scenes in the dungeons of Lubyanka, and the ruins of Stalingrad by the laboratories of the institute evacuated to Kazan, where the physicist Strum struggles with the mysteries of the atomic nucleus. However, it is not “folk thought” or “family thought” that determines the face of the work - in this, V. Grossman’s epic is inferior to the masterpieces of L. Tolstoy and M. Sholokhov. The writer is focused on something else: the subject of his reflections is the concept of freedom, as evidenced by the title of the novel. V. Grossman contrasts fate as the power of fate or objective circumstances weighing on a person with life as the free realization of personality even in conditions of its absolute lack of freedom. The writer is convinced that one can arbitrarily dispose of the lives of thousands of people, essentially remaining a slave like General Neudobnov or Commissar Getmanov. Or you can die unconquered in the gas chamber of a concentration camp: this is how military doctor Sofya Osipovna Levinton dies, until the last minute caring only about easing the torment of the boy David.
V. Grossman’s underlying thought that the source of freedom or lack of freedom of an individual is in the individual himself explains why the defenders of Grekov’s house, doomed to death, turn out to be much freer than Krymov, who came to judge them. Krymov’s consciousness is enslaved by ideology; he is, in a sense, a “man in a case,” albeit not as blinkered as some of the other heroes of the novel. Even I. S. Turgenev in the image of Bazarov, and then F. M. Dostoevsky convincingly showed how the struggle between “dead theory” and “living life” in the minds of such people often ends in the victory of theory: it is easier for them to admit the “wrongness” of life than infidelity the “only true” idea designed to explain this life. And therefore, when in a German concentration camp, Obersturmbannführer Liss convinces the old Bolshevik Mostovsky that they have much in common (“We are a form of a single entity - the party state”), Mostovsky can only respond to his enemy with silent contempt. He almost feels with horror how “dirty doubts” suddenly appear in his mind, not without reason called by V. Grossman “the dynamite of freedom.” The writer still sympathizes with such “hostages of the idea” as Mostovsky or Krymov, but his sharp rejection is caused by those whose ruthlessness towards people stems not from loyalty to established beliefs, but from the absence of them. Commissar Getmanov, once the secretary of the regional committee in Ukraine, is a mediocre warrior, but a talented exposer of “deviators” and “enemies of the people”, sensitive to any fluctuation in the party line. In order to receive a reward, he is able to send tankmen who have not slept for three days on the offensive, and when the commander of the tank corps Novikov, in order to avoid unnecessary casualties, delayed the start of the offensive for eight minutes, Getmanov, kissing Novikov for his victorious decision, immediately wrote a denunciation against him to Headquarters.
3.Among the works about the war that appeared in last years, two novels attract attention: “Cursed and Killed” by V. Astafiev (1992–1994) and “The General and His Army” by G. Vladimov (1995).
Works that restore the truth about the war cannot be light - the topic itself does not allow it, their goal is different - to awaken the memory of descendants. V. Astafiev’s monumental novel “Cursed and Killed” tackles the military theme in an incomparably harsher vein. In its first part, “The Devil’s Pit,” the writer tells the story of the formation of the 21st Infantry Regiment, in which, even before being sent to the front, those who were beaten to death by a company commander or shot for unauthorized absence die, those who are called upon to soon stand up for the defense of the Motherland are maimed physically and spiritually. The second part, “Bridgehead,” dedicated to the crossing of the Dnieper by our troops, is also full of blood, pain, descriptions of arbitrariness, bullying, and theft, which flourish in the army in the field. Neither the occupiers nor the home-grown monsters can forgive the writer for his cynically callous attitude towards human life. This explains the angry pathos of the author’s digressions and descriptions that are beyond the pale in their merciless frankness in this work, whose artistic method is not without reason defined by critics as “cruel realism.”
The fact that G. Vladimov himself was still a boy during the war determined both strong and weak sides his acclaimed novel The General and His Army (1995). The experienced eye of a front-line soldier will see many inaccuracies and overexposures in the novel, including those unforgivable even for a work of fiction. However, this novel is interesting because it is an attempt to look at events from a Tolstoyan distance that once became turning points for the entire world history. It is not for nothing that the author does not hide the direct similarities between his novel and the epic “War and Peace” (for more information about the novel, see the chapter of the textbook “Modern Literary Situation”). The very fact of the appearance of such a work suggests that the military theme in literature has not exhausted itself and will never exhaust itself. The key to this is the living memory of the war among those who know about it only from the lips of its participants and from history textbooks. And considerable credit for this belongs to the writers who, having gone through the war, considered it their duty to tell the whole truth about it, no matter how bitter it was.
Warning to warrior-writers: “whoever lies about the past war brings the future war closer” (V.P. Astafiev). Understanding the truth of the trenches is a matter of honor for any person. War is terrible, and a stable gene must be developed in the body of the new generation to prevent this from happening again. It’s not for nothing that V. Astafiev chose the saying of the Siberian Old Believers as the epigraph of his main novel: “It was written that everyone who sows unrest, war and fratricide on earth will be cursed and killed by God.”
4.During the Great Patriotic War, keeping diaries at the front was prohibited. Having analyzed the creative activity of front-line writers, it can be noted that such writers as A. T. Tvardovsky, V. V. Vishnevsky, V. V. Ivanov gravitated towards diary prose; G. L. Zanadvorov kept a diary during the occupation. The specific features of the poetics of diary prose of writers - the synthesis of lyrical and epic principles, aesthetic organization - are confirmed in many memoir-diary samples. Despite the fact that writers keep diaries for themselves, the works require artistic mastery from the creators: diaries are characterized by a special style of presentation, characterized by the capacity of thought, aphoristic expression, and precision of words. Such features allow the researcher to call the writer’s diaries independent micro-works. The emotional impact in the diaries is achieved by the author through the selection of specific facts, the author's commentary, and subjective interpretation of events. The diary is based on the transmission and reconstruction of the real through the personal representations of the author, and the emotional background depends on his state of mind.
Along with the obligatory structural components of diary prose, specific artistic examples may contain specific mechanisms for expressing attitudes towards reality. The diary prose of writers during the Great Patriotic War is characterized by the presence of such inserted plots as prose poems, short stories, and landscape sketches. Memoirs and diaries of the Great Patriotic War are confessional and sincere. Using the potential of wartime memoir and diary prose, the authors of memoirs and diaries were able to express the mood of the era and create a vivid idea of life during the war.
Memoirs of military leaders, generals, officers, and soldiers play a major role in the study of the Great Patriotic War. They were written by direct participants in the war, and, therefore, are quite objective and contain important information about the course of the war, its operations, military losses, etc.
Memoirs were left by I. Kh. Bagramyan, S. S. Biryuzov, P. A. Belov,
A. M. Vasilevsky, K. N. Galitsky, A. I. Eremenko, G. K. Zhukov,
I. S. Konev, N. G. Kuznetsov, A. I. Pokryshkin, K. K. Rokossovsky and others. Collections of memoirs devoted to a specific topic (battle or branch of the military) were also published, such as, for example, “In battles for Transcarpathia", "Stalingrad Epic", "Liberation of Belarus" and so on. The leaders of the partisan movement also left memoirs: G. Ya. Bazima,
P. P. Vershigor, P. K. Ignatov and others.
Many books of memoirs of military leaders have special appendices, diagrams, maps, which not only explain what is written, but are also an important source in themselves, as they contain features of military operations, lists of commanding personnel and fighting techniques, as well as the number of troops and some other information .
Most often, events in such memoirs are arranged in chronological order.
Many military leaders based their diaries not only on personal memories, but also actively used elements of a research nature (referring to archives, facts, and other sources). So, for example, A. M. Vasilevsky in his memoir “The Work of a Whole Life” indicates that the book is based on factual material that is well known to him and confirmed archival documents, much of which has not yet been published.
Such memoirs become more reliable and objective, which, of course, increases their value for the researcher, since in this case there is no need to check every fact presented.
Another feature memoir literature, written by military people (as, indeed, other memoirs of the Soviet period), is strict censorship control over the facts described. The presentation of military events required a special approach, since the official and presented versions should not have any discrepancies. The memoirs of the war were supposed to indicate the leading role of the party in defeating the enemy, facts that were “shameful” for the front, miscalculations and mistakes of the command and, of course, top secret information. This must be taken into account when analyzing a particular work.
Marshal of the Soviet Union G.K. Zhukov left a rather significant memoir work, “Memories and Reflections,” which tells not only about the Great Patriotic War, but also about the years of his youth, the Civil War, and military clashes with Japan. This information is extremely important as a historical source, although it is often used by researchers only as illustrative material. The memoirs of four-time Hero of the Soviet Union G. K. Zhukov, “Memories and Reflections,” were first released in 1969, 24 years after the victory in the Great Patriotic War. Since then, the book has been very popular not only among ordinary readers, but also among historians, as a source of quite important information.
In Russia, the memoirs were republished 13 times. The 2002 edition (used when writing the work) was timed to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Moscow and the 105th anniversary of the birth of G. K. Zhukov. The book was also published in thirty foreign countries, in 18 languages, with a circulation of more than seven million copies. Moreover, on the cover of the edition of the memoirs in Germany it is stated: “One of the greatest documents of our era.”
Marshall worked on “Memories and Reflections” for about ten years. During this period, he was in disgrace and was ill, which affected the speed of writing his memoirs. In addition, the book was subject to strict censorship.
For the second edition, G. K. Zhukov revised some chapters, corrected errors and wrote three new chapters, and also introduced new documents, descriptions and data, which increased the volume of the book. The two-volume book was published after his death.
When comparing the text of the first edition (published in 1979) and subsequent ones (published after his death), the distortion and absence of some places are striking. In 1990, a revised edition was published for the first time, based on the Marshal’s own manuscript. It differed significantly from others in the presence of sharp criticism of government bodies, the army and state policy in general. The 2002 edition consists of two volumes. The first volume includes 13 chapters, the second – 10.
Questions and tasks for self-control
1. Determine the periodization of the theme of the Great Patriotic War in the history of the development of Russian literature, supporting your opinion with an analysis of works of art by 3-4 authors.
2. Why do you think in the period 1941–1945. writers did not cover the horrors of war? What pathos prevails in the works of art of this period?
3. B school course literature about the Great Patriotic War is proposed to study “Son of the Regiment” (1944) by V. Kataev about the serene adventures of Vanya Solntsev. Do you agree with this choice? Identify the author school curriculum on literature.
4. Determine the dynamics of the depiction of Russian character in different periods of the development of the topic in literature. Have the dominant behavior and the main character traits of the hero changed?
5. Propose a list of literary texts about the Great Patriotic War, which can become the basis of an elective course for 11th grade students of a secondary school.
7 Military lyrics of the Great War. – M.: Khud. lit., 1989. – 314 p.
Grossman, V. S. Life and Fate / V. S. Grossman. – M.: Khud. lit., 1999. – P. 408.
Many years separate us from the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945). But time does not reduce interest in this topic, drawing the attention of today’s generation to the distant years at the front, to the origins of the feat and courage of the Soviet soldier - a hero, liberator, humanist. Yes, it is difficult to overestimate the writer’s word on war and about war; An apt, striking, uplifting word, poem, song, ditty, a bright heroic image of a fighter or commander - they inspired warriors to feats and led to victory. These words are still full of patriotic resonance today; they poeticize service to the Motherland and affirm the beauty and greatness of our moral values. That is why we return again and again to the works that made up the golden fund of literature about the Great Patriotic War.
Just as there was nothing equal to this war in the history of mankind, so in the history of world art there was not such a number of different kinds of works as about this tragic time. The theme of war was especially strong in Soviet literature. From the very first days of the grandiose battle, our writers stood in line with all the fighting people. More than a thousand writers took part in the fighting on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, defending their native land “with pen and machine gun.” Of the more than 1,000 writers who went to the front, more than 400 did not return from the war, 21 became Heroes of the Soviet Union.
Famous masters of our literature (M. Sholokhov, L. Leonov, A. Tolstoy, A. Fadeev, Vs. Ivanov, I. Erenburg, B. Gorbatov, D. Bedny, V. Vishnevsky, V. Vasilevskaya, K. Simonov, A Surkov, B. Lavrenev, L. Sobolev and many others) became correspondents for front-line and central newspapers.
“There is no greater honor for a Soviet writer,” A. Fadeev wrote in those years, “and there is no higher task for Soviet art than the daily and tireless service of the weapon of artistic expression to his people in the terrible hours of battle.”
When the guns thundered, the muses were not silent. Throughout the war - both in the difficult times of failures and retreats, and in the days of victories - our literature sought to reveal as fully as possible the moral qualities of the Soviet person. While instilling love for the Motherland, Soviet literature also instilled hatred of the enemy. Love and hate, life and death - these contrasting concepts were inseparable at that time. And it was precisely this contrast, this contradiction that carried within itself the highest justice and the highest humanism. The strength of wartime literature, the secret of its remarkable creative successes, lies in its inextricable connection with the people heroically fighting the German invaders. Russian literature, which has long been famous for its closeness to the people, has perhaps never been so closely connected with life and has not been as purposeful as in 1941-1945. In essence, it became literature of one theme - the theme of war, the theme of the Motherland.
The writers breathed the same breath with the struggling people and felt like “trench poets,” and all literature as a whole, in the apt expression of A. Tvardovsky, was “the voice of the heroic soul of the people” (History of Russian Soviet Literature / Edited by P. Vykhodtsev.-M ., 1970.-P.390).
Soviet wartime literature was multi-issue and multi-genre. Poems, essays, journalistic articles, stories, plays, poems, and novels were created by writers during the war years. Moreover, if in 1941 small - “operative” genres predominated, then over time works of larger literary genres begin to play a significant role (Kuzmichev I. Genres of Russian literature of the war years - Gorky, 1962).
The role of prose works in the literature of the war years was significant. Relying on the heroic traditions of Russian and Soviet literature, the prose of the Great Patriotic War reached great creative heights. The golden fund of Soviet literature includes such works created during the war years as “Russian Character” by A. Tolstoy, “The Science of Hate” and “They Fought for the Motherland” by M. Sholokhov, “The Capture of Velikoshumsk” by L. Leonov, “The Young Guard” A. Fadeeva, “The Unconquered” by B. Gorbatov, “Rainbow” by V. Vasilevskaya and others, which became an example for writers of post-war generations.
The literary traditions of the Great Patriotic War are the foundation of the creative search for modern Soviet prose. Without these traditions, which have become classical, which are based on a clear understanding of the decisive role of the masses in the war, their heroism and selfless devotion to the Motherland, the remarkable successes achieved by Soviet “military” prose today would not have been possible.
Prose about the Great Patriotic War received its further development in the first post-war years. “The Bonfire” was written by K. Fedin. M. Sholokhov continued to work on the novel “They Fought for the Motherland.” In the first post-war decade, a number of works appeared that were considered to be called “panoramic” novels for their pronounced desire for a comprehensive depiction of the events of the war (the term itself appeared later, when the general typological features of these novels were defined). These are “White Birch” by M. Bubyonnov, “Flag Bearers” by O. Gonchar, “Battle of Berlin” by Vs. Ivanov, “Spring on the Oder” by E. Kazakevich, “Storm” by I. Ehrenburg, “Storm” by O. Latsis, “The Rubanyuk Family” by E. Popovkin, “Unforgettable Days” by Lynkov, “For the Power of the Soviets” by V. Kataev, etc.
Despite the fact that many of the “panoramic” novels were characterized by significant shortcomings, such as some “varnishing” of the events depicted, weak psychologism, illustrativeness, straightforward opposition of positive and negative heroes, a certain “romanticization” of the war, these works played their role in development of military prose.
A great contribution to the development of Soviet military prose was made by writers of the so-called “second wave,” front-line writers who entered the mainstream literature in the late 1950s and early 1960s. So, Yuri Bondarev burned Manstein’s tanks near Stalingrad. E. Nosov, G. Baklanov were also artillerymen; poet Alexander Yashin fought in the Marine Corps near Leningrad; poet Sergei Orlov and writer A. Ananyev - tank crews, burned in the tank. The writer Nikolai Gribachev was a platoon commander and then commander of a sapper battalion. Oles Gonchar fought in a mortar crew; the infantrymen were V. Bykov, I. Akulov, V. Kondratyev; mortarman - M. Alekseev; a cadet and then a partisan - K. Vorobyov; signalmen - V. Astafiev and Y. Goncharov; self-propelled gun - V. Kurochkin; paratrooper and scout - V. Bogomolov; partisans - D. Gusarov and A. Adamovich...
What is characteristic of the work of these artists, who came to literature in greatcoats smelling of gunpowder with sergeant's and lieutenant's shoulder straps? First of all, the continuation of the classical traditions of Russian Soviet literature. Traditions of M. Sholokhov, A. Tolstoy, A. Fadeev, L. Leonov. For it is impossible to create something new without relying on the best that was achieved by predecessors. Exploring the classical traditions of Soviet literature, front-line writers not only mechanically assimilated them, but also creatively developed them. And this is natural, because the basis of the literary process is always a complex mutual influence of tradition and innovation.
Front-line experience varies from writer to writer. The older generation of prose writers entered 1941, as a rule, already established artists of words and went to war to write about the war. Naturally, they could see the events of those years more broadly and comprehend them more deeply than the writers of the middle generation, who fought directly on the front line and hardly thought at that time that they would ever take up a pen. The circle of vision of the latter was quite narrow and was often limited to the boundaries of a platoon, company, or battalion. This “narrow strip through the entire war,” as the front-line writer A. Ananyev put it, runs through many, especially early, works of prose writers of the middle generation, such as “Battalions Ask for Fire” (1957) and “The Last Salvos” ( 1959) by Y. Bondarev, “Crane Cry” (1960), “The Third Rocket” (1961) and all subsequent works by V. Bykov, “South of the Main Strike” (1957) and “An Inch of Earth” (1959), “The Dead Shame Not imut" (1961) by G. Baklanov, "Scream" (1961) and "Killed near Moscow" (1963) by K. Vorobyov, "Shepherd and Shepherdess" (1971) by V. Astafieva and others.
But, inferior to the writers of the older generation in literary experience and “broad” knowledge of the war, the writers of the middle generation had their clear advantage. They spent all four years of the war on the front line and were not just eyewitnesses of battles and battles, but also their direct participants, who personally experienced all the hardships of trench life. “These were people who bore all the hardships of the war on their shoulders - from its beginning to its end. These were men of the trenches, soldiers and officers; They themselves went on the attack, fired at tanks to the point of frantic and furious excitement, silently buried their friends, took high-rise buildings that seemed impregnable, felt with their own hands the metallic trembling of a red-hot machine gun, inhaled the garlicky smell of German felt and heard how sharply and splashingly the fragments pierced the parapet from exploding mines" (Yu. Bondarev. A look at the biography: Collected works - M., 1970. - T. 3. - P. 389-390.). While inferior in literary experience, they had certain advantages, since they knew war from the trenches (Literature of the great feat. - M., 1975. - Issue 2. - P. 253-254).
This advantage - direct knowledge of the war, the front line, the trench, allowed writers of the middle generation to give an extremely vivid picture of the war, highlighting the smallest details of front-line life, accurately and powerfully showing the most intense minutes - minutes of battle - everything that they saw with their own eyes and that themselves experienced four years of war. “It is precisely deep personal upheavals that can explain the appearance of the naked truth of war in the first books of front-line writers. These books became a revelation such as our literature about war had never known before” (Leonov B. The Epic of Heroism. - M., 1975. - P. 139.).
But it was not the battles themselves that interested these artists. And they wrote the war not for the sake of the war itself. A characteristic tendency of literary development of the 1950-60s, clearly manifested in their work, is to increase attention to the fate of man in its connection with history, to the inner world of the individual in its indissolubility with the people. To show a person, his inner, spiritual world, most fully revealed at the decisive moment - this is the main thing for which these prose writers took up their pen, who, despite their originality individual style, one is inherent common feature- sensitivity to the truth.
Another interesting one distinguishing feature characteristic of the work of front-line writers. In their works of the 50s and 60s, compared to the books of the previous decade, the tragic emphasis in the depiction of war increased. These books “carried a charge of cruel drama; they could often be defined as “optimistic tragedies”; their main characters were soldiers and officers of one platoon, company, battalion, regiment, regardless of whether dissatisfied critics liked it or didn’t like it, demanding large-scale paintings, global sound. These books were far from any kind of calm illustration; they lacked even the slightest didacticism, tenderness, rational precision, or substitution of internal truth for external ones. They contained the harsh and heroic soldier’s truth (Yu. Bondarev. Trend in the development of the military-historical novel. - Collected works. - M., 1974. - T. 3. - P. 436.).
War, as depicted by front-line prose writers, is not only, and not even so much, spectacular heroic deeds, outstanding deeds, but rather tedious everyday work, hard, bloody, but vital work, and from this, how everyone will perform it in their place, victory ultimately depended. And it was in this everyday military work that the writers of the “second wave” saw the heroism of the Soviet man. The personal military experience of the writers of the “second wave” determined to a large extent both the very depiction of war in their first works (the locality of the events described, extremely compressed in space and time, a very small number of heroes, etc.), and the genre forms that were most appropriate the contents of these books. Small genres (story, story) allowed these writers to most powerfully and accurately convey everything that they personally saw and experienced, with which their feelings and memory were filled to the brim.
It was in the mid-50s - early 60s that short stories and novellas took a leading place in the literature about the Great Patriotic War, significantly displacing the novel, which occupied a dominant position in the first post-war decade. Such a tangible overwhelming quantitative superiority of works written in the form of small genres has led some critics to hastily assert that the novel can no longer regain its former leading position in literature, that it is a genre of the past and that today it does not correspond to the pace of the times, the rhythm of life, etc. .d.
But time and life themselves have shown the groundlessness and excessive categoricalness of such statements. If in the late 1950s - early 60s the quantitative superiority of the story over the novel was overwhelming, then since the mid-60s the novel has gradually regained its lost positions. Moreover, the novel undergoes certain changes. More than before, he relies on facts, on documents, on actual historical events, boldly introducing real people into the narrative, trying to paint a picture of the war, on the one hand, as broadly and completely as possible, and on the other, historically as accurately as possible. Documents and fiction go hand in hand here, being the two main components.
It was on the combination of document and fiction that such works, which became serious phenomena of our literature, as “The Living and the Dead” by K. Simonov, “Origins” by G. Konovalov, “Baptism” by I. Akulov, “Blockade”, “Victory” by A. .Chakovsky, “War” by I. Stadnyuk, “Just One Life” by S. Barzunov, “Sea Captain” by A. Kron, “Commander” by V. Karpov, “July 41” by G. Baklanov, “Requiem for the PQ-17 Caravan” "V. Pikul and others. Their appearance was caused by growing demands in public opinion to objectively, fully present the degree of preparedness of our country for war, the reasons and nature of the summer retreat to Moscow, the role of Stalin in leading the preparation and course of military operations of 1941-1945 and some other socio-historical “knots” that attracted keen interest starting from the mid-1960s and especially during the perestroika period.
on the course “History of Russia”
on the topic: “The Great Patriotic War in literature and cinema ”
1. Literature and war
During the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet people, the pen of the writer and poet, the brush of the artist, the chisel of the sculptor, and the camera of the cameraman became the sharpest weapons in the fight against the hated enemy. Many literary and artistic figures wielded a bayonet and machine gun no less skillfully than they wielded a pen and brush. They fought in a single formation of fighters, commanders, and political workers of the active army.
More than a thousand Soviet writers went to the front, and among them were M. Bazhan, A. Bezymensky, P. Brovka, V. Vishnevsky, A. Gaidar, V. Grossman, E. Dolmatovsky, A. Korneychuk, V. Kozhevnikov, K. Krapiva, Yu. Krymov, M. Lynkov, S. Mikhalkov, P. Pavlenko, E. Petrov. A. Prokofiev, V. Sayanov, M. Svetlov, K. Simonov, L. Slavin, V. Stavsky, A. Surkov, M. Tank, A. Tvardovsky, N. Tikhonov, M. Sholokhov. 900 members of the Union of Artists, the entire military studio named after Grekov, went to the front. Composers A. Alexandrov, V. Muradeli and others went to the front; artists P. Sokolov-Skalya, B. Prorokov, P. Shukhmin and others; artists K. Baiseitova, E. Gogoleva, I. Ilyinsky, G. Yura and others.
Many of the writers and artists overcame serious obstacles on their way to the Active Doctors' Resistance Army. A. Gaidar was not allowed to go to the front because of an old severe concussion, Y. Inga - due to tuberculosis, J. Altauzen - due to heart disease, E. Kazakevich was released from combat service for health reasons, he was able to become a only an employee of the editorial office of a military newspaper located in the rear. Soon, without anyone's consent, he moved from this newspaper to the Active Army and became a courageous intelligence officer.
275 writers gave their lives for the freedom and independence of their homeland. 500 writers were awarded military orders and medals, 10 of them became Heroes of the Soviet Union.
Front-line writers performed many heroic deeds on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. Their lives and their names are forever etched in the memory of the Soviet people. S. Borzenko was in the forefront of the landing on the Kerch Peninsula. For 40 days and nights he was in continuous battles. He was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. The writer Yevgeny Petrov was in besieged Sevastopol in the last days of his heroic struggle. Yu. Krymov died while covering the retreat of a group of fighters with light machine gun fire. A. Gaidar stood under the bullets of a German machine gun to warn his fellow partisans of the danger. B. Lapin did not leave the encirclement with the others, but remained to certain death, refusing to leave his seriously wounded friend Z. Khatsrevin. J. Altauzen refused to fly out of encirclement by plane and died in battle. Together with the crew of the submarine, A. Lebedev met death on the seabed. The whole world knows the feat of Musa Jalil, which he accomplished in fascist dungeons.
Soviet writers also accomplished outstanding literary feats. From the first hour of the war, they gave the Soviet people - both the soldiers at the front and the workers of the rear, which was in dire need - a fighting artistic word.
It was difficult for a Soviet person, peace-loving by nature, to understand the seriousness of the situation and to be filled with withering hatred for the enemy. Here it was necessary to penetrate with a fiery word to the very depths of his soul, to convey to every convolution of the brain the awareness of the need for courageous defense of the Motherland, to burn through the hearts with the idea of the Holy Patriotic War. And this task was fulfilled with honor by Soviet writers, poets, playwrights and journalists.
In the first issue of the Pravda newspaper during the war days, June 23, poems by A. Surkov and N. Aseev were published. The next day, Izvestia published the lines of “The Holy War” by V. Lebedev-Kumach, filled with angry passion, which then became, after they were set to music by composer A. Alexandrov, the anthem of the Great Patriotic War. On June 26, I. Ehrenburg’s combative, devastating journalism began with a speech in the newspaper “Red Star”, and on June 27 in “Pravda” - A. Tolstoy. Inspirational patriotic articles by A. Tolstoy, M. Sholokhov and A. Fadeev, exciting essays by N. Tikhonov from besieged Leningrad, all Soviet literature, all art, all the creativity of hundreds and thousands of glorious representatives of our culture, the cultures of all peoples of the USSR, awakened the flame of hatred in people to the invaders, cultivated courage, strengthened the will to fight.
The idea of defending the Soviet Motherland became the main idea of all literature. Its main leading theme is selfless devotion to the Motherland, mortal hatred of the enemy, the heroism of the people, the humanism of the liberation war, and faith in victory. A fighting people, a man at war, has become the main character of works of literature. Turning to the centuries-old history of the struggle of the Russian and other peoples of the USSR against foreign invaders, to examples of heroism included in the world chronicles of glory, L. Leonov wrote: “In difficult times, ask them, these strict Russian people, who collected our homeland bit by bit, and they will tell you what to do, even if you are alone among the enemy multitude.”
I. Ehrenburg made a great contribution to the cultivation of popular hatred of the fascist invaders. He exposed the Nazis as repeat murderers who had long deserved the death penalty for their atrocities. “This war,” wrote I. Ehrenburg, “is not like previous wars. For the first time, our people were confronted not by people, but by evil and vile creatures, savages, equipped with all the achievements of technology, monsters acting according to regulations and citing science, who turned the extermination of infants into the last word of state wisdom.” A. Tolstoy called on Soviet soldiers: “You love your wife and child, turn your love inside out so that it hurts and oozes blood. ... Kill the beast, this is your sacred commandment.”
Soviet literature did not at all portray the enemy as weak, nor did it focus on an easy victory over him. She showed both his strength and his weakness. This strength lay in comprehensive preparation for an aggressive war, in the well-trained army, in its military experience, in the anger, greed and cynicism of the invaders. This weakness consisted in the absence of high ideals, in the baseness of goals, in their contradiction to the inexorable laws of history. The strength of spirit of the Soviet man and his devotion to socialism were incomparable with the gloomy semblance of ideals with which fascism acted.
The most important task during the war was to ensure that its deep meaning and patterns became the property of every person. And this task, along with other forms of educational, patriotic, ideological work, was solved by Soviet literature. By creating images of workers who rose to fight to the death, she used these examples to show strength and invincibility. She strongly defended our ideals and our worldview. The theme of patriotism was the leading theme in the literature of the peoples of the USSR throughout the Great Patriotic War.
The feat of the writers was inseparable from the feat of the entire people and was closely intertwined with it. During the harsh years of the war, the nationality of Soviet literature was immeasurably strengthened. This nationality was manifested in the fact that writers, poets, and playwrights said what the people longed to hear from them. They spoke the truth about the tragedy experienced by the people, and about their great, withering anger, which could not help but save our Motherland and all of humanity from enslavement by fascism. They expressed with all the power of artistic expression the irreversibility of world history, reflected in the victory of socialism in our country and the profound changes to which this victory led.
People at war, people in the rear, people in besieged cities - this is the main character of the fiction of the war years. Soviet literature convincingly showed the decisive role of the masses in the struggle against fascism and in winning the coming victory.
The feat of Soviet literature received legitimate recognition of the people. It was reflected in the increased interest of Soviet people in poetry and prose during the war. It is characteristic that during the war years 169.5 million copies of works of fiction were published.
Poetry turned out to be an effective, mobile, incendiary norm of artistic creativity. Poems and songs by D. Dzhambul, M. Isakovsky, G. Leonidze, V. Lebedev-Kumach, Y. Kolas, A. Kuleshev, Y. Kupala, S. Neris, M. Rylsky, K. Simonov were heard at the front and in the rear , A. Surkov, A. Tvardovsky, P. Tychina and many others. In the fall of 1941, N. Tikhonov wrote a poem about besieged Leningrad at the front, “Kirov is with us.” The poem “Russia” by A. Prokofiev, “Son” by P. Antokolsky, “Funeral of a Friend” by P. Tychina, “Banner of the Brigade” by A. Kuleshev, “Zoya” by M. Aliger depicted the heroic characters of the Soviet people who accepted mortal combat without flinching with the enemy. Zoya in the poem of the same name by M. Aliger, before her death, with faith in the future, says: “I will die, but the truth will win!”
K. Simonov, like many other poets, closely associated with the soldiers of the Soviet Armed Forces, deeply realized their need for lyrical lines. He created a number of poems of a high lyrical sound, in which a purely personal theme rises to the highest level of heroic citizenship. One of the most beloved poems of front-line lyrics, very characteristic of it, was his poem “Wait for me.” In this poem, a fighter addresses his girlfriend with words of love and confidence in her unshakable fidelity, in the fact that her expectation will save him in the midst of the fire of war. This and many other front-line lyrical poems by K. Simonov, M. Isakovsky, A. Surkov and other poets, filled with deep patriotic feelings, became popular folk songs war years. The songs of V. Lebedev-Kumach, and above all his “Holy War”, which perfectly characterized the formidable strength of the Soviet people, who rose in all their heroic stature to a sacred battle with the fascist black force, with the damned horde, inspired the fight against the enemy.
In the fall of 1942, A. Tvardovsky began publishing chapter by chapter his wonderful poem “Vasily Terkin.”
The poem “Vasily Terkin” creates a generalized image of a Soviet front-line soldier who views his military exploits as everyday military labor. But this work is illuminated by the light of a lofty patriotic idea - the idea of protecting the great achievements of socialism from the enemy. Terkin is a hero who absorbed the energy of the people's struggle against fascism. He is the bearer of the best features of the Russian folk character, the personification of the people's intelligence and people's strength. He is full of a clear mind, warmth, love of life, playful humor, warmth and subtle sadness. Terkin is a patriot in the best, highest sense of the word. For him there is no doubt that victory will be snatched from the enemy.
Terkin is a collective image. Such images stood next to real heroes glorified by Soviet literature. One of the outstanding merits of Soviet literature is that it widely covered the heroic exploits of Soviet soldiers, made these exploits widely known, and turned them into the property of the entire country and the entire people. Thanks to this, many such feats were repeated a thousand times. The epic of the heroic Soviet people forever included its faithful sons and daughters: partisan Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya and pilot Alexey Maresyev, battalion commander Bourdzhan Momysh-Uly and infantryman Alexander Matrosov.
Along with the exploits of real heroes, Soviet literature also covered the equally real exploits of entire hero cities. The barbaric blockade of Leningrad lasted 900 days. And all these days in the ranks of the heroic Leningraders were Vasily Ardamatsky, Nikolai Brown, Vera Inber, Vera Ketlinskaya, Alexander Kron, Pavel Luknitsky, Alexander Prokofiev, Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky, Vladimir Rudny, Vissarion Sayanov, Mikhail Svetlev, Nikolai Tikhonov, Zinaida Shishova. They dedicated their creativity to the hero city.
O. Berggolts wrote that she found her happiness as a poet and citizen in a strong connection with the heroic fate of the city of Lenin, of which she felt like an ordinary person.
M. Dudin dedicated his poems to the Hanko garrison. V. Grossman, M. Lukonin, K. Simonov and others wrote about the epic of Stalingrad.
Soviet prose of the war years began to develop rapidly somewhat later than poetry, around the summer of 1942. Such outstanding works of our literature appeared as: “The Science of Hate” by M. Sholokhov, “Russian People” and “Days and Nights” by K. Simonov, “The Unconquered "B. Gorbatov, "Volokolamsk Highway" by A. Beck, the story by V. Grossman "The People are Immortal", "Rainbow" by V. Vasilevskaya, "Invasion" by L. Leonov, "Front" by A. Korneichuk, the story by V. Kozhevnikov "March April”, etc. In many of these works, the features of the folk heroic epic are visible. A great life-affirming force is heard even in descriptions of the death of heroes whose courage is stronger than death. In V. Grossman’s story “The People are Immortal” it is shown that the heroism of fighters raises the greatness of the people even higher.
From the pages of M. Sholokhov’s novel “They Fought for the Motherland” came fighters filled with such courage that death receded before them. These people are deeply aware of the inseparability of their personal destiny from the destinies of the socialist Motherland and in this spirit, by their personal example, they educate and raise soldiers and commanders to heroic deeds. Even when seriously wounded, they remain in service. The communist fighter Streltsov says to his friend Lopakhin: “Even a deaf person can fight alongside his comrades.”
A. Beck’s story “Volokolamsk Highway” shows the complex process of the formation of Soviet soldiers from people who did not own weapons in peacetime. These people, imbued with the ideas of defending the Motherland and hatred of the enemy, having learned his strengths and weaknesses, a short time became a formidable force capable of crushing war machine Hitler's Germany. A. Beck's story shows the friendship of the peoples of the USSR, their unity, reveals the features of the work of commanders and political workers in a harsh war, their role in the education and training of Soviet soldiers.
Many works of Soviet literature during the war years show the suffering of people who fell into fascist bondage. The story “Rainbow” by V. Vasilevskaya is dedicated to this topic. The writer showed the devotion of the population of the occupied territory to Soviet power, the indestructible strength of their moral character. This story, like many other works of Soviet writers, reveals the immeasurable superiority of the morality and spirit of the Soviet people over the fascist barbarians.
A. Fadeev’s novel “The Young Guard” was completed at the end of the war. This novel is based on true story heroic struggle and tragic death of the underground Komsomol organization in the German-occupied mining city of Krasnodon. And in this novel, with great power of artistic expression, the origins of the heroism of Soviet people of various generations are revealed.
At the end of the war, a new theme appeared in literature: the dream of a soldier whose military paths took him far beyond its borders about his beloved homeland. This theme was heard in the song by M. Blanter based on the poems by M. Isakovsky “Under the Balkan Stars.”
Soviet literature marched across the battlefields in unison with all Soviet soldiers. She made the exploits of individual soldiers and commanders known to the entire people; she played her role in making these exploits a mass phenomenon. Soviet writers showed that heroism at the front is a natural manifestation of the character of a person defending his homeland. The Soviet people did exactly this because they could not do otherwise.
Not only writers were visibly and invisibly in the battle formations of the troops. Workers of Soviet art were also present here. During the war, 42 thousand actors visited the front, about 4 thousand concert crews, who held 1,350 thousand concerts. This should also include performances of army and navy amateur performances, which were not recorded. During the war, composers created a number of patriotic works of various genres. Songs played a big role, which were taken up by millions of Soviet soldiers as a reflection of their own feelings. Among the close-up works, an outstanding place belongs to D. Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony, written in besieged Leningrad. The composer dedicated his work to the hero city and the upcoming victory over the enemy. In a symphony by means musical art shows the invasion of fascist hordes, their cruelty and callousness, the struggle with the enemy for life and death and the final victory over fascism, the great triumph of freedom-loving humanity. Having created such a symphony in besieged Leningrad, its author himself accomplished an outstanding heroic feat. The symphony was first performed in Leningrad. From here it traveled around the globe with extraordinary speed, and was performed by the best symphony orchestras.
2. Feat of filmmakers
With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, newsreel cameramen, the vanguard of our cinematography, went to the front. They covered the entire long route of Soviet troops from the western borders of the USSR to the banks of the Volga and from the Volga to Berlin and the Elbe. Many of them died, but cinematography’s duty to the Motherland was fulfilled with honor. During the war, cameramen shot over 3.5 million meters of film. They recorded events that became part of history and created the greatest documentary and historical values. Scriptwriters and directors turn to this treasury again and again. In addition, during the war years, more than 500 issues of various film magazines, 67 short films and 34 full-length war films were created and released.
During the war years, a number of full-length documentaries were created from the materials of front-line cameramen, capturing the most important events of the thunderstorm years. On February 18, 1942, following fresh tracks, the film “The Defeat of German Troops near Moscow” (directed by L. Varlamov and I. Kopalin) began to be shown. Soon another documentary film was released - “Leningrad in Struggle” (directed by R. Karmen, N. Komarevtsev, V. Solovtsev and E. Uchitel). On June 13, 1942, 240 cameramen in 40 places in the country’s rear and along the entire vast front from the White to the Black Seas shot the film “Day of War.” In March 1943, a full-length documentary film “Stalingrad” appeared, filmed by front-line cameramen directly in the battles that took place in the hero city. This film, widely shown outside the USSR, shocked with its documentary style, which showed the courage and exploits of the heroic defenders of the city on the Volga. One of the American newspapers wrote: this film “represents the absolute pinnacle of this genre. No picture could convey so powerfully and so vividly the destructiveness of war. This film is unparalleled in its depiction of struggling Russia.” A number of films were devoted to subsequent offensive operations of the Soviet Armed Forces.
The series of documentaries of enormous impressive power ends with two, the names of which speak for themselves - “Berlin” (directed by Y. Raizman and E. Svilova) and “The Defeat of Japan” (directed by A. Zarkhi and I. Heifetz). About this series of films, I. Bolshakov, who headed the Cinematography Committee during the war, writes: “Many were distinguished by the novelty of directorial techniques, the brightness and extraordinary expressiveness of their shots, high professional cameramanship, good narration, and excellent musical design.
In other words, all components of a documentary film - editing, photography, narration, music - received new development and reached a high level. And documentary cinema rightfully stands on a par with feature cinematography in its ideological, political and educational significance. Soviet documentarians did a lot to raise the importance of documentary cinema to the level of feature cinematography.”
Many documentaries were filmed in partisan detachments, as well as in the ranks of the foreign resistance movement, dedicated to the liberation of the countries they occupied from the German invaders. Such, for example, is the film “Liberated France” by S. Yutkevich.
It was difficult immediately after the outbreak of the war to create full-length feature films devoted to its themes. Life has given rise to an operational form - short film novels. These short stories, including comedies, were combined into “action film collections.” There were such collections of films in 1941-1942. 12 were created. Their success was determined by the fact that the stories were based on reliable facts.
The predominant theme of wartime films, as of all Soviet art and literature, is the heroism of the Soviet people. This topic is covered from different angles in the films “Zoya” by L. Arnshtam, “Once Upon a Time There Was a Girl” by V. Eisymont, “Man 217” by M. Romm, “Invasion” by A. Room, “It Was in the Donbass” by L. Lukov, “Wait for me” by A. Stolper and B. Ivanov, “Sky of Moscow” by Y. Raizman, “Ivan Nikulin the Russian sailor” by I. Savchenko, “At six o’clock in the evening after the war” by I. Pyryev.
A number of films about the heroism of home front workers were also released. A number of works of literature and fine art are also dedicated to this.
Soviet writers, composers, artists, like everyone else Soviet people, were in a single battle formation during the war. According to the Danish writer Martin Andersen Nexo, they represented “forces of action, militant forces... Soviet art and literature did a lot to bring closer the victory of democracy throughout the world.” Their works instilled in Soviet people selfless heroism, moral purity and boundless devotion to the Motherland.
Placed at the service of the great cause of defeating the enemy, Soviet literature and art worthily fulfilled their civic patriotic duty and became a powerful spiritual weapon of the Great Patriotic War.
When I pronounce just the words “Great Patriotic War,” I immediately imagine battles and battles for my homeland, many years have passed, but that pain is still in the souls and hearts of people who lost relatives in those days. But this topic concerns not only those who went through the war, but also those who were born much later. Therefore, we study history, watch films and read books to be aware of this topic. In addition to those terrible moments that our grandparents had to go through, there is another side, this is the long-awaited victory. Victory Day is considered a legendary day, it is pride for all those actions and those people who made every effort to protect their land.
The theme of the Great Patriotic War can undoubtedly be called the main one throughout the 20th century. Many authors addressed this event in their stories and poems. Of course, the main authors were those who themselves experienced that terrible period and witnessed everything that happened. Therefore, in some works you can find completely truthful descriptions and facts, since some of the writers themselves took part in the war. All this was with the goal of describing the reader’s past life, telling why it all started and how to make sure such terrible events do not happen again.
The main Russian writers who passed through the period 1941-1945 can be called Sholokhov, Fadeev, Tolstoy, Simonov, Bykov, Tvardovsky and some other authors. From the above list I would especially like to highlight Vasily Bykov; in his works there were no special descriptions of bloody battles. His task was more to study human behavior in an extraordinary situation. Therefore, the character of the hero, courage, strength, perseverance will especially stand out in his works, but along with positive traits, one can also see betrayal and meanness.
But Bykov did not divide the heroes into good and bad; he gave this opportunity to the reader, so that he himself could decide who to condemn and who to consider a hero. The main example of such a story can be called Bykov’s work “Sotnikov”.
In addition to stories about the war, poetry also played a significant role in Russian literature. They talk not only about the period of battles, but also about the moments of victory themselves. As an example, we can highlight the work of the author Konstantin Simonov “Wait for me”; it added strength and morale to the soldiers.
Andrei Platonov wrote the story "Return". As for me, it is imbued with touchingness and eventfulness, despite the fact that the actions described by the author take place after the end of hostilities. It talks about the return of Captain Ivanov home to his family. But over the years, their relationship changes, and some misunderstanding appears on the part of their relatives. The captain does not know how his family lived while he was away, how his wife worked all day, how hard it was for the children. Seeing that Semyon Evseevich comes to his children, Ivanov even begins to suspect his wife of cheating, but in fact Semyon just wanted to bring at least some joy into the lives of the children.
Constant quarrels and a reluctance to hear anyone other than himself lead Ivanov to the point that he leaves home and wants to leave, but in last moment, seeing how the children are running after him, he still decides to stay. The author showed not the events of the ongoing war, but what happened after, how people’s characters and destinies changed.
Despite the passage of many years since these events, the works do not lose their relevance. After all, they are the ones who talk about the life of our people, about events and the victory over fascism. No matter how difficult and scary it was, the Soviet people never gave up hope of victory. The war became a great event that showed the strength of spirit, the heroism of the entire people, and the victory gave a future and faith in peace to many generations.
The Great Patriotic War in the works of 20th century writers
The Great Patriotic War was a tragedy for many families. Fathers, brothers, husbands went to the front, some did not return. This is probably why the theme of war very often appears in the works of writers of the 20th century. Many of them fought at war themselves, and their works are especially touching and sensitive. Every writer of the 20th century was permeated by this terrible atmosphere, which is why their works are very worthwhile and interesting.
Works began to be written during the war itself. For example, Tvardovsky wrote the poem Vasily Terkin from 1941-1945. This poem has thirty chapters, each of them describes an episode of this tragedy, namely the life of an ordinary front-line soldier. In this poem, Vasily Terkin is the embodiment of a courageous and real man; at that moment, it was precisely such people that should be taken as an example.
Nekrasov's story “In the Trenches of Stalingrad” was also written at the beginning of the war. It is very touching, but at the same time tough: the events described in the story simply tear your heart.
“Not on the lists” was Bykov’s legendary work, which is dedicated to the defenders of the Brest Fortress. After all, it is Brest Fortress was the first to receive a blow from the fascist invaders. The most important thing is that this work is based on real events and impressions.
This trend has grown and grown every year. The Patriotic War left a huge imprint on the destinies of people. They described many of their experiences in poems, stories, novels, songs and verses. This topic always shivers, because every family has faced this tragedy and experienced Hell on earth.
Sholokhov's story “The Fate of a Man” is a tragic work that certainly makes you think. This story is about a simple man, a driver. He experienced the complete oppression of the Germans, having been in a concentration camp. He saw the most terrible things that happened in those years: pain, torment, lost eyes full of tears, the death of innocent people. I saw how the Nazis abused women and children, killed people without even blinking their eyes. The most important difference between this character is that he wanted to live and survive because his family was waiting for him at home.
Despite the fact that many years have passed since these tragic events, works about the war are still relevant today. After all, they reflect the essence of the people, their will to win and patriotism. War is an event when you need to gather your will and strength into a fist and go to the end, to victory.
Several interesting essays
- Essay by Olga Ivanovna Dymova in the story of Chekhov's Jumper (Characteristics and image)
Chekhov's "The Jumper" speaks of the frivolity of people who sometimes consider their life to be a game. Whatever happens, everything will go away on its own and there is no need to try to fix the situation.
- Essay based on Repin's painting Pushkin at the Lyceum exam (description)
IN modern world It is very difficult to find a person who would not be familiar with the work of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. As you know, he received his first education at the lyceum, which was located in Tsarskoe Selo.
- Bazarov's nihilism in the novel Fathers and Sons of Turgenev, essay with quotes
In the novel by I.S. Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons" one of the problems is the confrontation between lordly and democratic Russia. Evgeny Bazarov, the main character of the work, calls himself a “nihilist.”
- The image and characteristics of the Undertaker by Andrian Prokhorov in Pushkin’s story The Undertaker
Andrian Prokhorov is the only main character of the work included in the cycle “Belkin’s Tale”.
- The image and characteristics of Marsilius in the Song of Roland essay
Marsilius is the king of the Spanish city of Zaragoza. This character is distinguished by the most unpleasant traits of a person - cunning, meanness, cowardice, commercialism and cruelty. This is confirmed in many episodes of the work, for example, for the sake of