Sholokhov's concept of the civil war. What is Sholokhov's attitude to the war

Wars were different, the history of peoples from antiquity is full of them. They are also reflected in the literature in different ways. After 1914, the topic of war became one of the main ones in our country and in other countries. Memories of that time, terrible in terms of savagery and inhumanity, are full of scorching anger, especially those who have been in the trenches, escaped barely alive from the flames and black ashes. This is how A. Serafimovich, D. Furmanov, K. Fedin, A. Tolstoy and others wrote about the war. Field of death... dressing stations... Half-dead in hospitals... Buried alive... Crazy... Writers as if summing up the terrible results of the war: destroyed cities, burned villages, trampled fields ... Legless, blind, orphaned ...

Reproduction of war and peace in organic unity and mutual conditionality, exact reality, historicism, battle painting and in the center of everything the fate of man - these are the traditions that were inherited by Russian writers in the depiction of war. Sholokhov, accepted this tradition, enriched it with new achievements. "Quiet Don" was created by two wars, the largest in the history of peoples. No sooner had the fires of the First World War been covered with ashes than the imperialists began preparations for the second. The First World War is depicted as a nationwide disaster, so its paintings correspond to gloomy symbolism: “At night, an owl roared in the bell tower. Unsteady and terrible cries hung over the farm, and the owl flew over to the cemetery, groaning over the brown, haunted graves.

To be thin, - the old people prophesied. “War is coming.”

With sharp, expressive strokes, the writer draws the onset of war - a national disaster. In the mass scenes, he allows many people to speak out - and the war appears in the people's perception, in the element of feelings, experiences, and assessments of the people. History breaks into the narrative widely and freely, in all its realities. The epic, dynamically unfolded pictures of Russia's entry into the world war end with an emotional assessment in which the voice of the writer himself sounds alarming.

The war demanded more and more victims. “The front was stretched from the Baltic with a deadly cord. Plans for a broad offensive were being developed at the headquarters, generals were poring over maps, orderlies were rushing, delivering combat orders, hundreds of thousands of soldiers were going to their death.

Sholokhov's heroes find themselves in various regiments scattered across different sectors of the fronts, which makes it possible for the writer to cover the beginning of hostilities widely, focus on depicting the first battles of the Southwestern and Northwestern fronts, on the events of the invasion of Russian armies into East Prussia, on the famous Battle of Galicia . Sholokhov's pages are sharply accusatory, their tone is disturbing and does not portend anything but a terrible expectation of death: “Echelons ... Echelons ... Uncountable echelons! Through the arteries of the country, along the railways to the western border, agitated Russia is driving greyish blood. The front line is depicted as a continuous hell. And everywhere in Sholokhov’s works, pain for the land emerges: “The cavalry trampled the ripened bread”, “The din, where the battles were going on, the gloomy face of the earth, smallpox blew up shells: rusted in it, longing for human blood, fragments of iron and steel.” But even more painful was the pain for the people. The war was gathering its terrible harvest: “Four sides, born with their heads, lay down, poured ore Cossack blood and, dead-eyed, unrestrained, decayed under an artillery memorial service in Austria, Poland, Prussia ... The Cossack color left the kurens and died there in death, during louse, horrified."

Only a month of war, but how people have changed: Yegorka Zharkov cursed dirtyly, cursed everything, Grigory Melekhov "all somehow charred, turned black." War cripples souls, devastates to the very bottom: “Changes were made on every face, each in his own way nurtured in himself and grew the seeds of what was sown by war.”

On the Vladimirov-Volynsk and Kovelsk directions in September 1916, the French method of attack was used - in waves. “Sixteen waves splashed Russian trenches. Swaying, thinning, boiling at the ugly clods of crumpled barbed wire, gray waves of human surf rolled in ... Of the sixteen waves, three rolled ... "

Such was terrible truth wars. And what blasphemy over morality, reason, the essence of humanity seemed to be the glorification of a feat. Sholokhov debunks such an idea of ​​a feat: “But it happened like this: people collided on the field of death ... stumbled, collided, delivered blind blows, disfigured themselves and horses and fled, frightened by a shot that killed a man, departed morally crippled. They called it a feat."

The popular perception of the imperialist war as a bloody massacre imposed on the people determined the realism of Sholokhov, open truth her images. The semi-feudal regime that existed in the country strengthened even more during the war, especially in the army. Wild treatment of soldiers, bullying, surveillance... Front-line soldiers are fed whatever they have to. Dirt, lice... The impotence of the generals to improve things. The desire of the allies to win the campaign at the expense of the human reserves of Russia, which the tsarist government willingly went for. And behind all this - countless human victims.

With exceptional expressiveness, pictures of the national disaster in the Quiet Don are drawn. In the autumn of 1917, the Cossacks began to return from the fronts of the imperialist war. They were gladly welcomed by their families. But it even more ruthlessly emphasized the grief of those who lost loved ones. It was necessary to take the pain, the torment of the entire Russian land very close to heart in order to say so solemnly and mournfully about this, as Sholokhov said: decayed under the cannon memorial service, and now the high hills are overgrown with weeds mass graves, crushed them with rains, covered with quicksand ... Grass overgrow graves - pain overgrows with prescription. The wind licked the traces of the departed, - time will lick both the blood pain and the memory of those who did not wait, because human life is short and not much is destined for all of us to trample the grass ... "

Sholokhov's humanism resounds with particular force on those pages where beauty is opposed to war. human feelings, the happiness of earthly existence, the victorious procession of emerging life. When the Melekhovs received news of Grigory's death in the war, they were stricken with grief. But on the twelfth day, Dunyashka learns from Peter's letter that Gregory is alive. With joyful news, she runs home: “Alive Grishka! .. Our dear one is alive! she yelled in a sobbing voice from a distance. “Peter writes! .. Grisha is wounded, not killed! .. Alive, alive! ..” And how Pantelei Prokofievich rejoices at the birth of two grandchildren: “Isho the Melekhov breed will not be transferred at once! The daughter-in-law presented the Cossack with the girl. Here is the daughter-in-law, so the daughter-in-law! .. ”So the pictures of simple human happiness set off the whole horror of a bloody massacre - a war that brings horror, death, ruin. Such a vision of the war brings Sholokhov closer to the Tolstoyan tradition of depicting war. The mighty breath of the Tolstoyan tradition in The Quiet Flows the Don was reflected in the depiction of the madness of war, its hostility to human nature, in the removal of heroic masks from it.

The First World War, followed by turbulent revolutionary events, became, as you know, the subject of close attention of world literature. But for the first time, Sholokhov succeeded in portraying this war with genuine epic power and deep historicism and from a truly popular position in The Quiet Don.

(1905 - 1984)

1. Personality of the writer.

2. "Don stories".

3. The epic novel "Quiet Don". The image of G. Melekhov in the assessment of criticism. The problem of the authorship of The Quiet Flows the Don. The poetics of the novel.

4. "Virgin Soil Upturned".

5. "The fate of man."

The name of Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov turned out to be hot spot in the literature of the second half of the twentieth century. The most controversial opinions were expressed about the works he created, the question of authorship was raised, and from time to time it escalated. The nature of the controversy around his work can be judged from numerous articles and monographs. Summing up the controversy, it should be said that there are many misunderstandings and contradictions. Sholokhov is the greatest writer of the 20th century, the most authoritative artist of the word.

M. A. Sholokhov was born in 1905, according to some reports in 1900. Father, a native of the Ryazan province, raznochinets, mother from peasants. He began to study at the Karginsky parochial school, continued his studies at the gymnasium, in the years civil war left her. From the age of 14 he fought on the side of the Reds, was a member of the food detachment. All the bloody events on the “quiet” Don were experienced by Sholokhov until the age of eighteen - he not only saw everything, but participated in many ways, was several times on the verge of death (no age gives experience of such emotional strength).

In October 1922, Mikhail Sholokhov left for Moscow. The path to literature was not easy. He worked as a loader, a bricklayer, served as an accountant. It was then, according to him, that “a real craving for literary work". Since 1923, Sholokhov began to attend meetings literary group"Young Guard", made acquaintance with young writers - Artem Vesely, Mikhail Svetlov, Yuri Libedinsky and others, tried himself in the genres of feuilleton, story. He stubbornly engaged in literature. The stay in Moscow was fruitful for Sholokhov. However, he was strongly associated with his small homeland. At the end of 1923, Mikhail Sholokhov left for the Don, where he married Maria Petrovna Gromoslavskaya, and the following year they arrived in Moscow, where he continues his creative work.

2. Creativity M.A. Sholokhov begins "Don stories"(1926) -8 stories ("Birthmark", "Kolovert", "Bakhchevnik", etc.). At the same time, a collection of short stories "Azure Steppe" was published, which included 12 stories ("Azure Steppe", "Nakhalenok", etc.). The main thing in these collections is the depiction of acute class and social conflicts. It happens that in these early stories“Mole”, “Alien blood”, “Shibalkovo seed”, etc.) the brother opposes the brother, the son opposes the father, the husband executes his wife. The civil war, especially on the Don and Kuban, proceeded very tragically, claimed many lives - we also find this drama in The Quiet Don. AT early works Sholokhov, the strength of these conflicts is felt, and the social conflict grew into a family one. The author of the Don Stories was accused of "hate psychosis", moral "deafness", "romantic execution", erection in a cult of violence. But is it?

The best works by M.A. Sholokhov is characterized not only by historical, but also by psychological truth: the truth of characters and actions. There are few such stories, but they exist, for example, “Alien Blood”. Here is not only depicted acute conflict time, and also reveals the psychology of the individual, and at the same time the author traces the change of one mood to another (we are talking about the mood of the old man Gavrila). Sholokhov portrayed the civil war on the Don as a bloody, fratricidal war, in which even the closest family ties collapsed. In the story "The Foal" one can feel the writer's philosophical thoughts about how unnatural war, blood, death of people are compared to the beauty and harmony of nature. And the foal is perceived as a piece of nature, an integral part of a peaceful life.

"Don stories" in terms of factual material, understanding the main conflict of the time, artistic skill were an approach to the theme of The Quiet Flows the Don. The originality of the style of the young Sholokhov manifested itself in the combination of drama and lyricism, in the depiction of the landscape. The nature of Sholokhov the artist is humanized, it is filled with sadness and anxiety. In the story "The Mole", the poetic image of the dark sun appears for the first time, which in "The Quiet Don" will become a symbol of the tragedy of Grigory Melekhov. The image of Don in the stories becomes a symbol of the Motherland, and in the epic it will be the main ideological core. The stories of M. Sholokhov were a significant stage in his work.

In 1924, Sholokhov returned to his homeland and settled forever in the village of Vyoshenskaya in order to constantly see the Don, listen to the sound of its waves, inhale the smells of the steppe, and live among the people.

3. Epic novel "Quiet Flows the Don" created from 1926 to 1940 . The first book appeared in 1928, the last in 1940. The first book of The Quiet Flows the Don (originally titled Donshchina) was completed in the spring of 1927, and the second in the fall. After their publication in the magazine "October" (1928, No. 1 - 10), it became clear that a writer of world significance entered the literature. M. Gorky noted that “Sholokhov, judging by the first volume, is talented ...”, and A.V. Lunacharsky called the still unfinished novel "a work of exceptional power in terms of the breadth of pictures, knowledge of life and people, in the bitterness of its plot."

The third book of The Quiet Don began to be published in 1929 (work on it went on from 1929 to 1931), but the publication was suspended several times - RAPP critics accused the writer of justifying the counter-revolutionary Upper Don Cossack uprising, which was discussed in this part of the epic . He was offered an ideological correction of events, which the author did not go for. Sholokhov sought to show the tragedy of each of the opposing sides in the Civil War. M. Sholokhov also had to make excuses for the ideological "reelings" of the protagonist: "I take Gregory as he is, as he really was ... I don't want to deviate from the historical truth."

In terms of genre, The Quiet Flows the Don belonged to a new type of historical romance. Central problem - searching for a place in a changing world. The plot is full of drama. The novel is intertwined with many storylines, through the development of which the main socio-historical conflict of the work is refracted. Extra-plot elements are author's digressions, lyrical landscapes. A large-scale recreation of the epochal life of the people, the subordination of numerous storylines to them, the disclosure of the fate of the characters (more than 700) determine genre originality– polyphony of voices carrying their truth of understanding the world. Exposition: the beginning of a love affair and the beginning of a social conflict - the relationship and interdependence of the storyline.

The structure of the epic is four books. The action in the first book (parts one, two and three) begins from 1912 to 1914, it describes the life of the Cossacks and the Melekhov family is brought to the fore, the formation of the character of the protagonist is presented; the action of the second book (parts four and five) begins in 1916 and ends in May 1918, its content: The First Imperialist War and Revolution. In the third book (part six) in the center of the Upper Don rebellion, civil war, the fate of Grigory, Natalia, Aksinya; book four (parts seven and eight) is a picture of the destruction of a life established over the centuries. The action ends in 1922, when the civil war died down on the Don.

One of characteristic features The epic novel is the writer's appeal to the life of people, the image of the family, traditions, etc. In The Quiet Don, Sholokhov talks about family relationships, about how three families coexisted peacefully under one roof. Pictures of mowing and catching fish turn into independent scenes. Sholokhov tells about folk customs. The matchmaking scene, the marriage of Grigory Melekhov, is written out in all details. The author from a close distance tells about the relations of neighbors (Melekhovs and Astakhovs), relations in the farm. In the 1st and 2nd parts of the novel, where interest in everyday life is especially noticeable, features of the national character are revealed.

The image of everyday life allows M. Sholokhov to touch upon the deepest problems - the problems of the stratification of society, to discover serious conflicts. Talking about the Tatar farm, Sholokhov seems to catch a glimpse of the fact that the neighbors have been fighting each other for seven years. The author also draws attention to the fact that the farm was ambivalent about the arrival of Shtokman. Some rebelled, treated him with hostility, but among the farmers there are those who are ready to listen to these evening conversations.

The relationship between the Melekhov and Korshunov families is perceived in a special way. Pantelei Prokofievich Melekhov knows his worth and tries to save his face in any situation. But one cannot but pay attention to the timidity that he experiences in the Korshunovs' house when he acts as a matchmaker (Melekhov guesses that he is no match for the rich owner Korshunov). It should also be noted a peculiar beginning, a plug-in short story about the father of Panteley Prokofievich, about his tragic fate. This story is a kind of prologue to the fate of Gregory.

Turning to everyday life, Sholokhov leads the reader to the conclusion that the Don society was not so united in its moods, that the Don began to be torn apart by contradictions. Here Sholokhov disagrees with bourgeois historiography, which proves that there was no ground for contradictions on the Don, and the Don Cossacks were free and prosperous, did not know serfdom, and later it was concluded that the revolution on the Don was not an organic phenomenon, that the Don did not come to the revolution, and the revolution - to the Don. Therefore, the uprising of 1919 is explained by the fact that the revolution was imposed from the outside, and in 1919 the Don defended his freedom. So Sholokhov's main idea was to create a true image of the people in a critical era.

The national character reveals itself in the special diligence of Natalya, Grigory, Pantelei Prokofievich. Grigory in the saddest moment will say that the only thing his thought is connected with is peasant worries, and everything else is tired. Drawing a portrait of Natalia, Sholokhov draws the reader's attention to "large hands crushed by work." The image of the people and its features are found in the fury of Pantelei Prokofievich, in the pride of Aksinya, in the motherly wisdom of Ilyinichna. Sholokhov was paramount not only to create an image from individual strokes, sketches, but the attitude of the people themselves to the ongoing events was important to him: the imperialist and civil wars, the revolution, and socio-political changes in the Don. There is talk of an imperialist war even when the farm says goodbye to the young Cossacks who are going into the army. Here one hears the dreary sorrowful "today feeds, the bread is ripe - it is necessary to clean it up." Officers argue about the war, but it is important for Sholokhov to show the perception of the rank and file, those who are on the front line. The people's environment also gives birth to Mikhail Koshevoy, who, unlike Grigory, accepted the truth of the Bolsheviks, and therefore is ready to take revenge and kill former friends for the idea.

So, at the end of 1926, Mikhail Sholokhov began his main book - Quiet Flows the Don. Trips around the Don farms, conversations with old-timers, work in the archives of Rostov - "material and nature", as the writer said, were at hand.

Image Grigory Melekhov connects the private world of family, home and the vast earthly world. Grigory Melekhov attracts the reader with a deep nationality and originality. Since childhood, he was brought up love for the earth, nature, wildlife. Somehow, by chance, while mowing, he cut a wild duck with a scythe and suffers from this. The author endows him with such character traits: he is wild, he has an indefatigable temperament, at the same time he is sensitive, observant. Grigory is a strong-willed nature (he took the first prize at horse races), he was handsome and stately. He was respected for his love for the household, work. At the beginning of the story, he is a nineteen-year-old boy. For the sake of his goal, he goes ahead: he fell in love with his neighbor's wife Aksinya, with her "perverse beauty", "he looked after her with bully perseverance ...", broke all the barriers on the way to her. They married not of their own free will, and Gregory did not want to come to terms with this. He cannot go against himself. Natalya is not sweet to him: “I don’t love you, Natasha.” Unable to overcome the passion for Aksinya, Grigory leaves home with her. An unprecedented thing - a free Cossack goes as a farm laborer to Pan Lesnitsky.

As a young father, wayward, obedient not to customs, but to his heart, he leaves for the service, goes to war. With all his being, Gregory resisted lies, violence, injustice. He is having a hard time with his first fight, he imagines the "Austrian" whom he cut down. "I'm tired of my soul." He not only acts, but thinks about the causes of what is happening. Grigory Melekhov witnesses how Silantyev dies, "saw how he fell, hugging the blue distance ...". The senselessness of the war gives rise to certain moods among the Cossacks, a negative attitude towards the war. At the same time, Grigory managed to preserve the dignity of a person in the war - he helps Aksinya's husband, the wounded Stepan Astakhov, get out of the battlefield, tries to protect the maid Franya from the brutalized Cossacks, denounces Chubatov for the senseless execution of the captured Austrian, but he also becomes hardened, ceases to understand the boundaries of goodness and evil, loses the ability to feel happiness.

Gregory meets on his life path both with fictional heroes, and with those who have real historical prototypes - Poznyakov, Budyonny, the imperial family. His endless throwing leads to the woman he loves, to home, children. Gregory's personality traits are spiritual quest and depth of experience.

Gregory did not have even and smooth roads. In 1917, Grigory Melekhov decides what to do: return home to the Don or go with the Reds. He, focusing on the mood of the Cossacks, at the beginning of 1918 fought on the side of the Reds and received the rank of colonel. Returning to the farm, he feels spiritual discord. Again the question arose: “To whom to lean?”. Gregory finds himself involuntarily in another camp again. Cruelty is becoming a terrible norm. Unable to stand it, he returns home again, "half gray". And again joins the Red Army, where he commands a squadron. Then the choice fell in favor of "peaceful life", but in the village he was persecuted as a "white, Cossack officer." Grigory falls into Fomin's gang, but cannot stand the senseless cruelty, leaves the gang of deserters, runs away to start a new life.

Love for Aksinya Astakhova, difficult and sinful, Grigory will carry through his whole life. Their love has withstood many trials: passion, betrayal and endless separation. When Grigory and Aksinya seemed to have united after a long torment (they were running away from the farm together), a tragedy occurred - a stray bullet took from him the creature dearest to him: “Grigory, dying of horror, realized that everything was over, that the worst thing that could only to happen in his life - it has already happened ... ". Grigory loses his Aksinya forever, and with her attachment to life, hope. After burying his beloved woman, he "raised his head and saw above him a black sky and a dazzlingly shining black disk of the sun." "The black disk of the sun" - a poetic image of monumental power, emphasizes the terrible loss.

There was no need for him to rush now. Everything was over. Grigory returns to the stirrup of the Quiet Don at the moment of the coming spring, throws weapons and cartridges into the "spiny ice" and even from a distance notices his son Mishatka. “Kneeling down, kissing his son’s pink cold hands, he repeated only one word in a choked voice:

“Son… son… That was all he had left in his life.”

The end of the novel has a philosophical sound. The final symbolizes not only parting with the past, but also the idea of ​​continuing life. Mikhail Sholokhov left his hero on the threshold of new life trials. What are his paths? How will his life turn out? The writer does not answer these questions, but makes the reader think.

One of the features of The Quiet Flows the Don is Sholokhov's attitude to people's destiny and personality. Therefore, the author singled out bright representative people - Grigory Melekhov. G. Melekhov is a people, popular attitude to truth and cruelty, to war, to life. There is no doubt that the image of Melekhov is a great artistic discovery of M. Sholokhov. This is the most complex image in literature.

The image of G. Melekhov in the assessment of criticism. Since 1940, since the release of the novel, there have been rather sharp disputes in literary criticism about the image of Grigory Melekhov. There were, as it were, two directions in the assessment of the hero. In the first case, researchers (L. Yakimenko and others) emphasized that Grigory was gradually at odds with his people and turned into a “renegade”, that Melekhov, on this path of divergence, was gradually losing those attractive qualities of nature that he had at the beginning. In the works of the 1940s-1950s, this image was interpreted with a minus sign.

The second concept, formed in the 1960s, "removed" the blame from Melekhov. V. Kovalev spoke out against critics who believed that Sholokhov was mainly occupied with exposing weaknesses popular character, was against the theory of apostasy. F. Biryukov argued with those who saw in the novel a violation of historical truth (Yakimenko, Gura and others) - this concerned the episode of Podtelkov's lynching of Cherentsov. According to Biryukov, Sholokhov followed the truth of history and destroyed only the straightforward schemes of the enemies of the revolution. The Quiet Don reflects all the complexity of life, when subjective honesty could turn into a betrayal of the people (Kaledin) and when the unscrupulousness of the leader cast a shadow on the communists (Podtelkov). A. Britikov urged not to simplify the organic social duality of the protagonist of The Quiet Flows the Don.

The tragedy of Melekhov was fully explained as a historical error, and a conclusion was made about the tragic fate of man. The authors who share this concept, Khvatov, Biryukov, Petelin, with a certain difference between them, emphasized the circumstance that pushed the hero onto this path, onto the path of Grigory entering the Fomin gang, and proved that Grigory is not a loner, not a renegade, and not guilty if the peasant-worker could not figure out what was happening. Grigory Melekhov, in search of the truth, stood on the verge of two principles, denying both of them, without realizing that the third was not given.

Shcherbina spoke about the inconsistency of the character of Sholokhov's hero, and Metchenko called G. Melekhov "an artistic type of the era." Ultimately, literary critics conclude that the hero is tragic.

At present, it would be naive to analyze the arguments of L. Yakimenko and those who tried to prove that Grigory broke up with the people - they are unconvincing. Those who spoke of renegade paid attention to tragic ending Main character. This, of course, makes sense, but also a tragedy. Grigory Melekhov testifies that the writer places high demands on his hero, and at the same time speaks of responsibility for committed crime, and yet the ending leads to the conclusion that the author trusts his hero. In order to understand the essence of Melekhov's tragedy, it is necessary to understand the author's attitude to this image, and which cannot be replaced (as Yakimenko did) with an attitude towards any of the heroes. Sholokhov's attitude to G. Melekhov arises at the intersection of views on Grigory of others actors: mothers, Natalia, Aksinya, Koshevoy, Shtokman, etc.

Of course, we take into account the Bolshevik Koshevoy's idea of ​​Grigory, but we also take into account the attitude of his mother towards Grigory. It is no coincidence that Ilyinichna singled out the youngest among other children. There is a magnificent scene in the novel, which is perceived through the eyes of Aksinya: the mother wants to meet Grigory before her death.

The truth is manifested both in sympathy for Gregory and in his condemnation, the measure of exactingness and the measure of trust. The tragedy of the image is seen in the fact that he is a person of a certain life experience and it is difficult for him to understand in the name of what sacrifices, sufferings. He does not accept these sufferings and therefore seeks his truth from the Reds, then from the Whites, but strives to go his own way. In such a situation, it is impossible to explain the contradictions of the hero by social position.

Throwing Grigory Melekhov explained by the complexity of his situation, the inconsistency of time and the fact that a man who knew only the peasant business, was not able to understand these events, could not decide "where to go." His throwing is “not his fault, but his misfortune” (S.I. Sheshukov). And at the same time, Grigory Melekhov modern man, and the choice life path imposes responsibility for their actions. The fate of Melekhov shows that the people fought on the side of the Reds and the Whites ”(P. Palievsky). Gregory's throwing is not only personal contradictions, but also contradictions of being.

It should be emphasized that the continuity fiction manifested itself in the fact that characters were created in national literatures (like Grigory Melekhov), where dialectically complex different shades struggle between good and evil, tragic throwing. For example, the image of Kazgirey Matkhanov by Alim Keshokov. It brings together heroes and unity with the people.

The author does not reduce the novel "Quiet Flows the Don" to the image of Grigory Melekhov. Women's images carry a special meaning in the novel - they continue the traditions of Russian classical literature. Each of them has its own unique world, its own suffering and joy, its own pain of the soul. Sholokhov at a new historical stage shows a collective image of a Russian woman. It would be unfair to bring out the characteristics of individual heroines or oppose one another. The images of Sholokhov, both female and male, are of world-historical significance.

One of the manifestations of the heroic are the principles of Sholokhov's portrayal of the people, a man from the people. The author reveals the people in typical features and does not show the feat of the people either in the unjust imperialist war, or in the White Cossack uprising, "the inglorious war against the Russian people." This is the writer's concept of achievement, heroism.

The problem of the authorship of The Quiet Flows the Don. Why was the authorship of Mikhail Sholokhov's novel questioned? For the first time, rumors and hints that the author used someone else's manuscript arose in 1928, when the October magazine published the first two books of The Quiet Flows the Don - they immediately brought All-Russian and international fame to Mikhail Sholokhov.

Amazement, followed by suspicion, caused the age of the author - Mikhail Sholokhov was only twenty-two years old at the time of the publication of the first book of The Quiet Flows the Don, and he finished the second at twenty-three. It seemed from where at all young man such maturity of judgment and such brilliant command literary form? They could not accept this phenomenon. A version arose about a certain white officer who allegedly wrote on the roads of the Civil War and then lost the manuscript of the book, and Sholokhov found it and “appropriated it”. A special commission was created, where Mikhail Sholokhov was supposed to submit drafts of The Quiet Flows the Don. When he introduced them, the suspicions immediately dissipated.

In 1965, after Mikhail Sholokhov was awarded the Nobel Prize, old rumors surfaced. However, the main argument for Sholokhov's "plagiarism" was the absence of the manuscript of The Quiet Flows the Don, which was lost during the Great Patriotic War.

Interest in the problem was later fueled by the book by I. Tomashevskaya, The Stirrup of the Quiet Don, who appeared under the pseudonym D * (Paris, 1974), with a preface and afterword by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a book by Roy Medvedev (1975), journal articles. A wave of relevant publications swept through the pages of Russian periodicals during the times of perestroika "sensations".

The book "Who wrote" Quiet Flows the Don "? (The problem of the authorship of The Quiet Don). - M., 1989) - translation of the 1982 edition of the work of the Swedish-Norwegian research group: G. Khiesto, S. Gustavsson and others, who conducted a computer analysis of the study of a literary text in a foreign computer center (since Sholokhov is a Nobel Prize winner). The analysis was author's speech Sholokhov (“Quiet Don”, “Virgin Soil Upturned”, “Don Stories”) and the Cossack writer Fyodor Kryukov. Scientists in this work presented the results of their analysis: tables, diagrams, etc. and came to the following conclusion that Sholokhov and Kryukov have a different vocabulary structure, frequency of word usage, sentence length, that is, the style of F. Kryukov is completely different from M. Sholokhov , and Sholokhov writes strikingly similar to the author of The Quiet Flows the Don. Thus, the authorship of The Quiet Flows the Don is concretely proved. On the this stage this issue was suspended and no longer caused the previous discussions.

In 1999, a manuscript of The Quiet Flows the Don was found in one of the editions in Moscow. December 4, 1999 Russian newspaper» published an article by the director of the Institute of World Literature named after A.M. Gorky (IMLI) Felix Kuznetsov "Who held Mikhail Sholokhov hostage?". It reported that IMLI managed to find and acquire the manuscripts of the first and second books of The Quiet Flows the Don, which were considered lost: “The manuscript has 885 pages. Of these, 605 were written by M.A. Sholokhov, 280 pages copied in white by the hand of the writer's wife Maria Petrovna Sholokhova and, apparently, her sisters; many of these pages contain edits by M. A. Sholokhov. The pages written by M. A. Sholokhov include drafts, versions and white pages, as well as sketches and inserts for certain parts of the text.

The choice of religion by a people is always determined by its rulers. The true religion is always the one professed by the sovereign; the true god is the god whom the sovereign orders to worship; thus, the will of the clergy, which leads the sovereigns, always turns out to be the will of God himself.

Sholokhov Mikhail Aleksandrovich, Nobel Prize laureate, Soviet writer and figure was born in May 1905 (10) at x. Kruzhilin in the Donetsk region.

Father, Alexander Mikhailovich Sholokhov, was a native of the Ryazan province, was engaged in agriculture on rented land, then was a clerk and manager of a mill. What is Sholokhov's attitude to the war Anastasia Danilovna Chernikova, Sholokhov's mother, was the daughter of a serf from the Chernihiv region.

At the beginning of the 1st World War, Sholokhov studied in Moscow, and then continued his studies in the Voronezh province, in Vyoshenskaya, having completed only four classes of the gymnasium.

In the period 1920 - 1922. Sholokhov lived and worked in the village of Karginskaya, was engaged in office work and taught, participated in the population census program. In 1922, Sholokhov decided to continue his education in Moscow and try his hand at writing. Having no Komsomol direction and work experience, Sholokhov failed to enter the working faculty. I had to work as a bricklayer, loader, handyman. In parallel with heavy physical labor, Mikhail Alexandrovich is also engaged in his spiritual development: he was a member of the Young Guard literary society, attends the classes of O. Brik, V. Shklovsky, N. Aseev.

The first humorous and other stories were published in the Youthful Truth newspaper in 1923, including the story "The Mole", which later became widely known. In December 1923, Sholokhov returned to Karginskaya, and then to Bukanovskaya village, where in January 1924 he married Gromoslavskaya G.P. (daughter of the former chieftain). In marriage, Sholokhov had four children: Alexander, Svetlana, Maria, Mikhail.

Sholokhov's novel The Quiet Flows the Don, published in 1940, but written, however, much earlier, from 1928 to 1932, brought great fame in Russia and abroad. In 1941, The Quiet Don was translated into European and Oriental languages. What is the attitude of Sholokhov to the war And for his work "Virgin Soil Upturned" Mikhail Alexandrovich receives the Lenin Prize in 1960.

Military works writers were no less famous, despite the fact that they were published in excerpts.

These works appeared under the impression of working as a correspondent during the war years. In the post-war period, Mikhail Alexandrovich was engaged in patriotic journalism, wrote “The Word about the Motherland”, “Light and Darkness”, “The Struggle Continues” and other works of patriotic themes. Until the end of his life, Sholokhov lived in Vyoshenskaya, where his house later became a museum. He donated both awards to charity, giving Stalin Prize to the defense fund, and the Nobel Prize for the construction of the Vyoshenskaya school. Since the 1960s, he moved away from literature, became interested in hunting and fishing. What is Sholokhov's attitude to the war

Happiness has no tomorrow; he does not have yesterday either; it does not remember the past, does not think about the future; he has a present - and that is not a day - but a moment.

The work of M. Sholokhov "Quiet Don", as well as "War and Peace" by L. Tolstoy, belongs to the genre of the epic novel. In both works, the human personality is shown in turning points Russian history, both boldly combine personal, family, domestic and historical narrative plans. In the Center of the novel "War and Peace" - the Patriotic War of 1812, in the "Quiet Don" events take place during the First World War and the Civil War. The psychology of a person in war is revealed in each of these works.

First of all, in both works, military reality

is reflected not through the perception of any one hero: it is important for both L. Tolstoy and M. Sholokhov to show the reaction of many people to the war and to the changes associated with it. So, in "War and Peace" we heard the proud words of Andrei Bolkonsky that he goes to war because "this life is not for me", the rumors of the Moscow and St. Petersburg world, etc. Similarly, in " On the Quiet Don, the reader will simultaneously or with a slight delay learn how in different places the Cossacks meet the news of the beginning of the war: Grigory's regiment is in the Carpathians, part of Mitka Korshunov is near Vilnius, and Grigory's brother, Peter, is mobilized in the Tatar farm.

Both works reflect the people's attitude to the war: L. Tolstoy's - the nationwide, M. Sholokhov's - in his Cossack version.

In the novel "War and Peace" war for the people is hard work, blood, suffering, death. Here is a picture of the campaign before the battle of Shengraben: “On the edges of the road, fallen, skinned and not skinned horses, then broken wagons were constantly visible ... Soldiers, drowning knee-deep in mud, picked up guns and wagons in their hands, whips beat, hooves slipped, lines burst and burst into screams of the chest. Reading this description, you feel the enormous tension of human strength, the burden of labor, fatigue reaching the limit. There is nothing spectacular and ostentatious in war, people simply do their duty without thinking that they are heroes (the most striking example is the battery of Staff Captain Tushin).

Almost a hundred years have passed, and nothing seems to have changed in human behavior in war. The same blood, the same strain of human strength, the same face of the earth distorted by war: “At night, over the horizon, handy scarlet glows stretched to the sky, small towns, villages, towns blazed with lightning ... , and from a distance it looked like the trees were in torn wounds and were bleeding with ore tree blood. And there are no heroes here, but there is fear, horror to the point of loss of reason and instinctive protection of one's own life. One of numerous examples this is the episode with the Cossack Kryukov, who saved the Cossack Ivankov from death and killed several Germans who surrounded him: “... he, rearing up his horse, wobbling his whole body, fought back with a saber until it was knocked out. Having snatched a pike from a nearby German, he unfolded it, as if for training. M. Sholokhov does not deprive Kryukov of courage and combat resourcefulness, but gradually gives this fight the character of a crazy fight, where people lose their human face and, "brutalized with fear", "stabbed and beaten with anything." (“The horses, unconscious with horror, swooped in and confusedly knocked together”).

Before us is not heroic deed, but an ordinary military episode, where ordinary people, not yet experienced in battle, were frightened of each other, entered the battle, having fulfilled their duty, and only chance decided the outcome of the fight. There are no cowards here, but there are no miracle heroes either, but the psyche of an ordinary person is shown in an inhuman situation of killing their own kind.

The murder of both L. Tolstoy and M. Sholokhov is a severe moral shock. Just as Petya Rostov in War and Peace cannot help thinking about the Frenchman he killed, so Grigory Melekhov again and again returns to the Austrian he killed. Murder is a burden that neither consciousness nor feelings can cope with.

Both L. Tolstoy and M. Sholokhov are deeply concerned about the question of humanity in war. It is clear that these two concepts are irreconcilably hostile to each other, but both writers convincingly show that it is in a situation of carnage that the true essence of a person is manifested, and if there was humanity in him, then it will only be strengthened in trials. We remember how in "War and Peace" Pierre takes a girl out of a burning house, Andrei Bolkonsky saves an unknown doctor's wife.

The situation is similar in the "Quiet Don". Grigory Melekhov, alone against a whole platoon, rushes to defend the unfortunate Franya, and then, remembering this terrible scene, he almost cries: what the war has done to people! Himself seriously wounded, he takes out an officer from the battle. He also saves his mortal enemy - Stepan Astakhov. “Saved, obeying the heart,” notes M. Sholokhov.

So, war severely examines a person for moral strength, faith and selflessness. But she convincingly shows what is real in a person. good start that compassion and mercy will help a person to save a living soul in fire. The novels "War and Peace" by L. Tolstoy and "Quiet Flows the Don" by M. Sholokhov are imbued with faith in a person who can endure any trials.

All works are abbreviated by this author The Quiet Don Virgin Soil Upturned At the end of the penultimate Turkish campaign, the Cossack Prokofy Melekhov brought home, to the village of Veshenskaya, a captive Turkish woman. From their marriage a son was born, named Panteley, just as swarthy...

The novel by M. Sholokhov "Quiet Flows the Don" is a work of extraordinary power. The heroes of the novel reflect the historical and social upheavals of the 20th century. Sholokhov created a gallery of images that, by the strength of their expressiveness, artistic value, stood in one row ...

Mishka Koshevoy is a Cossack from the village of Tatarskaya, who went over to the side of the Bolsheviks. His character is characterized by impetuosity, great emotionality, maximalism. Taking the position of the "Reds", the hero devotes his life entirely to the fight against the whites, the enemies of the people....

Natalia is a nervous, reflective woman. She is hardworking, beautiful, kind, but unhappy. Natalya, having only learned about the matchmaking of the Melekhovs, declares: “I love Grishka, but I won’t marry anyone else! .. I don’t need others, my friend ... I won’t go, let them go and don’t marry ....

Sholokhov was born on May 14, 1905 in the village of Kruzhilinsky in the village of Veshenskaya, Don District. Childhood years were spent in the farm Kruzhilinsky. He studied in Kargin, Moscow, Boguchar and Veshenskaya. He graduated from four classes of the gymnasium. At the time of the Great October Socialist Revolution, he studied at the men's gymnasium in one of the county towns of the Voronezh province. In 1918, when the occupying troops approached this city, he interrupted his studies and went home. From 1918 to the beginning of 1920, the Sholokhov family was alternately in the villages of Yelanskaya and Karginskaya in the Verkhnedonsky district. It was a difficult time: white and red waves swept the Don region - a civil war was raging. Teenager Misha "absorbed" the events taking place: battles, executions, poverty. Whites against reds, reds against whites, Cossacks against Cossacks. The stories are one scarier than the other.

Future Writer not only eagerly listened to the stories of experienced Cossacks; he went to watch those returning from the front, saw the emaciated, bloodless faces of wounded soldiers, read newspapers and leaflets. Memory recorded faces, names, facts, the expression of human eyes, the reflection on the faces of joy, grief, fear, hope, mortal agony. An unprecedented trace was left by the terrible incident of those years in the soul of an impressionable young man, incredible pictures were painted by his mighty imagination. In the events of the civil war, in sharp class conflicts, in the stanitsa and peasant farmers who separated themselves, in the exploits that the Bolsheviks performed, in the cruel habits of the defenders of the old world, life opened up before the keen eye and inquisitive thought of an early ripe young man. The desire to tell about what he saw and experienced was forced to take up the pen. Let the little stories that he sent back in 1922 to Komsomol newspapers and "Spark", were not printed - Sholokhov firmly decided to devote himself to literature. In the winter of 1924, in Moscow, he was interrupted by odd jobs in newspapers. Life was difficult: during the day - wandering around the editorial offices, at night - working on the manuscript.

Sholokhov's first story appeared on December 14, 1924 in the newspaper Molodoy Leninets. It was "Motherland". They discover a large cycle of Don stories, which was created by the writer in a year. The civil war for Sholokhov is a catastrophe in which human ties are destroyed. There are no right and wrong here, which means there can be no winners. The author’s position turns out to be wider than any socio-political concepts, as evidenced by the landscape that crowns the story: “And in the evening, when horsemen loomed behind the copse, the wind brought voices, horse snorting and the ringing of stirrups, a vulture kite reluctantly fell off the ataman’s shaggy head .

At first glance, it may seem that the story "Rodinka" is based on a social class conflict between the Red Army men, who establish Soviet power on the Don, and a gang that takes bread from peaceful Cossacks. Moreover, the dramatic nature of the depicted situation is aggravated by the fact that the class struggle demarcated not only the Don, but also the Cossack families: father and son find themselves in different sides barricades. However, in the state of mind of implacable enemies there is much in common. The life of the squadron commander Nikolka Koshevoy, like the life of the chieftain of the gang, got out of the usual norm. This is evidenced by the portraits and author's characteristics of the characters. In the portrait of Nikolka, Sholokhov emphasizes the contradiction between his young age and the harsh life experience that the civil war gave him: “Nikolka is broad-shouldered, looks beyond his years. His eyes are aging in radiant wrinkles and his back, stooped like an old man ”(the hero is 18 years old).

The main theme of the "Don Tales" can be defined as follows: the dehumanization of both the Reds and the Whites during the civil war and rare moments of the triumph of a very difficult reverse process - incarnation. At the same time, traditional Christian values, at first glance, are not taken into account by the author, but, nevertheless, the content of the characters' inner spiritual life is built in accordance with the gospel commandments. It must be admitted that the best stories from the Don cycle, such as "The Foal" and "Strange Blood", are variations on biblical themes.

The conflict between the Reds and the bandits, in the work of Sholokhov, is increasingly giving way to a more important conflict - between the centuries-old norms of human life and inhumanity fratricidal war. Starting the conversation with an analysis of the senselessness and suicidality of the confrontation of the parties in the civil war ("Mole"), M. Sholokhov comes to the idea of ​​the need to remove this mutual support by the New Testament morality: love your enemies. And this idea reaches its artistic peak in the story “Alien Blood”.

Approximately the same concept Sholokhov adheres to in the epic The Quiet Flows the Don. Working on it, Sholokhov proceeded from the fact that the people are the main driving force stories. This concept received a deep artistic embodiment in the novel: in the image folk life, life and work of the Cossacks, in the image of the participation of the people in historical events. Sholokhov showed that the path of the people in the revolution and civil war was difficult, tense, tragic. When he was awarded the Nobel Prize for the novel Quiet Flows the Don, Sholokhov spoke about the greatness of the historical path of the Russian people.

The First World War is portrayed by Sholokhov as a national disaster, and the old soldier, confessing Christian wisdom, advises young Cossacks: “Remember one thing: if you want to be alive, get out of a mortal battle, you must observe human truth ...” Sholokhov describes with great skill the horrors of war that cripples people both physically and mentally. Death, suffering awaken sympathy and unite soldiers: people cannot get used to war. Sholokhov writes in the second book that the news of the overthrow of the autocracy did not evoke joyful feelings among the Cossacks, they reacted to it with restrained anxiety and expectation. The Cossacks are tired of the war. They dream of finishing it. How many of them have already died: not one Cossack widow grieved for the dead. The Cossacks did not immediately understand the historical events. Having returned from the fronts of the world war, the Cossacks did not yet know what tragedy of fratricidal war they would have to endure in the near future. The Upper Don uprising appears in the image of Sholokhov as one of the central events of the civil war on the Don. There were many reasons. Red terror, unjustified cruelty of representatives Soviet power on the Don in the novel are shown with great artistic power. Numerous executions of Cossacks carried out in the villages - the murder of Miron Korshunov and grandfather Trishka, who personified the Christian principle, preaching that all power is given by God, the actions of Commissar Malkin, who gave orders to shoot bearded Cossacks. Sholokhov showed in the novel that the Upper Don uprising reflected the popular protest against the destruction of the foundations peasant life and centuries old traditions Cossacks, traditions that have become the basis of peasant morality and morality, which has evolved over the centuries, and is inherited from generation to generation. The writer also showed the doom of the uprising. Already in the course of events, the people understood and felt their fratricidal character. One of the leaders of the uprising, Grigory Melekhov, declares: “But I think that we got lost when we went to the uprising.” The life of the Cossacks is determined by two concepts - they are warriors and farmers at the same time. It must be said that historically the Cossacks developed on the borders of Russia, where enemy raids were frequent, so the Cossacks were forced to defend their land with weapons in their hands, which was distinguished by its special fertility and rewarded a hundredfold for the work invested in it. Later, already under the rule of the Russian tsar, the Cossacks existed as a privileged military estate, which largely determined the preservation of ancient customs and traditions among the Cossacks. Sholokhov shows the Cossacks as very traditional. For example, from an early age they get used to the horse, which acts for them not just as an instrument of production, but true friend in battle and a comrade in work (he takes the description of the weeping hero Christoni by the heart, according to the Funnel taken away by the Reds). All Cossacks are brought up in respect for their elders and unquestioning obedience to them (Pantelei Prokofievich could punish Grigory even when hundreds and thousands of people were under the latter's command). The Cossacks are controlled by the ataman, elected by the military Cossack Circle, where Pantelei Prokofievich is sent to Sholokhov.

War and peace - these two states of life of the human community, erected by Leo Tolstoy into the title formula of his great novel, to which the author of The Quiet Flows the Don oriented himself (he constantly read War and Peace at the time of thinking and working on the epic, he took with him and to the front of the Great Patriotic War), in fact, for Sholokhov, they are the two main layers of national life, the two points of human reference. Tolstoy's influence on Sholokhov, especially in his view of the war, has been noted more than once, but still the author of The Quiet Flows the Don has his own in-depth understanding of the peaceful and military status of life, coming from greater proximity to the natural-natural type of existence, the root feeling of being in general .

World War, revolution, civil war in Sholokhov in many ways only condenses to a terrible, repulsive concentrate what exists in a peaceful state, in the very nature of man and the things of this world: impulses of division, displacement, passionate selfhood, mockery of man, malice and murder. The world is twisted by its bundle of contradictions and struggles - having heated up, they will come out in a civil confrontation, they will reach the Homeric "bloodshed", violent mutual extermination, the complete destruction of the former way of life. Peace and war are states of relative, visible health (with a chronicity driven inside) and acute illness of one organism. The diagnosis of both phases of the disease, by and large, is the same: it is determined by that central ideological opposition of the Quiet Don, which Fedorov defined as relatedness, unrelatedness despite the fact that kinship is both the most naturally deep and irrevocable relationship between people, children of the same father, heavenly and earthly, and at the same time the most distorted, up to its opposite, even in its warm and secret core - family and community. It is in the fratricidal civil confrontation, ironically and mercilessly supported by ideology, on the one hand, and on the other, by the instinct of physical survival and protection of one’s home and well-being, that all the suicidality and mutual extermination of the “tit for tat” principle is untiringly fed by poisoned revengeful passion - to the last enemy and offender! Sholokhov does not get tired of clearly demonstrating how, inflaming more and more, the passionate indulgence in hatred, evil, murder is aggravated, how it strikes its bearers with a boomerang. Here, in the soul of Petro Melekhov, who was forced to dance to the common tune, currying favor with Fomin, “hate pounded fitfully and his hands convulsed with a cramp from an itchy desire to hit, kill.” When the opportunity arises, no one is holding back either hatred or this desire. Bitterness, frenzy - mutually and it is growing in degrees. The installation is for the complete physical destruction of the enemy, there is no question of some kind of disassembly-sorting of people, their disposal, transformation: “Shovel this evil spirits from the ground” and that's it! An officer of the Don Army harshly, coldly, like a breeder, signs the final verdict to the captured Red Army soldiers: “This bastard, which is a breeding ground for all sorts of diseases, both physical and social, must be exterminated. There is nothing to babysit them!” The same is mirrored in the thoughts and speeches of Mishka Koshevoy: camaraderie and unanimity by cutting down the rebellious, vacillating human material!

The discovery of the Don cycle by M. Sholokhov consisted in the fact that he showed the criminality of the civil war, its disastrous destructive consequences both for the fate of the Quiet Don and for Russia as a whole. Don writers before Sholokhov do not have this soul-shattering senselessness and sinfulness of fratricide. R. Kumov, S. Arefin, P. Krasnov only approached this topic, and M. Sholokhov developed it and deepened it. Very early in his life, the idea matures that both sides are wrong in this war, for which he sometimes received the label of a dubious fellow traveler.