The theme of the village in modern literature. Village theme in Russian literature

Russian village... What is it like? What do we mean when we pro-

Shall we use the word "village"? I immediately remember the old house, the smell of fresh

burning hay, vast fields and meadows. And I also remember the peasants, these

workers, and their strong calloused hands. Probably each of mine

My peers are grandparents living in the village. Coming to them

in the summer to relax, or rather, to work, we see with our own eyes how labor

on the life of peasants and how difficult it is for us, urbanites, to adapt to

this life. But you always want to come to the village, take a break from the city

What a fuss.

Many writers have not avoided the fate of the Russian

villages. Some admired the countryside and "learned in the truth

find bliss,” others saw the true situation of the peasants and the so-called

they left the village poor, and its huts gray. In Soviet times, the theme of fate

Russian village has become almost leading, and the question of the great turning point

is still relevant today. It must be said that it was collectivization that

forced writers to take up their pen.

Let us recall “Virgin Soil Upturned” by Sholokhov, “The Pit” by Platonov,

Tvardovsky's poems "By Right of Memory" and "Country of Ant". These products

niya, it would seem, should tell us everything about the fate of the Russian peasant

villages, show the situation of the village. But still this topic remains for

a mystery to us, because it was customary to remain silent about the “great turning point”:

To forget, to forget silently commanded,

They want to drown you in oblivion.

Living reality. And so that the waves

They closed over her. True story - forget.

But it’s impossible to forget, because the events of those years are very painful.

reverberate in modern times, in our lives today.

In the story "Farewell to Matera" V. Rasputin puts before the reader -

lem question: is it necessary to flood the village if higher organizations

decided to put a hydroelectric power station on it? Of course scientific and technical progress

above all, but how can you deprive the peasants of their native Matera? Village

must go under water, and the residents move to another village. Peasants

no one asked if they wanted this: they ordered - be so kind as to obey -

yay! Interestingly, residents reacted differently to this decision.

tion. Old people who have lived in their native village all their lives cannot simply

part with Matera. Every corner, every birch tree is familiar here,

here are the ashes of parents and grandfathers. So, main character stories of an old woman

Daria cannot leave her hut. A very touching episode when

Paradise, Daria decorates her hut before leaving it forever. How

This illiterate woman painfully discusses the fate of her village.

Daria's son is also sorry to part with the house, but he agrees with

because science is more important than nature, and they must move into something

no matter what.

Not only people, but also nature itself against rude, unceremonious

a great intrusion into life. Let us remember the mighty royal foliage, which

They could take neither an axe, nor a saw, nor fire. He withstood everything and did not break -

Xia. But is nature so eternal?

V. Rasputin concerns many moral issues in its own way

lead, but the fate of Matera is the leading theme of this work.

Well, what happened to the peasants when they left their native

village during collectivization? They were exiled to Solovki, to Siberia, to

logging sites, into mines where the living envied the dead. Treated cruelly

fate with Khvedor Rovba, the main character of V. Bykov’s work “Obla-

va". First Khvedor loses his wife, and then his daughter, whom he loved madly.

But. It seems that he should become embittered, hate everyone who drove him away from

native land-Mother. But Khvedor, having endured and survived everything, returned again.

goes home. At all, main feature Russian peasants is something

that they cannot live without their native land.

Related to the same topic is A.I. Solzhenitsyn’s story “Matrenin”

yard". The story takes place in 1956. A young teacher

poured in the hut of the peasant woman Matryona, and the reader can see the village

life through the eyes of an intellectual. We are immediately struck by poverty and wretchedness

her home. It was a dark room, into which light came only from

windows, there are numerous cockroaches and mice, a lame cat. Matryona lives

already at a time when the civil war, collectivization,

tion. Were peasants really that poor in the fifties? We are not

We will see at Matryona neither a well-established economy, nor a vegetable garden, nor a burning

gardener, no livestock. One off-white goat and a lanky cat -

Here are all Matryona's cattle.

The fate of the peasant woman is quite tragic: Matryona was sick, but

was not considered disabled, she did not work on the collective farm, so her pension

I didn't rely on it. And in order to receive a pension for deceased husband,

it was necessary to visit many institutions. In a word, as he writes himself

writer, “there was a lot of injustice with Matryona.”

But despite all the hardships of life, Matryona did not become embittered: she

so kind and simple-minded that she helps all her neighbors dig

sickness. She thought about herself at the very last minute, if only her apartment

rantu felt good.

But the anger and greed of those around her destroyed the peasant woman. During

transporting the upper room, several people fall under the train, including

like Matryona, the village holds on, the earth holds on.

85. THE THEME OF REVOLUTION IN A.A. BLOK’S POEM “TWELVE”.

A. Blok's poem "The Twelve" was written in 1918. It was

terrible time: four years of war are behind us, a feeling of freedom in the days

February Revolution, October Revolution and rise to power

Bolsheviks finally dispersed Constituent Assembly, first

Russian parliament. Intellectuals of the circle to which

belonged to A. Blok, all these events were perceived as national

tragedy, like the destruction of the Russian land. Against this background, there is a clear contrast

Blok's poem was read, it resonated with many of his contemporaries

seemed not only unexpected, but even blasphemous. How could

singer Beautiful Lady create poems about fat-faced Katya? How could

a poet who dedicated such heartfelt lyrical poems to Russia,

write the words on terrible days for her: “Let’s fire a bullet at the Holy

Rus'?" These questions were posed after the first publication of the poem

"Twelve" in the newspaper "Znamya Truda". Today, more than a third of a century later,

all these questions arose before us with renewed vigor, the poem "The Twelve"

aroused keen interest, we peer into it, peer into

the past, trying to understand the present and predict the future, to understand

the position of the poet, which dictated the lines of this poem to him.

“Epigraph of the century” - this is what researchers call Blok’s poem

modernity, offering various options her reading. IN

In the last nineties, interpreters sometimes try to read

poem “by contradiction”, to prove that Blok in it gave a satire on

revolution, and his Christ is actually the Antichrist. However, is it so

First of all, A. Blok warned that one should not overestimate

the meaning of political motives in the poem "The Twelve". She has more

broad meaning. At the center of the work is the element, or rather, the intersection

four elements: the nature of music, and the social element, the action itself

the poem takes place not only in Petrograd in 1918, but how much

writes the poet, “all over God’s world.” Elemental forces are rampant

nature, and for the romantic poet, symbolist poet, who was

A. Blok, this is a symbol that opposes the most terrible thing -

philistine peace and comfort. Even in the cycle "Iambas" (1907-1914) he

wrote: “No! It’s better to perish in the fierce cold! There is no comfort. There is no peace.”

That is why the elements of nature are so consonant with his soul, it is transferred to

“The Twelve” with many images: wind, snow, blizzard and blizzard. In that

wild elements, through the howl of the wind and snowstorm, A. Blok heard music

revolution - in his article "Intellectuals and Revolution" he

called: “With all your body, with all your heart, with all your mind - listen

Revolution." The main thing that the poet heard in this music was its

changing musical melodies. Among them are combat marches and household

conversation, and an old romance, and a ditty (it is known that A. Blok began

write your poem from the lines “I’ll slash and slash with a knife”,

heard by him and amazed him with their sound recording). And behind it all

pressure, a clear rhythm of movement with which the poem ends. Stikhiina

there is love in it. This is a dark passion with black drunken nights, with

fatal betrayal and absurd death of Katka, who is killed while aiming

to Vanka, and no one repents of this murder. Even Petrukha

shamed by his comrades, feels the inappropriateness of his

suffering: “He throws up his head, / He’s cheerful again.” A.Blok

very accurately felt the terrible thing that had entered life: complete

depreciation human life which is no longer protected

no law (no one even thinks about what kind of murder

Katya will have to thaw out. Morality does not deter one from killing either.

feeling - moral concepts have become extremely devalued. No wonder

after the death of the heroine, revelry begins, now everything is permitted:

“Lock the floors, / Today there will be robberies! / Unlock the cellars - /

Nowadays there is a bastard walking around!" Unable to keep from those "many,

terrible manifestations of the human soul and faith in God. She too

lost, and the Twelve who went "to serve in the Red Guard"

They themselves understand this: “Petka! Hey, don’t lie! / What saved you from /

Golden iconostasis?" and add: "Are your hands not covered in blood / Because

Katka's love?" But murder is not only done because of love -

Another element also appeared in it, the social element. In revelry, in robbery -

rebellion of "badness". These people are not just raging, they have come to power,

they accuse Vanka of being a “bourgeois”, they strive

destroy the old world: “We are at the woe of all the bourgeois / World fire

let's inflate..." And here the most complex issue who torments

readers of Blok's poem even now, as he tormented for three quarters of a century

back: how could A. Blok glorify this robbery and revelry, this

destruction, including the destruction of the culture in which he was

brought up and the bearer of which he himself was? Much in A. Blok’s position

may clarify that the poet, being always far from politics, was

brought up in the traditions of Russian intelligentsia culture of the 19th century with

inherent in her ideas of “people-worship” and a sense of guilt

intelligentsia before the people. Therefore, the revelry of revolutionary elements,

which sometimes acquired such ugly features as, for example,

the destruction of wine cellars mentioned by the poet, robberies, murders,

destruction of manorial estates with hundred-year-old parks, poet

perceived as popular retribution, including the intelligentsia,

on which lie the sins of the fathers. Lost moral compass,

overwhelmed by the revelry of dark passions, the revelry of permissiveness -

This is how Russia appears in the poem “The Twelve.” But in that terrible and

cruel, what she has to go through, what she experiences in winter

18th year, A. Blok sees not only retribution, but also immersion in hell,

to the underworld, but this is also its purification. Russia must pass

this is scary; Having plunged to the very bottom, ascend to the sky. AND

It is in this connection that the most mysterious image in the poem arises -

the image that appears in the finale is Christ. About this ending and the image

An infinite amount of Christ has been written. They treated him very

varied. In studies of past years, it sounded free or

involuntary (or rather, often involuntary) desire to explain

the appearance of Christ in the poem was almost an accident, a misunderstanding

A. Blok is the one who should be ahead of the Red Guards. Today already

there is no need to prove a pattern and deeply thought out

the nature of this ending. Yes, and the image of Christ is predicted in

work from the very beginning - from the title: for the then reader,

brought up in the traditions of Christian culture, who studied at school

Law of God, the number twelve was the number of apostles, disciples

Christ. The entire path that the heroes of Blok’s poem follow is the path from

abyss to resurrection, from chaos to harmony. It is no coincidence that Christ is coming

by “over-the-blue”, and in the lexical structure of the poem after deliberately

lowered, rude words appear so beautiful and traditional

for A. Blok:

"With a gentle step above the storm,

Snow scattering of pearls,

In a white corolla of roses

Ahead is Jesus Christ."

On this note, the poem ends, imbued with A. Blok’s faith in

the coming resurrection of Russia and the resurrection of the human in man.

The struggle of the worlds in the work is, first of all, an internal struggle,

overcoming the dark and scary within yourself.

1. The image and fate of the village in Russian literature of the 19th-20th centuries.

The life of the Russian village has long been the subject of depiction in Russian literature. The theme of the village appears at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries in the works of N.M. Karamzin (Tale " Poor Lisa") and A.N. Radishchev ("Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow"). It should immediately be noted that the theme of the village in the 19th century was identical to the theme of the life of the entire people; the concepts of "peasantry" and "people" were perceived as identical natural, and talk about the fate of the peasant in fiction- meant talking about the fate of the entire Russian people.
In the first half of the 19th century, A.S. Pushkin artistically explored the issue of the relationship between the aristocracy and the lower classes (the stories “The Captain’s Daughter” and “Dubrovsky”, as well as “The History of the Village of Goryukhin”). N.V. Gogol embodies his ideas about the beauty, strength and ability to work of the Russian people in the wonderful images of serfs from the poem “Dead Souls”; at the same time, the image of the city is assessed in literature as an image of the untruth of Russian life, as an image of a place where it is impossible to live. The image of St. Petersburg, depicted on the pages of Gogol's " Petersburg stories
"(the image of a city where a cruel wind blows on a person from all four sides at once) - this image is developed in the novels of F.M. Dostoevsky. It is impossible to live in Dostoevsky’s Petersburg: one can only die or commit crimes in it. L.N. Tolstoy proudly called himself “the lawyer of the 100 million agricultural people.” For L. Tolstoy, the Russian peasant has always been the bearer of the highest truth, which lies in the total, spiritual wisdom of the people.: be like everyone else! And this law is learned best heroes"War and Peace" - Prince Andrey, Pierre Bezukhov, Natasha Rostova.
Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov, mourning the hard life of a peasant, asked the people a question that contained the answer: “What worse would your lot be, When would you endure less?” Populist writers (Gleb Ivanovich Uspensky, Fyodor Mikhailovich Reshetnikov) and democratic revolutionaries of the 1860s - 80s called on the people to change their destiny, to resolutely protest against poverty and lawlessness.
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin, who knew very well and passionately loved the peasant and his difficult lot, deeply revealed the reason for the plight of the people in his stories “The Village” (1910) and “Sukhodol” (1911).
The wonderful writer, however, did not turn a blind eye to the peasant’s own shortcomings - his reluctance to learn anything, inertia, that is, reluctance to any changes, sometimes bestial cruelty and greed.
Another great representative of Russian critical realism, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, was close to this position. In his stories “Men” (1897) and “In the Ravine” (1900), he admitted that the troubles of the peasantry were his own fault.
In the second half of the 19th century, the social picture of Russian society changed; after the abolition of serfdom (1861), streams of peasants flocked to the city. An urban proletariat is emerging, increasingly losing its genetic connection with the countryside. (Note that Leo Tolstoy, for example, considered the “factory worker” to be only a spoiled peasant, divorced from his age-old folk roots).
The great humanist of the twentieth century, Maxim Gorky, was very wary of the peasantry. This attitude was clearly manifested both in his early romantic stories (for example, in the story "Chelkash") and in the cycle of stories "Across Rus'", and especially in detail in the series of journalistic articles " Untimely thoughts country, supporters of a new, technologically advanced, Western-oriented Russia are gaining the upper hand. The drama of the division of human destinies, the destinies of people, was imprinted in the work of one of the finest lyricists of the twentieth century - Sergei Yesenin. In his poems recent years
- “Leaving Rus'”, “Soviet Rus'”, “Letter to the Motherland”, in the poem “Anna Snegina” and many others Yesenin poses the question: who am I with? His sweet childhood is associated with the “old”, patriarchal Russia, and his life demonstrates the superior strength of the new, “steel” Russia. The words of another very deep and sincere writer, Vasily Shukshin, are very suitable for Yesenin: “I remind myself of a man,” said Shukshin, “who stands with one foot on the shore and the other in a boat. And it’s impossible to swim, and it’s impossible to walk.” ". A severe crisis caused by the impossibility of choosing between the two parts of one’s soul, the halves of the split Russian peasant life, claimed Yesenin’s life in 1925.
In the literature of the 1920s and 30s, the village appears as an object of social tutelage on the part of the city, as some kind of “sponsored person” who needs to be brought up to one’s level - brought up patiently, condescendingly. The people as the keeper of the eternal secret, especially as the God-bearing people in literature and the political consciousness of society, ceases to exist. The topic of collectivization arose in modern Russian literature almost simultaneously with the events of collectivization itself.
A modern researcher of literature on the topic of collectivization, Yuri Dvorya-shin, testifies: “In the atmosphere of a general attack on the countryside in the 30s, to some writers the very idea of ​​​​remaking the peasantry because of its supposed underdevelopment and insignificance from the point of view of the future seemed unrealistic , and therefore insufficient. At that time, even such revelations that reached readers, for example, from the pages of Panfer’s “Whetstones” did not seem wild: “At times he (Kirill Zhdarkin, the main character of the novel - A.T. ) it seemed - to remake a peasant who was accustomed to his piece of land - the greatest nonsense, nonsense, an empty fantasy; it must simply be used, as oxen are used for a tractor, in order to raise a new generation on the bones of this small owner - the people of the coming era."
However, the moral and humanistic aspect in covering the events of our time, the events of collectivization, has not disappeared from the field of view of the most thoughtful and honest writers. Such works as the stories of Ivan Makarov “The Island”, “Fortel Mortel”, Ivan Kataev “Milk” and some others reflected the writers’ understanding of the complexity and ambiguity of the relationship between the universal and the class in social transformations.
New peasant poets - Nikolai Klyuev, Sergei Klychkov, Pyotr Oreshin, Aleksey Shiryaevets - were destroyed because in their poems they dared to mourn the fate of their native villages, the entire Russian peasantry.
It was precisely because of the image of the devastation beginning in the village - as well as throughout the country - that he brought upon himself the first wave harsh criticism great writer twentieth century Andrei Platonovich Platonov. His story “The Doubting Makar” and the poor peasant chronicle “For Future Use,” written in 1929-30, metaphorically and covertly depicted the emerging kingdom of Soviet absurdity.
In modern Russian literature, many stories and novels are devoted to the topic of collectivization: “On the Irtysh” and “The Commission” by Sergei Zalygin (1960s), “Farewell, Gyulsary!” Chingiz Aitmatova; in the eighties, literature gained the opportunity to talk about the blind spots of Soviet history more freely, and the novels of Vasily Belov “Eves” and “The Year of the Great Turning Point” (not yet finished), “Men and Women” by Boris Mozhaev, “Ravines” by Sergei Antonov appeared , tetralogy by Fyodor Abramov "Pryasliny" ("Two Winters and Three Summers", "Crossroads", "Brothers and Sisters", "Home"). The tragic story “Everything Flows” by Vasily Grossman, which never saw the light of day, is published... Many films and theatrical performances

, society gained the opportunity to access documentary evidence of the era. However, it is precisely under these conditions that the courage of those writers who were able to capture this cruel era “from the inside” becomes increasingly clear and obvious. We will devote our article to the study of the theme of collectivization in Andrei Platonov’s story “The Pit” (1929-30).

2. The dying village is a symbol of the death of the Russian peasantry in A. Platonov’s story “The Pit”. If we consider everything written by Andrei Platonov as one book, then its first chapter will be works dedicated to the Leninist revolution."Chevengur", as if in a lens, collects all the themes, plots, heroes of this chapter, develops and deepens them.
The story "Pit" can be considered as a continuation of "Chevengur": a utopia is being built again. The foundation is being laid for a happy future, a foundation is being dug for a “common home for the proletariat.” Once again it is being built by dreamers, “fools”, reminiscent of the heroes of the novel. But ten years have passed since Chevengur’s death. The novel told about the construction of communism in one district, the story - about the construction of socialism in one country. Platonov writes “The Pit” in December 1929 - April 1930. These dates determine the plot of the story: December 27, 1929 Stalin announced the transition to a policy of “liquidation of the kulaks as a class”, March 2, 1930 Stalin in The article “Dizziness from Success” was briefly delayed by the mad rush to complete collectivization.
The heroes of "Chevengur" have aged ten years, their situation has changed, but they continue to believe, continuing to express doubts.
"The Pit" is the most capacious of Platonov's works. The writer abandoned the slow epic narrative, which in “Chevengur” conveyed the dead immobility of the achieved goal. The feverish running is fortunately conveyed in “The Pit” very concisely, in a short space of one hundred pages. Never again will Platonov succeed in such a complete merging of the real and concrete socio-historical background and ontological subtext.
The story consists of two chronotopes: urban and rural: two different spaces - city and village - are united by one time, the time of the race to socialism. The socialist project, it is called the Plan, is carried out in city and countryside under the leadership of one Organization. Real events, strictly defined by time and space, Platonov gives a symbolic meaning that turns “The Pit” into the only adequate depiction in literature of events, the significance of which in the history of the country and the people exceeds the significance of the October Revolution.
The socialist project in the city consists of the construction of a single building, “where the entire local class of the proletariat will enter to settle.”
The peculiarity of Platonov’s heroes is that they long for happiness, paradise on earth, which, however, is not like the “paradise” of leader Pashkin. They do not believe that “happiness will come from materialism,” as Voshchev is assured at the factory committee. Individuals who believe in “materialism,” such as Prokofy Dvanov or Kozlov, easily get their “share.”
Happiness remains incomprehensible for those who see it not as the satisfaction of base needs, but as the achievement of another, higher stage of existence.
The metaphysical, existential melancholy of Plato's heroes seems to the writer to be evidence of the powerful possibilities inherent in man. In every person, Platonov emphasizes, choosing as his heroes people who occupy the lowest position in society. The fundamental difference between "Chevengur" and "Pit", the difference caused by the difference between 1921 and 1930, is that during the years of the Leninist revolution there was still the opportunity to interpret the idea, to independently choose ways to achieve "paradise", during the years of the Stalinist revolution " "fools" obsessed with the idea of ​​happiness have no choice: they go to utopia the way their leaders show them. A comparison of the paths to “paradise”, to a communist utopia, shows that in both the first and second cases the same path is chosen. In "Chevengur" the apostles of the new faith exterminated the bourgeois and semi-bourgeois and stopped working.
In the "Pit" carriers new faith, proletarians, perform two functions: work and kill enemies. Their work, however, is imaginary; it is meaningless, because it is the fulfillment of paper plans. Digging the ground, digging a pit, a hole in the ground, under the foundation of the future all-proletarian house, the workers act in an unreal world.
They return to real world kill everyone, otherwise there are very few good ones." The excavator finds this conclusion quite class-based and clear: "It was monarchism that indiscriminately needed people for war, and we only care about one class." He ominously adds: "Yes, we will soon cleanse our class too from an unconscious element." "According to the plenum, the only way to build a new world, a "common proletarian home" is the extermination of all classes except one, the worker, and then the purge of this only surviving class. Nastya draws a logical conclusion: “Then there will be only the most important people.”
The village appears in the city chronotope unnoticed, carefully, and explodes with a terrible metaphor: men come to the city for coffins. Where a foundation pit is being dug for the “common proletarian house,” peasants from a neighboring village stacked coffins “for future use.” One of the walkers behind the coffins, “an unknown man with yellow eyes,” recalls the recent past: “His melancholy mind imagined a village in the rye, and the wind rushed over it and quietly turned a wooden mill, grinding its daily, peaceful bread. He lived like this in recent times , feeling fullness in his stomach and family happiness in his soul; and no matter how many years he looked from the village into the distance and into the future, he saw at the end of the plain only the radiance of the sky and the earth, and above him he had sufficient light of the sun and stars. The man remembers happy life: in the soul there is family happiness, in the stomach there is satiety, confidence in the future and in the universe.
The village depicted by the writer in the second half of the story is a village during the collectivization period, a village at the time of the Last Judgment. Comparing the collectivization described by Platonov with the classic Soviet novel about collectivization, “Virgin Soil Upturned” by Sholokhov, we see that both writers used the same elements: worker activists organizing a collective farm, stratification among the peasants - some join the collective farm, others refuse, - dispossession as a form of permitted robbery, the destruction of livestock by peasants, the liquidation of kulaks. Sholokhov put together from these elements a narrative about a measure necessary in the interests of the state and the poor, bringing joy and happiness to all those who agree with it. Platonov, giving the elements of collectivization the apocalyptic form of the Last Judgment, depicts the grotesque situation of building a new world, about which neither those who build it have any idea - driving those who agree into the collective farm, exterminating those who disagree - nor those for whom it - supposedly - under construction.
The contrast between the idyllic memory of a calm, happy village and the apocalypse of collectivization is presented as successive scenes of death and destruction. “Cry, grandma, cry harder,” says the “comrade activist”, the organizer of the collective farm, to the peasant woman, “this sun of a new life has risen and the light hurts your dark eyes.”
The cutting light of the “sun of new life” is merciless: without hiding a single detail, it illuminates the nightmarishly monstrous image of the construction of a utopia. Platonov uses only one surreal detail: a bear takes an active part in the dispossession of kulaks - he indicates the huts of the kulaks and subkulak members. Joseph Brodsky writes: “If Dostoevsky can be considered the first writer of the absurd for Captain Lebyadkin’s poems about the cockroach, then Platonov can be considered the first serious surrealist for the scene with the hammer bear in “The Pit.” The scene with the bear does not appear by chance in the story. Even in “Chevengur,” the builders of utopia believed that with the advent of communism, the liberation of animals would occur. In the “year of the great turning point,” the bear is freed and joins the proletariat. But the atmosphere of surrealism is not created by the proletarian bear. Impression bad dream
They kill Kozlov and Safronov, who came to the village to help build the collective farm, without looking, without asking, Chiklin kills a peasant who happened to be at hand, they kill, putting on a raft that descends into the ocean, all the peasants who did not want to enter the collective farm, the peasants they kill livestock, not wanting to give it to the collective farm. Collectivization is portrayed by the writer as collective suicide. Peasants, by killing livestock, killing workers who came to agitate them, destroying trees, joining a collective farm or refusing to do so, destroy their own flesh.
Platonov does not want the reader to have any doubts about the meaning of what is happening. He introduces a generalizing image of the Russian peasantry: “The old plowman Ivan Semenovich Kretinin kissed young trees in his garden and crushed them from the soil by the roots, and his woman wailed over the bare branches. “Don’t cry, old woman,” said Kretinin, “you’re on a collective farm.” You’ll become a peasant’s slave, and these trees are my flesh, and let her suffer now, she’s bored of being socialized into captivity!” The peasant agrees rather to socialize the flesh of his wife than his trees, which he feels with his flesh. Platonov refers to a religious symbol: “...beef then short time They ate like communion - no one wanted to eat, but it was necessary to hide the flesh of the native slaughter in one’s body and save it there from socialization.”
The village is divided into organized and unorganized: organized - peasants who agree to give up their flesh into captivity, to go to the collective farm, having first killed the cattle, which they spare more than themselves, unorganized - peasants who refuse to go to the collective farm, preferring to die.
The extermination of the “unorganized” - putting men, women and children on a raft lowered into the sea - is a repetition of the scene of the murder of the “bourgeois” and “semi-bourgeois” in “Cheven-Gur”: Utopia necessarily requires sacrifice, the elimination of the “unclean”. There are, however, differences in the massacres of 1921 and 1930. In 1921, the Chevengur apostols killed, poisoned by the Idea, out of internal necessity - like medieval chiliasts. In 1930, the murder occurs on a direct order from above, on the basis of another instruction from the region: “... it’s time to get going,” the activist declares, “the fourteenth plenum is underway in our region!”
In 1930 there is no such connection between victim and executioner as existed between the apostles and their victims. Saying goodbye to life, the “disorganized” ask the activist only one thing: “Turn away from us for a short time, let us not see you.” The murdered “bourgeois” died alone, holding the executioner’s hand as the last thread connecting them to life. The “kulaks” sent to death acquire spiritual strength from their neighbors, to whom they say goodbye in a Christian way: having confessed their sins and received forgiveness. Everyone kisses, and the kiss gives birth to “new relatives”: “After kissing, people bowed to the ground - each to everyone and stood on their feet, free and empty at heart.” The ancient ritual gives people going to death freedom and cleanses the heart. “We lived fiercely, but we end according to our conscience,” one peasant remarks to another.
The “unorganized”, doomed to death by the next plenum, die “according to their conscience”, in accordance with the Christian faith. But without a priest, although in the village in which the collective farm is being organized, there is both a church and a priest. "The pit" can be studied from many points of view: as a model of the "new story", as the best example of "Platonic language", as a historical source. The exceptional value of the story as a historical source lies in the fact that the writer managed to depict all the diversity in a very small area - 100 pages, one city and one village. social groups
and layers that took part - active or passive - in collectivization. Platonov does not introduce new themes into the story, but brings to the boiling point all the problems that are dear and important to him, expressing them sharply, openly and mercilessly. Religion - Christian faith
There is a church in the village: “Near the church, old forgotten grass grew, and there were no paths or other human traces of passage, which means people have not prayed in the temple for a long time.” People do not pray - because it is prohibited.
The believers are watched over by a former priest who “dissociated himself from his soul and cut his hair into a foxtrot.” He lists everyone who comes to church on the sheet: “And those sheets with the designation of a person who has made the sign of a hand-made cross, or who has bowed his body before the heavenly power, or who has performed another act of veneration of the sub-kulak saints, those sheets of paper every midnight I personally accompany you to a fellow activist.”
At night the priest commits his betrayal. At night, after sending the raft with those condemned to death, an activist, a priest of the new faith, organizes a rejoicing: dancing to the radio for the “organized.” This is a monstrous dance among the dead and dying - a thanksgiving prayer for the survivors. The men dance at night, enchanted, as if in a dream: “... An unclear moon appeared in the distant sky, empty of whirlwinds and clouds - in a sky that was so deserted that it allowed for eternal freedom, and so eerie that friendship was needed for freedom ". Under this deserted and eerie sky, the men are triumphant, rejoicing, still believing that they will be able to please “our mother, the Socialist-Revolutionary,” who “is as wise as a girl,” but will calm down and become a “quiet woman.” The writer knows that these hopes are vain and ridiculous. “Liquidated!?” says one of the dispossessed navvies to the navvie Chiklin. “Look, today I’m gone, and tomorrow you won’t be. So it will turn out that only yours will come to socialism.”". The nature of the utopia under construction could raise doubts in 1921. Ten years later there is no longer any doubt: the "kingdom-state" is not "wise as a girl", it acts according to a solid plan. "You will make a collective farm out of the entire republic, and the entire republic - then it will be an individual economy!" - there the dispossessed peasant defines the character of the socialist utopia. These words amaze the navvy Chiklin with their accuracy; having heard them, he rushes to the door of the hut and opens it, "so that freedom can be seen." Platonov creates an amazing meta -a head start, revealing the feelings of a worker who understands that socialism is becoming a “single-personal economy”, that “one... main person will come to socialism.” “... He also once hit a closed prison door, not understanding captivity, and cried out from the grinding power of his heart." Feeling in his heart the closing doors of the prison, the worker Chiklin, consoling himself, finds only one objection: “We can appoint a tsar when it is useful to us, and we can knock him down with one swing..." Chiklin, When we say “we,” we mean the working class. But these are only fragments of the old confidence in the meaning and role of the proletariat.
The hope that the Chevengur apostles carried within themselves, the hope of becoming subjects of history instead of objects, perished. “What kind of face am I to you?” says Chiklin. “I’m nobody: our party is our face!”
The Party is the “face”, the embodiment of the working class; “the main man” is the embodiment of socialism and the party - these are the elements of the socialist utopia, which is being built in feverish haste in town and countryside. It bears little resemblance to the dream of its apostles, but the writer, noting the differences, emphasizes the inextricable connection between dream and realization. With childish naivety, Nastya points out this connection. In a letter from the city to the collective farm, she writes to Chiklin, having learned about the murder of her acquaintances: “Eliminate the kulaks as a class. Long live Lenin, Kozlov and Safronov!” inextricably welded together by the “great dreamer,” as Lenin called H.G. Wells, and the fulfillers of his dreams, the Kozlovs and Safronovs, who died and killed out of love for those distant. Lenin died, but his work lives on.
The party is represented on the collective farm by an activist, he is also called “comrade activist.” In the gallery of Plato's bureaucrats, he occupies a special place: the activist directly leads the organization of mass murder.
15 years will pass after the writing of “The Pit”, and the expression “murderer at a desk” will appear. Outwardly, the activist does not look like polished SS men; he reads papers not at a desk, but at the kitchen table. But both his function and the motives of his behavior are the same as those of the organizers of Hitler’s concentration camps, the extermination of Jews and all other “unorganized” and harmful to Hitler’s utopia. The activist is, first of all, a man of paper: “He read each new directive with the curiosity of future pleasure...” Paper gives him pleasure for many reasons: it is a source of “enthusiasm for future action”, it introduces him to “a whole body living in the contentment of glory before his eyes devoted, convinced masses." The paper makes him tremble with fear: it’s easy to make a mistake - run ahead or end up behind. But strict adherence to directives, clearly signed and with “depictions of globes on stamps,” allowed the activist to leave “the general, guided life” and become “an assistant of the avant-garde and immediately have all the benefits of the future.” The working class and poor peasantry are just building the future, but a member of the avant-garde, an activist, already has it, having left the “led” life for the “leading” one. Looking at the “image of globes” on the stamps, he strengthens his service to the directives, for he is convinced that “all
The activist carries out his difficult, dangerous work with pleasure - the danger threatens primarily from the Higher Authority, which sends out directives - because he feels himself in the future, feels like a participant in a cause that affects the "universal body of the earth." He firmly expects to receive his “share” after the “softness” of the globe is in “iron hands.” The activist explains the essence of this ideology to the “brooding” seeker of truth Voshchev. “Is the truth due to the proletariat?”
- asked Voshchev. “The proletariat is supposed to have a movement,” the activist said, “and whatever comes along, it’s all his: be it the truth, be it the kulak’s looted jacket, everything will go into the organized cauldron, you won’t know anything.” The truth and the “looted jacket” are dumped together into a common pot, the distribution from which will be made by those who are already “in the future”: activists, the Pashkins. An activist is a generalized image of a party leader on a collective farm. Platonov does not give him a name, he calls him an activist, highlighting the main characteristic of the party representative on the collective farm.
Activist - acts: organizes a collective farm, organizes dispossession of kulaks, organizes the liquidation of kulaks, conducts ideological work. All party representatives, organizers of collective farms - from Davydov from “Virgin Soil Upturned” to Mitya, the representative from “On the Irtysh” - are kept in the activists from “Kotlovan”. Sholokhov in 1932, portraying a positive hero, Zalygin in 1964, portraying an obedient servant of the directive, added only psychological details to the “activist” Platonov. The main thing is that the essence of the character was open and mercilessly revealed by the author of "The Pit".
Andrei Platonov was the first to present genocide in literature as a necessary element in the construction of a socialist utopia, the first to explain the mechanism of genocide. The writer shows that the initial - necessary and obligatory - condition of genocide is the transformation of a person into an abstraction, depriving him of the name of a person, branding him with a negative sign - “bourgeois”, “semi-bourgeois”, “fist”, “sub-kulak”, “pest”.
The activist, having created a “special side column” called “a list of kulaks liquidated to death, as a class, by the proletariat, according to the property-escheat remainder,” enters into it “instead of people... signs of existence...” They explain to the “unorganized” that “there is no soul in them , but there is only one property mood.”
The future confirmed the tragic insight of the writer: Soviet studies of the collectivization era provide accurate data regarding the losses of large and small livestock, but even approximate figures for human losses are not reported. In the “side column” of the peasantry liquidated to death, instead of people, “signs of existence” and “property mood” are recorded. living by the mind. Feelings and instinct turn out to be insufficient protection against clever people. In "Chevengur" the apostles, waiting in the steppe for beggars, greet them with a flag on which is written: "Poor comrades"!
You have made every convenience and thing in the world, and now you have destroyed it and want the best for each other. For this reason, comrades are acquired in Chevengur from the roads they pass." In "The Pit" the inscription on the flag heralds a new era in which all previous dreams are condemned and discarded: "For the party, for loyalty to it, for the shock work that breaks through the doors to the future for the proletariat ". The elements have been tamed, the future is locked and entry into it is allowed only as a reward “for hard work”, with a pass issued by the Party guarding the door. Loyalty to the party becomes highest virtue
. The activist dies because he was mistaken in believing that loyalty to the directive would guarantee him a pass to “happiness and at least in the future... a district post.” Those who remained faithful to the Idea are dying, those who thought it was enough to be faithful to the Directive are dying. They die, killing millions of people and thereby fulfilling their role. The Apostles, who believe in the Idea, interfere with the realized utopia, because they consider the interpretation of the Idea to be their right; obedient servants of the directive interfere, because they believe that blind obedience gives them some kind of rights. Their elimination turns Utopia, Socialism into a “single-person economy” in which power belongs to the “main man”. Real and therefore
fantasy world
Platonov returns in the finale of "The Pit" to the theme of the deceased child, which in "Chevengur" meant the collapse of hope for a dream come true, disappointment in communism. In “Chevengur” the nameless child of a nameless beggar woman, invited with other “others” to the city of the Sun, was dying. In “The Pit” the girl Nastya, an unfortunate orphan of non-proletarian origin, dies, who was taken in and loved by the diggers, who saw the future in her. “Now I don’t believe in anything,” Zhachev declares after Nastya's death. Voshchev stands in bewilderment over the girl’s corpse, not knowing, “Where will communism be in the world now?” He asks himself: “Why... now do we need the meaning of life and the truth of universal origin, if there is no small, faithful person in whom the truth would become joy and movement?”
To express the oppressive hopeless feeling of loss of faith, Platonov, as usual, uses religious symbolism. Zhachev says his “I don’t believe in anything now!” in "It's the morning of the second day." On the second day, God separates the water from the firmament, the earth from the sky. The day of Nastya’s death, the birthday of the collective farm and the liquidation of the “unorganized,” is, for Platonov, the “second day,” when reality is separated from dreams, when dreams, hope and faith die, a terrible reality remains.
Chiklin spends fifteen hours digging a “special grave” for Nastya so that “it is deep... and so that the child will never be disturbed by the noise of life from the surface of the earth.” Chiklin buries faith and hope. And at this time, all the workers and all the collective farmers begin to dig a pit, larger than the size planned for the construction of a house, into which “every person from a barracks and a clay hut” can move in. Platonov concludes: “all the poor and middle-aged men worked with such zeal for life, as if they wanted to be saved forever in the abyss of the pit.”
The pit of the “common proletarian house” turns out to be an abyss. The abyss becomes a temple of socialist utopia. This cathedral is not erected on the ground and does not reach out to the sky, it is directed into the depths of the earth, into a hole whose digging has no end.

3. “Here there is neither subtracting nor adding - this is how it was on earth...” The role of literature in understanding the events of the collectivization period.

Even at the height of the events of collectivization, not all writers were fascinated by the scale with which the collapse of the traditional foundations of the Russian village was carried out. Boris Leonidovich Pasternak reported in one of his letters to a loved one: “In the early 30s, a movement was born among writers, which consisted of trips to collective farms to collect materials about the new village. I wanted to be like everyone else, and went on such a trip with a project to write a book. Words are beyond me express what I saw. It was a misfortune so inhuman, so unimaginable, a catastrophe so terrible that it, so to speak, became abstract and inaccessible to rational perception. I fell ill for a whole year.” .
Among the works of literature that raised questions about the relationship between class and universal humanity in the events of collectivization, special mention should be made of the texts of Andrei Platonov: the novel “Chevengur”, the stories “The Pit” (1929-30) and “The Juvenile Sea” (1932). Their humanistic meaning and philosophical depth appeared before the readers of the 80s in all their completeness and significance. Unfortunately, the participation in the literary process of these works, which reflected tragic fates Russian peasantry was reduced to a minimum due to the impossibility or direct prohibition of publication.
And yet, despite this circumstance, A. Platonov’s influence on the literature and spiritual life of the people was not completely interrupted.

Modern literature and history are getting to the deeper meaning of the terrible tragedy of the peasantry that occurred in the 20-30s, largely thanks to the civil feat of the courageous man and great writer Andrei Platonovich Platonov.

NOTES
Dvoryashin Yu.A. M.A. Sholokhov and Russian prose of the 20-30s about the fate of the peasantry.
- Novosibirsk, 1992. - P. 11.
The writer returns to the Stalinist revolution in a play written in 1937-1938, during the era of the next “Great Leap Forward”.
Andrey Platonov. Pit. Bilingual edition with a foreword by Joseph Brodsky.
- Michigan: Ardis, 1973, p.179.
The dates are in the manuscript.
I. Stalin. Essays. T. 1, p.169.
The dates are in the manuscript.
Andrey Platonov. Pit // "Grani", No. 70, 1969, p.178.
Ibid., p.222.
Ibid., p.217.
Ibid., p.239.
Ibid., p.165.
Andrey Platonov. Chevengur. YMCA-Press, Paris, 1972, p.248.
Ibid., p.249.
Andrey Platonov. Pit. Page 245.
Ibid., p.247.
Ibid., pp. 250, 251.
Ibid., p.242.
Ibid., p.242.
Ibid., p.243.
Ibid., p.243.
Ibid., p.261.
Ibid., p.258.
Ibid., p.259.
Ibid., p.236.
Ibid., pp. 228, 229.
Ibid., page 233.
Ibid., pp. 264, 265.
Ibid., p.245.
Ibid., p.273.
Andrey Platonov. Chevengur. p.222.
Quote by: Savelzon I.V. From the history of Russian literature. M.A. Bulgakov. A.P. Platonov: Teaching aid. - Orenburg, 1997.

The theme of the Russian village in modern literature (Based on the story by V. Belov “A Habitual Business”)

Modern society is well aware of the value and necessity of the agricultural industry. However, there are many problems in the village, there are many of them now, and there were not much fewer before. Therefore, countryside writers are especially popular and respected in Russia. Vasily Belov can safely be called a leader among this group of writers. His work “A Business as Usual” is an important milestone in modern literature on a rural theme. In the story we see the life and fate of a simple village worker Ivan Afrikanovich Drynov and his wife Katerina.

Belov treats his heroes with great respect. These are people dear and close to his heart, they are part of his own soul, they reflect his personal attitude to life. Ivan Afrikanovich is a simple peasant, an ordinary collective farmer, burdened with a large family. The author does not endow his hero with any special qualities or talents. And he’s not a fool for drinking, as they say, and before work he’s “evil,” and has an easy-going character. Neighbors and fellow villagers love him. Ivan Afrikanovich visited the front and has military awards. He argues with his superiors and is indignant when he is unfairly robbed. He is looking for new ways to earn money to feed his large family, although to no avail. But his active nature yearns useful application strength Ivan Afrikanovich is never sad for no reason and cheerful for no reason. When he gets lucky, he is happy and open to the whole world of people and nature around him. A poetic character, vitality, integrity - these are the main qualities of this person. But the character of Ivan Afrikanovich is revealed to the reader gradually; Belov’s hero is more multifaceted and deep than it seems at the beginning of the story. Describing the everyday life of the village, the author shows the unfair and even criminal attitude of society towards the village worker. The hero does not have any “documentation”, except for the “milk book”, where he records how much milk he donated from his cow. But the author invites the reader to look carefully not at the documentary data of his hero, but at the spiritual qualities of this simple Russian man, a native resident of the village, which is why, I believe, the description of the love and harmonious life of Ivan Afrikinovich and Katerina occupies such a large place in the story. The whole story seems to glorify the great love of these original Russian people. The author describes this love with extraordinary lyricism and artistic mastery. The reader is shocked by the scene of Ivan Afrikanovich’s farewell to dead wife. In his simple words about the injustice of death, which took his loved one away from him ahead of time, there is only pain that tears involuntarily well up in his eyes: “Don’t be offended, Katerina. I haven’t been, I haven’t visited you, this or that. I brought you some mountain ash. You used to love picking rowan trees in the fall.... Yes. Look, girl, look how it turned out... I was a fool, I took care of you poorly, you know it yourself... Here I am now... Like I’m walking on fire, I’m walking on you, forgive me. ... "

These simple words convey great moral strength and genuine grief of loss. I noticed that Ivan Afrikanovich, in a peasant way, feels the death of a dear person: “It’s like walking on fire...” That is, the earth for him merges into one image with Katerina buried in it.

Of course, the strength and significance of Belov’s story lies not only in the description of these touching relationships between the two loving friend people's friend. The author, in my opinion, set himself the task of showing in all true details the life of his contemporary village. But what we have before us is not just a description of everyday life, but an identification of the meaning of life, the meaning of work on earth in general. So, the peasant Ivan Afrikanovich Drynov is a simple and at the same time complex man. He seems to be like everyone else in the village and at the same time very different from everyone else. It is significant that Ivan Afrikanovich and his fellow countrymen perceive this way. I believe that the author is trying to create an image of an ideal villager of that time. Show that, despite negative social and everyday conditions, the soul of the people remains pure. It’s not for nothing that no everyday dirt sticks to Belov’s hero, even when he himself has messed up in something. For example, he looks funny in the story of Mishka’s matchmaking; the next morning all the village women are gossiping about this incident. But they only laugh at Mishka, and they feel sorry for Ivan Afrikanovich. It is clear that Ivan Afrikanovich is a kind of mirror for his fellow countrymen, which reflects their best feelings and virtues. He makes them happy and sets an example of goodness. The strength of his love and devotion to Katerina has a beneficial effect on the rest of the villagers. He is worldly wise and morally pure. This is, in my opinion, the main thing in his image and distinguishes him from other peasants. As the talented Russian poet Anatoly Peredreev said:

And we didn’t make a city,

And the village was lost forever...

In order not to fall into such dramatic “scissors”, we must carefully study the world that the writer Vasily Belov opens before us. His “Business as Usual” plays an important role in the townspeople’s understanding of the problems of the village and the character of the Russian peasant man. Without mutual understanding between city and village there cannot be normal life in the country.

The theme of the village in modern literature (based on the story by V. Belov A Habitual Business)

The theme of city and village became especially relevant in Russian literature of the 20th century, when the era of industrialization began to absorb the village: village culture, worldview. The villages began to empty, young residents sought to move to the city, “closer to civilization.” This state of affairs greatly worried many Russian writers who had roots in the village. After all, it was in the village way of thinking and feeling that they saw the foundations of true morality, purity, simplicity of life, and indigenous wisdom. In the post-revolutionary works of S. Yesenin, the problem of city and countryside resounds loudly. The poet loves his native fields “in his sadness”; he proclaims peace to the “rakes, scythes and plows” and wants to believe in a better lot for the peasantry. But his mood is pessimistic.

In the poem “I am the last poet of the village,” he predicts the imminent death of the village, an attack on its civilization in the form of an “iron guest.” In the poem “Sorokoust” Yesenin compares two worlds, presented in the form of a cast-iron train (city) and a red-maned foal (village). The foal strives to overtake the train, but this is impossible: the forces are unequal. The poet sadly notes that the times have come when “steel cavalry defeated living horses...” This was reflected not only in the way of life, but, what is much more serious, in the way of thought, in ideas about morality and morality. Another singer of village life was V.

I. Belov. He entered literature at the very beginning of the 60s of the 20th century.

The village people of V. Belov are stingy with words and expressions of feelings, sometimes rude, as they grew up in the difficult world of a distant northern village. It is no coincidence that Grandma Evstolya tells tales about Poshekhontsy, unfortunate men - bunglers. The main character of his story “A Business as Usual” is akin to these Poshekhons. It is said about him: “A Russian person is smart with hindsight, sometimes he is simple-minded, gets into trouble,” and that is why his fellow villagers and the author himself laugh so good-naturedly at him. Belov does not address an ideal person, but the most ordinary person, who has both positive and negative character traits. The writer claims that it is the village people who are the basis of morality, purity and simplicity, the basis of the nation.

V. Rasputin in “Matryonin’s Dvor” also addresses the theme of the village and the city. For the writer, the concept of a village is akin to the concepts of “land”, “homeland”, “memory” and “love”. Residents of Matera, guardians of traditions and the foundations of life, cannot imagine their lives without places familiar from childhood. They are not attracted to the improvement of the city; for them, existence outside their native island is meaningless, and even impossible. Young people think differently.

They break away from their native roots, move to the city, forget not only their ancestors, but also their native land, turn into people of memory and without a homeland. The writer sees a very alarming trend in this. Thus, country life, on the one hand, is idealized by writers, presented in all its naturalness and truth, on the other, rural life is contrasted with urban life as largely immoral, immoral, divorced from its roots and the commandments of its ancestors. At the same time, writers note that the city is winning over the village, people are trying to leave, villages are turning into abandoned deserts. This is an alarming trend, because the village is the basis of the nation, culture and worldview of the Russian people.

(Based on the works of V. Astafiev and V. Rasputin)

In our difficult times, we sometimes try not to notice the difficulties that arise in our lives. modern village. But they are the ones that are connected with the most pressing problems of society - ecology and moral behavior of humans. The solution to these problems determines the further course of the history of our civilization.

The theme of many works by writers - contemporaries of V. Rasputin and V. Astafiev - is ecological problem. The example of Matera shows the fate of our numerous villages, which were destroyed supposedly for the benefit of the people, having built various hydroelectric power plants, thermal power plants, etc. The destinies of the heroes unfold against the background main problem, which hurt everyone. Throughout the history of Matera, the inhabitants stuck to each other, i.e. lived as one family. And the flooding of their native land unexpectedly fell on their heads. Residents are delaying leaving until the last minute, because many of them were afraid to leave here, where they had existed for many years. In the literal sense of the word, people are being erased from their past and are being confronted with an unknown future. Mostly elderly people lived in the village, but it’s impossible to start completely new life at 70-80 years old. People resist to the last, they are even ready to die, but they cannot resist the huge machine of Reality, which sweeps away everything in its path. I believe that the heroes created by Rasputin are patriots of their native land. Maybe that’s why even nature itself “helps” the residents to ward off inevitable death from Matera.

Like Rasputin, Astafiev devotes a cycle of his stories to his contemporaries, “those who are lost or wandering, who are ready to shoot each other, who are drowning in the poison of the “babble”. The writer is trying by all means to draw the reader’s attention to the main idea - a ruthless attitude towards the taiga. After all, since ancient times it has been the richest source of various natural resources. Using the example of Ignatyich, the author shows the lawless robbery of nature. He lives one day at a time, without thinking about the consequences. In a duel with the symbolic king fish, in the face of an unknown higher power, the hero is transformed, at that moment he prays only for salvation. It seems to me that the unusual animal acts as the arbiter of justice over the poacher, showing that it is impossible to use nature forever.

Both works are united by one idea: man’s stewardship of the environment. The urgency of this problem lies in the fact that the merciless exploitation and pollution of nature is fraught with irreparable consequences and environmental disasters in the future. The existence of human society, its well-being and prosperity depend only on us and our joint efforts!