The civil war in the Quiet Don is described tragically by the author of the novel Sholokhov.
The epic novel "" is one of the most outstanding works of Soviet literature.
Despite the fact that Sholokhov was a zealous communist, in the 1920s he participated in the food appropriation system and in 1965 noisily condemned the writers Daniel and Sinyavsky at the famous trial, he main novel does not quite correspond to a strict ideological line.
The revolutionaries in “Quiet Flows the Don” are not idealized, they are shown to be cruel and often unfair, and the insecure and restless Grigory Melekhov is a genuine seeker of truth.
Melekhov family
In the spotlight - prosperous family Melekhovs, wealthy Don Cossacks. The Melekhovs lived amicably, took care of the household, gave birth to children, but soon Pantelei Prokofievich’s two sons were taken to the front: the First World War was underway. Then it “smoothly” develops into a revolution and family foundations collapse.
The Melekhovs found themselves on opposite sides of the confrontation. Peter and completely different. The first is a simple and ingenuous man, he dreams of becoming an officer in order to defeat the enemy and take away all his goods. And Gregory is a very complex person; he constantly seeks truth and justice, tries to maintain spiritual purity in a world where this is impossible.
So a huge event - the Civil War - was reflected in the fate of an individual Cossack kuren. Grigory cannot get along with either the White Guards or the Bolsheviks, because he sees that both are only interested in the class struggle. The Reds and Whites, one might say, forgot why they were fighting, or did not set themselves any noble goal at all - they only wanted to invent an enemy for themselves, destroy him and seize power.
Despite an excellent military career, which brought Gregory almost to the rank of general, he wants peaceful life, free from violence and blood. He is capable of truly loving, ardently and passionately, but the war takes away from him only love- receives an enemy bullet; After this, the hero, devastated, finally loses the meaning of life.
Mad Entity civil war visible, for example, from the episode with the Bolshevik Bunchuk, who carried out lynching of Kalmykov. Both heroes are Cossacks, members of a once united community, but Kalmykov is a nobleman, and Bunchuk is a worker. Now that both belong to opposing factions, there can be no question of any Cossack community - the former “compatriots” are killing each other. Why - they themselves do not understand; Bunchuk explains his actions like this: “If we don’t them, then they have us - there’s no heart!”
Red commander Ivan Malkin is simply mocking the population of the captured village. Malkin is a real historical figure, a famous figure of the NKVD, who tried to woo future wife Sholokhov. Terrifying the inhabitants of the Soviet country and taking advantage of the favor of the Stalinist leadership, he was nevertheless shot in 1939 on the orders of those whom he “faithfully” served.
But Grigory rushes not only between political camps, getting closer to the Reds and the Whites. He is just as fickle in his personal life. He loves two women, one of whom is his legal wife() and the mother of his child. But in the end he was unable to save either one.
So where is the truth?
Melekhov, and with him the author, come to the conclusion that there was no truth in both camps. The truth is not “white” or “red”; it does not exist where senseless murders and lawlessness occur, where military and human honor disappear. He returns to his farm to live normal life, however, such a life can no longer be called full: the war, as it were, burned out Melekhov’s entire soul, turning him, still a young man, almost into an old man.
Historical figures in the novel
It is estimated that there are more than 800 characters in "Quiet Don", of which at least 250 are real historical figures. Here are some of them:
- Ivan Malkin - the above-mentioned red commander with three classes of education, guilty of massacres and bullying;
- - Commander-in-Chief of the Volunteer Army, commander of the Russian Army in 1917;
- A. M. Kaledin - Ataman of the Don Army;
- P.N. - also Don Ataman;
- Kh. V. Ermakov - commander of the rebel army during the Veshensky uprising on the Don.
There have been different wars; the history of peoples since ancient times is full of them. They are reflected differently in the literature. After 1914, the topic of war became one of the main ones here and in other countries. Memories of that time, terrible in terms of the degree of savagery and inhumanity, are full of scorching anger, especially for those who were in the trenches and escaped barely alive from the flames and black ash. This is how A. Serafimovich, D. Furmanov, K. Fedin, A. Tolstoy and others wrote about the war. The killing field... dressing stations... Half-dead in hospitals... Buried alive... Lost mad... Writers as if they summed up the terrible results of the war: destroyed cities, burned villages, trampled fields... Legless, blind, orphaned...
Reproduction of war and peace in organic unity and mutual conditionality, exact reality, historicism, battle painting and in the center of everything is the fate of man - these are the traditions that were inherited by Russian writers in depicting war. Sholokhov, adopted this tradition and enriched it with new achievements. " Quiet Don"was created by two wars, the largest in the history of nations. No sooner had the fires of the First World War faded into ashes than the imperialists began preparing for the second. The First World War is depicted as a nationwide disaster, so its paintings correspond to gloomy symbolism: “At night, an owl roared in the bell tower. Unsteady and terrible cries hung over the farmstead, and the owl flew to the cemetery, moaning over the brown, grassy graves.
It will be bad, the old men prophesied. “The war will come.”
With sharp, expressive strokes the writer paints the onset of war - a national disaster. IN crowd scenes he gives many people a voice - and the war appears in popular perception, in the element of feelings, experiences, assessments of the people. History bursts into the narrative broadly and freely, in all its realities. The epically dynamically unfolded pictures of Russia's entry into the world war end with an emotional assessment in which the voice of the writer himself sounds alarming.
The war demanded more and more victims. “The front stretched from the Baltic like a deadly rope. Plans for a wide offensive were being developed at headquarters, generals were poring over maps, orderlies were rushing around delivering combat orders, hundreds of thousands of soldiers were going to their deaths.”
Sholokhov's heroes find themselves in various regiments scattered across different sectors of the fronts, which allows the writer to widely cover the beginning of hostilities, focus on depicting the first battles of the South-Western and North-Western fronts, on the events of the invasion of Russian armies into East Prussia, on the famous Battle of Galicia . Sholokhov’s pages are sharply accusatory, their tone is alarming and does not foreshadow anything other than the terrible expectation of death: “Echelons... Echelons... Countless echelons! Along the arteries of the country, along railroad tracks agitated Russia is driving gray blood to the western border.” The front line is depicted as a complete hell. And everywhere in Sholokhov’s works, pain for the land appears: “The ripe grain was trampled by the cavalry,” “The din where the battles were going on, the gloomy face of the earth was torn up by smallpox shells: fragments of cast iron and steel rusted in it, yearning for human blood.” But even more painful was the pain for the people. The war was gathering its terrible harvest: “The dear ones lay with their heads on the four sides, poured out ore Cossack blood and, dead-eyed, restless, decayed under the artillery memorial service in Austria, Poland, in Prussia... The Cossack color left the kuren and died there in death, in lice, terrified."
It’s only been a month of war, and how people have changed: Yegorka Zharkov cursed dirtyly, cursed everything, Grigory Melekhov “was somehow charred and blackened.” War cripples souls, devastates them to the very bottom: “Changes took place on every face, each in their own way nurtured and nurtured the seeds sown by the war.”
In the Vladimirov-Volynsky and Kovel directions in September 1916, the French method of attack was used - in waves. “Sixteen waves splashed out from the Russian trenches. Wavering, thinning, boiling near the ugly lumps of crumpled barbed wire, the gray waves of human surf rolled in... Of the sixteen waves, three rolled in...”
That's how it was terrible truth war. And what a blasphemy against morality, reason, the essence of humanity, the glorification of heroism seemed. Sholokhov debunks this idea of the feat: “And it was like this: people collided on the killing field... they bumped into each other, knocked them down, delivered blind blows, mutilated themselves and their horses and fled, frightened by the shot that killed a man, they left morally crippled. They called it a feat."
The popular perception of the imperialist war as a bloody massacre imposed on the people determined Sholokhov's realism and the open truth of its depiction. The semi-feudal regime that existed in the country became even stronger during the war, especially in the army. Wild treatment of soldiers, punching, surveillance... Front-line soldiers are fed whatever they need. Dirt, lice... The powerlessness of the generals to improve matters. The Allies’ desire to win the campaign at the expense of Russia’s human reserves, which the tsarist government willingly agreed to. And behind all this are countless human sacrifices.
Pictures of the national disaster in “Quiet Don” are painted with exceptional expressiveness. In the fall of 1917, Cossacks began to return from the fronts of the imperialist war. They were joyfully welcomed into their families. But this emphasized even more ruthlessly the grief of those who lost loved ones. It was necessary to take the pain and torment of the entire Russian land very close to the heart in order to speak about it so solemnly and mournfully, as Sholokhov said: “Many Cossacks were missing, they were lost in the fields of Galicia, Bukovina, East Prussia, the Carpathian region, Romania, they lay down as corpses and decayed under the gun memorial service, and now the high hills are overgrown with weeds mass graves, crushed by the rains, covered with shifting snow... The graves are overgrown with grass - the pain is overgrown with age. The wind licked the footprints of the departed, - time will lick both the blood pain and the memory of those who did not wait, because human life is short and it is not long before all of us are destined to trample the grass...”
Sholokhov's humanism resonates with particular force on those pages where war is contrasted with the beauty of human feelings, the happiness of earthly existence, and the victorious march of nascent life. When the Melekhovs received the news of Gregory's death in the war, they were struck with grief. But on the twelfth day, Dunyashka learns from Peter’s letter that Gregory is alive. She runs home with the good news: “Grishka is alive!.. Our dear one is alive! - she screamed in a sobbing voice from afar. “Peter writes!.. Grisha is wounded, not killed!.. Alive, alive!..” And how Panteley Prokofievich rejoices at the birth of two grandchildren: “Isho the Melekhov breed will not die out at once! The Cossack and the girl were given by the daughter-in-law. Here’s a daughter-in-law, so a daughter-in-law!..” Thus, pictures of simple human happiness highlight the entire horror of a bloody massacre - a war that brings horror, death, ruin. This vision of war brings Sholokhov closer to Tolstoy’s tradition of depicting war. The mighty breath of Tolstoy's tradition in "Quiet Don" was reflected in the depiction of the madness of war, its hostility to human nature, in the tearing off of its heroic masks.
The First World War, followed by turbulent revolutionary events, became, as we know, the subject close attention world literature. But for the first time Sholokhov managed to depict this war with genuine epic power and deep historicism and from a truly popular position in “Quiet Don”.
There have been different wars; the history of peoples since ancient times is full of them. They are reflected differently in the literature. After 1914, the topic of war became one of the main ones here and in other countries. Memories of that time, terrible in terms of the degree of savagery and inhumanity, are full of scorching anger, especially for those who were in the trenches and escaped barely alive from the flames and black ash. This is how A. Serafimovich, D. Furmanov, K. Fedin, A. Tolstoy and others wrote about the war. The killing field... dressing stations... Half-dead in hospitals... Buried alive... Lost mad... The writers seemed to sum up the terrible results of the war: destroyed cities, burned villages, trampled fields... Legless, blind, orphaned... the first world war of the Melechs
Reproduction of war and peace in organic unity and mutual conditionality, accurate reality, historicism, battle painting and, at the center of everything, the fate of man - these are the traditions that were inherited by Russian writers in depicting war. Sholokhov, having inherited this tradition, enriched it with new achievements. “Quiet Don” was created by two wars, the largest in the history of nations. No sooner had the fires of the First World War faded into ashes than the imperialists began preparing for the second. The First World War is depicted as a nationwide disaster, so its paintings correspond to gloomy symbolism: “At night, an owl roared in the bell tower. Unsteady and terrible cries hung over the farmstead, and the owl flew to the cemetery, moaning over the brown, grassy graves.
It will be bad, the old men prophesied. “The war will come.”
With sharp, expressive strokes the writer paints the onset of war - a national disaster. In crowd scenes, he allows many people to speak out - and the war appears in the people's perception, in the element of feelings, experiences, and assessments of the people. History bursts into the narrative broadly and freely, in all its realities. The epically dynamically unfolded pictures of Russia's entry into the world war end with an emotional assessment in which the voice of the writer himself sounds alarming.
The war demanded more and more victims: “The front stretched from the Baltic like a deadly rope. Plans for a wide offensive were being developed at headquarters, generals were poring over maps, orderlies were rushing around delivering combat orders, hundreds of thousands of soldiers were going to their deaths.”
Sholokhov's heroes find themselves in various regiments scattered across different sectors of the fronts, which allows the writer to widely cover the beginning of hostilities, focus on depicting the first battles of the South-Western and North-Western fronts, on the events of the invasion of Russian armies into East Prussia, on the famous Battle of Galicia . Sholokhov’s pages are sharply accusatory, their tone is alarming and does not foreshadow anything other than the terrible expectation of death: “Echelons... Echelons... Countless echelons! Through the arteries of the country, along the railways, agitated Russia is driving gray overcoat blood to the western border.” The front line is depicted as a complete hell. And everywhere in Sholokhov’s works, pain for the land appears: “Ripe bread was trampled by the cavalry,” “Where the battles were going on, the gloomy face of the earth was torn up by smallpox shells: fragments of cast iron and steel rusted in it, yearning for human blood.” But even more painful was the pain for the people. The war was gathering its terrible harvest: “The dear ones lay down with their heads on all four sides, poured out ore Cossack blood and, dead-eyed, restless, decayed under an artillery memorial service in Austria, Poland, in Prussia... The Cossack color left the kurens and perished there in death, in lice, terrified."
It’s only been a month of war, and how people have changed: Yegorka Zharkov cursed dirtyly, cursed everything, Grigory Melekhov “was somehow charred and blackened.” War cripples souls, devastates them to the very bottom: “Changes took place on every face, each in their own way nurtured and nurtured the seeds sown by the war.”
In the Vladimirov-Volynsky and Kovel directions in September 1916, the French method of attack was used - in waves. “Sixteen waves splashed out from the Russian trenches. Swaying, thinning, boiling near the ugly lumps of crumpled barbed wire, the gray waves of the human surf rolled in... Of the sixteen waves, three rolled in..."
This was the terrible truth of the war. And what a blasphemy against morality, reason, the essence of humanity, the glorification of heroism seemed. Sholokhov debunks this idea of the feat: “And it was like this: people collided on the killing field... they bumped into each other, knocked them down, delivered blind blows, mutilated themselves and their horses and fled, frightened by the shot that killed a man, they left morally crippled. This was called a feat.” The popular perception of the imperialist war as a bloody massacre imposed on the people determined Sholokhov’s realism, the open truth of its depiction. The semi-feudal regime that existed in the country became even stronger during the war, especially in the army. Wild treatment of soldiers, punching, surveillance... Front-line soldiers are fed whatever they need. Dirt, lice... The powerlessness of the generals to improve matters. The Allies’ desire to win the campaign at the expense of Russia’s human reserves, which the tsarist government willingly agreed to. And behind all this are countless human sacrifices.
Pictures of the national disaster in “Quiet Don” are drawn with exceptional expressiveness. In the fall of 1917, Cossacks began to return from the fronts of the imperialist war. They were joyfully welcomed into their families. But this emphasized even more ruthlessly the grief of those who lost loved ones. It was necessary to take the pain, the torment of the entire Russian land very close to the heart in order to speak about it so solemnly and mournfully, as Sholokhov said: “Many Cossacks were missing, they were lost in the fields of Galicia, Bukovina, East Prussia, the Carpathian region, Romania, they lay down as corpses They decayed during the gun memorial service, and now the high hills of mass graves are overgrown with weeds, crushed by rain, covered with drifting snow... The graves are overgrown with grass - the pain is overgrown with long ago. The wind licked the footprints of the departed, - time will lick both the blood pain and the memory of those who did not wait, because human life is short and it is not long before all of us are destined to trample the grass ... "
Sholokhov's humanism resonates with particular force on those pages where war is contrasted with the beauty of human feelings, the happiness of earthly existence, and the victorious march of nascent life. When the Melekhovs received the news of Gregory's death in the war, they were struck with grief. But on the twelfth day, Dunyashka learns from Peter’s letter that Gregory is alive. She runs home with the good news: “Grishka is alive!.. Our dear one is alive! - she screamed in a sobbing voice from afar. “Peter writes!.. Grisha is wounded, not killed!.. Alive, alive!..” And how Panteley Prokofievich rejoices at the birth of two grandchildren: “Isho the Melekhov breed will not die out at once! The Cossack and the girl were given by the daughter-in-law. Here is the daughter-in-law - so is the daughter-in-law!..” Thus, pictures of simple human happiness set off all the horror of the bloody carnage of war, bringing horror, death, and ruin. This vision of war brings Sholokhov closer to Tolstoy’s tradition of depicting war. The mighty breath of Tolstoy's tradition in "Quiet Flows the Don" was reflected in the depiction of the madness of war, its hostility to human nature, and in tearing off the heroic "masks" from it.
The First World War, followed by turbulent revolutionary events, became, as we know, the subject of close attention in world literature. But for the first time Sholokhov managed to depict this war with genuine epic power and deep historicism and from a truly popular position in “Quiet Don”.
/ / / Depiction of war in Sholokhov’s epic novel “Quiet Don”
M. Sholokhov lived and worked at a time when the lands of Russia were overflowing with military events. At first, it was the first World War, then the Civil War and the Second World War. Of course, so depressed social status could not but be reflected in the work of a talented person.
The epic novel “Quiet Don” captured a historical period of time on its pages. The author is trying to convey all the horror and darkness that the war brought with it. It follows the standard style of novel writing characteristic of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, Sholokhov does not miss the opportunity to introduce something new and unusual into the lines of a grandiose work.
The historical events of the novel cover nine years in the life of a Russian person, when Russia was just coming to its senses after the First World War and immediately plunged into the hardships of the civil war. M. Sholokhov tried to describe all the events taking place around him with the greatest accuracy and truthfulness, without missing out on details and trifles.
The events of the First World War are described in the most terrible colors. Unsteady moans and screams were heard above the farm. The old people prophesied bad things. The military action itself is described by the author so accurately, if Sholokhov had independently taken part in it. The military front stretched for many kilometers. Generals pored over maps, developing large-scale operations to attack the enemy. Ammunition was quickly transported.
In order to make the described military episodes more understandable and poignant, Sholokhov divides the action into various combat areas. Such areas had their heroes who died in vain. The author notes that the Cossack color was forced to leave his native farms and go towards a certain, terrible and dirty death.
The author did not forget to mention the meaning of the word “feat”. It meant a battle when warriors clashed on the battlefield, mutilated themselves and their horses, mutilated their enemies with bayonets and scattered to the sides from loud shots. This was called a feat.
The civil war that enveloped the Russian lands had a different character. She was tragic and stupid and senseless. In this war, due to political convictions, a son could kill his father, and a brother could kill his own brother. During the Civil War, many people found themselves in confusion, because they could not make a choice, determine the best military camp.
The soul of the main character of the novel, Grigory Melekhov, was filled with such painful doubts. Most of the Cossacks, like Gregory, did not recognize either the whites or the reds. They wanted their freedom, a return to their native villages and a quiet life.
In the text of the novel, the reader was able to see a clear picture of military actions that differed from each other in principles and goals. Both the First World War and the Civil War entailed terrible and dire consequences, destroyed families, maimed souls, poisoned the Russian land with peaceful blood.
Both here and here between the rows
The same voice sounds:
“Whoever is not for us is against us.
No one is indifferent: the truth is with us.”
And I stand alone between them
In roaring flames and smoke
And with our own time
I pray for both.
M.A. Voloshin
A civil war is a tragic page in the history of any nation, because if in a liberation (patriotic) war a nation defends its territory and independence from a foreign aggressor, then in a civil war people of the same nation destroy each other for the sake of change social order- for the sake of overthrowing the previous and establishing a new state political system.
IN Soviet literature In the 20s of the 20th century, the topic of the civil war was very popular, as young Soviet republic Having just won this war, the Red troops defeated the White Guards and interventionists on all fronts. In works about the civil war, Soviet writers had something to glorify and be proud of. Sholokhov’s first stories (later they compiled the collection “Don Stories”) are devoted to depicting the civil war on the Don, but the young writer perceived and showed the civil war as a people’s tragedy. Because, firstly, any war brings death, terrible suffering to people and destruction to the country; and secondly, in a fratricidal war, one part of the nation destroys another, as a result the nation destroys itself. Because of this, Sholokhov did not see either romance or sublime heroism in the civil war, unlike, for example, A.A. Fadeev, the author of the novel “Destruction.” Sholokhov directly stated in the introduction to the story “Azure Steppe”: “Some writer who has not smelled gunpowder talks very touchingly about the civil war, the Red Army soldiers - certainly “brothers”, about the fragrant gray feather grass. (...) In addition, you can hear about how Red fighters died in the Don and Kuban steppes, choking on pompous words. (...) In fact, it is feather grass. Harmful herb, odorless. (...) The trenches overgrown with plantain and quinoa, silent witnesses to recent battles, could tell a story about how ugly, how people simply died in them.” In other words, Sholokhov believes that the truth must be written about the civil war, without embellishing the details and without ennobling the meaning of this war. Probably to emphasize the disgusting nature real war, the young writer inserts frankly naturalistic, repulsive fragments into some stories: detailed description the hacked body of Foma Korshunov from the story “Nakhalyonok”, details of the murder of the chairman of the farm council Efim Ozerov from the story “Mortal Enemy”, details of the execution of the grandchildren of grandfather Zakhar from the story “Azure Steppe”, etc. Soviet critics unanimously noted these naturalistically reduced descriptions and considered them a shortcoming of Sholokhov’s early stories, but the writer never corrected these “shortcomings.”
If Soviet writers(A. Serafimovich “Iron Stream”, D.A. Furmanov “Chapaev”, A.G. Malyshkin “The Fall of Dayra” and others) inspiredly depicted how units of the Red Army heroically fought with the whites, then Sholokhov showed the essence of the civil war when members of the same family, neighbors or fellow villagers, living side by side for decades, kill each other, as they turned out to be defenders or enemies of the ideas of the revolution. Kosheva's father, a white ataman, kills his son, a red commander (story "Mole"); kulaks kill a Komsomol member, almost a boy, Grigory Frolov because he sent a letter to the newspaper about their fraud with the land (the story “Shepherd”); food commissar Ignat Bodyagin sentences to death own father— the first kulak in the village (story “Food Commissar”); red machine gunner Yakov Shibalok kills the woman he loves because she turned out to be a spy of Ataman Ignatiev (story “Shibalkov’s Seed”); Fourteen-year-old Mitka kills his father to save his older brother, a Red Army soldier (the story “The Bakhchevnik”), etc.
A split in families, as Sholokhov shows, occurs not because of the eternal conflict of generations (the conflict between “fathers” and “children”), but because of different socio-political views of members of the same family. “Children” usually sympathize with the Reds, since the slogans of the Soviet regime seem to them “extremely fair” (story “The Family Man”): the land goes to the peasants who cultivate it; power in the country - to deputies elected by the people, local power - to elected committees of the poor. And the “fathers” want to preserve the old order, familiar to the older generation and objectively beneficial for the kulaks: Cossack traditions, equal land use, a Cossack circle on the farm. Although, it must be admitted, both in life and in Sholokhov’s stories this is not always the case. After all, a civil war affects the entire nation, so the motivation for choosing (which side to fight on) can be very different. In the story “Kolovert”, the middle brother Mikhail Kramskov is a White Cossack, because in the tsarist army he rose to the rank of officer, and his father Pyotr Pakhomych and brothers Ignat and Grigory, middle peasant Cossacks, join the Red Army detachment; in the story “Alien Blood,” son Peter died in the white army, defending Cossack privileges, and his father, grandfather Gavril, reconciled with the Reds, because he fell in love with the young food commissar Nikolai Kosykh with all his heart.
Civil war not only makes enemies of adult family members, but does not spare even young children. Seven-year-old Mishka Korshunov from the story “Nakhalyonok” is shot when he hurries to the village at night for “help.” Hundreds of special-purpose soldiers want to kill the newborn son of Shibalko from the story “Shibalkovo’s Seed”, since his mother is a bandit spy, and because of her betrayal, half a hundred died. Only Shibalka's tearful plea saves the child from terrible reprisals. In the story “Alyoshka’s Heart,” a bandit, surrendering, hides behind a four-year-old girl, whom he holds in his arms, so that the Red Army soldiers do not rashly shoot him.
The civil war does not allow anyone to stay away from the general carnage. The validity of this idea is confirmed by the fate of the ferryman Mikishara, the hero of the story “The Family Man.” Miki-shara is a widower and the father of a large family, he is completely indifferent to politics, his children are important to him, whom he dreams of putting on their feet. The White Cossacks, testing the hero, order him to kill the two eldest sons of the Red Army, and Mikishara kills them in order to stay alive and take care of the seven younger children.
Sholokhov depicts the extreme bitterness of both warring sides - Red and White. The heroes of “Don Stories” are sharply and definitely opposed to each other, which leads to schematism of the images. The writer shows the atrocities of the whites and kulaks, who mercilessly kill the poor, Red Army soldiers and rural activists. At the same time, Sholokhov depicts the enemies of the Soviet regime, usually without delving into their characters, motives of behavior, or life history, that is, in a one-sided and simplified manner. The kulaks and White Guards in “Don Stories” are cruel, treacherous, and greedy. Suffice it to recall Makarchikha from the story “Alyoshka’s Heart,” who smashed the head of a starving girl—Alyoshka’s sister—with an iron, or the rich farmstead Ivan Alekseev: he hired fourteen-year-old Alyoshka as a worker “for grub,” forced the boy to work like an adult man, and beat him mercilessly “for grub.” every little thing." The nameless White Guard officer from the story “The Foal” kills the Red Army soldier Trofim in the back, who had just saved a foal from a whirlpool.
Sholokhov does not hide the fact that his political and human sympathies are on the side of the Soviet government, therefore he has positive heroes young writer become the village poor (Alyoshka Popov from the story “Alyoshka’s Heart”, Efim Ozerov from the story “Mortal Enemy”), Red Army soldiers (Yakov Shibalok from the story “Shibalkovo’s Seed”, Trofim from the story “The Foal”), communists (Ignat Bodyagin from the story “Food Commissar” ", Foma Korshunov from the story "Nakhalyonok"), Komsomol members (Grigory Frolov from the story "Shepherd", Nikolai Koshevoy from the story "Birthmark"). In these characters, the author emphasizes a sense of justice, generosity, sincere faith in a happy future for themselves and their children, which they associate with the new government.
However, already in the early “Don Stories” statements of the heroes appear, indicating that not only the White Guards, but also the Bolsheviks are pursuing a policy of brute force on the Don, and this inevitably gives rise to resistance from the Cossacks and, therefore, inflates the civil war even more. In the story “Food Commissar,” Father Bodyagin expresses his grievance to his son, the food commissar: “I should be shot for my goods, because I don’t let anyone into my barn, I am the counter, and who is rummaging through other people’s bins, this one is under the law? Rob, your strength." Grandfather Gavrila from the story “Alien Blood” thinks about the Bolsheviks: “They invaded the Cossacks’ ancestral life by enemies, they turned my grandfather’s ordinary life inside out, like an empty pocket.” In the story “About the Don Food Committee and the Misadventures of the Don Food Commissar Comrade Ptitsyn,” which is considered weak and is usually not analyzed by critics, the methods of surplus appropriation during the Civil War are shown very frankly. Comrade Ptitsyn reports how dashingly he carries out the order of his boss, Food Commissar Goldin: “I go back and download bread. And he got so worked up that the man was left with only fur. And he would have lost that good, he would have robbed him of his felt boots, but then Goldin was transferred to Saratov.” In “Don Stories” Sholokhov does not yet focus on the fact that the political extremism of whites and reds equally repels the common people, but later, in the novel “Quiet Don”, Grigory Melekhov clearly speaks out on this matter: “To me, if I’m really saying it, neither these nor these are in good conscience.” His life will be an example tragic fate an ordinary person caught between two irreconcilably hostile political camps.
To summarize, it should be said that Sholokhov early stories depicts the civil war as a time of great national grief. The mutual cruelty and hatred of the Reds and the Whites leads to a national tragedy: neither one nor the other understands the absolute value human life, and the blood of the Russian people flows like a river.
Almost all the stories in the Don cycle have a tragic ending; goodies, drawn by the author with great sympathy, die at the hands of the White Guards and kulaks. But after Sholokhov’s stories there is no feeling of hopeless pessimism. In the story “Nakhalyonok” the White Cossacks kill Foma Korshunov, but his son Mishka lives; in the story “Mortal Enemy,” fists lie in wait for Efim Ozerov when he returns to the farm alone, but before his death, Efim remembers the words of his comrade: “Remember, Efim, they will kill you - there will be twenty new Efims!.. Like in a fairy tale about heroes... "; in the story “The Shepherd”, after the death of the nineteen-year-old shepherd Gregory, his sister, seventeen-year-old Dunyatka, goes to the city to fulfill her and Gregory’s dream - to study. This is how the writer expresses historical optimism in his stories: ordinary people, even in a civil war, retain the best in their souls. human qualities: noble dreams of justice, a high desire for knowledge and creative work, sympathy for the weak and small, conscientiousness, etc.
It can be noted that already in his first works Sholokhov raises global, universal problems: man and revolution, man and the people, the fate of man in an era of global and national upheaval. True, a convincing disclosure of these problems in short stories the young writer did not give, and could not give. What was needed here was an epic with a long running time, with numerous characters and events. This is probably why Sholokhov’s next work after “Don Stories” was the epic novel about the civil war “Quiet Don”.