One girl left home for the forest. She got lost in the forest and began to look for the way home, but didn’t find it, but came to a house in the forest.

The door was open: she looked at the door, saw that there was no one in the house, and entered. Three bears lived in this house. One bear had a father, his name was Mikhail Ivanovich. He was big and shaggy. The other was a bear. She was smaller, and her name was Nastasya Petrovna. The third was a little bear cub, and his name was Mishutka. The bears were not at home, they went for a walk in the forest.

There were two rooms in the house: one was a dining room, the other was a bedroom. The girl entered the dining room and saw three cups of stew on the table. The first cup, a very large one, was Mikhail Ivanovich’s. The second cup, smaller, was Nastasya Petrovnina’s; the third, blue cup, was Mishutkina. Next to each cup lay a spoon: large, medium and small.

The girl took the largest spoon and sipped from the largest cup; then she took a middle spoon and sipped from the middle cup, then she took a small spoon and sipped from the blue cup; and Mishutka’s stew seemed to her the best.

The girl wanted to sit down and saw three chairs at the table: one large, Mikhail Ivanovich’s, another smaller one, Nastasya Petrovnin’s, and a third, small one, with a blue cushion, Mishutkin’s. She climbed onto a large chair and fell; then she sat on the middle chair, it was awkward, then she sat on the small chair and laughed, it felt so good. She took the blue cup on her lap and began to eat. She ate all the stew and began to rock in her chair.

The chair broke and she fell to the floor. She stood up, picked up the chair and went to another room. There were three beds there: one large - Mikhaily Ivanychev's, the other medium - Nastasya Petrovnina's, the third small - Mishenkina's. The girl lay down in the big one; it was too spacious for her; I lay down in the middle - it was too high; She lay down in the small bed - the bed was just right for her, and she fell asleep.

And the bears came home hungry and wanted to have dinner. The big bear took his cup, looked and roared in a scary voice: “Who drank in my cup!”

Nastasya Petrovna looked at her cup and growled not so loudly: “Who was slurping in my cup!”

And Mishutka saw his empty cup and squealed in a thin voice: “Who sipped in my cup and swallowed it all!”

Mikhailo Ivanovich looked at his chair and growled in a terrible voice: “Who was sitting on my chair and moved it from its place!”

Nastasya Petrovna looked at the empty chair and growled not so loudly: “Who was sitting on my chair and moved it from its place!”

Mishutka looked at his broken chair and squeaked: “Who sat on my chair and broke it!”

The bears came to another room. “Who lay in my bed and rumpled it!” - Mikhailo Ivanovich roared in a terrible voice. “Who lay in my bed and rumpled it!” – Nastasya Petrovna growled not so loudly. And Mishenka set up a small bench, climbed into his crib and squealed in a thin voice: “Who went to my bed!” And suddenly he saw a girl and screamed as if he was being cut: “Here she is!” Hold it, hold it! Here she is! Here she is! Ay-yay! Hold it!”

He wanted to bite her. The girl opened her eyes, saw the bears and rushed to the window. The window was open, she jumped out the window and ran away. And the bears did not catch up with her.

One winter I went to the forest to pick trees, cut down three trees, cut off the branches, trimmed them, I saw it was too late, I had to go home. And the weather was bad: it was snowing and shallow. I think the night will take over and you won’t find the road. I drove the horse; I’m going, I’m going, I’m still not leaving. All forest. I think my fur coat is bad, I’ll freeze. I drove and drove, there was no road and it was dark. I was just about to unharness the sleigh and lie down under the sleigh, when I heard bells rattling nearby. I went to the bells, I saw three Savras horses, their manes were braided with ribbons, the bells were glowing and two young men were sitting.

- Great, brothers! - Great, man! - Where, brothers, is the road? - Yes, here we are on the road itself. “I went out to them and saw what a miracle it was - the road was smooth and unnoticed. “Follow us, they say,” and they urged the horses. My filly is bad, she can't keep up. I began to shout: wait, brothers! They stopped and laughed. - Sit down, they say, with us. It will be easier for your horse to be empty. - Thank you, I say. - I climbed into the sleigh with them. The sleigh is good, carpeted. As soon as I sat down, they whistled: well, you guys! The Savras horses curled up so that the snow was like a column. I see what a miracle it is. It became brighter, and the road was smooth as ice, and we were burning so hard that it took our breath away, only branches lashed us in the face. I felt really terrified. I look ahead: the mountain is very steep, and there is an abyss under the mountain. The Savras are flying straight into the abyss. I got scared and shouted: fathers! easier, you'll kill me! Where are they, they just laugh and whistle. I see it disappearing. Sleigh over the abyss. I see there is a branch above my head. Well, I think: disappear alone. He stood up, grabbed a branch and hung. I just hung there and shouted: hold it! And I also hear the women shouting: Uncle Semyon! What are you? Women, oh women! blow fire. Something bad is wrong with Uncle Semyon, he screams. They started the fire. I woke up. And I’m in the hut, I grabbed the floor with my hands, I’m hanging and screaming in an unlucky voice. And this is me - I saw everything in a dream.

The widow Marya lived with her mother and six children. They lived poorly. But with the last money they bought a brown cow so that there would be milk for the children. The older children fed Burenushka in the field and gave her slops at home. One day, the mother came out of the yard, and the eldest boy Misha reached for bread on the shelf, dropped a glass and broke it. Misha was afraid that his mother would scold him, so he picked up the large glasses from the glass, took them out into the yard and buried them in the manure, and picked up all the small glasses and threw them into the basin. The mother grabbed the glass and began to ask, but Misha didn’t say; and so the matter remained.

The next day, after lunch, the mother went to give Burenushka some slop from the basin; she saw that Burenushka was bored and did not eat food. They began to treat the cow and called the grandmother. The grandmother said: the cow will not live, we must kill it for meat. They called a man and began to beat the cow. The children heard Burenushka roar in the yard. Everyone gathered on the stove and began to cry. When Burenushka was killed, skinned and cut into pieces, glass was found in her throat.

And they found out that she died because she got glass in the slop. When Misha found out this, he began to cry bitterly and confessed to his mother about the glass. The mother said nothing and began to cry herself. She said: we killed our Burenushka, now we have nothing to buy. How can small children live without milk? Misha began to cry even more and did not get off the stove while they ate the jelly from the cow's head. Every day in his dreams he saw Uncle Vasily carrying Burenushka’s dead, brown head with open eyes and a red neck by the horns. Since then the children have had no milk. Only on holidays there was milk, when Marya asked the neighbors for a pot. It happened that the lady of that village needed a nanny for her child. The old woman says to her daughter: let me go, I’ll go as a nanny, and maybe God will help you manage the children alone. And I, God willing, will earn enough for a cow a year. And so they did. The old lady went to the lady. And it became even harder for Marya with the children. And children without milk whole year lived: they ate only jelly and prison and became thin and pale. A year passed, the old woman came home and brought twenty rubles. Well, daughter! He says, now let’s buy a cow. Marya was happy, all the children were happy. Marya and the old woman were going to the market to buy a cow. The neighbor was asked to stay with the children, and the neighbor, Uncle Zakhar, was asked to go with them to choose a cow. We prayed to God and went to the city. The children had lunch and went outside to see if the cow was being led. The children began to judge whether the cow would be brown or black. They began to talk about how they would feed her. They waited, waited all day. They went a mile away to meet the cow, it was getting dark, and they came back. Suddenly, they see: a grandmother is riding along the street in a cart, and a motley cow is walking at the rear wheel, tied by the horns, and the mother is walking behind, urging her on with a twig. The children ran up and began to look at the cow. They gathered bread and herbs and began to feed them. The mother went into the hut, undressed and went out into the yard with a towel and milk pan. She sat down under the cow and wiped the udder. God bless! began to milk the cow, and the children sat in a circle and watched as the milk splashed from the udder into the edge of the milk pan and whistled from under the mother’s fingers. The mother milked half the milk pan, took it to the cellar and poured a pot for the children for dinner.

The collection includes works of L. N. Tolstoy of various genres from the “New ABC” and a series of four “Russian books for reading”: “Three Bears”, “Lipunyushka”, “Bone”, “The Lion and the Dog”, “Shark”, “Two Brothers”, “Jump”, etc. They were created in the early 1870s. for students of the school organized by Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana, and are loved by many generations of children.

A series: Extracurricular reading (Rosman)

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The given introductory fragment of the book Filipok (collection) (L. N. Tolstoy, 2015) provided by our book partner - the company liters.

Stories from the “New ABC”

Fox and crane

The fox called the crane for lunch and served the stew on a plate. The crane could not take anything with its long nose, and the fox ate everything herself. The next day the crane called the fox to his place and served dinner in a jug with a narrow neck. The fox could not get its snout into the jug, but the crane stuck its long neck in and drank it all alone.

The Tsar and the Hut

One king built himself a palace and made a garden in front of the palace. But at the very entrance to the garden there was a hut, and a poor man lived. The king wanted to demolish this hut so that it would not spoil the garden, and he sent his minister to the poor peasant to buy the hut.

The minister went to the man and said:

- Are you happy. The king wants to buy your hut. It’s not worth ten rubles, but the Tsar gives you a hundred.

The man said:

- No, I won’t sell a hut for a hundred rubles.

The minister said:

- Well, the king gives two hundred.

The man said:

“I won’t give it up for two hundred or a thousand.” My grandfather and father lived and died in this hut, and I grew old in it and will die, God willing.

The minister went to the king and said:

- The guy is stubborn, he doesn’t take anything. Don’t give the peasant anything, Tsar, but tell him to demolish the hut for nothing. That's all.

The king said:

- No, I don’t want that.

Then the minister said:

- How to be? Is it possible for a rotten hut to stand against a palace? Everyone looks at the palace and says: “The palace would be nice, but the hut spoils it. Apparently,” he will say, “the tsar didn’t have the money to buy a hut.”

And the king said:

- No, whoever looks at the palace will say: “Apparently the king had a lot of money to make such a palace”; and he will look at the hut and say: “Apparently, there was truth in this king.” Leave the hut.

Field mouse and city mouse

An important mouse came from the city to a simple mouse. Simple mouse she lived in a field and gave her guest what she had, peas and wheat. The important mouse chewed and said:

- That’s why you’re so bad, because your life is poor, come to me, see how we live.

So a simple mouse came to visit. We waited under the floor for night. People ate and left. The important mouse led her guest into the room from the crack, and both climbed onto the table. A simple mouse had never seen such food and did not know what to do. She said:

– You’re right, our life is bad. I will also go to the city to live.

As soon as she said this, the table shook, and a man with a candle entered the door and began to catch mice. They forcibly went into the crack.

“No,” says the field mouse, “my life in the field is better.” Although I don’t have sweet food, I don’t even know such fear.

Big stove

One person had big house, and there was a large stove in the house; and this man’s family was small: only himself and his wife.

When winter came, a man began to light the stove and burned all his wood in one month. There was nothing to heat it with, and it was cold.

Then the man began to destroy the yard and drown it with wood from the broken yard. When he burned the entire yard, it became even colder in the house without protection, and there was nothing to heat it with. Then he climbed in, broke the roof and began to drown the roof; the house became even colder, and there was no firewood. Then the man began to dismantle the ceiling from the house in order to heat it with it.

A neighbor saw him unraveling the ceiling and said to him:

- What are you, neighbor, or have you gone crazy? In winter you open the ceiling! You will freeze both yourself and your wife!

And the man says:

- No, brother, then I raise the ceiling so that I can light the stove. Our stove is such that the more I heat it, the colder it gets.

The neighbor laughed and said:

- Well, once you burn the ceiling, then will you dismantle the house? There will be nowhere to live, there will be only one stove left, and even that will get cold.

“This is my misfortune,” said the man. “All the neighbors had enough firewood for the whole winter, but I burned the yard and half the house, and even that was not enough.”

Neighbor said:

“You just need to redo the stove.”

And the man said:

“I know that you are jealous of my house and my stove because it is bigger than yours, and then you don’t order it to be broken,” and you didn’t listen to your neighbor and burned the ceiling and burned the house and went to live with strangers.

It was Seryozha’s birthday, and they gave him many different gifts: tops, horses, and pictures. But the most valuable gift of all was Uncle Seryozha’s gift of a net to catch birds. The mesh is made in such a way that a board is attached to the frame and the mesh is folded back. Place the seed on a board and place it in the yard. A bird will fly in, sit on the board, the board will turn up, and the net will slam shut on its own. Seryozha was delighted and ran to his mother to show the net. Mother says:

- Not a good toy. What do you need birds for? Why are you going to torture them?

- I'll put them in cages. They will sing and I will feed them.

Seryozha took out a seed, sprinkled it on a board and placed the net in the garden. And still he stood there, waiting for the birds to fly. But the birds were afraid of him and did not fly to the net. Seryozha went to lunch and left the net. I looked after lunch, the net slammed shut, and a bird was beating under the net. Seryozha was delighted, caught the bird and took it home.

- Mother! Look, I caught a bird, it’s probably a nightingale! And how his heart beats.

Mother said:

- This is a siskin. Be careful not to torment him, but rather let him go.

- No, I will feed and water him.

Seryozha put the siskin in a cage and for two days he poured seed into it and put water in it and cleaned the cage. On the third day he forgot about the siskin and did not change its water. His mother says to him:

- You see, you forgot about your bird, it’s better to let it go.

- No, I won’t forget, I’ll put some water on now and clean the cage.

Seryozha put his hand into the cage and began to clean it, but the little siskin got scared and hit the cage. Seryozha cleaned the cage and went to get water. His mother saw that he forgot to close the cage and shouted to him:

- Seryozha, close the cage, otherwise your bird will fly out and kill itself!

Before she had time to speak, the little siskin found the door, was delighted, spread its wings and flew through the room to the window. Yes, I didn’t see the glass, I hit the glass and fell on the windowsill.

Seryozha came running, took the bird, and carried it into the cage. The little siskin was still alive, but lay on his chest, with his wings outstretched, and was breathing heavily; Seryozha looked and looked and began to cry.

- Mother! What should I do now?

“You can’t do anything now.”

Seryozha did not leave the cage all day and kept looking at the little siskin, and the little siskin still lay on his chest and breathed heavily and quickly. When Seryozha went to bed, the little siskin was still alive. Seryozha could not fall asleep for a long time; every time he closed his eyes, he imagined the little siskin, how it lay and breathed. In the morning, when Seryozha approached the cage, he saw that the siskin was already lying on its back, curled its paws and stiffened. Since then, Seryozha has never caught birds.

Three Bears

One girl left home for the forest. She got lost in the forest and began to look for the way home, but didn’t find it, but came to a house in the forest.

The door was open: she looked at the door, saw that there was no one in the house, and entered. Three bears lived in this house. One bear had a father, his name was Mikhail Ivanovich. He was big and shaggy. The other was a bear. She was smaller, and her name was Nastasya Petrovna. The third was a little bear cub, and his name was Mishutka. The bears were not at home, they went for a walk in the forest.

There were two rooms in the house: one was a dining room, the other was a bedroom. The girl entered the dining room and saw three cups of stew on the table. The first cup, a very large one, was Mikhail Ivanovich’s. The second cup, smaller, was Nastasya Petrovnina’s; the third, blue cup, was Mishutkina. Next to each cup lay a spoon: large, medium and small.

The girl took the largest spoon and sipped from the largest cup; then she took the middle spoon and sipped from the middle cup; then she took a small spoon and sipped from the blue cup; and Mishutka’s stew seemed to her the best.

The girl wanted to sit down and saw three chairs at the table: one large, Mikhail Ivanovich’s, another smaller one, Nastasya Petrovnin’s, and the third small one, with a blue cushion, Mishutkin’s.

She climbed onto a large chair and fell; then she sat on the middle chair, it was awkward, then she sat on the small chair and laughed, it was so good. She took the little blue cup on her lap and began to eat. She ate all the stew and began to rock on her chair.

The chair broke and she fell to the floor. She stood up, picked up the chair and went to another room. There were three beds there: one large - Mikhaily Ivanychev's, the other medium - Nastasya Petrovnina's, the third small - Mishenkina's. The girl lay down in the big one; it was too spacious for her; I lay down in the middle - it was too high; She lay down in the small bed - the bed was just right for her, and she fell asleep.

And the bears came home hungry and wanted to have dinner. The big bear took his cup, looked and roared in a terrible voice:

-Who drank in my cup?

Nastasya Petrovna looked at her cup and growled not so loudly:

-Who drank in my cup?

And Mishutka saw his empty cup and squeaked in a thin voice:

-Who sipped in my cup and swallowed it all?

Mikhailo Ivanovich looked at his chair and growled in a terrible voice:

Nastasya Petrovna looked at her chair and growled less loudly:

-Who was sitting on my chair and moved it from its place?

Mishutka looked at his broken chair and squeaked:

– Who sat on my chair and broke it?

The bears came to another room.

-Who lay in my bed and rumpled it? - Mikhailo Ivanovich roared in a terrible voice.

-Who lay in my bed and rumpled it? – Nastasya Petrovna growled not so loudly.

And Mishenka put up a little bench, climbed into his crib and squeaked in a thin voice:

-Who went to bed with me?

And suddenly he saw the girl and screamed as if he was being cut:

- Here she is! Hold it, hold it! Here she is! Here she is! Ay-yay! Hold it!

He wanted to bite her. The girl opened her eyes, saw the bears and rushed to the window. The window was open, she jumped out the window and ran away. And the bears did not catch up with her.

Cat with a bell

It became bad for the mice to live because of the cat. Every day, it will take two or three. Once the mice came together and began to judge how they could escape from the cat. They tried, they tried, they couldn’t think of anything.

So one mouse said:

“I’ll tell you how we can save ourselves from the cat.” After all, that’s why we perish because we don’t know when he’s coming to us. You need to put a bell around the cat's neck so that it rattles. Then whenever he is close to us, we will hear him and we will leave.

“That would be good,” said the old mouse, “but someone needs to put a bell on the cat.” It's a good idea, but tie a bell around the cat's neck, then we'll thank you.

There was a boy, his name was Philip. Once all the boys went to school. Philip took his hat and wanted to go too. But his mother told him:

-Where are you going, Filipok?

- To school.

“You’re still young, don’t go,” and his mother left him at home.

The guys went to school. The father left for the forest in the morning, the mother went to work as a day laborer. Filipok and grandma remained in the hut on the stove. Filip became bored alone, his grandmother fell asleep, and he began to look for his hat. I couldn’t find mine, so I took my father’s old one and went to school.

The school was outside the village near the church. When Philip walked through his settlement, the dogs did not touch him, they knew him. But when he went out to other people’s yards, Zhuchka jumped out, barked, and behind Zhuchka big dog Spinning top. Filipok started to run, the dogs followed him. Filipok began to scream, tripped and fell. A man came out, drove the dogs away and said:

-Where are you, little shooter, running alone? Filipok said nothing, picked up the floors and started running at full speed. He ran to the school. There is no one on the porch, but the voices of children can be heard buzzing in the school. Fear came over Filip: “What if the teacher drives me away?” And he began to think what to do. To go back - the dog will eat again, to go to school - he is afraid of the teacher. A woman walked past the school with a bucket and said:

- Everyone is studying, but why are you standing here? Filipok went to school. In the senets he took off his hat and opened the door. The whole school was full of children. Everyone shouted their own, and the teacher in a red scarf walked in the middle.

- What are you doing? - he shouted at Filipok. Filipok grabbed his hat and said nothing.

- Who are you?

Filipok was silent.

-Or are you dumb?

Filipok was so frightened that he could not speak.

- Well, go home if you don’t want to talk.

And Filipok would have been glad to say something, but his throat was dry from fear. He looked at the teacher and cried. Then the teacher felt sorry for him. He stroked his head and asked the guys who this boy was.

End of introductory fragment.

Tolstoy’s “ABC” is a special book, testifying to Tolstoy’s readiness to famous writer, “go beyond the boundaries of fiction.”*

Tolstoy's ABC, published in 1872, can be considered a continuation of his pedagogical journal Yasnaya Polyana (1862). The writer perceived his book as fulfilling his duty to the people. Tolstoy dreamed that according to his “ABC,” “two generations of all Russian children, from royal to peasant, would learn, and would receive their first poetic impressions from it, and that, having written this ABC, I could die in peace.”

Tolstoy did not publish it in parts in magazines, such as the beginning of the new novel “War and Peace” in the magazine “Russian Messenger”. He refused to publish excerpts so that journalists, before the publication of the whole ABC book, would not “stole” the articles from the anthologies, persuading them to “give something” to their publication. He submitted only two stories to print: “God Sees the Truth” in “Conversation” (1872, No. 3) and “Caucasian Prisoner” in “Zarya” (1872, No. 2), where N. N. Strakhov collaborated, to whom Tolstoy explained : “If there is any merit in the articles of the ABC, it will lie in the simplicity and clarity of the drawing and stroke, that is, the language; but in a magazine it will be strange and unpleasant, as if not finished, as in art gallery, whatever it may be, pencil drawings without shadows” (from a letter of April 15, 1872). Tolstoy is already rejecting the proposal to place one of the stories in Kashperova’s “Family Evenings.”

But contrary to Tolstoy’s fears, in 1872 “The Big ABC,” as N. N. Gusev calls it, was published.

The famous teacher, professor at Moscow University S. A. Rachinsky was one of the first connoisseurs of the ABC; he noted in his “Rural School” that everyone educated person you need to know Count Tolstoy’s children’s books because, having devoted several years of his life to teaching children rural school, he learned a lot himself; that for Tolstoy this became a matter of life, and not a whim. Nothing of the kind, in his opinion, in European literature no longer exists.

During the period of the creation of the ABC, Tolstoy again worked with peasant children and invited public school teachers to test his system of teaching literacy.

“ABC” consists of four parts, bound into one voluminous book (almost 700 pages). The Russian reading department has been carefully thought out; each book of the ABC also contains a large section of Slavic reading: Slavic language was part of the public school program; peasants insisted on teaching Church Slavonic literacy, and ancient Russian literature was the favorite reading of Yasnaya Polyana schoolchildren. In addition, Tolstoy always attached importance to the study of languages. great importance, believing that “there are only two sciences in the usefulness of which one can be firmly confident - this is language or languages, the art of expressing and understanding all kinds of thoughts in every form, and mathematics.”

The Slavic text begins with excerpts from the chronicle of Nestor, then follows excerpts from the Chetya-Minea, biblical stories, excerpts from the Old Testament about the creation of the world, about the first people, about global flood, the story of Joseph and his brothers, which always touched Tolstoy, chapters from the Gospel, the Sermon on the Mount, which made a “huge” impression on him from childhood, the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, the Ten Commandments of Moses and three psalms. From the Chetya-Minea excerpts of instructive content have been selected. In “The Life of Sergius of Radonezh,” Tolstoy was attracted by Sergius’ answer to the metropolitan, who intended to put a gold cross on him: “From my youth I was not a gold-bearer, but in my old age I especially want to remain in poverty,” as well as Sergius’s decisive refusal to take the metropolitan see: “like hard adamant remains adamant." Tolstoy was also inspired by the rules of community life established by Sergius in his monastery: “Do not acquire anything for yourself, nor call anything your own, but have everything in common - according to the commandments of the holy fathers.”

Tolstoy places in his ABCs stories, epics, and parables in which all physical labor is praised: “If you don’t work hard and don’t work, nothing in the world makes you happy.” Reflecting on the theme of the story, Tolstoy often asks questions about moral and ethical topics, the answers to which are asked to be given by the student himself.
The form of questions and answers is a favorite technique of Tolstoy the publicist.

Including in the ABC a whole series of stories and articles from the life of animals and birds, Tolstoy sought to acquaint children with the reasons for what was happening. natural phenomena and explain them by asking seemingly simple questions: “What is the wind for?”, “Why do windows sweat and dew?”, “Why do trees crack in the cold?”, “Ice, water and steam.” (It is a great pity that Tolstoy’s planned article, “How Copernicus guessed that the earth rotates,” remained unfinished.)

In “The ABC” Tolstoy included “ General remarks for the teacher"; sharing the secrets of teaching children, he noted the main quality that makes a teacher perfect - love. “If a teacher has only love for his work, he will good teacher. If the teacher has only love for the student, like a father, like a mother, he will be a lot better than that a teacher who has read all the books, but has no love for either the work or the students.”

Based on my teaching experience Tolstoy defines the conditions necessary for a student to learn willingly. This is the cherished wish of Tolstoy the teacher, which is so necessary for our education system today**.

Tolstoy admitted more than once that “The ABC” is “one important thing in my life” (Vol. 62, p. 9). "I am writing these recent years I am still typing the alphabet. It’s very difficult to tell you what this work of many years means for me - the ABC<…>My proud dreams about this alphabet are this: two generations of all Russian children will learn from this alphabet... having written this alphabet, I can die in peace.” And one more thing: “The alphabet does not work, and it was dismantled in the Petersburg Gazette; but I’m almost not interested, I’m so sure that I erected a monument with this ABC” (T. 61, p. 349).

A letter to M. N. Katkov, editor of the Russkiy Vestnik, which publishes Anna Karenina, also contains Tolstoy’s high assessment of his work: “I’m not talking about approval - buckwheat porridge praises itself, and so does my ABC. Such an ABC did not exist and does not exist not only in Russia, but nowhere else! And every page of it cost me more labor and has greater value than all those writings for which they are so undeservedly praised” (Vol. 62, p. 185).

New form Tolstoy called letters “drawing without shadows.” The editor of the magazine “World Illustration” K. K. Sluchevsky noted the advantages of “ABC” in his article: simplicity, clarity of language. In his opinion, selflessness is how Count Leo Tolstoy can be called his refusal of the usual methods in his work that attracted readers, and to go for something completely new.

Tolstoy, based on his teaching experience, determines the conditions necessary for a student to learn willingly. This is one of the most cherished wishes of Tolstoy the teacher, which is so necessary today in our modern system education*.

At the beginning of 1873, at a meeting of the Academy of Sciences, at the suggestion of I. I. Sreznevsky, Tolstoy was elected a corresponding member not so much as the author of “War and Peace”, but as the author of “The ABC”. In November 1874, Tolstoy began revising the ABC, calling it in print “The New ABC”, and separately, “Russian Books for Reading” in 4 parts.

Until now, children receive their first poetic impressions of life from the works of Tolstoy, included in his “ABC”. Particular attention of readers and critics is drawn to the story “Caucasian Prisoner” written for “Azbuka” and the story-parable “God Sees the Truth, but He Will Not Tell Soon,” which is based on the story told by Platon Karataev about an innocently injured merchant, about an enlightened state of mind a person who has forgiven the culprit of his suffering. The stories “Filipok” and “Kostochka” have become classics of children's literature, on which every new generation is brought up.

PSS, vol. 22.

* See: Babaev E. G. The Big ABC, or Feeling of Happiness // Babaev E. G. “ High World audiences..." Lectures and articles on the history of Russian literature / Comp. E. E. Babaeva, I. V. Petrovitskaya. Under general ed. prof. T. F. Pirozhkova. – M.: MediaMir, 2008. – P. 364-374.
** White paper. Unified State Exam / Comp. prof. V. Ya. Linkov, prof. V. A. Nedzvetsky, Art. Rev. I. V. Petrovitskaya /
Preface by Corresponding Member of RAO A. M. Abramov. – M.: Faculty of Journalism Moscow State University, 2008;
Unified State Exam and fate Russian education. White paper. Prospect plan. Afterword by A. M. Abramov. “The Unified State Exam in Russia is more than the Unified State Exam.” – M.: Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University, 2009; website of the Faculty of Journalism and I. V. Petrovitskaya http://petrovitskaya.lifeware.ru.

Today I really want to show a book that is familiar to everyone in one form or another and is familiar, most likely from the very beginning. early childhood. This is Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy's "ABC".
The book whose cover you are now looking at is, of course, not the entire ABC. And like many similar publications, this is a collection of Stories from the ABC.
The publication was published in 1990 by the publishing house Children's Literature, as is the case with classic children's books and Soviet publications, with a huge circulation of 100 thousand copies. I must say that the book turned out to be very worthy, and no small merit is that the book uses Pakhomov’s pencil illustrations. The illustrations are so stunning, I must say, so “Tolstyan”, so woven into the book that it feels as if the author of the text and the author of the illustrations are one and the same person. =)

And forgive me, I can’t resist a long story not about the publication, but about Tolstoy’s “ABC” itself:

Tolstoy loved children endlessly; it was his love for “little peasants,” as he called peasant children, that manifested itself in “The ABC,” on which he worked long and painstakingly. He himself spoke about this with excitement: “I don’t know what will come of it, but I put my whole soul into it.” Tolstoy pinned his hopes on the “ABC”, believing that several generations of Russian children would learn from it: “My proud dreams about this alphabet are as follows: only two generations of Russian children, from royal to peasant, will learn from this alphabet, and their first impressions are poetic will receive from it, and that, having written this ABC, I can die in peace.”

Leo Tolstoy’s “ABC” became an event in pedagogy, and the significance of the new pedagogical work was not immediately understood and appreciated by contemporaries. Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy was convinced that the first stage of education begins spiritual development child. Will learning be joyful for the child, will he develop an interest in cognitive activity whether he will subsequently put spiritual values ​​above material goods- all this largely depends on his first steps into the world of knowledge. And it is development spiritual origin, according to Tolstoy, is the priority task of the school. More important than just communicating a certain amount of knowledge. It was precisely this problem that Lev Nikolaevich sought to solve with his “ABC”.

In essence, Tolstoy's ABC is a set teaching aids for initial training. It consists of four books of impressive size. The first includes the alphabet itself, texts for initial reading, as well as tasks for teaching numeracy. The following books are actually books for reading, which include literary texts and popular stories explaining natural phenomena, stories on history, physics, natural science, geography, texts for memorization and materials on arithmetic are provided. The material in the books becomes more complex according to the age of the students.

Tolstoy worked on “The ABC” with great tenacity in 1871-1872, causing a lot of controversy in the pedagogical community, primarily due to vernacular“ABC”, figurative presentation of the material and a new methodological approach in general. As a result, in 1875, having postponed work on Anna Karenina, Tolstoy wrote The New Alphabet and remade Books for Reading. The “New ABC” came out even more universal, improved as a result of polemics with opponents. And subsequently was admitted by the ministry to public schools. During Tolstoy's lifetime it went through over thirty editions.

Tolstoy did not discover his “ABC” the best way teaching literacy or the simplest way to master the four operations of arithmetic. But with the stories he placed there, he created an entire literature for children's reading. Many of these stories are still included in all anthologies and primers: “Filipok”, “Liar”, “Three Bears”, “The Lion and the Dog”, “Elephant”, etc.

When choosing sources and creating his own stories, Tolstoy always proceeded from the fact that their plot was simple but entertaining and that they were of instructive or educational interest. When releasing the first ABC in 1872, Tolstoy noted the facts of borrowing various plots for his stories. And he borrowed them not only from famous ancient Greek and folk stories, but also from simple stories Yasnaya Polyana children, which they wrote in their compositions, emphasizing the special poetry of the peasant language.

Tolstoy wrote that these fables “are sifted from 20 times more prepared stories, and each of them was redone 10 times” and cost him “more labor than any” of his writings. And that the main difficulty in working on “ABC” was that “it should be simple, clear, there would be nothing superfluous or false.” This made up the special artistic principles, which Tolstoy’s “ABC” so clearly conveys - “everything must be beautiful, short, simple, and, most importantly, clear.”

Let's return to the 1990 edition of ABC.
The text in the book is designed for independent reading. Enough large font and line spacing allow beginning readers to navigate the text without adult help. In accordance with Tolstoy's plan, the stories chosen for this edition of the ABC are arranged in the book from smaller volume and semantic load to larger.

In the case of my beginning reader (4.5 years old), this principle worked and we read the entire ABC almost in one breath (of course, not in one day). True, my novice reader has been reading texts for a long time and of a larger volume than the largest one presented in the book, but nevertheless, this is an excellent book for a child’s first reading. And there is no point in talking about the artistic and socio-historical components of the text))
On the spreads below you can see how the volume of text increases. The pictures show your favorite stories.

I think this book or a similar publication can be easily found online or at second-hand booksellers. Here is a link to the publication on Ozone:

Leo Tolstoy Shklovsky Viktor Borisovich

"ABC"

"ABC"

In the world in which ABC readers live, there are only men and gentlemen. They live nearby. Guys it's hard. The things around them are familiar, many things are familiar, which they usually don’t talk about, but they need to generalize what is familiar - this is more important than assessment.

Tolstoy does not think that children need to know only what he told them first at the Yasnaya Polyana school, and then at Azbuka. He wants to teach Russian children to see and generalize, believing that “science is only a generalization of particulars.”

“The task of pedagogy is, therefore, to guide the mind to generalization...”

What is important are generalizations “...that cannot be foreseen. Science is enriched by these unexpected generalizations.”

For generalization, fables, a few historical records and records of everyday, strictly realistic, sometimes even naturalistic nature are taken, which surprised and upset the reviewers.

On the first pages of The New ABC, where reading exercises for children are given, the columns read: “Fleas are small. The eyebrows are black."

This was given as ordinary things, without evaluation, and was not liked.

Tolstoy and others corrected Tolstoy for Tolstoy many times during reprints of the ABC. I had to seek an official recommendation of the book to libraries and schools. On July 26, 1891, Sofya Andreevna wrote down: “I spent the whole day correcting the proofs of the ABC. The Scientific Committee did not approve it due to different words, like: lice, fleas, devil, bug, and because there are mistakes, and also suggested throwing out the stories: About a fox and fleas, about a stupid man and others, to which Lyovochka did not agree.”

For Tolstoy, this is life, which he often does not like, but has not yet been changed.

In the third book of the ABC (1872) there is a story about how mice gnawed down two hundred young apple trees planted by Tolstoy. The story “Bedbugs” is written next to it: both stories begin with the word “Ya.”

It is written about apple trees just like about people - it’s a pity that the apple trees grew for four years, and then all of them died, except nine, and all this is very well explained: “The bark of trees is the same as the veins of a person: through the veins blood flows through a person, “And through the bark the sap travels through the tree and rises into branches, leaves and flowers.”

Bedbugs are talked about almost without irritation: a person enters into a useless single combat with them. Tolstoy puts the bed at the inn in the middle of the room and under each leg of the bed he puts a wooden cup of water and thinks about the bedbugs: “I have outsmarted you.” But bedbugs jump on him from the ceiling. The master puts on his fur coat and goes out into the yard, deciding: “You can’t be outsmarted.”

These stories upset critics; life is very simple and little happens in it: it is simple-minded and ugly. In addition, critics were upset and surprised that “ABC” did not contain works by other writers - neither Gogol nor Turgenev. Little is said about other life: there is a story about Eskimos, about blacks, but there are no stories about Europeans.

What happens in the books is the simplest and oldest: Aesop's fables are taken and simplified even more. From the new it is told about the railway and about electricity. The story about the railway is very interesting. It seems to contradict the book as a whole - it is called “Speed ​​makes power.” At the bottom the subtitle is “True”.

The road is passing by Yasnaya Polyana I went recently, people were still amazed at the steam locomotives, the steam locomotives seemed to be thinner than the current ones, and therefore seemed taller.

The story begins like this: “Once a car was driving very quickly along the railway. And on the road itself, at the crossing, stood a horse with a heavy cart. A man drove a horse across the road, but the horse could not move the cart because the back wheel came off. The conductor shouted to the driver: “Hold it,” but the driver did not listen. He realized that a man could neither drive a horse and cart nor turn it around, and that the cars could not be stopped immediately. He did not stop, but started the car as quickly as possible and ran into the cart at full speed. The man ran away from the cart, and the car, like a piece of wood, threw the cart and horse off the road, but didn’t shake itself and ran on.”

The driver explains that they killed the horse and broke the cart, and if they had listened to the conductor, they would have killed themselves and killed all the passengers.

The moral of the conductor is reminiscent of Tolstoy’s conversation with Herzen that if the ice is cracking, then the only salvation is to go faster.

“Speed ​​makes strength” - written against cowardice and procrastination.

Tolstoy himself was brave. From estate to estate, bypassing bridges, in the summer they traveled through crayfish fords, in winter and spring they crossed ice, sometimes unreliable, and crossed into the ice drift by boat.

It's not just a matter of courage - it's a matter of decision and an appreciation of speed. When they say that we need to go faster, the question arises:

Where to go?

What's the hurry?

What do you want to achieve?

But here the idyll begins.

People live in Tolstoy's ABC village life and they have nowhere to go, Railway appears unexpectedly with a steam locomotive; without it, these people could live, plow, have a cow, cry when the cow died, grow old, raise children.

The book talks about a simple morality – one that doesn’t move. There is almost no city in it, there is only a story, slightly altered by Tolstoy from the story of a student at the Yasnaya Polyana school. The story is called “How they didn’t take me to the city.”

The boy asked to go to the city, but they didn’t take him, he fell asleep from grief, he dreamed of the city. Then he went outside to play, and his father came from the city.

There are ships in ABC; on one ship, the captain's son, chasing a monkey, climbed into such a place that he could not return, and the father, under the threat of a shot from a gun, forced his son to jump into the water. In another story, children are swimming, and a shark approaches them, and the old artilleryman, when he saw the shark fin next to his son, managed to kill the shark with a cannon shot.

These are all stories about amazing cases that speak of human courage and luck.

The ships, of course, are sailing, and all this is almost a fable, although it is all true.

People go about their peasant work, and examples of the structure of matter go, in essence, only to the structure of a tree - it explains why the wheel hub is made of birch and not oak.

So as not to inject myself.

The village is surrounded by fields, and time does not seem to move. There are stories from the chronicle, there are passages from the Bible, there is a story about Ermak, about a conversation between Peter I and a man, and about how men dragged abandoned things from burned-out Moscow.

History is motionless, it is made somewhere beyond the fields and does not come to the fields.

The story about the artilleryman firing from a cannon and the epics retold by Tolstoy stand on the same plane and occurred in some common time.

There is no “machinist” in this world.

There is no speed here.

Life is patriarchal, slow and therefore strong. Tolstoy could have written: “from immobility there is strength.” There is no such story, but Tolstoy was planning to publish the Nesovremennik magazine by that time.

There is also a story about Pugachev: Pugachev came to the village, the gentlemen ran away, they dressed the little master’s girl as a peasant girl, Pugachev liked her, and he gave her a ten-kopeck piece.

Pugachev was, but what happened to Pugachev, because of which he fought with the masters, is not said: it is only said that there were peasants who hid the master’s child from Pugachev.

The gentlemen fight, ride on ships, plant gardens and hunt, their children learn to ride horses in order to hunt and fight. It is told how four brothers, and there were just that many Tolstoys, learned horse riding, how they beat an old horse, whose name was Raven, showing their prowess, and how the uncle shamed the boy who was torturing the old horse.

Lots of stories about hunting. Seven stories in a row - about Bulka's face. Muzzles were the name of strong dogs with which they hunted large animals. When the master left for the Caucasus, he locked up Bulka, with whom he went bear hunting. Bulka broke the window and caught up with the master. This is very well described: “At the first station, I was about to board another transfer station, when suddenly I saw something black and shiny rolling along the road. It was Bulka in his copper collar, he was flying at full speed towards the station. He rushed towards me, licked my hand and stretched out in the shadows under the cart.”

Then it is told how Bulka fought with a boar. It is also told how Bulka fought with the wolf, how he was friends with other dogs and was jealous of the owner for them.

The stories about dogs are detailed and differ in style from all other stories: there is no moralizing in them; they are full of precise details.

It would seem that Tolstoy should have told about Bulka in “Cossacks”: when Olenin walks through the forest, it is said how a dog runs in front of him and how its black back turns purple from the countless mosquitoes that have settled on it. But Bulka is not named in “Cossacks”. In "Cossacks" big questions are solved. Bulka appeared in “Azbuka” as part of life, Tolstoy’s ordinary life. The master in “Azbuka” remembers the Caucasus, remembers Bulka, so as not to think about Eroshka.

In addition to Bulka, there is also a story about another dog - Druzhka, who fought with a wolf. There is a large, very slow, calm story “Hunting is Worse than Bondage.” It talks about a bear hunt, about winter forest, about spending the night in the forest on spruce branches. “I slept so soundly that I forgot where I fell asleep. I looked around - what a miracle! Where I am? There are some white chambers above me, and the pillars are white, and there are sparkles on everything. I looked up - the stains were white, and between the stains there was some kind of burnished vault, and multi-colored lights were burning. I looked around, remembered that we were in the forest and that these trees in the snow and frost seemed to me like chambers, and the lights were stars in the sky trembling between the branches.

During the night, frost fell: there was frost on the branches, and on my fur coat, and Demyan was all under frost, and frost was falling from above.”

In 1858, in the winter, they walked around the she-bear - Lev Nikolaevich went bear hunting. Tolstoy stood in his place with two guns to wait for the bear, but did not trample the space around him. He always did everything his own way and decided everything anew.

Fet tells it this way: “When the hunters, each with two loaded guns, were placed along a clearing that ran through a forest furrowed in a checkerboard pattern with clearings, they were advised to trample the deep snow around them as widely as possible, in order to thus gain the greatest possible freedom of movement. But Lev Nikolayevich, standing at the indicated place, almost waist-deep in snow, declared trampling unnecessary, since the point was shooting at the bear, and not fighting with it.”

The beaters went; the bear suddenly ran out towards Tolstoy; Lev Nikolaevich fired; then he fired a second time, hit, but could not grab the second gun, he stumbled in the snow, the bear fell on him and began to gnaw his head. Tolstoy pulled his head into his shoulders, exposing fur hat into the mouth of the beast.

The leader of the bears, Astashkov, ran up to the bear and, hitting her with a twig, shouted quietly: “Where are you going? Where are you going?"

The bear got scared and ran away: she was killed the next day. Tolstoy had a torn cheek under his left eye and skin on the left side of his forehead.

Fet assures that Tolstoy, standing up while he was being bandaged, said: “Will Fet say something?”

Fet is a great poet, but he told an incident around Christmas 1859 to his own praise: how he foresaw everything well and how, because they did not listen to him, a misfortune almost happened.

Fourteen years later, Tolstoy tells everything calmly and scary. Him main character Demyan is the leader, and the main thing is not the danger, but the hunt: “And Demyan, without a gun, with only a twig, set off along the path, shouting: “He’s eaten his master!” The master is eaten!” He runs and shouts at the bear: “Oh, you troublemaker!” What is he doing! Give it up! Give it up!“

The bear obeyed, threw me and ran. When I got up, there was blood in the snow, as if a sheep had been slaughtered, and the meat hung in rags over my eyes, but in the heat of the moment it didn’t hurt.

A comrade came running, people gathered, they looked at my wound, and soaked it in snow. And I forgot about the wound, I asked: “Where is the bear, where did it go?” Suddenly we hear: “Here he is! here he is!" We see: the bear is running towards us again. We grabbed our guns, but before anyone had time to shoot, he ran away.” Next comes detailed story how they took this bear.

An entire section of three stories is devoted in ABC to a description of how trees are cut down. The whole piece is written in one piece, together: a landowner is building a garden for himself and unwittingly spoils nature, he wants to cut down dry land and game, he sees a large poplar tree with two girths, the poplar is surrounded by shoots. The master wants the place to be cheerful; it seems to him that the old poplar is drowned out by the young ones. He cuts down the young poplars, and the old poplar dries up. These were his children who came from his root, and he was about to transfer his power to them; the man intervened clumsily, the old poplar tree dried up in vain.

In vain does the landowner cut down the bird cherry tree. They cut down a tree and leaned on it. “At the same time, something seemed to scream - it crunched in the middle of the tree; we lay down, and it seemed to cry - there was a crackling sound in the middle, and the tree fell down. It tore at the cut and, swaying, lay like branches and flowers on the grass. The branches and flowers trembled after the fall and stopped.

“Oh, something important! - said the man. “It’s such a pity!” And I was so sorry that I quickly went to other workers.”

The third story is called “How Trees Walk.” The landowner again cleans out the garden near the pond, found a bird cherry tree and remembers that the garden was cleaned, and the bird cherry tree was large and thick. It turns out that the bird cherry crawled here from under the linden tree, where it was dying, but it had already thrown off the old root and grabbed the ground “with a twig and made a root out of the twig.”

It turns out that a person only gets confused in life and interferes with the life of the trees.

Lev Nikolaevich loved patriarchal life, he loved the fragrant Samara steppes, the slopes of the hills, the grass along which herds of horses walked, the healthy, calm Bashkir people, and he also loved the village. In order to understand Bashkir life, he read old books and decided that the Bashkirs are similar to the Scythians, about whom the Greek historian and geographer Herodotus once spoke. Somehow it turned out that both the desire to write more simply, unadornedly, about the most important and simple things, and the knowledge of the Bashkirs who are now living and have not changed the old way of life led Tolstoy to study the Greek language.

Greek literature and the simplicity of the old story helped Tolstoy write his “ABC”.

But Tolstoy, looking at the Bashkirs, bought land there, or rather, outbid it, and very inexpensively - ten rubles per tithe. (This is almost a hectare.)

Then a year later I saw that everything had changed, that there was no open space, the steppe was plowed up, and peasants lived there, and then famine came.

Tolstoy loved patriarchy, but as the owner he himself carried its destruction, and therefore “ABC” is a book about old village, which disappears.

What will happen after is unknown.

“Speed ​​is power,” but Tolstoy is against speed, because he does not know where to go and why to go.

The biggest story in ABC was the story “Prisoner of the Caucasus.” Tolstoy was almost captured by the Chechens near the Grozny fortress; many Russian officers were captured then; their families ransomed them with difficulty and at great cost. The topic “Russian among Chechens” is the topic “ Caucasian prisoner» Pushkin. Tolstoy took the same title, but told everything differently. His prisoner is a Russian officer from the poor nobles, the kind of man who knows how to do everything with his own hands. He's almost not a gentleman. He is captured because another, noble officer, rode away with a gun, did not help him, and was also captured.

Zhilin—that’s the prisoner’s name—understands why the highlanders don’t like Russians. The Chechens are strangers, but not hostile to him, and they respect his courage and ability to fix the watch. The prisoner is freed not by a woman who is in love with him, but by a girl who takes pity on him. He tries to save his comrade, he took him with him, but he was timid and lacking energy.

Zhilin was dragging Kostylin on his shoulders, but was caught with him, and then ran away alone.

Tolstoy is proud of this story. This is wonderful prose - calm, there are no decorations in it and there is not even what is called psychological analysis. Human interests collide, and we sympathize with Zhilin - to a good person, and what we know about him is enough for us, but he himself doesn’t want to know much about himself.

In addition to reading exercises and short stories, the ABC also contained arithmetic and instructions for the teacher.

There was a lot of controversy surrounding this book. Tolstoy himself wrote an article in Otechestvennye zapiski. The point of the article is that teachers usually assume that a child comes to school without knowing how to think, and they teach him thinking and counting. Meanwhile, the guys, already playing with each other, know how to count; they have already entered into life. The book wisdom and book conversations that teachers teach them is not the way forward, but the way back.

Tolstoy believed that logical reasoning and saying everything in full words is not the main thing and not only not the most necessary, but probably not necessary at all. Lev Nikolaevich defended a different type of person. Therefore, in the article “On Public Education” the question is not only about the alphabet, but about the type of civilization that they wanted to impose on the children.

Tolstoy said that the main thing is knowledge of language, a living language and Church Slavonic - a dead language for understanding a living one, and arithmetic as the basis of mathematics. Tolstoy was right about this.

But he was wrong when he considered all the progress of life false, he wanted to stop it, but speed was needed.

Lev Nikolaevich believed that “Azbuka” was persecuted, and was very sensitive to negative reviews. But during Tolstoy’s lifetime, “ABC”, despite its expensive price, - it cost twenty kopecks, - was redone and published twenty-eight times. Sofya Andreevna herself sold books.

The old scribe Mironov told me how he served as a boy in a bookstore on Nikolskaya Street, where they sold mainly books for the people. The boy was sent to Khamovniki to the house of Lev Nikolaevich. Barns opened into the dark garden, the barn door was opened, and bundles were taken out. Books were sold not by count, but by weight, knowing how many copies were per pound. They sent money with the boy for a pound of ABC.

Sometimes Lev Nikolayevich, already old, helped the boy lift the ABC from the ground and put it on his head: he showed how it would be easier to carry it.

From Khamovniki to Nikolskaya Street the road is very long, but is the horse tram expensive?