32. “Cavalry” by I. Babel. Issue, hero, style. Place in literature about the Civil War
The works were read according to ideological keys (codes), but not all could be read this way. N: Babel “Cavalry”.
“Cavalry” is an episode of the struggle for freedom of creativity. Early 1920s – stories, publications in the magazine “October”. Budyonny’s article “Babism of Babel from Krasnaya Novy” is an accusation against the writer of slandering the First Cavalry Army, where Babel himself served. A very straightforward reading, according to the so-called. ideological code.
The work was seen as the poetry of banditry; accused of deliberately de-heroizing history.
"Cavalry" is one of the most beautiful works about the revolution and the Civil War. The theme is “civil strife.” A series of short stories and short stories combined common theme, the image of the narrator who links them together.
It caused a mixed reaction among contemporaries (“Letter”, “Salt” - who is the hero? What kind of heroes are these?) - the characters did not fit into the stereotypes that had already developed. Naturalism, physiology...
“Letter” (23) is highlighted by many researchers. Written in 1923. There is no author’s position as such. “The Letter” does not deserve to be forgotten” - why? From the context it is clear that the father is a company commander with the Whites, and his three sons are in the Red Army. The letter is written by the author under the dictation of the boy Kirdyukov. In the second lines he tells his mother how his father cut his younger brother. Semyon found his dad and avenged Fedya. The boy himself is striking; there is nothing childish about him. The boy perceives the events as ordinary, ordinary; there is no concern for the mother to whom this letter is addressed.
The letter is a terrible document of that time => therefore it is beyond doubt.
Only the narrator experiences emotions and shock. But there is no open author's assessment. He asks only 1 question (was your father strict?). Author's assessment - only in the episode with the photo. He is different.
“My First Guest” (1924) – main character K.V. Lyutov. Is it possible for someone to be close to a hero? Understand him? For the majority, he is an inferior person, he is a scientist, glasses are a sign of his alienness. The worst thing is that he proves that he can be like everyone else, be his own. He must kill the owner's goose. The narrator says that it was a completely forced murder. → he comes into conflict with himself. The goose is presented as an innocent victim of war. There will be another concession to a war in which those who are right are not essentially, but because there are more of them.
“The Death of Dolgushov” (1923). One of the short stories that directly depicts a military episode. The action takes place after the battle, household painting. What does it mean to feel sorry for a mortally wounded person? What is willpower in war? Main meaning The short story is associated with the death of Dolgushov.
The drama of the main character. He understands, but it cannot be simpler, he cannot shoot at a person, even at his request. Afonka Beda (the narrator's friend) shoots. Afonka suffers a lot after the shot.
Many began to compare this short story with an episode from Fadeev’s “Destruction”. Babel has no remarkable purpose for which to kill.
For the narrator of Cavalry, the question of painful choice cannot be raised at all. He is neither on one side nor on the other. “Cavalry” carries Christian values, so it turned out to be irrelevant.
Style. Voronsky: the relationship between daydreaming and “womanish life.” Contemporaries began to read everyday, naturalistic literature according to the code. Babel’s thinking is based on a carnivalized worldview (life turned out of the ordinary rut, the world in reverse, liberation from laws ordinary life). Carnival as a worldview brings together the sacred and the profane, the high and the low, the wise and the foolish (Bakhtin). This must be taken into account in order to understand Cavalry. Babel’s irony is romantic (this is the essence and pathos of “Cavalry”; the combination of the ordinary and the sublime; the tragic and the comic - oberiuts).
Babel “Cavalry” (1926) - a cycle of stories. In all his works about the revolution and civil war, Babel denounced the unfair accusations that cost the lives of many innocent people, and which also overtook him. Babel's heroes tried to avoid bloodshed in all situations. In one of the short stories “Cavalry,” the main character before an attack specifically removes the cartridges from his revolver so as not to kill a person. His comrades do not understand him and begin to hate him. Babel talentedly developed the humanistic traditions of classical Russian literature, in which human life and happiness always prevail over other values.
Roman I.E. Babel's "Cavalry" is a series of episodes arranged into huge mosaic canvases. In them the writer shows horrors civil war: cruelty, violence, destruction of the old culture. Ordinary people - Cossacks, cavalrymen - and representatives of the intelligentsia are involved in this process. In "Cavalry", despite the horrors of war, the ferocity of those years is shown - faith in the revolution and faith in man. It should be noted that the book takes place in Ukraine and Poland, but all the characters mentioned below are Russian. The narration is told on behalf of Kirill Vasilyevich Lyutov. He, an educated person who knows languages, endowed with a sense of beauty, finds himself in an environment in which they “cut for points.” While fighting in Poland, the heroes of the book constantly encounter the local population - Poles and Jews. Most of the Jews depicted in “Cavalry” are educated people who protect their culture and traditions.
Behind the pathos of the revolution, the author saw its face: he realized that a revolution is an extreme situation that reveals the secret of man. But even in the harsh everyday life of the revolution, a person with a sense of compassion will not be able to come to terms with murder and bloodshed. Man, according to I.E. Babel, alone in this world.
“Cavalry” by I. E. Babel tells the reader about difficult times, about that terrible time when the destinies of various people were mixed up in a bloody whirlpool. The Civil War separated many families. It often happened that relatives found themselves on opposite sides of the front and destroyed each other with hatred. On the other hand, there was an involuntary convergence of people who were completely opposite in their worldview, perception of the environment and upbringing of people. So, in the Red Army, a former peasant boy, a Jewish intellectual, and a Cossack accustomed to war fought shoulder to shoulder. But all of them, going through a harsh military school, were forced to change. Previously existing values were forgotten. Violence, disregard for the personal dignity of other people, and rampant death raged all around.
The action of the story “The Death of Dolgushev” takes place during a short break between battles. The regiment went on the offensive, and Grischuk and Lyutov in their cart “were left alone and wandered between the walls of fire until the evening.” Foreign units did not accept them, and the division headquarters was moved somewhere. The regiments entered, but soon left Brody again. The Poles were advancing. Soon the cart accidentally stumbled upon a Polish patrol and found itself under open fire. Grischuk, already an elderly man, suddenly asked his companion “why do women work.” This uneducated Cossack, seeing the injustice happening all around - the death of thousands of people, came into sincere bewilderment. Since childhood, the centuries-old folk traditions and worldly wisdom embedded in him were unable to help him find the answer to a simple question: why should a person live, start a family, give birth to children, if such an insignificant death awaits him, why all the torment and suffering, if human life is worth nothing and is of no use to anyone: “It’s funny to me, why do women work...” Lyutov does not have time to answer the question; on the road they met a seriously wounded telegraph operator Dolgushov. His stomach was torn out, so at first glance it was clear that his days or even his hours were numbered. He begs Lyutov and Grischuk to shoot him and inform his relatives about his death. Lyutov is unable to fulfill Dolgushy’s request. A Jewish intellectual who has received a good secular and spiritual education cannot overstep himself. He does not have the right to decide the questions of the Almighty: whether a person lives or dies. And at the same time, he feels sorry for the telegraph operator, and the internal conflict grows. On one side of the scale are moral principles and moral values, on the other - the desire to alleviate the suffering of a mortally wounded comrade. Lyutov refuses Dolgushov and spurs his horse. Nevertheless, Lyutov feels guilty before him, and when his only friend Afonka Bida fulfills the request of the telegraph operator, Lyutov approaches him with a guilty smile. Of course, this decision was not easy for Afonka, but pity for her fellow sufferer overpowered her. The Cossack did not think about complex things, he simply saved Dolgushov from suffering. Most likely he did not experience moral suffering. Hatred burned in him for the enemies who killed another comrade in arms. He splashed out this hatred on the approaching Lyutov: “You, bespectacled ones, pity our brother, like a cat pities a mouse...”. The rage was so strong that Afonka would probably have shot his friend Lyutov if Grischuk had not stopped him. The friendship between these people was irretrievably lost. Lyutov himself was aware of this, as was Grischuk, who suddenly took out a wrinkled apple from the seat and offered it to his companion. In his story, Babel tries to convey to the reader that any war is a great tragedy. In its conditions, faced with blood and dirt, it is difficult to save face or somehow get used to it, adapt to the situation. The war will still turn everything upside down, force you to commit acts that are contrary to conscience and humanity, make both the Cossack helping the dying man and the intellectual who failed to step over their moral values and ideals wrong.
Municipal educational institution
"Secondary School No. 6"
____________________________________________________________________________
Mirsaeva Guzel Gabtullovna
The tragedy of man in the civil war
(based on “Don Stories” by M.A. Sholokhov
and “Cavalry” by I.E. Babel)
Scientific supervisor Ashurkina T.I.,
teacher of Russian language and literature
Gubkinsky
2006
1.Introduction………………………………………………………………………………3
2.The theme of the civil war in literature ………………………………………….5
3. Civil war as a tragedy of the people in “Cavalry” by I. Babel………...8
4. Civil war as depicted by Sholokhov………………………………....10
5. Comparative analysis of the depiction of the civil war in works
M. Sholokhov and Babel…………………………………………………………….. 12
6. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………..16
7. Bibliography………………………………………………………..19
Introduction
The topic of my essay“The tragedy of man in the civil war” based on the works of M. Sholokhov and I. Babel.
Why did I choose this topic?
The theme of revolution and civil war for a long time became one of the main themes of Russian literature of the 20th century. These events not only radically changed the life of Russia, redrew the entire map of Europe, but also changed the life of every person, every family.
Having crossed the threshold of the 21st century, we must not forget the events of the early 20th century and try to understand them. History repeats itself when we forget its lessons. Literature in its depiction of these events is multifaceted and contradictory.
Purpose of the abstract: compare the image of the civil war and the Red Army in the works of Babel and Sholokhov.
Tasks:
Study the works of M. Sholokhov “Don Stories” and I. Babel “Cavalry”.
Study critical literature on these works.
Find out what brings writers together in depicting the Civil War and what sets them apart.
Subject of research: stories by I. Babel from the collection “Cavalry”; stories by M.A. Sholokhov from the collection “Don Stories”.
Subject of the study: heroes of the stories of Sholokhov and Babel.
Research methods: reading the stories of Sholokhov and Babel, studying critical literature on this issue, selection and grouping of material, comparative analysis works.
Literature analysis
“Don Stories” by M. Sholokhov literary criticism were accepted immediately and unconditionally. A. Serafimovich, noting their high artistic merit, wrote: “Like a steppe flower, Comrade Sholokhov’s stories stand out like a living spot. Simple, bright... Huge knowledge of what he’s talking about... The ability to choose the most characteristic ones from many.” A reviewer for “New World” wrote: “The book “Don Stories” will take far from last place in literature devoted to the reproduction of the era of the Civil War." Both points of view are close to me.
With the publication of stories from the “Cavalry” series, Babel’s work became the subject of serious controversy. The legendary army commander S. Budyonny made an angry protest against the denigration and caricature of his soldiers, claiming that “Cavalry” is “the poetry of banditry” and slandering the Red Army.
V. Polonsky and A. Vronsky, one of best critics, tried to protect the writer from such accusations. Both critics wrote that Babel welcomed the revolution, despite all its contradictions and overlaps. A. Vronsky believed that the most important thing for a writer is “to express his artistic perception of the world.” Babel himself explained that the creation heroic story The first horse was not his intention. M. Gorky, who discovered the writer’s literary talent, also came to Babel’s defense. Gorky said that Babel portrayed the Red Army soldiers more picturesquely than Gogol did the Cossacks. And yet, tension around Babel’s name persisted, although Cavalry was continuously republished (in 1930 the next edition was sold out within seven days, and Gosizdat began preparing the next issue).
After reading critical articles V. Shklovsky, A. Voronsky, A. Lezhnev and V. Polonsky, written about Babel, I concluded that they generally give Babel’s work a positive assessment. In particular, Babel was spoken of as the founder of a writing genre that was just beginning to appear during the Soviet Republic, an individual genre that, as critics argued, all other writers could only repeat. Only S. Budyonny spoke about him as a writer who did not know the goals of military operations in the country, therefore, as he believed, Babel slandered the First Cavalry.
But A. Lezhnev’s statement seemed closest to me. He speaks of Babel as “...a master who ages his short stories under wraps for years, like wine in cellars. Babel is short, rich, clear and expressive. He is unlike any of his contemporaries." The critic admires Babel's stylistic source, his Russian-Jewish, Odessa jargon, which was introduced into literature by Yushkevich.
In my opinion, Babel, as a true artist of words, depicted the revolution as he felt and saw it. In no case did he go against the people, whose image was depicted with such vividness and naturalism in his stories.
At the beginning of my work, I put forward the following hypothesis as a working one:: a civil war, like any other, is a test for the people, changes their values, inner world, psychology and fate. Techniques for depicting a given historical event are determined by a number of reasons: the social status of the writer, his attitude to the event, his worldview, education, and upbringing.
The theme of the civil war in literature
A revolution is a huge event in its scale, so as not to be reflected in literature. Only a few writers and poets who came under her influence did not touch on this topic in their work.
This problem initially implied two options: either the writer accepted the revolution and automatically became its faithful singer, or he did not accept it, as a result of which he showed overt or secret resistance to it.
The writer always expects an aesthetic explosion from a powerful political event and gets burned by the monstrous moral consequences. “Listening to the music of the revolution” is always dangerous; it's captivating, but ends up producing too much sound effects.
The year 17 awakened and legally formalized a colossal surge in violence, making it the driving force national culture for many years to come.
October Revolution- the most important stage in the history of mankind - gave rise to the most complex phenomena in literature and art.
Many works have been written about revolution and counter-revolution. Writers tried to understand what motivated the people at a turning point in history, what was the truth of life that they defended. Why did the people direct their hatred even towards those who tried to awaken them for centuries, fought for their independence - against the intelligentsia?
Writers used various techniques to embody and convey all their thoughts about the revolution in the form that they themselves experienced while in the very centers of the civil war.
Among the writers who reflected these turning points in the history of the country were those who “equated the pen to the bayonet”: A. Fadeev, who wrote the novel “Destruction”; N. Ostrovsky, who embodied the experience of revolution and civil war in the novel “How the Steel Was Tempered”; M. Sholokhov, to whom “Don Stories” brought fame; I. Babel, whose “Cavalry” was ambiguously received by literary critics.
His vision of the revolution and civil war is shown in M. Bulgakov’s novel “ White Guard”, in B. Pasternak’s novel “Doctor Zhivago”.
The revolution was welcomed and sung in different periods of their creativity V. Mayakovsky, A. Blok, S. Yesenin.
M. Gorky's novel "Mother" shows how the revolution changes the inner world of a person and contributes to the moral awakening of a person.
The revolutionary present is shown in A. Platonov’s novel “The Pit,” and the future of a totalitarian society is shown in E. Zamyatin’s novel “We.”
In my work, I want to turn to the works of I. Babel and M. Sholokhov, to find out how these two writers depicted in their works the collapse of the old world and the emergence of a new type of society. How are the events and heroes of the revolution and civil war depicted? What has changed in people's lives, in their characters, psychology, worldview?
What gives me the right to conduct a comparative analysis of works about the Civil War by these particular authors? What do they have in common?
I will talk about this as I work. Now I would like to say a few explanations about my position.
Both writers enthusiastically greeted the revolution.
Both are participants, witnesses to the events they describe. During the civil war, Babel, under a false name, goes to fight in the Budyonny Cavalry. He came to the front as a correspondent for the newspaper “Red Cavalryman” - Kirill Vasilyevich Lyutov, Russian. While moving with units, he had to write propaganda articles and keep a diary of military operations.
M. Sholokhov participated in the civil war and the establishment of Soviet power on the Don. He was a literacy teacher, a statistician, a clerk, and a food inspector. He worked in the committees for the confiscation of grain, and in 1922 he was sentenced to a suspended sentence of 1 year for abuse of power.
Thus, both writers knew firsthand about the events depicted by I. Babel in “Cavalry” and M. Sholokhov in “Don Stories”; in these stories they described everything that happened before their eyes.
The stories of these writers are united not only by a common historical background, but also heroes. These are Cossacks.
The collections consist of stories united by a common theme, but new characters appear each time. This is especially true for “Don Stories” by M. Sholokhov. The stories from “Cavalry” by I. Babel are united by the image of the narrator.
Both “Don Stories” by M. Sholokhov and “Cavalry” by I. Babel did not go unnoticed by critics and the public.
If Sholokhov's stories were accepted with unanimous approval, then the attitude towards Babel's stories was contradictory. For a long time they were banned due to the death of Babel in Stalin’s dungeons.
Why do writers and their stories have such different fates?
We will try to figure this out in our work.
So, my task is to figure out why Sholokhov’s works were accepted by the authorities, and Babel’s works were first banned and then forgotten. After all, the answer to this question can be the image of the civil war and its main heroes.
The tragedy of man in the civil war in “Cavalry” by I. Babel
I. Babel was one of the famous revolutionary writers, complex in human and literary understanding. One gets the impression that even after his death, the question of the works created by him is still not resolved.
I. E. Babel was born in 1894 in Odessa, on Moldavanka, into a wealthy and educated Jewish family. As Babel later recalled, at home he was forced to study many sciences, and until the age of sixteen, “at the insistence of his father,” he studied the Hebrew language, the Bible, and the Talmud.
During the civil war, Babel, under a false name, goes to fight in the Budyonny Cavalry. His first stories about the Cavalry caused a violent negative reaction from Budyonny himself. This is not surprising: the style of chanting victories was already emerging then.
Bolsheviks and their various achievements, criticism was unacceptable. His own army commander called Babel this: “... a degenerate from literature, Babel spits with the artistic saliva of class hatred” of the cavalrymen. But M. Gorky, who knew the value of this writer’s talent, helped. Objecting to Budyonny, M. Gorky very highly appreciated Babel’s “Cavalry” and even said that the writer portrayed the heroes of his book more colorfully, “better, more truthfully than Gogol of the Cossacks.” But we know that Gorky himself came into conflict with the totalitarian regime of Stalin, and
Babel has lost his last defense. In 1939, Babel was arrested and soon died.
During the " Khrushchev's thaw"They started talking about Babel again. His book “Favorites” was published. But the official literary rehabilitation of Babel proceeded slowly. The “Thaw” ended, and the writer was again subjected to harsh criticism in the style of Budyonnovsky, but now he was accused of anti-scientific views and concepts.
What were his so-called anti-scientific views? It seems to me, first of all, that the Soviet censorship of that time pushed into the shadows the works about the revolution and civil war of those writers who spoke openly about their era.
Now that the creative heritage of this wonderful writer has been fully returned to the Russian reader, we see how wrong those who accused him of betraying his own people were.
In all his works about the revolution and civil war, Babel denounced the unfair accusations that cost the lives of many innocent people, and which also overtook him.
The novel “Cavalry” occupies a leading place in Babel’s work. This novel is not like the works of other authors who describe the events of the civil war and revolution. The novel consists of 36 short stories. The narration is told in the first person. The main character is Kirill Vasilyevich Lyutov. Under this name Babel fought in the ranks of the Red Army. Lyutov expresses the writer's views.
The hero-narrator finds himself in a world of poorly educated, ignorant people, wild from the war. Babel deprives the events he describes of the heroic aura, as was customary in official literature, and reveals the terrifying face of war. The author's sympathy is on the side of the victims of the civil war, local residents those villages and towns through which the Cossacks of the First Cavalry Army pass.
By portraying the Red Army soldiers as cruel sadists, Babel breaks the established tradition in depicting revolutionary, and therefore just, wars. A hero fighting on the side of the Reds must be endowed with every conceivable virtue. For what purpose is Babel doing this?
For him, any war, even a civil one, is inherently unnatural. In no way does he blame his heroes for being who they are. After all, culture and morality are not given at birth, they are developed throughout life. Moreover, even cultured person, finding himself in a situation of war, is not able to fully preserve his human face.
The merit of I. Babel is that he remains consistent in his work, as a humanist writer rejects any war and depicts the picture of events and its heroes in the form in which it presented itself to him. By drawing the truth, he accomplishes a human and civic feat. It was precisely these considerations that guided Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist through whose eyes we saw the truth of the war in Chechnya. How honest this truth was was confirmed by the fate of the journalist and her contract killing.
It was no coincidence that the author made the main character an alien, intelligent, educated person, since only such a person could comprehend and understand the whole tragedy of the revolution. For Babel, the tragedy of the civil war lies in the fact that it kills the human soul, blurring the line of what is permitted, devaluing the main human values and qualities: life, humanity, mercy. Humanity is paying too high a price for fratricidal wars, destroying the humanistic traditions accumulated by the people over the centuries.
The image of a person in the civil war in the stories of M.A. Sholokhov.
M. Sholokhov Born on the Kruzhilinsky Khutor of the Veshenskaya village into a peasant family. He studied at a parish school, then at a gymnasium, graduating from four classes. The outbreak of revolution and civil war prevented the continuation of education. Sholokhov served in the village revolutionary committee and volunteered to join the food detachment. At the end of 1922 he came to Moscow to study. But I had to work as a loader, a mason, an accountant, and a clerk. In 1924, his first story, “The Birthmark,” was published in “Young Komsomolets.”
In 1925, a meeting took place with A. Serafimovich, to whom Sholokhov would remain grateful for the rest of his life.
Stories appeared in newspapers and magazines of that time, later combined into the collection “Don Stories”. These stories received positive criticism. “This is not only a test of the pen, but also a wonderful debut of the writer,” said the writer’s biographer I. Lezhnev. The reviewer of “New World” believed that “Don Stories” would occupy a significant place in the literature devoted to reproducing the era of the Civil War. Sholokhov himself admitted that in “Don Stories” he tried to write the truth of life, to write about what worried him most, was the topic of the day for party and people. The well-known fact from his biography that Sholokhov was convicted of abuse of power during the seizure of surplus grain speaks volumes.
One feels that “Don Stories” was written in hot pursuit and deserves attention as documents of history. Sholokhov talks about the most terrible, tragic events in the life of the people during that period. There is a lot of death and inhuman torment in the stories.
All stories are about the clash between the white and red Cossacks. What is essential in the principles of Sholokhov’s depiction is that his “reds” are really red, and his whites are white. Everyone who fights for a just cause, for the happiness of the people, is warmed by the warmth of Sholokhov’s heart. The writer believes in his heroes, supports them in difficult times of life, because he sees that all these people are restive, stubborn, and will stand up for a person even when death stares them in the face.
Sholokhov’s “Don Stories” skillfully combines the image of a young contemporary, fighting evil, clearing the way to the future, with the cruel truth of life.
Sholokhov lived a long and full life of trials. He is a Nobel, Lenin and State Prize laureate, twice Hero of Socialist Labor; monuments were erected to him in Veshenskaya and Moscow; during his lifetime, one of the main streets of the village was named Sholokhovskaya. He was favored by all the rulers of the Soviet era - Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev.
But these are only the external aspects of the life of a great writer. His letters to Stalin reveal his sense of the tragedy of that time, when trials were carried out everywhere without investigation... In these letters he speaks people's defender. And more than once he himself was under attack and spent sleepless nights awaiting arrest. Only personal courage and people's love saved him.
Sholokhov will address the topic of depicting the civil war in the novel “ Quiet Don" This suggests that this topic was not a passing, temporary one, but a very important, painful one.
Comparison of stories by M. Sholokhov and I. Babel
To compare the image of a person in the civil war, I chose Sholokhov’s stories “Birthmark”, “Food Commissar”, “Shibalkovo Seed” and Babel’s stories “Letter”, “Salt”, “Biography of Pavlichenka, Matvey Rodionich”.
These stories are based on similar situations that took place very often at that tragic time: hatred pits people related by blood in war. Fathers, due to their age and life experience, defend the old times and old orders, sons fight on the side of the new owners of the young country, the Bolsheviks, i.e. fathers are on the side of the whites, and sons are on the side of the reds.
The main character of the story “Birthmark” - Nikolka Koshevoy. He is a squadron commander, a member of the RKSM, and he is only 18 years old.
His Cossack father disappeared into the German army, his mother died. Until he was fifteen, he hung around among the workers, then he went with the Reds to fight Wrangel.
Eliminated two gangs without damage. He led the squadron into battle for six months.
He is tired of the war and dreams of studying. “I’m sick of everything... There’s blood again, I’m tired of living like this...” These words from Nikolka emphasize his humanity, his soul resists life, which brings death and blood.
But White Guard gangs are still roaming the earth, and the time has not yet come for Nikolka to sit down at his desk and learn how to govern the young republic.
Chasing the gang, Nikolka does not know that the ataman of the gang is his father, who disappeared in Germany.
The advantage in this battle is on the side of the gang. Nikolka is destined to die at the hands of his father. But the father does not know at whom he is swinging his sharp saber. The ataman’s description of the killing of squadron commander Nikolka Koshevoy in battle is laconic: “... he waved his sword, for a moment he felt his body go limp under the blow and obediently slid to the ground.”
Pulling off the boots of the killed Red commander, the ataman “... on his leg, above the ankle, saw a mole the size of a pigeon’s egg” and realized that he had killed his son.
But at this moment he does not experience the triumph of victory over the enemy, over the traitor to his faith and truth: “Slowly, as if afraid to wake him up, he turned his cold head face up, smeared his hands in the blood crawling out of his mouth..., he peered and only then awkwardly hugged his angular shoulders and said dully:
Son!..Nikolushka!..Dear! My little blood...
Blackening, he shouted:
Yes, say at least a word! How is this possible, huh?
He fell, looking into the fading eyes; eyelids, drenched in blood, lifted, shaking the limp, pliable body..."
The denouement of the story: “Pressing the ataman to his chest, he kissed his son’s freezing hands and, clenching the steamed steel of the Mauser with his teeth, shot himself in the mouth...” is tragic. A father's life lost meaning when he killed his own son.
The landscape in Sholokhov’s story is consonant with the tragedy of the heroes: “The sun was covered by a cloud, and floating shadows fell on the steppe, on the highway, on the forest, torn away by the winds and in the fall.”
The afterword of the story tells the reader that life does not stand still, horsemen are trampling the ground again, which means that a gang is raging somewhere again: “And in the evening, when horsemen loomed behind the copse, the wind carried voices, horses snorting and the ringing of stirrups, with shaggy A vulture kite reluctantly fell off the chieftain's head. He fell off and melted into the gray, colorless autumn sky.”
At the heart of the story I. Babel “Letter“There is a similar situation: the father serves the whites, the sons serve the reds. The genre of the story is a letter written by the boy Kurdyukov to his mother. Vasily informs his mother that he is serving in the Red Cavalry Army of Comrade Budyonny. He asks his mother to send him a parcel. Inquiring about his horse Styopa. And only in the second lines of his letter does he describe to his mother how dad “cut up Fyodor Timofeevich Kurdyukov’s brother about a year ago.” How can this be explained? A year has passed: feelings have dulled or the person does not have the call of his native blood. Another brother, Semyon Timofeevich, avenges his murdered brother, kills his father with his own hands, although the father was already in prison and awaiting trial and investigation. And Vaska writes to her mother with regret that she cannot describe to her mother “how dad was finished.” In the images of the Kurdyukovs, the writer depicts the composure with which one kills his father, and the other reports it. The war hardened their hearts, taught them to live in the present day, with worries about their daily bread, about the physical component of their bodies: “They gave us two pounds of bread a day, half a pound of meat and enough sugar”; “...at lunchtime I went to my brother Semyon Timofeevich for pancakes or goose and after that I went to rest.”
In Sholokhov’s story “Food Commissar"The main character of the story is Ignashka Bodyagin. Appointed district food commissioner. His father kicked him out of the house at the age of fourteen, when Ignacha, seeing his father hit a worker in the teeth for breaking a pitchfork, said:
You're a bastard, dad...
The father whipped his son until he bled and ordered him to go around the world.
And now, six years later, Ignakha found himself in his native village as a food commissar. It was decided to shoot two Cossacks, including Ignakha’s father, for resisting the search.
Having met six years later, they feel nothing but hatred for each other. The father was shot. There is no schadenfreude or intoxication of revenge in putting the execution sentence into effect, only the sound of last words son: “Don’t be angry, dad...” Ignakha simply cannot do otherwise, because he was appointed district commissioner. If he did not have such a responsibility, perhaps he would have acted differently.
Ignakha also finds death. He is killed by Cossacks who rebelled against Soviet power. But before his death, Ignakha saves a boy who is freezing by the road, which costs him own life. In the image of this young man, the builder of the future, Sholokhov emphasizes self-sacrifice and kindness, courage and resilience.
In Sholokhov's story “Shibalkovo Seed”"The Cossack girl Daria, who was sheltered by the detachment out of pity, turned out to be a pion sent by Ignatiev’s gang. Shibalok, a machine gunner in the detachment, has become attached to her, but having learned that because of her reports his comrades were dying, he understands that Daria must die, despite the fact that Daria gave birth to a son from him. The Cossacks first wanted to finish off Shibalok himself if he did not finish off Daria and her baby. Shibalok begged to leave his son in exchange for Daria's death. He personally carries out the order.
Daria's death is justified here by the entire course of the narrative; the author understands the hero's action and supports him. There is a war going on, there can be no halftones. If you turn out to be an enemy, take a bullet. Shibalok is shown as a real Red Army soldier, whose class conscience does not sleep. When Daria needed help, he showed compassion, mutual assistance, he even fell in love with her. But he is unable to forgive the betrayal. Shibalok reveals himself to us as a loving and caring father; he only gives the baby to an orphanage until the end of hostilities.
In the story “Salt” by I. Babel the woman also becomes a victim of the revolutionary-minded masses. The plot of the story is as follows: the Red Army soldiers put a woman and a child in their carriage at the station. As time passed, it seemed strange to the Red Army soldiers what kind of child this was: he didn’t ask for food, didn’t cry... Having unwrapped the diapers, they saw “a good pood of salt.” The conversation with the enemies of Soviet power, with the bag makers, is short: “And by removing the faithful screw from the wall, I washed away this shame from the face of the working land and the republic.” What is the reason for this action? “...you, vile citizen, are more counter-revolutionary than that white general who threatens us with a sharp saber...” The hero not only sees the bagwoman, but “the indescribable scattering around her, and peasant fields without ears, and comrades who ride a lot on front, but few return…” This vision of the heroine’s act obscures from him the very culprit of his disorder, the reality of what is happening and, most importantly, humanity, the laws of morality.
In I. Babel’s story “Biography of Pavlichenka, Matvey Rodionich“The former shepherd and now general Matvey Rodionovich tells how he took revenge on master Nikitinsky for all the oppression because he was not paid for his work. His words reek of primitive cruelty, fury, inhumanity:“And then I trampled my master Nikitinsky. I trampled him for an hour or more than an hour... Shooting, I’ll put it this way, is the only way to get rid of a person: shooting is a pardon for him, but it’s a vile ease for yourself; shooting doesn’t reach the soul, where a person has it and how it shows itself. But sometimes I don’t feel sorry for myself, sometimes I trample the enemy for an hour or more, I would like to know life as it is for us...” Human life has become devalued by people who build new world, unjustified cruelty took over. You can hear the author’s voice through the lines: “I hate war.”
Conclusion
Civil wars are usually called fratricidal. Any war is fratricidal in its essence, but in civil war this essence is especially acute.
Hatred often brings together people who are related by blood, as confirmed by the stories of Babel and Sholokhov. The tragedy of the events depicted here is extremely exposed.
The Civil War became a test not only for the people through whose destinies the red wheel of history passed, but also for writers. It cost some of them their lives, others a deal with their own conscience.
As a result of working on the topic of my research, I came to the following conclusions:
1. History burst into people's lives. The 19th century with its traditions and way of life is replaced by the 20th century, filled with turbulent and tragic events.
2. The stories of Babel and Sholokhov reflect life in extreme conditions, because war - even for the beautiful ideals of the revolution - is always conditions different from normal life. People changing universal human values to momentary, political ones, they unite in whites and reds and begin to kill each other, sincerely believing that they are doing good deeds.
3. Sholokhov has no halftones. "Red" is really red, and white white. Youth is no obstacle to courage and perseverance in the image of Nikolka Koshevoy, the hero of the story “The Birthmark”; Sholokhov admires the humanity of Ignat Bodyagin, the hero of the story “Food Commissar”; justifies Mitka's action from the story "Melon Grower". The images of the enemies of the revolution are striking in their unjustified cruelty, hatred, and inhumanity (the father of Ignat Bodyagin, who mocked his workers and resisted Soviet power; the father of Mitka and Fyodor, who was appointed commandant at a military court and, with the support of the white Cossacks, dealt with the Red Army soldiers; who beat his wife).
4. I. Babel depicts Azak soldiers who served in Budyonny’s army, who hated local residents only because they had a different way of life, language, culture, who despised them for belonging to a different nationality, because they were Jews, Poles or Ukrainians, because they wanted maintain the same way of life. His heroes, contrary to the established tradition of depicting Red Army soldiers only with positive side, very contradictory. The writer shows, along with heroism, the rudeness and even cruelty of the soldiers of Budyonny’s cavalry towards the civilian population. Violence has become commonplace for them. The reader sees a lot, a lot of blood of innocent people. For Babel’s Red Army soldiers there are no prohibitions left, they are no longer afraid of anything, nothing is holding them back (the story “Letter”, “Salt”, “Biography of Pavlichenka, Matvey Rodionich”). The author does not idealize his heroes, as was customary in Soviet literature.
5. Sholokhov’s heroes are young. Nikolka Koshevoy is 18 years old, Grigory Frolov from the story “The Shepherd” is 19 years old, his sister Dunyatka is 17 years old. Is this a coincidence? For them, the young, a new life is being arranged, when they will no longer need bread and will begin to study. This means that Sholokhov’s stories are imbued with optimism: all adversity will be overcome, the pain of loss will subside, a new fair life will begin.
6. There is no such confidence in Babel’s stories. Babel, Having plunged into the passionate element of the revolution, he does not understand where the truth is, where the lies are, one thing is clear to him: “Revolution is a good deed of good people. But good people don't kill. This means that the revolution is being made by evil people.” Babel does not justify such cruelty; we understand his unspoken thought that we need to look for another path to a new life.
7.Sholokhov, through the actions and thoughts of his heroes, makes it clear that there is no other way, revolution, even with blood and cruelty, is the only way to change something on earth. Sholokhov explains the causes of the revolution and civil war with pictures of people’s miserable life, hunger, exploitation and cruelty (the story “Alyoshka’s Heart”).
8. Babel sees negative aspects revolution and does not silence them. Sometimes Babel, it seems to me, uses the power of hyperbolization, like Saltykov-Shchedrin, for artistic purposes. By using artistic exaggeration shows the danger of remaking the world by any means.
9.Babel and Sholokhov have significant differences and in the characteristics of the heroes . So, for example, Babel writes about a true Bolshevik: “... a young Kuban citizen, a tireless boor, a cleansed communist, a future flea dealer, a careless syphilitic, a leisurely liar” (“Prishchepa”). We see a completely different person in the description of Nikolka Koshevoy, the squadron commander, brave, dashing, devoted to the revolution: “He’s a boy, a kid, but look for someone else who could eliminate two gangs almost without damage and lead the squadron into battles and fights for six months no worse than anyone.” old commander! ("Mole").
The tasks and goals set at the beginning of the work can be considered completed. Based on the study of works, critical literature, acquaintance with the creative and personal biography of writers, I was able to conduct a comparative analysis of the depiction of the civil war, the images of the Red Army soldiers in the stories of M. Sholokhov “Don Stories” and in the stories of I. Babel from “Cavalry”.
It can be clearly stated why Sholokhov’s life was successful and Babel’s life ended so tragically. The writers lived during a brutal class struggle, when differences in the interpretation of the images of the Red Army soldiers and the meaning of the civil war were not allowed, when the principle socialist realism in literature. Sholokhov’s point of view on what was happening in the country at that time coincided with the generally accepted one, and Babel’s honest view doomed him to death and oblivion.
Now we understand that every writer is individual, everyone sees life
in my own way. Perhaps someone will reproach Sholokhov for some schematism of his heroes, and Isaac Babel will be reproached for excessive naturalism. But for us, readers, their works seem to complement each other. Both “Don Stories”, full of hope for a wonderful future, and the confusing, complex, but at the same time very truthful and honest collection of stories “Cavalry” present a complex picture of revolutionary times.
The awareness of the civil war as a national tragedy became decisive in many works of Russian writers brought up in the traditions of humanistic values classical literature. Including for Sholokhov (as the novel “Quiet Don” will show) and for Babel.
The results of my research can become auxiliary material when studying the topic of the Civil War in literature classes.
The next stage of work on this complex topic could be a comparative analysis of the image of man in the civil war based on “Cavalry” by I. Babel and the novel “Destruction” by A. Fadeev.
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Bibliography
1. Babel I.E. Favorites.-M.: Olympus; Publishing house AST, 1996.
2. Babel I.E. Articles and materials. Edited by B.K. Kazansky and Yu.N. Tynyanov.L., 1996.
3. Petelin V.V. M. Sholokhov. Pages of life and creativity. - M., 1990.
4. Sholokhov M.A. Stories.- M.: Bustard: Veche, 2002
In the 1920-1930s. Literature includes a younger generation of writers who went their own way, resisting the dehumanization of literature, defending their independence as an artist. Forced to compromise on something, they did not give up the main thing: freedom artistic creativity. Sometimes even the work of such writers as L.N. did not fit into the propaganda slogans of socialist realism. Seyfiulina, A. Serafimovich, K.A. Fedin, L.M. Leonov, not to mention Gorky, Sholokhov, Tvardovsky. As for writers like I.E. Babel, M.M. Zoshchenko, Yu. Olesha, B. Pilnyak and especially A. Platonov, M. Bulgakov - their artistic searches proceeded outside the official method Soviet literature.
I.E. Babel(1894-1940) entered Russian literature primarily as the author of “Cavalry” (1923-1925) and “Odessa Stories” (1921-1924).
“Cavalry” is a series of short stories in which people in individual episodes and situations of the civil war are depicted with sharp strokes. In these short stories, the reader was presented with a life in which heroism and cruelty, truth-seeking and mental underdevelopment, the beautiful and the disgusting, were intertwined. "Cavalry" is built on contrasts. There is romance in it, and naturalistic pictures in the description of murder and battles. Babel had a hard time experiencing the moral savagery of people caused by the First World War, revolution, and civil war. The naturalism of Babel’s “Cavalry” was associated not with the cynicism of the writer (he was accused of this), but with the bewilderment of a suffering humanist before the anger and hatred that destroys everything, forcing people to kill each other. In "Odessa Stories", drawing exotic world Odessa raiders, the amazing skill of Babel as a stylist was revealed: brilliant humor, generosity and brightness in the description of the Odessa region of Moldova, mastery of a special “slang syntax” and Odessa phraseology. Babel’s special manner of speech found its successors in literature - I. Ilf and E. Petrov, M. Zhvanetsky.
"Cavalry" is a collection of short stories, related topic civil war, a single image of the narrator and recurring characters without a detailed description of their lives. The flickering crowdedness is justified by the everyday life of the First Cavalry - someone dies, someone is lost on the roads of war. Babel’s writer’s view of the revolution from the inside ended tragically for him - “Cavalry” was declared a departure from Soviet reality (the role of the party is not shown, too sharply depicts the revolution), he himself was accused of participation in the Trotskyist organization, espionage for French intelligence and was shot.
M. Sholokhov “Virgin Soil Upturned”. In 1927, the XV Party Congress took place and decided on collectivization. Written “hot on the heels” of events, the first book of the novel “Virgin Soil Upturned” was published in 1932 and enthusiastically received by the Soviet nomenklatura and the initiators of the collective farm movement. The plot of the novel takes us to the Don, to the Gremyachiy Log farm, where participants and ideologists of the future conflict arrive at the same time: one, Polovtsev, at night, like a wolf, because he is a White Guard, the other, a former Putilov worker and red sailor Davydov, during the day, openly . Polovtsev wants to draw the Cossacks into the Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Don, Davydov, as a twenty-five thousandth leader, must gather everyone into the collective farm, pressing his fist tighter. After the arrival of the leaders, the plot action rapidly unfolds with its main “knots”: the first meeting of the poor, who decided to dispossess the “rich”, the scene of the dispossession of Gaev, Lashninov and others, the distribution of property to the poor, the second meeting of Gremyachen residents to create a collective farm, the dramatic “women’s revolt”, the plowing scene, when Davydov managed to organize a socialist competition of brigades. Crowd scenes -- artistic feature new, Soviet novel of socialist realism. What did the artist want to say with this plot structure? The masses “flow”, revealing their interested attitude towards new ideas, therefore, the people are the master and creator of history.
In the dramatic collisions of the novel, interesting, original characters are revealed, described vividly, plastically, with gentle humor. The reader cannot help but sympathize with Davydov with his breadth of soul and inner truthfulness, who, however, became the bearer of the command-administrative system and its hostage. He cannot help but grieve over the unsettled life, the lack of warmth of Nagulnov, who believes in the world revolution and is ready to give his life for it. The significance of the novel “Virgin Soil Upturned” is undeniable: and in the more or less truthful depiction of the village of the 30s. against the backdrop of ceremonial Soviet literature, and in the fact that Sholokhov, in essence, ushered in “village prose” of the new century with his novel. It will be most vividly represented in our literature by the works of F. Abramov, V. Rasputin, V. Tendryakov, V. Shukshin, V. Belov.
A. Fadeev was a fighter of the Red Army, participated in the defeat of the Kronstadt fortress, on the outskirts of which he was seriously wounded. Long months of treatment dragged on.
Thoughts and memories of the military past, still so recent and vivid, crowded into my head and worried me. And Fadeev decided to write a novel about the civil war, to capture in the book the images of wonderful heroes and the events of these years. The formation of a new person is the main thing to which the attention of Fadeev the artist is riveted. And the hero of Fadeev’s books - a man “on a great campaign, in the movement towards communism” - entered literature and life forever. This is our contemporary, with his romantic aspiration for the future, realistically assessing his practical activities, courageously facing death in battle with enemies, with unshakable faith in the triumph of the great cause of building communism.
Artistic works A. Fadeev, reflecting our heroic era of revolutionary transformation of society, truthfully showing the new man, the wealth of his spiritual interests, found a way to the reader’s heart.
“Destruction”, “The Last of the Udege”, “Young Guard” - books that reveal the romance of the people’s struggle against the old world, for the best and most beautiful society on earth - communism. They reveal the great organizing and inspiring role of the Communist Party.
The strength of A. Fadeev’s first works - the story “Spill”, the story “Against the Current” - is in the wealth of life observations, in the aspiration of his heroes to the future. The story depicts the life of a remote village lost in the South Ussuri taiga. Life in it flows slowly and unhurriedly. Its forms seem to have been established once and for all. Hard work, the enslaving dependence of the poor on the kulaks - a share, as if predetermined by fate itself. But even to this village, lost at the end of the world, news of the Great October Socialist Revolution comes. Bolshevik peasant Ivan Neretin appears in the village, returning from the front. He fights for the establishment of Soviet power in his native village, raises the poor against the kulaks. The climax In the story there is a flood of the Ulakhe River, which threatens the death of the village residents. Ivan Neretin leads the rescue of people. The story ends with the victory of the poor.
Fadeev glorifies in “Razliv” the victory of man over the elemental forces of nature, the work of people that transforms not only the earth, but also the relationships between them. The title of the story symbolizes the invincibility of the folk revolutionary movement. In 1923, the story “Against the Current” appeared in the magazine “Young Guard”. The plot of the story is simple. The regiment, formed from partisans, led by commander Semenchuk, left the combat positions. But under the influence of the Bolsheviks - Commissar Chelnokov and others, who courageously go “against the tide”, the regiment overcomes anarchic sentiments, and it goes to the front to carry out command assignments, ready to fight to the end with the enemies of the revolution. The author writes about these people of the regiment that they were “neither enemies nor traitors. Their whole trouble was that they were dark, like the black soil that raised them, they were mortally tired of fighting, and their own lands, huts, families and such a tempting family comfort" The Bolsheviks in Fadeev’s story resolutely oppose anarchist sentiments. These are strong-willed people, demanding of themselves and others, staunch soldiers of the revolution. “I tighten myself every day with invisible nuts to the last degree, to failure,” says Sobol. “I always go against the flow and drag along everyone I can drag with me...”
The novel “Destruction” was published as a separate edition in 1927. It brought Fadeev wide fame and recognition from readers. According to the author, he sought to show in this book how “everything hostile is swept away by the revolution, everything incapable of a real revolutionary struggle, accidentally falling into the camp of the revolution, is eliminated, and everything that has risen from the true roots of the revolution, from the millions of masses of the people, is tempered, grows, develops in this struggle. A huge transformation of people is taking place. This transformation of people is happening successfully because the revolution is led by advanced representatives of the working class - communists who clearly see the goal of the movement and who lead the more backward ones and help them re-educate.” The heroes of "Destruction", members of the partisan detachment, are people of the most different characters and beliefs. But all of them are cemented and directed by the will of the communist detachment commander Levinson.
Characteristics This leader of the masses is characterized by high ideology, strong will, determination, boundless love for the people, an inextricable connection with them, and dedication to the cause of the revolution.
The novel ends with a stunning scene: the partisan detachment was defeated, only 19 people remained alive, and wonderful soldiers, selflessly devoted to the revolution, died. But the detachment completed its combat mission, and these 19 people will be the core of the revived detachment.
Other Baklanovs and Morozks will come to the detachment, for the revolution that brings liberation to the common people, has millions of reserves, raises more and more new masses of people to fight for a just cause. Such a revolution is invincible. In the 20s, Fadeev was one of the first who set himself a task of fundamental importance - the creation of a Soviet positive hero, - and accomplished this task in the novel “Destruction.”
The terrible elements of the revolution do not spare either the convinced Bolshevik leader or the doubting intellectual. She brings blood, grief and death. Violence begets even more violence and bitterness among people. This is the picture of the revolutionary struggle in Kyiv in 1918, depicted by M. Bulgakov in "The White Guard". The writer was often accused of lacking a social outlook. Bulgakov really did not have such a political class position. He viewed the events taking place from a universal human point of view, although his heroes are not at all averse to politics. Here are defenders of the monarchy, participants in the white movement, Petliurists, anarchists, and communists. But, despite what ideas they profess, who seized power in the city, blood is still being shed, people are dying, and human life is being devalued. One can also understand the men, “with hearts burning with unsatisfied anger” against their centuries-old oppressors, the hatred of the mass of soldiers for the officers. But one cannot condemn the same “warrant officers and second lieutenants, former students... knocked off the screws of life by war and revolution.” The writer is interested in the novel not in the struggle of “great ideas” that incite the massacre, but in those eternal moral values that will help the Russian people get out of a deep crisis and stop the bloody wheel. This is, first of all, that human spiritual beauty that encourages his beloved heroes, forgetting about themselves, to help people, take care of them, even sacrifice themselves to save young lives. Bulgakov’s heroes are not ideal at all, they are subject to weaknesses and mistakes, but in the Turbins, and in Myshlaevsky, and in Nai-Tours there is the main thing - decency, a sense of honor, courage, kindness.
One of the most striking episodes of the novel was the scene of the death of Colonel Nai-Tours, who, disdaining the code of officer honor, gave the cadets a strange, unexpected order - to retreat, tearing off shoulder straps, cockades and throwing away weapons, and he himself tried to cover their retreat, where his death overtook him . The commander’s act made Nikolka Turbin, who dreamed of glory as a boy, understand that in the world, in addition to the red and white truths, there is also truth. And she is that main value on earth - a man that the true feat is not to lead a handful of junkers into battle for an idea and thereby destroy them, but to save them at the cost of one’s own life. This means that civil war and revolution help reveal the essence of each person. The unscrupulousness and weak-willedness of Talberg, Elena’s husband, become more visible, growing to the proportions of meanness. It is during these difficult times that the highest moral qualities a sweet, intelligent family, which becomes a kind of island of love, kindness and beauty, a place where everyone will find help, advice, sympathy. Having gone through blood and death, these people remain on their land, with their people. Bulgakov’s novel ends with prophetic words: “Everything will pass. Suffering, torment, blood, hunger, pestilence. The sword will disappear, but the stars will remain, when the shadow of our bodies and deeds will not remain on earth. There is not a single person who does not know this . So why don’t we want to turn our attention to them?
Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov in the epic novel "Quiet Don" creates a broad picture of historical changes in the life of the Don Cossacks.
Main topic The novel is the fate of the people during the years of revolution and civil guilt. In the vacillations of the Cossacks between revolution and counter-revolution, the effective nature of the psychology of the small owner, who involuntarily and inevitably gravitates either towards the bourgeoisie or towards the proletariat, was revealed. Economically, he cannot have an independent “line.” His past draws him to the bourgeoisie, his future to the proletariat. His reason gravitates towards the latter, his prejudice towards the former.
Among the Cossacks, the hesitations characteristic of the middle peasantry manifested themselves with particular force. If in other regions of Russia the basis of the alliance between the peasantry and the proletariat was the struggle for land, then on the Don the Cossacks, for the most part, had enough land. The White Guards intimidated the Cossacks with rumors that the Bolsheviks wanted to take away their land and give it to the “men.” These provocative rumors gave rise to blind hatred among the Cossacks and pushed them to fight for their “plot of land.” Provoked by the whites to rebel against Soviet power, the Cossacks thought with longing about spring plowing, about the abandoned farm, and refused to move far from their native farms. The attachment of the Cossacks to their farm revealed both the soul of the worker and the psychology of the owner. Feelings of fatigue, guilt and irritation take hold of the Cossacks especially strongly after they unite with the white army that has broken through to the Don. Even the economical Pantelei Prokofievich Melekhov, a true keeper of the Cossack spirit, who recently inspired his sons to fight the Bolsheviks, suddenly changes his mood. “The war ruined him, deprived him of his former zeal for work, took away his elder, brought discord and confusion into the family. It passed over his life, like a storm over a plot of wheat, but even after the storm the wheat rises and shows off in the sun, and the old man has already risen He couldn’t. Mentally he gave up on everything - come what may!” The Cossacks increasingly moved away from the white command, and after the defeat of the white army, the survivors began to return to their native farms. Not everyone recognized Soviet power right away. At first, many supported the bandits and helped them in the fight against food detachments, but gradually the Cossacks realized that by doing this they were interfering with the establishment of a normal life, and they decisively sided with the Soviets. Life itself shattered the illusions of the Cossacks. The absurdity of the idea of organizing “their own republic of ten villages” became clear to them. Either return to the old life: reach out to the officers, bend your back to the kulaks and landowners, or follow the Bolsheviks. There is no third way. And the overwhelming mass of the Cossacks turned to the path of building a new life.
The novel also presents those who wanted to maintain the old order and drown the people's power in blood. This is the family of rich farmstead Korshunovs, the merchant Mokhov, the landowner Listnitsky, generals and officers of the White Army, foreign interventionists. The portraits of Kornilov, Kaledin, and Krasnov are expressive in the novel. Like dogs fighting over a bone, they viciously denounce each other in a struggle for power. Foreign aid did not save the white generals. On the Don, cleared of White Guards, the construction of a new life begins.
With all the diversity of heroes, Sholokhov managed to endow each hero with “his own features, create a unique face, a unique inner human structure.”
Sholokhov's novel received international recognition, and the author received the Nobel Prize.
“Cavalry” is an episode of the struggle for freedom of creativity. Early 1920s – stories, publications in the magazine “October”. Budyonny’s article “Babism of Babel from Krasnaya Novy” is an accusation against the writer of slandering the First Cavalry Army, where Babel himself served.
Collection short stories, connected by the theme of the civil war and a single image of the narrator. “Cavalry” is written based on Babel’s diaries (when he fought in the First Cavalry Army). The writer is concerned about the problem of humanism in war. He strives not to talk about a person, but to show him, revealing to the reader individual pages of the life of his heroes, revealing their essence.
Poetry of banditry; accused of deliberately de-heroizing history.
A life in which heroism and cruelty, truth-seeking and mental underdevelopment, the beautiful and the disgusting, the funny and the tragic are intertwined. The story is told on behalf of Lyutov, an employee of the division headquarters. The hero is autobiographical. The hero, an intellectual, a humanist, thought that the war would bring about an internationalization of good people. Trying to become one of our own looks pathetic.
"My first goose." Among the cavalrymen, Lyutov is a stranger. Bespectacled, intellectual, Jewish. He is forced to prove that he is capable of being one of his own: he must kill the goose. This is a forced murder. The goose is an innocent victim of the civil war.
"The Death of Dolgushov"(1923). One of the short stories that directly depicts a military episode. The action takes place after the battle, an everyday picture. What does it mean to feel sorry for a mortally wounded person? What is willpower in war? The main meaning of the novella is connected with the death of Dolgushov. The drama of the main character. He understands, but it can’t be simpler, he can’t shoot a person. The author, Kirill Lyutov, is an intellectual who, as a result of a conscious choice, ends up on the side of the Reds, finds himself in a difficult moral situation. A mortally wounded cavalryman, telephone operator Dolgushov, asks to be finished off, saving him from torment and possible abuse from the Poles. Lyutov refuses to do this. The very fact of the choice that Lyutov has to make is deeply tragic. To kill a person is to violate the internal moral law. Not killing him means dooming him to a slower and more painful death. It’s as if Afonka Vida is performing an act of mercy, finishing off Dolgushov and thereby doing good. However, the Cossack was already infected with a passion for murder.
"Letter" highlighted by many researchers. Written in 1923. The father is a company commander with the Whites, and his three sons are in the Red Army. Author's assessment - only in the episode with the photo.
Style. Voronsky: the relationship between daydreaming and “womanish life.” Contemporaries began to read everyday, naturalistic literature according to the code. Babel’s thinking is based on a carnivalized worldview (life turned out of the ordinary rut, the world in reverse, liberation from the laws of ordinary life). Carnival as a worldview brings together the sacred and the profane, the high and the low, the wise and the foolish (Bakhtin). This must be taken into account in order to understand Cavalry.