People in war and peace. An essay on the theme The image of the common people in the novel “War and Peace

"War and Peace" is one of the brightest works of world literature, revealing an extraordinary wealth human destinies, characters, unprecedented breadth of coverage of the phenomena of life, the deepest image of the most important events in the history of the Russian people. The basis of the novel, as LN Tolstoy admitted, is based on "people's thought." “I tried to write the history of the people,” Tolstoy said. The people in the novel are not only peasants and disguised peasant soldiers, but also the courtyard people of the Rostovs, and the merchant Ferapontov, and the army officers Tushin and Timokhin, and representatives of the privileged class - the Bolkonskys, Pierre Bezukhov, Rostovs, and Vasily Denisov, and the field marshal Kutuzov, that is, those Russian people for whom the fate of Russia was not indifferent. The people are opposed by a handful of court aristocrats and a "muzzle" merchant, worried about his goods before the French take Moscow, that is, those people who are completely indifferent to the fate of the country.

In the epic novel, there are more than five hundred characters, a description of two wars is given, events unfold in Europe and Russia, but, like cement, holds all the elements of the novel "popular thought" and "the author's original moral attitude to the subject." According to Leo Tolstoy, an individual is valuable only when he is an integral part of the great whole, his people. “His hero is a whole country fighting the invasion of the enemy,” wrote V. G. Korolenko. The novel begins with a description of the 1805 campaign, which did not touch the hearts of the people. Tolstoy does not hide the fact that the soldiers not only did not understand the goals of this war, but even vaguely imagined who was Russia's ally. Tolstoy is not interested foreign policy Alexander I, his attention is drawn to the love of life, modesty, courage, endurance, dedication of the Russian people. Tolstoy's main task is to show the decisive role of the masses in historical events, to show the greatness and beauty of the feat of the Russian people in conditions of mortal danger, when psychologically a person reveals himself most fully.

The basis of the plot of the novel is Patriotic War 1812 The war brought about decisive changes in the life of the entire Russian people. All the usual living conditions had shifted, everything was now assessed in the light of the danger that hung over Russia. Nikolai Rostov returns to the army, Petya volunteers to fight, old prince Bolkonsky forms a detachment of militias from his peasants, Andrei Bolkonsky decides to serve not in the headquarters, but directly command the regiment. Pierre Bezukhov gave part of his money to equip the militia. The Smolensk merchant Ferapontov, in whose minds a disturbing thought about the "destruction" of Russia, when he learned that the city was being surrendered, does not seek to save the property, but calls on the soldiers to drag everything out of the shop so that the "devils" do not get anything.

The war of 1812 is more represented by crowd scenes. The people begin to realize the danger when the enemy approaches Smolensk. The fire and surrender of Smolensk, the death of the old prince Bolkonsky at the time of the inspection of the peasant militia, the loss of the harvest, the retreat of the Russian army - all this intensifies the tragedy of events. At the same time, Tolstoy shows that in this difficult situation something new was born that was supposed to destroy the French. Tolstoy sees the growing mood of determination and anger against the enemy as the source of the approaching turning point in the course of the war. The outcome of the war was determined long before its end by the "spirit" of the army and the people. This decisive "spirit" was the patriotism of the Russian people, which manifested itself simply and naturally: the people left the cities and villages captured by the French; refused to sell food and hay to enemies; partisan detachments were gathering in the rear of the enemy.

The battle of Borodino is the culmination of the novel. Pierre Bezukhov, watching the soldiers, feels the horror of death and the suffering that war brings, on the other hand, the consciousness of the "solemnity and significance of the coming minute" that the people inspire in him. Pierre became convinced of how deeply, with all their heart, Russian people understand the meaning of what is happening. The soldier who called him "fellow countryman" tells him confidentially: "They want to pile up with all the people; one word - Moscow. They want to make one end ”. The militias who have just arrived from the depths of Russia, in accordance with custom, put on clean shirts, realizing that they will have to die. Old soldiers refuse to drink vodka - "not such a day, they say."

In these simple related folk concepts and customs and forms showed the high moral strength of the Russian people. The high patriotic spirit and moral strength of the people brought victory to Russia in the war of 1812.

June 26 2010

The people in "War and Peace" are Tikhon Shcherbaty, Tushin and Timokhin, Pierre Bezukhoye and, Nikolai Rostov and. The Kuragins and Drubetskoy belong to the historical people. The people in War and Peace are not only morally healthy and positive. For the author of a historical epic dedicated to the Patriotic era with Napoleon, the concept of "people" included a complex and contradictory unity, heterogeneous both in moral and socially... Over the course of Tolstoy's life, many of his concepts changed dramatically. Including the concept of "people". Perhaps this change in Tolstoy's understanding of what a parod is, and the nature and direction of Tolstoy's special and historically significant path was expressed in the most vivid way.

In the 80s, after the crisis he went through and the transition to the position of the defender of peasant interests, only for the "working people", only for the working classes, will he recognize the right to be called a people. Then the concepts of "man" and "master" will become for him deeply opposite in their social and moral sense and values. In "War and Peace" this is not yet and could not be. It could not be due to the peculiarities of the historical material of the work, and due to the peculiarities of Tolstoy's worldview of that time. It is worth noting that in "The Landowner's Morning", written in the 50s, Tolstoy calls the peasants not a people, as he will do from the 80s, but a "class of the people." , The people in "War and Peace" - as it should be with historical people- multifaceted and multidimensional. On the pages of Tolstoy's novel, they collide, meet and part, disperse and converge, love and hate, people live and die different characters and different social situations. These are landowners and peasants, officers and soldiers, merchants and petty bourgeois, etc. However, Tolstoy devotes most of all attention and space to depicting people belonging to the nobility. This is explained not only by the fact that, as Tolstoy himself admits, the nobles, their way of life, manners, their deeds and thoughts were better known to him. This is also justified by purely objective circumstances: action historical novel Tolstoy takes place at a time when it was precisely the nobility who was the main conscious participant in the historical process and therefore, not only in Tolstoy's view, but also in reality, in reality, was on foreground events. Let us recall that the era that Tolstoy portrayed in the novel was attributed by V.I.Lenin to the period of nobility in the development of the Russian revolutionary movement.

The fact that Tolstoy treats the nobility with special attention does not at all mean that Tolstoy, the author of War and Peace, treats different people from among the nobility in the same way. To Tolstoy, some of the heroes are clearly sympathetic, sweet, spiritually close, and for the reader this immediately becomes noticeable. Other heroes to Tolstoy are alien and unpleasant, and this is also felt by the reader immediately and in the most direct way. Affects the author's "purity of moral feeling", which has an organic ability to infect in the artistic sense. As in his earlier works, so in War and Peace, Tolstoy is never morally indifferent to his heroes. Like Pierre Bezukhov, he constantly asks questions: “What's wrong? What well? What should we love, what should we hate? " These are the most basic questions artistic worldview Tolstoy. For him, these are the most fundamental questions of history, of all human illumination and reproduction of history.

I tried to write the history of the people.

L. Tolstoy

LN Tolstoy believed that the movement of hands on the clock of history depends on the rotation of many wheels interlocked with each other, and these wheels turn out to be people with an infinite variety of characters.

In the novel "War and Peace" - greatest work not only Russian, but also world literature - Tolstoy managed not only to display major events in the history of the Russian people, but also to reveal the features of the Russian national identity.

Putting “popular thought” as the basis of the novel, the writer tests the value and maturity of his heroes by their attitude to ordinary Russian peasants, to soldiers. Observing the people, plunging into the thick of events, Tolstoy's heroes make important discoveries for themselves, which often change their future life.

Sincere, open, life-loving Natasha Rostova, one might say, is saturated with the Russian national spirit: “Where, how, when she sucked into herself from the Russian air she breathed — this decanter brought up by a French governess — this spirit, where did she get these techniques ... But the spirit and the techniques were the same, inimitable, unexplored, Russian. " That is why Natasha is close to folk music, folk dances... But her love for the people is not limited to passive admiration, and in a difficult time for the country, Natasha demands that their carts, where they have already loaded their property, be given to the wounded. When communicating with Russian soldiers, Pierre Bezukhov finds the meaning and goals of life, realizing the falsity of his previous attitudes. He remains forever grateful to Platon Karataev, whom he met in captivity with the French, a Russian soldier who preaches goodness and love of life.

The courage and dedication of the Russian people during the battle of Austerlitz largely influenced the rejection of the ambitious aspirations of Prince Andrei Bolkons. And the prince devoted his whole life to this people, when the Patriotic War of 1812 began - a time of formidable trials, which made huge changes in the life of the entire Russian people.

A colossal wave of anger was caused by the French attack on Russia among all people who were not indifferent to the fate of their homeland. The whole country rose to fight the enemy. Many, including Andrei Bolkonsky, went to the active army. People like Pierre Bezukhov donated their money to the military, equipping the militia. Many merchants, for example Ferapontov, burned their shops or gave away property so that nothing would go to the French. Civilians of Moscow, before Napoleon's troops entered the city, left the city so as not to be under the power of the invaders. Material from the site

The Russian people showed a high patriotic spirit during the Battle of Borodino, where a high sense of camaraderie, a sense of duty, and the physical and moral strength of the soldiers were manifested. On the Borodino field, the French for the first time faced an enemy of such fortitude. That is why the Russian people won this war, because the flight of the French from Moscow and their final defeat were the result of joint actions. regular army, partisan detachments and local residents, who refused to sell hay and food to the enemy, left cities and villages captured by enemies, burned supplies and warehouses, dooming the French to starvation. The Russian people understood that the outcome of the war depends on each of them, and therefore did not need either persuasion or prodding. And they defended their lives. "Dubina people's war It rose with all its formidable and majestic strength and, without asking anyone's tastes and rules, with stupid simplicity, but expediently, without disassembling anything, it rose, fell and nailed the French until the entire invasion had died. "

Leo Tolstoy calls the Russian people a "wonderful, incomparable people", admiring his courage, dedication, and the steadfastness of his spirit, which helped to smash even the previously invincible army of Napoleon.

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Image common people the author of War and Peace pays a lot of attention. The peasantry appears before us in the person of serfs, corvée and servants, and in the person of soldiers who retain their peasant features, and in the person of partisans. As Tolstoy's worldview changes, he is interested in different aspects of the external and inner life peasants, but he always draws them unusually truthfully and vividly. Mass scenes with their variety of behavior and relationships of individual characters are amazing in their skill; amaze with their life truth speech characteristics.

When describing the 1805 campaign in Austria, Russian peasants appear as living people, dressed in soldier's greatcoats, but who have not lost their special peasant appearance. They go to fight without knowing exactly what, with whom and where. In the campaign, people show their usual endurance, simplicity, good nature, cheerfulness - a sign of great physical and moral strength. Making a tedious transition, they are thrown among themselves in separate phrases. At the command of the captain, the songwriters ran forward, sang a song, and then a soldier ran forward and began to dance. But here the soldiers are shown in battle, in action, in hard work in a time of mortal danger hanging over Russia, and one immediately feels new trait folk character- firmness and courage.

During the heroic battle of Schöngraben, the uncovered “battery continued to fire and was not taken by the French. In the course of an hour, seventeen of the forty servants were killed, "but the soldiers, led by their officer, continued to courageously fight against the superior forces of the enemy. Over the course of several years of work on War and Peace, Tolstoy's interest in the peasantry increased and the character of his depiction changed somewhat. The plight of the people is emerging more and more clearly. On the estates of Bezukhov and after his "reforms" "the peasants continue to give with work and money everything that they give from others, that is, everything that they can date.

The old prince Bolkonsky orders to give his courtyard a soldier because he mistakenly served coffee first to the prince's daughter, and not to a Frenchwoman who used the given time the location of the old man. Such manifestations of lordly tyranny were not isolated phenomena, as this is evident from the conversation between Andrei Bolkonsky and Pierre during their trip to Lysye Gory. Describing the Rostovs' hunting, Tolstoy introduces a new, episodic person - the landowner Ilagin, the owner of a wonderful hunting dog, for which the "respectable courteous gentleman" "gave his neighbor three courtyard families a year ago."
The discontent of the peasants manifests itself in War and Peace more than once. The peasants' dissatisfaction with their position, the consciousness of the injustice of the existing system, underlines such a small episode. When the wounded Prince Andrey was brought to the dressing station and the doctor ordered him to be carried to the tent immediately, “a murmur arose in the crowd of awaiting wounded.

"It is seen. and in the next world for the masters to live alone. - said one. " The closeness of the French shook the lordly power. and the men begin to talk openly about that. that they have long been painful. The hatred of the peasants for the landlords was so great. as “the last stay of Prince Andrey in Bogucharovo. hospitals with its innovations. schools and the relief of quitrent. - did not soften their morals, but. against. strengthened those character traits in them. which the old prince called savagery. " The promises of Princess Marya to give bread and take care of new places did not inspire them with confidence. where she invited them to move.

However, the nobles do not feel at ease either. The meaning of this concern is clearly expressed by Pierre. speaking in the epilogue to Nikolai Rostov. that it is necessary to prevent a possible Pugachevism. But. despite their plight. the peasants do not want to surrender their homeland to the rule of the French invaders, and at the same time show boundless courage and resilience. The mobilized peasants, the militia, put on clean shirts before the Battle of Borodino: they prepared for death. but not to retreat. Expression of this simple and sincere. alien to any imagination and theatricality of love for their homeland is unshakable fortitude. courage of Russian soldiers. The valiant Russian warriors have nothing ostentatious. They stand in their places and that the French do not dare to attack more. " This incomprehensible strength of the Russian army was the strength of the Russian people. who fought for his homeland. And Tolstoy again leads the reader to the source of this strength of the Russian army - ordinary Russian people. peasants. dressed in soldier's greatcoats.

The very same prince Andrei, who once spoke with Pierre from his aristocratic positions so contemptuously about the peasants, as he came into close contact with the soldiers and peasants in the common cause of defending the homeland, he was imbued with deep respect for them. Not only that part of the people who had been mobilized into the army took part in the struggle against the invaders. After the Battle of Borodino, the French “did not have fodder to feed their horses and cattle... Nothing could help this disaster, because the local peasants burned their hay and did not give it to the French. " The peasantry played a huge role in the final destruction of the enemy and by organizing partisan detachments that fearlessly exterminated Napoleon's "great" army.

Peasants, including soldiers, appear in "War and Peace" vividly, vividly, convincingly truthfully, thanks to a huge number separate bright sketches, sometimes small strokes, characterizing the general appearance of the masses. From time to time, individual artistically completed images appear from the general mass for a more or less long period. Each of them has its own striking features. So, for example, Platon Karataev, who played such a important role in the life of Pierre Bezukhov. Complete indifference to deprivation, "swarm principle", simplicity, tenderness - all this struck Pierre as a sharp contrast to the need for luxury, careerism, gross egoism and arrogance of "high society", the Kuragin society, Scherer and the like, so weighed him down. The humanity and compassion of this Russian peasant helped Pierre to re-enter the world of human relations after the terrible spectacle of the execution of innocent people in Moscow occupied by the enemy.

Peering into the simple activities of Karataev, his attitude towards people and life in general, Pierre, as it seemed to him at that time, found a solution to the dissatisfaction that tormented him. Reconciliation with all the suffering and hardships that befell him, confidence in the expediency of everything that was happening seemed to Pierre at this time the greatest wisdom life. Karataev's life, “as he himself looked at it, did not make sense as a separate life. It made sense only as a part of the whole that he constantly felt. " Positive traits In Pierre's eyes, Karataev was not diminished by either his thief or lack of special affection: "Platon Karataev remained forever in Pierre's soul the most powerful and dear memory and the personification of everything Russian, kind and round." The image of Karataev is not given by Tolstoy directly from himself, but only through the perception of Pierre, and in a special state of mind, and this leaves a special imprint on him. Particular importance to this image is given by a kind of speech that contains very little of the actual Karataev language, but in which the centuries-old folk wisdom... But these sayings by no means always reflect his personal feelings and life rules... Along with speech characteristic the image of Karataev is revealed through his labor activity and attitude towards people around. Tolstoy is touched by the patience, humility, good-naturedness, compassion and hard work of Karataev. The author embellished his speech wise sayings borrowed from the centuries-old life experience a number of generations, but by no means showed him the embodiment of the best features of the people, although the fatalism of Karataev is to some extent consonant with the views of the author. Showing in the person of Karataev infinite patience and all-embracing kindness and benevolence, Tolstoy obscures the acuteness of class contradictions between landlords and peasants. A different type is given in the image of the partisan Tikhon Shcherbaty. At a time when the chiefs of large detachments still did not dare to think of an invasion of the very center of the French army, "the Cossacks and peasants who climbed between the French believed that now everything is possible."

Among these men, for whom "everything is possible", Tikhon Shcherbatyi stands out for his extraordinary prowess. First, he caught the "Miroderov", living in his village Pokrovskoe near Gzhatya, and then he joined partisan detachment Denisov. He did all kinds of hard economic work there, and then, when he showed his fearlessness and dexterity, he was enrolled in the Cossacks. Tikhon was the most useful and brave man in the detachment. Nobody else discovered cases of French attacks. Tikhon was not proud of his exploits, but once he was wounded and since then did not take prisoners: apparently, the wound hardened him. One of the manifestations inner strength Chipped is also his ability to depict in a humorous sense even the most dangerous situations in which he found himself. Along with love for the homeland, steadfastness, simplicity and selfless courage, along with a close comradely bond and a sense of collectivity, Tolstoy shows a special feature of the Russian people - humanity. After the enemy was defeated, in the soul of the people "the feeling of insult and revenge" replaced the axis with "contempt and pity."

When Kutuzov on November 5, on the first day of the Krasnensky battle, rode with his "huge retinue of generals who were displeased with him, whispering behind him," he saw French prisoners disfigured by sores and tearing raw meat with their hands. The same good-natured attitude towards prisoners is manifested in the descriptions of the subsequent stages of the expulsion of the French army from Russia. Russian soldiers are lifting and carrying the weakened Rambal to the officer's hut. So, in the great work of Tolstoy, there is peasant Rus in all its diversity, with all its contradictions, with its strength and weakness.

The folk theme is the main theme of War and Peace. It should be noted that the image of Karataev is in contradiction with the general image of the Russian people - the fearless defender of their homeland. Less attention than the peasantry is given in War and Peace to the urban lower classes, but they are depicted with a great artistic force and true.

In Smolensk, the population sets fire to their houses so that the French do not get anything. The petty trader Ferapontov in despair shouts that the soldiers take everything and that he himself will set fire to his house. This abandoned people do not believe in the possibility of leaving Moscow and, reading the Rostopchin posters, goes to Count Rostopchin for instructions on how and where to take part in the defense. hometown... But Rostopchin, with his ostentatious, false patriotism, does not know the common Russian people and is afraid of him. Having provoked the murder of Vereshchagin, he leaves Moscow from the back porch, reflecting in French that “the crowd of people is terrible, disgusting. They are like wolves: nothing can satisfy them except meat. " And these "wolves", the crowd that Rostopchin had pushed to murder, began to hastily move around the lying bloody corpse. These people then took upon themselves the whole brunt of the life of the city occupied by a non-friend, up to executions for arson, in which they were not guilty. Thus, before us passes the Russian peasantry (and partly the urban lower classes) in all its diversity, with its selfless love to the homeland, with his fearlessness, endurance, hard work, with his deep humanity - features that have developed in the conditions working life... It was in this class, despite its weaknesses and shadowy sides, noticed by the keen gaze of a genius realist writer, that the strength of Russia was at that time.

Common people in the novel War and Peace

The author of "War and Peace" pays a lot of attention to the depiction of the common people. The peasantry appears before us in the person of serfs, corvée and servants, and in the person of soldiers who retain their peasant features, and in the person of partisans.
As Tolstoy's worldview changes, he is interested in different aspects of the external and internal life of the peasants, but he always draws them with unusually truthful and vivid colors. Mass scenes with their variety of behavior and relationships of individual characters are amazing in their skill; speech characteristics are striking in their life truth.
When describing the 1805 campaign in Austria, Russian peasants appear as living people, dressed in soldier's greatcoats, but who have not lost their special peasant appearance. They go to fight without knowing exactly what, with whom and where. On a hike, people show their usual endurance, simplicity, good nature, cheerfulness - a sign of great physical and moral strength. Making a tedious transition, they are thrown among themselves in separate phrases. At the command of the captain, the songwriters ran forward, sang a song, and then a soldier ran forward and began to dance. But here the soldiers are shown in battle, in action, in hard work in a time of mortal danger hanging over Russia, and one immediately senses a new feature of the national character - fortitude and courage.

During the heroic battle of Schöngraben, the uncovered “battery continued to fire and was not taken by the French. In the course of an hour, seventeen of the forty servants were killed, "but the soldiers, led by their officer, continued to courageously fight against the superior forces of the enemy. Over the course of several years of work on War and Peace, Tolstoy's interest in the peasantry increased and the character of his depiction changed somewhat. The plight of the people is emerging more and more clearly. On the estates of Bezukhov and after his "reforms" "the peasants continue to give with work and money everything that they give from others, that is, everything that they can date.

The old prince Bolkonsky orders the soldiers to give up his courtyard for the fact that he mistakenly served coffee first to the prince's daughter, and not to the Frenchwoman, who at that time was in the old man's favor. Such manifestations of lordly arbitrariness were not isolated
phenomena, as this is evident from the conversation between Andrei Bolkonsky and Pierre during their trip to Bald Mountains. Describing the Rostovs' hunting, Tolstoy introduces a new, episodic person - the landowner Ilagin, the owner of a wonderful hunting dog, for which the "respectable courteous gentleman" "gave his neighbor three courtyard families a year ago."
The discontent of the peasants manifests itself in War and Peace more than once. The peasants' dissatisfaction with their position, the consciousness of the injustice of the existing system, underlines such a small episode. When the wounded Prince Andrei was brought to the dressing station and the doctor ordered him to be carried to the tent immediately, “a murmur arose in the crowd of awaiting wounded.

"It is seen. and in the next world for the masters to live alone. - said one. "

The closeness of the French shook the lordly power. and the men begin to talk openly about that. that they have long been painful. The hatred of the peasants for the landlords was so great. as “the last stay of Prince Andrey in Bogucharovo. hospitals with its innovations. schools and ease of quitrent. - did not soften their morals, but. against. strengthened those character traits in them. which the old prince called savagery. "

The promises of Princess Marya to give bread and take care of new places did not inspire them with confidence. where she invited them to move.

However, the nobles do not feel at ease either. The meaning of this concern is clearly expressed by Pierre. speaking in the epilogue to Nikolai Rostov. that it is necessary to prevent the possible Pugachevism. But. despite their plight. the peasants do not want to surrender their homeland to the rule of the French invaders, and at the same time show boundless courage and resilience. Mobilized men
Before the battle of Borodino, the militia put on clean shirts: they prepared for death. but not to retreat.
Expression of this simple and sincere. alien ...