Essays. The theme of the tragic fate of man in a totalitarian state

Works of literature about the fate of man in totalitarian society(list): E. Zamyatin “We”, A. Platonov “The Pit”, “Chevengur”, A. Solzhenitsyn “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”, “The Gulag Archipelago”, “In the First Circle”, “ Cancer building", V. Shalamov " Kolyma stories”, V. Grossman “Life and Fate”, A. Rybakov “Children of the Arbat”, etc., G. Vladimov “Faithful Ruslan”, Y. Daniel “Redemption”

The theme of man and the totalitarian state in literature

Understanding the theme of man in a totalitarian society began in the 20s with the advent of the dystopian genre - the novel “We” by E. Zamyatin. Zamyatin's novel, written during the years of war communism, became a warning to humanity. A person in a totalitarian society is deprived of a name, and therefore of individuality, he is designated by a letter and numbers. All his activities are regulated by the state, even sexual relations. In order to check the correctness of the flow of life, a whole army of observers is needed. The life of the hero and his fellow citizens is imbued with faith in the Benefactor, who knows better than others how to make life beautiful. The election of the Benefactor turns into a national holiday.

An integral feature of a totalitarian society is the conviction of a person that what the state gives him is good, that there is no better country in the world.

A totalitarian state needs scientists who would help strengthen its power, but it does not need people with imagination, because fantasy makes a person think, see what the state would prefer to hide from its citizen. It is love that makes the hero rebel, but his rebellion is broken: he passively watches the murder of his beloved, he, devoid of imagination. It is love that becomes the enemy of totalitarianism, because it makes a person an individual, makes him forget the image of the Benefactor. Mother's love O-90 forces her to protest, to flee the state in order to keep the child, and not give him to the state. The novel “We” has universal significance; it is a reflection of any totalitarian regime based on the suppression of the human personality.

Solzhenitsyn's novels

The works of A. Solzhenitsyn are based on material experienced by the author himself. The writer is an ardent opponent of Soviet power as a totalitarian power. He tries to show the characters of people whose destinies are broken by society. This is how the situation in the novel “Cancer Ward” is a model of different representatives Soviet world, collected in the hospital by one misfortune - illness (cancer). Each image is a persistent system of beliefs: Oleg Kostoglotov, a former prisoner, an ardent opponent of the system, who understands all its anti-humanism; Shulubin, a Russian intellectual, participant in the revolution, outwardly accepts official morality, suffering from its inconsistencies; Rusanov is a man of the nomenklatura, for whom everything prescribed by the party and the state is accepted unconditionally; he does not torment himself with moral questions, but sometimes benefits from his position. Main question disputes - is it moral? existing system. According to the author and his hero, Oleg, the answer is clear: the system is immoral, it poisons the souls of children even at school, teaching them to be like everyone else, depriving them of their personality; it reduces literature to serving its own interests (to recreate the image of a beautiful tomorrow), this is a system with a shifted scale of values that demands the same from a person. The fate of a person depends on the choice he makes.

A. Solzhenitsyn will write about this somewhat differently in “Archipelago”: he will say that in a totalitarian society, his insight depends on the fate of a person (the reasoning is that he could turn out not to be a prisoner, but an NKVD officer).

Works by G. Vladimirov

The totalitarian system distorts the best features human character, leaves a mark for life. “Faithful Ruslan” is the story of a camp dog.

G. Vladimov shows that even after the dissolution of the camps, the camp dogs continue to wait for their duty to be fulfilled - they can’t do anything else. And when young builders arrive at the station and march in a column to the construction site, dogs surround them, which at first seems funny to the young people, and then terrible. A totalitarian system teaches a person to love his master and obey him unquestioningly. But there is a scene in the novel that shows that submission is not limitless: the prisoners refuse to leave the barracks in the cold, then the camp commander orders the doors to be opened and the inside of the barracks to be watered ice water, and then one of the shepherd dogs, the most talented one, clamps the hose with its teeth: this is how the animal protests against the inhumanity of people. Dying Ruslan dreams of his mother, the one whom the state took from him and deprived him of true feelings. And if Ruslan himself evokes sympathy, then the image of his master is disgusting in its primitiveness, cruelty, and soullessness.

Y. Daniel and the novel about the Thaw

The horror of totalitarianism is that even the souls of people with a fairly prosperous fate are broken by the totalitarian regime. The action of Y. Daniel's story “Atonement” takes place during the Khrushchev Thaw. Main character story - he is talented, honest, happy, he has many friends, a wonderful woman loves him. But then an accusation falls upon him: a fleeting old acquaintance of the hero returns from the camp: he is convinced that he was imprisoned as a result of the hero’s denunciation. But the writer initially claims that the hero is not guilty. And now, without trial or investigation, without explanation, the hero finds himself in isolation: not only his colleagues, but also his friends have turned their backs on him; his beloved, unable to bear it, leaves. People are used to accusations, they believe everything; no matter what in in this case The poles change (the enemy of the people is an informer). The hero goes crazy, but before that he understands that everyone in this society is guilty, even those who have lived a quiet life. Everyone is poisoned by the poison of totalitarianism. To get rid of it, like to get rid of oneself as a slave, is the process of life of more than one generation.

The fate of a person in a totalitarian society is tragic - this is the conclusion of all works on this topic, but the attitude towards certain people varies domestic writers different, as different and from position.

Materials are published with the personal permission of the author - Ph.D. Maznevoy O.A.

Did you like it? Don't hide your joy from the world - share it

Plan:
1. A concentration camp is a totalitarian state in miniature.
2. “People live here too” is the basic principle of Ivan Denisovich’s life.
3. Only through labor can freedom of spirit and personal freedom be achieved.
4. Preservation of dignity and humanity in any conditions, at any time - all this is the main thing for a person.
5. The human soul is something that cannot be deprived of freedom, cannot be captured or destroyed - this is the meaning of the story.

Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn's story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” was conceived in the camp in 1950-51, and written in 1959. The image of Ivan Denisovich was formed from the soldier Shukhov, who fought with the author in the Soviet-German war. All yours personal experience life in the camp, the author outlined all his impressions in his story. Main character works - simple Russian man, unremarkable. There were very, very many people like Shukhov in the camp. Before us appear people whom fate brought to a concentration camp, innocent people who did nothing reprehensible. Among them: Gonchik, who carried milk into the forest, Baptists suffering for their faith, Estonians, prisoners. They all live and work in the camp, trying to maintain their own existence. There is everything on the camp territory: a bathhouse, a medical unit, and a dining room. All this resembles a small town. But the matter cannot be done without guards, of whom there are a huge number, they are everywhere, they make sure that all the rules are followed, otherwise a punishment cell awaits the disobedient.
And for eight years now, Ivan Denisovich has been wandering around the camps, enduring, suffering, tormenting, but at the same time maintaining his inner dignity. Shukhov does not change peasant habits and “doesn’t let himself down”, doesn’t humiliate himself because of a cigarette, because of rations, and certainly doesn’t lick the bowls, doesn’t denounce his comrades to improve his own fate.
Conscientiousness, unwillingness to live at someone else’s expense, or to cause inconvenience to someone, forces him to forbid his wife from collecting parcels for him in the camp, to justify the greedy Caesar and “not to stretch your belly on other people’s goods.” He also never feigns illness, and when he is seriously ill, he behaves guiltily in the medical unit: “What... Nikolai Semenych... I seem to be... sick...” Solzhenitsyn writes that he speaks at the same time “conscientiously, as if he was coveting something that belongs to someone else.” . And while he sat in this clean medical unit and did nothing for five whole minutes, he was very surprised by this: “it was wonderful for Shukhov to sit in such a clean room, in such silence...”
Work, according to Shukhov, is salvation from illness, from loneliness, from suffering. It is at work that Russian people forget themselves; work gives satisfaction and positive emotions, which prisoners have so little of.
That's why it's so bright folk character The character emerges in the work scenes. Ivan Denisovich is a mason, a carpenter, a stove maker, and a poplar carver. “He who knows two things will also pick up ten,” says Solzhenitsyn. Even in captivity, he is overwhelmed by the excitement of the work, conveyed by the author in such a way that Ivan Denisovich’s feelings turn out to be inseparable from the author’s own. We understand that A.I. Solzhenitsyn is a good mason. He transfers all his skills to his character. AND human dignity, equality, freedom of spirit, according to Solzhenitsyn, is established in work; it is in the process of work that prisoners joke, even laugh. Everything can be taken away from a person, but the satisfaction of a job well done cannot be taken away.
The phrase where Shukhov says that “he himself doesn’t know whether he wanted it or not” has a very significant meaning for the writer. Prison, according to Solzhenitsyn, is a huge evil, violence, but suffering contributes to moral purification. With all their behavior in the camp, the heroes of A.I. Solzhenitsyn confirm the main idea of this work. Namely, that the soul cannot be taken captive, it cannot be deprived of its freedom. The formal release of Ivan Denisovich will not change his worldview, his value system, his view of many things, his essence.
The concentration camp, the totalitarian system could not enslave strong in spirit there were a lot of people in our long-suffering country, who stood their ground and did not let the country perish.

Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn (1918 - 2008)

Man, writer, philosopher...

Lesson topic: “Biography of A.I. Solzhenitsyn”

The purpose of the lesson :

introduce students to the pages of the biography and creativity of an unusual person;
skills to take notes, identify the main thing, generalize, reflect;
personality education.

Equipment:

Alexander Sokurov’s film “The Knot” (video equipment);
portrait of a writer;
notes on the board:

A) lesson topics;

B) epigraphs;

B) dictionary: Dissident; Zurich; Vermont, America.

Dissident – (mouth) – one who deviates from the dominant religion in the country; apostate.

(Latin) – disagreeing, contradictory.

D) recording of the main works:

I am not me, and mine literary fate- not mine, but all those millions who did not scratch, did not whisper, did not wheeze their prison fate, their camp discoveries.

A. Solzhenitsyn

...Solzhenitsyn, more than any other writer, answered the question of who we are today through the question: what is happening to us?

S. Zalygin

During the classes

Organizational moment
1. The teacher's word.

In the early 1980s, President Reagan invited the most prominent Soviet dissidents living in the West to breakfast. Of the entire host of those invited, only A.I. Solzhenitsyn refused, noting that he was not a “dissident”, but a Russian writer who could not talk with the head of state, whose generals, on the advice of scientistsare seriously developing the idea of selective destruction of the Russian people through targeted nuclear strikes . Having expressed polite refusal, Solzhenitsyn, however, reciprocated by inviting Reagan, when his term of office expired, to visit his home in Vermont and there to talk in a calm atmosphere about pressing issues of relations between our two countries, unobtrusively emphasizing thatthe presidential office is occupied by oneface for a maximum of eight years,vocation Russian writer for life.

2. Who is this man?

Alexander Sokurov’s film “The Knot” will help us recognize this person ( 23 minutes of part I ), demonstrated in December 1998, when the writer turned 80 years old.

Born in December 1918. in Kislovodsk.

My father came from peasants, became a student, then volunteered for his first world war and was awarded the St. George Cross. He died in a hunting accident six months before the birth of his only child.

After high school Solzhenitsyn graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the University in Rostov-on-Don (1941).. ), at the same time he enters the Moscow Institute of Philosophy and Literature as a correspondence student.

Goes to war, from 1942 to 1945. commands a battery at the front, awarded orders and medals.

In February 1945 with the rank of captain, arrested due to criticism of Stalin detected in correspondence and sentenced to 8 years:

1 year – on investigation and transfers

3g. - in the prison research institute

4g. – general work in the political Special Security.

1953 – Cancer – cured. Miracle.

The camp term ended on the day of Stalin’s death, March 5, 1953, and cancer was immediately discovered, when, according to the doctors’ verdict, I had no more than three weeks to live... however, I did not die (with my hopelessly advanced malignant tumor, it was God's miracle, I couldn’t understand it any other way. All the life returned to me since then is not mine in the full sense, it has an embedded purpose).

Then he was exiled to Kazakhstan “forever”; however, man-made eternity lasted “only” three years, after which, by the ruling of the Supreme Court of the USSR on February 6, 1957. rehabilitation followed.

After rehabilitation he worked school teacher in Ryazan.

Following publication at 11 m issue of "New World" for 1962. The work “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” was accepted into the Writers’ Union, but except for a few more stories and one article, everything written was forced to be given away from “Samizdat” or published abroad.

In 1969 - excluded from the joint venture.

In 1970 – awarded Nobel Prize on literature.

In 1974 - in connection with the release of the 1st volume of The Gulag Archipelago, he was forcibly expelled to the West.

Until 1976 lived in Zurich, then moved to the American state Vermont , nature reminiscent middle lane Russia.

He is married for the second time to Natalya Svetlova, they have three children - Ermolai, Ignat and Stepan. Currently, they are adults.

Ermolai – phenologist (study of living natural phenomena)

Ignat – musician

Stepan is a city planner.

Instead of creative work, at the very end of the war he experienced, he suffered arrest, prison and a camp, but:

- It’s scary to think that I would have become a writer (and I would have) if I hadn’t been imprisoned.

1955-1968 - novel “In the First Circle”

1955-1967 - story “Cancer Ward”

1958-1968 - “GULAG Archipelago” (designation of the camp country)

1963-1964 - 227 witnesses

1956 - story “Zakhar-Kalita”

1959-1963 – story “Matryonin’s Dvor”

By 1994 – 10 volumes “The Red Wheel” (narrative of the revolution)

! Let's turn to his ideas about the purpose of art in people's lives.

Art, Solzhenitsyn rightly believes, is characterized by a secret Inner Light, and it is not possible for a person to grasp it all.

Solzhenitsyn believes that there are two types of artists:

one “considers himself the creator of an independent spiritual world and takes the act of creating this world onto his shoulders.”
another knows a higher power above him, this world was not created by him
«… The artist is given only the ability to sense more acutely than others the harmony of the world, the beauty and ugliness of the human contribution to it - and acutely convey this to people»

? - What type of artist would you classify Solzhenitsyn as?

In defining his understanding of art, Solzhenitsyn reflects on Dostoevsky’s “mysterious” phrase “The world will be saved by beauty.”

Homework:

History of the creation of the work

zh No. 5, 89g, p.21

The camp, its structure, its regime, its purpose
Social hierarchy of camp life. Its laws. Camp workers.
The main character of the story:

a) Autobiography - on behalf of Shukhov.

b) What kind of figure is in front of us? What impression does it give?

5) Speech matter from which Solzhenitsyn’s hero was created.

6) Collective farm life illuminated in the work.

Lesson topic: “Theme tragic fate V
totalitarian state»

(story by A.I. Solzhenitsyn “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”)

The purpose of the lesson :

based on the analysis of the story, penetrate into the world of a person from the people, find out how he relates himself to the forcibly imposed reality and its ideas;
expression of the ability to analyze and prove one’s thoughts about the work read;
raising a creative reader.

Equipment:

portrait of the author;
epigraphs to the topic;
vocabulary: totalitarianism, righteous

Totalitarianism – one of the forms of the state, characterized by complete (total) control by the authorities state power over all spheres of society, the physical elimination of constitutional freedoms and rights.

Righteous – 1. a person who lives according to the commandments prescribed by any religion;

2. one who is guided by the principles of justice and honesty does not violate the rules of morality.

What field did the executioners trample,

They pressed with a merciless wheel.

Oh, if only all the tortured would stand up

And they told the truth about everything.

V. Bokov

I was very lucky that I was in the camp and, most importantly, that I survived there.

“I” survived to find itself in art and to revive in it the faces of those who were hidden behind alphanumeric signs.

A. Solzhenitsyn

During the classes

I. Organizational moment

II. Work on speech breathing “Start”

III. Express survey (based on a work read at home)

Name full name the main character of the story (Ivan Denisovich Shukhov)
Camp number of Ivan Denisovich ( Shch-854)
In what years do the events covered in the work take place?

(50s)

How old is the main character of the work?
List the heroes of the work, their occupation in freedom ( 0.5b for each)

IV. 1. The teacher’s word, which turns into an analysis of the work.

The conversation is accompanied by a commented reading of the text.

The most strong impression Shukhov's thoughts, the secret of his inner life conveyed in monologue, affect us.

Let's start, perhaps, with the idea that Ivan Denisovich came up with.

The working day ended and everyone returned to camp.

And this thought:

“Five roads converge to the watch…” ( page 77) text.

Urban planners - slaves - walk along the streets of tomorrow to work: in the morning - to the sites, in the evening - back.

Prisoners walk according to the camp rule, holding their hands behind them and lowering their heads.

The columns go as if to a funeral, “and you can see,” Ivan Denisovich is annoyed, “only the front two or three have legs and a patch of sunken ground where you can step on with your feet.”

The mental activity of Ivan Denisovich Shukhov does not stop for a second.

He keeps track of camp time in hours and minutes.

2. … Camp. Its structure, its mode, its purpose.

Life goes on behind the barbed wire.

What saves a person in this inhuman life?

As always, involvement in a community of people. Here this is a brigade, the annals of a family in free life. Father-Brigadier...

The foreman in the camp is everything... ( page 30, page 34)

3. Social hierarchy of camp life. Its laws.

Camp workers (Buinovsky Caesar)

Law-taiga

The main character of the work

a) Autobiography (individual)

b) How did you get to the camp?

c) What kind of figure is in front of us? What impression does it make?

d) Speech matter from which Solzhenitsyn’s hero was created

Collective farm life

Conclusions, generalizations.

Camp life, no matter how regulated it was, offered prisoners a choice: there were executioners and guards, idiots and informants, goons and just raw prisoners.

? What did Shukhov choose?

Quietly and unnoticed by everyone, he became a righteous man.

Every day and hour I had to choose between good and evil, strength and weakness, dignity and humiliation.

The most difficult thing in choosing is to find support.

! And again the reader is overcome by a sense of the absurdity of what is happening at the behest of the camp: for some reason, in the camp hospital, the young poet is finishing poems that were unfinished in the wild.

The peasant Glukhov was brought back from the war to logging.

And the guards themselves, the guards, the Russian people who stand on the towers in the cold and protect whom? And for what?

? What kind of robber horde captured the country and sent one part of the people to another?

! The theme is the responsibility of the people and their leaders for the present and future of the country.

Lesson summary

Homework:

1. Find the beginning of the action, the plot of the plot

2. Who are they, the main characters of the story?

Group assignments:

I. Narrator

II. Matryona

Lesson topic: “A village is not worthwhile without a righteous man”

The purpose of the lesson :

1) trace how the image of the “majestic Slavic woman” is shown in the work of A.I. Solzhenitsyn;

2) development of monologue speech, the ability to maintain a dialogue;

3) personality education.

Equipment:

1. portrait of the writer;

2. notes on the board.

During the classes

I. Organizational moment

II. introduction teachers.

The study of Russian character continued in other works of A.I. Solzhenitsyn at the end of 50 x – n.60s.

In the original version, the work was called “A village does not stand without a righteous man,” and the action in it took place in 1956 (in the published version, the events developed in pre-Khrushchev times in 1953). The changes were aimed at giving the story a more private meaning.

III. Conversation on the content of the work.

What event does the plot of the work focus on?

At 184 ohm km from Moscow along the branch that goes to Murom and Kazan

What have we learned about the narrator?

He walked his way to “Matryona’s yard” “from” the dusty hot desert, where he “stayed for about ten years.” He succeeds in realizing his dream of returning to “interior” Russia when “something is changing in the country...” (allegories about liberation from the camp, the memorable “camp padded jacket.” Long years did not instill malice in the narrator’s soul...)

What have you learned about Matryona’s life?

The heroine is, as it were, outside of society, merging with nature. Darkness, lack of education. Memories of Matryona’s youth that in her youth she “didn’t consider five pounds a burden,” and one day she “grabbed the bridle and stopped the sleigh.”

Nekrasovka heroine:

In the game the horseman will not catch her,

In trouble - he will not fail - he will save:

Stops a galloping horse

He will enter the burning hut!

The heroine finds herself in the center of the eternal confrontation between good and evil, trying “with her conscience” and her life itself to connect the edges of the abyss.

Climax in external and internal plot plans is the moment of Matryona’s death at a crossing.

Matryona is still trying to restore harmony common life, making his bright contribution to the work started by “breakers - not builders”, for which “good” is a material concept.

Matryona - Thaddeus

Among her fellow villagers, Matryona remains “misunderstood”, a “stranger”.

At the end of the story folk wisdom becomes the basis for assessing the heroine: “... she is the very righteous man, without whom, according to the proverb, the village does not stand.”

Review of "The Gulag Archipelago".

Homework:

Bibliography:

1. No. 5, 1990 Literature at school

One hour, one day, one human life in the works of A.I. Solzhenitsyn

2. Akimov “On the Winds of Time”

3. No. 5, 1989 Literature at school

Alexander Solzhenitsyn: guide

4. No. 4, 1997 One day…

The conflict between the temporary and the eternal in the story “One Day...”

5. Weekly supplement to the newspaper “First of September” No. 17-18 1993.

“Why is the period of existence of a totalitarian state in the 20th century the most tragic?” - any high school student can answer this question, but the best answer can be found in such works of Solzhenitsyn as “The Gulag Archipelago”, “In the First Circle”, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”. They all talk about how the life of a Soviet person could change due to false rumors, a wrong step or a desire for justice. This idea, which unites all of Solzhenitsyn’s work, is visible in the title of his main novel.

Gulag is an abbreviation for all places of detention. In other words, these are concentration camps, only not German, but Soviet, but in the USSR compatriots were sometimes treated worse than the Nazis... It is known that the writer who helped Solzhenitsyn work on the novel “The Gulag Archipelago” hanged herself after a brutal interrogation of the people who tracked her down. This is what happened to ordinary workers, educators!

The location of dozens of camps, if you look at the map, is very reminiscent of an archipelago, which is why Solzhenitsyn chose

this is the title for his main novel. To get into the Gulag, it is enough to be a dispossessed peasant, a member of a foreign party, or a person who has been in captivity. Sometimes completely innocent people ended up there, but the main goal of the head of the camps was to morally destroy a person, and not to prove guilt. The worst thing is that even a child could become a permanent resident of the “archipelago” - he was given 10 years in prison. If initially the authorities shot “traitors” without trial or investigation, then soon Stalin decided to take advantage of the free labor force and sent to the Gulag for 25 years.

In the novel, Solzhenitsyn says that the very first place for the formation of a camp was a monastery. But getting there meant that the person was relatively lucky, because the most scary place imprisonment was SLON - a special purpose camp in the north.

20 years after the establishment of the totalitarian regime, the “archipelago” acquired extraordinary dimensions. The people who ended up there were not people - but “aboriginals,” and due to inhuman conditions, not a day passed without mortality. Gulags continued to grow throughout the country, there were more and more prisoners, but even those who survived all 25 years of torment were not released.

Such a tragic fate was experienced by hundreds of thousands of people who served their state with truth and faith, but were slandered. But the Soviet people survived everything, and even despite the fact that after the death of Stalin the Gulags continued to exist, the time came when the violence disappeared and people began to live calmly, without being afraid to say an extra word or take a step to the left. We are the happy inhabitants of this time, and we should be infinitely indebted to those who withstood all the hardships in a totalitarian state.

On the topic: methodological developments, presentations and notes

Reflections on the story by A.I. Solzhenitsyn "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich"

To attract students' interest in the personality and work of A. I. Solzhenitsyn, who became a symbol of openness, will and Russian directness; show “unusual life material”, taken...

Topic: The tragedy of the 30s in the history of Russia and its reflection in the story by A. I. Solzhenitsyn “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.”

Integrated lesson literature - history...

will save a person in an inhuman life, what is his highest purpose; help to understand what contributes to moral purification....

Essays. The theme of the tragic fate of man in a totalitarian state

The theme of man and the totalitarian state in literature

Solzhenitsyn's novels

Works by G. Vladimirov

Y. Daniel and the novel about the Thaw

Other works on this topic:

On the topic: methodological developments, presentations and notes