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In the novel, the main attention is focused on three moments in the life of Alyosha Alexandrov, a pupil of the cadet school: nascent youthful love, passion for art, and everyday life of a closed military educational institution. The novel was published as work progressed on it chapter by chapter for five years from 1927 to 1932. Perhaps that is why the chapters, each of which reproduces an episode from the Junker's life, are not firmly connected with each other, their sequence is not always determined by the development of the plot - "the history of the growth and organization of character."

“Kuprin often “jumped” in the process of writing from chapter to chapter, as if he still did not clearly imagine where to put each of them - in the middle or at the beginning of the novel,” 20 noted F.I. Kuleshov. Many researchers note that the chapters are not subordinate to each other, they contain unnecessary repetitions, such as, for example, about the company commander of the cadet Alexandrov: “This is the commander of our fourth company, Captain Fofanov, and in our opinion Drozd” In addition, researchers, and in particular F.I. Kuleshov, note that "the chronology is arbitrarily shifted in the novel" 21 . Alyosha's heartfelt hobbies, his writing debut are attributed to the first months of the hero's stay in a military school, and these chapters are overly stretched, overloaded with small events, and more important ones are reduced. The pages that tell about the second year of stay look like a chronicle. The third part of the novel is generally worked out less than the previous two. One gets the impression that it was written with difficulty, without enthusiasm, as if in order to finish the two-year life of the cadet Alexandrov.

But let's take a closer look at what is happening in the Junkers.

Poetry of youthful love

The novel begins with a description of the arrival of cadets, who have completed their full course, to the corps for the last time before they become full-fledged junkers. Alexandrov walks along the roads traveled and avoided many times and recalls the years that have passed in the corps, the case when Captain Yablukinsky sent him, a generally recognized varmint, to a punishment cell, but this time undeservedly. Alexandrov's pride rebelled: “Why should I be punished if I am not guilty of anything? What am I to Yablukinsky? Slave? Subject?., let me be told that I am a cadet, that is, like a soldier, and must unquestioningly obey the orders of superiors without any reasoning? Not! I am not yet a soldier, I have not taken an oath... So: I have absolutely nothing to do with the corps and can leave it at any moment (VIII, 205). And he cheated out of the punishment cell.

From the first pages it seems to us that we have fallen into the same situation that was depicted by Kuprin in The Cadets. But, despite the fact that we are back at the cadet school, we do not recognize him: the colors are not so gloomy, the sharp corners are smoothed out. In the Cadets there was no case when a pupil would be addressed with a kind word, advice, trying to help him. But here the situation is different. For example, the civilian teacher Otte tries to calmly and politely explain the situation to the excited young man, reasoning with Lieutenant Mikhin. But the boy was again sent to the punishment cell, although the culprit of the whistle was confessed, and the company buzzed with displeasure. And here an episode is included in the narrative, which tells about two cases of a rebellion by the Cadets: the first about the kulebyak with rice was resolved peacefully, and in the neighboring building, discontent turned into an uprising and a pogrom, which were stopped with the help of soldiers. One of the instigators was given to the soldiers, many pupils were expelled from the corps. The author concludes: "And it's true: you can't twist with the people and with the boys..." (VIII, 209). Here the intonation of the former Kuprin slips through, and then he “puts on rose-colored glasses” again.

The mother arrives, begins to reproach Alyosha, recalls the escape from the Razumovsky School (I wonder what caused it?). Then a conversation with the priest of the corps church, Father Mikhail, who simply and gently speaks to the teenager about love for his mother, admits the injustice of Yablukinsky, does not force Alyosha to ask for forgiveness. And this caress and kindness will be remembered by Alexandrov for the rest of his life, and, having already become a famous artist, he will come to the old father Mikhail for a blessing.

The situation was sorted out, the child was understood, the cadet was pleased with the outcome, one can see a clear attention to the personality of the teenager, despite all the “buts”. This is no longer the cadet school in which Bulanin studied, although the same characters are encountered here, for example, Uncle Nonsense.

Alexandrov said goodbye to the school. And here he is, five minutes to the Junker. Here, for the first time, a female image appears on the pages of the novel, and the theme of love becomes one of the leading ones. The pages about the hero's intimate experiences are by far the best in the novel. His first summer passion is Julia, "an incomprehensible, incomparable, unique, delightful, hairy goddess" (VIII, 217). Such epithets are given to her by a cadet in love. And he? He, of course, is insignificant in comparison with her, ugly and still quite a boy. Despite the deification of Yulia, Alexandrov does not forget to pay attention to her younger sisters Olga and Lyuba. Suffering, poems dedicated to the lady of the heart, jealousy and a quarrel with the enemy, and then again the resurrection of hope, the first kisses, the first ball in the cadet school, which destroys the hero's dreams.

Having sent three tickets to the Sinelnikovs, Alexandrov awaits the arrival of Yulia and her sisters, but only the younger ones arrive. Olenka informs him that Yulia is marrying a well-to-do man who has been courting her for a long time. But Alyosha calmly perceives this news and immediately confesses his love to Olga.

The hero constantly feels the need to love someone: his awakened heart can no longer live without love, he needs chivalrous admiration for a woman. “He falls in love quickly, falls in love with the same naive simplicity and joy with which herbs grow and buds open,” 22 writes F.I. Kuleshov.

His "beloved" is hard to list. Alexandrov could be in love with two or three girls at the same time and was tormented by the question, which one is more? Each time he thought it was a strong, real feeling, for life. But time passed, and there was a new love and the words "to the grave."

It cannot be said that Alexandrov looked like a romantic hero-admirer, a pure, chaste young man. Let us recall at least an adventure in rye with a peasant woman Dunyasha or a mention of a connection with the wife of the forester Egor - Marya, "a beautiful, healthy woman." But on the other hand, he was not licentious and morally corrupt, he did not play don Juan. Falling in love, Alexandrov did not think that this was another affair or adventure. He loved passionately and sincerely.

After the first love, the second will follow. (The chapter is called “Second love”). Alyosha is agonizing over which of the Sinelnikov sisters to fall in love with now: Olenka or Lyubochka? “To Olenka,” he decides, and promises to dedicate a “suite” to her, which will soon be published in one magazine. But an unfortunate mistake occurred, and hopes for reciprocity were lost.

The most remarkable and vivid chapters of the novel are dedicated to Alexei's love for Zina Belysheva ("Catherine's Hall", "Arrow", "Waltz", "Love Letter"). They describe the environment through the prism of the romantic perception of the Junker Alexandrov. From the moment he arrived at the Catherine Institute, he was overwhelmed with impressions. Everything seems fabulously beautiful, from the stairs to the front hall. The descriptions are dominated by such epithets as "striking", "unusual", "magnificent", "graceful", "beautiful". And the voice of the girl that Alexey hears is also of “unusual sonority”, the figure is “airy”, the face is “non-repeating”, the smile is “affectionate”, the lips are “perfectly shaped”. He already reproaches himself for past hobbies, calling them fun and games, “but now he loves. Loves!., now a new life begins in the infinity of time and space, all filled with glory, brilliance, power, deeds, and all this, together with my ardent love, I lay at your feet, O beloved, O queen of my soul! (VIII, 328).

The emergence and development of love feelings, expressed by a gleam of eyes, a special look, a gesture and a thousand smallest elusive signs, a change of mood - all this skillfully portrays Kuprin, everything from the first dance to a declaration of love and plans for the future: “You will have to wait for me about three years" (VIII, 382).

This conversation took place in March. And then more than three months pass, and Alexandrov, after so many dreams, never once remembers Zinaida, his vow to marry. Not a single meeting, not a note! Why does the Junker forget the object of his passion? And does he forget? Most likely, the writer forgets about her, who strives to finish the story as quickly as possible and nullifies a wonderful love story without ending it with at least hints, without motivating such a strange behavior of the junker. The reader waits until the last pages for a continuation, but is disappointed not to see it. “The last pages of the novel give rise to a feeling of incompleteness of the plot and tongue twisters in the narrative: the story about the hero’s stay within the walls of the school has been exhausted, but there is not even a hint of a possible denouement of his intimate drama,” 23 writes the author of the monograph “Kuprin’s Creative Way” F.I. Kuleshov. And he is right: the reader, who is accustomed to Kuprin's brilliant writing style, to his refinement and thoughtfulness, is at a loss: what happened? The author of The Junkers is betrayed by his skill: despite the factual completeness of the novel, it seems to be unfinished. But at the same time, we still recognize the former Alexander Ivanovich: true to himself, he glorifies sublime earthly love in The Junkers as a wonderful song of mankind, the most magnificent and unique.

At the very end of August, the cadet adolescence of Alyosha Alexandrov ends. Now he will study at the Third Junker named after Emperor Alexander II infantry school. In the morning he pays a visit to the Sinelnikovs, but alone with Yulenka he manages to stay no more than a minute.

Always in the foreground, always in the main place she is; incomprehensible, inaccessible, incomparable, unique, delightful, dizzying - Julia.

The girl invites Alyosha to forget summer country nonsense: both of them have now become adults.

Alyosha appears in the building of the school with sadness and confusion in his soul. True, he is flattered that he is already a "pharaoh", as the first-year sophomores called "chief officers" called the first-year students. Alexander's Junkers are loved in Moscow and are proud of them. The school invariably participates in all solemn ceremonies. Alyosha will long remember the magnificent meeting of Alexander III in the autumn of 1888, when the royal family walked along the line at a distance of several steps and the "pharaoh" fully tasted the sweet, pungent delight of love for the monarch.

However, during their studies, extra day-to-day duties, the cancellation of vacation, and arrest are pouring on the heads of the young men. Junkers are loved, but the platoon officer, course officer and commander of the fourth company Captain Fofanov, nicknamed Drozd, are mercilessly "warmed" at the school. Daily exercises with a heavy infantry berdanka and drill could have caused disgust for the service, if not for the patience and stern participation of all the "warmers".

There is no pushing around the younger ones in the school, which is usual for St. Petersburg schools. The atmosphere of chivalrous military democracy, stern but caring camaraderie prevails here. Everything related to the service does not allow indulgences even among friends, but outside of this, a friendly address to “you” is prescribed.

After the oath, Drozd recalls that now they are soldiers and for misconduct they will be sent not to their mother, but as privates in an infantry regiment. And yet, boyishness, which has not been completely outlived, forces young junkers to give their names to everything around them. The first company is called "stallions", the second - "animals", the third - "dabs" and the fourth (Alyoshina) - "fleas".

Each commander, except for the second course officer Belov, also has a nickname. From the Balkan War, Belov brought a Bulgarian wife of indescribable beauty, before whom all the cadets bowed, which is why the personality of her husband is considered inviolable. But Dubyshkin is called Pup, the commander of the first company is Khukhrik, and the battalion commander is Berdi-Pasha. All junker officers are mercilessly hounded, which is considered a sign of youth.

However, the life of eighteen-twenty-year-old boys cannot completely absorb the interests of the service. Alexandrov is vividly experiencing the collapse of his first love, but is also keenly interested in the younger sisters Sinelnikovs. At the December ball, Olga Sinelnikova tells Alyosha about Yulenka's engagement. Shocked, Aleksandrov replies that he doesn't care. He has long loved Olga and will dedicate his first story to her, which will soon be published by Evening Leisures.

This writing debut of his is really taking place, but at the evening roll call Drozd assigns him three days in a punishment cell for publishing without the sanction of his superiors. Aleksandrov takes Tolstoy's "Cossacks" into the cell, and when Drozd asks if the young talent knows what he was punished for, he cheerfully replies: "For writing a stupid and vulgar essay."

Alas, the troubles don't end there. A fatal mistake is revealed in the dedication: instead of “O” there is “Yu” (such is the power of first love!). Soon the author receives a letter from Olga: "For some reason, I'm unlikely to ever see you, and therefore goodbye."

There is no limit to the shame and despair of the Junker, but time heals all wounds. Alexandrov gets to the ball at the Catherine Institute. This is not included in his Christmas plans, but Drozd suppresses all Alyosha's reasoning. For many years Alexandrov will remember the brilliant entrance of an old house, marble staircases, bright halls and pupils in formal dresses with a ball neckline.

At the ball, Alyosha meets Zinochka Belysheva, from whose very presence the very air brightens and shines with laughter. Between them there is a true and mutual love. In addition to undeniable beauty, Zinochka has something more valuable and rare.

Alexandrov confesses his love to Zinochka and asks him to wait for three years. In three months he is graduating from college, and before entering the Academy of the General Staff he will serve for another two years. Then he will pass the exam and will ask for her hand. The lieutenant receives forty-three rubles a month, and he will not allow himself to offer her the miserable fate of a provincial regimental lady. Zinochka promises to wait.

True love, like gold, never rusts or oxidizes.

Since then, Alexandrov has been trying to get the highest score. With nine points, you can choose a suitable regiment for service. He also lacks up to nine some three tenths because of the six in military fortification.

But now all the obstacles have been overcome, Alexandrov receives nine points and the right to choose the first place of service. When Berdi Pasha calls his last name, the cadet, without looking, points his finger at the list and stumbles upon the unknown Undomsky infantry regiment.

And now a brand new officer's uniform is put on, and the head of the school, General Anchutin, admonishes his pupils. Usually there are at least seventy-five officers in a regiment, and in such a large society, gossip is inevitable, corroding this society.

Having finished the parting words, the General says goodbye to the newly minted officers. They bow to him, and General Anchutin remains "forever in their minds with such firmness, as if he had been cut with a diamond on carnelian."

retold

the cadet corps remained with me for the rest of my life”15.

Maybe that's why he wrote this story. The whole system of education in the cadet corps was disgusting, Kuprin opposed it, fought with it, defending the rights of the child, dreaming of a strong family connection between educators and pupils.

1.4 Embitterment as a result of upbringing

What happened then in educational institutions, in particular, in the cadet corps, cannot be called education. Growing up in an atmosphere of cruelty, brought up on rods and a punishment cell, people who left the corps, and then from the cadet schools, used the same methods in relation to their subordinates (soldiers), preparing them to serve the Fatherland by flogging. “The future torturing soldiers, rapists and sadists, cynics and ignoramuses”16, with whom the story “Duel” will be so densely populated, came out of the military gymnasiums. Rarely did pupils retain something human in themselves, but if they were not broken by an educational institution, they were broken by the army. Clever, clean, romantically-minded young men (this is after all) were doomed to death.

We will talk about the results of the education of future officers, considering the story "Duel".

Chapter 2. "Junkers": the second stage of training

future officers

2.1 Idealization of everyday life as a hallmark of the novel

The second work, which we conditionally included in our trilogy, is the novel "Junker". It is closely interconnected with "The Cadets" and "Duel", as it depicts the second stage in the formation of the personality of the future officer. “This story is partly a continuation of my own story “At the Turning Point” (“The Cadets”)17, wrote Kuprin in 1916. But this work differs sharply in its pathos. This is explained primarily by the fact that the "Junkers" were written by Kuprin in exile. The aging writer's view of his youth becomes idealized. Apparently, after so many changes in the public life of Russia, in the life of Kuprin himself, a sentimental mood seizes him. Being far from the Motherland, from everything that was once close to the writer, the author of "Junkers" recalls the past, it seems to him beautiful, despite some shortcomings.

“Here I am completely at the mercy of the images and memories of the cadet life with its ceremonial and inner life, with the quiet joy of first love and meetings at dance evenings with my “sympathies”. I remember the cadet years, the traditions of our military school, the types of educators and teachers. And remember a lot of good things.

When you read the novel "Junker", it seems that it was written by a completely different person, not the author of "The Cadets" and "Duel". And this person argues with Kuprin, with the accusatory orientation of these two works. People and time are shown here from a different angle. It’s not that accusatory assessments were completely absent in the Junkers - they are, especially at the beginning of the novel, which describes the last days of Cadet Aleksandrov’s stay in the corps, although they are significantly softened, but by the end of the novel they practically disappear.

As soon as he touches upon the unattractive aspects of Junker life, the author immediately, often contradicting the facts and himself, hurries to put forward excusing circumstances. Kuprin attributed to his hero what he himself sometimes thought about the Russian army in exile. The writer in this work makes some adjustments to his previous bold judgments. And how could it be otherwise? In the years when The Duel was written, Kuprin and those people who were now also next to him, in exile (or, rather, most of them), were on opposite sides of the barricade. He is a democrat, he denounced the social foundations that the nobility and the ruling elite were so proud of. And now - he is with them, and “they don’t go to a strange monastery with their charter” - you need to change your views, somehow adapt to the life that you chose when you find yourself at a crossroads.

In addition, it is impossible to remain without a homeland on a foreign side, in that life, which he himself calls "fake." “While the new Russia seems to him hostile and alien, he “grabs” the old Russia like a straw... This is how the theme of the homeland, artificially “cleansed” from filth, arises and expands in Kuprin’s work during his emigrant years... This is Russia from the front door »19 - notes A. Volkov.

Perhaps these facts influenced the content of the novel. But it is impossible to say for sure. Now, after many years, it is difficult for us to understand what motivated the writer, who so abruptly changed his view on the methods of educating future officers, on the mores and customs of the military environment.

And in essence, with his novel Junkers, Kuprin baffled readers, made them doubt where the truth is: in Cadets, Duel, or Junkers. Let's put this question and we, and subsequently try to answer it. For now, let's take a look at the content of this article.

2.2 Three aspects of the life of Junker Aleksandrov

“Kuprin often “jumped” in the process of writing from chapter to chapter, as if he still did not clearly imagine where to put each of them - in the middle or at the beginning of the novel,” 20 remarked F.I. Kuleshov. Many researchers note that the chapters are not subordinate to each other, they contain unnecessary repetitions, such as, for example, about the company commander of the cadet Alexandrov: “This is the commander of our fourth company, Captain Fofanov, and in our opinion Drozd” In addition, researchers, and in particular F.I. Kuleshov, note that "the chronology is arbitrarily shifted in the novel"21. Alyosha's heartfelt hobbies, his writing debut are attributed to the first months of the hero's stay in a military school, and these chapters are overly stretched, overloaded with small events, and more important ones are reduced. The pages that tell about the second year of stay look like a chronicle. The third part of the novel is generally worked out less than the previous two. One gets the impression that it was written with difficulty, without enthusiasm, as if in order to finish the two-year life of the cadet Alexandrov.

But let's take a closer look at what is happening in the Junkers.

2.2.1 Poetry of youthful love

The hero constantly feels the need to love someone: his awakened heart can no longer live without love, he needs chivalrous admiration for a woman. “He falls in love quickly, falls in love with the same naive simplicity and joy with which grasses grow and buds bloom,”22 writes F.I. Kuleshov.

This conversation took place in March. And then more than three months pass, and Alexandrov, after so many dreams, never once remembers Zinaida, his vow to marry. Not a single meeting, not a note! Why does the Junker forget the object of his passion? And does he forget? Most likely, the writer forgets about her, who strives to finish the story as quickly as possible and nullifies a wonderful love story without ending it with at least hints, without motivating such a strange behavior of the junker. The reader waits until the last pages for a continuation, but is disappointed not to see it. “The last pages of the novel give rise to a feeling of incompleteness of the plot and tongue twisters in the narrative: the story about the hero’s stay within the walls of the school has been exhausted, but there is not even a hint of a possible denouement of his intimate drama,”23 writes the author of the monograph “Kuprin’s Creative Way” F.I. Kuleshov. And he is right: the reader, who is accustomed to Kuprin's brilliant writing style, to his refinement and thoughtfulness, is at a loss: what happened? The author of The Junkers is betrayed by his skill: despite the factual completeness of the novel, it seems to be unfinished. But at the same time, we still recognize the former Alexander Ivanovich: true to himself, he glorifies sublime earthly love in The Junkers as a wonderful song of mankind, the most magnificent and unique.

2.2.2 Passion for art

Creative searches are also internally connected with the intimate experiences of the hero in love. Even as a child, Alexandrov's talent manifested itself, and he dreamed of becoming a poet. Kuprin tells with humor about Alexei's childhood poetic experiences and cites his children's poems as an example, attributing them to his hero:

Rather, oh birds, fly

You are in warm countries from us,

When you arrive again

That will be spring with us... (VIII, 274)

At the request of his mother, Alyosha often read them to guests, they admired, success flattered his vanity. When Alexandrov grew up, he became ashamed of his poetry and tried to express himself in prose, and, imitating F. Cooper, wrote the novel "Black Panther" (from the life of the North American savages of the Wayax tribe and about the war with the pale-faced), which was saturated with exotic, completely far-fetched , was written heavily and was eventually sold for a ruble and a half to a bookseller. The hero succeeded better with watercolor pictures and pencil caricatures of teachers and comrades. But this kind of creativity at that time did not attract the young man much.

The writing efforts continued. The fact that he still had literary talent was evidenced by his classy essays, rated at “full twelve points” and often read aloud as an example. From prose Alyosha again turns to poetry. Tries to make translations of poems by German romantics, but they come out "heavy". He makes new and new attempts, and the praises of comrade Sasha Guryev disturb his pride. Alyosha decides on the last experiment: to translate Heine's little poem "Lorelei" and compare his translation with the translations of venerable word artists. Alexandrov himself understands that his translation is imperfect and, wanting to experience all the bitterness of failure, gives a translation for the assessment of a German teacher. He praises the junker, noting his undoubted literary abilities. But how vain everyone is in their youth! Just good and nothing more! What a disgrace! “Of course, for all eternity, my writing” (VIII, 280). But the thought of fame did not want to break away from the writer's magical world imagined by Alexandrov.

One summer, at the dacha of his older sister, Alyosha meets Diodor Ivanovich Mirtov, the famous Russian poet, a nervous and exalted man, who advises the young man to try to create prose, noting his powers of observation, and promises to help in publishing the story. And encouraged by the interest in his work, Alexandrov built the suite "The Last Debut" (why the suite, he himself did not know - he just liked this foreign word). And he wrote about things and feelings unknown to him: the theatrical world, tragic love that ended in suicide ... Alekhan Andronov signed and brought it to Mirtov, he praised, congratulated him on his initiation into the "knights of the pen." And here is the moment of glory: the suite is printed, friends congratulate the author, he is proud and happy! And in the morning, the unlucky writer is sent to a punishment cell. From a triumphant, he again turns into a "pathetic pharaoh." Sitting there, after long explanations and reflections, Alyosha comes to the conclusion that his whole story (suite) is stupid, far-fetched, it has a lot of clumsy dull places, exaggerations, heavy turns, all the characters are inanimate.

And then Vincent, in order to brighten up the hours of boredom of a comrade, brings him the story "Cossacks" by L.N. Tolstoy. And Alexandrov was amazed that “an ordinary person ... in the simplest words, without the slightest effort, without any trace of fiction, took and calmly told what he saw, and he grew up an incomparable, inaccessible, charming and completely simple story” ( VIII, 293). And his suite is sucked from the finger, there is no, absolutely no life truth in it.

Such a critical conclusion could not have occurred to the young man, this self-recognition is derived from the writing experience of Kuprin himself, and he attributes these mature thoughts to Aleksandrov. A young man could not be so demanding of himself and formulate the principle of life's truth. After all, he himself admitted that the work of Shakespeare, Goethe, Byron, Homer, Pushkin, Dante is a great miracle, which he does not understand, although he bows before him with reverence.

“Aleksandrov does not at all feel an organic need for deep reflection, for philosophical reflection, they are beyond his capabilities. He perceives the beautiful in art and the beautiful in nature thoughtlessly, with almost childish spontaneity... In Kuprin's attempt to force Alexandrov - an exceptionally emotional nature - to engage in the "philosophy of art", the author's tendency to slightly elevate the hero of the novel appeared"24, - F.I. makes an apt remark . Kuleshov.

And indeed, more carefully examining the spiritual life of the young cadet, we will come to the conclusion that his intellectual interests are limited. He reads little: at school he read only Queen Margo and L. Tolstoy's story The Cossacks, and even then he met the second by chance, and before school he was fond of the works of Dumas, Schiller, Scott, Cooper, that is, he read those books, on that didn't take much thought. True, once he made an attempt to read Dobrolyubov "as a forbidden writer", but he could not master it entirely - out of boredom he did not even reach a quarter of the book.

And this is very typical for the hero of the novel: often he lacks endurance, perseverance, patience in serious matters. He draws pretty well, but we learn about this only in the form of information, nothing is said about his studies in this type of creativity, except that Aleksandrov took lessons from Pyotr Ivanovich Shmelnov. The Junker's love for the theater is mentioned, but there is not a single visit to any dramatic performance. Maybe all this was in the life of Alexandrov, but left behind the scenes by the writer, as insignificant in the spiritual development of a young man.

And what is important? Balls, parties, dances, skating rink. These pictures are bright, detailed, impressive. Here one can clearly feel the Junker's admiration for all this easy, carefree life, admiration for his own grace and secularity. One gets the impression that Alexandrov is a person incapable of serious studies, his image is far from the image of the truth-seeker Romashov from "Duel", he is infantile and not very intellectual. First at the rink and in the fencing hall, in the dance class and at the parade, Aleksandrov is far from the interests of the progressive Russian youth. It turns out that in the center of the novel is not the internal, spiritual development of the emerging personality, the search for its place in life, reflections on the fate of the people (which was the subject of attention in the "Duel"), but only pictures of the external being of a young man, in the alternation of pranks and punishments, sports and secular exploits, the excitement of first love. And, perhaps, that is why the researcher of creativity A.I. Kuprina I.V. Koretskaya concludes in her monograph: “Although the author called “Junker” a novel, it is, in fact, only a suite of sketches of corps and city life, bright and masterful in form, but not giving any broad reflection of the then reality”25. It seems that, despite the many successful images and scenes, this conclusion is correct. So, for example, the image of Moscow occupies a large place in the novel, but it is given in everyday terms, and its social boundaries are small: the life of the cadet school, the life of pupils of the Catherine Institute. Basically, this is the life of middle-class Muscovites: balls, a skating rink, triplets running through snow-covered streets, a rampant carnival, traditional bargaining on Red Square.

2.2.3 Weekdays of a closed military educational institution

Of course, the life of the junkers is drawn more vividly and in detail. This theme is most of all connected with two other works of the trilogy that we conditionally created - "The Cadets" and "The Duel". From life, living conditions in the cadet corps, the author proceeds to describe the life of the cadet school - the second stage in military training and education of future officers. There is much in common in these works, but there are even more differences, at least in the approach to describing the mores, customs, and living conditions of the pupils. Once again, we note that in the "Junkers" life in a military educational institution is highly idealized.

“The beginning of the novel, which describes the last days of cadet Aleksandrov’s stay in the corps, in a somewhat softened tone, but still continues the critical line of the story “At the Turning Point”. However, the strength of this inertia is very quickly depleted, and along with interesting and correct descriptions of the life of the school, laudatory characteristics are heard more and more often, gradually forming into the jingoistic chanting of the cadet school”26, emphasizes A. Volkov.

But, despite attempts to veil reality, it still peeps repeatedly through the lines of the novel through some hints, random strokes, phrases. Kuprin is an experienced writer, and he could not change his worldview, cross out all his work, in particular its peak - "Duel", as well as "The Cadets" and many stories written on a military theme, which are imbued with a critical attitude towards the tsarist army, to the education of future officers, their cruelty, dullness.

Let us turn to a further analysis of the text of the novel "Junker".

So, having said goodbye to the cadet corps, where Alexei spent eight years (two years in the same class), he becomes a pupil of the Alexander Cadet School. The most striking impression of the first day was the minute when Aleksandrov found out that he belonged to the category of “pharaohs”. "Why am I the pharaoh?" (VIII, 227) - he asks and finds out that all first-year students are called that way, and sophomores are “chief officers”.

Chapter five is called "Pharaoh" and tells in detail how the former cadets were drawn into the regime of the cadet school: "... with difficulty, very slowly and sadly" (VIII, 228), and then this phrase is softened .

At the Alexander School, there is no rude and even humiliating treatment of a senior year with a junior: freedom-loving Moscow did not recognize the capital's "tricks". There are rules here: do not mock the younger ones, but still keep them at a certain distance, in addition, each sophomore must carefully monitor the “pharaoh” with whom he ate the same hulled porridge a year ago in order to “cut or pull up” ".

And from the next chapter, "Tantalum Torments", we can conclude that first-year cadets were subjected to many hours of "strict" drill at the school.

The first thing they had to remember was that each of them, if necessary, could be drafted into the active army. Many things had to be learned anew, for example, the marching step. “Yes, those were the days of truly quadruple warming. He warmed his uncle-classmate, warmed his platoon harness-junker, warmed the exchange officer and, finally, the main warmer, the eloquent Drozd ... ”(VIII, 239).

All the days of the junkers were completely cluttered with military duties and teaching: “They taught the drill march with a gun, always with a rolled overcoat over their shoulder and in high state boots ... They taught, or rather, relearned gun techniques” (VIII, 239). But no one could lift a twelve-and-a-half-pound infantry rifle by a bayonet on an outstretched hand, except for freshman Zhdanov. It's hard ... And coaching in saluting! For several hours they walked along the corridors and saluted. Yes, it's really difficult. “Of course,” Kuprin makes a reservation, “these daily exercises would seem infinitely nasty and would cause premature bitterness in the souls of young men if their tutors were not so imperceptibly patient and so sternly sympathetic” (VIII, 240). Although they could sharply pull their chicks, but malice, captiousness, insult and mockery were completely absent in their treatment of the younger ones.

But everything ends sooner or later. A month later, the intensive training of the "pharaohs" for dexterity, speed, and accuracy of military techniques ended, and the young people, having taken the oath, became full-fledged junkers. Alexandrov enjoys a beautifully tight form. But the Junkers had no more time. Only two hours a day remained free for soul and body. And then the lessons began, which were often limited to cramming. Aleksandrov never forgot his impressions from the first days of his stay at the school, and if they were so deeply embedded in his memory, then, probably, not from a sweet and good life. This is also evidenced by the phrase where Kuprin says about his hero: “Black days fell to his lot more than bright ones” (VIII, 234). And in the novel, on the contrary, more attention is paid to bright days, the proportions are not respected. Kuprin tries to leave life aside, and in the foreground is the front side of life. Is military service hard? No, only at first it seems so, out of habit ...

It's been about two months. Aleksandrov has developed into a real cadet. Service is no longer a burden. “The junkers live happily and freely. It's not that hard to learn. The professors are the best there are in Moscow... True, the monotony is a little boring, but home parades with music... bring some variety here too" (VIII, 250). The junkers imperceptibly became involved in everyday barracks life with its laws and traditions, and discovered their own charms of school life: they were allowed to smoke in their free time between classes (recognition of junker adulthood), send an attendant for cakes to a nearby bakery. On major holidays, the junkers were taken to the circus, theater and

In the epic novel "War and Peace" Tolstoy's true bearer of goodness, beauty and truth is the people, and hence the people's commander Kutuzov. Kutuzov is great, for "there is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth."

The work of the front-line writer Vyacheslav Kondratiev, features of his depiction of the war. Stages of life of V. Kondratiev, his years in the war and the path to writing. Analysis of the story "Greetings from the front". Ideological and moral connections in the works of Kondratiev.

The parable as a literary problem, the systematization of ideas about the features and features of the parable. The study of the work of writers I. Bunin, A. Kuprin, B. Zaitsev from the point of view of the parable-like nature of the works, the features of the parable in their literature.

The historical and patriotic orientation of the novel by L.N. Tolstov "War and Peace". The diversity of the inner worlds of the people of the novel. List of military actions and their heroes. Courage, patriotism and unity of the Russian people. Spiritual victory of the Russian people.

Lermontov Mikhail Yurievich as a great Russian poet, prose writer and playwright. Displaying childhood memories in the poems "Caucasus" and "Blue mountains of the Caucasus, I greet you!". Drama "Strange Man" as a focus of autobiographical motifs in Lermontov's lyrics.

The holiday of Christmas is one of the most revered in the Christian world. Manifestation of ancient pagan tradition and religious symbols. Ch. Dickens' Christmas stories: children's images and motives. Ideas for the education of youth in Russian Christmas stories.

The study of the biography of the Russian writer A.I. Kuprin, peculiar features of his creative personality. Analysis of works on the theme of love and its embodiment in many human destinies and experiences. Biblical motifs in the work of A.I. Kuprin.

With constant interest and attention, A.I. Kuprin. The heroes of his stories are children from the "bottom". His stories about children doomed by society to overwork, poverty and extinction are imbued with real social protest.

General concepts of a reasoned essay, its goals and main elements. Availability of well-founded points of view, supporting judgments and consideration of counter-arguments. Public opinion about the problems of conscription into the army, contract recruitment and deferrals from service.

A.S. Pushkin and his "Mermaid" - a truly folk, life-truthful drama. A number of expressive female characters by A. N. Ostrovsky. A. I. Kuprin's story "Olesya". A play by L. Filatov "Once again about the naked king." Leonid Filatov, use of verbal scum.

Less than ten years separate Anna Karenina from War and Peace. "Resurrection" is separated from "Anna Karenina" by two decades. And although the third novel differs in many ways from the previous two, they are united by a truly epic scope in the depiction of life.

The artistic concept of childhood in Russian literature. The problem of education and its connection with socio-political issues in the work of Maxim Gorky. The educational role of heroic-sublime images of fiction in the life of a child.

Women in the life and fate of A.I. Kuprin. Spiritual rise and moral fall of a woman in love. Tale of betrayal, deceit, lies and hypocrisy in love. Some artistic and psychological means of creating female images in the prose of A.I. Kuprin.

Biography of Vasily Bykov. The situation of moral choice as the basis of his plots. Artistic study of the moral foundations of human behavior in their social and ideological conditionality. The theme of the Great Patriotic War in the work of V. Bykov.

Depiction of images of "vulgar people" and "special person" in Chernyshevsky's novel "What is to be done?". The development of the theme of the troubles of Russian life in the works of Chekhov. The chanting of the wealth of the spiritual world, morality and romanticism in the work of Kuprin.

The reasons for the controversy of critics around Tolstoy's military stories, the specifics and distinctive features of these works. Psychologism of the writer's military works in critics' assessments. The characterology of L.N. Tolstoy in the assessments of the critics of the 19th century.

Conceptual and aesthetic functions of pictures of nature in fiction. Landscape as a component of the text, as the philosophy and ideological position of the writer, his dominant role in the overall semantic and stylistic structure of A.I. Kuprin.

The epic novel by Leo Tolstoy "War and Peace", created by the writer in the sixties of the last century, became a great event in Russian and world literature. Back in 1860, the writer tried to turn to the genre of the historical novel.

The image of the "little man" in the works of A.S. Pushkin. Comparison of the theme of the little man in the works of Pushkin and the works of other authors. Disassembly of this image and vision in the works of L.N. Tolstoy, N.S. Leskova, A.P. Chekhov and many others.

A protest against the vulgarity and cynicism of bourgeois society, corrupt feelings, manifestations of animal instincts. The author's creation of an example of ideal love. Life and creative path of AI Kuprin.

The image of army life in Kuprin's stories "Junkers", "Cadets"

Introduction
1. The image of military life in the early work of Kuprin. On the outskirts of the "Cadets".
2. The autobiographical story "At the Break" ("The Cadets").
3. Creative history of the creation of the novel "Junker".

5. Instead of a conclusion. Army military everyday life in the story "The Last Knights".
Bibliography
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Introduction.
The great Russian writer Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin was destined to live a difficult and difficult life. He experienced ups and downs, the poverty of the Kyiv lumpen and the well-being of the writer beloved by the public, fame and oblivion. He never - or almost never - went with the flow, but often - against it, not sparing himself, not thinking about tomorrow, not afraid to lose what he had won, to start all over again. In his strong nature there was a lot of outwardly contradictory and at the same time - organically inherent in it, and it was the inconsistency of Kuprin's character that largely determined the originality and richness of his personality.
Having abandoned military service, left without a livelihood, Kuprin managed to get out of the addictive swamp of a tramp life, not get lost among the mass of provincial newspapermen, doomed to the position of tabloid scribblers, and became one of the most popular Russian writers of his time. His name was mentioned among the names of prominent realists of the late 19th - first half of the 20th century Andreev, Bunin, Veresaev, Gorky, Chekhov.
At the same time, Kuprin is perhaps the most uneven writer in all of Russian literature. It seems that it is impossible to name another writer who created works so different in their artistic quality throughout his entire career.
A deeply Russian man, longing for a well-aimed folk phrase, without his beloved Moscow, he spent almost two decades away from his homeland.
“He is complicated, sore,” Chekhov spoke about Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin [A.P. Chekhov. Collected works in 12 volumes, - M., 1964, v. 12, p. 437].
A lot of things in him become clear when referring to the years of childhood - "scandalized childhood", by his definition, and youth - it was then that they finally took shape, and in some ways, probably, the character and mental warehouse of the future writer broke down.
Not all works of Alexander Ivanovich have stood the test of time, not all works that have stood this test have entered the golden fund of Russian literature. But it is enough to list only some of the best novels and stories of the writer to make sure that they are still interesting, have not become a thing of the past, as happened with the legacy of a myriad of writers, that Kuprin rightfully occupies an honorable place in the history of Russian literature.
An artist of diverse life experience, Kuprin studied the military environment in which he spent fourteen years in a particularly profound way. The writer devoted a lot of creative work to the theme of the tsarist army; it is with the development of this theme that the individual coloring of his talent is largely connected, the new that he introduced into Russian literature, which is hard to imagine without "Inquest", "Army Ensign", "Wedding", "Overnight", "Duel", "Cadets", "Junkers", dedicated to the life and way of life of the Russian army.
And if someone who evaluates the works of Kuprin from the standpoint of the sophisticated art of the 20th century, with his irony - a sign of weakness - they seem somewhat naive, "rustic", let us remind him of the words of Sasha Cherny from a letter to Kuprin: "I rejoiced at your wonderful simplicity and enthusiasm - there are no more of them in Russian literature ... "[Kuprina K.A. Kuprina is my father. - M., 1979, p. 217].
1. Image of military life in the early works of Kuprin.
On the outskirts of the "Cadets".
Depicting the military environment, Kuprin opened to readers an area of \u200b\u200bRussian life that was little explored by literature. Russian philistinism was severely criticized by Kuprin's great contemporaries - Chekhov and Gorky. But Kuprin for the first time with such artistic skill and in such detail shows the officer, in its essence also petty-bourgeois, environment.
“In this little world, the features of Russian petty-bourgeoisness appeared in a concentrated form. In no other layers of petty-bourgeois Russia was there, perhaps, such a screaming contradiction between spiritual poverty and the inflated caste arrogance of people who imagine themselves to be the “salt of the earth.” And, which is very important, it is unlikely "Where did such a gulf exist between intellectuals and people from the people. And it was necessary to know very well all the nooks and crannies of army life, to visit all the circles of hell of the royal barracks in order to create a broad and reliable image of the royal army." [Volkov A.A. Creativity A.I. Kuprin. Ed. 2nd. - M., 1981, p. 28.]
Already among the early Kuprin stories there are quite a few that conquer us with their artistic authenticity. These are works from military life familiar to him, and first of all, the story "Inquiry" (1984), in which Kuprin appeared as a successor to the traditions of military fiction prose by L. Tolstoy and V. Garshin, a writer of everyday life in the barracks soldier's life, an accuser of the tsarist military, cane discipline in the army. Unlike his predecessors, who depicted a man on the battlefield, in battles, in the "blood and suffering" of the war, Kuprin showed a soldier of "peaceful" army everyday life, quite cruel and inhuman. In fact, it was he who was one of the first to talk about the powerless position of the Russian soldier, who is cruelly tortured for the most insignificant duty. The scene of the execution of private Baiguzin described in the "Inquest" anticipated a similar episode of the torture of a soldier in Tolstoy's later "After the Ball". The humanism of the writer was expressed in a deeply sympathetic depiction of the victims of arbitrariness, in the experiences and thoughts of Lieutenant Kozlovsky, a largely autobiographical character.
Barely having achieved recognition from Baiguzin, Kozlovsky already regrets it. He feels personally responsible for what happens to the Tatar. He tries in vain to get a reduced sentence. The forthcoming cruel and humiliating whipping of the soldier haunts him. When his name is mentioned in the verdict, it seems to Kozlovsky that everyone is looking at him with condemnation. And after the flogging, his eyes meet Baiguzin's, and he again feels some strange spiritual connection that has arisen between him and the soldier.
The story features a number of characters typical of the royal barracks. The image of sergeant major Taras Gavrilovich Ostapchuk is very picturesque. The image of Ostapchuk embodies the features of non-commissioned officers, who are a kind of "mediastinum" between "gentlemen officers" and "lower ranks".
The thinking of the sergeant major, his manner of speaking, holding himself, his vocabulary vividly characterize the type of an experienced campaigner, cunning and limited. In each of his words, in each act, the simple psychology of the overseer is reflected, formidable with his subordinates and currying favor with his superiors.
The sergeant-major loves after the evening roll call, sitting in front of the tent, to drink tea with milk and a hot roll. He "talks" with volunteers about politics and appoints those who disagree with his opinion to extraordinary duty.
Ostapchuk, as is typical of ignorant people, likes to talk "about lofty matters" with an educated person. But "an abstract conversation with an officer is a liberty that a sergeant major can only allow himself with a young officer, in whom he immediately discerned an intellectual who had not yet learned to order and despise the "lower ranks."
In the image of Ostapchuk, the writer gives his first sketch of a type very characteristic of the tsarist army. The company commander shifts all household chores to the sergeant major. The sergeant major is the "thunderstorm" of the soldiers and in fact the owner of the unit. In relation to the officers, he is a servant. In relation to the soldiers, he is the master, and here the traits of the overseer brought up by the regime and cane discipline are revealed. In this capacity, Ostapchuk sharply opposes the humane and reflective Kozlovsky.
The themes and images outlined in "Inquest" will find their further artistic development in other works of Kuprin from military life, created between 1895 and 1901 - "Army Ensign", "Lilac Bush", "Overnight", "Breguet", " Night shift".
Kuprin considered the establishment of mutual understanding and trust between officers and soldiers to be the best means of raising the combat effectiveness of the army. Ensign Lapshin (the story "Army Ensign", 1897) writes in his diary that during field work between officers and soldiers, the "hierarchical difference" seems to be weakening, "and then you involuntarily get acquainted with a Russian soldier, with his apt views on all kinds of phenomena, even for such complex ones as the corps maneuver - with its practicality, with its ability to adapt everywhere and to everything, with its biting figurative word seasoned with coarse salt. This suggests that a Russian person, even in the hard labor conditions of the royal barracks, does not leave natural humor, the ability to accurately characterize the phenomena of life, and in other cases inquisitively, almost "philosophically" evaluate them.
This idea is even more clearly expressed in the story "The Night Shift" (1899). Here, a string of precisely and picturesquely outlined village types, "polished" by the royal barracks, passes before the readers.
Yesterday’s peasant, private Luka Merkulov, is eager to go to the village with all his heart, because he’s at least lost in the barracks: “They feed him from hand to mouth, dress him out of line to take orders, the platoon commander scolds him, the detached scolds, - sometimes he will poke him in the teeth with his fist, - learning is difficult , difficult ... "It is especially hard for soldiers from among the so-called foreigners. Tatar Kamafutdinov, for example, does not understand many Russian words, and for this, at the "literature lessons" he is rudely scolded by an enraged non-commissioned officer: "Turkish idiot! Muzzle! Why am I asking you? Well! What am I asking you ... Speak like your gun is called, Kazan cattle! Behind the insult, a thrashing, a scuffle is inevitable. So every day, year after year.
This is in the barracks. And in tactical exercises - the same thing, as shown in the story "Campaign" (1901). Tired, emaciated, stupefied by drill and straining under an unbearable burden, people in gray overcoats wearily and randomly wander in gloomy and anxious silence, in the pitch darkness of the night, watered by the tedious autumn rain. The old soldier Vedenyapin, an inexhaustible merry fellow and wit, tries to stir them up with his jokes. But people are not up to fun ... In the dark, one of the privates, probably half asleep, ran his eye into the bayonet of the one in front - the hoarse voice of the wounded is heard: It hurts a lot, your honor, you can’t endure ... ". And the answer : “Why did you climb on the bayonet, idiot?” - this is shouted by the company commander Skibin, who always has a whole set of bad curses in reserve for the soldiers: “scoundrel”, “fool”, “idiot”, “rotozey”, etc. Lieutenant Tushkovsky, obligingly fawning over Skibin, seems to compete with him in indifferent cruelty and contempt for the soldiers; for him they are “cattle”, “bastard.” The evil and stupid sergeant Gregorash stretches behind the authorities, from whose tongue the words “scoundrels” break out , "scoundrels". These three are convinced: the soldier should be scolded, kept in fear, beaten in the teeth, slashed at their backs. "But in my opinion, you need to beat their scoundrels! ..." - Skibin says vindictively, and Tushkovsky obsequiously agrees with him.
The author's position in the story "Campaign" is clearly felt in the thoughts and feelings of lieutenant Yakhontov. Like Kozlovsky from "Inquest", Yakhontov is extremely sincere in his compassion for the soldier, in respect and love for him. He is indignant at the boorish behavior of Skibin and Tushkovsky: he is resolutely against the massacre, against the torture of soldiers, against the rude, inhuman treatment of them. He is certainly a kind, sensitive, humane person. However, what can he do alone, if mockery and bullying have long become in the tsarist army almost a legalized form of treatment of officers with subordinates? Almost nothing. And this consciousness of his own powerlessness before the evil reigning in the army causes him almost physical pain, gives rise to a nagging feeling of longing and loneliness, close to despair. For an honest officer, as well as for a bewildered soldier, military service is worse than hard labor. The same feelings are keenly experienced by Lapshin in "The Ensign of the Army", and later by Romashov and Nazansky in "Duel"; a lot of Kuprin's heroes are covered by similar moods. In general, the theme of soldiery, barracks army life, begun in "Inquest" and artistically developed by the writer from the standpoint of a consistent humanistic and democratic worldview, will become one of the leading ones in Kuprin's work.
Autobiographical story "At the Break" ("The Cadets").
Kuprin also spoke about barracks life and drill in his autobiographical story "At the Break" ("The Cadets"), which appeared in 1900 and was first published in the issues of the Kyiv newspaper "Life and Art" under the title "At the Beginning" with the subtitle: "Essays on the military - gymnasium life. Under the title "The Cadets" the story was published in 1906 in the magazine "Niva" (December 9-30, Nos. 49-52). In an expanded edition called "At the Break" ("The Cadets"), it was included in the fifth volume of the collected works of Kuprin in the Moscow Book Publishing House (1908).
In the newspaper and magazine, the story was provided with footnotes by the author: "The entire gymnasium was divided into three ages: junior - I, II classes, middle - III IV V and senior - VI VII; "Kurilo" was the name of a pupil who already knows how to inhale while smoking and carrying his own tobacco." [Kuprin A.I. Sobr. op. in 9 volumes - M., 1971, v.3, p. 466].
And although the story is not about soldiers, but about the education of future officers of the tsarist army, the essence remains the same. The military gymnasium life instilled in the cadets for seven years wild, "bursat" morals, and the dull barracks atmosphere, hateful studies, mediocre teachers, cruel, stupid guards, ignorant educators, rude, unfair gymnasium authorities - all this distorted the soul of the boys, on morally deformed them all their lives. The military gymnasium lived according to the written rule of life: the one who has strength is right. Educators and teachers painfully whipped with rulers or rods, and older cadets, strong, arrogant and cruel, like the inveterate Gruzov, Balkashin or Myachkov, mocked the weak and timid, who secretly hoped in time to move into the category of strong.
Here is how the military gymnasium meets the main character, the newcomer Bulanin (an autobiographical image of the author himself):
Surname?
What? asked Bulanin timidly.
Fool, what's your last name?
Bu... Bulanin...
Why not Savraskin? Look at you, what a surname ... horse.
Laughed helpfully all around. Gruz continued:
Have you ever tried buttermilk, Bulanka?
N... no... haven't tried it.
How? Never tried?
Never...
That's the thing! Do you want me to feed you?
And without waiting for Bulanin's answer, Gruzov bent his head down and very painfully and quickly hit it first with the end of his thumb, and then fractionally with the knuckles of all the others, clenched into a fist.
Here's butter for you, and another, and a third! ... Well, Bulanka, is it tasty? Maybe you want more?
The old men gleefully cackled: "This Cargo! Desperate! ... He fed the newcomer great with butter."
The universal "cult of the fist" very clearly divided the entire gymnastic environment into "oppressors" and "oppressed". It was possible not only to "force" the weakest, but it was also possible to "forget", and Bulanin very soon understood the difference between these two actions.
"Forsila" rarely beat a newcomer out of malice or for the sake of extortion, and even less often took something from him, but the trembling and confusion of the baby gave him once again the sweet consciousness of his power.
Much worse for a first-grader were "forgotten". There were fewer of them than the first, but they brought much more harm. She “forgot” when harassing a beginner or a weak classmate, she did it not out of boredom, like “force”, but consciously, out of revenge, or self-interest, or another personal motive, with a physiognomy distorted from anger, with all the ruthlessness of a petty tyrant. Sometimes he tormented the newcomer for whole hours in order to "squeeze" out of him the last pitiful remnants of gifts that had survived from the grab, hidden somewhere in a secluded corner.
The forgetful jokes were violent and always ended in a bruise on the victim's forehead or a nosebleed. They were especially and downright outrageously angry towards boys suffering from some kind of physical defect: stutterers, cross-eyed, bow-legged, etc. Teasing them, the forgetfuls showed the most inexhaustible ingenuity.
But the forgetfuls were angels in comparison with the "desperate", this scourge of God for the entire gymnasium, from the headmaster to the very last kid.
All life in the cadet corps, as it were, revolves in a kind of vicious circle, which Kuprin speaks of in the story: "... Wild people who grew up under a rod, in turn, with a rod, used in terrifying amounts, prepared other wild people for the best service to the fatherland , and this service was again expressed in the frantic flogging of subordinates ... ".
Naturally, future torturers of soldiers, rapists and sadists, cynics and ignoramuses, with whom the story "Duel" is so densely populated, came out of military gymnasiums.
The connection between this early story by Kuprin and his "Duel" is obvious. "The Cadets" are, as it were, the first link in Kuprin's trilogy ("The Cadets", "Junkers", "Duel"). It was from such cadet corps that those army bourbons came out, with their lack of culture, rudeness, caste arrogance and isolation from the life of the people, whom the writer portrayed in "Duel". It is not without curiosity to trace where the heroes of his "Duel" come from, what their school years are, wrote the critic A. Izmailov about "The Cadets" [Birzhevye Vedomosti, 1907, January 24, No. 9711.]
We found an interesting mention of the 2nd Moscow Cadet Corps and Kuprin's stay in it in the memoirs of L.A. Limontov about A.N. Scriabin (the future composer studied here at the same time as Kuprin).
"I was then," writes Limontov, "just as 'tempered', rude and wild as all my comrades, the Cadets. Strength and dexterity were the naked ideal. The first strongman in the company, in the class, in the department - enjoyed all sorts of privileges: the first increase in the "second" at dinner, the extra "third", even a glass of milk prescribed by the doctor to the "weak" cadet was often transferred to the first strongman. About our first strongman, Grisha Kalmykov, our other friend, A.I. Kuprin, a future writer, and at that time a nondescript, small, clumsy cadet, composed:
Our Kalmykov, modest in the sciences,
He was athletic
How amazing - huge
And stunning Parchen.1
He is stupid, like Zhdanov of the first company,
Strong and agile, like Tanti.2
Everywhere in everything has benefits
And everywhere he can go
When first published in the newspaper, the story was not noticed by critics. When she appeared in the Niva in 1906, she aroused sharp criticism from the military press. Critic of the military-literary magazine "Scout" Ross in the feuilleton "Walks in the Gardens of Russian Literature" wrote: depiction of military life in its various manifestations. This is to the taste of readers of a certain kind, but where does artistic truth go? Alas, she has no place; it is replaced by a trend. In our time, this trend is such that all military affairs should be cursed, if not directly, then at least allegorically ... According to Kuprin, the Cadet Corps has not gone far from the blessed memory of the Bursa, and the Cadets - from the Bursaks ...
And what a surprise! The author's talent is undeniable. The pictures he draws are vital and true! But for God's sake! Why talk only about bad things, exclusively about nasty things, emphasizing and highlighting them! ["Scout", - St. Petersburg, 1907, July 24, No. 874.]
In the text of Life and Art, there were six chapters in the story; the sixth chapter ended with the words: "They say that in the present corps morals have softened, but softened to the detriment of, albeit wild, but still comradely spirit. How good or bad it is, the Lord knows."
In Niva and subsequent reprints, the author gives a different ending to the sixth chapter: “They say that things are different in the current corps. future. The present showed nothing."

The creative history of the creation of the novel "Junker".
The idea of the novel "Junker" came from Kuprin in 1911, as a continuation of the story "At the Break" ("The Cadets") and at the same time was announced by the magazine "Motherland". Work on the "Junkers" continued throughout all the pre-revolutionary years. In May 1916, the Vecherniye Izvestiya newspaper published an interview with Kuprin, who spoke about his creative plans: "... I eagerly set about finishing the Junkers," the writer reported, "this story is partly a continuation of my own story" At the turning point "" Cadets ". Here I am completely at the mercy of the images and memories of the cadet life with its ceremonial and inner life, with the quiet joy of first love and meetings at dance evenings with my" sympathies ". I remember the cadet years, the traditions of our military school, types educators and teachers. And I remember a lot of good things ... I hope that this autumn I will publish this story. [Petrov M., A.I. Kuprin, "Evening News", 1916, May 3, No. 973.]
"Revolutionary events in Russia and the emigration that followed interrupted the writer's work on the novel. Only in 1928, five years before the publication of the novel as a separate book, did separate chapters appear in the Renaissance newspaper: January 4 - "Drozd", February 19 - " Photogen Pavlych", April 8 - "Polonaise", May 6 - "Waltz", August 12 - "Quarrel", August 19 - "Love Letter", August 26 - "Triumph".
Apparently, the writer began from the middle of the novel, gradually returning from describing the school and the love of Alexandrov and Zina Belysheva to the starting point: the end of the cadet corps, the passion for Yulia Sinelnikova, etc. These chapters were published in Renaissance two years later: February 23, 1930 - "Father Michael", March 23 - "Farewell", April 27 and 28 - "Julia", May 25 - "Restless Day", June 22 - " Pharaoh "", July 13 and 14 "Tantalum Torments", July 27 - "Under the Banner!", September 28, October 12 and 13 - "Mr. Writer". The last chapter of the novel "Production", was published on October 9, 1932. [ Kuprin A. I. Collected works in 5 volumes, - M., 1982, v. 5, p. 450.]
The novel was published as a separate edition in 1933.
The Juncker novel depicts real faces and real facts. So, the novel mentions "the times of General Schwanebach, when the school was going through its golden age." Shvanebakh Boris Antonovich was the first head of the Alexander School - from 1863 to 1874. General Samokhvalov, the head of the school, or, in Junker, "Epishka", commanded the Alexandrovites from 1874 to 1886. The chief, whom Kuprin found, Lieutenant General Anchutin, nicknamed "the statue of the commander"; battalion commander "Berdi Pasha" - Colonel Artabalevsky; the commander of the company "His Majesty's stallions" "Khukhrik" - captain Alkalaev-Kalageorgy; commander of the "beasts" company - Captain Klochenko; the commander of the "dab" company - Captain Khodnev - they are all bred in the novel under their own names. In the book, the Alexander Military School for 35 years, both the Doctor of Theology, Archpriest Alexander Ivanovich Ivantsov-Platonov, and the actual State Councilor Vladimir Petrovich Sheremetevsky, who taught the junkers the Russian language from 1880 to 1895, and bandmaster Fyodor Fedorovich Kreinbring, who led the orchestra in 1863, are mentioned years, and fencing teachers Taras Petrovich Tarasov and Alexander Ivanovich Postnikov.
In the list of cadets who graduated from college on January 10, 1890, next to Kuprin we will find the names of his friends - Vladimir Vincent, Pribil and Zhdanov, Richter, Korganov, Butynsky and others.
Kuprin began his great autobiographical work with a study of those feelings and impressions that were inviolably stored in the deep recesses of his soul. The joyful and direct perception of life, the delights of fleeting love, the naive youthful dream of happiness - this is sacred and freshly preserved by the writer, and from this he began a novel about the youthful years of his life.
A common feature of Kuprin's works written in exile is the idealization of old Russia. "The beginning of the novel, which describes the last days of cadet Alexandrov's stay in the corps (in the story "At the Break" - Bulanin), in a somewhat softened tone, but still continues the critical line of the story "At the Break". However, the strength of this inertia is very quickly depleted, and along with interesting and true descriptions of the life of the school, laudatory characteristics are heard more and more often, gradually forming into a jingoistic chanting of the cadet school. [Volkov A.A., p. 340-341.]
With the exception of the best chapters of the novel, which describe Alexandrov's young love for Zina Belysheva, the pathos of praising the pedagogical principles and morals of the Alexander School unites individual episodes of life, as earlier in the stories "At the Break" and "Duel" they were united by the pathos of exposing public order and methods of educating the younger generations.
"Father wanted to forget himself," says the writer's daughter Ksenia Kuprina, "and so he undertook to write Junkers. He wanted to compose something like a fairy tale." [Zhegalov N., Outstanding Russian realist. - "What to read", 1958, No. 12, p. 27.]
4. Features of the image of army life in the novel "Junkers".
In the novel "Junker" one can feel the author's admiration for the festive, bright and easy life of carefree and in their own way happy, contented people, admiring affection for the refined "secularism" of Junker Alexandrov, his dexterity, grace of movements in dance, the ability to control all the muscles of his strong young body.
In general, the physical development and maturation of the Junkers in the novel is given the same significant place as their intimate love experiences. In Aleksandrov, a strong and agile athlete, an excellent and tireless dancer and an excellent exemplary drillman are always emphasized. About his hero Kuprin says: "He enjoyed a quiet military life, smoothness in all his affairs, the trust of his superiors in him, excellent food, success with young ladies and all the joys of a strong muscular young body."
How does this “military life”, which Alexandrov enjoyed, look like in the novel? What are the everyday life of pupils of the cadet school? To what extent did Kuprin truthfully tell about this?
The well-known researcher of Kuprin’s work, Fedor Ivanovich Kuleshov, believes: “There is no doubt that the real Russian reality of the reaction period of the eighties, to which the narrative relates, gave the writer abundant material for critical coverage of the life and customs that reigned in military educational institutions. And whether the novel was written in the era " violent and rebellious "moods of Kuprin, we would probably have a work of the same accusatory force as the story" Duel. "Now this cannot be said about the Junkers: the people of time are shown here from a different angle than in the duel and the Cadets. It’s not that accusatory assessments and criticism were completely absent in the Junkers - they are there, but both are significantly weakened, softened. ed., - Minsk, 1987, p. 238.]
The story of the internal regime in the military school is conducted in the novel in such a way that, having barely touched on the shady sides of the Junker life, which are spoken of in general terms, the author, after that, often in contradiction with the facts and with himself, hurries to put forward one or another excuse circumstances.
Thus, from the chapter "Tantalum Torments" it can be indubitably concluded that the first-year cadets - "poor yellow-mouthed pharaohs" - were subjected to many hours of "continuous prosaic, strict drill" at the school: the junkers were trained day by day, taught to march with a gun and with a rolled-up overcoat, gun techniques, they were trained in the "subtle art of saluting", and for a petty offense they were put in a punishment cell, deprived of home holidays, "warmed" mercilessly. And in real life, all this was in the order of things, which is confirmed by Kuprin's biography of the period of his stay at the cadet school. [Mikhailov O.N. Kuprin, ZhZL, - M., 1981, p. 25-28.]
And the life of Alexei Alexandrov, like other cadets, according to the author of the novel, consisted of days of truly "quadruple heating": they were "warmed by their uncle-classmate, warmed by his platoon harness-cadet, warmed by a course officer", greatly annoyed by the company Drozd, who was the main "warmer". The novelist says that among the junkers every day was "completely tightly cluttered" with military duties and exercises, and "only two hours a day" remained free for soul and body, during which "the junker could move where he wanted and do what he wanted. within the inner limits of the school building. Only during these two afternoons was it possible to sing, chat or read and "even lie down on the bed, unbuttoning the top hook of the jacket." And then classes began again - "cramming or drawing under the supervision of course officers." If, as it is said in the novel, Aleksandrov never "forgotten his first terrible impressions", then this, obviously, is not from a sweet and calm life. Involuntarily recognizing it, Kuprin says about his hero: "Black days fell to his lot much more, than light ones: a dreary, tedious stay in the boring position of a young novice pharaoh, a harsh, tedious drill drill, rude shouts, arrest, assignment to extra duties - all this made the military service heavy and unattractive."
If the Junkers had "much more "black days" than bright ones, then wouldn't it be more natural to preserve real proportions in the novel? Cooper did the wrong thing. Highlighting the front side of the Junker life, he preferred to talk more about bright days than about black ones. Is military service hard and unattractive? But this is only out of habit and for a very short time, after which "without a trace" disappears into oblivion "all the difficulty of military exercises and the military system." And Alexandrov, by the will of the author, quickly felt that "the gun is not heavy", that he easily developed a "big and strong step", and a "proud consciousness appeared in his soul: I am a cadet of the glorious Alexander School." Yes, and all the junkers, according to Kuprin, live in general "fun and free." Military service, brought "to brilliant perfection," has become for them an exciting art that "borders on sporting competition" and does not tire the junkers. boring? And here is some variety.
So almost every critical remark is immediately followed by a phrase of carefully chosen words, designed to soften, neutralize any unfavorable impression on the reader from the story about the regime at the school. Instead of a sharp and definite word "hard" - Kuprin very often uses the harmless "hard". For example, after the winter holidays, when the junkers were "infinitely free", it was "hard for them to get involved again in the harsh military discipline, in lectures and rehearsals, in drill drill, in getting up early in the morning, in sleepless night shifts, in the boring repetition of days, deeds and thoughts." Is it possible to characterize the above listed here with the vague word "hard"? Or here's another. In the cramped bedrooms of the school, the junkers "had a hard time breathing at night." During the day, I immediately had to teach lectures and make drawings, sitting in a very uncomfortable position - "sideways on the bed and resting my elbows on an ash cabinet where shoes and toiletries lay." And after these words comes a cheerful author's exclamation: But-nothing! The strong young people endured everything cheerfully, and the infirmary was always empty ... ".
Kuprin painted a rosy picture of the relationship between the cadets and the school authorities. These relations were even, calm, and, according to a long tradition, they were established "on truthfulness and broad mutual trust." The authorities singled out neither favorites nor hateful among the junkers, the officers were "imperceptibly patient" and "severely sympathetic." Were there bourbons and persecutors in the school? Kuprin does not deny this. He writes: "There were officers who were too strict, picky thugs, too quick to pay big penalties." Among the "happening persecutors, the battalion commander Berdi Pasha is named, who, as it were," was cast from iron at the factory and then beaten with steel hammers for a long time until he took on the approximate, rude form of a man. "Berdi Pasha knows" neither pity nor love, no affection", he only "calmly and coldly, like a machine, punishes, without regret and without anger, applying the maximum of his power." Captain Khukhrik, the commander of the first company Alkalaev-Kalageorgy, is also shown with obvious antipathy.
But these three "persecutors" whom the junkers endured "like God's punishment" were not typical representatives of the authorities. Kuprin considers Captain Fofanov (or Drozd) to be a characteristic figure of a street officer. It was he, Drozd, who in his appearance and rough-figurative speech resembled the captain of the plum from "Duel", was the favorite commander and skillful educator of the junkers. Now instantly quick-tempered, now imperturbably calm and "intelligently caring", always direct, honest and often generous, he brought up his chicks "in agile obedience, in unconditional truthfulness, on a wide denouement of mutual trust." He knew how to be both strict, without offending the personality of the pupil, and at the same time gentle and comradely simple. Almost all officers were like that, and not one of them ever "dared to shout at the junker or insult him with a word." Even General Samokhvalov, the former head of the school, who used to "with merciless, Bourbon cruel rudeness" treat subordinate officers, showering them with "merciless curses", even he invariably favored "his beloved junkers", gave them indulgences, paternally patronized and protected .
Kuprin mentions both civilian teachers and military school educators. It was "not at all that difficult" for the junkers to study, because the professors at the school were "the best there are in Moscow." Among them, of course, there is not a single ignoramus, drunkard or cruel torturer, like those with whom we are familiar from the story "The Cadets". Obviously, they were still in the Alexander and other cadet schools, but the writer's changed view of the past prompted him to depict them differently than he did before, in his pre-revolutionary work.
Let's remember one particular. In The Cadets, Kuprin, in a sharply accusatory light, presented the figure of the priest Peshchersky, hated by the Cadets for hypocrisy, unctuousness, unfair treatment of pupils for his "thin, nasal and rattling" voice, for his tongue-tied tongue in the lessons of God's law. Peshchersky in the story "The Cadets" is opposed to the rector of the gymnasium church, Father Mikhail, but the latter is given literally six lines there. While working on The Junkers, Kuprin not only remembered this “Father Mikhail,” but willingly introduced him into the novel and spoke about him in great detail, with undisguised tenderness, in the first two chapters. That Peshchersky "were lost" from her memory, but a handsome old man in a cassock took root in her - "small, gray-haired, touchingly similar to St. Nicholas the Saint."
For the rest of his life, the hero of the "junkers" remembered both the "homemade cassock" on the skinny priest, and his stole, from which "it smelled so cozy of wax and warm incense," and his "meek and patient instructions" to the pupils, his soft voice and soft laughter. The novel tells that fourteen years later - "in the days of severe spiritual anxiety" - Alexandrov was irresistibly drawn to confession to this wise old man. When an old man “in a brown cassock, very tiny and hunched, like Seraphim of Sarov, no longer gray-haired, but greenish” rose to meet Alexandrov, Alexandrov noted with joy his “nice, long-familiar habit” of screwing up his eyes, saw all the same “unusually sweet" face and a gentle smile, heard a heartfelt voice, so that at parting Alexandrov could not stand it and "kissed a dry little bone", after which "his soul became numb." F.I. Kuleshov assesses this scene this way: “All this looks in the novel touchingly touching, idyllic and, in fact, sugary-sweet. a writer who became a bit sentimental in his declining years Kuleshov F.I., p.242.
Four hundred pupils of a military school look in Kuprin's novel as a single, soldered team of contented, cheerful young men. In their treatment of each other there is no malice and envy, captiousness, hostility, desire to offend and offend. The junkers are very polite, obligingly correct: Zhdanov does not look like Butynsky, and Vincent differs sharply from Aleksandrov in his individual traits. But, - according to the author, - "the arches of their characters were so located that in the union they had to get along well, without hanging out and without pressing." The school does not have that dominance of the strong over the weak, which actually reigned for centuries in institutions of a closed type and about which Kuprin himself spoke in the story "The Cadets". Senior junkers treat newcomers - "pharaohs" with extraordinary sensitivity and humanity. They adopted on this account a "wise verbal decree" directed against possible "zucchini" on freshmen: "... let every second-year student carefully watch the pharaoh of his company with whom he ate the same corps porridge only a year ago. Beware of him on time, but on time and pull up tight." All junkers jealously guard the "excellent reputation" of their school and strive not to tarnish it "neither by buffoonery, nor by idiotic harassment of junior comrades."
Not only the age inequality of the Junkers has been eliminated, but social differences, discord and inequality have also been erased. There is no antagonism between junkers from rich and poor families. It never occurred to any of the junkers, say, to sneer at a fellow student of humble origin, and no one at all allowed himself to mock at those whose parents were financially untenable, poor. “Cases of such bullying,” the novel says, were completely unknown in the domestic history of the Alexander School, whose pupils, under some mysterious influence, lived and grew on the foundations of chivalrous military democracy, proud patriotism and stern, but noble, caring and considerate camaraderie. ".
What was the expression of this peculiar "patriotism" of the Junkers? First of all, in youthful conceited pride in their glorious school, in which they had the "high honor" to be brought up and serve, considering it the best not only in Russia, but also "the first military school in the world." Here, the sprouts of consciousness of their privileged position in society and imaginary superiority over people of a different social affiliation were born, caste prejudices of the future officers were cultivated. It is noteworthy that the Alexandrovites, proud of their military uniform, called all civilians without exception "shpaks", and their attitude towards this category of people "from time immemorial has been contemptuous and dismissive." However, this is well known from "Duel". The difference, however, is that before, in the era of "Duel", such arrogance of "gentlemen's officers" in relation to civilians gave rise to anger and protest in the writer, aroused his unconditional judgment: now Kuprin speaks of the contempt of the junkers for "spaks" with a gentle smile as if it were a harmless, innocent eccentricity of future officers.
Junkers are not alien to another kind of vain pride - pride in their ancestors. The Alexandrovites are proud of their "illustrious ancestors because many of them at one time" lay down on the battlefield for faith, the tsar and the fatherland. " This "proud patriotism" of the junkers was precisely an expression of their readiness to give their lives in the future "for the faith, the tsar and the fatherland ". After all, it is not for nothing that, judging by the novel, they idolize the Russian Tsar so much.
The chapter "Triumph" is curious in this respect. All of it is entirely sustained in iridescent bright colors, designed to set off the loyal delight of the junkers on the eve of and during the royal review of the military units of Moscow. Kuprin writes: "In Alexandrov's imagination, the 'tsar' is drawn in gold, in a Gothic crown, the 'sovereign' is bright blue with silver, the 'emperor' is black with gold, and on his head is a helmet with a white sultan." This is in the Junker's imagination. As soon as the tall figure of the tsar appeared in the distance, a "sweet sharp delight" seized Alexandrov's soul and carried it up like a whirlwind. The tsar presented himself to him as a giant of "superhuman might". The sight of the tsar gives rise in the soul of an enthusiastic cadet to "thirst for boundless sacrificial exploits" for the glory of the "adored monarch."
F.I. Kuleshov believes: “The subjective experiences and excited thoughts of an eighteen-year-old cadet speak of the naive monarchism of pupils of a military school who idolize the person of the tsar. himself during the years of the cadet, or, in any case, experienced by him then to an incomparably weaker degree. The cadet Kuprin was not deeply impressed by the tsar's arrival in Moscow in October 1888, described in detail in the novel. That is why Kuprin did not write then, in his early youth, not a single line of poetry about the tsar's review of the junkers, although he responded in verse to other important and even insignificant moments of his junker life.Moreover: a year and a half before this event, he sympathetically depicted the execution of those who tried to kill the tsar. The final hero, Junker Alexandrov, on the contrary, sees in the Tsar a "great shrine." [Kuleshov F.I., p. 245.]
Alexandrov did not think about how correct were the system of feelings and the direction of thoughts that were instilled in him and his comrades in the school. Questions of politics, public life, social problems, everything that happened behind the thick walls of a military school and how the people and the country lived, do not excite the hero of the "Junkers", do not interest him. Only once in his life he is by chance - just by chance! - came into contact with people of a completely different world. Once, during some kind of student riot, he was passing by the university in a column of junkers and suddenly saw “a pale, worn-out student who angrily shouted from behind the iron university fence: “Bastard! Slaves! Professional assassins, cannon fodder! Freedom Stranglers! Shame on you! A shame!"
It is not known how each of the junkers reacted to the student's passionate cries addressed to them. But many months later, recalling this scene, Alexandrov tried to mentally refute the words of the "students": "He is either stupid, or irritated by resentment, or sick, or unhappy, or simply snared by someone's evil and deceitful will. But war will come, and "I'm ready to go to defend against the enemy: this student, and his wife with small children, and the elderly, his dad and mom. To die for the fatherland. What great, simple and touching words!"
The "Junkers" are dominated by people whose social emotions are, as it were, muffled or atrophied: feelings of indignation, indignation, protest. While the heroes of the "Junkers" were Cadets, they were still capable of some kind of struggle and even rebellion. Aleksandrov, for example, remembers the case when an "evil" mass uprising broke out in the Fourth Cadet Corps, caused by poor nutrition and "pressure from the authorities": then the Cadets broke "all the lamps and glass, opened the doors and frames with bayonets, tore the library books to pieces." The riot stopped only after the soldiers were called. The "rebels" were dealt with severely. On this occasion, the following author's judgment is expressed in the novel: "It's true: you can't twist people and boys" - you can't bring people to indignation and push them to rebellion by force. Having matured and settled down, the cadets no longer allow themselves to rebel, and through the mouth of Aleksandrov they condemn the "evil mass uprising", for which, as it seems to them, there are no reasons, no reason.
Superficial and erroneous were the ideas of the junkers about barracks life in the tsarist army. Alexandrov honestly admits that he knows nothing about the "unknown, incomprehensible creature" whose name is a soldier. "... What do I know about the soldier," he asks himself and answers: Lord God, I know absolutely nothing about him. He is infinitely dark for me. And all this is from the fact that the cadets were only taught to command a soldier, but they did not say what to teach a soldier, except for formation and gun techniques, they did not show at all how to talk to him. And upon leaving the school, Aleksandrov will not know how to train and educate an illiterate soldier and how to communicate with him: “How will I approach this important matter when I have only a little more special military knowledge than my one-year-old, young soldier, which he does not have at all, and, however, he is an adult in comparison with me, a hothouse child. He does not see anything bad, abnormal, and even more outrageous in the relationship between officers and soldiers, and does not want to see it. Before being sent to the regiment, Alexandrov declares: "Yes, of course, there is not a single vicious regiment in the Russian army." He is still ready to admit that, perhaps, there are "poor, driven into the impenetrable wilderness, forgotten by the higher authorities, coarsened regiments," but they are all, of course, "no lower than the glorified guard."
Strange: from what did Alexandrov conclude that life is good among soldiers and that there is not “a single vicious regiment” in Russia if he knows nothing about the army? The answer is simple: here, as in some other places in the novel, Kuprin attributed to his hero what he sometimes thought about the Russian army many years later - in exile. Kuprin here makes some adjustments to his previous bold judgments about the tsarist military. as a result, one gets the impression that the author of "The Junkers" is constantly arguing with the author of "Duel", and in other chapters with the author of "The Cadets".
When was such a "corrected", changed view of the writer on army and school life determined?
F.I. Kuleshov explains it this way: “It would be wrong to link these changes directly with Kuprin’s departure to emigration. The writer’s partial departure from the“ bold and violent ”ideas of the era of the first revolution, a certain weakening of the critical spirit, a decrease in accusatory pathos - all this was already felt in his work of the period reaction and the imperialist war. And even then the youth of the writer and the years of the Junkers began to be clothed in his imagination in iridescent colors. As the story moved away from the time, all the bad things faded, decreased in size, and now the writer looks at him exactly through inverted binoculars. In exile he , obviously, became even more entrenched in the idea that a bright look at yesterday that had sunk into eternity is the most fair.Surrendering to the magical power of memories, Kuprin extracted from the "archive of memory" colorfully colored episodes, pictures, faces, facts that, according to the law of psychological antithesis, were so unlike his present dreary, lonely, gray vegetating in a foreign land. [F.I. Kuleshov, p. 247.]

5. Instead of a conclusion. Army military everyday life in the story
"The Last Knights"
The narrative tone taken in the "Junkers", full of tenderness and sadness, changed dramatically in another "foreign" work of Kuprin on military topics - the story "The Last Knights" (originally - "Dragoon Prayer"). The writer turned to the events of the era of the imperialist war, relatively close in time, and his voice acquired severity, his judgments became sharp, his characters were vital, and the author's position was clear and unambiguous.
One of the undoubted advantages of the story "The Last Knights" is the richness of events and the swiftness of their development. The form of the narrative is extremely compressed, but meanwhile the author covered significant periods of time, said a lot about the historical era and managed to trace almost the entire life of the main characters. Despite the seeming slowness and thoroughness of the descriptions, the narrative flows freely, quickly and naturally, as in the best stories of this writer.
In The Last Knights, Kuprin plunged into his native element of army military everyday life, but not in order to admire them, but in order to once again sharply condemn the careerism, stupidity and mediocrity of the generals and staff tsarist officers. The sarcastic words about "the great strategists of the General Staff sitting in Petrograd and never having seen the war even from afar" are full of indignant pathos. One of the heroes of the story, whose views are entirely shared by the author, says indignantly: “Even during the Japanese war, I loudly insisted that it was impossible to direct battles sitting a thousand miles away in an office; that it was absurd to send old generals to the most responsible posts, under patronage. in whom the sand is pouring and there is no military experience, that the presence in the war of persons of the imperial family and the sovereign himself does not lead to anything good.
But it was they, mediocre and stupid people - these "great strategists of the general staff" and persons of the imperial family - who actually led the army during the Russo-Japanese and German wars, they developed armchair plans of operations that actually led to defeat and disgrace, they were the culprits the deaths of thousands of brave soldiers and officers, and they "cawed like crows" when enterprising military officers dared to show independence, contemptuously calling the latter "incompetent brave men." Such a "crow's croak" was heard in response to the proposal of the talented and fearless General L. to make a bold cavalry raid behind German lines and achieve the transfer of the war to German territory - "thus making our position from defensive to offensive, and taking the initiative of fighting into their own hands, as the great Russian victors did in past centuries. Up there, they knew little about the true situation on the fronts and did not know how to coordinate the actions of the army and military units. For this reason, says Kuprin, the well-known raid of the army of General Rennenkopf into East Prussia in August 1914 ended so tragically and shamefully: "He was not supported in time and his flight was slowed down by the same staff careerists." Yes, and on other fronts, the Russian army often turned out to be beaten only because of the stupidity, inactivity, and sometimes outright betrayal of staff officers.
More and more military units were called upon to mend the holes "made by the ruling class and the sycophancy of the theoreticians". No one took into account the lives of soldiers who were recklessly exposed to enemy fire, doomed to a senseless death. “These cabinet columnists, the future Russian Moltke,” writes Kuprin sarcastically, “loved to flaunt a phrase that speaks of the boundless severity of power and the boundlessness of bloody military measures that contribute to the achievement of success ... Their modern science of winning included terrible iron formulas and terms : "throw a division into the fire", "shut up the defile with a corps", "revive the sluggish offensive of such and such an army with their own machine guns, and so on." contempt for the "combat units" that make up the strength and power of the Russian army as a whole. Those who led the army often talked about the "psychology of the masses" in general, but as usual completely forgot the psychology of the Russian soldier, underestimated "his incomparable fighting qualities", gratitude for good manners, his sensitive capacity for initiative, his amazing patience, his mercy to the vanquished.
In those military units where a soldier is valued and respected, where "even innocent slaps on the back of the head have been weathered", where the unwritten rule is firmly observed, according to which one cannot even jokingly beat and one should never speak nasty things about his mother, - there reigns a high fighting spirit, every soldier there is worthy of admiration. "And what kind of people! - Kuprin says admiringly about the soldiers of one regiment, - Well done to well done. Tall, healthy, cheerful, dexterous, self-confident, white-toothed ..."
This is due to the fact that in that regiment the commander treats the soldier "without yelling stupid, without goiter and without rancor." A soldier in battle - "in action" shows amazing quick wit, resourcefulness and ingenuity, which, for example, was shown by the Cossack constable Kopylov. The story expresses a firm conviction that from the mass of peasant farmers "it is possible to grow and educate an army that has never been and never will be in the world."
On hospitable and humane principles, the attitude towards the soldiers of Captain Tulubeev and General L., who are brought out in the story as positive characters, is kept. The first of them captivates with the absence of conceited thoughts, simplicity and modesty, honesty and generosity. It was he, Captain Tulubeev, who refused an enviable position in the general staff and preferred to return to his regiment. He served in the army by vocation, out of love for the "swift profession" of a cavalryman. Tulubeev found himself a like-minded person in the person of General L., whose name the soldiers pronounced "with clumsy, stern adoration", because for all his severity the general was extremely fair and responsive: he was distinguished by a deep "knowledge of military science, diligence, resourcefulness, representativeness and remarkable skill in dealing with soldiers."
These two combat commanders are opposed in the story "The Young Prince". This is a person of the imperial family, "an unsuccessful offspring of a great house", one of the "young grand dukes, who has already managed to become famous in St. Petersburg for revelry, debts, scandals, audacity and beauty." Being in the regiment of General L. in the rank of junior officer, the young "princesses" behave in the most "shameful, shameful and indecent way. General L., a very direct and independent person, did not reckon with the" offspring "of the Romanovs' house and severely punished the cheeky" princess ". True, General L. "got hard" for this, but in the eyes of officers and soldiers, his authority grew even more.
In this light, the tsarist military and the Russian army appeared in the story "The Last Knights".
Immediately after the appearance in the press, Kuprin's story provoked indignant attacks from the white emigration. Kuprin was accused of slandering "the victorious Russian army." A certain Georgy Sherwood, in a letter addressed to the editor of the newspaper Vozrozhdeniye, called the Kuprin story a libel and drew the following conclusion: The Last Knights is the best fit for one of the Soviet newspapers, where they will undoubtedly be reprinted, but in Vozrozhdeniye - in that organ of the émigré press, which we are accustomed to regard as the spokesman of healthy and pure state views - how could all this fiction be printed? The White Guard officer Sherwood found it necessary to send an open letter to the author of The Last Knights through Vozrozhdenie. Sherwood concluded that with "The Last Knights" Kuprin crossed out the novel "Junker" and his other works of the period of emigration and again returned to the path of denunciation ...
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1 The cook is a fermenter in our building. A very big and strong man. 2 Clown in the circus of Solomon. [Sat. "Alexander Ivanovich Skryabin. 1915-1940. Collection for the 25th anniversary of his death", - M.-L., 1940, p.24.] 1 2

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At the very end of August, the cadet adolescence of Alyosha Alexandrov ended. Now he will study at the Third Junker named after Emperor Alexander II infantry school. In the morning he paid a visit to the Sinelnikovs, but alone with Yulenka he managed to stay no more than a minute, during which, instead of a kiss, he was asked to forget the summer country nonsense: both of them now became big.

It was vague in his soul when he appeared in the building of the school on Znamenka. True, it was flattering that now he was already a “pharaoh”, as the “chief officers” called the first-year students - those who were already in their second year. Alexander's junkers were loved in Moscow and were proud of them.

The school invariably participated in all solemn ceremonies. Alyosha will long remember the magnificent meeting of Alexander III in the autumn of 1888, when the royal family walked along the line at a distance of several steps and the “pharaoh” fully tasted the sweet, pungent delight of love for the monarch. However, superfluous appointments, cancellation of vacation, arrest - all this rained down on the heads of the young men. They loved the junkers, but they “warmed” mercilessly at the school: the uncle warmed him - a classmate, a platoon officer, a course officer and, finally, the commander of the fourth company, Captain Fofanov, who bore the nickname Drozd.

Of course, daily exercises with a heavy infantry berdanka and drill could cause disgust for the service, if all the "pharaoh" warmers were not so patient and sternly sympathetic. The school did not even have a "tsukanya" - pushing the younger ones around, which is common for St. Petersburg schools. An atmosphere of chivalrous military democracy, a stern but caring camaraderie, prevailed. Everything related to the service did not allow indulgences even among friends, but outside of this, an unchanging “you” and a friendly, with a touch of familiarity that did not cross certain boundaries, were prescribed. After the oath, Drozd reminded them that now they were soldiers and for misconduct they could be sent not to their mother, but as privates in an infantry regiment. And yet, youthful enthusiasm, a boyishness that had not been outlived to the end, were visible in the tendency to give its name to everything around.

The first company was called "stallions", the second - "animals", the third - "dabs" and the fourth (Aleksandrova) - "fleas". Each commander also bore the name assigned to him. Only Belov, the second course officer, did not stick to a single nickname. From the Balkan War, he brought a Bulgarian wife of indescribable beauty, before whom all the cadets bowed, which is why the personality of her husband was considered inviolable.

But Dubyshkin was called Pup, the commander of the first company was Khukhrik, and the battalion commander was Berdi-Pasha. The persecution of officers was also a traditional manifestation of youth. However, the life of eighteen-twenty-year-old youths could not be completely absorbed by the interests of the service. Alexandrov vividly experienced the collapse of his first love, but just as vividly, sincerely interested in the younger sisters Sinelnikovs. At the December ball, Olga Sinelnikova announced Yulenka's engagement.

Alexandrov was shocked, but replied that he didn’t care, because he had loved Olga for a long time and would dedicate his first story to her, which Evening Leisures would soon publish. This his writing debut really took place. But at the evening roll call, Drozd appointed three days in a punishment cell for publishing without the sanction of his superiors. Aleksandrov took Tolstoy's "Cossacks" into the cell, and when Drozd asked if the young talent knew what he had been punished for, he cheerfully replied: "For writing a stupid and vulgar essay."

(After that, he abandoned literature and turned to painting.) Alas, the troubles did not end there. A fatal mistake was discovered in the dedication: instead of “O” there was “Yu” (such is the power of first love!), So soon the author received a letter from Olga: “For some reason, I can hardly ever see you, so goodbye” .

The Junker's shame and despair seemed to know no bounds, but time heals all wounds. Alexandrov turned out to be “dressed up” for the most prestigious ball, as we now say, at the Catherine Institute.

This was not part of his Christmas plans, but Drozd did not allow him to argue, and thank God. For many years, with bated breath, Alexandrov will remember the frantic race among the snows with the famous photogen Palych from Znamenka to the institute; a shiny entrance of an old house; the porter Porfiry, who seems just as old-fashioned (not old!) The marble staircases, light-coloured behinds, and pupils in formal dresses with a ball neckline. Here he met Zinochka Belysheva, from whose mere presence the very air brightened and shone with laughter.

It was true and mutual love. And how wonderfully they suited each other both in dance, and at the Chistoprudny skating rink, and in society. She was undeniably beautiful, but she possessed something more precious and rare than beauty. Once Alexandrov confessed to Zinochka that he loved her and asked her to wait for him for three years.

Three months later he graduated from college and served two months before entering the Academy of the General Staff. He will pass the exam no matter what the cost.

That's when he will come to Dmitry Petrovich and ask for her hand. The lieutenant receives forty-three rubles a month, and he will not allow himself to offer her the miserable fate of a provincial regimental lady. "I'll wait," was the answer. Since then, the question of the average score has become a matter of life and death for Aleksandrov. With nine points, it became possible to choose a regiment suitable for you for service. He also lacks up to nine some three tenths because of the six in military fortification. But now all the obstacles have been overcome, and nine points provide Alexandrov with the right to choose the first place of service.

But it so happened that when Berdi Pasha called out his name, the cadet almost at random jabbed his finger into the leaf and stumbled upon an unknown Undom infantry regiment. And now a brand new officer's uniform is put on, and the head of the school, General Anchutin, admonishes his pupils. Usually there are at least seventy-five officers in a regiment, and in such a large society, gossip is inevitable, corroding this society. So when a comrade comes to you with news about comrade X.

Then be sure to ask if he will repeat this news to X himself. Farewell, gentlemen.

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