Literature lesson in grade 11

"Linguistic analysis of V. Shalamov's stories" Berries "," Single measurement "

Lesson objectives:

1. Educational:

* improving the skill of linguistic and stylistic analysis of the text;

* the formation of the ability to analyze the text of an artistic style;

* activation of cognitive and research activities of students.

2. Developing:

* further development of the communicative, linguistic and linguistic competencies of students;

* development of the creative abilities of the personality of students and the activation of their mental activity through the use of elements of the technology of critical thinking;

* improving the ability to argue and prove your point of view on a problematic issue;

* development of social competence of students.

3.Educational:

* contribute to the moral development of the personality of students, their determination of true life values.

Technology: technology of critical thinking; problem learning technology, workshop of value orientations.

Tasks:

* to reveal the main idea of ​​V. Shalamov's stories "Berries"

* story linguistic and stylistic analysis of stories "Single measurement"

* analyze linguistic (expressive) means.

Lesson type:a lesson in the complex application of knowledge, skills and abilities of students.

Methods:problem-search, problematic

Lesson type:workshop

Forms of work:frontal, individual.

On the desk:

All that was dear - trampled to dust; civilization and culture fly off a person in the shortest possible time, calculated in weeks.

The stoves of Auschwitz and the shame of Kolyma proved that art and literature are zero ...

V. Shalamov

On the sideboard: (concepts are recorded during the lesson)

Totalitarianism

Suppression

Destruction of personality

Grain of sand

State machine

Camp

Model of society

At the end of the lesson with these words, make up sentences - conclusions.

On the left wing:

Story

Composition

Means of artistic expression

During the classes:

1. Teacher's words

At home you got acquainted with the stories of V. Shalamov. Have you read the works of this author before?

Today we will discover the world of Shalamov's prose, the world is cruel and merciless and truthful to the limit. To understand the motives for writing such works, it is necessary to get acquainted with a short biography of the author.

2. Presentationprepared by a student - biography of V. Shalamov

3. Conversation

What is shocking in the biography of the writer?

He was in the camps in Kolyma for 20 years, was a political prisoner. Consequently, everything he wrote about was experienced and felt by the author himself. "Kolyma stories" - personal experience.

What do we know about those times, camps?

4. Informing the student about the punishment system in the camps.

So what stories have you read.

- "Single measurement", "Berries".

What is the theme uniting these stories?

The main theme is the existence of a person in the camp.

Where does the action take place?

In the north. Kolyma, the most severe camps.

Who is at the center of the story?

Convicts (thieves, political prisoners), overseers.

What is the intonation of the story?

The intonation is impassive, ordinary, without emotion. This intonation gives the stories a note of doom.

As a rule, in any prose fiction there are all types of speech: narration, description, reasoning. What is in V. Shalamov's stories? Prove it.

There is a narration and description.

Why is there no reasoning in V. Shalamov's stories?

The zek cannot reason. He is a cog, "nobody", "camp dust".

In what episodes does the description appear?

These episodes are related to the description of food. It is a powerful emotion in the face of constant hunger. There is a clear parallel: food = life, man = animal.

Is there a narrative?

Yes, this is the basis of stories. The life of a convict consists of a series of actions aimed at preserving and maintaining his own life: exhausting, pointless work, struggle with constant hunger and cold, actions to get food.

What is the problematic of stories?

1. The problem of confrontation between man and the totalitarian state machine. 2. The problem of changing (deforming) a person's values ​​in the camp.

3. The problem of the cost of human life.

5. Analysis of the story "Single measurement"

The genre is declared by V Shalamov in the title of the collection - "Kolyma stories"

What is a story? Let's turn to the dictionary.

The story is a small epic genre, a prose work of a small volume, which, as a rule, depicts one or more events in the life of the hero.

What is the classic storytelling composition?

The beginning, the development of the action, the culmination, the denouement.

Do V. Shalamov's stories correspond to the classical form?

No. There is no introduction, the climax is shifted towards the end of the piece.

This is a deliberate departure from literary canons. Shalamov was convinced that literature was dead (the one that “teaches” - the literature of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy).

The narrative about the last day of the hero of the story is ordinary, without emotions. Dugaev's death is a statistic.

Why is there no introduction and conclusion in the story?

V. Shalamov needs to show the essence without burdening it with the hero's prehistory. In the conditions of the camp, it does not matter at all who the person was before. Shalamov writes about a man who stands at the line dividing life and death.

The people around are indifferent to the fate of a comrade. (Read 1 paragraph of the story, analyze the behavior of the partner and the foreman)

What does Dugaev feel in the camp?

The main feeling is hunger. It is he who determines the hero's train of thought (read an excerpt). The second is indifference (read the passage).

In the camp, a person becomes dull, turns into an animal. Dugaev does not know how to steal (and this is the “main northern virtue” in the camp), so he quickly weakens. He tries to fulfill the quota (“None of the comrades will grumble that he will not fulfill the quota”). When Dugaev finds out that he has completed only 25%, he is surprised because “the work was so hard”. He was so tired that even "the feeling of hunger left him long ago."

Find the climax of the story and its denouement.

The climax and the denouement are combined in the last paragraph (read out). When Dugaev realized why he was being led to a high fence with barbed wire, he “regretted that he had worked in vain, that he had been tormented in vain for this last day”.

6. Analysis of the story "Berries"

What do the stories “Single Size” and “Berries” have in common?

In the story "Berries" Shalamov draws everyday life in the camp, as in "Single measurement". The hero, on whose behalf the story is being told, like Dugaev, clings to life, although he understands that his life and the life of his comrades are worthless.

1. In the camp, everyone is for himself.

2. Hunger is a painful acute sensation that pushes a person to risk and rash actions.

3. All moral qualities of a person gave way to physiological needs - to eat, sleep, be warm.

Why did Rybakov, the narrator's friend, put the berries in a jar?

If Rybakov picks up a full can, the chef of the guard detachment will give him bread. Rybakov's enterprise immediately became an important thing. ”Getting food is the most important thing in the camp.

Why didn't Rybakov ask for help in picking berries?

He would have to share bread, and the “camp ethics” does not imply such human actions. Consequently, Shalamov's idea is once again confirmed that in the camp everyone is for himself.

What episode intonationally and meaningfully stands out from the general narrative?

An episode describing berries. This is real poetry. The narrator draws berries with an intonation of a gourmet and connoisseur. Nothing in the life of a prisoner evokes such strong emotions. Only food.

Analyze the episode about Rybakov's death.

Rybakov was shot dead by the guard Seroshapka for violating the boundaries of the designated zone. Seroshapka did it casually, without regret. The guard knew that Rybakov would not run away, but he killed the convict with the first shot. The author draws the reader's attention to the fact that Rybakov was killed by the first shot, which should be a warning. The second was made formally - two shots were supposed to be fired. Neither the guard Seroshapka nor the convicts thought about the observance of the rule of law, because the camp is a territory of lawlessness, and "the price of camp dust is zero."

The death of a comrade is an ordinary event. There is no sense of loss, trouble. Man is nothing. A jar of berries is valuable as it can be exchanged for bread.

Read again the words of V. Shalamov about civilization and culture. After reading the stories, did it become clear why the author adheres to this point of view? Use the key words you noted on the chalkboard throughout the lesson in your answer.

V. Shalamov thinks so, because the camp proved that the physical and spiritual forces of a person in a collision with the machine of a totalitarian state are limited. The forces of evil break and destroy the personality, because the possibilities of man are finite, and evil can be unlimited. The artist was not afraid to show the terrible in man. Having shown the "dehumanization" of the world, Shalamov turned out to be a prophet: cruelty is growing everywhere, while he never aestheticized inhumanity. He strove for the reader to see and appreciate what it is in real life. Everything is allowed - the terrible reality of human history, which must be resisted - the author of "Kolyma Tales" leads the reader to this conviction.

Homework: a response to V. Shalamov's story "Condensed milk"

Help me find an analysis of any "Kolyma story" by V. T. Shalamov and got the best answer

Answer from LEGE artis [guru]
Varlam Shalamov is rightly considered the discoverer of the camp theme in Russian literature of the 20th century. But it so happened that his works became known to the reader after the publication of A. Solzhenitsyn's story “One Day in Ivan Denisovich” by Polom, “Kolyma Tales” are most often perceived against the background of Solzhenitsyn's prose, in comparison and comparison with her And immediately strikes the eye: Shalamov is tougher, more merciless, more unambiguous in describing the horrors of the Gulag than Solzhenitsyn
In "One Day in Ivan Denisovich" and in "The Gulag Archipelago" there are many examples of human baseness, meanness, and hypocrisy. But nevertheless, Solzhenitsyn notes that it was mainly those who, who were already at liberty, were prepared for this, to learn flattery, succumbed to moral corruption in the camp. , lies, “small and big villains” can be everywhere, but a person must remain a person even in the most difficult and cruel conditions. Moreover, Solzhenitsyn shows that humiliation and trials awaken inner reserves in the personality and spiritually liberate it
In "Kolyma Tales" (1954-1973) Shalamov, on the contrary, tells how the convicts quickly lost their former "face" and often the beast was more merciful, fairer and kinder than them.
Indeed, the characters in Shalamov, as a rule. they lose faith in goodness and justice, present them as morally and spiritually devastated Their souls, the writer concludes “turn up to complete corruption” “In the camp, every man for himself,” the prisoners “immediately learned not to intercede for each other.” In the barracks, the author notes, disputes often arose, and they all ended almost all the same -
fights. "But the participants in these disputes are former professors, party members, collective farmers, military leaders." According to Shalamov, there is moral and physical pressure in the camp, under the influence of which "everyone can become a thief from hunger."

LESSONS 1 - 2. V. SHALAMOV. "KOLYM'S STORIES" OBJECTIVES: analyzing the works of V. T. Shalamov, to give an answer to the question: "What could a man oppose to this hellish colossus grinding him with its teeth of evil?" Equipment: book exhibition: V. Shalamov. "Kolyma stories"; A. Solzhenitsyn. "GULAG Archipelago"; O. Volkov. "Plunge into darkness"; recording of I. Talkov's song "Russia". DURING THE CLASSES. 1. Introductory remarks Turning over the pages of the works of V. Shalamov, A. Solzhenitsyn, O. Volkov, A. Zhigulin, we will feel the need to talk about the difficult, totalitarian time in our country. In many families, in the countryside and in the city, among the intelligentsia, workers and peasants, there were people who were sent to hard labor for many years for their political convictions, where many of them died from unbearable living conditions. Shalamov, Volkov, Zhigulin, Solzhenitsyn are writers who have fully drunk this cup. “How do you get to this mysterious Archipelago? Airplanes fly there every hour, ships sail, trains rattle - but not a single inscription on them indicates the destination. Both ticket cashiers and agents of Sovtourist and Intourist will be amazed if you ask for a ticket there. They did not know or hear any of the archipelago as a whole, not one of its countless islets. ... The Universe has as many centers as there are living beings in it. Each of us is the center of the Universe, and the Universe collapses when someone hisses: "You are under arrest." If you are already arrested, is there anything else that has survived this earthquake? What is arrest? Arrest is an instantaneous, striking re-roll, re-flip, re-flip from one state to another. Along the long crooked street of our life, we happily rushed or unhappily wandered past some fences - rotten, wooden, adobe duvals, brick, concrete, cast-iron fences. We didn't think about what was behind them. We didn’t try to look beyond them with our eyes or our minds - and this is where the country of the GULAG begins. Very close, two meters from us "(A. Solzhenitsyn." The Gulag Archipelago "). The experience of Shalamov as a political prisoner is one of the hardest: the work is inhumanly difficult - in a gold mine, and the term is extremely tough - seventeen years. Even among prisoners, Shalamov's fate is unusual. The people who suffered from the GULAG admitted that Shalamov got much more. “Would I have withstood what Shalamov had withstood? I'm not sure, I don't know. Because the depth of humiliation, hardships that he had to endure in Kolyma ... of course, I did not have to. They never beat me, but Shalamov's eardrums were broken, ”wrote Oleg Vasilyevich Volkov. This terrible experience did not leave the writer all his life. “Covering his nose with a scented handkerchief, investigator Fedorov talked to me:“ You see, you are accused of praising Hitler’s weapons. - What does it mean? - Well, the fact that you spoke approvingly about the German offensive. - I know almost nothing about it. I haven't seen newspapers in years. Six years. - Well, this is not the main thing. You said that the Stakhanov movement in the camp is a fake, a lie. - I said that this is ugliness, in my opinion, this is a distortion of the concept of "Stakhanovite". - Then you said that Bunin is a great Russian writer. - He is really a great Russian writer. Can I be given a term for what I said? 1 - You can. He's an émigré, a vicious émigré ... You see how we treat you. Not a single harsh word, no one beats you. No pressure ... "(VT Shalamov." My process "). - What was the charge, for which the hero of the story was arrested? What is arrest? Here is how AI Solzhenitsyn answers this question: “... arrest: this is a blinding flash and blow, from which the present is at once moved into the past, and the impossible becomes a full-fledged present. This is a sharp night bell, or a rude knock on the door. This is a gallant entry of operatives' indelible boots ... This is hacking, ripping, throwing from walls, throwing to the floor from cabinets, tables, shaking out, ripping, crumbling - and cluttering on the floor with mountains, and crunching under the boots! And nothing is sacred during a search! When the locomotive driver Inokhin was arrested, there was a coffin with a newly deceased child on his desk in his room. Lawyers threw the child on the floor, they were looking in the coffin ... And they shake the sick out of bed, and unbind the bandages ... In 1937, Dr. Kazakov's institute was destroyed. The "commission" broke the vessels with lysates invented by him, although the healed and healed cripples were jumping around and begging to keep the miracle cure. But according to the official version, lysates were considered poisons. So why weren't they kept at least as material evidence ?! Arrests are very diverse in form ... You are arrested in the theater, on the way to and from the store, at the train station, in a train car, in a taxi. Sometimes arrests even seem to be a game - there is so much fiction, well-fed energy in them "(A. I. Solzhenitsyn." The Gulag Archipelago "). - For what it was possible to get to the Archipelago? Listen to the voices of the terrible past ... (Students read fragments of documents: - Railway rank Gudkov: “I had records with Trotsky’s speeches, but my wife told me.” - A machinist, a representative of the society of anecdotes: “Friends gathered on Saturdays with families and told anecdotes. .." Five years. Kolyma. Death ... - Misha Vygon - student of the Institute of Communications: "I wrote to Comrade Stalin about everything that I saw and heard in prison." For three years, Misha survived, insanely denying himself, disowning his close comrades, survived the executions. He himself became the shift supervisor at the same section of the "Partizan", where all his comrades were killed, destroyed. - Kostya and Nika. Fifteen-year-old Moscow schoolchildren playing football in a cell with a homemade rag ball "terrorists" who killed Khadzhyan. Many years later, it turned out that Khadzhyan was shot dead in his office by Beria. And the children who were accused of killing him - Kostya and Nika - died in Kolyma in 1938. They died, although no one made them work especially ... They died from the cold ... A student reads a poem by V. Shalamov. Where is life? And it's scary for me to step forward, Though with the rustle of a leaf Step, like into a hole, into a black forest, She would say, Where memory takes the hand But behind the back - emptiness, And - there is no heaven. But behind the back there is silence. - What do you feel in this poem? What does Shalamov's human and artistic memory mark? - Despite the terrible years spent in the mines, he retained an excellent memory. Shalamov paints the truth, seeks to restore to the smallest detail all the details of his imprisonment, does not soften the colors. - Shalamov paints torture with inhuman conditions of existence, slave backbreaking labor, terror of criminals, hunger, cold, complete 2 vulnerability to arbitrariness. The writer's scrupulous memory captures the evil of the camps. Under the pen of the artist, the truth about the experience appears. Pupils read an excerpt from Shalamov's letter to Pasternak. “The camp, for a long time, since 1929, has been called not a concentration camp, but a corrective labor camp (ITL), which, of course, does not change anything — this is an extra link in the chain of lies. The first camp was opened in 1924 in Kholmogory, in the homeland of M.V. Lomonosov. It contained mainly participants in the Kronstadt mutiny (even numbers, for the odd ones were shot immediately after the suppression of the riot). In the period from 1924 to 1929 there was one camp - Solovetsky, i.e. ELEPHANT, with branches on the islands in Kem, Ukhta-Pechora and the Urals. Then they got a taste, and from 1929 the business began to grow rapidly. The "reforging" of the White Sea Canal has begun; Darkness, then Dmitlag (Moscow - Volga), where in one Dmitlag there were over 800,000 people. Then there were no camps to count: Sevlag, Sevvostlag, Bamlag, Irkutlag. It was densely populated. ... The white, slightly bluish haze of a winter sixty-degree night, an orchestra of silver trumpets playing carcasses in front of a dead line of prisoners. The yellow light of huge gasoline torches drowning in the white mist; They read the lists of those shot for non-fulfillment of the norm ... ... The fugitive who was caught in the taiga and shot by the operatives ... cut off his fingers of both hands - after all, they had to be printed, - by the morning he got well and made his way to our hut. Then he was finally shot. ... Those who could not go to work were tied to a sled, and the sled dragged him two or three kilometers ... "A student reads an excerpt from B. Pasternak's poem" Soul " Mourning for them, You became the burial vault You are in our time selfish Tortured alive. Embalming their bodies for conscience and fear, You stand as a grave urn, Dedicating a verse to them, Resting their ashes ... - “All these are random pictures,” Shalamov wrote. - The main thing is not in them, but in the corruption of the mind and heart, when the vast majority becomes clear from day to day that it turns out that you can live without meat, without sugar, without clothes, without shoes, and most importantly without honor, duty, conscience, love! Everything is exposed, and this last exposure is terrible ... After all, there was not a single large construction site without prisoners - people whose life is an uninterrupted chain of humiliations. Time has successfully made a person forget that he is a person! " - That's about this and many other things - Shalamov's Kolyma Tales, which we will talk about. 2. Analysis of stories. I recommended in advance to read for the lesson and summarize the content of Shalamov's stories "At Night", "At the Presentation", "Snake Charmer", "The Last Battle of Major Pugachev", "Best Praise", "Shock Therapy", "Apostle Paul". - Is it easy to preserve, not to lose yourself in the conditions described in the story "At Night"? - Many of Shalamov's stories show how hunger, cold, constant beatings turn a person into a miserable creature. The desires of such people are dulled, limited to food, sympathy for someone else's grief is also dulled. Friendship is not tied to hunger and cold. - What feelings, for example, can the hero of the story "Single Measurement" have? A single measurement is a measurement of personal performance. Former student Dugaev is given an impossible quota. He worked in such a way that "his arms, shoulders, and head ached unbearably." But he still did not fulfill the norm (only 25%) and was shot. He is so worn out and 3 depressed that he has no feelings. He only "regretted that this last day has been tormented in vain." - There were moments when the inflamed human brain continued to desperately resist gradual dying, dullness. Shalamov speaks about this in the story "Sentence". Shalamov's morality is the same for everyone, universal. She is for all times, and morally only what is for the good of a person. There is no need to talk about any moral standards in the Gulag. What a moral if you can be beaten every minute for nothing, killed even without any reason. "IN THE NIGHT" 1954 - Briefly retell the plot of the story. (Two prisoners take off the clothes of the dead to survive). - With what artistic means does the author draw his heroes? (portrait - p. 11; manner is in the camp - p. 11). - How can you characterize the act of Bagretsov and Glebov from the point of view of morality? (as immoral) - What is the reason for the act? (constant state of hunger, fear of not surviving, hence the act) - How can you morally evaluate this act? (mockery, blasphemy) - Why did you choose this particular dead man? (p.12) (it was a newcomer) - Is it easy for the heroes to decide on such a thing? What was simple and clear to them? (p. 11 - 12) (dig up clothes, sell, survive). The author shows that these people are still alive. - What unites Bagretsov and Glebov? (hope, desire to survive at any cost) - But these are no longer people, but mechanisms. (p. 12 √√) - Why is the story called "Night"? (p. 13) (the ghostly world of the night gives hope to survive, it is opposed to the real world of the day, which takes away this hope) Conclusion: a small hope to live one more day warmed and united people even in an immoral act. The moral principle (Glebov was a doctor) was completely suppressed before the cold, hunger, and death. "FOR PRESENTATION" (game of debt) 1956 - Retell the plot of the story. (Sevochka and Naumov are playing cards. Naumov lost everything and began to play for a long time, but he has nothing of his own, and the debt must be presented within an hour. A sweater of a man who does not give it up voluntarily is given in debt, and he is killed). - Through what artistic means does the author introduce us into the life and everyday life of prisoners? List. (description of the barrack, portrait characteristics, behavior of the heroes, their speech) - From t.zr. composition, what element is the description of the barracks? (p.5) (exposition) - What are the cards made of? What does this mean? (p.5) (from a volume by V. Hugo, on lack of spirituality) - Read the portrait characteristics of the characters. Find keywords in character descriptions. Sevochka (p.6), Naumov (p.7) - The game has begun. Whose eyes are we watching her? (narrator) - What does Naumov lose to Sevochka? (suit, p. 7) - At what point, from t.zr. compositions, are we coming up? (to the string) 4 - What does the loser Naumov decide on? (for presentation, p. 9.) - Where will he borrow the thing? (p.9) - Whom do we see now: a saint or a murderer looking for a victim? - Is the tension increasing? (yes) - What is the name of this compositional technique? (culmination) - Where is the highest point of tension: when Naumov is looking for a victim or Garkunov's words: “I won't take it off, only with the skin”? - Why didn't Garkunov take off his sweater? (p.10) (besides what the narrator says, it is also a fortress that connects Garkunov with another life, if he loses his sweater, he will die) - What episode of the story serves as a denouement? (murder of Garkunov, p. 10√√) This is a denouement, both physical and psychological. - What do you think the murderers will be punished? Why? Who is Garkunov? (No, Garkunov is an engineer, an enemy of the people, convicted under Article 58, and the killers are criminals who were encouraged by the heads of the camps, that is, there is a mutual guarantee) "SNAKE CHARMER" 1954 Purpose: through artistic means to see the forms of bullying people. - Name the forms of bullying that are encountered in the story. (pushed in the back, pushed out into the light, lifted at night, sent to sleep in a latrine (parasha), deprived of the name). - Between whom does the collision occur in the story? (this is a typical clash between criminals and political ones, according to Article 58) - Who is Fedechka? What is his status in the barracks? (p.81√) (fingernail, doing nothing - a form of life for criminals) - What was Fedechka dreaming about? (p. 81 √√) - How does speech characterize the hero? (he feels himself a master, free in the life and death of these people) - Why is Platonov losing his morality? (p.82√√) Having said: "... I can squeeze", - Platonov did not rise above the thieves, but descended to their level, thereby dooming himself to death, since during the day he will work, and at night he will tell novels. - Has Platonov's position changed? Conclusion: in the camps there was an established system of bullying those who were convicted under Article 58. Some of the scum crushed the best people, "helping" the state machine to grind the best that was. A student reads a poem by Shalamov. You will be able to, so you will console That the ice of the forest swamps And calm down the sobs. It won't melt forever. Alas! Stronger than hopes Under the black glass My memories. Swamps of ice Their raven protects Hidden warmth And himself, he himself, he does not know, The unspeakable word. - “Alas! Stronger than hopes / My memories ... ”How do you understand these lines? How do you understand this poem? - The hopes of the prisoners may not be fulfilled. Most likely, they will not be fulfilled. But what has been imprinted in memory will remain. - Memories have power. Experience in them ... - This is what Shalamov said in the story "Train": "I was frightened by the terrible power of man - the desire and ability to forget. I saw that I was ready to forget, delete, 20 years from my 5th life. And what years! And when I realized this, I defeated myself! I knew that I would not let my memory forget everything I saw! " Conclusion. V. Shalamov himself said that he conveyed in his work “... the truth about the struggle of man with the state machine. The truth of this struggle, the struggle for oneself, within oneself, outside oneself. " We have touched this truth today. And I hope we will keep it in our hearts ... At home: pp. 313 - 315, a message about the life and work of V.M. Shukshin. Stories "Chudik", "Cut", "Wolves", etc. 6

The theme of the tragic fate of a person in a totalitarian state in the "Kolyma Tales" by V. Shalamov

I've lived in a cave for twenty years

Burning with the only dream

breaking free And moving

shoulders like Samson

stone vaults on perennial

this dream.

V. Shalamov

The Stalin years are one of the tragic periods in the history of Russia. Numerous repressions, denunciations, executions, a heavy, oppressive atmosphere of lack of freedom - these are just some of the signs of the life of a totalitarian state. The terrible, cruel machine of auto-ritualism ruined the fates of millions of people, their families and friends.

V. Shalamov is a witness and participant in those terrible events that the totalitarian country was going through. He went through both exile and the Stalinist camps. Other thoughts were brutally persecuted by the authorities, and the writer had to pay too dear price for the desire to tell the truth. Varlam Tikhonovich summarized the experience gained from the camp in the collection “Kolymskie Stories”. "Kolyma Tales" is a memorial to those whose lives were ruined for the sake of the personality cult.

Showing in the stories the images of those convicted under the fifty-eighth, "political" article and the images of criminals who are also serving sentences in camps, Shalamov reveals many moral problems. Finding themselves in a critical life situation, people showed their true "I". Among the prisoners were traitors, cowards, scoundrels, and those who were "broken" by the new circumstances of life, and those who managed to preserve the human in themselves in inhuman conditions. The latter were the least of all.

The most terrible enemies, "enemies of the people", were political prisoners for the authorities. It was they who were in the camp in the most severe conditions. Criminals - thieves, murderers, robbers, whom the narrator ironically calls "friends of the people", paradoxically, aroused much more sympathy from the camp authorities. They had various indulgences, they could not go to work. They got away with a lot.

In the story "For the Presentation" Shalamov shows a game of cards, in which the personal belongings of the prisoners become the prize. The author draws images of the criminals Naumov and Sevochka, for whom human life is worthless and who kill engineer Garkunov for a woolen sweater. The author's calm intonation, with which he ends his story, says that such scenes for the camp are a common, everyday occurrence.

The story "At Night" shows how people blur the line between good and bad, how the main goal became - to survive on their own, no matter what the cost. Glebov and Bagretsov take off the corpse's clothes at night with the intention of obtaining bread and tobacco instead. In another story, the convicted Denisov with pleasure pulls the footcloths off a dying, but still living comrade.

The life of the prisoners was unbearable, it was especially hard for them in the severe frosts. The heroes of the story "Carpenters" Grigoriev and Potashnikov, intelligent people, for the sake of saving their own lives, in order to spend at least one day in the warmth, go to deception. They go to carpentry, not knowing how to do this, by which they save themselves from the severe frost, get a piece of bread and the right to warm themselves by the stove.

The hero of the story "A Single Measurement", a recent university student, exhausted by hunger, receives a single measurement. He is unable to complete this task completely, and his punishment for that is shooting. The heroes of the story "Tombstone" were also severely punished. Weakened from hunger, they were forced to engage in backbreaking work. For the request of Brigadier Dyukov to improve food, the entire brigade was shot along with him.

The destructive influence of the totalitarian system on the human personality is very clearly demonstrated in the story "The Parcel". It is very rare for political prisoners to receive parcels. This is a great joy for each of them. But hunger and cold kills the human in a person. The prisoners are robbing each other! “Our envy was dull and powerless from hunger,” says the story “Condensed Milk”.

The author also shows the brutality of the guards, who, having no sympathy for their neighbors, destroy the pitiful pieces of prisoners, break their bowlers, the convicted Efremov is beaten to death for stealing firewood.

The story "Rain" shows that the work of "enemies of the people" takes place in unbearable conditions: waist-deep in the ground and in the incessant rain. For the slightest mistake, each of them will die. It is a great joy if someone cripples himself, and then, perhaps, he will be able to avoid the hellish work.

Prisoners live in inhuman conditions: “In a barrack filled with people, it was so cramped that it was possible to sleep while standing ... to lean somewhere on a bunk, on a post, on someone else's body - and sleep ... ".

Crippled souls, crippled destinies ... "Everything inside was burned out, devastated, we didn't care", - sounds in the story "Condensed Milk". In this story, the image of the "informer" Shestakov arises, who, hoping to attract the narrator with a can of condensed milk, hopes to persuade him to escape, and then inform about it and receive a "reward". Despite extreme physical and moral exhaustion, the narrator finds the strength to see through Shestakov's plan and deceive him. Unfortunately, not everyone turned out to be so quick-witted. "They fled in a week, killed two not far from the Black Keys, three were tried in a month."

In the story "The Last Battle of Major Pugachev," the author shows people whose spirits were not broken by either the Nazi or Stalinist concentration camps. “These were people with different skills, habits acquired during the war - with courage, the ability to take risks, who believed only in weapons. Commanders and soldiers, pilots and scouts, ”the writer says about them. They make a daring and courageous attempt to escape from the camp. The heroes understand that their salvation is impossible. But for a breath of freedom, they agree to give their lives.

"The last battle of Major Pugachev" clearly shows how the Motherland dealt with the people who fought for it and were guilty only of the fact that, by the will of fate, they were in German captivity.

Varlam Shalamov is a chronicler of the Kolyma lagers. In 1962 he wrote to AI Solzhenitsyn: “Remember the most important thing: the camp is a negative school from the first to the last day for anyone. The person - neither the boss nor the prisoner, does not need to see him. But if you saw him, you must tell the truth, no matter how terrible it may be. For my part, I decided long ago that I would devote the rest of my life to this very truth. ”

Shalamov was true to his words. "Kolyma Tales" became the pinnacle of his work.

For a long time, quite a long time ago, I wanted to analyze in detail, paragraph by paragraph, at least one work of such a recognized authority in the field of describing the utter horrors of the Gulag, the second master after the Great Solzhenitsyn, like Varlam Shalamov.

And then by chance I got hold of the 1989 issue of the Novy Mir magazine. I reread it, and finally decided that it was impossible to do without a detailed analysis. Analysis not from the point of view of literary criticism, but proceeding from elementary logic and common sense, designed to simply answer the question: is the author honest with us, can we believe him, is it permissible to take what is described in his stories as an objective historical picture?

It is enough to show on the example of one story - "Lesha Chekanov, or odnodeltsy in Kolyma".
But first, about Shalamov's "creative method" in his own words. Here's what the author thinks about objectivity and credibility: " It's important to resurrect the feeling<...>, extraordinary new details, descriptions in a new way are needed to force believe the story, everything else not as information, but as in an open heart wound ".
And we will see that the whole story boils down to the fact that the facts described there by Shalamov himself, as such, sharply differ from the way he seeks to "present" them. Facts are facts. And conclusions - this is what Shalamov urges us to draw from them, imposes his view, as a priori objective. Let's see how the first and the second fit together.

So let's go: "They took us to the Kolyma to die and from December 1937 they threw us into executions in Garanin, into beatings, into hunger. We read the lists of those shot day and night."(from RP: Why read out the lists of those who were spread to the prisoners - after all, they don't really know each other, all the more so at night?)

"We were taken to Kolyma to die "- this is the leading leitmotif in all Shalamov stories. Expanded, this means the following: the GULAG and in particular its Kolyma branches were death camps, extermination camps, those who got there were doomed to die. This is repeated many times in different ways on each page. Therefore, our task will be impartial, not succumbing to the author's cries and sobs, to consider relying only on his own words to find out - is this really so?

"Everyone who did not die at Serpantinnaya, the investigative prison of the Mining Administration, and there they shot tens of thousands under the hum of tractors in 1938, were shot according to the lists, daily under the orchestra, under the carcasses read twice a day at divorce - day and night shifts."- Already strange inconsistencies are beginning in such a short piece of text.

First: why it was necessary to carry tens and hundreds of thousands of prisoners to distant lands, VERY far, to the edge of geography, spend food on them on the way, diesel fuel and coal for steam locomotives and ships, food and money for the maintenance of thousands of guards, build the camps themselves, etc. .NS. - if no one bothered to shoot all these people (if they wanted to shoot them) in the basements of the prisons in which they were imprisoned? What was in the way? UN? Journalists? LJ community with its gossip? That was not the case then. Nothing technically interfered with.

Second, it is not clear what the mass execution of tens of thousands of people looked like from a legal point of view? No, I am not idealizing the justice of the time. But nevertheless - the verdict is the verdict, it is passed by the court. And if the court pronounced a sentence - imprisonment, then how can one shoot, I emphasize, not just rot at work, starve, etc. - namely, officially shoot them en masse? Now the stage has come to the head of the camp - 1000 people, each has his own term, his own article, his own business. And he had them all in one fell swoop - rr-times! and the hum of tractors! How will he explain this to his superiors that his camp has become empty? everyone was killed while trying to escape? they were sent to him to maintain and protect, and he was all in a spray. By what right, by order, how will he confirm that they have not fled?

(from RP: By the way, where are the graves of tens and hundreds of thousands of those shot? After all, they should be at least comparable in size to Babi Yar. Over the 20 years of the anti-Soviet rule, not a single such burial has been found - and they should have archives and aerial photography and everything else at their disposal. And everything is simple - there are no graves of tens and hundreds of thousands of those shot in Kolyma. Generally.)

And again - we return to the first point: why was it necessary to drive for 15,000 kilometers? What, there were no tractors in the European part of the USSR?

Third. Tractors and orchestra do not fit together at all. Tractors - they (if we accept that they were and hummed) to hide the fact of executions from the prisoners. And the execution in front of an orchestra, in front of everyone - to show that it will be so with everyone. How does it fit? So that they do not know at the same time, but tremble? Or to be afraid, but not suspect about the executions?

"I" swam "dozens of times, wandered from the bottom to the hospital and back"- this is about life in the camp of death, destruction and total pestilence. Shalamov honestly writes that he was not allowed to die TEN times. He was taken or carried to the hospital, and there he was nursed. Why did they take care of, and not just - "recover"? Yes, because you can simply recover, "endure", two or three times. Not dozens. An extremely emaciated organism cannot - by work, cold, beatings - endure by itself.

Here is one of two things:
- either the "death camps" did not set themselves the goal of destroying their prisoners, since they pulled them out of the grave dozens of times
- or, if Shalamov himself recovered dozens of times, then the living and working conditions were not at all as hellish as they paint them.

"The means of physically destroying political enemies of the state is the main role of the foreman in production, and even in the one that serves the extermination camps."- here once again the "extermination camp" sounds. But new details are being revealed. It turns out that not everyone was shot (but what about a little higher, that - "all", with orchestras of tractors?). It turns out that a labor process is needed, in which the main role is assigned to the foreman, whose purpose is to destroy the enemies of the state (political ones, remember this).

"The crimes of the foremen in Kolyma are innumerable - they are the physical executors of the high politics of Moscow during the Stalin years" - and a little higher - “The foreman is like the breadwinner and drinker of the brigade, but only within the limits that are allotted to him from above. He himself is under strict control, you cannot go far with the postscripts - the surveyor will expose the fake, advanced cubes in the next measurement, and then the foreman is covered. the foreman follows a proven, reliable path - to knock these cubes out of goner workers, to knock them out in the most real physical sense - with a pick on the back ".

It turns out that the main culprits are the same forced people ( "For five people, a permanent foreman is allocated, not released from work, of course, but the same hard worker."), while - within certain limits - the breadwinners and drinkers of their brigades, whose crime is that they force their comrades to work. How - we'll see further.
“That is why the exact, historically derived formula was noted in the few statistics and numerous memoirs:“ A man can swim in two weeks. ”This is the norm for a strong man, if you keep him in the Kolyma, at fifty - sixty degrees, cold for fourteen hours on hard work, beat, feed only with camp rations and not let sleep ... Two weeks - this is the time that turns a healthy person into a goner. I knew all this, understood that there is no salvation in labor, and wandered from hospital to slaughter and back for eight years" .

Ah, here's the thing! Yes, our author is a simulator !! While - as he claims - the strongmen reach "in two weeks" (and again our main question is: why were they taken for 15,000 km?), Varlam Tikhonovich wanders from hospital to slaughter and back for 8 years. Apparently, he was warmed by the thought that while others "swim", he must survive in order to tell...

But here the lafa and bullshit ends:
"The foreman has him (new foreman - approx.)immediately inquired about my labor behavior. The characterization was given negative (this is strange! - approx).

- Well, b ..., - said Lyosha Chekanov loudly, looking me straight in the eyes, - do you think if we are from the same prison, you don’t need to work? I don’t help the Philones. Earn it with hard work. Honest work.

From that day on, they began to drive me more diligently than before. "

Here it is - the immeasurable crime of an accomplice high politics of Moscow during the Stalin years.

Here, you know, Varlam Tikhonovich outlived his dead-in-two-weeks-fellow prisoners 208 times, and they began to chase him more diligently. Note that he was not put in a punishment cell, his rations were not cut, his kidneys were not beaten off, he was not even shot. They just started paying more attention to how he works.

Then Shalamov was sent for correction to the brigades to the fanatic, and this is what happens to him:
"Every day, in front of the entire brigade, Sergei Polupan beat me: with his feet, fists, a log, a pick handle, a shovel. He knocked literacy out of me. The beatings were repeated every day. When heated, Polupan took off his jacket and remained in a padded jacket, handling a crowbar and pick even more freely. ... Polupan knocked out some of my teeth, broke my rib ".

I'm afraid to sound cynical, but let people with medical education pull me up or correct me: Shalamov writes that they beat me for many days and weeks in a row. They beat me with a pick (that is, a pickaxe), a crowbar, a log and just fists. Tell me, knowledgeable people, I would especially like to hear the opinion of forensic experts or pathologists: how can a person live and get rid of JUST with a few teeth and a nipple rib, who is beaten with all his might with CROP AND KYL - they are beaten for many, many days in a row ???? I don't know how much that crowbar and that pick weighed, but obviously not less than a few kilograms. Please describe what happens to the bones and soft tissues of a person who has been charged with a pick or a crowbar over the head, or hands, or just the body? ( From RP: One blow with an ice ax was enough for Trotsky - essentially a pick. One blow with a crowbar, as a rule, interrupts the hand, almost always if it hits - the bones of the hand, after several blows to the soft tissues, and even those inflicted by the "hot man", the victim will not be able to work accurately.)

Citizen Shalamov was tenacious ...
But all bad things come to an end, and so z / c Shalamov goes to "The Central Northern Administration - to the village of Yagodny, like a malicious filon, to initiate a criminal case and a new term".
“In the isolation ward, investigators are driven to work, trying to knock at least one working hour out of the transit day, and the investigators do not like this ingrained tradition of camps and transit.
But I did not go to work, of course, to try to knock out some norm in a hole out of the stone, but just to get some air, to ask, if they would give me an extra bowl of soup.
In the city, even in the camp city, which was the village of Yagodny, it was better than in the isolation ward, where every log of mortal sweat smelled like sweat. For going to work they were given soup and bread, or soup and porridge, or soup and herring. "

We continue to be amazed at the order in the system of "extermination camps". Not for the work done, but only for access to it, give soup and porridge, and you can even beg for an extra bowl.

For comparison, how they fed in real extermination camps, in German:
"On August 6, 1941, the high command of the German army issued an order regarding the food ration of Soviet prisoners of war; according to this order, for 28 days each of them was supposed to:
6 kg of bread - 200 gr. in a day,
400 g of meat - 15 gr. in a day,
440 g fat - 15 g per day and
600 grams of sugar - 21 grams per day. "
It can be assumed that no extra bowls were given.
And here is how they ate in besieged Leningrad: "The fifth reduction in food norms - to 250 grams of bread per day for workers and 125 grams for the rest - took place on November 20, 1941"

But how was comrade Shalamov fed for his coming to work? Like this:
"Food norm number 1 (basic) of a prisoner of the GULAG in 1948 (for 1 person per day in grams) :

1. Bread 700 (800 for heavy workers) - !!! compare with German and blockade rations !!!
   
2. Wheat flour 10
3. Various groats 110
4. Pasta and noodles 10
5. Meat 20
6. Fish 60
7. Fats 13
8. Potatoes and vegetables 650
9. Sugar 17
10. Salt 20
11. Surrogate tea 2
12. Tomato puree 10
13. Pepper 0.1
14. Bay leaf 0.1 "- from here

"My investigation ended in nothing, they did not wind up a new term for me. Someone superior judged that the state would receive little benefit by adding a new term to me again."- I wonder why the state reasoned differently, shooting tens of thousands of people convicted under the same Article 58 as Shalamov to the hum of tractors? .. What has changed so dramatically in the state? Or maybe Shalamov above in the text is simply lying?

And finally, the story ends with the hateful monster Polupan being killed, as well as with the words "Then they chopped off a lot of brigadier's heads, and on our vitamin business trip, blatari saw off the head of the hated foreman with a two-handed saw." .

Remember, I asked you to remember that the foremen were the instrument of murder of precisely the political enemies of the state? But in these words we see how the brigadier is killed not by some political ones, but by blatars - they are being killed brutally and subtly - for wanting to force him to work. Shalamov agrees with the blatars. The spirit itself did not have enough for anything, only for philony, but - in solidarity.

Here's a story. Lies on lies. A lie spiced with pathos and hypocrisy. Who has a different opinion?

Ukrainianologist