The depiction of the events of the civil war in Babel's book of stories “Cavalry. The depiction of the events of the civil war in the book of stories I

Famous for his works Soviet writer and playwright Isaac Babel. "Cavalry" ( summary consider below) - his most famous work. This is primarily due to the fact that it initially contradicted the revolutionary propaganda of that time. S. Budyonny and took the book with hostility. The only reason the work was published was the intercession of Maxim Gorky.

Babel, "Konarmiya": a summary

"Cavalry" is a collection of short stories that began to be published in 1926. The work is united by a common theme - the civil war of the early 20th century. The basis for writing was diary entries author during the service which was commanded by S. Budyonny.

"My first goose"

The collection "Cavalry" opens with just this story. Main lyric hero and the narrator Lyutov, who works for the newspaper "Red Cavalry", falls into the ranks of the 1st Cavalry Army under the command of Budyonny. The 1st Horse is at war with the Poles, therefore it passes through Galicia and Western Ukraine. Next comes the image of military life, where there is only blood, death and tears. They live here one day.

Cossacks mock and mock the intellectual Lyutov. And the hostess refuses to feed him. When he was starving to the point of impossibility, he came to her and demanded to feed himself. And then he went out into the yard, took a saber and hacked to death a goose. Then he ordered the hostess to cook it. Only after that the Cossacks began to consider Lyutov almost their own and stopped ridiculing.

"Death of Dolgushov"

The collection of stories by Isaac Babel continues the story of the telephone operator Dolgushov. Somehow Lyutov stumbles upon a mortally wounded colleague who asks to finish him off out of pity. but the main character unable to kill even to ease fate. Therefore, he asks Afonka to approach the dying man. Dolgushov and the new assistant are talking about something, and then Afonka shoots him in the head. The Red Army soldier, who has just killed a comrade, rushes at Lyutov in anger and accuses him of unnecessary pity, from which there is only harm.

"Biography of Pavlichenka, Matvey Rodionich"

She pays a lot of attention to her protagonist Babel ("Cavalry"). The summary again tells about the emotional anxieties of Lyutov, who secretly envies the decisiveness and firmness of the Cossacks. His main desire is to become his own among them. Therefore, he seeks to understand them, attentively listens to the general's story about how he dealt with the master Nikitsky, whom he served before the revolution. The owner often pestered Matthew's wife, therefore, as soon as he became a Red Army soldier, he decided to avenge his insult. But Matvey did not shoot Nikitsky, but trampled on him in front of his wife. The general himself says that the shooting is mercy and pardon, not punishment.

"Salt"

Reveals the fate of ordinary Red Army soldiers in his work Babel. "Cavalry" (the summary confirms this) is a kind of illustration of post-revolutionary reality. So, Lyutov receives a letter from the cavalry soldier Balmashev, who tells about the incident on the train. At one of the stations, the soldiers picked up a woman with a child and let them into their carriage. However, gradually doubts began to creep in among them. Therefore, Balmashev tears off the diapers, but instead of the child he discovers a bag of salt. The Red Army man becomes furious, attacks the woman with an accusatory speech, and then throws her out of the train. Despite the fall, the woman remained intact. Then Balmashev grabbed a weapon and shot her, believing that in this way he washed away the shame from the working people.

"Letter"

Isaac Babel portrays not only adult fighters, but also children. "Cavalry" is a collection in which there is a work dedicated to the boy Vasily Kurdyukov, who is writing a letter to his mother. In the message, he asks to send some food and tell how the brothers are doing, fighting for the Reds. It immediately turns out that Fyodor, one of the brothers, was captured and killed by his own father, who was fighting on the side of the whites. He commanded Denikin's company, and he killed his son for a long time, cutting off the skin piece by piece. After some time, the White Guard himself was forced to hide, repainting his beard for this. However, his other son Stepan found his father and finished him off.

"Prishepa"

The next story is dedicated to the young Kuban citizen Prishchepa Isaac Babel ("Cavalry" tells about this). The hero had to escape from the whites who killed his parents. When the enemies were driven out of the village, Prishchepa returned, but the neighbors managed to plunder all the property. Then he takes the cart and goes through the courtyards to look for his goods. In those huts in which he managed to find things belonging to his parents, Prishchepa leaves the hanged dogs and old women over the wells and icons soiled with droppings.

When everything has been collected, he puts things in their former places and locks himself in the house. Here he drinks unrestrainedly for two days, chops tables with a sword and sings songs. And on the third night, a flame engulfs his house. Clothespipe goes to the barn, takes out the cow left over from the parents, and kills. After that, he mounts his horse and drives off wherever his eyes would look.

"The Story of a Horse"

This work continues Babel's stories "Cavalry". For a cavalry officer, the horse is the most important thing, he is a friend, and a comrade, and a brother, and a father. Once the division commander Savitsky took white horse from the commander of the first squadron Khlebnikov. Since then, Khlebnikov harbored a grudge and waited for an opportunity for revenge. And as soon as Savitsky lost his position, he wrote a petition to return the stallion to him. Having received a positive answer, Khlebnikov went to Savitsky, who refused to give up the horse. Then the commander goes to the new chief of staff, but he drives him away. Then Khlebnikov sits down and writes a statement that he is offended by the Communist Party, which is unable to return his property. After that, he is demobilized, since he has 6 wounds and is considered disabled.

"Pan Apolek"

The church theme of Babel's works is also touched upon. "Cavalry" tells the story of the bogomaz Apolek, who was entrusted with painting the Novgorod church in the new church. The artist presented a diploma and several of his works, so the priest accepted his candidacy without question. However, when the job was handed over, employers greatly resented it. The fact is that the artist made ordinary people into saints. So, in the image of the Apostle Paul, the face of the lame Janek was guessed, and Mary Magdalene was very similar to Elka, a Jewish girl, the mother of a considerable number of children under the fence. Apolek was driven out, and another bogomaz was hired to replace him. However, he did not dare to paint over the creation of others' hands.

Lyutov, a double of Babel from the Cavalry, met the disgraced artist in the house of a runaway priest. At the very first meeting, Pan Apolek attached to make him a portrait in the image of Blessed Francis for only 50 marks. In addition, the artist told the blasphemous story of how Jesus married a rootless girl, Deborah, who gave birth to a son from him.

"Gedali"

Lyutov encounters a group of old Jews who are selling something near the yellowed walls of the synagogue. The hero begins to remember with sadness the Jewish way of life, which has now been destroyed by the war. He also recalls his childhood, his grandfather, who stroked numerous volumes of the sage of the Jews Ibn Ezra. Lyutov goes to the market and sees the stalls closed with locks, which he associates with death.

Then the hero catches the eye of the shop of the ancient Jew Gedali. You can find anything here, from gilded shoes to broken pots. The owner himself rubs his white hands, walks along the counters and complains about the horrors of the revolution: everywhere they suffer, kill and rob. Gedali would like another revolution, which he calls the "international kind people". However, Lyutov does not agree with him, he claims that the International is inseparable from rivers of blood and gunpowder shots.

The hero then asks where he can find Jewish food. Gedali says that earlier it could be done in the neighborhood, but now they only cry, not eat.

"Rabbi"

Lyutov stopped in one of the houses for the night. In the evening, the whole family sits down at the table, headed by Rabbi Motale Bratslavsky. His son Ilya is also sitting here, with a face similar to Spinoza. He fights on the side of the Red Army. Despondency reigns in this house and one feels near death, although the rabbi himself urges everyone to rejoice in the fact that they are still alive.

With incredible relief, Lyutov leaves this house. He goes to the station, where the train of the First Horse is already standing, and the unfinished newspaper "Red Cavalryman" is waiting there.

Analysis

Created an indissoluble artistic unity of all the stories of Babel ("Cavalry"). The analysis of the works emphasizes this feature, since a certain plot-forming connection is revealed. Moreover, the author himself forbade changing the places of the stories when the collection was republished, which also emphasizes the importance of their location.

Combined the cycle and one composition Babel. "Cavalry" (analysis allows us to be convinced of this) is an inextricable epic-lyrical story about the times of the Civil War. It combines both naturalistic descriptions of military reality and romantic pathos. In the stories there is no author's position, which allows the reader to draw their own conclusions. And the images of the hero-narrator and the author are so intricately intertwined that they create the impression of the presence of several points of view.

Cavalry: heroes

Kirill Vasilievich Lyutov - central character the entire collection. He acts as a narrator and as an unwitting participant in some of the events described. Moreover, he is a double of Babel from the Cavalry. Kirill Lyutov - this was the literary pseudonym of the author himself when he worked

Lyutov is a Jew who was abandoned by his wife, he graduated from St. Petersburg University, his intelligence prevents him from intermarrying with the Cossacks. For the fighters, he is a stranger and only causes condescension on their part. He is essentially an intellectual who is trying to reconcile humanistic principles with the realities of the revolutionary era.

Pan Apolek is an icon painter and an old monk. He is an atheist and a sinner who blasphemously treated the painting of a church in Novgorod. In addition, he is the bearer of a huge supply of distorted biblical stories where the saints are depicted as subject to human vices.

Gedali is the owner of a shop of antiquities in Zhitomir, a blind Jew with a philosophical character. He seems to be ready to accept the revolution, but he does not like the fact that it is accompanied by violence and blood. Therefore, for him there is no difference between counter-revolution and revolution - both bring only death.

Cavalry is a very frank and merciless book. The reader finds himself in the usual harsh military reality, in which spiritual blindness and truth-seeking, tragic and funny, cruelty and heroism are intertwined.

RUSSIAN PEOPLES FRIENDSHIP UNIVERSITY

ABSTRACT ON RUSSIAN LITERATURE

THE THEME OF THE CIVIL WAR IN THE "CONARMY" BY I. BABEL

Performed:

Checked:

Moscow 2010

The history of the creation of the novel …………………………………………………… 3

The originality of the style ……………………………………………………………… 7

Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………… 8

References…………………………………………………. ..ten

NOVEL CREATION HISTORY

"Cavalry"

A series of stories based on Babel's diary entries made during his stay in the First Cavalry Army (1920) as a correspondent for the newspaper "Red Cavalry", where he was often published under the pseudonym K. Lyutov. In the political department of the Cavalry, the writer also arrived with documents addressed to Kirill Vasilyevich Lyutov, issued to him by the secretary of the Odessa Provincial Committee S. Ingulov. Originally published in Moscow, Odessa and Leningrad periodicals, the Cavalry was published as a separate book in the State Publishing House at the end of May 1926.

The book includes thirty-four stories. Its editor was D.A. Furmanov is a writer, author of the famous novel "Chapaev". According to his testimony, Babel proposed to include 50 titles in it. After a discussion of the Cavalry in the press house, where criticisms were made against the writer, Babel, according to the same Furmanov, said the following: “What I saw at Budyonny's, I gave it. I see that I didn’t give a political worker there at all, I didn’t give much about the Red Army at all, I’ll give it further if I can ”.

Babel's book became a significant literary event and caused numerous responses literary criticism... From 1926 to 1933 "Cavalry" went through eight editions.

Babel became known to a wide circle of readers in 1924, when Mayakovsky published several short stories of the young author in Ledovo. Soon after this, "Cavalry" was published. It was translated into twenty languages, and Babel became known far beyond the borders of the country. For Soviet and foreign readers, he was one of the most remarkable writers of his time. Babel was not like anyone, and no one could be like him. He always wrote about his own and his own way; from other authors he was distinguished not only by his original writing style, but also by a special perception of the world. All his works were born of life, he was a realist in the most precise sense of the word. He noticed what others were passing by and spoke in such a way that his voice surprised. Babel spoke unusually about the unusual. The long life of a person, in which the exceptional, like the essence of water, is diluted with everyday life, and the tragedy softened by habit, Babel showed briefly and pathetically. Of all, a person is most exposed, perhaps that is why the themes of love passion and death are repeated with such persistence in his books.

ARTISTIC PERSONALITY.

Most of the book (23 of 34 short stories) is written in the manner of a personal storytelling - from an autopsychological hero, witness and participant in the events. Only in four cases was he named Lyutov. In the rest of the novellas, it is simply "me" with biographical details that do not always coincide. The later Argamak was performed in the same manner.

In seven short stories, Babel demonstrates the classic fairy tale manner. Before us is the word of the hero, a picturesque paradoxical character created not just by action, but also by purely linguistic means. This is the famous "Letter" by Vaska Kurdyukov about how the enemies of father and son were "finished" (a variation of "Taras Bulba"); another letter from the gloomy and mysterious Sokolov with a request to send him to make a revolution in Italy ("The Sun of Italy"); one more letter and an explanatory note from Nikita Balmashov to the investigator ("Salt", "Treason"); exchange of messages between Savitsky and Khlebnikov ("The story of one horse", "Continuation of the story of one horse"); the story-confession of Pavlichenko ("Life of Pavlichenko, Matvey Rodionych").

In fact, the late "Kiss" adjoining the book turns out to be a strange word, the hero of which is usually considered Lyutov. In fact, the character-narrator has significant differences from the "bespectacled" (he is a squadron commander, "put two Polish officers in battle", flaunts bloodthirstiness) and should be considered as an objective hero with an intellectual, not a vernacular tale. In the novel "Prishchepa" the narrator refers to the hero's story, but reproduces it from himself, depicting the consciousness, but not the speech of the central character.

Finally, three short stories ("Chief of the supply store", "Cemetery in Kozin", "Widow") do without a personal narrator and storyteller at all. They are performed in an objective manner, from a third person perspective. But here, too, the pure anecdote about the cunning Dyakov (the brightest and "most problem-free" novel in the book) sharply differs from a prose poem, a lyrical sigh at a Jewish cemetery (the shortest and most storyless story).

Babel mobilizes the latent possibilities of a small genre, tests it for strength, diversity, and depth.

"Cavalry" begins with "Crossing the Zbruch". In this one and a half page text, almost all the themes and motives that have become the structural basis of the book are exhibited. Behind a dry line of military reports, a world of inhuman beauty and Shakespearean passions opens up.

The first murderers in the book are Poles, nominal enemies. But then everything mixes up, diffuses, turns into a bloody mess. In "Cavalry" there is not a single natural death (suddenly, but without someone else's help, only the old man will die in the late story "The Kiss"). But a lot of shot, stabbed, tortured. In 34 short stories 12 deaths are given close-up, others, massive ones, are mentioned in passing. “Prishchepa walked from one neighbor to another, the bloody print of his soles followed him. "He set fire to villages and shot Polish elders for harboring."

Daddy cuts his son, a Red Army soldier, and another son ends up daddy ("Letter"), Pavlichenko tramples on the former master ("Life of Pavlichenka ..."). Konkin crumbles the gentry, then, together with his fellow soldier, removes two of them with screws, another Spirka leads to Dukhonin's headquarters to check documents, and finally, the narrator makes it easier for the proud old Pole ("Konkin"). Nikita Balmashov, with the help of the right screw, also finishes the deceiving bagwife ("Salt"). Trunov stuck his saber into the throat of the captive, Pashka smashed the boy's skull, then enemy airplanes shot first Andryushka from machine guns, then Trunov ("Squadron Trunov"). Belmasty Galin, an employee of the Red Cavalry, tastefully paints the violent deaths of emperors. “Last time,” says Galin, narrow in shoulders, poor and blind, “last time we examined, Irina, the execution of Nikolai the Bloody, executed by the Yekaterinburg proletariat. Now let's move on to other tyrants who died a dog's death. Peter III was strangled by Orlov, his wife's lover. Paul was torn to pieces by the courtiers and own son... Nikolai Palkin was poisoned, his son fell on the first of March, his grandson died of drunkenness ... You need to know about this, Irina ... "(" Evening ").

In the world of "Cavalry" it is difficult to escape and survive not only for people. “I grieve for the bees. They are torn apart by warring armies. There are no more bees in Volhynia "(" The Way to Brody ")," Scorched and torn, wagging his legs, he led the cow out of the stall, put a revolver in her mouth and fired "(" Prishchepa ").

Most of the pages of the book are painted in the brightest color - red. Therefore, the sun here looks like a severed head, and the glow of the sunset resembles impending death, and autumn trees swing at intersections like the naked dead.

Blood and death equalize friends and foes, right and wrong. "... He died, Pashka, he has no more judges in the world, and I am his last judge of all" ("Squadron Trunov").

“What is our Cossack? - Babel writes in his diary. - Layers: bardism, daring, professionalism, revolutionary spirit, bestial cruelty. We are the vanguard, but why? "

In "Cavalry" short stories-shots are mounted on contrast, contradiction - consoling bundles and soothing reflections. One undresses prisoners and corpses; another is robbing a church; the third tortures the unfortunate deacon, his unrecognized double; the fourth dies heroically in a fight with airplanes; the fifth sees treason even in the hospital among the attending physicians; the sixth instantly becomes a skillful brigade commander with "the imperious indifference of the Tatar khan"; the seventh dreams of killing the Italian king in order to reignite the Icon of Apolek.

From Viktor Shklovsky's “critical romance” about Babel (1924), who was on the whole very perceptive, the aphorism became the most famous: “The meaning of Babel’s reception is that he speaks with one voice both about the stars and about the gonorrhea”. It is one-sided, imprecise. In "Cavalry", among other things, it is the range of intonations and the architectonic structure of the book that amazes me. The even tone of conversation about the terrible, so amazed contemporaries (some saw this as deliberate aestheticism), is combined with the style of the report or protocol, comic narration, high rhetoric, exalted lyrics of a "poem in prose."

OWN STYLE

The style of the writer, in fact, which immediately distinguished him as a bright artistic personality, required painstaking labor in order to safely pass the reefs of pretentiousness and flamboyance, not to fall into excessive literature. As A. Kholkovsky correctly noted, the conflict between "precision" and "pomp", factography and literary form, is the leading axis of Babel's style. It is precisely the conflict, the tension between the two poles, and not a simple decision in favor of "truth" or pure art.

Babel himself spoke about the peculiarities of his work: “... I forget the impressions, images and colors I received from reality. And then one thought arises, devoid of artistic flesh, one naked theme ... I begin to develop this theme, fantasize, clothe it in flesh and blood, but without resorting to the help of memory ... but an amazing thing! What seems to me to be fantasy, fiction, often later turns out to be reality, forgotten for a long time and immediately restored in this unnatural and difficult way. This is how the Cavalry was created, and even the names of the heroes, which, it seemed to me, I had invented, turned out to be the real names of people. "

I. Babel's novel "Cavalry" is a series of not very connected episodes, lining up into huge mosaic canvases. In the "Cavalry", despite the horrors of war and the fierce climate of those years, faith in the revolution and faith in man are shown. The author depicts the piercingly melancholy loneliness of man in war. And, seeing in the revolution not only strength, but also “tears and blood”, he spun a person this way and that, analyzed him.

CONCLUSION

At the center of the "Cavalry" is one of the fundamental problems of Babel's realism: the problem of a man in a revolution, a man who has entered the struggle for a new beginning. Many pages of the Cavalry are permeated with the desire to understand the human in the revolution, its humanistic content. Man and struggle, freedom and revolutionary necessity, violence and the so-called "socialist legality", proletarian dictatorship and proletarian humanism, the sublime and the base in man - these are, perhaps, the main pivotal questions that to one degree or another are present in every short story of the cycle "Cavalry".

There is no legal defense of the revolution in the Cavalry. The heroes of the Cavalry are sometimes cruel, sometimes funny; there is a lot of stormy, military spill in them. However, the whole book is imbued with the righteousness of the cause for which they die and fight, although neither the author nor the heroes talk about it. For Babel, the soldiers of the Cavalry were not those schematic heroes that we meet in our literature, but living people with dignity and vices. In "Cavalry" - a stream, an avalanche, a storm, and in it each person has his own appearance, his own feelings, his own language.

In the chapters "Letter" and "Berestechko" the author shows different positions their heroes in the war. In "Letter" he writes that on the scale life values the hero, the story of how they "finished" first brother Fyodor, and then dad, takes second place. This is the author's own protest against the murder. And in the chapter "Berestechko" Babel tries to get away from reality, because it is unbearable. Describing the characters of the heroes, the boundaries between them states of mind, unexpected actions, the author draws the endless heterogeneity of reality, the ability of a person to be simultaneously sublime and ordinary, tragic and heroic, cruel and kind, giving birth and killing. Babel masterfully plays with transitions, oscillating between horror and delight.
Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………… 8

Used literature ………………………………………………… ... 10

"Cavalry" by IE Babel tells the reader about difficult times, about that terrible time when the fates of various people mixed in a bloody whirlpool. The civil war has divided many families. It often happened that relatives found themselves on opposite sides of the front and annihilated each other with hatred. On the other hand, there was an involuntary rapprochement of the completely opposite in terms of worldview, perception of the environment and upbringing of people. So, in the Red Army, a former peasant guy, a Jewish intellectual, and a Cossack accustomed to war fought shoulder to shoulder. But all of them, going through a harsh military school, had to change. Previously existing values ​​were forgotten. Violence raged all around, disregard for the personal dignity of other people, rampant death.

The story "Death of Dolgushev" takes place during a short break between battles. The regiment went on the offensive, and Grischuk and Lyutov in their tachanka "were left alone and wandered between the firing walls until evening." Foreign units did not accept them, and the division headquarters was moved somewhere. The regiments entered, but soon they left Brody again. The Poles were advancing. Soon the cart accidentally stumbled upon a Polish patrol and found itself under open fire. Grischuk, already old man, suddenly asked his companion, "why do women work." This uneducated Cossack, seeing the injustice going on all around - the death of thousands of people, was truly bewildered. From childhood, folk age-old traditions and worldly wisdom could not help him find the answer to the simple question, why should a person live, create a family, give birth to children, if such an insignificant death awaits him, why all the torment and suffering, if human life It costs nothing and nobody needs it: "Laughter to me, why do women work ...". Lyutov does not have time to answer the question; on the way he met a seriously wounded telegraph operator Dolgushov. His stomach was ripped out, so at first glance it was clear that his days or even hours were numbered. He begs Lyutov and Grischuk to shoot him and inform his family about his death. Lyutov is unable to fulfill the request of Dolgushiy. A Jewish intellectual who has received a good secular and spiritual education cannot overstep himself. He has no right to decide the questions of the Almighty: to live or die for a person. And at the same time he feels sorry for the telegraph operator, internal conflict... On one side of the scale - moral attitudes and moral values, on the other - a desire to alleviate the suffering of a mortally wounded comrade. Lyutov refuses Dolgushov and spurs on his horse. Nevertheless, Lyutov feels guilty before him, and when his only friend Afonka Bida fulfills the telegraph operator's request, Lyutov approaches him with a guilty smile. Undoubtedly, Afonka did not easily make this decision, but here she was overpowered by pity for her brother in misfortune. The Cossack did not think about difficult things, he simply saved Dolgushov from suffering. Most likely, he did not experience moral suffering. He burned hatred for the enemies who killed another comrade in arms. This hatred he threw out on the approaching Lyutov: "You are sorry, bespectacled our brother, like a cat a mouse ...". The rage was so strong that Afonka would certainly have shot and his friend Lyutov, if Grischuk had not stopped him. The friendship between these people was irretrievably lost. Lyutov himself realized this, and Grischuk, who suddenly took out a wrinkled apple from the seat and offered it to his companion. In his story, Babel tries to convey to the reader that any war is great tragedy... In its conditions, faced with blood and dirt, it is difficult to save your face or somehow get used to, adjust to the situation. The war will still turn everything upside down, force them to commit acts contrary to conscience and humanity, make wrong both the Cossack who helps the dying, and the intellectual who could not step over their moral values and ideals.

I.E. Babel:

Man on fire of civil war and revolution.

"The writer and the revolution of 1917", "The intelligentsia and the revolution" - these themes seem to be used and outdated today. And, meanwhile, they have not yet received a researcher capable of evaluating them not from the position of a political observer, but detached and not confusing aesthetics with political topicality.
This problem initially implied two ways out: either the writer accepted the revolution and automatically became it faithful dog and a singer, or did not accept, as a result of which he showed her explicit or secret resistance. But both of these models dictate to the writer only the version of his behavior in the political arena, absolutely not envisaging numerous metamorphoses in the cultural zone. Therefore, the emphasis in the relationship of the writer with the last Russian revolution has always been made exclusively on the politically speculative moment; all cultural studies were discarded either in best case was in the background.
Here again there is a typical Russian cultural tradition confusion of aesthetics and morality. The writer always expects from the powerful political event an aesthetic explosion and fired at monstrous moral consequences. “Listening to the music of the revolution” is always dangerous; it is mesmerizing, but ends up producing too strong sound effects.
The seventeenth year awakened and legally formalized a colossal surge in violence, making it driving force national culture for many years to come. And this unique situation allows us to compare the work of the classics of the twenties with the cultural gestures of representatives of world culture.

The revolution is an event too huge in scale not to be reflected in literature. And only a few writers and poets who were under her influence did not touch on this topic in their work.

It should also be borne in mind that the October Revolution - the most important stage in the history of mankind - gave rise to the most complex phenomena in literature and art.

A lot of paper was written in response to the revolution and counter-revolution, but only a little that came out of the pen of the creators of stories and novels was able to fully reflect everything that moved the people in such difficult times and exactly in the direction in which it was necessary was the highest office without a single person... Also, the moral breakdown of people who have fallen into the most difficult position of the beast of the revolution is not described everywhere. And the one who instigated, unleashed a war ... Did they feel better? No! They, too, were in the hands of the monster that they themselves had spawned. These people from high society, the color of the entire Russian people is the Soviet intelligentsia. They underwent severe trials from the second, most of the country's population, who intercepted progress, further development war. Some of them, especially young people, broke down ...

Many writers have used various methods of embodiment and transmission of all their thoughts about the revolution in full and in the form that they themselves experienced while in the very centers of the civil war.

One of the famous revolutionary writers was I.E. Babel.

I.E. Babel is very, very complex in human and literary understanding. He was persecuted during his lifetime. One gets the impression that even after his death, the question of the works created by him is still not resolved.

This is a chronicle of everyday atrocities,

which crowds me tirelessly,

like a heart defect.

“Russia,” he said
under the table and huddled, - Russia ... "

In the 1920s and 1930s, Isaak Emmanuilovich Babel was rightfully considered one of the leading writers in Russia. Dozens of articles have been written about his prose. Most early stories Babel was approved and published by M. Gorky himself. This was in 1916, but then there was a long pause.
During the Civil War, Babel, under a false name, went to fight in the Red Cavalry of Budyonny. His first stories about the Cavalry caused a violent negative reaction from Budyonny himself. This is not surprising: even then the style of glorifying the victories of the Bolsheviks and their various accomplishments was emerging, criticism was unacceptable.
So, his own commander called Babel as follows: “... a literary degenerate Babel spits the artistic saliva of class hatred” of the cavalrymen. But again M. Gorky helped, who knew the value of the talent of this writer. Objection to Budyonny, M. Gorky highly appreciated Babel's "Cavalry" and even said that the writer portrayed the heroes of his book more colorful, "better, more truthful than Gogol of the Cossacks." But we know that Gorky himself came into conflict with Stalin's totalitarian regime, and
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Babel has lost his last defense. In 1939, Babel was arrested and soon died in Stalin's dungeons.
During the so-called “Khrushchev thaw”, they started talking about Babel again. His book "Favorites" was published. But Babel's official literary rehabilitation proceeded slowly. The "thaw" ended, and the writer was again subjected to sharp criticism, in the style of Budennovskaya, but now he was accused of anti-scientific views and concepts.
What were his so-called anti-scientific views? It seems to me, first of all, in the fact that the Soviet censorship of that time pushed into the shadows works about the revolution and the civil war of those writers who spoke frankly about their era. While the Soviet censors were trying to somehow silence the name of Babel, in 1973 a two-volume collection of his works was published in the GDR, and in the 79th in the United States - a one-volume Russian-language “Forgotten Babel”.
Now that the Russian reader has been fully returned creative heritage of this wonderful writer, we see how wrong those who accused him of treason to his own people were wrong.
In all his works about the revolution and the civil war, Babel denounced the unfair accusations that cost the lives of many innocent people, which overtook him. Babel's heroes tried to avoid bloodshed in all situations. In one of the novellas of "Cavalry" the protagonist, before the attack, specially removes cartridges from the revolver so as not to kill a person. Fighting comrades do not understand him and begin to hate him. I. Babel talentedly developed humanistic traditions classical Russian literature, in which human life and happiness always prevail over other values.

In 1920 Babel voluntarily joined the ranks of the First Cavalry Army and went to the front. Based on his direct impressions, he wrote a cycle of stories "Cavalry", working as a correspondent for the newspaper "Red cavalry" under the pseudonym K. Lyutov in the first Cavalry Army. Roman I.E. Babel's "Cavalry" is a series of seemingly unrelated episodes, lined up in huge mosaic canvases. In them, the writer shows the horrors of the civil war: cruelty, violence, destruction of the old culture. This process involves simple people- Cossacks, cavalrymen - and representatives of the intelligentsia. In the "Cavalry", despite the horrors of war, the ferocity of those years is shown - faith in revolution and faith in man. The art of Isaac Babel paints in the work a ruthless panorama of the feelings of the masses and the Red Army, slightly covered by a kind of black humor. It should be noted that the book is set in Ukraine and Poland, but all the characters mentioned below are Russian. The story is told on behalf of Kirill Vasilyevich Lyutov, who says about himself: "I graduated from the Faculty of Law and belong to the so-called intelligent people." Lyutov is deeply alone. He is an educated man fluent in languages endowed with a sense of beauty, finds himself in an environment in which they “cut for glasses”. They do not want to accept him until he commits a murder (even if this is a murder of a goose, but for an intellectual it is a tragedy). Only after the reprisal against the goose Lyutov merges with the mass of the Red Army men who said about him: "The guy is suitable for us." But this is only an appearance. He is still a stranger among them. He cannot bring himself to abandon the commandments of morality. Desecration of churches, violence against women, cruelty towards prisoners - all this echoes with pain in his soul. He will never turn into one of them, he will not become exactly like Vasily Kurdyukov, who coolly described the murder of his own father, or Afonka Vida, who bravely shot the wounded Dolgushov. To behave like these people, you need to know just as little and have no idea about the moral law.

Lyutov is not the only intellectual in the Cavalry. Fighting in Poland, the heroes of the book constantly encounter the local population - Poles and Jews. Jewish culture means a lot to Babel, who knew it from childhood. Most of the Jews depicted in the "Cavalry" are educated people who protect their culture and traditions.
According to N. Berkovsky: "Cavalry" is one of the significant phenomena in fiction about the civil war ".

The idea of ​​this novel is to reveal and show all the flaws of the revolution, the Russian army and human immorality.

The author depicts the piercingly melancholy loneliness of a man in a war. I.E. Babel, seeing in the revolution not only strength, but also "tears and blood", "spun" a person this way and that, analyzed him. In the chapters "Letter" and "Berestechko" the author shows the different positions of people in the war. In "Letter" he writes that on the scale of the hero's life values, the story of how they "finished" first brother Fedno, and then dad, takes second place. This is the author's own protest against the murder. And in the chapter "Berestechko" I.E. Babel tries to escape reality, because it is unbearable. Describing the characters of the heroes, the boundaries between their states of mind, unexpected actions, the author draws the endless heterogeneity of reality, the ability of a person to be simultaneously sublime and ordinary, tragic and heroic, cruel and kind, giving birth and killing. I.E. Babel masterfully plays the transitions between horror and delight, between the beautiful and the terrifying.

Behind the pathos of the revolution, the author discerned its face: he realized that the revolution is an extreme situation that reveals the secret of man. But even in the harsh everyday life of the revolution, a person who has a sense of compassion will not be able to come to terms with murder and bloodshed. A person, according to I.E. Babel, alone in this world. He writes that the revolution is going "like lava, scattering life" and leaving its imprint on everything it touches. I.E. Babel feels himself "at a large, incessant funeral service." The incandescent sun is still dazzlingly shining, but it already seems that this "orange sun is rolling across the sky like a severed head", and the "gentle light" that "lights up in the gorges of clouds" can no longer remove anxiety, because it is not just a sunset , and "the standards of the sunset are blowing over our heads ..." The picture of victory acquires an unusual cruelty before our eyes. And when, following the "sunset standards," the author writes the phrase: "The smell of yesterday's blood and killed horses drips into the evening chill" - with this metamorphosis he, if not overturned, then, in any case, will greatly complicate his initial triumphant song. All this prepares the finale, where in a hot dream the narrator sees fights and bullets, and in reality a sleeping Jewish neighbor turns out to be a dead, brutally slaughtered old man by Poles.

V. Polyansky noted that in the "Cavalry", as well as in " Sevastopol stories"L. Tolstoy," the hero in the end is the "truth" ... the rising peasant element, which rose to the rescue proletarian revolution, communism, even if understood in a peculiar way ”.

"Cavalry" I.E. Babel at one time caused a huge commotion in the censorship, and when he brought the book to the House of Press, after listening to harsh criticism, he calmly said: “What I saw from Budyonny, I gave it. I see that I didn’t give a political worker there at all, I didn’t give much about the Red Army at all, I will, if I can, further ”...

As it was said, the author did not disregard in his work such problems as national question... In the story "Gedali" we see a man who under no circumstances can give up his national traditions: "Revolution - let's say yes to it, but will we say no to Saturday?" The revolution brought him and other Jews nothing but new troubles: “And here we are all, learned people, we fall on our faces and shout at our voices: woe to us, where is the sweet revolution? .. "The hero of Isaac Babel's story - old Gedali expresses such a wish:" And I want an International of good people, I want every soul to be taken into account and given I wish her a ration in the first category. " To which the main character of the work, Kirill Lyutov, answers him that the International is "eaten with gunpowder and seasoned with the best blood."
Gedali himself understands this very well. He sees that both white and red bring evil, devastation, grief, destruction with them. And in his view, “revolution is a good thing good people... And then the hero asks the question: "Who will tell Gedali, where is the revolution and where is the counter-revolution." Where is the sweet revolution? " He wants simple calm, clarity. So that his beloved gramophone is not taken away from him, and in response he receives: "I will shoot at you ... and I cannot but shoot, because I am a revolution." Gedali is very easy to understand: people fighting against each other are equally cruel to the civilian population, and he wants kind, peaceful and sympathetic people to live around him.
In my opinion, in those conditions and at that time it was impossible. There was a war, the most absurd in its essence, when a brother goes against a brother, a son - against a father. And how, with weapons in hand, stepping over the dead, can you build a kind and just world that unites people of different nationalities?
It cannot be built, because it is perfect different cultures, ideas about the world, different lifestyles.
And one more feature: Gedali does not need high revolutionary ideals and goals at all, he needs a calm, peaceful and well-fed life. And there are many like him.
And the author himself considers the "International of good people" impossible, therefore he calls Gedali "the founder of the unrealizable International."

With his story, there were nine of them, the author seems to express the idea: there are no winners in the war, on the contrary, here everyone is defeated. Those who were killed are defeated, those who killed are amazed, because the trail of a committed murder will lie on them all their lives, and each shot will kill not only a person, but also a part of the soul. This is the most terrible, destructive influence of war, the burial of the souls of soldiers. Therefore, the author writes: I was horrified by the many funeral services that await me. In the very name Babel lays down definite meaning... There were nine of them + Who are they? Soldier, clerks, prisoners? The author deliberately writes about them as a homogeneous group of people, but he does this not being guided by the policy of anti-Semitism, but trying to isolate each person. Of the nine killed, the reader knows only one, standing at number four, Adolf Schulmeister, a ód clerk, a Jew. And who are they - the other eight people? And eight? After all, eight were killed only on this day, and how many of them laid down their heads under a deadly sight? And do not count, I guess. Therefore, Babel uses their pronoun, leaving the image of prisoners mysterious for the reader. The theme of the story can be defined as the destructive force of war, its effect on a person. The idea of ​​the story is to emphasize this many funerals, maybe open the eyes of all people and try to ask: What is all this for? Myriads of bees fought off the victors and died at the hives. They fought for themselves, for their home, for their big family, and a common goal brought them together. And when people kill each other in cold blood, what's this? It's not even a fight, not a war. This is the extermination of neighbors. The story has a kind of refrain: Nine prisoners are dead. I know it with my heart. This thought is repeated at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of the work, thereby encompassing all its parts as one. Like a thought throbbing in my brain. These words become the main words for the author. His hero, the narrator, worries about those killed. But what can he do if the platoon commander of the Heads, killing a man, regains a smile of relief and peace, as if such actions could be called great, heroic? In the story, besides the narrator, there are other heroes, whose characters the author reveals with the help of portrait sketches, dialogues, and their actions. So a young man with curly bins ,. with calm eyes of condescending youth embodies the idea of ​​the futility of war. Because youth looks at everything with different eyes. And it does not matter whether we lose or not, it is much different: whether we will preserve the main wealth of a person. Golov, the platoon commander, is contrasted in the story with the narrator. If for the latter to kill it is to take life, to commit a sin, an unforgivable act, then for the Head the murder turns into only a cold-blooded execution of the order. The polarity of these two images is also manifested in dialogues, in their relationships, in phrases. Golov speaks with hatred that the narrator is looking at the light through his glasses. Perhaps,. He really sees the world through the prism human feelings, the same as in peacetime, but, according to the Head, in war it is impossible. He is adapted for war: he learned to get clothes from prisoners, to shoot, to kill. His nature was probably very much influenced by the war. The heads are no longer a man. He is a soldier. And in this concept you can invest not only fighting qualities, but also the transformation of a person into one cog in the mechanism of the army and nothing more. The author uses another dialogue to express the thoughts of his characters. It takes place between the narrator and the captive Jew Schulmeister. The reader learns that two Jews communicate with each other. The only difference is that one officer and the other a prisoner, that one will kill, and the other will die in a matter of minutes. The author needed such a peculiar hero double to show the indiscriminate scourge of war. Everyone will simply die: some physically, others morally. If you go to the lexical level, then you can note the use of stylistically reduced, colloquial words that create a harmonious background for the narration (do the carve-up, throw the junk). Also, as always in colloquial speech, in the dialogues of the heroes you can find inversions, ellipses that are not artistic means but create a harmonious picture. At the end of the story there is an antithesis: I took the diary and went to the flower garden, which still survived. Hyacinths and blue roses grew there. The reader sees a sharp contrast between the horrors of war and the exquisite blue roses that grow in the flower garden, like fragments of a past carefree life, settled in the middle of the sea of ​​war.

All of Babel's stories are filled with memorable, vivid metamorphoses, reflecting the drama of his worldview. And we cannot but grieve about his fate, not sympathize with his inner torment, not admire him creative gift... His prose has not faded in time. His characters have not faded. His style is still mysterious and unreproducible. His portrayal of the revolution is perceived as an artistic discovery. He expressed his position on the revolution, became a "lonely man" in a world that is changing rapidly and teeming with change. And we see how civil war is alien to an intelligent person. This is the kingdom of savagery, the destruction of culture - both Russian and Polish and Jewish.

The catastrophic events of the social revolutions of the 20th century could not but become the greatest shock in the fate of literature. October 1917 blew up Russia from the inside and spawned a civil war. Devotion to the revolution and protection of its ideals in the civil war were reflected in the novels of D. Furmanov "Chapaev", N. Ostrovsky "How the Steel Was Tempered", A. Fadeev "Defeat", A. Serafimovich "Iron Stream".
But there were many writers who went to the conscious opposition and, following the laws of humanistic morality, talked about the revolutionary time as violence, distorting the fate of people in Russia. Works such as “ Quiet Don"," Don Stories "by M. Sholokhov," Cavalry "by I. Babel," Run "," White Guard”,“ Days of the Turbins ”by M. Bulgakov,“ Doctor Zhivago ”by B. Pasternak and others. Most of these authors fell victim to a dictatorial regime that did not want to know the truth about itself.
I. Babel. "CONARMY"
The life of I. Babel can be considered a vivid example of the fate of a person, warped under the wheels of the revolution. The tragic fate of the writer, who was shot in January 1940 in Moscow, was predetermined: the author of "Cavalry" could not survive the terror of the 1930s. As we read his books, we remember that they were paid on the highest bill.
"Cavalry" is a novel in short stories typical of the literature of the 1920s and 1930s. All novellas are combined literary storyteller Kirill Vasilyevich Lyutov, candidate of rights at St. Petersburg University, assigned to the headquarters of one of the divisions of the First Cavalry Army. The fate of a hero is not special case, concerning an individual representative of the intelligentsia, but a colossal generalization of the most important problem - the intelligentsia and the revolution.
The plot conflict is based on Lyutov's attempts to become an equal fighter of the Cavalry, to turn into a true red cavalryman who would not stand out from the crowd. Hence the ordeal of the hero. It could not be otherwise, because a well-educated, intelligent person, in many respects an idealist and romantic, falls into the circle of people with little education, ignorant, simply run wild from the many years of slaughter.
After an explosion of despair, the hero's affairs are slowly but surely moving towards a positive conclusion: he is gaining considerable authority among the cavalrymen, which can be judged by the fact that they call him "Lyutych", they turn to him as an arbitrator in case of difficulties.
Moreover, when Lyutov finds the courage and strength to resist the shooting of prisoners in a tense combat situation, he gets his way. This is the denouement: the hero overcame (of course, to a certain limit) the abyss that separated him from the fighters of the First Horse.
One of the most important in the novel is the problem of humanism, considered in the topic "man in war". The writer emphasizes that the heroes' thirst for revolutionary justice develops into fratricidal war, and courage and selfless dedication to the struggle "for a just cause" compensates for any moral shortcomings.
These are the heroes of Cavalry: Konkin, Ivan Akinfiev, Kolesnikov. Afonka Bida, Nikita Balmashev, even “the lady of all squadrons, Sashka”. For example, Ivan Akinfiev is a sophisticated sadist, for him "sovets power is bitter blood", and he is ready to kill Lyutov because he goes on the attack without shooting at the enemy.
War is equally disastrous in moral terms for all its participants. So, Lyutov, on the one hand, protests against the killing of prisoners and offending the religious feelings of Catholics, and, on the other, sets fire to a pile of straw on the floor of the house for that.
to force the hostess to feed him. This means that, getting into a similar situation, even a cultured person is not able to resist the principles of humanism.
Describing the horrors of war is not an end in itself for a writer. The attitude of the candidate of rights Lyutov to what is happening, an attempt to reconcile in the minds aversion to violence and the idea of ​​its inevitability - this is the contradiction that is fundamental for the novel.
The book about the war contains practically no battle scenes. For example, in the short stories "Kombrig Two", "Chesniki". "Afonka Vida" only mentions the fight. There is only one explanation for this: "Cavalry" is not a chronicle, it is a novel about human soul, restless, seeking truth in an unjust bleeding world. Having told tragic truth about the war, Babel, as a writer, as a humanist, completely rejects the wild, unnatural state of civil war, "seasoned" with revolutionary slogans about justice.
M.A. BULGAKOV. "WHITE GUARD", "RUN", "TURBINE DAYS"
Bulgakov entered literature with a theme that he remained faithful to in his work - revolution and culture, where the connecting union “and” sometimes sounded for the writer as a dividing “or”.
When the world around Bulgakov was shocked by the revolution, the question arose: what will happen to the culture created by millennia of civilization?
For Bulgakov, destroying the old means destroying, first of all, cultural values. He believes that only culture, the world of the intelligentsia, bring harmony into the chaos of human existence.
Thinking about Russia, the writer did not think of it without the intelligentsia as main force historical development... This idea takes on a tragic sound in the novel "The White Guard". The attempt of the Turbins, sword in hand, to defend life, which had already lost its existence, was assessed by Bulgakov as quixotic. With their death, according to the writer, everything perishes. Art world the novel seems to split in two: on the one hand, it is the world of the Turbins with their well-established cultural life, on the other hand, it is the barbarism of Petliuraism. The world of the Turbins perishes, but Petliura also perished. The battleship Proletarian enters the city, bringing the same chaos into the world of human kindness.
Following the "White Guard" Bulgakov creates a dramatic dilogy "Days of the Turbins" and "Running". While the White Guard clearly expresses the idea that everything perishes along with the death of the old intelligentsia, in Days of the Turbins and Run, only part of the world perishes with the death of the Turbins. Tragic heroes- Turbin and Khludov - warming up their parody twins - Lariosik and General Charnotu.
Heroism and personal courage Turbin, alone defending the gymnasium, is parodically reduced by the farcical performance of a lonely watchman who is ready to save the school desks at the cost of his life. Maxim is a kind of twin of the Turbins. They also have a "Mr. Director" who has sunk into oblivion. Their lives were also given for the sake of historical illusion. Here it gets tied main feature Bulgakov's vision and reflection of the world: tragedy and farce. It is the bitter irony, laughter, farce that will become decisive in describing the tragic essence of the life of people who have fallen under the wheels of history. And in "White Guard", and in "Run", and in "Days of the Turbins" Bulgakov portrayed the Russian intelligentsia, perishing in the fire of the revolution.
For a long time Bulgakov was called the singer of the "White Guard", and his works were regarded as "a direct sortie of the class enemy." Realizing the impossibility of surviving with romantic nostalgia for the old culture, Bulgakov in his work develops satirical image the new world, born of the revolution, in the famous story " dog's heart", In" The Devil "and other works.