Eternal in its value, the work “Quiet Flows the Don” by Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov as a boundless panorama presents us with the tragic events of the first quarter of the 20th century of Russian history. The minds of readers are struck by the terrible picture of the wars that have befallen the country, its people and every single person.

Touching upon the motive of the First World War, the author nevertheless places the strongest emphasis not on such a seemingly more comprehensive military arena, but on the Civil War of 1917-1922 localized in one country. For the writer, it was a life's work to portray, to reflect the spirit of his native people, his native land in the most difficult periods of the life of the state, at its turning points. And the Civil War, sadly, is the most telling example. Such a war is unusually terrible: it is not just a thirst for victory over a third-party enemy, a desire to acquire new lands and trophies, it is the murder of people close to you, your own people, enemies within your family, neighbors, farms, etc. This is some kind of warped caricature, breaking, breaking souls, hearts, houses, bonds of people. Mikhail Sholokhov portrayed all this drama realistically and without “censorship” using the example of the Melekhov family, their initially strong and, as they would now say, successful court.

A friendly family lives peacefully and harmoniously, works, cultivates the land, keeps the hearth and moral foundations of the “Orthodox Quiet Don”. Of course, some troubles happen in it, but this fundamentally changes nothing. And then comes and hits, as if with a butt on the head, war, fratricidal war, immoral and merciless. With her clawed paws, she takes, distorts the lives of people in turn, delaying her own pleasure, the head of the family - Panteley Prokofievich, his son Peter Melekhov, matchmaker Miron Korshunov; Aksinya Astakhova, Daria Melekhova, old people and kids indiscriminately - the war takes everyone. The strong Melekhov family, friendship with neighbors, the entire social structure of the farm, village, region and, in the end, the whole state is collapsing. As in a kaleidoscope, friends and enemies, relatives and strangers change, and a spiritual break occurs inside the person himself. So, Grigory Melekhov, weighed down by his love throwing from his legal wife to another desired woman, is faced with a choice between the Red Army and the White Guards, he is desperately looking for the truth in their ranks. Gregory is a fighter for justice, he does not crave blood like a wild beast, he does not crave superiority, power. He wants the return of peace and tranquility to his native land and wants to contribute to this, but he does not know how exactly - the war has confused all the cards.

Despite all the complexity and tragedy of the terrible events, the formula for achieving peace and happiness becomes obvious to the reader at the end of the novel: the preservation of morality and the family, caring for the neighbors and flowers of this life - children.

And there, and here between the rows
The same voice sounds:
“Whoever is not for us is against us.
No one is indifferent: the truth is with us.”

And I stand alone between them
In roaring flames and smoke
And time with your own strength
I pray for both.
M.A. Voloshin

A civil war is a tragic page in the history of any nation, because if in a liberation (patriotic) war a nation defends its territory and independence from a foreign aggressor, then in a civil war people of one nation destroy each other in order to change the social system - in order to overthrow the old one and establish a new one. state political system.

In Soviet literature of the 20s of the XX century, the topic of the civil war was very popular, since the young Soviet Republic had just won this war, the Red troops defeated the White Guards and interventionists on all fronts. In works about the civil war, Soviet writers had something to sing about and something to be proud of. The first stories of Sholokhov (later they compiled the collection "Don Stories") are devoted to the image of the civil war on the Don, but the young writer perceived and showed the civil war as a national tragedy. Because, firstly, any war brings death, terrible torment to people and destruction of the country; and secondly, in a fratricidal war, one part of the nation destroys the other, as a result, the nation destroys itself. Because of this, Sholokhov did not see either romance or sublime heroism in the civil war, in contrast, for example, to A.A. Fadeev, the author of the novel Defeat. Sholokhov directly stated in the introduction to the story “Azure Steppe”: “Some writer who has not smelled gunpowder very touchingly talks about the civil war, the Red Army men - certainly “brothers”, about the smelly gray feather grass. (...) In addition, you can hear about how in the steppes of the Don and Kuban, red soldiers died, choking on pompous words. (...) In fact, feather grass is a blond grass. Harmful herb, odorless. (...) The trenches overgrown with plantain and swan, silent witnesses of recent battles, could tell about how ugly and simply people died in them. In other words, Sholokhov believes that it is necessary to write the truth about the civil war, without embellishing the details and without ennobling the meaning of this war. Probably, in order to emphasize the disgusting essence of a real war, the young writer places frankly naturalistic, repulsive fragments in some stories: a detailed description of the chopped up body of Foma Korshunov from the story “Nakhalyonok”, details of the murder of the chairman of the farm council Efim Ozerov from the story “Mortal Enemy”, details of the execution of grandchildren grandfather Zakhar from the story "Azure Steppe", etc. Soviet critics unanimously noted these naturalistically reduced descriptions and considered them to be a shortcoming of Sholokhov's early stories, but the writer never corrected these “shortcomings”.

If Soviet writers (A. Serafimovich "Iron Stream", D.A. Furmanov "Chapaev", A.G. Malyshkin "The Fall of Daire" and others) depicted with inspiration how units of the Red Army heroically fight with the whites, then Sholokhov showed the essence of the civil wars, when members of the same family, neighbors or fellow villagers, living side by side for decades, kill each other, as they turned out to be defenders or enemies of the ideas of the revolution. Koshevoy's father, a white ataman, kills his son, a red commander (the story "Birthmark"); the kulaks kill a Komsomol member, almost a boy, Grigory Frolov, because he sent a letter to the newspaper about their machinations with the land (the story "The Shepherd"); food commissar Ignat Bodyagin sentences his own father, the first fist in the village, to be shot (the story "Food commissar"); the red machine gunner Yakov Shibalok kills the woman he loves because she turned out to be a spy for ataman Ignatiev (the story "Shibalkov's seed"); fourteen-year-old Mitka kills his father in order to save his older brother, a Red Army soldier (the story "Bakhchevnik"), etc.

The split in families, as Sholokhov shows, does not occur because of the eternal conflict of generations (the conflict of "fathers" and "children"), but because of the different socio-political views of members of the same family. “Children” usually sympathize with the Reds, since the slogans of Soviet power seem to them “extremely fair” (the story “Family Man”): the land - to the peasants who cultivate it; power in the country - to deputies elected by the people, power in the localities - to the elected committees of the poor. And the "fathers" want to preserve the old order, familiar to the older generation and objectively beneficial to the kulaks: Cossack traditions, egalitarian land use, the Cossack circle on the farm. Although, it must be admitted, this is not always the case both in life and in Sholokhov's stories. After all, a civil war affects the entire nation, so the motivation for choosing (whose side to fight on) can be very different. In the story “Kolovert”, the middle brother Mikhail Kramskov is a White Cossack, because he rose to the rank of officer in the tsarist army, and his father Pyotr Pakhomych and brothers Ignat and Grigory, middle peasants, join the Red Army detachment; in the story “Alien Blood”, son Peter died in the white army, defending Cossack privileges, and his father, grandfather Gavrila, reconciled with the Reds, as he fell in love with the young food commissar Nikolai Kosykh with all his heart.

The civil war not only makes enemies of adult family members, but does not spare even young children. Seven-year-old Mishka Korshunov from the story "Nakhalyonok" is shot when he rushes to the village at night for "help". The newborn son Shibalk from the story "Shibalkovo Seed" wants to kill hundreds of special purpose soldiers, since his mother is a gangster spy, half a hundred died because of her betrayal. Only the tearful prayer of Shibalka saves the child from terrible punishment. In the story "Alyoshkino's Heart", the bandit, surrendering, hides behind a four-year-old girl, whom he holds in his arms so that the Red Army soldiers do not shoot him in the heat of the moment.

The civil war does not allow anyone to stay away from the general slaughter. The validity of this thought is confirmed by the fate of the ferryman Mikishara, the hero of the story "Family Man". Miki-shara is a widower and father of a large family, he is completely indifferent to politics, his children are important to him, whom he wants to put on their feet. The White Cossacks, testing the hero, order him to kill the two eldest sons of the Red Army, and Mikishara kills them in order to stay alive himself and take care of the seven younger children.

Sholokhov depicts the extreme bitterness of both warring sides - the Reds and the Whites. The heroes of the "Don stories" are sharply and definitely opposed to each other, which leads to the schematism of images. The writer shows the atrocities of the whites and kulaks, who mercilessly kill the poor, the Red Army and rural activists. At the same time, Sholokhov draws the enemies of the Soviet government, usually without delving into their characters, into the motives of behavior, in the history of life, that is, one-sidedly and simplified. The fists and the White Guards in the Don Stories are cruel, treacherous, and greedy. Suffice it to recall Makarchykha from the story “Alyoshkino’s Heart”, who smashed the head of a starving girl, Alyoshka’s sister, or Ivan Alekseev, a rich farmer, with an iron: he hired fourteen-year-old Alyoshka as a worker “for grub”, forced the boy to work like an adult peasant and mercilessly beat “for every trifle." The unnamed White Guard officer from the story "The Foal" kills in the back the Red Army soldier Trofim, who had just saved the foal from the whirlpool.

Sholokhov does not hide the fact that his political and human sympathies are on the side of the Soviet authorities, therefore, the village poor become positive characters for the young writer (Alyoshka Popov from the story "Alyoshkino Heart", Efim Ozerov from the story "Mortal Enemy"), Red Army soldiers (Yakov Shibalok from the story “Shibalkovo seed”, Trofim from the story “The Foal”), communists (Ignat Bodyagin from the story “Food Commissar”, Foma Korshunov from the story “Nakhalyonok”), Komsomol members (Grigory Frolov from the story “Shepherd”, Nikolai Koshevoy from the story “Mole”) . In these characters, the author emphasizes a sense of justice, generosity, sincere faith in a happy future for themselves and their children, which they associate with the new government.

However, already in the early Don Stories, statements of heroes appear, indicating that not only the White Guards, but also the Bolsheviks are pursuing a policy of brute force on the Don, and this inevitably gives rise to the resistance of the Cossacks and, therefore, further inflates the civil war. In the story “Food Commissar,” Father Bodyagin expresses his resentment to his son, food commissar: “I need to be shot for my kindness, for not letting me into my barn, I am a contra, and who fumbles through other people's bins, this one under the law? Rob, your strength." Grandfather Gavrila from the story "Alien Blood" thinks about the Bolsheviks: "They invaded the Cossack primordial life as enemies, their grandfather's life, ordinary, was turned inside out, like an empty pocket." In the story "On the Donprodkom and the misadventures of Comrade Ptitsyn, the food commissar for the Don", which is considered weak and usually not analyzed by critics, the methods of requisitioning during the civil war are shown quite frankly. Comrade Ptitsyn reports how famously he fulfills the order of his boss, food commissar Goldin: “I go back and pump bread. And he got so far that there was only wool left on the peasant. And I would have lost that good, I would have taken it for felt boots, but then Goldin was transferred to Saratov. In Don Stories, Sholokhov does not yet focus on the fact that the political extremism of whites and reds equally repels ordinary people, but later, in the novel Quiet Don, Grigory Melekhov will clearly speak out on this subject: “To me, if I tell the truth, neither the one nor the other is conscientious.” His life will become an example of the tragic fate of an ordinary person who finds himself between two irreconcilably hostile political camps.

Summing up, it should be said that Sholokhov in his early stories portrays the civil war as a time of great national grief. The mutual cruelty and hatred of the Reds and Whites lead to a national tragedy: neither one nor the other understands the absolute value of human life, and the blood of Russian people flows like a river.

Almost all the stories of the Don cycle have a tragic ending; positive characters, drawn by the author with great sympathy, perish at the hands of the White Guards and kulaks. But after Sholokhov's stories, there is no feeling of hopeless pessimism. In the story "Nakhalyonok", the White Cossacks kill Foma Korshunov, but his son Mishka is alive; in the story “A Mortal Enemy”, fists lie in wait for Yefim Ozerov when he returns to the farm alone, but before his death, Yefim recalls the words of his friend: “Remember, Yefim, they will kill you - there will be twenty new Yefims! .. As in a fairy tale about heroes ... »; in the story "The Shepherd" after the death of the nineteen-year-old shepherd Grigory, his sister, seventeen-year-old Dunyatka, goes to the city to fulfill her and Grigory's dream - to study. This is how the writer expresses historical optimism in his stories: the common people, even in the context of a civil war, retain the best human qualities in their souls: noble dreams of justice, a high desire for knowledge and creative work, sympathy for the weak and small, conscientiousness, etc.

It can be seen that already in his first works, Sholokhov raises global universal problems: man and revolution, man and people, the fate of man in an era of world and national upheavals. True, the young writer did not give a convincing disclosure of these problems in short stories, and could not give. What was needed here was an epic with a long duration of action, with numerous heroes and events. This is probably why Sholokhov's next work after Don Stories was the epic novel about the civil war Quiet Don.

Civil war in the image of M. A. Sholokhov

In 1917, the war turned into a bloody turmoil. This is no longer a national war requiring sacrificial duties from everyone, but a fratricidal war. With the onset of the revolutionary era, relations between classes and estates change dramatically, moral foundations and traditional culture are rapidly destroyed, and with them the state. The disintegration that was generated by the morality of war embraces all social and spiritual ties, brings society into a state of struggle of all against all, to the loss of the Fatherland and faith by people.

If we compare the face of the war depicted by the writer before this milestone and after it, then an increase in tragedy becomes noticeable, starting from the moment the world war turned into a civil one. The Cossacks, tired of the bloodshed, hope for its quick end, because the authorities "must end the war, because the people, and we do not want war."

The First World War is portrayed by Sholokhov as a national disaster,

Sholokhov with great skill describes the horrors of war, crippling people both physically and morally. Death, suffering awaken sympathy and unite soldiers: people cannot get used to war. Sholokhov writes in the second book that the news of the overthrow of the autocracy did not evoke joyful feelings among the Cossacks, they reacted to it with restrained anxiety and expectation. The Cossacks are tired of the war. They dream of finishing it. How many of them have already died: not one Cossack widow voted for the dead. The Cossacks did not immediately understand the historical events. Having returned from the fronts of the world war, the Cossacks did not yet know what tragedy of the fratricidal war they would have to endure in the near future. The Upper Don uprising appears in the image of Sholokhov as one of the central events of the civil war on the Don.

There were many reasons. The Red Terror, the unjustified cruelty of the representatives of the Soviet authorities on the Don in the novel are shown with great artistic power. Sholokhov showed in the novel that the Upper Don uprising reflected a popular protest against the destruction of the foundations of peasant life and the age-old traditions of the Cossacks, traditions that became the basis of peasant morality and morality, which developed over the centuries, and passed down from generation to generation. The writer also showed the doom of the uprising. Already in the course of events, the people understood and felt their fratricidal character. One of the leaders of the uprising, Grigory Melekhov, declares: “But I think that we got lost when we went to the uprising.”

The epic covers a period of great upheavals in Russia. These upheavals had a strong impact on the fate of the Don Cossacks described in the novel. Eternal values ​​determine the life of the Cossacks as clearly as possible in that difficult historical period that Sholokhov reflected in the novel. Love for the native land, respect for the older generation, love for a woman, the need for freedom - these are the basic values ​​without which a free Cossack cannot imagine himself.

Depiction of the civil war as a tragedy of the people

Not only civil, any war for Sholokhov is a disaster. The writer convincingly shows that the cruelties of the civil war were prepared by the four years of the First World War.

Dark symbolism contributes to the perception of the war as a nationwide tragedy. On the eve of the declaration of war in Tatarsky, “at night, an owl roared in the bell tower. Unsteady and terrible cries hung over the farm, and the owl flew from the bell tower to the cemetery, soiled by calves, groaned over the brown, haunted graves.

“To be thin,” the old people prophesied, hearing owl voices from the cemetery.

“The war will come.”

The war broke into the Cossack kurens like a fiery whirlwind just at the time of harvesting, when the people cherished every minute. The orderly rushed in, raising a cloud of dust behind him. The fateful...

Sholokhov demonstrates how just one month of war changes people beyond recognition, cripples their souls, devastates them to the very bottom, makes them look at the world around them in a new way.

Here the writer describes the situation after one of the battles. In the middle of the forest, corpses are completely scattered. “They lay flat. Shoulder to shoulder, in various poses, often obscene and scary.

A plane flies by, drops a bomb. Next, Yegorka Zharkov crawls out from under the rubble: “The released intestines smoked, shimmering with pale pink and blue.”

This is the merciless truth of war. And what blasphemy over morality, reason, betrayal of humanism became under these conditions the glorification of the feat. The generals needed a "hero". And he was quickly “invented”: Kuzma Kryuchkov, who allegedly killed more than a dozen Germans. They even began to produce cigarettes with a portrait of the "hero". The press wrote about him excitedly.

Sholokhov tells about the feat in a different way: “But it was like this: people who collided on the field of death, who had not yet had time to break their hands in the destruction of their own kind, in the animal horror that declared them, stumbled, knocked down, inflicted blind blows, mutilated themselves and horses and fled, frightened by a shot, killed a man, departed morally crippled.

They called it a feat."

People at the front are cutting each other in a primitive way. Russian soldiers hang like corpses on wire fences. German artillery destroys entire regiments to the last soldier. The ground is thickly stained with human blood. Everywhere settled hills of graves. Sholokhov created a mournful cry for the dead, cursed the war with irresistible words.

But even more terrible in the image of Sholokhov is the civil war. Because she is fratricidal. People of the same culture, one faith, one blood engaged in an unheard-of extermination of each other. This "conveyor belt" of senseless, terrible in terms of cruelty, murders, shown by Sholokhov, shocks to the core.

... Punisher Mitka Korshunov spares neither the old nor the young. Mikhail Koshevoy, satisfying his need for class hatred, kills his centenary grandfather Grishaka. Daria shoots the prisoner. Even Gregory, succumbing to the psychosis of the senseless destruction of people in the war, becomes a murderer and a monster.

There are many amazing scenes in the novel. One of them is the massacre of the podtelkovites over forty captured officers. “The shots were fired feverishly. The officers, colliding, rushed in all directions. A lieutenant with beautiful female eyes, in a red officer's hood, ran, clutching his head with his hands. The bullet made him jump high, as if through a barrier. He fell and didn't get up. The tall, brave Yesaul was cut down by two. He clutched at the blades of the checkers, blood poured from his cut palms onto his sleeves; he screamed like a child, fell on his knees, on his back, rolled his head in the snow; his face showed only bloodshot eyes and a black mouth drilled with a continuous scream. His flying checkers slashed across his face, along his black mouth, and he was still screaming in a voice thin with horror and pain. Having squatted over him, the Cossack, in an overcoat with a torn off strap, finished him off with a shot. The curly-haired cadet almost broke through the chain - he was overtaken and killed by some ataman with a blow to the back of the head. The same chieftain drove a bullet between the shoulder blades of the centurion, who was running in his overcoat, which had opened from the wind. The centurion sat down and scratched his chest with his fingers until he died. The gray-haired podsaul was killed on the spot; parting with his life, he kicked a deep hole in the snow and would still have beaten like a good horse on a leash, if the pitiful Cossacks had not finished it. These mournful lines are extremely expressive, filled with horror before what is being done. They are read with unbearable pain, with spiritual trepidation and carry the most desperate curse of a fratricidal war.

No less scary are the pages devoted to the execution of the "podtelkovtsy". People who at first “willingly” went to the execution “as if to a rare merry spectacle” and dressed up “as if for a holiday”, faced with the realities of a cruel and inhuman execution, are in a hurry to disperse, so that by the time the massacre of the leaders - Podtelkov and Krivoshlykov - there were completely few people.

However, Podtelkov is mistaken, presumptuously believing that people dispersed because of the recognition of his innocence. They could not endure the inhuman, unnatural spectacle of their violent death. Only God created man, and only God can take his life.

Two “truths” collide on the pages of the novel: the “truth” of the Whites, Chernetsov and other killed officers, thrown in the face of Podtelkov: “Traitor to the Cossacks! Traitor!" and the “truth” opposing it, Podtelkov, who thinks that he is defending the interests of the “working people.”

Blinded by their "truths", both sides mercilessly and senselessly, in some kind of demonic frenzy, exterminate each other, not noticing that there are fewer and fewer of those for whom they are trying to approve their ideas. Talking about the war, about the military life of the most combative tribe among the entire Russian people, Sholokhov, however, nowhere, not in a single line, praised the war. No wonder his book, as the well-known Sholokhov expert V. Litvinov notes, was banned by the Maoists, who considered war the best way to socially improve life on Earth. Quiet Don is a passionate denial of any such cannibalism. Love for people is incompatible with love for war. War is always a people's misfortune.

Death in the perception of Sholokhov is what opposes life, its unconditional principles, especially violent death. In this sense, the creator of The Quiet Flows the Don is a faithful successor to the best humanistic traditions of both Russian and world literature.

Despising the extermination of man by man in war, knowing what tests the moral sense undergoes in front-line conditions, Sholokhov, at the same time, on the pages of his novel, painted the classic pictures of mental stamina, endurance and humanism that took place in the war. A humane attitude towards one's neighbor, humanity cannot be completely destroyed. This is evidenced, in particular, by many of the actions of Grigory Melekhov: his contempt for looting, the protection of the Pole Frani, the salvation of Stepan Astakhov.

The concepts of “war” and “humanity” are irreconcilably hostile to each other, and at the same time, against the backdrop of bloody civil strife, the moral possibilities of a person, how beautiful he can be, are especially clearly drawn. War severely examines the moral fortress, unknown to peaceful days.

The civil war in the Pacific Don is described tragically by the author of the novel, Sholokhov.

The epic novel Quiet Don is one of the most outstanding works of Soviet literature.

Despite the fact that Sholokhov was an ardent communist, participated in the surplus appropriation in the 1920s, and in 1965 loudly condemned the writers Daniel and Sinyavsky at the famous trial, his main novel does not quite correspond to a strict ideological line.

The revolutionaries in The Quiet Don are not idealized, they are shown as cruel and often unfair, and the insecure and restless Grigory Melekhov is a true seeker of truth.

Melekhov family

The focus is on the prosperous family of the Melekhovs, wealthy Don Cossacks. The Melekhovs lived together, took care of the household, gave birth to children, but soon two sons of Panteley Prokofievich were taken to the front: the First World War was on. Then it "smoothly" develops into a revolution and the Civil War, and family foundations collapse.

The Melekhovs found themselves on opposite sides of the confrontation. Peter and Gregory are completely different. The first is a simple and unsophisticated man, he dreams of becoming an officer in order to defeat the enemy and take away all his good. And Gregory is a very complex person; he is constantly looking for truth and justice, trying to maintain spiritual purity in a world where this is impossible.

So a huge event - the Civil War - was reflected in the fate of an individual Cossack kuren. Grigory cannot get along with either the White Guards or the Bolsheviks, because he sees that both are interested only in the class struggle. The Reds and Whites, one might say, forgot what they were fighting for, or did not set themselves any noble goal at all - they only wanted to invent an enemy for themselves, destroy it and seize power.

Despite an excellent military career, which brought Gregory almost to the rank of general, he wants a peaceful life, free from violence and blood. He is able to truly love, passionately and passionately, but the war takes away his only love - Aksinya receives an enemy bullet; after that, the hero, devastated, finally loses the meaning of life.

The insane essence of the civil war is visible, for example, from the episode with the Bolshevik Bunchuk, who staged lynching of Kalmykov. Both heroes are Cossacks, members of a once united community, but Kalmykov is a nobleman, and Bunchuk is a worker. Now, when both belong to opposing groups, there can be no question of any Cossack community - the former "tribesmen" kill each other. Why - they themselves do not understand, Bunchuk explains his actions as follows: "If we are not them, then they are us - there is no middle ground!"

The red commander Ivan Malkin is simply mocking the population of the captured village. Malkin is a real historical person, a famous figure in the NKVD, who tried to marry Sholokhov's future wife. Threatening the inhabitants of the Soviet country and taking advantage of the location of the Stalinist leadership, he was nevertheless shot in 1939 on the orders of those whom he served “faithfully and truthfully”.

But Gregory rushes about not only between political camps, approaching either the Reds or the Whites. He is just as unstable in his personal life. He loves two women, one of which is his legal wife (Natalya) and the mother of his child. But neither one nor the other, he ultimately could not save.

So where is the truth?

Melekhov, and with him the author, come to the conclusion that there was no truth in both camps. The truth is not “white” or “red”, it does not exist where senseless murders, lawlessness are happening, military and human honor disappear. He returns to his farm to live a normal life, but you can’t call such a full-fledged life: the war, as it were, burned out Melekhov’s whole soul, turned him, still a young man, almost into an old man.

Historical persons in the novel

It is estimated that there are more than 800 characters in The Quiet Don, of which at least 250 are real historical figures. Here are some of them:

  • Ivan Malkin - the red commander mentioned above with three classes of education, guilty of massacres and bullying;
  • Lavr Kornilov - Commander-in-Chief of the Volunteer Army, commander of the Russian Army in 1917;
  • A. M. Kaledin - Ataman of the Don Cossacks;
  • P. N. Krasnov - also the Don ataman;
  • Kh.V. Ermakov - commander of the rebel army during the Vyoshensky uprising on the Don.

Introduction…………………………………………………………………….3

1. Realism of the “Quiet Flows the Don”……………...……………………………………4

2. Reflection of the civil war in the novel……………..................................8

Conclusion………………………………………………………………..15

Literature………………………………………………………………...16


INTRODUCTION

Epic novel by M.A. Sholokhov "Quiet Don" is an epic work about the fate of the Russian Cossacks during the First World War and the Civil War, recognized as one of the pinnacles of Russian and world literature of the 20th century. The novel tells about the most difficult time in the life of Russia, which brought huge social and moral upheavals. The unity - as it was in reality - of the tragic and heroic principles, expressed through the dramatic fate of the Cossacks, is the main historical originality and strength of the novel.

Showing the tragic events of the civil war on the Don, the writer created vivid, truthful, lively images of people who clashed in a fiercely irreconcilable struggle. People of relatives, relatives, fathers and sons who raised their hands against each other. He showed their cruelty and mercy, spiritual suffering and hopes, their souls, their characters, joys and misfortunes, defeats and victories. The tragic grandeur of their lives. And could the life of the Russian people be different in a critical, revolutionary era?

The purpose of this work is to study the theme of the civil war in the novel by M.A. Sholokhov "Quiet Don". In accordance with the goal, the research tasks are defined:

- to show the realism of "The Quiet Flows the Don";

- to show the reflection of the civil war in the novel.

The totality of the goal and the tasks set determined the following structure of the study, which consists of an introduction, two chapters, a conclusion and a list of references.


1. Realism of the "Quiet Flows the Don"

M.A. Sholokhov began writing The Quiet Flows the Don at the age of twenty in 1925 and completed in 1940. The book was conceived as a story, quite traditional for Soviet literature, about the fierce struggle for the victory of Soviet power on the Don in the autumn of 1917 - in the spring of 1918. Something similar was already in the "Don stories", which made up the first book of the writer. However, soon Sholokhov abandoned the original plan. And the whole first volume of his novel is about something else: about the life and way of life of the Don Cossacks.

A brief but energetic plot tells about the history of the Melekhov family from the middle of the 19th century, when, after the Russian-Turkish war, Prokofy Melekhov brought his Turkish wife to the farm; he loved her, carried her in his arms to the top of the mound, where they both "looked at the steppe for a long time"; and when a threat loomed over her, he defended with a saber in his hands. So, from the first pages, proud, capable of great feelings, freedom-loving people, workers and warriors appear in the novel.

In the terrible scene of the murder of the offender of his wife by Prokofy, another important idea for the writer is revealed: the protection of the clan, family, and offspring. Contrary to the tradition of Soviet writers of the 1920s to depict pre-revolutionary reality as a chain of horrors, Sholokhov frankly admires the life of the Cossacks. A living reality, the truthfulness of the depicted events of a large epic plan is given by very specific, juicy, full-blooded sketches of the life and life of the Cossacks of various historical periods. Sholokhov recreates the indestructible, inert way of life, the closed life of the "important kurens" of the pre-revolutionary years. “In every yard, surrounded by wattle fences, under every roof of every kuren, its own, isolated from the rest, full-blooded, bittersweet life was spinning like a bell.”

With all the smallest everyday details, the writer tells about this life of the inhabitants of kurens with its sorrows and joys, anxieties and worries. With colorful strokes, he paints pictures of mowing, folk festivals, youth games, their free Cossack songs about the glorious blue Don.

But Sholokhov the realist also shows the other side of pre-revolutionary Cossack life. And then the savagery, inertness, bestial cruelty of this possessive, closed little world is exposed. For a heap of hay, trampled by bulls, a Cossack, the sovereign master of the kuren, “ruined his wife” almost half to death. For treason, Stepan Astakhov “deliberately and terribly” beats his young beautiful wife Aksinya in front of indifferent neighbors watching this “spectacle”: “it’s very clear why Stepan favors his lawful one.”

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2. Reflection of the civil war in the novel

One of the favorite tricks of M.A. Sholokhov - a story-preliminary. So, at the end of the first chapter of the fifth part of the novel, we read: “Until January, they lived quietly on the Tatar farm. The Cossacks who returned from the front rested near their wives, ate, did not feel that at the thresholds of the kurens they were guarded by bitter misfortunes and hardships than those that they had to endure in the war they had gone through.

“The worst troubles” are a revolution and a civil war that broke the usual way of life. In a letter to Gorky, Sholokhov noted: "Without exaggerating my colors, I painted the harsh reality that preceded the uprising." The essence of the events depicted in the novel is truly tragic, they affect the fate of vast sections of the population. More than seven hundred characters, main and episodic, named by name and nameless, act in The Quiet Don; and the writer is concerned about their fate.

In 1917, the war turned into a bloody turmoil. This is no longer a national war requiring sacrificial duties from everyone, but a fratricidal war. With the onset of the revolutionary era, relations between classes and estates change dramatically, moral foundations and traditional culture are rapidly destroyed, and with them the state. The disintegration that was generated by the morality of war embraces all social and spiritual ties, brings society into a state of struggle of all against all, to the loss of the Fatherland and faith by people.

If we compare the face of the war depicted by the writer before this milestone and after it, then an increase in tragedy becomes noticeable, starting from the moment the world war turned into a civil one. The Cossacks, tired of the bloodshed, hope for its quick end, because the authorities "must end the war, because the people, and we do not want war." But there is still a long search for an answer to the question posed by Grigory Garanzhe: “How can you shorten the war? How to destroy it, since they have been fighting forever?


CONCLUSION

The novel by Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov "Quiet Flows the Don" is a masterpiece of world literature. In "Quiet Don"


LITERATURE

1. Vasilenko E.V. Towards death // Literature at school, 2004. - No. 5.

2. Ermolaev G.S. Mikhail Sholokhov and his work. - St. Petersburg: 2000.

3. Kiseleva L.F. On the importance of the key and dominant foundations of the artistic world of Sholokhov for the past and present // Philological Bulletin of the Rostov State University, 2005. - No. 2.

4. Kovalev V.A. etc. Essay on the history of Russian Soviet literature. Part two. – M.: 1955.

5. Ognev A. Don sun // Soviet Russia, 2005. - No. 70-71.

6. Semenova S. Philosophical and metaphysical facets of the "Quiet Don" // "Questions of Literature", 2002. - No. 1.

7. Tolstoy A.N. A quarter of a century of Soviet literature. – M.: 1943.

8. Sholokhov M.A. Sobr. cit.: In 8 vols. - M.: 1985-1986.

9. Yakimenko L.G. Creativity M.A. Sholokhov. – M.: 1977.


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