Dostoevsky dead house. Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Notes from the House of the Dead

In the remote regions of Siberia, among the steppes, mountains or impenetrable forests, occasionally come across small towns, with one, many with two thousand inhabitants, wooden, nondescript, with two churches - one in the city, the other in the cemetery - cities that look more like a good village near Moscow than a city. They are usually very adequately equipped with police officers, assessors and all the rest of the subaltern rank. In general, in Siberia, despite the cold, it is extremely warm to serve. People live simple, illiberal; orders are old, strong, consecrated for centuries. Officials who rightly play the role of the Siberian nobility are either natives, hardened Siberians, or visitors from Russia, mostly from the capitals, seduced by the salary that is not set off, double runs and tempting hopes in the future. Of these, those who know how to solve the riddle of life almost always remain in Siberia and take root in it with pleasure. Subsequently, they bear rich and sweet fruits. But others, a frivolous people who do not know how to solve the riddle of life, will soon get bored with Siberia and ask themselves with anguish: why did they come into it? They impatiently serve their legal term of service, three years, and after it has expired, they immediately bother about their transfer and return home, scolding Siberia and laughing at her. They are wrong: not only from official, but even from many points of view, one can be blessed in Siberia. The climate is excellent; there are many remarkably rich and hospitable merchants; many extremely sufficient foreigners. Young ladies bloom with roses and are moral to the last extreme. The game flies through the streets and stumbles upon the hunter itself. Champagne is drunk unnaturally much. Caviar is amazing. Harvest happens in other places fifteen times ... In general, the land is blessed. You just need to know how to use it. In Siberia, they know how to use it.

In one of these cheerful and self-satisfied towns, with the sweetest people, the memory of which will remain indelible in my heart, I met Alexander Petrovich Goryanchikov, a settler who was born in Russia as a nobleman and landowner, who later became a second-class exile convict for the murder of his wife and, after the expiration of a ten-year term of hard labor determined for him by law, he humbly and inaudibly lived out his life in the town of K. as a settler. He, in fact, was assigned to one suburban volost, but he lived in the city, having the opportunity to get at least some kind of livelihood in it by teaching children. In Siberian cities one often comes across teachers from exiled settlers; they are not shy. They teach primarily French, so necessary in the field of life and about which without them in the remote regions of Siberia they would not even have a clue. For the first time I met Alexander Petrovich in the house of an old, honored and hospitable official, Ivan Ivanovich Gvozdikov, who had five daughters, of different years, who showed great promise. Alexander Petrovich gave them lessons four times a week, thirty silver kopecks a lesson. His appearance intrigued me. He was an extremely pale and thin man, not yet old, about thirty-five, small and frail. He was always dressed very cleanly, in a European way. If you spoke to him, he looked at you extremely intently and attentively, listening with strict courtesy to your every word, as if pondering it, as if you had asked him a task with your question or wanted to extort some secret from him, and, finally, he answered clearly and briefly, but weighing every word of his answer to such an extent that you suddenly felt uncomfortable for some reason, and you yourself finally rejoiced at the end of the conversation. I then asked Ivan Ivanovich about him and found out that Goryanchikov lives impeccably and morally, and that otherwise Ivan Ivanovich would not have invited him for his daughters; but that he is terribly unsociable, hiding from everyone, extremely learned, reads a lot, but speaks very little, and that in general it is quite difficult to get into conversation with him. Others claimed that he was positively insane, although they found that, in essence, this was not such an important shortcoming, that many of the honorary members of the city were ready to show kindness to Alexander Petrovich in every possible way, that he could even be useful, write requests and so on. It was believed that he must have decent relatives in Russia, maybe not even the last people, but they knew that from the very exile he stubbornly cut off all relations with them - in a word, he hurt himself. In addition, we all knew his story, they knew that he killed his wife in the first year of his marriage, killed out of jealousy and himself denounced himself (which greatly facilitated his punishment). The same crimes are always looked upon as misfortunes and regretted. But, in spite of all this, the eccentric stubbornly avoided everyone and appeared in public only to give lessons.

At first I did not pay much attention to him, but, I do not know why, he gradually began to interest me. There was something mysterious about him. There was no way to talk to him. Of course, he always answered my questions, and even with an air as if he considered this his first duty; but after his answers I somehow found it hard to question him longer; and on his face, after such conversations, one could always see some kind of suffering and fatigue. I remember walking with him one fine summer evening from Ivan Ivanovich. It suddenly occurred to me to invite him over for a minute to smoke a cigarette. I cannot describe the horror expressed on his face; he was completely lost, began to mutter some incoherent words, and suddenly, looking angrily at me, rushed to run in the opposite direction. I was even surprised. Since then, when meeting with me, he looked at me as if with some kind of fear. But I did not let up; something drew me to him, and a month later, for no apparent reason, I myself went to Goryanchikov. Of course, I acted stupidly and indelicately. He lodged on the very edge of the city, with an old bourgeois woman who had a sick, consumptive daughter, and that illegitimate daughter, a child of ten years old, a pretty and cheerful girl. Alexander Petrovich was sitting with her and teaching her to read the minute I went in to see him. When he saw me, he became so confused, as if I had caught him in some kind of crime. He was completely at a loss, jumped up from his chair and looked at me with all his eyes. We finally sat down; he closely followed my every glance, as if he suspected some special mysterious meaning in each of them. I guessed that he was suspicious to the point of madness. He looked at me with hatred, almost asking: “Will you leave here soon?” I talked to him about our town, current news; he remained silent and smiled maliciously; it turned out that he not only did not know the most ordinary, well-known city news, but was not even interested in knowing them. Then I started talking about our region, about its needs; he listened to me in silence and looked into my eyes so strangely that I finally felt ashamed of our conversation. However, I almost teased him with new books and magazines; I had them in my hands, fresh from the post office, and I offered them uncut to him. He gave them a greedy look, but immediately changed his mind and declined the offer, responding with lack of time. Finally I said goodbye to him and, leaving him, I felt that some unbearable weight had been lifted from my heart. I was ashamed and it seemed extremely stupid to pester a man who, precisely, supplies his main task- as far as possible to hide from the whole world. But the deed was done. I remember that I hardly noticed his books at all, and, therefore, it was unfairly said about him that he reads a lot. However, driving twice, very late at night, past his windows, I noticed a light in them. What did he do, sitting up until dawn? Did he write? And if so, what exactly?

Circumstances removed me from our town for three months. Returning home already in the winter, I learned that Alexander Petrovich died in the autumn, died in seclusion and never even called a doctor to him. The town has almost forgotten about him. His apartment was empty. I immediately made the acquaintance of the mistress of the dead man, intending to find out from her; What was her lodger particularly busy with, and did he write anything? For two kopecks, she brought me a whole basket of papers left over from the deceased. The old woman confessed that she had already used up two notebooks. She was a gloomy and silent woman, from whom it was difficult to get anything worthwhile. She had nothing new to tell me about her tenant. According to her, he almost never did anything and for months did not open a book and did not take a pen in his hands; but whole nights he paced up and down the room and kept thinking something, and sometimes talking to himself; that he was very fond of and very fond of her granddaughter, Katya, especially since he found out that her name was Katya, and that on Catherine's day every time he went to someone to serve a memorial service. Guests could not stand; he went out from the yard only to teach children; he even looked askance at her, the old woman, when she, once a week, came at least a little to tidy up his room, and almost never said a single word to her for three whole years. I asked Katya: does she remember her teacher? She looked at me silently, turned to the wall and began to cry. So, this man could at least make someone love him.

PART ONE

INTRODUCTION

In the remote regions of Siberia, among the steppes, mountains or impenetrable forests, one occasionally comes across small towns, with one, many with two thousand inhabitants, wooden, nondescript, with two churches - one in the city, the other in a cemetery - cities that look more like a good suburban village than in the city. They are usually very adequately equipped with police officers, assessors and all the rest of the subaltern rank. In general, in Siberia, despite the cold, it is extremely warm to serve. People live simple, illiberal; orders are old, strong, consecrated for centuries. Officials who rightly play the role of the Siberian nobility are either natives, hardened Siberians, or visitors from Russia, mostly from the capitals, seduced by the salary that is not set off, double runs and tempting hopes in the future. Of these, those who know how to solve the riddle of life almost always remain in Siberia and take root in it with pleasure. Subsequently, they bear rich and sweet fruits. But others, a frivolous people who do not know how to solve the riddle of life, will soon get bored with Siberia and ask themselves with anguish: why did they come into it? They impatiently serve their legal term of service, three years, and after it has expired, they immediately bother about their transfer and return home, scolding Siberia and laughing at her. They are wrong: not only from official, but even from many points of view, one can be blessed in Siberia. The climate is excellent; there are many remarkably rich and hospitable merchants; many extremely sufficient foreigners. Young ladies bloom with roses and are moral to the last extreme. The game flies through the streets and stumbles upon the hunter itself. Champagne is drunk unnaturally much. Caviar is amazing. Harvest happens in other places by itself-fifteen ... In general, the land is blessed. You just need to know how to use it. In Siberia, they know how to use it.

In one of these cheerful and self-satisfied towns, with the sweetest people, the memory of which will remain indelible in my heart, I met Alexander Petrovich Goryanchikov, a settler who was born in Russia as a nobleman and landowner, who later became a second-class exile convict for the murder of his wife and, after the expiration of a ten-year term of hard labor determined for him by law, he humbly and inaudibly lived out his life in the town of K. as a settler. He, in fact, was assigned to one suburban volost, but he lived in the city, having the opportunity to get at least some kind of livelihood in it by teaching children. In Siberian cities one often comes across teachers from exiled settlers; they are not shy. They teach mainly the French language, which is so necessary in the field of life and which without them in the remote regions of Siberia would have no idea. For the first time I met Alexander Petrovich in the house of an old, honored and hospitable official, Ivan Ivanovich Gvozdikov, who had five daughters, of different years, who showed great promise. Alexander Petrovich gave them lessons four times a week, thirty silver kopecks a lesson. His appearance intrigued me. He was an extremely pale and thin man, not yet old, about thirty-five, small and frail. He was always dressed very cleanly, in a European way. If you spoke to him, he looked at you extremely intently and attentively, listening with strict courtesy to your every word, as if pondering it, as if you had asked him a task with your question or wanted to extort some secret from him, and, finally, he answered clearly and briefly, but weighing every word of his answer to such an extent that you suddenly felt uncomfortable for some reason, and you yourself finally rejoiced at the end of the conversation. I then asked Ivan Ivanovich about him and found out that Goryanchikov lives impeccably and morally, and that otherwise Ivan Ivanovich would not have invited him for his daughters; but that he is terribly unsociable, hiding from everyone, extremely learned, reads a lot, but speaks very little, and that in general it is quite difficult to get into conversation with him. Others claimed that he was positively insane, although they found that, in essence, this was not such an important shortcoming, that many of the honorary members of the city were ready to show kindness to Alexander Petrovich in every possible way, that he could even be useful, write requests and so on. It was believed that he must have decent relatives in Russia, maybe not even the last people, but they knew that from the very exile he stubbornly cut off all relations with them - in a word, he hurt himself. In addition, we all knew his story, they knew that he killed his wife in the first year of his marriage, killed out of jealousy and himself denounced himself (which greatly facilitated his punishment). The same crimes are always looked upon as misfortunes and regretted. But, in spite of all this, the eccentric stubbornly avoided everyone and appeared in public only to give lessons.

At first I did not pay much attention to him, but, I do not know why, he gradually began to interest me. There was something mysterious about him. There was no way to talk to him. Of course, he always answered my questions, and even with an air as if he considered this his first duty; but after his answers I somehow found it hard to question him longer; and on his face, after such conversations, one could always see some kind of suffering and fatigue. I remember walking with him one fine summer evening from Ivan Ivanovich. It suddenly occurred to me to invite him over for a minute to smoke a cigarette. I cannot describe the horror expressed on his face; he was completely lost, began to mutter some incoherent words, and suddenly, looking angrily at me, rushed to run in the opposite direction. I was even surprised. Since then, when meeting with me, he looked at me as if with some kind of fear. But I did not let up; something drew me to him, and a month later, for no apparent reason, I myself went to Goryanchikov. Of course, I acted stupidly and indelicately. He lodged on the very edge of the city, with an old bourgeois woman who had a sick, consumptive daughter, and that illegitimate daughter, a child of ten years old, a pretty and cheerful girl. Alexander Petrovich was sitting with her and teaching her to read the minute I went in to see him. When he saw me, he became so confused, as if I had caught him in some kind of crime. He was completely at a loss, jumped up from his chair and looked at me with all his eyes. We finally sat down; he closely followed my every glance, as if he suspected some special mysterious meaning in each of them. I guessed that he was suspicious to the point of madness. He looked at me with hatred, almost asking: "Will you be leaving here soon?" I talked to him about our town, current news; he remained silent and smiled maliciously; it turned out that he not only did not know the most ordinary, well-known city news, but was not even interested in knowing them. Then I started talking about our region, about its needs; he listened to me in silence and looked into my eyes so strangely that I finally felt ashamed of our conversation. However, I almost teased him with new books and magazines; I had them in my hands, fresh from the post office, and I offered them uncut to him. He gave them a greedy look, but immediately changed his mind and declined the offer, responding with lack of time. Finally I said goodbye to him and, leaving him, I felt that some unbearable weight had been lifted from my heart. I was ashamed and it seemed extremely stupid to pester a person who, precisely, sets his main task - to hide as far as possible from the whole world. But the deed was done. I remember that I hardly noticed his books at all, and, therefore, it was unfairly said about him that he reads a lot. However, driving twice, very late at night, past his windows, I noticed a light in them. What did he do, sitting up until dawn? Did he write? And if so, what exactly?

Circumstances removed me from our town for three months. Returning home already in the winter, I learned that Alexander Petrovich died in the autumn, died in seclusion and never even called a doctor to him. The town has almost forgotten about him. His apartment was empty. I immediately made the acquaintance of the mistress of the dead man, intending to find out from her; What was her lodger particularly busy with, and did he write anything? For two kopecks, she brought me a whole basket of papers left over from the deceased. The old woman confessed that she had already used up two notebooks. She was a gloomy and silent woman, from whom it was difficult to get anything worthwhile. She had nothing new to tell me about her tenant. According to her, he almost never did anything and for months did not open a book and did not take a pen in his hands; but whole nights he paced up and down the room and kept thinking something, and sometimes talking to himself; that he was very fond of and very fond of her granddaughter, Katya, especially since he found out that her name was Katya, and that on Catherine's day every time he went to someone to serve a memorial service. Guests could not stand; he went out from the yard only to teach children; he even looked askance at her, the old woman, when she, once a week, came at least a little to tidy up his room, and almost never said a single word to her for three whole years. I asked Katya: does she remember her teacher? She looked at me silently, turned to the wall and began to cry. So, this man could at least make someone love him.

I took his papers away and sorted through them all day. Three-quarters of these papers were empty, insignificant shreds or student exercises from copybooks. But then there was one notebook, rather voluminous, poorly written and incomplete, perhaps abandoned and forgotten by the author himself. It was a description, albeit incoherent, of a ten-year hard labor life, endured by Alexander Petrovich. In places this description was interrupted by some other story, some strange, terrible memories sketched unevenly, convulsively, as if under some kind of compulsion. I re-read these passages several times and almost convinced myself that they were written in madness. But the penal notes - "Scenes from the House of the Dead", as he himself calls them somewhere in his manuscript, seemed to me not entirely uninteresting. A completely new world, hitherto unknown, the strangeness of other facts, some special notes about the perished people carried me away, and I read something with curiosity. Of course, I could be wrong. On trial I choose first two or three chapters; Let the public judge...

DEAD HOUSE

Our prison stood on the edge of the fortress, at the very ramparts. It happened that you looked through the cracks of the fence at the light of day: would you see at least something? - and only you will see that the edge of the sky and a high earthen rampart, overgrown with weeds, and back and forth along the rampart, day and night, sentries pace; and you immediately think that whole years will pass, and you will come up in the same way to look through the cracks of the fence and see the same rampart, the same sentries and the same small edge of the sky, not the sky that is above the prison, but another, distant, free sky. Imagine a large yard, two hundred paces long and one hundred and fifty paces wide, all surrounded by a circle, in the form of an irregular hexagon, with a high fence, that is, a fence of high pillars (pals), dug deep into the ground, firmly leaning against each other with ribs, fastened with transverse strips and pointed at the top: this is the outer fence of the prison. In one of the sides of the fence there are strong gates, always locked, always guarded day and night by sentries; they were unlocked on demand, for release to work. Behind these gates was a bright, free world, people lived, like everyone else. But on this side of the fence, that world was imagined as some kind of unrealizable fairy tale. It had its own special world, unlike anything else, it had its own special laws, its own costumes, its own manners and customs, and a dead house alive, life like nowhere else, and special people. It is this particular corner that I begin to describe.

As you enter the fence, you see several buildings inside it. On both sides of the wide courtyard stretch two long one-story log cabins. These are the barracks. Here live prisoners, placed by category. Then, in the depths of the fence, there is still the same log house: this is a kitchen, divided into two artels; further on there is a building where cellars, barns, sheds are placed under one roof. The middle of the yard is empty and makes up a flat, fairly large area. Prisoners line up here, check and roll call take place in the morning, at noon and in the evening, sometimes even several times a day, judging by the suspiciousness of the guards and their ability to quickly count. Around, between the buildings and the fence, there is still quite a large space. Here, on the backs of the buildings, some of the prisoners, more unsociable and gloomy in character, like to walk around after hours, closed from all eyes, and think their little thought. Meeting them during these walks, I liked to peer into their gloomy, branded faces and guess what they were thinking. There was one exile whose favorite pastime in free time, it was considered Pali. There were a thousand and a half of them, and he had them all in his account and in mind. Each fire meant a day for him; every day he counted one finger, and thus, by the remaining number of fingers not counted, he could clearly see how many days he still had to stay in prison before the deadline for work. He was sincerely glad when he finished any side of the hexagon. He had to wait for many more years; but in prison there was time to learn patience. I once saw a convict saying goodbye to his comrades, who had been in hard labor for twenty years and was finally released. There were people who remembered how he entered the prison for the first time, young, carefree, not thinking about his crime or his punishment. He came out a gray-haired old man, with a gloomy and sad face. Silently he went around all our six barracks. Entering each barracks, he prayed to the image and then bowed low, to the waist, to his comrades, asking them not to commemorate him dashingly. I also remember how once a prisoner, formerly a prosperous Siberian peasant, was once called to the gate towards evening. Six months before this, he received the news that his ex-wife was married, and he was deeply saddened. Now she herself drove up to the prison, called him and gave him alms. They talked for about two minutes, both burst into tears and said goodbye forever. I saw his face when he returned to the barracks... Yes, one could learn patience in this place.

When it got dark, we were all taken to the barracks, where we were locked up for the whole night. It was always difficult for me to return from the yard to our barracks. It was a long, low, stuffy room, dimly lit by tallow candles, with a heavy, suffocating smell. I do not understand now how I survived in it for ten years. On the bunk I had three boards: that was my whole place. On the same bunk, about thirty people were accommodated in one of our rooms. In winter they locked up early; I had to wait four hours for everyone to fall asleep. And before that - noise, din, laughter, curses, the sound of chains, smoke and soot, shaved heads, branded faces, patchwork dresses, everything - cursed, defamated ... yes, a tenacious person! Man is a being who gets used to everything, and I think this is the best definition of him.

There were only two hundred and fifty of us in prison - the figure is almost constant. Some came, others finished their sentences and left, others died. And what people were not here! I think every province, every strip of Russia had its representatives here. There were also foreigners, there were several exiles, even from the Caucasian highlanders. All this was divided according to the degree of crimes, and therefore, according to the number of years determined for the crime. It must be assumed that there was no such crime that would not have had its representative here. The main foundation of the entire prison population was the exile-convict ranks of the civil (hard-labor, as the prisoners themselves naively pronounced). They were criminals, completely deprived of any rights of state, cut off chunks from society, with a branded face for eternal evidence of their rejection. They were sent to work for terms of eight to twelve years and then sent somewhere in the Siberian volosts to be settlers. There were criminals and a military category, not deprived of the rights of the state, as in general in Russian military prison companies. They were sent for short periods; at the end of them, they turned back to the same place they came from, into soldiers, into Siberian linear battalions. Many of them almost immediately returned to prison for secondary important crimes, but not for short periods, but for twenty years. This category was called "always". But the "permanent ones" were still not completely stripped of all status rights. Finally, there was another special category of the most terrible criminals, mainly military ones, quite numerous. It was called "special department". Criminals were sent here from all over Russia. They themselves considered themselves eternal and did not know the term of their works. They were required by law to double and triple their work lessons. They were kept at the prison until the opening of the most difficult hard labor in Siberia. "You've got a term, and we'll get along with hard labor," they said to other prisoners. I heard that this category has been destroyed. In addition, civil order was also destroyed at our fortress, and one general military prisoner company was opened. Of course, with this, the leadership also changed. I am describing, therefore, antiquity, things long past and past ...

It was a long time ago; I dream of all this now, as in a dream. I remember how I entered the prison. It was in the evening, in the month of December. It was already getting dark; people were returning from work; prepared to be trusted. The mustachioed non-commissioned officer finally opened the doors for me to this strange house, in which I had to stay for so many years, endure so many such sensations, about which, without actually experiencing them, I could not even have an approximate idea. For example, I could never imagine: what is terrible and painful in the fact that in all ten years of my penal servitude I will never, not for a single minute be alone? At work, always under escort, at home with two hundred comrades, and never, not once - alone! However, I still had to get used to this!

There were casual killers and killers by trade, robbers and chieftains of robbers. There were just Mazuriks and vagrants-industrialists on found money or in the Stolevskaya part. There were also those about whom it is difficult to decide: for what, it seems, they could come here? Meanwhile, everyone had his own story, vague and heavy, like the fumes from yesterday's hops. In general, they spoke little about their past, did not like to talk about it, and, apparently, tried not to think about the past. I even knew of them murderers so cheerful, so never thinking that it was possible to bet on a bet, that their conscience never reproached them. But there were also dark days, almost always silent. In general, few people told about their lives, and curiosity was not in fashion, somehow not in the custom, not accepted. So unless, occasionally, someone will talk from idleness, while the other listens coolly and gloomily. No one here could surprise anyone. "We are a literate people!" - they often said, with some strange self-satisfaction. I remember how once one robber, drunk (it was sometimes possible to get drunk in hard labor), began to tell how he stabbed a five-year-old boy, how he first deceived him with a toy, led him somewhere into an empty barn and stabbed him there. The whole barracks, hitherto laughing at his jokes, screamed as one man, and the robber was forced to be silent; the barracks did not cry out of indignation, but like that, because it was not necessary to talk about it, because it is not customary to talk about it. I note, by the way, that these people were really literate and not even figuratively, but literally. Probably more than half of them could read and write. In what other place, where the Russian people gather in large places, will you separate from them a bunch of two hundred and fifty people, of which half would be literate? I heard later that someone began to deduce from similar data that literacy is ruining the people. This is a mistake: there are completely different reasons; although one cannot but agree that literacy develops arrogance in the people. But this is by no means a disadvantage. All the ranks differed in dress: some had half of the jacket dark brown and the other gray, as well as on pantaloons - one leg was gray and the other dark brown. Once, at work, a Kalashny girl who approached the prisoners looked at me for a long time and then suddenly burst out laughing. “Fu, how nice it is!” she cried, “there was not enough gray cloth, and there was not enough black cloth!” There were also those whose entire jacket was of one gray cloth, but only the sleeves were dark brown. The head was also shaved in different ways: in some, half of the head was shaved along the skull, in others across.

At first glance, one could notice a certain sharp commonality in this whole strange family; even the sharpest, most original personalities who reigned over others involuntarily, and they tried to get into the general tone of the whole prison. In general, I will say that all this people - with a few exceptions of inexhaustibly cheerful people who enjoyed universal contempt for this - were a gloomy, envious people, terribly vain, boastful, touchy and in the highest degree formalist. The ability to be surprised at nothing was the greatest virtue. Everyone was obsessed with how to behave outwardly. But often the most arrogant look with the speed of lightning was replaced by the most cowardly. There were some truly strong people; those were simple and did not grimace. But a strange thing: of these real strong people there were several vain to the last extreme, almost to the point of illness. In general, vanity, appearance were in the foreground. Most were corrupted and terribly mean. Gossip and gossip were incessant: it was hell, pitch darkness. But no one dared to rebel against the internal charters and accepted customs of the prison; everyone obeyed. There were characters that stood out sharply, obeyed with difficulty, with effort, but nevertheless obeyed. Those who came to the prison were too presumptuous, too jumped out of the measure in the wild, so that in the end they did their crimes as if not of their own accord, as if they themselves did not know why, as if in delirium, in a daze; often out of vanity excited to the highest degree. But in our country they were immediately besieged, despite the fact that some, before arriving in prison, were the horror of entire villages and cities. Looking around, the newcomer soon noticed that he had landed in the wrong place, that there was no longer anyone to surprise, and he noticeably humbled himself and fell into the general tone. This general tone was formed from the outside out of some special dignity with which almost every inhabitant of the prison was imbued. As if, in fact, the title of convict, decided, was some kind of rank, and even an honorary one. No sign of shame or remorse! However, there was also some outward humility, so to speak official, some kind of calm reasoning: "We are a lost people," they said, "we did not know how to live in freedom, now break the green light, check the ranks." - "You did not obey your father and mother, now obey the drum skin." - "I did not want to sew with gold, now beat the stones with a hammer." All this was said often, both in the form of moralizing and in the form of ordinary sayings and sayings, but never seriously. All these were just words. It is unlikely that at least one of them confessed inwardly his lawlessness. Try someone who is not a convict to reproach a prisoner for his crime, to scold him (although, however, it is not in the Russian spirit to reproach a criminal) - there will be no end to curses. And what were they all masters of swearing! They swore subtly, artistically. Cursing was elevated to a science among them; they tried to take it not so much with an offensive word as with an offensive meaning, spirit, idea - and this is more subtle, more poisonous. Continuous quarrels between them further developed this science. All this people worked under duress, - consequently, they were idle, consequently, they became corrupted: if they had not been corrupted before, then they were corrupted in hard labor. They all gathered here not of their own free will; they were all strangers to each other.

"The devil took three bast shoes before he gathered us in one heap!" - they said to themselves; and therefore gossip, intrigue, women's slander, envy, strife, anger were always in the foreground in this pitch-black life. No woman was able to be such a woman as some of these murderers. I repeat, there were strong people among them, characters who were accustomed all their lives to break and command, hardened, fearless. These were somehow involuntarily respected; for their part, although they were often very jealous of their glory, they generally tried not to be a burden to others, did not enter into empty curses, behaved with extraordinary dignity, were reasonable and almost always obedient to their superiors - not out of principle obedience, not out of a state of duty, but as if under some kind of contract, recognizing mutual benefits. However, they were treated with caution. I remember how one of these prisoners, a fearless and resolute man, known to the authorities for his bestial inclinations, was called once for punishment for some crime. The day was summer, it's time for non-working. The staff officer, the nearest and immediate chief of the prison, came himself to the guardhouse, which was at our very gates, to be present at the punishment. This major was some kind of fatal creature for the prisoners; he brought them to the point that they trembled him. He was insanely strict, "rushed at people," as the convicts used to say. What they feared most in him was his penetrating, lynx-like gaze, from which nothing could be concealed. He saw without looking. Entering the prison, he already knew what was happening at the other end of it. The prisoners called him eight-eyed. His system was wrong. He only embittered already embittered people with his furious, evil deeds, and if there had not been a commandant over him, a noble and reasonable man, who sometimes tempered his wild antics, he would have caused great trouble with his administration. I don't understand how he could end well; he retired alive and well, although, by the way, he was put on trial.

The prisoner turned pale when he was called. As a rule, he silently and resolutely lay down under the rods, silently endured the punishment and got up after the punishment as disheveled, calmly and philosophically looking at the misfortune that had happened. However, he was always treated with caution. But this time he thought he was right for some reason. He turned pale and, quietly away from the escort, managed to stick a sharp English shoe knife into his sleeve. Knives and all kinds of sharp tools were terribly forbidden in prisons. The searches were frequent, unexpected and serious, the punishments were cruel; but since it is difficult to find it with a thief when he decides to hide something especially, and since knives and tools were a constant necessity in prison, then, despite the searches, they were not transferred. And if they were selected, then new ones were immediately started. All hard labor rushed to the fence and with a sinking heart looked through the cracks of the fingers. Everyone knew that Petrov would not want to go under the rod this time, and that the major had come to an end. But at the most decisive moment, our major got into the droshky and left, entrusting the execution of the execution to another officer. “God himself saved!” the prisoners later said. As for Petrov, he calmly endured the punishment. His anger passed with the departure of the major. The prisoner is obedient and submissive to a certain extent; But there is an extreme that should not be crossed. By the way: nothing could be more curious than these strange outbursts of impatience and obstinacy. Often a person endures for several years, humbles himself, endures the most severe punishments, and suddenly breaks through on some little thing, on some trifle, almost for nothing. On another view, one might even call him crazy; yes they do.

I have already said that for several years I did not see any slightest sign repentance, not the slightest painful thought about his crime, and that most of one of them internally considers himself absolutely right. It is a fact. Of course, vanity, bad examples, youthfulness, false shame are largely the cause of this. On the other hand, who can say that he has tracked down the depths of these lost hearts and read in them what is hidden from the whole world? But after all, it was possible, at such a young age, to notice at least something, to catch, to catch in these hearts at least some trait that would testify to inner longing, to suffering. But it wasn't, it wasn't positive. Yes, crime seems to be incomprehensible from given, ready-made points of view, and its philosophy is somewhat more difficult than it is believed. Of course, prisons and a system of forced labor do not correct the criminal; they only punish him and ensure society from further attempts by the villain on his peace. In the criminal, prison and the most intensified hard labor develop only hatred, a thirst for forbidden pleasures, and terrible frivolity. But I am firmly convinced that the famous cell system also achieves only a false, deceptive, external goal. It sucks the life juice out of a person, energizes his soul, weakens it, frightens it, and then a morally withered mummy, she presents a half-mad man as a model of correction and repentance. Of course, a criminal who rebels against society hates it and almost always considers himself right and him guilty. In addition, he has already suffered punishment from him, and through this he almost considers himself cleansed, getting even. Finally, one can judge from such points of view that it will almost be necessary to justify the criminal himself. But, in spite of various points of view, everyone will agree that there are such crimes that always and everywhere, according to various laws, have been considered indisputable crimes since the beginning of the world and will be considered such as long as man remains a man. Only in prison have I heard stories about the most terrible, most unnatural deeds, about the most monstrous murders, told with the most irresistible, with the most childlike laughter. I especially remember one parricide. He was from the nobility, served and was with his sixty-year-old father something like prodigal son. His behavior was completely dissolute, he got into debt. His father limited him, persuaded him; but the father had a house, there was a farm, money was suspected, and - the son killed him, thirsting for an inheritance. The crime was found only a month later. The killer himself filed a statement with the police that his father had disappeared to no one knows where. He spent the whole month in the most depraved way. Finally, in his absence, the police found the body. In the yard, along its entire length, there was a ditch for the drain of sewage, covered with boards. The body lay in this groove. It was dressed and removed, the gray-haired head was cut off, attached to the body, and the killer placed a pillow under the head. He did not confess; was deprived of the nobility, rank and exiled to work for twenty years. All the time I lived with him, he was in the most excellent, cheerful frame of mind. He was an eccentric, frivolous, unreasonable person in the highest degree, although not a fool at all. I never noticed any particular cruelty in him. The prisoners despised him not for a crime that was not even mentioned, but for stupidity, for not knowing how to behave. In conversations, he sometimes recalled his father. Once, speaking to me about a healthy constitution, hereditary in their family, he added: "Here is my parent, so he did not complain of any illness until his death." Such brutal insensitivity is, of course, impossible. This is a phenomenon; there is some lack of constitution, some bodily and moral deformity, not yet known to science, and not just a crime. Of course, I did not believe this crime. But people from his city, who should have known all the details of his history, told me all his business. The facts were so clear that it was impossible not to believe.

The prisoners heard him shouting one night in his sleep: "Hold him, hold him! Chop off his head, head, head! .. "

The prisoners almost all talked at night and raved. Curses, thieves' words, knives, axes most often came to their delirium on the tongue. "We are a beaten people," they said, "our insides are broken, that's why we scream at night."

State hard labor serf labor was not an occupation, but a duty: the prisoner worked out his lesson or served his legal hours of work and went to jail. Work was viewed with hatred. Without his special, his own occupation, to which he would be devoted with all his mind, with all his calculation, a person in prison could not live. Yes, and in what way is all this people, developed, very old and desiring to live, forcibly brought here into one heap, forcibly cut off from society and from normal life, could get along here normally and correctly, with his will and hunting? From mere idleness here such criminal qualities would have developed in him, of which he had not previously had the slightest idea. Without labor and without legitimate, normal property, a person cannot live, he becomes corrupted, turns into a beast. And therefore everyone in prison, due to natural need and some sense of self-preservation, had his own skill and occupation. The long summer day was almost entirely filled with government work; v short night barely had time to sleep. But in winter, the prisoner, according to the situation, as soon as it gets dark, should already be locked up in prison. What to do during long, boring hours winter evening? And therefore, almost every barracks, despite the ban, turned into a huge workshop. Actually work, occupation was not prohibited; but it was strictly forbidden to have tools with you in prison, and without this work was impossible. But they worked quietly, and it seems that in other cases the authorities did not look at it very closely. Many of the prisoners came to prison without knowing anything, but learned from others and then went free as good artisans. There were shoemakers, and shoemakers, and tailors, and carpenters, and locksmiths, and carvers, and gilders. There was one Jew, Isai Bumshtein, a jeweler, who is also a usurer. They all worked and got a penny. Work orders were obtained from the city. Money is minted freedom, and therefore for a person completely deprived of freedom, it is ten times more expensive. If they only jingle in his pocket, he is already half comforted, even though he could not spend them. But money can always and everywhere be spent, especially since the forbidden fruit is twice as sweet. And in hard labor one could even have wine. Pipes were strictly forbidden, but everyone smoked them. Money and tobacco saved from scurvy and other diseases. Work also saved from crime: without work, the prisoners would eat each other like spiders in a flask. Even though both work and money were forbidden. Often, sudden searches were made at night, everything forbidden was taken away, and no matter how the money was hidden, the detectives still sometimes came across. This is partly why they did not take care, but soon got drunk; that is why wine was also planted in prison. After each search, the culprit, in addition to losing his entire fortune, was usually punished painfully. But, after each search, shortcomings were immediately replenished, new things were immediately started, and everything went on in the old way. And the authorities knew about this, and the prisoners did not grumble at the punishment, although such a life was similar to the life of those who settled on Mount Vesuvius.

Who did not have skill, hunted in a different way. There were ways quite original. Others made their living, for example, by outbidding, and sometimes such things were sold that it would not have occurred to someone behind the walls of the prison not only to buy and sell them, but even to consider them things. But hard labor was very poor and extremely industrial. The last rag was valuable and was used in some business. Due to poverty, money in prison had a completely different price than in freedom. For a large and complex work paid pennies. Some were successful in usury. The prisoner, wound up and ruined, took his last belongings to the usurer and received from him some copper money for terrible interest. If he did not redeem these things on time, then they were immediately and ruthlessly sold; usury flourished to such an extent that even state-owned inspection items were accepted on bail, such as: state linen, shoe goods, etc. - things that every prisoner needs at any moment. But with such mortgages, another turn of affairs also occurred, not entirely unexpected, however: the one who pledged and received the money immediately, without long conversations, went to the senior non-commissioned officer, the nearest head of the prison, reported on the pawn of viewing things, and they were immediately taken from moneylender back, even without a report to the higher authorities. It is curious that sometimes there was not even a quarrel: the usurer silently and gloomily returned what was due, and even seemed to himself expecting it to be so. Perhaps he could not but admit to himself that in the place of the pawnbroker he would have done the same. And therefore, if he cursed sometimes later, then without any malice, but only to clear his conscience.

In general, everyone stole from each other terribly. Almost everyone had their own chest with a lock for storing government items. It was allowed; but the chests did not save. I think you can imagine what skillful thieves were there. I have one prisoner, a person sincerely devoted to me (I say this without any exaggeration), stole the Bible, the only book that was allowed to have in hard labor; he himself confessed this to me the same day, not out of repentance, but pitying me, because I had been looking for her for a long time. There were kissers who sold wine and quickly enriched themselves. About this sale I will say someday especially; she's pretty amazing. There were many people in the prison who came for smuggling, and therefore it is not surprising how, with such inspections and convoys, wine was brought to the prison. By the way: smuggling, by its nature, is some kind of special crime. Is it possible, for example, to imagine that money, profit, for a smuggler play a secondary role, stand in the background? In the meantime, this is exactly what happens. The smuggler works out of passion, by vocation. It's partly a poet. He risks everything, goes into terrible danger, cunning, inventing, extricating himself; sometimes even acts on some kind of inspiration. It is a passion as strong as a card game. I knew a prisoner in the prison, who was colossal in appearance, but so meek, quiet, and humble that it was impossible to imagine how he ended up in the prison. He was so mild-mannered and accommodating that he did not quarrel with anyone throughout his stay in prison. But he was from the western border, he came for smuggling and, of course, could not resist and set off to carry wine. How many times he was punished for this, and how he was afraid of the rod! Yes, and the very carrying of wine brought him the most insignificant income. Only one entrepreneur enriched himself from wine. The eccentric loved art for art's sake. He was whiny like a woman, and how many times, after punishment, he swore and swore not to wear contraband. With courage, he sometimes overcame himself for a whole month, but in the end he still could not stand it ... Thanks to these personalities, the wine did not become scarce in prison.

Finally, there was another income, although it did not enrich the prisoners, but it was constant and beneficial. This is an alms. The upper class of our society has no idea how merchants, philistines and all our people take care of the "unfortunate". Alms are almost uninterrupted and almost always in bread, rolls and rolls, much less often in money. Without these alms, in many places, it would be too difficult for the prisoners, especially the defendants, who are kept much stricter than the Reshons. Alms are religiously divided by the prisoners equally. If there is not enough for everyone, then the rolls are cut equally, sometimes even into six parts, and each prisoner will certainly get his own piece. I remember the first time I received money alms. This was soon after my arrival in prison. I was returning from morning work alone, with an escort. A mother and daughter walked towards me, a girl of about ten, as pretty as an angel. I've already seen them once. Mother was a soldier, a widow. Her husband, a young soldier, was on trial and died in the hospital, in the prison ward, at the same time that I was lying there sick. His wife and daughter came to say goodbye to him; both were crying terribly. Seeing me, the girl blushed and whispered something to her mother; she immediately stopped, found a quarter of a kopeck in the bundle, and gave it to the girl. She rushed to run after me ... "Here," unfortunate ", take Christ for the sake of a penny!" she shouted, running ahead of me and thrusting a coin into my hands. I took her kopeck, and the girl returned to her mother completely satisfied. I kept this penny for a long time.

"Notes from the House of the Dead" can rightly be called the book of the century. If Dostoevsky had left behind only one Notes from the House of the Dead, even then he would have entered the history of Russian and world literature as its original celebrity. It is no coincidence that critics assigned him, while still alive, a metonymic "second name" - "the author of Notes from the House of the Dead" and used it instead of the writer's surname. This book of Dostoevsky's books caused, as he accurately anticipated back in 1859, i.e. at the beginning of work on it, the interest was "the most capital" and became a sensational literary and social event of the era.
The reader was shocked by the pictures from the hitherto unknown world of the Siberian “military penal servitude” (military hard labor was harder than civilian), honestly and courageously written out by the hand of its prisoner, the master of psychological prose. "Notes from the House of the Dead" made a strong (albeit not the same) impression on A.I. Herzen, L.N. Tolstoy, I.S. Turgenev, N.G. Chernyshevsky, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, and others. To the triumphal, but behind the prescription of years, as if almost forgotten glory of the author of "Poor People", a mighty refreshing addition was added the glory of the newly appeared - the great martyr and Dante of the House of the Dead at the same time. The book not only restored, but raised Dostoevsky's literary and civic popularity to new heights.
However, the existence of "Notes from the House of the Dead" in Russian literature cannot be called idyllic. They were stupidly and absurdly censored. Their "mixed" newspaper and magazine first publication (the Russkiy Mir weekly and the Vremya magazine) stretched out for more than two years. The enthusiastic reception of the reader did not mean the understanding that Dostoevsky counted on. How upsetting he regarded the results of literary-critical evaluations of his book: "In criticism" 3<аписки>from Mert<вого>Houses "mean that Dostoevsky denounced the prison, but now it is outdated. So they said in the book<ых>stores<нах>, offering a different, more immediate exposure of prisons" (Notebooks 1876-1877). Criticism downplayed and lost the meaning of Notes from the House of the Dead. Such one-sided and opportunistic approaches to the "Notes from the House of the Dead" only as a "denunciation" of the penitentiary-hard labor system and - figuratively and symbolically - in general, the "house of the Romanovs" (V.I. Lenin's assessment), the institute state power have not been completely overcome to this day. The writer, meanwhile, did not focus on "accusatory" goals, and they did not go beyond the bounds of immanent literary and artistic necessity. That is why politically biased interpretations of the book are essentially fruitless. As always, Dostoevsky here, as a heart specialist, is immersed in the element of personality. modern man, develops his concept of the characterological motives of people's behavior in conditions of extreme social evil and violence.
The catastrophe that occurred in 1849 had grave consequences for the Petrashevsky Dostoevsky. Prominent connoisseur and historian of the royal prison M.N. Gernet terribly, but not exaggerating, comments on Dostoevsky’s stay in the Omsk prison: “One must be amazed how the writer did not die here” ( Gernet M.N. History of the royal prison. M., 1961. T. 2. S. 232). However, Dostoevsky took full advantage of the unique opportunity to comprehend up close and from within, in all details inaccessible in the wild, the life of the common people, constrained by hellish circumstances, and to lay the foundations of his own writer's national knowledge. “You are not worthy to talk about the people, you understand nothing about them. You did not live with him, but I lived with him,” he wrote to his opponents a quarter of a century later (Notebooks 1875-1876). “Notes from the House of the Dead” is a book worthy of the people (peoples) of Russia, entirely based on the grave personal experience writer.
The creative history of "Notes from the House of the Dead" begins with hidden entries in "my notebook of hard labor<ую>”, which Dostoevsky, violating the establishment of the law, led in the Omsk jail; from Semipalatinsk sketches "from the memoirs<...>stay in hard labor ”(letter to A.N. Maikov dated January 18, 1856) and letters of 1854-1859. (M.M. and A.M. Dostoevsky, A.N. Maikov, N.D. Fonvizina and others), as well as from oral stories in the circle of people close to him. The book was hatched and created for many years and surpassed in the duration of the creative time given to it. Hence, in particular, its genre-stylistic finishing, unusual for Dostoevsky in terms of thoroughness (not a shadow of the style of "Poor People" or), the elegant simplicity of the narration is entirely the peak and perfection of form.
The problem of defining the genre of Notes from the House of the Dead has puzzled researchers. In the set of definitions proposed for the Notes... there are almost all types of literary prose: memoirs, a book, a novel, an essay, a study... And yet, not one of them converges in the totality of features with the original. The aesthetic phenomenon of this original work consists in the inter-genre boundary, hybridity. Only the author of Notes from the House of the Dead was subject to the combination of document and targeting with the poetry of complex artistic and psychological writing that determined the stamped originality of the book.
The elementary position of the recollector was initially rejected by Dostoevsky (see the indication: "My personality will disappear" - in a letter to his brother Mikhail dated October 9, 1859) as unacceptable for a number of reasons. The fact of his condemnation to hard labor, well-known in itself, did not represent a plot forbidden in the censorship-political sense (with the accession of Alexander II, censorship indulgences were outlined). The figure of an invented man who was imprisoned for the murder of his wife could not mislead anyone either. In essence, it was an understandable mask of Dostoevsky the convict. In other words, the autobiographical (and therefore valuable and captivating) narrative about the Omsk penal servitude and its inhabitants in 1850-1854, although it was overshadowed by a certain look back at censorship, was written according to the laws artistic text, free from the self-sufficing and stubborn in the everyday personality of the recollector of memoir empiricism.
So far, no satisfactory explanation has been offered of how the writer managed to achieve harmonious conjugation in a single creative process chronicle writing (factography) with a personal confession, knowledge of the people - with self-knowledge, analytic thought, philosophical meditation - with epic imagery, meticulously microscopic analysis of psychological reality - with entertaining and concisely artless fiction, Pushkin's type of storytelling. Moreover, "Notes from the House of the Dead" was an encyclopedia of Siberian penal servitude in the middle of the century before last. The external and internal life of its population is covered - with the laconicism of the story - to the maximum, with unsurpassed fullness. Dostoevsky did not disregard a single undertaking of convict consciousness. Scenes from the life of the prison, chosen by the author for scrupulous consideration and unhurried reflection, were recognized as stunning: “Bath”, “Performance”, “Hospital”, “Claim”, “Exit from hard labor”. Their large, panoramic plan does not obscure the mass of details and details that are all-encompassing in their totality, no less poignant and necessary in their ideological and artistic significance in the general humanistic composition of the work (a penny alms given by a girl to Goryanchikov; etc.)
The visual philosophy of Notes from the House of the Dead proves that a “realist in the highest sense,” as Dostoevsky would call himself later, did not allow his most humane (by no means “cruel”!) talent to deviate one iota from the truth of life, no matter how hard-hitting and tragic it might be. neither was. book about dead house he courageously challenged the literature of half-truths about man. Goryanchikov the narrator (behind whom Dostoevsky himself visibly and tangibly stands), observing a sense of proportion and tact, looks into all corners of the human soul, not avoiding the most distant and gloomy. Thus, not only the savage-sadistic antics of prison mates (Gazin, Akulkin's husband) and ex officio executioners (lieutenants Zherebyatnikov, Smekalov) fell into his field of vision. The anatomy of the ugly and vicious knows no bounds. "Brothers in misfortune" steal and drink the Bible, tell "about the most unnatural deeds, with the most childlike laughter", get drunk and fight on holy days, rave in their sleep with knives and "Raskolnikov's" axes, go crazy, engage in sodomy (scabrous "partnership" to which Sirotkin and Sushilov belong) get used to every kind of abomination. One after another, from private observations of the current life of hard labor people, generalizing aphoristic judgments-maxims follow: “Man is a being who gets used to everything, and, I think, this is his best definition”; "There are people like tigers, thirsty to lick blood"; “It is hard to imagine how much human nature can be distorted,” etc. - then they will join the artistic philosophical and anthropological fund of the “Great Pentateuch” and “The Writer's Diary”. Scientists are right who believe not Notes from the Underground, but Notes from the House of the Dead, to be the beginning of many beginnings in the poetics and ideology of Dostoevsky, a novelist and publicist. It is in this work that the origins of the main literary ideological, thematic and compositional complexes and decisions of Dostoevsky the artist: crime and punishment; voluptuous tyrants and their victims; freedom and money; suffering and love; shackled "our extraordinary people" and nobles - "iron noses" and "fly-hounds"; the narrator-chronicler and the people and events he describes in the spirit of a confessional diary. In "Notes from the House of the Dead" the writer found a blessing for his further creative path.
With all the transparency of the artistic-autobiographical relationship between Dostoevsky (author; prototype; imaginary publisher) and Goryanchikov (narrator; character; imaginary memoirist), there is no reason to simplify them. A complex poetic and psychological mechanism is hidden and hidden here. It is rightly noted: "Dostoevsky typified his cautious fate" (Zakharov). This allowed him to remain in "Notes ..." himself, unconditional Dostoevsky, and at the same time, in principle, following the model of Pushkin's Belkin, not to be him. The advantage of such a creative "two-world" lies in the freedom of artistic thought, which comes, however, from actually documented, historically confirmed sources.
The ideological and artistic significance of the "Notes from the House of the Dead" seems immeasurable, the questions raised in them are innumerable. This is - without exaggeration - a kind of poetic universe of Dostoevsky, a brief edition of his full confession about a human. Here, the colossal spiritual experience of a genius who lived for four years “in a heap” with people from the people, robbers, murderers, vagabonds, is summed up directly, when in him, without getting a proper creative outlet, “inner work was in full swing”, and rare, from case to case, fragmentary entries in the "Siberian Notebook" only kindled a passion for full-blooded literary pursuits.
Dostoevsky-Goryanchikov thinks on the scale of the entire geographically and nationally great Russia. There is a paradox of the image of space. Behind the prison fence (“burnings”) of the House of the Dead, the outlines of an immense power appear dotted: the Danube, Taganrog, Starodubye, Chernigov, Poltava, Riga, St. Petersburg, Moscow, “a village near Moscow”, Kursk, Dagestan, the Caucasus, Perm, Siberia, Tyumen, Tobolsk , Irtysh, Omsk, the Kyrgyz "free steppe" (in Dostoevsky's dictionary this word is spelled with a capital letter), Ust-Kamenogorsk, Eastern Siberia, Nerchinsk, the port of Petropavlovsk. Accordingly, for sovereign thinking, America, the Red (Red) Sea, Mount Vesuvius, the island of Sumatra and, indirectly, France and Germany are mentioned. The living contact of the narrator with the East is emphasized (oriental motifs of the "Steppe", Muslim countries). This is consonant with the character multi-ethnicity and multi-confessionalism of "Notes ...". The arresting artel is made up of Great Russians (including Siberians), Ukrainians, Poles, Jews, Kalmyks, Tatars, "Circassians" - Lezgins, Chechens. Baklushin's story depicts the Russian-Baltic Germans. The Kirghiz (Kazakhs), “Muslims”, a Chukhonka, an Armenian, Turks, Gypsies, a Frenchman, a Frenchwoman are named and act to one degree or another in the “Notes from the House of the Dead”. In the poetically conditioned dispersion and interlocking of topoi and ethnic groups, there is its own, already "novel" expressive logic. Not only the House of the Dead is a part of Russia, but Russia is also a part of the House of the Dead.
The main spiritual conflict between Dostoevsky and Goryanchikov is connected with the theme of Russia: bewilderment and pain before the fact of the class alienation of the people from the noble intelligentsia, its best part. In the chapter "Claim" - the key to understanding what happened to the narrator-character and the author of the tragedy. Their attempt to take the side of the rebels in solidarity was rejected with deadly categoricalness: they are - under no circumstances and never - "comrades" for their people. The way out of penal servitude solved the most painful problem for all prisoners: de jure and de facto, prison captivity was put an end to. The ending of "Notes from the House of the Dead" is bright and uplifting: "Freedom, new life, resurrection from the dead... What a glorious moment!" But the problem of separation from the people, which was not envisaged by any of the Russian lawmakers, but which pierced Dostoevsky’s heart forever (“the robber taught me a lot” - Notebook of 1875-1876), remained. It gradually - in the desire of the writer to solve it at least for himself - democratized the direction creative development Dostoevsky and eventually led him to a kind of soil populism.
A modern researcher aptly calls Notes from the House of the Dead "a book about the people" (Tunimanov). Russian literature before Dostoevsky knew nothing of the kind. centering position folk theme in the conceptual basis of the book forces one to reckon with it in the first place. "Notes ..." testified to Dostoevsky's tremendous success in understanding the personality of the people. The content of Notes from the House of the Dead is by no means limited to what Dostoevsky-Goryanchikov personally saw and personally experienced. The other, no less significant half is what came to the Notes ... from the environment that tightly surrounded the author-narrator, by oral, "voiced" way (and what the corpus of records of the Siberian Notebook reminds of).
Folk storytellers, jokers, wits, "Petrovichi Conversations" and other Chrysostoms played an invaluable "co-author" role in artistic intent and implementation of "Notes from the House of the Dead". Without what they heard and directly adopted from them, the book - in the form in which it is - would not have taken place. Prisoner's stories, or "chatter" (an expression neutralizing censorship by Dostoevsky-Goryanchikov) recreate the lively - as if according to the dictionary of a certain cautious Vladimir Dal - the charm of folk colloquial speech of the middle of the century before last. The masterpiece inside Notes from the House of the Dead, the story Akulkin's Husband, no matter how stylized we may recognize it, is based on everyday folklore prose of the highest artistic and psychological merit. In fact, this ingenious interpretation of an oral folk tale is akin to Pushkin's Tales and Gogol's Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka. The same can be said about Baklushin's fairy tale romance story-confession. Of exceptional importance for the book are the constant narrative references to rumors, gossip, gossip, visits - grains of everyday folklore life. With appropriate reservations, "Notes from the House of the Dead" should be considered a book, to a certain extent told by the people, "brothers in misfortune" - so great in it specific gravity colloquial tradition, legends, stories, momentary living word.
Dostoevsky, one of the first in our literature, outlined the types and varieties of folk narrators, cited stylized (and improved by him) samples of their oral art. The Dead House, which, among other things, was also the "house of folklore", taught the writer to distinguish between storytellers: "realists" (Baklushin, Shishkov, Sirotkin), "comedians" and "buffoons" (Skuratov), ​​"psychologists" and "jokes" ( Shapkin), whipping "veils" (Luchka). Dostoevsky as a novelist could not have been more useful than the analytical study of the convict "Conversations of the Petrovichs", the lexicon-characterological experience that was concentrated and poetically processed in "Notes from the House of the Dead" came in handy and further nourished his narrative skill (Chroniker, biographer of the Karamazovs, writer in the diary, etc.).
Dostoevsky-Goryanchikov equally listens to his collaborators - "good" and "bad", "near" and "far", "famous" and "ordinary", "alive" and "dead". In his "estate" soul there are no hostile, "lordly" or squeamish feelings towards a commoner fellow prisoner. On the contrary, he reveals a Christian-sympathetic, truly "comradely" and "fraternal" attention to the masses of the people under arrest. Attention, unusual in its ideological and psychological predestination and ultimate goals - through the prism of the people to explain himself, and the person in general, and the principles of his life arrangement. It was caught by Ap. A. Grigoriev immediately after the release of "Notes from the House of the Dead" in the light: their author, the critic noted, "reached through a passive psychological process to the point that in the "Dead House" he completely merged with the people ... "( Grigoriev Ap. A. Lit. criticism. M., 1967. S. 483).
Dostoevsky did not write a dispassionately objectified chronicle of penal servitude, but a confessional-epic and, moreover, "Christian" and "edifying" narrative about "the most gifted, strongest people of all our people", about its "mighty forces", which in the House of the Dead "died in vain ". In the poetic folk philology of Notes from the House of the Dead, samples of most of the main characters of the late Dostoevsky the artist were expressed: “soft-hearted”, “kind”, “persistent”, “sympathetic” and “heartfelt” (Alei); native Great Russian, "most sweet" and "full of fire and life" (Baklushin); “Kazan orphan”, “quiet and meek”, but capable of rebellion in extremes (Sirotkin); "the most resolute, most fearless of all convicts", heroic in potency (Petrov); stoically suffering "for the faith", "meek and meek as a child" schismatic rebel ("grandfather"); "spider" (Gazin); artistic (Potseikin); "superman" of penal servitude (Orlov) - the entire socio-psychological collection human types, revealed in the "Notes from the House of the Dead" cannot be listed. In the end, one thing remains important: the characterological studies of the Russian jail opened to the writer the horizonless spiritual world of a man from the people. On these empirical grounds, Dostoevsky's novelistic and journalistic thought was updated and affirmed. Internal creative rapprochement with folk element, which began in the era of the House of the Dead, brought it to the formulated by the writer in 1871. " law turn to nationality.

The historical merits of the author of "Notes from the House of the Dead" to the national ethnological culture will be infringed if you do not pay focused attention to some other aspects folk life who found their discoverer and first interpreter in Dostoevsky.
The chapters "Performance" and "Convict Animals" are assigned a special ideological and aesthetic status in the "Notes ...". They depict the life and customs of the prisoners in an environment close to the natural, primordial, i.e. unscrupulous folk activity. The essay on the "folk theater" (the term was invented by Dostoevsky and entered the circulation of folklore and theater studies), which formed the core of the illustrious eleventh chapter of Notes from the House of the Dead, is priceless. This is the only one in Russian literature and ethnography that is so complete (“reporting-reporting”) and competent description of the phenomenon of the folk theater of the 19th century. - an indispensable and classic source on the history of Russia theatrical.
The drawing of the composition of "Notes from the House of the Dead" is similar to a hard labor chain. Shackles are the heavy, melancholy emblem of the House of the Dead. But the chain arrangement of links-chapters in the book is asymmetrical. The chain, consisting of 21 links, is divided in half just by the middle (unpaired) eleventh chapter. In the main weak-plot architectonics of Notes from the House of the Dead, chapter eleven is out of the ordinary, compositionally, highlighted. Dostoevsky poetically endowed her with an enormous life-affirming power. This is the pre-programmed climax of the story. With all the measure of talent, the writer here pays tribute to the spiritual power and beauty of the people. In a joyful impulse to light and eternal soul Dostoevsky-Goryanchikov, rejoicing, merges with the people's soul (actors and spectators). The principle of human freedom and the inalienable right to it triumphs. Folk art is set as a model, which the highest authorities of Russia can verify: “This is Kamarinskaya in all its scope, and it would be right if Glinka at least accidentally heard it in our prison.”
Behind the guarded palisade, its own, so to speak, "dungeon-convict" civilization has developed - a direct reflection, first of all, of the traditional culture of the Russian peasant. Usually the chapter on animals is viewed from a stereotypical angle: our smaller brothers share the fate of slaves with the prisoners, figuratively and symbolically supplement, duplicate and shade it. This is undeniably true. The animalistic pages really correspond with the bestial principles in people from the House of the Dead and outside it. But Dostoevsky is alien to the idea resemblance between human and animal. Both in the bestiary plots of Notes from the House of the Dead are connected by ties of natural-historical kinship. The narrator should not Christian traditions prescribing to see behind the real properties of creatures chimerical semblances of the divine or the devil. He is entirely in the grip of healthy, this-worldly folk-peasant ideas about animals that are close to people every day and about unity with them. The poetry of the chapter "Convict Animals" is in the chaste simplicity of the story about a man from the people, taken in his eternal relationship with animals (horses, dogs, goats and eagles); relations, respectively: loving-household, utilitarian-skuroderskih, amusing-carnival and merciful-respectful. The head-bestiary is involved in a single "passive psychological process” and completes the picture of the tragedy of life in the space of the House of the Dead.
Many books have been written about the Russian prison. From the "Life of Archpriest Avvakum" to the grandiose paintings of A.I. Solzhenitsyn and camp stories V.T. Shalamova. But the Notes from the House of the Dead remained and will remain comprehensively fundamental in this literary series. They are like an immortal parable or a providential mythologeme, a kind of all-significant archetype from Russian literature and history. What could be more unfair than to look for in them during the time of the so-called. "lie of Dostoevism" (Kirpotin)!
A book about Dostoevsky's great, albeit "unexpected" closeness to the people, about a kind, intercessory and infinitely sympathetic attitude towards him - "Notes from the House of the Dead" is primordially imbued with a "Christian human-folk" look ( Grigoriev Ap. A. Lit. criticism. P. 503) on an unsettled world. This is the secret of their perfection and charm.

Vladimirtsev V.P. Notes from the House of the Dead // Dostoevsky: Works, letters, documents: Dictionary-reference book. St. Petersburg: Pushkin House, 2008, pp. 70-74.

"Notes from the House of the Dead" is the pinnacle of Dostoevsky's mature non-novel work. The essay story “Notes from the House of the Dead”, based on the life material of which is based on the impressions of the writer’s four-year hard labor in Omsk, occupies a special place both in the work of Dostoevsky and in Russian literature. mid-nineteenth v.
Being dramatic and woeful in terms of problems and vital material, "Notes from the House of the Dead" is one of the most harmonious, perfect, "Pushkin" works of Dostoevsky. The innovative nature of "Notes from the House of the Dead" was realized in the synthetic and multi-genre form of the essay story, approaching the organization of the whole to the Book (Bible). The way the story is told, the nature of the narration from the inside overcome the tragedy of the event outline of the “notes” and leads the reader to the light of the “truly Christian”, according to L.N. Tolstoy, a view of the world, the fate of Russia and the biography of the main narrator, which is indirectly related to the biography of Dostoevsky himself. “Notes from the House of the Dead” is a book about the fate of Russia in the unity of concrete historical and metahistorical aspects, about Goryanchikov’s spiritual journey, like Dante’s wanderer in the Divine Comedy, overcoming the “dead” beginnings of Russian life with the power of creativity and love and gaining a spiritual fatherland ( House). Unfortunately, the acute historical and social relevance of the issues of "Notes from the House of the Dead" obscured its artistic perfection, the innovation of this type of prose, and the moral and philosophical uniqueness of both contemporaries and researchers of the 20th century. Modern literary criticism, despite great amount private empirical works on the problems and understanding of the socio-historical material of the book, takes only the first steps towards the study unique nature artistic integrity of "Notes from the House of the Dead", poetics, innovation author's position and the nature of intertextuality.
This article gives a modern interpretation of "Notes from the House of the Dead" through the analysis of the narrative, understood as a process of implementation of the author's holistic activity. The author of Notes from the House of the Dead, as a kind of dynamic integrating principle, exercises his position in constant fluctuations between two opposite (and never fully realized) possibilities - to enter the world he created, striving to interact with the characters as if they were living people (this technique is called “getting used to”), and at the same time to distance himself as much as possible from the work he created, emphasizing the fictitiousness, “composing” of characters and situations (a technique called by M.M. Bakhtin “alienation”).
Historical and literary situation in the early 1860s. with its active diffusion of genres, which gives rise to the need for hybrid, mixed forms, made it possible to implement in the "Notes from the House of the Dead" an epic of folk life, which, with some degree of conventionality, can be called an "essay story". As in any story, the movement of artistic meaning in Notes from the House of the Dead is realized not in the plot, but in the interaction of different narrative planes (the speech of the main narrator, oral convict narrators, the publisher, rumors).
The very name "Notes from the House of the Dead" does not belong to the person who wrote them (Goryanchikov calls his work "Scenes from the House of the Dead"), but to the publisher. The title seemed to meet two voices, two points of view (Goryanchikov and the publisher), even two semantic beginnings (specific chronicle: "Notes from the House of the Dead" - as an indication of the genre nature - and the symbolic-conceptual oxymoron formula "Dead House" ).
The figurative formula "Dead House" appears as a kind of moment of concentration of the semantic energy of the narrative and, at the same time, in the very general view outlines the intertextual course in which the author's value activity will unfold (from the symbolic name of the Russian Empire as the Necropolis by P.Ya. Chaadaev to allusions to the novels by V.F. Odoevsky "Dead Man's Mock", "Ball", "The Living Dead" and more - the topic is dead spiritless reality in the prose of Russian romanticism and, finally, to the internal controversy with the name Gogol's poem « Dead Souls”), the oxymoronism of such a name is, as it were, repeated by Dostoevsky on a different semantic level.
The bitter paradox of Gogol's title (the immortal soul is declared dead) is contrasted with the internal tension of the opposing principles in the definition of "Dead House": "Dead" due to stagnation, lack of freedom, isolation from big world, and most of all from the unconscious spontaneity of life, but still "home" - not only as housing, warmth of the hearth, shelter, sphere of existence, but also as a family, clan, community of people ("strange family"), belonging to one national integrity .
The depth and semantic capacity of the artistic prose of "Notes from the House of the Dead" is especially clearly revealed in the introduction about Siberia that opens the introduction. Here the result of spiritual communication between the provincial publisher and the author of the notes is given: at the level of plot-event understanding, it would seem, did not take place, however, the structure of the narrative reveals the interaction and gradual penetration of Goryanchikov's worldview into the style of the publisher.
The publisher, who is also the first reader of Notes from the House of the Dead, while comprehending the life of the House of the Dead, is simultaneously looking for a clue to Goryanchikov, moving towards an ever greater understanding of him not through the facts and circumstances of life in hard labor, but rather through the process of familiarization with the worldview of the narrator. And the measure of this initiation and understanding is recorded in Chapter VII of Part Two, in the publisher's report on future fate prisoner - an imaginary parricide.
But Goryanchikov himself is looking for the key to the people's soul through painfully difficult familiarization with the unity of people's life. Across different types consciousness refracts the reality of the House of the Dead: publisher, A.P. Goryanchikov, Shishkov, telling the story of a ruined girl (chapter "Akulkin's husband"); all these ways of world perception look at each other, interact, are corrected by one another, on the border of them a new universal vision of the world is born.
The introduction provides an outside view of Notes from the House of the Dead; it ends with a description of the publisher's first impression of reading them. It is important that both principles are present in the mind of the publisher, which determine the internal tension of the narration: it is an interest in both the object and the subject of the story.
“Notes from the House of the Dead” is a story of life not in a biographical sense, but rather in an existential sense, it is not a story of survival, but of life in the conditions of the House of the Dead. Two interrelated processes determine the nature of the narrative of "Notes from the House of the Dead": this is the story of the formation and growth of Goryanchikov's living soul, which takes place as he comprehends the living fruitful foundations of folk life, revealed in the life of the House of the Dead. The spiritual self-knowledge of the narrator and his comprehension of the element of the people takes place simultaneously. Compositional construction"Notes from the House of the Dead" is mainly determined by the change in the narrator's view - both by the laws of the psychological reflection of reality in his mind, and by the focus of his attention on the phenomena of life.
“Notes from the House of the Dead”, in terms of external and internal type of compositional organization, reproduces the annual circle, the circle of life in hard labor, comprehended as a circle of being. Of the twenty-two chapters of the book, the first and last are open outside the prison, in the introduction it is given Short story Goryanchikov's life after hard labor. The remaining twenty chapters of the book are built not as a simple description of hard labor, but as a skillful translation of the reader's vision, perception from the external to the internal, from the mundane to the invisible, essential. The first chapter implements the final symbolic formula "House of the Dead", the following three chapters are called "First Impressions", which emphasizes the personality of the narrator's holistic experience. Then two chapters are called "The First Month", which continues the chronicle-dynamic inertia of the reader's perception. Further, three chapters contain a multi-component indication of "new acquaintances", unusual situations, and colorful characters of the prison. Two chapters are culminating - X and XI ("The Feast of the Nativity of Christ" and "Performance"), and in the X chapter the deceived expectations of convicts about the failed internal holiday are given, and in the chapter "Performance" the law of the need for personal spiritual and creative participation is revealed, so that the real the holiday took place. The second part contains the four most tragic chapters with impressions of the hospital, human suffering, executioners, victims. This part of the book ends with the overheard story "Akulkin's Husband", where the narrator, yesterday's executioner, turned out to be today's victim, but did not see the meaning of what happened to him. The next five final chapters give a picture of spontaneous impulses, delusions, external actions without understanding the inner meaning of the characters from the people. The final tenth chapter, Exit from Hard Labor, marks not just the physical acquisition of freedom, but also gives Goryanchikov's inner transformation with the light of sympathy and understanding of the tragedy of people's life from the inside.
Based on all of the above, the following conclusions can be drawn: the narration in "Notes from the House of the Dead" develops a new type of relationship with the reader, in the essay novel the author's activity is aimed at shaping the reader's worldview and is realized through the interaction of the consciousnesses of the publisher, narrator and oral narrators from the people, inhabitants Dead house. The publisher acts as a reader of Notes from the House of the Dead and is both the subject and the object of a change in worldview.
The word of the narrator, on the one hand, lives in constant correlation with the opinion of all, in other words, with the truth of public life; on the other hand, it is actively addressed to the reader, organizing the integrity of his perception.
The dialogical nature of Goryanchikov's interaction with the horizons of other narrators is not aimed at their self-determination, as in the novel, but at revealing their position in relation to common life, so in many cases the narrator's word interacts with non-personalized voices that help shape his way of seeing.
The acquisition of a truly epic perspective becomes a form of spiritual overcoming of disunity in the conditions of the House of the Dead, which the narrator shares with the readers; this epic event determines both the dynamics of the narrative and the genre nature of Notes from the House of the Dead as an essay novel.
The dynamics of the narrator's narration is entirely determined by the genre nature of the work, subject to the implementation of the aesthetic task of the genre: from a generalized view from afar, "from a bird's eye view" to the development of a specific phenomenon, which is carried out with the help of comparison different points vision and identifying their commonality based on popular perception; Further, these developed measures of the people's consciousness become the property of the reader's inner spiritual experience. Thus, the point of view acquired in the process of familiarization with the elements of folk life acts in the event of the work as both a means and an end.
The nature of the author's activity in "Notes from the House of the Dead" is determined by the dialectical unity of the personal and non-personal principles, which organizes the whole narrative world.
Thus, the introduction from the publisher gives an orientation to the genre, removes the figure of the main narrator, Goryanchikov, and makes it possible to show him both from the inside and from the outside, as the subject and object of the story at the same time. The movement of the narrative within the "Notes from the House of the Dead" is determined by two interrelated processes: the spiritual development of Goryanchikov and the self-development of folk life, to the extent that this is revealed as the hero-narrator comprehends it.
The internal tension of the interaction of individual and collective worldview is realized in the alternation of the concrete momentary point of view of the eyewitness narrator and his own final point of view, distanced into the future as the time of the creation of "Notes from the House of the Dead", as well as the point of view of common life, which appears then in its concrete -everyday version of mass psychology, then in the essential being of the universal folk whole.

Akelkina E.A. Notes from the House of the Dead // Dostoevsky: Works, letters, documents: Dictionary-reference book. SPb., 2008. S. 74-77.

Lifetime publications (editions):

1860—1861 — Russian world. The newspaper is political, social and literary. Edited by A.S. Hieroglyphic. SPb.: Type. F. Stellovsky. Year two. 1860. September 1st. No. 67. P. 1-8. Year three. 1861. January 4th. No. 1, pp. 1-14 (I. Dead house. II. First impressions). January 11th. No. 3, pp. 49-54 (III. First Impressions). The 25th of January. No. 7, pp. 129-135 (IV. First Impressions).

1861—1862 — . SPb.: Type. E Praza.
1861: April. pp. 1-68. September. pp. 243-272. October. pp. 461-496. November. pp. 325-360.
1862: January. pp. 321-336. February. pp. 565-597. March. pp. 313-351. May. pp. 291-326. December. pp. 235-249.

1862 — Part one. SPb.: Type. E. Pratsa, 1862. 167 p.

1862 — Second edition. SPb.: Ed. A.F. Bazunov. A type. I. Ogrizko, 1862. Part one. 269 ​​p. Part two. 198 p.

1863 - St. Petersburg: Type. O.I. Bakst, 1863. - S. 108-124.

1864 — For upper middle classes educational institutions. Compiled by Andrey Filonov. Second edition, corrected and enlarged. Volume one. epic poetry. SPb.: Type. I. Ogrizko, 1864. - S. 686-700.

1864 -: nach dem Tagebuche eines nach Sibirien Verbannten: nach dem Russischen bearbeitet / herausgegeben von Th. M. Dostojewski. Leipzig: Wolfgang Gerhard, 1864. B. I. 251 s. B. II. 191s.

1865 — Revisited and updated by the author himself. Edition and property of F. Stellovsky. SPb.: Type. F. Stellovsky, 1865. T. I. S. 70-194.

1865 — In two parts. Third edition, revised and updated with a new chapter. Edition and property of F. Stellovsky. SPb.: Type. F. Stellovsky, 1865. 415 p.

1868 — Issue the first [and only]. [B.m.], 1868. - Notes from the House of the Dead. Akulkin husband. pp. 80-92.

1869 - For the upper classes of secondary educational institutions. Compiled by Andrey Filonov. Third edition, significantly revised. Part one. epic poetry. SPb.: Type. F.S. Sushchinsky, 1869. - Notes from the House of the Dead. Representation. pp. 665-679.

1871 - For the upper classes of secondary educational institutions. Compiled by Andrey Filonov. Fourth edition, significantly revised. Part one. epic poetry. SPb.: Type. I.I. Glazunov, 1871. — Notes from the House of the Dead. Representation. pp. 655-670.

1875 - For the upper classes of secondary educational institutions. Compiled by Andrey Filonov. Fifth edition, significantly revised. Part one. epic poetry. SPb.: Type. I.I. Glazunov, 1875. — Notes from the House of the Dead. Representation. pp. 611-624.

1875 — Fourth edition. SPb.: Type. br. Panteleev, 1875. Part one. 244 p. Part two. 180 s.

SPb.: Type. br. Panteleev, 1875. Part one. 244 p. Part two. 180 s.

1880 - For the upper classes of secondary educational institutions. Compiled by Andrey Filonov. Sixth edition (printed from the third edition). Part one. epic poetry. SPb.: Type. I.I. Glazunov, 1879 (in the region - 1880). — Notes from the House of the Dead. Representation. pp. 609-623.

Posthumous edition prepared for printing by A.G. Dostoevskaya:

1881 — Fifth edition. SPb.: [Ed. A.G. Dostoevskaya]. A type. brother. Panteleev, 1881. Part 1. 217 p. Part 2. 160 p.

Part one

Introduction

In the remote regions of Siberia, among the steppes, mountains or impenetrable forests, one occasionally comes across small towns, with one, many with two thousand inhabitants, wooden, nondescript, with two churches - one in the city, the other in a cemetery - cities that look more like a good suburban village than in the city. They are usually very adequately equipped with police officers, assessors and all the rest of the subaltern rank. In general, in Siberia, despite the cold, it is extremely warm to serve. People live simple, illiberal; orders are old, strong, consecrated for centuries. Officials who rightly play the role of the Siberian nobility are either natives, hardened Siberians, or visitors from Russia, mostly from the capitals, seduced by the salary that is not set off, double runs and tempting hopes in the future. Of these, those who know how to solve the riddle of life almost always remain in Siberia and take root in it with pleasure. Subsequently, they bear rich and sweet fruits. But others, a frivolous people who do not know how to solve the riddle of life, will soon get bored with Siberia and ask themselves with anguish: why did they come into it? They impatiently serve their legal term of service, three years, and after it has expired, they immediately bother about their transfer and return home, scolding Siberia and laughing at her. They are wrong: not only from official, but even from many points of view, one can be blessed in Siberia. The climate is excellent; there are many remarkably rich and hospitable merchants; many extremely sufficient foreigners. Young ladies bloom with roses and are moral to the last extreme. The game flies through the streets and stumbles upon the hunter itself. Champagne is drunk unnaturally much. Caviar is amazing. Harvest happens in other places fifteen times ... In general, the land is blessed. You just need to know how to use it. In Siberia, they know how to use it.

In one of these cheerful and self-satisfied towns, with the sweetest people, the memory of which will remain indelible in my heart, I met Alexander Petrovich Goryanchikov, a settler who was born in Russia as a nobleman and landowner, who later became a second-class exile for the murder of his wife, and, after the expiration of a ten-year term of hard labor determined for him by law, he humbly and inaudibly lived out his life in the town of K. as a settler. He was actually assigned to one suburban volost; but he lived in the city, having the opportunity to get at least some livelihood in it by teaching children. In Siberian cities one often comes across teachers from exiled settlers; they are not shy. They teach mainly the French language, which is so necessary in the field of life and which without them in the remote regions of Siberia would have no idea. For the first time I met Alexander Petrovich in the house of an old, honored and hospitable official, Ivan Ivanovich Gvozdikov, who had five daughters of different years who showed great promise. Alexander Petrovich gave them lessons four times a week, thirty silver kopecks a lesson. His appearance intrigued me. He was an extremely pale and thin man, not yet old, about thirty-five, small and frail. He was always dressed very cleanly, in a European way. If you spoke to him, he looked at you extremely intently and attentively, listened to your every word with strict politeness, as if pondering it, as if you had asked him a task with your questions or wanted to extort some secret from him, and, finally, he answered clearly and briefly, but weighing every word of his answer to such an extent that you suddenly felt uncomfortable for some reason, and you yourself finally rejoiced at the end of the conversation. I then asked Ivan Ivanovich about him and found out that Goryanchikov lives impeccably and morally, and that otherwise Ivan Ivanovich would not have invited him for his daughters, but that he is terribly unsociable, hiding from everyone, extremely learned, reads a lot, but speaks very little. and that in general it is quite difficult to talk to him. Others claimed that he was positively insane, although they found that in essence this was not such an important shortcoming, that many of the honorary members of the city were ready to show kindness to Alexander Petrovich in every possible way, that he could even be useful, write requests and so on. It was believed that he must have decent relatives in Russia, maybe not even the last people, but they knew that from the very exile he stubbornly cut off all relations with them - in a word, he hurt himself. In addition, we all knew his story, they knew that he killed his wife in the first year of his marriage, killed out of jealousy and himself denounced himself (which greatly facilitated his punishment). The same crimes are always looked upon as misfortunes and regretted. But, in spite of all this, the eccentric stubbornly avoided everyone and appeared in public only to give lessons.

I didn't pay much attention to him at first; but, I don't know why, he gradually began to interest me. There was something mysterious about him. There was no way to talk to him. Of course, he always answered my questions, and even with an air as if he considered this his first duty; but after his answers I somehow found it hard to question him longer; and on his face after such conversations there was always some kind of suffering and fatigue. I remember I was walking with him one fine summer evening from Ivan Ivanovich. It suddenly occurred to me to invite him over for a minute to smoke a cigarette. I cannot describe the horror expressed on his face; he was completely lost, began to mutter some incoherent words, and suddenly, looking angrily at me, rushed to run in the opposite direction. I was even surprised. Since then, when meeting with me, he looked at me as if with some kind of fear. But I did not let up; something drew me to him, and a month later, for no apparent reason, I myself went to Goryanchikov. Of course, I acted stupidly and indelicately. He lodged on the very edge of the city, with an old bourgeois woman who had a sick, consumptive daughter, and that illegitimate daughter, a child of ten years old, a pretty and cheerful girl. Alexander Petrovich was sitting with her and teaching her to read the minute I went in to see him. When he saw me, he became so confused, as if I had caught him in some kind of crime. He was completely at a loss, jumped up from his chair and looked at me with all his eyes. We finally sat down; he closely followed my every glance, as if he suspected some special mysterious meaning in each of them. I guessed that he was suspicious to the point of madness. He looked at me with hatred, almost asking: “Will you leave here soon?” I talked to him about our town, current news; he remained silent and smiled maliciously; it turned out that he not only did not know the most ordinary, well-known city news, but was not even interested in knowing them. Then I started talking about our region, about its needs; he listened to me in silence and looked into my eyes so strangely that I finally felt ashamed of our conversation. However, I almost teased him with new books and magazines; they were in my hands, fresh from the post office, I offered them to him not yet cut. He gave them a greedy look, but immediately changed his mind and declined the offer, responding with lack of time. Finally, I said goodbye to him and, leaving him, I felt that some unbearable weight had been lifted from my heart. I was ashamed and it seemed extremely stupid to pester a person who, precisely, sets his main task - to hide as far as possible from the whole world. But the deed was done. I remember that I hardly noticed his books at all, and, therefore, it was unfairly said about him that he reads a lot. However, driving twice, very late at night, past his windows, I noticed a light in them. What did he do, sitting up until dawn? Did he write? And if so, what exactly?

Circumstances removed me from our town for three months. Returning home already in the winter, I learned that Alexander Petrovich died in the autumn, died in seclusion and never even called a doctor to him. The town has almost forgotten about him. His apartment was empty. I immediately made the acquaintance of the owner of the dead man, intending to find out from her: what was her tenant doing especially and did he write anything? For two kopecks, she brought me a whole basket of papers left over from the deceased. The old woman confessed that she had already used up two notebooks. She was a gloomy and silent woman, from whom it was difficult to get anything worthwhile. She could tell me nothing particularly new about her tenant. According to her, he almost never did anything and for months did not open a book and did not take a pen in his hands; but whole nights he paced up and down the room and kept thinking something, and sometimes talking to himself; that he was very fond of and very fond of her granddaughter, Katya, especially since he found out that her name was Katya, and that on Catherine's day every time he went to someone to serve a memorial service. Guests could not stand; he went out from the yard only to teach children; he even looked askance at her, the old woman, when she, once a week, came at least a little to tidy up his room, and almost never said a single word to her for three whole years. I asked Katya: does she remember her teacher? She looked at me silently, turned to the wall and began to cry. So, this man could at least make someone love him.

I took his papers away and sorted through them all day. Three-quarters of these papers were empty, insignificant shreds or student exercises from copybooks. But then there was one notebook, rather voluminous, poorly written and incomplete, perhaps abandoned and forgotten by the author himself. It was a description, albeit incoherent, of a ten-year hard labor life, endured by Alexander Petrovich. In places this description was interrupted by some other story, some strange, terrible memories sketched unevenly, convulsively, as if under some kind of compulsion. I re-read these passages several times and almost convinced myself that they were written in madness. But the hard labor notes - "Scenes from the House of the Dead," as he himself calls them somewhere in his manuscript, seemed to me not entirely uninteresting. A completely new world, hitherto unknown, the strangeness of other facts, some special notes about the perished people carried me away, and I read something with curiosity. Of course, I could be wrong. On trial I choose first two or three chapters; Let the public judge...

I. Dead house

Our prison stood on the edge of the fortress, at the very ramparts. It happened that you looked through the cracks of the fence at the light of day: would you see at least something? - and only you will see that the edge of the sky and a high earthen rampart, overgrown with weeds, and sentries are walking back and forth along the rampart day and night, and you immediately think that whole years will pass, and you will just go to look through the cracks of the fence and you will see the same rampart, the same sentries, and the same little edge of the sky, not the sky that is above the prison, but another, distant, free sky. Imagine a large yard, two hundred paces long and one hundred and fifty paces wide, all surrounded by a circle, in the form of an irregular hexagon, with a high fence, that is, a fence of high pillars (pals), dug deep into the ground, firmly leaning against each other with ribs, fastened with transverse strips and pointed at the top: this is the outer fence of the prison. In one of the sides of the fence there are strong gates, always locked, always guarded day and night by sentries; they were unlocked on demand, for release to work. Behind these gates was a bright, free world, people lived, like everyone else. But on this side of the fence, that world was imagined as some kind of unrealizable fairy tale. It had its own special world, unlike anything else; it had its own special laws, its own costumes, its own manners and customs, and a dead house alive, life like nowhere else, and special people. It is this particular corner that I begin to describe.

As you enter the fence, you see several buildings inside it. On both sides of the wide courtyard stretch two long one-story log cabins. These are the barracks. Here live prisoners, placed by category. Then, in the depths of the fence, there is still the same log house: this is a kitchen, divided into two artels; further on there is a building where cellars, barns, sheds are placed under one roof. The middle of the yard is empty and makes up a flat, fairly large area. Prisoners line up here, checks and roll calls take place in the morning, at noon and in the evening, sometimes even several times a day, judging by the suspiciousness of the guards and their ability to quickly count. Around, between the buildings and the fence, there is still quite a large space. Here, on the backs of the buildings, some of the prisoners, more unsociable and gloomy in character, like to walk around after hours, closed from all eyes, and think their little thought. Meeting them during these walks, I liked to peer into their gloomy, branded faces and guess what they were thinking. There was one exile whose favorite pastime in his free time was counting pali. There were a thousand and a half of them, and he had them all in his account and in mind. Each fire meant a day for him; every day he counted one finger, and thus, by the remaining number of fingers not counted, he could clearly see how many days he still had to stay in prison before the deadline for work. He was sincerely glad when he finished any side of the hexagon. He had to wait for many more years; but in prison there was time to learn patience. I once saw a convict say goodbye to his comrades, who had been in hard labor for twenty years and was finally released. There were people who remembered how he entered the prison for the first time, young, carefree, not thinking about his crime or his punishment. He came out a gray-haired old man, with a gloomy and sad face. Silently he went around all our six barracks. Entering each barracks, he prayed to the image and then bowed low, to the waist, to his comrades, asking them not to commemorate him dashingly. I also remember how once a prisoner, formerly a prosperous Siberian peasant, was once called to the gate towards evening. Six months before this, he received the news that his ex-wife was married, and he was deeply saddened. Now she herself drove up to the prison, called him and gave him alms. They talked for about two minutes, both burst into tears and said goodbye forever. I saw his face when he returned to the barracks... Yes, one could learn patience in this place.

When it got dark, we were all taken to the barracks, where we were locked up for the whole night. It was always difficult for me to return from the yard to our barracks. It was a long, low, stuffy room, dimly lit by tallow candles, with a heavy, suffocating smell. I do not understand now how I survived in it for ten years. On the bunk I had three boards: that was my whole place. On the same bunk, about thirty people were accommodated in one of our rooms. In winter they locked up early; I had to wait four hours for everyone to fall asleep. And before that - noise, din, laughter, curses, the sound of chains, smoke and soot, shaved heads, branded faces, patchwork dresses, everything - cursed, defamated ... yes, a man is tenacious! Man is a creature that gets used to everything, and I think this is the best definition of him.

There were only two hundred and fifty of us in prison - the figure is almost constant. Some came, others finished their sentences and left, others died. And what people were not here! I think every province, every strip of Russia had its representatives here. There were also foreigners, there were several exiles, even from the Caucasian highlanders. All this was divided according to the degree of crimes, and therefore, according to the number of years determined for the crime. It must be assumed that there was no such crime that would not have had its representative here. The main basis of the entire prison population was the exile-hard labor ranks of the civil ( strongly hard labor, as the prisoners themselves naively pronounced). They were criminals, completely deprived of any rights of state, cut off chunks from society, with a branded face for eternal evidence of their rejection. They were sent to work for terms of eight to twelve years and then sent somewhere in the Siberian volosts to be settlers. There were criminals and a military category, not deprived of the rights of the state, as in general in Russian military prison companies. They were sent for short periods; at the end of them, they turned back to the same place they came from, into soldiers, into Siberian linear battalions. Many of them almost immediately returned to prison for secondary important crimes, but not for short periods, but for twenty years. This category was called "always". But the "permanent ones" were still not completely deprived of all the rights of the state. Finally, there was another special category of the most terrible criminals, mainly military ones, quite numerous. It was called "special department". Criminals were sent here from all over Russia. They themselves considered themselves eternal and did not know the term of their works. They were required by law to double and triple their work lessons. They were kept at the prison until the opening of the most difficult hard labor in Siberia. “You have a term, and we are long in hard labor,” they said to other prisoners. I heard later that this category was destroyed. In addition, civil order was also destroyed at our fortress, and one general military prisoner company was opened. Of course, with this, the leadership also changed. I am describing, therefore, antiquity, things long past and past ...

It was a long time ago; I dream of all this now, as in a dream. I remember how I entered the prison. It was in the evening, in the month of December. It was already getting dark; people were returning from work; prepared to be trusted. The mustachioed non-commissioned officer finally opened the doors to this strange house in which I had to stay for so many years, endure so many sensations that, without actually experiencing them, I could not even have an approximate idea. For example, I could never imagine: what is terrible and painful in the fact that in all ten years of my penal servitude I will never, not for a single minute be alone? At work, always under escort, at home with two hundred comrades, and never, never once! However, I still had to get used to this!

There were casual killers and killers by trade, robbers and chieftains of robbers. There were just Mazuriks and vagrants-industrialists on found money or in the Stolevskaya part. There were also those about whom it was difficult to decide: for what, it seems, they could come here? Meanwhile, everyone had his own story, vague and heavy, like the fumes from yesterday's hops. In general, they spoke little about their past, did not like to talk about it, and, apparently, tried not to think about the past. I even knew of them murderers so cheerful, so never thinking that it was possible to bet on a bet, that their conscience never reproached them. But there were also gloomy faces, almost always silent. In general, few people told about their lives, and curiosity was not in fashion, somehow not in the custom, not accepted. So unless, occasionally, someone will talk from idleness, while the other listens coolly and gloomily. No one here could surprise anyone. “We are a literate people!” they often said with a sort of strange self-satisfaction. I remember how once one robber, drunk (it was sometimes possible to get drunk in hard labor), began to tell how he stabbed a five-year-old boy, how he first deceived him with a toy, led him somewhere into an empty shed, and stabbed him there. The whole barracks, hitherto laughing at his jokes, screamed as one man, and the robber was forced to be silent; the barracks screamed not from indignation, but because didn't have to talk about it talk; because talking about it not accepted. By the way, I note that these people were really literate and not even figuratively, but literally. Probably more than half of them could read and write. In what other place, where the Russian people gather in large masses, will you separate from them a bunch of two hundred and fifty people, of which half would be literate? I heard later that someone began to deduce from similar data that literacy is ruining the people. This is a mistake: there are completely different reasons; although one cannot but agree that literacy develops arrogance in the people. But this is by no means a disadvantage. All the ranks differed in dress: some of them had half of the jacket dark brown and the other gray, as well as on pantaloons - one leg was gray and the other dark brown. Once, at work, a Kalashny girl who approached the prisoners looked at me for a long time and then suddenly burst out laughing. “Ugh, how nice! she shouted, “and the gray cloth was missing, and the black cloth was missing!” There were also those whose entire jacket was of one gray cloth, but only the sleeves were dark brown. The head was also shaved in different ways: in some, half of the head was shaved along the skull, in others across.

At first glance, one could notice a certain sharp commonality in this whole strange family; even the sharpest, most original personalities who reigned over others involuntarily, and they tried to get into the general tone of the whole prison. In general, I will say that all this people, with a few exceptions of inexhaustibly cheerful people who enjoyed universal contempt for this, were a gloomy, envious, terribly vain people, boastful, touchy and highly formalist. The ability to be surprised at nothing was the greatest virtue. Everyone was obsessed with how to behave outwardly. But often the most arrogant look with the speed of lightning was replaced by the most cowardly. There were some truly strong people; those were simple and did not grimace. But a strange thing: of these real, strong people there were several vain to the last extreme, almost to the point of illness. In general, vanity, appearance were in the foreground. Most were corrupted and terribly mean. Gossip and gossip were incessant: it was hell, pitch darkness. But no one dared to rebel against the internal charters and accepted customs of the prison; everyone obeyed. There were characters that stood out sharply, obeyed with difficulty, with effort, but nevertheless obeyed. Those who came to the prison were too presumptuous, too jumped out of the measure in the wild, so that in the end they did their crimes as if not of their own accord, as if they themselves did not know why, as if in delirium, in a daze; often out of vanity excited to the highest degree. But in our country they were immediately besieged, despite the fact that some, before arriving in prison, were the horror of entire villages and cities. Looking around, the newcomer soon noticed that he had landed in the wrong place, that there was no longer anyone to surprise, and imperceptibly humbled himself, and fell into the general tone. This general tone was formed from the outside out of some special, personal dignity with which almost every inhabitant of the prison was imbued. As if, in fact, the title of convict, decided, was some kind of rank, and even an honorary one. No sign of shame or remorse! However, there was also some outward humility, so to speak official, some kind of calm reasoning: “We are a lost people,” they said, “we didn’t know how to live in freedom, now break the green light, check the ranks.” - "You did not obey your father and mother, now obey the drum skin." “I didn’t want to sew with gold, now beat the stones with a hammer.” All this was said often, both in the form of moralizing and in the form of ordinary sayings and sayings, but never seriously. All these were just words. It is unlikely that at least one of them confessed inwardly his lawlessness. Try someone who is not hard labor to reproach the prisoner with his crime, scold him (although, however, it is not in the Russian spirit to reproach the criminal) - there will be no end to curses. And what were they all masters of swearing! They swore subtly, artistically. Cursing was elevated to a science among them; they tried to take it not so much with an offensive word as with an offensive meaning, spirit, idea - and this is more subtle, more poisonous. Continuous quarrels between them further developed this science. All this people worked under duress, consequently they were idle, consequently they became corrupted: if they had not been corrupted before, then they were corrupted in penal servitude. They all gathered here not of their own free will; they were all strangers to each other.

“The devil took down three bast shoes before he gathered us together!” they said to themselves; and therefore gossip, intrigue, women's slander, envy, strife, anger were always in the foreground in this pitch-black life. No woman was able to be such a woman as some of these murderers. I repeat, there were strong people among them, characters who were accustomed all their lives to break and command, hardened, fearless. These were somehow involuntarily respected; for their part, although they were often very jealous of their glory, they generally tried not to be a burden to others, did not enter into empty curses, behaved with extraordinary dignity, were reasonable and almost always obedient to their superiors - not from the principle of obedience , not from the consciousness of duties, but as if under some kind of contract, realizing mutual benefits. However, they were treated with caution. I remember how one of these prisoners, a fearless and resolute man, known to the authorities for his bestial inclinations, was called once for punishment for some crime. The day was summer, it's time for non-working. The staff officer, the nearest and immediate chief of the prison, came himself to the guardhouse, which was at our very gates, to be present at the punishment. This major was some kind of fatal creature for the prisoners, he brought them to the point that they trembled at him. He was insanely strict, "rushed at people," as the convicts used to say. What they feared most in him was his penetrating, lynx-like gaze, from which nothing could be concealed. He saw without looking. Entering the prison, he already knew what was happening at the other end of it. The prisoners called him eight-eyed. His system was wrong. He only embittered already embittered people with his furious, evil deeds, and if there had not been a commandant over him, a noble and reasonable man, who sometimes tempered his wild antics, he would have caused great trouble with his administration. I don't understand how he could end well; he retired alive and well, although, by the way, he was put on trial.

The prisoner turned pale when he was called. As a rule, he silently and resolutely lay down under the rods, silently endured the punishment and got up after the punishment, as if disheveled, calmly and philosophically looking at the misfortune that had happened. However, he was always treated with caution. But this time he thought he was right for some reason. He turned pale and, quietly away from the escort, managed to stick a sharp English shoe knife into his sleeve. Knives and all kinds of sharp tools were terribly forbidden in prison. The searches were frequent, unexpected and serious, the punishments were cruel; but since it is difficult to find a thief when he decided to hide something especially, and since knives and tools were a constant necessity in prison, then, despite the searches, they were not transferred. And if they were selected, then new ones were immediately started. All hard labor rushed to the fence and with a sinking heart looked through the cracks of the fingers. Everyone knew that Petrov would not want to go under the rod this time, and that the major had come to an end. But at the most decisive moment, our major got into the droshky and left, entrusting the execution of the execution to another officer. "God himself saved!" the prisoners said later. As for Petrov, he calmly endured the punishment. His anger passed with the departure of the major. The prisoner is obedient and submissive to a certain extent; But there is an extreme that should not be crossed. By the way: nothing could be more curious than these strange outbursts of impatience and obstinacy. Often a person endures for several years, humbles himself, endures the most severe punishments, and suddenly breaks through on some little thing, on some trifle, almost for nothing. On another view, one might even call him crazy; yes they do.

I have already said that for several years I did not see among these people the slightest sign of repentance, not the slightest painful thought about their crime, and that most of them inwardly consider themselves to be completely right. It is a fact. Of course, vanity, bad examples, youthfulness, false shame are largely the cause of this. On the other hand, who can say that he has tracked down the depths of these lost hearts and read in them what is hidden from the whole world? But after all, it was possible, at such a young age, to notice at least something, to catch, to catch in these hearts at least some trait that would testify to inner longing, to suffering. But it wasn't, it wasn't positive. Yes, it seems that crime cannot be comprehended from given, ready-made points of view, and its philosophy is somewhat more difficult than it is believed. Of course, prisons and a system of forced labor do not correct the criminal; they only punish him and ensure society from further attempts by the villain on his peace. In the criminal, prison and the most intensified hard labor develop only hatred, a thirst for forbidden pleasures, and terrible frivolity. But I am firmly convinced that the famous cell system achieves only a false, deceptive, external goal. It sucks the life juice out of a person, energizes his soul, weakens it, frightens it, and then a morally withered mummy, she presents a half-mad man as a model of correction and repentance. Of course, a criminal who rebels against society hates it and almost always considers himself right and him guilty. In addition, he has already suffered punishment from him, and through this he almost considers himself cleansed, getting even. Finally, one can judge from such points of view that it will almost be necessary to justify the criminal himself. But, in spite of various points of view, everyone will agree that there are such crimes that always and everywhere, according to various laws, have been considered indisputable crimes since the beginning of the world and will be considered such as long as man remains a man. Only in prison have I heard stories about the most terrible, most unnatural deeds, about the most monstrous murders, told with the most irresistible, with the most childlike laughter. I especially remember one parricide. He was from the nobility, served and was with his sixty-year-old father something like a prodigal son. His behavior was completely dissolute, he got into debt. His father limited him, persuaded him; but the father had a house, there was a farm, money was suspected, and - the son killed him, thirsting for an inheritance. The crime was found only a month later. The killer himself filed an announcement with the police that his father had disappeared to no one knows where. He spent the whole month in the most depraved way. Finally, in his absence, the police found the body. In the yard, along its entire length, there was a ditch for the drain of sewage, covered with boards. The body lay in this groove. It was dressed and removed, the gray-haired head was cut off, attached to the body, and the killer placed a pillow under the head. He did not confess; was deprived of the nobility, rank and exiled to work for twenty years. All the time I lived with him, he was in the most excellent, cheerful frame of mind. He was an eccentric, frivolous, unreasonable person in the highest degree, although not a fool at all. I never noticed any particular cruelty in him. The prisoners despised him not for a crime that was not even mentioned, but for stupidity, for not knowing how to behave. In conversations, he sometimes recalled his father. Once, speaking to me about a healthy constitution, hereditary in their family, he added: “Here my parent

. ... break the green street, check the ranks. - The expression has a meaning: to pass through the formation of soldiers with gauntlets, receiving a number of blows on the bare back determined by the court.

Headquarters officer, closest and immediate chief of the prison... - It is known that the prototype of this officer was V. G. Krivtsov, the parade-major of the Omsk prison. In a letter to his brother dated February 22, 1854, Dostoevsky wrote: “Platz Major Krivtsov is a scoundrel, of which there are few, a petty barbarian, a quarrel, a drunkard, everything that can only be imagined disgusting.” Krivtsov was dismissed, and then put on trial for abuse.

. ... commandant, a noble and reasonable man ... - The commandant of the Omsk fortress was Colonel A. F. de Grave, according to the memoirs of the senior adjutant of the Omsk corps headquarters N. T. Cherevin, "the kindest and most worthy person."

Petrov. - In the documents of the Omsk prison there is a record that the prisoner Andrey Shalomentsev was punished "for resisting the parade-major Krivtsov while punishing him with rods and uttering the words that he would certainly do something to himself or slaughter Krivtsov." This prisoner, perhaps, was the prototype of Petrov, he came to hard labor "for breaking the epaulette from the company commander."

. ... the famous cell system ... - The system of solitary confinement. The question of organizing solitary prisons in Russia on the model of the London prison was put forward by Nicholas I himself.

. ... one parricide ... - The prototype of the nobleman-“paricide” was D.N. Ilyinsky, about whom seven volumes of his court case have come down to us. Outwardly, in terms of events and plot, this imaginary “paricide” is the prototype of Mitya Karamazov in latest novel Dostoevsky.

This work by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky deals with the life and experience of being in prison of one main character, whose name was Alexander Goryanchikov. He was a fairly intelligent and well-mannered man who, by the will of fate, ended up in prison for the murder of his wife. And for all the ten years that the main character served in hard labor, he wrote his thoughts and reasoning in his notebook.

He called this institution the "Dead House" due to the fact that people there largely lose all their human qualities, conscience and sense of justice. Everyone lives by their own rules, someone tries to adapt to the circumstances, everyone earns in various ways. Completely different people gather in one place and are forced to live by the same rules. Only all people are different opposites, some are convicted illegally, and for some such punishment is not enough.

The protagonist draws certain conclusions for himself and decides that he will not change his life positions, trying thereby to improve their lives, to facilitate the conditions of existence. He never begs or complains about life. Just trying to live, while remaining human. In this institution, he finds only one friend for himself, this is a local dog. Periodically, he caresses and feeds her, giving the last for the animal. Later, of course, he became familiar with other people who got there, but he still tried to avoid many.

The prisoner also conveys the atmosphere of their life both on weekdays and on holidays. He tells about the joy of people who were allowed to take a bath before Christmas. About the church, which did not turn away from these people, trying to help them, if not financially, but to provide psychological support.

Alexander also talks about his treatment in the hospital. He also describes those corporal punishments that people receive and cannot resist.

The revolt that the prisoners staged and their joy for the improvement of living conditions and nutrition are also transmitted. For the entire time of stay in this institution, a person draws conclusions about a change in his character, about certain conclusions and mistakes.

This work teaches people to treat everything with a sense of their own pride and dignity, which will not break under any circumstances.

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• Summary of Mayakovsky Bath

  The story describes the time in the USSR, namely the 1930s. The main character is a scientist named Chudakov. The scientist tried to create a time machine. He had a friend Bicyclekin

• Summary Christmas tree with a surprise O. Henry

  In the story "Christmas Tree with a Surprise", the main character - a man named Cherokee - finds gold and invites friends to come and celebrate this event. People get together and decide to create a settlement near a precious metal deposit.

• Summary Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet

  The book describes the actions that happened in just 5 days. The book tells about 2 warring families Capulet and Montague. The reasons for the quarrel were not known to anyone. Although the quarrel was known to last about 2 generations

• Summary of Trifon Exchange

  Between mother-in-law Ksenia Fedorovna and daughter-in-law Elena Dmitrieva there was a long-standing enmity and mutual hostility without any reason. Over the years, she grew stronger and grew into scandals in the Dmitriev family.

• Summary of Shukshin Grinka Malyugin

  Grinka lived in a rural settlement. People considered him not a very normal person. But Malyugin did not pay attention to them and did what he considered right for himself. For example, he never went to work on Sunday.