Sholokhov's position on the civil war. What does M.A see?

19.10.2020

Serafimovich, Mayakovsky, Furmanov, and after them young writers opposed the portrayal of the revolution, the civil war as a natural disaster, and emphasized the organizing role of the party in the popular movement. Sholokhov turned to the topic of the civil war following Furmanov and Serafimovich. From these writers he received high praise and recognition. It can be assumed that Sholokhov’s works about the civil war met with Furmanov’s approval primarily because they were close to his ideological positions, because the idealization of the spontaneous principle in the revolutionary movement was alien to them. A. Serafimovich also valued “Don Stories” for its truthfulness. He was the first to note the peculiarities of Sholokhov’s creative style; simplicity of life, dynamism, figurative language of stories, a sense of proportion in “acute moments”, “a subtle grasping eye”, “the ability to snatch out the most characteristic from many signs”,

In his early stories, Sholokhov realistically and visibly, from the ideological positions of a writer of the new world, explains the social meaning of the events that took place on the Don in the first years of the formation of Russian power. Sholokhov's first collection, “Don Stories” (1926), opened with the story “The Birthmark.” The commander of the red squadron, Nikolai Koshevoy, is waging an irreconcilable fight against white gangs. One day his squadron encounters one of the gangs, headed by Nikolai Koshevoy’s father. In battle, the father kills his son and accidentally recognizes him by his birthmark. Opening the collection with this story, Sholokhov thereby drew attention to one of the central thoughts of the entire collection - an acute class struggle demarcated not only the Don, the village, the farm, but also Cossack families. One side defends proprietary, class interests, the other – the gains of the revolution. Communists, Komsomol members, and the youth of the village boldly break with the old world, heroically defending the interests and rights of the people in harsh battles with it.

The second collection, “Azure Steppe” (1926), begins with a story of the same name, the introduction to which, written in 1927, is openly polemical in nature. The author is ironic about writers who very touchingly lisp “about the odorous gray feather grass,” about the Red Army “brothers” who allegedly died, “choking on pompous words.” Sholokhov claims that the red fighters died for the revolution in the Don and Kuban steppes “disgustingly simply.” Strongly speaking out against idealization and false romanticization of reality, he portrays the people's struggle for Soviet power as a complex social process, traces the growth of revolutionary sentiments among the Cossacks, overcoming difficulties and contradictions on the path to a new life.

Almost simultaneously with Sholokhov, such writers as S. Podyachev, A. Neverov, L. Seifullina and others revealed the severity of the brutal class struggle in the countryside during the Civil War, showing the new things that the revolution brought to the countryside. However, a number of writers continued to focus on the “idiocy” of the village, on the supposedly eternal inertia of the “peasant,” without noticing the revolutionary renewal of the village and its people. Sun. Ivanov, in the collection “The Secret of the Secret,” artificially isolated the peasants from the social struggle and became carried away by the depiction of their biological instincts. K. Fedin, in the story “Transvaal” and the stories in the collection of the same name, did not notice the triumph of new, social relations in the Russian village. By exaggerating the role of the kulak, he thereby violated the real balance of forces and paid primary attention to the inertia and stagnation of village life.

In 1925, L. Leonov’s novel “Badgers” was published, in which the writer, unlike earlier stories, asserted the victory of the organizing principle in the revolution over the elements of the old world. However, the author has not yet achieved a clear demonstration of the stratification of the village. Class struggle was replaced by random litigation between two villages for ownership of hayfields. This litigation determined the attitude of the peasants towards the Russian government. Drawing two brothers, Semyon and Pavel Rakhleev, participating in the struggle on the side of two hostile camps, L. Leonov is guided not so much by the need to show the class struggle that even divided families, but by the desire to base the work on a psychologically intense conflict.

Sholokhov was interested in the class and social struggle, which determined the ideological demarcation of members of the same family. In the story “Wormhole,” the writer depicts a “rift” in a wealthy kulak family. The youngest son, Komsomol member Stepan, stands against his father and brother, who are hostile to Russian power. He cannot remain silent, knowing
that they are deceiving the Soviet government, hiding surplus grain. The feud in the family reaches the point that Yakov Alekseevich and his eldest son Maxim kill Stepan, whom they hate.

Both here and here between the rows
The same voice sounds:
“Whoever is not for us is against us.
No one is indifferent: the truth is with us.”

And I stand alone between them
In roaring flames and smoke
And with our own time
I pray for both.
M.A. Voloshin

A civil war is a tragic page in the history of any nation, because if in a liberation (patriotic) war a nation defends its territory and independence from a foreign aggressor, then in a civil war people of the same nation destroy each other for the sake of changing the social system - for the sake of overthrowing the old one and establishing a new one state political system.

In Soviet literature of the 20s of the 20th century, the theme of the civil war was very popular, since the young Soviet Republic had just won this war, the Red troops defeated the White Guards and interventionists on all fronts. In works about the civil war, Soviet writers had something to glorify and be proud of. Sholokhov’s first stories (later they compiled the collection “Don Stories”) are devoted to depicting the civil war on the Don, but the young writer perceived and showed the civil war as a people’s tragedy. Because, firstly, any war brings death, terrible suffering to people and destruction to the country; and secondly, in a fratricidal war, one part of the nation destroys another, as a result the nation destroys itself. Because of this, Sholokhov did not see either romance or sublime heroism in the civil war, unlike, for example, A.A. Fadeev, the author of the novel “Destruction.” Sholokhov directly stated in the introduction to the story “Azure Steppe”: “Some writer who has not smelled gunpowder talks very touchingly about the civil war, the Red Army soldiers - certainly “brothers”, about the fragrant gray feather grass. (...) In addition, you can hear about how Red fighters died in the Don and Kuban steppes, choking on pompous words. (...) In fact, it is feather grass. Harmful herb, odorless. (...) The trenches overgrown with plantain and quinoa, silent witnesses to recent battles, could tell a story about how ugly, how people simply died in them.” In other words, Sholokhov believes that the truth must be written about the civil war, without embellishing the details and without ennobling the meaning of this war. Probably, in order to emphasize the disgusting essence of a real war, the young writer places openly naturalistic, repulsive fragments in some stories: a detailed description of the hacked body of Foma Korshunov from the story “Nakhalyonok”, details of the murder of the chairman of the farm council Efim Ozerov from the story “Mortal Enemy”, details of the execution of his grandchildren grandfather Zakhar from the story “Azure Steppe”, etc. Soviet critics unanimously noted these naturalistically reduced descriptions and considered them a shortcoming of Sholokhov’s early stories, but the writer never corrected these “shortcomings.”

If Soviet writers (A. Serafimovich “Iron Stream”, D.A. Furmanov “Chapaev”, A.G. Malyshkin “The Fall of Dayra” and others) inspiredly depicted how units of the Red Army heroically fought with the whites, then Sholokhov showed the essence of civil wars, when members of the same family, neighbors or fellow villagers, living side by side for decades, kill each other, because they turned out to be defenders or enemies of the ideas of the revolution. Kosheva's father, a white ataman, kills his son, a red commander (story "Mole"); kulaks kill a Komsomol member, almost a boy, Grigory Frolov because he sent a letter to the newspaper about their fraud with the land (the story “Shepherd”); food commissar Ignat Bodyagin sentences his own father, the first kulak in the village, to execution (story “Food Commissar”); red machine gunner Yakov Shibalok kills the woman he loves because she turned out to be a spy of Ataman Ignatiev (story “Shibalkov’s Seed”); Fourteen-year-old Mitka kills his father to save his older brother, a Red Army soldier (the story “The Bakhchevnik”), etc.

A split in families, as Sholokhov shows, occurs not because of the eternal conflict of generations (the conflict between “fathers” and “children”), but because of different socio-political views of members of the same family. “Children” usually sympathize with the Reds, since the slogans of the Soviet regime seem to them “extremely fair” (story “The Family Man”): the land goes to the peasants who cultivate it; power in the country - to deputies elected by the people, local power - to elected committees of the poor. And the “fathers” want to preserve the old order, familiar to the older generation and objectively beneficial for the kulaks: Cossack traditions, equal land use, Cossack circle on the farm. Although, it must be admitted, both in life and in Sholokhov’s stories this is not always the case. After all, a civil war affects the entire nation, so the motivation for choosing (which side to fight on) can be very different. In the story “Kolovert”, the middle brother Mikhail Kramskov is a White Cossack, because in the tsarist army he rose to the rank of officer, and his father Pyotr Pakhomych and brothers Ignat and Grigory, middle peasant Cossacks, join the Red Army detachment; in the story “Alien Blood,” son Peter died in the white army, defending Cossack privileges, and his father, grandfather Gavril, reconciled with the Reds, because he fell in love with the young food commissar Nikolai Kosykh with all his heart.

Civil war not only makes enemies of adult family members, but does not spare even young children. Seven-year-old Mishka Korshunov from the story “Nakhalyonok” is shot when he hurries to the village at night for “help.” Hundreds of special-purpose soldiers want to kill the newborn son of Shibalko from the story “Shibalkovo’s Seed”, since his mother is a bandit spy, and because of her betrayal, half a hundred died. Only Shibalka's tearful plea saves the child from terrible reprisals. In the story “Alyoshka’s Heart”, a bandit, surrendering, hides behind a four-year-old girl, whom he holds in his arms, so that the Red Army soldiers do not rashly shoot him.

The civil war does not allow anyone to stay away from the general carnage. The validity of this idea is confirmed by the fate of the ferryman Mikishara, the hero of the story “The Family Man.” Miki-shara is a widower and the father of a large family, he is completely indifferent to politics, his children are important to him, whom he dreams of putting on their feet. The White Cossacks, testing the hero, order him to kill the two eldest sons of the Red Army, and Mikishara kills them in order to stay alive and take care of the seven younger children.

Sholokhov depicts the extreme bitterness of both warring sides - Red and White. The heroes of “Don Stories” are sharply and definitely opposed to each other, which leads to schematism of the images. The writer shows the atrocities of the whites and kulaks, who mercilessly kill the poor, Red Army soldiers and rural activists. At the same time, Sholokhov depicts the enemies of the Soviet regime, usually without delving into their characters, motives of behavior, or life history, that is, in a one-sided and simplified manner. The kulaks and White Guards in “Don Stories” are cruel, treacherous, and greedy. Suffice it to recall Makarchikha from the story “Alyoshka’s Heart,” who smashed the head of a starving girl—Alyoshka’s sister—with an iron, or the rich farmstead Ivan Alekseev: he hired fourteen-year-old Alyoshka as a worker “for grub,” forced the boy to work like an adult man, and beat him mercilessly “for grub.” every little thing." The nameless White Guard officer from the story “The Foal” kills in the back the Red Army soldier Trofim, who had just saved a foal from a whirlpool.

Sholokhov does not hide the fact that his political and human sympathies are on the side of the Soviet regime, so the young writer’s positive heroes are the village poor (Alyoshka Popov from the story “Alyoshka’s Heart”, Efim Ozerov from the story “Mortal Enemy”), Red Army soldiers (Yakov Shibalok from the story “Shibalkovo Seed”, Trofim from the story “The Foal”, communists (Ignat Bodyagin from the story “Food Commissar”, Foma Korshunov from the story “Nakhalyonok”), Komsomol members (Grigory Frolov from the story “Shepherd”, Nikolai Koshevoy from the story “Birthmark”) . In these characters, the author emphasizes a sense of justice, generosity, sincere faith in a happy future for themselves and their children, which they associate with the new government.

However, already in the early “Don Stories” statements of the heroes appear, indicating that not only the White Guards, but also the Bolsheviks are pursuing a policy of brute force on the Don, and this inevitably gives rise to resistance from the Cossacks and, therefore, inflates the civil war even more. In the story “Food Commissar,” Father Bodyagin expresses his grievance to his son, the food commissar: “I should be shot for my goods, because I don’t let anyone into my barn, I am the counter, and who is rummaging through other people’s bins, this one is under the law? Rob, your strength." Grandfather Gavrila from the story “Alien Blood” thinks about the Bolsheviks: “They invaded the Cossacks’ ancestral life by enemies, they turned my grandfather’s ordinary life inside out, like an empty pocket.” In the story “About the Don Food Committee and the Misadventures of the Don Food Commissar Comrade Ptitsyn,” which is considered weak and is usually not analyzed by critics, the methods of surplus appropriation during the Civil War are shown very frankly. Comrade Ptitsyn reports how dashingly he carries out the orders of his boss, Food Commissar Goldin: “I go back and download bread. And he got so worked up that the man was left with only fur. And he would have lost that good, he would have robbed him of his felt boots, but then Goldin was transferred to Saratov.” In “Don Stories” Sholokhov does not yet focus on the fact that the political extremism of whites and reds equally repels the common people, but later, in the novel “Quiet Don”, Grigory Melekhov clearly speaks out on this matter: “To me, if I’m really saying it, neither these nor these are in good conscience.” His life will become an example of the tragic fate of an ordinary person who finds himself between two irreconcilably hostile political camps.

To summarize, it should be said that Sholokhov in his early stories depicts the civil war as a time of great national grief. The mutual cruelty and hatred of the Reds and the Whites leads to a national tragedy: neither one nor the other understands the absolute value of human life, and the blood of the Russian people flows like a river.

Almost all the stories in the Don cycle have a tragic ending; positive heroes, drawn by the author with great sympathy, die at the hands of the White Guards and kulaks. But after Sholokhov’s stories there is no feeling of hopeless pessimism. In the story “Nakhalyonok” the White Cossacks kill Foma Korshunov, but his son Mishka lives; in the story “Mortal Enemy,” fists lie in wait for Efim Ozerov when he returns to the farm alone, but before his death, Efim remembers the words of his comrade: “Remember, Efim, they will kill you - there will be twenty new Efims!.. Like in a fairy tale about heroes... "; in the story “The Shepherd”, after the death of the nineteen-year-old shepherd Gregory, his sister, seventeen-year-old Dunyatka, goes to the city to fulfill her and Gregory’s dream - to study. This is how the writer expresses historical optimism in his stories: ordinary people, even in a situation of civil war, retain the best human qualities in their souls: noble dreams of justice, a high desire for knowledge and creative work, sympathy for the weak and small, conscientiousness, etc.

It can be noted that already in his first works Sholokhov raises global, universal problems: man and revolution, man and the people, the fate of man in an era of global and national upheavals. True, the young writer did not, and could not, provide a convincing disclosure of these problems in short stories. What was needed here was an epic with a long running time, with numerous characters and events. This is probably why Sholokhov’s next work after “Don Stories” was the epic novel about the civil war “Quiet Don”.

Eternal in its value, the work “Quiet Don” by Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov presents to us the tragic events of the first quarter of the 20th century of Russian history as a boundless panorama. The minds of readers are struck by the terrible picture of the wars that have befallen the country, its people and every individual.

Touching on the motive of the First World War, the author places the strongest emphasis not on such a seemingly more comprehensive military arena, but on the Civil War of 1917-1922, localized in one country. For the writer, it was his life’s work to portray and reflect the spirit of his native people, his native land during the most difficult periods in the life of the state, at its turning points. And the Civil War, sadly enough, is the most telling example. Such a war is unusually terrible: it is not just a thirst for victory over a third-party enemy, the desire to acquire new lands and trophies, it is the murder of loved ones, people dear to you by yourself, enemies within your family, neighbors, farm, etc. This is some kind of distorted caricature, breaking, breaking souls, hearts, homes, bonds of people. Mikhail Sholokhov depicted this whole drama realistically and without “censorship” using the example of the Melekhov family, their initially strong and, as they would say now, successful court.

The friendly family lives peacefully and smoothly, works, cultivates the land, maintains the hearth and moral foundations of the “Orthodox Quiet Don.” Of course, some troubles occur in it, but this does not fundamentally change anything. And then war comes and hits you like a butt on the head, a fratricidal war, immoral and merciless. With her clawed paws she takes away, distorts the lives of people one by one, delaying her own pleasure, the head of the family - Pantelei Prokofievich, his son Pyotr Melekhov, matchmaker Miron Korshunov; Aksinya Astakhova, Daria Melekhova, old people and children indiscriminately - the war takes them all. The strong Melekhov family, friendship with neighbors, the entire social structure of the farmstead, village, region and, in the end, the whole state is collapsing. As in a kaleidoscope, friends and enemies, relatives and strangers change, and a spiritual break occurs within the person himself. Thus, Grigory Melekhov, burdened by his love affairs from his lawful wife to another desirable woman, faces a choice between the Red Army and the White Guards; he is desperately looking for the truth in their ranks. Gregory is a fighter for justice, he does not thirst for blood, like a wild beast, he does not thirst for superiority or power. He wants the return of peace and tranquility to his native land and wants to contribute to this, but he doesn’t know how exactly - the war has confused all the cards.

Despite all the complexity and tragedy of the terrible events, at the end of the novel the formula for achieving peace and happiness becomes obvious to the reader: preserving morality and family, caring for neighbors and the flowers of this life - children.

The Civil War as depicted by M. A. Sholokhov

In 1917, the war turned into bloody turmoil. This is no longer a domestic war, requiring sacrificial duties from everyone, but a fratricidal war. With the advent of revolutionary times, relations between classes and estates change dramatically, moral foundations and traditional culture, and with them the state, are rapidly destroyed. The disintegration that was generated by the morality of war covers all social and spiritual ties, leads society into a state of struggle of all against all, to the loss of people of the Fatherland and faith.

The First World War is portrayed by Sholokhov as a national disaster,

Sholokhov with great skill describes the horrors of war, which cripples people both physically and morally. Death and suffering awaken sympathy and unite soldiers: people cannot get used to war. Sholokhov writes in his second book that the news of the overthrow of the autocracy did not evoke a joyful feeling among the Cossacks; they reacted to it with restrained anxiety and expectation. The Cossacks are tired of the war. They dream of its end. How many of them have already died: more than one Cossack widow echoed the dead. The Cossacks did not immediately understand historical events. Having returned from the fronts of the World War, the Cossacks did not yet know what tragedy of the fratricidal war they would have to endure in the near future. The Upper Don Uprising appears in Sholokhov's depiction as one of the central events of the civil war on the Don.

There were many reasons. The Red Terror, the unjustified cruelty of representatives of the Soviet government on the Don are shown in the novel with great artistic force. Sholokhov also showed in the novel that the Upper Don uprising reflected a popular protest against the destruction of the foundations of peasant life and the centuries-old traditions of the Cossacks, traditions that became the basis of peasant morality and morality, which had developed over centuries, and were inherited from generation to generation. The writer also showed the doom of the uprising. Already during the events, the people understood and felt their fratricidal nature. One of the leaders of the uprising, Grigory Melekhov, declares: “But I think that we got lost when we went to the uprising.”

The epic covers a period of great upheaval in Russia. These upheavals greatly affected the fate of the Don Cossacks described in the novel. Eternal values determine the life of the Cossacks as clearly as possible in that difficult historical period that Sholokhov reflected in the novel. Love for the native land, respect for the older generation, love for a woman, the need for freedom - these are the basic values without which a free Cossack cannot imagine himself.

Portraying the Civil War as a People's Tragedy

Not only civil war, any war is a disaster for Sholokhov. The writer convincingly shows that the atrocities of the civil war were prepared by four years of the First World War.

The perception of the war as a national tragedy is facilitated by gloomy symbolism. On the eve of the declaration of war in Tatarskoye, “at night an owl roared in the bell tower. Unsteady and terrible cries hung over the farmstead, and an owl flew from the bell tower to the cemetery, fossilized by calves, moaning over the brown, grassy graves.

“It will be bad,” the old men prophesied, hearing owl calls from the cemetery.

“The war will come.”

The war burst into the Cossack kurens like a fiery tornado just during the harvest, when the people valued every minute. The messenger rushed up, raising a cloud of dust behind him. The fateful thing has come...

Sholokhov demonstrates how just one month of war changes people beyond recognition, cripples their souls, devastates them to the very bottom, and makes them look at the world around them in a new way.

Here the writer describes the situation after one of the battles. There are corpses scattered all over the middle of the forest. “We were lying down. Shoulder to shoulder, in various poses, often obscene and scary.”

A plane flies by and drops a bomb. Next, Yegorka Zharkov crawls out from under the rubble: “The released intestines were smoking, casting soft pink and blue.”

This is the merciless truth of war. And what a blasphemy against morality, reason, and a betrayal of humanism, the glorification of heroism became under these conditions. The generals needed a “hero”. And he was quickly “invented”: Kuzma Kryuchkov, who allegedly killed more than a dozen Germans. They even began to produce cigarettes with a portrait of the “hero.” The press wrote about him excitedly.

Sholokhov talks about the feat differently: “And it was like this: the people who collided on the field of death, who had not yet had time to break their hands in the destruction of their own kind, in the animal horror that overwhelmed them, stumbled, knocked down, delivered blind blows, mutilated themselves and their horses and fled, frightened by the shot, who killed a man, the morally crippled ones dispersed.

They called it a feat."

People at the front are cutting each other down in a primitive way. Russian soldiers hang corpses on wire fences. German artillery destroys entire regiments to the last soldier. The earth is thickly stained with human blood. There are settled hills of graves everywhere. Sholokhov created a mournful lament for the dead, and cursed the war with irresistible words.

But even more terrible in Sholokhov’s depiction is the civil war. Because she is fratricidal. People of the same culture, the same faith, the same blood began to exterminate each other on an unprecedented scale. This “conveyor belt” of senseless, horribly cruel murders, shown by Sholokhov, shakes to the core.

... Punisher Mitka Korshunov does not spare either the old or the young. Mikhail Koshevoy, satisfying his need for class hatred, kills his hundred-year-old grandfather Grishaka. Daria shoots the prisoner. Even Gregory, succumbing to the psychosis of the senseless destruction of people in war, becomes a murderer and a monster.

There are many stunning scenes in the novel. One of them is the reprisal of forty captured officers by the Podtelkovites. “Shots were fired frantically. The officers, colliding, rushed in all directions. The lieutenant with the most beautiful feminine eyes, wearing a red officer’s cap, ran, clutching his head with his hands. The bullet made him jump high, as if over a barrier. He fell and never got up. Two men chopped down the tall, brave captain. He grabbed the blades of the sabers, blood poured from his cut palms onto his sleeves; he screamed like a child, fell to his knees, on his back, rolling his head in the snow; on the face one could see only blood-stained eyes and a black mouth, drilled with a continuous scream. His face was slashed by flying bombs, across his black mouth, and he was still screaming in a thin voice of horror and pain. Stretching over him, the Cossack, wearing an overcoat with a torn strap, finished him off with a shot. The curly-haired cadet almost broke through the chain - some ataman overtook him and killed him with a blow to the back of the head. The same ataman drove a bullet between the shoulder blades of the centurion, who was running in an overcoat that had opened in the wind. The centurion sat down and scratched his chest with his fingers until he died. The gray-haired podesaul was killed on the spot; parting with his life, he kicked a deep hole in the snow and would have beaten him like a good horse on a leash if the Cossacks, who took pity on him, had not finished him off.” These mournful lines are extremely expressive, filled with horror at what is being done. They are read with unbearable pain, with spiritual trepidation and carry within themselves the most desperate curse of the fratricidal war.

No less terrible are the pages dedicated to the execution of the Podtelkovites. People, who at first “willingly” went to the execution “as if for a rare fun spectacle” and dressed up “as if for a holiday”, faced with the realities of a cruel and inhumane execution, are in a hurry to disperse, so that by the time of the reprisal against the leaders - Podtelkov and Krivoshlykov - there was nothing left few people.

However, Podtelkov is mistaken, arrogantly believing that people dispersed out of recognition that he was right. They could not bear the inhuman, unnatural spectacle of violent death. Only God created man, and only God can take his life.

On the pages of the novel, two “truths” collide: the “truth” of the Whites, Chernetsov and other killed officers, thrown in the face of Podtelkov: “Traitor to the Cossacks! Traitor!" and the opposing “truth” of Podtelkov, who thinks that he is protecting the interests of the “working people.”

Blinded by their “truths,” both sides mercilessly and senselessly, in some kind of demonic frenzy, destroy each other, not noticing that there are fewer and fewer of those left for whose sake they are trying to establish their ideas. Talking about the war, about the military life of the most militant tribe among the entire Russian people, Sholokhov, however, nowhere, not a single line, praised the war. It is not for nothing that his book, as noted by the famous Sholokhov scholar V. Litvinov, was banned by the Maoists, who considered war the best way to socially improve life on Earth. “Quiet Don” is a passionate denial of any such cannibalism. Love for people is incompatible with love for war. War is always a people's disaster.

Death in Sholokhov’s perception is that which opposes life, its unconditional principles, especially violent death. In this sense, the creator of “Quiet Don” is a faithful successor of the best humanistic traditions of both Russian and world literature.

Despising the extermination of man by man in war, knowing what tests the moral sense is subjected to in front-line conditions, Sholokhov, at the same time, on the pages of his novel, painted the now classic pictures of mental fortitude, endurance and humanism that took place in the war. A humane attitude towards one's neighbor and humanity cannot be completely destroyed. This is evidenced, in particular, by many of the actions of Grigory Melekhov: his contempt for looting, the defense of the Polish woman Franya, the rescue of Stepan Astakhov.

The concepts of “war” and “humanity” are irreconcilably hostile to each other, and at the same time, against the background of bloody civil strife, the moral capabilities of a person, how beautiful he can be, are especially clearly outlined. War severely tests moral strength, unknown in days of peace.

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

1. Realism of “Quiet Don”…………………………………………………………4

2. Reflection of the civil war in the novel……………...................8

Conclusion……………………………………………………………..15

Literature………………………………………………………………………………...16

INTRODUCTION

Epic novel by M.A. Sholokhov’s “Quiet Don” is an epic work about the fate of the Russian Cossacks during the First World War and the Civil War, recognized as one of the peaks of Russian and world literature of the twentieth century. The novel tells the story of a difficult time in the life of Russia, which brought enormous social and moral upheaval. In the unity - as it was in reality - of the tragic and heroic principles, expressed through the dramatic fate of the Cossacks, lies the main historical originality and strength of the novel.

Showing the tragic events of the civil war on the Don, the writer created vivid, truthful, living images of people who faced a fiercely irreconcilable struggle. Close people, relatives, fathers and sons who raised their hands to each other. He showed their cruelty and mercy, mental suffering and hopes, their souls, their characters, joys and misfortunes, defeats and victories. The tragic greatness of their lives. And could the life of Russian people be different in a turning point, revolutionary era?

The purpose of this work is to study the theme of the civil war in the novel by M.A. Sholokhov "Quiet Don". In accordance with the goal, the research objectives were determined:

– show the realism of “Quiet Don”;

– show the reflection of the civil war in the novel.

The set of goals and objectives determined the following structure of the study, which consists of an introduction, two chapters, a conclusion and a list of references.

1. Realism of "Quiet Don"

M.A. Sholokhov began writing Quiet Don at the age of twenty in 1925 and completed it in 1940. The book was conceived as a completely traditional story for Soviet literature about the brutal struggle for the victory of Soviet power on the Don in the fall of 1917 - spring of 1918. Something similar already happened in “Don Stories,” which made up the writer’s first book. However, Sholokhov soon abandoned the original plan. And the entire first volume of his novel is about something else: about the life and way of life of the Don Cossacks.

A brief but energetic plot tells about the history of the Melekhov family from the middle of the 19th century, when, after the Russian-Turkish war, Prokofy Melekhov brought his Turkish wife to the farm; he loved her, carried her in his arms to the top of the mound, where they both “looked at the steppe for a long time”; and when a threat loomed over her, he defended her with a saber in his hands. So, from the first pages, proud people, capable of great feelings, freedom-loving people, workers and warriors appear in the novel.

In the terrible scene of Prokofiy’s murder of his wife’s abuser, another important idea for the writer comes to light: the protection of the clan, family, and offspring. Contrary to the tradition of Soviet writers of the 20s to depict pre-revolutionary reality as a chain of horrors, Sholokhov openly admires Cossack life. Very specific, rich, full-blooded sketches of the life and everyday life of the Cossacks of various historical periods give living reality and truthfulness to the depicted events of a large epic plan. Sholokhov recreates the indestructible, inert way of life, the closed life of the “stately kurens” of the pre-revolutionary years. “In every courtyard, surrounded by fences, under every roof of every smoking room, its own full-blooded, bittersweet life, isolated from the rest, swirled like a whirlwind.”

With all the smallest everyday details, the writer talks about this life of the inhabitants of the kurens with its sorrows and joys, anxieties and worries. With colorful strokes he paints pictures of mowing, folk parties, youth games, their free Cossack songs about the glorious blue Don.

But Sholokhov the realist also shows another side of pre-revolutionary Cossack life. And then the savagery, inertia, and bestial cruelty of this possessive, closed world are revealed. For a shock of hay trampled by bulls, a Cossack, the sovereign owner of the kuren, “flogged his wife” almost to death. For treason, Stepan Astakhov “deliberately and terribly” beats his young beautiful wife Aksinya in front of indifferent neighbors watching this “spectacle”: “it’s very clear why Stepan favors his lawful one.”

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2. Reflection of the civil war in the novel

One of M.A.’s favorite techniques. Sholokhov - a preliminary story. So, at the end of the first chapter of the fifth part of the novel we read: “Until January, they lived quietly on the Tatar farm. The Cossacks who returned from the front rested near their wives, ate their food, did not sense that at the thresholds of the kurens they were watching for greater troubles and hardships than those they had to endure in the war they had experienced.”

“Big troubles” are revolution and civil war, which disrupted the usual way of life. In a letter to Gorky, Sholokhov noted: “Without exaggerating the colors, I painted the harsh reality that preceded the uprising.” The essence of the events depicted in the novel is truly tragic; they affect the fate of huge sections of the population. In "Quiet Don" there are more than seven hundred characters, main and episodic, named and unnamed; and the writer is concerned about their fates.

If we compare the face of war depicted by the writer before this milestone and after it, then an increase in tragedy becomes noticeable, starting from the moment the world war turned into a civil war. The Cossacks, tired of the bloodshed, hope for a quick end, because the authorities “must end the war, because both the people and we do not want war.” But there is still a long search ahead for the answer to the question asked by Grigory Garanzhe: “How will you shorten the war? How to destroy it, since they have been fighting forever?”

CONCLUSION

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov’s novel “Quiet Don” is a masterpiece of world literature. In "Quiet Don"

LITERATURE

1. Vasilenko E.V. Towards death // Literature at school, 2004. – No. 5.

2. Ermolaev G.S. Mikhail Sholokhov and his work. – St. Petersburg: 2000.

3. Kiseleva L.F. On the significance of the key and dominant foundations of Sholokhov’s artistic world for the past and present centuries // Philological Bulletin of the Rostov State University, 2005. – No. 2.

4. Kovalev V.A. and others. Essay on the history of Russian Soviet literature. Part two. – M.: 1955.

5. Ognev A. Don sun // Soviet Russia, 2005. – No. 70-71.

6. Semenova S. Philosophical and metaphysical facets of “The Quiet Don” // “Questions of Literature”, 2002. – No. 1.

7. Tolstoy A.N. A quarter of a century of Soviet literature. – M.: 1943.

8. Sholokhov M.A. Collection cit.: In 8 vols. – M.: 1985-1986.

9. Yakimenko L.G. Creativity M.A. Sholokhov. – M.: 1977.

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