The spiritual world of man in the works of Vasily Belov. Vasily Belov "Eves" - analysis A

Yuri Seleznev
CANUNA [Chapter from the book by Yu. Seleznev (1939 - 1981) “Vasily Belov. Reflections on the creative fate of the writer "(M.," Soviet Russia ", 1983).]

You can reread the first chapter of the novel "Eves" dozens of times, especially the beginning of it, and each time discover something new, fresh, deep in her poetry, akin in spirit and in artistic expressiveness to the poetics of the folk word of Gogol's "Evenings":
“Crooked Nose was lying on its side, and wide, like a spring flood, dreams surrounded him. In his dreams, he again thought of his free thoughts. I listened to myself and wondered: the world is long, many wonders, on both sides, on this and on that.
Well, and that side ... Which side, where is it?
Nasopyr, no matter how hard he tried, could not see any other side. There was only one white light, one disconnected. Only it was too big. The world expanded, grew, ran in all directions, in all sides, up and down, and the further, the faster. There was a black haze everywhere. Mingling with the fierce light, it passed into the distant azure smoke, and there, behind the smoke, even further away, now blue, now vat, now pink, now green layers moved apart; warmth and cold extinguished each other. Empty multi-colored versts swirled, swirled in depth and breadth ...
“And then what? - thought Nosopyr in a dream. “Further, then, apparently, God” ... Nosopyr ... wondered that there was no fear of God, only respect. God, in a white robe, sat on a painted pine throne, fingering some gilded bells with his calloused fingers ...
Nasopier sought reverence for secrets in his soul. Again he sketched the godly, on white horses, the army, with light pink cloaks on sloping, like a girl's shoulders, with spears and ensigns curling in azure, then he tried to imagine a noisy horde of unclean, these scoundrels with red mouths, galloping on stinking hooves.
Both those and others constantly strived for battles ... Again he returned to the land, to his quiet winter volost and to the growing bathhouse, where he lived as a bean, one on one with his fate ...
He also dreamed of what was or could be at any time! Right now, over the bathhouse in the cheerful purple sky, sad stars are herding, in the village and on the garden backs, crumbly soft snow sparkles, and the moon shadows from the farmsteads are rapidly moving across the street. Hares roam around the gumens, or even at the very bathhouse. They move their mustaches and silently, uselessly jump in the snow ...
... The moon shone through the window, but it was dark in the bathhouse, Nasopyr felt about to find an iron mower and split off a splinter. But the mower was not there. This again affects him, Bannushko ... Recently he has been indulging more and more often: he will take away the bast shoes, then he will cool the bath, then he will sprinkle tobacco in the salt.
- Well, well, give it back, - said Nosopyr amicably. - Put in place who they say ...
... Above, on the mountain, dozens of tall white smoke emanated to the sky native Shibanikha. All the surrounding villages were smoking around, as if crowded with frost. And Nosopyr thought: “See, it is ... Russia is drowning the stove. I also need it. "
Directly - one of the secondary heroes of the novel sees, feels, thinks, by no means a poet or thinker, not so much even a "typical representative" of the peasant mass, as an exception - a beggar, lonely old man who sold his house and now lives in a bathhouse. In a word, he is far from being an advanced spokesman for even general peasant "poetic views" on the world. But even the farm beekeeper Rudy Panko is far from the most advanced person of his era, but what would even Gogol himself mean without his Panko ... He, almost the first in new Russian literature, dared to show Russia, and through her and to the whole world, life "through the eyes" of an uneducated, "last" on the ladder of the social hierarchy of a common man, to tell about the world in his words - and how wonderful, multicolored and wide this world turned out to be. Of course, Gogol revealed to us not so much the individual ideas of a commoner, but - through these representations - precisely the poetic views of the people on the world as a whole. The secret of this transformation of the individual into the nation-wide is in the essence of the writer's talent, which Gogol himself defined as follows: “... true nationality does not consist in describing the sundress, but in the very spirit of the people. A poet can even be national even then, when he describes a completely foreign world, but looks at it through the eyes of his national element, through the eyes of the whole people, when he feels and speaks in such a way that his compatriots think that they themselves feel and say it ”.
Looking at the world through the eyes of even one of the peasants, Belov managed, at the same time, to open us a view of the world precisely “through the eyes of his national element, through the eyes of his people,” because in the concrete ideas of his hero, the general views of the people were reflected in the main, in the essential, as well , for example, as an unprofessional, but folk singer (the same Yashka Turok in Turgenev's "Singers") reflects in a song not personally composed by him the feeling of an entire people as much as his own.
At the heart of the above introductory chapter to "The Eves", this melody to the entire novel, lies a stable, millennia-old feeling of the world. This song with equal right could precede the narration about the events of the tenth, fourteenth, nineteenth centuries, not only the work about the northern village of the late twenties of our century. And this is natural - we have before us a kind of image of the peasant universe, and the universe, in turn, is an image of stability (not absolute immutability or static, but precisely - stability) of general laws, features, manifestations of the essence of the world (from the peasant world - the community to the world - the Universe ).
Here we have just "the whole world": from the concrete life of Nosopyr - the village bathhouse - to the world - "all Russia" and the World - Cosmos, which swirls deep and wide in empty multicolored versts; this is both the inner world of the soul, which he hears within himself, marveling at its many miracles, - and the world is the whole "white light", which is "too great." This is the world of Christian ideas, with its army of God on white horses, and the world is even more ancient - pagan; the world "that" and the world "this" ... The world is multicolored and multidimensional, moving and stable in its movement in breadth and depth. The world is contradictory, the world of fighting opposites and one, containing in this unity both "bright light" and "black darkness", "warmth and cold", extinguishing each other, "white army" and "a horde of unclean people", "God in a white mantle "- and almost real, making fun of the old man, like a kitten," banushka "...
Here, even the old man, who has cut himself off from the common life of the village, is not like a human, lonely, “alone with his fate,” at the same time continues to live one life with the whole village (and with all of Russia, because according to his peasant ideas, what is happening in his native village is happening in all of Russia, and what is happening in all of Russia will not escape his Shibanihu): “Russia stokes the stove. I also need ... "
Yes, we have before us the image of the "peasant universe". It is peasant. The author is by no means fond of its natural reproduction, its ethnographic copying in words. But he almost imperceptibly retains in the reader the feeling of a special structure of consciousness, of the worldview of his heroes. Recreating the spirit and meaning of this universe, Belov uses the folk-poetic, or, as we have already said, the “Gogol”, syllable: “Nosopyr ... again thought his free thoughts. I listened to myself and wondered: the world is long, many wonders, on both sides, on this and on that ... "- here it is the folk song poetics with its sound and semantic repetitions, creating a certain rhythm of mood, music of harmony (" I thought. .. thoughts ... long "); "Again ... their own free"; listen at least only to the bewitching rhythm of this one phrase: "... the world is long, many wonders ..." - and understand, feel that this is by no means the author's: I can do it and I want it so much, but something else is essential here is an echo, an echo of that mode of speech, which was supposed to reproduce the “mode of the universe”, and the music of the phrase should correspond to the “music of the spheres”: the same, in fact, the law is quite palpable in the ancient Slavic chants, in the construction of the phrase of solemn “Words "(As, for example," Words about Law and Grace "), etc. That is, we are dealing with a linguistic structure that reflects the" harmony of the universe "in the word and through the word. In Belov - I repeat - this is both the national and the peasant proper, and even the individually "nosopyryevsky" echo of the "universal harmony", the "peasant universe": "The world expanded, grew, ran in all directions", and suddenly something was not from the " "-" in all directions ", and then completely" nosopyryevskoe ":" And the further, the faster. " This word does not explode the "universe", but clarifies, reminds of a specific angle of view, its specific perception. And further: "Empty multicolored versts swirled, swirled in depth and breadth ..." And God himself is here - not only "in a white mantle", but also with "calloused fingers", sitting on a "painted pine throne" - "a peasant god ", Not so much reminiscent of the Old Testament, as" the old man Petrusha Klyushin, slurping a bastard after a bath "(italics mine. - Yu. S). This is again a "nosopyryevskaya", personal concretization, which does not differ, however, in essence, with the general peasant folk idea: only such a god, with calloused fingers, on a pine throne worked out by his own, Shibanov, skilled craftsman, could be the father of that Christ whose godfather the path was naturally linked in the peasant's consciousness with the "earthly cravings", with the fate of the plowman-warrior - Christ of the so-called "national gospel" (Old Russian "Word about how Christ plowed the earth with a plow"). Such a god easily and naturally got along with the pre-Christian, pagan banushka.
And these and other no less obvious extremes and contradictions, on the one hand, are in constant struggle and movement, and, on the other, - at the same time, in an equally obvious unity and even harmony of harmony.
Lad is the central concept of all Belov's work and the novel "Eves" in particular. Lad is the basis and essence of the "peasant universe" artistically recreated by the writer; this is the main law of its constitution, the interdependence of its movement and stability, its safety and unity. This is the moral center of the ideological and artistic world of Belov's "Kanunov".
Lad in "Kanuni" manifests itself precisely as the ideal of peasant life and life, but by no means as their idealization. In the same "song" there are a lot of details of this life, which speaks volumes: here is life in a growing bathhouse, and the memory of wintering out of need, and a cast iron that replaces Nosopyr not only a pot for cabbage soup, but also a samovar, here is a drying torch - the joy of long autumn and winter evenings, and the rustling of cockroaches in the walls ... Only this detail: “Nikita ... in an old man's fussy way climbed onto the stove ... rye "- testifies to how far the author of" Kanunov "is from idealizing the old village, from the poeticization of what is least amenable to poeticization in this everyday life, for which, oddly enough, our other critics reproached Belov more than once or twice.
Naturally, in the literary world of the writer, the harmony itself manifests itself in the word and only through the word of the writer. Lad realizes the integrity of a lofty, almost solemn, ascending word and word of everyday life, material, poetic and prosaic, author's and proper peasant, belonging to heroes, bookish and colloquial, common and local. Lad is the organizing center of all these opposing and interdependent linguistic elements, transforming them into the unity of the national Russian literary language. Perhaps this is precisely what Gogol was talking about, prophesied to us:
“Finally, our extraordinary language itself is still a mystery. It contains all the tones and shades, all the transitions of sounds from the hardest to the most delicate and soft; he is boundless and can, living like life, enrich himself every minute, learning on the one hand high words ... and on the other hand choosing apt names from his countless dialects scattered across our provinces, thus the same speech ascend to a height inaccessible to any other language, and descend to simplicity, a tangible sense of touch of the most incomprehensible person - a language that is already a poet in itself and which was not without reason forgotten for a while by our best society: it was necessary that we blurt out everything in foreign dialects rubbish, whatever stuck to us along with foreign education, so that all those vague sounds, inaccurate names of things - children of unexplained and confused thoughts that darken tongues - would not dare to darken the infant clarity of our language and would return to it, already ready to think and live with your own mind, not a foreign one. All this is still tools, more materials, more lumps, and precious metals in the ore, from which a different, powerful speech will be forged. This speech will pass through the whole soul and will not fall on barren ground. Our poetry will light up with the sorrow of an angel and, striking all the strings that are in a Russian person, will bring into the hardest souls the sanctity of that which no forces and tools can establish in a person; will call us our Russia, - our Russian Russia, not the one that rudely show us some leavened patriots, and not the one that strangled Russians summon to us from across the sea, but the one that she will extract from us and show in this way that every single one, no matter what different thoughts, images of upbringing and opinions, will say with one voice: “This is our Russia; we feel comfortable and warm in it, and now we are really at home, under our own roof, and not in a foreign land! "
We have already turned to Gogol more than once, speaking of Belov. And it is no coincidence. There is indeed a lot of Gogol in the work of our contemporary: not from Gogol, but from Gogol. One could cite whole episodes, scenes from the same "Eves", clearly comparable with Gogol's scenes from "Evenings" and "Mirgorod". I will not do this, firstly, because the readers themselves will easily discover Gogol in Belov, and secondly, the matter is not only in the scenes and episodes themselves, and not even in the related features of folk humor among both writers, and not in the reproduction of folk-festive traditions, representations, but in the structure of the folk-poetic speech itself for both. Yes, there is a lot in common and kindred here, although in every phrase of Gogol the element of the folk life of his native Little Russia, Ukraine, is full of luxury, and in Belov's is the harsh inconspicuousness of Northern Russia.
“The moon hung over my father’s chimney, high and clear, it flooded the village with golden-green gloom penetrating everywhere. Maybe into the very soul. He shone broadly and silently over the world "- a picture as Belov's as it is" Gogol's "- almost from" Terrible revenge "or" May night ". But: “And autumn walked on the Russian land ... As a strange woman of unknown age walks: along golden copses, between trees, gathering crunchy mushrooms in a hem” - this is already “northern”, in fact Belov. One could, it seems, and so to distinguish it. But you can't. It is impossible, because this specifically northern, "proper" or narrowly Belov poetics of life is in harmony with the "South Russian", in fact Gogol (meaning, of course, Gogol - the author of "Evenings" and "Mirgorod"), ascending to the harmony of the all-Russian figuratively -language element. As was the case with the "Central Russian" Turgenev, Tolstoy, Yesenin, the "North Russian" Prishvin, the "South Russian" Sholokhov, the "Petersburg" Dostoevsky, as with the same "Little Russian", as, incidentally, the "Petersburg" Gogol ...
In the general stylistic world of Belov's work, of course, the "Aksakov", and "Glebo-Uspensky", and "Pishvinsky", and "Sholokhov" strata are obvious, but nevertheless this style is most related in its folk-poetic principles, in my opinion , Gogol's style of "Evenings" and "Mirgorod". Both of them - each in its own way - from the same all-Russian source - the folk-poetic principle.
I do not want to say that all those hopes that Gogol placed (in the above final excerpt from his article "What, finally, is the essence of Russian poetry and what is its peculiarity") for the future Russian word have already been fully and completely justified. say, in the work of Belov, or, even more so, only in his work. But Belov is one of those of our contemporary writers, whose work is really on the way to the ideal of literature that Gogol outlined and predicted in the future:
“Other things are coming ... Just as during the infancy of peoples, she served to call the peoples to battle ... so now she will have to challenge a person to another, higher battle - to a battle no longer for our temporary freedom, rights and privileges, but for our soul ... Much remains to be done now ... to return to society what is truly beautiful and what has been expelled from it by the present senseless life ... Their very speech will be different; it will be closer and more akin to our Russian soul: our native beginnings will come out even more audibly in it ”.
For a truly Russian writer, the revolutionary democrat Belinsky argued, "Russia must be loved at the root, at the very core, at its foundation," and its root, its foundation is "a simple Russian man, in everyday language called a peasant and a peasant."
The founder of socialist realism, Gorky, continuing the same thought, pointed out: "We again need to think hard about the Russian people, to return to the task of cognizing its spirit."
In the harsh pre-war years, and especially during the Great Patriotic War, with all the certainty, the writers faced a task of enormous historical importance, about which Aleksey Tolstoy said: “The responsibility before the history of our Motherland has fallen heavily on us. Behind us is the great Russian culture, ahead are our immense riches and opportunities ... Homeland is the movement of the people through their land from the depths of centuries to the desired future, in which they believe and create with their own hands for themselves and their generations. It is ... an eternally born stream of people, carrying their language, their spiritual and material culture and unshakable faith in the legitimacy and indestructibility of their place on earth. "
That is why all the great writers of the past and present, one way or another, but could not and cannot get around in their work the problem of "knowing the spirit" of the people, including the peasantry, - the historical, spiritual and material basis and root of the entire people, their spirit. That is why the problem of the Russian countryside at one of the decisive moments of its thousand-year history - "on the threshold" of the revolutionary transition from the age-old traditional life to the new socialist way of life, not accidentally attracts serious contemporary artists, gives rise to many truly outstanding canvases - from the classic "Virgin Soil Upturned" Mikhail Sholokhov and “The Mirskaya Chalice” by Mikhail Prishvin until the recent “Men and Women” by Boris Mozhaev and “Drachunov” by Mikhail Alekseev. Writers feel the need and need for an objective, taking into account the experience of our time, artistic analysis of the past, identifying both positive and negative (the absence of any analogies of collective farm construction, forced by circumstances haste, excesses, acts of direct hostile leftist-Trotskyist distortion of party policy in attitude towards the "middle peasant" and towards the peasantry as a whole, etc., etc.) of the factors that determined the course of the revolution in the countryside. To comprehend and evaluate this past - not for its own sake, not in order to “correct” it retroactively, to pay tribute to whom, and to whom “for nuts”, but - having objectively understood the past, realistically assessing the present - these are, in principle, the meaning and purpose of any appeal of every great artist to history.
The modern and future fate of the Russian countryside, the peasantry as an essential component of that unity that we call the fate of the entire people, the fate of the Motherland, is the main problematic of Belov's work as a whole, which naturally led the writer to the need for an artistic study of the people in the era of the great revolutionary turning point in the countryside (novel "Eves" - the first book conceived by the writer of a multivolume work) and research of scientific and artistic ("Lad. Essays on folk aesthetics"). And, we repeat, the main key to understanding the problems, ideas and forms of artistic embodiment of "Kanunov", of course, must be sought in the idea of ​​his "Lada", which was not accidental for Belov.
Let us turn again to the "lead song" of the novel "Eves", to the image of its "peasant universe". We have already spoken about his insubordination to time, about stability, safety in all his internal struggles. However, if we carefully reread this "tune" again, we will feel some kind of vague anxiety, a sense of the nonrandomness of the accumulation of converging extremes that threaten the unity and integrity of this universe. Indeed: "The world ... was running away"; “There was a black haze everywhere. Mingling with the fervent light "; "Warmth and cold extinguished each other"; “Sad stars herd in the cheerful ... sky,” and so on, so that the image of a harmony in a state of some kind of crisis really begins to appear in our minds.
This image of the harmony in a state of crisis, "on the threshold", of course, is given in the "solo", as it were, in the same timeless generalization. But the whole chapter ends with a kind of translation of this timeless, generalized image into a concrete historical dimension: "It was the second week of Christmastide, Christmastide of the new one thousand nine hundred and twenty-eight." And this means that two weeks ago, the XV Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (held from December 2 to December 19, 1927) finished its work, indicating the course for the collectivization of agriculture. The novel "Eves" and portrays the state of the village on the eve of the most serious and decisive revolutionary transformations in its entire centuries-old history.
Is it necessary to see in "Eves" a kind of lamentation for the departing traditional village, a kind of commemoration for a dear heart, but still a dead man, or, perhaps, a kind of "worldly feast"? - let us recall the central image of the "worldly bowl" in the story of the same name by M. Prishvin - the bowl in which the traditional ideas of good and evil, beauty and ugliness are boiled over, so that it can pass through this worldly, universal fiery font only the most persistent, the most indestructible, which would become spiritual food for the renewed humanity in struggles ...
Yes, I am convinced that it is precisely this image of the “worldly cup” from Prisvin that is most closely related to the image of the “worldly feast” in the novel “Eves” with its weeping and joy, with its worries and hopes, with its struggles and triumph of the human in man, with overcoming evil with good.
But what creates, according to Belov, a crisis state “on the threshold” in his “Eves” that threatens the destruction of the harmony?
Before us is a village in that state when the new, Soviet (the second decade has passed since the victory of the October Revolution), and the old, traditionally peasant, get used to it, seek and find in the main agreement a single harmony of life. The Soviet government gave the peasant the main thing - land for eternal use, destroyed the exploitation of man by man, and even more so now, when the most dashing times of the civil war are over (the participation in which the overwhelming majority of the peasantry on the side of the revolution played an important role in the victory and strengthening of Soviet power during the whole country), the years of anxieties and doubts of "war communism" with its surplus appropriations, which were forced to lay a heavy burden first of all on the peasants' shoulders - now, when all this is already over, the Soviet power could not be perceived by the absolute majority of the peasantry as some kind of threat to its present or future state, hopes, aspirations. On the contrary, as the novel "Eves" also testifies, - it is the Soviet power that is regarded as the only one of its own, as the power that is capable and must defend peasant interests.
And yet we have before us in "Eves" the clearly felt state of the old peasant "harmony" - in anxiety, in a presentiment of discord.
Let's try to understand the other side of the problem: after all, we are already facing a Soviet, but not yet a collective farm village, a village on the eve of collectivization. Maybe this is the essence of the discord of the "peasant universe" of the novel? No. And here it is necessary to say with all certainty: the very idea of ​​collective land use and collective labor could neither frighten nor alienate the peasantry, and therefore bring serious discord into the world of their ideas. She could not even because, in spite of all her "private ownership instincts," all her striving for sole proprietorship, developed by reality under the conditions of the general bourgeois-private property temptation, the same peasant always knew that these aspirations were a fact, and not the truth, for the truth is that, according to his own people-peasant worldview, the land is “God’s”, that is, it cannot belong to anyone personally, but it is allowed to be used only by the one who yells it himself, abundantly watering it with his own sweat. In the idea of ​​collective farming, the peasant could not fail to see, though a new form, but nevertheless a traditional community for him - peace. And it is no coincidence that the most forward thinking, hardworking, strong, and therefore the most respected by "opchestm" men, after a short doubt and hesitation, as a rule, were among the first to sign up for the collective farm, setting an example for others, as evidenced by the novel by Vasily Belov "Eves".
What, then, is the root of all evil? What could threaten aesthetics; and the ethics of the peasant harmony?
Of course, even in itself the idea of ​​a completely peaceful, “okay” adaptation of the traditional village to socialism did not imply any idyll. Speaking "about the long agony of childbirth, inevitably associated with the transition from capitalism to socialism" [Lenin V. I. Poli. collection cit., v. 36, p. 476.], Lenin, as we see, was well aware of the possibilities and even the inevitability of the difficulties and costs of such a transition. However, as far as "Eves" is concerned, the essence of the matter here is clearly not in such difficulties and costs, the main conflict of the novel is not only in the natural gap between the possibility, the idea, the theory of collective farm development and the living, concrete embodiment of these same ideas and theories. It should not be forgotten that revolution - any revolution, including in the countryside - is carried out not only as the construction of the new in the struggle against the old. No less serious and significantly different from the above was the conflict between different, and fundamentally different, views on the goals, objectives, and therefore the forms and methods of building the new and - fighting the old.
The tasks, goals, forms and methods of socialist construction in the countryside, as is known, were developed by V.I. Lenin. Let us remember what Lenin's program was on this issue: “Hardly everyone understands,” he wrote in his work On Cooperation, “that now, since the October Revolution ... cooperation is acquiring absolutely exceptional significance in our country. There is a lot of fantasy in the dreams of the old co-operators ... But what makes them fantastic? The fact that people do not understand the fundamental fundamental significance of the political struggle of the working class to overthrow the rule of the exploiters. Now we have this overthrow, and now much of what was fantastic ... in the dreams of the old co-operators, is becoming the most unadorned reality. In our country, indeed, since the state power is in the hands of the working class, since this state power belongs to all the means of production, we, in fact, have only the task of co-operating the population. Under the condition of maximum cooperation, the socialism that previously caused legitimate ridicule, a smile, a disdainful attitude towards itself on the part of people who are justly convinced of the need for a class struggle, a struggle for political power, etc., achieves its goal by itself. " [Lenin V. I. Poly. collection cit., v. 45, p. 369.].
So, “... cooperation in our conditions quite often coincides with socialism” [Ibid., P. 375.], and therefore it will be “as simple as possible, easier and more accessible for the peasant” by “transition to a new order” [Ibid, p. 370.].
Secondly, the task of cooperation had to be solved, as they would say now, in a comprehensive manner, simultaneously with the task of creating in the countryside the material basis of communism and "the cultural development of the entire masses of the people." And “this requires a whole historical epoch. We can pass, at a good end, this era in one or two decades. But nevertheless it will be a special historical epoch, and without this historical epoch, without universal literacy ... and without a material basis for this, without a certain security, say, from poor harvest, from hunger, etc. - without this we have our own the goal cannot be achieved ”[Lenin V. I. Poli. collection co - .., v. 45, p. 372.]. Any haste, sweeping, haste in this matter, an attempt to solve it "by impetuosity or onslaught, agility or energy" is harmful and, "one might say, disastrous for communism" [Ibid, p. 391.]. “No,” writes Lenin. - We should start by establishing communication between town and country, without at all setting the preconceived goal of introducing communism into the countryside. Such a goal cannot be achieved now. Setting such a goal will harm the cause instead of benefit ”[Ibid., P. 367.].
And the whole program as a whole (which, as we know, was Lenin's testament), and these warnings were not accidental: the task of transitioning the countryside to the foundations of socialist management had to be solved, but the ways to solve it were too different.
Of course, Belov's novel does not pretend to be an artistic analysis of a specific historical situation in all its fullness and complexity, but outside of its understanding it is impossible to assess the completely ideological and problematic content of "Kanunov". The novel, as we have already repeated more than once, was written as if from the point of view of the peasants themselves, and they could hardly clearly perceive the complex general political and ideological situation: for them, say, the district commissioner Ignat Sopronov is to a large extent also a real power. and real politics. But it is precisely by his actions and statements that they should judge the attitude of the authorities towards themselves, towards the peasantry as a whole. What kind of power is Ignat Sopronov, who is assigned such a significant and, I would say, sinister role in the novel. By himself, he is an insignificant person, never distinguished by his love of work, having never done anything good to anyone. The peasants do not know for him any special merits before the Soviet power, he is not respected in the village, but he literally bursts into it shaking his revolver, looking for an enemy in everyone, because he needs enemies.
“Even in adolescence, his pride, strangled by past grievances, began to grow uncontrollably: his time, Ignakhino, had come ... But even now life seemed to him an unjust mockery, and he entered into a deaf, ever-growing enmity with her. He did not forgive people, he saw only enemies in them, and this gave rise to fear, he no longer hoped for anything, believed only in his own strength and cunning. And having believed in this, he became convinced that all people are the same as him, the whole world lives only under the sign of fear and strength ... Kindness was regarded as pretense and cunning "... Of course, he, Ignat Sopronov, was Like his fellow villagers, it is not easy to grasp the political essence of Trotskyism, but in his attitude to the world, to people, he is a ready instrument for introducing this very essence of Trotskyism into the traditional way of life in his native village. And, however, the politically "dark" peasants do not confuse the real power over them Ignachi and Soviet power, although they hardly know about Ignashkin's Trotskyism (like himself), perhaps they also do not know about the defeat of Trotskyism at the party congress ...
So he bursts into the church during the wedding of Pavel Pachin to Vera, deciding to immediately hold a rally right here, now, dedicated to helping the Chinese revolutionaries.
“Ignachi's voice broke, the people did not know what to do in amazement. Some of the teenagers giggled, some of the girls yelped, women whispered, some old men forgot to shut their mouths.
- Let's hold, comrades, a Shibanov meeting of citizens! I am as sent by the executive committee ...
“You were sent by the devil, not by the executive committee! - Evgraf said loudly.
- Lord, what have we lived to see ...
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
- Comrades, the appeal was signed by the executive committee of the MOPR ... "
What were the men supposed to feel? The world existed for thousands of years, there were both bad and good, there were times that were both unreliable and terrible, but it had never burst into them. : a bum, a loafer, a worthless man, Ignashka, - now the bosses are armed, and the hardworking men, respected by everyone, walk in enemies, and then there are all these unknown, but frightening: MOPR, APO, OGPU, VIK, KKOV, SUK, resolution, contracting, activation ... Hence the wary attitude towards life, towards the future, towards the present.
But what happened? Due to what circumstances did the worthless Ignashka suddenly become such a significant person, for whom the people are nothing, and he, Ignach, is everything?
"The people will say, and Sopronov will indicate ... The time is, you see, unreliable ..." - the peasants grumble. Yes, and the chairman of the VIK, Stepan Luzin, is heard preaching: “We ... will remake the whole of Russia. There will be no stone unturned from old Russia ... "But when the old party member, secretary of the provincial committee Ivan Shumilov invites him to read the" revelations of the Trotskyist "in order to somehow determine his position, the same Luzin admits:" I and Marx are something else I haven’t read everything, but you are thrusting Trotskyists into me ”... It is not only in the peasant universe that there is a disturbance in the minds of even the secretary of the provincial committee, so that, of course, it is not just Ignat that is the matter. Shumilov was primarily a party member. Never and nowhere did he doubt either the correctness of the Party cause, or the need for democratic centralism ... He not only respected, but also carried out exactly all the directives of the center. And until recently, he had no contradiction between what he needed and what he wanted. But now ... he began to dully feel this contradiction ... irritation was born from the fact that the latest directives really often contradicted each other ...
“There is probably no consensus in the current Politburo,” he shares his doubts with Luzin.
- Where is Stalin looking?
- Stalin, Stepan, in Moscow, for some reason, is considered right. And all the Politburo with him.
- All this Trotskyist tricks ... "
Trotskyist tricks really, as we know, cost dearly both the party, the state and the people.
Of course, it would be naive to reduce the entire complex of problems that have arisen in connection with the radical transformation of the countryside exclusively to the problem of Trotskyism. Here, as we have already said, the absence of any experience, and the tense internal (struggle against the kulaks), and the external situation, which dictated the need to carry out the party line on collectivizing the peasantry in the shortest possible time, and a certain kind of excesses, certainly affected, but - and just as unconditionally - all these problems could have been solved less painfully if a hostile force had not intervened in the historically predetermined course of events, consciously opposing itself to the party and the people, but trying to act on behalf of the party and the revolution.
Without understanding the essence of this problem, we can hardly count on an understanding of the ideological and problematic content of the novel "Eves".

INTRODUCTION

VASILY BELOV - RUSSIAN WRITER, RESEARCHER OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD OF MAN

BELOV'S FAIRY TALES AS A METHOD FOR STUDYING THE SPIRITUAL WORLD OF A MAN

ROMAN "CANUNA" - A DEEP RESEARCH OF THE SPIRITUALITY OF SOCIETY IN THE RETROSPECTIVE

... "CITY PROSE" VASILY BELOV AND THE PROBLEM OF REVIVAL OF THE LOST HARMONY OF THE SOUL IN THE BOOK "LAD"

CONCLUSION

LITERATURE

INTRODUCTION

“You had to live, sow grain, breathe and walk on this difficult land, because there was no one else to do all this ...” - the phrase crowning the story of Vasily Belov “Spring”. This "must" - as with many other Russian writers - comes from the springs of the nation's consciousness. Vasily Belov's word is always profound. His artistic thought, often turned to the past, is always internally modern, always directed at the main thing, "around which the soul walks" of a great writer, our contemporary. And if we really want to know our Motherland, today we cannot do without Belov, without his words about our native land. This increases relevancethe topic chosen for research.

An objectresearch: the work of Vasily Belov.

Thingresearch: the spiritual world of man in the works of Vasily Belov.

Targetresearch: defining the essence of the creative consciousness of Vasily Belov through the spiritual world of the heroes of his works.

On the way to the set goal, the following were solved tasks: to define the work of Vasily Belov as a tool for studying the spiritual world of man; to analyze the tales of Vasily Belov as a method for studying the spiritual world of a person; to consider the problems in the novel "Eves" from the point of view of a deep study of the spirituality of society in retrospect; to reveal the problems of the lost harmony of the soul in the "urban prose of Vasily Belov and its revival in the book" Lad ".

Methodsresearch: historical definition, artistic and aesthetic generalization.

The work was based on the works of L.F. Ershova, A. Malgin, A. Kogan, Yu. Seleznev, D. Urnov.

1. VASILY BELOV - RUSSIAN WRITER, RESEARCHER OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD OF MAN

Vasily Belov began as a poet and a prose writer. In 1961, the book of his poems "My Forest Village" and the story "Berdyayka Village" were published at the same time. Even earlier, individual poems, articles, essays and feuilletons of the writer appeared on the pages of regional newspapers of the Vologda Oblast.

The leitmotif of the book of poems by V. Belov is the images of the "alder side" and "pine village". In unassuming words, it tells about the Vologda region, dear to the heart of the poet, about the chills of the first awakened feeling, about a soldier returning to his father's house. Lyric and landscape sketches and genre pictures of rural life alternate with poems on historical themes ("Builders", "Grandfather", etc.).

When comparing the collection of poems with the story "Berdyayka Village", it is clearly seen that poetry in the ideological and thematic respect was noticeably ahead of early prose. The first story of V. Belov, written quite professionally, did not yet foreshadow the appearance of a significant artist. Motorism and descriptiveness prevailed in her over the analysis of the spiritual state of the heroes. The language of the author and the characters is habitually literary, does not have any special signs of northern Russian speech. In Berdyayk Village, the story is conducted only in one time dimension - today (later, V. Belov in the structure of one and the same work will often alternate pictures or reflections about the past and the present, giving a special historical depth to the narrative).

The artistic palette is incomparably enriched. Intimate movements of the heart and lofty universal human thoughts become subject to the writer. Lyricism is complicated by a psychological principle, and in the transmission of dramatic and even tragic collisions, everything is determined by noble restraint. Images of nature and human moods seem to overflow, flow into one another, creating a feeling of the unity of all that exists, which helps to see and reveal the relationship of the “thinking reed” with the surrounding living and inanimate world.

If the miniature "At Home" is a prose poem, then the story "Behind Three Portages" is a socio-analytical story that contains many years of observations and reflections of the writer about the life of a northern Russian village. The composition of the story is organized by the image of the road. It is also a symbol of life, a person's path from carefree youth to strict, demanding maturity.

In the story "Habitual Business" V. Belov gave examples of a daring search in the most promising direction. In the new story, the writer turns to a detailed analysis of the first and smallest unit of society - the family. Ivan Afrikanovich Drynov, his wife Katerina, their children, grandmother Evstolya - this is, in essence, the main object of research. The writer's focus is on ethical issues. Hence the desire to show the origins of the folk character, its manifestation at sharp turns in history. It would seem that abstract categories - duty, conscience, beauty - are filled in the new life conditions with a high moral and philosophical meaning.

The character of Ivan Afrikanovich, the protagonist of The Habitual Business, is not readable within the framework of the usual production prose. This is the Russian national character, as it was recreated by the classics of the 19th - early 20th centuries, but with new features that were formed during the period of collectivization. With the outwardly primitive nature of Ivan Afrikanovich, the reader is struck by the integrity of this personality, its inherent sense of independence and responsibility. Hence the hero's innermost desire to comprehend the essence of the world in which he lives. Ivan Afrikanovich is a kind of peasant philosopher, attentive and perceptive, able to see the world around him, the charm of northern nature in an unusually subtle, poetic, somehow fierce manner.

V. Belov is interested not so much in the production as in the spiritual biography of the hero. This is precisely what those critics who accused Ivan Afrikanovich of social passivity, "social infancy", primitivism and other sins failed to understand.

Belov's heroes just live. They live a difficult, sometimes dramatic life. They have neither mental nor physical breakdown. They can work for twenty hours and then smile with a guilty or shy smile. But there is a limit to their capabilities: they burn out prematurely. This happened with Katerina, the consolation and support of Ivan Afrikanovich. This can happen to him.

Belovsky's hero is not a fighter, but he is not an "existentialist" either. The artist's discovery was that he showed one of the typical manifestations of the Russian national character. And this was done by a writer who creatively mastered the heritage that was bequeathed to the classics.

The hero of "Habitual Business" stoically endures everyday troubles, but he lacks the courage to make a radical change in his destiny. His heroism is inconspicuous and unseen. During the Great Patriotic War, he was a soldier: "he drove into Berlin," six bullets pierced him through and through. But then the fate of the people and the state was decided. In ordinary peaceful conditions, especially when it comes to personal, he is quiet and inconspicuous. Ivan Afrikanovich loses his temper just once (when it comes to the information needed to leave for the city), but the hero's "rebellion" is worthless, the trip turns into a tragedy: Ivan Afrikanovich "repented" to leave his native place.

In the early stories ("Berdyayka Village", "Sultry Summer"), the plot is dynamic. In "Habitual Business" everything is different. The hero himself is unhurried and not fussy, and so is the course of the story. Stylish polyphony compensates for the weakening of plot intrigue. Instead of improving the actual methods of plotting, the writer chooses a different path - he creates a completely new manner of storytelling, where the tone is set not by the previous objectified method from the author, but by two others - skaz (lyric-dramatic monologue) and the form of improperly direct speech. The disclosure of the inner world of a person, modeling of character is carried out through the skillful interweaving of these two stylistic and speech elements. At the same time, the truly witchcraft power of the word contributes to a more complete revelation of the psychology of the image.

The transition to the tale can be explained by the desire for further democratization of prose, the desire, having overheard the speech of the people (remember the famous "dialogue" of Ivan Afrikanovich with the horse), only to faithfully convey it, which was also inherent in the masters of the tale in the 1920s.

Thus, the spiritual foundations of Vasily Belov's heroes lie in the proximity to nature, the earth, in the beneficial influence of labor.

2. BELOV'S FAIRY TALES AS A METHOD FOR STUDYING THE SPIRITUAL WORLD OF MAN

If in "Habitual Business" the historical background is present in the form of a folklore-fairytale synthesis (fairy tales of grandma Evstolya), then in "Carpentry Tales" history invades directly and directly. The publicistic beginning is noticeably increasing, and acute social problems are embodied not so much in the author's comments as in the fates of the main characters of the story - Olesha Smolin and Aviner Kozonkov.

Aviner Kozonkov is the type of person that Olesha and the author are critical of. The guardian of dogma, the bearer of such an infallible beginning, Aviner turns out to be a very vulnerable person, because he does not want to fulfill the first commandment of the peasantry - to work earnestly and zealously, frugally live. On the pages of the story, two morals, two visions of life collide. In the eyes of Kozonkov, his neighbor Olesha Smolin only for the fact that he does not want to separate Kozonkov's race - “class enemy” and “contra”.

Olesha Smolin, like the hero of "Habitual Business," is a kind of peasant sage. It is to him that the baton of Ivan Afrikanovich's thoughts about the meaning of being, about life and death passes. Are not familiar intonations heard in Olesha's inquiring words: “Well, okay, this very body will decay in the earth: the earth gave birth, the earth took it back. The matter is clear with the body. Well, what about the soul? This mind, well, that is, which I myself am, is this something where does it go? "

Olesha is often silent, listening to Aviner's rant, but he is not silent. Moreover, although in the final scene Konstantin Zorin sees his friends-enemies peacefully conversing, this reveals the contradictory complexity of life in which pro and contra, good and evil, whimsically mixed bad and good. The writer teaches us the wise comprehension of this difficult truth.

The tale (and "Carpentry Tales" were written in this manner) is a genre of inexhaustible possibilities. It is fraught with great potential as one of the specific varieties of comic storytelling. The early short stories of V. Belov "The Bell", "Three Hours to the Deadline", where the testing of the fairytale manner began, are also the first exits of the writer into the field of folk humor. A sly grin, an ironic intonation, a playful and sometimes sarcastic assessment of certain shortcomings and incongruities of life are the main signs of the comic style. In "Bukhtins of the Vologda scoundrels, in six themes" (1969), which, as the subtitle says, "are reliably recorded by the author from the words of the stove-maker Kuzma Ivanovich Barakhvostov, now a collective farm pensioner, in the presence of his wife Virineya and without her", in the story "They kiss Dawns "(1968-1973), the story" Fishing Bike "(1972) and other works revealed these sides of the talent of the writer.

In "Habitual Business" and "Carpenter's Tales", V. Belov's attention was attracted by an ordinary person, revealed in a chronological sequence of events, in ordinary, familiar conditions. There is nothing of this in the "Bukhtins of Vologda ...". The writer turns to a special kind of realism - semi-fantastic and daring, to grotesque situations, to the constant violation of external plausibility. The author also does not disdain openly farcical moments (scenes of folk festivities, matchmaking, marriage, etc.).

Thus, skazki as a type of Russian folk art provides richest opportunities for revealing the spiritual essence of a Russian person, a peasant and a toiler.

3. NOVEL "CANUNA" - A DEEP STUDY OF THE SPIRITUALITY OF SOCIETY IN THE RETROSPECTIVE

If the literature of the late 20s - early 30s focused its attention on the life of the south or central part of Russia, then V. Belov takes the Russian North with all the specifics of its local conditions. The peasants, awakened by the revolution from social lethargy, energetically reached for creative labor on their land. But gradually a conflict of creative and dogmatic thinking is brewing, a confrontation between those who plow and sow, chop down huts, and those who are pseudo-revolutionary, demagogic and hide their social dependency under the cover of leftist phrases. The unhurried canvas of the chronicle explodes from within with the intensity of passions and contradictions.

In "Eves" the human drama unfolds in its most direct manifestations. In the center of the plot is the confrontation between two characters - Pavel Pachin and his "ideological" antagonist Ignakhi Sopronov, unlike Ignakhi, who is indifferent to the land, works to the limit, and at the same time he poetically, spiritually perceives the world around him. "Old fatigue for many days" does not prevent him from getting up at dawn, smiling at the rising sun. Hence the deep roots of his kindness, the ability to sympathize with his neighbor and the inspiration of his plan - to create a mill not for himself, but for the whole neighborhood. Working to exhaustion at a construction site, Pachin draws here, "as if from a bottomless mine," and new strength. However, a rainy day is coming in the guise of a zealous Ignachi: the silent mill, which has not yet put on its wings, will never be set to work. Pavel Pachin is experiencing the bitterest of dramas - the drama of unrealized creative possibilities. Powerless is the perspicacious wisdom of Nikita's grandfather, who inspired Paul in difficult times. Everything: the determination to go to the end, and the ultimate dedication, and inspiration - crumbles to dust "from one piece of paper Ignakha Sopronov."

Orientation of people, torn off the ground, on "elevation" threatened in the future with unpleasant consequences. This is evidenced by the unfinished story of the commissioner Ignakha Sopronov, for whom the main thing is not work, not the respect of fellow villagers, but the position. And when it is not there, "anxiety and emptiness" remain. The epithet that is most often applied to Ignach is empty (“It was strange and empty in my heart.” “... The walkers on the wall tapped empty seconds"). There is no position (for adventurism and arbitrariness he was removed from the post of secretary of the Olkhovskaya party cell, expelled from the party) - and Sopronov is seized by a strange vacuum. After all, most of all Ignach does not like "messing around in the ground."

Although the life of peasants in the Vologda village of Shibanikhi is in the center of "Eves", the novel is extremely multi-layered. In the author's field of vision are workers' Moscow at the end of the 20s, and the rural intelligentsia, and the rural clergy. The artist's searching thought does not stop at the topical socio-political problems of the era. The desire to comprehend the essence of conflicts and contradictions on a global scale prompted the introduction into the structure of the novel of the image of a “manly intellectual” from the nobility - Vladimir Sergeevich Prozorov. Prozorov's haunted thoughts, his speeches are directed against nihilistic acts, schematization and simplification in determining the future paths of Russia. He resolutely does not accept the idea of ​​indiscriminate destruction of everything old: “Russia is not a Phoenix. If it is destroyed, it cannot be reborn from the ashes ... "

The novel is densely populated with episodic figures. And among them - a peasant from the distant village Afrikan Drynov in "oily, sweaty Budenovka"; Danila Pachin, ready to staunchly defend the pride of a working peasant; Akindin Sudeikin - a village wit and indefatigable ditty, a kind of distant descendant of buffoonery Russia; cunning and tight-fisted Bug; sedate Evgraf Mironov. In a word, in "Eves" for the first time, perhaps in our prose, such a peculiar scattering of original folk characters of the Russian North is captured.

Thus, "Eves" is based on a deep study of the history of our society in the 1920s, and at the same time, the novel is addressed to the present and to the future, helping to draw significant moral and aesthetic lessons from the past. The completeness of the depiction of reality is in harmony in "Eves" with the richness and variety of artistic means. The art of socio-psychological analysis has been deepened, whether it be the rural world or the life of a Moscow communal apartment, the tireless labor activity of a simple peasant or the contemplative-meditative way of life of a former nobleman. The resources of northern folklore and folk customs are unusually widely used: Christmastide, fortune-telling, wedding ceremony, orations, songs and ditties, legends and times, games with mummers, improvised performances. At homework and in the field, old songs are sung, at games and gatherings - sonorous ditties. The writer also does not pass by traditional beliefs: a brownie lives in a house, a banushko lives in a bathhouse, an ovinushko lives in a barn.

4. "CITY PROSE" VASILY BELOV AND THE PROBLEM OF REVIVAL OF THE LOST HARMONY OF THE SOUL IN THE BOOK "LAD"

belov spiritual city prose

In the 70s and 80s - the time of the search for a large epic form - the writer increasingly turns to the problems of urban life. The artist himself explained in one of his speeches the motives of this evolution: “I don’t think that there is any special village theme in literature. There can be no special village theme, there is a universal, national theme. A real writer who writes mainly about the city cannot but touch on the countryside, and vice versa, who writes mainly about the countryside, cannot do without the city. "

In the cycle of novellas and short stories "My Life", "Education by Doctor Spock", "Date in the Morning", "Chok-Payk" V. Belov explores the nature of a city dweller (often a former villager who has left the countryside forever). Urban life is subject to completely different rules and regulations. Lack of closeness to nature, breaking of established moral foundations - all this does not pass without a trace. Weaning a person from the earth is sometimes dramatic and not painful. Confusion of the soul, a feeling of discord, give rise to feelings of instability, disappointment.

The problem of the lost and unrecovered harmony also affected the artist's creative manner. The characteristic features of the emotionally rich, dense in its figurative fabric of Belov's prose wavered under the pressure of information content and descriptiveness. How can this be explained? The writer himself tried to answer this question: “For the harmonious development of a personality, nature is necessary, which is associated for me with the countryside. In the city, man is devoid of nature. If nature is necessary, therefore, sooner or later we will return to the village, because the city cannot give a person what the village can give. But even one village cannot give a person everything he needs. This is not only a difficult social, but also a philosophical question. "

The greatness of the technical achievements of the scientific and technological revolution cannot divert the artist's gaze from the inevitable, but not inevitable, losses and losses. The writer resurrects on the pages of the book about folk aesthetics "Lad" (1981) the world of human relations, alien to the spirit of the ruinous pursuit of quantity at the expense of quality and the environment itself. The book deals not only with what has left or is leaving rural life, but also about those moral and aesthetic constants over which time has no power.

The book "Lad" - not only observations and reflections on agricultural aesthetic ideas, but also the identification of the ideological and aesthetic foundations of the artist himself, primarily the principle of nationality. If in fictional prose V. Belov shows various facets of the Russian folk character, then in "Lada" the factors that historically participated in the formation of this character are traced. The author consistently investigates the life of the Russian peasant from the cradle to the "grave grass". V. Belov seeks to reveal "the elusive transition from compulsory, generally accepted labor to creative labor."

Whatever you take: plowing or spreading canvases for bleaching, blacksmithing or shoemaking - a sense of harmony and proportion prevailed everywhere. At the same time, everything was done sequentially, gradually, which determined an important character trait. Disregard for the past always takes cruel revenge. And not so much, perhaps, for the present generations, as for those to come.

Thus, the book "Lad" gives beauty, without which the ethics of the future is inconceivable. The book was written in one breath: its research pathos is spiritualized by a lyrical and soulful beginning. Historical memory is an invaluable heritage. "Lad" - "Red Book" of folk aesthetics, keeping the artistic memory of generations of peasants in the Russian North.

CONCLUSION

Vasily Belov began as a poet and a prose writer. The first story of V. Belov, written quite professionally, did not yet foreshadow the appearance of a significant artist. Unexpectedly freshly and in a new way, the novel by V. Belova of the first half of the 60s spoke to the reader. The artistic palette is incomparably enriched. Intimate movements of the heart and lofty universal human thoughts become subject to the writer. Lyricism is complicated by a psychological principle, and in the transmission of dramatic and even tragic collisions, everything is determined by noble restraint.

V. Belov is interested not so much in the production as in the spiritual biography of the hero. Belov's heroes live a difficult, sometimes dramatic life. But they have neither mental nor physical breakdown. Belovsky's hero is not a fighter, but he is not an "existentialist" either. The artist's discovery was that he showed one of the typical manifestations of the Russian national character.

The transition to the tale can be explained by the desire for further democratization of prose, the desire, having overheard the speech of the people, to faithfully convey it. The novel "Eves" (1976) is the first performance of V. Belov in the genre of a large epic form. The artist's thoughts about the fate of the country and the peasantry, the ways in which folk culture is destined to develop, received an in-depth substantiation here.

In the 70s and 80s - the time of the search for a large epic form - the writer increasingly turns to the problems of urban life. Weaning a person from the earth is sometimes dramatic and not painful. Confusion of the soul, a feeling of discord, give rise to feelings of instability, disappointment. The book "Lad" - not only observations and reflections on agricultural aesthetic ideas, but also the identification of the ideological and aesthetic foundations of the artist himself, primarily the principle of nationality.

LITERATURE

1.Belov, V. Kanuny. Stories and stories [Text] / V. Belov. - Ed. 2nd. - M .: Art. lit., 1990 .-- 543 p.

.Ershov, L.F. V. Belov [Text] / L.F. Ershov // Ershov, L.F. History of Russian Soviet Literature / L.F. Ershov. - Ed. 2nd, add. - M .: Higher. shk., 1988. - S. 473-487.

.Malgin, A. In search of "world evil" [Text] / A. Malgin // Literature and modernity: collection 24-25. Literature Articles 1986-1987. / Comp. And Kogan. - M .: Art. lit., 1989 .-- S. 267-299.

.Seleznev, Y. Vasily Belov [Text] / Y. Seleznev. - M .: Sov. Russia, 1983 .-- 144 p.

.Urnov, D. About near and far [Text] / D. Urnov // Literature and modernity: collection 24-25. Literature Articles 1986-1987. / Comp. And Kogan. - M .: Art. lit., 1989 .-- S. 249-266.

Vasily Belov's novel "Eves" is about collectivization in the Russian countryside. That is, about a turning point and in many ways a fatal event in Soviet history. We painfully feel the immediate and distant consequences of this event, experience and try to realize today. V. Belov was one of the first who, already in the 60s and 70s, tried in a new way, without rosy ideological glasses, to look at the history of collectivization, to truthfully outline its movement and turns. Therefore, the novel "Eves" has become not only a literary, but also a social fact.
The history of its creation and appearance is indicative. It dragged on for many years. For the first time, V. Belov's novel broke through to the reader in the early 70s - in a form cut down by censorship. And yet V. Belov managed to raise such questions that alarmed readers and critics. At the same time, it soon became clear that the social conflicts vividly depicted by Belov the artist caused the most controversial publicistic interpretations. The truth of history did not at all lie on the surface of events, and the path to truth did not promise easy discoveries.
It became clear that the author of "Habitual Business" and "Carpentry Stories" was preparing an unusual version of collectivization. The main, non-canonical meaning of this version was the perception of collectivization as a national and state tragedy. While working on the novel, which has not yet been completed, V. Belov offered a number of historical explanations for this tragedy. At the beginning of the second book of the novel, entitled "The Year of the Great Turning Point" ("New World", 1989, no. 3), we find a lot of harsh statements and assessments addressed to political figures of the 1920s and 1930s. Belov's interpretation of "Trotskyism" acquired a special acuteness ...
Much has been said about all this in the works of literary critics who responded in different years to V. Belov's novel. The compiler strove to present their opinions broadly enough. But by no means everything written by critics, sociologists, and publicists about "Eves" was included in this collection, strictly limited by its concept and volume. When selecting materials, preference was given to "monographic" works dedicated specifically to the Vedic novel. So the collection did not include, for example, the judgments of I. Zolotussky and I. Litvinenko, expressed in critical reviews, whose article "Closed Fracture" ("Far East", 1988, No. 6) turned out to be largely new and timely.
The controversy around "Eves" - for all its debatable zigzags and the most unexpected conclusions - is extremely instructive. This is one of the lessons of social identity in the 70s and 80s. Therefore, we will consider everything written by the writer and his critics as a spiritual fact that needs a holistic and sober analysis.
Verification of the versions proposed in the course of disputes about V. Belov's novel inevitably leads to the need for a thorough assessment of historical realities. On this path, the systematization of our ideas about collectivization and its social prerequisites is inevitable. The problem arises of comparing Belov's version with other literary versions of the “great breakthrough” - both modern and previous ones.
In prose of the 60s and 80s, V. Belov's novel is by no means the only work about collectivization. No less noticeable, for example, is the novel by B. Mozhaev "Men and Women", the works of S. Zalygin, K. Vorobyov, F. Abramov, I. Akulov, M. Alekseev, S. Antonov, V. Tendryakov attracted attention ... Critics who wrote about "Eves" repeatedly touched upon this layer of prose. As for the works of the 30s, written in hot pursuit of events, much has been forgotten in them. Meanwhile, a reminder of the versions of collectivization that arose at the very moment of its implementation is also a natural step on the path of understanding that era, that tragic time.
That is why my task, as the compiler of this collection, I see not only in presenting the range of responses of modern critics about the novel by V. Belov. It is no less important, in my opinion, to reconstruct some historical and literary facts that are directly related to today's controversy about the “great turning point”. Therefore, in conclusion of the collection I offer my experience of the historical and literary "commentary".
The reader of the collection will hear the voice of Vasily Belov himself, reflecting in one of the interviews about his plans and creative approaches to "Eves", will hear today's and come from "yesterday", sometimes in hot pursuit expressed, judgments of writers, critics, publicists about this novel. Judgments, which, colliding with each other through quite distant years, pushing the boundaries of various periodicals, create in the aggregate a kind of correspondence "round table" dedicated to the interpretation of V. Belov's novel from different points of view.

Vasya Li Belov - Vladimir Stetsenko
I WOULD LIKE TO PROTECT OWN LANDS, KIND AND CLOSE ... [Fragments from a conversation with V. Belov, published in the book: Writer and Time. M., "Soviet Writer", 1986.]

V. Stetsenko. Vasily Ivanovich! You started out as a poet, in many theaters your plays Above Bright Water, Po 206, Immortal Koschey are staged, and a book about the folk aesthetics “Lad” was recently published in Molodaya Gvardia with unique color photographs by Anatoly Zabolotsky. Until now, disputes about your "urban" stories, about "Eves" - a village chronicle of the late 1920s, do not cease. But for the majority of readers your name is primarily associated with the novella "Habitual Business", as, say, the name of Sholokhov - with "Quiet Don". It seems to me that this story, published twenty years ago in the Sever magazine, not only brought you fame, but also marked a new stage in Russian fiction, which tells about the modern village. I remember what a strong impression she made on the Moscow writers. Question: "Have you read Habitual Business?" - sounded then almost instead of a greeting. Critics, when they write about "country" prose, certainly return to "Habitual Business."
The story, although small, seems to be all-encompassing and monumental, uncomplicated and wise at the same time. People's characters are given in epic simplicity, without idealization and without oversimplification, with full confidence in the moral basis of peasant life, which you know from within.
In a sense, the young "village breeders" could say that they left the "Habitual Business".
V. Belov. I disagree with this interpretation. I believe that the sober analytical tradition of Russian village prose has not been interrupted, it, at the very least, has always lived. I remember reading the novels of Fyodor Abramov "Brothers and Sisters" and "Fatherlessness". These were amazing discoveries for me! It was simply not clear how it was possible to write such a bitter truth immediately after the war! I read these books on the recommendation of my brother Yuri. He says: read the books, this is written about our family. And for sure! I read, like everything about our family, even everything in detail, right down to the cow! I was shocked when I read these books. But he was an adult. Already served in the army. I have not read anything like it anywhere. It turned out that you can write the truth about collective farm life!
V.S. The tradition of a truthful portrayal of village life was not really interrupted. There were excellent essayists - Valentin Ovechkin, Efim Dorosh, Georgy Radov, Leonid Ivanov ...
Publicism "invaded" the life of the post-war village, but fictional prose did not shy away from varnishing, sometimes preferring to write not what was, but what should have been ... And, I remember, I was also shocked: a young rural poet, but shows such penetration into the innermost depths of the life of the people.
VB Excuse me, at the age of sixteen a person should be an adult! And if we talk about predecessors ... This is not only Abramov. Yashin's "Levers" were written. And published. That also meant something. Not only for me, but for all literature. Yashin stunned me with his truthfulness and journalism. This was the fifty-sixth year. And plus to that Ovechkin's essays. They seemed not very interesting in the artistic sense, but in the journalistic and ideological sense, they just turned me around. There were Tendryakov's "Ukhabs", there were ... There was a lot of something! And they are not "villagers" at all! Just writers. They wrote the truth about social phenomena. That's all. Our critics are adept at inventing new terms. (...)
I know good things appear out of the blue and without any plan.
VS Is this some kind of inspiration, a revelation?
VB I, for example, believe in inspiration, I believe, although I myself do not know what it is. The condition itself is special ...
V.S.Titsian Tabidze tried to explain this:

I don't write poetry. They, like a story, write
Me, and life's course accompanies them.
What is the verse? The collapse of the snow ... dies - and breathes from the place,
And bury him alive. That's the verse.

You walk - and suddenly ... As if someone is whispering to you ... Write it down! And you didn’t think about anything like that at that moment!
VB There are many different states. And there are unexplained states.
V.S. But when did you feel that you need to get down to work, what precedes it? Or do you just sit down - and, as they say, "not a day without a line"?
VB No. What are you! Just a special state comes when you can work. And before that - I didn't even remember these states - before I always wanted to work. Now the age is not the same. You need to cherish the periods when you can. It probably depends on your health condition or atmospheric pressure ...
Q. Do you have a way to keep it up and running?
VB No, in my opinion, no. A normal lifestyle is needed. Silence is needed. Calm is needed. What kind of work can be if, for example, they demand to go to a meeting or go somewhere to a plenum. Or you go on a train, live in a hotel. And the calls are incessant. In order to work, you need to come to a normal, balanced state. And then, perhaps, you will want to write ... That is, of course, you can create such an environment artificially. How? So that there were no hindrances, so that no one was chasing me - to go somewhere, to heat a bath alone, to go picking mushrooms in the forest, and then a normal human state appears.
V. S. Do you consider this an artificially created state?
VB Well, of course. To some extent artificial. Everyday life is connected with gimmicks, with all sorts of family and administrative matters. All sorts of things happen. And he; is not conducive to work, this life. A condition can be created artificially. Just retire. For example, I wrote the tale of "Immortal Koschei" in three weeks. Because there were no acquaintances in Koktebel, except for Yulia Drunina and her husband, the director. I felt free and calm, and therefore worked. But in the summer in Pitsunda - what kind of work is there, remember?
V.S.Yes. You were a hermit, and you looked tortured, like a person suffering from a toothache. You complained that the work was not progressing, and your acquaintances thought that you did not want to know them.
VB In general, I think that a person in terms of literary work should not rape himself. If possible, so ...
V. S. You can - don't write!
VB Yes.
V.S.When you are a poet and you write on a whim - this concept is meaningless for a poet to work without inspiration.
VB An article, for example, can be written by reason. In a tough way. I am outraged, for example, a bad attitude! to the ground. I'm boiling, I'm already writing this article out of anger. Not from ...
V.S.Good. But the long-term work, the continuation of which we are all waiting for - "Eves". This is probably spelled differently?
VB I have a very complicated affair with "Kanunami". There is a very large abundance of material here. There is so much material that ... And documentary material. I don't know how to get out from under it. He crushes me. I can't get out from under it. Some people collect material. But I can't say what I'm collecting. I take away.
V.S.You have not yet mastered it to the end, obviously?
VB Too much of it. I have not quite mastered. But I'm taking over.
VS And this work is harder than, say, "city" stories? They were probably written easier because everything was happening, as it were, before your very eyes.
VB Work is always easy when you get involved in it and start working. And then comes something that you yourself do not expect. But, in order to have the right to start work on, say, a big thing, I must fully know everything. But, since the material in "Eves" is quite specific, it takes me a lot of time to research. For research such cases.
V. S. And to what year are you going to bring the story?
VB I would like to describe the war. But this is only a dream. May God let me write at least 30th year and 35th. (...)
1985

Leo backgammon Emelyanov
DESTRUCTION OF SILENCE [The first review of the publication of "Kanunov" in the journal "Sever" (1972, No. 4, 5). - "Zvezda", 1972, No. 11.]

The beginning of great changes, the eve of significant events that abruptly turned the historical fate of the Russian countryside at the turn of the twenties and thirties - this is the central theme of Vasily Belov's new novel.
Vasily Belov is a deeply modern writer. The novellas "Habitual Business" and "Carpentry Stories", the books "Behind the Three Portages", "River Paths" and "Sultry Summer" - that is, almost everything that he has written so far has been devoted to the life of a modern Russian village. And yet it would not be, I think, an exaggeration to say that to the theme of "Eves", to the era when "everything was just beginning," he walked for a long time. Not to mention the fact that the problematics of his most significant works objectively go far beyond the time reflected in them and that such of his heroes as, say, Ivan Afrikanovich, can be truly understood only in a very broad and complex system of socio-historical coordinates; we must also take into account something else: the fact that Belov himself perfectly understands all this. Looking intently at modern village life, sensitively capturing and being able to subtly express its characteristic features, he feels its internal continuity and more and more often comes to the conclusion that the key to many of its aspects can by no means always be found in the circumstances of only today, that many “ tight knots "it can be understood and untied, only by realizing that they were" tied "in ancient times. So, in "Carpentry Tales" the complex relationship between Olesha Smolin and Aviner Kozonkov, and through them, and in general much in the way of the modern village, are rooted in the deep past, in this case extremely significant and important. Times and circumstances change, as the writer says, events, large and small, go into the past, but all this is added to a unity called the historical process, and there are no links in this process that would not affect the further life of human society by a whole series of social ones. moral, psychological consequences.
As you know, our literature constantly turned to the events, to the epoch, reflected in the "Eves". Actually, we can talk about a whole section of literature, an extensive, fundamental section, including works that are justly considered classics of Soviet literature.
We can also talk about something else - that in the course of the development of literature on collective farm construction, certain traditions have developed, associated with an ever deepening unity of the very understanding of those complex socio-political processes, the concrete expression of which was collectivization. With all the dissimilarity of the spheres of life, reflected, for example, in "Virgin Soil Upturned" by M. Sholokhov and "Bars" by F. Panferov, "The Tempest" by V. Latsis and "Dark Fir Trees" by E. Green, "Karyukha" by M. Alekseev and "People in the swamp "I. Melezh, with all the diversity of interpretation of individual phenomena accompanying collectivization, in the initial position of all these writers there is at least one common point, namely: the understanding of collectivization as one of the forms of manifestation of the class struggle. The fight is historically logical. Struggle caused by the presence of class contradictions that were not yet resolved at that time, the overcoming of which was the most important condition for the Soviet countryside to enter the path of socialist development.
Hence - the close attention of the writers to the class structure of the countryside, the desire to trace them and reflect the class struggle precisely in those forms that were characteristic of the Soviet countryside as a whole. For the depth of understanding the class differentiation of the countryside depended, in fact, on the very understanding of the specifics of rural reality, and, consequently, on the possibility of answering the question about the further paths of development of the Soviet countryside.
The class struggle in the countryside was, therefore, for writers that unshakable initial data, which allowed them to navigate the infinite variety of specific situations and conflicts that arose in the course of collectivization.
With the passage of time, however, another trend began to emerge in the literature. The strict and clear lines of the "classical" drawing of the class struggle gradually began to seemingly double, split. Certain aspects of the traditional idea of ​​collectivization began not to be disputed, but somewhat supplemented, deepened - in any case, complicated. "Nestor and Cyrus" by Y. Kazakov, "On the Irtysh" by S. Zalygin, "Death" by V. Tendryakov, "Carpentry Stories" by the same V. Belov - in different aspects and with varying degrees of categoricality, but in all these works one and the same question: the question of a certain special layer of conflicts in the era of collectivization, which has so far been little touched upon by the literature of the past.
It would, of course, be wrong to regard these works as an attempt to rethink or "correct" in some way our basic ideas about that difficult era, as an attempt to rearrange the established and generally recognized accents. Collectivization is a historically completed process, and whatever its "costs" may be, its historical justification is beyond doubt. A simple, or rather, an end-to-end statement of "costs", at best, can only have the meaning of passive knowledge - nothing more.
The point, I think, is different - that the problems of the Russian Soviet village of the fifties and sixties had their own complexity and this complexity sometimes prompted writers to turn in search of an answer to the events and deeds of bygone days.
From these positions, one should, I think, consider the novel "Eves". This is the only way to fully understand both its problems and the nature of the moral and social concept that underlies it.
Vasily Belov's books have characteristic titles. "My forest village." "River beams". "Behind three portages" ... This is because he writes about the same lands, familiar to him from childhood.
Right there, “behind three portages”, behind blue “river paths”, lies this “forest village” - Shibanikha, where the main events of the novel “Eves” take place. Life in Shibanikh is measured and serene. Somewhere big events are taking place, the country is seething, reaching one of the steepest frontiers of its history, but here, in Shibanikh ...

And there, in the depths of Russia,
There is an age-old silence ...

The roar of the great "rift" that shook the country comes here only in vague echoes. The new era did not make any special changes in the local way of life. The peasants carried out several necessary measures "in the spirit of the times" - they drove out the landowner Prozorov, by the way, who was already dragging out a very meager existence (he had only twenty dessiatines), chose the appropriate authorities - and healed as if nothing had happened. Apparently, there was not even any land redistribution. Each remained with what he had, for he had only what was earned by his own labor. Unless Danilo Pachin voluntarily handed over his crowd to the commune named after Klara Zetkina, so that he would not differ from an ordinary middle peasant in any way.
In short, the social structure of Shibanikha remained without any significant changes, because there was nothing in it that would, to some extent, contradict the structure of the entire Soviet society at that time. In the new social system, at least in the first phase of its development, Shibanikha entered, so to speak, ready-made. The Soviet government, as it were, legitimized the foundations of life that had developed there from time immemorial. That is why life in Shibanikh is so full-blooded and serene, that is why the relations of people with each other are so natural and friendly. It is no coincidence, I think, in the novel there are so many light, festive pictures - Christmas time with all the accompanying wealth of ancient folk games and rituals, Shrovetide with its wide and daring sweep and fun, especially the description of "help", where this going from deep antiquity, the collective, "artel" beginning of Russian village life, this is the communal-patriarchal unity of the peasant's attitude to work, to man, to the "world."
These are the "eves" in Shibanikh.
However - the eves of what? What changes await the village? Where, from which side should they come?
As for the Shibanovites themselves, they do not suspect or think about anything. Of course, they consider their present position to be the goal of the transformations that have taken place in the country - and that is all. They each work honestly on their own piece of land, pay tax in good faith, and certainly do not realize that some other, more effective forms of management are possible, that only these new forms can radically raise the level of Soviet agriculture. They think of their future in the usual categories: if you sow more, you will collect more. Well, perhaps nothing more ...
But Shibanikha still faces the transition to new paths - whether she wants it or not. This is the historical pattern. And the point, of course, is not in this transition itself, because sooner or later the men will be convinced of the necessity of it anyway. The point is, by what means it will be implemented, to what extent local conditions and local opportunities will be taken into account. After all, it is not for nothing that in the question of collectivization, the party's strategy provided for different regions of the country and different terms and different forms.
It is on this key moment that V. Belov focuses his main attention.
The peculiarity of the Shibanikha "Eves" was, in his opinion, in the fact that class differentiation did not receive any noticeable development there. Property inequality, giving rise to class contradictions, was almost completely absent here. Only far, far away, somewhere on the very horizon, the lone figure of Nasonov's real fist looms in the novel. True, there are two beggars in Shibanikh - Nosopyr and Tanya - but their poverty is by no means of social origin. The explanation to her lies exclusively within the bounds of their personal destinies. As for the rest of the inhabitants, even such figures traditionally odious for the village reality as the priest and the landowner, live almost one life with the people. Pop Ryzhko easily plays cards with the peasants and works at the Pachin "help" until he breaks down, and the landowner Prozorov, who lives on the outskirts of the local commune, long ago resigned himself to his position, although he enters into a philosophical dispute with the chairman of the executive committee Luzin.
It would seem that Shibanihi's transition to new paths can be realized without any particular complications. With the same ease and naturalness with which, for example, M.I.
Everything, however, turns out differently.
In the minds of people who had no idea about the life of Shibaniha, but on whom, unfortunately, her fate depended, Shibaniha was a "village in general", a village, where, of course, there must be a class struggle, and the division characteristic of a "village in general" on the poor, middle peasants and kulaks.
This, in fact, is the tragedy of the situation depicted in the novel. Life, hitherto organic and natural, is, as it were, placed under high tension. Polarization, which is not characteristic of it, is artificially caused in it. The age-old foundations are crumbling. For chimeras that have arisen in fanatical or simply incapable of thinking heads, someone must pay with blood ...
The stream of events in the novel, at first as if stationary or spreading along many little connected channels, towards the end, however, acquired such a definite direction that it seems that we can already judge what awaits Shibanihu in the future. Moreover, in "Carpentry Tales" there are quite a few episodes scattered about, which clearly echo the events of the novel. Tabakov, Aviner, Fedulenok - the characters and fates of these characters, sketched in "Carpentry Tales" in cursory strokes, here in "Eves" will appear before us more than once. For there are characters who characterize the writer's outlook, the very categories in which he is most inclined to think about a particular topic.
However, let's not guess. We will only talk about what is prompted by the very logic of the novel. This logic is such that people like Danila Pachin, his son Pashka, Miron and many others seem doomed in the novel. It is on their shoulders that the brunt of the consequences of that bitter political delusion, of which Shibanikha was a victim, will most likely fall.
It must be said, however, that the path that V. Belov chose, a bold and difficult path, at times looks, perhaps, somewhat risky. And this is connected primarily with one of the central characters of the novel - with the image of Ignakha Sopronov.
This type, as is known, is not new in our literature. He was approached in one way or another by Yu. Kazakov, and S. Zalygin, and V. Tendryakov. And Belov himself "dissolved" some of his features in Aviner and Tabakov "Carpentry stories". But if in the works of the aforementioned writers he was considered comparatively apart, but if by Belov himself he appeared only in isolated episodes, then here, in the novel, he is given in close-up and with a considerable generalizing "charge".
And here, on the path of generalization, V. Belov, it seems to me, bears a certain amount of damage.
The fact is that Aviner Kozonkov in "Carpentry Tales", with all the similarity of his role to the role of Ignakha, was still an ordinary village peasant, with all his roots "woven" into the life of his village. The motives for his actions were fully explained by his character.
Ignakha Sopronov is a geek, as they say, by all counts. In fact, he has no contact with the life in which he grew up. Pariah in childhood and youth, now he came to Shibanihu to take revenge on his fellow countrymen. And this somehow turns out to be compatible, compatible with his revolutionary aspirations. At times he is likened to some kind of demon (his appearance at Prozorov's, his vengeful dreams in the house of Mitka Usov). This harshness, this almost grotesque "flashiness" with which he is opposed to everything and everything in the novel, involuntarily intensifies the main contrast of the novel - the contrast between the patriarchal nature of village life and the evil that came into it from the outside - and intensifies to such an extent that it already begins to seem somewhat deliberate. I would like to hope that the general rhythm of the novel, splendidly found by Belov, will further “introduce” this image, so important for the problems of the novel, into a more correct channel.
In the meantime, one thing is clear: the novel "Eves" promises to unfold into a monumental epic story, the completion of which the reader is waiting with quite understandable interest.

Yur iy Seleznev
CANUNA [Chapter from the book by Yu. Seleznev (1939 - 1981) “Vasily Belov. Reflections on the creative fate of the writer "(M.," Soviet Russia ", 1983).]

You can reread the first chapter of the novel "Eves" dozens of times, especially the beginning of it, and each time discover something new, fresh, deep in her poetry, akin in spirit and in artistic expressiveness to the poetics of the folk word of Gogol's "Evenings":
“Crooked Nose was lying on its side, and wide, like a spring flood, dreams surrounded him. In his dreams, he again thought of his free thoughts. I listened to myself and wondered: the world is long, many wonders, on both sides, on this and on that.
Well, and that side ... Which side, where is it?
Nasopyr, no matter how hard he tried, could not see any other side. There was only one white light, one disconnected. Only it was too big. The world expanded, grew, ran in all directions, in all sides, up and down, and the further, the faster. There was a black haze everywhere. Mingling with the fierce light, it passed into the distant azure smoke, and there, behind the smoke, even further away, now blue, now vat, now pink, now green layers moved apart; warmth and cold extinguished each other. Empty multi-colored versts swirled, swirled in depth and breadth ...
“And then what? - thought Nosopyr in a dream. “Further, then, apparently, God” ... Nosopyr ... wondered that there was no fear of God, only respect. God, in a white robe, sat on a painted pine throne, fingering some gilded bells with his calloused fingers ...
Nasopier sought reverence for secrets in his soul. Again he sketched the godly, on white horses, the army, with light pink cloaks on sloping, like a girl's shoulders, with spears and ensigns curling in the azure, then he tried to imagine a noisy horde of unclean, these scoundrels with red mouths, galloping on stinking hooves.
Both those and others constantly strived for battles ... Again he returned to the land, to his quiet winter volost and to the growing bathhouse, where he lived as a bean, one on one with his fate ...
He also dreamed of what was or could be at any time! Right now, over the bathhouse in the cheerful purple sky, sad stars are herding, in the village and on the garden backs, crumbly soft snow sparkles, and the moon shadows from the farmsteads are rapidly moving across the street. Hares roam around the gumens, or even at the very bathhouse. They move their mustaches and silently, uselessly jump in the snow ...
... The moon shone through the window, but it was dark in the bathhouse, Nasopyr felt about to find an iron mower and split off a splinter. But the mower was not there. This again affects him, Bannushko ... Recently he has been indulging more and more often: he will take away the bast shoes, then he will cool the bath, then he will sprinkle tobacco in the salt.
- Well, well, give it back, - said Nosopyr amicably. - Put in place who they say ...
... Above, on the mountain, dozens of tall white smoke emanated to the sky native Shibanikha. All the surrounding villages were smoking around, as if crowded with frost. And Nosopyr thought: “See, it is ... Russia is drowning the stove. I also need it. "
Directly - one of the secondary heroes of the novel sees, feels, thinks, by no means a poet or a thinker, not so much even a "typical representative" of the peasant mass, as an exception - a beggar, lonely old man who sold his house and now lives in a bathhouse. In a word, he is far from being an advanced spokesman for even general peasant "poetic views" on the world. But even the farm beekeeper Rudy Panko is far from the most advanced person of his era, but what would even Gogol himself mean without his Panko ... He, almost the first in new Russian literature, dared to show Russia, and through her and to the whole world, life "through the eyes" of an uneducated, "last" on the ladder of the social hierarchy of a common man, to tell about the world in his words - and how wonderful, multicolored and wide this world turned out to be. Of course, Gogol revealed to us not so much the individual ideas of a commoner, but - through these representations - precisely the poetic views of the people on the world as a whole. The secret of this transformation of the individual into the nation-wide is in the essence of the writer's talent, which Gogol himself defined as follows: “... true nationality does not consist in describing the sundress, but in the very spirit of the people. A poet can even be national even then, when he describes a completely foreign world, but looks at it through the eyes of his national element, through the eyes of the whole people, when he feels and speaks in such a way that his compatriots think that they themselves feel and say it ”.
Looking at the world through the eyes of even one of the peasants, Belov managed, at the same time, to open us a view of the world precisely “through the eyes of his national element, through the eyes of his people,” because in the concrete ideas of his hero, the general views of the people were reflected in the main, in the essential, as well , for example, as an unprofessional, but folk singer (the same Yashka Turok in Turgenev's "Singers") reflects in a song not personally composed by him the feeling of an entire people as much as his own.
At the heart of the above introductory chapter to "The Eves", this melody to the entire novel, lies a stable, millennia-old feeling of the world. This song with equal right could precede the narration about the events of the tenth, fourteenth, nineteenth centuries, not only the work about the northern village of the late twenties of our century. And this is natural - we have before us a kind of image of the peasant universe, and the universe, in turn, is an image of stability (not absolute immutability or static, but precisely - stability) of general laws, features, manifestations of the essence of the world (from the peasant world - the community to the world - the Universe ).
Here we have just "the whole world": from the concrete life of Nosopyr - the village bathhouse - to the world - "all Russia" and the World - Cosmos, which swirls deep and wide in empty multicolored versts; this is both the inner world of the soul, which he hears within himself, marveling at its many miracles, - and the world is the whole "white light", which is "too great." This is the world of Christian ideas, with its army of God on white horses, and the world is even more ancient - pagan; the world "that" and the world "this" ... The world is multicolored and multidimensional, moving and stable in its movement in breadth and depth. The world is contradictory, the world of fighting opposites and one, containing in this unity both "bright light" and "black darkness", "warmth and cold", extinguishing each other, "white army" and "a horde of unclean people", "God in a white mantle "- and almost real, making fun of the old man, like a kitten," banushka "...
Here, even the old man, who has cut himself off from the common life of the village, is not like a human, lonely, “alone with his fate,” at the same time continues to live one life with the whole village (and with all of Russia, because according to his peasant ideas, what is happening in his native village is happening in all of Russia, and what is happening in all of Russia will not escape his Shibanihu): “Russia stokes the stove. I also need ... "
Yes, we have before us the image of the "peasant universe". It is peasant. The author is by no means fond of its natural reproduction, its ethnographic copying in words. But he almost imperceptibly retains in the reader the feeling of a special structure of consciousness, of the worldview of his heroes. Recreating the spirit and meaning of this universe, Belov uses the folk-poetic, or, as we have already said, the “Gogol”, syllable: “Nosopyr ... again thought his free thoughts. I listened to myself and wondered: the world is long, many wonders, on both sides, on this and on that ... "- here it is the folk song poetics with its sound and semantic repetitions, creating a certain rhythm of mood, music of harmony (" I thought. .. thoughts ... long "); "Again ... their own free"; listen at least only to the bewitching rhythm of this one phrase: "... the world is long, many wonders ..." - and understand, feel that this is by no means the author's: I can do it and I want it so much, but something else is essential here is an echo, an echo of that mode of speech, which was supposed to reproduce the “mode of the universe”, and the music of the phrase should correspond to the “music of the spheres”: the same, in fact, the law is quite palpable in the ancient Slavic chants, in the construction of the phrase of solemn “Words "(As, for example," Words about Law and Grace "), etc. That is, we are dealing with a linguistic structure that reflects the" harmony of the universe "in the word and through the word. In Belov - I repeat - this is both the national and the peasant proper, and even the individually "nosopyryevsky" echo of the "universal harmony", the "peasant universe": "The world expanded, grew, ran in all directions", and suddenly something was not from the " "-" in all directions ", and then completely" nosopyryevskoe ":" And the further, the faster. " This word does not explode the "universe", but clarifies, reminds of a specific angle of view, its specific perception. And further: "Empty multicolored versts swirled, swirled in depth and breadth ..." And God himself is here - not only "in a white mantle", but also with "calloused fingers", sitting on a "painted pine throne" - "a peasant god ", Not so much reminiscent of the Old Testament, as" the old man Petrusha Klyushin, slurping a bastard after a bath "(italics mine. - Yu. S). This is again a "nosopyryevskaya", personal concretization, which does not differ, however, in essence, with the general peasant folk idea: only such a god, with calloused fingers, on a pine throne worked out by his own, Shibanov, skilled craftsman, could be the father of that Christ whose godfather the path was naturally linked in the peasant's consciousness with the "earthly cravings", with the fate of the plowman-warrior - Christ of the so-called "national gospel" (Old Russian "Word about how Christ plowed the earth with a plow"). Such a god easily and naturally got along with the pre-Christian, pagan banushka.
And these and other no less obvious extremes and contradictions, on the one hand, are in constant struggle and movement, and, on the other, - at the same time, in an equally obvious unity and even harmony of harmony.
Lad is the central concept of all Belov's work and the novel "Eves" in particular. Lad is the basis and essence of the "peasant universe" artistically recreated by the writer; this is the main law of its constitution, the interdependence of its movement and stability, its safety and unity. This is the moral center of the ideological and artistic world of Belov's "Kanunov".
Lad in "Kanuni" manifests itself precisely as the ideal of peasant life and life, but by no means as their idealization. In the same "song" there are a lot of details of this life, which speaks volumes: here is life in a growing bathhouse, and the memory of wintering out of need, and a cast iron that replaces Nosopyr not only a pot for cabbage soup, but also a samovar, here is a drying torch - the joy of long autumn and winter evenings, and the rustling of cockroaches in the walls ... Only this detail: “Nikita ... in an old man's fussy way climbed onto the stove ... rye "- testifies to how far the author of" Kanunov "is from idealizing the old village, from the poeticization of what is least amenable to poeticization in this everyday life, for which, oddly enough, our other critics reproached Belov more than once or twice.
Naturally, in the literary world of the writer, the harmony itself manifests itself in the word and only through the word of the writer. Lad realizes the integrity of the lofty, almost solemn, ascending word and word of everyday life, material, poetic and prosaic, author's and proper peasant, belonging to heroes, book and colloquial, common and local. Lad is the organizing center of all these opposing and interdependent linguistic elements, transforming them into the unity of the national Russian literary language. Perhaps this is precisely what Gogol was talking about, prophesied to us:
“Finally, our extraordinary language itself is still a mystery. It contains all the tones and shades, all the transitions of sounds from the hardest to the most delicate and soft; he is boundless and can, living like life, enrich himself every minute, learning on the one hand high words ... and on the other hand choosing apt names from his countless dialects scattered across our provinces, thus the same speech ascend to a height inaccessible to any other language, and descend to simplicity, a tangible sense of touch of the most incomprehensible person - a language that is already a poet in itself and which was not without reason forgotten for a while by our best society: it was necessary that we blurt out everything in foreign dialects rubbish, whatever stuck to us along with foreign education, so that all those vague sounds, inaccurate names of things - children of unexplained and confused thoughts that darken tongues - would not dare to darken the infant clarity of our language and would return to it, already ready to think and live with your own mind, not a foreign one. All this is still tools, more materials, more lumps, and precious metals in the ore, from which a different, powerful speech will be forged. This speech will pass through the whole soul and will not fall on barren ground. Our poetry will light up with the sorrow of an angel and, striking all the strings that are in a Russian person, will bring into the hardest souls the sanctity of that which no forces and tools can establish in a person; will call us our Russia - our Russian Russia, not the one that rudely show us some leavened patriots, and not the one that strangled Russians summon to us from across the sea, but the one that she will extract from us and show in this way that every single one, no matter what different thoughts, images of upbringing and opinions, will say with one voice: “This is our Russia; we feel comfortable and warm in it, and now we are really at home, under our own roof, and not in a foreign land! "
We have already turned to Gogol more than once, speaking of Belov. And it is no coincidence. There is indeed a lot of Gogol in the work of our contemporary: not from Gogol, but from Gogol. One could cite whole episodes, scenes from the same "Eves", clearly comparable with Gogol's scenes from "Evenings" and "Mirgorod". I will not do this, firstly, because the readers themselves will easily discover Gogol in Belov, and secondly, the matter is not only in the scenes and episodes themselves, and not even in the related features of folk humor among both writers, and not in the reproduction of folk-festive traditions, representations, but in the structure of the folk-poetic speech itself for both. Yes, there is a lot in common and kindred here, although in every phrase of Gogol the element of the folk life of his native Little Russia, Ukraine, is full of luxury, and in Belov's is the harsh inconspicuousness of Northern Russia.
“The moon hung over my father’s chimney, high and clear, it flooded the village with golden-green gloom penetrating everywhere. Maybe into the very soul. He shone broadly and silently over the world "- a picture as Belov's as it is" Gogol's "- almost from" Terrible revenge "or" May night ". But: “And autumn walked on the Russian land ... As a strange woman of unknown age walks: along golden copses, between trees, gathering crunchy mushrooms in a hem” - this is already “northern”, in fact Belov. One could, it seems, and so to distinguish it. But you can't. It is impossible, because this specifically northern, "proper" or narrowly Belov poetics of life is in harmony with the "South Russian", in fact Gogol (meaning, of course, Gogol - the author of "Evenings" and "Mirgorod"), going back to the harmony of the all-Russian figuratively -language element. As was the case with the "Central Russian" Turgenev, Tolstoy, Yesenin, the "North Russian" Prishvin, the "South Russian" Sholokhov, the "Petersburg" Dostoevsky, as with the same "Little Russian", as, incidentally, the "Petersburg" Gogol ...
In the general stylistic world of Belov's work, of course, the "Aksakov", and "Glebo-Uspensky", and "Pishvinsky", and "Sholokhov" strata are obvious, but nevertheless this style is most related in its folk-poetic principles, in my opinion , Gogol's style of "Evenings" and "Mirgorod". Both of them - each in its own way - from the same all-Russian source - the folk-poetic principle.
I do not want to say that all those hopes that Gogol placed (in the above final excerpt from his article "What, finally, is the essence of Russian poetry and what is its peculiarity") for the future Russian word have already been fully and completely justified. say, in the work of Belov, or, even more so, only in his work. But Belov is one of those of our contemporary writers, whose work is really on the way to the ideal of literature that Gogol outlined and predicted in the future:
“Other things are coming ... Just as during the infancy of peoples, she served to call the peoples to battle ... so now she will have to challenge a person to another, higher battle - to a battle no longer for our temporary freedom, rights and privileges, but for our soul ... Much remains to be done now ... to return to society what is truly beautiful and what has been expelled from it by the present senseless life ... Their very speech will be different; it will be closer and more akin to our Russian soul: our native beginnings will come out even more audibly in it ”.
For a truly Russian writer, the revolutionary democrat Belinsky argued, "Russia must be loved at the root, at the very core, at its foundation," and its root, its foundation is "a simple Russian man, in everyday language called a peasant and a peasant."
The founder of socialist realism, Gorky, continuing the same thought, pointed out: "We again need to think hard about the Russian people, to return to the task of cognizing its spirit."
In the harsh pre-war years, and especially during the Great Patriotic War, with all the certainty, the writers faced a task of enormous historical importance, about which Aleksey Tolstoy said: “The responsibility before the history of our Motherland has fallen heavily on us. Behind us is the great Russian culture, ahead are our immense riches and opportunities ... Homeland is the movement of the people through their land from the depths of centuries to the desired future, in which they believe and create with their own hands for themselves and their generations. It is ... an eternally born stream of people, carrying their language, their spiritual and material culture and unshakable faith in the legitimacy and indestructibility of their place on earth. "
That is why all the great writers of the past and present, one way or another, but could not and cannot get around in their work the problem of "knowing the spirit" of the people, including the peasantry, - the historical, spiritual and material basis and root of the entire people, their spirit. That is why the problem of the Russian countryside at one of the decisive moments of its thousand-year history - "on the threshold" of the revolutionary transition from the age-old traditional life to the new socialist way of life, not accidentally attracts serious contemporary artists, gives rise to many truly outstanding canvases - from the classic "Virgin Soil Upturned" Mikhail Sholokhov and “The Mirskaya Chalice” by Mikhail Prishvin until the recent “Men and Women” by Boris Mozhaev and “Drachunov” by Mikhail Alekseev. Writers feel the need and need for an objective, taking into account the experience of our time, artistic analysis of the past, identifying both positive and negative (the absence of any analogies of collective farm construction, forced by circumstances haste, excesses, acts of direct hostile leftist-Trotskyist distortion of party policy in attitude towards the "middle peasant" and towards the peasantry as a whole, etc., etc.) of the factors that determined the course of the revolution in the countryside. To comprehend and evaluate this past - not for its own sake, not in order to “correct” it retroactively, to pay tribute to whom, and to whom “for nuts”, but - having objectively understood the past, realistically assessing the present - these are, in principle, the meaning and purpose of any appeal of every great artist to history.
The modern and future fate of the Russian countryside, the peasantry as an essential component of that unity that we call the fate of the entire people, the fate of the Motherland, is the main problematic of Belov's work as a whole, which naturally led the writer to the need for an artistic study of the people in the era of the great revolutionary turning point in the countryside (novel "Eves" - the first book conceived by the writer of a multivolume work) and research of scientific and artistic ("Lad. Essays on folk aesthetics"). And, we repeat, the main key to understanding the problems, ideas and forms of artistic embodiment of "Kanunov", of course, must be sought in the idea of ​​his "Lada", which was not accidental for Belov.
Let us turn again to the "lead song" of the novel "Eves", to the image of its "peasant universe". We have already spoken about his insubordination to time, about stability, safety in all his internal struggles. However, if we carefully reread this "tune" again, we will feel some kind of vague anxiety, a sense of the nonrandomness of the accumulation of converging extremes that threaten the unity and integrity of this universe. Indeed: "The world ... was running away"; “There was a black haze everywhere. Mingling with the fervent light "; "Warmth and cold extinguished each other"; “Sad stars herd in the cheerful ... sky,” and so on, so that the image of a harmony in a state of some kind of crisis really begins to appear in our minds.
This image of the harmony in a state of crisis, "on the threshold", of course, is given in the "solo", as it were, in the same timeless generalization. But the whole chapter ends with a kind of translation of this timeless, generalized image into a concrete historical dimension: "It was the second week of Christmastide, Christmastide of the new one thousand nine hundred and twenty-eight." And this means that two weeks ago, the XV Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (held from December 2 to December 19, 1927) finished its work, indicating the course for the collectivization of agriculture. The novel "Eves" and portrays the state of the village on the eve of the most serious and decisive revolutionary transformations in its entire centuries-old history.
Is it necessary to see in "Eves" a kind of lamentation for the departing traditional village, a kind of commemoration for a dear heart, but still a dead man, or, perhaps, a kind of "worldly feast"? - let us recall the central image of the "worldly bowl" in the story of the same name by M. Prishvin - the bowl in which the traditional ideas of good and evil, beauty and ugliness are boiled over, so that it can pass through this worldly, universal fiery font only the most persistent, the most indestructible, which would become spiritual food for the renewed humanity in struggles ...
Yes, I am convinced that it is precisely this image of the “worldly cup” from Prisvina that is most closely related to the image of the “worldly feast” in the novel “Eves” with its weeping and joy, with its worries and hopes, with its struggles and triumph of the human in man, with overcoming evil with good.
But what creates, according to Belov, a crisis state “on the threshold” in his “Eves” that threatens the destruction of the harmony?
Before us is a village in that state when the new, Soviet (the second decade has passed since the victory of the October Revolution), and the old, traditionally peasant, get used to it, seek and find in the main agreement a single harmony of life. The Soviet government gave the peasant the main thing - land for eternal use, destroyed the exploitation of man by man, and even more so now, when the most dashing times of the civil war are over (the participation in which the overwhelming majority of the peasantry on the side of the revolution played an important role in the victory and strengthening of Soviet power during the whole country), the years of anxieties and doubts of "war communism" with its surplus appropriations, which were forced to lay a heavy burden first of all on the peasants' shoulders - now, when all this is already over, the Soviet power could not be perceived by the absolute majority of the peasantry as some kind of threat to its present or future state, hopes, aspirations. On the contrary, as the novel "Eves" also testifies, - it is the Soviet power that is regarded as the only one of its own, as the power that is capable and must defend peasant interests.
And yet we have before us in "Eves" the clearly felt state of the old peasant "harmony" - in anxiety, in a presentiment of discord.
Let's try to understand the other side of the problem: after all, we are already facing a Soviet, but not yet a collective farm village, a village on the eve of collectivization. Maybe this is the essence of the discord of the "peasant universe" of the novel? No. And here it is necessary to say with all certainty: the very idea of ​​collective land use and collective labor could neither frighten nor alienate the peasantry, and therefore bring serious discord into the world of their ideas. She could not even because, in spite of all her "private ownership instincts," all her striving for sole proprietorship, developed by reality under the conditions of the general bourgeois-private property temptation, the same peasant always knew that these aspirations were a fact, and not the truth, for the truth is that, according to his own people-peasant worldview, the land is “God’s”, that is, it cannot belong to anyone personally, but it is allowed to be used only by the one who yells it himself, abundantly watering it with his own sweat. In the idea of ​​collective farming, the peasant could not fail to see, though a new form, but nevertheless a traditional community for him - peace. And it is no coincidence that the most forward thinking, hardworking, strong, and therefore the most respected by "opchestm" men, after a short doubt and hesitation, as a rule, were among the first to sign up for the collective farm, setting an example for others, as evidenced by the novel by Vasily Belov "Eves".
What, then, is the root of all evil? What could threaten aesthetics; and the ethics of the peasant harmony?
Of course, even in itself the idea of ​​a completely peaceful, “okay” adaptation of the traditional village to socialism did not imply any idyll. Speaking "about the long agony of childbirth, inevitably associated with the transition from capitalism to socialism" [Lenin V. I. Poli. collection cit., v. 36, p. 476.], Lenin, as we see, was well aware of the possibilities and even the inevitability of the difficulties and costs of such a transition. However, as far as "Eves" is concerned, the essence of the matter here is clearly not in such difficulties and costs, the main conflict of the novel is not only in the natural gap between the possibility, the idea, the theory of collective farm development and the living, concrete embodiment of these same ideas and theories. It should not be forgotten that revolution - any revolution, including in the countryside - is carried out not only as the construction of the new in the struggle against the old. No less serious and significantly different from the above was the conflict between different, and fundamentally different, views on the goals, objectives, and therefore the forms and methods of building the new and - fighting the old.
The tasks, goals, forms and methods of socialist construction in the countryside, as is known, were developed by V.I. Lenin. Let us remember what Lenin's program was on this issue: “Hardly everyone understands,” he wrote in his work On Cooperation, “that now, since the October Revolution ... cooperation is acquiring absolutely exceptional significance in our country. There is a lot of fantasy in the dreams of the old co-operators ... But what makes them fantastic? The fact that people do not understand the fundamental fundamental significance of the political struggle of the working class to overthrow the rule of the exploiters. Now we have this overthrow, and now much of what was fantastic ... in the dreams of the old co-operators, is becoming the most unadorned reality. In our country, indeed, since the state power is in the hands of the working class, since this state power belongs to all the means of production, we, in fact, have only the task of co-operating the population. Under the condition of maximum cooperation, the socialism that previously caused legitimate ridicule, a smile, a disdainful attitude towards itself on the part of people who are justly convinced of the need for a class struggle, a struggle for political power, etc., achieves its goal by itself. " [Lenin V. I. Poly. collection cit., v. 45, p. 369.].
So, “... cooperation in our conditions quite often coincides with socialism” [Ibid., P. 375.], and therefore it will be “as simple as possible, easier and more accessible for the peasant” by “transition to a new order” [Ibid, p. 370.].
Secondly, the task of cooperation had to be solved, as they would say now, in a comprehensive manner, simultaneously with the task of creating in the countryside the material basis of communism and "the cultural development of the entire masses of the people." And “this requires a whole historical epoch. We can pass, at a good end, this era in one or two decades. But nevertheless it will be a special historical epoch, and without this historical epoch, without universal literacy ... and without a material basis for this, without a certain security, say, from poor harvest, from hunger, etc. - without this we have our own the goal cannot be achieved ”[Lenin V. I. Poli. collection co - .., v. 45, p. 372.]. Any haste, sweeping, haste in this matter, an attempt to solve it "by impetuosity or onslaught, agility or energy" is harmful and, "one might say, disastrous for communism" [Ibid, p. 391.]. “No,” writes Lenin. - We should start by establishing communication between town and country, without at all setting the preconceived goal of introducing communism into the countryside. Such a goal cannot be achieved now. Setting such a goal will harm the cause instead of benefit ”[Ibid., P. 367.].
And the whole program as a whole (which, as we know, was Lenin's testament), and these warnings were not accidental: the task of transitioning the countryside to the foundations of socialist management had to be solved, but the ways to solve it were too different.
Of course, Belov's novel does not pretend to be an artistic analysis of a specific historical situation in all its fullness and complexity, but outside of its understanding it is impossible to assess the completely ideological and problematic content of "Kanunov". The novel, as we have already repeated more than once, was written as if from the point of view of the peasants themselves, and they could hardly clearly perceive the complex general political and ideological situation: for them, say, the district commissioner Ignat Sopronov is to a large extent also a real power. and real politics. But it is precisely by his actions and statements that they should judge the attitude of the authorities towards themselves, towards the peasantry as a whole. What kind of power is Ignat Sopronov, who is assigned such a significant and, I would say, sinister role in the novel. By himself, he is an insignificant person, never distinguished by his love of work, having never done anything good to anyone. The peasants do not know for him any special merits before the Soviet power, he is not respected in the village, but he literally bursts into it shaking his revolver, looking for an enemy in everyone, because he needs enemies.
“Even in adolescence, his pride, strangled by past grievances, began to grow uncontrollably: his time, Ignakhino, had come ... But even now life seemed to him an unjust mockery, and he entered into a deaf, ever-growing enmity with her. He did not forgive people, he saw only enemies in them, and this gave rise to fear, he no longer hoped for anything, believed only in his own strength and cunning. And having believed in this, he became convinced that all people are the same as him, the whole world lives only under the sign of fear and strength ... Kindness was regarded as pretense and cunning "... Of course, he, Ignat Sopronov, was Like his fellow villagers, it is not easy to grasp the political essence of Trotskyism, but in his attitude to the world, to people, he is a ready instrument for introducing this very essence of Trotskyism into the traditional way of life in his native village. And, however, the politically "dark" peasants do not confuse the real power over them Ignachi and Soviet power, although they hardly know about Ignashkin's Trotskyism (like himself), perhaps they also do not know about the defeat of Trotskyism at the party congress ...
So he bursts into the church during the wedding of Pavel Pachin to Vera, deciding to immediately hold a rally right here, now, dedicated to helping the Chinese revolutionaries.
“Ignachi's voice broke, the people did not know what to do in amazement. Some of the teenagers giggled, some of the girls yelped, women whispered, some old men forgot to shut their mouths.
- Let's hold, comrades, a Shibanov meeting of citizens! I am as sent by the executive committee ...
“You were sent by the devil, not by the executive committee! - Evgraf said loudly.
- Lord, what have we lived to see ...
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
- Comrades, the appeal was signed by the executive committee of the MOPR ... "
What were the men supposed to feel? The world existed for thousands of years, there were both bad and good, there were times that were both unreliable and terrible, but it had never burst into them. : a bum, a loafer, a worthless man, Ignashka, - now the bosses are armed, and the hardworking men, respected by everyone, walk in enemies, and then there are all these unknown, but frightening: MOPR, APO, OGPU, VIK, KKOV, SUK, resolution, contracting, activation ... Hence the wary attitude towards life, towards the future, towards the present.
But what happened? Due to what circumstances did the worthless Ignashka suddenly become such a significant person, for whom the people are nothing, and he, Ignach, is everything?
"The people will say, and Sopronov will indicate ... The time is, you see, unreliable ..." - the peasants grumble. Yes, and the chairman of the VIK, Stepan Luzin, is heard preaching: “We ... will remake the whole of Russia. There will be no stone unturned from old Russia ... "But when the old party member, secretary of the provincial committee Ivan Shumilov invites him to read the" revelations of the Trotskyist "in order to somehow determine his position, the same Luzin admits:" I and Marx are something else I haven’t read everything, but you are thrusting Trotskyists into me ”... It is not only in the peasant universe that there is a disturbance in the minds of even the secretary of the provincial committee, so that, of course, it is not just Ignat that is the matter. Shumilov was primarily a party member. Never and nowhere did he doubt either the correctness of the Party cause, or the need for democratic centralism ... He not only respected, but also carried out exactly all the directives of the center. And until recently, he had no contradiction between what he needed and what he wanted. But now ... he began to dully feel this contradiction ... irritation was born from the fact that the latest directives really often contradicted each other ...
“There is probably no consensus in the current Politburo,” he shares his doubts with Luzin.
- Where is Stalin looking?
- Stalin, Stepan, in Moscow, for some reason, is considered right. And all the Politburo with him.
- All this Trotskyist tricks ... "
Trotskyist tricks really, as we know, cost dearly both the party, the state and the people.
Of course, it would be naive to reduce the entire complex of problems that have arisen in connection with the radical transformation of the countryside exclusively to the problem of Trotskyism. Here, as we have already said, the absence of any experience, and the tense internal (struggle against the kulaks), and the external situation, which dictated the need to carry out the party line on collectivizing the peasantry in the shortest possible time, and a certain kind of excesses, certainly affected, but - and just as unconditionally - all these problems could have been solved less painfully if a hostile force had not intervened in the historically predetermined course of events, consciously opposing itself to the party and the people, but trying to act on behalf of the party and the revolution.
Without understanding the essence of this problem, we can hardly count on an understanding of the ideological and problematic content of the novel "Eves".
“For many years,” writes a contemporary researcher of this problem, “V. I. Lenin exposed Trotskyism as a system of views organically alien to Marxism and the interests of the working class. He fully disclosed the opportunist, Menshevik-capitulatory essence of the Trotskyist "theory of permanent revolution", gave a resolute rebuff to Trotsky's attempts to undermine the ideological and organizational foundations of the party "[Basmanov M. I. In the train of reaction. Trotskyism of the 30s - 70s. M., Politizdat, 1979, p. 5.]. It was from the standpoint of "permanent revolution" that "Trotsky and his supporters denied Lenin's theory of the possibility of the victory of the socialist revolution ... in one single country ... They reproached Lenin for national narrow-mindedness" [Minutes of the Central Committee of the RSWDP (b). August 1917 - February 1918. M., Gos-politizdat, 1958, p. 82].
Trotsky, wrote V. I. Lenin, with his theories and actions "groups all the enemies of Marxism", "unites everyone who cares about any ideological decay" [Lenin V. I. Poli. collection cit., v. 20, p. 45 - 46.].
An equally sharp and principled struggle unfolded between Lenin and Trotsky after the victory of the October Revolution on the question of the forms and methods of building socialism in Soviet Russia.
If Lenin directed the party and the country towards the alliance of the proletariat and the peasantry, towards the creative tasks of building socialism (“The dictatorship of the proletariat,” he pointed out, “is a special form of class alliance between the proletariat, the vanguard of the working people, and numerous non-proletarian strata of working people (the petty bourgeoisie, small proprietors, peasantry, intelligentsia, etc.), or the majority of them, an alliance against capital ... "[Ibid., vol. 38, p. 377. Ninth Congress of the RCP (b). March - April 1920. Minutes. M„ 1960, pp. 96.]), then the goals and objectives of Trotskyism were reduced to something else, the opposite: "Only destruction, and only this, is capable of renewing the world." Only "devastation", - Trotsky argued at the Ninth Congress of the RCP (b) in 1920, - destroying and destroying everything in its path, at the same time cleared the way for new construction. " The revolution in Russia itself was viewed by Trotsky not at all as a means of transition to the building of a new socialist society, but only as a means and a springboard for inciting a world revolutionary war, in which both Soviet power and Russia itself could perish, which would not be a big trouble, Trotsky taught. for the goal is not the creation of a just system in Russia, but precisely the world revolution. The proletarian masses were seen as an effective force, an instrument of such a revolution, or, as he himself called, “the ants of the revolution,” while the peasantry, at best, was a ballast in need of alteration. It is necessary to "squeeze the peasant," he said. And more than that. In Russia at that time there were two main kinds of toilers-farmers: the peasantry and the Cossacks. With regard to the Cossacks, Trotsky's line was reduced to one thing: “To destroy the Cossacks, as such, to decorate the Cossacks — this is our slogan. Remove stripes, prohibit being called a Cossack, evict en masse to other areas ”[Quoted. According to the book. Priyma K.I. With the century on a par: Articles about the work of M. Sholokhov. Rostov n / D., 1981, p. 164.]. This was announced in 1919. The program of Trotskyism in relation to the peasantry was essentially the same. A year later, in 1920, at the Ninth Party Congress, Trotsky came out with a program for the "militarization of labor" and, above all, of the peasantry: absolutely necessary. We mobilize the peasant force and form labor units out of this mobilized labor force, which are similar in type to military units. .. In the military field there is a corresponding apparatus which is put into motion to compel soldiers to fulfill their duties. This should be in one form or another and in the field of labor. Of course, if we are seriously talking about a planned economy, which is embraced from the center by the unity of design, when the labor force is distributed in accordance with the economic plan at a given stage of development, the mass of workers cannot be a wandering Russia. It must be transferred, assigned, commanded in the same way as the soldiers ... This mobilization is unthinkable without ... the establishment of such a regime in which every worker feels like a soldier of labor, who cannot dispose of himself freely, if the outfit is given to transfer him, he must fulfill it; if he doesn’t do it, he will be a deserter, who is punished! " [Ninth Congress of the RCP (b), p. 92, 93, 94.] A clear idea of ​​the seriousness of the "socialism" that Trotsky envisioned is given by his following unequivocal conclusion: "[Ibid, p. 97 - 98.], but not to socialism. “How far the Trotskyists went in relying on administration and oppression of the masses,” writes a modern researcher of the problem, “can be seen from the speech of Holtzman, who, at the Moscow Party Conference in 1920, proposed to impose measures of merciless cane discipline in relation to the masses of the workers. “We will not stop,” he threatened, “before using prisons, exile and hard labor in relation to people who are not able to understand our tendencies” [M. I. Basmanov In the train of reaction, p. 116.].

Vasily Belov

Chronicle novel of the late 1920s

Part one

Crooked Nosopyr lay on his side, and wide, like a spring flood, dreams surrounded him. In his dreams, he again thought of his free thoughts. I listened to myself and wondered: the world is long, many wonders, on both sides, on this and on that.

Well, and that side ... Which, where is it?

Nasopyr, no matter how hard he tried, could not see any other side. There was only one white light, one disconnected. Only it was too big. The world expanded, grew, ran in all directions, in all sides, up and down, and the further, the faster. There was a black haze everywhere. Mingling with the fierce light, it passed into the distant azure smoke, and there, behind the smoke, even further away, now blue, now vat, now pink, now green layers moved apart; warmth and cold extinguished each other. Empty multicolored versts swirled, swirled in depth and breadth ...

“And then what? - thought Nosopyr in a dream. - Further, then, apparently, God. He wanted to sketch God as well, but it turned out not that bad, but somehow not for real. Nasopyr grinned with one of his wolfishly empty, sheep-like imperturbable insides, wondered that there was no fear of God, only respect. God, in a white robe, sat on a painted pine throne, fingering some gilded bells with his callused fingers. He looked like the old man Petrusha Klyushin, who was slurping a hoe made of oatmeal after a bath.

Nasopier sought reverence for secrets in his soul. Again he sketched the godly, on white horses, the army, with light pink cloaks on sloping, like a girl's shoulders, with spears and ensigns curling in the azure, then he tried to imagine a noisy horde of unclean, these scoundrels with red mouths, galloping on stinking hooves.

Both of them were constantly striving to fight.

There was something empty-headed, not real in this, and Nasopyr mentally spat on those and those. Once again he returned to the land, to his quiet winter volost and to the growing bathhouse, where he lived as a bean, alone with his fate.

Now he remembered his real name. After all, his name was Alexei, he was the son of pious, quiet and large parents. But they did not like the youngest son, which is why they married the volost beauty. On the second day after the wedding, the father took the young people outside the outskirts, to a wasteland overgrown with nettles, stuck a spruce stake into the ground and said: "Here, graft yourself, hands are given to you ..."

Alekha was a stout man, but he was too absurd in face and figure: long legs of varying thickness, a scarf in the torso, and on a large round head all over his face a wide nose appeared, nostrils sticking out to the sides, like dens. From this, they called him the Nose. He cut down a hut in the very place where his father put the stake, but he never grafted onto the piece of land. Every year he went to carpentry, boiled over, did not like to live on the other side, but because of the need he got used to the winter. When the children grew up, together with their mother, leaving their father, they hit the Yenisei River, the minister Stolypin praised those places very much. Another neighbor Akindin Sudeikin then came up with a ditty:

We live behind the Yenisei,
We sow neither oats nor rye,
We walk at night, we lie for the day,
They chewed up on the regime.

Not a word came from the family. Nasopyr was forever alone, overgrown with hair, curled up, sold the house, and bought a bathhouse for housing and began to feed from the world. And so that the children would not tease the beggars, he pretended to be a cow doctor, carried a canvas bag with a red cross on his side, where he kept a chisel for chopping off hooves and dry bundles of St. John's wort grass.

He also dreamed of what was or could be at any time. Right now, over the bathhouse in the cheerful purple sky, sad stars are herding, in the village and on the garden backs, crumbly soft snow sparkles, and the moon shadows from the farmsteads are rapidly moving across the street. Hares roam around the gumens, or even at the very bathhouse. They wiggle their ears and silently, uselessly jump in the snow. A one-hundred-year-old black raven sleeps on a Christmas tree in the suburbs, the river flows under the ice, in some houses unfinished Nikolskoe beer wanders in tubs, and at Nosopyr's, his joints yearn from previous colds.

I will not say that Belov is difficult to read, but nevertheless his author's style is so ... you know ... peculiar. Either he overtakes the lyrics, then the thought spreads along the tree, then he drove like a horse downhill, which you cannot hold back. Here in "Eves" so - like the general storyline - this is collectivization, or peasantization, but when he begins to talk about the life of the people in the countryside outside these events, you involuntarily think - has not the author forgotten that he is singing from the wrong opera? Yes, of course the author tried to cover the broad masses of the people and peasants. And it came out pretty convincing. But isn't it too much lyrics?

The novel is called Eves, and it is very apt. This begs the question - if the events in Shibanikh are only eves, then what happened next?

Many books have been written about what happened next. Well, "Eves" is really about the beginning of collectivization, not yet very bold, not very confident, but gaining momentum every day. And now collectivization and dispossession of kulaks are manifested in full force. Whoever has three cows is the enemy.

An interesting image of Ignakha Sopronov, a convinced Bolshevik, but in fact a scoundrel, whose mean nature is only progressing. This is a person who does not take into account anyone's situation, who goes against the whole village, where each person is his own for each other, is unstoppable in achieving the plan for dispossession and organization of the collective farm, and most importantly, guided by personal hostility towards people during inspections, purges and dispossession.

God forbid to meet this in life, not to read it in a novel.