Conclusion. On the resurrection of Grigory Otrepiev in the guise of General Secretary In the history of Russia, it happened only once that a person involved in the clergy was on the tsar's throne. Even the imperious Metropolitan Filaret Romanov was forced to abandon the dream of

An inch of conquered land About the prose of Grigory Baklanov Grigory Baklanov has a small, only a few pages, work - "How I Lost the Leadership". Either a short story, or a sketch, - apparently, and the author found it difficult to determine the genre, having set at the first publication

The birth of the epic novel is associated with the events of Russian history of global significance. The first Russian revolution of 1905, the world war of 1914-1918. The October Revolution, the Civil War, the period of peaceful construction caused the desire of artists of the word to create works of wide epic coverage. It is characteristic that in the 1920s they began to work almost simultaneously: M. Gorky - on the epic "The Life of Klim Samgin", A. N. Tolstoy - on the epic "Walking through the agony", M. Sholokhov turned to the creation of the epic "Quiet Don" ...

The creators of epic canvases relied on the traditions of Russian classics, on such works about the fate of the people as “The Captain's Daughter”, “Taras Bulba”, “War and Peace”.

The epic novel "Quiet Don" occupies a special place in the history of Russian literature. Sholokhov devoted fifteen years of his life and hard work to its creation. M. Gorky saw in the novel the embodiment of the enormous talent of the Russian people.

The events in “Quiet Don” begin in 1912, before the First World War, and end in 1922, when the civil war on the Don died out. Knowing perfectly the life and everyday life of the Don Cossacks, being himself a participant in the harsh struggle on the Don in the early 1920s, Sholokhov focused on portraying the Cossacks. The work closely combines document and fiction. In "Quiet Don" there are many true names of farms and villages of the Don region. The center of events, with which the main action is connected, is the village of Veshenskaya.

Sholokhov portrays the actual participants in the events: this is Ivan Lagutin, the chairman of the Cossack department of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, the first chairman of the Don All-Russian Central Executive Committee Fyodor Podtyolkov, a member of the Revolutionary Committee, the Elan Cossack Mikhail Krivoshlykov. At the same time, the main characters of the story are fictionalized: the Melekhovs, Astakhovs, Korshunovs, Koshevs, Listnitsky families. Fiction and farm Tatarsky.

“Quiet Don” begins with a depiction of the peaceful pre-war life of the Cossacks. The days of Tatarsky's farm are spent in hard work. The Melekhov family, a typical middle peasant family with patriarchal foundations, comes to the fore. The war interrupted the working life of the Cossacks.

The First World War is portrayed by Sholokhov as a national disaster, and the old soldier, professing Christian wisdom, advises young Cossacks: "Remember one thing: if you want to be alive, to get out of mortal combat alive, you need to observe the human truth ..."

Sholokhov with great skill describes the horrors of war, crippling people both physically and morally. The Cossack Chubaty teaches Grigory Melekhov: “In battle, killing a person is a holy cause ... destroy a person. He's a filthy man! " But Chubaty with his bestial philosophy scares people away. 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 a joyful feeling among the Cossacks, they treated it with "restrained anxiety and expectation." The Cossacks are tired of the war. They dream of ending it. How many of them have already died: not one Cossack widow has voiced over the dead.

The Cossacks did not immediately understand the historical events. Bitter words in the novel precede a description of the tragic events on the Don, a story about the massacre of Podtelkov's expedition, about the Verkhne-Don uprising.

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 Verkhne-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 regime on the Don, is shown in the novel with great artistic force. Numerous executions of Cossacks carried out in the villages - the murder of Miron Korshunov and grandfather Trishka, who personified the Christian principle, preaching that all power is given by God, the actions of Commissar Malkin, who gave orders to shoot bearded Cossacks.

Sholokhov also showed in the novel that the Verkhne-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 that took shape over the centuries and passed down from generation to generation.

The writer also showed the doom of the uprising. Already in the course of the 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."

A. Serafimovich wrote about the heroes of The Quiet Don: “... his people are not drawn, not written out, they are not on paper”. In the type images created by Sholokhov, the deep and expressive features of the Russian people are generalized. Depicting the thoughts, feelings, actions of the heroes, the writer did not break, but bare the threads leading to the past.

Among the characters of the novel, Grigory Melekhov is an attractive, contradictory, reflecting all the complexity of the searches and delusions of the Cossacks. Undoubtedly, the image of Grigory Melekhov is an artistic discovery of Sholokhov. Creating this image, the writer acted as an innovator, artistically reproducing what was the most controversial, most difficult, most exciting in life. Grigory Melekhov in the epic is not an isolated character. He is in the closest unity and is connected both with his family and with the Cossacks of the Tatarsky farm and the entire Don, among whom he grew up and with whom he lived and fought, constantly in search of truth and the meaning of life. Melekhov is not separated from his time. He not only communicates with people and participates in events, but always reflects, evaluates, judges himself and others.

These features help to conclude that Melekhov is depicted in the epic as the son of his people and his time. The world of Gregory is the people's world, he never tore himself away from his people, from nature. In the fire of battles, in the dust of campaigns, he dreams of work in his native land, of a family. Gregory ends his journey through agony by returning to his native farm Tatarsky. Throwing his weapon into the Don, he hurries back to what he loved so much and from which he was torn away for so long.

The ending of the novel has a philosophical sound. Sholokhov left his hero on the verge of new life trials. What paths await him? How will his life turn out? The writer does not give an answer to these questions, but forces the reader to reflect on the most difficult fate of this hero.

Sholokhov turns to the creation of female characters already at the very beginning of his career. But if in the stories the characters of women are only outlined, then in The Quiet Don Sholokhov creates vivid artistic images. Women are central to the epic; women of different ages, different temperaments, different destinies - the mother of Grigory Ilyinichna, Aksinya, Natalia, Daria, Dunyashka, Anna Pogudko and others.

The ardor, passionate Aksinya, with her “vicious beauty, is contrasted with the modest hard worker Natalya, restrained in feelings. The fate of both Aksinya and Natalia is tragic. There were many difficult things in their lives, but they also knew real human happiness. The writer shows their hard work, their huge role in family life.

Are of great importance speech characteristics, portrait (Aksinya has a "chiseled neck", "fluffy curls of hair", "inviting lips." Natalia has a "smooth white forehead", "large hands crushed by work", Daria has "frowned arches of eyebrows", "curly gait".

The action of the novel "Quiet Flows the Don" involves a wide range of people, representatives of various social strata. It begins with a depiction of life in the Tatarsky Cossack farm, captures the Listnitskys' estate, is transferred to the places of the unfolding world war - to Poland, Romania, East Prussia, to Petrograd, Novocherkassk, Novorossiysk, to the villages of the Don.

Sholokhov is an unsurpassed master of the artistic word, skillfully uses the language spoken by the Cossacks. Both the main characters and episodic characters appear before the reader. Landscape sketches testify to the artist's passionate love for the nature of the Don region. The landscape is humanized, it performs a variety of ideological and artistic functions; helps to reveal the feelings, moods of the characters, convey their attitude to the events taking place. Works of folk art are skillfully used: proverbs, sayings, basics, songs. They convey the mood, feelings, experiences of the people, reflect the aesthetic world of the heroes. Works of folk art, especially songs, reveal the philosophical depth of the epic. Old Cossack songs serve as epigraphs to the first and third books of the novel.

Great spiritual meaning lies in the poetic image of the Don, which is a symbol of the life of the people. The very name “Quiet Don” is full of symbolism: it contrasts with the events depicted. There is a special meaning in the image of the steppe, which acts as a symbol of the Motherland: “Dear steppe over the low Don sky!., A mound in wise silence, guarding the buried Cossack glory ... I bow low and wholeheartedly your red land ... Don stainless blood is watered steppe...". Such words could only be found and said by a writer who was ardently in love with the beauty of his native Don nature and his people.

Working on the epic "Quiet Don", Sholokhov proceeded from the philosophical concept that the people are the main driving force of history. This concept received a deep artistic embodiment in the epic: in the depiction of the people's life, everyday life and work of the Cossacks, in the depiction of the people's participation in historical events.

Sholokhov showed that the path of the people in the revolution and civil war was difficult, tense, tragic. The destruction of the “old world” was associated with the collapse of age-old folk traditions, Orthodoxy, the destruction of churches, the rejection of the moral commandments that were instilled in people from childhood.

When presenting the Nobel Prize for the novel “Quiet Don”, Sholokhov spoke about the greatness of the historical path of the Russian people and about “that everyone I wrote and write should pay homage to this working people, building people, hero people”.

Grigory Melekhov is the main character of the novel... His fate, the formation and development of character, exploits, disappointments, the search for a path are the basis of the plot of the work. It connects family and household, love and socio-historical lines of action.

At the beginning of the novel, Gregory is nineteen years old. From his grandfather, he received an independent character, and from a Turkish grandmother - a bright appearance and irrepressible nature. At first, all of Gregory's actions look like ordinary youth. This is how everyone around him explains his connection with the married Aksinya. Gregory breaks with her by marrying Natalia. But the unusual power of love, breaking all the foundations, makes Melekhov go against his father, leave home and live with Aksinya in the Listnitsky estate. This is how the hero's special path begins.

The "millstones" of the war are in his soul. In the war, the hero matured, earned four crosses of St. George and four medals, became an officer, supported the Cossack "honor and glory", but became "evil." After getting acquainted with the Bolshevik "philosophy" the hero feels himself to be "sighted." His return home at the end of the first book reveals the changes that took place in Gregory.

In the second book, a number of oppositions to the main character arise. First of all, these are ideological opponents and supporters of the royal power. Each of them, according to Sholokhov, has its own truth. But the officers are far from the people, their superiority over the soldiers is imaginary, some of them manifest themselves as cowards.

At the beginning of the third book, the civil war of 1918 is shown, when Melekhov fights in a detachment under the command of his older brother Peter. But even now he is experiencing all the same "thick longing" for a peaceful life. Now, along with other Cossacks, he is ready to blame the Bolsheviks who divided the people. Three horses were killed near Gregory, his greatcoat was perforated in five places, but the heroism is in vain - “the stream of the Red Army floods” the Don land.

The Melekhov brothers return home, but even there class enmity overtakes them. For the new government, Melekhov is a white officer, a "contra". The Bolshevik Mishka Koshevoy, with whom they were "little roots, they studied together at school, ran after girls," is ready to stab Grigory. The hero again involuntarily finds himself in a hostile camp.

Cruelty is becoming a terrible norm. Villagers kill each other. So, Koshevoy kills Grigory's older brother - Peter. Melekhov is the regiment commander, and on his order brutal massacres are committed. But, at the same time, he releases the prisoners in Veshenskaya, pours his melancholy with vodka, asks for death. Unable to bear it, the hero returns home again, “half gray”.

The fourth book reveals a new feature in Melekhov - the emerging ability to resist the “stream of life”. Pity and love awakens in him as opposed to a merciless war. Despite the defeat of the Volunteer Army, due to his illness (he fell ill with typhus for a month), Gregory "cheered up" and abandoned the thought of death. A craving for the new explains his entry into the Red Army, where he commands a squadron. Ahead of Gregory is the Red pursuit for his "white" past, the death of Aksinya. The hero's life journey, described in the novel, ends with a return home, an attempt to start life from scratch.

In the image of Grigory Melekhov, the features of a person of a transitional moment in history are typified. His destiny reflects all the most important trends in the socio-political struggle of the revolutionary era in Russia. At the same time, the hero is depicted as a person in conflict with an inevitable fate, seeking to pave his own path in history.

The individual features of Melekhov's image are deeply unique. The hero is shown as a real Don Cossack. A distinctive feature of Gregory is his spiritual quest and depth of experience. He stands out against the background of a simple, illiterate mass of Cossacks living according to their grandfather's customs. Melekhov has a need to live in harmony with his heart, to find a fair justification for common actions.

The ability to feel deep feelings is the most important characteristic of a hero. His return to Aksinya is the basis of the plot. This love cannot be overshadowed by war, jealousy, or suffering. This invincible feeling, which contradicts the foundations of Cossack morality, finds analogy only in history. It is similar to the love of grandfather Prokofy for his Turkish wife. In this regard, Gregory's feelings for Aksinya bear the imprint of romantic sublimity.

In the image of Grigory Melekhov, the author's intention is embodied. Sholokhov strove to show the clash of history with a personality trying to preserve humanistic values \u200b\u200bat the end of the eras as the legacy of age-old folk morality. The description of Melekhov's participation in social and political events and their influence on his fate is colored with tragic pathos. Starting from a historically accurate picture of events, the author creates a generalized image of the hero of his time.

Grigory Melekhov is the central character of The Quiet Flows the Don, who is unsuccessfully seeking his place in a changing world. In the context of historical events, he showed the difficult fate of the Don Cossack, who knows how to passionately love and selflessly fight.

History of creation

Thinking of a new novel, Mikhail Sholokhov did not expect that the work would eventually turn into an epic. It all started innocently. In the middle of autumn 1925, the writer started the first chapters of "The Don region" - this was the original title of the work in which the author wanted to show the life of the Don Cossacks during the revolution. From that beginning - the Cossacks went as part of the army to Petrograd. Suddenly the author was stopped by the thought that readers would hardly understand the motives of the Cossacks in suppressing the revolution without a background, and he put the manuscript aside in a far corner.

Only a year later, the idea fully matured: in the novel, Mikhail Alexandrovich wanted to reflect the life of individuals through the prism of historical events that happened in the period from 1914 to 1921. The tragic fates of the main characters, including Grigory Melekhov, had to be written into the epic theme, and for this it was worth getting to know the customs and characters of the inhabitants of the Cossack farm. The author of "Quiet Don" moved to his homeland, to the village of Vishnevskaya, where he plunged headlong into the life of the "Don region".

In search of vivid characters and a special atmosphere that settled on the pages of the work, the writer traveled around the neighborhood, met with witnesses of the First World War and revolutionary events, collected a mosaic of tales, beliefs and elements of folklore of local residents, and also stormed the Moscow and Rostov archives in search of the truth about the life of those dashing years.

Finally, the first volume of The Quiet Don was published. It featured Russian troops on the war fronts. The second book added the February coup and the October Revolution, the echoes of which reached the Don. In the first two parts of the novel alone, Sholokhov placed about a hundred heroes, later 70 more characters joined them. In total, the epic stretched out into four volumes, the last one was completed in 1940.

The work was published in the editions "October", "Roman-newspaper", "Novy Mir" and "Izvestia", rapidly gaining recognition from readers. They bought up magazines, filled the editorial board with reviews, and the author with letters. The tragedies of the heroes were perceived by Soviet book-readers as personal shocks. Among the favorites, of course, was Grigory Melekhov.

It is interesting that in the first drafts Gregory was absent, but a character with this name was encountered in the writer's early stories - there the hero is already endowed with some features of the future "resident" of "Quiet Don". Researchers of Sholokhov's creativity consider the Cossack Kharlampy Ermakov, who was sentenced to death in the late 1920s, to be the prototype of Melekhov. The author himself did not admit that it was this man who became the prototype of the book Cossack. Meanwhile, Mikhail Alexandrovich, while collecting the historical basis of the novel, met Ermakov and even corresponded with him.

Biography

The novel sets out the entire chronology of Grigory Melekhov's life before and after the war. The Don Cossack was born in 1892 on the Tatarsky farm (the village of Veshenskaya), while the writer does not indicate the exact date of birth. His father Panteley Melekhov once served as a police officer in the Ataman Life Guards Regiment, but he was retired due to his old age. For the time being, the life of a young guy passes in serenity, in ordinary peasant affairs: mowing, fishing, caring for the farm. At night - passionate meetings with the beautiful Aksinya Astakhova, a married lady, but passionately in love with a young man.

His father is dissatisfied with this heartfelt affection and hastily marries his son to an unloved girl - meek Natalya Korshunova. However, the wedding does not solve the problem. Gregory understands that he cannot forget Aksinya, so he leaves his legal wife and settles with his mistress in the estate of the local master. On a summer day in 1913, Melekhov becomes a father - his first daughter was born. The couple's happiness turned out to be short-lived: life was destroyed by the outbreak of the First World War, which called Gregory to pay his debt to the Motherland.

Melekhov fought in the war selflessly and desperately, in one of the battles he was wounded in the eye. For bravery, the soldier was noted with the St.George Cross and a promotion in rank, and in the future, three more crosses and four medals will be added to the awards of the men. The hero's political views turned upside down when he met the Bolshevik Garanzha in the hospital, who convinced him of the injustice of the tsarist rule.

Meanwhile, a blow awaits the house of Grigory Melekhov - Aksinya, heartbroken (by the death of her little daughter), succumbs to the spell of the son of the owner of the estate Listnitsky. The common-law husband who arrived on leave did not forgive the betrayal and returned to his legal wife, who later bore him two children.

In the outbreak of the Civil War, Gregory takes the side of the "red". But by 1918 he became disillusioned with the Bolsheviks and joined the ranks of those who perpetrated an uprising against the Red Army on the Don, becoming a division commander. The death of his elder brother Petro at the hands of a fellow villager, an ardent supporter of Soviet power, Mishka Koshevoy, awakens even greater anger towards the Bolsheviks in the hero's soul.

Passions are also boiling on the love front - Gregory cannot find peace and is literally torn between his women. Because of still vivid feelings for Aksinya Melekhov, it is not possible to live peacefully in the family. Her husband's constant infidelities push Natalia to an abortion, which destroys her. A man can hardly bear the premature death of a woman, because he also had peculiar, but tender feelings for his wife.

The offensive of the Red Army on the Cossacks forces Grigory Melekhov to go on the run to Novorossiysk. There, the hero, driven into a dead end, joins the Bolsheviks. 1920 was marked by the return of Gregory to his homeland, where he settled with his children at Aksinya. The new government began persecuting the former "whites", and during the escape to the Kuban for a "quiet life" Aksinya was mortally wounded. After wandering a little more around the world, Gregory returned to his native village, because the new authorities promised amnesty to the Cossack rebels.

Mikhail Sholokhov put an end to the narration at the most interesting place, without telling the readers about the future fate of Melekhov. However, it is not difficult to guess what happened to him. Historians urge curious lovers of the writer's work to consider the date of death of a beloved character the year of the shooting of his prototype - 1927.

Form

The author conveyed the difficult fate and internal changes of Grigory Melekhov through a description of his appearance. By the end of the novel, the carefree stately young man in love with life turns into a stern warrior with gray hair and a frozen heart:

“… I knew that I would no longer laugh at him as before; I knew that his eyes had sunk in and his cheekbones were sticking out sharply, and in his gaze more and more often the light of senseless cruelty began to shine through.

Gregory is a typical choleric: temperamental, quick-tempered and unbalanced, which manifests itself both in love affairs and in relations with the environment in general. The character of the protagonist of "Quiet Don" is an alloy of courage, heroism and even recklessness, passion and humility, gentleness and cruelty, hatred and endless kindness are combined in him.

Sholokhov created a hero with an open soul, capable of compassion, forgiveness and humanity: Grigory suffers from a gosling accidentally killed in the mow, defends Franya, not being afraid of a whole platoon of Cossacks, saves Stepan Astakhov, his sworn enemy, Aksinya's husband in the war

In search of the truth, Melekhov rushes from reds to whites, eventually becoming a renegade that neither side accepts. The man appears as a real hero of his time. Its tragedy lies in the story itself, when shocks broke a calm life, turning peaceful workers into unhappy people. The character's spiritual quest was accurately conveyed by the phrase of the novel:

"He stood on the verge of a struggle between two principles, denying both of them."

All illusions were dispelled in the battles of the civil war: anger towards the Bolsheviks and disillusionment with the "whites" forces the hero to look for a third path in the revolution, but he understands that in the middle it is impossible - they will crush. Once passionately in love with life, Grigory Melekhov never finds faith in himself, remaining at the same time folk character and an extra person in the current fate of the country.

Adaptation of the novel "Quiet Don"

The epic of Mikhail Sholokhov appeared on movie screens four times. On the basis of the first two books, a silent film was shot in 1931, where the main roles were played by Andrei Abrikosov (Grigory Melekhov) and Emma Tsesarskaya (Aksinya). Rumor has it that the writer created a sequel to The Quiet Don with an eye to the characters of this production.

In 1958, the director presented a piercing picture based on the work to the Soviet audience. The beautiful half of the country fell in love with the hero performed. The mustachioed handsome Cossack played love with, which convincingly appeared in the role of passionate Aksinya. Melekhov's wife Natalya played. The film awards piggy bank consists of seven awards including a Directors Guild Diploma.

Another multi-part adaptation of the novel belongs to. Russia, Great Britain and Italy worked on the 2006 film “Quiet Flows the Don”. The main role was approved by and.

For "Quiet Don" Mikhail Sholokhov was accused of plagiarism. The researchers considered the "greatest epic" to be stolen from a white officer who died in the Civil War. The author even had to postpone the work of writing a sequel to the novel for a while while a special commission investigated the information received. However, the problem of authorship has not yet been resolved.

The beginning actor of the Maly Theater, Andrei Abrikosov, woke up famous after the premiere of The Quiet Don. It is noteworthy that before that, in the temple of Melpomene, he never went on stage - they simply did not give a role. The man also did not bother to get acquainted with the work, he read the novel when the shooting was already in full swing.

Quotes

"You have a smart head, but the fool got it."

"The blind man said," We'll see. "

“Like a steppe scorched by fires, Gregory's life became black. He lost everything that was dear to his heart. Everything was taken from him, everything was destroyed by ruthless death. Only the children remained. But he himself was still convulsively clinging to the ground, as if in fact his broken life was of some value to him and to others. "

"Sometimes, remembering your whole life, you will look - and she is like an empty pocket, turned inside out."

“Life turned out to be ironic, wisely simple. Now it seemed to him that there had never been such a truth in it, under whose wing everyone could warm up, and, embittered to the brim, he thought: everyone has his own truth, his own furrow. "

“There is no truth in life. It is evident that whoever overcomes whom will devour him ... And I was looking for the bad truth. "