The theme of the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) became one of the main topics in Soviet literature. Many Soviet writers were directly involved in the fighting on the front lines, someone served as a war correspondent, someone fought in a partisan detachment ... Such iconic authors of the 20th century as Sholokhov, Simonov, Grossman, Ehrenburg, Astafiev and many others left us amazing testimonies. Each of them had their own war and their own vision of what happened. Someone wrote about pilots, someone about partisans, someone about child heroes, someone about documentaries, and someone about fiction books. They left terrible memories of those fatal events for the country.
These testimonies are especially important for today's teenagers and children, who must read these books without fail. Memory cannot be bought, it can either not be lost, or lost, or restored. And it's better not to lose. Never! And don't forget to win.
We decided to compile a list of the TOP-25 most notable novels and short stories by Soviet writers.
Great Patriotic War was the bloodiest event in world history, which claimed the lives of millions of people. Almost every Russian family has veterans, front-line soldiers, blockade survivors, people who survived the occupation or evacuation to the rear, this leaves an indelible mark on the entire nation.
The Second World War was the final part of World War II, which swept like a heavy skating rink throughout the European part Soviet Union. June 22, 1941 was the starting point for it - on this day, German and allied troops began the bombardment of our territories, launching the implementation of the "Plan Barbarossa". Until November 18, 1942, the entire Baltic, Ukraine and Belarus were occupied, Leningrad was blocked for 872 days, and the troops continued to rush inland to capture its capital. The Soviet commanders and the military were able to stop the offensive at the cost of heavy casualties both in the army and among the local population. From the occupied territories, the Germans massively drove the population into slavery, distributed Jews to concentration camps, where, in addition to unbearable living and working conditions, various kinds of research on people were practiced, which led to many deaths.
In 1942-1943, Soviet factories evacuated deep to the rear were able to increase production, which allowed the army to launch a counteroffensive and push the front line to the western border of the country. The key event during this period is Battle of Stalingrad, in which the victory of the Soviet Union became a turning point that changed the existing balance of military forces.
In 1943-1945, the Soviet army went on the offensive, recapturing the occupied territories of the right-bank Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states. In the same period, in the territories that have not yet been liberated, partisan movement, which was attended by many local residents up to women and children. The ultimate goal of the offensive was Berlin and the final defeat of the enemy armies, this happened late in the evening of May 8, 1945, when the act of surrender was signed.
Among the front-line soldiers and defenders of the Motherland were many key Soviet writers - Sholokhov, Grossman, Ehrenburg, Simonov and others. Later they would write books and novels, leaving to posterity their vision of that war in the form of heroes - children and adults, soldiers and partisans. All this today allows our contemporaries to remember the terrible price of a peaceful sky overhead, which was paid by our people.
Many years separate us from the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945). But time does not reduce interest in this topic, drawing the attention of today's generation to the distant front-line years, to the origins of heroism and courage. Soviet soldier- hero, liberator, humanist. Yes, the writer's word on the war and about the war is hard to overestimate; A well-aimed, striking, uplifting word, a poem, a song, a ditty, a bright heroic image of a fighter or commander - they inspired the soldiers to exploits, led to victory. These words are still full of patriotic sound today, they poetize the service to the Motherland, affirm the beauty and grandeur of our moral values. That is why we again and again return to the works that made up the golden fund of literature about the Great Patriotic War.
Just as there was nothing equal to this war in the history of mankind, so in the history of world art there was no such number of different kinds of works as about this tragic time. The theme of the war sounded especially strongly in Soviet literature. From the very first days of the grandiose battle, our writers stood in line with all the fighting people. More than a thousand writers took part in the fighting on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, defending native land. Of the more than 1000 writers who went to the front, more than 400 did not return from the war, 21 became Heroes of the Soviet Union.
Famous masters of our literature (M. Sholokhov, L. Leonov, A. Tolstoy, A. Fadeev, Vs. Ivanov, I. Ehrenburg, B. Gorbatov, D. Poor, V. Vishnevsky, V. Vasilevsky, K. Simonov, A Surkov, B. Lavrenyov, L. Sobolev and many others) became correspondents for front-line and central newspapers.
“There is no greater honor for the Soviet writer,” A. Fadeev wrote in those years, “and there is no higher task for Soviet art than the daily and tireless service of the artistic word to its people in the terrible hours of battle.”
When the cannons thundered, the muses were not silent. Throughout the war - both in the difficult time of failures and retreats, and in the days of victories - our literature strove to reveal the moral qualities as fully as possible. Soviet man. While instilling love for the motherland, Soviet literature also instilled hatred for the enemy. Love and hate, life and death - these contrasting concepts were inseparable at that time. And it was precisely this contrast, this contradiction that carried the highest justice and the highest humanism. The strength of the literature of the war years, the secret of its remarkable creative success, lies in its inseparable connection with the people heroically fighting against the German invaders. Russian literature, which has long been famous for its closeness to the people, has perhaps never been so closely connected with life and has never been so purposeful as in 1941-1945. In essence, it has become the literature of one theme - the theme of war, the theme of the Motherland.
The writers breathed one breath with the struggling people and felt like “trench poets”, and all literature as a whole, in the apt expression of A. Tvardovsky, was “the voice of the heroic soul of the people” (History of Russian Soviet Literature / Edited by P. Vykhodtsev.-M ., 1970.-p.390).
Soviet wartime literature was multi-problem and multi-genre. Poems, essays, journalistic articles, stories, plays, poems, novels were created by writers during the war years. Moreover, if in 1941 small - "operational" genres prevailed, then over time, works of larger literary genres begin to play a significant role (Kuzmichev I. Genres of Russian literature of the war years. - Gorky, 1962).
The role of prose works is significant in the literature of the war years. Based on the heroic traditions of Russian and Soviet literature, the prose of the Great Patriotic War reached great creative heights. The golden fund of Soviet literature includes such works created during the war years as “The Russian Character” by A. Tolstoy, “The Science of Hatred” and “They Fought for the Motherland” by M. Sholokhov, “The Capture of Velikoshumsk” by L. Leonov, “The Young Guard” A. Fadeeva, "Unconquered" by B. Gorbatov, "Rainbow" by V. Vasilevskaya and others, which became an example for writers of post-war generations.
The traditions of the literature of the Great Patriotic War are the foundation of the creative search for modern Soviet prose. Without these traditions, which have become classical, based on a clear understanding of the decisive role of the masses in the war, their heroism and selfless devotion to the Motherland, those remarkable successes that have been achieved by Soviet “military” prose today would not have been possible.
Own further development prose about the Great Patriotic War received in the first post-war years. Wrote "Bonfire" K. Fedin. M. Sholokhov continued to work on the novel "They Fought for the Motherland". In the first post-war decade, a number of works appeared, which are taken as a pronounced desire for a comprehensive depiction of the events of the war to be called "panoramic" novels (the term itself appeared later, when the general typological features of these novels were defined). These are “White Birch” by M. Bubyonnov, “Banner Bearers” by O. Gonchar, “Battle of Berlin” by Vs. Ivanov, “Spring on the Oder” by E. Kazakevich, “The Storm” by I. Ehrenburg, “The Storm” by O. Latsis, “The Rubanyuk Family” by E. Popovkin, “Unforgettable Days” by Lynkov, “For the Power of the Soviets” by V. Kataev, etc.
Despite the fact that many of the "panoramic" novels were characterized by significant shortcomings, such as some "varnishing" of the events depicted, weak psychologism, illustrativeness, straightforward opposition of positive and bad guys, a certain "romanticization" of the war, these works played a role in the development of military prose.
A great contribution to the development of Soviet military prose was made by the writers of the so-called "second wave", front-line writers who entered the big literature in the late 1950s and early 1960s. So, Yuri Bondarev burned Manstein's tanks near Stalingrad. Artillerymen were also E. Nosov, G. Baklanov; poet Alexander Yashin fought in marines near Leningrad; the poet Sergei Orlov and the writer A. Ananiev - tankers, burned in the tank. Writer Nikolai Gribachev was a platoon commander, and then a sapper battalion commander. Oles Gonchar fought in a mortar crew; infantrymen were V. Bykov, I. Akulov, V. Kondratiev; mortar - M. Alekseev; cadet, and then partisan - K. Vorobyov; signalmen - V. Astafiev and Yu. Goncharov; self-propelled gunner - V. Kurochkin; paratrooper and scout - V. Bogomolov; partisans - D. Gusarov and A. Adamovich ...
What is characteristic of the work of these artists, who came to literature in overcoats smelling of gunpowder with sergeant's and lieutenant's shoulder straps? First of all - the continuation of the classical traditions of Russian Soviet literature. Traditions of M. Sholokhov, A. Tolstoy, A. Fadeev, L. Leonov. For it is impossible to create something new without relying on the best that was achieved by the predecessors. Exploring the classical traditions of Soviet literature, front-line writers not only mechanically assimilated them, but also creatively developed them. And this is natural, because the basis of the literary process is always a complex mutual influence of tradition and innovation.
The front-line experience of different writers is not the same. Prose writers of the older generation entered 1941, as a rule, already established artists of the word and went to war to write about the war. Naturally, they could see the events of those years more broadly and comprehend them more deeply than the writers of the middle generation, who fought directly on the front line and hardly thought at that time that they would ever take up a pen. The circle of vision of the latter was rather narrow and was often limited to the limits of a platoon, company, or battalion. This “narrow band through the whole war”, in the words of front-line writer A. Ananiev, also passes through many, especially early, works of prose writers of the middle generation, such as, for example, “Battalions ask for fire” (1957) and “Last volleys” ( 1959) Y. Bondareva, "Crane Cry" (1960), "Third Rocket" (1961) and all subsequent works by V. Bykov, "South of the main blow" (1957) and "Span of the earth" (1959), "The dead are not shameful imut” (1961) by G. Baklanov, “Scream” (1961) and “Killed near Moscow” (1963) by K. Vorobyov, “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess” (1971) by V. Astafyeva and others.
But, yielding to the writers of the older generation in literary experience and "broad" knowledge of the war, the writers of the middle generation had their clear advantage. They spent all four years of the war at the forefront and were not just eyewitnesses of battles and battles, but also their direct participants, who personally experienced all the hardships of trench life. “These were people who bore all the hardships of the war on their shoulders - from its beginning to the end. They were people of the trenches, soldiers and officers; they themselves went on the attack, fired at the tanks to furious and furious excitement, silently buried their friends, took skyscrapers that seemed impregnable, felt the metallic trembling of a red-hot machine gun with their own hands, inhaled the garlic smell of German tol and heard how sharply and splashing splinters pierce into the parapet from exploding mines ”(Yu. Bondarev. A look into the biography: Collected work. - M., 1970. - T. 3. - S. 389-390.). Yielding in literary experience, they had certain advantages, since they knew war from the trenches (Literature of a great feat. - M., 1975. - Issue 2. - P. 253-254).
This is the advantage - direct knowledge of the war, leading edge, a trench, allowed the writers of the middle generation to give an extremely vivid picture of the war, highlighting the smallest details of front-line life, accurately and strongly showing the most intense minutes - the minutes of the battle - everything that they saw with their own eyes and that they themselves experienced during the four years of the war. “It is deep personal upheavals that can explain the appearance in the first books of front-line writers of the naked truth of the war. These books have become a revelation that our literature about the war has not yet known ”(Leonov B. Epos of Heroism.-M., 1975.-S.139.).
But it was not the battles themselves that interested these artists. And they wrote the war not for the sake of the war itself. A characteristic trend in the literary development of the 1950s-60s, which was clearly manifested in their work, is to increase attention to the fate of a person in its relationship with history, to inner world personality in its indissolubility with the people. To show a person, his inner, spiritual world, which is most fully revealed at a decisive moment - this is the main thing for which these prose writers took up the pen, who, despite the originality of their individual style, have one thing in common - sensitivity to the truth.
Another interesting distinguishing feature is characteristic of the work of front-line writers. In their works of the 1950s and 1960s, compared with the books of the previous decade, the tragic accent in the depiction of the war intensified. These books “carried a charge of cruel drama, often they could be defined as“ optimistic tragedies ”, their main characters were soldiers and officers of one platoon, company, battalion, regiment, regardless of whether dissatisfied critics liked it or did not like it, demanding large-scale wide pictures, global sound. These books were far from any calm illustration, they lacked even the slightest didactics, emotion, rational alignment, the substitution of internal truth for external. They had a harsh and heroic soldier's truth (Yu. Bondarev. The development trend of the military-historical novel. - Sobr. soch.-M., 1974.-T. 3.-S.436.).
The war in the image of front-line prose writers is not only, and not even so much, spectacular heroic deeds, outstanding deeds, but tedious everyday work, hard work, bloody, but vital, and from this, how everyone will perform it in their place, Ultimately, victory depended. And it was in this everyday military work that the writers of the "second wave" saw the heroism of the Soviet man. The personal military experience of the writers of the "second wave" determined to a large extent both the very image of the war in their first works (the locality of the events described, extremely compressed in space and time, a very small number of heroes, etc.), and the genre forms that are most appropriate the content of these books. Small genres (story, short story) allowed these writers to convey most strongly and accurately everything that they personally saw and experienced, which filled their feelings and memory to the brim.
It was in the mid-1950s and early 1960s that the story and short story took the leading place in the literature on the Great Patriotic War, significantly replacing the novel, which occupied a dominant position in the first post-war decade. Such a tangible overwhelming quantitative superiority of works written in the form of small genres has led some critics to assert with hasty vehemence that the novel can no longer regain its former leading position in literature, that it is a genre of the past and that today it does not correspond to the pace of time, the rhythm of life, etc. .d.
But time and life themselves have shown the groundlessness and excessive categoricalness of such statements. If in the late 1950s - early 60s the quantitative superiority of the story over the novel was overwhelming, then from the mid-60s the novel gradually regains its lost ground. Moreover, the novel undergoes certain changes. More than before, he relies on facts, on documents, on actual historical events, boldly introduces real people into the narrative, trying to paint a picture of the war, on the one hand, as broadly and completely as possible, and on the other, historically extremely accurate. Documents and fiction go hand in hand here, being the two main components.
It was on the combination of document and fiction that such works, which became serious phenomena of our literature, were built, such as “The Living and the Dead” by K. Simonov, “Origins” by G. Konovalov, “Baptism” by I. Akulov, “Blockade”, “Victory” A .Chakovsky, "War" by I. Stadnyuk, "Only one life" by S. Barzunov, "Captain long-distance navigation» A. Krona, V. Karpov’s “Commander”, G. Baklanov’s “July 41”, V. Pikul’s “Requiem for the Caravan PQ-17” and others. the readiness of our country for war, the reasons and nature of the summer retreat to Moscow, the role of Stalin in leading the preparation and course of hostilities in 1941-1945, and some other socio-historical "knots" that have attracted close interest since the mid-1960s and especially during the period of restructuring.
The war caught them seventeen
Almost 70 years separate us from the beginning of the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945). But time does not reduce interest in this topic, drawing the attention of today's generation to the distant front-line years, to the origins of the feat and courage of the Soviet soldier - hero, liberator, humanist. Yes, the word of the writer in the war and about the war is difficult to overestimate. A well-aimed, striking, uplifting word, a poem, a song, a ditty, a bright heroic image of a fighter or commander - they inspired the soldiers to exploits, led to victory. These words are still full of patriotic sound today, they poetize the service to the Motherland, affirm the beauty and grandeur of our moral values. That is why we again and again return to the works that made up the golden fund of literature about the Great Patriotic War.
A great contribution to the development of Soviet military prose was made by front-line writers who entered the big literature in the late 1950s and early 1960s. So, Yuri Bondarev burned Manstein's tanks near Stalingrad. Artillerymen were also E. Nosov, G. Baklanov; the poet Alexander Yashin fought in the marines near Leningrad; the poet Sergey Orlov and the writer A. Ananiev - tankers, burned in the tank. Writer Nikolai Gribachev was a platoon commander, and then a sapper battalion commander. Oles Gonchar fought in a mortar crew; infantrymen were V. Bykov, I. Akulov, V. Kondratiev; mortar - M. Alekseev; cadet, and then partisan - K. Vorobyov; signalmen - V. Astafiev and Yu. Goncharov; self-propelled gunner - V. Kurochkin; paratrooper and scout - V. Bogomolov; partisans - D. Gusarov and A. Adamovich ...
1924 was the year of birth of front-line soldiers known throughout the country - prose writers, poets. They are Victor Astafiev, Yuri Bondarev, Boris Vasiliev, Vasil Bykov, Bulat Okudzhava and Yulia Drunina. "Generation of the 24th" - these are those who were barely seventeen by the beginning of the Great Patriotic War.
"Goodbye boys..."
The tragic fate of high school students who went to war is well described in an article by the poet, prose writer and translator N. Korzhavin, dedicated to Bulat Okudzhava: “The war enriched the experience of this generation, revealed to him the value of life and the meaning of life values, brought him closer to the people ... But there was something in the youth of those shameful and terrible years that attracts our hearts to it today. Some kind of natural need for personal communion with everything high and great ... All those who died in the war at the age of seventeen or eighteen are now naturally called boys. And not the dead - too, but the girls who shared the mortal danger with them - girls, as Bulat Okudzhava does in the song "Goodbye, boys!".
Oh, war, what have you done, vile:
our yards became quiet,
our boys raised their heads -
they have matured,
barely loomed on the threshold
and left, after the soldier - the soldier ...
Goodbye boys!
Boys
try to go back.
No, don't hide, be tall
do not spare bullets or grenades and do not spare yourself,
and still try to go back.
Oh, war, what have you done, vile one:
instead of weddings - separation and smoke,
our girls dresses are white
gave away to their sisters.
Boots - well, where can you get away from them?
Yes, green wings of shoulder straps ...
You spit on the gossips, girls.
We'll settle accounts with them later.
Let them talk that you have nothing to believe in,
that you are going to war at random ...
Goodbye girls!
try to go back.
Let us remember the front-line writers born in 1924, they would have turned 90 this year or would have turned 90 years old.Victor Astafiev
Born May 1, 1924 in the village of Ovsyanka near Krasnoyarsk. Having lost his parents early, he was brought up first in the family of his grandparents, and then in an orphanage.
The teacher of the boarding school, the Siberian poet Ignaty Dmitrievich Rozhdestvensky notices in Viktor a penchant for literature and develops it. The essay entitled “Alive!”, Printed in the school magazine, will later unfold into the story “Vasyutkino Lake”. After graduating from a boarding school, a teenager earns his own bread. “My childhood was left in the far Arctic,” V.P. Astafiev wrote years later, “A stranger to himself and to everyone, a teenager or youth entered the adult working life of a wartime.”
Gathering money for a ticket. Victor leaves for Krasnoyarsk, enters the FZO school of factory training). “I did not choose the group and profession in the FZO - they chose me themselves,” the writer later tells. After graduating, he works as a train compiler at the Bazaikha station near Krasnoyarsk. From there, in the fall of 1942, he went to the front: he was a driver, an artillery reconnaissance officer, and a signalman. Several times he was seriously wounded. He was awarded the Order of the Red Star, medals "For Courage", "For the Liberation of Warsaw", "For the Victory over Germany". In 1945 he was demobilized.
About himself, he wrote: “Well, man, village, orphanhood sits in me ... I was not a member of the pioneers, nor the Komsomol, nor the party ... I was a driver and in artillery intelligence, and when my eye was blackened, I involuntarily became signalman ... We divided the day in two, lived and worked in constant tension, receiving swearing, kicks and scoldings for this ... So the rumor “sits down” - this is the result of hard work in front-line field communications ... from the front we rode crippled , abandoned by everyone to the mercy of fate, without a specialty, without education ... the winners - a goal like a falcon ... who cared about us ?! ".
He worked as a loader, a locksmith, a foundry worker, an auxiliary worker, a teacher, a station attendant, and a storekeeper. At the same time he studied at night school.
The first stories of the author were published in the magazine "Change". Already the early stories of Astafiev, "Starodub", "Starfall" and "Pass", attracted the attention of critics. Since 1951, he worked in the editorial office of the Chusovskoy Rabochiy newspaper, where he first published his story "Civil Man". Wrote reports, articles, stories. His first book, Until Next Spring, was published in 1953.
In 1958, Astafiev was admitted to the Writers' Union of the USSR. In 1961, V. Astafiev graduated from the Higher Literary Courses at the SSP of the USSR. Laureate of the Lenin Prize (for the story "Tsar-fish").
Two of the most important themes of Soviet literature of the 1960s and 1970s - military and rural - were equally embodied in Astafiev's work. In his work, including works written long before Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost, the Patriotic War appears as a great tragedy. The story "The Shepherd and the Shepherdess" (1971), the genre of which was designated by the author as "modern pastoral", tells about the hopeless love of two young people brought together for a brief moment and forever separated by war. In Forgive Me (1980), a play set in a military infirmary, Astafiev also writes about love and death. Even more harshly than in the works of the 1970s, and absolutely without pathos, the face of war is shown in the story “So I want to live” (1995) and in the novel “Cursed and Killed” (1995). "
....It is difficult to write about the war ... Happy is he who does not know it, and I would like to wish everyone kind people and never know it, and never know it, never carry red-hot coals in your heart that burn your health and sleep... memory at rest". (V. Astafiev)
Astafiev's style of narration conveys the view of the war of a simple soldier or junior officer. In his works, he created a literary image of a simple working war - on which the whole army rests, which is bypassed by awards, but punishments are given in abundance. This half-autobiographical, half-collective image of a comfrey front-line soldier living the same life with his comrades and accustomed to calmly look into the eyes of death, Astafyev largely copied from himself and from his front-line friends, opposing it to the rear campers who lived in large numbers throughout the war in a relatively safe frontline zone and for which the writer until the end of his days felt the deepest contempt.
In the 70s, the writer again turns to the theme of his childhood - the collection "The Last Bow" is born. The story of childhood - already in two books - was published in 1978 by the Sovremennik publishing house.
From 1978 to 1982, V.P. Astafiev worked on the story "The Sighted Staff", published only in 1988. In 1991, the writer was awarded the State Prize of the USSR for this story.
In 1980, Astafiev moved to live in his homeland - in Krasnoyarsk. A new, extremely fruitful period of his work began. In Krasnoyarsk and in Ovsyanka - the village of his childhood - he wrote the novel "The Sad Detective" and many stories. The protagonist of the novel, policeman Soshnin, tries to fight criminals, realizing the futility of his efforts. The hero - and with him the author - is horrified by the massive decline in morality, leading people to a series of cruel and unmotivated crimes. - In 1996 he writes - also "military" - the story "Oberton", in 1997 he completes the story "Merry Soldier", begun in 1987 - the war does not leave the writer, his memory disturbs. The cheerful soldier is he, the wounded young soldier Astafiev, returning from the front and trying on a peaceful civilian life. He died in 2001 in Krasnoyarsk. Buried in Ovsyanka.
Astafiev's books have been translated into many languages. On November 29, 2002, a memorial house-museum of Astafyev was opened in the village of Ovsyanka and a monument to the great writer was erected. In 2006, another monument to Viktor Petrovich was erected in Krasnoyarsk. In 2004, on the Krasnoyarsk-Abakan highway, not far from the village of Sliznevo, a brilliant forged "Tsar-fish" was installed, a monument to the story of the same name by Viktor Astafyev. Today it is the only monument in Russia literary work with an element of fiction.
Bulat Okudzhava
Bulat Okudzhava was born on May 9, 1924 in Moscow and grew up in the Arbat courtyard, which taught the laws of brotherhood and loyalty to the word, friend, people...
The Black Thirties did not bypass the family. Okudzhava wrote: “My father, five uncles, aunt and mother were repressed. She spent nine years in prison, but I, “the son of the enemies of the people,” survived. I went to war as a volunteer, after the ninth grade, in 1942. He was a patriotic and romantic boy. It turned out that war is hard bloody work. At first he was a mortar. Fought near Mozdok. In December 1942 he was wounded. Then he served as a radio operator in heavy artillery. Being a regimental leader, in 1943 at the front he composed the first song “We couldn’t sleep in cold cars”.
The perception of the war by a young person not yet ready for trials was reflected in B. Okudzhava’s story “Be Healthy, Schoolboy”: “At seventeen, my father created the Komsomol underground, but I didn’t create anything ... I didn’t even finish the tenth grade .. Will I be able to get on the tank? No, I can't... But I'm a soldier... What happened: everyone was lifted up, carried away, confused... Schoolchildren crawl through the trenches, die of wounds, return home without arms, without legs... Girl foreman... What happened ?.. Before the war, I watched a movie. So all the fighters were like fighters: adults, experienced, they knew what was happening. But I don’t know, Sasha doesn’t know, and this girl doesn’t know.”
After demobilization as an external student, he passed the exams for high school. In 1950 he graduated from the philological faculty of Tbilisi University. Having received a diploma, he got a job as a school teacher in a Kaluga village. The first book "Lyrika" was published in Kaluga in 1956. After the rehabilitation of his parents, he returns to Moscow. The poet began writing his songs in the 1950s.
In 1957, the whole capital, and after it the whole country, sang to Okudzhava: "Midnight Trolleybus", "Sentimental Waltz", "King", "Song about Soldier's Boots", "Not Tramps, Not Drunkards", "Vanka Morozov" , "Merry drummer" and many others. A lot of amateur tape recordings of Okudzhava's songs performed by him went around the country.
In the 1960s, collections of poems were published: "The Cheerful Drummer", "March the Generous". In 1961, the story "Be healthy, schoolboy!" Was written. Okudzhava turns to historical prose: in 1969 the story "Poor Avrosimov" was published. Okudzhava's novels The Voyage of Amateurs (1976-78) and Appointment with Bonaparte (1979-83) put their author among the best Russian prose writers.
Okudzhava was the author of scripts for the famous films "Fidelity", "Zhenya, Zhenechka and Katyusha", as well as songs for the popular film "Belarusian Station" and others. The last poetry collection "Tea drinking on the Arbat" was published in 1996.
June 13, 1997 Okudzhava died in a Paris clinic. He was buried in Moscow at the Vagankovsky cemetery.
Boris Vasiliev
Boris Vasiliev was born on May 21, 1924 in Smolensk. Father - Vasiliev Lev Alexandrovich, a regular officer of the tsarist, later - Red and Soviet army, "miraculously survived three army purges, which hit the former officers of the tsarist army most of all ...". Mother - Alekseeva Elena Nikolaevna (b. 1892), from a well-known old noble family, associated with the names of Pushkin and Tolstoy, with the social movement of the 19th century; her father and uncle were the organizers of the populist circle "Chaikovites". Here is what Vasiliev himself wrote about his father: “A finger on his left hand was cut off, his lungs were poisoned with gases, and his shoulder was shot through ... Avoiding edification, as if by the way, my father managed to sow admiration for heroes in my soul ready for sowing.
I grew up among stories and memories, at the age of seven I dismantled a revolver and knew all types of small arms as a modern boy knows the brands of cars ... My father admired a sunset or a melody, silence or a book, a human act or human genius sincerely and without sin ... With what calm wisdom the father did not notice the servile desire to “get”, “get”, “buy”, “sell”, and to summarize, “to like people ...”. From childhood I was accustomed to deeply despise two ulcers of human society: the idealization of idleness and the strained, sweaty, lackey thirst for acquisition ...
Boris Vasiliev's early fascination with history and love for literature "were intertwined in his mind from childhood." While studying at a Voronezh school, he played in amateur performances, published a handwritten magazine with his friend.
In 1943, after graduating from the ninth grade, he volunteered for the front as part of a Komsomol fighter battalion and was sent near Smolensk. He was surrounded, left it in October 1941, then there was a camp for displaced persons, from where, at his personal request, he was sent first to the cavalry regimental school, and then to the machine-gun regimental school, which he graduated from. He served in the 8th Guards Airborne Regiment of the 3rd Guards Airborne Division. During a combat reset on March 16, 1943, he fell on a mine stretch and was taken to the hospital with a severe concussion. After graduating from the Faculty of Engineering in 1946, he worked as a tester for wheeled and tracked vehicles in the Urals. He retired from the army in 1954 with the rank of engineer-captain. In the report, he named the desire to engage in literature as the reason for his decision.
The first work that came out from under his pen was the play "Tankers" (1954). The fate of Vasiliev's first prose work Ivanov's boat (1967) was not easy: A. T. Tvardovsky accepted the story for publication in Novy Mir. But after his death, she spent almost 3 years in the editorial portfolio and saw the light only in 1970. Fame and popularity brought the writer the story "The dawns here are quiet ...", published in 1969 (magazine "Youth, No. 8"). In 1971, the story was staged by director Yuri Lyubimov on the stage of the Taganka Theater, and then in 1972 it was filmed by director Stanislav Rostotsky.
It was from her, which received a huge reader response, that the writer's fate of Boris Vasiliev began to steadily gain height. The theme of the Great Patriotic War was devoted to such works of the writer as the story "He was not on the lists" (1974), the story "Veteran" (1976), the stories "Tomorrow there was a war" (1984), "The Magnificent Six" (1980) and others. The novel "Don't shoot the white swans" - ("Youth", 1973, No. 6-7), which has something in common in moral direction with many of Vasilyevsky's works, occupies a special place in the writer's work. In a duel with cynical and cruel poachers, the one beaten to death by them perishes. main character, perceived in the village as "God's poor-bearer", Yegor Polushkin, who stood up for the nature entrusted to his protection. Believing in his rightness and human justice, he becomes a victim of evil, causing an angry reaction in the reader towards the killers. Shooting at swans and kicking their defender, they first of all kill everything human in themselves. Goodness is vulnerable, like any moral principle, and requires protection from us not alone, but by the whole world.
Boris Vasiliev wrote numerous scripts for films. In total, about 20 films were shot according to his scripts. Among them are such popular paintings as "Officers" (1971), "And the dawns here are quiet ..." (1972), "Ata bats, soldiers were coming ..." (1976), "Tomorrow there was a war" (1987). About my generation
B. Vasiliev wrote: “We became soldiers ... I say “we” not because I want to snatch a crumb of your military glory, my friends and strangers of the same age. You saved me when I rushed about in the Smolensk and Yartsevo encirclements in the summer of 1941, fought for me when I wandered through regimental schools, marching companies and formations, gave me the opportunity to study at the armored academy when Smolensk was not yet liberated ... War ... in me, a part of my being, a charred piece of biography. And yet - a special debt for the fact that they left me safe and sound "("My horses are flying...").
Vasil Bykov
Vasil Bykov was born on June 19, 1924 in the village of Bychki, Vitebsk Region, into a peasant family. The writer's childhood was bleak: "A hungry life, when you have to go to school, but there is nothing to eat and wear ...".
After graduating from the seven-year period, Vasil entered the sculpture department of the Vitebsk Art College, which he soon had to leave: in 1940, scholarships were canceled.
The war found Bykov in Ukraine. As part of the army, he retreated to Voronezh. Then, after the Saratov Infantry School, with the rank of junior lieutenant, he returned to the front and fought until the Victory - in Ukraine, Romania, Hungary, Austria. Was wounded twice. He was finally demobilized in 1955; lived in the city of Grodno (Belarus).
In 1949, Bykov's first stories were published in Grodnenskaya Pravda. The writer himself literary biography leads from the stories "Death of a Man" and "Obznik", written in 1951 in the Kuriles. main theme his prose was the Great Patriotic War - the era of "colossal efforts of the people."
Already in early stories ("Crane Cry", (1960); "Third Rocket", (1962); "Alpine Ballad", (1964); "The Dead Doesn't Hurt", (1966); "Kruglyansky Bridge", (1969) and others, most of which saw the light on the pages of the Novy Mir magazine and received the “blessing” of A. T. Tvardovsky, the literary landmarks chosen by the young prose writer are clearly visible.
V. Bykov wrote about himself and his heroes (Sotnikov, Quarry, etc.): “... To explore not the war itself (this is the task of historians), but the possibility of the human spirit manifesting itself in war ... It seems to me that when we talk today about the meaning human factor in our life as a decisive force in creation, in the renewal of reality, we mean both ideological conviction and spirituality, which is based on conscientiousness, on inner decency. Living with conscience is not easy. But a man can be a man, and the human race can survive only on the condition that human conscience remains at its best... Yes, of course, it is difficult to demand high humanity from a person in inhuman circumstances, but there is a limit beyond which humanity risks turning into its opposite.” According to Ch. Aitmatov, fate saved Bykov “for him to live and write on behalf of a whole generation.”
Julia Drunina
Yulia Vladimirovna Drunina was born in Moscow, in the family of a school principal who taught history and literature. Mother was a music teacher and librarian, her name was Matilda Borisovna. The family lived in a communal apartment in the center of Moscow.
Julia began writing poetry at the age of 11, studied at a literary studio. For the first time, her school poems were published in the Teacher's Newspaper in the 30s. In 1931, Yulia entered school. He visits the literary studio at the Central House of Artistic Education of Children, located in the building of the Theater for Young Spectators. In the late 1930s, he participated in a competition for the best poem. As a result, the poem "We sat at the school desk together ..." was published in the Teacher's Newspaper and broadcast on the radio.
Thus began the creative path of a still young girl, who did not even suspect what awaited her. Her generation still dreams of exploits, regrets its immature age, complaining that the main thing is passing by. " Rescue of the Chelyuskinites, anxiety about Marina Raskova wandering in the taiga, conquering the Pole, Spain - that's what we lived in childhood. And they were upset that they were born too late ... An amazing generation! It is quite natural that in the tragic forty-first it became a generation of volunteers ... ". Indeed, an amazing generation, a generation of romantics, who did not hesitate to defend the Motherland.
When the war began, she found her document on the completion of nursing courses and went to the front in active units. Belorussian Front. Julia was seriously wounded in 1943, became disabled and was discharged. Then she returned to Moscow and tried to enter the Literary Institute there, but she was not accepted. Then she returned to the front again and fought in the Pskov region and the Baltic states. In 1944, she was shell-shocked and declared unfit for service. She was awarded the rank of foreman of the medical service and was awarded the medal "For Courage" and the Order of the Red Star.
In 1948, her first collection of poems, In a Soldier's Overcoat, was published. The first book was well received by critics, it entered a number of collections of military poems and occupied its own niche. In 1952, with the support of A. Tvardovsky, Yulia Vladimirovna was admitted to the Writers' Union. She will forever be enrolled in the ranks of front-line poets, and throughout her work, critics will attribute her to the military generation, thus explaining her main tendencies in lyrics.
In the period from 1963 to 1966, Drunina published four collections: "Alarm" (1963), "You are near" (1964), "My friend" (1965), "Country of Youth" (1966). At this time, Drunina is also engaged in social work. Outwardly, everything was going well in her life - labor orders were added to the front-line awards. She was awarded prestigious awards, was elected secretary of the board different unions writers, chairman of the Council for Military Fiction, member of the editorial board of central newspapers and magazines.
In the meantime, there were rumors that all this literary and social work, and more often - vanity, all these titles, awards and posts did not like her at all. Her work is poetry. In 1975, a collection of poems "Trench Star" was published.
I'm not from childhood -
From the war.
And that's probably why
More than you
I appreciate the happiness of silence,
And every new day
What I have lived.
I do not come from childhood - From the war.
Once, breaking through the partisan path,
I understood forever
What should we
be kind
To any timid path.
I'm not from childhood -
From the war.
And maybe that's why -
more insecure
The hearts of the veterans are burned,
And you have rough hands.
I'm not from childhood -
From the war.
Forgive me -
It's not my fault...
The light of a trench star illuminates the life of Yulia Drunina, it penetrates into her poems, her books. The trench star is a symbol of high morality and selfless service to the motherland.
The originality of Drunina's poems is in an understanding and kind view of the world and, most importantly, of the war, in which a woman brings not only her courage and patience, but also the initial protest, due to the incompatibility of the life-giving female essence with destruction and murder.
November 21, 1991 Yulia Drunina died. Yulia Drunina left the life of suffering, broken, but not betraying her front-line youth, her first front-line love, friendship. And she left us wonderful poems as a legacy.
No, this is not merit, but luck
Become a girl soldier in the war.
If my life were different,
How ashamed I would be on Victory Day!
We girls were not greeted with delight:
We were driven home by a hoarse military commissar.
So it was in forty-one.
And other regalia later...
I look back, into the smoky distances:
No, not merit in that ominous year,
And schoolgirls considered the highest honor
The opportunity to die for your people.
Yuri Bondarev
Yuri Vasilyevich Bondarev was born on March 15, 1924 in the city of Orsk into a peasant family. Father, Vasily Vasilyevich, participated in the struggle for the formation of Soviet power in the Urals, worked as an investigator, received a law degree.
Yuri Bondarev early addicted to books. He was taught to read by his mother, who read aloud to him. The first years of the life of the future writer were spent in the Orenburg region, in the South Urals, in Central Asia. Since the end of 1931, the Bondarev family has been living in Moscow.
In 1941, together with thousands of his peers, he participated in the construction of defensive fortifications near Smolensk. Then he studied at an infantry school in the city of Aktyubinsk, and then ended up near Stalingrad and became the commander of a mortar crew. In the battles he was shell-shocked, received frostbite and a slight wound in the back. Then he participated in the crossing of the Dnieper and the liberation of Kiev, reached Poland and Czechoslovakia.
At the end of the war, he was demobilized from the army and returned to Moscow. He enrolled in a driver's course, but was already seriously thinking about higher education and decided to go to college. At first he entered the preparatory department of the Aviation Technology Institute, but soon realized that he was attracted to something completely different, and entered the Literary Institute. M. Gorky. At the Literary Institute, he was lucky: he got into a creative seminar led by Konstantin Paustovsky, one of the largest Russian writers.
Paustovsky, according to Bondarev, did extremely much for him: "he instilled a love for the great mystery of art and words, inspired that the main thing in literature is to say one's own." Bondarev graduated from the institute in 1951.
The first stories were published in 1949. The first collection of short stories, On the Big River, was published in 1953. In 1956, Bondarev's first story, "The Youth of Commanders," was published, telling about the everyday life of cadets of an artillery school at the end of the war and in peacetime. "Battalions ask for fire" (1957) and "Last volleys" (1959) are two stories that brought wide fame to the writer. This was a new and significant step for the young writer along the chosen path of depicting military reality, which was fundamental for him. The main thing that brought together and at the same time distinguished these works from one another was the study of the moral strength of a person in war. Critics immediately praised both the story as a whole and the image of the protagonist. Bondarev's novel "Silence" (1962-1964) is one of the first references to the theme of Stalin's repressions in Soviet literature. The novel Hot Snow (1970) was a great success; the action of the work is limited to one day and one event - the battles on the outskirts of Stalingrad.
Bondarev never embellishes, does not glorify the war, he shows it exactly as it really was. The main characters of Yuri Bondarev's story are "little great people". Major Bulbanyuk, Captain Ermakov, Senior Lieutenant Orlov, Lieutenant Kondratiev, Sergeant Kravchuk, Private Sklyar never utter big words, never take heroic poses and do not strive to get on the tablets of History. They are just doing their job - protecting the Motherland. The heroes of Bondarev go through a whole series of tests, including the main test - the test in combat. And it is in battle, on the verge of life and death, that the true essence of each person is revealed. In the following novels - "Coast" (1975), "Choice" (1980), "Game" (1985), "Temptation" (1991), "Non-resistance" (1994-1995) - Bondarev turned to the fate of the Russian intelligentsia of the second half of the 20th century (his heroes are a writer, artist, film director, scientist). A significant place in Bondarev's creative biography is occupied by work in the cinema - he created screenplays based on many of his own works "Battalions Ask for Fire", "Hot Snow", "Silence", "Shore", the script for the film epic "Liberation" (1970-1972).
« I would like says the writer, so that my readers learn in my books not only about our reality, about modern world but also about themselves. This is the main thing when a person recognizes in the book something dear to him, what he went through, or what he wants to go through.
I have letters from readers. Young people report: after my books they became military officers, they chose this life path. It is very expensive when a book affects psychology, which means that its characters have entered our lives. War is oh-oh-oh, it's not like rolling a wheel on asphalt! But someone still wanted to imitate my heroes. This is very dear to me and has nothing to do with a bad feeling of complacency. This is different. You didn’t work for nothing, you lived, you understand?! You did not fight for nothing, fought in completely inhuman conditions, not without reason went through this fire, remained alive ... I paid the war a light tribute - three wounds. But others paid with their lives! Let's remember this. Is always".
Such books should be read, especially for boys aged 14-16 ... It contains the truth about the war, about life and death, and not slogans and fairy tales. When playing computer games, they completely lose touch with reality, do not appreciate what they have at all. The only question is how to get them to start reading it. Just to start, because these are unique writers, they reveal even such terrible topics in an accessible and exciting way - the reader seems to dive into the plot, become an involuntary spectator, an accomplice ...
Boys, read these books...
Hate never made people happy. War is not just words on the pages, not just beautiful slogans. War is pain, hunger, soul-rending fear and… death. Books about war are inoculations against evil, sobering us, keeping us from reckless actions. Let us learn from the mistakes of the past by reading wise and truthful writings to avoid repeating the terrible history so that we and future generations can build a beautiful society. Where there are no enemies and any disputes can be settled by conversation. Where you don’t bury your relatives, howling from anguish. Where all life is priceless...
Not only the present, but also the distant future depends on each of us. You just need to fill your heart with kindness and see in those around you not potential enemies, but people just like us - with families dear to our hearts, with a dream of happiness. Remembering the great sacrifices and deeds of our ancestors, we must carefully preserve their generous gift - life without war. So let the sky above our heads always be peaceful!
POETRY OF THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR PERIOD
(1941-1945)
Quoted from: History of Russian Soviet Poetry 1941 - 1980. Leningrad, "Nauka", LO, 1984.
Page 7 – 15
The military reality of the initial period demanded from literature, especially in the first months, predominantly agitation-poster words - shock, open, journalistic-targeted. Truly poetry, according to the testament of Vl. Mayakovsky, were equated "to the bayonet." A leaflet, said Nikolai Tikhonov, was sometimes more important for a poet than a poem, and a poem often aspired to become a leaflet without feeling aesthetically infringed. “There has never been such a variety in the writer's arsenal! - he recalled in the article "In the days of trials." - Brief vivid correspondence, sketches immediately after the battle, impressions, observations, portraits of individual heroes, leaflets, battle sheets, appeals to enemy soldiers, numerous radio appearances, articles, and poems, and appeals addressed to the lands occupied by the Nazis, materials for partisan press, essays, stories, conversations, feuilletons, reviews, reviews ... "(1) Poets, according to N. Tikhonov, did not represent any exception in this diverse newspaper, mostly purely journalistic business. On the contrary, “verse received a special advantage”, since “it was written quickly, did not take up much space in the newspaper, immediately entered service ...” (2)
Poetic journalism is the most developed, most widespread type of literary work during the Great Patriotic War. Many poets dedicated their talent entirely to her. Evg. Dolmatovsky, in his memoirs about Jack Altauzen, writes that the poet was published in every issue of his newspaper and proudly called himself a private of the newspaper regiment.
The front-line life of military poets did not differ much from the life of soldiers and military officers, they completely shared with them all the hardships of the situation. Not only correspondence, but also poems were born literally "on the ground". As he wrote, concluding his "Vasily Terkin", Alexander Tvardovsky, -
In a war under a shaky roof,
On the roads where it was necessary
Without leaving the wheels
In the rain, covered with a raincoat,
Or taking off the glove with his teeth,
In the wind, in the bitter cold,
I entered it in my notebook
Lines that lived scattered ... (3)
Everyday poetic work, including utilitarian-rough work in the newspapers of the first period of the war, despite the fact that much of it did not survive its time, and remained in old newspaper files, cannot be underestimated. It was, firstly, huge in scope, it was done daily and hourly by thousands of writers on all fronts of the Great Patriotic War, they did it selflessly and selflessly in the most difficult conditions of an exhausting struggle, they permeated the whole tense atmosphere of wartime with their propagandistic, agitational word of the party; secondly, these collective efforts of poets, each of which performed its own local task, together formed for today's reader a kind of chronicle of their heroic era; the very haste, incompleteness, unfinishedness of this or that poetic line acquires an additional documentary effect today - the rough, charred texture of the verse sometimes testifies to us about the gravity of the war more than the works finished in all particulars, written at leisure, could say.
Wasn't this what Sergey Orlov was talking about in 1945, looking back at his military poems:
With hands hardened by steel
Write poetry by squeezing a pencil.
The soldiers are sleeping - they are tired during the day,
Snoring smoke-filled dugout.
Under the ceiling, the smokehouse freezes,
Wet firewood crackles in the stove ...
Someday a descendant will read
Clumsy but hot words
And suffocate from thick smoke
From the air that I breathed
From the fury of the unique winds,
Which knock down on the spot.
And, who has not seen grief and sorrow,
Not calcined by fire, like a blacksmith,
He hardly envy his ancestors,
Hearing how lead sings in verse,
How the whole poem smells of smoke,
How you want to live before the attack ...
And he will forgive my sin in rhyme ...
He cannot forgive this. (4)
In addition, one cannot ignore the fact that this huge, everyday and, of course, often poetic work, far from artistic perfection, although it was sometimes designed only for a short period of a newspaper page or for half-forgetfulness in a notebook, was of great benefit to the writers themselves, because it taught the artist to constantly live by the real needs of the people at war and to pronounce words that are just as necessary in war as a bullet, shell or rifle. Everything that was a decorative phrase, vainglory, grandiloquence and other literary beauties, immediately revealed its groundlessness - the war demanded deeds, and only deeds. The people to whom the poems were addressed constantly met with death - they needed a heartfelt and truthful word. “The war taught us,” remarked M. Sholokhov, “to speak very directly.” (5) Literature, including poetry, for a very long time worked almost exclusively, so to speak, on two colors: white and black, without halftones, because only two feelings then owned the poet - love and hatred. In accordance with this spiritual (and aesthetic) mood, expressed for the first time with great force in the song of you. Lebedev-Kumach and A.V. Aleksandrov "The Holy War", that marked by a noticeable originality, the invocative and propaganda coloring of the poetic journalistic speech was quickly formed, which was later even called the "style of 1941". Many poetic works of the first months of the war were indeed characterized by the widespread use of newspaper phraseological units, and those stylistic clichés that are usually characteristic of hasty and energetic oratory, laconism, improvisation, poster clarity, etc. Most poets, of course, did not count on longevity of his poems. “Die, my verse, die like a private, like our nameless ones died in the assaults,” they could say with full right and not without understandable pride after Vl. Mayakovsky. (6)
One of the employees of the Frontline Pravda, S.A. Savelyev, recalls: “... already in the first months of the war, front-line poetry became the “queen of newspaper fields”. In our newspaper, as in others, she showed excellent fighting qualities: high efficiency, accuracy, great explosive power, the ability to “interact” with all other types of newspaper weapons, “attach” both an official document, and correspondence from the front line, and avaricious information message the energy of a poetic word ... "(7)
They really were poetry-soldiers, ordinary war workers who did not shy away from any rough work, selflessly rushing into the thick of battles and dying in the thousands, forever remaining unknown to the distant descendants of their military readers.
But, of course, in the field of poetic journalism, along with poems that did not live a long life, there were many works that can be safely attributed to the masterpieces of Soviet journalistic lyrics, which retain their aesthetic value to this day. It must be assumed that every poet - and then, as it was said, everyone worked in the genre of journalism, there were no exceptions to this rule - every poet will find a work that has stepped over the framework of that immediate moment by which it was once called to life on newspaper strip.
For example, the journalistic poems of K. Simonov, who fruitfully worked throughout the war years in all literary genres, were of great agitational significance. The most famous among them was the poem “Kill him!”, which appeared in 1942. It closely echoes many works of other poets devoted to the theme of retribution, but its exceptional popularity is explained by the fact that the poet saturates his poetic poster with emotional civic passion, giving it a truly poster-like, impactful, aphoristic clarity and graphic clarity. It is important to note that this poem by K. Simonov, exceptionally purposeful in its theme, and poems by other authors (M. Isakovsky, A. Surkov, A. Sofronov, I. Selvinsky and many others), with all their flaming hatred, appealing for retribution , were essentially far from a call for revenge as such, for revenge dictated by blind rage.
The most striking example of such inner humanism is M. Svetlov's poem "Italian" (1943). The character of M. Svetlov, "a young native of Naples", is a tragic figure in his own way. The poet especially focuses on his guilt, but at the same time he shows that his hero is a victim of the criminal forces standing over him.
…………………………………
A young native of Naples!
What did you leave on the field in Russia?
………………………………..
………………………………..
Our land - Russia, Russia -
Did you plow and sow?
Not! You were brought in a train
To capture distant colonies,
To cross from the casket from the family
It grew to the size of a grave ... (8)
This stanza is essentially a poster grotesque, a tragic grotesque at the same time: the great calamity of the peoples, sometimes against their will involved in the criminal slaughter unleashed by the Nazi invaders, clearly appears here in the concretely questioning, lamenting intonation of the author. However, this feeling does not prevent M. Svetlov from passing a death sentence to the Italian:
I shoot - and there is no justice
Fairer than my bullet! (9)
S. Narovchatov said well about this poem: "... militant humanity writes these lines with Svetlov's hand." (10)
As you can see, poems of a journalistic-draft character, which at first wore several general character of a purely agitational and propagandistic nature, gradually began to absorb concrete facts in the course of the war and the accumulation of live observations, to dwell longer and in more detail on the heroic events of the war, on individual characters, etc. Such a focus on the event-specific and psychological side life, on deeds, on faces, on episodes, demanded a well-known narrative. Along with the commanding, imperative intonation that accompanies the phraseology of the call (“Not a step back!”, “Defend the Motherland!”, “Forward against the enemy!”, Etc.), the intonation of the story, narration appeared, which testified to the maturation in the field of journalism various genres and genre varieties peculiar to it, for example, poetic correspondence, essay, story, plot poem, and then ballad.
Among this kind of works, a significant part of which also did not survive their time, there were works that told about lofty examples courage. It is important to note that, while remaining journalistic in their inner nature, in terms of the author's task and in style, such reporting poems, essay poems carried a strong personal beginning - they were, as it were, potentially characterized by a lyrical element, due to the position of the poet-agitator. Neither the poetic story nor the poetic reportage was dispassionate, that is, objectively informative; their journalistic nature energetically demanded the author's voice, an open author's view, the direct presence of the author not only in the story, but also in the event itself - as its participant.
Subsequently, A. Tvardovsky well formulated this general feature of military poetry, saying in Vasily Terkin:
Where to say to the hero,
I often say...
Among such poetic sketches-portraits, almost lyrical in their intonation and visual means, one can attribute the well-known at one time and since then invariably reprinted poem-portrait of A. Prokofiev "Olga".
The poet begins his poem, filled with enthusiastic admiration for the heroic girl, with the words:
I see you golden
In the obscure distance of the field,
Not under a scarf under a cambric,
And under the combat cap.
You with a rifle-girlfriend
I see - I will not take my eyes off, -
All with cheerful freckles,
Walking in the military ranks ...
He then sketches - again in song-lyrical lines - the short pre-war semi-childish life of his heroine:
For a long time or on a perch-well
You ran to the stream
How long have you been walking in a short,
She herself is not happy with happiness ... (11)
Then, after this poem, many other works will appear, where the “biography of the hero” will be recreated with great perseverance, including his short, war-torn pre-war youth: Margarita Aliger’s poem “Zoya”, Pavel Antokolsky’s poem “Son” and others, but, as always, the beginning, the first reconnaissance, is important - Prokofiev carried out such poetic reconnaissance in a poem about Olga Makkaveskaya.
In accordance with his artistic principles, which, as you know, always gravitated towards lyrical generalization, A. Prokofiev noticeably digresses from local biographical features in this poem as well. famous person, (12) to sketch, let a few common features, the image of a generation, pre-war youth - that youth, about which Yulia Drunina later, “in the first person”, said:
The uncompressed rye sways,
Soldiers are walking along it.
We walk and we
girls,
Similar to guys.
No, it's not the huts that are burning:
That my youth is on fire,
Girls go to war
Similar to guys. (thirteen)
Prokofiev is attracted to Olga Makkaveskaya by her, so to speak, national features, signs of a nationwide character:
How long have lullabies been singing
Every single one of them sang mother!
Now for the ship pines
You came to fight!
For a simple and joyful life,
For the golden fire of the soul,
For this lake is cool,
For the willows, for the reeds.
So that along the perch-well,
Of all the roads, having chosen it,
Ran in blue, short
All your childhood is clear!
Run with cute pigtails
Easy and fun home
Spring path, familiar,
Path white - in winter.
Now with a rifle-girlfriend
You are in the battle line,
All with cheerful freckles,
I see - I will not take my eyes off! (14)
This poem, in which word turns, metaphors characteristic of A. Prokofiev, lyrical mood and imagery, gravitating towards the style of folk choruses, vividly shine through, can already be called not so much purely journalistic as lyrical, but with obvious elements of a documentary essay. This, in a word, is a work of a transitional type from journalism to lyrics. In general, the journalism of the second year of the war more and more often let in a lyrical beginning, was saturated with specific details and acquired a greater realistic volume and multidimensionality than at the beginning of the war.
Poetic publicistic stories, usually based on real facts, were written by almost all the poets who worked in military newspapers. Several similar works were written by A. Tvardovsky. Some of them (for example, in the "Song of the Regimental Banner", in the poem "Father and Son") he prefaced with epigraphs from newspaper reports. For example, “The Song of the Regimental Banner” is preceded by several lines “From the combat report”: “A Red Army soldier of the 3rd machine-gun company of the Nosky Regiment, Stepan Valenko, saved the regimental banner by rushing after it to a car set on fire by an enemy shell.” In the poem “Sergeant Vasily Mysenkov”, A. Tvardovsky, in detail, but dynamically, partly involuntarily repeating the old Tikhonov story (“The Ballad of the Package”), tells how the package was delivered on time and to the destination, at the cost of incredible efforts. The poem is interesting not only because it tells in detail the whole terrible path of the messenger, but also because of the mass of lively, expressive, characteristic details of front-line life, a thorough knowledge of the psychology of a fighter, as well as those sometimes purely humorous remarks that already partly anticipate the future "Book about a fighter":
Breaks nearby. Beats - does not lie.
Exactly like in a war.
From the story of A. Tvardovsky, the hard, bloody, tragic work of the war comes through, its incredible tension - its sweat and blood.
Yes, everything is different in the war,
What anyone could think
And the salt of sweat on your back
Your feat will come through.
Bristle stiff beard
Breaks on the cheek
And the blood of barefoot footprints
Marks in the sand… (15)
A. Tvardovsky's poem "Sergeant Vasily Mysenkov" was one of the first numerous, however, experiments in the transition of a purely journalistic theme, dictated by the newspaper task "to give a portrait of a hero", into the sphere of a lyrical-psychological dynamic story. Simultaneously with A. Tvardovsky, many followed the same path. It was a transition, so to speak, almost massive and spontaneous, very organic.
“The communication of writers with the people during this war,” said A. Prokofiev, “was, as never before, close and effective.” (16) It is precisely the close and effective connection with folk life that explains the major artistic successes of our poetry in those difficult years, including the successes of journalism. It is she, this ability to live one life with the people, to feel like an equal particle in the ocean of national life, to draw from there one's strength and return them - a hundredfold and free of charge - back, even if only to the newspaper page of a small-format division, - in this inspiration and selflessness, and perhaps most of all, the close continuity of Soviet poetry with the Russian classics and with the poetry of the previous Soviet years affects.
The poetic journalism of the period of the war is an almost boundless phenomenon in its scope. The scale of newspaper work (and all journalistic poems were originally published in newspapers) was truly grandiose. Suffice it to say that, for example, in 1944, 821 military newspapers were printed, and their total one-time circulation was 3,195,000 copies. (17)
Unlike previous eras, the single voice of the poet was now instantly voiced by hundreds of thousands of newspaper pages (not to mention other media and propaganda, such as radio), which, of course, the first and Russian poetry "employee" of the army printing house could not even think about You. Zhukovsky. This, of course, greatly increased the propaganda and other impact of the verse on the readership, while, of course, imposing a special responsibility on the poet.
From newspaper strips laid out at night,
Still smelling of front-line smoke,
Satire, song, slogan, poems
I come to my readers, -
written by Nicholas Brown. (18) And so all poets-publicists could say.
Poetic journalism was an indispensable and militant participant in every day of military suffering. In her best works, she combined the sharp precision of journalistic
forms, the deepest hatred of the enemy with ardent humanism, proletarian internationalism, with the deepest faith in the triumph of humanity. It was this magnificent and complex alloy that gave the poetic journalism of the period of the Great Patriotic War a colossal agitational power of influence.
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(1) Tikhonov N. In the days of trials.- In the book: With a pen and a gun: Writers, journalists of Leningrad during the blockade. L., 1964, p. 14.
(2) Ibid., p. twenty.
(3) Tvardovsky A. Vasily Terkin: A book about a fighter. M., 1973, p. 314.
(4) Orlov Sergey. Poems. L., 1968, p. 51-52.
(5) Mikhail Sholokhov. Sobr. cit.: In 8 vols. M., 1960, vol. 8, p. 174.
(6) Mayakovsky Vladimir. Full coll. cit.: In 13 vols. M., 1958, v. 10, p. 283.
(7) Soviet writers on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. - In the book: Literary heritage. M., 1966, v. 78, book. 1, p. 345.
(8) Svetlov M. Poems and poems. L., 1966, p. 279, 280. (B-ka poet. Large series).
(9) Ibid., p. 280.
(10) Narovchatov S. Poetry in motion: Articles. M., 1966, p. 142.
(11) Red Star, 1942, 5 Dec.
(12) See book: Friends remember. L., 1977, p. 117.
(13) Drunina Julia. Uncompressed rye sways ... - In the book: Poetry in battle: Poems about the Great Patriotic War. M., 1959, p. 196.
(14) Prokofiev A. Olga. - Red Star, 1942, 5 Dec.
(15) Tvardovsky A. T. Sobr. cit.: In 6 vols. M., 1977, v. 2, p. 41.
(16) Prokofiev Alexander. People at war. - Leningrad, 1945, No. 13-14, p. 27.
(17) See: Zhukov S.I. Front-line printing during the Great Patriotic War. Moscow publishing house. un-ta, 1968, p. 5.
(18) Brown Nicholas. military spring. L., 1943, p. 3.
