According to the encyclopedia “The Great Patriotic War,” over a thousand writers served in the active army; out of eight hundred members of the Moscow writers’ organization, two hundred and fifty went to the front in the first days of the war. Four hundred and seventy-one writers did not return from the war - this is a big loss. Once during the Spanish War, Hemingway remarked: “It is very dangerous to write the truth about war, and it is very dangerous to seek the truth... When a man goes to the front to seek the truth, he may find death instead. But if twelve go, and only two return, the truth that they bring with them will really be the truth, and not distorted rumors that we pass off as history. Is it worth the risk to find this truth? Let the writers themselves judge that.”
Newspapers played a special role in the fate of military literature.
I. Erenburg, K. Simonov, V. Grossman, A. Platonov, E. Gabrilovich, P. Pavlenko, A. Surkov worked as correspondents for “Red Star”; its regular authors were A. Tolstoy, E. Petrov, A. Dovzhenko, N. Tikhonov. A. Fadeev, L. Sobolev, V. Kozhevnikov, B. Polevoy worked for Pravda. Army newspapers even created a special position - a writer. B. Gorbatov served in the newspaper of the Southern Front “For the Glory of the Motherland”, in the newspaper of the Western and then the 3rd Belorussian Front “Krasnoarmeyskaya Pravda” - A. Tvardovsky... The newspaper at that time became the main intermediary between the writer and the reader and the most influential practical organizer of the literary process. The alliance of the newspaper with writers was born of the newspaper’s need for a writer’s pen (of course, within the framework of journalistic genres), but as soon as it became more or less strong and familiar, it turned into an alliance with fiction (it began to be present on newspaper pages in “pure » form). In January 1942, “Red Star” published the first stories by K. Simonov, K. Paustovsky, V. Grossman. After this, works of fiction - poems and poems, short stories and stories, even plays - began to appear in other central newspapers, in front-line and army newspapers. A previously unthinkable phrase came into use - it was considered an axiom that a newspaper lives for one day - on the newspaper page the phrase: “To be continued in the next issue.” The following stories were published in newspapers: “Russian Tale” by P. Pavlenko (“Red Star”, 1942), “The People are Immortal” by V. Grossman (“Red Star”, 1942), “Rainbow” by V. Vasilevskaya (“Izvestia”, 1942 ), “The Family of Taras” (“The Unconquered”) by B. Gorbatov (“Pravda”, 1943); the first chapters of the novel “The Young Guard” by A. Fadeev (Komsomolskaya Pravda, 1945), the novel was finished after the war; poems: "Pulkovo Meridian" by V. Inber ("Literature and Life", "Pravda", 1942), "February Diary" by O. Berggolts ("Komsomolskaya Pravda", 1942), "Vasily Terkin" by A. Tvardovsky ("Pravda" , “Izvestia”, “Red Star”, 1942); plays: “Russian People” by K. Simonov (Pravda, 1942), “Front” by A. Korneychuk (Pravda, 1942).
For the infantry soldier, artilleryman, and sapper, war was not only countless dangers - bombings, artillery raids, machine gun fire - and proximity to death, which was so often only four steps away, but also hard daily work. And from the writer she also demanded selfless literary work - without respite or rest. “I wrote,” recalled A. Tvardovsky, “essays, poems, feuilletons, slogans, leaflets, songs, articles, notes - everything.” But even the traditional newspaper genres intended to cover the present day, its evil - correspondence and journalistic articles (and they, naturally, became most widespread at that time, they were turned to most often throughout the war), when a gifted artist resorted to them, they were transformed : correspondence turned into an artistic essay, a journalistic article into an essay, and acquired the advantages of fiction, including durability. Much of what was then hastily written for tomorrow’s issue of the newspaper has retained its living force to this day, so much talent and soul was invested in these works. And the individuality of these writers clearly manifested itself in journalistic genres.
And the first line in the list of the writers who most distinguished themselves during the war by their work in the newspaper rightfully belongs to Ilya Ehrenburg, who, as evidenced on behalf of the corps of front-line correspondents K. Simonov, “worked harder, more selflessly and better than all of us during the difficult suffering of the war.”
Ehrenburg is a publicist par excellence; his main genre is the article, or rather the essay. In Ehrenburg one can rarely find a description in its pure form. The landscape and the sketch are immediately enlarged and acquire a symbolic meaning. Ehrenburg’s own impressions and observations (and he, a purely civilian, went to the front more than once) are included in the figurative fabric of his journalism on equal terms with letters, documents, quotes from newspapers, eyewitness accounts, testimonies of prisoners, etc.
Laconism is one of the striking distinctive features of Ehrenburg's style. The large number of varied facts that the writer uses requires conciseness. Often the very “montage” of facts carves out a thought and leads the reader to the conclusion: “When Leonardo da Vinci sat over the drawings of a flying machine, he thought not about high-explosive bombs, but about the happiness of mankind. As a teenager I saw the first loops of the French pilot Pegu. The elders said: “Be proud - man flies like a bird!” Many years later I saw Junkers over Madrid, over Paris, over Moscow...” (“The Heart of Man”).
Contrasting comparison, a sharp transition from a particular but striking detail to a generalization, from ruthless irony to heartfelt tenderness, from an angry invective to an inspiring appeal - this is what distinguishes Ehrenburg’s style. An attentive reader of Ehrenburg's journalism cannot help but guess that its author is a poet.
Konstantin Simonov is also a poet (at least, that’s how readers perceived him at that time, and he himself then considered poetry to be his true calling), but of a different kind - he always gravitated towards plot poems; in one of the reviews of his pre-war poems it was insightful noted: “Konstantin Simonov has visual acuity and the demeanor of a prose writer.” So the war and work at the newspaper only pushed him towards prose. In his essays, he usually depicts what he saw with his own eyes, shares what he himself experienced, or tells the story of some person with whom the war brought him together.
Simonov's essays always have a narrative plot, so their figurative structure is indistinguishable from his stories. As a rule, they contain a psychological portrait of the hero - an ordinary soldier or front-line officer, reflect the life circumstances that shaped the character of this person, depict in detail the battle in which he distinguished himself, while the author pays main attention to the everyday life of war. Here is the ending of the essay “On the Sozh River”: “The second day of the battle began on this not the first water line. It was an ordinary, difficult day, after which a new day of battle began, just as difficult,” she characterizes the author’s point of view. And Simonov recreates in great detail what a soldier or officer had to go through in these “ordinary” days, when in the bone-chilling cold or muddy roads he walked along endless front-line roads, pushed skidding cars or pulled out dead stuck cars from impassable mud. guns; how he lit the last pinch of shag mixed with crumbs, or chewed a randomly preserved cracker - for days there was no grub or smoke; how he ran across under mortar fire - overshooting, undershooting - feeling with his whole body that he was about to be covered by the next mine, or, overcoming the dreary emptiness in his chest, rising under fire to rush into enemy trenches.
Viktor Nekrasov, who spent the entire Stalingrad epic on the front line, commanding regimental sappers, recalled that journalists appeared in Stalingrad infrequently, but still, journalists did appear, however, usually “men of the pen” appeared only briefly and did not always go down below the army headquarters. There were, however, exceptions: “Vasily Semenovich Grossman was not only in divisions, but also in regiments, on the front line. He was also in our regiment.” And the most important evidence: “...newspapers with his, like Ehrenburg’s, correspondence were read to our ears.” The Stalingrad essays were the writer's highest artistic achievement at that time.
In the gallery of images created by Grossman in his essays, the two warriors whom the writer met during the Battle of Stalingrad were the living embodiment of the most significant, dearest to him traits of the people’s character. This is the 20-year-old sniper Chekhov, “a young man whom everyone loved for his kindness and devotion to his mother and sisters, who did not shoot with a slingshot as a child,” because he “regretted hitting the living,” “who became a terrible man with the iron, cruel and holy logic of the Patriotic War , an avenger" ("Through the Eyes of Chekhov"). And sapper Vlasov with the “creepy, like a scaffold” (this is from Grossman’s notebook, that’s how it impressed him), the Volga crossing: “It often happens that one person embodies all the special features of a big business, great job that the events of his life, his character traits express the character of an entire era. And of course, it is Sergeant Vlasov, a great worker of peacetime, who went behind the harrow as a six-year-old boy, the father of six diligent, unpampered children, the man who was the first foreman on the collective farm and the keeper of the collective farm treasury - and is the exponent of the harsh and everyday heroism of the Stalingrad crossing" (" Vlasov").
Grossman's key word, the key concept explaining the strength of popular resistance is freedom. “It is impossible to break the people’s will to freedom,” he writes in the essay “Volga - Stalingrad,” calling the Volga “the river of Russian freedom.”
“Spiritualized People” is the name of one of the most famous essays and stories (in the absence of others, we will use this genre definition, although it does not convey the originality of the work, in which a specific, documentary basis is combined with a legendary-metaphorical artistic structure) by Andrei Platonov. “He knew,” Platonov writes about one of his heroes, “that war, like peace, is inspired by happiness and there is joy in it, and he himself experienced the joy of war, the happiness of the destruction of evil, and still experiences them, and for this he lives Other people live in war” (“Officer and Soldier”). Time and again the writer returns to the idea of fortitude as the basis of our perseverance. “Nothing is accomplished without preparedness in the soul, especially in war. But this internal preparedness of our warrior for battle can be judged both by the strength of his organic attachment to his homeland, and by his worldview, formed in him by the history of his country” (“About the Soviet Soldier (Three Soldiers)”). And for Platonov, the most disgusting, monstrous thing about the invaders rampaging through our land is “emptiness.”
The war against fascism appears in Platonov’s works as a battle of “spiritual people” with an “inanimate enemy” (this is the title of another Platonov essay), as a struggle of good and evil, creation and destruction, light and darkness. “In moments of battle,” he notes, “the whole earth is freed from villainy.” But, considering the war in fundamental universal human categories, the writer does not turn away from his time, does not neglect its specific features (although he did not avoid this kind of unfair accusations: “In Platonov’s stories there is no historical person colored by time, our contemporary...”). The lifestyle of his contemporaries (or rather, their worldview, for everything everyday, “material” is switched by Platonov into this sphere) is invariably present in his works, but the author’s main goal is to show that the war is being waged “for the sake of life on earth”, for the right to live, breathe, raise children. The enemy has encroached on the very physical existence of our people - this is what dictates Platonov’s “universal”, universal human scale. His style is also oriented towards this, in which philosophy and folklore metaphorism, hyperbole, going back to fairy-tale narration, and psychologism, alien to fairy tales, symbolism and vernacular, equally intensely coloring both the speech of the heroes and the author’s language, merged.
The focus of Alexei Tolstoy is on the patriotic and military traditions of the Russian people, which should serve as a support, a spiritual foundation for resistance to the fascist invaders. And for him, the Soviet soldiers fighting against the Nazi hordes are the direct heirs of those who, “protecting the honor of the fatherland, walked through the Alpine glaciers behind Suvorov’s horse, resting his bayonet, repelled the attacks of Murat’s cuirassiers near Moscow, stood in a clean shirt - gun to his leg - under the destructive bullets from Plevna, awaiting the order to go to inaccessible heights" ("What We Defend").
Tolstoy’s constant appeal to history responds in style with solemn vocabulary; the writer widely uses not only archaisms, but also vernacular language - let us remember Tolstoy’s famous: “Nothing, we can do it!”
A characteristic feature of many wartime essays and journalistic articles is high lyrical tension. It is no coincidence that essays are so often given subtitles of this type: “From a writer’s notebook,” “Pages from a diary,” “Diary,” “Letters,” etc. This predilection for lyrical forms, for a narrative close to a diary, was not explained so much because they gave great internal freedom in conveying material that had not yet been laid down, material that was today’s in the literal sense of the word - the main thing was something else: this way the writer got the opportunity to speak in the first person about what filled his soul express your feelings directly. “I drew inspiration from the feeling of collective cohesion, from the complete dissolution of a person in the common cause of defending Leningrad,” Nikolai Tikhonov said, but the feeling here is expressed common to most writers. Never before has a writer heard the heart of the people so clearly - for this he just had to listen to his heart. And no matter who he wrote about, he certainly wrote about himself. Never before has the distance between word and deed been so short for a writer. And his responsibility has never been so high and specific.
Sometimes the literary process of the war years in critical articles looks like a path from a journalistic article, an essay, a lyric poem to more “solid” genres: a story, a poem, a drama. It is believed that, as writers accumulated impressions of military reality, small genres faded away. But the living process does not fit into this temptingly harmonious scheme. Until the very end of the war, writers continued to appear on the pages of newspapers with essays and journalistic articles, and the best of them were real literature, without any discounts. And the first stories and plays, in turn, appeared early - in 1942. And, moving from essays and journalism to a review of stories, one must keep in mind that the higher-lower approach, better-worse assessments, is not suitable here. We will talk about the most significant, artistically most striking, reprinted many times and in post-war years works: “The People are Immortal” (1942) by V. Grossman, “The Unconquered” (titled “The Family of Taras”) (1943) by B. Gorbatov, “Volokolamsk Highway” (the first part entitled “Panfilov’s Men on the First Frontier (a Tale of Fear and fearlessness)", 1943; the second - "Volokolamsk Highway (the second story about Panfilov's men)", 1944) by A. Beck, "Days and Nights" (1944) by K. Simonov. They are also remarkable in that they reveal a wide range of literary traditions, which the authors of the stories were guided by, artistically translating the impressions of the catastrophically changing, turbulent military reality.
Vasily Grossman began writing the story “The People Are Immortal” in the spring of 1942, when the German army was driven away from Moscow and the situation at the front had stabilized. We could try to put it in some order, to comprehend the bitter experience of the first months of the war that seared our souls, to identify what was the true basis of our resistance and inspired hopes of victory over a strong and skillful enemy, to find an organic figurative structure for this.
The plot of the story reproduces a very common front-line situation of that time - our units who were surrounded in a fierce battle, suffering heavy losses, break through the enemy ring. But this local episode is considered by the author with an eye to Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”, it moves apart, expands, the story takes on the features of a mini-epic. The action moves from the front headquarters to the ancient city, which was attacked by enemy aircraft, from the front line, from the battlefield - to a village captured by the Nazis, from the front road - to the location of German troops. The story is densely populated: our soldiers and commanders - both those who turned out to be strong in spirit, for whom the trials that befell became a school of “great tempering and wise heavy responsibility”, and official optimists who always shouted “hurray”, but were broken by defeats; German officers and soldiers, intoxicated by the strength of their army and the victories won; townspeople and Ukrainian collective farmers - both patriotically minded and ready to become servants of the invaders. All this is dictated by “people's thought,” which was the most important for Tolstoy in “War and Peace,” and in the story “The People are Immortal” it is highlighted.
“Let there be no word more majestic and holy than the word “people”!” - writes Grossman. It is no coincidence that the main characters of his story were not career military men, but civilians - a collective farmer from the Tula region, Ignatiev, and a Moscow intellectual, historian Bogarev. They are a significant detail, being drafted into the army on the same day, symbolizing the unity of the people in the face of the fascist invasion.
The combat is also symbolic - “as if the ancient times of duels were revived” - Ignatiev with a German tankman, “huge, broad-shouldered”, “who walked through Belgium, France, trampled the soil of Belgrade and Athens”, “whose chest Hitler himself adorned with the “iron cross”. It is reminiscent of Terkin’s fight with a “well-fed, shaved, careful, freely fed” German, described later by Tvardovsky:
Like on an ancient battlefield,
Chest on chest, like shield on shield, -
Instead of thousands, two fight,
As if the fight would solve everything.
How much in common Ignatiev and Terkin have! Even Ignatiev’s guitar has the same function as Terkin’s accordion. And the kinship of these heroes suggests that Grossman discovered the features of the modern Russian folk character.
Boris Gorbatov said that while working on the story “The Unconquered,” he was looking for “words-projectiles” and was in a hurry to “immediately transfer” the story “for the spiritual armament of our army.” He wrote it after Stalingrad, after the liberation of Donbass, having been there, seeing what happened to the people who found themselves in the power of the occupiers, what cities and towns, factories and mines had become. “...I only write what I know well...” admitted Gorbatov. “Only because I myself am a Donbass citizen, born and raised there, and only because during the days of the war I was in Donbass, both during its defense and in battles for it, only because I entered the liberated Donbass with my troops,” I was able to take the risk of writing a book “The Unconquered” about people known and close to me. I didn't study them - I lived with them. And many of the heroes of “Invictus” were simply copied from life - as I knew them.”
Gorbatov strives to paint an epic picture of what is happening. But his aesthetic guide, primarily in revealing the theme of patriotism, is the romantic epic “Taras Bulba” by Gogol. The author of “The Unconquered” does not hide this, the connection with the Gogol tradition is exposed to readers, deliberately emphasized: when first published, Gorbatov’s story was even called “The Family of Taras”; its three main characters - old Taras and his sons Stepan and Andrey - not only repeat the names of the heroes Gogol's story, the attitude of Gorbatov's Taras towards his sons, their fates should have reminded readers of the drama in the family of Taras Bulba, of the conflict between patriotic and paternal feelings. The style of the story “The Unconquered” goes back to the ballad: as in poetry, there are repeating images that hold the narrative together, supporting verbal leitmotifs; the phrase that ends the chapter and which contains the summary of what has just been told is placed at the beginning of the next chapter, creating its emotional field.
Gorbatov’s story begins with the scene of the summer retreat of 1942: “Everything to the east, everything to the east... At least one car to the west! And everything around was filled with anxiety, filled with screams and moans, the creaking of wheels, the grinding of iron, hoarse swearing, the screams of the wounded, the crying of children, and it seemed that the road itself was creaking and groaning under the wheels, rushing in fear between the slopes...” And it ends with liberation from the invaders, the advance of our army and the retreat of the German: “They were going west... They came across long, sad columns of captured Germans. The Germans walked in green overcoats with torn straps, without belts, no longer soldiers - prisoners.” They walked as our prisoners walked a year ago - also “an overcoat without straps, without a belt, a sideways glance, hands behind their backs, like convicts.” And between these events, a year in the life of a factory village occupied by the Nazis - terrible year reprisals, lawlessness, humiliation, slave existence.
Gorbatov’s story was the first serious attempt to depict in detail what was happening in the occupied territory, how they lived there, how people who found themselves in fascist captivity lived in poverty, how fear was overcome, how resistance arose to the invaders of the civilian population, left to the mercy of fate, to be desecrated by the enemy. To isolate oneself from the surrounding world, which has become hostile, with strong bars and locks (“This does not concern us!”), to sit in one’s own house - this was the first reaction of old Taras. But it soon became clear: this is no way to escape.
“It was impossible to live.
The fascist ax has not yet fallen on Taras’s family. No one close to us was killed. No one was tortured. Not stolen. They weren't robbed. Not a single German has ever visited the old house in Kamenny Brod. But it was impossible to live.
They didn’t kill, but they could have killed at any moment. They could have broken in at night, they could have grabbed me in broad daylight on the street. They could have thrown him into a carriage and driven him to Germany. They could have put you up against the wall without guilt or trial; They could have shot you, or they could have let you go, laughing at how the person was turning gray before our eyes. They could do everything. They could - and it was worse than if they had already killed. Fear spread out like a black shadow over Taras’s house, like over every house in the city.”
And then the story tells about overcoming this fear, about how everyone resisted the invaders in their own way, and was involved in one way or another in the fight against them. The old master Taras refuses to restore his factory and engages in sabotage. His eldest son Stepan, who was here the secretary of the regional committee, the “master” of the region, organizes and heads underground organization; Taras’s daughter Nastya, who graduated from school before the occupation, becomes an underground member. The younger son Andrei, who was captured, crosses the front line and returns to his hometown in the ranks of the troops that liberated him. In the stories of Stepan and Andrei, Gorbatov touches on those painful phenomena of military reality that no one then dared to address. Now, after half a century, it is clear that not everything was then revealed to the author of “The Invictus” in its true light; he was hampered by ideological blinders, but nevertheless he took on explosive material, which at that time there were few hunters to touch.
Putting together underground groups, contacting people who were “active” in peacetime, Stepan discovers - this is a discouraging surprise for him, an expert on “personnel” and an experienced leader - that among those who enjoyed official trust, he was in favor with the authorities , there turned out to be cowards and traitors, and among the unnoticed, “unpromising” or obstinate, thinking and acting in their own way, disliked by the authorities, there were many people who were completely loyal to the Motherland, true heroes. “So you didn’t know people well, Stepan Yatsenko,” Gorbatov’s hero reproaches himself. “But he lived with them, ate, drank, worked... But he didn’t know the main thing about them - their souls.” But that’s not the point, the “owner” of the region is mistaken here (and along with him the author): everything that he, as the secretary of the regional committee, needed to know about people, he knew - the system itself was not suitable, it was false, soullessly official people's assessments.
The fate of Gorbatov's Andrei is projected onto the fate of Taras Bulba's youngest son. But Andrei did not betray his Motherland, and it is not his fault that he, along with tens of thousands of poor fellows like him, was captured, although his father sees him as a traitor and brands him, like Taras Bulba his youngest son, and when Andrei crossed the front line, he was “long and strictly interrogated in a special department.” Yes, he himself believed that he was guilty, since he did not put a bullet in his forehead. And apparently, the author also thinks so, although the story of Andrei he told is decisively at odds with such an assessment. But behind all this was Stalin’s monstrously cruel order: “captivity is treason,” the grave legal and moral consequences of which could not be overcome for half a century.
The plot of “Volokolamsk Highway” by Alexander Bek is very reminiscent of the plot of Grossman’s story “The People are Immortal”: after heavy fighting in October 1941 near Volokolamsk, the battalion of Panfilov’s division was surrounded, breaks through the enemy ring and unites with the main forces of the division. But significant differences in the development of this plot are immediately apparent. Grossman strives in every possible way to expand the general panorama of what is happening. Beck closes the narrative within the framework of one battalion. The artistic world of Grossman's story - the heroes, military units, the scene of action - is generated by his creative imagination, Beck is documentarily accurate. This is how he characterized his creative method: “Searching for heroes active in life, long-term communication with them, conversations with many people, patient collection of grains, details, relying not only on one’s own observation, but also on the vigilance of the interlocutor...” In “ Volokolamsk Highway" he recreates the true history of one of the battalions of Panfilov's division, everything in him corresponds to what happened in reality: geography and chronicle of battles, characters.
In Grossman's story, the omnipresent author narrates the events and people; in Bek, the narrator is battalion commander Baurdzhan Momysh-Uly. Through his eyes we see what happened to his battalion, he shares his thoughts and doubts, explains his decisions and actions. The author recommends himself to readers only as an attentive listener and “a conscientious and diligent scribe,” which cannot be taken at face value. Is not more than artistic technique, because, talking with the hero, the writer inquired about what seemed important to him, Bek, and compiled from these stories both the image of Momysh-Ula himself and the image of General Panfilov, “who knew how to control, to influence not with a cry, but with his mind, in the past an ordinary soldier who retained soldier’s modesty until his death,” Beck wrote in his autobiography about the second hero of the book, very dear to him.
“Volokolamsk Highway” is an original artistic and documentary work associated with the literary tradition that it personifies in the literature of the 19th century. Gleb Uspensky. “Under the guise of a purely documentary story,” Beck admitted, “I wrote a work subject to the laws of the novel, did not constrain the imagination, created characters and scenes to the best of my ability...” Of course, both in the author’s declarations of documentary, and in his statement that that he did not constrain the imagination, there is a certain slyness, they seem to have a double bottom: the reader may think that this is a technique, a game. But Beck’s naked, demonstrative documentary is not a stylization, well known to literature (let’s remember, for example, “Robinson Crusoe”), not poetic clothes of an essay-documentary cut, but a way of comprehending, researching and recreating life and man. And the story “Volokolamsk Highway” is distinguished by its impeccable authenticity even in the smallest details (if Beck writes that on the thirteenth of October “everything was in snow,” there is no need to turn to the archives of the weather service, there is no doubt that this was the case in reality). This is a unique but accurate chronicle of the bloody defensive battles near Moscow (this is how the author himself defined the genre of his book), revealing why the German army, having reached the walls of our capital, could not take it.
And most importantly, why “Volokolamsk Highway” should be considered fiction, and not journalism. Behind the professional army, military concerns - discipline, combat training, battle tactics - with which Momysh-Uly is absorbed, the author faces moral, universal problems, aggravated to the limit by the circumstances of war, constantly putting a person on the brink between life and death: fear and courage, dedication and selfishness, loyalty and betrayal.
In the artistic structure of Beck's story, a significant place is occupied by polemics with propaganda stereotypes, with battle cliches, open and hidden polemics. Explicit, because such is the character of the main character: he is harsh, not inclined to go around sharp corners, does not even forgive himself for weaknesses and mistakes, does not tolerate idle talk and pomp. Here is a typical episode:
“After thinking, he said:
- “Without knowing fear, Panfilov’s men rushed into the first battle...” What do you think: a suitable start?
“I don’t know,” I said hesitantly.
This is how the corporals of literature write,” he said harshly. “During these days that you are living here, I deliberately ordered you to be taken to places where sometimes two or three mines burst, where bullets whistle. I wanted you to feel fear. You don’t have to confirm it, I know without even admitting it that you had to suppress your fear.
So why do you and your fellow writers imagine that some supernatural people are fighting, and not people like you?”
Twenty years after the war, Konstantin Simonov wrote about “Volokolamsk Highway”: “When I read this book for the first time (during the war - L.L.), the main feeling was surprise at its invincible accuracy, at its iron authenticity. I was then a war correspondent and believed that I knew the war... But when I read this book, I felt with surprise and envy that it was written by a person who knows the war more reliably and more accurately than me...”
Simonov really knew the war well. Since June 1941, he went into the active army on the Western Front, which then had to take the brunt of the German tank columns, only in the first fifteen months of the war, until an editorial trip brought him to Stalingrad, wherever he visited , I've seen everything. Miraculously escaped in July 1941 from the bloody chaos of the encirclement. I was in Odessa, besieged by the enemy. Participated in the combat campaign of a submarine that mined a Romanian port. Went on the attack with infantrymen on the Arabatskaya Strelka in Crimea...
And yet, what Simonov saw in Stalingrad shocked him. The ferocity of the battles for this city reached such an extreme limit that it seemed to him that there was some very important historical milestone here during the fighting. A man restrained in expressing his feelings, a writer who always shunned loud phrases, he ended one of the Stalingrad essays almost pathetically:
“This land around Stalingrad is still nameless.
But once upon a time, the word “Borodino” was known only in the Mozhaisk district, it was a district word. And then one day it became a national word. The Borodino position was no better and no worse than many other positions lying between the Neman and Moscow. But Borodino turned out to be an impregnable fortress, because it was here that the Russian soldier decided to lay down his life rather than surrender. And so the shallow river became impassable and the hills and copses with hastily dug trenches became impregnable.
In the steppes near Stalingrad there are many unknown hills and rivers, many villages, the names of which no one a hundred miles away knows, but the people wait and believe that the name of one of these villages will sound for centuries, like Borodino, and that one of these steppe wide fields will become a field of great victory.”
These words turned out to be prophetic, which became clear even when Simonov began writing the story “Days and Nights.” But events that were already perceived as historical - in the most precise and highest sense of the word - are depicted in the story as they were perceived by the defenders of the ruins of three Stalingrad houses, completely absorbed in repelling the sixth attack of the Germans that day, smoking them out at night the basement they captured, transport cartridges and grenades to the house cut off by the enemy. Each of them did what they thought was a small, but extremely difficult and dangerous task, without thinking about what it all would ultimately add up to. The story in the story seems to have been taken by surprise; it did not have time to put itself in order to pose for future artists - romantics and monumentalists. Transferred into art almost in its original form, what happened in Stalingrad should be shocking, the author of “Days and Nights” believed. It is worth noting the closeness of the aesthetic positions of Simonov and Beck (it is no coincidence that Simonov rated Volokolamsk Highway so highly).
Following the Tolstoy tradition (Simonov said more than once that for him there was no higher example in literature than Tolstoy - however, in this case we are not talking about the epic scope of War and Peace, but about a fearless look at the cruel everyday life of war in “Sevastopol Stories”), the author sought to present “war in its true expression - in blood, in suffering, in death.” This famous Tolstoy formula also accommodates the backbreaking daily work of a soldier - many kilometers of marches, when everything that is needed for battle and for life has to be carried on oneself, dug trenches and dugouts in the frozen ground - there is no number of them. Yes, trench life - a soldier needs to somehow get comfortable in order to sleep and wash, he needs to patch his tunic and repair his boots. It’s a meager cave life, but there’s no getting around it, you have to adapt to it, and besides, if it weren’t for worries about lodging and food, about smoking and foot wraps, a person would never be able to withstand constant proximity to mortal danger.
“Days and Nights” are written with sketchlike precision, with diary immersion in everyday life at the front. But the figurative structure of the story, the internal dynamics of the events and characters depicted in it are aimed at revealing the spiritual image of those who fought to the death in Stalingrad. In the story, the first stage of unprecedentedly brutal battles in the city ends with the enemy, having cut off the division, which included the battalion of the protagonist of the story, Saburov, from the army headquarters, and goes to the Volga. It would seem that everything was over, further resistance was pointless, but the defenders of the city did not admit defeat even after that and continued to fight with unflagging courage. No enemy superiority could cause them fear or confusion. If the first battles, as they are depicted in the story, are distinguished by extreme nervous tension and furious frenzy, now the most characteristic thing for the writer seems to be the calmness of the heroes, their confidence that they will survive, that the Germans will not be able to defeat them. This calmness of the defenders became a manifestation of the highest courage, the highest level of courage.
In the story “Days and Nights” the heroic appears in its most massive manifestation. Soul Strength Simon's heroes, which is not striking in ordinary peaceful conditions, truly manifests itself in moments of mortal danger, in difficult trials, and selflessness and unostentatious courage become the main measure of human personality. In a nationwide war, the outcome of which depended on the strength of the patriotic feeling of many people, ordinary participants in historical cataclysms, the role of the ordinary person did not decrease, but increased. “Days and Nights” helped readers realize that it was not the miracle heroes who stopped and broke the Germans in Stalingrad, who didn’t care about everything - after all, they don’t drown in water or burn in fire - but mere mortals who drowned at the Volga crossings and burned in the flames of neighborhoods that were not protected from bullets and shrapnel, which were hard and scared - each of them had one life, which they had to risk, which they had to part with, but all together they fulfilled their duty, survived .
These stories by Grossman and Gorbatov, Beck and Simonov outlined the main directions of post-war prose about the war and revealed the supporting traditions in the classics. The experience of Tolstoy’s epic was reflected in Simonov’s trilogy “The Living and the Dead” and in Grossman’s dilogy “Life and Fate”. The hard realism of “Sevastopol Stories”, implemented in its own way, reveals itself in the stories and short stories of Viktor Nekrasov and Konstantin Vorobyov, Grigory Baklanov and Vladimir Tendryakov, Vasil Bykov and Viktor Astafiev, Vyacheslav Kondratyev and Bulat Okudzhava; almost all the prose of writers of the front-line generation is associated with it. Emmanuil Kazakevich paid tribute to romantic poetics in “Star”. Documentary fiction took a prominent place, the capabilities of which were demonstrated by A. Beck during the war; its successes are associated with the names of A. Adamovich, D. Granin, D. Gusarov, S. Alexievich, E. Rzhevskaya.
During the war, not only poetic genres developed. The prose is no less rich and varied in its own way. It is represented by journalistic and essay genres, war stories and heroic stories.
Journalistic genres are very diverse: articles, essays, pamphlets, feuilletons, appeals, letters, leaflets, etc. Articles were written on political, historical-patriotic, military and other topics. Perhaps there was no writer who would not try his hand in this direction. This is understandable: the journalistic genre was, so to speak, direct fire at the enemy. Articles were written by L. Leonov, A. Tolstoy, M. Sholokhov, I. Ehrenburg, Vs. Vishnevsky, N. Tikhonov, B. Gorbatov, A. Dovzhenko and others.
Like all Soviet publicists, the writers sought to provide active assistance to the defenders of the fatherland with their articles. They instilled in people high civic feelings, revealed the true face of the organizers of the “new order” and taught them to be uncompromising towards fascism.
Writers contrasted fascist false propaganda with great human truth. Hundreds of articles presented irrefutable facts about the atrocities of the invaders, quoted letters, diaries, testimonies of prisoners of war, named names, dates, numbers, made references to secret documents, orders and regulations of the authorities, etc. Artists wrote primarily about what they were witnessed by themselves, but did not write like indifferent chroniclers, “information” became a means of angry denunciation. Here, for example, as L. Leonov testified in his “testimony” in the article “Rage”: “Over the last month I have visited many places in Rus' and Ukraine and have seen enough of your affairs, Germany. I saw desert cities, like the stone dead Khara-khoto, where there was neither a dog nor a sparrow - I saw Gomel erased from the earth, Chernigov defeated, Yukhnov non-existent. I visited unfortunate Kyiv and saw a terrible ravine where the half-burnt ashes of one hundred thousand of our people were scattered. This Babi Yar looks like a hellish river of ash, carrying unburnt children’s shoes mixed with human remains.”
Publicists of the war years addressed appeals, letters, articles and messages to officers, soldiers, defenders of Leningrad, partisans of Ukraine and Belarus, home front workers, women and children, and even the coming generation. In their articles, they told the harsh truth about the war, supported the people's bright dream of victory, had intimate conversations about the Motherland, about life and death, and called for perseverance, courage and perseverance. In the most alarming hours, their voice sounded like an order. “Not a step further!” - this is how A. Tolstoy’s article begins.
In “Pulkovo Meridian” a mainly journalistic solution to the topic is given with a detailed, even scrupulous depiction (“Riding the world, the planet from the plague - that’s humanism! And we are humanists”); Prokofiev in his poem reveals the image of Rossli lyrically, without going into the circumstances, “Moscow is threatened by an enemy.” In the summer of 1942, when our troops left Rostov and retreated beyond the Don, A. Tolstoy demanded that every soldier say to his conscience: “Stop! No step back! Stop, Russian man, grow your feet into your native land.” The same demand was made by I. Ehrenburg, B. Gorbatov, Dovzhenko and other writers. L. Leonov writes famous letters to an unknown American friend. Occasionally articles appeared castigating cowardice and cowardice. Such, for example, is the article by Vsevolod Vishnevsky “Death to cowards!”
Following the advancing army, our publicists sent the order to the Motherland: “Do not give the enemy a break!” Through the mouths of publicist artists, the Motherland thanked the defenders of Moscow and Leningrad, Stalingrad and Sevastopol, Kursk and Belgorod. The publicist's voice reached particular strength when it came to the destinies of the Motherland (“Motherland” by A. Tolstoy, “Reflections of Kiev” by L. Leonov, “The Soul of Russia” by I. Ehrenburg, “The Power of Russia” by N. Tikhonov, “Lessons of History” by Vs. Vishnevsky).
Journalism 1941 - 1945 developed in line with the best traditions of journalism. At the same time, it acquired new features. Publicists started talking not only about the greatness of October, but also about the life-giving traditions of the past, about the national character of people. “Russia”, “Rus”, “Russian Land” and other similar names filled the headlines of articles. Images of ancient Russian cities, rivers glorified by the people, pictures of Russian plains, willingly drawn by publicists, gave the articles a unique flavor.
The strengthening of national-patriotic motives contributed to an increase in emotional intensity in journalism, bringing articles closer to poetry. In the so-called literary journalism, at least in many of the best articles written by A. Tolstoy, L. Leonov, Ehrenburg and others famous writers, there is a clear predominance of the emotional-figurative principle over the logical one. In this regard, the genre nature of journalism changed. Journalism was transformed mainly into poetry. Some researchers characterized military journalism, meaning its lyricism and imagery) as artistic creativity between prose and poetry - closer to poetry."
These judgments are not indisputable, but they contain a certain amount of truth; the basis of a journalistic article is not an image, but a logically developed thought that has current socio-political significance. She, like a lyric poet, appeals to the sense of the reader’s mind through an image-experience, gives facts that have simply cognitive significance an emotional character, and gives the whole article the unity of a poetic idea. Journalistic thought determines the structure of the article and acquires the power of a passionate monologue, a speech addressed to people. These are the best articles of the war years.
For example, the aesthetic center, the pathos of A. Tolstoy’s article “Motherland” makes the patriotic writer think about the fate of the fatherland in times of difficult trials. The artist turns to the past in order to become imbued with even greater love for the present and strengthen his faith in the inviolability of the Russian land. The image of a bearded ancestor is a poetically sublime expression of the lyrical “I”, it is an image-experience carried through the gauntlet national history and warmed by a single patriotic breath, everything that “imagined” the ancestor - and “the red shields of Igor”, and “the groans of the Russians on Kalka”, and “the peasants’ spears on the Kulikovo field”, and “blood-cast ice Lake Peipsi“Right up to the time when “the European powers had to make room and give Russia a place in the “red corner”, and then retreat before the people and the revolution - all this is a lyrical illumination of the past, history melted into love and hatred. “Motherland” by A. Tolstoy is lyricism in prose, a song about the fatherland, as if coming from the depths of centuries.
Of course, the boundaries between “simply” journalism and artistic journalism are relative. In military journalism they coexist: in the best articles of those years, our writers rose to true poetry.
Unified in its ideological basis, artistic journalism of 1941-1945. very diverse in form. This diversity was primarily determined by the creative individuality of the writer. Tolstoy the publicist was characterized by reliance on one fact, one detailed image, and a calm, moderate intonation. Vsevolod Vishnevsky acted as a fiery speaker in his articles. He called not to thought, but to action. Ilya Ehrenburg's favorite way of constructing articles is contrast. The author's brief remarks are full of genuine sarcasm. Leonid Leonov is prone to broad philosophical generalizations, to deep reflections, to meditation. B. Gorbatov was best at intimate, heartfelt conversations with the reader (“Letters to a Comrade”).
In mood and tone, war journalism was either satirical or lyrical. The fascist invaders were mercilessly ridiculed in satirical articles. The pamphlet became a favorite genre of satirical journalism.
The articles addressed to the Motherland, to the people, had a sincerely lyrical coloring and were very diverse in genre. Traditional appeal articles, appeals, appeals, letters, diaries, short stories and other types of journalistic forms were widely and boldly used by publicists: Writers cared not about the “purity” of the genre, but about the strength and integrity of feelings and often combined an article in one work - a short story, and journalistic writing, and elements of a pamphlet. This is, for example, Leonid Leonov’s second letter to an “Unknown American Friend.”
Writers often gave their articles a rhythmic character, introduced into the text peculiar refrains, parallelisms, inversions, omissions, rhetorical questions. The authors strived for precision in the choice of stylistic and emotionally expressive means of language, and boldly combined “high” and “low” vocabulary when characterizing opposing social forces. So, for L. Leonov, the soldiers of our army are “workers of goodness and truth,” and the Nazis are “disgusting green mold", "two-legged creatures", "rabble", etc.
Journalism had a huge influence on all genres of wartime literature, and especially on the essay. Like publicists and lyricists, essayists tried to keep up with military events and played the role of a kind of literary scouts. From them the world first learned about the immortal names of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, Liza Chaikina, Alexander Matrosov, about the feat of Panfilov’s men, about the heroism of the Young Guard. The poem “Kirov is with us,” the story “Days and Nights,” and the novel “The Young Guard” were preceded by essays by the same authors.
A front-line essay begins its journey with a report, with a description of combat episodes. But not even two or three months had passed before three main types of essays were determined: portrait, travel and event. Moreover, each of them has undergone evolution.
Initially, a portrait sketch was a description of the heroic feat of one or another Soviet patriot. Then writers begin to become increasingly interested not only in exploits, but also in everyday life at the front, in the difficult path of becoming a soldier. A characteristic essay by V. Kozhevnikov “The Birth of a Warrior” (February 1943).
Pyotr Lidov’s essays “Tanya” and “Who Was Tanya” (February 1942) about Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya laid the foundation for a gallery of portraits of famous heroes of the Patriotic War - Liza Chaikina, Alexander Matrosov, Konstantin Zaslonov, the Ignatov brothers, Alexander Pokryshkin, etc. .
An essay about the feat of a large group of people was distributed, especially in 1943-1945. Thus, essays appear about the 62nd Army (V. Velichko), about night aviation “U-2” (K. Simonova), about the heroic Komsomol (Vs. Vishnevsky), etc. M. Sholokhov, A. Fadeev, N. Tikhonov in his essays recreates a portrait of the fighting people, the image of the Motherland. The journalistic essays dedicated to Ukraine and Belarus are extremely poetic (“Ukraine is buzzing” by A. Korneychuk, “Glory to the warrior people” by A. Dovzhenko, “On the fields of Belarus” by V. Lidin). The historical portrait of the homeland was created in the essays by N. Tikhonov “1919-1942”, L. Martynov “Lukomorye”, Vs. Vishnevsky "The Collapse of Ostland".
Essays devoted to the heroic home front, as a rule, are also portrait sketches. Moreover, from the very beginning, writers pay attention not so much to the fate of individual heroes, but to mass labor heroism. M. Shaginyan, E. Kononenko, A. Karavaeva, A. Kolosov wrote most intensively about the people of the rear.
The theme of “return” is the most typical for a travel essay. Winter offensive 1941/42 gave rise to a whole series of articles about the return of cities and villages conquered from the Nazis (“Town” by E. Gabrilovich, “The Damned and the Laughed” by V. Grossman, “In the West” by E. Petrov, etc.). With offensive battles of 1942-1943. related essays by A. Fadeev,
A. Surkov, B. Gorbatov, A. Tvardovsky, L. Pervomaisky, N. Gribachev. A massive flow of travel essays was observed in 1944-1945. Writers march with the army to the west and describe stage by stage its victorious march. Thus, L. Sobolev, in a series of essays “On the Roads of Victory” (Pravda, 1944), talks about the liberation of Minsk, Odessa, Sevastopol, and the capture of Constanta and Bucharest. Sun. Ivanov creates the essay “Russians in Berlin” (April 1945). At the end of the war, a large number of essays appear depicting the victorious march of our troops. The liberation of the peoples of Europe from the fascist yoke is described in the essays by L. Slavin “On Polish Land”, B. Polevoy “Across Upper Silesia”, “In the depths of Europe” by P. Pavlenko, “The Road to Berlin”
B. Grossman, etc.
If portrait sketches depicted the heroism of the Soviet people, and travel guides focused attention on describing the appearance of their native land tormented by the Nazis and the defeated
Europe, the events represent an artistic chronicle of military operations. Moreover, their main content is the heroism of the masses. An event essay includes portrait characteristics, descriptions typical of a travel essay, and a journalistic element. It grows out of the “combat episodes” that initially filled central and front-line newspapers. The defense of Leningrad and the battle of Moscow were the reason for the creation of a number of essays in which an attempt is made to move from describing combat episodes to generalizations. This is evidenced by the essays “Moscow. November 1941” by V. Lidina, “July-December” by K. Simonov. The resilience of Leningraders is reflected in the journalistic essays of Vs. Vishnevsky “October in the Baltic” and N. Tikhonov “Kirov with us”. N. Tikhonov creates a large number of essays about the Leningrad epic. Among them, we should mention “The Battle of Leningrad”, “City-Front”, a series of essays “The Leningrad Year” (1943) and the essay “Victory!” The work of essayists Vs. is associated with Leningrad and the Baltic. Vishnevsky, V. Sayanov, V. Ketlinskaya, O. Berggolts, V. Inber, N. Chukovsky and a book of essays by A. Fadeev “Leningrad in the days of the siege”. The Battle of Stalingrad was reflected in a series of essays by V. Grossman, K. Simonov, E. Krieger, B. Polevoy, V. Koroteev and others.
In depicting military events, our essayists followed L. Tolstoy. The traditions of “Sevastopol Stories” are felt both in the composition, and in the principles of presenting the material, and in the depiction of folk heroism. N. Tikhonov achieves special skill as an essayist. His essays “Leningrad in May”, “Leningrad in June”, “Leningrad in July” in 1942, etc. up to the essay “Leningrad in January 1944”. Victory!" - this is not so much a chronicle of the events of the great battle in itself, but rather an artistic description of the fighting spirit of the people, and this is important, since no archival document will not be able to preserve for posterity even a hundredth part of what the artist’s sensitive ear and keen eye will catch. N. Tikhonov shows how Leningrad and its defenders lived day after day, month after month.
Event essays reflected the battle for the Caucasus (B. Gorbatov), the liberation of Donbass (N. Gribachev,
V. Velichko), the Battle of Kursk-Oryol (K. Fedin, L. Pervomaisky, V. Poltoratsky), events in the Crimea (S. Borzenko), the fall of Koenigsberg, Berlin, etc. However, behind the rapid offensive of our army, which unfolded along the entire front in 1944-1945, even the essayists did not have time to follow. And although sometimes the fascination of essayists with travel sketches led to unjustifiably exaggerated attention to the enemy, to his experiences in the days of defeat and capitulation (L. Slavin, M. Gus, B. Agapov, etc.), in general, portrait, travel and event front-line sketches fulfilled their purpose and paved the way for other genres, and above all the story.
If the story “is an episode from the boundless poem of human destinies,” which, according to Belinsky, concentrates in one moment so much life that cannot be outlived in centuries, then the Patriotic War was especially generous with such episodes. The war itself seemed to lay claim to the role of “storyteller,” and the artist could only be its secretary. This was partly the reason why the story in 1941-1945. becomes a notable literary phenomenon. The stories are published on the pages of newspapers and magazines, and published as separate books.
However, the successes of the war story in comparison with other genres of those years are relatively modest, and its path is very contradictory. The first obstacle to the story of those years turned out to be, paradoxically, the abundance of the very episodes that were discussed. A fiction writer of the war years, in order to be a storyteller, had to overcome the force of attraction of fact, “strangle” the essayist in himself, and rise to a new level of artistic generalization.
The essayist “outlines” real facts, describes reality seen and studied by him, if you like, he creates, but from ready-made material given by reality. The narrator creates characters and puts them “in such relationships with each other that novels or stories are formed by themselves” (V.G. Belinsky). Even an experienced author was not always able to switch from an essay to a story.
At the beginning of the war and even later, a number of storytellers showed a tendency towards falsely romantic depictions of heroic deeds. She influenced B. Lavrenev (“The Foreman’s Gift”, 1942), Vl. Lidin (collection “Simple Life”, 1943), L. Kassil (“There are such people”, 1943), V. Ilyenkov (“Defense of the Village”, 1942), F. Panferov, L. Nikulina and others. The Germans were depicted in in these works by extremely stupid and cowardly soldiers, whom the heroes deal with without any difficulty, sometimes without weapons, but with the help of a stick, a poker, a twig, a ladle of water (“The Old Water Carrier” by V. Kozhevnikov), etc. Stories of this type were not composed glory to the literature of the war years.
However, it was during the war years that a truly romantic novel blossomed unprecedentedly. It reflected a passionate, incomparable, all-consuming desire for victory over the enemy. Without exaggeration, we can say that nine-tenths of wartime short stories are associated with the poeticization of military exploits. This topic is traditional for Soviet story. Interest in it has not faded since the Civil War, and at the end of the 30s it even intensified in connection with the events at Lake Khasan and others. Along with truthful works, in the stories of the 30s there was - and often - a frivolous, thoughtless depiction of the war. The events of the first months of the Patriotic War forced our literature to radically change course. The truthful depiction of war, inherent in the main direction of our art, triumphed throughout the literary front.
Already in the first months of the war, stories that were not quite usual for pre-war prose appeared (“Nightingales” by L. Sobolev, “In the Mountains” by I. Aramilev). Their unusualness lay not in the choice of topic (the topic is the same - war), but in the romantically elevated, conventional manner of presentation.
In 1942-1943. the number of romantic short stories is increasing significantly: “Sea Soul” by L. Sobolev, “Mother” by A. Dovzhenko, “Tea Rose” by B. Lavrenev, “The Tale of Ivan Asksiveter” by N. Lyashko, “Grandfather the Sailor”, “Tree of the Motherland”, “Armor”, “Animated People” by A. Platonov, “The Soul of the Ship” by L. Solovyov, some stories by V. Kaverin, P. Pavlenko, N. Tikhonov, K. Paustovsky, P. Skosyrev and others.
In 1944-1945 The flow of romantic stories is somewhat weakening. But they don't leave the stage. Following suit
Jl. Sobolev, writers create cycles of short stories: “The Sevastopol Stone” by L. Solovyov, “Russian Nights” by N. Lyashko, “Mountains and Night” by V. Kozin, etc. The stories poeticize the exploits of sailors (L. Sobolev, L. Solovyov), intelligence officers and partisans (N. Lyashko), mothers of warriors (A. Dovzhenko), persistent and courageous commanders (V. Kozhevnikov), pilots, artillerymen, old people and children, etc. A significant place is occupied by the poeticization of the high moral qualities of the Soviet people, the glorification of pure , sublime and selfless love (M. Prishvin, K. Paustovsky).
The emotional range of romantic stories is varied, but the dominant tone was heroic and sublime, which, however, never lost the quality of spontaneity and sincerity.
Many romantic stories are based on factual material. The heroes of L. Sobolev’s stories “Sea Soul” are, as a rule, taken from life. A. Platonov’s story “Spiritualized People” is based on the feat of political instructor Filchenkov and his comrades. Legends were created by life itself, hence the veracity of the stories of the war years, written in a romantic vein. As a rule, they are not characterized by the complexity and intricacy of the plot, various stylistic decorations, etc., characteristic of traditional romanticism. These are the passionate little stories of L. Sobolev, built on reliable legends.
But no matter how plausible the romantic stories of the war years may be, many things distinguish them from realistic stories. The differences begin primarily with the plot. If the plot of a realistic story is life-like, then a romantic story is most often built on situations of an exceptional nature. L. Sobolev’s short story “Battalion of Four” tells how four Soviet soldiers, with a wounded comrade in their arms, fought off hundreds of enemies, broke through the encirclement and reached their own. Petty Officer - sailor Petrishchev (“The Soul of the Ship” by L. Solovyov) died three times and rose from the dead three times to beat the hated enemy. In the story “The Measure of Hardness,” V. Kozhevnikov tells the story of a fantastically invincible machine gunner who did not let go of a heavy machine gun even when his legs were crushed by a collapsed reinforced concrete beam. The measure of resilience for the heroes of romantic stories becomes super-measure.
Romantic heroes JI. Soboleva, JI. Solovyov and other storytellers are solid natures. For them, struggle is a vital necessity, and heroism is a natural manifestation of this struggle. They are people of action. For them there is no unresolved question “to be or not to be.” Only fight, only victory! They do not avoid danger, but go towards it and perform heroic deeds on the orders of their own conscience. Such, for example, are the scouts from the short story “And the Mortar Hit” by JI. Soboleva, the brave woman Maria Stoyan, who hid Soviet pilots in her home, from the story “Mother” by A. Dovzhenko.
J1. Sobolev, in stories about the “sea soul,” singles out one feature of the Soviet sailor - his unparalleled bravery, bravery and courage in the fight against enemies - and abstracts from all others. He is stingy with everyday or psychological details, says almost nothing about the past of his heroes, about their personal inclinations, affections or habits. The author is not interested in the ethnographic features of the characters. We don’t even know where they come from - from Siberia, Belarus or the Urals. His heroes live by established beliefs. A. Platonov, JI adheres to the same principle in depicting heroes. Soloviev and other authors of romantic short stories.
The poetics of romantic short stories was subordinated to one thing - to show in the most vivid and complete form the heroic deeds of people. The romantic form of generalization did not contradict either the truth of the fact or the aesthetic tastes of the people. These short stories left a noticeable mark on the history of Russian literature.
No matter how significant the achievements of the romantic short story writers were, the basis of the foundations in those years was still the concrete realistic short story: the stories of N. Tikhonov, B. Gorbatov, F. Gladkov, K. Simonov and others. One of the best such stories turned out to be “Russian character” by Alexei Tolstoy.
The initial basis of A. Tolstoy’s story, as is known, is documentary. However, the artist transformed a specific fact of life and created a living and multifaceted image of the Russian warrior Yegor Dremov. He introduced the technique of recognition into the narrative and applied the compositional scheme of a story within a story, which was common during the war days. In the short story, one can hear, as it were, three narrative voices: the voices of the intelligent, observant narrator Ivan Sudarev, the author, and the voice of Yegor Dremov himself. Thanks to this polyphony, the narrative acquires a voluminous and versatile character. The unique details of everyday life, noticed by the hero, character traits, subtly “Commented” by the narrator, seem to prepare the author’s generalizations from the inside and give them a strikingly reliable character. The final lines of the patriotic writer crown the story with an epic ending: “Yes, here they are, Russian characters! It seems like a simple man, but a severe misfortune will come and rise within him great power- human beauty."
With true depth and epic scope, M. Sholokhov depicted the national character of the Russian warrior, the path of formation of a soldier in the story “The Science of Hate.”
Romantic and realistic stories of the war years enrich the reader’s understanding of the image of the people at war and, together with the essay, seem to pave the way for a heroic story, groping for the main plot points in the tangled labyrinth of crowded military events and human destinies.
During the war, Ilya Erenburg more than once asserted that in the dugout “there is no time to write a story and think about a novel, and soldiers have no time to read it. “All this,” he said, “will become possible only after victory.” However, in four years, in addition to a good hundred poems, more than one hundred and fifty stories and novels were published in Russian alone. Almost all of them are connected with the burning theme of our time - the theme of war.
The first major narrative works about the war were “Russian Tale” by P. Pavlenko, “Guardsmen” by Y. Libedinsky, “With My Own Eyes” by F. Panferov (January - May 1942). The authors’ desire to master the battle plot, capture the features of the heroic time, and outline the characters is noticeable in them. However, these stories turned out to be imperfect in many ways. Writers became interested in “pictorial” depictions of battles, descriptions of happy surprises, meetings and all kinds of exploits. Works of this type appeared later (“Golden Star” by L. Nikulin, “Birthday” by G. Fish, “Your Comrade” by S. Krushinsky, etc.). The ideological, educational and aesthetic significance of these works is small. But to some extent they served as the beginning of the appearance of harsh and truthful stories about soldiers’ everyday life (“Volokolamsk Highway” by A. Beck, “Days and Nights” by K. Simonov, “Division Commander” by G. Berezko, etc.).
A. Beck resolutely opposes the primitive depiction of war and the Soviet soldier at war, angrily ridiculing the “literary corporals” who write about soldiers who knew no fear and were eager to fight. Similar aesthetic positions were occupied by K. Simonov and G. Berezko. The war in their works is presented without embellishment. Dust, smoke, soot, night darkness, endless fountains of explosions, machine gun crackling, roar, noise and some kind of stupid habit to all this - this is the landscape of the story “Days and Nights”, its background and coloring. In the story by G. Berezko, the soldiers do not rush into the attack, but crawl through a marshy swamp, wallowing in an icy slurry. “Don’t expect me to describe nature,” warns the main character of “Volokolamsk Highway.”
If in the works mentioned above victories were achieved relatively easily, then in the stories of A. Beck, K. Simonov, G. Berezko they are won at the cost of superhuman efforts. The attacks of the regiments of Divisional Commander Bogdanov (“Division Commander”) are choked one after another. It is unbearably difficult for the defenders of the Volokolamsk Highway to hold back the onslaught of the German hordes. Three times it is difficult for the heroes of “Days and Nights” at Stalingrad. But these incredible, inhuman difficulties are carried on the shoulders of the most ordinary people: captain Saburov (“Days and Nights”), private division commander Bogdanov (“Division Commander”). They find the strength not only to survive, but also to overpower the enemy.
A. Beck, K. Simonov and partly G. Berezko do not so much narrate the battles as explore the reasons for the vitality of their heroes, the nature of their patriotism and come to the conclusion that the keys to victory are kept not just in the heroic deeds of fearless heroes, but in everyday military work , in the ability to fight. “A soldier goes into battle not to die, but to live,” said General Panfilov.
The heroes of the stories under consideration are alien to pathos and hate phrases. They are stingy with words, restrained in feelings, active and energetic. The stamp of composure and efficiency lies on the narrative style itself,
In the stories of A. Beck, K. Simonov, G. Berezko, a new turn of the topic emerged. It was accomplished not without the influence of L.H. Tolstoy, who in “Sevastopol Stories” and “War and Peace” contrasted the “prose” of war, its true truth, with battles with music and drumming.
“Volokolamsk Highway”, “Days and Nights”, “Division Commander” are a significant phenomenon in the prose of the war years. However, these works lacked the epic breadth that he himself demanded. The subject of the image is the people's war. This was expressed primarily in the fact that in the analyzed works the people's experience of war is essentially associated with one person. The line between “I” and “my battalion”, “my division” does not disappear as the action develops, but seems to even intensify. The commander's will is often contrasted with carelessness, laziness, and the difficult-to-eradicate “maybe” that is supposedly inherent in the mass of soldiers (“Volokolamsk Highway”); the commander's autocracy becomes a defining feature of his behavior (“Division Commander”); ordinary soldiers are stereotyped and schematic (“Days and Nights”).
The lack of organic unity with the masses had a negative impact on the character of the main characters. According to the general opinion expressed by critics, Captain Saburov as a person is limited, dry, and the love line in the story “Days and Nights” clearly failed. Momysh-uly is straightforward and somewhat dogmatic in his relationships with people. He strives to put all the complexity of soldier’s psychology into the formula: fear and fearlessness (the original magazine edition of the story was entitled: “The Tale of Fear and Fearlessness”). Humanity, a wise fatherly attitude towards soldiers, so characteristic of Panfilov, seem to fade away in the nature of the battalion commander. With even greater justification one can make such reproaches to G. Berezko.
Inheriting the best traditions of Russian battle prose, A. Beck, K. Simonov, G. Berezko said a lot of truth about the war, about effective patriotism, about the ability to win, about front-line comradeship. Their works have serious educational value, but they have not yet managed to truly pose the problem of creating a national character.
V. Grossman (“The People are Immortal”), V. Vasilevskaya (“Rainbow”), B. Gorbatov (“The Unconquered”) came close to her. And they did it from a different aesthetic perspective, in a different stylistic key.
V. Grossman persistently and quite definitely strives to convey the idea of the popular nature of the war. He introduces a large number of characters into the narrative, creates numerous crowd scenes of soldiers, reproduces conversations, jokes, laughter, disputes of soldiers, etc. The descriptions are accompanied by numerous journalistic digressions and discussions about the role of the people in the Patriotic War. The story is densely populated. Both soldiers and civilians are united in the fight against the hated enemy.
The story “The People are Immortal” is lyrical. The poetic idea of the people's war found especially deep expression through the lyrical beginning. Direct and indirect lyrical digressions cement the narrative, expand the radius of the positions being observed, and give meaning to the numerous disparate phenomena of the war that are reflected in the story. The author’s “I” embraces the city burning in the night, and the retreating columns of Soviet units, and the mournful village on the other side of the military line... The author excellently conveys the general atmosphere of the first military autumn, creates the so-called collective image of the people, paints a broad epic picture of the war , including the enemy camp.
The central conflict of the story is not built on an internal collision of experiences (fear and fearlessness in the story “Volokolamsk Highway”), but covers the main conflict of the era: the clash of two forces - Russia, the birthplace of Leninism, and fascist Germany - which found plot expression in the battle of Mertsalov and Bogarev with a German colonel and in the duel between Semyon Ignatiev and a fascist. When portraying heroes, V. Grossman strives not so much to individualize characters, but to create folk national types. Thus, he endows Mertsalov with fearlessness, Bogarev with intelligence, calls Cherednichenko “the soldier’s Kutuzov,” and Semyon Ignatiev absorbs various traits of the people’s character: reckless prowess, resourcefulness, spiritual generosity, beauty and strength, wit.
Similar principles of representation underlie Rainbow and Invictus. With all the individuality of their handwriting, V. Vasilevskaya and B. Gorbatov strive for one thing: to show the fire of partisan war as widely as possible. In "Rainbow" the entire village actively resists the Germans. The grief of Olena Kostyuk is the grief of the entire village, of all of Ukraine. The artist paints an image of Ukraine - “in blood and flame, with a strangled song on its lips, with food torn to pieces by a German boot.” Olena Kostyuk, a partisan mother, rises to the symbolic image of the motherland, undaunted and invincible. B. Gorbatov, through the images of Taras and his son Stepan, who are looking for one unruined places, the other for unconquered souls, paints an epic picture of a nationwide war. Taras's family is the personification of a struggling people. Everything that torments and worries old Taras, a descendant of the Cossacks-Cossacks, poeticized by Gogol, torments and worries the entire people. In his fate is the fate of the people: “The whole nation walked chained to a wheelbarrow, and old Taras walked too.”
Taras’s initial position “this does not concern us” was a kind of form of resistance to the enemy. For example, it did not remotely resemble Mr. Bunting’s “philosophy of non-intervention” from the novel by English writer Robert Greenwood “Mr. Bunting in Days of Peace and War.” Banting chose the philosophy “it doesn’t concern us” in order to escape the struggle and withdraw into his narrow, philistine world. His indifferentism is inexhaustible. Taras Yatsenko, having turned his apartment “into a pure pillbox,” moved toward active resistance from the very beginning. “My sons could not resist in defense. I will stand. “I’ll wait,” old Taras said to himself. And the force that could move Taras from his place, turn the old worker into a slave, has not yet come to light.
The works analyzed are highly dramatic. V. Vasilevskaya and B. Gorbatov show the enemy in all his bestial essence. The image of Captain Werner (“Rainbow”) shooting in the small face of a newborn baby lifted by the collar in front of a distraught mother made even skeptical bourgeois journalists shudder.
Epic breadth in “Rainbow”, “Invictus”, “Immortal People” becomes the main artistic principle. The images of Semyon Ignatiev, Olena Kostyuk, Taras Yatsenko go beyond individual characters and become household names. This makes them similar to the traditional heroic epic. At the same time, it should be emphasized that V. Grossman, V. Vasilevskaya and B. Gorbatov in the development of this principle reached the point beyond which the hero can lose touch with living reality and turn into an abstraction, an abstract symbol. The reality of such a danger is evidenced by the failure in the depiction of military leaders in V. Grossman’s story. Eremin, Samarin, Cherednichenko, Bogarev seem to obscure each other. It was necessary to create such characters that, while maintaining epic universal significance, would not lose the living features of a specific personality. This task was successfully solved during the war years by M. Sholokhov (“They Fought for the Motherland”), L. Leonov (“Capture of Velikoshumsk”), A. Fadeev (“Young Guard”).
The background of M. Sholokhov’s novel “They Fought for the Motherland” is connected with the essays “On the Don”, “Prisoners of War”, “The Science of Hate”. M. Sholokhov was one of the first to feel and reflect in his essays the national character of the war and in the chapters “They Fought for the Motherland” with high artistic expression showed a real, not a fictional, ruthless war.
The chapters published during the war describe only two battles in which the remnants of the defeated regiment took part. In these battles, front-line death in two stages wiped out a good half of the heroes depicted by the artist. Captain Sumskov, cook Lisichenko, Kochetygov were killed, Ivan Zvyagintsev was struck to death.
However, not only drama characterizes this work. During the war years, no one before Sholokhov penetrated so deeply into the soul of a Soviet soldier, or painted such vividly and vividly living characters as was done in the novel “They Fought for the Motherland.” Lopakhin, Streltsov, Zvyagintsev and their front-line comrades live a rich and meaningful spiritual life. The soldiers' thoughts are wise, interesting, and it seems that there is not a single important issue that the soldier's mind has not touched upon. They judge the situation at the front, the nature of the war, the causes of failures, comradeship, remember relatives, friends, dead soldiers, admire the beauty of nature, hate the Nazis, think about the fate of the fatherland. Under Sholokhov’s pen, the agitated, multifaceted sea comes to life and seethes folk life. But this diverse mass of people is not colorless. Even an episodic person carries within him the features of a unique individuality and at the same time a particle of a universal, national character.
The realistic principle of depiction, which forms the basis of the novel “They Fought for the Motherland,” most fully inherits the best features of the battle prose of Russian literature, the tradition of “War and Peace.” At the same time, he develops and deepens what new writers have introduced into the depiction of war, poeticizing civil war(“Walking through torment”, “The Last of the Udege”, “Quiet Don”). He turned out to be very promising. JI worked in this direction during the war years. Leonov, A. Fadeev.
L. Leonov breaks the eventual framework of the story, resurrects in the memory of General Litovchenko the wonderful image of the teacher Kulkov, from Sobolkov’s stories he creates a wonderful legend about the fabulous Altai, draws simple patterns of the Velikoshumsky environs, where from time immemorial numerous namesakes and fellow countrymen of the general lived and live, and soldier Litovchenko, driver of the legendary T-34 number 203. He does this in order to expose the very origins of the patriotism of the tank crew he loved, to make clearly visible the blood connection of the general and the soldiers with their homeland, to show the inexhaustible source from which his tank crews draw strength in an unequal duel. Leonov’s story “The Capture of Velikoshumsk” is of a deep philosophical nature.
An event of great significance was the “Young Guard” by A. Fadeev. In the feat of the Krasnodon residents, the artist caught the patriotic impulse of youth, the romance of struggle, so characteristic and natural for Komsomol members of the war years, and carefully transferred it to his canvas, without adding anything to the beauty of life: the feat of the Young Guards does not need exaggeration.
“The Young Guard” is the first major completed novel about the Patriotic War, not only a true monument to the unprecedented feat of the Krasnodon Komsomol members, but also an outstanding work of art about the people’s war, which revealed unprecedented fortitude in Soviet people. The romantic elation of the characters and the entire style of narration sharpened the truth of the depiction of events. Fadeev was able to pose and truly poetically reveal a whole complex of moral problems that determined the nature and outcome of the war (the origins of courage, spontaneous and conscious in the struggle, the leading force and initiative of the masses themselves, the problem of fathers and sons, the positive hero, etc.). "The Young Guard", representing a work of high tragic intensity, is at the same time close in its genre features to an epic poem. The combination of tragedy, epic and romantic pathos is the originality of the novel, imbued with the spirit of high citizenship.
One of the best works of socialist realism, “The Young Guard,” like such books as “The Gadfly” and “How the Steel Was Tempered,” traveled to almost all countries of the world, was translated into many languages and became one of the favorite works of the century, especially among young people.
The principles of poeticization of the heroic, developed by M. Sholokhov, L. Leonov, A. Fadeev, were further developed in the post-war novel about the Great Patriotic War.
During the war years, works were also created in which the main attention was paid not so much to the folk heroic content, but to the fate of man in the war. Human happiness and war - this is how one could formulate the basic aesthetic principle of such works as “Simply Love” by V. Vasilevskaya, “It Was in Leningrad” by A. Chakovsky, “The Third Chamber” by B. Leonidov, etc. But these works appeared sooner a statement on a topic rather than a solution to it. Novelists will take up this problem closely after the war.
According to the general opinion that formed back in the days of the war and, apparently, fair, our artists were less successful in poeticizing labor than in depicting military exploits. Writers addressed the topic of labor less often than the topic of war. The first to show the heroic labor efforts taking place in the rear was A. Perventsev (“Test”). Following him, F. Gladkov (“Oath”), A. Karavaeva (“Lights”) and others write about the labor community of the front and rear, workers and peasants. The most successful should be recognized as the image of milling machine operator Nikolai Sharonov, created by F. Gladkov in the story “ Oath".
During the days of the war, as never before, the question arose about the connections of our people with their heroic past. Patriotic traditions were most fully and deeply developed in the genre of the historical novel. The historical novel, which already occupied a rather honorable place in our literature in the 30s, gained great popularity during the war years. “Port Arthur” by A. Stepanov, “Dmitry Donskoy” by S. Borodin, “Bagration” by S. Golubov are published, the continuation of “Peter the Great” by A. Tolstoy, “Emelyan Pugachev” by V. Shishkov is published, dozens of wide canvases dedicated to the Tatar invasion, the times of Alexander Nevsky, Ivan the Terrible, Peter 1, the events of 1812, etc. The era of Ivan the Terrible, in particular, was reflected in the novels of V. Kostylev, V. Safonov, in the dramaturgy of A. Tolstoy, I. Selvinsky, V. Solovyova.
The themes of wartime historical novels are determined by noble patriotic ideals. Artists strive for a realistic reproduction of reality, to reveal the spirit of the era and the character of the people. At the same time, in the historical prose of those years there is a tendency towards an embellished depiction of kings. This especially affected the works in which Ivan the Terrible was depicted. The “publication” of the tsar, the exaggeration of his personal services to history, can be found in the novels of V. Kostylev, in the historical dramas of those years, including in the dilogy of A. Tolstoy “Ivan the Terrible”.
The image of a military leader, almost unknown in the literature of the 30s, occupied a large place in the novels. Thus, images of Alexander Nevsky, Dmitry Donskoy, Kutuzov, Bagration, Nakhimov, Makarov and other geniuses of Russian military art are created. The most successful in this regard is the novel by A. Stepanov “Port Arthur”.
Writers depicting the revolutionary past of our people have achieved significant artistic results. The most significant of these works, the novel “Emelyan Pugachev” by Vyacheslav Shishkov, shows a wide shot of rebellious Rus'. The writer looked into the very soul of the Russian people, restless, freedom-loving, desperate, decisive and selfless in moments of danger, and created a bright, historically truthful character of the people's leader. V. Shishkov's novel became one of the outstanding works of Soviet literature.
The historical prose of the war years is an echo of the heroic past of our people. Together with military stories and other prose genres dedicated to the events of 1941 - 1945, it recreated the monumental epic image of the victorious people and perfectly corresponded to the moods and aspirations of the Russian people in the days of the great battle.
“Airport” is not a chronicle, not an investigation, not a chronicle. This is a work of fiction based on real facts. The book has many characters, many intertwining dramatic storylines. The novel is not only and not so much about war. It is about love, about betrayal, passion, betrayal, hatred, rage, tenderness, courage, pain and death. In other words, about our life today and yesterday. The novel begins at the Airport and unfolds minute by minute during the last five days of the more than 240-day siege. Although the novel is based on real facts, all the characters are a work of fiction, like the name of the Airport. The small Ukrainian garrison of the Airport day and night repels attacks from an enemy that is many times superior to it in manpower and equipment. In this completely destroyed Airport, treacherous and cruel enemies are faced with something they did not expect and cannot believe. With cyborgs. The enemies themselves called the defenders of the Airport that way for their inhuman vitality and stubbornness of the doomed. Cyborgs, in turn, called their enemies orcs. Along with the cyborgs at the Airport there is an American photographer who, for a number of reasons, experiences this unnecessary war as a personal drama. Through his eyes, as if in a kaleidoscope, in the intervals between battles at the Airport, the reader will also see the whole history of what objective historians will call nothing less than the Russian-Ukrainian war.
The book is based on the life story of a real person. A former prisoner, a fighter of a penal company, and then a second lieutenant of the ROA and one of the leaders of the Kengir uprising of Gulag prisoners, Engels Ivanovich Sluchenkov. There are amazing destinies. They look likeadventurenovels accompanied by fantastic escapades and incredible twists. FateEngels Sluchenkovwas from this series.There are rubbles of lies piled up around his name. His fate, on the one hand, looks like a feat, on the other, like a betrayal. But theyWith I consciously or was unknowingly the culprit these confused metamorphoses.
But to understand Sluchenkov as a person, not to justify, but only to understand, what way it became possible, that he is a Soviet citizen and a Soviet soldier went to fight against Stalin. In order to understand the reasons why that many thousands of Soviet citizens during the Second World War decided put on an enemy uniform and take up a weapon, against their own brothers and friends, we must live their lives. Find yourself in their place and in their shoes. We must transport ourselves to those times when a person is forced was to think one thing, say another and, in the end, do a third. AND at the same time retain the ability to be ready to one day resist such rules behavior, rebel and sacrifice not only his life, but also his good name.
Vladimir Pershanin’s novels “Penalty Officer from a Tank Company”, “Penalty Officer, Tankman, Suicide Squad” and “The Last Battle of the Penalty Officer” are history Soviet man during the Great Patriotic War. Yesterday's student, who in June 41 had the chance to go to a tank school and, having gone through the terrible trials of war, became a real Tankman.
At the center of the novel "Family" is the fate of the main character Ivan Finogenovich Leonov, the writer's grandfather, in its direct connection with the major events in the now existing village of Nikolskoye from the late 19th to the 30s of the 20th century. The scale of the work, the novelty of the material, rare knowledge of the life of the Old Believers, and a correct understanding of the social situation put the novel among the significant works about the peasantry of Siberia
In August 1968, at the Ryazan Airborne School, two battalions of cadets (4 companies each) and a separate company of special forces cadets (9th company) were formed according to the new staff. The main task of the latter is to train group commanders for GRU special forces units and formations
The ninth company is perhaps the only one that has gone down in legend as an entire unit, and not as a specific roster. More than thirty years have passed since it ceased to exist, but its fame does not fade, but rather, on the contrary, grows.
Andrei Bronnikov was a cadet of the legendary 9th company in 1976–1980. Many years later, he honestly and in detail spoke about everything that happened to him during this time. Starting from the moment of admission and ending with the presentation of lieutenant shoulder straps...
Among the numerous works of fiction about the Great Patriotic War, Akulov’s novel “Baptism” stands out for its incorruptible objective truth, in which the tragic and the heroic are combined like a monolith. This could only be created by a gifted artist of words, who personally went through a barrage of fire and metal, through frosty snow sprinkled with blood, and who saw death in the face more than once. The significance and strength of the novel “Baptism” is given not only by the truth of events, but also by classical artistry, the richness of the Russian folk language, the volume and variety of created characters and images.
His characters, both privates and officers, are illuminated with a bright light that penetrates their psychology and spiritual world.
The novel recreates the events of the first months of the Great Patriotic War - the Nazi offensive near Moscow in the fall of 1941 and the rebuff that Soviet soldiers gave it. The author shows how sometimes difficult and confusing human destinies are. Some become heroes, others take the disastrous path of betrayal. The image of a white birch - the favorite tree in Rus' - runs through the entire work. The first edition of the novel was published in 1947 and soon received the Stalin Prize of the 1st degree and truly national recognition.
Military prose
War. From this word comes death, hunger, deprivation, disaster. No matter how much time passes after its end, people will remember it for a long time and mourn their losses. A writer’s duty is not to hide the truth, but to tell how everything really was in the war, to remember the exploits of heroes.
What is military prose?
War prose is a work of fiction that touches on the theme of war and man’s place in it. Military prose is often autobiographical or recorded from the words of eyewitnesses of events. Works about war raise universal, moral, social, psychological and even philosophical themes.
It is important to do this so that the generation that did not come into contact with the war knows what their ancestors went through. Military prose is divided into two periods. The first is writing stories, novels, and novels during hostilities. The second refers to the post-war period of writing. This is a time to rethink what happened and take an unbiased look from the outside.
In modern literature, two main directions of works can be distinguished:
- Panoramic . The action in them takes place in different parts of the front at the same time: on the front line, in the rear, at headquarters. Writers in this case use original documents, maps, orders, and so on.
- Tapered . These books tell a story about one or more main characters.
The main themes that are revealed in books about the war:
- Military operations on the front line;
- Guerrilla resistance;
- Civilian life behind enemy lines;
- Life of prisoners in concentration camps;
- The life of young soldiers at war.
Man and war
Many writers are interested not so much in reliably describing the combat missions performed by fighters, but in exploring their moral qualities. The behavior of people in extreme conditions is very different from their usual way of a quiet life.
In war, many prove themselves the best side, others, on the contrary, do not withstand the test and “break”. The authors’ task is to explore the logic of behavior and inner world those and other characters . This is the main role of writers - to help make correct conclusion readers.
What is the importance of literature about war?
Against the backdrop of the horrors of war, a person with his own problems and experiences comes to the fore. The main characters not only perform feats on the front line, but also perform heroic deeds behind enemy lines and while sitting in concentration camps.
Of course, we all must remember what price was paid for victory and draw a conclusion from this s. Everyone will find benefit for themselves by reading literature about the war. Our electronic library has many books on this topic.
- Lev Kassil;
Liesel's new father turned out to be a decent man. He hated the Nazis and hid a fugitive Jew in the basement. He also instilled in Liesel a love for books, which were mercilessly destroyed in those days. It is very interesting to read about the everyday life of Germans during the war. You rethink many things after reading.
We are glad that you came to our website in search of information of interest. We hope it was useful. You can read books in the genre of military prose online for free on the website.
The development of literature during the Great Patriotic War and post-war decades is one of the most important topics in Russian art. It has a number of features that distinguish it from military literature of other countries and periods. In particular, poetry and journalism acquire a huge role in the spiritual life of the people, since difficult times full of hardships require small forms from genres.
For all literary works The war years are characterized by pathos. Heroic pathos and national pride have become constant attributes of any book. In the very first days of the Nazi offensive, writers, poets, publicists and all creative people felt mobilized on the information front. This call was accompanied by very real battles, injuries and deaths, from which not a single Geneva Convention saved the Soviet intelligentsia. Of the two thousand authors who went to the front line, 400 did not return. Of course, no one counted injuries, illnesses and grief. That is why every poem, every story, every article is characterized by overflowing emotionality, drama, intensity of syllables and words, and the warmth of a friend who is experiencing the same thing as you.
Poetry
Poetry becomes the voice of the Motherland, who called out to her sons from the posters. The most musical poems were turned into songs and flew to the front with teams of artists, where they were indispensable, like medicine or weapons. The literature of the period of the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) for the majority of Soviet people is poetry, because in the form of songs they flew around even the most remote corners of the front, proclaiming the fortitude and intransigence of soldiers. In addition, it was easier to declare them on the radio, diluting front-line reports. They were also published in the central and front-line press during the Great Patriotic War.
To this day, the people love the song lyrics of M. Isakovsky, V. Lebedev-Kumach, A. Surkov, K. Simonov, O. Berggolts, N. Tikhonov, M. Aliger, P. Kogan, Vs. Bagritsky, N. Tikhonov, A. Tvardovsky. A profound national feeling resounds in their poems. The poets' instincts became sharper, their view of their native latitudes became filial, respectful, and tender. The image of the Motherland is a concrete, understandable symbol that no longer needs colorful descriptions. Heroic pathos also penetrated into intimate lyrics.
Melodic poetry with its inherent emotionality and declarative oratorical speech very soon spreads at the fronts and in the rear. The flourishing of the genre was logically determined: it was necessary to epically reflect pictures of heroic struggle. Military literature outgrew poems and developed into a national epic. As an example, you can read A. Tvardovsky “Vasily Terkin”, M. Aliger “Zoya”, P. Antokolsky “Son”. The poem “Vasily Terkin,” familiar to us from school times, expresses the severity of military life and the indomitably cheerful disposition of the Soviet soldier. Thus, poetry during the Second World War acquired enormous importance in the cultural life of the people.
Main genre groups of war poems:
- Lyrical (ode, elegy, song)
- Satirical
- Lyrical-epic (ballads, poems)
The most famous wartime poets:
- Nikolay Tikhonov
- Alexander Tvardovsky
- Alexey Surkov
- Olga Berggolts
- Mikhail Isakovsky
- Konstantin Simonov
Prose
Small forms of literature (such as short stories and tales) were especially famous. Sincere, unbending and truly national characters inspired Soviet citizens. For example, one of the most famous works of that period, “The Dawns Here Are Quiet,” is still known to everyone from school. Its author, Boris Vasiliev, already mentioned above, in his works adhered to one main theme: the incompatibility of the natural human, life-giving and merciful principle, embodied, as a rule, in female images, – and wars. The tone of the work, characteristic of many writers of that time, namely the tragedy of the inevitable death of noble and selfless souls in a collision with the cruelty and injustice of “power”, combined with a sentimental-romantic idealization of “positive” images and plot melodrama, captivates the reader from the first pages, but leaves a deep wound to impressionable people. Probably, this textbook example gives the most complete idea of the dramatic intensity of prose during the Second World War (1941-1945).
Large works appeared only at the end of the war, after the turning point. No one doubted victory anymore, and the Soviet government provided writers with conditions for creativity. Military literature, namely prose, has become one of the key areas of the country's information policy. The people needed support, they needed to realize the greatness of that feat, the price of which was human lives. Examples of prose from the Second World War include V. Grossman’s novel “The People Are Immortal,” A. Beck’s novel “Volokolamsk Highway,” and B. Gorbatov’s epic “The Unconquered.”
Famous prose writers of the war:
- A. Gaidar
- E. Petrov
- Yu. Krymov
- M. Jalil,
- M. Kulchitsky
- V. Bagritsky
- P. Kogan
- M. Sholokhov
- K. Simonov
Journalism
Outstanding wartime publicists: A. Tolstoy (“What We Defend”, “Moscow is Threatened by the Enemy”, “Motherland”), M. Sholokhov (“On the Don”, “Cossacks”, short story “The Science of Hate”), I. Ehrenburg (“Stand!”), L. Leonov (“Glory to Russia”, “Reflections near Kiev”, “Rage”). All these are articles published in those newspapers that soldiers received in the trenches of the front and read before the battle. Exhausted by back-breaking work, people greedily drilled their tired eyes into these same lines. The journalism of those years has enormous literary, artistic and historical value. For example, articles by Boris Vasiliev calling for the establishment of the priority of national culture over politics (an example of which was set by Vasiliev himself, leaving the CPSU in 1989, which he had been a member of since 1952, and since the early 1990s, withdrawing from participation in “perestroika” political actions) . His journalistic materials about the war are distinguished by a sound assessment and the greatest possible objectivity.
The main journalistic genres of wartime:
- articles
- essays
- feuilletons
- appeals
- letters
- leaflets
The most famous publicists:
- Alexey Tolstoy
- Mikhail Sholokhov
- Vsevolod Vishnevsky
- Nikolay Tikhonov
- Ilya Erenburg
- Marietta Shahinyan
The most important weapon of journalism of those years was the facts of violence of the Nazi occupiers against the civilian population. It was the journalists who found and systematized documentary evidence that enemy propaganda was at odds with the truth in everything. It was they who convincingly argued the patriotic position to those who doubted, because only in it lay salvation. No deal with the enemy could guarantee freedom and prosperity for the dissatisfied. The people had to realize this, learning the monstrous details of the massacres of children, women and the wounded that were practiced by the soldiers of the Third Reich.
Dramaturgy
The dramatic works of K. Simonov, L. Leonov, A. Korneichuk demonstrate the spiritual nobility of the Russian people, their moral purity and spiritual strength. The origins of their heroism are reflected in the plays “Russian People” by K. Simonov and “Invasion” by L. Leonov. The history of the confrontation between two types of military leaders is played out polemically in the play “Front” by A. Korneychuk. Drama during the Great Patriotic War is very emotional literature, filled with heroic pathos characteristic of the era. It breaks out of the framework of socialist realism and becomes closer and more understandable to the viewer. The actors are no longer acting, they are depicting their own everyday life on stage, reliving their own tragedies so that people are internally indignant and continue their courageous resistance.
Everyone was united by the literature of the war years: in each play the main idea was a call for the unity of all social forces in the face of an external threat. For example, in Simonov’s play “Russian People” the main character is an intellectual, seemingly alien to proletarian ideology. Panin, a poet and essayist, becomes a military correspondent, like the author himself once did. However, his heroism is not inferior to the courage of battalion commander Safonov, who sincerely loves a woman, but still sends her on combat missions, because his feelings towards his homeland are no less significant and strong.
The role of literature during the war years
The literature of the period of the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) is distinguished by its purposefulness: all writers, as one, strive to help their people withstand the heavy burden of occupation. These are books about the Motherland, self-sacrifice, tragic love for one’s country and the duty with which it obliges every citizen to defend the fatherland at any cost. Crazy, tragic, merciless love revealed the hidden treasures of the soul in people, and writers, like painters, accurately reflected what they saw with their own eyes. According to Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy, “literature in the days of war becomes truly folk art, the voice of the heroic soul of the people."
Writers were not separated from front-line soldiers and home front workers; they became understandable and close to everyone, since the war united the nation. The authors froze and starved at the fronts as war correspondents, cultural workers, and died with soldiers and nurses. An intellectual, a worker or a collective farmer - everyone was at one. In the first years of the struggle, masterpieces were born in one day and remained in Russian literature forever. The main task of these works is the pathos of defense, the pathos of patriotism, raising and maintaining military spirit in the ranks of the Soviet army. What is now called “on the information front” was really needed then. Moreover, literature from the war years is not a state order. Writers like Simonov, Tvardovsky, Ehrenburg came out on their own, absorbing impressions on the front line and transferring them into notebooks to the sound of exploding shells. That's why you really believe these books. Their authors suffered through what they wrote and risked their lives to pass on this pain to their descendants, in whose hands the world of tomorrow was supposed to be.
List of popular books
Books will tell about the collapse of simple human happiness in military realities:
- “Simply Love” by V. Vasilevskaya,
- “It was in Leningrad” by A. Chakovsky,
- "Third Chamber" of Leonidov.
- “And the dawns here are quiet” by B. Vasiliev
- “The Fate of Man” by M. Sholokhov
Books about heroic exploits in the bloodiest battles during the Second World War:
- “In the trenches of Stalingrad” by V. Nekrasov,
- "Moscow. November 1941" Lidina,
- “July – December” by Simonov,
- “Brest Fortress” by S. Smirnov,
- “They fought for their homeland” by M. Sholokhov
Soviet literature about betrayal:
- “The battalions ask for fire” by Yu. Bondarev
- “Sotnikov” by V. Bykov
- “Sign of Trouble” by V. Bykov
- “Live and Remember” by V. Rasputin
Books dedicated to the siege of Leningrad:
- “The Siege Book” by A. Adamovich, D. Granin
- “The Road of Life” by N. Khodza
- “Baltic Sky” by N. Chukovsky
About children participating in the war:
- Young Guard - Alexander Fadeev
- Tomorrow there was a war - Boris Vasiliev
- Goodbye boys – Boris Balter
- Boys with bows – Valentin Pikul
About women participating in the war:
- War does not have a feminine face - Svetlana Alekseevich
- Madonna with ration bread – Maria Glushko
- Partisan Lara – Nadezhda Nadezhdina
- Girls' team - P. Zavodchikov, F. Samoilov
An alternative view of military leadership:
- Life and Fate – Vasily Grossman
- Penal battalion – Eduard Volodarsky
- In war as in war - Viktor Kurochkin
25. “Poetry and prose” (About the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945)
1) expanding students’ knowledge about military prose and poetry of the war period and the 1950-1960s, a story about the fate of some authors;
2) developing a love for Russian literature;
3) education of patriotic feelings.
EVENING DECORATION
Release of the wall newspaper “Forties, Fatal”, exhibition of books about the war, drawings; stands with reproductions of paintings by V. Sidorov “Victory Day”, A. and S. Tyutchev “Autumn 1941. Soldiers”, K. A. Vasiliev “Farewell of a Slav”, A. and S. Tyutchev “May 1945” and others, portraits of writers .
Musical arrangement: Audio recordings of songs by V. Vysotsky and B. Okudzhava, Lebedev-Kumach “Holy War”, “Ave Maria”, recording of the poem by K. Simonov “Do you remember, Alyosha, the roads of the Smolensk region” performed by the author.
CHARACTERS:
1) teacher;
2) first presenter;
3) second leader;
4) third leader;
5) fourth leader;
6) first girl;
7) second girl;
PROGRESS OF THE EVENING
Teacher:
Every year we celebrate the day of sacred national memory - Victory Day.<…>Today we want to pay tribute<…>poets and writers who defended their native land with pen and machine gun, who raised the morale of their compatriots with their creativity in tragic days.
First presenter:
On the very first day of the war, writers and poets of Moscow gathered for a rally. A. Fadeev stated: “The writers of the Soviet country know their place in this decisive battle. Many of us will fight with weapons in our hands, many of us will fight with pens.” More than 1000 poets and writers went to the front and over 400 did not return.<…>
(The song sounds based on the poems of Lebedev-Kumach “Holy War”)
Second presenter:
The poetry of the Great Patriotic War is the poetry of courage. The war gave birth to many poets, because extreme conditions create such spiritual pressure, which could immediately be realized only in such a direct genre as poetry. Poetry immediately expressed the whole gamut of feelings that people experienced: pain, anxiety, hope, grief. Poetry glorified military deeds and called for battle with the enemy.
Third presenter:
Nikolai Mayorov, Pavel Kogan, Vsevolod Bagritsky, Mikhail Kulchinsky, Semyon Gudzenko... In 1941, they were a little older than us, and not all of them returned from the war. Lieutenant Pavel Kogan, a poet, was killed near Novorossiysk. He was removed from military registration due to health reasons, but at the beginning of the war he entered military translator courses. Pavel Kogan wrote in 1942: “Only here, at the front, did I understand what a dazzling, what a charming thing life is. Near death you understand this very well... I believe in history, I believe in our strength... I know that we will win! He wrote:
I'm a patriot. I am Russian air,
I love the Russian land,
I believe that nowhere in the world
You won't find another one like it!
Fourth presenter:
While performing a combat mission in 1942, 20-year-old Vsevolod Bagritsky died. A thin brown notebook of front-line poems was found in his pocket, pierced by a shrapnel that killed the young man.
(Verses from V. Vysotsky’s song “And the sons go into battle”)
First presenter:
In the battles near Stalingrad in January 1943, Mikhail Kulchinsky, the author of the famous lines, died:
War is not fireworks at all,
It's just hard work,
When – black with sweat – up
Infantry slides through the plowing.
Second presenter:
The commander of the rifle platoon, Vladimir Chugunov, died on the Kursk Bulge on July 5, 1943, raising soldiers to attack. He died as he predicted in his poem:
If I'm on the battlefield,
Letting out a dying groan,
I'll fall in the sunset fire,
Hit by an enemy bullet.
If a raven, as if in a song,
The circle will close on me, -
I want someone the same age
He stepped forward over the corpse.
Third presenter:
When the war began, many students from the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History (IFLI) volunteered for the front. Among them was the young poet Semyon Gudzenko. In the notebooks of soldier Gudzenko there is an entry: “Wounded. In the stomach. I lose consciousness for a minute. Most of all I was afraid of a wound in the stomach. Let it be in the arm, leg, shoulder. I can't walk. They're carried on a sleigh."
From the memoirs of the poet Ilya Ehrenburg:
“In the morning there was a knock on the door of my room. I saw a tall, sad-eyed young man in a tunic. I told him: “Sit down.” He sat down and immediately stood up: “I’ll read poetry to you.” I prepared for the next test - who didn’t write poems about war back then! The young man read very loudly, and I listened and repeated: “More... more.” Then they told me: “You have discovered a poet.” No, that morning Semyon Gudzenko revealed much of what I vaguely felt. And he was only 20 years old, he didn’t know what to do Long hands, and smiled embarrassedly.”
One of the first poems read to Ehrenburg was the poem “When they go to death, they sing”:
First reader:
When they go to death, they sing,
And before that you can cry, -
After all, the most terrible hour in battle is
An hour of waiting for an attack.
The snow is full of mines all around.
And turned black from mine dust.
and a friend dies
And that means death passes by.
Now it's my turn
The infantry is following me alone
Damn you
forty-first year
You, frozen infantry in the snow!
I feel like I'm a magnet
That I attract mines.
and the lieutenant wheezes.
And death passes by again.
But we can't wait anymore
And he leads us through the trenches
A numb enmity
A bayonet makes a hole in the neck.
The fight was short.
They drank ice-cold vodka,
And picked it out with a knife
From under my nails I steal someone else's blood.
Third presenter:
Shortly before the victory, Semyon Gudzenko wrote: “Recently I came under heavy bombing at the crossing of the Morava... I lay there for a long time and painfully. I really don’t want to die in 1945.” In 1946, his following lines appeared: “We will not die of old age, we will die of old wounds.” This is exactly what happened to him in February 1953.
Fourth presenter:
If poetry instantly reacted to current events, then prose, and especially such large genres as the novel, took time. Immediately after the war, such works as “The Young Guard” by A. Fadeev, “The Tale of a Real Man” by B. Polevoy, “Flag Bearers” by O. Gonchar and many others appeared. Writers glorify in them the heroic feat of the victorious people, and the war is perceived as a confrontation between good - beauty and evil - ugliness.
First presenter:
In Russian prose, the voices of war participants first sounded powerfully in the mid-1950s and early 1960s.<…>Yuri Bondarev characterized this somewhat prolonged silence of yesterday’s soldiers as follows: “The spiritual experience of these people was saturated to the limit. They lived through all four years of the war without taking a breath, and it seemed that the concentration of details and episodes, conflicts, sensations, losses, images of soldiers, landscapes, smells, conversations, hatred and love was so thick and strong after returning from the front that they simply it was impossible to organize all this, to find the necessary plot, composition, to clearly demonstrate main idea. Hundreds of plots, destinies, collisions, characters were crowded into everyone’s unfaded memory. Everything was too hot, too close - the details grew to gigantic proportions, overshadowing the main thing.”
Second presenter:
The role of history's trustees, memory keepers, was taken on by writers of the front-line generation - from former military journalists: M. Sholokhov, K. Simonov, V. Grossman, B. Polevoy, A. Andreev, A. Kalinin to those who came directly as soldiers or lieutenants on the fiery line of the trenches, like V. Astafiev, V. Bykov, E. Nosov, A. Ananyev, K. Vorobyov, Yu. Bondarev, V. Kondratyev, G. Baklanov.
First presenter:
Of course, writers depict military actions in their works - attacks, retreats, tears, blood, deaths, injuries. But war is also a test for a person, forcing him to make moral choices.
Second presenter:
The entire work of Vasil Bykov is characterized by the problem of moral choice in war.<…>Bykov, who himself went through the war, seems to be tracking how his heroes reveal themselves under the influence of circumstances. In the story "Sotnikov" the main character goes through difficult trials with honor and accepts death with dignity. The fisherman, saving his own life, betrays his homeland, the partisan detachment and personally executes Sotnikov. The physically weaker Sotnikov turns out to be more prepared for a moral feat:
Second reader:
“... Sotnikov suddenly realized that their last night in the world was expiring. The morning will no longer belong to them.
Well, I had to muster my last strength to face death with dignity. Of course, he did not expect anything else from these degenerates. They could not leave him alive - they could only torture him in that devilish nook of Budyly. And so, perhaps, it’s not bad: a bullet will end your life instantly and without pain - not the worst possible end, at least, an ordinary soldier’s end in war.
And he, a fool, was still afraid of dying in battle. Now such death with arms in hand seemed to him an unattainable luxury, and he almost envied the thousands of those lucky ones who met their honorable end at the front great war …
And now the end has come.
At first glance this seemed strange, but, having come to terms with own death For a few short hours, Sotnikov acquired some kind of special, almost absolute independence from the power of his enemies.<…>He was not afraid of anything, and this gave him a certain advantage over others, as well as over his former self. Sotnikov easily and simply, as something elementary and completely logical in his situation, now made the final decision to take everything upon himself. Tomorrow he will tell the investigator<…>that he is the commander of the Red Army and an opponent of fascism, let them shoot him. The rest have nothing to do with it.
Essentially, he sacrificed himself to save others, but no less than others, he himself needed this sacrifice.<…>
Like every death in the struggle, it must affirm something, deny something, and, if possible, complete what life did not manage to accomplish. Otherwise, what is life for then? It is too difficult for a person to be careless about its end.”
Fourth presenter:
Viktor Astafiev said: “What would I like to see in prose about war? The truth! All the cruel but necessary truth so that humanity, having learned it, would be more prudent.”
V. Astafiev displays the “trench truth” in his works in order to bring us readers to the main idea - about the unnatural nature of war, which forces people to kill each other. And, moreover, about the passionate hope that the war will become a historical, moral lesson for humanity, and that something like this will never happen again. Therefore, in all photographic details, V. Astafiev describes the heroic death of Sergeant Major Mokhnakov in the story “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess”:
Third reader:
“He brought the car so close that the driver recoiled when he saw a man emerging from the smoke and dust through the open hatch. The sergeant-major also saw the enemy’s melted face - naked, covered in baby pink skin, without eyebrows, without eyelashes, with a red eyelid turned out, making the eyes appear sanded and slanted. The driver was on fire, more than once.
They looked at each other for only a moment, but from the death-horror that flashed in the driver’s disfigured eye, Mokhnakov guessed that the German understood everything; The experienced differ from the inexperienced in that they are better able to guess the extent of the danger that threatens them.
The tank jerked and braked, squealing with iron. But he was carried along, inexorably dragged forward, and the Russian, blocking his face with his hands, closing his eyes, whispering something with his fingers, fell under the caterpillar. The explosion of an anti-tank mine cracked the old combat vehicle along a recently made seam. The caterpillar tracks were thrown all the way into the trench.
And where Sergeant-Major Mokhnakov lay down under the tank, there remained a crater with ashy earth around the edges and black stubble rods. The body of the sergeant-major, along with his heart, burned out during the war, was carried across the high-rise building, foggy with greenery from the sunny side.”
(An excerpt from V. Vysotsky’s song “He Didn’t Return from the Battle” sounds)
Second presenter:
When the war began, the future writer Yuri Bondarev was only 17 years old. And at 18 - in August 1942 - he was already at the front. Was wounded twice.<…>A quarter of a century after the end of the war, he would write: “The war was a tough and rough school, we sat not at desks, but in frozen trenches. We did not yet have life experience and, as a result, did not know the simple, elementary things that come to a person in everyday peaceful life... But our spiritual experience was filled to the limit.”
Like the author, young heroes Bondareva stepped into the war straight from school<…>. Bondarev, depicting the war, tries to adhere to the truth, “ultimate authenticity,” which is probably why the fate of his heroes is often tragic. In the novel “Battalions Ask for Fire”<…>Due to the fault of one of the bosses, Colonel Iverzev, only five out of several hundred people will remain alive.
Fourth reader(poem by Yuri Belash “Unsuccessful Battle”):
And in the wet meadow, here and there, with gray tubercles
Bodies were left lying in their slashed overcoats...
Someone made a mistake somewhere. Something was not done somewhere.
And the infantry will pay for all these mistakes in full with blood!..
We go and remain silent. We don't want to talk about anything.
What can we talk about if we are a quarter of an hour ago
They put it with that one - damn her three times! – groves
Half of the guys - and which ones, I'll tell you, guys.
First presenter:
There are many works in Russian literature about the war of 1941–1945. The war is revealed in them from different points of view, depending on the author's position. But there is one factor that unites front-line writers: each of them experienced the war through themselves, each saw with their own eyes the whole hell of war.
A. Tvardovsky wrote:
War - there is no crueler word,
War - there is no sadder word,
War - there is no holier word,
In the melancholy and glory of these years.
(B. Okudzhava’s song “Goodbye, boys” sounds)
Fourth presenter:
The beginning of the war left its mark on all subsequent work of Konstantin Simonov. Simonov immediately went to the front, and throughout the war he worked as a correspondent for the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper. For the sake of a few lines in the newspaper, Simonov moved from front to front.<…>. Everything that he published during the war years was later included in his books: “From the Black to the Barents Sea”, “Yugoslav Notebook”, “Letters from Czechoslovakia”. During the war years, Konstantin Simonov wrote the plays “Wait for Me,” “Russian People,” “So It Will Be,” and the story “Days and Nights.” His two collections of poems, “With You and Without You” and “War,” are being published. He knew about the war from no one’s stories - he had been in the trenches, met soldiers and officers, knew well those people who commanded regiments and divisions and drew up plans for military operations. In the post-war years, his trilogy “The Living and the Dead” appeared, which tells about the heroic events of the war.
Before his death in 1979, K. Simonov asked that his last wish be fulfilled: the writer wanted to remain forever with those who died in the first days of the war, and his ashes were scattered in a field near Bobruisk.
Second presenter:
According to the participants in the war, one of the very first poetic works that touched their souls was K. Simonov’s poem “Do you remember Alyosha, the roads of the Smolensk region,” dedicated to Alexei Surkov, a senior comrade.
(The poem is heard in a recording performed by the author)
Third presenter:
Konstantin Simonov gives a great lesson in courage, brotherhood, love, humanity, and loyalty in his lyrics. His famous “Wait for me” is a hymn of love, true love and devotion.
Fourth presenter:
They say that war “does not have a woman’s face,” but women also went to the front. They were nurses - they carried the wounded from the battlefield, carried shells, were snipers and pilots. The word was also their weapon. The whole country knew their poems. Anna Akhmatova, Olga Berggolts, Veronika Tushnova, Yulia Drunina... The hard times of war were woven into the fate and poetry of each of them.
First presenter:
17-year-old graduate of one of the Moscow schools, Yulia Drunina, like many of her peers, voluntarily went to the front in 1941 as a soldier on an ambulance train. From the memoirs of the poet Nikolai Starshinov: “In her character, the most striking features were determination and firmness. If she has decided on something, nothing can bring her down. No force. This was probably especially evident when she volunteered to go to the front. Their family was then evacuated from Moscow to Zavodoukovka in the Tyumen region, they barely managed to somehow get settled there, and their parents - school teachers - were categorically against this step. Moreover, he is the only child in the family, and a very late one at that: his father was already over 60, he died there in Zavodoukovka...”
Sixth reader:
I left my childhood for a dirty car,
To an infantry echelon, to a medical platoon
I listened to distant breaks and did not listen
To everything, the usual forty-first year.
I came from school to damp dugouts,
From the Beautiful Lady to “mother” and “rewind”,
Because the name is closer than "Russia"
I couldn't find it.
Second presenter:
Yulia Drunina wrote these lines in 1942. And throughout her entire work, the running theme will be the motive of leaving childhood in the horror of war, from which she could not return even decades later. From the memoirs of N. Starshinov: “We must also emphasize who Yulia was during the war. A nurse, a nurse in the infantry, the most poorly organized branch of the army, and not just somewhere in a hospital, but on the very front line, in the heat, where under fire it was necessary to pull out the seriously wounded with weak girlish hands. Mortal danger and hard work together. In general, I learned and saw enough.” Starshinov said that her front-line poems made a strong impression at the end of the war and immediately after its completion, her “Zinka” was known by heart.
"Zinka." In memory of fellow soldier - hero of the Soviet Union Zina Samsonova.
(Staging of the poem<…>)
First girl:
We lay down by the broken fir tree,
We are waiting for it to start getting brighter.
It's warmer for two under an overcoat
On chilled, rotten ground.
Second girl:
But today she doesn't count
At home, in the apple outback
Mom, my mother lives.
You have friends, darling.
I only have one.
Spring is bubbling beyond the threshold.
It seems old: every bush
A restless daughter is waiting
You know, Yulka, I am against sadness,
But today she doesn’t count.
First girl:
We barely warmed up.
Suddenly - an unexpected order: “Forward!”
Again next to me in a damp overcoat
The blonde soldier is coming.
Every day it became worse.
They walked without rallies and banners
Surrounded near Orsha
We have a battered battalion.
Zinka led us on the attack,
We made our way through the black rye,
Along funnels and gullies,
Through mortal boundaries.
(<…>The light is dimmed)
We didn't expect posthumous fame.
We wanted to live with glory.
Why in bloody bandages
The blonde soldier is lying down?
Her body with her overcoat
I covered her with my lips pressed together,
The Belarusian winds sang
About the Ryazan wilderness gardens.
You know, Zinka, I am against sadness,
But today she doesn’t count.
Somewhere in the apple outback
Mom, your mother lives.
I have friends, my love,
She had you alone.
The house smells like bread and smoke,
Spring is bubbling beyond the threshold.
And an old lady in a flowery dress
She lit a candle at the icon.
I don't know how to write to her
So she wouldn't wait for you?
(During the reading of the last stanza, a participant dressed as an old woman appears in the background of the stage and lights a candle near the icon. “Ave Maria” sounds)
Third presenter:
The fate of Yulia Drunina is tragic and happy at the same time. Tragic - because her youth was spent during the war years, happy - because she survived this war and became a poet.
Just like Yulia Drunina, Olga Berggolts began her poetic journey with grief. In 1937, her first husband, the talented poet Boris Kornilov, disappeared during the repressions. After 1937, one could only whisper about it. Olga Berggolts herself was also arrested on a false denunciation, and only in 1939 was she rehabilitated. Two of her daughters died before her arrest, and the third child, whom the poetess was expecting, was never born: he was killed by prison.
During the war, Olga Berggolts lived in her favorite city, Leningrad. She, who is called the siege poetess, knows from hearsay all the hardships of life under the siege. Her second husband, Nikolai Molchanov, died of hunger, and Olga Fedorovna herself, according to her sister, “died there, in Leningrad, from dystrophy.” But it is precisely in these years that the best poems are born. The works of Olga Berggolts were heard on the radio in the besieged city, raising the spirit of people and instilling faith in victory. Olga Fedorovna’s poems also told about the horror experienced during the terrible days of hunger. In the lines of the poetess one can hear the confidence that even in this terrible time a person remains a person, humanity defeats fascism, and love for their Motherland makes people sacrifice their own lives:
Sixth reader:
I'm talking to you amid the whistling of shells,
Illuminated with a gloomy glow.
I'm talking to you from Leningrad,
My country, sad country...
Kronstadt evil, indomitable wind
The thrown thing hits my face.
Children fell asleep in bomb shelters,
The night guard stood at the gate.
There is a mortal threat over Leningrad...
Sleepless nights, hard days.
But we have forgotten what tears are,
What was called fear and prayer.
I say: us, citizens of Leningrad,
The roar of cannonades will not shake,
And if tomorrow there are barricades, -
We will not leave our barricades.
We will fight with selfless strength
We will defeat the rabid animals
We will win, I swear to you, Russia,
On behalf of Russian mothers.
Fourth presenter:
The war found Anna Akhmatova in Leningrad. In July 1941, she wrote a poem that spread throughout the country:
And the one who says goodbye to her beloved today -
Let her transform her pain into strength.
We swear to the children, we swear to the graves,
That no one will force us to submit.
(The song by V. Vysotsky “It happened, the men left”)
First presenter:
Not all works about the Great Patriotic War immediately reached the reader. Some of them were subjected to severe criticism, others, whose authors tried to convey to people the tragic truth about the war, to talk about the mistakes of the war years, were completely prohibited.<…>A whole series of party decrees were issued, according to which military literature had to varnish reality and be conflict-free. “Obedient” writers, whose works were often far from real life, were awarded Stalin Prizes, while “obstinate” authors faced oblivion for many years, until perestroika.
Second presenter:
A striking example of this is the work of Vasily Grossman and, in particular, his novel “Life and Fate”. As a correspondent for Red Star, Grossman goes to the front in the first days of the war. In 1943 he was already a lieutenant colonel.<…>His essays on war are deep and thoughtful. V. Grossman is one of the first authors of fiction books about the war, the story “The People Are Immortal” (1942). 10 years later, his novel “For a Righteous Cause” was published, which was a huge success among readers. However, some critics recognized the novel as a work “unprincipled, anti-people, and not in accordance with the principles of socialist realism.” Grossman was reproached for describing Hitler, but the image of Stalin is missing. And this is “ideological sabotage.” They forgot the book and the author. In 1961, another Grossman novel, Life and Fate, was arrested. After this he did not write any more prose.
What was the reason for the arrest of the novel? “Life and Fate” is a synthesis of military and camp prose. Grossman showed that man is shackled within the framework of a brutal command-administrative system. The novel reveals the role of violence in society, barracks, the cult of leaders... And in this sense, fascist concentration camps and Gulag camps are compared. Unfreedom and human powerlessness are equivalent in them. The cult of violence, alignment with one person turns many talented people into “stepchildren of history” and, on the contrary, brings gray people, mediocre people to the fore. Of course, in the 1960s. such works did not have the right to exist. The novel “Life and Fate” was published only in 1988.
Grossman is merciless in depicting the horrors of war. The scene of the execution of Jews in the gas chamber of one of the fascist camps is described by the author with shocking authenticity.
Seventh reader:
... The crowd in the cell became denser, the movements became slower, the steps of people became shorter and shorter.<…>And the naked boy took tiny, meaningless steps. The curve of movement of his light little body no longer coincided with the curve of movement of Sofia Osipovna’s large and heavy body, and so they separated. It was not necessary to hold him by the hand, but just like these two women - mother and girl - convulsively, with the gloomy tenacity of love, press cheek to cheek, chest to chest, to become one inseparable body.
There were more and more people, and the molecular movement, as it thickened and became denser, deviated from Avogadro’s law. Having lost Sofia Osipovna's hand, the boy screamed. But then Sofya Osipovna moved into the past. There was only now and now.<…>And suddenly again, in a new way, a movement occurred next to David.
The noise was also new, different from rustling and muttering.
- Let me out of the way! - and a man with powerful, tense arms, a thick neck, and a bowed head made his way through the single mass of bodies. He wanted to break free from the hypnotic concrete rhythm, his body rebelled like a fish's body on a kitchen table, blindly, without thought. He soon calmed down, gasped and began to mince his feet, doing what everyone else did.
Because of the disturbance he made, the crooked movements changed, and David found himself next to Sofia Osipovna. She hugged the boy to her with the same force that was discovered and measured by workers in extermination camps - when unloading the camera, they never tried to separate the bodies of the hugging loved ones.
... The child’s movement filled her with pity. Her feeling for the boy was so simple - she did not need words and eyes. The half-dead boy was breathing, but the air given to him did not prolong life, but took it away. His head turned, he still wanted to look. He saw those who sank to the ground, saw open toothless mouths, mouths with white and gold teeth, saw a thin stream of blood running from the nostrils...
All the time, strong, hot arms hugged David, the boy did not understand that it had become dark in his eyes, echoing, deserted in his heart, boring, blind in his brain. He was killed and he ceased to be.
Sofya Osipovna Lewington felt the boy’s body settle in her arms. She fell behind him again.
In underground mines with poisoned air, gas indicators - birds and mice - die immediately, they have small bodies; and the boy with the small, bird-like body left before she did...
But there was still life in her heart: it was shrinking. It hurt, I felt sorry for you, the living and the dead...
Third presenter:
Those works that spoke about the tragedy of the family during the war years were also subjected to unfair and cruel criticism. Official propaganda was very disapproving of the depiction of a person’s personal tragedy in fiction. Thus, A. Tvardovsky’s poem “House by the Road” and A. Platonov’s story “Return” became unappreciated. Em's story was subjected to severe criticism. Kazakevich “Two in the steppe”. The same fate befell M. Isakovsky’s poem “The Enemies Burned His Own Hut,” whose hero, upon returning home from the war, found only ashes:
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