Educational portal. Which works of Russian classics depict the morals of bureaucracy and in what ways do these works have something in common with Gogol’s “The Inspector General”? (Unified State Examination in Literature) Which works ridicule the behavior of officials

20.06.2020

What works of Russian writers depict the morals of officials and what makes these works similar to N.V. Gogol’s play “The Inspector General”?

“The Inspector” N.V. Gogol

Mayor. It is my duty, as the mayor of this city, to ensure that there is no harassment to travelers and all noble people...

Khlestakov (at first he stutters a little, but by the end of his speech he speaks loudly). But what can I do?.. It’s not my fault... I’ll really pay... They’ll send it to me from the village.

Bobchinsky looks out of the door.

He is more to blame: he serves me beef as hard as a log; and the soup - God knows what he splashed in there, I had to throw it out the window. He starved me for days on end... The tea is so strange: it stinks of fish, not tea. Why am I... Here's the news!

Mayor (timid). Sorry, it's really not my fault. The beef at my market is always good. They are brought by Kholmogory merchants, people who are sober and of good behavior. I don't know where he gets this from. And if something goes wrong, then... Let me invite you to move with me to another apartment.

Khlestakov. No I do not want to! I know what it means to another apartment: that is, to prison. What right do you have? How dare you?.. Yes, here I am... I serve in St. Petersburg. (Being cheerful.) I, I, I...

Mayor (to the side). Oh my God, so angry! I found out everything, the damned merchants told me everything!

Khlestakov (bravely). Even if you’re here with your whole team, I won’t go! I'm going straight to the minister! (He hits the table with his fist.) What are you doing? What do you?

Mayor (stretched out and trembling all over). Have mercy, don't destroy! Wife, small children... don’t make a person unhappy.

Khlestakov. No I do not want! Here's another! What do I care? Because you have a wife and children, I have to go to prison, that’s great!

Bobchinsky looks out the door and hides in fear.

No, thank you humbly, I don’t want to.

Mayor (trembling). Due to inexperience, by golly due to inexperience. Insufficient wealth... Judge for yourself: the government salary is not enough even for tea and sugar. If there were any bribes, it was very small: something for the table and a couple of dresses. As for the non-commissioned officer's widow, a merchant, whom I allegedly flogged, this is slander, by God, slander. My villains invented this: they are such a people that they are ready to encroach on my life.

Khlestakov. What? I don't care about them. (In thought.) I don’t know, however, why are you talking about villains and about some non-commissioned officer’s widow... A non-commissioned officer’s wife is completely different, but you don’t dare flog me, you’re far from that... Here's another! Look at you!.. I will pay, I will pay money, but now I don’t have it. The reason I'm sitting here is because I don't have a penny.

Mayor (to the side). Oh, subtle thing! Where did he throw it? what a fog he brought in! Find out who wants it! You don’t know which side to take. Well, just try it at random. (Aloud.) If you definitely need money or anything else, then I’m ready to serve this minute. My duty is to help those passing by.

Khlestakov. Give me, lend me! I'll pay the innkeeper right now. I would only like two hundred rubles or even less.

Mayor (bringing up pieces of paper). Exactly two hundred rubles, although don’t bother counting.

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The morals of officials are reflected in the story by N.V. Gogol's "The Overcoat" and the story by A.P. Chekhov's "Death of an Official"

In the work of N.V. Gogol depicts the story of a small, poor official Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin, in whose image the typical features of representatives of the bureaucratic environment are embodied: spiritual underdevelopment, loss of values, wretchedness of interests, servility to higher ranks, which is also typical for representatives of power county town in the play "The Inspector General". However, unlike the officials of the comedy, Bashmachkin “served with love”, lived exclusively by service and treated the performance of duties with diligence.

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Introduction

image bureaucracy official work of the Czechs

Chekhov was one of the first classical writers who completely denounced vulgarity and reluctance to live a full, rich life. IN Chekhov's works we see a moral call for human inner freedom, spiritual purification. His later stories are permeated through and through with an inner spiritual cry: “It’s impossible to live like this anymore!” M. Gorky wrote about the significance of Chekhov’s work:

“No one understood as clearly and subtly as Anton Chekhov the tragedy of the little things in life; no one before him was able to so mercilessly and truthfully paint people a shameful and dreary picture of their lives in the dull chaos of bourgeois everyday life. His enemy was vulgarity; all his life he struggled with it, he ridiculed it and depicted it with a dispassionate, sharp pen, able to find the charm of vulgarity even where at first glance, everything seemed to be arranged very well, conveniently, even brilliantly...”

The theme of bureaucracy occupies a special place in Chekhov’s work. It is reflected in many of his stories. This is exactly what we decided to choose as the topic of this course work.

The image of a poor official is traditional for Russians writers of the 19th century century. However, this topic was explored by writers in different ways, and this image underwent significant changes. To reveal the image of a poor official, the most important are two completely different aspects: voluntary resignation to the position of a powerless person, the thought of the impossibility of changing anything, and the completely opposite desire to achieve “known degrees”, not disdaining any means.

The leading feature of his heroes is blind veneration of rank, reverence for a superior person; Their desire to gain rank is very strong, but they evoke pity and sympathy. The principle of combining the comic and tragic is already embodied in Chekhov’s early stories; later it will become leading in his poetics.

Chekhov fulfilled his great artistic calling, noted by A.M. Gorky - to illuminate the prose of the everyday existence of people from a higher point of view.

The relevance of this course work lies in the fact that this topic has not exhausted itself to this day. The phenomenon of Russian bureaucracy, understanding its nature and problems are extremely important for the reform and development of our society on a reasonable basis. In addition, A.P. Chekhov, being a recognized classic of Russian and even world literature, will never lose his popularity and modernity.

Speaking about the degree of development of the topic in educational and popular literature, we emphasize that we have not found a substantive and systematic analysis of the problem, including in educational and methodological literature, therefore, with our study of this topic we hope to somewhat fill this gap, generalize existing considerations and information on the topic, identify new approaches and reveal famous Chekhov's texts in a single key - through the image of an official. This is the novelty of our work.

The object of our research is the works of A.P. Chekhov, which touches on the topic of bureaucracy

The subject is the image of an official and the means of his depiction in the works of A.P. Chekhov.

The purpose of our research is to determine the ways and means of depicting the image of an official in the stories of A.P. Chekhov.

The goal is achieved by solving the following tasks:

To analyze the critical literature on the problem of bureaucracy in the works of A.P. Chekhov;

Compare images of officials A.P. Chekhov with images of officials from other writers;

To identify linguistic means and ways of depicting an official in the stories of A.P. Chekhov;

The structure of this course work includes: introduction, two chapters and conclusion. The introduction substantiates the choice and relevance of the topic of the work, sets the purpose of the research, and defines the main tasks.

Chapter 1. The image of an official in Russian literature of the 19th century.

OFFICIAL - Civil servant (pre-revolutionary, foreign). A major official. Minor official.

“The landowners, zemstvo chiefs and all sorts of officials commanded enough over the peasants!” Lenin.

OFFICIAL - A civil servant. An official who performs his work formally, following instructions, without active participation in the matter; formalist, bureaucrat.

OFFICIAL - in Russia until 1917, a civil servant who had a certain class rank according to the Table of Ranks. Higher officials (usually 4th - 1st classes) were informally called dignitaries. IN in a broad sense- the name of lower civil servants who did not have ranks (clerks, copyists).

CHINOMVNIK, -a, m.

1. Civil servant in pre-revolutionary Russia and in bourgeois countries. Customs official. Police official. Petty officials. ? Titular Councilor Kaverznev was a very small official. Saltykov-Shchedrin, Senile grief. I happened to see several times how officials went to the presence in the morning.

2. transfer An official who performs his or her job formally, following instructions, without active participation in the matter. - There are officials sitting on the roadstead, inky rats! - Volodya Makarov was worried. “They don’t care that we lost two hours.”

Officialdom is a class that was widespread in old Russia, so the official was not a new figure in Russian literature. A.S. Pushkin was one of the first to raise the topic " little man", reflecting it in the personality of the official Samson Vyrin in the story " Stationmaster" A.S. Griboyedov, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, F.M. Dostoevsky - everyone experienced a bright palette of feelings towards one or another representative of a given class: from ridicule of vices to sympathy, pity.

§1. The theme of bureaucracy in Russian literature of the 19th century.

This image of a poor official (Molchalin) is presented in the comedy by A.S. Griboyedov "Woe from Wit".

Molchalin is one of the most prominent representatives of Famus society. However, if Famusov, Khlestova and some other characters are living fragments of the “past century,” then Molchalin is a man of the same generation as Chatsky. But, unlike Chatsky, Molchalin is a staunch conservative, his views coincide with Famusov’s worldview. Just like Famusov, Molchalin considers dependence “on others” to be the basic law of life. Molchalin is a typical “average” person both in intelligence and in his ambitions. But he has “his own talent”: he is proud of his qualities - “moderation and accuracy.” Molchalin's worldview and behavior are strictly dictated by his position in the service hierarchy. He is modest and helpful, because “in the ranks... of small ones,” he cannot do without “patrons,” even if he has to depend entirely on their will. Molchalin is the antipode of Chatsky not only in his beliefs, but also in the nature of his attitude towards Sophia. Molchalin only skillfully pretends that he loves the girl, although, by his own admission, he does not find “anything enviable” in her. Molchalin is in love “by position”, “at the pleasure of the daughter of such a man” as Famusov, “who feeds and waters, // And sometimes gives him rank...” The loss of Sophia’s love does not mean Molchalin’s defeat. Although he made an unforgivable mistake, he managed to get away with it. It is impossible to stop the career of a person like Molchalin - this is the meaning of the author's attitude towards the hero. Chatsky rightly noted in the first act that Molchalin “will reach known degrees,” for “The silent are blissful in the world.”

A completely different image of a poor official was examined by A.S. Pushkin in his “St. Petersburg story” “The Bronze Horseman”. In contrast to Molchalin’s aspirations, the desires of Evgeny, the protagonist of the poem, are modest: he dreams of quiet family happiness, his future is associated with his beloved girl Parasha (remember that Molchalin’s courtship of Sophia is due solely to his desire to obtain a higher rank). Dreaming of simple (“philistine”) human happiness, Evgeniy does not think at all about high ranks; the hero is one of countless officials “without a nickname” who “serve somewhere” without thinking about the meaning of their service. It is important to note that for A.S. For Pushkin, what made Evgeny a “little man” is unacceptable: the isolation of existence in a close circle of family concerns, isolation from his own and historical past. However, despite this, Evgeny is not humiliated by Pushkin; on the contrary, he, unlike the “idol on a bronze horse,” is endowed with a heart and soul that has great importance for the author of the poem. He is capable of dreaming, grieving, “fearing” for the fate of his beloved, and exhausting himself from torment. When grief bursts into his measured life (the death of Parasha during a flood), he seems to wake up, he wants to find those to blame for the death of his beloved. Eugene blames Peter I, who built the city in this place, for his troubles, and therefore blames the entire state machine, entering into an unequal battle. In this confrontation, Eugene, the “little man,” is defeated: “deafened by the noise” of his own grief, he dies. In the words of G.A. Gukovsky, “with Evgeniy... enters high literature... a tragic hero.” Thus, the tragic aspect of the theme of a poor official unable to resist the state (an insoluble conflict between the individual and the state) was important for Pushkin.

N.V. also addressed the topic of the poor official. Gogol. In his works (“The Overcoat”, “The Inspector General”) he gives his interpretation of the image of a poor official (Bashmachkin, Khlestakov), while if Bashmachkin is close in spirit to Pushkin’s Evgeniy (“The Bronze Horseman”), then Khlestakov is a kind of “successor” to Molchalin Griboedova. Like Molchalin, Khlestakov, the hero of the play “The Inspector General,” has extraordinary adaptability. He easily assumes the role of an important person, realizing that he is being mistaken for another person: he meets the officials, accepts the request, and begins, as befits a “significant person,” to “scold” the owners for nothing, causing them to “shake from fear." Khlestakov is not able to enjoy power over people; he simply repeats what he himself probably experienced more than once in his St. Petersburg department. The unexpected role transforms Khlestakov, making him an intelligent, powerful and strong-willed person. Talking about his studies in St. Petersburg, Khlestakov involuntarily betrays his “desire for honors apart from merit,” which is similar to Molchalin’s attitude towards service: he wants to “take the rewards and have fun.” However, Khlestakov, unlike Molchalin, is much more carefree and flighty; his “lightness” “in thoughts... extraordinary” is created with the help large quantity exclamations, while the hero of Griboyedov’s play is more cautious. The main idea of N.V. Gogol is that even the imaginary bureaucratic “greatness” can set in motion generally intelligent people, turning them into obedient puppets.

Another aspect of the theme of the poor official is considered by Gogol in his story “The Overcoat”. Her main character Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin evokes an ambiguous attitude towards himself. On the one hand, the hero cannot but evoke pity and sympathy, but on the other hand, hostility and disgust. Being a man of a narrow-minded, undeveloped mind, Bashmachkin expresses himself “mostly in prepositions, adverbs and particles that absolutely do not have any meaning,” but his main occupation is the tedious rewriting of papers, a task with which the hero is quite satisfied. In the department where he serves, officials “do not show him any respect,” making evil jokes at Bashmachkin’s expense. The main event in his life is the purchase of an overcoat, and when it is stolen from him, Bashmachkin forever loses the meaning of life.

Gogol shows that in bureaucratic St. Petersburg, where “significant persons” rule, coldness and indifference reign to the fate of thousands of shoemakers, forced to eke out a miserable existence, which deprives them of the opportunity to develop spiritually, makes them wretched, slave creatures, “eternal titular advisers.” Thus, the author’s attitude towards the hero is difficult to determine unambiguously: he not only sympathizes with Bashmachkin, but also sneers at his hero (the presence in the text of contemptuous intonations caused by the insignificance of Bashmachkin’s existence).

So, Gogol showed that the spiritual world of a poor official is extremely meager. F.M. Dostoevsky made an important addition to the understanding of the character of the “little man”, revealing for the first time all the complexity inner world this hero. The writer was interested not in the social and everyday, but in the moral and psychological aspect of the theme of the poor official.

Depicting the “humiliated and insulted,” Dostoevsky used the principle of contrast between the external and the internal, between a person’s humiliating social position and his increased self-esteem. Unlike Evgeny (“The Bronze Horseman”) and Bashmachkin (“The Overcoat”), Dostoevsky’s hero Marmeladov is a man with great ambitions. He acutely experiences his undeserved “humiliation,” believing that he is “offended” by life, and therefore demanding more from life than it can give him. The absurdity of Marmeladov’s behavior and mental state unpleasantly strikes Raskolnikov at their first meeting in the tavern: the official behaves proudly and even arrogantly: he looks at visitors “with a tinge of some arrogant disdain, as if at people of lower status and development, with whom he has no business talking” , In Marmeladov, the writer showed the spiritual degradation of “poor officials.” They are incapable of either rebellion or humility. Their pride is so exorbitant that humility is impossible for them. However, their “rebellion” is tragicomic in nature. So for Marmeladov these are drunken rantings, “tavern conversations with various strangers.” This is not Eugene’s fight with the Bronze Horseman and not Bashmachkin’s appearance to a “significant person” after death. Marmeladov is almost proud of his “pigness” (“I am a born beast”), happily telling Raskolnikov that he even drank his wife’s “stockings”, “with rude dignity” reporting that Katerina Ivanovna “tears out his hair.” Marmeladov’s obsessive “self-flagellation” has nothing to do with true humility. Thus, Dostoevsky has a poor official-philosopher, a thinking hero, with a highly developed moral sense, constantly experiencing dissatisfaction with himself, the world and those around him. It is important to note that F.M. Dostoevsky in no way justifies his hero, it is not “the environment that has stuck”, but the man himself is guilty of his actions, for he bears personal responsibility for them. Saltykov-Shchedrin radically changed his attitude towards bureaucracy; in his works, the “little man” becomes a “petty man”, whom Shchedrin ridicules, making him the subject of satire. (Although already in Gogol, bureaucracy began to be depicted in Shchedrin’s tones: for example, in “The Inspector General”). We will focus on Chekhov's “officials”. Interest in the topic of bureaucracy not only did not fade away from Chekhov, but on the contrary, it flared up, reflected in the stories, in his new vision, but also without ignoring past traditions. After all, “...the more inimitable and original the artist, the deeper and more obvious his connection with previous artistic experience.”

§2. The image of an official in the stories of A.P. Chekhov

It is in Chekhov that the “little man” - the official becomes “petty”, forced to hide, go with the flow, obey the habits and laws established in the community.

In fact, Chekhov no longer depicts small people, but what prevents them from being big - he depicts and generalizes the small in people.

In the 80s of the 19th century, when official relations between people permeated all layers of society, the “little man” lost his characteristic humane qualities, being a person of the established social system - a product and a tool in one person. Finding social status by rank, he becomes an official, not only and not necessarily by profession, but by his main function in society.

In Chekhov, he (the official) acquires a completely independent collective image, bearing within itself the many-sided features of the essence designated by the concept of “rank” in human society. This is how the theme of the “little man” ended in Chekhov’s stories - one of the strongest themes in Russian classical literature.

Beings destitute and oppressed, these “little people” were indeed worthy of compassion, deprived of the care and protection of the state, “humiliated and insulted” by the power of higher officials.

And here Chekhov is the direct successor of this humanistic tradition of democratic Russian literature, quite clearly showing in his early stories the omnipotence of the police and bureaucratic arbitrariness.

The assimilation of the traditions of Russian classical literature simultaneously with a decisive rethinking of many of them will become a defining feature of Chekhov’s literary position.

Some literary scholars attribute the work of A.P. Chekhov to the direction called “sociological realism”, because main theme Chekhov is the problem of the social structure of society and the fate of man in it. This direction explores objective social relations between people and the conditionality of all other important phenomena of human life by these relationships.

The main object artistic research writer - “Chekhov’s world” became something in Russian society that connected it into a single state organism, where service relations become the most fundamental relationships between people - the basis of society. A complex hierarchy of people and institutions is emerging, in relationships of subordination (command and subordination) and coordination (subordination).

On this basis, a system of power and management, unprecedented in history, is developing in Russia, in which tens of millions of people are involved - all sorts of bosses, managers, managers, directors, etc., who become masters of the situation, imposing their ideology and psychology, their attitude towards the whole society. all aspects of public life.

So, in the entire gigantic picture of Russian life written by Chekhov, it is not difficult to notice the dominant features of Chekhov’s vision of reality, namely, the image of that in people and their relationships that is due to the very fact of their unification into a single state whole, their distribution in this social organism according to to various levels of the social hierarchy, depending on the social functions they perform.

Therefore, it is no coincidence that it was the official who became one of the central figures (if not the most important) in Chekhov’s work, and representatives of other social categories began to be considered in their bureaucratic-like functions and relationships.

Chapter 2. Official of post-reform Chekhov's Russia

So, what is he like, an official of Chekhov’s post-reform Russia?

We learn about this by analyzing the texts of A.P.’s stories. Chekhov.

Chekhov’s refraction of the “little man” theme is clearly visible

in the story “The Death of an Official” (1883)

The same type of hero - a little man, humiliated by his social role who exchanged his own life for fear of the powers that be. However, Chekhov solves the conflict between tyrant and victim, so beloved in our classics, in a new way.

If the general behaves extremely “normally,” then the behavior of the “victim” is implausible, Chervyakov is exaggeratedly stupid, cowardly and annoying - this does not happen in life. The story is built on the principle of sharp exaggeration, beloved by early Chekhov, when the style of “strict realism” is masterfully combined with heightened convention.

The seemingly naive story is, in fact, not so simple: it turns out that death is just a device and a convention, a mockery and an incident, so the story is perceived as quite humorous.

In the clash of laughter and death in the story, laughter triumphs - as a means of exposing the power over people of trifles elevated to a fetish. Official relations here are only a special case of a conditional, invented system of values.

A person’s increased, painful attention to the little things of everyday life stems from the spiritual emptiness and self-inadequacy of the individual, his “smallness” and worthlessness.

The story contains funny, bitter and even tragic: behavior that is ridiculous to the point of absurdity; bitter awareness of the insignificant value of human life; the tragic understanding that the worms cannot help but grovel, they will always find their brizhals.

And one more thing: I would like to draw attention to the situation of embarrassment, so characteristic of Chekhov’s characters, and the flight from it into the bureaucracy. Of course, such a paradoxical embarrassment... with a fatal outcome clearly goes beyond the scope of everyday realism, but in everyday life the “little man” often escapes from unforeseen circumstances - through bureaucratic relations, when the need (according to a circular) and the want (internal needs) outwardly coincide. This is how a true official is born - a bureaucrat, whose internal “I want” - important, desirable - is degenerated into a prescribed “must”, which is externally legitimized, permitted and reliably protects against embarrassment in any circumstances.

§1. Verb vocabulary and its function in the text

The verb, together with verbal forms, which has a large “set” of categories, forms and shades of meaning, is one of the stylistically remarkable parts of speech in the Russian language.

By its nature, the verb is one of the main means of expressing dynamics. This is partly why scientific and business speech are contrasted with artistic and colloquial speech in terms of the frequency of use of verb forms; It is precisely this character of the former that is opposed to the verbal character of the latter. Business speech is characterized by nominal expressions of an official nature: Providing assistance, eliminating deficiencies, taking part in... etc. Fiction, journalistic and lively colloquial speech make greater use of verb forms, avoiding nominal constructions. The overall dynamism of speech largely depends on this. If we compare scientific speech as a whole with artistic speech in relation to the use of the verb, then the qualitative nature of the verbs in the first case and the dynamic nature in the second case clearly appear. This is due not only to the frequency of verbs in speech, but also to their composition, i.e. lexical and grammatical side. Since in scientific works we are talking about constant features and qualities of objects, about natural phenomena, descriptions take up more space, since the corresponding verbal units - in terms of the meaning of lexemes and forms - are selected from the language system. It is no coincidence, for example, that in scientific speech many state verbs used in the present tense do not denote a dynamic state at the moment of speech, as is typical, for example, of everyday speech, but quality.

The stylistic properties of various categories and forms determine the varying degrees of their application in functional styles. For example, forms rich in expression and emotionality imperative mood almost unknown in scientific and official business speech, but widely used in colloquial fiction and journalistic speech (in the latter case, in appeals).

Many shades of the verb type and ways of expressing them have limited areas of use. For example, verbs of multiple and single action are a striking feature of colloquial speech (beat, caught, sadanul), but are not characteristic of book speech.

Verb categories and forms have rich synonymy and possibilities for figurative use. For example, the present of a living representation is used to express actions that took place in the past, or, on the contrary, the past tense is used to express actions in the future, etc. All the diversity of these possibilities is presented in fiction. For artistic speech It is also characteristic that within a relatively small context, a wide variety of forms and their meanings, as well as ways of expressing moods, are used for expressive purposes, while scientific and especially business speech is characterized by the use of forms of one or two types.

§2. The functioning of verbal vocabulary in the story by A.P. Chekhov's "Death of an Official"

The pinnacle of the comic discrepancy between what should have been, from the point of view of common sense, and what actually happened, is the event that forms the basis of the 1883 story “The Death of an Official.” One person, sneezing, accidentally sprayed another, and then... died of fear and grief. However, the anecdote acquires the flesh of authenticity.

The story is extremely laconic and, as a result, dynamic. This special dynamism of the story is contained in verbs and their forms (in all their diversity). It is through verbal vocabulary that the plot develops, and the characteristics of the characters are also given; although, of course, the writer also uses others artistic techniques(for example, speaking surnames).

But let's move directly to the text.

The main character of the work is introduced into the story in the very first lines: “In one beautiful evening an equally excellent executor, Ivan Dmitrievich Chervyakov, sat in the second row of seats and looked through binoculars at “The Bells of Corneville.” He looked and felt on top of bliss. But suddenly...” As we see, the plot of the story is already contained here - the intriguing “But suddenly...”. The ellipsis only enhances this effect. Through verbs, the author introduces us to this atmosphere.

First of all, it should be noted that the action develops in the past long time, i.e. the action is represented in its existence, statically. This is achieved thanks to the form of verbs - past tense, imperfect form (sat, looked, felt).

The verb looked gives us the primary characteristics of the hero. Ivan Dmitrievich Chervyakov sat in the theater and did not watch, but looked at the stage. The word itself bears the imprint of colloquialism, stylistic “lowness”. Thus, Chervyakov seems to us to be a simple man in the street, a “little man.”

The repetition of the verb (... and looked through binoculars at The Bells of Corneville. He looked and felt...) fixes our attention on the state of “looking” of the hero, which indicates some relaxation and which, in part, serves as an impetus for the development of the plot, since it causes surprise sneezing.

“But suddenly his face wrinkled, his eyes rolled up, his breathing stopped... he took the binoculars away from his eyes, bent down and... apchhi! He sneezed, as you can see.” The author gradually brings us to one of the key words of the story. With clear, bright verbs, Chekhov conveys Chervyakov’s state, the process of sneezing itself (a series of winced - rolled up - stopped - pulled away - bent over - sneezed). Thus, the writer conveys the state of a person, his hero, through actions.

The author presents this case directly and easily. This is facilitated by constant appeal to the reader. In this case, the verbs are used in the present tense (it occurs, as you can see). Although it should be noted that it is not the author himself who addresses the readers, but rather the narrator. He owns a small " lyrical digression", reflection on sneezing: "No one is forbidden to sneeze anywhere. Men and police chiefs, and sometimes even privy councilors, sneeze. Everyone is sneezing." In the first case, the verb sneeze is part of a compound verbal predicate in an impersonal sentence. In this case, we are dealing with the present timeless, which is only emphasized by the impersonal form. This, in turn, refers us to the scientific style, or rather, to the truly timeless with a touch of quality, i.e. We are talking here about a quality, a property inherent in a person. Further repetition of this verb (sneeze) in the present tense, 3rd person, plural form extends this property to all people (Everyone sneezes).

In total, the word sneeze appears six times in the story (one of them is in the form of a gerund), but its repeated repetition (four times in a row) puts a logical emphasis on it, on the one hand, and this word becomes one of the key words of the text, on the other hand - imparts to this action the nature of constant, repeated repetition in life, i.e. commonality, commonality.

Then the action develops dynamically. This is achieved through the use of perfective verbs, because It is they who represent action as a component of a dynamic situation [Karpukhin 2004: 106], in development. “Chervyakov was not at all embarrassed, wiped himself with a handkerchief and, like a polite person, looked around him: had he bothered anyone with his sneezing? But here I already had to be embarrassed. He saw that the old man sitting in front of him, in the first row of seats, was diligently wiping his bald head and neck with a glove and muttering something.” As we can see, the verbs used here in the perfect form of the past tense convey the actions of the hero, Ivan Dmitrievich Chervyakov (was not embarrassed, wiped himself off, looked, did not bother, saw). The verbs of the imperfect form that we encounter here convey Brizzhalov’s state rather than the action (wiped, muttered).

The case of opposition in the above passage is also interesting: I wasn’t embarrassed - I had to be embarrassed. First form of 3rd person verb singular the past tense conveys Chervyakov’s action - he was not embarrassed, speaks of his natural behavior (he just sneezed, and no one is forbidden to sneeze). The second, impersonal form rather conveys the effect of something extraneous on the consciousness of the hero, an influence from the outside - he had to be embarrassed. What made him embarrassed was the realization that he had caused trouble, especially since it turned out to be a civil general, the rank of an old man being the determining factor here. The prevailing morals, principles and admiration for high rank determine the further behavior of the hero. This verb - to be embarrassed is also one of the key ones.

And then a “fatal” thought comes to Chervyakov’s head: “I sprayed him!” - thought Chervyakov. - Not my boss, a stranger, but still awkward. I need to apologize." This phrase contains two verbs that are key to the entire text. This is to spray and apologize. They will “sit” in the hero’s mind and will “torment” him until the very end of the story. Their compositional value is determined by the honesty of their use. The verb to spray occurs four times, and it enters the text, most often, through the dialogue between Chervyakov and Brizzhalov. The verb excuse/apologize occurs seven times and “accompanies” Ivan Dmitrich from the moment the conflict began.

The hero’s condition changes dramatically when his apology, in his own opinion, is not accepted properly. This is achieved by repeating the same verbs in the same forms, but in different contexts. Compare: He looked and felt at the height of bliss. - He looked, but no longer felt bliss. The anxiety arising in Cherovyakov’s head is also conveyed through the verb - it “began to torment” him. The prefix gives the verb a rudimentary action, its weak expression. It is this anxiety that makes the hero want to explain: “I should explain to him that I didn’t want it at all...”. The subjunctive mood gives the action a hint of desirability, but after the next meeting the “desirability” turns into a firm intention: I’ll explain to him...

During the second meeting between the general and the executor, laughter comes into the story. It should be noted that laughter here is immediately perceived as ridicule:

You're just laughing, sir! - he said, hiding behind the door.

“What kind of ridicule is there? - Thought Chervyakov. “There is no ridicule here at all!”

A synonym (including contextual) for the word “laugh” is “mockery”. It is the possibility of ridicule that worries and frightens Chervyakov.

“I came yesterday to worry about you,” he muttered when the general raised his questioning eyes to him, “not to laugh, as you deigned to say.” I apologized for sneezing, sir... but I didn’t even think of laughing. Do I dare laugh? If we laugh, then there will be no respect for people... there will be...

Chervyakov did not think, did not dare to laugh. The last sentence generally contains the whole essence of the philosophy of the ill-fated executor Ivan Dmitrievich Chervyakov. Here the discrepancy with elementary human common sense also “pops up”. On the one hand, “no one is forbidden to sneeze,” this is natural and characteristic of every person, but on the other hand, he “does not dare laugh” at this “natural” and generally funny incident.

This discrepancy becomes fatal for the hero. The last “explanation” with the general turns out to be tragic for him.

Something came off in Chervyakov’s stomach. Seeing nothing, hearing nothing, he backed away to the door, went out into the street and trudged... Arriving mechanically home, without taking off his uniform, he lay down on the sofa and... died.”

The entire tragedy of the denouement, the climax of the story, is conveyed here precisely through verbal vocabulary: pulled away - without seeing - without hearing - backed away - went out - trudged - arriving - without taking off - lay down - died. All of the above verbal forms convey, first of all, the state of the hero, his crushed, killed - he did not walk, but trudged, he did not see or hear anything. And as a result of everything, he died.

The tragic ending of the story is not perceived as such. The word “verb”, which contains the culmination and denouement of the work, is stylistically reduced, colloquial. Thus, the reader feels the attitude of the author himself towards the hero, or rather towards his death. It is ironic, he does not consider this the death of Man, the true “pathos” of death is not felt here.

Thus, the entire behavior of Ivan Dmitrievich Chervyakov, the entire development of actions can be conveyed through the following series of key verbs: sat - looked - sneezed - had to be embarrassed - sprayed - apologize - explain - I don’t dare laugh - came off - backed away - trudged - lay down - died. As you can see, the entire plot of the story is based on verbal vocabulary (or rather, directly on verbs).

A.P. Chekhov decisively rethinks the traditional image of the “little man” in Russian literature. Often “The Death of an Official” by A.P. Chekhov is compared and contrasted with “The Overcoat” by N.V. Gogol. But Ivan Dmitrievich Chervyakov is decidedly different from Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin. And the general is far from being an “oppressor”; he is not that formidable. After all, he barked at his visitor only when he brought him more and more visits. The general’s “boiling” can also be conveyed through a series of verbs. So, first he “mumbled,” then he “said,” then he “made a whiny face and waved his hand,” and only then he “barked.” The degree of the general's rage is conveyed by the participial forms - the general, suddenly blue and shaking, barked.

In addition, the general’s condition is also conveyed by the person in which he addresses Chervyakov. If at first he answered him in the second plural, i.e. on you (let me listen, laugh), then his last phrase is extremely expressive due to the imperative mood and the address to you: Get out!

Thus, one of the leading stylistic functions in A.P.’s story. Chekhov's “Death of an Official” is performed by verbs and their forms. It is the verbal vocabulary that contributes to the brightness, expressiveness and conciseness of the work, which are the defining features of A.P.’s style. Chekhov.

Having traced the functioning of verbal vocabulary in the text, we came to the following conclusions.

The verb, together with its verb forms, which has a large “set” of categories, forms and shades of meaning, is one of the stylistically remarkable parts of speech in the Russian language.

First of all, the verb is the main means of giving the text dynamism and communicating the development of actions.

The functioning of a verb in a text is determined by its personal form, tense, mood, aspect.

Particularly diverse in literary text meanings and functions of the past tense. The past tense in a literary text is divided into three main types - the past imperfect, expressing a long-lasting action in the past (this is what the descriptive past is called), the past perfect with an effective meaning, and the past narrative.

The determining factor here is the type of verb, which represents the action in two aspects. These are the action view statically and the action view dynamically.

In the story by A.P. Chekhov’s “The Death of an Official”, the verbal vocabulary determines the entire plot fabric of the story and performs the following functions:

1. imperfective past tense verbs convey the hero’s state to a greater extent;

2. verbs of the past tense of the perfect form report the action directly in development, in dynamics and contain the plot thread of the story;

3. verbs of the present tense (in impersonal sentences) convey generality and routine to an object, action, state;

4. the same verbs in different contexts contain oppositions, i.e. are contextual homonyms;

5. stylistic reduction of verbs is a means of expressing the author’s attitude towards the hero, because characterize him in many ways;

6. repetition of the same verbs puts logical emphasis on them and suggests that they may be key;

7. the degree of expressiveness of verbs conveys the emotional state of the characters;

8. participles and gerunds are shading in relation to verbs and contribute to a more vivid characterization of the characters.

Thus, it is the verbal vocabulary in A.P.’s story. Chekhov's “Death of an Official” is a defining stylistic characteristic of the writer.

Conclusion

As a result of our research, the main object of which was the “Chekhov world” and the heroes inhabiting it, we, first of all, developed a new vision of the work of A.P. Chekhov - in the vein of sociological realism. This allowed us to identify as the central figure of the “Chekhov’s world” an official who acts on behalf of the authorities and who has become the personification of the era. “Russia,” wrote Chekhov, “is a government country.”

And he's amazing artistic power using the example of bureaucracy, he showed that a person’s position in the social system and hierarchy of Russian society began to turn into a factor that determines all other aspects of a person’s life, and the relationship of command and subordination became the basis for all other relationships. Chekhov managed to create a picture of the tragicomedy of human existence in a world of illusory values, worries and anxieties, unprecedented in Russian and world literature.

M. Gorky wrote about the significance of Chekhov’s work:

“No one understood as clearly and subtly as Anton Chekhov the tragedy of the little things in life; no one before him was able to so mercilessly and truthfully paint people a shameful and dreary picture of their lives in the dull chaos of bourgeois everyday life. His enemy was vulgarity; all his life he fought with it, he ridiculed it and depicted it with a dispassionate, sharp pen, able to find the charm of vulgarity even where at first glance, everything seemed to be arranged very well, conveniently, even brilliantly ... "

Therefore, among the Chekhov heroes discussed in the course work are not just officials by profession, but various forms of bureaucratic relations, called the “Chekhov world”, where Chekhov managed to create a picture of the tragicomedy of human existence, unprecedented in Russian and world literature, in a world of illusory values, worries and worries.

A review of the sources used allowed me to see and appreciate different views and approaches to the topic of bureaucracy.

We began the main part of the work with the vision of the official by other writers, in order to understand how Chekhov saw it and what new things he brought to this image.

The main task of our research is to show how the writer saw the official.

The theme of the “little man” is traditional in Russian

literary tradition - found a unique refraction in Chekhov’s stories.

Gaining social status by rank, Chekhov's little man becomes an essentially petty official - not only and not necessarily by profession, but by his main function in society, losing his humane human qualities.

Through Chekhov's short and seemingly unpretentious texts, the pitiful, small and petty in the nature of a social person, who has completely lost himself in the real world of social conventions and priorities, is revealed in all his nature. We explored this moral “break” of a small person in a social environment hostile to him, the loss of humanity in a person in various forms in Chekhov’s stories.

It was impossible to ignore another very important aspect of Chekhov’s exploration of the theme of bureaucracy, since this was precisely what became the writer’s artistic discovery, the subject of his attention and comprehension. Chekhov managed to discover the decisive role of everyday life in the creation of the entire system and way of life of a person. It is here that the main tragedy of human existence, the “little things in life” kill the humanity in a person... This is how the common disease of bureaucracy is revealed - self-forgetfulness in a social role, loss of human essence in official self-realization.

The phenomenon of Russian bureaucracy, understanding its nature and problems are extremely important for the reform and development of our society on reasonable principles, bequeathed to us by Chekhov. And with renewed vigor, among universal human problems, “Chekhov’s problems” “highlighted” - and turned out to be central! After all, transformation Russian state, its social reorganization on a reasonable basis is possible only through a person, and a government person - an official - in the first place.

For a hundred years now, Chekhov has not been with us, but Chekhov’s message to us living in Russia in the 21st century is very important for the construction of “new forms of life” in our Russian reality.

Bibliography

Big Encyclopedic Dictionary. 2000.

Gogol N.V. Favorites - Moscow. Enlightenment.1986

Griboyedov A.S. Woe from Wit - Moscow AST Astrel. 2003

Gromov M.P. A book about Chekhov - Moscow: Sovremennik, 1989. Electronic version.

Dostoevsky F.M. Crime and Punishment. Moscow enlightenment 1989

Small academic dictionary

Pushkin A.S. Selected works in two volumes. volume one. Moscow. fiction.1978

Kuznetsov's Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language

Ushakov's Explanatory Dictionary

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Images of officials in Russian literatureXIXV

(Based on the works of A.P. Chekhov)

Denisova Natalya Mikhailovna, teacher of Russian language and literature

MCOU "Secondary School No. 1"

Introduction

Russian bureaucracy is a phenomenal phenomenon in our national history and modernity.

The term “bureaucracy” comes from the Old Russian “chin”, which meant “row, order, established order"(violation of which is disorderly conduct). But these meanings are now forgotten. In our understanding, rank is a title that allows you to occupy certain positions. Thus, bureaucracy (its modern synonym is bureaucracy), which will be discussed, is a category of persons professionally engaged in office work and performing executive functions in the public administration system.

The importance of bureaucracy in Russia is determined by the fact that for entire historical eras The bureaucratic hierarchy was an important basis for the social division of society. The concept of “rank” in Russian imperial culture acquired a self-sufficient and almost mystical character. Expressing regret that “we don’t respect intelligence, but honor rank,” A.S. Pushkin stated: “Ranks have become the passion of the Russian people.”

This rank, this phenomenon that took shape over a hundred and fifty years, has grown into the habits of Russian ambition... How did it develop historically?

The introduction of ranks in Russia really streamlined public life in many ways. The Russian system of ranks was legitimized by Peter I in the “Table of Ranks,” which changed and systematized the bureaucratic hierarchy. The rank according to the Table was called “rank”, and the person who had the rank began to be called “official”.

The “Golden Age” of Russian bureaucracy was the 19th century, when Russia, in the words of V.O. Klyuchevsky, “was no longer governed by the aristocracy, but by the bureaucracy.” This is how a powerful instrument of imperial power in Russia appeared, called Civil service, is a rigid, loyalty-oriented system, but not devoid of reasonable principles.

This official was an integral part of the administrative management system that gave birth to him, its main employee and main driving force.

That's how historical portrait official of the Nicholas era, who became the hero of the stories of A.P. Chekhov.

Relevance of the topic: the official continues to live because he is eternal, just as the immortal features that make up his essence and define the very concept of “official”. It is this amazing phenomenon, characteristic of our Russian mentality, that I will try to analyze in my article, based on the works of Chekhov.

Goal of the work: to reveal the true nature and role of bureaucracy in life Russian society through the stories of the great Russian writer A.P. Chekhov.

"CHEKHOV'S WORLD" AND ITS HEROES.

1.1. Great writer of "small form"

There is an inexorable historical and literary logic in the fact that it was the narrator, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, who “closed” the chain of Russian classics of the “Golden Age”.

Let's try to see Chekhov in the cultural and social context of his time. 80-90s of the 19th century...

The reality, on the basis of which Chekhov’s artistic creativity developed, was outwardly peaceful and received the reputation of an “eventless” time. In fact, these were the years of the darkest reaction in Russia, characterized by secrecy and unspoken forms of state terror: a continuous stream of prohibitions, reprimands, circulars that stifled living thought, killed a person’s habit of truthful free speech, excesses and ferocity of police officers and officials, complete impunity superiors...

Chekhov somehow immediately renounced the natural side of life and understood it in social categories and assessments, subsequently creating a picture of the life and customs of Russian society of his time that was grandiose in terms of breadth of coverage and depth of penetration.

In the 1890s, the domestic literary situation suddenly changed. Many readers then had the feeling that the literary substance, against the will of the writers themselves, began to shrink and concentrate. And grandiose novels were replaced by short, inconspicuous stories: the “small” form overnight triumphed over the “big”.

The rhythm of time changed, it feverishly accelerated, rushing towards the 20th century with its cataclysms and dynamics. And most importantly, the peak of development of Russian literature of the 19th century was passed, the golden era was left behind, having absorbed the energy of the centuries-long development of Russian literature, and an inevitable decline followed.

The short story genre was the best fit for literature in this situation.

Shortly before his death, Chekhov wrote to I.A. Bunin: “It’s good for you to write stories now, everyone is used to it, and it was I who paved the way to little story, they scolded me for this... They demanded that I write a novel, otherwise I couldn’t be called a writer..."

Before Chekhov, literature did not know a method that would allow one to analyze the fleeting features of current existence and at the same time give a complete, epic picture of life. The artistic system created by him is, in essence, a system of displaying an unimaginable multitude of details illuminated under different angles view, from different genre angles, of particulars merging into a huge generalization. This is a kind of creative method of in-depth realism, realism in the very flow of life, a kind of aesthetic “multitude” that replaced the old novel. The main artistic discovery of Chekhov is considered to be the story “In a few words - about a lot” Chekhov told in his numerous stories, in which he first described the characteristic characters and everyday scenes of its time, later evolving to satirical stories of enormous generalizing power.

Young Chekhov began as a humorist with the genre of skits. This is a short humorous story, a picture from life, made in a dramatic manner, because its comedy is achieved by conveying the conversation of the characters. Chekhov, publishing in the St. Petersburg magazine “Oskolki,” masterfully mastered the technique of the “fragmentation” scene and raised it to the level of great literature, filling it with sparkling humor.

When it comes to satire and humor of the Chekhov type, the essence of the matter must be seen in reality itself, which can be adequately described only in a satirical-humorous form. Thus, Chekhov's satire and humor are not necessarily funny (they are even bitter), they amaze with their accuracy, brevity, expressiveness and depth of understanding of social problems. Chekhov's laughter was deeply democratic, because only equals laugh among themselves, but the authorities never speak the language of laughter with their subordinates.

The author's position of Chekhov - the storyteller - deserves attention. He places at the center of his work one episode in which, like a drop of water, all the contradictions of reality are reflected immediately, simultaneously. The author here is an objective witness, almost a chronicler: the heroes expose themselves without any help from him. The author's position is determined by the content of the story; this is quite enough.

The difficulty of perceiving the texts of Chekhov, a realist, is that he does not allow in a single drop of “deception that elevates us” and illusions. He acts as a writer of everyday life of his time, his era. All his grotesque - funny and bitter - stories, no matter how sad, are true, i.e. the quintessence of real life, an amazing copy of reality. D.V. calls Chekhov’s stories a “revolution in literature.” Grigorovich.

The continent of Chekhov's stories is striking in its numbers and population.

Apparently, Chekhov is one of the most populous writers in world literature. It turned out that almost 8 thousand characters live and act in Chekhov’s prose - eight thousand faces in five hundred stories and stories written in 1880 - 1904. They represent with epic completeness all layers of society in Russia on the borderlands of the 19th and 20th centuries, without exception.

One of Chekhov’s contemporaries noted that if Russia, by some miracle, had suddenly disappeared from the face of the earth, then, based on Chekhov’s stories, it could have been restored to the smallest detail again.

1.2. "Sociological realism" of the writer

Some literary scholars attribute the work of A.P. Chekhov to the direction called “sociological realism”, since Chekhov’s main theme is the problem of the social structure of society and the fate of man in it. This direction explores objective social relationships between people and the conditionality of all other important phenomena of human life by these relationships.

The main object of the writer’s artistic research - “Chekhov’s world” became that in Russian society that connected it into a single state organism, where service relations become the most fundamental relationships between people - the basis of society. A complex hierarchy of people and institutions is emerging, in relationships of subordination (command and subordination) and coordination (subordination). On this basis, a system of power and management, unprecedented in history, is developing in Russia, in which tens of millions of people are involved - all sorts of bosses, managers, managers, directors, etc., who become masters of the situation, imposing their ideology and psychology, their attitude towards the whole society. all aspects of public life.

Thus, in the entire gigantic picture of Russian life written by Chekhov, it is not difficult to notice the dominant features of Chekhov’s vision of reality, namely, the image of that in people and their relationships that is due to the very fact of their unification into a single state whole, their distribution in this social organism at various levels of the social hierarchy, depending on the social functions they perform.

Thus, the object of close attention of Chekhov, the writer and researcher, became “state-owned” Russia - the environment of bureaucracy and bureaucratic relations, i.e. the relationship of people to the grandiose state apparatus and the relationship of people within this apparatus itself. Therefore, it is no coincidence that it was the official who became one of the central figures (if not the most important) in Chekhov’s work, and representatives of other social categories began to be considered in their bureaucratic-like functions and relationships.

So, we got to know Chekhov in the cultural and social context of his time, with the peculiarities of his creative style.

The main artistic discovery of the writer A.P. Chekhov is a “small genre” in great literature, because in a new artistic form he wrote an epoch-making picture of his time.

A.P. Chekhov is an unrivaled master of storytelling. The ability to fit solutions to large universal human problems into a small text, to show one’s attitude towards them, to convincingly prove one’s ideas - all this is demonstrated by Chekhov in his stories.

Characterizing Chekhov's story as a genre, it should be noted that by its nature it is deeply realistic, but the reality itself reflected in it is so paradoxical that it can be conveyed exclusively in a humorous or satirical form. Chekhov began with entertaining humor, but soon delved into cognitive humor and sociological satire as means of knowledge and expression of their results.

One can imagine Chekhov's depiction of life as a social cross-section of society, where all people are interconnected into a single state whole, being a kind of functions in the system of these relations. It is this “state-owned” Russia that becomes the object of attention of Chekhov - a writer and researcher, and an official - one of the central figures of “Chekhov’s world”.

1.3 “Little man” in the poetry of A.P. C h ekh o v a.

The official was not a new figure in Russian literature, because officialdom is one of the most widespread classes in old Russia. And in Russian literature, legions of officials pass before the reader - from registrars to generals. In Chekhov, he (the official) acquires a completely independent collective image, bearing within itself the many-sided features of the essence designated by the concept of “rank” in human society.

This is how the theme of the “little man” ended in Chekhov’s stories - one of the strongest themes of Russian classical literature, going back to Pushkin and Gogol, continued and developed by Dostoevsky. With their literary genius they managed to raise the smallness and humiliation of man to tragic heights. The heroes of the works of these writers were people of low social status, completely crushed by life, but trying with all their might to resist the injustice reigning in Russia. Beings destitute and oppressed, these “little people” were indeed worthy of compassion, deprived of the care and protection of the state, “humiliated and insulted” by the power of higher officials.

The assimilation of the traditions of Russian classical literature simultaneously with a decisive rethinking of many of them will become a defining feature of Chekhov’s literary position.

Saltykov radically changed his attitude towards bureaucracy.

Shchedrin; in his works, the “little man” becomes a “petty man”, whom Shchedrin ridicules, making him the subject of satire. (Although already in Gogol, bureaucracy began to be depicted in Shchedrin’s tones: for example, in “The Inspector General”).

But it is in Chekhov that the “little man” - the official becomes “petty”, forced to hide, go with the flow, obey the habits and laws established in the community...

In fact, Chekhov no longer depicts small people, but what prevents them from being big - he depicts and generalizes the small in people.

In the 80s of the 19th century, when official relations between people permeated all layers of society, the “little man” lost his characteristic humane qualities, being a person of the established social system - a product and a tool in one person. Having acquired social status by rank, he becomes an official, not only and not necessarily by profession, but by his main function in society.

II. The image of an Official in the stories of A.P. Chekhov.

So, what is he like, an official of Chekhov’s post-reform Russia? We learn about this by analyzing the texts of A.P.’s stories. Chekhov.

Chekhov’s refraction of the “little man” theme is clearly visible in the story "Death of an Official"(1883)

This is one of the brightest examples of early Chekhov's poetics. The plot of this extremely dynamic short story has become widely known.

A certain Chervyakov, a minor official, while in the theater, accidentally sneezed on the bald head of General Brizzhalov sitting in front, thereby “encroaching” on the “sacred” of the bureaucratic hierarchy... The poor fellow was terribly scared, tried to justify himself, did not believe that the general did not attach any significance to this event , began to bother me, made the general angry - and immediately upon arriving home he died of horror...

Chekhov rethought the situation similar to Gogol’s “The Overcoat”: a small official in a clash with his superiors, a “significant person.”

The same type of hero - a little man, humiliated by his social role, who exchanged his own life for fear of the powers that be. However, Chekhov solves the conflict between tyrant and victim, so beloved in our classics, in a new way.

The seemingly naive story is, in fact, not so simple: it turns out that death is just a device and a convention, a mockery and an incident, so the story is perceived as quite humorous.

A person’s increased, painful attention to the little things of everyday life stems from the spiritual emptiness and self-inadequacy of the individual, his “smallness” and worthlessness.

And one more thing: I would like to draw attention to the situation of embarrassment, so characteristic of Chekhov’s characters, and the flight from it into the bureaucracy. Of course, such a paradoxical embarrassment... with a fatal outcome clearly goes beyond the scope of everyday realism, but in everyday life the “little man” often escapes from unforeseen circumstances - through bureaucratic relations, when the need (according to a circular) and the want (internal needs) outwardly coincide. This is how a true official is born - a bureaucrat, whose internal “I want” - important, desired, expected - is degenerated into a prescribed “must”, which is externally legitimized, permitted and reliably protects against embarrassment in any circumstances.

The story "Thick and Thin"

An interesting plot is about the meeting of two old friends, former classmates: a fat one and a thin one. While they know nothing about each other, they show themselves as people: “The friends kissed each other three times and fixed their eyes full of tears on each other.” But as soon as they exchanged “personal data,” an impassable social boundary immediately appeared between them. So a friendly meeting turns into a meeting of two unequal ranks.

It is known that in the first edition of the story the motivation was traditional: the “thin” one was humiliated from actual dependence, since the “fat” one turned out to be his direct boss and scolded him “on the job.” Including the story in 1886 in the collection “Motley Stories,” Chekhov reworked it, removing a similar motivation, and placing other accents.

Now, as was the case in “Death of an Official,” the superior retains at least some human traits: “Well, that’s enough! - the fat man winced. “...why is this veneration for rank here!” And the inferior, on the contrary, without any coercion begins to servile and grovel. The mere mention of the high rank of the “fat one” plunges the “thin one” and his entire family into a kind of trance - a kind of sweet self-abasement, an ardent desire to do everything to deprive oneself of any semblance of humanity.

Here there is a substantive divergence and a fundamental difference between Chekhov and Gogol, between Chekhov’s officials and Gogol’s officials. Chekhov brings the analysis of the essence of bureaucratic relations to its logical conclusion. It turns out that the matter is not just a matter of subordination in service, but much deeper - already in the person himself.

Chekhov brings to the forefront in his stories “little people” (represented by the “subtle one”), who not only are not against the reigning world order, but also humiliate themselves - without any demand from above. Simply because life has already formed them into slaves, voluntary executors of someone else’s will.

Thus, the main object of ridicule in the story “Fat and Thin” was a little official who acts meanly and grovels when no one forces him to do so. Showing how the very object of humiliation becomes its mouthpiece, Chekhov asserted a more sober view of the nature of slave psychology, medically harshly diagnosing it at its core as a spiritual illness.

The decline of the sense of personality, the loss of one’s “I” by a person are brought to a critical limit in the story.

I note that such a person does not see a person in another, but only a rank, a certain symbol indicating subordination, and nothing more. Human communication is replaced by official subordination. Social function turns out to be dominant, absorbing the whole person. He no longer lives in the full sense of the word - “functions”... Isn’t this an Official with a capital C, honoring the rank, not the person?

Actually, the entire system of Chekhov's stories is devoted to the study of various facets of spiritual subordination and slavery, ranging from the simplest (with which we began the analysis) to the most complex.

In Chekhov's narrative, the environment has ceased to be an external force, foreign to man, and the characters depend on it to the extent that they themselves create and reproduce it (shape it with their participation).

Chekhov gave a multiple analysis of the reasons that force people into submission in captivity. It is customary to say that he “exposes” - he castigates servility, covetousness, flattery, betrayal, lies and other vices of social man. But for such an “exposure” you don’t need to be Chekhov.

Deep, hidden meaning Chekhov's work and artistic discovery was that as a writer, as a psychologist, as a doctor, he explored the composition of slave blood drop by drop, story by story.

In the last years of his life, Chekhov noted in his notebook: “Nowhere is authority as pressing as among us, Russians, humiliated by centuries of slavery, afraid of freedom... We are overtired of servility and hypocrisy.”

In his stories, Chekhov mercilessly depicts the most varied manifestations of servility as a blatant distortion human personality. At the same time, the writer captures the blood connection between servility and despotism: one gives rise to, supports and feeds the other.

So, in a story with a very precise title "Two in one" the same official manifests himself without any spiritual dramas differently in different circumstances - sometimes as a slave, sometimes as a master. The same theme of completely unprincipled conformism, revealing both the serf and the despot in human nature, resounds vividly in the stories "Chameleon"(as an image of a natural opportunist) and "Mask".

Let's take a closer look at the story with the expressive title "The Victory's Celebration"(1883): these are the memoirs of a retired collegiate registrar. The story talks about how Kozulin, who has risen to the ranks - the current “winner” - mocks and mocks his former boss Kuritsyn and his other subordinates, treating them to a rich Maslenitsa dinner...

Kozulin, apparently, is a mediocre official: “for our brother, who does not soar high under the skies, he is great, omnipotent, great wise” - this is what the narrator says; in fact, he cannot boast of a successful career, although he is no longer young, and besides, he is petty and vicious, as his subordinates characterize him. Chekhov's “little man,” even endowed with considerable rank, is also small with all the other human characteristics - both those given to him by nature and those acquired. But in the world of servile subordinates, he really feels omnipotent. Among his guests was his former boss, whom he served before as prescribed by the state of affairs, and now he is taking low, sophisticated and evil revenge on him for his humiliation.

Thus, in Chekhov’s depiction, the official appears as a being who potentially contains both the qualities of a despot and the qualities of a slave, which are revealed only depending on his actual position in the system of command and subordination.

A.P. told us a terrible thing about the man. Chekhov: someone who has once suffered humiliation has already cultivated anger in the embryo, and under certain circumstances will certainly throw out his despotic power on another, and if possible, will take revenge on everyone, without distinguishing between right and wrong, receiving sadistic pleasure from other people’s humiliations (shows out his baser instincts).

The behavior of Kozulin, endowed with power over his guests - subordinates, is inhuman and disgusting: the official does not see a person in his subordinate, in the boss's courage he completely loses his face, revealing the ugly nature of man, his passion for self-affirmation at the expense of the weak, in this case - the subordinate.

It is interesting to note the fact that the former boss, Kuritsyn, lacks this cruelty and passion for trampling on the weak. Perhaps that is why he did not succeed in his career and retired in the lowest rank - a collegiate registrar. The subtitle gives the reader this information, although in the story itself not a single character is named by rank.

Observing Kuritsyn's behavior, we come to the conclusion that he is seeker and cowardly, laughs with others at the humiliation of the weak, and is himself ready to humiliate himself for a petty position. Playing the jester along with his elderly father on the orders of his boss, he thinks with satisfaction: “I should be the clerk’s assistant!” And, remembering after many years the formidable boss, he mentally trembles before him... Here it is, the main reason for the possibility of tyranny of any scale, the soil on which only lawlessness and arbitrariness can grow - this is the willingness to perceive them and continue, to obey them. For what?

In “official” Russia, a person experiences the detrimental influence of the social structure: a person’s existence is devalued, his social status is important, the improvement of which can only be achieved by climbing the career ladder, making a successful career. So rank, another title, awards became a way to transition to a new quality of life, the daring dream of which lives in every “little person.”

Chekhov is unparalleled in Russian literature in depicting how social status a person determines all other aspects of life (including family, companionship and love relationships), becomes the main human function, and everything else is derivative.

Returning to the story "The Victory's Celebration", I would like to note that in this small and seemingly absurd plot, Chekhov with amazing vigilance shows us the origins of tyranny: Kozulin does not kill people or torture them, since he is just the head of the office, not a concentration camp. But he has no moral brakes. Different - only forms of torture...

Probably, Chekhov could not foresee the terrible monsters, fascists and mass murderers on whom the 20th century turned out to be so generous.

Already in the title of the story, a vile human phenomenon is indicated - triumph over the vanquished, i.e. dependent people. This sounds very alarming for our time, because victory can only be achieved through confrontation, a war that people are constantly waging at different levels...

Although Chekhov was never an official, this unattractive historical and unartistic literary stereotype turns in his stories into visible and vivid images (which have even become common nouns), embodying character traits this class.

It is important to note that in Chekhov’s writings there is a description of the tendency towards the bureaucraticization of the entire Russian society, the transformation of the mass of people who were not formally considered officials into something official-like. Chekhov created images of not just officials by profession, but images of bureaucratic relations in all spheres of life and in all layers of society.

Let's turn to the stories.

Ranks and orders appear in Chekhov's stories, perhaps more often than in other writers. One of the early stories is called "Order".

A high school teacher with the rank of collegiate registrar named Lev Pustyakov goes to dinner with a merchant he knows, wearing someone else’s Order of Stanislav, because the owner “terribly loves orders” and intends to make a splash. But while visiting, he had to face another “furor”: his colleague, finding himself at the table opposite, also put on the undeserved Order of Anna. The conflict was thus successfully resolved, but our hero was very upset that he did not wear the Order of Vladimir.

Chekhov's ability to depict a person's character in one short stroke and turn a funny scene into a thoughtful parable is amazing! After all, teacher Pustyakov (!) not only wants to please the tastes of the owner of the house - he is infected with the all-encompassing disease of Russian bureaucracy - Khlestakovism.

This desire to look more significant than one actually is, and the thirst for undeserved honors also characterize our modern officials - bureaucrats: probably, each of us in everyday life, applying even for a trifling certificate - a piece of paper, experienced the pressure of apparent significance and dependence on ordinary officials - performers. After all, the significance of a person in the administrative world is often determined by the ability to imitate his significance by various means, not necessarily symbols of power. Not to be, but to appear - this is such bureaucratic vulgarity.

"A story that's hard to find a title"- another curious scene where the main character, the official Ottyagaev, a fiery speaker, having begun his toast, so to speak, to the peace (“There are thefts, thefts, theft, robbery, extortion all around…”), ends it to health (“… let’s drink to the health of our boss, patron and benefactor...!"). This change of tone, caused by the appearance of the boss himself at the dinner table, as well as the unbridled praise and ostentatious democracy of his speech, makes it clear to the attentive reader true price this official. What seems to be a beautiful impulse in words to forget about veneration of rank, to unite everyone on equal terms, in fact demonstrates flattery and servility to one’s own boss and the desire to at least mentally soar to higher spheres, bringing one’s friend closer to much higher ranks. Moreover, it is not a fact that in reality he will not show his power over his subordinates, because it is known that inflated significance compensates for its failure at the expense of the weaker.

It is also difficult to find a “name” for the hero of the story: a demagogue plus the whole servile and pharisaical set. Plus... my own awkwardness and bewilderment. Empty man!

Story " Experienced" I also suggested taking a plot for the article.

The plot of this story is simple: officials of one institution put their signatures on the attendance sheet for the New Year. When one official carefully signed his name, another told him that he could easily ruin him by placing a squiggle or a blot next to his signature. The first official was horrified by this, since this seemingly trifle could really ruin his career, as happened with a colleague who threatened him...

Interpreting this situation to Soviet reality, the author argues that in Soviet institutions officials do more dirty tricks to each other than Chekhov’s heroes, and in the most sophisticated form, while hiding behind concern for their neighbors, the collective, the country, and all progressive humanity. Soviet intellectual folklore reflected this in countless anecdotes and jokes.

I will cite a few well-known ones: if under capitalism man is a wolf to man, then under socialism comrade is a wolf; a decent person differs from a scoundrel only in that he commits meanness towards loved ones without experiencing pleasure from it; I’m the boss - you’re a fool, you’re the boss - I’m a fool; do not do good - you will not receive evil; initiative is punishable; a holy place is never empty... Isn’t it familiar, almost Chekhovian?

Our National history and literature after Chekhov, and my own observations in modern life confirm that Chekhov was surprisingly right: “How little it takes to knock down a person!”

2.1 The tragedy of the little things in life

It was precisely his interest in the bureaucratic - bureaucratic aspect of the life of society that allowed Chekhov to open up for literature the area of phenomena that seemed insignificant, everyday trifles and trifles, but under Chekhov’s watchful gaze they revealed their decisive role in the creation of a certain system and way of life.

Subject of interest and artistic comprehension Chekhov becomes a new layer of life, unknown to Russian literature. He reveals to the reader everyday life, a series of routine everyday affairs and considerations familiar to everyone, passing by the consciousness of the majority.

Ordinary, everyday life for Chekhov is not something secondary in comparison with some other human life, but the main sphere of existence of his contemporaries.

Everyday life in his stories is not the background of the spiritual quest of his heroes, but the very way of life, penetrating into the way of life - a mediator in a person’s relationship with the world.

He wrote private life - this was precisely what became Chekhov’s artistic discovery. Under his pen, literature became a mirror of a moment that matters only in the life and fate of one specific person.

Reflections on Chekhov's stories led researchers to the conclusion that the everyday, “all this habitually current everyday life,” is not necessarily a source of drama. That special life drama discovered by Chekhov, for the expression of which he needed new artistic forms, is focused in a person, in the state of his consciousness.

Chekhov's interest in himself to an ordinary person of a very special kind, it cannot be reduced to denunciation of vulgarity. Chekhov's approach is more complex: what and how does an ordinary person bring himself into the everyday course of life, and through everyday life - into all forms of human relations.

In the everyday life of an ordinary private person, the writer sees far from a private meaning: in Chekhov, a person is tested by his attitude to his own and general existence, he himself participates in the “formation of life.”

Chekhov's private stories are full of tragedy and artistic bewilderment. The writer’s stories about fat and thin people, about chameleons and small children striving for fame and rank, about full-time and freelance law enforcement officers (this whole “parade” of officials presented in my essay) created a picture of reality full of social meanness and moral ugliness. Exploring the phenomenon of bureaucracy in Chekhov’s Russia, we saw the “components” of the lives of Chekhov’s characters in their bureaucratic guise - and we can join the writer’s verdict: “You live badly, gentlemen!”

With all his work, Chekhov shows that the main source of evil in Russian life is dominant social relations and opposes the distorted forms of Russian statehood that suppress people. Chekhov considers the existing social system of life to be abnormal, unnatural in the sense that it gives rise to phenomena that do not correspond to human ideals of goodness, goodness, justice - thereby breaking and distorting the nature of man himself.

This idea is expressed with utmost force - and brought to the point of absurdity - in the story "Ward №6"; in it, smart and highly moral people end up in a madhouse, and scoundrels dominate society. “In “Ward No. 6,” wrote N. Leskov, “the general order in the country is depicted in miniature. Everywhere - ward No. 6. It's Russia". The desire of one of the heroes of the work for society to realize its shortcomings and be horrified is realized in the story with great force.

Chekhov does not try to explain the prevailing troubles by immediate social causes. After all, the social ill-being that plagues Russia is only the initial impetus for the leveling of the individual. But it is the man himself who completes everything.

Let's go back to the story "Gooseberry" from the small trilogy “About Love”. For the official - nobleman Nikolai Ivanovich, the gooseberry symbolizes an idyllic, pastoral life, which is in every way the opposite of social life. He hoped to break out of the bureaucratic world of his office and become a man free from class restrictions. But he turned into a slave of his own dreams, jumped from one class niche to another: he was an official, but became a landowner. He never became a free man. Before us is a typical story of the degradation of the human personality, which voluntarily dissolved in social conditions.

The hero's fear and cowardice in the face of circumstances, the mystical, almost religious habit of everyday existence turned out to be stronger than love in the story "About Love".

As one of Chekhov’s heroes noted (in the story “Fear”), the main thing that is scary is “everyday life”, from which it is impossible to hide. In the same series is the spiritual death of Doctor Startsev, who turned into a pathetic philistine Ionych (in story of the same name), and the fate of Nikitin (“Literature Teacher”), who wants to break with the world of boring, insignificant people, but is not yet able to do this.

It is difficult to change your lifestyle. In Chekhov's stories we observe a decline in a person's sense of personality and personal responsibility for his life and destiny, when it is easier to submit to the prevailing relations in society, guided by ready-made, generally accepted rules.

“No one understood as clearly and subtly as Anton Pavlovich the tragedy of the little things in life; no one before him knew how to so mercilessly truthfully paint people a shameful and dreary picture of their lives in the dull chaos of petty-bourgeois everyday life,” wrote A.M. Bitter.

In Chekhov's picture of life, a person is both an object of influence (“the environment is stuck”) and a subject of action, accordingly shaping this very environment in which he lives.

Chekhov, more keenly than many others, saw and masterfully demonstrated in his work the depersonalization of human individuality, pointing out the “poverty of human resources,” internal inconsistency, and the alienation of man from his true nature. As a diagnostician, Chekhov points out the cause of this disease - the human soul.

It is in the absence of spiritual independence that there is a danger of forgetting oneself in a social role, which is what happens to Chekhov’s hero, who lost himself in official self-realization, his name is an official.

A. Zinoviev believes that from a sociological point of view, the most significant thing in Chekhov’s work is the discovery of the power of nonentities and insignificance (“everyday life”) as the basis of the life of a state-organized society.

As many years of experience have shown Soviet history, the power of “little things” and the power of nonentities not only did not weaken in post-revolutionary Russia, but, on the contrary, strengthened and grew in every possible way, capturing all spheres of social life. Moreover, those unsightly qualities that Chekhov portrayed in the images of petty officials, completely crushed by life, in Soviet reality developed especially strongly in the most educated and highest-ranking part of society, which has real power. Thus, Chekhov came across such human relationships and the human qualities determined by them, which are reproduced at different levels, regardless of social order. And their nature, as Chekhov tells us, is in man himself, the human personality, creating his own and social life.

2.2 Artistic epiphanies to a better future

There are important lines in Chekhov’s notebook: “New forms in literature are always followed by new forms of life (harbingers).” In Chekhov's “picture of a single epochal consciousness” (L. Ginzburg), with all the diversity of its states, one thing was expressed: the readiness of life and thought to move into “new forms, higher and more reasonable.” Reasonable!

In his worldview, Chekhov is close to V.I. Vernadsky - scientist, thinker, humanist, who saw the development of Russian civilization through the noosphere, i.e. intelligent human activity. “The most difficult thing is the brain of a statesman,” says Vernadsky, meaning the ability of a statesman to have reasonable, morally oriented thinking, i.e. official

Therefore, the phenomenon of Russian bureaucracy, understanding its nature and problems are extremely important for the civilized development of a society governed by the state. And the figure of the official in this context becomes key, because all positive changes in the social system are possible not through administrative measures, but only through the person performing its functions.

Chekhov's creative development followed the line of an increasingly in-depth analysis of social reality, and his diagnostic picture of life in post-reform Russia amazes with its harsh truthfulness and harshness of view. Yes, society is not healthy. The person is also sick.

Knowing that the patient is doomed, Doctor Chekhov not only sympathizes with a hopelessly ill person, but experiences his fate as his own, while giving hope to everyone, acting as a healer of incurable diseases.

Chekhov's understanding of the completeness of human self-realization is addressed to his moral resources. The creator of a new faith - faith in man, Chekhov rightly views everything that divides people as transitory.

Chekhov fulfilled his great artistic calling, noted by A.M. Gorky - to illuminate the prose of the everyday existence of people from a higher point of view.

The greatness of Chekhov lies in the fact that he wrote not only about the influence of the environment, the social structure on a person, but also about the duty of a person to resist this influence, moreover, to overcome this dependence.

Man is inseparable from social existence, and the path to a fair social structure is at the same time the path to the emancipation of the spiritual capabilities of people - these are two sides of a single process of the progressive development of human civilization. By caring about justice, people humanize themselves. And any deviation from this wise law of life is at the same time anti-human and anti-social and leads to the strengthening of injustice and at the same time to the destruction and death of the human personality.

Chekhov, the great seeker of the truth about man and for man, the great citizen of his Fatherland, wrapped in impenetrable clothes of irony, is concerned with learning himself and teaching others to look for answers.

Exactly - learn to search! Not to find out the answers, but to come to the answers, learn to find them at all times in this changing and multifaceted life.

The writer's artistic insight into a better future inspires hope and faith in the triumph of Homo Sapiens and the discovery of “new forms of life” in our Russian reality.

Conclusion.

As a result of the research, the main object of which was the “Chekhov world” and the heroes inhabiting it, we, first of all, develop a new vision of the work of A.P. Chekhov - in the vein of sociological realism. This allowed me to identify as the central figure of “Chekhov’s world” an official who acts on behalf of the authorities and who has become the personification of the era.

“Russia,” wrote Chekhov, “is a government country.” And with amazing artistic power, using the example of bureaucracy, he showed that a person’s position in the social system and hierarchy of Russian society began to turn into a factor that determines all other aspects of a person’s life, and the relationship of command and subordination became the basis for all other relationships. Therefore, among the Chekhov heroes discussed in the essay are not just officials by profession, but various forms of bureaucratic relations, called the “Chekhov world”, where Chekhov managed to create a picture of the tragicomedy of human existence in a world of illusory values, worries and anxieties, unprecedented in Russian and world literature .

Following the logic of revealing the topic, first I looked at the historical aspect

problems against which the writer Chekhov creates his stories. This is very important for understanding the problem of bureaucracy and its competent interpretation in Chekhov’s work.

A critical review of the sources used allows you to see and evaluate different views and approaches to the topic, for their subsequent use, rethinking and generalization.

I thoughtfully began the main part of the article with the presentation of Chekhov in the cultural and social context of his time in order to show the originality of the writer’s talent, the special artistic means and methods characteristic of his work and with the help of which he was able to identify and skillfully capture the phenomenal phenomenon of Russian life - bureaucracy.

The main task of the study - to show the many-sided image of bureaucracy in Chekhov's stories - was solved systematically and consistently.

The theme of the “little man,” traditional in the Russian literary tradition, found a unique refraction in Chekhov’s stories. Gaining social status by rank, Chekhov's little man becomes an essentially petty official - not only and not necessarily by profession, but by his main function in society, losing his humane human qualities.

For a direct analysis of the texts of Chekhov’s stories, revealing the image of an official, E. Kazakevich’s phrase “The writer tells - his story proves” seemed to me successful. The interpretation of each of the stories in this part of the essay was built as evidence of a certain thesis.

Through Chekhov's short and seemingly unpretentious texts, the pitiful, small and petty in the nature of a social person, who has completely lost himself in the real world of social conventions and priorities, is revealed in all his nature. It is this moral “break” of a small person in a social environment hostile to him, the loss of humanity in a person in various forms, that I reasonably explored in Chekhov’s stories.

Thus, in the main evidentiary part of the article, we carefully and substantively examined the many-sided image of the official attested in Chekhov’s stories. It seems to me that the main goal of my work - revealing the true nature of bureaucracy, this phenomenal phenomenon in the life of Russian society - has been achieved. My personal knowledge of bureaucracy has been significantly enriched precisely through Chekhov’s stories, which reveal the deep nature of this phenomenon inherent in the person himself.

I would like to note that I attempted an integrated approach to this topic in Chekhov’s works, based on the analysis of scattered information in different sources, rethought and generalized.

And finally, the logical conclusion of the topic will be a perspective vision and philosophical understanding of the problem of bureaucracy - through Chekhov.

The phenomenon of Russian bureaucracy, understanding its nature and problems are extremely important for the reform and development of our society on reasonable principles, bequeathed to us by Chekhov. And with renewed vigor, among universal human problems, “Chekhov’s problems” “highlighted” - and turned out to be central! After all, the transformation of the Russian state, its social reorganization on a reasonable basis is possible only through a person, and a state person - an official - in the first place.

List of used literature

I. Chekhov A.P. Selected works. In 2 volumes. T. 1, 2. - M., 1979.

2.Berdnikov T.P. A.P. Chekhov. Ideological and creative quests. - M.: Artist. lit., 1984. -511 p.

Z. Gromov M.P. A book about Chekhov. - M.: Sovremennik, 1989. - 382 p. “The fans grew up. Literature").

4. Kapitanova L.A. A.P. Chekhov in life and work: Textbook. allowance. -M.: Rus. word, 2001. - 76 p.

5. Kuleshov V.I. Life and work of AL 1. Chekhov: Essay. M.: Det. lit., 1982. - 175 p. .

6.Linkov V.Ya. Art world prose by A.P. Chekhov. M.: Publishing house. Moscow State University, 1982.- 128 p.

7. Tyupa V.I. The artistry of Chekhov's story. - M.: Higher. school, 1982. - 133 p.

In my articles, I have repeatedly mentioned that the Trans-Urals have always been a well-fed and rich region. Not only merchants, but also peasants had large capital. For example, the wealth of some trading peasants exceeded several times the capital of merchants of the III and sometimes II guilds. And yet, for some reason, the peasants did not join the merchant class. I would like to publish a short story (memoirs) from the life of a trading peasant from Kurtamysh (now Kurgan region), and then a merchant of the II guild, Kuzma Aleksandrovich Yugov, which in some way explains why he became a merchant, although he did not really want it. And also about the arbitrariness of officials in Tsarist Russia. But first I would like to mention that a small conflict occurred between the young peasant Yugov and the Zemsky chief Pyotr Vladimirovich Lavrentyev, which, due to the vindictiveness and abuse of official position of the Zemsky chief, grew to enormous proportions. And, of course, a lot of money was involved in such cases. All kinds of checks began on Yugov, as a volost clerk, audits that took a lot of time and effort. Having found no legitimate reasons for Yugov’s dismissal, nit-picking began against him for any reason. However, the legally literate peasant easily repelled all the attacks of the local “boss.”

“The zemstvo chief turned into a strict auditor. He carried out his thorough audit for two days and two evenings, but did not find any shortcomings, much less abuses. About a month later, a certain guy comes to the volost with an order from Zemsky to conduct a thorough audit. The consequences of this audit were revealed in the fact that the judicial investigator Chikov came to Kaminskaya with a resolution to bring me to trial for abuse of office. However, I refuted all the accusations, and the investigator issued a decree to dismiss the case. Can you imagine Lavrentyev’s irritation?! But he continues to attack me.

The volost foreman Makhov rides on a pair of horses. I stood at my shop, far from the road, and put goods into a cart, preparing for the fair in Kurtamysh. The watchman runs with the order of the foreman: go to the volost now. I arrive, the foreman asks:

Did you see me drive by?

If you saw it, why didn’t you bow?

Is this necessary? Hats are removed only in front of the Bishop's carriage, when they see him.

The clerk writes a decree arresting Yugov for two days for disrespecting his superiors. Did you write it? Subscribe Yugov.

I take a pen and roll it out to the hilt: that he was driving so fast that due to the distance and clouds of dust, at first I could not find out, but only when he passed, I guessed that it was the foreman, i.e., who drove by. “boss,” as he calls himself. Please give me a copy of the resolution.

When you've served it, then you'll get it.

I answer that I am going to the fair, and if you arrest me, you will disrupt my trade. Then, for your information, I inform you that your resolution will cancel the Peasant Presence as illegal, and then I will prosecute you for wrongful imprisonment and sue for damages caused to my trade by delaying me in arrest, since I am deprived of a trip to fair.

Well, when you didn’t recognize me at first, I forgive you for that.

Then you write that you consider this resolution invalid and cancel it.

After checking what the clerk wrote and the foreman signed, I sit down on the bench, along with the coachman and peasant Ivan Postovalov. And I hear the foreman’s call again:

Now you're in trouble again - why did you sit down in a public place? Clerk! Write a new decree - For two days!

He winced and began to write. When signing the new resolution, I make the remark that when I had an explanation about the first resolution, I stood in front of the foreman out of respect for his position all the time, and sat down when the whole incident was already settled. They even sit in state courts and institutions when the interrogation of the accused is over. Sitting with me were the coachman and the peasant Postovalov, but for some reason the foreman did not make these demands of them. I repeated everything out loud, and my interlocutors quickly fled from the volost.

Kurtamysh. n. XX century.

From the window of my room I see: the watchman is leading the coachman and the peasant Postovalov, and the foreman arrested them because they were sitting in a public place. After some time, the foreman calls me to him and says:

Forgive me, Kuzma Aleksandrovich, because I didn’t do all this just now of my own free will, but on the orders of the Zemsky chief. He ordered that as soon as I arrived in the volost, I would immediately arrest you, finding fault with something.

Well, what do you intend to do with me now?

I threw it all away and released the arrested coachman and Postovalov.

To make sure, I went into the volost, it turned out that the Resolution had been canceled, “screwed,” as the foreman said. Having survived these troubles, I wrapped up my goods and left for the fair, but seeing no end to such incidents, I chose merchant rights in my name in Kurtamysh. This protected me from similar attacks from various “bosses.” Here's the story.

What works of Russian writers depict the morals of officials and what makes these works similar to N.V. Gogol’s play “The Inspector General”?

Read the text fragment below and complete tasks B1-B7; C1-C2.

Mayor. It is my duty, as the mayor of this city, to ensure that there is no harassment to travelers and all noble people...

Khlestakov (at first he stutters a little, but by the end of the speech he speaks loudly). But what can I do?.. It’s not my fault... I’ll really pay... They’ll send it to me from the village.

Bobchinsky looks out of the door. He is more to blame: he serves me beef as hard as a log; and the soup - God knows what he splashed in there, I had to throw it out the window. He starved me for days on end... The tea is so strange: it stinks of fish, not tea. Why am I... Here's the news!

Mayor (timid). Sorry, it's really not my fault. The beef at my market is always good. They are brought by Kholmogory merchants, people who are sober and of good behavior. I don't know where he gets this from. And if something goes wrong, then... Let me invite you to move with me to another apartment.

Khlestakov. No I do not want to! I know what it means to another apartment: that is, to prison. What right do you have? How dare you?.. Yes, here I am... I serve in St. Petersburg. (Being cheerful.) I, I, I...

Mayor (to the side). Oh my God, so angry! I found out everything, the damned merchants told me everything!

Khlestakov (bravely). Even if you’re here with your whole team, I won’t go! I'm going straight to the minister! (He hits the table with his fist.) What do you? What do you?

Mayor (stretched out and shaking all over). Have mercy, don't destroy! Wife, small children... don’t make a person unhappy.

Khlestakov. No I do not want! Here's another! What do I care? Because you have a wife and children, I have to go to prison, that’s great!

Bobchinsky looks out the door and hides in fear. No, thank you humbly, I don’t want to.

Mayor (shaking). Due to inexperience, by golly due to inexperience. Insufficient wealth... Judge for yourself: the government salary is not enough even for tea and sugar. If there were any bribes, it was very small: something for the table and a couple of dresses. As for the non-commissioned officer's widow, a merchant, whom I allegedly flogged, this is slander, by God, slander. My villains invented this: they are such a people that they are ready to encroach on my life.

Khlestakov. What? I don't care about them. (Thinking.) I don’t know, however, why you are talking about villains and about some non-commissioned officer’s widow... A non-commissioned officer’s wife is completely different, but you don’t dare flog me, you are far from that... Here’s another! Look at you!.. I will pay, I will pay money, but now I don’t have it. The reason I'm sitting here is because I don't have a penny.

Mayor (to the side). Oh, subtle thing! Where did he throw it? what a fog he brought in! Find out who wants it! You don’t know which side to take. Well, just try it at random. (Aloud.) If you definitely need money or anything else, then I am ready to serve right now. My duty is to help those passing by.

Khlestakov. Give me, lend me! I'll pay the innkeeper right now. I would only like two hundred rubles or even less.

Mayor (bringing up papers). Exactly two hundred rubles, although don’t bother counting.

N. V. Gogol “The Inspector General”

Indicate the genre to which N.V. Gogol’s play “The Inspector General” belongs.

Explanation.

N.V. Gogol's play “The Inspector General” belongs to the comedy genre. Let's give a definition.

Comedy is a genre of fiction characterized by a humorous or satirical approach, as well as a type of drama in which the moment of effective conflict or struggle between antagonistic characters is specifically resolved.

Answer: comedy.

Answer: comedy

Name a literary movement that is characterized by an objective depiction of reality and the principles of which were developed by N.V. Gogol in his work.

Explanation.

This literary movement is called realism. Let's give a definition.

Realism is the fundamental method of art and literature. Its basis is the principle of life truth, which guides the artist in his work, striving to give the most complete and true reflection of life and maintaining the greatest life verisimilitude in the depiction of events, people, objects of the material world and nature as they are in reality.

Answer: realism.

Answer: realism

The above scene is structured as a conversation between two characters. What is this form of communication between characters in a work of art called?

Explanation.

This form of communication is called dialogue. Let's give a definition.

Dialogue is a conversation between two or more persons in a work of fiction.

Answer: dialogue.

Answer: dialogue

The fragment uses the author's explanations, comments on the course of the play (“at first he stutters a little, but by the end of the speech he speaks loudly,” etc.). What term are they called?

Explanation.

They are called the term "remark". Let's give a definition.

Directions are explanations with which the playwright precedes or accompanies the course of action in the play. remarks can explain the age, appearance, clothing of the characters, as well as their state of mind, behavior, movements, gestures, intonations. In the stage directions that precede an act, scene, or episode, a designation and sometimes a description of the scene of action or setting is given.

Answer: remark.

Answer: remark|remarks

What technique is used in Khlestakov’s remark about beef “hard, like a log»?

Explanation.

This technique is called comparison. Let's give a definition.

Comparison is a trope in which one object or phenomenon is compared to another according to some characteristic common to them. The purpose of comparison is to identify new, important, advantageous properties for the subject of the statement in the object of comparison.

Answer: comparison.

Answer: comparison

The surname of Khlestakov, as well as the surnames of other characters in the play, contains a certain figurative characteristic. What are these surnames called?

Explanation.

Such surnames are called “speaking” in the literature. Let's give a definition.

“Talking” surnames in literature are surnames that are part of the characteristics of a character in a work of fiction, emphasizing the most striking character trait of the character.

Answer: speakers.

Answer: speaking|speaking surnames|speaking surname

The speech of the characters is emotional and replete with exclamations and questions that do not require an answer. What are their names?

Explanation.

Such questions are called rhetorical. Let's give a definition.

A rhetorical question is a rhetorical figure that is not an answer to a question, but a statement. Essentially, a rhetorical question is a question to which an answer is not required or expected due to its extreme obviousness.

Answer: rhetorical.

Answer: rhetorical|rhetorical|rhetorical question

What role does the above scene play in the development of the plot of the play?

Explanation.

Each of the heroes of the comedy “The Inspector General,” alarmed by the news of a possible audit, behaves in accordance with his character and his actions against the law. The mayor comes to Khlestakov’s tavern, believing that he is an auditor. In the first minutes, both are frightened: the mayor thinks that the newcomer is not happy with the order in the city, and Khlestakov suspects that they want to take him to prison for non-payment of accumulated bills. This scene reveals the essence of two characters: Khlestakov’s cowardice and the mayor’s experienced resourcefulness. The comedy of the first meeting of the mayor and Khlestakov in the tavern is built on a mistake, which provokes fear in the characters, fear so strong that both do not notice obvious contradictions. From this scene begins the comic story of the absurd relationship between officials of the county town and the petty swindler Khlestakov.

Explanation.

The action in The Inspector General dates back to the early 30s of the nineteenth century. All kinds of abuses of power, embezzlement and bribery, arbitrariness and disdain for the people were characteristic, deep-rooted features of the bureaucracy of that time. This is exactly how Gogol shows the rulers of the county town in his comedy.

All officials are drawn by Gogol as if they were alive, each of them is unique. But at the same time, they all create the overall image of the bureaucracy governing the country, revealing the rottenness of the socio-political system of feudal Russia.

The officials from Gogol's "Dead Souls", the officials from Griboedov's "Woe from Wit", the "servants of the people" of the Soviet era from M. Bulgakov's novel "The Master and Margarita" are very similar to the officials from The Inspector General.

The officials from the novel “The Master and Margarita” are extremely unscrupulous creatures, mired in proprietary interests. Stepan Likhodeev is a degenerate type, drinks, walks around without thinking, and lets dubious artists into variety shows. “Officials from literature”, being the authority for “ordinary” writers, true artists, creators, obey directives from above and with one stroke of the pen are forbidden to create, without thinking that by depriving them of the opportunity to write, they are depriving a true master of life.

Thus, in Russian literature of both the 19th and 20th centuries, bureaucrats do not appear in their most favorable color, revealing in their ranks examples of meanness, hypocrisy, and servility.