Review of a work of modern Russian literature. (Based on the novel by A

Among works of fiction about the difficult thirties, the novel “Children of the Arbat” is of particular importance. After its first publication (1988), it was unanimously highlighted by both readers and critics. He received more responses, but both praise and abuse. Moreover, interest in the work was due not only to artistic qualities; as a rule, they are not discussed. For the first time, after so many years of silence, at the center of the plot of a large epic work is the figure of a statesman who was the arbiter of the destinies of millions throughout an entire historical period in the life of the country and at the same time a mysterious figure, although his name was on everyone’s lips. And to this day, in essence, only fragments of information, individual episodes, portrait features and character traits, contradictory assessments of certain words and actions of this person, taken from the memoirs of various figures of the Stalin era, reach us. After all, in fact, no real generalizing and analytical work about Stalin has been published in our country, unless, of course, you count the official ceremonial biography released immediately after the war.

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State budgetary professional educational institution of the Moscow region

"Agricultural and Industrial College"

LITERARY RESEARCH

based on the novel by A. Rybakov

"Children of Arbat"

"These difficult thirties"

Teacher: Evergetova V.S.

2014

PLAN.

Novel "Children of Arbat".
Great historical work.
“In essence, this is a novel about Stalin.” (I. Anninsky)
“Children of Arbat” is a novel about the fate of the first generations of Soviet people.
These difficult thirties.
1. “Eventless” time (1933-1934):
a) 1934 is a milestone year;
b) the formation of the Stalinist system;
Connection of times:
a) Arbat in the thirties: pictures of life;
b) house on Arbat - “Noah’s Ark”.
Causes and consequences of the tragedy of the thirties:
Image of Sasha Pankratov:
a) “the case of the director of the Krivoruchko Institute”;

c) contrasting Sasha Pankratov with Stalin and his regime;
Yura Sharok, Vika and Vadim Morasevich.
Personality of J.V. Stalin:
a) episode with the dentist;
b) M. A. Ryazanov’s attitude towards the leader.
A revolution is great not because of what it destroys, but because of what it creates.
My attitude to the novel.

These difficult thirties

Therefore, the overwhelming majority of readers perceived A. Rybakov’s novel as a kind of missing link in historical knowledge, “filling the gap,” as was often said in critical articles. And it is assessed precisely as a historical work, causing differences in judgment and necessary additions. clarifications and even contradictions. "IN essence - this is a novel about Stalin." - wrote, for example, L. Anninsky in 1987.

After the first publication of the work, A. Rybakov was literally attacked by journalists and criticism. From his numerous interviews it is known that the novel was conceived a quarter of a century ago as a broad narrative about the fate of the first generation of Soviet people. His heroes were those who were born around 1914 and whose conscious life began after the revolution and civil war, who, having passed through the boundaries of the thirties, at the age of physical and spiritual maturity, met the Great Patriotic War.

The writer himself belonged to this generation, who fully shared both the bitter and the bright in the fate of the first Soviet people.

November 1933 - December 1934. This is how the time frame of the first novel from the epic canvas broadly conceived by A. Rybakov is determined. The critic Bocharov wrote an article about “Children of the Arbat,” where he argued that the writer “based the plot... on the usual “eventless year,” but perhaps this is not entirely true.

Many events have happened this year. If you leaf through the newspaper files, you can read about the rescue of the “Chelyuskinites”, about the first congress of writers, and so on. But this is not important for Rybakov; he has his own truth, which made it possible to clearly reflect the contradictions of the time, which are more clearly and clearly visible to him.

And yet 1934 was called special, milestone year in the pre-war period of the country's history.

Only ten years have passed since the mournful January 1924, and the feeling of unity that gripped the entire nation at the hour of farewell to Ilyich is still alive in people.

And the atmosphere of the fierce struggle against the opposition that unfolded immediately after the death of the leader is alive. The struggle in which the authority of the General Secretary of the Central Committee Stalin, who continued the Leninist idea of the unity of the Bolshevik Party, grew so much.

The fighters of the “Iron Guard of Lenin’s forging”, who were hardened in the underground, went through the revolution and civil war, and then for some time occupied key positions in the party, state and economic leadership, are still held in high esteem.

But they are already being replaced by new leaders of the “Stalinist school”, apparatus, created during the first five-year plans.

Thus, of the seven members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of 1924, by the beginning of the 30s, only the General Secretary remained in it.

The country is picking up the pace of socialist construction. The USSR “rises with glory to meet the day,” as it was sung in the most popular “Song of the Oncoming One” by B. Kornilov and D. Shostakovich. It seemed that the excesses and “dizziness from success” in agriculture were left behind forever, and the terrible famine they caused in 1931-1932 on the richest black soil lands was almost forgotten (at least officially). At the turn of 1934 and 1935, food cards will be abolished. Soon Stalin’s words that “life has become better, life has become more fun” will be heard throughout the country, sincerely and enthusiastically taken up by millions.

Most recently, Stalin toured the newly opened White Sea-Baltic Canal. It was built by the labor of tens of thousands of prisoners, the overwhelming majority of them “subkulak members” and “alien elements,” and was immediately named after Stalin. These are peculiar relics, fragments of the NEP, the liquidation of which was carried out extremely harshly.

In January 1934, the XVII Congress of the CPSU (b), called the “Congress of the Winners,” convened. At one of its meetings, an episode occurred that was received very cheerfully by everyone, but turned out to be a terrible prophecy. Workers at the Tula Arms Factory presented Stalin with a sample of a new sniper rifle. Rising above the presidium table and smiling slightly into his mustache, he playfully took aim at the meeting room applauding him.

In December of the same 1934, Kirov was killed, and years later the 17th Party Congress will be spoken of as a “congress of those executed.”

“The largest house on Arbat between Nikolsky and Denezhny lanes, now they are called Plotnikov lane and Vesnina street”... This phrase opens A. Rybakov’s novel.

The choice of location was greatly influenced by the personal and life experiences of the author of the work: he repeatedly mentioned that his childhood and youth were spent on this very street, in this very yard. But this is only the external side of the choice.

Arbat and the entire Arbat area are special places not only for the poor part of the population, but also for the rich layer of Moscow residents of the thirties. Let us remember the novel by M. Bulgakov. He also settled his heroes, the Master and Margarita, in the Arbat alleys! What did this part of Moscow mean? A business and shopping street occupying a central position between the then periphery of the city and its center. Very close are Vozdvizhenka, Manege, and the Kremlin. But the Smolensky market is nearby, and there it’s a stone’s throw to Dorogomilov and Devichye Pole - the Moscow outskirts. And as soon as you step away from the noisy street, you will find yourself in quiet, almost provincial side streets: Stolovy, Skaterny. Starokonyushenny, Dog Playground, with green islands and mansions that have preserved the atmosphere of the last century.

“Tram traffic has been stopped on Arbat, the street has been paved.” - Sasha learns from letters during exile and has difficulty trying to imagine the changed places of his childhood. Yes, Arbat becomes in the early thirties regime street. Here there is a path from the Kremlin to Stalin’s nearby dacha, and special vehicles rush along the newly asphalted pavement several times a day.

I would like to draw special attention to this very significant beginning. It seems that the first lines are purely informational in nature, but it is here, pointing to a really existing house, that the author seems to affirm the reality of the children of Arbat themselves. An atmosphere of some kind of historical narrative arises. Rybakov's heroes, the residents of this house, may have really existed. Everything that happens to them on the pages of the novel is quite likely real events. But, in addition, the writer clarifies the coordinates of the house, which arose already during the years of publication of the work. That is, already at the very beginning a thread is stretched tense connections: the past does not die and is not subject to oblivion!

They live in the house, study at the same school, and grow up with very different young people, both in origin (for that time - a very important sign!) and in their outlook on life. Sasha Pankratov is from an intelligent family, the son of a tailor (according to his profile - a worker) Yura Sharok, professor's children Vika and Vadim Morasevich. orphan sisters Nina and Varya Ivanov, son of a stoker Maxim Kostin. Emphasizing the origin, indicating the occupations and past of young people - this is the special author’s intention. That is why one of the critics of the novel even gave the house on Arbat a biblical name - “Noah’s Ark”: Rybakov placed completely different people, “pure” and “impure”, in his house, and showed in their destinies the fate of the entire country.

And nearby there are other layers of life, to which threads are stretched through the same children of Arbat: their schoolmate Lena Budyagina is friends with them - the daughter of a member of the Central Committee, a major diplomat, and now deputy people's commissar, Stalin's friend from exile. And Sasha Pankratov’s uncle is a major business executive, whom Ordzhonikidze values very much.

But the first pages of the story do not promise anything strict, much less anything dark.

Pre-holiday, carefree Moscow evening. “At the cinema “Arbatsky Ars” girls were already walking in pairs, Arbat girls and Dorogomilovsky, and girls from Plyushchikha, coat collars casually raised, lips painted, eyelashes curled, expectant eyes, a colored scarf on their necks - autumn Arbat chic.” With one of these girls. Katya, and the hero of the work by student Sasha Pankratov will have a love and at the same time some very mundane date in her friend’s room somewhere on the working outskirts, not far from the Novodevichy Convent. Everything is described very casually and somehow erased. You hardly see the heroes. Perhaps this was the author’s intention, focusing on the details of everyday life. A sparse festive table, pies with soy, potatoes, cabbage, a bottle of vodka. The cramped conditions of an overcrowded communal apartment. Children are sent to neighbors so as not to disturb them...

But the reader will find descriptions of other apartments in the novel. The same communal apartment, but already inhabited by residents of a different circle. An apartment in a prominent building on Arbat, where the Potapovs occupy two rooms, and at that time - almost luxury! A. Rybakov will show a separate apartment of the deputy people's commissar's family in a government building, where the walls are armored with bookshelves, and on a round table under a wide low lampshade lies an open box of marmalade.

Details, written out in detail or dropped in passing, not only recreate the picture of life in the early 30s, but also serve as original signals of changes that have already begun, signals that are incomparably more acutely perceived by today's readers than by the characters in the novel themselves.

Here is Mark Aleksandrovich Ryazanov, Sasha’s uncle, walking from the Arbat to the Business House on Nogin Square. On the way, his gaze glances at this familiar picture: “A large crowd was waiting for the opening of the Voentorg store, and another, smaller one, huddled near Kalinin’s reception.”

And on a peaceful summer day, a group of young people in Serebryany Bor hear a pleasant baritone sounding over the quiet dacha village of old Bolsheviks and responders:

“And why I love you, silent night...

“Sings well,” said Yura, “who is this?”
Our neighbor,” Lena answered, “is an employee of the Central Committee.” Nikolai Ivanovich Ezhov.

Vadim shook his head as a sign that he was hearing this name for the first time.

And he knew all the names.

I don’t know who he is,” Yura said, “but he sings well.”
“A very good person,” said Lena.”

It is worth noting that here the author, striving for a strong effect, as noted by researchers of Rybakov’s work, allows for a certain stretch. By 1934, N.I. Ezhov was quite well known not only in leadership circles. His fame even then was not the best. In 1928-1930, Yezhov, Deputy People's Commissar of Agriculture, zealously pursued the line of complete collectivization and liquidation of the kulaks as a class, following Stalin's instructions. After the publication of the article “Dizziness from Success,” not only was he not brought to party responsibility, like a number of leaders of the People’s Commissariat of Agriculture, but he was appointed head of the Distribution Department and the Personnel Department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. By the summer of 1934, Yezhov had already been Stalin’s first assistant for four years in carrying out his personnel policy, which is expressively stated in A. Rybakov’s novel: “All the time it is necessary to break up these established apparatuses, these clips of harmonized people, shuffle, shuffle, shuffle.”

These are the different heroes of Rybakov, but the fate and life of each will be either directly or indirectly connected with the “arbiter of destinies,” with Stalin, and it is important for the author to understand the origins and consequences of the tragedy of the thirties. The fate of Sasha Pankratov is placed at the center of the novel.

After the very calm, even somewhat slow-motion scene of the love meeting between Sasha Pankratov and Katya that opens the novel, there follows a chapter about a meeting of the party bureau of the institute, where the case of the student Pankratov is to be discussed. Sasha expressed public dissatisfaction with the fact that the accounting teacher, instead of presenting the fundamentals of the subject, “exposes bourgeois views on economics.” But the main issue at the meeting is the case of the deputy director of the institute, Krivoruchko, a party member since 1914, a man with a legendary military biography. The construction of the student dormitory was not completed on time. They didn’t provide materials for construction, Magnitostroy chose all the funds, but... But the answer to all this is obvious: “We are not interested in objective reasons! Have funds been transferred to high-impact construction projects? You are not responsible for Magnitogorsk, but for the institute. Why weren’t they warned that the deadlines were unrealistic? Ah, the deadlines are real... Why are they not met? Have you been in the party for twenty years?.. We will bow down for past services, but we will beat you for mistakes.”

And the attitude towards Sasha and his case now completely depends on what position he will take in relation to Krivoruchko, whether he will support or not support the accusation. Sasha did not support, and his question was submitted for discussion to the Komsomol organization: let the youth figure it out themselves. It would seem democratic? But here the rules of a “different game” come into force, which Sasha is initially unaware of. It is one thing to condemn in a narrow circle and punish on behalf of the party bureau, another thing is to achieve public repentance or public condemnation, and then make a decision based on the “fury of the masses” (that was the wording in those years).

“- Yanson! Janson! Let Yanson speak!..

Comrades, the issue we are discussing is very important.
“We know this without you,” they shouted from the audience.
But it is necessary to separate objective results from subjective motives.
Same!
Don't philosophize!
No, it's not the same thing. But let me finish my point...
We won't allow it! Enough!..
Pankratov took an apolitical and, therefore, philistine position.
Few! Few!
There’s nothing to listen to!”

And then the scale of action expands and becomes larger. Summoned to Moscow, Mark Aleksandrovich Ryazanov is going to talk about Sasha’s case with his old acquaintance - Ordzhonikidze’s deputy and member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) Budyagin. “These working-class intellectuals, who exchanged the commissar’s overcoat for an embassy tailcoat, the leather jacket of the chairman of the gubchek for the suit of the director of the trust, always personified for Mark Alexandrovich the formidable spirit of the Revolution. the all-crushing power of the Dictatorship."

But Sasha’s fate in a conversation between old acquaintances is not the main one - the fate of the fourth blast furnace at the metallurgical plant, which Ryazanov is building, is being decided. The blast furnace should be blown out by the 17th Party Congress, in five months, and not in eight, as envisaged by the plan. Both Ryazanov and Budyagin understand that “economic expediency is being sacrificed to political necessity,” but this is Stalin’s will.

There is a student dormitory, here there is a blast furnace, on the commissioning of which the five-year plans of many factories depend. The scales are different, but the essence is the same: neither people, nor their lives, nor the real possibilities of completing the task are taken into account.

But Stalin, during a personal meeting, suddenly unexpectedly supported Ryazanov. He liked the phrase that the construction manager of a metallurgical plant is not a technical adventurer. “So the Central Committee is technically adventurous?” - Stalin suddenly asked cheerfully.” And little did Mark Aleksandrovich, who admired the leader’s wisdom and foresight, know that with the phrase about “technical adventurism,” he was already targeting Deputy People’s Commissar Budyagin, and through him, Ordzhonikidze. Just as Sasha was unaware that Krivoruchko was being dealt with, in essence, not for being a hostel, but because he was once in the opposition, “signed letters,” “joined the platforms,” and only formally admitted mistakes, but “not disarmed."

And the end of Ryazanov’s conversation with Stalin casts another light on the emerging atmosphere of the 30s. Ryazanov’s remark that one of the adjacent factories is letting him down with supplies leads to the following:

“Stalin asked who the director of this plant was. Hearing the answer, he said:

A stupid person will fail everything.

His eyes became yellowish, heavy, tiger-like, and anger flashed in them towards the man whom Mark Aleksandrovich knew as a good man who found himself in difficult conditions,” and in any situation he was faithful to his Komsomol ethics. At a factory or at an institute, in Butyrki or on the Angara.

And oddly enough, its strength lies in idealism, in the romantic vision of a new, perfect society. That is why Dyakov is unable to break Sasha and force him to sign testimony about the presence of a counter-revolutionary organization at the institute. The investigator's cunning tricks do not work on this student, who lives according to the standards of real revolutionaries.

Apart from college history, I don’t know anything about myself.

So you were arrested for nothing? Are we imprisoning innocent people? Even here you continue counter-revolutionary agitation, but we are not the gendarmerie, not the Third Section, we are not just punitive agencies. We are an armed detachment of the party. And you are a double-dealer, Pankratov, that’s what you are!
You don't dare call me that!

Dyakov hit the table with his fist.

I'll show you what I dare and what I don't dare! Do you think you've arrived at the sanatorium? We have other conditions here for people like you. Double-dealer! You have spent your whole life on the neck of the working class and are still sitting on the neck of the state, it teaches you, pays you a scholarship, and you deceive it!”

Indeed, Pankratov relies on the example of the Bolsheviks, who stood for the truth in tsarist prisons no matter what. Like them, he rebels during interrogations, demonstrates perseverance, like them, and tries to educate himself even in his cell.

“In the afternoon an unfamiliar warden appeared with a piece of paper and a pencil in his hands.

Write a request to the library -

Library allowed!

Sasha doesn’t know how many books and for how long he can borrow. But he didn’t show any sign of his ignorance. An experienced prisoner is treated more highly by staff than an inexperienced one.

Tolstoy - “War and Peace”, Gogol - “Dead Souls”, Balzac - “Lost Illusions”... The latest issues of the “Krasnaya Nov” magazines. New world". "October". “Young Guard”, “Star”... He wrote without thinking, there was no time to think, a person waited, the prisoner must decide in advance what he needed, he wrote what came to mind, it is important to get books, thicker books, so that enough until the next time, which is unknown when it will be.

He demanded only one thing deliberately - the “Criminal Procedure Code”. He won't get it. And yet he wrote: “Criminal Procedure Code of the RSFSR,” at least thereby expressing a protest against his position.”

"She offers him an option hare life, under someone else's name, with someone else's passport. And if he ever meets an acquaintance somewhere, he will have to explain to him that he is no longer Pankratov, but Iskhakov, he, you see, got married. And if the Dyakovs do get to him, they will gloat and triumph: he tried to hide behind his wife’s back, no, my friend, you can’t hide from us behind anyone’s back. And it is no coincidence that you live with a false passport; an honest Soviet man does not need a false passport; an honest Soviet man does not change his last name.

Enough, - said Sasha, - the conversation is becoming meaningless. I was born with this surname, and I will die with it. There will be no change."

“At the same time that Muscovites were walking through the floodlit Red Square, greeting Stalin standing at the mausoleum, it was dinner time in the Butyrka prison.”

This brings us back to the traditions of L. Tolstoy. His writing techniques are based on exposing negative characters through details. Same with Rybakov. An example is Stalin’s “sovereign pipe”. She appears in numerous literary works, films, and paintings by artists as a symbol of the leader’s wisdom. But in “Children of the Arbat” it turns into a completely different detail: the rotten, completely smoked teeth of a heavy smoker. And the “golden eye color” mentioned in the memoirs receives a completely different meaning: “Stalin looked at Kirov from under his brows, his eyes were yellow, tiger-like.” This is a very important detail that conveys the inner essence of the leader’s character, the impression he made on his interlocutors.

“Sasha never experienced such melancholy either in Butyrka or during the transit, neither at the stage. In Butyrka there was hope - they would sort it out and release him; at the stage there was a goal - to get to the place, settle down, and patiently wait out his sentence. Hope made him human, purpose helped him live. There is no hope or purpose here. He wanted to help people use the separator, but he was accused of sabotage. Alferov proved this to him with iron logic. And Alferov can crush him at any moment by using Ivan Parfenovich’s statement. Is it possible to live like this? Why the French textbooks that he is waiting for from Moscow, books on political economy and philosophy? To whom will he express them, to whom will he speak in French? With bears in the taiga? Even if Alferov doesn’t touch him, then how and what can he live on here? He can hem felt boots - he can learn this. This is his lot. Forget, forget everything! The idea on which he grew up has been taken over by the Baulins, Lozgachevs, Stolpers, they trample on this idea and trample on the people devoted to it. Previously, he thought that in this world you need to have strong hands and an unbending will, otherwise you will die, now he understood: you will die with strong hands and an unbending will, because your will will collide with an even more unbending will, your hands with even stronger hands - they have power. In order to survive, one must submit to someone else's will, someone else's power, be careful, adapt, live like a hare, afraid to poke his head out from behind a bush, only at this price can he preserve himself physically. Is life worth living?

Critic V. Kozhinov said: “Pankratov, by his very essence, is a child of the system with which he found himself in conflict... All the basic questions of existence for him seem to have been decided in advance, and he is ready to mercilessly defend his indisputable rightness.”

I think that the critic in this case is not entirely right. Yes, Pankratov is a child of the times. He picks up the baton of the first years of the revolution - a time of hot, uncompromising battles. But is this a child of the system that took shape at the turn of the 20s and 30s? Doubtful! Judging by his fate, he is precisely “breaking out” of her oppressive regime.

Among the younger generation, Yuri Sharok causes particular hostility. “When Sharok was accepted into the Komsomol, Sasha said a short “I don’t trust” and abstained from voting.” And in this case, Pankratov was right. His mistrust is not based on guesses and suspicions: he saw Yure looking for workarounds in life Suffice it to recall the practice at the factory.

In general, Sharok only imitates conviction and "obsession with an idea" Calculating, assertive and cynical. “He did not know what exactly the revolution had infringed on him, but from childhood he grew up in the consciousness that it had infringed upon him. I couldn’t imagine how life would have been for him under a different system, but I had no doubt that it would be better.” From a hidden, cautious candidate for legal advisor, he turns into an investigator - a sadist, a catcher of souls, especially sophisticated, doubly insidious. He knew how to win people over, ingratiate himself, pretend to understand, to get into the situation.

And among the inhabitants of Arbat there are many like him: the same Vika Morasevich and her brother Vadim. They all live on their own, wait, and take advantage. And perhaps they will never be able to understand the purity and selflessness, sincere joy and pride for Magnitka and Kuznetsk of people like Sasha, Lena, Maxim Kostin and others. They are far from those of whom they say: “Here it is, their country, the shock brigade of the world proletariat, the stronghold of the coming world revolution. Yes, they live by rationing, deny themselves everything, but they are building a new world.”

The whole trouble is, A. Rybakov convincingly shows, that an act, even the most direct and honest, can be interpreted system. And here time puts its pressure on the consciousness of all people, including Pankratov. Already in prison, he thinks: “Why should he hide Krivoruchko’s words about “a cook who prepares spicy dishes”? Let Comrade Krivoruchko himself explain what he meant. And Sasha doesn’t understand that such a confession will turn into a denunciation. However, Sasha did not sign a direct denunciation of the presence of an enemy organization at the institute, clearly understanding what it means to renounce oneself.

This same resistance to fear and calculation guides Sasha’s entire behavior in exile. And in his confrontation with Timofey, who is ready to kill the exile only because he is defenseless. And in his moral duel with the NKVD commissioner Alferov.

And yet... The scenes in exile evoke a feeling of dissatisfaction and lead to reflection. Sasha Pankratov, having found himself in Siberia as an exile, inevitably encounters a new world for himself. But how wretched and soulless this world is! Of course, the wave of collectivization and dispossession that swept across Siberia, the inculcation of a policy of fear left its mark, but did not kill all living things in the Siberian village! Suffice it to remember that the Siberian peasant always had a special attitude towards exiles.

Stalin and a simple student Sasha Pankratov will never meet. But they are opposed to each other: one - by that terrible regime that suppresses everything around, the other - by honesty, sincerity, love, high morality, nobility. What is characteristic of Stalin?

One of the most expressive scenes of the novel is Stalin's internal monologue, in which he evaluates his associates. Everything is almost the same as Lenin once did in his “Letter to the Congress,” but Stalin’s logic is completely different. He is looking for each has either a dark spot in their biography, or at least some weakness that could result in direct guilt before Stalin, and therefore And before the party. And the course of Stalin’s reasoning turns out to be similar to the system thoughts one of the ordinary performers of his line, investigator NKVD. “Dyakov did not believe in the actual guilt of people, but in the general version guilt. This general version must be applied to this person and createdspecific version." AtDyakov is by no means represented in this in the novel a complete scoundrel,unlike his assistant Yuri Sharok. Investigatorsincerely convincedharmony, logic and correctness of their reasoning.

Such a system is based on complete submission to the regime. Actions can occur only according to a given mechanism of relationships. Nothing personal in person is not taken into account. AND therefore, when any deviations from established "scheme" inevitably arisesthe question is whostands behind the person who committed the act?

Stalin didn't like him at all when he has at least they are doing something behind their back. By the way, inconfirmation of this by the authorpoints to a very interesting detail. Communication scene leader with a dentist Lipman shows Stalin's distrust, wariness and suspiciousness to the fullest extent. Doctor installing a chair before through the eyes of a patient, and then explains to him his every action. In any suspicious situation that goes beyond logic, he immediately looks for the usual: who sent? Whose position is it stating? What do they want from Comrade Stalin?

That is why his reaction in the episode with the dentist cannot be explained only by an instant whim. The point is not that the doctor exchanged a few phrases on the beach with Kirov, the relationship with whom was ruined and, apparently, forever. There is a chain of actions here. The doctor is a good specialist, but... Firstly, he may not agree with the wishes of Comrade Stalin and at the same time not be afraid of his directly expressed dissatisfaction.

I ask you, Comrade Stalin, to wear this prosthesis for only one day. See which one is more convenient and decide for yourself.

Stalin raised his eyebrows in amazement. After all, he told him that he preferred the gold one, he even hit the chair with his fist, and the doctor lost heart. And yet he stubbornly insists on his own. God knows, maybe that's how it should be.

“Okay,” Stalin reluctantly agreed.

Secondly, he is capable, if not of deception, then of concealing from Comrade Stalin the reasons for the delay in completing the task. Here again Stalin’s logical train of thought is obvious: “So,” Stalin said expressively, “keep in mind: everything CAN be told to Comrade Stalin, everything MUST be told to Comrade Stalin, nothing CANNOT be hidden from Comrade Stalin. And one more thing: IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO HIDE ANYTHING from Comrade Stalin.” The key words of this phrase, spoken with emphasis: it is possible, it is necessary, it is impossible, it is impossible - they determine the logic of Stalin’s attitude towards people. And logic, albeit simplified, has always been a strong point in his reasoning.

Thirdly: Lipman was offered to work on a book, and he goes to the beach. For what? To establish contacts with Kirov behind Comrade Stalin’s back? For a job well done, he received his sieve of grapes, but it is impossible to keep it close not only to himself, but also to Comrade Stalin’s inner circle. He is potentially dangerous, so the issue with him has been resolved: “Replace the dentist Lipman with another... fire him from the Kremlin hospital, but leave him alone.”

“He was calm and unperturbed. The only thing that bothered him was the alien, hairdresser's smell. It’s absurd to come to the Kremlin, to Stalin, like this fresh. He went into the barber shop again and washed his face and hair. The hairdresser, leaving the client sitting in the chair, stood in front of him with a towel in his hands. That complacent Mark Alexandrovich, who half an hour ago had joked with him about balding men, no longer existed. The imperious face, especially now that he had taken off his glasses, seemed merciless.”

However, Ryazanov is close to Ordzhonikidze and Budyagin, has his own view on the construction of the plant, and is capable of independent, sometimes unpredictable actions. For now, this suits Stalin, without even suspecting it. Ryazanov helps him in counteracting Ordzhonikidze, so he does not hurry up Ryazanov, moreover, brings him closer to himself, despite the arrest of his nephew.

Let us trace once again how the thoughts of Stalin and Ryazanov echo.

"So that as soon as possible country turn peasant into country industrial, innumerable material and human sacrifices are needed. If several million people die, history will forgive Comrade Stalin for this.”

And here is Ryazanov’s reaction to the words of his fellow traveler on the train, a Belgian socialist: “The Belgian noticed that this grandiose program (industrialization) is feasible only at the expense of other industries, primarily through agriculture. Mark Alexandrovich knew these Menshevik arguments...”

And the closer Ryazanov is to Stalin, the more firmly he assimilates the logic of his thoughts and actions. Mark Aleksandrovich internally approved the withdrawal of Budyagin from Central Committee, because that the time for general managers has come, but the time for specialists has passed. He also accepts his nephew’s fate as given: if he was imprisoned, then it means he is guilty. Although earlier he spoke about his fate with Budyagin and agreed with what he heard that “we are imprisoning Komsomol members.”

It would seem that Ryazanov, both as a worker and as a person personally devoted to him, most suits Stalin, who claims that “the party does not need to flaunt shades thoughts. The party needs business work. Anyone who doesn’t understand this is not needed by the party!”

However, proximity to Stalin will not save Ryazanov. Mark Aleksandrovich will turn out to be too independent, and his end is foreseen. By renouncing his nephew, he betrays himself. And soon the sister’s prophecies will come true.

“Don’t make noise, don’t worry,” she [Sofya Alexandrovna, Sasha’s mother] continued calmly, “I’ll tell you what, Mark: you offered me money, money can’t pay me off. You raised the sword against the innocent, the defenseless, and you yourself will perish by the sword!

She bowed her gray head, looked at her brother from under her brows, and extended her finger.

And when the time comes, Mark, you will remember Sasha, you will think, but it will be too late. You didn't protect the innocent. There will be no one to protect you either.”

The children of Arbat will walk through, check and experience this Stalinist system, which was established in the mid-thirties. Time is scattering the once friendly, noisy Arbat company, although formal relations are still preserved. The work seems to fall apart into separate stories with certain characters. This is how a kind of love triangle appears: the increasingly powerful NKVD officer Yura Sharok, secret informant Vika Morasevich and the daughter of a former diplomat Lena Budyagina. Varya Ivanova’s almost “theatrical” romance with the “mysterious” villain and adventurer Kostya, and then her growing attraction to Sasha Pankratov, who is in distant exile. Right here the story of Nina Ivanova and Maxim Kostin.

The novel “Fly the Arbat” tells not only about the disintegration of ties between generations, as the most difficult drama of the era, but also confirms the relay of generations.

It is possible that the closest hero to the author from the generation of fathers of youth of the thirties is Budyagin. It is in his words that Rybakov puts the main idea of the work: a true revolution “is great not because it destroys, but because it creates.”

Stalin, thinking about the further course of events, reads Pushkin"Boris Godu new." He is especially attracted by the characteristics of the people given"An evil monk" in the omitted scene of the tragedy: “Our stupid people are lightren: glad to marvel at miracles andnovelty”... “Exactly said! - comments Stalin. - Stupid and gullible:the essence of the people."

However, everything the content of Pushkin's tragedy refutes the "Evil Devil" netsa." And Stalin - smart, experienced a politician who also knows the art welltheory, I couldn’t help but understand this.And the parallel thathe allegedly spends between each other and impostor Grigory Otrepyev.

And here, in my opinionopinion, a strange narrative paradox emerges.After all, M. A. Ryazanov, who learnedStalin's logic, thinks about the inevitable end« wild, dirty, blind, tattered and ignorant village "...

Aren't the Siberian scenes novel, voluntary or involuntaryconfirmation of this characteristic of the Russian village?

I think I was able to touch on the main questions that worried the author of “Children of the Arbat”: what was the fate of the first generation of Soviet people, what were the main reasons for the tragedy of the thirties, what did the “Stalinist system” entail.

But, unfortunately, many of them still cannot be answered. According to critics, the novel turned out to be a pioneer in mastering an unusually complex and difficult area of historical knowledge of the thirties: the trends in the life of the party and ordinary citizens, the specifics of building socialism in our country.

The writer himself belonged to this generation, who fully shared both the bitter and the bright in the fate of the first Soviet people.

And yet, 1934 was called a special, milestone year in the pre-war period of the country’s history.

Only ten years have passed since the mournful January 1924, and the feeling of unity that gripped the entire nation at the hour of farewell to Ilyich is still alive in people.

But they are already being replaced by new leaders of the “Stalinist school,” an apparatus created during the years of the first five-year plans.

Thus, of the seven members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of 1924, by the beginning of the 30s, only the General Secretary remained in it.

In December of the same 1934, Kirov was killed, and years later the 17th Party Congress will be spoken of as a “congress of those executed.”

This is how 1934 remains in history. What was he like for his contemporaries? What did the direct participants in what was happening, the heroes of the novel “Children of the Arbat”, see, feel and understand during this “eventless” time? “The largest house on Arbat between Nikolsky and Denezhny lanes, now they are called Plotnikov lane and Vesnina street”... This phrase opens A. Rybakov’s novel.

“Tram traffic has been stopped on Arbat, the street has been paved.” - Sasha learns from letters during exile and has difficulty trying to imagine the changed places of his childhood. Yes, Arbat became a restricted street in the early thirties. Here there is a path from the Kremlin to Stalin’s nearby dacha, and special vehicles rush along the newly asphalted pavement several times a day.

I would like to draw special attention to this very significant beginning. It seems that the first lines are purely informational in nature, but it is here, pointing to a really existing house, that the author seems to affirm the reality of the children of Arbat themselves. An atmosphere of some kind of historical narrative arises. Rybakov's heroes, the residents of this house, may have really existed. Everything that happens to them on the pages of the novel is quite likely real events. But, in addition, the writer clarifies the coordinates of the house, which arose already during the years of publication of the work. That is, already at the very beginning a thread of connection between times is stretched: the past does not die and is not subject to oblivion!

But the first pages of the story do not promise anything strict, much less anything dark.

And on a peaceful summer day, a group of young people in Serebryany Bor hear a pleasant baritone sounding over the quiet dacha village of old Bolsheviks and responders:

“And why I love you, silent night...

“Sings well,” said Yura, “who is this?”

Our neighbor,” Lena answered, “is an employee of the Central Committee.” Nikolai Ivanovich Ezhov.

Vadim shook his head as a sign that he was hearing this name for the first time.

And he knew all the names.

I don’t know who he is,” Yura said, “but he sings well.”

“A very good person,” said Lena.”

“- Yanson! Janson! Let Yanson speak!..

Comrades, the issue we are discussing is very important.

“We know this without you,” they shouted from the audience.

But it is necessary to separate objective results from subjective motives.

Same!

Don't philosophize!

No, it's not the same thing. But let me finish my point...

We won't allow it! Enough!..

Pankratov took an apolitical and, therefore, philistine position.

Few! Few!

There’s nothing to listen to!”

“Stalin asked who the director of this plant was. Hearing the answer, he said:

A stupid person will fail everything.

Apart from college history, I don’t know anything about myself.

So you were arrested for nothing? Are we imprisoning innocent people? Even here you continue counter-revolutionary agitation, but we are not the gendarmerie, not the Third Section, we are not just punitive agencies. We are an armed detachment of the party. And you are a double-dealer, Pankratov, that’s what you are!

You don't dare call me that!

Dyakov hit the table with his fist.

I'll show you what I dare and what I don't dare! Do you think you've arrived at the sanatorium? We have other conditions here for people like you. Double-dealer! You have spent your whole life on the neck of the working class and are still sitting on the neck of the state, it teaches you, pays you a scholarship, and you deceive it!”

“In the afternoon an unfamiliar warden appeared with a piece of paper and a pencil in his hands.

Write a request to the library -

Library allowed!

Sasha doesn’t know how many books and for how long he can borrow. But he didn’t show any sign of his ignorance. An experienced prisoner is treated more highly by staff than an inexperienced one.

Later, in exile, he will selflessly help collective farmers, despite the fact that he is actually a political outcast there. He will refuse the plan proposed to him to “go underground”: enter into a fictitious marriage, change his last name and passport, and renounce his past. “She offers him the option of a hare’s life, under someone else’s name, with someone else’s passport. And if he ever meets an acquaintance somewhere, he will have to explain to him that he is no longer Pankratov, but Iskhakov, he, you see, got married. And if the Dyakovs do get to him, they will gloat and triumph: he tried to hide behind his wife’s back, no, my friend, you can’t hide from us behind anyone’s back. And it is no coincidence that you live with a false passport; an honest Soviet man does not need a false passport; an honest Soviet man does not change his last name.

Enough, - said Sasha, - the conversation is becoming meaningless. I was born with this surname, and I will die with it. There will be no change."

This internal confrontation runs through the entire novel between two characters who will never meet each other, Stalin with his regime and a simple student, Sasha Pankratov. In the novel they embody the unique ideological and moral epicenters of the work. The author uses the contrast between these two heroes not only in the plot itself, but also in individual phrases. “At the same time that Muscovites were walking through the floodlit Red Square, greeting Stalin standing at the mausoleum, it was dinner time in the Butyrka prison.”

The scenes of Sasha Pankratov's stay in prison are the most powerful in the novel and in terms of precision of detail. In addition, they reveal the spiritual world of the hero, revealing the process of maturation and maturation of the young man’s character. It is here that the fundamental forces that determine human social behavior collapse: fear and calculation. And most importantly, blind, unconditional faith in the wisdom of the leader’s policy disappears. “Sasha never experienced such melancholy either in Butyrka, or during the transit, or during the transit. In Butyrka there was hope - they would sort it out and release him; at the stage there was a goal - to get to the place, settle down, and patiently wait out his sentence. Hope made him human, purpose helped him live. There is no hope or purpose here. He wanted to help people use the separator, but he was accused of sabotage. Alferov proved this to him with iron logic. And Alferov can crush him at any moment by using Ivan Parfenovich’s statement. Is it possible to live like this? Why the French textbooks that he is waiting for from Moscow, books on political economy and philosophy? To whom will he express them, to whom will he speak in French? With bears in the taiga? Even if Alferov doesn’t touch him, then how and what can he live on here? He can hem felt boots - he can learn this. This is his lot. Forget, forget everything! The idea on which he grew up has been taken over by the Baulins, Lozgachevs, Stolpers, they trample on this idea and trample on the people devoted to it. Previously, he thought that in this world you need to have strong hands and an unbending will, otherwise you will die, now he understood: you will die with strong hands and an unbending will, because your will will collide with an even more unbending will, your hands with even stronger hands - they have power. In order to survive, one must submit to someone else's will, someone else's power, be careful, adapt, live like a hare, afraid to poke his head out from behind a bush, only at this price can he preserve himself physically. Is life worth living?

Among the younger generation, Yuri Sharok causes particular hostility. “When Sharok was accepted into the Komsomol, Sasha said a short “I don’t trust” and abstained from voting.” And in this case, Pankratov was right. His mistrust is not based on guesses and suspicions: he saw how Yure was looking for workarounds in life. Suffice it to recall the practice at the factory.

In general, Sharok only imitates conviction and “obsession with an idea.” Calculating, assertive and cynical. “He did not know what exactly the revolution had infringed on him, but from childhood he grew up in the consciousness that it had infringed upon him. I couldn’t imagine how life would have been for him under a different system, but I had no doubt that it would be better.” From a hidden, cautious candidate for legal advisor, he turns into an investigator - a sadist, a catcher of souls, especially sophisticated, doubly insidious. He knew how to win people over, ingratiate himself, pretend to understand, to get into the situation.

The whole trouble is, A. Rybakov convincingly shows, that an act, even the most direct and honest, can be interpreted by the system. And here time puts its pressure on the consciousness of all people, including Pankratov. Already in prison, he thinks: “Why should he hide Krivoruchko’s words about “a cook who prepares spicy dishes”? Let Comrade Krivoruchko himself explain what he meant. And Sasha doesn’t understand that such a confession will turn into a denunciation. However, Sasha did not sign a direct denunciation of the presence of an enemy organization at the institute, clearly understanding what it means to renounce oneself.

One of the most expressive scenes of the novel is Stalin's internal monologue, in which he evaluates his associates. Everything is almost the same as Lenin once did in his “Letter to the Congress,” but Stalin’s logic is completely different. He looks for in everyone either a dark spot in their biography, or at least some kind of weakness that could turn into direct guilt before Stalin, and, consequently, before the party. And Stalin’s line of reasoning turns out to be similar to the line of thought of one of the ordinary executors of his line, an NKVD investigator. “Dyakov did not believe in the actual guilt of people, but in the general version of guilt. This general version must be applied to a given person and a specific version must be created.” At the same time, Dyakov is by no means presented in the novel as a complete scoundrel, unlike his assistant Yuri Sharok. The investigator is sincerely convinced of the harmony, logic and correctness of his reasoning.

Such a system is based on complete submission to the regime. Actions can only occur according to a given mechanism of relationships. Nothing personal about a person is taken into account. And therefore, when any deviations from the established “scheme” appear, the question inevitably arises: who is behind the back of the person who committed the act?

Stalin generally did not like it when people did anything behind his back. By the way, to confirm this, the author points out a very interesting detail. The scene of the leader’s communication with the dentist Lipman fully shows Stalin’s distrust, wariness and suspiciousness. The doctor places a chair in front of the patient’s eyes, and then explains to him his every action. In any suspicious situation that goes beyond logic, he immediately looks for the usual: who sent? Whose position is it stating? What do they want from Comrade Stalin?

I ask you, Comrade Stalin, to wear this prosthesis for only one day. See which one is more convenient and decide for yourself.

“Okay,” Stalin reluctantly agreed.

The logic of Stalin's relationship with the dentist can be traced to his main line of relationships with people. The greatest interest, in my opinion, is the figure of Ryazanov, who remains on the periphery of the narrative. The young, energetic, knowledgeable “captain of the new industry” impressed Stalin. And Ryazanov admires the leader’s wisdom and will and sincerely assimilates his working style. It is enough to pay attention to his attitude towards Comrade Stalin. Consider the brief scene in the barbershop. “He was calm and unperturbed. The only thing that bothered him was the alien, hairdresser's smell. It’s absurd to show up to the Kremlin, to Stalin, so fresh. He went into the barber shop again and washed his face and hair. The hairdresser, leaving the client sitting in the chair, stood in front of him with a towel in his hands. That complacent Mark Alexandrovich, who half an hour ago had joked with him about balding men, no longer existed. The imperious face, especially now that he had taken off his glasses, seemed merciless.”

However, Ryazanov is close to Ordzhonikidze and Budyagin, has his own view on the construction of the plant, and is capable of independent, sometimes unpredictable actions. For now, this suits Stalin, without even suspecting it. Ryazanov helps him in countering Ordzhonikidze, so he does not rush Ryazanov, moreover, he brings him closer to him, despite the arrest of his nephew.

Let us trace once again how the thoughts of Stalin and Ryazanov echo.

“In order to transform a peasant country into an industrial country in the shortest possible time, innumerable material and human sacrifices are needed. If several million people die, history will forgive Comrade Stalin for this.”

And the closer Ryazanov is to Stalin, the more firmly he assimilates the logic of his thoughts and actions. Mark Aleksandrovich internally approved the withdrawal of Budyagin from the Central Committee, because the time for general leaders had come, but the time for specialists had passed. He also accepts his nephew’s fate as given: if he was imprisoned, then it means he is guilty. Although earlier he spoke about his fate with Budyagin and agreed with what he heard that “we are imprisoning Komsomol members.”

It would seem that Ryazanov, both as a worker and as a person personally devoted to him, most suits Stalin, who claims that “the party does not need to flaunt shades of thoughts. The party needs business work. Anyone who doesn’t understand this is not needed by the party!”

She bowed her gray head, looked at her brother from under her brows, and extended her finger.

And when the time comes, Mark, you will remember Sasha, you will think, but it will be too late. You didn't protect the innocent. There will be no one to protect you either.”

The children of Arbat will walk through, check and experience this Stalinist system, which was established in the mid-thirties. Time is scattering the once friendly, noisy Arbat company, although formal relations are still preserved. The work seems to fall apart into separate stories with certain characters. This is how a kind of love triangle appears: the increasingly powerful NKVD officer Yura Sharok, secret informant Vika Morasevich and the daughter of a former diplomat Lena Budyagina. Varya Ivanova’s almost “theatrical” romance with the “mysterious” villain and adventurer Kostya, and then her growing attraction to Sasha Pankratov, who is in distant exile. Here is the story of Nina Ivanova and Maxim Kostin.

The novel “Fly the Arbat” tells not only about the disintegration of ties between generations, as the most difficult drama of the era, but also confirms the relay of generations.

Following “White Clothes” by V. Dudintsev, the novel by Anatoly Naumovich Rybakov (1911-1998), “Children of Arbat” (1987), which forms part of the trilogy: “Thirty-fifth and other years. Book One" (1989), "Fear. Book Two" (1990) and "Dust and Ashes" (1994).

The best in the trilogy is the first book, “Children of the Arbat,” in which the action develops from the autumn (August-September) of 1933 to December 1934, the time of Kirov’s assassination, that is, a little over a year. Although short, four pages long, the afterword momentarily expands the time frame and takes the two heroes Sasha Pankratov and Maxim Kostin into the war years. This describes a meeting that took place on June 20, 1944, between the commander of the Guards Rifle Corps, General Maxim Ivanovich Kostin, and the head of the Guards Auto Service, Major Alexander Pavlovich Pankratov, who was sent to his disposal. The afterword gives the novel a certain plot completeness and allows us to consider it as a book completed at a certain time stage.

“Children of Arbat” is a work about the writer’s peers, about his “small homeland” Arbat, about Arbat girls and boys who have just graduated and are graduating from universities. This is the story of seven young people of the post-revolutionary, pre-war era: four boys and three girls. But only three are shown in close-up (Sasha, Sharok, Varya), the second shot is barely outlined (Lena Budyagina, Nina Ivanova, Maxim Kostin, Vadim Marasevich).

The idea of showing Arbat and Arbat youth is attractive at first glance, but it puts the writer in a position where he has to depict students of different universities outside their educational community, mainly in the sphere of leisure, when they visit restaurants, the Business Club, the Arbat basement or meet with their company on holidays. But a feast is a feast. Although there is talk here about Hitler coming to power, the possibility of war, about Thälmann, about the Dimitrov trial, this is discussed in passing and not always, naturally, more details will be discussed about how the company is dressed, how they joke here, who loves whom, what they eat . The situations, in a word, are monotonous and unprofitable for showing socially active characters, as Sasha Pankratov intended.

It is no coincidence that the antipode of Sasha, Yuri Sharok, the son of a tailor, turned out to be more clearly depicted in the novel; the latter still cannot forgive the Soviet government for the nationalization of his fashion workshop. The younger Sharok learned the same feeling with his mother’s milk. He did not know what exactly the revolution had infringed on him, but from childhood he grew up in the consciousness that it had infringed: “... the caustic word comrades, which became common in their family to designate the new masters of life, he transferred to school Komsomol members...” Sharok - an individualist, focused on his career and everyday life, therefore the situations chosen by the scripture are suitable for him.

Sasha Pankratov is a hero who is biographically close to the author (study at the Engineering and Transport Institute, arrest, exile to Siberia...); for a writer, he is a convinced person, an exponent of the ideas and essential views of his generation. But it is more declared than depicted. The author touches little on his spiritual world, the protagonist has almost no introspection, although his love stories are described in detail, but do not give anything to reveal the soul. The concept of the hero is stated, but his individual and unique character is not found, and Sasha sometimes resembles his literary predecessors, for example, Sergei Vokhmintsev from Yu. Bondarev’s novel “Silence” (1962).

In A. Rybakov’s novel, two worlds themselves exist - the world of Arbat youth and the world of Stalin with his entourage, and only the characters of Lena Budyagina’s father, Deputy People’s Commissar Ivan Grigorievich Budyagin and the head of a giant construction project in the East, Sasha Pankratov’s uncle Mark Aleksandrovich Ryazanov, in fact repeating the image of Alexander Onisimov from A. Beck’s “New Destination”, they are intended to at least partially bring these worlds closer together.

Many historians and critics considered the image of Stalin to be the greatest success in the novel and rightly expressed disagreement with the concepts of Ordzhonikidze and Kirov proposed by Rybakov, the latter is presented without sufficient grounds as a potential fighter against Stalinism, understanding all its vices.

Indeed, Stalin is depicted in a new way in the novel, as an “inner man.” He is only briefly shown in action, in communication with people (meetings with Ryazanov, Budyagin, Kirov, dentist, etc.); the main point of attraction for a writer is his thought, introspection, reflections concerning many aspects of life, motives of behavior; hence the feeling of integrity of the image. For the first time, the writer, through the thought of the “leader,” tried to understand the motives of his actions and, in particular, the origins of his cruel attitude towards others.

Over the fifteen years that have passed since the publication of Rybakov’s novel, the study of Stalin as a historical figure and the era of the cult of personality as a whole went in several directions at once: bit by bit his portrait was collected in the memoirs of people who knew him personally, and among them the memoirs of K. Simonov “Through the Eyes a person of my generation. Reflections on I.V. Stalin,” published by the critic Lazarev a year after the release of Rybakov’s novel; dramaturgy tried its hand on this path (“Further... further... further!” M. Shatrova); the playwright E. Radzinsky wrote a historical study “Stalin” and on its basis made a television program “The Mystery of Stalin”; the former director of the Institute of Military History D. Volkogonov created the book “Triumph and Tragedy”; Stalin’s time is reflected in the “village”, military and urban prose.

From the heights of the new historical stage, when society knows quite a lot about Stalin and his time from various publications and television programs, Rybakov’s novel is no longer perceived as a unique phenomenon, but as a work that occupied a certain place in the literary process of the end of the century, since “Children of the Arbat” were published during the writer's lifetime. According to A. Rybakov, the novel in 2 parts was completed in 1978 and announced in the magazine “October”, but publication took place only 20 years later. With a fair degree of confidence, we can assume that at the end of the 80s, in the process of preparing an old manuscript for publication, the writer nevertheless corrected it; this was required by the new time.

I want to write an essay based on Anatoly Rybakov’s book “Children of the Arbat” - my favorite work of modern Russian literature. This novel is autobiographical, in the image of the main character Sasha Pankratov there is a lot from the fate of the writer himself. Somewhere Rybakov said that Sasha’s path is his, Rybakov’s, path, only Sasha is better than his prototype. I am concerned about the events that took place in our country in the pre-war period - the “dark spots” of our history. And this is the huge role of literature and the writer Anatoly Rybakov, in particular.

It is obvious that one of the main objectives of the novel “Children of the Arbat” is to show how the cult of Stalin was established. The novel begins in 1934, when this cult began to turn into something grandiose and exceptional. Stalin in the novel is a historical figure who was able to subjugate millions of people to his will and determine the path of development of a huge country. The writer sought to comprehend the seemingly contradictory logic of the tyrant’s actions. For example, the episode with the dentist is one of the most vivid in Stalinist scenes. An excellent specialist shows professional pride by deciding to make a plate prosthesis for Stalin, despite the fact that the tall patient insists on a clasp one. Stalin agrees to test the new prosthesis, wear it for just one day, as the doctor asks, and admits that the doctor is right. He acknowledges and even sets an example of an exemplary attitude to business, but still orders the dentist to be replaced by another and fired from the Kremlin hospital. Why? There is no proper fear, no unquestioning submission. He dares to object, but he needs other people around him, people who don’t object, who don’t reason, who are blindly loyal. Stalin in Rybakov's novel is deeply lonely. He deliberately places himself outside of human relationships; he does not need friends and family, but only executors of his will. Performers who will be replaced over time by others when they refuse to follow his instructions or think too much of themselves.

After reading the novel “Children of the Arbat,” I understood why and how the tragic events happened in the thirties, I better realized that Stalin himself led and directed the tyranny, the destruction of many innocent people, I understood what motives guided him, how terrible it was. He made me think. “Children of the Arbat”, I think everyone should read. After all, this book not only opens our eyes to the painful reality of our recent history, it tells the truth about that time. Rybakov wrote a novel about Stalin and Sasha Pankratov, because in the confrontation between these two personalities he saw the main conflict of the time. Pankratov, one of the main non-historical characters of the novel, is a truly good and honest person who never acts against his conscience, he is always driven by a sense of justice. Sasha is a person with a pronounced social temperament. This kind of temperament in itself can be dangerous. Sharok recalls how, upon admission to the Komsomol, Sasha refused to vote for him, curtly saying: “I don’t believe it.” It is easy to imagine how such people, in the atmosphere of the thirties, threw out their “I don’t believe it” not only to people like Sharok.

But Sasha has one quality that makes him vulnerable. Morality for him is a human value that stands above all else. He cannot, for example, bear false witness against the deputy director of the institute, Krivoruchko, and does not want to be cunning, maneuver, pretend, or hide thoughts and feelings. Sasha’s business arose as a result of his personal independence, which then grew like a snowball. The wall newspaper is already an anti-party leaflet, a political sabotage organized by a group entrenched in the institute, led by Krivoruchko. As a result, a search, arrest, horror of a shocked mother, prison, interrogations, exile and a long way of the cross along the roads of Siberia. The path of spiritual development of personality, the path of the final elimination of illusions and attempts to find a new faith. Sasha’s ideas about unanimity as the basis of society, the myth about the justice of violence of the majority over the minority, are scattered. Sasha Pankratov himself, by the will of fate, ended up in the minority. Nina Ivanova, Sasha's former classmate, is initially shocked by his arrest. The undoubted leader of the class, the school, honest, believing in the ideals by which they all live - how can he be an enemy? The misunderstanding will, of course, be sorted out soon. But they don’t “get it.” And changes take place in Nina’s consciousness, and now she tells Sasha’s mother that, supposedly, the intensification of the class struggle requires “particular clarity of positions, and Sasha, unfortunately, sometimes put his own understanding of things and events above the point of view of the collective.” You can always find explanations for why the punishing sword fell on another, and hope that it will pass you by. “He was strong among the strong, they tore him out of his usual environment, deprived him of the environment in which he existed, and it immediately became clear that he had nothing to rely on, in himself he was nothing,” - this is how Sasha Pankratov suffers in Mozgov. But he survived because he knew that “even in these wild conditions the highest human values are affirmed. Compassion is one of them." “The human in man is not killed and will never be killed.” With this consciousness Sasha greets December 1934, when the long-awaited mail arrives, where in one of his mother’s letters he finds a note from Varya. The postscript to which Varya has been going for so long and which Sasha can also understand only after her long journey: “Everything is still ahead, damn it, everything is still ahead! He has Varya, now he knows it for sure. There is Varya, there is mother, there are people around, there are his thoughts, his thoughts. Everything that makes a person a Human.”

Sasha Pankratov with his crippled fate evokes pain in me for the entire generation of young people, whose destinies were also broken by Stalinist repressions. A. Rybakov’s novel gave me food for thought about time, history, the psychology of society, and the fate of the generation that is the focus of the writer’s attention. The author taught us these two lessons - a history lesson and a moral lesson. The main idea of the novel is that one must live in such a way that history and morality are inseparable.

After reading Anatoly Rybakov’s novel “Children of the Arbat,” I realized that only the truth brings up courageous, loyal and honest people. And this is the main moral lesson that follows for me from Anatoly Rybakov’s book.

Many responses to “Children of the Arbat” have the same motive: how timely this book came out! It is believed that books should still be published as they are written.
Far from abandoning this idea, today's critics are right. Now that the passions around the fisherman’s novel have subsided and the fierce debate about it has receded into the realm of, albeit recent, but still history, even the most active opponents of “Children of the Arbat” are unlikely to deny that this book was destined to play a special role in our social development .
It was during the controversy surrounding “Children of the Arbat” that an unprecedented process of unification and demarcation of different literary - and not only literary - forces took place. It was during this debate that the clear contours of future social confrontations emerged. For both the “left” and the “right,” the novel is something of a testing ground: during the trial battles, many things were clarified, positions were strengthened, and it inevitably became easier to move on. It was after the publication of “Children of the Arbat” and the controversy it caused that the flow of “returned” literature began to unfold with all its might and became almost uncontrollable. And - let's look back again - after the “anti-Stalinist” “Children of the Arbat”, the conversation about our relatively close and slightly more distant history really began, going from exposing the unprecedented atrocities of the “father of nations” to analyzing the deep beginnings of the Bolshevik state and the personality of its founder . A conversation in the light of which Rybakov’s acclaimed novel itself lost its recent poignancy. This view can be allowed not at all in order to convince readers who discovered “Children of the Arbat” that all this happened thanks to one single work. But it just so happened that this novel turned out to be a stumbling block. I'll start with the last one. We have already compared the literature of the Soviet period with an iceberg - only the tip is visible on the surface, everything else is hidden under water. In those distant years, be that as it may, not everyone was given the opportunity to completely “open up”; everyone had their own limits. All secular people dreamed that there would be no limits at all in the foreseeable future - such a prospect was difficult for the human consciousness to digest. But even the most free-thinking among us continued to remain Soviet people, students of this system.
In a word, to one degree or another, with one or another reservation, our consciousness remained an “iceberg”. This is how we came to read the novel “Children of the Arbat”.
There was a resonance in the press that no other work of contemporary literature had ever caused. There were several reasons for this. And the first, main figure was Stalin, to whom the author gave priority. If we recall the image of a man with a pipe, which until recently appeared before us in many copies from books, the contrast was striking. Not “strict, but fair” Father, who bears a heavy burden of responsibility for the subjects of his vast power, is a bloody despot, a spider, weaving the threads of a conspiracy against his yesterday’s comrades, cold-bloodedly preparing the murder of Kirov in order to unleash terror. Showing his hero from the inside, revealing partly in detailed internal monologues his psychology and, most importantly, philosophy, Rybakov turned to the most serious questions of our historical existence - questions that have never arisen in such a direct form from the pages of our literature. Stalin, Kirov, Yagoda, Yezhov. Arrested, interrogated, exiled. The corridors of prison and the corridors of power. The life of the NKVD hidden from prying eyes. The background of political processes. But this is still Moscow in the thirties, where fear and approaching epiphanies interfere with reckless fun, where they not only languish in prison lines, but also while away the time in “cellars”, waste their lives in restaurants, laugh heartily and dance heartily, make acquaintances.
“Children of Arbat” came out “sufficiently full-blooded - enough to look like “living people.” Reading authentic missions is an inevitable tribute to the “rules of the game”, which forced the writer, even in his wildest courage, to exercise caution. Today we can say that it was a gagged controversy, or at least that’s how it started. The novel itself was put in a false position: just like the good old days. As a result, “Children of the Arbat” was pulled out of the general literary series.
In the novel, the author teaches us how to fight with dignity against an enemy who uses the fact that the writer makes the subject of his depiction of Moscow in 1934 to accuse him of indifference to the fate of the Russian village in the thirties and thirty-thirds? With the enemy, from the fact that the author portrays the heroes of the novel as children of his time, living in Moscow on the Arbat, concluding that he is only concerned about the tragedy of “his own” as opposed to the tragedy of the “national” - this is the meaning of the title of Rybakov’s novel “Children of the Arbat” . Did the author give reason to reproach himself for his indifference to the fate of the Russian peasantry, for the fact that he did not see the tragedy of the “people” behind the tragedy of the Arbat children and communists? No, I didn't. Did he give reason to reproach his novel for being difficult to understand? Was he completely free in his views on the origins of the cataclysms that shook Russia? But “Children of the Arbat” was also an unfinished work, perhaps extremely important, but still part of the canvas conceived by the writer. In fact, how do we know how the plan will develop and what the author and his characters will ultimately come to? Even now, when we have read two more books that continued “Children of the Arbat,” we do not have the right to say that this plan is one hundred percent clear to us. In “Children of Arbat” Sasha Pankratov says to the philosopher Vsevolod Sergeevich: “Lenin also did not deny eternal truths, he himself grew up on them. His words about a special class morality were caused by the demands of the moment, revolution is war, and war is cruel. What for Lenin was temporary, caused by cruel necessity, Stalin elevated to permanent, eternal, elevated to dogma.” “For all your nobility, Sasha,” answers Vsevolod Sergeevich, “you have one weakness: from the fragments of your faith you are trying to drink another vessel. But it won’t work: the fragments are united only in their previous form.” Words are too significant to appear in a novel by accident. But now the author’s intention is not fully understood... In “The Thirty-Fifth...” it is shown how the fragments of the worldview themselves united in the same form.
The new novel did not confirm the critics' guesses. But does this mean that the guess was fundamentally wrong? If you think about it, first of all, because we all know too well how long and painfully our society got rid of illusions, how, even after going through trials incomparable to Sasha’s, people continued to cling, if not to Stalin, then at least to Lenin, some of the heroes of the novel they try to live by the standards of the party, they do not know all the horror that is happening literally under their noses, and those who cannot get used to lies die, unable to withstand Stalin’s “web”. So, by depicting his heroes like this, the writer did not sin against the truth. And, apparently, the truth of Sasha’s character and the character of the times lies precisely in the fact that neither on the Arbat, nor in a prison cell, nor even in Siberian exile was it possible for him to see the light. Only after going through the ordeals of the main character Sasha, a person with a “minus” in his passport, through the humiliations associated with getting a job, with the daily fear of again “growing up” and dragging others along with him, only by committing moral violence against himself and raising his hand for the death penalty for people , - only after going through all this, Sasha Pankratov begins to guess about his guilt: “What is happening now is an inevitable consequence of what happened then. Then he himself demanded victory anthems from others, and now they demand the same from him.”
In the light of the two subsequent books, “Children of the Arbat” is read somewhat differently. No, the author’s plan does not include a speedy trial of the heroes, just as it was not the imposition of final historical verdicts. Who is Rybakov talking about Lenin? Stalin, Sasha Pankratov, Kirov, Budyagin. Which of them can be called the “mouthpiece of the writer’s ideas”? Rybakov did not avoid the question of the historical guilt of the heroes and leaders of the revolution in the blood that was shed and will be shed - he bypassed this issue. Moreover, he went around it completely in the spirit of the “iceberg” times, counting on the understanding reader. And who knows what the hero of the Civil War Budyagin will dream of in the last, mortal smoke: maybe, going through torture, like Sasha Pankratov, he remembers: “what is happening now is an inevitable consequence of what happened then?” “Dark times are coming” - “Children of the Arbat” ended. Rybakov’s thirty-seventh year is already the apotheosis of fear. Fear. Fear and lies. People are disconnected from each other and fall silent, human contacts are collapsing.
Fear makes people executioners. This is what Varya says to her devout sister Nina after she was summoned to the district committee. An immeasurable, endless chain of fear: from Stalin - and down, down, down. Where everyone is a link in this fear. Critics accuse Rybakov of being too long, of oversaturation with factual material, of weakening psychological motives. The writer was in a hurry, and one can understand him. Now we are reading Rybakov through the eyes of people for whom the returned past has not yet cooled down. But when all this settles down and fades into the realm of distant history, people will be more loyal to such novels. Today, when almost all of the “hidden” literature has been published, it seems that we have crossed the threshold of the long-awaited freedom of speech, the temptation is very great to pit some writers against others. Every writer - if he is an honest writer - is doing his life's work. Let's say Rybakov wrote “Children of the Arbat” in 1987, and took the time of the thirties and forties of Moscow. We have a lot to be grateful to Anatoly Rybakov for. The “Arbat epic” is not over yet. So may God grant the writer to bring his plan to completion.