The theme of revolution and civil war in Russian literature. Composition: Civil war in the works of Russian writers of the twentieth century Civil war works

Volgograd 2004

Literature abstract

« The Civil War in the Works of Russian Writers

XX century"

Completed:

11A student

Arkhipov Alexey

Teacher:

Skorobogatova O.G.

Introduction………………………………………………………………….3

in the work of Russian writers.

1.1. A.A. Fadeev - "the most important initiator of Soviet literature

Tours, singer of the youth of the new world and the new man.

The novel "The Defeat"………………………………………………__

1.2. The contradictions inherent in life in the epoch of class struggle,

depicted in the novel by M.A. Sholokhov "Quiet Flows the Don"…….__

1.3. The conflict between the human destiny of the intelligentsia and

the course of history in the works of M.M. Bulgakov "Days

Turbinnykh" and "White Guard"………………………………__

1.4. Cavalry by I.E. Babel - "chronicle of everyday atrocities",

times of revolution and civil war…………………...__

Conclusion……………………………………………………………….__

Bibliography………………………………………………………__

Introduction

Here God is fighting the devil,

and the battlefield is people's hearts!
F. M. Dostoevsky
The civil war of 1918-1920 is one of the most tragic periods in the history of Russia; it claimed the lives of millions, forced the masses of people of different classes and political views, but of one faith, one culture and history, to face in a cruel and terrible struggle. War in general, and civil war in particular, is an action that is initially unnatural, but after all, at the origin of any event is a Man, his will and desire: even L. N. Tolstoy argued that an objective result in history is achieved by adding the wills of individual people into a single whole, in one result. Man is a tiny, sometimes invisible, but at the same time irreplaceable detail in the vast and complex mechanism of war. Domestic writers, who reflected the events of 1918-1920 in their works, created a number of vital, realistic and vivid images, putting the fate of a Man in the center of the story and showing the impact of the war on his life, inner world, scale of norms and values.
Any extreme situation puts a person in extremely difficult conditions and makes him show the most significant and deepest properties of character; in the struggle between good and evil principles, the soul wins the strongest, and the act performed by a person becomes the result and consequence of this struggle.

The revolution is too huge an event in its scale not to be reflected in literature. And only a few writers and poets who were under its influence did not touch this topic in their work.

It must also be borne in mind that the October Revolution, a most important stage in the history of mankind, gave rise to the most complex phenomena in literature and art.

A lot of paper was written in response to the revolution and counter-revolution, but only a little that came out from the pen of the creators of stories and novels could fully reflect everything that moved the people in such difficult times and exactly in the direction in which it is necessary. was the highest posts, not having a single person. Also, the moral breakdown of people who have fallen into the most difficult position of the beast of the revolution is not everywhere described. And the one who stirred up, unleashed a war ... Did they feel better? Not! They, too, ended up in the hands of the monster that they themselves gave birth to. These people are from high society, the flower of the entire Russian people - the Soviet intelligentsia. They were subjected to the most difficult trials by the second, most of the population of the country, who intercepted the progress, the further development of the war. Some of them, especially young people, broke down...

Many writers have used various methods of embodying and conveying all their thoughts about the revolution in full and in the form that they themselves experienced while being in the very centers of the civil war.

For example, A.A. Fadeev was the same person of revolutionary cause as his heroes. His whole life and its circumstances were such that A.A. Fadeev was born into a family of rural progressive-minded intellectuals. And immediately after school, he rushed into battle. About such times and the same young guys drawn into the revolution, he wrote: “So we all parted for the summer, and when we came back in the fall of 18, a white coup had already taken place, a bloody battle was already going on, in which the whole people, the world was drawn into split ... Young people whom life itself led directly to the revolution - such were we - did not look for each other, but immediately recognized each other by voice; the same thing happened to young people who went into the counter-revolution. The one who did not understand who was going with the flow, carried away by fast or slow, sometimes even muddy waves unknown to him, he grieved, offended why he was so far from the shore, on which yesterday still close people were still visible ... "

But the choice did not yet determine fate. Among those who left with A.A. Fadeev to the partisans, there were also "falconers", there were also those who "came not to fight, but simply to hide from the possibility of being mobilized into Kolchak's army."

Another example is M.A. Bulgakov "a man of amazing talent, internally honest and principled and very intelligent" makes a great impression. It should be said that he did not immediately accept and understand the revolution. He, like A.A. Fadeev, saw a lot during the revolution, he happened to go through a difficult period of the civil wave, which was later described in the novel "The White Guard", the plays "Days of the Turbins", "Running" and numerous stories, including the Hetmanate and Petliurism in Kiev, the decomposition of Denikin's army. There is a lot of autobiographical in the novel "The White Guard", but it is not only a description of one's life experience during the years of the revolution and the civil war, but also an insight into the problem of "Man and the epoch"; it is also the study of an artist who sees the inextricable link between Russian history and philosophy. This is a book about the fate of classical culture in the formidable era of scrap centuries old traditions. The problems of the novel are extremely close to Bulgakov, he loved The White Guard more than his other works. Bulgakov fully accepted the revolution and could not imagine life without a cultural upsurge, he worked constantly, intensely and selflessly, contributed to the development of literature and art, became a major Soviet writer and playwright.

Finally I.E. Babel, working as a correspondent for the newspaper "Red Cavalryman" under the pseudonym K. Lyutov in the First Cavalry Army, wrote a cycle of stories "Cavalry" based on diary entries.

Literary critics note that I.E. Babel is very complex in human and literary understanding, in connection with which he was persecuted during his lifetime. After his death, the question of the works created by him is still not resolved, so the attitude towards them is not unambiguous.

We agree with the opinion of K. Fedin: “If the artist’s biography serves as a concrete channel for his idea of ​​the world, then Sholokhov’s worldly lot fell to one of the most turbulent, deepest currents that the social revolution in Russia knows.”

Path of B. Lavrenev: in the fall I went to the front with an armored train, stormed Petliura's Kiev, went to the Crimea. Gaidar's words are also known: "When they ask me how it could happen that I was such a young commander, I answer: this is not an ordinary biography, but the time was extraordinary."

Thus, it is clear that many writers could not stand aside from the events of their homeland, among the many social, political, spiritual differences and the reigning confusion, but always honestly fulfilled their literary and civic duty.

How, in what centuries, the stages of the movement of art differ? features of the conflict? The emergence of previously undeveloped plots, genres? The progress of artistic technique, finally?

Of course, all this, and many others too. But, above all, the emergence of a new type of personality, expressing the leading features of the time, embodying the people's desire for the future, for the ideal.

A person in history, literature, philosophy, art is always a priority, more weighty than everything else, relevant at all times. It is from this position that we regard the increase in the relevance of the topic under study, because on the fronts of the civil war, at the head, first of all, the people described in works of art- Chapaev, Klychkov, Levinson, Melekhov ...

Literature in vivid images captured the features of real heroes, created collective figures of writers' contemporaries, reflecting the thoughts, aspirations, ideological ordeals and worldview of a whole generation of Russian society, from which its mentality is formed.

These literary aspects allow descendants to substantiate many historical processes, explain the spiritual potential, psychology of the current generation.

That is why this topic is significant and relevant.

We have set the following tasks:

To reveal the formation of a historical idea of ​​the literary process, revealing the theme of the revolution and the civil war in Russia, the significance of the historical conditionality of this subject and issues in Russian literature.

To study and analyze the theme of revolution and civil war in the works of A.A. Fadeev, M.A. Sholokhov, I.E. Babel, M.A. Bulgakov, the views and assessment of literary critics on the reflection of the historical problem by these authors.

Create an idea and identify the most characteristic personality traits of this period, the main socio-spiritual conflicts and values ​​reflected in the literature about the revolution and civil war.

The value of the works of art we are considering lies in the truthful depiction of the revolution and the civil war, those who, drawn into the era, made the revolution and fought on the fronts.

What was a man like during the revolution and civil war? Why did he go into battle? What was he thinking? How has his attitude changed? People of our generation are interested to know how this person changed, what was new in him, how those qualities that the cruel, bloody time demanded of them were strengthened and established in him, what lessons of history have learned from the experienced humanity.

To this end, we proceed to the presentation of the study.

Chapter 1. The theme of revolution and civil war

in the work of Russian writers.

1.1. A.A. Fadeev is "the most important initiator of Soviet literature, the singer of the youth of the new world and the new man." The novel "Destruction"

Where is he, God? -

lame man chuckled. -

There is no god ... no, no,

no, vigorous louse!

A.A. Fadeev,

A novel that is still in circulation and has stood the test of time is A.A. Fadeev. In the novel, “the cramped little world of a partisan detachment is an artistic miniature of a real picture of a large historical scale. The system of images of The Defeat, taken as a whole, reflected the real-typical correlation of the main social forces of our revolution. It is no coincidence that the core of the partisan detachment was made up of workers, miners, the "coal tribe" constituted the most organized and conscious part of the detachment. These are Dubov, Goncharenko, Baklanov, selflessly devoted to the cause of the revolution. All partisans are united by a single goal of struggle.

With all his passion as a communist writer and revolutionary A.A. Fadeev sought to bring closer the bright time of communism. This humanistic faith in a beautiful person permeated the most difficult pictures and situations in which his heroes fell.

For A.A. Fadeev, a revolutionary is not possible without this striving for a brighter future, without faith in a new, beautiful, kind and pure person.

The characterization of the Bolshevik Levinson, the hero of the novel "Rout", as a person striving and believing in the best, is contained in the following quote: "... everything he thought about was the deepest and most important thing he could think of, because in overcoming this poverty and poverty was the main meaning of his own life, because there was no Levinson, but there would have been someone else if there had not lived in him a huge thirst for a new, beautiful, strong and kind person, incomparable with any other desire. But how can there be talk about a new, beautiful person as long as huge millions are forced to live such a primitive and miserable, such an inconceivably meager life.

If we take a purely external shell, the development of events, then this is really the story of the defeat of Levinson's partisan detachment. But A.A. Fadeev uses for the story one of the most dramatic moments in the history of the partisan movement in the Far East, when the combined efforts of the White Guard and Japanese troops dealt heavy blows to the partisans of Primorye.

The optimistic idea of ​​"The Defeat" is not in the final words: "... it was necessary to live and fulfill one's duties", not in this appeal, which united life, struggle and overcoming, but in the entire structure of the novel, precisely in the arrangement of the figures, their destinies and their characters.

You can pay attention to one feature in the construction of "The Rout": each of the chapters not only develops some kind of action, but also contains a complete psychological development, an in-depth description of one of the characters. Some chapters are named after the names of the heroes: "Frost", "Sword", "Levinson", "Intelligence Snowstorm". But this does not mean that these persons act only in these chapters. They take an active part in all events in the life of the entire detachment. Fadeev, as a follower of Leo Tolstoy, explores their characters in all difficult and sometimes compromising circumstances. At the same time, creating more and more new psychological portraits, the writer seeks to penetrate into the innermost corners of the soul, trying to foresee the motives and actions of his characters. With each turn of events, new sides of character are revealed.

To determine the main meaning of the novel, I chose the method of finding the main character of the work. Thus, one can see how the children of the revolution grow up from ordinary, everyday children, as from normal workers who do not differ from each other in any way.

But it is not so easy to answer such a seemingly naive question. One main character can be seen in the commander of the partisan detachment Levinson. Another personality can be imagined by merging together the images of Levinson and Metelitsa, because with their special features they together embody the true heroism of the struggle. The third compositional coloring of the novel lies in the conscious opposition of two images: Frost and Mechik, and in connection with such an intention of the writer, the personality of Frost comes to the fore. There is even such an option where the true hero of the novel becomes a team - a partisan detachment, composed of many more or less detailed characters.

But all the same, the theme of such a multi-heroic novel is "led" by Levinson, he is given a voice in the most important reflections on the goals of the revolution, on the nature of the relationship between the leaders and the people. Almost all the main characters are correlated, compared and contrasted with him.

For the young Baklanov, the "heroic assistant" of the detachment commander, Levinson is "a special person, right breed”, who should be learned and followed: “... he knows only one thing - business. Therefore, it is impossible not to trust and not obey such a right person ... ”Imitating him in everything, even in external behavior, Baklanov at the same time quietly adopted valuable life experience - wrestling skills. Morozka refers to the same people of the “special, correct breed” the platoon commander of the miner Dubov, the demolition worker Goncharenko. For him, they become an example worthy of emulation.

In addition to Baklanov, Dubov and Goncharenko, who consciously and purposefully participate in the struggle, the image of Metelitsa, the former shepherd, who “was all fire and movement, and his predatory eyes always burned with an insatiable desire to catch up with someone and fight,” is also associated with Levinson. According to Baklanov, it is planned and possible path Metelitsy: “How long have you been grazing horses, and in two years, look, he will be in command of all of us ...” This is a person for whom revolution is the goal and meaning of existence.

Frost and Mechik are also correlated with the image of Levinson - the two most important figures in the novel. As A.A. Fadeev: “As a result of a revolutionary test, it turned out that Morozka is a human type higher than Mechik, because his aspirations are higher - they determine the development of his personality as higher.”

As for the young Sword, he had one of the main moments in choosing a life path. And as a young and inexperienced man, he chose the romantic path for him. About such moments in the life of A.A. Fadeev said: “... a white coup had already taken place, a bloody battle was already underway, into which all the people were drawn, the world was split, the question arose before every young man, not figuratively, but vitally: “In which camp to fight?”

A.A. Fadeev, putting Mechik in various positions, shows that his drama is not in the collision of a romantic dream with the harsh reality of life. Sword's consciousness perceives only the external, superficial side of phenomena and events.

The last thing to understand the young man and his fate is a night conversation with Levinson. By this time, quite a few grievances had accumulated. The sword turned out to be little adapted to partisan life. As an outsider, looking at the detachment from the side, he tells Levinson with the utmost, bitter frankness: “Now I don’t trust anyone ... I know that if I were stronger, they would obey me, they would be afraid of me, because everyone here is only with this is considered, everyone is only looking to fill his belly, at least to steal from his comrade for this, and no one cares about everything else ... It even seems to me sometimes that if they got to Kolchak tomorrow, they would also would have served Kolchak and dealt with everyone just as cruelly, but I can’t, and I can’t do that! .. ”

A.A. has Fadeev and another idea: "The end justifies the means." In this regard, Levinson appears before us, who does not stop at any cruelty in order to save the detachment. Stashinsky, who took the Hippocratic oath, helps him in this matter! And the doctor himself and, it would seem, Levinson come from an intelligent society. To what extent you need to change to kill a person. This process of “breaking” a person can be observed, taking into account how Mechik is transformed: “People are different here, I need to break somehow…”

At the end of the novel, we have before us a weeping Levinson, the commander of a defeated partisan detachment:

“... he sat looking down, slowly blinking his long wet eyelashes, and tears rolled down his beard ... Every time Levinson managed to forget himself, he began to look around again in confusion and, remembering that Baklanov was not there, he began to cry again.

So they left the forest - all nineteen.

Sam A.A. Fadeev, defined the main theme of his novel: “In the civil war, the selection of human material takes place, 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 people, hardens, grows, develops in this struggle. There is a huge transformation of people."

In the main theme of the re-education of man in the revolution, more fully than in others, the ideological content of the novel is expressed; this is reflected in all elements of the work: composition, individual images, the entire figurative system. Emphasizing this idea, ?A. Bushnin? writes: “Each of the main characters of “The Rout” has its own finished, individually expressed image. At the same time, the cohesion of human figures in the novel, the totality of all social, cultural, ideological and moral varieties (Bolshevik Levinson, workers - Morozka, Dubov, Goncharenko, Baklanov, peasants - Metelitsa, Kubrak, intellectuals - Stashinsky, Mechik, etc.) form a complex "contradictory picture of the spiritual formation of a new man, a Soviet citizen, in the practice of revolution"

The invincibility of the revolution lies in its vitality, in the depth of penetration into the consciousness of people who were often the most backward in the past. Like Frost, these people rose to conscious action for the highest historical goals. In Morozok, Fadeev showed a generalized image of a man from the people, the re-education of people in the fire of revolution and civil war, the “reworking of human material”, gave a history of the development of a new consciousness experienced by millions of people in the first years of the new government.

A. Fadeev wrote: “Morozka is a man with a difficult past. He could steal, he could swear rudely, he could treat a woman rudely, he did not understand a lot in life, he could lie, drink. All these traits of his character are undoubtedly his great shortcomings. But in difficult, decisive moments of the struggle, he did what was necessary for the revolution, overcoming his weaknesses. The process of his participation in the revolutionary struggle was the process of the formation of his personality. This was the main optimistic idea of ​​the tragic novel "The Rout", which even now makes it possible to turn to the question of revolutionary humanism, which, having absorbed the progressive ideas of the past, was a new degree of moral development of mankind.

Summing up all the above, it can be noted that the writer in the novel "The Defeat" asserted the triumph of the revolutionary cause, linking it with a truthful, historically concrete reproduction of reality, which he portrayed with all its contradictions, showing the struggle of the new with the old, while showing special interest to show the process of the birth of a new person in the conditions of the new time.

Describing this feature of the novel, K. Fedin wrote: “... in the twenties, A. Fadeev was one of the first who set himself the task of fundamental importance for all literature - the creation of a positive hero - and completed this task in the novel “The Rout” ... "

Concretizing this idea, we can cite the statement of A. Fadeev himself, who, characterizing his creative method, said that he sought, first of all, to more fully “transmit the processes of change in ________ that occur in people, in their desires, aspirations, to show what influences these changes, to show through what stages the development, the formation of the new man of socialist culture takes place.

"The Rout" was a significant event in the history of early Soviet prose, becoming for a time the focus of heated debate about the future fate of literature. The success of Fadeev's novel, an innovative work, is based on high ideological and artistic merits. Having talentedly depicted the process of the formation of a new person, in revolution and civil war, Fadeev established himself as an excellent master of psychological analysis, a thoughtful, penetrating artist who adopted the traditions of classical literature.

1.2. The contradictions inherent in the life of the era of the class struggle, depicted in the novel by M.A. Sholokhov "Quiet Flows the Don"

"I would like my books

helping people become better

become purer in soul, awaken

love for a person, striving actively

fight for the ideas of humanism and human progress.

M.A. Sholokhov

M.A. Sholokhov came to literature with the theme of the birth of a new society in the heat and tragedies of the class struggle. His novels The Quiet Flows the Don and Virgin Soil Upturned received the unanimous and wide recognition of millions of people as a true artistic chronicle of the historical destinies, social aspirations and spiritual life of the people who made a revolution and built a new society. The writer sought to embody the heroism and drama of the revolutionary era, to reveal the strength and wisdom of his native people, to convey to readers "the charm of humanity, and the disgusting essence of cruelty and perfidy, meanness and money-grubbing as a terrible creation of a vicious world.

During the Civil War, Sholokhov lived on the Don, served in the food detachment, and participated in the fight against white gangs. After the end of the civil war, Sholokhov worked as a bricklayer, laborer, statistician, accountant.

Sholokhov belongs to the generation of Soviet writers who were shaped by the revolution and the civil war.

In The Quiet Don, Sholokhov appears, first of all, as a master of epic narration. The artist unfolds a vast historical panorama of turbulent dramatic events widely and freely. ²Quiet Don² covers a period of ten years - from 1912 to 1922. Those were years of unprecedented historical saturation: the First World War, the February coup, the October Revolution, the civil war. From the pages of the novel, a holistic image of the era of the greatest changes, revolutionary renewal emerges. Heroes live the life that is the ideal of millions and millions of people. Who are they? Cossacks, workers, farmers and warriors. They all live in the Tatarsky farm, located on the high bank of the Don. A considerable distance separates this farm from the nearest city, news from big world to the Cossack kurens. But it was the farm with its way of life and traditions, mores and customs, it was the restless soul, the “simple and ingenuous mind” of Grigory Melekhov, the fiery heart of Aksinya, the impatient and angular nature of Mishka Koshevoy, the kind soul of the Cossack Christoni, that were for the artist the mirror in which they reflected events of great history and changes in the way of life, consciousness and psychology of people.

The Quiet Don dispelled the legend of class solidity, social and caste isolation of the Cossacks. The same laws of social stratification and class differentiation operate on the Tatar farm as in any place in peasant Russia. Narrating the life of the farm, Sholokhov, in essence, gives a social cross-section of modern society with its economic inequality and class contradictions.

History inevitably “walks” through the pages of the Quiet Don, and the fates of dozens of characters who find themselves at the crossroads of the war are drawn into the epic action. Thunderstorms rumble, warring camps clash in bloody battles, and in the background the tragedy of mental throwing of Grigory Melekhov, who turns out to be a hostage of war, is played out: he is always in the center of terrible events. The action in the novel develops in two plans - historical and domestic, personal. But both plans are given in inseparable unity. Grigory Melekhov stands at the center of The Quiet Don, not only in the sense that more attention is paid to him: almost all the events in the novel either take place with Melekhov himself or are somehow connected with him. “Our era is the era of the intensification of the struggle for the Melekhovs ... in the context of the worldwide popularity of the Sholokhov epic, the inaccuracy and limited approach to the image of Melekhov as the image of a renegade, a morally degrading person who is supposedly waiting for inevitable death are especially striking. This contradicts the attitude of the author himself and the majority of readers towards him. Sholokhov teaches the wise combination of political insight and adherence to principles with humanity and sensitivity,” these words belong to A.I. Metchenko, who praised Sholokhov's epic novel in his articles "The Great Power of the Word" and "The Wisdom of the Artist". Sholokhov, with Shakespearean depth, sculpts an image that nowhere and never loses such a human quality as the charm of personality. A.I. Metchenko argues that we have before us not only the image of a Don Cossack lost at the crossroads of history, but also the type of era and that common psychological and political situation in which a person must make his choice: past or future, already experienced and experienced or unknown, unclear.

Recently, the opinion has been expressed that "the educational impact of the image of Melekhov is increasing." What is it, first of all? Probably, in frenzied truth-seeking, in ethical uncompromisingness. In our opinion, this book is instructive and important for young readers because it reminds of the right and obligation of everyone to make their own choice. Despite the fact that Grigory Melekhov is seriously mistaken in his actions, he never prevaricates. The greatness of Melekhov lies in the fact that there is no “second person” in him.

Melekhov is characterized in the novel in many ways. His youthful years are shown against the backdrop of the life and life of the Cossack village. Sholokhov truthfully depicts the patriarchal structure of the life of the village. The character of Grigory Melekhov is formed under the influence of conflicting impressions. The Cossack village instills in him from an early age courage, straightforwardness, courage, and at the same time she inspires him with many prejudices that are passed down from generation to generation. Grigory Melekhov is smart and honest in his own way. He passionately strives for truth, for justice, although he does not have a class understanding of justice. This person is bright and large, with large and complex experiences. It is impossible to fully understand the content of the book without understanding the complexity of the path of the protagonist, generalizing the artistic power of the image.

The combination of the epic depiction of great historical events with the amazing lyricism of the narration, the transfer of the most subtle intimate experiences of people, the disclosure of their most intimate feelings and thoughts, and to a greater extent this applies to the description of female images of ordinary Russian women

From a young age he was kind, sympathetic to someone else's misfortune, in love with all living things in nature. Once, in a hayfield, he accidentally slaughtered a wild duckling and “with a sudden feeling of acute pity, he looked at the dead lump lying in his palm.” The writer makes us remember Gregory in harmony with the natural world.

As a tragedy, Gregory experienced the first human blood shed by him. In the attack, he killed two Austrian soldiers. One of the murders could have been avoided. The realization of this weighed heavily on my soul. The mournful appearance of the dead man appeared later in a dream and caused "internal pain." Describing the faces of the Cossacks who got to the front, the writer found an expressive comparison: they resembled “stalks of mowed, withering and changing grass.” Grigory Melekhov also became such a beveled withering stem: the need to kill deprived his soul of moral support in life.

Grigory Melekhov many times had to observe the cruelty of both whites and reds, so the slogans of class hatred began to seem fruitless to him: “I wanted to turn away from everything seething with hatred, hostile and incomprehensible world ... I was drawn to the Bolsheviks - I walked, led others, and then took thought, cold at heart.

Civil strife exhausted Melekhov, but the human in him did not fade away. The more Melekhov was drawn into the whirlpool of the civil war, the more desirable his dream of peaceful labor. From the grief of loss, wounds, throwing in search of social justice, Melekhov aged early, lost his former prowess. However, he did not lose the "human in man", his feelings and experiences - always sincere - were not dulled, but perhaps aggravated.

The manifestations of his responsiveness and sympathy for people are especially expressive in the final parts of the work. The hero is shocked by the spectacle of the dead: “baring his head, trying not to breathe, carefully,” he circles a dead old man, stretched out on scattered golden wheat. Passing through the places where the chariot of war rolled, he sadly stops in front of the corpse of a tortured woman, straightens her clothes, and invites Prokhor to bury her. He buried the innocently killed, kind, hardworking grandfather Sashka under the same poplar tree where the latter had buried him and Aksinya's daughter. In the scene of Aksinya's funeral, we see a grief-stricken man who has drunk a full cup of suffering to the brim, a man who has grown old before his term, and we understand that only a great, albeit wounded heart could feel the grief of loss with such deep strength.

In the final scenes of the novel, Sholokhov reveals the terrible emptiness of his hero. Melekhov lost his most beloved person - Aksinya. Life has lost all meaning and meaning in his eyes. Even earlier, realizing the tragedy of his position, he says: “I fought off the whites, didn’t stick to the reds, and I swim like manure in an ice hole ...”. There is a great typical generalization in the image of Gregory. The impasse in which he found himself, of course, did not reflect the processes that took place in the entire Cossacks. The typical character is not that. The fate of a man who has not found his way in life is tragically instructive. The life of Grigory Melekhov was not easy, his journey ends tragically in the Quiet Don. Who is he? A victim of delusions, who experienced the full burden of historical retribution, or an individualist who broke with the people and became a pitiful renegade? The tragedy of Grigory Melekhov was often perceived by critics as the tragedy of a man who broke away from the people, who became a renegade, or as a tragedy of historical error. It would seem that such a person cannot cause anything but hostility and contempt. The reader is left with the impression of Grigory Melekhov as a bright and strong person; not without reason, in his image, the writer sought not only to show the perniciousness of decisions and actions due to the illusions of the possessive world, but also to convey the "charm of man."

In the difficult situation of the civil war, Gregory cannot find the right path due to the strength of political illiteracy, the prejudices of his country. Sholokhov, depicting the path of painful searches for the truth that Grigory followed, drawing the roads that led him to the camp of the enemies of the revolution, and severely condemning the hero for the crime against the people and humanity, nevertheless constantly reminds that, according to his inner inclinations, deeply rooted moral aspirations, this original a man of the people was constantly drawn to those who fought in the camp of the revolution. Therefore, it is no coincidence that his short stay with the Reds was accompanied by the acquisition of peace of mind, moral stability.

The image of Gregory cannot be understood by analyzing only his actions and not taking into account the state of his inner world, those motives that explain his actions.

The path of the hero in the novel ends tragically, and the motif of suffering grows stronger and more tense, our desire for a successful outcome of his fate becomes more relentless. This motive reaches a special tension in the scene of Aksinya's death. The psychologically penetrating portrait of Gregory and the image of the infinite cosmic world, before which he appeared one on one, conveys the depth of the tragedy.

But still, the tragedy does not obscure the motive of historical optimism in the novel, the idea of ​​a real possibility of overcoming tragic conflicts in the course of historical cataclysms. This is precisely the pathos of the "Quiet Don" as an epic of folk life at a steep historical turn. Sholokhov showed that the process of any renewal, restructuring, requires the exertion of all forces, brings hardships, gives rise to sharp conflicts and confusion among the masses. This is reflected in the fate of Grigory Melekhov. His image acts as the personification of high human capabilities, which, due to tragic circumstances, did not receive their full implementation.

Grigory Melekhov showed extraordinary courage in the search for the truth. But for him, she is not just an idea, some idealized symbol of a better human existence. He is looking for its embodiment in life. Coming into contact with many small particles of truth, and ready to accept each one, he discovers their failure when faced with life.

The internal conflict is resolved for Gregory by the rejection of war and weapons. Heading to his native farm, he threw it away, "thoroughly wiped his hands on the floor of his greatcoat."

Manifestations of class hostility, cruelty, bloodshed, the author of the novel contrasts the eternal dream of a person about happiness, about harmony between people. He consistently leads his hero to the truth, which contains the idea of ​​the unity of the people as the basis of life.

What will happen to the man, Grigory Melekhov, who did not accept this hostile world, this “bewildered existence”? What will happen to him if he, like a female little bustard, which is not able to frighten off volleys of guns, having gone through all the roads of war, stubbornly strives for peace, life, work on earth? The author does not answer these questions. The tragedy of Melekhov, intensified in the novel by the tragedy of all his relatives and dear people, reflects the drama of the whole region, which has undergone a violent "class alteration". The revolution and civil war tore and distorted the life of Grigory Melekhov. The memory of this terrible mess will be an unhealed wound on the soul of Gregory.

"Quiet Flows the Don" is an epic of people's life in historically significant years, reproduced by the writer with its heroism and tragedy. Sholokhov showed how, in the course of revolution and civil war, the possibility opens up for the realization of the highest ideals of humanity, the age-old aspirations of the people. Sholokhov portrayed this era as a historical action, covered with heroism and tragedy.

1.3. The conflict between the human destiny of the intelligentsia and the course of history in the works of M.A. Bulgakov "Days of the Turbins" and "White Guard"

And why don't the days go by for a long time

Turbins" by playwright Bulgakov?

I.V. Stalin

In 1934, in connection with the 500th performance of The Days of the Turbins, M. Bulgakov's friend PS Popov wrote: “The Days of the Turbins is one of those things that somehow enter into one's own life and become an epoch for oneself.” The feeling expressed by Popov was experienced by almost all the people who had the good fortune to see the performance that was going on at the Art Theater from 1926 to 1941.
The leading theme of this work was the fate of the intelligentsia in the context of civil war and general savagery. The surrounding chaos here, in this play, was opposed by a stubborn desire to preserve a normal life, “a bronze lamp under a lampshade”, “a white tablecloth”, “cream curtains”.

The play "Days of the Turbins" by M.A. Bulgakov initially had the goal of showing how the revolution changes people, to show the fate of people who accepted and did not accept the revolution. In the center is the tragic fate of an intelligent family against the backdrop of the collapse of the White Guard, the flight of the hetman, and the revolutionary events in Ukraine.

In the center of the play is the house of the Turbins. His prototype was largely the Bulgakovs' house on Andreevsky Spusk, which has survived to this day, and the prototypes of the heroes were people close to the writer. So the prototype of Elena Vasilievna was the sister of M. Bulgakov, Varvara Afanasievna Karum. All this gave Bulgakov's work that special warmth, helped to convey that unique atmosphere that distinguishes the Turbins' house. Their house is the center, the center of life, and unlike the writer's predecessors, for example, romantic poets, symbolists of the early 20th century, for whom comfort and peace were a symbol of philistinism and vulgarity, M. Bulgakov's House is the center of spiritual life, he fanned with poetry, its inhabitants value the traditions of the House and even in difficult times try to preserve them. In the play "Days of the Turbins" a conflict arises between human destiny and the course of history. The civil war breaks into the Turbins' house and destroys it. The "cream curtains" mentioned more than once by Lariosik become a capacious symbol - it is this line that separates the house from the world engulfed in cruelty and enmity. Compositionally, the play is built according to the circular principle: the action begins and ends in the Turbins' house, and between these scenes, the Ukrainian hetman's office becomes the scene of action, from which the hetman himself flees, leaving people to their fate; the headquarters of the Petlyura division, which enters the city; the lobby of the Alexander Gymnasium, where the junkers gather to repulse Petlyura and defend the city.

It is these events of history that drastically change life in the Turbins' house: Alexei is killed, Nikolka is crippled, and all the inhabitants of the Turbine house face a choice.

The Days of the Turbins is, of course, a psychological play. Together with a strongly pronounced lyrical beginning, humor makes itself felt in the depiction of the exposure of the hetman, the bandit existence of the Petliurites. And the tragic end ends with the collapse of the convictions of an honest and strong man - Alexei Turbin. The old world is collapsing and the remaining characters of the play face the problem of choice.

Let us dwell in more detail on the heroes of this immortal play. The Turbin family, a typical intelligent military family, where the older brother is a colonel, the younger is a cadet, and the sister is married to Colonel Talberg. And all friends are military. A large apartment with a library, where they drink wine at dinner, where they play the piano, and, having drunk, they sing the Russian anthem out of tune, although the tsar has been gone for a year, and no one believes in God. You can always come to this house. Here they will wash and feed the frozen captain Myshlaevsky, who scolds the Germans, and Petlyura, and the hetman. Here, they will not be very surprised at the unexpected appearance of the “cousin from Zhytomyr” Lariosik and “shelter and warm him”. This is a friendly family, everyone loves each other, but without sentimentality.
For eighteen-year-old Nikolka, thirsty for battles, the elder brother is the highest authority. Alexey Turbin, in our current opinion, is very young: at the age of thirty he is already a colonel. Behind him is the just ended war with Germany, and talented officers are quickly promoted in the war. He is a smart, thinking commander. Bulgakov succeeded in giving a generalized image of a Russian officer in his face, continuing the line of Tolstoy, Chekhov, Kuprin officers. Turbin is especially close to Roshchin from "Walking through the torment". Both of them are good, honest, intelligent people who are rooting for the fate of Russia. They served the Motherland and want to serve it, but there comes a moment when it seems to them that Russia is perishing, and then there is no point in their existence.
There are two scenes in the play when Alexei Turbin appears as a character. The first - in the circle of friends and relatives, behind the "cream curtains" that cannot hide from wars and revolutions. Turbin talks about what worries him; despite the “seditiousness” of his speeches, Turbin regrets that earlier he could not foresee “what Petliura is.” He says that it is a "myth", a "fog". In Russia, according to Turbin, there are two forces: the Bolsheviks and the former tsarist military. The Bolsheviks will come soon, and Turbin is inclined to think that victory will be theirs. In the second climactic scene, Turbin is already in action. He commands. Turbin disbands the division, orders everyone to remove their insignia and immediately go home. Turbin says bitter things: the hetman and his henchmen fled, leaving the army to its fate. Now there is no one to protect. And Turbin makes a difficult decision: he no longer wants to participate in “this booth”, realizing that further bloodshed is pointless. Pain and despair grow in his soul. But the commanding spirit is strong in him. “Don't dare!” - he shouts when one of the officers suggests that he run to Denikin on the Don. Turbin understands that there is the same “headquarters mob” that forces officers to fight with their own people. And when the people win and “split the heads” of the officers, Denikin will also run away abroad. Turbin cannot push one Russian person against another. The conclusion is this: the white movement is over, the people are not with it, they are against it.
But how often in literature and cinema the White Guards were portrayed as sadists with a painful penchant for villainy! Alexey Turbin, having demanded that everyone take off their shoulder straps, remains in the division until the end. Nikolai, brother, correctly understands that the commander "waits death from shame." And the commander waited for her - he dies under the bullets of the Petliurists. Aleksey Turbin is a tragic image, he is a solid, strong-willed, strong, brave, proud man who fell victim to the deceit and betrayal of those for whom he fought. The system collapsed and killed many of those who served it. But, dying, Turbin realized that he had been deceived, that those who were with the people had strength.
Bulgakov had a great historical sense and correctly understood the alignment of forces. For a long time they could not forgive Bulgakov for his love for his heroes. In the last act, Myshlaevsky shouts: “Bolsheviks?.. Magnificent! I'm tired of portraying manure in the hole... Let them mobilize. At least I will know that I will serve in the Russian army. The people are not with us. The people are against us." Rude, loud-voiced, but honest and direct, a good comrade and a good soldier, Captain Myshlaevsky continues in the literature a well-known type of Russian military man - from Denis Davydov to the present day, but he is shown in a new, unprecedented yet civil war. He continues and finishes the thought of the elder Turbin about the death of the white movement, an important thought leading to the play.
There is a “rat running from the ship” in the house - Colonel Thalberg. At first, he gets frightened, lies about a “business trip” to Berlin, then about a business trip to the Don, makes hypocritical promises to his wife, followed by a cowardly flight.
We are so accustomed to the name "Days of the Turbins" that we do not think about why the play is called that. The word "Dni" means time, those few days in which the fate of the Turbins, the whole way of life of this Russian intelligent family was decided. It was the end, but not a broken, ruined, destroyed life, but a transition to a new existence in new revolutionary conditions, the beginning of life and work with the Bolsheviks. People like Myshlaevsky will serve well in the Red Army, the singer Shervinsky will find an appreciative audience, and Nikolka will probably study. The finale of the piece sounds major. We want to believe that all the wonderful heroes of Bulgakov's play will really become happy, that they will bypass the fate of many intellectuals of the terrible thirties, forties, fifties of our difficult century.

M.A. Bulgakov masterfully conveyed the events that took place in Kyiv and, first of all, the most difficult experiences of the Turbins, Myshlaevsky, Studzinsky, Lariosik. Coups, unrest and similar incidents aggravate the situation, after which we see not only the fate of intelligent people who are drawn into these events and are forced to decide the question: to accept or not to accept the Bolsheviks? - but also that crowd of people who opposed the revolution - the Hetmanate, its owners - the Germans. As a humanist, Bulgakov does not accept Petlyura's wild beginnings, and angrily rejects Bolbotun and Galanba. Also M.A. Bulgakov ridicules the hetman and his "subjects". He shows to what baseness and dishonor they reach, betraying the Motherland. Human meanness has its place in the play. Such events are the flight of the hetman, his baseness before the Germans. In the scene with Bolbotun and Galanba, the author, with the help of satire and humor, reveals not only an anti-human attitude, but also rampant nationalism.

Bolbotun says to the Sich deserter: “Do you know what German officers and commissars are doing to our grain growers? They bury the living near the ground! Chuv? So I'll bury you yourself at the grave! Himself!”

The dramatic action in Days of the Turbins develops with great speed. And the driving force is the people who refuse to support the "Hetman of All Ukraine" and Petliura. And the fate of the hetman, and the fate of Petliura, and the fate of honest intellectuals, including white officers - Alexei Turbin and Viktor Myshlaevsky, depend on this main force.

Through the rumble, confusion and confusion of the junkers and students, the voice of reason breaks through. Aleksey Turbin refuses to participate in the "booth" that began as early as three in the morning, does not want to lead the division to the Don, to Denikin, as Captain Studzinsky and some cadets suggest, because he hates the "staff bastard" and tells the junkers openly that on the Don they will meet "the same generals and the same staff mob." As an honest and deeply reflective officer, he realized that the white movement had come to an end. It remains only to emphasize that the main motive that moved Turbin was his awareness of one event: “The people are not with us. He is against us."

Aleksey also tells the cadets and students about Denikin's men: "They will force you to fight with your own people." He predicts the inevitable death of the white movement: “I tell you: the end of the white movement in Ukraine. He will end in Rostov-on-Don, everywhere! The people are not with us. He is against us. So it's over! Coffin! Lid!.."

Looking into the history of the Civil War, we noticed an interesting statement by General Pyotr Wrangel, who wrote about Anton Denikin's offensive: arbitrariness. As a result - the collapse of the front and the uprising in the rear "...

The play ends with a tragic despair. Petliurists leave Kiev, the Red Army enters the city. Each of the characters decides how to be. Myshlaevsky clashes with Studzinsky. The latter is going to run to the Don and fight the Bolsheviks there, while the other one objects to him. Myshlaevsky, like Aleksey, is sure of the collapse of the white movement as a whole - he is ready to go over to the side of the Bolsheviks: “Let them mobilize! At least I will know that I will serve in the Russian army. The people are not with us. The people are against us. Alyosha is right!

It is no coincidence that special attention was paid to Myshlaevsky in the conclusion. Viktor Viktorovich's confidence that there is truth behind the Bolsheviks, that they are capable of building new Russia, - this conviction, which characterizes the choice of a new path for the hero, expresses the ideological meaning of the play. Therefore, the image of Myshlaevsky turned out to be so close to M.A. Bulgakov.

Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov is a complex writer, but at the same time he clearly and simply sets out the highest philosophical questions in his works. His novel The White Guard tells about the dramatic events unfolding in Kiev in the winter of 1918-1919. The writer speaks dialectically about the deeds of human hands: about war and peace, about human enmity and wonderful unity - “the family, where only you can hide from the horrors of the surrounding chaos.”

In an epigraph from The Captain's Daughter by Pushkin, Bulgakov emphasized that we are talking about people who were overtaken by the storm of revolution, but who were able to find the right path, maintain courage and a sober view of the world and their place in it. The second epigraph is biblical. And with this, Bulgakov introduces us into the zone of eternal time, without introducing any historical comparisons into the novel.
The motive of the epigraphs is developed by the epic beginning of the novel: “The year was great and terrible after the birth of Christ 1918, from the beginning of the second revolution. It was abundant in summer with sun, and in winter with snow, and two stars stood especially high in the sky: the shepherd's star Venus and red trembling Mars. The beginning style is almost biblical. Associations make you remember the eternal Book of Genesis, which in itself
uniquely materializes the eternal, as well as the image of the stars in heaven. The specific time of history is, as it were, soldered into the eternal time of being, framed by it. The confrontation of the stars, the natural series of images related to the eternal, at the same time symbolizes the collision of historical time. In the beginning of the work, majestic, tragic and poetic, there is a grain of social and philosophical problems associated with the opposition of peace and war, life and death, death and immortality. The very choice of the stars makes it possible to descend from the cosmic distance to the world of the Turbins, since it is this world that will resist enmity and madness.
In The White Guard, the sweet, quiet, intelligent Turbin family suddenly becomes involved in great events, becomes a witness and participant in terrible and amazing things. The days of the Turbins absorb the eternal charm of calendar time: “But the days in both peaceful and bloody years fly like an arrow, and the young Turbins did not notice how white, shaggy December came in a hard frost.

The House of the Turbins is opposed to the outside world, in which destruction, horror, inhumanity, and death reign. But the House cannot separate, leave the city, it is a part of it, like a city is a part of the earthly space. And at the same time, this earthly space of social passions and battles is included in the expanses of the World.
The city, according to Bulgakov's description, was "beautiful in the frost and in the fog on the mountains, above the Dnieper." But its appearance changed dramatically, “... industrialists, merchants, lawyers, public figures fled here. Journalists fled, Moscow and St. Petersburg, corrupt and greedy, cowardly. Cocottes, honest ladies from aristocratic families...” and many others. And the city began to live with “a strange, unnatural life...” The evolutionary course of history is suddenly and menacingly disrupted, and man finds himself at its breaking point.
The image of a large and small space of life grows in Bulgakov in opposition to the destructive time of war and the eternal time of Peace.
You can’t sit out a hard time, shutting yourself off from him like the landlord Vasilisa is “an engineer and a coward, a bourgeois and unsympathetic”. This is how Lisovich is perceived by Turbines, who do not like petty-bourgeois isolation, narrow-mindedness, hoarding, isolation from life. No matter what happens, they will not count the coupons, hiding in the dark, like Vasily Lisovich, who only dreams of surviving the storm and not losing the accumulated capital. Turbines meet a formidable time differently. They do not change themselves in anything, they do not change their way of life. Every day, friends gather in their house, who are met by light, warmth, and a laid table. Nikolkin's guitar rings with brute force - desperation and defiance even before an impending catastrophe.
Everything honest and pure, like a magnet, is attracted by the House. Here, in this comfort of Home, comes from terrible world deadly frozen Myshlaevsky. A man of honor, like Turbins, he did not leave the post under the city, where in a terrible frost forty people waited for a day in the snow, without fires, to change,
which would never have come if Colonel Nai-Turs, also a man of honor and duty, could not, despite the disgrace that is happening at the headquarters, bring two hundred junkers, perfectly dressed and armed through the efforts of Nai-Turs. Some time will pass, and Nai-Turs, realizing that he and his cadets have been treacherously abandoned by the command, that his children are destined for the fate of cannon fodder, will save his boys at the cost of his own life. The lines of the Turbins and Nai-Tours will intertwine in the fate of Nikolka, who witnessed the last heroic minutes of the colonel's life. Admired by the feat and humanism of the colonel, Nikolka will do the impossible - he will be able to overcome the seemingly insurmountable in order to give Nai-Turs his last duty - to bury him with dignity and become a close person for the mother and sister of the deceased hero.
The fates of all truly decent people are contained in the world of the Turbins, whether they are the courageous officers Myshlaevsky and Stepanov, or deeply civilian by nature, but not deviating from what befell him in the era of hard times, Alexei Turbin, or even the completely, it would seem, ridiculous Lariosik . But it was Lariosik who managed to quite accurately express the very essence of the House, opposing the era of cruelty and violence. Lariosik spoke about himself, but many could subscribe to these words, “that he suffered a drama, but here, at Elena Vasilyevna’s, his soul comes to life, because this is an absolutely exceptional person Elena Vasilyevna and their apartment is warm and comfortable, and especially wonderful cream curtains on all windows, thanks to which you feel cut off from the outside world ... And he, this outside world ... you will agree yourself, formidable, bloody and meaningless.
There, outside the windows - the merciless destruction of everything that was valuable in Russia.
Here, behind the curtains, there is an unshakable belief that everything beautiful must be protected and preserved, that it is necessary under any circumstances, that it is feasible. “... Hours, fortunately, are completely immortal, both the Saardam Carpenter and the Dutch tile are immortal, like a wise scan, life-giving and hot in the most difficult time.”
And outside the windows - "the eighteenth year is flying to an end and every day it looks more menacing, bristly." And Aleksey Turbin thinks with anxiety not about his possible death, but about the death of the House: “Walls will fall, an alarmed falcon will fly from a white mitten, the fire will go out in a bronze lamp, and the Captain’s Daughter will be burned in the furnace.”
But, perhaps, love and devotion are given the power to protect and save, and the House will be saved?
There is no clear answer to this question in the novel.
There is a confrontation between the center of peace and culture to the Petliura gangs, which are being replaced by the Bolsheviks.
One of the last sketches in the novel is a description of the armored train “Proletary”. Horror and disgust emanates from this picture: “He hissed softly and angrily, something oozed in the side shots, his blunt snout was silent and squinted into the Dnieper forests. From the last platform, a wide muzzle in a deaf muzzle was aimed at the heights, black and blue, for twenty versts and straight at the midnight cross. Bulgakov knows that in old Russia there were many things that led to the tragedy of the country. But people who point the muzzles of their guns and rifles at their fatherland are no better than those staff and government scoundrels who sent the best sons of the fatherland to certain death.
History will inevitably sweep away murderers, criminals, robbers, traitors of all ranks and stripes, and their names will be a symbol of dishonor and shame.
And the House of Turbins, as a symbol of the imperishable beauty and truth of the best people of Russia, its nameless heroes, humble workers, keepers of goodness and culture, will warm the souls of many generations of readers and prove with each of its manifestations that a real person remains a person even at the turn of history.
Those who violated the natural course of history committed a crime in front of everyone, including the tired and frozen sentry at the armored train. In torn felt boots, in a torn overcoat, brutally, inhumanly, a chilled person falls asleep on the go, and he dreams of his native village and his neighbor walking towards him. “And immediately a formidable guard voice in his chest tapped out three words:
“Sorry... sentry... you will freeze...”
Why is this man given up to a meaningless nightmare?
Why are thousands and millions of others given to this?
One can not be sure that little Petka Shcheglov, who lived in the wing and had a wonderful dream about a sparkling diamond ball, will wait for what the dream promised him - happiness?
Who knows? In an era of battles and upheavals, an individual human life is more fragile than ever. But the strength of Russia is that there are people in it for whom the concept of “living” is tantamount to the concepts of “love”, “feel”, “comprehend”, “think”, be faithful to duty and honor. These people know that the walls of the House are not just a dwelling, but a place of connection between generations, a place where soulfulness is preserved in incorruptibility, where the spiritual principle never disappears, the symbol of which is the main part of the House - bookcases filled with books.
And as at the beginning of the novel, in its epilogue, looking at the bright stars in the frosty sky, the author makes us think about eternity, about the life of future generations, about responsibility to history, to each other: “Everything will pass. Suffering, torment, blood, hunger and pestilence. The sword will disappear, but the stars will remain, when the shadow of our bodies and deeds will not remain on the earth.”

1.4. Cavalry I.E. Babel - a chronicle of everyday atrocities" during the revolution and civil war.

This chronicle of everyday atrocities,

which oppresses me tirelessly,

like a heart defect.

I.E. Babel

The last book belongs to I.E. Babel. This legacy, which has come down to our times, has become a notable event in the literary life of the first post-revolutionary decade.

According to N. Berkovsky: "Cavalry" is one of the significant phenomena in fiction about the civil war.

The idea of ​​this novel is to reveal and show all the flaws of the revolution, the Russian army and the immorality of man.

Roman I.E. Babel's Cavalry is a series of seemingly unrelated episodes that line up in huge mosaic canvases. In Cavalry, despite the horrors of the war, the ferocity of those years is shown - faith in the revolution and faith in man. The author draws the piercingly dreary loneliness of a man in the war. I.E. Babel, seeing in the revolution not only strength, but also "tears and blood", "twisted" a person this way and that, analyzed him. In the chapters "Letter" and "Berestechko" the author shows the different positions of people in the war. In the “Letter”, he writes that on the scale of the hero’s life values, the story of how they “finished” first brother Fedno, and then dad, takes second place. This is the author's own protest against the assassination. And in the chapter "Berestechko" I.E. Babel tries to get away from reality because it is unbearable. Describing the characters of the characters, the boundaries between their states of mind, unexpected actions, the author draws the infinite heterogeneity of reality, the ability of a person to be sublime and ordinary, tragic and heroic, cruel and kind, giving birth and killing at the same time. I.E. Babel skillfully plays with transitions between horror and delight, between beautiful and terrifying.

Behind the pathos of the revolution, the author saw its face: he understood that the revolution is an extreme situation that reveals the secret of man. But even in the harsh everyday life of the revolution, a person who has a sense of compassion will not be able to reconcile himself to murder and bloodshed. Man, according to I.E. Babel, alone in this world. He writes that the revolution is “like lava, scattering life” and leaving its imprint on everything it touches. I.E. Babel feels like "at a big ongoing memorial service." The hot sun is still dazzlingly shining, but it already seems that this “orange sun is rolling across the sky like a severed head”, and the “gentle light” that “lights up in the gorges of the clouds” can no longer relieve anxiety, because it’s not just a sunset , and "the standards of sunset are blowing over our heads ..." The picture of victory before our eyes acquires unusual cruelty. And when, following the “standards of sunset”, the author writes the phrase: “The smell of yesterday’s blood and dead horses drips into the evening cool,” with this metamorphosis, if he does not overthrow, then, in any case, he will greatly complicate his initial triumphant chant. All this prepares the finale, where in a hot dream the narrator sees fights and bullets, and in reality the sleeping Jewish neighbor turns out to be a dead old man, brutally stabbed by the Poles.

All Babel's stories are filled with memorable, vivid metamorphoses, reflecting the drama of his worldview. And we cannot but grieve about his fate, not sympathize with his inner torments, but admire his creative gift. His prose has not faded with time. His heroes have not faded. His style is still mysterious and irreproducible. His depiction of the revolution is perceived as an artistic discovery. He expressed his position on the revolution, became a "lonely man" in a world that is rapidly changing and teeming with change.

V. Polyansky noted that in Cavalry, as well as in Leo Tolstoy’s Sevastopol Tales, “in the end, the hero is “truth” ... the rising peasant element, rising to the aid of the proletarian revolution, communism, albeit peculiarly understood” .

Cavalry by I.E. Babel at one time caused a huge commotion in censorship, and when he brought the book to the Press House, after listening to sharp criticisms, he calmly said: “What I saw at Budyonny is what I gave. I see that I didn’t give a political worker there at all, I didn’t give much at all about the Red Army, I’ll give it further if I can” ...

From the blood spilled in battles

From dust turned to dust

From the torments of the executed generations,

From souls baptized in blood

Of hateful love

Of crimes, frenzy

Righteous Russia will arise.

I pray for her...

M. Voloshin

The last epigraph by no means accidentally fit into the general picture of discussions about the revolution. If we consider only Russia - Russia, then, of course, we can agree with M.A. Bulgakov, who accepted, preferred the best path for our country. Yes, almost everyone agrees so, but not everyone thinks about the mysterious curve of the Leninist straight line. The fate of the country is in the hands of the country itself. But as the people themselves said, that from it is like from a wooden log, depending on who processes it ... Or Sergius of Radonezh, or Emelyan Pugachev. Although the second name is more suitable for the hetman, Kolchak and Denikin, as well as all those "staff bastards" who unleashed the very bloody slaughter of the revolution, which was originally meant as "direct". But, in general, out of all the turmoil, “out of blood”, “ashes”, “torments” and “souls”, “righteous Russia” arose! This is what M.A. Bulgakov, exclaiming through his heroes. I agree with his opinion. But we should not forget about M.A. Sholokhov and I.E. Babel, they showed practically all that “curve”, everything that arose “out of crimes”, “out of hating love”, everything that “in the end” was the Truth.

Conclusion

Having deeply studied a wide range of literary and artistic works of the last century, having analyzed literary criticism, it can be argued that the theme of revolution and civil war has long become one of the main themes of Russian literature of the 20th century. These events not only dramatically changed the life of the Russian Empire, redrawn the entire map of Europe, but also changed the life of every person, every family. Civil wars are usually called fratricidal. Any war is fratricidal in its essence, but in the civil war this essence of it is revealed especially sharply.

From the works of Bulgakov, Fadeev, Sholokhov, Babel, we have revealed: Hatred often brings together people who are related by blood in it, and the tragedy here is extremely naked. The awareness of the civil war as a national tragedy has become decisive in many works of Russian writers, brought up in the traditions of the humanistic values ​​of classical literature. This realization sounded, perhaps not even fully understood by the author, already in A. Fadeev's novel "The Rout", and no matter how much they look for an optimistic beginning in it, the book is primarily tragic - in terms of the events and destinies of people described in it. Philosophically comprehended the essence of events in Russia at the beginning of the century years later B. Pasternak in the novel "Doctor Zhivago". The hero of the novel turned out to be a hostage of history, which mercilessly intervenes in his life and destroys it. The fate of Zhivago is the fate of the Russian intelligentsia in the 20th century. In many ways close to the poetry of B. Pasternak is another writer, playwright, for whom the experience of the civil war became his personal experience - M. Bulgakov, whose works ("Days of the Turbins" and "The White Guard") became a living legend of the twentieth century and reflected the impressions the author from life in Kyiv in the terrible years of 1918-19, when the city passed from hand to hand, shots were fired, the course of history decided the fate of a person.

In the process of research, we discovered general trends that are characteristic of almost all literary works about the revolution and the civil war, which allowed us to draw the following conclusions.

The fate of a person in a period of severe historical upheavals and trials is subject to a painful search for his place and destination in new circumstances. The innovation and merit of the authors we have considered (Fadeev, Sholokhov, Bulgakov, Babel) lies in the fact that they gave the reader's world examples of personalities, restless, doubting, hesitant, for whom the old, well-established world collapses overnight, and they are captured by a wave of rapid innovative events which put the heroes in a situation of moral, political choice of their path. But these circumstances do not harden the heroes, they do not have malice, unaccountable hostility to everything indiscriminately. This is the manifestation of the enormous spiritual strength of man, his inflexibility before destructive forces, opposition to them.

In the works of Fadeev, Sholokhov, Bulgakov, Babel, one can clearly see how history breaks into people's lives, how the 20th century tempers them. Behind their thunderous tread, the voice of an individual is not heard, devalued his life. Like the era, so the person faces the problem of moral choice in the literature of this time. This is Levinson, and Melekhov, and Myshlaevsky ... The tragic outcome of this choice repeats the tragic course of history. The choice that Alexei Turbin faced at the moment when the cadets subordinate to him were ready to fight was cruel - either to remain faithful to the oath and officer honor, or to save the lives of people. And Colonel Turbin gives the order: "Tear off your shoulder straps, throw away your rifles and immediately go home." The choice made by him is given to a regular officer, "who has endured the war with the Germans", as he himself says, is infinitely difficult. He utters words that sound like a sentence to himself and the people of his circle: "The people are not with us. They are against us." It is hard to admit this, to back down from the military oath and betray the honor of an officer is even harder, but Bulgakov's hero decides to do this in the name of the highest value - human life. It is this value that turns out to be the highest in the minds of Alexei Turbin and the author of the play himself. Having made this choice, the commander feels complete hopelessness. In his decision to stay in the gymnasium, there is not only a desire to warn the outpost, but also a deep motive, unraveled by Nikolka: "You, the commander, are waiting for death from shame, that's what!" But this expectation of death is not only from shame, but also from complete hopelessness, the inevitable death of that Russia, without which such people cannot imagine life. Similar reflections on the tragic nature of the heroes were noted in the considered works. Therefore, fiction about the revolution and civil war has become one of the most profound artistic comprehension of the tragic essence of man in the era of revolution and civil war. At the same time, each hero experienced the evolution of his worldview, attitude to what is happening, his assessment and, in connection with this, his further actions in this world.

The characteristic position of the authors themselves is also interesting. These works are largely autobiographical or connected with their relatives, comrades-in-arms in combat operations. All writers, without exception, are captivated by reasoning about the enduring values ​​of our world - duty to the Motherland, friends, family. It was difficult for the authors themselves at that time to figure out who to follow, whom to oppose, on whose side the truth is, they often, like their heroes, turned out to be hostages of their own oath and sense of honor, were subjected to the conditions of growing Soviet censorship, which did not give them the opportunity to to clearly and directly indicate their position in the works, to speak out to the end. Indicative in this respect is the end of any considered work, where there is no clear logical conclusion in its problematics. So the novel by M. Bulgakov “The White Guard” ends with the words: “Everything will pass. Suffering, torment, blood, hunger and 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? Why? “There are eternal values ​​that do not depend on the outcome of the civil war. Stars are a symbol of such values. It was in serving these eternal values ​​that the writer Mikhail Bulgakov, like Mikhail Sholokhov, and Alexander Fadeev, and Isaac Babel saw his duty.

The best books about the revolution and the civil war, which are “Rout”, “Quiet Don”, “Cavalry”, “Days of the Turbins”, “White Guard” are still widely read, in demand, are not only of interest, but also contain educational aspects for the formation of humanism, patriotism, a sense of duty, love for one's neighbor, political vigilance, the ability to find one's place and vocation in any life circumstances, the ability to make the right decision that does not contradict universal moral values ​​among young people.

LIST OF USED LITERATURE.

1. Babel I.E. Works. In 2 vols. T. 2: Cavalry; Stories 1925-1938; Plays; Memoirs, portraits; Articles and speeches; Screenplays / Comp. And prepare. Text by A. Pirozhkva; Comment. S. Povartsova; Artistic V. Veksler.-M.: Artist. Lit., 1990.- 574 p.

2. Bulgakov M.A. Plays. - M .: Soviet writer, 1987. - 656 p.

3. Bulgakov M.A. "And the dead were judged...": Novels. Tale. Plays. Essay / Comp., cr. Biochronika, approx. B.S. Myagkova; Intro. Art. V.Ya. Lakshina.- M.: Shkola-Press, 1994.- 704 p.

4. Fadeev A.A. Novels./ Ed. Krakovskaya A.- M.: Khudozh. Literature, 1971. - 784 p.

5. Fadeev A.A. Letters. 1916-1956 / Ed. Platonova A.- M.: Artist. Literature, 1969. - 584 p.

6. A. Dementiev, E. Naumov, L. Plotkin "Russian Soviet Literature" - M.: Uchpedgiz, 1963. - 397 p.

The theme of revolution and civil war became one of the main themes of Russian literature of the 20th century for a long time. These events not only dramatically changed the life of Russia, redrawn the entire map of Europe, but also changed the life of every person, every family. Civil wars are usually called fratricidal. This is essentially the nature of any war, but in a civil war this essence of it comes to light especially sharply. Hatred often brings together people who are related by blood in it, and the tragedy here is extremely naked. The awareness of the civil war as a national tragedy has become decisive in many works of Russian writers, brought up in the traditions of the humanistic values ​​of classical literature.

This realization sounded, perhaps not even fully understood by the author himself, already in A. Fadeev's novel "The Rout". And no matter how much critics and researchers look for an optimistic beginning in it, the book is primarily tragic - according to the events described in it and the fate of people, B. Pasternak philosophically comprehended the essence of events in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century years later in the novel "Doctor Zhivago". The hero here turned out to be a hostage of history, which mercilessly interferes with his life and destroys it. The fate of Zhivago is the fate of the Russian intelligentsia in the 20th century.

In many ways close to B. Pasternak is another writer, playwright, for whom the experience of the civil war became his personal experience. This is M. Bulgakov. His play Days of the Turbins became a living legend of the 20th century. The play was born unusually. In 1922, having found himself in Moscow (after Kyiv and Vladikavkaz, after the experience of working as a doctor), M. Bulgakov learns that his mother died in Kiev. This death served as an impetus for the start of work on the novel The White Guard, and only then a play was born from the novel.

The novel and the play reflect the personal impressions of M. Bulgakov. In the terrible winter of 1918-1919, the writer lived in Kyiv, his hometown, which passed from hand to hand. The fate of man was decided by the course of history. In the center of the play is the house of the Turbins. His prototype was largely the Bulgakovs' house on Andreevsky Spusk, which has survived to this day, and the prototypes of the heroes were people close to the writer. So, the prototype of Elena Vasilievna was the sister of M. Bulgakov. This gave Bulgakov's work a special warmth, helped to convey the unique atmosphere that distinguishes the Turbins' house.

Their house is the center, the center of life, and unlike the writer's predecessors, for example, romantic poets, symbolists of the early 20th century, for whom comfort and peace were a symbol of philistinism and vulgarity, M. Bulgakov's house is the center of spiritual life, it is fanned poetry, its inhabitants value the traditions of the house and even in difficult times try to preserve them.

In the play "Days of the Turbins" a conflict arises between human destiny and the course of history. The civil war breaks into the Turbins' house and destroys it. The "cream curtains" mentioned more than once by Lariosik become a capacious symbol of peaceful life - it is this line that separates the house from the world engulfed in cruelty and enmity. Compositionally, the play is built according to the circular principle: the action begins and ends in the Turbins' house, and between these scenes, the Ukrainian hetman's office becomes the scene of action, from which the hetman himself flees, leaving people to their fate; the headquarters of the Petlyura division, which enters the city; the lobby of the Alexander Gymnasium, where the junkers gather to repulse Petlyura and defend the city.

It is these events of history that drastically change life in the Turbins' house: Alexei is killed, Nikolka is crippled, and all the inhabitants of the Turbine house face a choice. The last scene of the play sounds bitter irony. Christmas tree in the house, Christmas Eve 18. Red troops enter the city. It is known that in real history these two events did not coincide in time - the Red troops entered the city later, in February, but M. Bulgakov needed a Christmas tree on the stage, a symbol of the most domestic, most traditional family holiday, which only makes you feel the near collapse of this house and all the beauty that has been created over the centuries and the doomed world. Myshlaevsky’s remark also sounds bitter irony: after Lariosik pronounces the words from Chekhov’s play “Uncle Vanya”: “We will rest, we will rest ...” distant cannon strikes are heard, in response to them follows the ironic words said by Myshlaevsky: “So! Rest!..” This scene clearly shows how history breaks into people’s lives, how the 19th century, with its traditions, way of life, complaints of boredom and non-event, replaces the 20th century, filled with stormy and tragic events. Behind their thunderous tread, the voice of an individual is not heard, his life is devalued. So, through the fate of the Turbins and people of their circle, M. Bulgakov reveals the drama of the era of revolution and civil war.

Special attention should be paid to the problem of moral choice in the play. Before such a choice is main character works - Colonel Alexei Turbin. His leading role is preserved in the play to the end, although he is brought to the murdered at the end of the third act, and the entire last fourth act takes place after his death. In it, the colonel is invisibly present, in it, as in life, he acts as the main moral guide, the personification of the concept of honor, a guide for others.

The choice that Alexei Turbin faced at the moment when the cadets subordinate to him were ready to fight was cruel - either to remain faithful to the oath and officer honor, or to save the lives of people. And Colonel Turbin gives the order: "Tear off your shoulder straps, throw your rifles and immediately go home." Such a choice, made by him, is given to a career officer, "who endured the war with the Germans", as he himself says, is infinitely difficult. He utters words that sound like a sentence to himself and the people of his circle: “The people are not with us. He is against us." It is hard to admit this, to back down from the military oath and betray the honor of an officer is even harder, but Bulgakov's hero decides to do this in the name of the highest value - human life. It is this value that turns out to be the highest in the minds of Alexei Turbin and the author of the play himself. Having made this choice, the commander feels complete hopelessness. In his decision to stay in the gymnasium, there is not only a desire to warn the outpost, but also a deep motive, unraveled by Nikolka: “You, commander, are waiting for death from shame, that’s what!” But this expectation of death is not only from shame, but also from complete hopelessness, the inevitable death of that Russia, without which such people as Bulgakov's heroes cannot imagine life.

The play by M. Bulgakov became one of the most profound artistic comprehension of the tragic essence of man in the era of revolution and civil war.

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  • The events of the revolution and the civil war were reflected in the new literature of the 1990s. The revolution brought enthusiasm, faith in a new world order, but it also brought misfortune, the tragedy of the whole country. The coverage of the war was simplistic, one-dimensional, monumentally heroic. It is now known that in addition to the "revolution - the holiday of the working people and the oppressed" there was another image: "cursed days" (Bunin), "deaf years" (Mandelstam), "vomit of war - October fun" (Gippius). But this point of view had no right to exist!


    Starting the countdown of the new time and intending to create an earthly paradise, they began to destroy right and left. They sang: "He who was nothing will become everything," but the people have already been persecuted, fooled, hungry and poor! They sang: “Let's renounce the old world, but we renounced Gumilyov and Chaliapin, Bunin and Akhmatova. And from 1.6 million of the most talented scientists and writers who emigrated abroad. Demolished the most ancient temples and monasteries, killed the clergy!


    Maxim Gorky: “Our revolution gave scope to all the bad and bestial instincts that have accumulated under the lead roof of the monarchy. The people's commissars treat Russia as material for experiment; the Russian people are for them the same horse that bacteriologists inoculate with typhus in order for the horse to develop anti-typhoid serum in its blood. It is precisely such a cruel and doomed to failure experiment that the commissars conduct on the Russian people, not thinking that the exhausted, half-starved horse can die.


    There is a red terror in the country. But those who pinned their hopes on the white movement are also wrong. In an atmosphere of bloody confusion, the Whites could not give anything significant to the people, who in their mass, naturally, were neither angels nor noble knights. Neither the Reds nor the Whites could give anything to the people, but behind the Reds, as behind a new force, there was a serious psychological advantage.


    In the outbreak of the civil war, Russia lost from 1918 to 1922 - millions of people! (according to other sources 16 million): military losses - 800 thousand emigration - 1.5 - 2 million people sickness - 5.1 million people. The remaining 5-7 million were illegally shot (Krondshtatsky, Tambov and other rebellions). The war began from the moment the new government was born.


    Literary positions of the 1920s “The Winners” “The Defeated” “Neither with the One, nor with the Other” Dmitry Furmanov “Chapaev” Alexander Serafimovich “The Iron Stream” Alexander Fadeev “The Rout” and others Mikhail Bulgakov “The White Guard” Ivan Shmelev “The Sun of the Dead”, “The Tale of an Old Woman” Marina Tsvetaeva “The Swan Camp” Boris Lavrenyov “Forty-First” Boris Pilnyak “The Hungry Year”, “The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon” Vitaly Veresaev “At a Dead End” Isaac Babel “Konarmiya” Artyom Vesely “Russia, with Blood washed"


    "Winners" Revolution and civil war - a heroic time In the crucible of the civil war, the formation of personality takes place The Bolsheviks play a leading role in overcoming the spontaneity of the masses The Bolsheviks are positive heroes, people from the people Works are always optimistic, even if the ending is tragic






















    Maxim Gorky: “Our commissars treat Russia as a material for experiment, the Russian people for them are the same horse that bacteriologists inoculate with typhus so that the horse develops anti-typhoid serum in its blood. It is precisely such a cruel and doomed to failure experiment that the commissars conduct on the Russian people, not thinking that the exhausted, half-starved horse can die.

    Terminological minimum Key words: themes, problems, pathos, realism, genre, image, character, canon, literary process, form, content, myth, social order.

    Plan

    1. general characteristics of the literary process of the post-revolutionary period: three branches of Russian literature of the Soviet era.

    2. The theme of revolution and civil war from the point of view of representatives of official literature (A. Fadeev, N. Ostrovsky).

    3. Negative image of revolution and civil war
    (I. Bunin, I. Babel, B. Pilnyak).

    4. Gravitation in the image to the inclusiveness of events in the works of M. Bulgakov, A. N. Tolstoy and others.

    Literature

    Texts to study

    1. Bunin, I. A. Cursed days.

    2. Babel, I. Cavalry.

    3. Ostrovsky, N. A. How steel was tempered.

    4. Pilnyak, B. Naked Year.

    5. Tolstoy, A. N. Going through the throes.

    6. Fadeev, A. A. Razgrom.

    7. Shmelev, I. S. The sun of the dead.

    8. Sholokhov, M. A. Don stories.

    Main

    1. History of Russian literature of the twentieth century: textbook. allowance: in 2 volumes / ed.
    V. V. Agenosov. – M. : Yurayt, 2013.

    2. Kormilov, S. I. History of Russian literature of the XX century (20–90s): main names / S. I. Kormilov. - M. : Publishing House of Moscow State University, 2010. - 480 p.

    3. Russian literature of the XX century: textbook. allowance: in 2 volumes / under. ed. L. P. Krementsova. – M. : Academy, 2012.

    Additional

    1. Anninsky, L. A . "How the steel was tempered" by Nikolai Ostrovsky / L. A. Anninsky. - M. : Education, 1971. - 276 p.

    2. Russian literature of the 20th century: regularities historical development. New artistic strategies / otv. ed. N. L. Leiderman. - Yekaterinburg: Uro RAN, 2005. - 465 p.

    3. Russian writers of the twentieth century from Bunin to Shukshin: textbook. allowance / ed. N. N. Belyakova, M. M. Glushkova. - M. : Flinta: Nauka, 2008. - 440 p.

    4. Sokolov, B. V. Bulgakov Encyclopedia / B. V. Sokolov. - M. : Veko, 1998. - 348 p.

    5. Sheshukov, S. I . Alexander Fadeev: essay on life and work / S. I. Sheshukov. - M. : Education, 1990. - 298 p.

    1. Starting a conversation about the theme of revolution and civil war in Russian literature, it should be noted that it is these events that are traditionally considered to be milestones that gave movement to all subsequent literature of the Soviet period.

    Turning to the study of the literary process of those years as a whole and the artistic heritage of its individual representatives, it must be borne in mind that the old Soviet dogmas had long since collapsed and it became obvious that fiction cannot be measured primarily by ideological yardsticks. However, it is also true that they cannot be completely ignored either. Due to the grandiose political events of that period, the once unified Russian classical literature was divided into three branches: Soviet literature, which is in the service of the new government, the literature of the Russian diaspora, whose representatives, not accepting it, were forced to emigrate, and literature, which turned out to be persecuted inside the country (later it will be called "hidden", "forbidden").

    The stratification of the literary process in this form with rare deviations and changes (for example, in the era of the “thaw”) lasted for quite a long time, until the early 2000s. And if the ban within the country on a number of works is lifted in the late 1980s - early 1990s, then the reunification of the entire literary process is usually attributed to the moment the Federal Law “On Citizenship of the Russian Federation” comes into force (July 1, 2002). ). Most of the writers, having found themselves abroad for one reason or another, got the opportunity to be citizens of Russia. A. Solzhenitsyn, V. Voinovich,
    A. Aksenov. Thus, from that moment on, there is no need to talk about the literature of the Russian Diaspora, since the ideological opposition has been removed and it has become possible to publish banned works in Russia.

    Russian post-revolutionary literature is a period, although short in length, but very important in its cultural and historical essence. And although from a purely literary point of view it was nothing more than a direct continuation of the literature of previous years, qualitatively new features appeared in it, which later became the reason for its split in the 1920s.

    The history of literature testifies that 1921 became a fateful year for new Russian literature in this respect; it marked the appearance of two journals that opened the Soviet period in it. The journals Krasnaya Nov and Pechat i Revolyutsiya were a kind of attempt to revive the so-called "thick" journals that had become traditional for Russian literature of the 19th century.

    The literary process of that time has its own characteristics. On the basis of the Silver Age, which had not yet completely forgotten, a grandiose social upsurge gave rise to exceptional enthusiasm and creative energy among not only supporters of the revolution, but also representatives of the old Russian intelligentsia. In this regard, the literature of the 1920s as a whole, and to a large extent of the decade that followed, turned out to be extremely rich.

    However, one cannot fail to say that in 1921 A. Blok died and N. Gumilyov was shot. In 1922, the last complete collection of poems by A. Akhmatova was published, the flower of the Russian intelligentsia was expelled from the country, I. Bunin, M. Tsvetaeva, V. Khodasevich G. Ivanov and others left Russia. A little later, I. Shmelev, B. Zaitsev, M. Osorgin, M. Gorky.

    One of the signs of that time was the massive closure of magazines. Under the ban were “Notes of Dreamers”, “Culture and Life”, “Chronicle of the House of Writers”, “Literary Notes”, “Beginnings”, “Pass”, “Mornings”, “Annals”, “Rosehip”, “Literary Thought”, "Russian Contemporary" and others. And this tragic trend continued in one form or another until the end of the 1950s.

    Divided in the early 1920s. in parts, Russian literature in many respects still remained united, although there were both Russian diaspora and their own Soviet literature. Therefore, Russian culture until the end of the 1980s was considered literary-centric. At all times, it has largely replaced the Soviet person and philosophy, and history, and psychology, and other humanitarian spheres. It was not surprising that in order to promote their ideological postulates, the government resorted to the help of writers and poets loyal to it. Thus, through literature, the strongest ideological indoctrination of the Soviet person was carried out. People represented the revolution and events related to it according to the poems of V. Mayakovsky and A. Tvardovsky, collectivization - according to the novel “Virgin Soil Upturned” by M. Sholokhov, the novels by A. Fadeev “The Young Guard” and B. Polevoy “The Tale of a Real Man” reflected the events Patriotic War, etc.

    The theme of the revolution and the Civil War for a long time became one of the main ones in the work of many bright Russian writers. Each of them understood that these events irrevocably changed not only the life of the entire Russian state, but also the fate of every person, every family. In their works, no matter what political platforms they stood on, they called these events fratricidal. The civil war has become a kind of example of inhumane behavior of man and society. Awareness of it as a great national tragedy has become decisive in many works of Russian writers, brought up in the tradition of following humanistic values ​​in Russian classical literature.

    2. The civil war destroyed not only the age-old foundations of family and cultural relations. Each writer also had to make his own moral choice, which dictated artistic tasks. The main problem was the ability to reflect the current events without prejudice or, focusing on one or another ideological platform, to reproduce the situation from a certain point of view.

    The works about the Civil War differ in their artistic merit and the choice of situations in which the idea is realized. Among the many, the works of A. A. Blok, S. A. Yesenin and
    V. V. Mayakovsky, for whom the theme of the revolution after 1917 became one of the main ones. These poets had different attitudes to the changes that had taken place in the country, covered them in different ways, and artistically embodied them in their works. V. Mayakovsky had the most straightforward positive attitude towards the revolution. He fully accepted all the events that took place in his country, sided with the Bolsheviks. Moreover, V. V. Mayakovsky subordinated all of himself, all his work to the service of the cause of the socialist revolution.

    The attitude of A. A. Blok and S. A. Yesenin to the revolution of 1917 was not so unambiguous. It is known that Blok enthusiastically accepted it as an update, a change, a step towards something new, better. But at the same time, he was well aware that this complex process cannot proceed completely smoothly, without losses, blood and suffering.

    Unlike V. V. Mayakovsky and A. A. Blok, S. Yesenin was the most difficult to accept the events that had taken place. He saw in the revolution, first of all, the loss of his homeland, the former Russia, which was replaced by a completely different country, where the poet no longer has a place.

    In the field of drama, in our opinion, we should talk about the creation of the Soviet myth, utopia, idealization of reality. Art captures not only a deformed society, a world of destroyed humanistic values, generated by ideology, subordinated to it and called upon to serve the new regime. It also seeks to know the individual, the world of the individual, which must also be subject to ideology. The utility of art is caused by necessity (the so-called social order). The old and the new, the true and the false, the official Soviet and those opposed to ideological totalitarianism collide. The conflict of beliefs, genuine creativity and unified thinking of the new art lies at the heart of this complex fusion of life and art. And, although in the dramaturgy of the 1920s. there is little hard truth, the analysis of literary texts makes it possible to reconstruct the type of thinking of a person of that time, the ideology of culture, the relationship of the state and Soviet art to the main categories of being (time, space, man, nature, life, etc.). Plays of the first years of the revolution "Roar, China!" S. Tretyakova, “Love Yarovaya” by K. Trenev, “Storm” by V. Bill-Belotserkovsky, “Rift” by B. Lavrenev, “Crimson Island” by M. Bulgakov, comedies by V. Mayakovsky have a common goal - to show what is happening with point of view of an eyewitness and a participant in the events. The same applies to novel art, such works as the texts of A. Serafimovich "The Iron Stream", A. Vesely "Russia, Washed with Blood", "The Rupture" by B. Lavrenev, etc.

    A revolutionary understanding of the situation was also expressed in A. Fadeev's novel "The Rout", which primarily describes the tragedy of events and the fate of people. Years later, N. Ostrovsky in the novel "How the Steel Was Tempered" tried to give a philosophical assessment of the events of the beginning of the century.

    A. A. Fadeev, who wrote the novel "The Rout", which was highly appreciated by both critics and readers, defined the idea of ​​"remaking human material in the crucible of the revolution." This explains the artistic features of the work. The writer's attention is directed to how his characters behave in the proposed historical conditions, whether they accept the demands of the time, the revolution. For members of the partisan detachment there is no choice. They fight for the future, which is not very clear to them, they only know for sure that it will be better than the past and the present.

    In this regard, the image of Frost, one of the heroes of the novel, is interesting. Actually, his presence in the center of the work is explained by the fact that he is a model of a new person undergoing a remake. Speaking about the selection of "human material", the writer had in mind not only those who turned out to be necessary for the revolution. People "unsuitable" for the construction of a new society are ruthlessly discarded. Such a hero in the novel is Sword. It is no coincidence that this person, by social origin, belongs to the intelligentsia and consciously joins the partisan detachment, guided by the idea of ​​the revolution as a great romantic event.

    The spontaneity, sung by many in those years, does not at all attract Fadeev. Members of the detachment often allow themselves hooligan acts (theft of melons from the chestnut tree, for example), which are evidence of their low consciousness, proof of the need to remake a person for a new life. The story of the theft of melons is described at the very beginning of the novel, when we still have the former Frost in front of us.

    Even the life of an individual - partisan Frolov, mortally wounded and therefore interfering with the advance of the detachment - can be sacrificed to the interests of the team.

    Almost all the characters of "The Rout" are people with whom the author fought, lived in poverty, and made the most difficult taiga crossings in battles. Of course, he did not copy them entirely from life. Much in them conjectured and generalized.

    The best die in battles: Metelitsa, Baklanov. Remains in the ranks is not the most worthy - Chizh.

    The creative success of A. Fadeev was considered the image of Levinson. Fadeev dreamed of creating the image of such a hero ever since he picked up a pen. This dream united in him both a politician and an artist, and just an interested person. After all, he saw in himself a growing, more and more conscious leader. To show the Bolshevik leader in such a way that the reader would believe in him, follow him, be convinced of his special right to power, was for Fadeev both a vital interest and an exciting task - political and artistic in equal measure. It is not for nothing that Spill begins with Neretin, Against the Current, with Commissar Chelnokov. These were, however, only sketches for an image that sooner or later had to take shape. Levinson is the first great creative success of the writer. In order to attract the reader to the figure of this hero, Fadeev did not endow him with either stone cheekbones or iron jaws, like A. Serafimovich of his Kozhukha in Iron Stream, or fanatical faith in the revolution, like B. Lavrenev Evsyukova in Forty-First, nor a martyr's crown, like Yu. Libedinsky a whole group of characters in "The Week" or Vs. Ivanov Peklevanova in Armored Train. He relied on frankness and openness to the reader.

    Levinson is quite an ordinary person, with weaknesses and shortcomings. Another thing is that he knows how to conceal and suppress them. And he has doubts, and confusion, and painful mental discord. But he did not share his thoughts and feelings with anyone, he presented ready-made “yes” or “no”. It is impossible without this. The partisans who entrusted their lives to him should not know about any discord and doubts of the commander. Levinson's art of leading people is captivating. There is no deceit in it, no demagogy.

    With the advent of The Defeat, it became clear that all the other Bolshevik heroes, who managed to quite densely "populate" literature, are noticeably inferior to Levinson, written both more lively and deeper than any of them.

    The main issue around which the life of all the heroes of the work revolves is their attitude to revolutionary events. This is what the novel by N. A. Ostrovsky “How the Steel Was Tempered”, which became a cult for the Soviet era, is dedicated to.

    “How the Steel Was Tempered” is quite often called the “tracing paper of the era”, and Korchagin’s predecessor can be called his namesake, Pavel Vlasov. Both of them, as a historical type, arise at the moment when the eternal search for an idea is combined with the movement of the masses.

    Seriousness is inherent in Paul, a sense of meaningfulness of each step. It combines characteristic and its philosophical meaning. The hero resolves all the issues of the generation with an extremely complete approach. If for senior communists there is a question of ends and means (in the scene of the hijacking of a steam locomotive by Artyom and the elder Bruzzak), then Seryozha Bruzzak, without thinking, goes to kill in order to bring closer the day when there will be no murders on earth at all. The author knowingly puts Korchagin in a love situation. The secret of Korchagin's attitude to love: he cannot love to the detriment of an idea, to sacrifice it. Pavel gives himself up to love for Tae Kyutsam, finding in her a friend and support, only when nothing threatens the idea.

    Nevertheless, the generation of Pavel Korchagin cannot be called ascetic. They feel the fullness of life, their exploits cannot be called sacrificial: they feel their place in life, and hence their self-confidence and conviction that they are doing a great job. There are many episodes in the book in which any of his brothers in the generation could behave like Paul. But there are times when you need it. These are situations when a strong, unified will must defeat vulgarity.

    However, the heroism of this generation is connected with tragedy. People believed in the idea recklessly, they were ready to die for it.

    3. The Revolution and the Civil War were portrayed in different ways: as an element, a blizzard, a whirlwind (Pilnyak’s “Hungry Year”), the end of culture and history (“Cursed Days” by Bunin, Shmelev’s “Sun of the Dead”), as the beginning of a new world (“The Defeat Fadeev, Serafimovich's Iron Stream). The writers who accepted the revolution filled their works with heroic-romantic pathos. Those who saw in it the unbridled elements portrayed it as an apocalypse, reality appeared in a tragic tone.

    The main theme of the writers of the 1920s. revolution and civil war. It was the main nerve of the works of both Russian writers abroad and those who worked in Soviet Russia.

    Ideologically, there were two lines in the depiction of the civil war. Some writers perceived the October Revolution as an illegal coup, and the civil war as bloody, fratricidal. The hatred for the Soviet regime and everything it creates was manifested especially clearly in the Cursed Days by I. Bunin, the novels The Ice Campaign by R. Gul, and The Sun of the Dead by I. Shmelev.

    Born of personal grief (the shooting of the son of Sergei by the Bolsheviks), the book "The Sun of the Dead" is a terrible mosaic of the revolution. Shmelev shows the revolutionary leaders as a blind force. These red-star "renewers of life" can only kill. From the standpoint of Christian morality, they have no justification. The victims are spiritually superior to them. Their suffering, the pain of their souls, is shown by Shmelev as the suffering of the entire Russian people, not poisoned by ideology. In the novel, which consists of separate stories, the leitmotif is the image of the dead sun - tragic.

    Bunin cursed the October Revolution with fierce hatred. His position as an opponent of the Bolsheviks took shape during the Civil War. However, there was no political struggle in the writer's activities, he did not belong to any groups, in addition, he denied Bolshevism not so much from the ideological side (the writer was independent of ideologies), but from a moral, aesthetic, emotional point of view. Despite this, Bunin desperately sought to comprehend the events of 1917–1919. in the context of world history. The writer understood that the country needed changes, on the eve of the revolution, he talked about the renewal of life and believed that the revolution was salvation for us and that the new system would lead to the flourishing of the state, he admitted that in Rasputin's time he longed for revolution. However, the course of history led Bunin to the conclusion that this philosophy is not good for hell.

    Before the revolution, he could not be called a political writer. However, in the conditions of 1917 it became obvious that he was a deeply civic, progressive-minded person. Revolution for Bunin is a consequence of the irreversibility of the historical process, the manifestation of cruel instincts. The writer understood that without bloodshed, the power in the country would not change. However, he could not in any way imagine that the revolution would be carried out exactly as it did. “I was not one of those who were taken by surprise by it, for whom its size and atrocities were a surprise, but nevertheless reality surpassed all my expectations: what the Russian revolution soon turned into, no one who has not seen it will understand. This spectacle was sheer horror for anyone who had not lost the image and likeness of God, and hundreds of thousands of people fled from Russia after the seizure of power by Lenin, who had the slightest opportunity to escape. According to Bunin, the death of Russia as a great state and empire began with the revolution. It was then that base and wild instincts began to appear in society. I. A. Bunin called the October Revolution "cursed days."

    "Cursed Days" consists of two parts: Moscow, 1918, and Odessa, 1919. Bunin writes down the facts he saw on the streets of cities. In the first part, there are more street scenes, the writer walks around Moscow, passing on fragments of dialogues, newspaper reports and even rumors. The voice of the author himself appears in the second part, Odessa, where Bunin reflects on the fate of Russia, experiences something personal, thinks about his own dreams and reminisces. Bunin wrote a diary for himself, and at first the writer had no thoughts about publishing it, but circumstances forced him to make the opposite decision.

    The unusual nature of B. Pilnyak's novel The Naked Year (1920) immediately after the appearance of this text became the subject of lively discussion in modern criticism. If we now temporarily take out the problems of the work, then we can say that the main points that aroused the greatest interest of critics were the following: the unusual architectonics of The Naked Year, the absence of a plot in the usual sense of the word and, on this basis, the uncertainty of the genre of the work.

    The novel by B. A. Pilnyak "The Naked Year" has become a remarkable phenomenon of "ornamental" prose and a kind of artistic document about the revolutionary state of the world, which is imprinted both in individual and in the mass consciousness. The work is built on the correlation of what is happening before the eyes of contemporaries with Russian history.

    In the first part of the work (“Ordynin-city”), preceding the main presentation, the main ways of updating the documentary beginning in the narrative are outlined. The documentary discourse depicts the existence of the old merchant town of Ordynin in the past and in the revolutionary present.

    With documentary, chronicle scrupulousness, signs of the centuries-old history of provincial folk life are recreated here, which is reflected in the local topography, and sometimes in curious semi-literate city signs. However, through the peacefully inert course of life, in contrast to the encouraging chronicle evidence of how rich the Horde lands are in fuel stone and magnetic ore, to which iron sticks, irrational rhythms of history break through: in 1914 the war broke out, and after it in 1917 - revolution. Epochal catastrophic upheavals, which in an incredible way accelerate and drag the course of human life into oblivion, are paired in Pilnyak's novel with documented phenomena in the individual and public frame of mind.

    In the main part of the author's narrative, elements of a historical chronicle are found, designed to document the outlines of being, which has entered a state of unstoppable, catastrophic variability. The author likens his own narrative to a kind of “transcript” of modernity, in which the sound of a new language deformed by the onset of the era and the spirit of the revolution are felt.

    The text generated by the author is conceived by him as a document about himself. In the documentary discourse of Pilnyak's novel, multidirectional fermentations of the people's consciousness are artistically recreated, which sometimes lead to the age-old jungle of anarchist-sectarian worldview.

    Babel became known to a wide circle of readers in 1924, when several short stories by the young author were published. Shortly thereafter, Cavalry was published. It was translated into 20 languages, and Babel became known far beyond the borders of the country. For Soviet and foreign readers, he was one of the most remarkable writers of his time. Babel was like no other. He always wrote about his own and in his own way; He was distinguished from other authors not only by a peculiar writing style, but also by a special perception of the world. All his works were born of life, he was a realist in the most precise sense of the word. He noticed what others passed by, and spoke in such a way that his voice surprised. Babel spoke unusually about the unusual. The long life of a person, in which the exceptional, like the essence of water, is diluted with everyday life, and the tragedy is softened by habit, Babel showed briefly and pathetically. Of all, man is most exposed, perhaps that is why the themes of love passion and death are repeated with such persistence in his books.

    With a few exceptions, his books show two worlds that struck him - pre-revolutionary Odessa and the campaign of the First Cavalry Army, in which he was a participant.

    Most of the Cavalry is written in the manner of a personal narrative - on behalf of a witness and participant in the events. Only in four cases is he named Lyutov. In the rest of the short stories, it's just "I" with biographical details that do not always match.

    In seven short stories, Babel demonstrates the classic tale style. Before us is the word of the hero, a picturesque paradoxical character, created not just by action, but also by pure language means. In fact, the late “Kiss” adjoining the book turns out to be a foreign word, the hero of which is usually considered Lyutov. In fact, the character-narrator has significant differences from the "bespectacled" and should be considered as an objective hero with an intelligent, rather than colloquial tale. In the short story "Prischepa", the narrator refers to the hero's story, but reproduces it from himself, depicting the consciousness, but not the speech of the central character.

    Finally, three short stories (“Head of the Store”, “Cemetery in Kozin”, “Widow”) do without a personal narrator and narrator at all. They are performed in an objective manner, in the third person. But here, too, the pure anecdote about the cunning Dyakov (the brightest and "problemless" short story in the book) differs sharply from a prose poem, a lyrical sigh in a Jewish cemetery (the shortest and fabulous short story).

    Babel mobilizes the hidden possibilities of the small genre, tests it for strength, diversity, and depth.

    In 34 short stories, 12 deaths are given in close-up, others, mass ones, are mentioned in passing. Most of the book's pages are colored in the brightest red. That is why the sun here looks like a severed head, and the glow of the sunset reminds of impending death, and the autumn trees sway at the crossroads like naked dead people. Behind the pathos of the revolution, the author saw its face: he realized that the revolution is an extreme situation that reveals the secret of man. But even in the harsh everyday life of the revolution, a person who has a sense of compassion will not be able to reconcile himself to murder and bloodshed. Man, according to Babel, is alone in this world.

    4. From a general humanist position, the civil war is depicted in the novels of M. A. Bulgakov “The White Guard”, A. N. Tolstoy “Sisters” (one of the parts of “The Path of Torment”).

    In the novel The White Guard, the surrounding chaos, inconstancy, and ruin are contrasted with the stubborn desire to preserve their Home with “cream curtains”, a tiled stove, and the warmth of a family hearth. External signs of the past have no material value, they are symbols of the former stable and indestructible life.

    The Turbin family - military and intellectuals - is ready to defend their House to the end; in a broad sense - the city, Russia, Motherland. These are people of honor and duty, real patriots. Bulgakov shows the events of 1918, when Kiev passed from hand to hand, as apocalyptic, tragic events. The biblical prophecy “and there was blood” comes to mind when pictures of the wild atrocities of the Petliurists arise, scenes of the massacre of the “pan kurenny” with his defenseless victim. In this world standing on the edge of the abyss, the only thing that can keep from falling is love for the Home, for Russia.

    Bulgakov portrayed his White Guard heroes from a humanistic position. He sympathizes and sympathizes with honest and pure people plunged into the chaos of the Civil War. With pain, he shows that the most worthy, the color of the nation, are dying. And this, in the context of the entire novel, is regarded as the death of all of Russia, the past, history. The novel tells about a family of Russian intellectuals and their friends who are experiencing the social cataclysm of the civil war. The novel is largely autobiographical, almost all characters have prototypes - relatives, friends and acquaintances of the Bulgakov family. The scenery of the novel was the streets of Kyiv and the house where the writer's family lived in 1918. Although the manuscripts of the novel have not been preserved, the Bulgakov scholars traced the fate of many prototype characters and proved the almost documentary accuracy and reality of the events and characters described by the author.

    The work was conceived by the author as a large-scale trilogy covering the period of the Civil War. Part of the novel was first published in the Rossiya magazine in 1925. The novel in its entirety was first published in France in 1927–1929. Criticism of the novel was perceived ambiguously: the Soviet side condemned the writer's glorification of class enemies, the emigrant side condemned Bulgakov's loyalty to the Soviet regime.

    The work served as a source for the play The Days of the Turbins and several subsequent film adaptations. This performance became a favorite production of V. G. Stalin, who often revised it.

    The action of the novel takes place in 1918, when the Germans who occupied Ukraine leave the City and Petliura's troops capture it. The author describes the complex, multifaceted world of a family of Russian intellectuals and their friends. This world is breaking down under the onslaught of a social cataclysm and will never happen again.

    Alexey Turbin, Elena Turbina-Talberg and Nikolka are involved in the cycle of military and political events. The city, in which Kyiv is easily guessed, is occupied by the German army. As a result of the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, it does not fall under the control of the Bolsheviks and becomes a refuge for many Russian intellectuals and military men who flee from Bolshevik Russia. Officer combat organizations are being created in the city under the auspices of Hetman Skoropadsky, an ally of the Germans, recent enemies of Russia. Petliura's army advances on the City. By the time of the events of the novel, the Compiègne truce has been concluded and the Germans are preparing to leave the City. In fact, only volunteers defend him from Petliura. Realizing the complexity of their situation, the Turbins console themselves with rumors about the approach of French troops, who allegedly landed in Odessa (in accordance with the terms of the armistice, they had the right to occupy the occupied territories of Russia up to the Vistula in the west). Aleksey and Nikolka Turbins, like other residents of the City, volunteer to join the defenders, and Elena guards the house, which becomes a refuge for former officers of the Russian army. Since it is impossible to defend the city on its own, the hetman's command and administration leave it to its fate and leave with the Germans (the hetman himself disguises himself as a wounded German officer). Volunteers - Russian officers and cadets - unsuccessfully defend the City without command against superior enemy forces (the author created a brilliant heroic image of Colonel Nai-Turs). Some commanders, realizing the futility of resistance, send their fighters home, others actively organize resistance and perish along with their subordinates. Petlyura occupies the City, arranges a magnificent parade, but after a few months he is forced to surrender it to the Bolsheviks.

    The story of M. Sholokhov "The Mole", one of the first included in his book "Don Stories", is also dedicated to the events of the period of the civil war. There are two very different main characters in the work, each fighting for their own truth. The first hero is the red commander Nikolka Koshevoy, and the second is the battered ataman of the Cossack gang. The author tells the story of each of them in turn, introduces the reader to their past and present.

    The young commander of the red horsemen is only eighteen years old. He had an ordinary farm childhood, but he early learned the bitterness of loss, having lost his mother and father. And Nikolka himself has been fighting for a new government for more than a year, dreaming of its speedy end.

    Another hero is an old Cossack chieftain. M. Sholokhov shows in detail his difficult fate. For more than seven years he was not in his native places, did not know about the fate of his loved ones.

    The culmination of the story is the very mortal battle in which father and son meet without recognizing each other. The most exciting episode of the story is the brutal confrontation between the two closest people. The young commander attacks the ataman of the gang and falls down, amazed by the swing of his saber.

    As you can see, the fatal confrontation between the Reds and the Whites turns into a terrible tragedy: the father kills his own son. The absurd nonsense of war destroys the most sacred family ties. Recognizing his own son in the Red Army soldier he killed, the ataman turns to the already dead body: “Son! .. Nikolushka! .. My little blood…”. These are the main words of Sholokhov's story. Having no reason to live anymore, the ataman shoots himself. The worst thing is the real reason their death is another war - the First World War. If in 1914 the father had not gone to the German front, then perhaps he and his son would not have found themselves on opposite sides of the barricades and this tragedy would not have happened. Most of the writer's works are imbued with such anti-war pathos.

    A. N. Tolstoy, the author of the trilogy "Walking through the torments", began to write this work in the 1920s, while in exile. With thoughts about the Motherland, he began his novel "Sisters", the first part of a trilogy. This is the artist's confession to himself, to the court of his people. The plot is based on the fate of the Bulavin sisters, Ekaterina Dmitrievna and Dasha, the story of their love, joys and sorrows. Their poetic images reflect the brightest sides of the human soul, opening towards happiness. The philosophy of personal happiness is given in the novel in Katya's love for officer Roshchin and Dasha for engineer Telegin. Their small egoistic world includes events of a large, historical scale - the First World War and the beginning of the revolution, which overturned, along with the usual way of bourgeois existence, their own ideas about the meaning of life. Tolstoy clearly shows the spiritual collapse of the Russian intelligentsia, cut off from the interests of the people, in the images of the lawyer Smokovnikov and the poet Bessonov, the historical doom of all old Russia, its classes hostile to the people, with their decline in culture and art. The revolutionary storm scattered over the earth, like dry leaves, this "intellectual aristocracy of the country", adherents of religious and philosophical doctrines and habitues of country restaurants. Roshchin thinks at first that his great Russia ceased to exist from the moment the people threw down their arms. He is sure that years will pass, wars will subside, revolutions will make no noise, and only the meek, tender heart of his Katya will remain incorruptible, and peace will again come without worries and struggle.

    In 1927, the writer began the second novel of the trilogy "Walking through the torments" - "The Eighteenth Year". The new novel brought to the fore the idea of ​​the happiness of the people and the motherland as a symbol of the highest historical justice. The events of the revolution become the center of the novel. In the way the fate of the main characters of this work organically merges with the fate of the motherland and the people, how the scope of the image of the revolutionary events themselves is widely expanded, the new scope of A. Tolstoy's epic talent is reflected.

    Through the stormy year of 1918, the writer's heroes pass, transforming themselves in the fertile thunderstorm of the revolution. Engineer Ivan Ilyich Telegin finds his place in the ranks of the people, deeply believing in the words of the St. Petersburg worker Vasily Rublev, that Russia alone will be saved by the Soviet government and that now there is nothing in the world more important than our revolution.

    With all her tender and meek heart, Ekaterina Dmitrievna Bulavina feels the greatness of what is happening. And only Roshchin wanders the animal paths of the enemy of the revolution, linking his fate with the white army. Only after Roshchin understands that the great future of Russia is in the people, and not in the decayed Kornilov-Denikin army, will he find the courage to break with the counter-revolution and begin new life. Repentance will come, and with it cleansing. On a broad epic scale and detailed pictures shows Tolstoy's life in the eighteenth year.

    In the 1930s the writer worked on the novel "Gloomy Morning", which ended the trilogy "Walking through the torments" - this is an artistic chronicle of the revolutionary renewal of Russia. The trilogy has been in the making for over twenty years. Tolstoy considered it the main work in all his work. The writer said that the theme of the trilogy is the lost and returned homeland. It is noteworthy that Tolstoy ends his novel with excited patriotic words.

    Thus, completing the conversation about the theme of revolution and civil war in Russian literature, we can state that such writers as A. Fadeev, B. Pasternak, M. Bulgakov, B. Lavrenev, M. Sholokhov, although they held different political convictions, sought to objectively highlight the great tragedy that befell Russia in the early 1920s, to truthfully show that in this fratricidal massacre there are no and cannot be right and wrong, but only people who are losing what is dear to them.

    However, contrary to existing opinions that the formation and development of Russian literature during the years of the revolution and civil war took place in a situation of chaos, we can safely state that the literary process - and especially in the field of prose - had obvious ideological and aesthetic dominants, allowing us to talk about October 1917 year as the beginning of the development of a new literary and artistic chronology.

    Questions and tasks for self-control

    1. List the characteristic features of the image of the revolution and the Civil War in Russian literature of the 1920s–1930s. Literary Criticism in the Thaw.

    2. Suggest a basic diagram-summary of the functioning of the three branches of Russian literature.

    3. What are the interpretive foundations for studying A. N. Tolstoy's trilogy "Walking through the torments"?

    The revolution is too large an event not to be reflected in literature, and a rare writer who survived it did not touch it in any way in his work.

    There are different approaches to this topic. For example, Babel's "Konarmiya" or Sholokhov's "Don Stories" are a series of episodes that are not very interconnected, lining up in huge mosaic canvases, and Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov's "White Guard" is a classic novel. Different writers present events from different points of view: Serafimovich in Iron Stream - from the point of view of the people, Bulgakov and most emigre writers - from the point of view of the nobility. In general, Sholokhov does not investigate the struggle between the oppressors and the oppressed, but the contradictions that arise within the people themselves in the course of a fratricidal war. There is another approach to the topic - historical. Mark Aldanov in the novel "The Ninth Thermidor" describes not our revolution, but the French one. Revolution for this author is not just a change of power or even a social formation, but an explosion of animal instincts, the return of humanity to a brutal state. He writes: "The revolution is terrible not against the monarchy, but against the handkerchief," that is, against culture.

    And yet, among the many opinions, two main approaches to this topic can be distinguished. It will be most convenient to analyze this process on the example of two novels - "The Defeat" by Fadeev and "The White Guard" by Bulgakov.

    Bulgakov's characters are the Russian intelligentsia, the nobility, officers, and the events are presented from their point of view. The heroes of Fadeev, on the other hand, are people from the people (the only one who, at the very least, can be called an "intellectual" - Mechik, is presented as a representative of the "petty bourgeoisie"). These two writers are in different camps and, accordingly, Bulgakov's representatives of the common people, "peasants - God-bearers Dostoevsky" are presented negatively. These people do not care where the whites are, where the reds are, they only care about themselves, and the intelligentsia appears before us as the custodian of the people's memory, great culture and strong moral principles. With Fadeev, the opposite is true. A cultured and educated Mechik turns out to be a traitor, he does not have the inner strength to follow and serve the people. Frost, as the personification of the common people, although somewhat impulsive, but intuitively feels the truth.

    Fadeev also has another idea: "The end justifies the means." The image of Levinson, who does not stop at any cruelty in order to save the squad, is indicative. He can be compared with Khludov from Bulgakov's "Run", but at the end of the drama Khludov realizes his mistake, realizes the perniciousness of this idea. Levinson, on the contrary, is convinced that he is right, and Fadeev justifies him.

    Naturally, from all of the above it is clear that Fadeev and Bulgakov have diametrically opposed views on the revolution itself. If Fadeev presented this event as necessary and natural, which liberated the people (and in general, despite the tragic fate of the heroes, the novel "The Rout" is an optimistic thing), then for Bulgakov the revolution is a prototype of the apocalypse, the death of old Russia, the destruction of culture and everything which is dear to man.

    We see that such a grandiose event could not leave anyone indifferent. There may be different opinions on this matter, but the way the revolution was reflected in different works of different writers can help us, the descendants, understand everything, understand and comprehend our history...