Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation

State Educational Institution

Higher Professional Education

"Tobolsk State Pedagogical

Institute named after D.I. Mendeleev."

Department of Russian Language and Literature

Autobiographical basis

"Stories of my contemporary"

V.G. Korolenko

Completed by: Student of group 32

Turnaeva Elena Viktorovna

Checked by: Ph.D., Associate Professor

Nikitina T.Yu.

Tobolsk - 2007

I. Introduction

II. Main part

1. The idea of ​​“History” and the reflection of previous creativity in it

2. Autobiographical in the work “The History of My Contemporary”

3. Genre features of “The History of My Contemporary”

III. - Conclusion -

IV. Used Books

INTRODUCTION

The whole life and work of Korolenko, according to A.M. Gorky, were devoted to the struggle for the implementation of “truth and justice”, the struggle for the liberation of the people from the yoke of the “hundred-headed monster”. His largest work, “The History of My Contemporary,” is dedicated to this goal, which is the subject of research in this work.

As a true patriot of his homeland, Korolenko did not hush up the inertia and passivity of the backward masses. But he was full of faith in the enormous creative powers of the people. During the years of reaction, it was precisely this faith in the people, faith in the possibility and regularity of their development along the path of struggle towards liberation that was the soil that nourished the optimistic direction of his work. This faith in the people is most fully embodied in his fundamental work - in “The History of My Contemporary.”

The first volume of Korolenko's memoirs has been published separate publication in 1909, when the best people were suffocating in the suffocating atmosphere of “dark, dull and gloomy reaction”, when all sorts of decadent trends in literature reached their apogee. Against this background, “The History of My Contemporary” especially stood out as a work of high realism, which asserted, in contrast to the apologetics of “supermans” and unchanging passions in the literature of decadence, the ideas of deep humanity and love for the common people.

In his work, the writer strove for the most complete historical truth. And he did not try to give his own portrait. Korolenko wanted to show the life of his time, showing it through his autobiography, which the author of numerous memoirs probably managed to accomplish, showing it in sufficient detail.

This explains the high assessment given by M. Korolenko, who described the author of “The History of My Contemporary” as the first “most talented writer we have today,” and the special attention Korolenko himself paid to his memoirs as his main work.

The concept of “History” and the reflection of previous creativity in it

In the rich literary heritage of V.G. Korolenko there is one work in which the most character traits his life and work. This is the four-volume “History of My Contemporary,” on which Korolenko worked for more than fifteen years of his life. This story ends well creative path Korolenko occupies a leading place among his works both in terms of volume and artistic skill.

The topic, in which the personal would be closely intertwined with the past of Russian society, with the history of the revolutionary struggle and the search for ways of this struggle, worried Korolenko for a long time, since the mid-80s. It kept popping up in the author’s mind over the next twenty years and finally matured only in 1905. True, according to the recollections of Korolenko’s relatives, his first thoughts about writing “History” date back to 1902-1903. “After moving to Poltava, V.G., while his mother Evelina Iosifovna Korolenko was still alive, in conversations with her, tried to remember the details of his childhood life, names and people.” So, back in 1879, in the essay “In Berezovsky Repairs,” he tried to depict the history of his personal exile wanderings against the backdrop of an artistic depiction of Russian reality. In the early 80s, while in Yakut exile, Korolenko worked on the story “The Stripe,” in which “The Story of One Young Man” was also supposed to be closely intertwined with the social events of Russia at that time. All of the listed works became a kind of “blanks” and were later used by the writer in his work.

But these were only the first stages of work; writing began in the summer of 1905.

Korolenko showed peasant “enmity”, different forms and stages of peasant protest before “The History of My Contemporary”, and the vague romantic impulses of intelligentsia youth - the same way. But the merging of these two principles was, in essence, what new topic, which had long worried him and led to “The History of My Contemporary.” This was the very “middle of the process” from which the true “History of My Contemporary” began for Korolenko; everything that preceded it was just an introduction to it. This “introduction” constituted the contents of the first volume.

The first volume was published in 1906-1908 in the magazines “Modernity” and “Russian Wealth”. He received high praise from A. M. Gorky. In 1910, in a letter to M. M. Kotsyubinsky, A. M. Gorky wrote: on every page you feel the smart, human smile of a great soul that thought a lot, cared a lot... I took this excellent book in my hands and - I read it again, - wrote Gorky . “And I will read it often,” I like her more and more, both in her serious tone, and in this little-known modern literature of ours, with a kind of respectable modesty. Nothing flashy, but everything touches the heart. The voice is quiet, but gentle and thick, a real human voice.”

Korolenko considered the chapter “On the Yammalakh Cliff” to be perhaps the most important part of his work, because it outlined the story of his liberation from such ideas that prevented him from finding himself as a writer and public figure. (C) Information published on the site
“This is the chapter that made me a writer,” he says.
- After that I wrote “Makar’s Dream”...

Ideological content and the meaning of the first volume of “History” is closely connected with the range of issues that occupied Korolenko back on the eve and maturation of the revolution of 1905 and were reflected in his Romanian essays, in Siberian stories, in the story “Not Terrible”. Korolenko spoke there about the power of tradition, about spontaneity, about the power of the everyday, the familiar, about everything that creates a psychological basis for passive submission to the established social order, no matter how unfair it may be. In the first volume of “History,” the writer turns to the past, showing the roots of these phenomena in pre-reform Russia.

The second volume was published in 1910 (the first chapters in “Russian Wealth”) and in 1919 (entirely, in the edition “Zadruga”), the third volume - in 1921 (“Zadruga” and the fourth volume, now completed by a terminally ill writer, appeared in ᴨȇchat after his death in “The Voice of the Past”.

Work on “The History of My Contemporary” proceeded outwardly under extremely unfavorable conditions. She was constantly pushed aside by the circumstances of the current literary life, and, above all, the turbulent events of living modernity: the events of 1905, which required a journalistic response, the fight against the death penalty (“Everyday Phenomenon” and “Features of Military Justice”, 1910-1911), the Beilis case, the world war during which the writer lived besides, far from Russia; colossal world upheavals of the revolutionary era. “The History of My Contemporary” was written over the course of seventeen years. Between its first volume and the next one lay the years of war and two revolutions.

The autobiographical material of “The History of a Contemporary” was selected by the artist from the point of view of its typicality and historical significance.

The fact that the idea of ​​“History” took shape under the influence of the events of 1905 is evidenced by the author’s original preface to the first volume. Korolenko directly points out the topicality of his work; he believes that the image of “what his generation dreamed of and fought for” is of interest to the living reality itself and for the current time, when “our life fluctuates and trembles from the acute collision of new principles with outdated ones.” It even “occurred to the author to start from the middle, with those events that are already connected by a direct living connection with the issues of the present day, like the first actions of the drama with its denouement.” But since he wrote “not the history of his time, but the history of life at that time,” he wanted “the reader to first become familiar with the prism in which it was reflected.” For Korolenko, “time” was at the center; the presentation of his personal biography was, according to his plan, only a prism reflecting the era. This resulted in self-restraint in the choice of biographical material: “All the facts, impressions, thoughts and feelings set out in these essays are the facts of my life, my thoughts, my impressions and my feelings, as far as I am able to restore them with a certain degree of vividness and without adding later layers. But here are not all the facts, not all the thoughts, not all the movements of the soul, but only those that I consider related to these or other generally interesting motives.”

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Korolenko again felt the need to look back, to look back at the past of his generation, where the roots of his own new ideas and moods were located. The topic is “quarrels with little brother", partly reproduced by him in "The Artist Alymov", directed his attention towards the petrels of the 70s.

Korolenko repeatedly tried, in one form or another, to depict personal history against the background of the struggle of the revolutionary part of Russian society against the autocratic system.

As Korolenko wrote in the preface: “In my work I strived for the most complete historical truth possible, often sacrificing to it the beautiful or bright features of artistic truth. I am not trying to give a portrait of myself... I recalled and revived a number of paintings from the last half-century... Now I see much of what my generation dreamed of and fought for, bursting into the arena of public life alarmingly and violently. I think that many episodes from the times of my exile wanderings, events, meetings, thoughts and feelings of people of that time and that struggle have not lost the interest of living reality itself... our life fluctuates and trembles from the sharp clashes of new principles with outdated ones. I hope to at least partially illuminate some elements of this struggle.”

“The History of My Contemporary” remained unfinished. The book ends at the events associated with the return of V.G. Korolenko from Yakut exile in 1884. But even in its unfinished form, “The History of My Contemporary” remains Korolenko’s most important work.

Autobiographical in the work “The History of My Contemporary”

Portraying life path of his “Contemporary”, in the poetic outline of which it is easy to recognize the biography of the writer himself, Korolenko acquaints the reader with the development of the social movement of the 60-80s, with outstanding historical events that time.

Korolenko showed wide historical background era. However, the peculiarities of his personal biography predetermined the range of historical material that made up the content of the four books “The History of My Contemporary”.

The writer sought to give a typical image of the hero of his generation, a commoner in terms of living conditions, associated with the democratic aspirations of the eras of the sixties and seventies. The writer gives a broad generalization, reviving in his memory the most important episodes own life, brilliantly analyzing the spiritual quest of Korolenko, a high school student, a student, an “intelligent proletarian” and, finally, a “state criminal.”

The range of topics covered in “The History of My Contemporary” is extensive and diverse. It depicts a family and a gymnasium, a student audience and illegal gatherings of the seventies, attic slums and prisons, the offices of officials and the life of peasant hut. The era covers an almost thirty-year period: from the 50s to the mid-80s. The geographical scale is enormous. Here are the provincial Ukrainian village of Garny Lug and the provincial city of Zhitomir, Moscow and St. Petersburg, Kronstadt and Vyatka, Perm, Irkutsk, Berezovsky Pochinki abandoned to the ends of the world and, finally, the remote settlement of Amga, Yakutsk region.

In the depiction of the awakening and growing consciousness of a child, to which the first book of “History” is dedicated, there is a palpable critical attitude towards the structure of life. The idea of ​​complete completeness and indestructibility of everything that surrounded the child is replaced by an understanding of the “wrong side” of life, some kind of untruth that underlies bourgeois reality. This feeling of the “wrong side” of life gradually comes into the young man’s consciousness social injustice, in the belief that the state of the landowners and bourgeoisie is based on “lies from top to bottom.”

The hero of “History” goes through various stages of development, starting with a fascination with the romance of the past.

“The History of My Contemporary” begins with a depiction of the life of a child in the provincial city of Zhitomir and the provincial town of Rivne, which is quite consistent with the personal biography of V.G. Korolenko. As a child, the hero of the stars at night asks God to send him good couple real wings for flight. The first disappointment leads to a first, still unconscious, instinctive impulse of protest. After the collapse of childhood fantastic dreams, a blasphemous phrase breaks into the traditional prayer before sleep, in addition to consciousness, as if someone whispered it in the ear. Further, real impulses coming from very specific facts come to the aid of the unreasonable, instinctive voices of human nature. public life and moving into the sphere of clear consciousness.

The hero of "History" - the young "contemporary" Korolenko - is carried away in the imagination "to unknown lands and unknown times"; he is already attracted to battles, chases, battles. And somewhere there, outside the estate, there is a working life of its own, unknown and alien.
It blows into our enchanted borders alienation, contempt, enmity... And there is nothing that would connect the life of imagination, dreams, impulse with this harsh but real life of work and hardship...”

Many times previously depicted people from the people's environment are generalized under the influence of the revolution into a collective image of the revolutionary people. As elsewhere in “The History of My Contemporary,” in the depiction of such a hero, old memories acquire the interest of the most living modernity.

Korolenko reflected a vivid memory of the collective image of the people on the pages of “The History of My Contemporary,” which unfolds against the joyful backdrop of spring. Korolenko searched for this image of the people throughout his entire literary career and found it in his last work.

During the years of exile, he several times experienced the “temptation” to escape and become illegal. This thought first gripped him when he arrived from Glazov to Berezovskie Pochinki; this plan, however, was completely fantastic, since it was possible to escape to a certain Pyotr Ivanovich Nevolin, who was considered a dangerous revolutionary leader, but turned out to be a completely “peaceful” person. Then in Perm, after Korolenko refused the oath, Yuri Bogdanovich came to him with an offer to join the revolutionary organization. On the way to the Yakut region, he could have committed dangerous attempt escape from Tobolsk prison; the result of this attempt would be either death, in case of failure, or, with complete success, the final transition to an illegal position. In all these cases, Korolenko overcame his “temptations.” The first time he was kept from escaping by the desire to come into closer contact with people's life in its very depths; He refused Yuri Bogdanovich’s offer due to disagreement with the terrorist tactics of the Narodnaya Volya; An accident prevented the escape from Tobolsk prison. Korolenko recalls that at the decisive moment of his life, on the Yammalakh cliff, he collected all these facts in his memory and came to a decisive conclusion: no, he was not a revolutionary. In “The History of My Contemporary,” summing up all his previous thoughts, he resolves this very question in a final and general form.

Korolenko “had no faith in either terror or its consequences...” One of the chapters of “The History of My Contemporary” has the following subtitles: “The tragedy of the Russian revolutionary intelligentsia. - Fight without people." Korolenko understood this tragedy in the position of the revolutionary intelligentsia already in his youth; he did not want to be left “without the people.”

It was precisely history - the history of society and the history of the individual in their inseparable unity, the history of the people and the history of a person striving to connect his destiny with the people, while maintaining his individuality and his dignity. This condition was extremely important for the hero of “The History of My Contemporary.” Sometimes he openly opposes himself to people from the people if for some reason they offend his dignity. He is an educated man, he is an exile, he also knows a craft, and he demands respect for himself, without introducing the slightest shade of lordliness into his behavior.

If “The History of My Contemporary” had not been cut short by the death of the author, he could have cited other similar episodes dating back to a later time in his further narrative.

Only from the moment of the emergence of a connection between the abstractly romantic impulses of intellectual youth and peasant hostility to the “lordship” will there appear, according to Korolenko’s concept, “awareness of personal responsibility for the entire order of things.” And this consciousness is already the direct opposite of the traditional integral mood of “stable balance of conscience.”

The writer's memory preserved pictures of the life of an official family. With great skill, Korolenko embodied in concrete images the figures of district court officials familiar to him from childhood - funny characters worthy of comedy plots - gloomy figures of the highest authorities. With particular skill, Korolenko spoke about the gymnasium, creating a whole gallery of types of government teachers, supporters of dogmatic education.

The life of the remote province as depicted by Korolenko in its own way reflected events taking place far beyond its borders. Gymnasium reforms, all sorts of orders from the “highest authorities” and government regulations - all this was reflected in the life of the district town, and “The History of My Contemporary” creates a picture of how stupid and senseless all these “actions” of the tsarist administration looked when they were carried out. One of the episodes of the reform of 1861 is clearly depicted. The father, as usual, waved his hand: “Interpret the patient with the doctor!” The old time bequeathed to the new part of its initial inheritance...”

In a magnificent essay dedicated to his father, Korolenko tells how the concept of immutability was destroyed social order and how responsibility only for one’s personal activities was replaced by “a caustic feeling of guilt for public untruth.

The life of the remote province as depicted by Korolenko in its own way reflected events taking place far beyond its borders. Gymnasium reforms, government regulations aimed at strengthening the power of the police and governors - all this was reflected in the life of the district town, and “The History of My Contemporary” creates a picture of how stupid and senseless all these “actions” of the highest authorities looked when they were carried out in life.

It is known in what mood Korolenko went into exile in Vyatka. He was ready to experience all the hardships of the “forest wilderness”, just to “sink to the bottom folk life" However, the populist passions of the author of “History” did not withstand contact with reality. The illusions collapsed as soon as Korolenko found out harsh life villages. And only by getting rid of “preconceived notions” was Korolenko able to feel and understand the life of the Berezov Pochinkovs with such insight that almost forty years later he reproduced it in “History” with all the fullness of realistic colors and living details.

With a feeling of deep pain, Korolenko spoke about the “sparks... of immediate talent” that “were born and died in a deep forest.” In conditions of an almost primitive existence, Korolenko saw a talented girl-storyteller and drew the image of Gavri Biserov with his desire for poetry.

Not all periods of Korolenko’s life are described with equal completeness in “The History of My Contemporary.” For example, the events preceding the second arrest of V.G. are briefly described. Korolenko, although here, with the expressiveness characteristic of the author, colorful figures of representatives of the then intelligentsia are drawn (for example, the figure of the publisher of the newspaper “Novosti” Notovich).

The story gives portraits of many participants in the social movement of the 60s and 70s. In this environment there were also “dilettantes from the revolution”, random people who, after they fell into the hands of the police, gave treacherous testimony and considered it their duty to make lengthy repentances. However, Korolenko’s exile wanderings brought him together with people of significant revolutionary temperament and unyielding will, with participants in major political processes. He met with people involved in the case of Chernyshevsky and Pisarev.

Great place in “The History of My Contemporary” occupies the student period of Korolenko’s life. IN bright paintings Korolenko depicts Korolenko’s half-starved existence during his studies at the Technological Institute, work in a proofreading bureau, and the “student revolt” at the Petrovsky Academy.

The writer's student years coincided with the rise of the Russian social movement. Young people familiar with the ideas of Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov came to the audiences of institutes and universities. These youth of all ranks huddled in attics and basements, lived from hand to mouth, and among them vague ideas about the liberation of the people matured, issues of worldview and norms of behavior were discussed. The chapters dedicated to the “artel of poor students” who lived in attic No. 12 provide one of the most characteristic pictures of the life of mixed students in Russian literature.

The last chapters of the story most fully illuminate the activities of the populist intelligentsia. Korolenko's artistic memoirs, of course, cannot claim to be a comprehensive coverage of the era. The author is sometimes subjective in his assessment of persons and contemporary phenomena of reality, sometimes he presents historically significant material in less detail than material that has limited significance. Nevertheless, in general, Korolenko’s artistic memoirs are of great interest to the Soviet reader, who will find in them a vivid depiction of a significant period of Russian history.

Genre features of “The Stories of My Contemporary”

Memoir literature is a very broad concept that unites very diverse works of literature. Memoirs in the narrow sense of the word are memories from personal life author or memories of the life of a certain layer(s) of society. But, first of all, these are purely personal memories.

If we approach Korolenko’s memoirs from this point of view, that is, if we consider his “History of My Contemporary” to be only the writer’s personal memories, then, quite understandably, this work it will be necessary to include S.M. among the memoirs like “Underground Russia”. Stepnyak-Kravchinsky, “Land and Freedom of the 70s”, etc.

“The History of My Contemporary” by V. G. Korolenko, along with the author’s direct observations, absorbed numerous historical and artistic sources, which the writer fused into his own artistic canvas, reflecting the multifaceted aspects of Russian reality. Consequently, Korolenko’s memoirs are not memoirs in the narrow sense of the word, like “Notes to the Earth by M.R. Popova.

In “The History of My Contemporary” Korolenko, along with the presence of memoir material itself, the main place is occupied by artistic and historical images. And the memoir material itself, due to the special biography of the writer, which for the most part was intertwined with the social events of Russian reality, represents an organic whole, a unified one, in which the private characterizes the public, and the public characterizes the private.

In “The History of My Contemporary” Korolenko there is artistic prose that approaches Tolstoy’s trilogy and Aksakov’s chronicles. “History” is an example of a “mixing” of various genres, and the composition is characterized by some discontinuity in the presentation of historical facts.

Korolenko tells about himself, starting with a description early childhood and ending with the events of that time when he refused to serve. Specific historical figures depicted in memoirs become heroes and types of literary works. This is the strength of the creative talent of writers, this is the dignity of his memoirs as works of art, in contrast to memoirs in the narrow sense of the word.

The combination of genre diversity at the beginning of the narrative gradually falls from volume to volume. In the third and, especially in the fourth volumes of “The History of My Contemporary”, the picture of “genre” combinations completely changes. There are many “genres” here. But such "genres" as historical essay and journalism, which in the first two volumes occupied a secondary, and in some places even a barely noticeable place, here in the third, and especially in the fourth volume, move to the forefront.

Korolenko wrote about the third volume: “I set myself... the task: to tell exactly the “story of my contemporary,” i.e. events that he witnessed, and these events themselves are of interest for their memoir side, in addition to their artistic interest. I talk about this a little in one of the first chapters of the third volume. I’m talking about how sometimes the writer and the artist in me struggle. And I have to give preference to the writer of everyday life.”

The last two volumes of Korolenko’s memoirs contain many biographical memories. In this regard, it is quite understandable that in relation to these houses we should not just talk about the predominance of the “genre” of historical and biographical artistic essays. pages telling about how he was engaged in agriculture and lived in a Yakut yurt can be attributed to the best parts autobiographical story by Korolenko. But at the same time, this book contains more and more factual errors and omissions of everyday details.

The depiction of the actual biographical data from the very beginning of the narrative of the memoirs to the last line is presented by the writer in a broad and truthful manner. artistic canvas Russian historical reality 1853-1885. The very development of the personality of a “contemporary” is organically predetermined by historical social and everyday pictures. But if in the first two volumes of the memoirs the image of the personality of a contemporary is the center of the narrative, then in the second half the presence of a “contemporary” is sometimes barely noticeable. We observe the latter phenomenon, for example, in such chapters as: “Walkers. - The history of Fyodor Bogdan, who reached the Tsar himself,” “The History of Petya Popov,” “The History of the Young Man Shvetsov” and in other chapters of the third volume, “Amga cultural layers, “Peter Davydovich Ballod” and others - of the fourth volume.

Consequently, in the artistic method of display itself there is a certain evolution, a transition from the refraction of the phenomena of real reality through the prism of the perception of a “contemporary” in the first half of the memoirs to a comprehensive and objective typical display of the same real world in the second half of the memoirs. From this, of course, it does not at all follow that the content of the second half of Korolenko’s memoirs, as given through the perception of a “contemporary,” is not objective.

The second half of the memoirs was created by the writer during his illness and old age, and in connection with this, artistically this part of the memoirs is weaker. There is some truth in such a statement. The second half of the memoirs was actually created by Korolenko during a period of deterioration in his health, which, naturally, affected the quality artistic treatment. For example, there are facts of almost verbatim repetition of some episodes from the first half of the memoirs in the second half; quite understandably, this should be explained precisely by the poor state of health of the writer. (C) Information published on the site
For these reasons, the last pages of the memoirs are only sketches and even excerpts.

However, in the vividness of the narrative and the richness of facts of social life, the second half of the memoirs is not inferior to the first half. Moreover, a number of chapters even in the fourth volume of the memoirs, for example, such as “Along Lena”, “My Lena Visions”, “Yakut Poetry”, etc., artistic performance, perhaps better than any chapters of the second half of the memoirs. Meanwhile, these chapters were written just a few days before the writer’s death. (C) Information published on the site
There is all the more reason to say the same when comparing the narrative of the third volume, for example, with the second or first volume of memoirs. As for the wealth of facts and the breadth of the depiction of Russian reality, it is unlikely that anyone will dispute the superiority of the second half of the memoirs over Russia.

As a subtle observer and deep realist, Korolenko reflected in his works different aspects of Russian reality in its different historical periods. Naturally, unique forms were also required to display diverse content. The writer, by the way, testifies that “from his youth he had the habit of putting his impressions into words, looking for them best shape, not calming down until I found her.” In connection with this we have full reason to believe that it was the rapid change in events in social life that was one of the incentives for Korolenko’s genre searches.

True, the memoirs tell about a much distant period in the history of Russia. However, the writer even there saw the changeability of the social foundations of life, which, under the influence of modern events, should have especially affected the entire content of “The History of My Contemporary.”

Naturally, the story about Sovremennik’s childhood experiences should have been limited to a narrower range of material than the story about his exiled period of life. Hence the author’s transition from reproducing life through the prism of the perceptions of a “contemporary” at the beginning of the memoirs to a comprehensive objective display of life in their second half.

So, we have come to the conclusion that the phenomenon of “mixing” of multiple “genres”, changing to the extent of their dominance during the course of the narrative in accordance with the developing and changing reality, is quite understandable and should be recognized as a single, but special type of the genre of artistic memoirs.

- Conclusion -

Reading Korolenko’s artistic memoirs, one cannot help but recall many of his stories, essays and novellas, the plots and themes of which seem to have grown out of the material in “The Stories of My Contemporary.”

Our life fluctuates and trembles from the sharp clashes of new principles with outdated ones, and I hope to at least partially illuminate some elements of this struggle. Later, in the note “From the Author,” the same idea is repeated: “We will continue our essays amid the creaking of gear and the splash of the storm. With quiet movements of children’s thoughts, they must move towards events and motives that are closely related to the very painful motives of our time.”

In general, Korolenko’s artistic memoirs are of great interest to the Soviet reader, who finds in them a vivid depiction of a significant period of Russian history.

“The History of My Contemporary” has enduring significance both as an outstanding historical document that reliably captured a number of social events of the era, and as a great work of art in which the features of the remarkable talent of an outstanding Russian writer were revealed with the greatest completeness and force.

These indisputable merits of “The History of My Contemporary” raise it above the usual level of memoir literature and place it on a par with Herzen’s “The Past and Thoughts” and autobiographical trilogies L. Tolstoy and M. Gorky.

“The History of My Contemporary” is the direct conclusion of “Makar’s Dream”, a test of the path traveled by the writer, the result of his artistic and social activities.

The distinctive feature of “History” is its extraordinary warmth, sincerity of intonation, and heartfelt trust in the reader. This is a typical feature of the best works of Russian literature, according to M. Gorky’s description, “the most heartfelt literature in the world.”

LIST LITERATURES

1. Balabanovich E.V. V.G. Korolenko. M., 1947. - 164 p.

2. Byaly G.A. V.G. Korolenko. L.: Fiction, 1983. - 350 p.

3. Korolenko V.G. The story of my contemporary. In 5 volumes - T. I - L., 1989. - 624 p.

4. Korolenko V.G. The story of my contemporary. In 6 volumes - T. I - M.: Pravda, 1971. - 496 p.

5. Korolenko V.G. The story of my contemporary. In 4 volumes - M., 1965. - 1054 p.

6. Korolenko V.G. The story of my contemporary. M.: Pravda, 1953. - 408 p.

7. Kotov A.K. V.G. Korolenko. Essay on life and literary activity. M., 1957. - 86 p.

8. Mironov G. Korolenko. M.: Young Guard, 1962. - 367 p.

9. Kuklin E.A. Siberian pages of life and creativity of V.G. Korolenko. Novosibirsk: Nauka, 1987. - 206 p.

10. Rostov N.V.G. Korolenko. M.: Fiction, 1965. - 111 p.

11. Skatov N.N., Lebedev Yu.V. Russian history literature of the 19th century century. Second half. Textbook for students ᴨȇd. Inst. - M., Education, 1991. - 512 p.

12. Storozhev A.I. The story of my contemporary Korolenko. Minsk, 1953. - 190 p.

In the rich literary heritage of V.G. Korolenko there is one work in which the most characteristic features of his life and work are most fully expressed. This is the four-volume “History of My Contemporary,” on which Korolenko worked for more than fifteen years of his life. Korolenko showed peasant “enmity”, different forms and stages of peasant protest before “The History of My Contemporary”, and the vague romantic impulses of intelligentsia youth - the same way. But the merging of these two principles was, in essence, the new theme that had long worried him and led to “The History of My Contemporary.” This was the very “middle of the process” from which the true “History of My Contemporary” began for Korolenko; everything that preceded it was just an introduction to it. This “introduction” formed the content of the first volume.

The first volume was published in 1906-1908 in the magazines “Modernity” and in “Russian Wealth”. He received high praise from A. M. Gorky. Korolenko considered the chapter “On the Yammalakh Cliff” to be perhaps the most important part of his work, because it outlined the story of his liberation from ideas that prevented him from finding himself as a writer and public figure. “This is the chapter that made me a writer,” he says. – After that I wrote “Makar’s Dream”...

The ideological content and meaning of the first volume of “History” are closely connected with the range of issues that occupied Korolenko even on the eve and maturation of the revolution of 1905 and were reflected in his Romanian essays, in Siberian stories, in the story “Not Scary.” Korolenko spoke there about the power of tradition, about spontaneity, about the power of the everyday, the familiar, about everything that creates a psychological basis for passive submission to the established social order, no matter how unfair it may be. In the first volume of History, the writer turns to the past, showing the roots of these phenomena in pre-reform Russia.

The second volume was published in 1910 (the first chapters in Russian Wealth) and in 1919 (in its entirety, in the Zadruga edition), the third volume in 1921 (Zadruga and the fourth volume, hastily completed by a terminally ill writer, appeared in print after his death in “The Voice of the Past.”

Work on “The History of My Contemporary” proceeded outwardly under extremely unfavorable conditions. It was constantly pushed aside by the circumstances of current literary life, and, above all, by the turbulent events of living modernity: the events of 1905, which required a journalistic response, the fight against the death penalty (“Everyday Phenomenon” and “Features of Military Justice”, 1910-1911), the Beilis case, the world war, during which the writer also lived far from Russia; colossal world upheavals of the revolutionary era. “The History of My Contemporary” was written over the course of seventeen years. Between its first volume and the subsequent one lay the years of war and two revolutions.

The autobiographical material of “The History of a Contemporary” was selected by the artist from the point of view of its typicality and historical significance.

The fact that the idea of ​​“History” took shape under the influence of the events of 1905 is evidenced by the author’s original preface to the first volume. Korolenko directly points out the topicality of his work; he believes that the image of “what his generation dreamed of and fought for” is of interest to the living reality itself and for the current time, when “our life fluctuates and trembles from the acute collision of new principles with outdated ones.” It even “occurred to the author to start from the middle, with those events that are already connected by a direct living connection with the issues of the present day, like the first actions of a drama with its denouement.” But since he wrote “not the history of his time, but the history of life at that time,” he wanted “the reader to first become familiar with the prism in which it was reflected.” At the center for Korolenko was “time”, but the presentation of his personal biography was, according to his plan, only a prism reflecting the era. This resulted in self-restraint in the choice of biographical material: “All the facts, impressions, thoughts and feelings set out in these essays are the facts of my life, my thoughts, my impressions and my feelings, as far as I am able to restore them with a certain degree of vividness and without adding later layers. But here are not all the facts, not all the thoughts, not all the movements of the soul, but only those that I consider related to these or other generally interesting motives.”

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Korolenko again felt the need to look back, to look back at the past of his generation, where the roots of his own new ideas and moods were located. The theme of “a quarrel with a smaller brother,” partly reproduced by him in “The Artist Alymov,” directed his attention towards the petrels of the 70s.

Korolenko repeatedly tried, in one form or another, to depict personal history against the background of the struggle of the revolutionary part of Russian society against the autocratic system.

As Korolenko wrote in the preface: “In my work I strived for the most complete historical truth possible, often sacrificing to it the beautiful or bright features of artistic truth. I am not trying to give a portrait of myself... I recalled and revived a number of paintings from the past half-century... Now I see much of what my generation dreamed of and fought for, bursting into the arena of public life in an alarming and stormy way. I think that many episodes from the times of my exile wanderings, events, meetings, thoughts and feelings of people of that time and that struggle have not lost the interest of living reality itself... our life fluctuates and trembles from the sharp clashes of new principles with outdated ones. I hope to at least partially illuminate some elements of this struggle.”

“The History of My Contemporary” remained unfinished. The book ends at the events associated with the return of V.G. Korolenko from Yakut exile in 1884.

Depicting the life path of his “Contemporary”, in the poetic outline of which it is easy to recognize the biography of the writer himself, Korolenko acquaints the reader with the development of the social movement of the 60-80s, with the outstanding historical events of that time. The writer sought to give a typical image of the hero of his generation, a commoner in terms of living conditions, associated with the democratic aspirations of the eras of the sixties and seventies. The writer gives a broad generalization, reviving in his memory the most important episodes of his own life, brilliantly analyzing the spiritual quest of Korolenko, a high school student, a student, an “intelligent proletarian” and, finally, a “state criminal.”

The range of topics captured in “The History of My Contemporary” is extensive and diverse. It depicts a family and a gymnasium, a student audience and illegal gatherings of the seventies, attic slums and prisons, the offices of officials and the life of a peasant hut. The epic covers a period of almost thirty years: from the 50s to the mid-80s. The geographical scale is enormous. Here are the provincial Ukrainian village of Garny Lug and the provincial city of Zhitomir, Moscow and St. Petersburg, Kronstadt and Vyatka, Perm, Irkutsk, Berezovsky Pochinki abandoned to the ends of the world and, finally, the remote settlement of Amga, Yakutsk region.

In the depiction of the awakening and growing consciousness of a child, to which the first book of “History” is dedicated, there is a noticeable critical attitude towards the structure of life. The idea of ​​complete completeness and indestructibility of everything that surrounded the child is replaced by an understanding of the “wrong side” of life, some kind of untruth that underlies bourgeois reality. This feeling of the “wrong side” of life gradually transforms in the young man into a consciousness of social injustice, into the conviction that the state of the landowners and bourgeoisie is based on “lies from top to bottom.”

The hero of “History” goes through various stages of development, starting with a fascination with the romance of the past.

The hero of "History" - the young "contemporary" Korolenko - is carried away in the imagination "to unknown lands and unknown times"; he is already attracted to battles, chases, battles. And somewhere there, outside the estate, there is a working life of its own, unknown and alien. It blows into our enchanted borders alienation, contempt, enmity... And there is nothing that would connect the life of imagination, dreams, impulse with this harsh but real life of work and patience...”

Many times previously depicted people from the people's environment are generalized under the influence of the revolution into a collective image of the revolutionary people. As elsewhere in “The History of My Contemporary,” in the depiction of such a hero, old memories acquire the interest of the most living modernity.

Korolenko reflected a vivid memory of the collective image of the people on the pages of “The History of My Contemporary,” which unfolds against the joyful backdrop of spring. Korolenko searched for this image of the people throughout his entire literary career and found it in his last work.

During the years of exile, he was several times “tempted” to escape and go underground. For the first time this thought gripped him when moving from Glazov to Berezovskie Pochinki; this plan, however, was completely fantastic, since it was possible to escape to a certain Pyotr Ivanovich Nevolin, who was considered a dangerous revolutionary leader, but turned out to be a completely “peaceful” person. Then in Perm, after Korolenko refused the oath, Yuri Bogdanovich came to him with an offer to join the revolutionary organization. On the way to the Yakut region, he could have made a dangerous attempt to escape from the Tobolsk prison; the result of this attempt would be either death, in case of failure, or, if completely successful, the final transition to an illegal position. In all these cases, Korolenko overcame his “temptations.” The first time he was kept from escaping by the desire to come into closer contact with people's life in its very depths; He refused Yuri Bogdanovich’s offer due to disagreement with the terrorist tactics of the Narodnaya Volya; An accident prevented the escape from Tobolsk prison. Korolenko recalls that at the decisive moment of his life, on the Yammalakh cliff, he went through all these facts in his memory and came to a decisive conclusion: no, he was not a revolutionary. In “The History of My Contemporary,” summing up all his previous thoughts, he resolves this issue in a final and general form.

Korolenko “had no faith in either terror or its consequences...” One of the chapters of “The History of My Contemporary” has the following subtitles: “The tragedy of the Russian revolutionary intelligentsia. “Fighting without people.” Korolenko understood this tragedy in the position of the revolutionary intelligentsia already in his youth; he did not want to be left “without the people.”

It was precisely history - the history of society and the history of the individual in their inseparable unity, the history of the people and the history of a person striving to connect his destiny with the people, while maintaining his individuality and his dignity. This condition was extremely important for the hero of “The History of My Contemporary.” Sometimes he openly opposes himself to people from the people if for some reason they offend his dignity. He is an educated man, he is an exile, he also knows a craft, and he demands respect for himself, without introducing the slightest shade of lordliness into his behavior.

If “The History of My Contemporary” had not been cut short by the death of the author, he could have cited other similar episodes dating back to a later time in his further narrative.

The writer's memory preserved pictures of the life of an official family. With great skill, Korolenko embodied in concrete images the figures of county court officials familiar to him from childhood - funny characters worthy of comedy plots - gloomy figures of the highest authorities. With particular skill, Korolenko spoke about the gymnasium, creating a whole gallery of types of government teachers, supporters of dogmatic education.

The life of the remote province as depicted by Korolenko in its own way reflected events taking place far beyond its borders. Gymnasium reforms, all sorts of orders from the “highest authorities” and government regulations - all this was reflected in the life of the district town, and “The History of My Contemporary” creates a picture of how stupid and senseless all these “actions” of the tsarist administration looked when they were carried out. One of the episodes of the reform of 1861 is clearly depicted. The father, as usual, waved his hand: “Interpret the patient with the doctor!” The old time bequeathed to the new part of its sad inheritance..."

In a magnificent essay dedicated to his father, Korolenko tells how the concept of the immutability of the social order was destroyed and how responsibility only for one’s personal activities was replaced by “a caustic feeling of guilt for social untruths.

The life of the remote province as depicted by Korolenko in its own way reflected events taking place far beyond its borders. Gymnasium reforms, government regulations aimed at strengthening the power of the police and governors - all this was reflected in the life of the district town, and “The History of My Contemporary” creates a picture of how stupid and senseless all these “actions” of the highest authorities looked when they were carried out in life.

It is known in what mood Korolenko went into exile in Vyatka. He was ready to experience all the hardships of the “forest wilderness” just to “sink to the bottom of people’s life.” However, the populist passions of the author of “History” did not withstand contact with reality. The illusions collapsed as soon as Korolenko learned the harsh life of the village. And only by getting rid of “preconceived notions” was Korolenko able to feel and understand the life of the Berezov Pochinkovs with such insight that almost forty years later he reproduced it in “History” with all the fullness of realistic colors and living details.

With a feeling of deep pain, Korolenko spoke about the “sparks... of immediate talent” that “were born and died in a deep forest.” In conditions of almost primitive existence, Korolenko saw a talented girl storyteller and drew the image of Gavri Biserov with his desire for poetry.

The story gives portraits of many participants in the social movement of the 60s and 70s. In this environment there were also “dilettantes from the revolution”, random people who, after they fell into the hands of the police, gave treacherous testimony and considered it their duty to make lengthy repentances. However, Korolenko’s exile wanderings brought him together with people of significant revolutionary temperament and unyielding will, with participants in major political processes. He met with people involved in the case of Chernyshevsky and Pisarev.

A large place in “The History of My Contemporary” is occupied by the student period of Korolenko’s life. In vivid paintings, Korolenko depicts Korolenko’s half-starved existence during his studies at the Technological Institute, work in a proofreading bureau, and the “student revolt” at the Petrovsky Academy.

The writer's student years coincided with the period of the rise of the Russian social movement. Young people familiar with the ideas of Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov came to the audiences of institutes and universities. These youth of all ranks huddled in attics and basements, lived from hand to mouth, and among them vague ideas about the liberation of the people matured, issues of worldview and norms of behavior were discussed. The chapters dedicated to the “artel of poor students” who lived in attic No. 12 provide one of the most characteristic pictures of the life of mixed students in Russian literature.

The last chapters of the story most fully illuminate the activities of the populist intelligentsia. Korolenko's artistic memoirs, of course, cannot claim to be a comprehensive coverage of the era. The author is sometimes subjective in his assessment of persons and contemporary phenomena of reality, sometimes he presents historically significant material in less detail than material that has limited significance. Nevertheless, in general, Korolenko’s fictional memoirs are of great interest to the Soviet reader, who will find in them a vivid depiction of a significant period of Russian history.

I tried to shorten something, but considering that few people read 4 volumes, I left it as is.

Related information.

Back in the mid-1890s, Korolenko, together with his closest friend and co-editor of “Russian Wealth” N. Fannensky, was planning a memoir and journalistic book “Ten Years in the Province,” which was not yet connected with the history of an entire generation of the 1870s . The epic plan was outlined in the fall of 1896 in Korolenko’s correspondence with P.F. Yakubovich. The latter sent the story “Youth” from Kurgan exile to the editorial office of “Russian Wealth” and expressed his dream of a “novel of our time.” Korolenko, in a response letter, supported the idea of ​​“our novel,” which “played out with greater or less intensity among an entire generation,” when “the scene was filled with active populism,” and the epilogue of which is “remote places.” He believed, however, that on the way to such a novel there are not only insurmountable external obstacles in the form of censorship: we “ourselves cannot yet look back with sufficient calm and<...>"objectivity" Yakubovich, in turn, expressed hope that the person who will be able to “cope with all the difficulties” will be Korolenko himself: “You, exactly You You’ll write “our novel” after all.”

In 1905, when the censorship climate had softened significantly, Korolenko began an artistic chronicle of his generation. “I wanted, paying tribute to the topic of the day, to start with exile,” he wrote to his brother, but he overcame the temptation and started from childhood. However, the “first impression of existence” turned out to be a fire: “reflections of a crimson flame” “against the deep background of night darkness.” A picture that echoes the Russian reality of the “burning year”.

In an effort to determine the genre of his work, Korolenko resorted to various formulas: the work is “almost fictional, not dry memories”, “life impressions”, “illuminated by memories”, but not a biography, not a “public confession”, not “his own portrait”, in at the same time, the story of one life, where “historical truth” is given preference over “artistic truth.” In the end, “The History of My Contemporary” absorbed all the main principles of Korolenko’s work - artistic and visual, memoir, lyrical, essay and journalistic. At the same time, the weight of the last two elements gradually increased, which corresponded to the general direction of the writer’s path.

Portraying the high spiritual image of his contemporary, Korolenko shares with the reader many anxieties and doubts. In 1916, he called the “young and hot” time of his populism “the crushed ashes of still recent hopes”: “After that old sharp experience, I am skeptical about “ready-made formulas”,” be it the formula of “folk” or “class” wisdom. He chose for himself a “partisan line” of action “from his own mind.”

The generation of the 1860s-1870s, which Korolenko called “his own”, entered the historical arena with “boiling wine of denial” in their heads, with a tendency to act “very radically and very naively”, dealing with all sorts of “junk” using the “Knock on head” method and to hell! Korolenko treated all kinds of “nihilists” and “subverters” aloofly, believing that something new can only be introduced if it is based on a higher moral principle.

However, in the life of the “nihilistic generation” Korolenko overheard the motive of exhaustion of denial, fatigue from enmity, and caught the desire of the young for “something that could reconcile with life - if not with reality, then at least with its possibilities.”

The shortest and most succinct review of “The History of My Contemporary” belongs to A.V. Amphiteatrov: “A fragrant book!” History has prepared a cruel epilogue for the Korolenkov generation: “the dictatorship of the bayonet,” as the writer defined it in last years life, “immediately moved us centuries back,” surpassing “the wildest dreams of the royal retrogrades.”

Many years have passed since the reader of the first volume of “The History of My Contemporary” parted with its hero, and many events lay between this new past and present. This distance from the subject of the story has its disadvantages, but there are also good aspects. In the foggy distances, perhaps many details disappear that once came to the fore in a closer perspective. But the prospect itself is expanding. What is stored in memory appears on a wider horizon, in new relationships.

I finished the first volume in 1905, during the first explosions of the Russian revolution. Now that it has reached its turning points, I turn with particular interest the gaze of memory to the distant path of the past, “dusty and foggy,” on which the figure of “my contemporary” can be seen. Perhaps the reader will want to look with some sympathy at this already familiar figure and at the same time think how many premonitions this generation had, whose conscious life began amid the struggle with the system that had finally passed, and ends among the ruins of this system, covering the horizon of the future. And how much more should this future capture from the collapse of old mistakes and difficult-to-eradicate habits!

This mood began for me back in Rivne, on the morning when the postman handed me a package with a postmark from the Technological Institute, addressed to my name. With my heart beating, I opened it and took out a printed form with my last name written at the top. The director of the Technological Institute, Ermakov, informed so-and-so that he had been accepted into the first year and was required to appear by August fifteenth.

When I looked around after that, it seemed to me that in those few minutes a whole day had passed: before the postman arrived it was yesterday, now a new today has arrived. I definitely slept through the night and woke up not only different, but a little bit in another world... This feeling came from thick gray paper with printed text and Ermakov’s signature. And when I rushed through the streets after that, it seemed to me that the houses, the fences, and the people I met also looked at me differently. After all, in fact, for the first time since the creation of the world, they too see... student so and so.

I did not part with the “notice” for several days. Sometimes, alone, I took it out and re-read it each time with new pleasure, as if it were not a dry official form, but a poem. And indeed - a poem: a break with the old world, a call for something new, desirable and bright... “Director Ermakov” is calling. In my imagination, this surname was associated with something very hard, almost granite (probably from the Siberian Ermak) and at the same time - unattainably sublime and intelligent. And this Ermakov is waiting for me on the fifteenth of August. He needs me to fulfill his high purpose...

The mood was stupid, and I, of course, realized that it was stupid: Ermakov’s very signature was printed. He doesn’t even sign such notices himself, but the office sends out hundreds of them. I knew this, but this knowledge did not change my mood. Knew I'm smart and felt stupidly. At the very time I was instilling in myself these sober truths, my mouth involuntarily opened to my ears. And I had to turn away so that people would not see this idiotic smile and would not guess from it that Ermakov was calling me, who personally needed me by the fifteenth of August...

With youthful egoism, I somehow did not take part in my mother’s worries about my equipment. She pawned her pension book somewhere, sold some things, asked for loans where she could, and finally saved something like two hundred rubles. After this there were long meetings with the tailor Shimko.

Tailor Shimko was a short, stocky Jew, with a wide face, on which thin lips and a pointed nose gave the impression of an almost gloomy comic. While father was alive, we always laughed at Shimk, sharpening our wit at his appearance and his supposed tricks. When my father died and my mother was left without funds, he came to her, critically examined the condition of our suits and said seriously:

Well, it's time to sew one overcoat and two uniforms.

You know, Shimko, that now I have no money, and I don’t know what else will happen,” the mother answered sadly.

Well,” Shimko objected, “you don’t have money, but you have children... Isn’t that money?..

And he worked for us again, without stuttering about payment deadlines and never haggling, as happened before.

Now he has launched his activities in our apartment. Having inquired whether I wanted him to sew “in the latest fashion,” and having learned that latest fashion I despise, he even grunted with pleasure and gave full rein to his creative imagination. He soaked and steamed materials, took measurements, cut, tried on, sewed, and finally I came out of his hands equipped, not particularly smartly, but cheaply. He sewed me a summer suit from some very durable and tough material with yellow miniature bouquets on a brown field. In addition, he sewed another coat. It seemed to me vaguely that the durable material with bouquets gives the idea more of upholstery than of a suit for the capital, and the coat resembles a Spanish cloak or almaviva...

But on this score I was unpretentious and carefree. Fashion aside, I felt dressed to the nines, “quite simply, but tastefully.”

Alas! Subsequently, this flight of creative imagination of honest Shimka gave me many bitter and unpleasant moments...

Suchkov, who had already lived in the capital for a year, came for the holidays, and, of course, I bombarded him with questions. For some reason he was stingy with his stories, but still I learned that the institute is not at all like a gymnasium, the professors are not at all like teachers, and the students are not gymnasium students. Complete freedom... No one monitors attendance at lectures... And there are wonderful personalities among the students. You might mistake someone else for a professor. And what disputes! About what subjects! You need to read and prepare a lot just to understand what we are talking about...

Casually and as if in passing, he told me that he was staying for various reasons in the first year, and that means we will go together again.

In the middle of these holidays I turned eighteen, but it seemed to me that I had far outgrown the little world around me. Here he is, all here, as if on a flat plate, worrying from prison to post office, familiar, prosaic and hateful. On one of my last evenings, when I looked with a farewell glance at the public walking along the highway street, the face of the official Mikhalovsky, whom I once considered a “famous poet,” suddenly emerged from the twilight in front of me. He had a large cigar in his teeth, and its light flared up and illuminated a surprisingly uninteresting, flat face, with bulging, expressionless eyes. Just recently this man seemed to me surrounded by a poetic aura. And how many others seemed to be superior beings only because they were adults, and I was a boy. Now I have grown up, and the small little world has narrowed and diminished... The former smart people seemed either stupid or too ordinary... Who should I put on top now, before whom or what should I bow? Where are the people here who know and can indicate the highest in life, what the young soul strives for?.. Which of them even thinks about this highest, seeks it, yearns, dreams... No one, no one!

I developed an arrogant belief that I was perhaps the smartest in this city. My standard was this: I can understand all the people flashing before me in this stream, swaying like water in a plate, from the barrier to the post office and back. I know everything they know, everything anyone needs to know. And they have no idea what thoughts about them and what dreams are wandering in my head.

Korolenko Mironov Georgy Mikhailovich

"The Story of My Contemporary"

"The Story of My Contemporary"

Khatki is a small village on the banks of the Pel, a few versts from the large village of Velikiye Sorochintsy and twenty versts from Mirgorod. Here, on the mountain above the river, Vladimir Galaktionovich bought a half-decade estate with a well and a garden in 1903.

By the summer of 1905, a small house was built on the site of the collapsed hut. Here, in a work room, on a mezzanine with a wonderful view of the floodplain meadows and groves, of the winding silver ribbon of Pel, Korolenko at the end of summer began to write “The History of My Contemporary.”

Often, especially in the first period of work, when he was not yet involved in a powerful stream of memories, Korolenko put down his pen and thought for a long time. What goals does he set for his work, what should the reader find in it?

He is already in his sixties. Half a century has passed, and now he (to use Goethe’s figurative expression) looks back at the smoky and foggy path. To do this was his long-time dream, one of the most important literary tasks of his life. For a long time he could not start it - it was difficult to tear himself away from the immediate sensations of the present, to look back at the past with the calm gaze of a writer of everyday life, to comprehend the present and the past in their mutual organic connection.

It is not easy to be a dispassionate describer of events that took place forty years ago - in the first years after “liberation”, realizing that now, separated from that time by four decades, Russia is going through the last years before liberation. “What did these forty years take?” - the reader may ask. How to explain all this to him, deafened by the stormy roar of menacing days, a contemporary, an eyewitness, a participant in the Port Arthur epic, or the ten-day existence of the sailors' republic on the battleship Potemkin, or the massacre in the Tsushima Strait - how to attract him to the quiet movements of a child's thought, how to show the transition from these thoughts to events and motives that are closely and inextricably linked with the most important issues of our time?..

He does not want to write the history of his time, but only the history of one life at this time. This book is not a biography, he will not be particularly concerned about the completeness of biographical information; this book is not a confession - he does not believe in the possibility or usefulness of public confession. In his work he will strive for the most complete historical truth possible.

There will be nothing in his notes that he has not encountered in reality, that he has not experienced, felt, or seen. And yet, he will not try to give his own portrait: the reader will find here only features from the “history of a contemporary”, a person known to him closer than all other people of his time.

There is no doubt that the roots of modern revolutionary storms go far into the past - in the 60s, 70s and subsequent years. He will try to recall and revive a number of paintings from the past half-century. Now much of what his generation dreamed of and fought for has appeared in the arena of public life. Many episodes from his exile wanderings, events, meetings, thoughts and feelings of people of that time and that struggle have not lost interest even now. And now life hesitates and trembles from the sharp clashes of new principles with outdated ones. He hopes, at least in part, to illuminate some elements of this struggle.

Korolenko worked with ever greater passion - until last numbers September, until the turbulent events of a turbulent year tore him away from his memories for a long time.