A.I. Solzhenitsyn was born on December 11, 1918 in Kislovodsk. Lost my father early. As a full-time student at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Rostov University, he entered the correspondence department of the Moscow Institute of Philosophy and Literature. In the fall of 1941 he was drafted into the army, graduated from a one-year officer school and was sent to the front. Awarded military orders. In 1945, he was arrested and sentenced for anti-Soviet activities to 8 years in forced labor camps. Then he was exiled to Kazakhstan.
The “Khrushchev Thaw” opened the way for Solzhenitsyn to great literature. In 1962, the magazine “New World” published his story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”, in 1963 - three more stories, including “ Matrenin Dvor" In 1964, Solzhenitsyn was nominated for the Lenin Prize, but did not receive it. The books “In the First Circle” (published in 1968, in full edition in 1978), “Cancer Ward” (1963-66), “The Gulag Archipelago” (1973-1980) were already published in samizdat and abroad. In 1969, Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Writers' Union. The announcement that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize in 1970 caused new wave repressions, in 1974 the writer was expelled from the USSR for many 20 years. In exile, Solzhenitsyn worked on the multi-volume historical epic “The Red Wheel”, wrote autobiographical prose (“A calf butted an oak tree”, 1975), and journalistic articles. The writer considered it possible to return to his homeland. 1994
The figure of Solzhenitsyn stands out noticeably against the background literary history XX century. This writer occupied spiritual culture modern Russia special place. His very fate and the nature of his creativity make us recall the great asceticism of Russian writers of past eras, when literature in the minds of civil society was surrounded by almost religious veneration. In the 1960s-1980s. it was Solzhenitsyn who was perceived in Russia as the embodiment of the conscience of the nation, as the highest moral authority for his contemporaries. Such authority in the minds of Russian people has long been associated with independence in relation to power and with special “righteous” behavior - bold denunciation of social vices, a willingness to guarantee the veracity of one’s “sermon” with one’s own biography, and serious sacrifices made in the name of the triumph of truth.
In a word, Solzhenitsyn belongs to that rare type of writers in the 20th century that has developed in Russian culture previous century- to the type of writer-preacher, writer-prophet. However, Solzhenitsyn’s social temperament should not obscure from us the actual artistic merits of his prose (as often happens in school, for example, with the figure of N.A. Nekrasov). In no case should the significance of Solzhenitsyn’s work be reduced to his discovery and development of the so-called “ camp theme».
Meanwhile, in the minds of the average reader, Solzhenitsyn’s name is usually associated with precisely this thematic complex, and the merits of his prose are often characterized by the words “truthfulness,” “exposure of totalitarian violence,” and “historical authenticity.” All these qualities are truly present in the writer’s work. Moreover, with his story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” published in 1962, Solzhenitsyn had an unprecedented impact on the minds and souls of his contemporaries, opened up a whole new world for most of them, and most importantly, established a new authenticity criteria.
However, Solzhenitsyn’s artistic world is not only a world of camp suffering. Secretly reading his books (perhaps the most widely read of them was “The Gulag Archipelago”), Russian readers of the 1960s-1980s. they were horrified and rejoiced, saw the light and were indignant, agreed with the writer and recoiled from him, believed and did not believe. Solzhenitsyn is not a writer of everyday life camp life, but not a publicist-accuser either: while denouncing, he never forgot about accuracy and artistic expression images; reproducing life with high degree concreteness, did not forget about the importance of the “lesson” presented by literature. Solzhenitsyn’s writing personality combined the meticulousness of a scientific researcher, the highest “pedagogical” technique of a talented teacher - and artistic talent, an organic sense of verbal form. How can one not remember in this regard that the future writer simultaneously mastered student years the profession of a mathematics teacher and the skills of a writer.
The internal thematic structure of the writer’s prose itself is interesting (partly coinciding with the sequence in which Solzhenitsyn’s works came to the reader): first, the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” (the quintessence of the “camp” theme); then the novel “In the First Circle” (the life of camp scientists in a closed research institute - with a more “gentle” regime and with the opportunity to communicate with smart, interesting colleagues in “intelligent” work); the story “Cancer Ward” (about the fight against the disease of a former prisoner, and now an exile); the story “Matrenin’s Dvor” (about the “free” life of a former exile, even if this “free” village life differs only slightly from the conditions of exile).
As one critic wrote, Solzhenitsyn seems to be creating with his prose a staircase between camp hell and free life, leading his hero (and with him the reader) out of a cramped cell into a wide, unconstrained space - the space of Russia and, most importantly, the space of history. A large historical dimension opens up before the reader: one of Solzhenitsyn’s main books, “The Gulag Archipelago,” is devoted not so much to the history of the camps as to the entire Russian history of the 20th century. Finally, the writer’s largest work, the epic “The Red Wheel,” is directly subordinated to the theme of the fate of Russia, exploring those generic properties of the Russian national character that contributed to the country’s slide into the abyss of totalitarianism.
Solzhenitsyn, as it were, restores the connection of times, seeks the origins of a national “disease” - because he believes in the possibility of purification and revival (the writer himself prefers the quiet word “arrangement”). It is faith that is the cornerstone of Solzhenitsyn’s worldview. He believes in the power of truth and righteousness, in the power of the spirit of the Russian person, and believes in the social significance of art. Origins ideological position writer - in the religious and philosophical teachings of that group of Russian thinkers who, at the beginning of the 20th century, became participants in the philosophical and journalistic collections “Vekhi” and “From the Depths”, in the works of S. Bulgakov, S. Frank, N. Berdyaev, G. Fedotov. The writer is convinced of the need for solidarity, “artel” efforts in the restoration normal life. The title of one of his journalistic works is eloquent in this regard: “How can we organize Russia?”
These are general outline Solzhenitsyn's ideological position. However, no matter how important his beliefs are for understanding the writer’s works, the main thing in his legacy is the living persuasiveness of the artistic text, artistic equipment, and stylistic individuality.
Story life of Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn(11.XII.1918, Kislovodsk) is the story of the endless struggle against totalitarianism. Confident in the absolute moral correctness of this struggle, not needing comrades-in-arms, not fearing loneliness, he always found the courage to resist the Soviet system - and won in this seemingly completely hopeless confrontation. His courage was forged by the entire experience of life, which occurred during the most dramatic changes of the Soviet era. Those circumstances of Russian socio-historical reality of the 30-50s, which broke and destroyed the steel-hard characters of professional revolutionaries and brave red division commanders, only tempered Solzhenitsyn and prepared him for the main work of his life. Most likely, he chose literature as a weapon of struggle - it is by no means valuable in itself for him, but is significant insofar as it makes it possible to represent before the world on behalf of all those broken and tortured by the system.
He graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Rostov University and entered adulthood in 1941. On June 22, having received his diploma, Solzhenitsyn came for exams at the Moscow Institute of History, Philosophy, Literature (MIFLI), where he had studied correspondence courses since 1939. Regular session coincided with the beginning of the war. In October he was mobilized into the army, and soon enrolled in an officer school in Kostroma. In the summer of 1942 - the rank of lieutenant, and at the end - the front: Solzhenitsyn commanded a “sound battery” in artillery reconnaissance. As an artillery officer, he travels from Orel to East Prussia and is awarded orders.
On February 9, 1945, Captain Solzhenitsyn was arrested at the command post of his superior, General Travkin, who, a year after the arrest, gave his former officer a reference, where he listed, without fear, all his merits - including the night withdrawal from the encirclement of the battery in January 1945 ., when the battles were already in Prussia. After the arrest - camps: in New Jerusalem, in Moscow at the Kaluga outpost, in special prison No. 16 in the northern suburbs of Moscow (Marfinskaya "sharashka", described in the novel "In the First Circle", 1955-1968). Since 1949 - camp in Ekibastuz (Kazakhstan). Since 1953, Solzhenitsyn has been an “eternal exiled settler” in a remote village in the Dzhambul region, on the edge of the desert. In 1956 - rehabilitation and a rural school in the village of Torfoprodukt not far from Ryazan, where a recent prisoner teaches, renting a room from Matryona Zakharova, who became the prototype of the hostess of “Matryona’s Yard” (1959). In 1959, Solzhenitsyn “in one gulp”, in three weeks, created a story, upon publication called “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”, which, after much trouble by A.T. Tvardovsky and with the blessing of N.S. himself. Khrushchev was published in “New World” (1962. No. 11). In the mid-50s, the most fruitful period of the writer’s work began: the novels “Cancer Ward” (1963-1967) and “In the First Circle” (both published in 1968 in the West) were created, and work on “The Gulag Archipelago”, which had begun earlier, was underway. (1958-1968; 1979) and the epic “The Red Wheel” (work on a large historical novel"R-17", which grew into the epic "Red Wheel", started in 1964).
In 1970, Solzhenitsyn became a Nobel Prize laureate; he doesn’t want to leave the USSR, for fear of losing his citizenship and the opportunity to fight in his homeland, so he personally received the award and made a speech Nobel laureate are being postponed for now. At the same time, his position in the USSR is increasingly deteriorating: his principled and uncompromising ideological and literary position leads him to expulsion from the Writers' Union (November 1969), and a campaign of persecution of the writer is unfolding in the Soviet press. This forces him to give permission for the publication in Paris of the book “August the Fourteenth” (1971) - the first “Knot” of the epic “The Red Wheel”. In 1973, the first volume of The Gulag Archipelago was published by the YMCA-Press publishing house in Paris.
In February 1974, at the peak of the unbridled persecution launched in the Soviet press, Solzhenitsyn was arrested and imprisoned in Lefortovo prison. But his incomparable authority among the world community does not allow the Soviet leadership to simply deal with the writer, so he is deprived of Soviet citizenship and expelled from the USSR. In Germany, the first country to accept an exile, he stays with Heinrich Böll, after which he settles in Zurich (Switzerland). In 1975, the autobiographical book “A Calf Butted an Oak Tree” was published - detailed story O creative path the writer from the beginning of literary activity to the second arrest and deportation and an essay on the literary environment of the 60-70s.
In 1976, the writer and his family moved to America, to Vermont. Here he is working on full meeting works and continues historical research, the results of which form the basis of the epic “The Red Wheel”.
Solzhenitsyn was always confident that he would return to Russia, even when the very thought of it seemed incredible. But already in the late 80s, the return began to gradually take place. In 1988, Solzhenitsyn was returned to USSR citizenship, and in 1990, the novels “In the First Circle” and “Cancer Ward” were published in Novy Mir. In 1994, the writer returned to Russia. Since 1995, Novy Mir has published a new cycle - “two-part” stories, miniatures “Tiny Things”.
In the works of A.I. Solzhenitsyn, with all his diversity, three central motifs can be distinguished, closely related to each other. Concentrated in his first published work, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” they developed, sometimes separately from each other, but more often intertwined. The “pinnacle” of their synthesis was the “Red Wheel”. Conventionally, these motives can be designated as follows: Russian national character; history of Russia of the 20th century; politics in the life of a person and a nation in our century. These themes, of course, are not at all new to the Russian realistic tradition of the last two centuries. But Solzhenitsyn, a man and a writer, almost panic-strickenly afraid not only of his participation in a literary group, but also of any form of literary neighborhood, looks at all these problems not from the point of view of a writer of one or another “trend,” but as if from above, in the most sincere way ignoring directions. This does not ensure objectivity at all, in artistic creativity, in essence, impossible - Solzhenitsyn is very subjective. Such open literary non-partisanship ensures artistic independence - the writer represents only himself and expresses only his personal, private opinion; whether it will become public depends not on the support of the group or influential members of the “trend,” but on society itself. Moreover, Solzhenitsyn does not adapt to “popular opinion”, knowing full well that it does not always express the ultimate truth: the people, like an individual, can be blinded by pride or delusion, can make mistakes, and the writer’s task is not to indulge him in these mistakes, but strive to enlighten.
Solzhenitsyn generally never follows a path already laid by someone, paving exclusively his own path. Neither in life nor in literature did he flatter anyone - neither the politicians who, like Khrushchev, sought to make him a Soviet writer, castigating the vices of the cult of personality, but not encroaching on the fundamental principles of the Soviet system, nor the politicians of the past who became the heroes of his epic, who, while claiming ways of salvation, were never able to provide them. He was even cruel, turning away and breaking for political and literary reasons with people who sent his manuscripts abroad, often at serious risk to themselves, or who sought to help him publish his things here. One of the most painful breaks, both personal, social, and literary, was with V.Ya. Lakshin, Tvardovsky’s collaborator on Novy Mir, a critic who offered one of the first readings of the writer and did a lot of possible and impossible things for the publication of his works. Lakshin did not accept the portrait of A.T. Tvardovsky in essays literary life“The calf butted the oak tree” and, of course, did not agree with the interpretation of his own role in the literary situation of the 60s, as it developed around the “New World”. Another breakup, equally painful and cruel, was with Olga Carlisle. In 1978, she published the book “Solzhenitsyn and the Secret Circle” in the USA, in which she spoke about the role that she played in organizing secret routes for transferring the manuscripts of “The Gulag Archipelago” and “In the First Circle” to the West and about the cruelty with which Solzhenitsyn spoke about her in “The Calf...”. All this gave many both at home and in the West grounds for accusing Solzhenitsyn of self-centeredness and elementary human ingratitude. But the point here is deeper - it is not at all about personal character traits. This is the firm life position of a writer, deprived of the ability to compromise, which is the only thing that gives him the opportunity to fulfill his life purpose.
A.I. Solzhenitsyn is a whole era both in literature and in public life. Outstanding Russian writer, Nobel Prize laureate in literature, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, laureate of the State Prize of the Russian Federation. Alexander Solzhenitsyn is one of the few writers who emerged victorious from terrible trials. He proved with his life and literary destiny the truth of the proverb “One word of truth will conquer the whole world.”
We bring to your attention materials thematic lesson"A. I. Solzhenitsyn - life and destiny”, dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the birth of Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn.
Lesson option [PDF ] [DOCX ]
Presentation [PDF] [PPTX]
Target: formation of value orientations of students using the example of the personality of A. I. Solzhenitsyn.
Tasks:
- systematization of students’ knowledge about the life and work of A. I. Solzhenitsyn;
- development of skills in working with literary sources;
- introducing teachers to spiritual and moral values.
Exercise. Look at the slide and decide what it is about. famous person Today there will be a speech in class.
Topic of the lesson.
Exercise. Look video and answer the questions presented on the slide.
Questions.
With which historical eras did the work of A. I. Solzhenitsyn coincide?
What stages of Alexander Isaevich’s life can be identified based on this video fragment?
Teacher: Not only his autobiography, but also his works and quotes can tell about a writer.
The teacher invites students to create a value portrait of the writer.
Exercise. Read the quotes by A.I. Solzhenitsyn presented on the slides and determine what values were important to him.
Teacher: As literary heritage Solzhenitsyn left his readers novels and stories, journalistic articles and artistic research, and also lyrical works, which he himself called “tiny ones.”
Exercise. Try to determine what kind of tiny genre this is by matching this word associative words-synonyms.
Teacher: Speaking about tiny things, A.I. Solzhenitsyn wrote: “You can fit a lot in a small form.”
Question: Do you agree with this?
Exercise: Listen to one of the author’s lyrical miniatures and answer the questions.
Questions:
What does A.I. Solzhenitsyn write about?
Why is the work called “Breath”?
The teacher suggests listening to another lyrical miniature by A. I. Solzhenitsyn and answering questions.
Questions:
What biographical fact from the life of the writer does the lyrical miniature “In Yesenin’s Homeland” tell?
Guess why the writer decided to visit the village of Konstantinovo.
Teacher: The lyrical miniature “The Fire and the Ants” is one of the author’s shortest works in terms of volume, but the meaning that the author puts into it is much greater than its volume.
Questions:
What is this work about?
Who do ants remind you of?
How does this work characterize the writer, what value is most important to him?
Teacher: The main themes in the writer’s work have always been the fate and history of Russia, public policy, the problem of man and power.
Exercise. Listen to Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s poem “When I Turn Through It in Sorrow” and answer the questions.
Questions:
What, according to the content of the poem, does Alexander Solzhenitsyn value most?
How did literary creativity affect the fate of the writer?
Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn was born on December 11, 1918 in the city of Kislovodsk in the family of a peasant and a Cossack woman. Alexander's poor family moved to Rostov-on-Don in 1924. Since 1926, the future writer studied at a local school. At this time he created his first essays and poems.
In 1936, Solzhenitsyn entered the Rostov University at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, while continuing to engage in literary activities. In 1941, the writer graduated from Rostov University with honors. In 1939, Solzhenitsyn entered the correspondence department of the Faculty of Literature at the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History, but due to the outbreak of the war he was unable to graduate.
World War II
Despite his poor health, Solzhenitsyn strove to go to the front. Since 1941, the writer served in the 74th transport and horse-drawn battalion. In 1942, Alexander Isaevich was sent to Kostromskoye military school, upon completion of which he received the rank of lieutenant. Since 1943, Solzhenitsyn has served as commander of a sound reconnaissance battery. For military services, Alexander Isaevich was awarded two honorary orders, received the rank of senior lieutenant, and then captain. During this period, Solzhenitsyn did not stop writing and kept a diary.
Conclusion and link
Alexander Isaevich was critical of Stalin's policies, and in his letters to his friend Vitkevich condemned the distorted interpretation of Leninism. In 1945, the writer was arrested and sentenced to 8 years in camps and eternal exile (under Article 58). In the winter of 1952, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose biography was already quite difficult, was diagnosed with cancer.
The years of imprisonment are reflected in literary creativity Solzhenitsyn: in the works “Love the Revolution”, “In the First Circle”, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”, “Tanks Know the Truth”, etc.
Conflicts with authorities
Having settled in Ryazan, the writer works as a teacher at a local school and continues to write. In 1965, the KGB seized Solzhenitsyn's archive and he was prohibited from publishing his works. In 1967, Alexander Isaevich wrote an open letter to the Congress of Soviet Writers, after which the authorities began to perceive him as a serious opponent.
In 1968, Solzhenitsyn completed work on the work “The Gulag Archipelago”; “In the First Circle” and “Cancer Ward” were published abroad.
In 1969, Alexander Isaevich was expelled from the Writers' Union. After the publication abroad in 1974 of the first volume of The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn was arrested and deported to Germany.
Life abroad. Recent years
In 1975 – 1994, the writer visited Germany, Switzerland, USA, Canada, France, Great Britain, and Spain. In 1989, “The Gulag Archipelago” was first published in Russia in the magazine “New World”, and soon the story “Matrenin’s Dvor” was also published in the magazine.
In 1994, Alexander Isaevich returned to Russia. The writer continues to be actively involved in literary activities. In 2006–2007, the first books of the 30-volume collected works of Solzhenitsyn were published.
Date when it broke off difficult fate great writer, became August 3, 2008. Solzhenitsyn died at his home in Troitse-Lykovo from heart failure. The writer was buried in the necropolis of the Donskoy Monastery.
Chronological table
Other biography options
- Alexander Isaevich was married twice - to Natalya Reshetovskaya and Natalya Svetlova. From his second marriage, the writer has three talented sons - Ermolai, Ignat and Stepan Solzhenitsyn.
- In a brief biography of Solzhenitsyn, one cannot fail to mention that he was awarded more than twenty honorary awards, including the Nobel Prize for his work “The Gulag Archipelago.”
- Literary critics often call Solzhenitsyn
Russian thinkers did not consider freedom an instinctive gift, but “a product of spiritual development.” In his time, Hegel made the moral and state structure dependent on the people’s ideas about freedom of spirit - limited or true. In his work “The Meaning and Purpose of History” (1929), Karl Japers gave the concept of freedom as a process that knows no end. He could not help but note that the people do not accept freedom, which is always under attack and “always in danger.” Writers, like philosophers of the 20th century, associate freedom with moral choice, inseparable from consciousness. They consider the problem of moral choice as existential, as a deep problem for every person in order to survive (V.S. Bibler).
The idea of freedom and fate is one of Solzhenitsyn’s main ones. Knowledge of a person’s ability to resist circumstances is, as a rule, the main focus of his works. In failures the will is condensed; Solzhenitsyn’s personality is usually born from the blows of fate. The decision of diplomat Volodin (“In the First Circle”) to go against events turns into a challenge state system, a challenge to fate. The message to the Americans about the impending theft of parts of an atomic bomb turned life around. In an argument with fate, I felt like a “fragile little shuttle”, who was not just pulled under the nose of a “heavy fast ship”, and “he himself went to the battleship with a torpedo.” Free choice is associated with a change in life attitude, with a new attitude towards the world. “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?” - it is said in the Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 16:26). Volodin had a world full of blessings. But he gave it to save his face, his conscience, his purpose. He was ready to throw all the blessings of life “into the underworld for justice alone!” Live to see the end of this gang and listen to its pitiful babble at the trial!” He never had “the most priceless good: the freedom to say what you think.”
At first, we are not given the opportunity to predict who this person will appear in relation to the ship of fate - a fragile shuttle or a torpedo, whether he will submit to fate or stand above it. One thing is clear: his freedom of choice is fraught with a tragic outcome. “The silent bulk will crush him - and no one on Earth will ever know how the puny, white-bodied Innocent tried to save civilization!” This is already the thought of the prisoner who read on the form with his fingerprints “the cosmic formula: KEEP FOREVER!”
Volodin’s choice is both a throw “into the abyss with a quick catch of feelings”, and a “poorly thought out” impulse, and a decision associated with being true to oneself. “He didn’t regret calling. Obviously, it had to be that way.” He is both free and dependent at the same time. His moral choice is determined by both the life attitude and the nature of the individual.
Two heroes are introduced at the beginning of the novel “In the First Circle” - a diplomat and a prisoner, Volodin and Rubin. They do not meet each other, but it is the prisoner who becomes the “catcher” of the diplomat. Working in the Marfinskaya sharashka with a sound encoder, Rubin is looking for Volodin’s trail as a state criminal. The bloodhound and the victim are connected by multidirectional goals. Internal antinomy becomes the form of their connection. According to Volodin, the planet will perish if atomic bomb the communists will have it. And Rubin recognizes its necessity for the Revolution.
The knot that connects these characters is the dispute between Sologdin and Rubin about humanity, history and revolution. “Innokenty Volodin could not imagine now that a tedious, exhausting night argument between two prisoners had an impact on his fate,” which prompted Rubin’s determination to find the person who called the American embassy, “to sniff the trail of this anonymous scoundrel.”
Rubina was “pushed forward by her training in five-year plans and the consciousness of her party duty.” And at the same time, he could not help but understand that he himself was already sick, his wife was getting old, “and he still has to sit for more than five years, and every year the damned apparatchiks are bending and bending the revolution into the swamp.” Guided by the ideology that determined his way of life, Rubin ignores his nature. His bright personality is broader than the narrow communist idea he professes. When he discusses the problem of happiness in Goethe’s tragedy “Faust,” when he carries out the “trial” of Prince Igor, he reveals high intelligence, breadth of thought, and understanding of human psychology. But the Osvobozhdenie ideology, adopted from youth, forces him to run away from himself, from his true understanding things. The personal in him is suppressed by the idea of collectivism. Being, as the greatest gift, is sacrificed to utopia. Contrary to the obvious existence of the “complacent, impenetrable breed” that has become widespread in the country, Rubin considers it a positive force, personifying the dictatorship of the proletariat. Its main goal is to “save the idea, save the banner,” to serve the advanced system. He wants to rise above his fate as a prisoner and devotes his mind and abilities to the service of the existing system. Having long ago lost all personal success, Rubin lived the life of humanity “as if it were his own family.” It seems to him that, neglecting the individual, he serves history.
Ruby in the novel is a tragic figure. He committed treason before others, crossed the prison threshold before others. While working in the large circulation department of the Kharkov Tractor Plant, at the first request to “disarm before the party,” he betrayed his cousin, who had once instructed him to hide the printing font. He was an instrument of the party during collectivization, when he tore up grain pits and did not allow flour to be ground and bread to be baked, although people were dying of hunger. Only now, in prison, did he think about his guilt. “Prison is for you! Get sick for this!” The sleepless nights “exhausted a lot from my sad, mistaken soul.” The moment of awareness of one’s guilt becomes the moment of moral development of the individual.
The confrontation in the novel between Rubin and Nerzhin is a dialogue between a fanatic and a skeptic, a revolutionary and an ascetic. This type of intellectual, striving for “dictatorship in the name of saving the people,” has already been characterized in Russian moral philosophy, which saw a “dividing principle” in “heroic self-affirmation” (S. N. Bulgakov).
The nature of fanaticism has long been considered by thinkers. Hegel in “Philosophy of Religion” wrote about the hierarchy of goals and that every supergoal turns into its opposite, into some kind of endless goal that excludes the realization of the ideal. The desire for a supergoal leads to fanaticism, called “the terrible creation of the 20th century.” “It was fanaticism,” writes S. B. Krymsky, “blinded by faith in an absolute priority goal capable of justifying any sacrifices and deeds, that was the factor in the transformation normal people into the monsters of totalitarianism."
Lev Rubin, in his blindness to the idea, does not see the obvious, and is called a “biblical fanatic”, justifying everything that is done in the name of socialism. History, in his opinion, requires sacrifices. His opponent Sologdin reveals the bloody background of modern fanaticism. The revolution, in his opinion, is “a stupid revolt of the mob”, “the extermination of the nation.”
The need for truth is a feature of the spiritual life of Solzhenitsyn’s heroes, the cornerstone of their ethical quest. They seek moral justification for their actions; they cannot do without ethical sanction. For Rubin it is in the party, in socialism, for Nerzhin - in the inviolability of the individual, belonging to the people, for Sologdin - in Christianity and intellectual courage. The author's consciousness coexists with the spiritual worlds of the heroes.
The basis of all ethical systems is the antinomy of good and evil, their relativity or absoluteness. The official ideological position is presented in the novel “In the First Circle” by a lecture by a regional committee lecturer on “The History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)” for employees of the Marfa sharashka. The lecturer argued that “only matter is absolute, and all the laws of science are relative. ...There are no absolute truths, all truth is relative... The concepts of good and evil are relative.”
Nerzhin and the artist Kondrashev-Ivanov got lost in the “nuances” of good and evil. In the landscapes of the latter, powerful nature - a mutilated oak tree over the abyss, twisted branches, a stormy sky without the sun. The element, in his opinion, corresponds to the national character, “self-burners”, “rebel archers”, “People’s Volya”, “Decembrists”. To reproaches of Shakespeareanism in his paintings and too capital letters over good and evil, the artist angrily objects that for the first time in the 20th century, villainy appeared, above which it is necessary to put “five-story letters so that they blink like beacons.” “Under Shakespeare there were veal games.”
This idea was developed by Solzhenitsyn in “The Gulag Archipelago” in polemics with world literature, which gave “images of densely black villains - Shakespeare, Schiller, and Dickens.” From the perspective modern perception they seem partly “boothy”, since all the villains are “perfectly aware of themselves as villains and their soul - black.”
In many of his works, the writer touches on the nature of evil. Gleb Nerzhin is sure that there are no people on earth who want evil; maybe people think that they are doing good, that they are right, but they receive evil - “they sowed rye, but quinoa grew” (“In the First Circle”). “To do evil, a person must first recognize it as good or as a meaningful, logical action,” Solzhenitsyn wrote in “The Gulag Archipelago.”
Reflections on Tolstoy's thoughts about good and evil force many of Solzhenitsyn's characters to delve deeper into the problem. In the episode of Sanya Lazhenitsyn’s meeting with Tolstoy on one of the alleys Yasnaya Polyana the thought of the great writer about serving good as life goal, about the evil generated by ignorance, but not by human nature, raised doubts in the young thinker, but made him think (“August the Fourteenth”).
Hard labor experience and thoughts famous philosophers led Solzhenitsyn's heroes to understand bad as good. They do not ignore the ideas of Hegel, Goethe, Kant, who recognized the necessity of evil. Kant saw it in human nature. Schopenhauer believed that evil is inseparable from life in general. Nietzsche saw the conditions in evil and good human existence. He saw the power of life in the evil. To consider good as law means, in his opinion, to deny violence in nature, the action of destructive elements in it. Seeing the creative power in the evil, he came to terms with reality. Nietzsche considered himself more indebted to illness than to health, since it gave him spiritual strength. Pain is the liberator of the spirit. Suffering makes a person deeper. Evil is needed just as well as good, “knowledge always grew next to an evil conscience” (“Thus Spoke Zarathustra”).
Lev Shestov wrote about the Nietzschean experiences of Turgenev in old age, who saw the horror of evil, but reconciled with it, finding good in evil. The “sad stirring of the soul” of L. Tolstoy, who regretted that he did not recognize prison, has been spoken about more than once. According to Solzhenitsyn, “he really needed the prison, like a rainstorm to a drought,” because “at some point this giant began to dry up.” Solzhenitsyn himself wrote about himself in the 60s: “It’s scary to think what kind of writer I would have become (and I would have become) if I had not been imprisoned.”
For Russian thinkers of the beginning of the century, “evil is a crack in “all-unity,” as N. A. Berdyaev wrote in a dispute with S. L. Frank. They considered good to be the true basis of inner existence, seeing the path to evil in the instability of our freedom of choice. S. L. Frank saw overcoming evil in the consciousness of guilt, in the consciousness of responsibility for complicity in evil.
One of the problems of the theory of progress was the improvement of humanity. Hegel created the “doctrine about the development of the spirit towards freedom”, Fichte - about the moral world order, Kant - about autonomy moral life, “about the self-legitimacy of the will in the choice of good or evil.” S. N. Bulgakov, who wrote about this, considered the free development of personality to be the ideal of social development and the main theme of classical philosophy.
Solzhenitsyn found himself close to this direction of social thought, represented in his work by the images of the Stoics, ascetics, “knights,” creators with their lofty spirit and superiority over external circumstances. The writer reported a new breath forgotten tradition European and Russian culture.
Chivalry in Solzhenitsyn’s work is not a class or estate category, but a metaphysical one. Chivalry is eternal, since its main values are honor and loyalty, and high spirit. Illarion Gerasimovich, Dmitry Sologdin, Kondrashev-Ivanov, P.A. Stolypin are “knights” who sacrifice the blessings of life for the sake of higher values. The idea of chivalry is one of the important ones in Solzhenitsyn’s ethics. The strength of his heroes lies in spiritual victories. A person finds himself free in dungeons and happy in poverty. Kondrashev-Ivanov is confident that the camp should not break a person’s spiritual strength, goodness should triumph, a strong, noble person shapes life, and not vice versa. The “fantastic ideas” of the ageless idealist delighted Nerzhin, although they did not coincide with his everyday experience. For Kondrashev, there is a knightly sanction associated with the Essence of man, with the image of Perfection that makes up his “I”. According to the artist, the world lacks “knights” (“In the First Circle”).
Sologdin’s “iconographic face,” which stopped Gleb at the first meeting, responded to his Christianity as “the faith of the strong in spirit,” his courage “to see the evil of the world and eradicate it.” Sologdin was “sincerely pious and captivatingly vain. He was sacrificial, but also a lover of money.” That’s why he fulfills the order of those who planted him. He rarely allows anyone to “see the inside,” because he has to live “under a closed visor.” He considers it offensive to obey external conditions. “Free or in prison - what's the difference? “A man must cultivate in himself an inflexibility of will subordinate to reason.” In the position of a dispossessed slave, Sologdin retained his dignity and fortitude. Having nothing on earth, he lives in harmony with himself.
Stolypin is called a “knight” in “August the Fourteenth”. More than any of Solzhenitsyn’s heroes, he united high spirit, nobility of thoughts, and contempt for danger. Promoting reforms, “keeping up with the speed of the century,” fighting for “peasant ownership of the land,” understanding that “the knot of Russian destinies is tied in the countryside,” he directed the moral strength of society to renew the country. He “never lost the feeling of connection with the lower classes as with main support states." But even “feeling in himself the crosshairs of all the hardships of Russia,” being the father of six children, Stolypin “did not hesitate to put his life” at risk by challenging the fanfare deputy to a duel. Although this challenge shocked the State Duma with its untimeliness, which had forgotten “for for many years flexible literature”, that “an insult can pull the trigger of a pistol”, and one must answer for words “even with life”, he testified to the honor and courage of the Prime Minister. Already after the bomb explosion at his dacha, which resulted in the casualties of innocent people, Stolypin instilled in the children: we must not hide when they shoot at us. Feeling sorry for Russia, he knew, and did not have a presentiment, that “he would not die a natural death.” And he met her “as an equal.”
Dispersing himself in almost all the heroes, Solzhenitsyn did not dare to “create himself” as a historical figure. The moral will of a person is discovered by the writer not only in the creativity of new forms of life, ideas of national self-awareness, as in Stolypin, not only in the motives of freedom and self-construction of the individual, as in Sologdin, Kondrashev-Ivanov, Nerzhin. Moral improvement makes itself felt in different forms resistance to evil - violent and non-violent. The Kengir uprising in the “GULAG Archipelago” is an open violent resistance of the people, as is the fight in a cell with criminals, “predatory creatures... living only at the expense of others” (“Cancer Ward”). All these are manifestations of the “great moral account.”
Modern researchers call all forms of evasion and avoidance of evil, non-violent resistance to it “a small moral account.” This moral experience was acquired from Solzhenitsyn by Ivan Denisovich (“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”), Oleg Kostoglotov (“Cancer Ward”), Spiridon Egorov, Potapov, Khorobrov and others (“In the First Circle”). The people combined “heroic traits in the spirit of... secular and religious stoicism with everyday “small moral consideration.”
In the hierarchy values a person, in his ideas about the world, the life of the soul is connected with purpose, with the future, with movement towards it. The idea of fate is one of the axes of the life of the people. Time, fate, history - a circle of related phenomena. A. Potebney, O. Spengler, P. Florensky associate the idea of fate with time. “It is impossible to understand a person if you do not know his sense of time, his idea of fate,” wrote O. Spengler.
The idea of fate in Solzhenitsyn’s work is connected not only with God’s providence, with predestination, but also with the free choice of man, free will. The idea of fate is correlated with the idea of freedom. In the story “Matrenin’s Dvor,” the heroine’s submission to fate and the prevailing life circumstances is connected in her mind with the belief in the predetermination of her path. The circumstances in which Matryona Vasilyevna found herself were not accidental for her. They are signs of her destiny, embedded in her mental structure. Belief in fate is determined in this case by social instability and unsettled life. A destroyed house and a missing pot of holy water marked the movement of fate. A terrible denouement ended life. Her selflessness turned into tragedy. Matryona is an image of Russian destiny.
The original title of the story - “A village is not worthwhile without a righteous man” - has its origin in a proverb going back to the Bible: “A city is not worthwhile without a saint, a village without a righteous man.” Without patience, limitation, and asceticism, which underlie Matryona’s righteousness, the people cannot survive, as well as without honest work day after day.
Tradition classical literature, and first of all N.S. Leskov, who included the righteous man from the realm of holiness into everyday life, acquired new meaning in the work of the writer of the mid-20th century, who saw in righteousness an expression of the people's ideal. But humility before fate is not always a virtue, and fear is simply destructive to the individual. He belittles a person and destroys his soul (Shulubin in “ Cancer building"). In a totalitarian society based on lies and violence, people lose “the very sense of truth.” Solzhenitsyn singles out among them those who spent their whole lives “wandering and squelching in the stinking swamp of society,” and those who slid “as if on top of this slurry, without drowning in it at all.” He classifies the latter as the righteous.
The philosophy of skepticism, recognized as useful in the fight against dogmatists, is generally rejected by Solzhenitsyn. A person is not always free to control his own destiny. But there are circumstances that give him the opportunity to direct her in the right direction. In his study “The Decline of Europe,” O. Spengler wrote about the ability of an outstanding person to sense, behind the historically moving surface of “public connections,” the idea of fate and the random role in it of these meaningless “everyday formations.” In the essays “A Calf Butted an Oak Tree,” Solzhenitsyn sees the highest universal meaning in certain events that a person must learn to comprehend. The writer reproached himself for his inability to unravel in time the meaning of his life’s turns, “the true reason of what happened.”
Exchanging his second year in prison, Solzhenitsyn still did not understand the “finger of fate that he pointed at” to him, “thrown onto the Archipelago.” Last words the prisoner dying in the hospital was comforted by the understanding that “you can’t shake off such an inheritance by shrugging your shoulders.” In these words, Solzhenitsyn saw a universal law of life: “... no punishment in this earthly life comes to us undeservedly... If we look through life and think deeply, we will always find our crime for which we have now been struck” (“ Gulag Archipelago").
The writer sees the meaning of earthly existence “in the development of the soul.” Talking about his desire to join the ensemble, which a year later died in a truck run over by a train, Solzhenitsyn is convinced from experience that “the ways of the Lord are inscrutable. That we ourselves never know what we want. And how many times in his life has he passionately achieved what was unnecessary and “despaired from failures that were successes.” The writer defines the main milestones along which his path lay.
In “The Gulag Archipelago” in the fourth chapter - “The Soul and Barbed Wire” - the author’s reflections are connected with the image of fate as God’s providence. Looking back at the past, I became convinced that “my entire adult life I did not understand either myself or my aspirations.” For a long time, something that was destructive seemed good to him, and he kept rushing in the direction opposite to the one that he “truly needed.” “The blows of misfortune painfully returned him to the firmament.” And only in this way was he able to “walk the very road that he always wanted.”
Solzhenitsyn's image of fate becomes a dimension of spirituality. From his prison years, he felt a “guiding hand” in his life. Recovery from a serious illness is associated with predestination, with the duty assigned to it by fate. “With my hopelessly advanced acute malignant tumor, it was God's miracle, I couldn’t understand it any other way. All the life that has been returned to me since then is not mine in the full sense, it has an embedded purpose,” he wrote in literary essays. His duty to the dead did not allow for concessions: “they died, and you are alive, do your duty so that the world knows about everything.”
Not accepting writers who “serve the censer of lies,” Solzhenitsyn saw a sign of the times in underground literature, with which “our first exit from the abyss of dark waters began.” The wave of slanderous fabrications that hit the writer in the late 60s, the theft by the KGB of the novel “In the First Circle” and the archive forced him to move from silence to action. Trouble became a sign and call of fate. He realized that she was unlocking his freedom, that “proud opposition” to the authorities gave him the right to his own thoughts. Only by unraveling the “heavenly code” did the writer discover “the highest and mysterious meaning of that grief” for which he found no justification, “that hurling from the Supreme Reason that we little ones cannot foresee.” He perceived the “deadly misfortune” sent to him as an impetus, as a reason that forced him “out of desperation” to speak and act, “for the time had come.” In a letter to Tvardovsky, calling the general literary situation “cool” for himself, Solzhenitsyn abandoned the “passive position” that he had occupied for four years. He considered his path to be “secretly determined”, “I walked towards my destiny and with high spirits.” He did not hide behind fate, deeply convinced that “we still choose the main directions of our lives ourselves.” In connection with the tragic events in Czechoslovakia in 1968, the introduction of Soviet troops, Solzhenitsyn deliberately kept silent because of the need to finish the novel, although he was ashamed: “I again chose my fate in these days.” He considered the most terrible danger to be “a pinch of conscience, the deterioration of one’s clear conscience,” which cannot be compared with any threats.
Solzhenitsyn took control of the situation by rejecting the rules of the game. He ceased to be a Soviet writer. His way out of the current circumstances testified to a new stage in the development of the individual, to the expansion of his horizons. The philosopher M. Mamardashvili called this act of Solzhenitsyn, who stood in opposition to the force “that dictated the law of struggle from within the situation,” “a great act of human freedom.” The writer brought his existence “beyond the given conventions of life.” He “broke with the rules and thanks to this opened a different world for himself and for the reader.” Calling this action “transcending,” the philosopher saw in it self-construction and the evolution of personality. M. Mamardashvili considered a way out of this situation “a necessary condition human history" Having begun to speak and act out of despair, Solzhenitsyn gradually felt himself a free man. By sending the manuscript of “The Gulag Archipelago” to the West, the writer finally determined his future.
Every culture has its own idea of destiny. Great people both bowed to fate and fought against it. According to O. Spengler, the idea of fate “reveals the soul’s search for the world, its desire for light, exaltation, completion and the fulfillment of its purpose.” In Russian literature, the idea of fate is considered the “double of man,” one of its cross-cutting themes (D.S. Likhachev). Related to national character, the image of fate among Russian writers expresses both long-suffering and struggle. The pathos of Solzhenitsyn’s essays “The Calf Butted an Oak Tree” is determined by the hero’s victory over fate.
Writers of the 20th century are increasingly thinking about ethical issues. A. Tvardovsky, A. Solzhenitsyn, Vl. thought about the price of revolution and socialism. Dudintsev and you. Grossman, S. Zalygin and V. Astafiev, Y. Dombrovsky, and Vl. Tendryakov. First of all, Solzhenitsyn does not accept the relativity of the concepts of good and evil. The 20th century turned out to be, in his opinion, tougher than the previous one. In his Nobel lecture, he spoke of the old cave feelings - “greed, envy, unbridledness, mutual ill will”, which have taken on “decent pseudonyms like class, racial, mass, trade union struggle”, which are tearing and tearing our world apart. “The caveman-like aversion to compromise is introduced into the theoretical principle and is considered a virtue of orthodoxy... It drills into our souls that there are no universally stable concepts of goodness and justice, that they are all fluid, changing, and therefore you must always do what is beneficial to your party.” .
In the essays “The Calf Butted an Oak Tree,” the author explores the drama of Tvardovsky’s duality, torn apart by two truths - the party truth and the true one, which he could not connect in any way. The thinking of the great poet did not combine the understanding of the high intrinsic value of art and adherence to party principles. Solzhenitsyn considers his divergence with him to be a divergence of ideologies, a “split of two literatures” - Russian and Soviet. Tvardovsky “was devoted to Russian literature, its holy approach to life... But this was not the century, and everyone and everywhere was recognized and implanted in everyone... another, more important truth - the party truth.” For Tvardovsky there was “the only possible way” - to combine Solzhenitsyn’s novel and party positions. In the contradictions between his “biography and soul,” in “these darknesses and enlightenments,” Solzhenitsyn saw the poet’s “tormented life.” The confrontation between the concepts of “Russian” and “Soviet”, seen by Solzhenitsyn in life and literature, became the “most important truth” that he revealed to the world.
People who are loyal to party dogmas most often run away from themselves. Focusing only on their worldview, they choose a lifestyle and type of behavior. Spirituality is always connected “with the choice of one’s own image, one’s destiny and role, and meeting oneself.” In this case, external existence is translated into the inner life of a person, ethical in nature. Consciousness and freedom, inseparable from each other, determine the nature of choice, in which the spiritual self-determination of the individual is expressed.
Solzhenitsyn considers public freedom a condition, an environment, but not the goal of our existence, since freedom as arbitrariness is meaningless. “To want freedom for freedom without purpose and content means to want emptiness,” N.A. once wrote. Berdyaev, who connected the birth of necessity with the abuse of freedom.
Solzhenitsyn's concept of freedom, focused on the historical experience of the people, the world philosophical thought and your own life experience, turned out to be both modern and new for Soviet society.