Abstract: literature of the Second World War - the Great Patriotic War.

“Airport” is not a chronicle, not an investigation, not a chronicle. This is a work of fiction based on real facts. The book has many characters, many intertwining dramatic storylines. The novel is not only and not so much about war. It is about love, about betrayal, passion, betrayal, hatred, rage, tenderness, courage, pain and death. In other words, about our life today and yesterday. The novel begins at the Airport and unfolds minute by minute during the last five days of the more than 240-day siege. Although the novel is based on real facts, all the characters are a work of fiction, like the name of the Airport. The small Ukrainian garrison of the Airport day and night repels attacks from an enemy that is many times superior to it in manpower and equipment. In this completely destroyed Airport, treacherous and cruel enemies are faced with something they did not expect and cannot believe. With cyborgs. The enemies themselves called the defenders of the Airport that way for their inhuman vitality and stubbornness of the doomed. Cyborgs, in turn, called their enemies orcs. Along with the cyborgs at the Airport there is an American photographer who, for a number of reasons, experiences this unnecessary war as a personal drama. Through his eyes, as if in a kaleidoscope, in the intervals between battles at the Airport, the reader will also see the whole history of what objective historians will call nothing less than the Russian-Ukrainian war.

The book is based on a life story real person. A former prisoner, a fighter of a penal company, and then a second lieutenant of the ROA and one of the leaders of the Kengir uprising of Gulag prisoners, Engels Ivanovich Sluchenkov. There are amazing destinies. They look likeadventurenovels accompanied by fantastic escapades and incredible twists. FateEngels Sluchenkovwas from this series.There are rubbles of lies piled up around his name. His fate, on the one hand, looks like a feat, on the other, like a betrayal. But theyWith I consciously or was unknowingly the culprit these confused metamorphoses.

But to understand Sluchenkov as a person, not to justify, but only to understand, what this way it became possible, that he is a Soviet citizen and a Soviet soldier went to fight against Stalin. In order to understand the reasons why that many thousands of Soviet citizens during the Second World War decided put on an enemy uniform and take up a weapon, against their own brothers and friends, we must live their lives. Find yourself in their place and in their shoes. We must transport ourselves to those times when a person is forced was to think one thing, say another and, in the end, do a third. AND at the same time retain the ability to be ready to one day resist such rules behavior, rebel and sacrifice not only his life, but also his good name.

Vladimir Pershanin’s novels “Penalty Officer from a Tank Company”, “Penalty Officer, Tankman, Suicide Squad” and “The Last Battle of the Penalty Officer” are the story of a Soviet man during the Great Patriotic War. Yesterday's student, who in June 41 had the chance to go to a tank school and, having gone through the terrible trials of war, became a real Tankman.

At the center of the novel "Family" is the fate of the main character Ivan Finogenovich Leonov, the writer's grandfather, in its direct connection with the major events in the now existing village of Nikolskoye from the late 19th to the 30s of the 20th century.

The scale of the work, the novelty of the material, rare knowledge of the life of the Old Believers, a correct understanding of the social situation put the novel among the number of significant works about the peasantry of Siberia

In August 1968, at the Ryazan Airborne School, two battalions of cadets (4 companies each) and a separate company of special forces cadets (9th company) were formed according to the new staff. The main task of the latter is to train group commanders for GRU special forces units and formations

The ninth company is perhaps the only one that has gone down in legend as an entire unit, and not as a specific roster. More than thirty years have passed since it ceased to exist, but its fame does not fade, but rather, on the contrary, grows.

Among the numerous works of fiction about the Great Patriotic War, Akulov’s novel “Baptism” stands out for its incorruptible objective truth, in which the tragic and the heroic are united like a monolith. This could only be created by a gifted artist of words, who personally went through a barrage of fire and metal, through frosty snow sprinkled with blood, and who saw death in the face more than once. The significance and strength of the novel “Baptism” is given not only by the truth of events, but also by classical artistry, the richness of Russian vernacular, volume and variety of created characters and images.

His characters, both privates and officers, are illuminated with a bright light that penetrates their psychology and spiritual world.

The novel recreates the events of the first months of the Great Patriotic War - the Nazi offensive near Moscow in the fall of 1941 and the rebuff that Soviet soldiers gave it. The author shows how sometimes difficult and confusing human destinies are. Some become heroes, others take the disastrous path of betrayal. The image of a white birch - the favorite tree in Rus' - runs through the entire work. The first edition of the novel was published in 1947 and soon received the Stalin Prize of the 1st degree and truly national recognition.

Military prose

War. From this word comes death, hunger, deprivation, disaster. No matter how much time passes after its end, people will remember it for a long time and mourn their losses. A writer’s duty is not to hide the truth, but to tell how everything really was in the war, to remember the exploits of heroes.

What is military prose?

Military prose is piece of art, touching on the theme of war and man’s place in it. Military prose is often autobiographical or recorded from the words of eyewitnesses of events. Works about war raise universal, moral, social, psychological and even philosophical themes.

It is important to do this so that the generation that did not come into contact with the war knows what their ancestors went through. Military prose is divided into two periods. The first is writing stories, novels, and novels during hostilities. The second refers to the post-war period of writing. This is a time to rethink what happened and take an unbiased look from the outside.

In modern literature, two main directions of works can be distinguished:

1. Panoramic . The action in them takes place in different parts of the front at the same time: on the front line, in the rear, at headquarters. Writers in this case use original documents, maps, orders, and so on.
2. Narrowed . These books tell a story about one or more main characters.

The main themes that are revealed in books about the war:

• Military operations on the front line;
• Guerrilla resistance;
• Civilian life behind enemy lines;
• Life of prisoners in concentration camps;
• The life of young soldiers at war.

Man and war

Many writers are interested not so much in reliably describing the combat missions performed by fighters, but in exploring their moral qualities. The behavior of people in extreme conditions is very different from their usual way of a quiet life.

In war, many prove themselves the best side, others, on the contrary, do not withstand the test and “break”. The authors’ task is to explore the logic of behavior and the inner world of both characters . This is the main role of writers - to help readers draw the right conclusion.

What is the importance of literature about war?

Against the backdrop of the horrors of war, a person with his own problems and experiences comes to the fore. The main characters not only perform feats on the front line, but also perform heroic deeds behind enemy lines and while sitting in concentration camps.

Of course, we all must remember what price was paid for victory and draw a conclusion from this s. Everyone will find benefit for themselves by reading literature about the war. Our electronic library has many books on this topic.

• Lev Kassil;

  Liesel's new father turned out to be a decent man. He hated the Nazis and hid a fugitive Jew in the basement. He also instilled in Liesel a love for books, which were mercilessly destroyed in those days. It is very interesting to read about the everyday life of Germans during the war. You rethink many things after reading.

  We are glad that you came to our website in search of information of interest. We hope it was useful. You can read books in the genre of military prose online for free on the website.

According to the encyclopedia “The Great Patriotic War,” over a thousand writers served in the active army; out of eight hundred members of the Moscow writers’ organization, two hundred and fifty went to the front in the first days of the war. Four hundred and seventy-one writers did not return from the war - this is a big loss. Once during the Spanish War, Hemingway remarked: “It is very dangerous to write the truth about war, and it is very dangerous to seek the truth... When a man goes to the front to seek the truth, he may find death instead. But if twelve go, and only two return, the truth that they bring with them will really be the truth, and not distorted rumors that we pass off as history. Is it worth the risk to find this truth? Let the writers themselves judge that.”

Newspapers played a special role in the fate of military literature.

I. Erenburg, K. Simonov, V. Grossman, A. Platonov, E. Gabrilovich, P. Pavlenko, A. Surkov worked as correspondents for “Red Star”; its regular authors were A. Tolstoy, E. Petrov, A. Dovzhenko, N. Tikhonov. A. Fadeev, L. Sobolev, V. Kozhevnikov, B. Polevoy worked for Pravda. Army newspapers even created a special position - a writer. B. Gorbatov served in the newspaper of the Southern Front “For the Glory of the Motherland”, in the newspaper of the Western and then the 3rd Belorussian Front “Krasnoarmeyskaya Pravda” - A. Tvardovsky... The newspaper at that time became the main intermediary between the writer and the reader and the most influential practical organizer of the literary process. The alliance of the newspaper with writers was born of the newspaper’s need for a writer’s pen (of course, within the framework of journalistic genres), but as soon as it became more or less strong and familiar, it turned into an alliance with fiction (it began to be present on newspaper pages in “pure » form). In January 1942, “Red Star” published the first stories by K. Simonov, K. Paustovsky, V. Grossman. After this, works of fiction - poems and poems, short stories and stories, even plays - began to appear in other central newspapers, in front-line and army newspapers. A previously unthinkable phrase came into use - it was considered an axiom that a newspaper lives for one day - on the newspaper page the phrase: “To be continued in the next issue.” The following stories were published in newspapers: “Russian Tale” by P. Pavlenko (“Red Star”, 1942), “The People are Immortal” by V. Grossman (“Red Star”, 1942), “Rainbow” by V. Vasilevskaya (“Izvestia”, 1942 ), “The Family of Taras” (“The Unconquered”) by B. Gorbatov (“Pravda”, 1943); the first chapters of the novel “The Young Guard” by A. Fadeev (Komsomolskaya Pravda, 1945), the novel was finished after the war; poems: "Pulkovo Meridian" by V. Inber ("Literature and Life", "Pravda", 1942), "February Diary" by O. Berggolts ("Komsomolskaya Pravda", 1942), "Vasily Terkin" by A. Tvardovsky ("Pravda" , “Izvestia”, “Red Star”, 1942); plays: “Russian People” by K. Simonov (Pravda, 1942), “Front” by A. Korneychuk (Pravda, 1942).

For the infantry soldier, artilleryman, and sapper, war was not only countless dangers - bombings, artillery raids, machine gun fire - and proximity to death, which was so often only four steps away, but also hard daily work. And from the writer she also demanded selfless literary work - without respite or rest. “I wrote,” recalled A. Tvardovsky, “essays, poems, feuilletons, slogans, leaflets, songs, articles, notes - everything.” But even the traditional newspaper genres intended to cover the present day, its evil - correspondence and journalistic articles (and they, naturally, became most widespread at that time, they were turned to most often throughout the war), when a gifted artist resorted to them, they were transformed : correspondence turned into an artistic essay, a journalistic article into an essay, and acquired the advantages of fiction, including durability. Much of what was then hastily written for tomorrow’s issue of the newspaper has retained its living force to this day, so much talent and soul was invested in these works. And the individuality of these writers clearly manifested itself in journalistic genres.

And the first line in the list of the writers who most distinguished themselves during the war for their work in the newspaper rightfully belongs to Ilya Erenburg, who, as evidenced on behalf of the corps of front-line correspondents K. Simonov, “worked harder, more selflessly and better than all of us during the difficult suffering of the war.”

Ehrenburg is a publicist par excellence; his main genre is the article, or rather the essay. In Ehrenburg one can rarely find a description in its pure form. The landscape and the sketch are immediately enlarged and acquire a symbolic meaning. Ehrenburg’s own impressions and observations (and he, a purely civilian, went to the front more than once) are included in the figurative fabric of his journalism on equal terms with letters, documents, quotes from newspapers, eyewitness accounts, testimonies of prisoners, etc.

Laconism is one of the striking distinctive features of Ehrenburg's style. The large number of varied facts that the writer uses requires conciseness. Often the very “montage” of facts carves out a thought and leads the reader to the conclusion: “When Leonardo da Vinci sat over the drawings of a flying machine, he thought not about high-explosive bombs, but about the happiness of mankind. As a teenager I saw the first loops of the French pilot Pegu. The elders said: “Be proud - man flies like a bird!” Many years later I saw Junkers over Madrid, over Paris, over Moscow...” (“The Heart of Man”).

Contrasting comparison, a sharp transition from a particular but striking detail to a generalization, from ruthless irony to heartfelt tenderness, from an angry invective to an inspiring appeal - this is what distinguishes Ehrenburg’s style. An attentive reader of Ehrenburg's journalism cannot help but guess that its author is a poet.

Konstantin Simonov is also a poet (at least, that’s how readers perceived him at that time, and he himself then considered poetry to be his true calling), but of a different kind - he always gravitated towards plot poems; in one of the reviews of his pre-war poems it was insightful noted: “Konstantin Simonov has visual acuity and the demeanor of a prose writer.” So the war and work at the newspaper only pushed him towards prose. In his essays, he usually depicts what he saw with his own eyes, shares what he himself experienced, or tells the story of some person with whom the war brought him together.

Simonov's essays always have a narrative plot, so their figurative structure is indistinguishable from his stories. As a rule, they contain a psychological portrait of the hero - an ordinary soldier or front-line officer, reflect the life circumstances that shaped the character of this person, depict in detail the battle in which he distinguished himself, while the author pays main attention to the everyday life of war. Here is the ending of the essay “On the Sozh River”: “The second day of the battle began on this not the first water line. It was an ordinary, difficult day, after which a new day of battle began, just as difficult,” she characterizes the author’s point of view. And Simonov recreates in great detail what a soldier or officer had to go through in these “ordinary” days, when in the bone-chilling cold or muddy roads he walked along endless front-line roads, pushed skidding cars or pulled out dead stuck cars from impassable mud. guns; how he lit the last pinch of shag mixed with crumbs, or chewed a randomly preserved cracker - for days there was no grub or smoke; how he ran across under mortar fire - overshooting, undershooting - feeling with his whole body that he was about to be covered by the next mine, or, overcoming the dreary emptiness in his chest, rising under fire to rush into enemy trenches.

Viktor Nekrasov, who spent the entire Stalingrad epic on the front line, commanding regimental sappers, recalled that journalists appeared in Stalingrad infrequently, but still, journalists did appear, however, usually “men of the pen” appeared only briefly and did not always go down below the army headquarters. There were, however, exceptions: “Vasily Semenovich Grossman was not only in divisions, but also in regiments, on the front line. He was also in our regiment.” And the most important evidence: “...newspapers with his, like Ehrenburg’s, correspondence were read to the gills.” The Stalingrad essays were the writer's highest artistic achievement at that time.

In the gallery of images created by Grossman in his essays, two warriors whom the writer met during Battle of Stalingrad, were the living embodiment of the most significant, most dear to him traits of the people’s character. This is the 20-year-old sniper Chekhov, “a young man whom everyone loved for his kindness and devotion to his mother and sisters, who did not shoot with a slingshot as a child,” because he “regretted hitting the living,” “who became a terrible man with the iron, cruel and holy logic of the Patriotic War , an avenger" ("Through the Eyes of Chekhov"). And the sapper Vlasov with the “creepy, like a scaffold” (this is from Grossman’s notebook, that’s how it impressed him), the Volga crossing: “It often happens that one person embodies all the special features of a big business, great job that the events of his life, his character traits express the character of an entire era. And of course, it is Sergeant Vlasov, a great worker of peacetime, who went behind the harrow as a six-year-old boy, the father of six diligent, unpampered children, the man who was the first foreman on the collective farm and the keeper of the collective farm treasury - and is the exponent of the harsh and everyday heroism of the Stalingrad crossing" (" Vlasov").

Grossman's key word, the key concept explaining the strength of popular resistance is freedom. “It is impossible to break the people’s will to freedom,” he writes in the essay “Volga - Stalingrad,” calling the Volga “the river of Russian freedom.”

“Spiritualized People” is the name of one of the most famous essays and stories (in the absence of others, we will use this genre definition, although it does not convey the originality of the work, in which a specific, documentary basis is combined with a legendary-metaphorical artistic structure) by Andrei Platonov. “He knew,” Platonov writes about one of his heroes, “that war, like peace, is inspired by happiness and there is joy in it, and he himself experienced the joy of war, the happiness of the destruction of evil, and still experiences them, and for this he lives Other people live in war” (“Officer and Soldier”). Time and again the writer returns to the idea of ​​fortitude as the basis of our perseverance. “Nothing is accomplished without preparedness in the soul, especially in war. But this internal preparedness of our warrior for battle can be judged both by the strength of his organic attachment to his homeland, and by his worldview, formed in him by the history of his country” (“About the Soviet Soldier (Three Soldiers)”). And for Platonov, the most disgusting, monstrous thing about the invaders rampaging through our land is “emptiness.”

The war against fascism appears in Platonov’s works as a battle of “spiritual people” with an “inanimate enemy” (this is the title of another Platonov essay), as a struggle of good and evil, creation and destruction, light and darkness. “In moments of battle,” he notes, “the whole earth is freed from villainy.” But, considering the war in fundamental universal categories, the writer does not turn away from his time, does not neglect its specific features (although this kind of unfair accusations: “In Platonov’s stories there is no time-colored historical person, our contemporary..." - he did not escape). The lifestyle of his contemporaries (or rather, their worldview, for everything everyday, “material” is switched by Platonov into this sphere) is invariably present in his works, but the author’s main goal is to show that the war is going on “for the sake of life on earth”, for the right to live, breathe, raise children. The enemy has encroached on the very physical existence of our people - this is what dictates to Platonov the “universal”, universal scale. His style is also oriented towards this, in which philosophy and folklore metaphorism, hyperbole, going back to fairy-tale narration, and psychologism, alien to fairy tales, symbolism and vernacular, equally intensely coloring both the speech of the heroes and the author’s language, merged.

The focus of Alexei Tolstoy is on the patriotic and military traditions of the Russian people, which should serve as a support, a spiritual foundation for resistance to the fascist invaders. And for him, the Soviet soldiers fighting against the Nazi hordes are the direct heirs of those who, “protecting the honor of the fatherland, walked through the Alpine glaciers behind Suvorov’s horse, resting his bayonet, repelled the attacks of Murat’s cuirassiers near Moscow, stood in a clean shirt - gun to his leg - under the destructive bullets from Plevna, awaiting the order to go to inaccessible heights" ("What We Defend").

Tolstoy’s constant appeal to history responds in style with solemn vocabulary; the writer widely uses not only archaisms, but also vernacular language - let us remember Tolstoy’s famous: “Nothing, we can do it!”

A characteristic feature of many wartime essays and journalistic articles is high lyrical tension. It is no coincidence that essays are so often given subtitles of this type: “From the writer’s notebook,” “Pages from the diary,” “Diary,” “Letters,” etc. This predilection for lyrical forms, for narration close to a diary, was not explained so much because they gave great internal freedom in conveying material that had not yet been laid down, material that was today’s in the literal sense of the word - the main thing was something else: this way the writer got the opportunity to speak in the first person about what filled his soul express your feelings directly. “I drew inspiration from the feeling of collective cohesion, from the complete dissolution of a person in the common cause of defending Leningrad,” Nikolai Tikhonov said, but the feeling here is expressed common to most writers. Never before has a writer heard the heart of the people so clearly - for this he just had to listen to his heart. And no matter who he wrote about, he certainly wrote about himself. Never before has the distance between word and deed been so short for a writer. And his responsibility has never been so high and specific.

Sometimes literary process war years in critical articles looks like a path from a journalistic article, essay, lyric poem to more “solid” genres: story, poem, drama. It is believed that, as writers accumulated impressions of military reality, small genres faded away. But the living process does not fit into this temptingly harmonious scheme. Until the very end of the war, writers continued to appear on the pages of newspapers with essays and journalistic articles, and the best of them were real literature, without any discounts. And the first stories and plays, in turn, appeared early - in 1942. And, moving from essays and journalism to a review of stories, one must keep in mind that the higher-lower approach, better-worse assessments, is not suitable here. We will talk about the most significant, artistically most striking works, reprinted many times in the post-war years: “The People are Immortal” (1942) by V. Grossman, “The Unconquered” (under the title “The Family of Taras”) (1943) by B. Gorbatov, “Volokolamsk highway" (the first part is called "Panfilov's men on the first line (a story about fear and fearlessness)", 1943; the second - "Volokolamsk highway (the second story about Panfilov's men)", 1944) A. Bek, "Days and Nights" (1944) K. Simonova. They are also remarkable in that they reveal a wide range of literary traditions, which the authors of the stories were guided by, artistically translating the impressions of the catastrophically changing, turbulent military reality.

Vasily Grossman began writing the story “The People Are Immortal” in the spring of 1942, when the German army was driven away from Moscow and the situation at the front had stabilized. We could try to put it in some order, to comprehend the bitter experience of the first months of the war that seared our souls, to identify what was the true basis of our resistance and inspired hopes of victory over a strong and skillful enemy, to find an organic figurative structure for this.

The plot of the story reproduces a very common front-line situation of that time - our units who were surrounded in a fierce battle, suffering heavy losses, break through the enemy ring. But this local episode is considered by the author with an eye to Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”, it moves apart, expands, the story takes on the features of a mini-epic. The action moves from the front headquarters to the ancient city, which was attacked by enemy aircraft, from the front line, from the battlefield - to a village captured by the Nazis, from the front road - to the location of German troops. The story is densely populated: our soldiers and commanders - both those who turned out to be strong in spirit, for whom the trials that befell became a school of “great tempering and wise heavy responsibility”, and official optimists who always shouted “hurray”, but were broken by defeats; German officers and soldiers, intoxicated by the strength of their army and the victories won; townspeople and Ukrainian collective farmers - both patriotically minded and ready to become servants of the invaders. All this is dictated by “people's thought,” which was the most important for Tolstoy in “War and Peace,” and in the story “The People are Immortal” it is highlighted.

“Let there be no word more majestic and holy than the word “people”!” - writes Grossman. It is no accident that he made the main characters of his story not career military men, but civilians - a collective farmer from the Tula region, Ignatiev, and a Moscow intellectual, historian Bogarev. They are a significant detail, being drafted into the army on the same day, symbolizing the unity of the people in the face of the fascist invasion.

The combat is also symbolic - “as if the ancient times of duels were revived” - Ignatiev with a German tanker, “huge, broad-shouldered”, “who walked through Belgium, France, trampled the soil of Belgrade and Athens”, “whose chest Hitler himself adorned with the “iron cross”. It is reminiscent of Terkin’s fight with the “well-fed, shaved, careful, freely fed” German, described later by Tvardovsky:

Like on an ancient battlefield,
Chest on chest, like shield on shield, -
Instead of thousands, two fight,
As if the fight would solve everything.

How much in common Ignatiev and Terkin have! Even Ignatiev’s guitar has the same function as Terkin’s accordion. And the kinship of these heroes suggests that Grossman discovered the features of the modern Russian folk character.

Boris Gorbatov said that while working on the story “The Unconquered,” he was looking for “words-projectiles” and was in a hurry to “immediately transfer” the story “for the spiritual armament of our army.” He wrote it after Stalingrad, after the liberation of Donbass, having been there, seeing what happened to the people who found themselves in the power of the occupiers, what cities and towns, factories and mines had become. “...I only write what I know well...” admitted Gorbatov. “Only because I myself am a Donbass citizen, born and raised there, and only because during the days of the war I was in Donbass, both during its defense and in battles for it, only because I entered the liberated Donbass with my troops,” I was able to take the risk of writing a book “The Unconquered” about people known and close to me. I didn't study them - I lived with them. And many of the heroes of “Invictus” were simply copied from life - as I knew them.”

Gorbatov strives to draw epic picture what's happening. But his aesthetic guide, primarily in revealing the theme of patriotism, is the romantic epic “Taras Bulba” by Gogol. The author of “The Unconquered” does not hide this, the connection with the Gogol tradition is exposed to readers, deliberately emphasized: when first published, Gorbatov’s story was even called “The Family of Taras”; its three main characters - old Taras and his sons Stepan and Andrey - not only repeat the names of the heroes Gogol's story, the attitude of Gorbatov's Taras towards his sons, their fates should have reminded readers of the drama in the family of Taras Bulba, of the conflict between patriotic and paternal feelings. The style of the story “The Unconquered” goes back to the ballad: as in poetry, there are repeating images that hold the narrative together, supporting verbal leitmotifs; the phrase that ends the chapter and which contains the summary of what has just been told is placed at the beginning of the next chapter, creating its emotional field.

Gorbatov’s story begins with the scene of the summer retreat of 1942: “Everything to the east, everything to the east... At least one car to the west! And everything around was filled with anxiety, filled with screams and moans, the creaking of wheels, the grinding of iron, hoarse swearing, the screams of the wounded, the crying of children, and it seemed that the road itself was creaking and groaning under the wheels, rushing in fear between the slopes...” And it ends with liberation from the invaders, the advance of our army and the retreat of the German: “They were going west... They came across long, sad columns of captured Germans. The Germans walked in green overcoats with torn straps, without belts, no longer soldiers - prisoners.” They walked as our prisoners walked a year ago - also “an overcoat without straps, without a belt, a sideways glance, hands behind their backs, like convicts.” And between these events, a year in the life of a factory village occupied by the Nazis was a terrible year of reprisals, lawlessness, humiliation, and a slave existence.

Gorbatov’s story was the first serious attempt to depict in detail what was happening in the occupied territory, how they lived there, how people who found themselves in fascist captivity lived in poverty, how fear was overcome, how resistance arose to the invaders of the civilian population, left to the mercy of fate, to be desecrated by the enemy. To isolate oneself from the surrounding world, which has become hostile, with strong bars and locks (“This does not concern us!”), to sit in one’s home - this was the first reaction of old Taras. But it soon became clear: this is no way to escape.

“It was impossible to live.

The fascist ax has not yet fallen on Taras’s family. No one close to us was killed. No one was tortured. Not stolen. They weren't robbed. Not a single German has ever visited the old house in Kamenny Brod. But it was impossible to live.

They didn’t kill, but they could have killed at any moment. They could have broken in at night, they could have grabbed me in broad daylight on the street. They could have thrown him into a carriage and driven him to Germany. They could have put you against the wall without guilt or trial; They could have shot you, or they could have let you go, laughing at how the person was turning gray before our eyes. They could do anything. They could - and it was worse than if they had already killed. Fear spread out like a black shadow over Taras’s house, like over every house in the city.”

And then the story tells about overcoming this fear, about how everyone resisted the invaders in their own way, and was involved in one way or another in the fight against them. The old master Taras refuses to restore his factory and engages in sabotage. His eldest son Stepan, who was here the secretary of the regional committee, the “master” of the region, organizes and heads an underground organization; Taras’s daughter Nastya, who graduated from school before the occupation, becomes an underground member. The younger son Andrei, who was captured, crosses the front line and returns to his hometown in the ranks of the troops that liberated him. In the stories of Stepan and Andrei, Gorbatov touches on those painful phenomena of military reality that no one then dared to address. Now, after half a century, it is clear that not everything was then revealed to the author of “The Invictus” in its true light; he was hampered by ideological blinders, but nevertheless he took on explosive material, which at that time there were few hunters to touch.

Putting together underground groups, contacting people who were “active” in peacetime, Stepan discovers - this is a discouraging surprise for him, an expert on “personnel” and an experienced leader - that among those who enjoyed official trust, he was in favor with the authorities , there turned out to be cowards and traitors, and among the unnoticed, “unpromising” or obstinate, who thought and acted in their own way, and were disliked by their superiors, there were many people, until the end loyal to the Motherland, true heroes. “So you didn’t know people well, Stepan Yatsenko,” Gorbatov’s hero reproaches himself. “But he lived with them, ate, drank, worked... But he didn’t know the main thing about them - their souls.” But that’s not the point, the “owner” of the region is mistaken here (and along with him the author): everything that he, as the secretary of the regional committee, needed to know about people, he knew - the system itself was not suitable, it was false, soullessly official people's assessments.

The fate of Gorbatov's Andrei is projected onto the fate of Taras Bulba's youngest son. But Andrei did not betray his Motherland, and it is not his fault that he, along with tens of thousands of poor fellows like him, was captured, although his father sees him as a traitor and brands him, like Taras Bulba did his youngest son, and when Andrei crossed the front line, he was “long and strictly interrogated in a special department.” Yes, he himself believed that he was guilty, since he did not put a bullet in his forehead. And apparently, the author also thinks so, although the story of Andrei he told is decisively at odds with such an assessment. But behind all this was Stalin’s monstrously cruel order: “captivity is treason,” the grave legal and moral consequences of which could not be overcome for half a century.

The plot of “Volokolamsk Highway” by Alexander Bek is very reminiscent of the plot of Grossman’s story “The People are Immortal”: after heavy fighting in October 1941 near Volokolamsk, the battalion of Panfilov’s division was surrounded, breaks through the enemy ring and unites with the main forces of the division. But significant differences in the development of this plot are immediately apparent. Grossman strives in every possible way to expand the general panorama of what is happening. Beck closes the narrative within the framework of one battalion. Art world Grossman's stories - heroes, military units, scene of action - were generated by him creative imagination, Beck is documentarily accurate. This is how he characterized his creative method: “Searching for heroes active in life, long-term communication with them, conversations with many people, patient collection of grains, details, relying not only on one’s own observation, but also on the vigilance of the interlocutor...” In “ Volokolamsk Highway" he recreates the true history of one of the battalions of Panfilov's division, everything in him corresponds to what happened in reality: geography and chronicle of battles, characters.

In Grossman's story, the omnipresent author narrates the events and people; in Bek, the narrator is battalion commander Baurdzhan Momysh-Uly. Through his eyes we see what happened to his battalion, he shares his thoughts and doubts, explains his decisions and actions. The author recommends himself to readers only as an attentive listener and “a conscientious and diligent scribe,” which cannot be taken at face value. This is nothing more than an artistic device, because, talking with the hero, the writer inquired about what seemed important to him, Bek, and from these stories he compiled both the image of Momysh-Ula himself and the image of General Panfilov, “who knew how to control and influence without shouting.” , but in mind, in the past of an ordinary soldier who retained soldier’s modesty until his death,” so Beck wrote in his autobiography about the second hero of the book, very dear to him.

“Volokolamsk Highway” is an original artistic and documentary work associated with the literary tradition that it personifies in the literature of the 19th century. Gleb Uspensky. “Under the guise of a purely documentary story,” Beck admitted, “I wrote a work subject to the laws of the novel, did not constrain the imagination, created characters and scenes to the best of my ability...” Of course, both in the author’s declarations of documentary, and in his statement that that he did not constrain the imagination, there is a certain slyness, they seem to have a double bottom: the reader may think that this is a technique, a game. But Beck’s naked, demonstrative documentary is not a stylization, well known to literature (let’s remember, for example, “Robinson Crusoe”), not poetic clothes of an essay-documentary cut, but a way of comprehending, researching and recreating life and man. And the story “Volokolamsk Highway” is distinguished by its impeccable authenticity even in the smallest details (if Beck writes that on the thirteenth of October “everything was in snow,” there is no need to turn to the archives of the weather service, there is no doubt that this was the case in reality). This is a unique but accurate chronicle of the bloody defensive battles near Moscow (this is how the author himself defined the genre of his book), revealing why the German army, having reached the walls of our capital, could not take it.

And most importantly, why “Volokolamsk Highway” should be considered fiction, and not journalism. Behind the professional army, military concerns - discipline, combat training, battle tactics - with which Momysh-Uly is absorbed, the author faces moral, universal problems, aggravated to the limit by the circumstances of war, constantly putting a person on the brink between life and death: fear and courage, dedication and selfishness, loyalty and betrayal.

In the artistic structure of Beck's story, a significant place is occupied by polemics with propaganda stereotypes, with battle cliches, open and hidden polemics. Explicit, because this is the character of the main character: he is harsh, not inclined to bypass sharp corners, does not even forgive himself for weaknesses and mistakes, does not tolerate idle talk and pomp. Here is a typical episode:

“After thinking, he said:

- “Without knowing fear, Panfilov’s men rushed into the first battle...” What do you think: a suitable start?

“I don’t know,” I said hesitantly.

This is how literature corporals write,” he said harshly. “During these days that you are living here, I deliberately ordered you to be taken to places where sometimes two or three mines burst, where bullets whistle. I wanted you to feel fear. You don’t have to confirm it, I know without even admitting it that you had to suppress your fear.

So why do you and your fellow writers imagine that some supernatural people are fighting, and not people like you?”

Twenty years after the war, Konstantin Simonov wrote about “Volokolamsk Highway”: “When I read this book for the first time (during the war - L.L.), the main feeling was surprise at its invincible accuracy, at its iron authenticity. I was then a war correspondent and believed that I knew the war... But when I read this book, I felt with surprise and envy that it was written by a person who knows the war more reliably and more accurately than me...”

Simonov really knew the war well. Since June 1941, he went into the active army on the Western Front, which then had to take the brunt of the German tank columns, only in the first fifteen months of the war, until an editorial trip brought him to Stalingrad, wherever he visited , I've seen everything. Miraculously escaped in July 1941 from the bloody chaos of the encirclement. I was in Odessa, besieged by the enemy. Participated in the combat campaign of a submarine that mined a Romanian port. Went on the attack with infantrymen on the Arabatskaya Strelka in Crimea...

And yet, what Simonov saw in Stalingrad shocked him. The ferocity of the battles for this city reached such an extreme limit that it seemed to him that there was some very important historical milestone here during the fighting. A man restrained in expressing his feelings, a writer who always shunned loud phrases, he ended one of his Stalingrad essays almost pathetically:

“This land around Stalingrad is still nameless.

But once upon a time the word “Borodino” was known only in the Mozhaisk district, it was a district word. And then one day it became a national word. The Borodino position was no better and no worse than many other positions lying between the Neman and Moscow. But Borodino turned out to be an impregnable fortress, because it was here that the Russian soldier decided to lay down his life rather than surrender. And so the shallow river became impassable and the hills and copses with hastily dug trenches became impregnable.

In the steppes near Stalingrad there are many unknown hills and rivers, many villages, the names of which no one a hundred miles away knows, but the people wait and believe that the name of one of these villages will sound for centuries, like Borodino, and that one of these steppe wide fields will become a field of great victory.”

These words turned out to be prophetic, which became clear even when Simonov began writing the story “Days and Nights.” But events that were already perceived as historical - in the most precise and highest sense of the word - are depicted in the story as they were perceived by the defenders of the ruins of three Stalingrad houses, completely absorbed in repelling the sixth attack of the Germans that day, smoking them out at night the basement they captured, transport cartridges and grenades to the house cut off by the enemy. Each of them did what they thought was a small, but extremely difficult and dangerous task, without thinking about what it would all ultimately add up to. The story in the story seems to have been taken by surprise; it did not have time to put itself in order to pose for future artists - romantics and monumentalists. Transferred into art almost in its original form, what happened in Stalingrad should be shocking, the author of “Days and Nights” believed. It is worth noting the closeness of the aesthetic positions of Simonov and Beck (it is no coincidence that Simonov rated Volokolamsk Highway so highly).

Following the Tolstoy tradition (Simonov said more than once that for him there was no higher example in literature than Tolstoy - however, in this case we're talking about not about the epic scope of War and Peace, but about the fearless look at the brutal mundanity of war in " Sevastopol stories"), the author sought to present "war in its true expression - in blood, in suffering, in death." This famous Tolstoy formula also accommodates the backbreaking daily work of a soldier - many kilometers of marches, when everything that is needed for battle and for life has to be carried on oneself, dug trenches and dugouts in the frozen ground - there is no number of them. Yes, trench life - a soldier needs to somehow get comfortable in order to sleep and wash, he needs to patch his tunic and repair his boots. It’s a meager cave life, but there’s no getting around it, you have to adapt to it, and besides, if it weren’t for worries about lodging and food, about smoking and foot wraps, a person would never be able to withstand constant proximity to mortal danger.

“Days and Nights” are written with sketchlike precision, with diary immersion in everyday life at the front. But the figurative structure of the story, the internal dynamics of the events and characters depicted in it are aimed at revealing the spiritual image of those who fought to the death in Stalingrad. In the story, the first stage of unprecedentedly brutal battles in the city ends with the enemy, having cut off the division, which included the battalion of the protagonist of the story, Saburov, from the army headquarters, and goes to the Volga. It would seem that everything was over, further resistance was pointless, but the defenders of the city did not admit defeat even after that and continued to fight with unflagging courage. No enemy superiority could cause them fear or confusion. If the first battles, as they are depicted in the story, are distinguished by extreme nervous tension and furious frenzy, now the most characteristic thing for the writer seems to be the calmness of the heroes, their confidence that they will survive, that the Germans will not be able to defeat them. This calmness of the defenders became a manifestation of the highest courage, the highest level of courage.

In the story “Days and Nights” the heroic appears in its most massive manifestation. The spiritual strength of Simon's heroes, which is not striking in ordinary peaceful conditions, truly manifests itself in moments of mortal danger, in difficult trials, and selflessness and unostentatious courage become the main measure of human personality. In a nationwide war, the outcome of which depended on the strength of the patriotic feeling of many people, ordinary participants in historical cataclysms, the role of the ordinary person did not decrease, but increased. “Days and Nights” helped readers realize that it was not the miracle heroes who stopped and broke the Germans in Stalingrad, who didn’t care about everything - after all, they don’t drown in water or burn in fire - but mere mortals who drowned at the Volga crossings and burned in the flames of neighborhoods that were not protected from bullets and shrapnel, which felt hard and scary - each of them had one life, which they had to risk, which they had to part with, but all together they fulfilled their duty, survived .

These stories by Grossman and Gorbatov, Beck and Simonov outlined the main directions of post-war prose about the war and revealed the supporting traditions in the classics. The experience of Tolstoy’s epic was echoed in Simonov’s trilogy “The Living and the Dead” and in Grossman’s dilogy “Life and Fate.” The hard realism of “Sevastopol Stories”, implemented in its own way, reveals itself in the stories and short stories of Viktor Nekrasov and Konstantin Vorobyov, Grigory Baklanov and Vladimir Tendryakov, Vasil Bykov and Viktor Astafiev, Vyacheslav Kondratiev and Bulat Okudzhava; almost all the prose of writers of the front-line generation is associated with it. Emmanuel Kazakevich paid tribute to romantic poetics in “Star”. Documentary fiction took a prominent place, the capabilities of which were demonstrated by A. Beck during the war; its successes are associated with the names of A. Adamovich, D. Granin, D. Gusarov, S. Alexievich, E. Rzhevskaya.

25. “Poetry and prose” (About the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945)

1) expanding students’ knowledge about military prose and poetry of the war period and the 1950-1960s, a story about the fate of some authors;

2) developing a love for Russian literature;

3) education of patriotic feelings.

EVENING DECORATION

Release of the wall newspaper “Forties, Fatal”, exhibition of books about the war, drawings; stands with reproductions of paintings by V. Sidorov “Victory Day”, A. and S. Tyutchev “Autumn 1941. Soldiers”, K. A. Vasiliev “Farewell of a Slav”, A. and S. Tyutchev “May 1945” and others, portraits of writers .

Musical arrangement: Audio recordings of songs by V. Vysotsky and B. Okudzhava, Lebedev-Kumach “Holy War”, “Ave Maria”, recording of the poem by K. Simonov “Do you remember, Alyosha, the roads of the Smolensk region” performed by the author.

CHARACTERS:

1) teacher;

2) first presenter;

3) second presenter;

4) third leader;

5) fourth leader;

6) first girl;

7) second girl;

PROGRESS OF THE EVENING

Teacher:

Every year we celebrate the day of sacred national memory - Victory Day.<…>Today we want to pay tribute<…>poets and writers who defended native land with a pen and a machine gun, who raised the morale of his compatriots with his creativity in tragic days.

First presenter:

On the very first day of the war, writers and poets of Moscow gathered for a rally. A. Fadeev stated: “The writers of the Soviet country know their place in this decisive battle. Many of us will fight with weapons in our hands, many of us will fight with pens.” More than 1000 poets and writers went to the front and over 400 did not return.<…>

(The song sounds based on the poems of Lebedev-Kumach “Holy War”)

Second presenter:

The poetry of the Great Patriotic War is the poetry of courage. The war gave birth to many poets, because extreme conditions create such spiritual pressure, which could immediately be realized only in such a direct genre as poetry. Poetry immediately expressed the whole gamut of feelings that people experienced: pain, anxiety, hope, grief. Poetry glorified military deeds and called for battle with the enemy.

Third presenter:

Nikolai Mayorov, Pavel Kogan, Vsevolod Bagritsky, Mikhail Kulchinsky, Semyon Gudzenko... In 1941, they were a little older than us, and not all of them returned from the war. Lieutenant Pavel Kogan, a poet, was killed near Novorossiysk. He was removed from military registration due to health reasons, but at the beginning of the war he entered military translator courses. Pavel Kogan wrote in 1942: “Only here, at the front, did I understand what a dazzling, what a charming thing life is. Near death you understand this very well... I believe in history, I believe in our strength... I know that we will win! He wrote:

I'm a patriot. I am Russian air,

I love the Russian land,

I believe that nowhere in the world

You won't find another one like it!

Fourth presenter:

While performing a combat mission in 1942, 20-year-old Vsevolod Bagritsky died. A thin brown notebook of front-line poems was found in his pocket, pierced by a shrapnel that killed the young man.

(Verses from V. Vysotsky’s song “And the sons go into battle”)

First presenter:

In the battles near Stalingrad in January 1943, Mikhail Kulchinsky, the author of the famous lines, died:

War is not fireworks at all,

It's just hard work,

When – black with sweat – up

Infantry slides through the plowing.

Second presenter:

The commander of the rifle platoon, Vladimir Chugunov, died on the Kursk Bulge on July 5, 1943, raising soldiers to attack. He died as he predicted in his poem:

If I'm on the battlefield,

Letting out a dying groan,

I'll fall in the sunset fire,

Hit by an enemy bullet.

If a raven, as if in a song,

The circle will close on me, -

I want someone the same age

He stepped forward over the corpse.

Third presenter:

When the war began, many students from the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History (IFLI) volunteered for the front. Among them was the young poet Semyon Gudzenko. In the notebooks of soldier Gudzenko there is an entry: “Wounded. In the stomach. I lose consciousness for a minute. Most of all I was afraid of a wound in the stomach. Let it be in the arm, leg, shoulder. I can't walk. They carry it on a sleigh."

From the memoirs of the poet Ilya Ehrenburg:

“In the morning there was a knock on the door of my room. I saw a tall, sad-eyed young man in a tunic. I told him: “Sit down.” He sat down and immediately stood up: “I’ll read poetry to you.” I prepared for the next test - who didn’t write poems about war back then! The young man read very loudly, and I listened and repeated: “More... more.” Then they told me: “You have discovered a poet.” No, that morning Semyon Gudzenko revealed much of what I vaguely felt. And he was only 20 years old, he didn’t know where to put his long arms, and smiled embarrassedly.”

One of the first poems read to Ehrenburg was the poem “When they go to death, they sing”:

First reader:

When they go to death, they sing,

And before that you can cry, -

After all, the most terrible hour in battle is

An hour of waiting for an attack.

The snow is full of mines all around.

And turned black from mine dust.

and a friend dies

And that means death passes by.

Now it's my turn

The infantry is following me alone

Damn you

forty-first year

You, frozen infantry in the snow!

I feel like I'm a magnet

That I attract mines.

and the lieutenant wheezes.

And death passes by again.

But we can't wait anymore

And he leads us through the trenches

A numb enmity

A bayonet makes a hole in the neck.

The fight was short.

They drank ice-cold vodka,

And picked it out with a knife

From under my nails I steal someone else's blood.

Third presenter:

Shortly before the victory, Semyon Gudzenko wrote: “Recently I came under heavy bombing at the crossing of the Morava... I lay there for a long time and painfully. I really don’t want to die in 1945.” In 1946, his following lines appeared: “We will not die of old age, we will die of old wounds.” This is exactly what happened to him in February 1953.

Fourth presenter:

If poetry instantly reacted to current events, then prose, and especially such large genres as the novel, took time. Immediately after the war, such works as “The Young Guard” by A. Fadeev, “The Tale of a Real Man” by B. Polevoy, “Flag Bearers” by O. Gonchar and many others appeared. Writers glorify in them the heroic feat of the victorious people, and the war is perceived as a confrontation between good - beauty and evil - ugliness.

First presenter:

In Russian prose, the voices of war participants first sounded powerfully in the mid-1950s and early 1960s.<…>Yuri Bondarev characterized this somewhat prolonged silence of yesterday’s soldiers as follows: “The spiritual experience of these people was saturated to the limit. They lived through all four years of the war without taking a breath, and it seemed that the concentration of details and episodes, conflicts, sensations, losses, images of soldiers, landscapes, smells, conversations, hatred and love was so thick and strong after returning from the front that they simply it was impossible to organize all this, to find the necessary plot, composition, to clearly demonstrate main idea. Hundreds of plots, destinies, collisions, characters were crowded into everyone’s still-fresh memory. Everything was too hot, too close - the details grew to gigantic proportions, overshadowing the main thing.”

Second presenter:

The role of history's trustees, memory keepers, was taken on by writers of the front-line generation - from former military journalists: M. Sholokhov, K. Simonov, V. Grossman, B. Polevoy, A. Andreev, A. Kalinin to those who came directly as soldiers or lieutenants on the fiery line of the trenches, like V. Astafiev, V. Bykov, E. Nosov, A. Ananyev, K. Vorobyov, Yu. Bondarev, V. Kondratyev, G. Baklanov.

First presenter:

Of course, writers depict military actions in their works - attacks, retreats, tears, blood, deaths, injuries. But war is also a test for a person, forcing him to make moral choices.

Second presenter:

The entire work of Vasil Bykov is characterized by the problem of moral choice in war.<…>Bykov, who himself went through the war, seems to be tracking how his heroes reveal themselves under the influence of circumstances. In the story "Sotnikov" the main character goes through difficult trials with honor and accepts death with dignity. The fisherman, saving his own life, betrays his homeland, the partisan detachment and personally executes Sotnikov. The physically weaker Sotnikov turns out to be more prepared for a moral feat:

Second reader:

“... Sotnikov suddenly realized that their last night in the world was expiring. The morning will no longer belong to them.

Well, I had to muster my last strength to face death with dignity. Of course, he did not expect anything else from these degenerates. They could not leave him alive - they could only torture him in that devilish nook of Budyly. And so, perhaps, it’s not bad: a bullet will end your life instantly and without pain - not the worst possible end, at least, an ordinary soldier’s end in war.

And he, a fool, was still afraid of dying in battle. Now such death with arms in hand seemed to him an unattainable luxury, and he almost envied the thousands of those lucky ones who met their honorable end on the front of the great war...

And now the end has come.

At first glance it seemed strange, but, having come to terms with his own death, Sotnikov for a few short hours acquired some kind of special, almost absolute independence from the power of his enemies.<…>He was not afraid of anything, and this gave him a certain advantage over others, as well as over his former self. Sotnikov easily and simply, as something elementary and completely logical in his situation, now made the final decision to take everything upon himself. Tomorrow he will tell the investigator<…>that he is the commander of the Red Army and an opponent of fascism, let them shoot him. The rest have nothing to do with it.

Essentially, he sacrificed himself to save others, but no less than others, he himself needed this sacrifice.<…>

Like every death in the struggle, it must affirm something, deny something, and, if possible, complete what life did not manage to accomplish. Otherwise, what is life for then? It is too difficult for a person to be careless about its end.”

Fourth presenter:

Viktor Astafiev said: “What would I like to see in prose about war? The truth! All the cruel but necessary truth so that humanity, having learned it, would be more prudent.”

V. Astafiev displays the “trench truth” in his works to bring us readers to the main idea - about the unnatural nature of war, which forces people to kill each other. And, moreover, about the passionate hope that the war will become a historical, moral lesson for humanity, and that something like this will never happen again. Therefore, in all photographic details, V. Astafiev describes the heroic death of Sergeant Major Mokhnakov in the story “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess”:

Third reader:

“He brought the car so close that the driver recoiled when he saw a man emerging from the smoke and dust through the open hatch. The sergeant-major also saw the enemy’s melted face - naked, covered in baby pink skin, without eyebrows, without eyelashes, with a red eyelid turned out, making the eyes appear sanded and slanted. The driver was on fire, more than once.

They looked at each other for only a moment, but from the death-horror that flashed in the driver’s disfigured eye, Mokhnakov guessed that the German understood everything; The experienced differ from the inexperienced in that they are better able to guess the extent of the danger that threatens them.

The tank jerked and braked, squealing with iron. But he was carried along, inexorably dragged forward, and the Russian, blocking his face with his hands, closing his eyes, whispering something with his fingers, fell under the caterpillar. The explosion of an anti-tank mine cracked the old combat vehicle along a recently made seam. The caterpillar tracks were thrown all the way into the trench.

And where Sergeant-Major Mokhnakov lay down under the tank, there remained a crater with ashy earth around the edges and black stubble rods. The body of the sergeant-major, along with his heart, burned out during the war, was carried across the high-rise building, foggy with greenery from the sunny side.”

(An excerpt from V. Vysotsky’s song “He Didn’t Return from the Battle” sounds)

Second presenter:

When the war began, the future writer Yuri Bondarev was only 17 years old. And at 18 - in August 1942 - he was already at the front. Was wounded twice.<…>A quarter of a century after the end of the war, he would write: “The war was a tough and rough school, we sat not at desks, but in frozen trenches. We did not yet have life experience and, as a result, did not know the simple, elementary things that come to a person in everyday peaceful life... But our spiritual experience was filled to the limit.”

Like the author, Bondarev’s young heroes stepped into the war straight from school.<…>. Bondarev, depicting the war, tries to adhere to the truth, “ultimate authenticity,” which is probably why the fate of his heroes is often tragic. In the novel “Battalions Ask for Fire”<…>Due to the fault of one of the bosses, Colonel Iverzev, only five out of several hundred people will remain alive.

Fourth reader(poem by Yuri Belash “Unsuccessful Battle”):

And in the wet meadow, here and there, with gray tubercles

Bodies were left lying in their slashed overcoats...

Someone made a mistake somewhere. Something was not done somewhere.

And the infantry will pay for all these mistakes in full with blood!..

We go and remain silent. We don't want to talk about anything.

What can we talk about if we are a quarter of an hour ago

They put it with that one - damn her three times! – groves

Half of the guys - and which ones, I'll tell you, guys.

First presenter:

There are many works in Russian literature about the war of 1941–1945. The war is revealed in them from different points of view, depending on the author's position. But there is one factor that unites front-line writers: each of them experienced the war through themselves, each saw with their own eyes the whole hell of war.

A. Tvardovsky wrote:

War - there is no crueler word,

War - there is no sadder word,

War - there is no holier word,

In the melancholy and glory of these years.

(B. Okudzhava’s song “Goodbye, boys” sounds)

Fourth presenter:

The beginning of the war left its mark on all subsequent work of Konstantin Simonov. Simonov immediately went to the front, and throughout the war he worked as a correspondent for the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper. For the sake of a few lines in the newspaper, Simonov moved from front to front.<…>. Everything that he published during the war years was later included in his books: “From the Black to the Barents Sea”, “Yugoslav Notebook”, “Letters from Czechoslovakia”. During the war years, Konstantin Simonov wrote the plays “Wait for Me,” “Russian People,” “So It Will Be,” and the story “Days and Nights.” His two collections of poems, “With You and Without You” and “War,” are being published. He knew about the war from no one’s stories - he had been in the trenches, met soldiers and officers, knew well those people who commanded regiments and divisions and drew up plans for military operations. In the post-war years, his trilogy “The Living and the Dead” appeared, which tells about the heroic events of the war.

Before his death in 1979, K. Simonov asked that his last wish be fulfilled: the writer wanted to remain forever with those who died in the first days of the war, and his ashes were scattered in a field near Bobruisk.

Second presenter:

According to the participants in the war, one of the very first poetic works, touched their souls - the poem by K. Simonov “Do you remember Alyosha, the roads of the Smolensk region,” dedicated to Alexei Surkov, a senior comrade.

(The poem is heard in a recording performed by the author)

Third presenter:

Konstantin Simonov gives a great lesson in courage, brotherhood, love, humanity, and loyalty in his lyrics. His famous “Wait for me” is a hymn of love, true love and devotion.

Fourth presenter:

They say that war “does not have a woman’s face,” but women also went to the front. They were nurses - they carried the wounded from the battlefield, carried shells, were snipers and pilots. The word was also their weapon. The whole country knew their poems. Anna Akhmatova, Olga Berggolts, Veronika Tushnova, Yulia Drunina... The hard times of war were woven into the fate and poetry of each of them.

First presenter:

17-year-old graduate of one of the Moscow schools, Yulia Drunina, like many of her peers, voluntarily went to the front in 1941 as a soldier on an ambulance train. From the memoirs of the poet Nikolai Starshinov: “In her character, the most striking features were determination and firmness. If she has decided on something, nothing can bring her down. No force. This was probably especially evident when she volunteered to go to the front. Their family was then evacuated from Moscow to Zavodoukovka in the Tyumen region, they barely managed to somehow get settled there, and their parents - school teachers - were categorically against this step. Especially only child in the family, and even very late: my father was already over 60, he died there in Zavodoukovka ... "

Sixth reader:

I left my childhood for a dirty car,

To an infantry echelon, to a medical platoon

I listened to distant breaks and did not listen

To everything, the usual forty-first year.

I came from school to damp dugouts,

From the Beautiful Lady to “mother” and “rewind”,

Because the name is closer than "Russia"

I couldn't find it.

Second presenter:

Yulia Drunina wrote these lines in 1942. And throughout her entire work, the running theme will be the motive of leaving childhood in the horror of war, from which she could not return even decades later. From the memoirs of N. Starshinov: “We must also emphasize who Yulia was during the war. A nurse, a nurse in the infantry, the most poorly organized branch of the army, and not just somewhere in a hospital, but on the very front line, in the heat, where under fire it was necessary to pull out the seriously wounded with weak girlish hands. Mortal danger and hard work together. In general, I learned and saw enough.” Starshinov said that her front-line poems produced strong impression at the end of the war and immediately after its completion, her “Zinka” was known by heart.

"Zinka." In memory of fellow soldier - hero of the Soviet Union Zina Samsonova.

(Staging of the poem<…>)

First girl:

We lay down by the broken fir tree,

We are waiting for it to start getting brighter.

It's warmer for two under an overcoat

On chilled, rotten ground.

Second girl:

But today she doesn't count

At home, in the apple outback

Mom, my mother lives.

You have friends, darling.

I only have one.

Spring is bubbling beyond the threshold.

It seems old: every bush

A restless daughter is waiting

You know, Yulka, I am against sadness,

But today she doesn’t count.

First girl:

We barely warmed up.

Suddenly - an unexpected order: “Forward!”

Again next to me in a damp overcoat

The blonde soldier is coming.

Every day it became worse.

They walked without rallies and banners

Surrounded near Orsha

We have a battered battalion.

Zinka led us on the attack,

We made our way through the black rye,

Along funnels and gullies,

Through mortal boundaries.

(<…>The light is dimmed)

We didn't expect posthumous fame.

We wanted to live with glory.

Why in bloody bandages

The blonde soldier is lying down?

Her body with her overcoat

I covered her with my lips pressed together,

The Belarusian winds sang

About the Ryazan wilderness gardens.

You know, Zinka, I am against sadness,

But today she doesn’t count.

Somewhere in the apple outback

Mom, your mother lives.

I have friends, my love,

She had you alone.

The house smells like bread and smoke,

Spring is bubbling beyond the threshold.

And an old lady in a flowery dress

She lit a candle at the icon.

I don't know how to write to her

So she wouldn't wait for you?

(During the reading of the last stanza, a participant dressed as an old woman appears in the background of the stage and lights a candle near the icon. “Ave Maria” sounds)

Third presenter:

The fate of Yulia Drunina is tragic and happy at the same time. Tragic - because her youth was spent during the war years, happy - because she survived this war and became a poet.

Just like Yulia Drunina, Olga Berggolts began her poetic journey with grief. In 1937, her first husband, the talented poet Boris Kornilov, disappeared during the repressions. After 1937, one could only whisper about it. Olga Berggolts herself was also arrested on a false denunciation, and only in 1939 was she rehabilitated. Two of her daughters died before her arrest, and the third child, whom the poetess was expecting, was never born: he was killed by prison.

During the war, Olga Berggolts lived in her favorite city, Leningrad. She, who is called the siege poetess, knows from hearsay all the hardships of life under the siege. Her second husband, Nikolai Molchanov, died of hunger, and Olga Fedorovna herself, according to her sister, “died there, in Leningrad, from dystrophy.” But it is precisely in these years that the best poems are born. The works of Olga Berggolts were heard on the radio in the besieged city, raising the spirit of people and instilling faith in victory. Olga Fedorovna’s poems also told about the horror experienced during the terrible days of hunger. In the lines of the poetess one can hear the confidence that even in this terrible time a person remains a person, humanity defeats fascism, and love for their Motherland makes people sacrifice their own lives:

Sixth reader:

I'm talking to you amid the whistling of shells,

Illuminated with a gloomy glow.

I'm talking to you from Leningrad,

My country, sad country...

Kronstadt evil, indomitable wind

The thrown thing hits my face.

Children fell asleep in bomb shelters,

The night guard stood at the gate.

There is a mortal threat over Leningrad...

Sleepless nights, hard days.

But we have forgotten what tears are,

What was called fear and prayer.

I say: us, citizens of Leningrad,

The roar of cannonades will not shake,

And if tomorrow there are barricades, -

We will not leave our barricades.

We will fight with selfless strength

We will defeat the rabid animals

We will win, I swear to you, Russia,

On behalf of Russian mothers.

Fourth presenter:

The war found Anna Akhmatova in Leningrad. In July 1941, she wrote a poem that spread throughout the country:

And the one who says goodbye to her beloved today -

Let her transform her pain into strength.

We swear to the children, we swear to the graves,

That no one will force us to submit.

(The song by V. Vysotsky “It happened, the men left”)

First presenter:

Not all works about the Great Patriotic War immediately reached the reader. Some of them were subjected to harsh criticism, others, the authors of which tried to convey to people the tragic truth about the war, to talk about the mistakes of the war years, were completely prohibited.<…>A whole series of party decrees were issued, according to which military literature had to varnish reality and be conflict-free. To “obedient” writers, whose creations were often far from real life, Stalin Prizes were awarded, while the “obstinate” authors faced oblivion long years, right up to perestroika.

Second presenter:

A striking example of this is the work of Vasily Grossman and, in particular, his novel “Life and Fate”. As a correspondent for Red Star, Grossman goes to the front in the first days of the war. In 1943 he was already a lieutenant colonel.<…>His essays on war are deep and thoughtful. V. Grossman is one of the first authors of fiction books about the war, the story “The People Are Immortal” (1942). 10 years later, his novel “For a Righteous Cause” was published, which was a huge success among readers. However, some critics recognized the novel as a work “unprincipled, anti-people, and not in accordance with the principles of socialist realism.” Grossman was reproached for describing Hitler, but the image of Stalin is missing. And this is “ideological sabotage.” They forgot the book and the author. In 1961, another Grossman novel, Life and Fate, was arrested. After this he did not write any more prose.

What was the reason for the arrest of the novel? “Life and Fate” is a synthesis of military and camp prose. Grossman showed that man is shackled within the framework of a brutal command-administrative system. The novel reveals the role of violence in society, barracks, the cult of leaders... And in this sense, fascist concentration camps and Gulag camps are compared. Unfreedom and human powerlessness are equivalent in them. The cult of violence, alignment with one person turns many talented people into “stepchildren of history” and, on the contrary, brings gray people, mediocre people to the fore. Of course, in the 1960s. such works did not have the right to exist. The novel “Life and Fate” was published only in 1988.

Grossman is merciless in depicting the horrors of war. The scene of the execution of Jews in the gas chamber of one of the fascist camps is described by the author with shocking authenticity.

Seventh reader:

... The crowd in the cell became denser, the movements became slower, the steps of people became shorter and shorter.<…>And the naked boy took tiny, meaningless steps. The curve of movement of his light little body no longer coincided with the curve of movement of Sofia Osipovna’s large and heavy body, and so they separated. It was not necessary to hold him by the hand, but just like these two women - mother and girl - convulsively, with the gloomy tenacity of love, press cheek to cheek, chest to chest, to become one inseparable body.

There were more and more people, and the molecular movement, as it thickened and became denser, deviated from Avogadro’s law. Having lost Sofia Osipovna's hand, the boy screamed. But then Sofya Osipovna moved into the past. There was only now and now.<…>And suddenly again, in a new way, a movement occurred next to David.

The noise was also new, different from rustling and muttering.

- Let me out of the way! - and a man with powerful, tense arms, a thick neck, and a bowed head made his way through the single mass of bodies. He wanted to break free from the hypnotic concrete rhythm, his body rebelled like a fish's body on a kitchen table, blindly, without thought. He soon calmed down, gasped and began to mince his feet, doing what everyone else did.

Because of the disturbance he made, the crooked movements changed, and David found himself next to Sofia Osipovna. She pressed the boy to her with the strength that workers in extermination camps discovered and measured - when unloading the camera, they never tried to separate the bodies of the hugging loved ones.

... The child’s movement filled her with pity. Her feeling for the boy was so simple - she did not need words and eyes. The half-dead boy was breathing, but the air given to him did not prolong life, but took it away. His head turned, he still wanted to look. He saw those who sank to the ground, saw open toothless mouths, mouths with white and gold teeth, saw a thin stream of blood running from the nostrils...

All the time, strong, hot arms hugged David, the boy did not understand that it had become dark in his eyes, echoing, deserted in his heart, boring, blind in his brain. He was killed and he ceased to be.

Sofya Osipovna Lewington felt the boy’s body settle in her arms. She fell behind him again.

In underground mines with poisoned air, gas indicators - birds and mice - die immediately, they have small bodies; and the boy with the small, bird-like body left before she did...

But there was still life in her heart: it was shrinking. It hurt, I felt sorry for you, the living and the dead...

Third presenter:

Those works that spoke about the tragedy of the family during the war years were also subjected to unfair and cruel criticism. Official propaganda was very disapproving of the depiction of a person’s personal tragedy in fiction. Thus, A. Tvardovsky’s poem “House by the Road” and A. Platonov’s story “Return” became unappreciated. Em's story was subjected to severe criticism. Kazakevich “Two in the steppe”. The same fate befell M. Isakovsky’s poem “The Enemies Burned His Own Hut,” whose hero, upon returning home from the war, found only ashes: