What does Astafiev write about in his works? Leonid Podolsky: “My works contain my biography, my memory, my attitude and life experience. Trials of adult life

Recently, two new books by Leonid Podolsky with telling titles were released:novel "Identity" andcollection of prose "Fate".

The writer shares in his interview on the book portal PRO-BOOKS how much a person’s fate depends on his self-identification, and about the creative connection between books and the process of their creation.

“There is a connection, of course. Sometimes it is direct, sometimes it is indirect, and it is very difficult to determine what is primary in this connection between “fate and self-identification”. And I won’t give you the answer now, I’d rather refer you to the novel. Indeed, if this difficult question could be answered in a few words, why would one write a novel? Literature is not physics, not mathematics, it rarely gives definitive answers, it is always subjective, literature for the most part poses questions, and the reader must find the answers to them. After all, real reading is not the absorption of information, it is empathy, and perhaps co-creation.

The novel “Identity” is primarily about the search and acquisition of identity or self-identification, but not only. It upsets me when criticism mainly focuses on one topic: identity, anti-Semitism in the USSR, emigration. In fact, the novel is much broader. “Identity” is, of course, a Jewish novel, even in some ways a “Jewish encyclopedia,” but almost to the same extent it is a “Russian” novel, in which love and pain about Russia are mixed. This is natural, because Jewish (Ashkanazi) and Russian history and life in general are very closely, sometimes tragically intertwined. It is not for nothing that Alexander Solzhenitsyn not so long ago wrote his famous book “Two Hundred Years Together.”

The creation of a literary work is always a process of self-expression, manifestation of one’s creative self, thoughts, feelings, emotions, even, perhaps, subconscious complexes, covered on top by a plot and plot, invented - this is the deep, internal thing that connects everything with thin threads-neurons my works, they contain my biography, my memory, my attitude and life experience. Obviously, this is an exclusively internal, psycho-emotional connection. Probably, linguistic and other analysis would reveal common features, the use of words, repetitions, returns to some starting points, something personal, although I wrote my various works (there are sixteen stories in the book “Fate”) at very different times, in different situations and he himself probably changed a lot during the decades that passed between the first and last of these works. And, of course, both books and all these stories, short stories and novels are united by a common theme, because I write about Russia, about its difficult, complex, contradictory fate, about freedom and lack of freedom, about justice and injustice."

He also tells how the books are related to his life and autobiography:

“My feeling: I am writing a biography of the country, Russia, its history and, at the same time, my own biography. But an artistic biography is very different from a profile. My main characters are Leonid Vishnevetsky (the novel “Identity”), Igor Belogorodsky (the novel “Disintegration”), which should be published in early 2019), Igor Poltavsky (in the yet unpublished novel “Investcom”, and he is also in the novel “Financier” ", which I am working on now) are not just similar to me to some extent, we have the same many biographical points, primarily age, which means that my heroes see the same as I do, live the same, or very similar life. But literature is a special mirror in which the real and the fictional, the imaginary are mixed, so that biographical coincidences do not at all mean identity. There are some biographical coincidences in many of my stories (“Memories”, “The Fool and Sisyphus”, “Moscow Holidays”), but even where there are no direct coincidences, my experience, memories of the past, attitude, and outlook are present. Obviously, when you turn 70, you will always have something to remember and something to tell. You just need to put your memories, your experiences and thoughts into artistic form.

"TOMORROW". Vladimir Sergeevich, you wrote a lot about Solzhenitsyn. Why are you paying so much attention to him?

Vladimir BUSHIN. The fact is that whether we like it or not, he really played a big role in the life of our country, he was known and popular all over the world. Now, probably, few people are interested in him, but at one time, when he appeared with his works, with the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” everyone welcomed him - right up to Sholokhov. There were articles about him by Simonov, Marshak, Grigory Baklanov, and I ended up in this company in the Leningrad magazine "Neva". Then it turned out that he lied a lot when he talked about himself, the war, and the country. Nevertheless, it was picked up, used, inflated. Our propaganda did not find the strength and opportunity to respond to his writings in a timely and convincing manner. And it so happened that he played an important role in what happened to the country in the 90s, in the destruction of the country. His upcoming 100th anniversary this December is a very strange celebration.

"TOMORROW". For what purpose does the government elevate this figure, who, as you correctly said, played a negative role in the history of our country and contributed to the destruction of the state?

Vladimir BUSHIN. After all, our government is anti-Soviet; it arose by denying and denigrating everything that happened in Soviet times. Attempts are being made to completely throw out the heroic 75-year Soviet period from the history of our people. And Solzhenitsyn is a very suitable person here. It has reached the point that his writings are now recommended to be studied in schools. I don’t know in what exact form, but in any case, his widow reduced “The Gulag Archipelago” by 4 times and offered it to young people for reading. Well, of course! The man seemed to be imprisoned for no reason, served in captivity, and now he exposes the regime that sent him there. Although Solzhenitsyn himself admits that he was imprisoned quite naturally. While at the front, he wrote and sent letters to his friends in which he denounced the country's leadership, the command of the Red Army, and Stalin personally.

"TOMORROW". But he, being an officer, probably knew that the letters could be viewed and some measures would follow.

Vladimir BUSHIN. He couldn’t help but know this, because the envelopes were stamped “reviewed by military censorship.” Therefore, there is every reason to believe that he acted consciously. After all, he had such an idea, and he wrote about it to his wife Reshetovskaya: the Patriotic War is ending and the revolutionary war will begin. Those. fascism is over, and now there will be a war against England, France and America. And he believed that this would be an even more terrible war. Well, it would be nice to get away from her. He began to write these letters, provocative in essence. And he should have been punished for such behavior, this is obvious. An active-duty army officer is blaspheming his command! In any army at any time this is regarded as an action in favor of the enemy. And it must be said that in his ingenious constructions he was not far from the truth. Now we know that Churchill was preparing an unthinkable operation against the USSR. So we took Berlin, stopped, and he planned to use Anglo-American forces, with the help of surviving German units, to strike at the exhausted Red Army. Many authors wrote about this, including the former secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU State Bureau of the Soviet Union and head. International Department of the CPSU Central Committee Valentin Falin. All these documents are known. This strike did not take place only because the Americans refused to support it. They needed our help to fight against Japan. I think Roosevelt said about Churchill that he had many great ideas every day, two or three of them good. But this was not a good idea.

"TOMORROW". It seems to me that the very fact that Solzhenitsyn wrote such letters in wartime, provoking attention to himself and foreseeing the consequences, refutes the assertions that the Soviet Union was an unimaginable repressive machine, which for any carelessly spoken word was thrown into the dungeons, or even shot. He, as we see, understood perfectly well that for anti-state activities in favor of the enemy, when both the country's leadership and the actions of the army were condemned, he would not be shot at all.

Vladimir BUSHIN. He himself admits that it was natural for him to be imprisoned. He corresponded with his school friend Nikolai Vitkevich, wrote to his wife and to several other addresses. It is naive and ridiculous to think that he did not know about the consequences.

"TOMORROW". You said that he lied a lot. What are some examples of lies?

Vladimir BUSHIN. If we put aside all politics and simply take from the point of view of reliability what he says, this is a complete lie. For example, when his first publication appeared, he spoke about himself: throughout the war, without leaving the front line, I commanded a battery.

There are already several amazing inventions in this phrase. First of all, the word “battery” has multiple meanings. Place five bottles in a row - this is already a battery of bottles. And when we hear the word “battery” in relation to war, we immediately think of guns. He had a battery at the front that did not have a single cannon. He commanded a sound reconnaissance battery. This is not at all like a combat fire battery. The sound battery is located at a sufficient distance from the front. And what kind of front line it was can be understood by remembering that his wife came to join him at the front.

The front at that time was in Belarus, Solzhenitsyn sent an orderly from Belarus to Rostov-on-Don, and he, using false documents, brought his young wife to the front. She lived in his dugout. They read Maxim Gorky's "The Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin", she rewrote his poems and stories, sent them to Moscow to different addresses - to Boris Lavrenev, literary critic Leonid Ivanovich Timofeev, with whom I later studied at the Literary Institute.

This is the “advanced” one. And when the division commander got tired of the presence of a stranger, he asked her to leave. As for Solzhenitsyn's stories about the suffering and horrors in the camps, then, of course, the camp is not honey and milk, not at the mother-in-law's for pancakes... But, for example, the words that those sentenced to death were not shot, but given to be eaten wild animals in the zoo - what is this? Moreover, he very often says this: they say, what I bought it for is what I sell it for...

"TOMORROW". Referring to someone?

Vladimir BUSHIN. Yes. Like, people say, why not believe it? Indeed, why shouldn’t an anti-adviser believe what he’s pleased to hear? And endlessly this kind of reference: one Uzbek, two students, three Red Army soldiers... No names, no dates, no facts. This is impossible to believe. But it impresses many. Although sometimes there are numbers. He was quite a smart man, and sometimes peppered his lies with actual facts. Well, let's say, many famous political figures were repressed, he talks about this, mentions them.

His wife quartered the “GULAG Archipelago” mainly due to the biggest absurdities there. She understands that this is an impossible lie. Like one hundred and six million repressed people, for example. Who fought then, who rebuilt the country? She cleaned it all up and gave it a more authentic look. But there are still a lot of lies left.

"TOMORROW". Vladimir Sergeevich, perhaps it is a lot of honor for this figure to say that he was one of the formidable weapons with which they hit the Soviet Union. They said that they aimed at communism, but ended up in Russia. But initially they set their sights on Russia. And Solzhenitsyn was one of the tools of this Western machine that acted against our country. Why now is this weapon, a direct enemy of the country, not just forgotten and hidden, but very actively promoted? Although Putin said that the collapse of the Soviet Union (I believe it was not collapse, but destruction) is a tragic event, he recognizes this, nevertheless, such attention to the figure who contributed to the murder of our country, our Motherland imposed on society.

Vladimir BUSHIN. I think it's just stupidity. Our leadership does not know how to step over unnecessary pages. After all, there is a lot of such nonsense. Here they are camouflaging the Mausoleum. For what? So this is it - it would be good to forget him and that’s it. Honor him if you like. But make it a state matter! He is an American citizen, a traitor to the country, and we honor him. It’s not you and me, Katya, but they who will honor him.

"TOMORROW". But they are statesmen, and they honor on behalf of the state.

Vladimir BUSHIN. Certainly. A committee was created, in which, however, there is not a single writer. They offered it to Yuri Polyakov, but he refused, which speaks very well of him. In this committee there are governors, officials, they have power in their hands. Here one step remains to General Vlasov and honors to him.

"TOMORROW". Yuri Polyakov, when he refused, argued that there are no monuments to many worthy writers and figures, although they died much earlier; their services to the country were enormous.

It seems that absolutely every traitor, enemy of the Motherland, has a monument erected, or streets or centers are named after him. Why does the government extol betrayal?

Vladimir BUSHIN. It's just out of my mind. Zhores Alferov wrote the book “Power without Brains.” There is nothing left to do but support Comrade Alferov. There is this nonsense at every step. This was the anniversary of the Battle of Kursk. The great battle, after which the Germans never recovered. There were celebrations and a parade in Kursk. The Supreme Commander-in-Chief arrived there. And in a conversation with a participant in the parade, he said that yes, this is a great battle, and without this battle and without many others, it is still unknown what would have happened to the Russian people and to our state.

Think: unknown! Everyone knows this! His hometown of Leningrad would have been destroyed, wiped off the face of the earth. The city in which he lives would also be destroyed. I can advise him to read, he knows German, “Plan Ost”, it tells in great detail what they wanted to do with our Motherland. They had this idea - Lebensraum - living space. They cleared living spaces for themselves! Mainly at the expense of Russians and other Slavs.

"TOMORROW". Vladimir Sergeevich, you are a participant in the Great Patriotic War. And Solzhenitsyn is a participant in the war. Do you have a commonality with him, a front-line brotherhood?

Vladimir BUSHIN. I knew him personally. I also welcomed him when his story appeared. It says that there are innocent people in the camp. Yes, such things happened, and I, along with other writers, welcomed the fact that they began to talk about it. We began a correspondence with him, then we saw each other several times. Even by chance, on the streets of Moscow, in the area of ​​Mayakovsky Square, I once met him, somewhere else.

But what kind of brotherhood are we talking about? He is a traitor in the literal sense of the word, and the fact that he was called a “literary Vlasovite” is absolutely fair. There can and should not be any doubts here.

"TOMORROW". Why did he return to Russia, in your opinion? Do you miss your homeland?

Vladimir BUSHIN. He is a very prudent man, and in terms of what he did for himself, he is a man of extraordinary talent. In terms of his dexterity, agility, resourcefulness, and quickness, he is an amazing person. And pay attention, because he didn’t come right away, he waited: what’s it like there? Is this revolution reliable? After waiting three years, it seems he has arrived. And he did it pompously: through Vladivostok, there Svetlana Goryacheva, a communist, you know, met him and then gave a blissful interview. That's when she would have to be called to order, and she would be much later.

He arrived, traveled all over the country, made stops, and meetings were organized for him. A rally also took place in Omsk. And there was the newspaper “Omsk Time”, where the editor-in-chief was Galina Ivanovna Kuskova, I was published there, and just at the time of his arrival my article “The Mystery of Solzhenitsyn’s Arrest” was published. Because he tells different stories about how he was arrested. He tells one thing, but his orderly tells something completely different. And I published an article catching him in a lie. At a rally, someone says to him: what does Bushin write about you? Him: Ahh! Bushin! It's a snake, a snake, I know him!

And he wrote such praises to me when we corresponded with him!

"TOMORROW". Will you publish these letters?

Vladimir BUSHIN. I published them. I recently published my fifth edition of a book about Solzhenitsyn. True, in a somewhat awkward form from the point of view of illustrations. They put such blissful photographs there, as if it were a ZhZL book about a good person worthy of our attention and respect. I asked if there was an additional circulation to remove these photographs.

"TOMORROW". He also returned, do you think, out of prudence?

Vladimir BUSHIN. Yes, he provides for everything. And he talks about it himself! So he goes to a meeting of the Secretariat of the Writers' Union and plans in advance in what order to greet whom, who to shake hands with, who to nod to, who to pass by and not notice. He records everything! And at this meeting he sits and takes shorthand notes. His mother was a stenographer, she taught him. And he took shorthand notes of everything he could. Many of his publications go to his notes. When, say, Tvardovsky told him: “You have nothing sacred, even spit in your eyes, everything is God’s dew for you,” he recorded this. And his characteristic feature, which has now been developed in society, is that he not only does some vile things, he brags about them.

There was such a case. Tvardovsky wrote a letter in defense of Solzhenitsyn to Konstantin Fedin, who then headed the Writers' Union. I sent it, and three days later it suddenly appeared on the BBC. Tvardovsky tells him: how could this be? I sent it by express, I didn’t give it to anyone but you, you read it, you couldn’t write it off. And he writes - yes, I couldn’t write off everything, but I managed to write off the most important thing. Those. copied and transmitted through the appropriate channels to the BBC.

And he admires his meanness. Something that is common now. Even Voznesensky Andrei said: “our shame was removed like appendicitis.” Indeed, shame has been removed.

"TOMORROW". You wrote that Gorky’s anniversary was made a regional anniversary, he was taken to Nizhny Novgorod, but Solzhenitsyn’s anniversary is going to be celebrated throughout the country, they intend to erect a monument to him, and they are giving it a national scale.

And who is this strange figure - his widow? Why, for example, do they unveil a monument to St. Vladimir, and she is there, at the opening next to the country’s leadership. Where is Prince Vladimir the Saint and where is Solzhenitsyn? Why does this widow have such influence in the country?

Vladimir BUSHIN. When they say, why are they celebrating his anniversary, here are the anniversaries of Turgenev, Gorky... This cannot be compared. These anniversaries have nothing to do with Solzhenitsyn’s anniversary. These are writers, and this one is an enemy of the people. And his widow is simply a rather nimble, nosy, businesslike and dexterous person. The monument to Tvardovsky was unveiled, and she was right there. She approached Tvardovsky’s daughters and tried to talk to them. And Valentina Tvardovskaya said: no, madam, we have nothing to talk about. But this widow too - at least spit in her eyes.

"TOMORROW". You never know who is active, because this is support at the state level. When the monument to Prince Vladimir was unveiled, there was a limited number of people. And she.

Vladimir BUSHIN. I think that it was not she herself who came. She was invited by the organizers of this celebration, and she even made a speech. She is an educated woman.

"TOMORROW". Again: there are many educated, not stupid women, but she is a certain symbol. The authorities, through such actions, for example, establishing anniversaries, monuments, inviting such people, show what they emphasize and what they consider important and necessary for the country. But this is completely at odds with the opinion of the majority of the population. You say she's not stupid. But it’s not like that, it seems to me, the authorities are still stupid.

Vladimir BUSHIN. The authorities are undoubtedly stupid. She is clever, cunning, but she does stupid things all the time. I have already spoken about some of them, and we can talk about this endlessly. For example, we had a statute of limitations for economic crimes - ten years. It's about the same in other countries. Comrade Putin came and said - this is a lot, let's do it for three years. And it became three years.

"TOMORROW". You served three years on the Cote d'Azur, and that's it, you're not subject to jurisdiction? Come and continue stealing. Then Stankevich, who, after being caught taking a bribe, fled to Poland, would not have to sit there for so long, waiting for this very period of persecution to end. He would have come sooner so that he wouldn’t leave the screens, teaching us what is good and what is bad, how we can develop Russia.

Vladimir BUSHIN. Yes, after three years you can no longer pursue. From the point of view of national interests, this is stupidity. This is a harmful decision, anti-people.

"TOMORROW". Probably, in the terminology of the same Solzhenitsyn, economic criminals are people spiritually close to the authorities: these are those who steal on a huge scale, corrupt officials. They are spiritually close to the authorities, and therefore the authorities meet them halfway and liberalize punishment. Medvedev generally proposed limiting economic crimes to fines. But almost all crimes are committed for the sake of money.

Vladimir BUSHIN. For the authorities, Solzhenitsyn is a necessary, useful, necessary figure. Putin visited him and was his guest. And no one would have thought of organizing celebrations on the occasion of his centenary without the permission of senior management.

"TOMORROW". Needed for what?

Vladimir BUSHIN. Look: the Bolsheviks took a long time to come to power, they went through exile, prison, and immigration. And these came to power instantly. Yesterday they were successful Soviet officials, today they have become even more successful anti-Soviet officials. So they need to somehow justify this, they need to prove that that era, that power was so disgusting that it was impossible not to betray it, a decent person simply had to do it. And here Solzhenitsyn is just right, and that’s exactly what he proves. He proves it with great enthusiasm.

"TOMORROW". Solzhenitsyn was among the authors who, according to Alexander Prokhanov, ended Soviet power with books. They literally turned the word into a weapon with which they attacked their country. And what does the government that extols traitors count on? After all, now, when there are sanctions, when our country is demonized throughout the Western world, which, in fact, is the only authority for our leadership, we must unite to withstand the blow. But at the same time, a man who was a destructive weapon, who was in the same ranks with the West and with the West’s attitude towards the country, through the mouth of a hero called for dropping an atomic bomb on the Soviet Union, the authorities are launching into the country.

Vladimir BUSHIN. This speaks of a small mind. Everything could have been done much more delicately, more subtly, even with their hatred of the Communist Party, they could have acted smarter and more delicately. One could say: she fulfilled her role, exhausted her capabilities, let her retire. But this was nothing! The persecution began. There is a program on television, some presenter, in front of whom is a girl, says: could you knock out a stool under a communist who has a noose around his neck? Ta: yes, I could knock it out. Or, for example, a cake in the shape of Lenin is made, people come together, eat this cake and admire it. But this is pathological! Only completely different biological individuals can do this. They exist, and our government uses them very willingly.

"TOMORROW". In Soviet times, Solzhenitsyn was a member of the Writers' Union, and was treated kindly by you, too. When he returned, he had a writing environment, he continued to communicate with writers, did he have anything to do with the Union? Or have you isolated yourself?

Vladimir BUSHIN. He was registered with the Ryazan Writers' Organization, and he was expelled there. And again in this case he admitted justice, he said, what kind of Soviet writer am I? And when he returned, he probably didn’t need it and didn’t join the Soviet writers again, although the Writers’ Union awarded him some kind of prize.

After returning, in my opinion, he did not communicate with any of the famous writers. There was an article in “Soviet Russia” “To Kill the Dragon” by one of the local authors, a member of the editorial board, I won’t name her, a woman. She accuses writers of the fact that Soviet writers themselves gave birth to this dragon. Nothing like this. Once he was discovered, there were numerous statements and speeches against him. At the beginning, when he appeared, he wrote a letter to the writers' convention. The fourth, I think, was the writers' congress, he wrote a letter there, and I remember the now deceased Emka Mandel came to me with an offer to sign a request that he be given the floor. I signed.

Then even such writers as Valentin Kataev and Veniamin Kaverin supported him. They could know better than anyone else the history of our literature, the fate of many writers. But then, when he sufficiently revealed himself, especially when his “Feast of the Winners” and other things were published, then one after another there followed numerous most cruel and harsh assessments of his figure, right up to the proposal to expel him from the Writers' Union.

"TOMORROW". Reasoned?

Vladimir BUSHIN. Yes. Someone told Tvardovsky that after reading Solzhenitsyn’s first story, Sholokhov said: kiss Solzhenitsyn for me. And then he said: is he a normal person? I have the complete impression that this is some kind of painful shamelessness.

He read several of his works and gave the most severe assessment of these writings. And many other writers, both Moscow and Leningrad, and from the national republics, spoke out completely decisively against this figure. And not only writers, scientists, military men. It was a very friendly reaction to everything that he eventually discovered and showed us.

"TOMORROW". He is a Nobel Prize laureate. These awards are now clearly politicized.

Vladimir BUSHIN. Yes. I recently came across an article, the author writes that so-and-so Solzhenitsyn, but he is a Nobel laureate.

My God, who takes any awards seriously? The prize is most often political, and the Nobel Prize is especially biased in relation to Russia. It has existed since 1900, and Tolstoy was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize. Then some European writers sent him their sympathy, saying Lev Nikolaevich, what a shame. He almost sent them to hell. Gorky was nominated more than once. Not allowed. They gave it to Bunin for being anti-Soviet. How not to give? The famous writer, a total anti-Soviet, remained that way until the end of his life.

"TOMORROW". Alexievich was given.

Vladimir BUSHIN. Yes.

"TOMORROW". Recently, in our newspaper, we had a conversation with the governor of the Belgorod region, Evgeny Stepanovich Savchenko, and he said that any work should be assessed according to the following criterion: it promotes harmony in society, strengthens relationships in society, or, on the contrary, brings discord and discord into society. And Solzhenitsyn’s books, his works, his activities contribute to what?

Vladimir BUSHIN. Of course, such a view as one of the criteria for literature is quite natural. But all of Solzhenitsyn’s creativity, all of his personality, only sows discord and enmity among people. A monument to him was erected in Vladivostok and literally the very next day a sign “Judas” appeared on the monument. In Moscow, near some medical center, his image appeared, and the same thing happened. Why the authorities need this, they themselves do not understand it. Much is being done to push people together. Or again, not out of great intelligence.

"TOMORROW". Vladimir Sergeevich, thank you for the conversation.

Composition

Viktor Petrovich Astafiev (1924-2001) began writing very early. Working as a correspondent for various newspapers, Astafiev announced himself as a prose writer in 1953, releasing a collection of stories “Until Next Spring.” Next came books for children: “Lights” (1955), “Vasyutkino Lake” (1956), “Uncle Kuzya, Fox, Cat” (1957), “Warm Rain” (1958). The writer was concerned with the problem of personality development in difficult living conditions. This theme is reflected in the works: “Starfall”, “Theft”, “War is thundering somewhere”. In subsequent stories, Astafiev wrote about the people of the village; critics began to classify the writer’s works as village prose. The genre of a short story or one close to a story becomes a favorite for the writer.

Work on the prose cycles “The Last Bow” and “The Tsar Fish” occupied a large place in the writer’s work. The idea of ​​“The Last Bow” (1958-1978), created over two decades, was born from the writer’s desire to talk about Siberia and his childhood impressions. The author called the collection “pages of childhood.” The main character of the cycle, uniting all the stories, is the child Vitka Potylitsyn. The first book is filled with descriptions of children's games, fishing, and village fun. The boy Vitka is emotionally open to understanding beauty; through his perception the writer conveys the dissonance of the songs. The stories written in the first person are filled with a feeling of gratitude to fate for communicating with beautiful nature, for meeting extraordinary people. The writer paid his last bow to all the good that was and is in this world. The pages of the book are imbued with confessionalism and lyricism.

The novelistic cycle “The Fish King” (1976) talks about the relationship between man and nature. The plot of the book is connected with the author’s journey through his native Siberia. The action of each of the stories takes place on one of the tributaries of the Yenisei. People and circumstances change, but the river, which represents the flow of life, remains unchanged. Several stories raise the issue of poaching. These, according to the writer, are not only poachers from the village of Chush, who mercilessly destroy the river’s wealth, not only government officials who designed the dam in such a way that the river festered and all life in it died, but also Goga Hertsev, who breaks the hearts of lonely women. “The Tsar Fish” is a warning book about an impending environmental disaster, the writer’s reflections on the lack of spirituality of modern society. Vasil Bykov called Astafiev’s novel “The Sad Detective” (1986) “the cry of a sick soul.” The author himself considered it an unusual novel, combining artistry with journalism. The hero of the novel is a police officer, detective Leonid Soshnin. The action takes place in the provincial Russian town of Veisk over several days. The novel has nine chapters telling about individual episodes from the hero's life. The hero's memories are intertwined with real episodes of his professional activity. A terrible picture of violence, robbery, and murder appears. The conflict of the work lies in the clash of the protagonist with the world of immorality and lawlessness.

Astafiev thought a lot about the war and repeatedly addressed this topic. The first work telling about military events was the story “Starfall” (1961). In the early 70s, according to critics, the writer’s most perfect work was published - the story “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess” (Subtitle “Modern Pastoral”, 1867-1971). At the center of the story is the story of the relationship between Boris Kostyaev and Lucy. The writer simultaneously describes the tender relationship of lovers and terrible pictures of death and blood in war. Astafiev created his myth about the Great Patriotic War in the novel “Cursed and Killed” (1992, 1994). The work is sharply different from everything created about the Great Patriotic War: the writer destroys the existing stereotypes of the image of the people at war.

No matter what Astafyev wrote about, the main theme in his work was always the fate and character of the common man, the life of the people “in the depths of Russia.”

Viktor Petrovich Astafiev (1924 - 2001) - famous Soviet writer, prose writer, essayist. Born on May 1, 1924 in the small village of Ovsyanka, Yenisei province (Krasnoyarsk Territory).

The beginning of life's journey

V.P. Astafiev lived a difficult life, filled with experiences, life's difficulties, and trials of the era. Victor was the fourth child in the family, but his older sisters died in infancy. The child also lost his father at a young age. The breadwinner, like the grandfather, was imprisoned for political reasons.

The future writer’s mother died when little Victor was barely 7 years old. He grew up as a difficult teenager, deprived of parental care and care. For some time he was under the protection of his grandmother, but after serious misconduct at school, he was forced to be sent to an orphanage. Victor escaped from his pursuers, wandering like a homeless person for a long time.

Trials of adult life

After graduating from the FZO school, young Astafiev got a job as a train coupler. However, everyday work very soon gave way to the horror of war. Despite the railway reservation, Victor volunteered for the front in 1942. There, the former hooligan and rowdy shows all his nature as a hero and patriot. He was both a driver and a signalman.

He distinguished himself in howitzer artillery, where he was seriously wounded and then concussed. Merits to the patronymic were supported by a number of important awards: the Order of the Red Star, For Courage, and For Victory over Nazi Germany.

Demobilization overtook the hero with the rank of “private” after the end of hostilities in 1945. The former soldier moved to the town of Chusovoy (Perm region). Here he started a family with Maria Koryakina, who gave birth to her husband three children. In addition, Astafiev became the adoptive father of two more daughters.

Towards destiny

Victor tried himself in many jobs: from a mechanic and storekeeper to a teacher and a station attendant. The turning point came when the writer got a job at the editorial office of Chusovsky Rabochiy (1951). Here he was able to introduce his works to the public for the first time. 2 years later, his first book, “Until Next Spring,” was published.

It took the young writer 5 long years to become part of the USSR Writers' Union. From 1959 to 1961, Victor studied at the Higher Literary Courses. This was followed by years of long journeys from Perm to Vologda, and then to Krasnoyarsk. From 1989 to 1991, the writer was among the ranks of officials.

Creation

The key themes of Astafiev’s work are the military-patriotic direction and the romance of village life. His first work, written while still at school, was the story “Vasyutkino Lake.” Many years later, the writer transformed his children's work into a full-fledged publication. Of the early stories, the most famous are “Starodub”, “Starfall”, “Pass”.

Edvar Kuzmin once described Astafiev’s “language” as lively, but clumsy, full of inaccuracies, but with an incredible freshness of perception of reality. The Siberian writer wrote like a simple soldier, often describing workers, warriors, and ordinary villagers.

Marshal D. Yazov also noted his special presentation and ability to express himself hysterically, revealing his personal experiences to the reader. Astafiev wrote harshly about peaceful life, not covering up all the everyday bitterness and tragedy of the “little man.”

Viktor Astafiev died in 2001 in Krasnoyarsk.

Lydia Fomenko

Fifties. New, young forces are entering literature. From the Ural city of Chusovoy, stories are published in various magazines, marked with the stamp of true talent. There are original miniatures. And they, as a rule, tell about village life, even with features of antiquity, but in these places there is no longing for the patriarchal social structure. The author values ​​peasant hard work, attachment to the land, and the moral foundations of a conscientious life.

This is how the name Viktor Astafiev appeared in literature. An experienced man, successful, despite his youth, declared himself as a lyricist.

An experienced person - what does this mean? In this case, a difficult childhood in the village of Ovsyanka in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, work in the port of Igarka, at the Bazaikha railway station, and then the front, and later post-war life in the Urals, in the city of Chusovoy. Having gone through many different paths in life, Astafiev set foot on journalism, and then on writing. Looking back in a recent article on his approaching fiftieth birthday, Astafiev writes disapprovingly of critics who emphasize his “orphanhood.” The writer defined his task as follows: “To become a professional reader, thinker, and worker...” The author is unfair to his critics. I remember that one of the first to write about him was Lenina Ivanova, who left us early, and who never even thought about being an orphan, and subsequently, whoever wrote about Astafiev was first of all admired by his strength, and not at all by his “orphanhood.” . That's a word that doesn't suit him!

From the very first steps of Astafiev, a mature talent appeared before the reader, matured and strengthened somehow immediately, although he did not go through literary school, and nothing, it would seem, prepared Astafiev for the main work of his life. Except for life itself. Such talent could not and did not get lost, but declared itself in a big, reliable way. Depicting the village, he finds something romantic and new in this world. And in his work the naked truth of life coexists with the poetically beautiful in a rustic, sometimes even old-village environment.

From the late fifties and throughout the next decade, the reader gets acquainted with the rural childhood of Astafiev’s hero, which left a good mark on the boy’s soul. And all because of my grandmother, Katerina Petrovna. I don’t know whether there is Gorky’s influence here, as the critics wrote, or not, I only see that Astafiev takes his characters from the very depths of life, including the sad woman, the boy’s protector - the grandmother. And “A Horse with a Pink Mane”, and “A Far and Near Fairy Tale”, and “A Monk in New Pants” - all these sketches, captivating in their poetry, immediately made Astafiev’s name heard far and wide. We recognized the poet, although we had not read his poems. We felt the density and richness of his prose and fell in love with his figurative speech.

A few years after the first ideas appeared, Astafiev combined stories about a “truly barefoot” village childhood into one book and called it “The Last Bow.” A strong, wise and highly moral book. And before, reading stories in scattered form, it was possible to guess the future of the boy hero. The grains thrown into his impressionable soul were supposed to bear fruit. This was nothing more than personality education. And he was raised kind, sympathetic, receptive to beauty. “Since his soul lies with the flower... it means that he has his own meaning in this, his own meaning, which is not clear to us,” the grandfather says about his grandson.

However, life is not a fairy tale. She can also be bitter. War breaks out, and the boy, that same “monk in new pants,” that little connoisseur of forest diversity, makes his way through bad weather, half-starved, poorly dressed... of course, to his grandmother. His grandmother was not in the village, she had left, and the world became dim for him, and he felt unprotected. Now he does a lot mechanically. Even hunting Yamans does not diversify his existence. Moreover, you have to kill a beautiful animal. The life around him seems huge to the young man, the world seems vast. For the first time, he realized with amazing clarity that he had matured.

In the final story of the book, this is an adult making his “last bow.” This is the final farewell to childhood and parting with my grandmother forever. Having been demobilized from the army, that same boy, familiar to us, who rejoiced at a horse with a pink mane, who loved music, fairy tales, poetry, felt in his native element alone with nature, that same young man, saw for the last time the most dear person, his grandmother, and bowed to her to the ground.

“What life was like. God forbid! - Grandmother complained. - I'm all tired. Eighty-sixth year... The work was done - just right for another artel. Everything was waiting for you. But the anticipation is growing stronger.” Man lives by hope and love. With this thought, Astafiev ends his book of stories about childhood.

Vyacheslav Shugaev insists that Astafiev wrote a confession, that he had the courage, “without sparing his heart,” to talk about the long years of his childhood. Yes, of course, there is confession in this book. And the author had the right to it. Behind this “I” of the confessing person are the people’s life and people’s characters. This is why the reader has “spasms in the throat,” as Shugaev admits. They, these “spasms in the throat,” come from recognizing real people with their high souls. The strong emotional charge of the book “The Last Bow” is experienced by everyone who has a sense of national life.

Another tonality is also subject to Astafiev. It can be acutely dramatic (the story “The Eighth Escape” or the story “The Theft”). When the writer portrays even representatives of the criminal world, his faith in the person does not leave him and helps him to discern in the juvenile criminals from “Theft” people who can still be returned to society. The problem of personal education deeply concerns Astafiev. A lot has been written about the story “The Theft,” including the author of these lines, and perhaps it would not be worth returning to it if it were not a very noticeable milestone in the writer’s work. The actions of fifteen-year-old teenager Tolya Mazov introduce us to the depths of the human soul, show his desire for justice and, finally, the understanding that one cannot fight alone. The words spoken about the head of a city in the Far North, in the permafrost region, seem to me to be applicable to the author of “Theft”: “He did not accept life and the world in a ready-made form, but saw it at work, in the struggle and, having worked himself, asked the price to this world, as a master to the house in which he should live, and take care of it himself.”

The people who “tend” the earth all come from the same root - from the root of high Russian humanity.

I can rightfully call Astafiev a master of words. He thinks a lot about his “craft.” He once admitted that what he liked most about a story was the intonation (what Bunin called sound), that he loved the story-meditation. In this sense, Astafiev stands next to those of his fellow writers who write “small prose,” as a rule, with thoughts about life: with kindness towards man, towards his beauty. Who values ​​figurative language, a filial reverent attitude towards native nature, the ever-present and unchanging inspiration and heroine of Russian novelists.

They are driven by love. Astafiev’s idea is effective. It requires not selfish worship, but self-surrender. Love for a woman is the highest manifestation of love as a humanistic feeling. Here is a strong plot outline of one of Astafiev’s stories.

“Run sick” Sergei Mitrofangch goes to the city every year for examination to extend his pension. He is irritated by these trips and inspections, as if his stump could grow back in a year, as if the wounds of the war could be completely eradicated and he, God forbid, would begin to “rob” the state by illegally receiving a pension. Sergei Mitrofanich is a conscientious man, therefore, after talking sternly with the doctors, he quickly leaves and only confides to himself the gloomy, angry words: “This is the law! You, and another, and a third, and all together would say where necessary - and change the law. Is he made of stone or something, a law? Is he a mountain, or what? So, after all, mountains are being demolished...” Having thought this, he still calmly drives home, although he feels a nagging pain all over his body. This happens to him often. The wife repeats every time: “This is war, war is going on for you, Mitrofanich.” Yes, years and years have passed, and the war continues to “walk and walk” on it.

But what he endured during the war still constitutes his moral wealth, which Mitrofanich strives to pass on to people. Here they are, these people, modern city boys going to the army, and girls seeing them off. Their songs are new, their clothes cannot be more fanciful, but their tears are the same, and their farewells are the same. And Mitrofanich was touched to the very heart; he, who clearly saw all their shortcomings, became family to them. Or rather, they became family to him. And the conversation began, truthful, sincere, and no matter how distant the old soldier was to the guys, they listened to him, thoughtful. And first of all, his words about the Russian woman captivated them: “Baba, our Russian woman cannot leave her husband to be maimed. A healthy person can be thrown away... but a cripple can be thrown down - no! Because our woman is a person forever and ever!” Having said such words, Mitrofanich seemed to “let the guys see all of him because there was no rubbish, darkness, or secret nooks in him.” And he sang his favorite - “Is it a clear day?” And he keeps thinking: “You honor the young in such a manner; they are not your children, but foundlings?” The same thoughts, the same worries as in “The Theft,” although the whole setting and the very atmosphere of the story are different. In “Theft,” thoughts about youth and education come daily, even nightly, to the director of the orphanage, Repnin, a former tsarist officer who, by chance, became a teacher, but it turned out that this was his true calling. “Life begins from the time when a person thinks about his actions and is responsible for them,” Repnin said to his favorite, excellent guy Tolya Mazov. These boys on the train are not yet responsible for anything, but the time will come to them when they will feel responsible, and not only for their actions, but also for other people, for something greater than their personal lives. And often such thoughts come from contact with some good person.

Astafiev has many examples of how a person picks up good intentions and thoughts from another. The story “On a Clear Day” was written about the mutual influence of people. For the “youngsters”, a meeting with a front-line soldier will not be one of the half-forgotten episodes. And for Panya, even more so, it did not become an episode. She knew: “Everything that is good in her and in him, they adopted from each other, and they tried to get rid of the bad.” Here is a maxim, but introduced into the fabric of the narrative, into the thoughts of the heroine, it becomes a truth that you will no longer forget.

And here they are - Panya and Mitrofanich - singing in two voices the same old song “Is it a clear day” and thinking about the same thing, only in different words: “So, apparently, you won’t end the war to the grave? Where does your memory wander now? Along what edges and trenches? The trenches are plowed, overgrown, and you are still there, everything is there..."

One of the main motives of Astafiev’s creativity is the inexorable war. The trenches were plowed, they were overgrown with grass, there seemed to be no trace left, and the scars were so deep that they couldn’t be plowed or overgrown. And Mitrofanich dreams of his gun crew. And there is an inappropriately direct speech, so frequent in the writer’s stories: “There was peace on the earth and in the village, and somewhere there, in a foreign land, the gun crew slept in eternal sleep... Weighed down with metal and the blood of many wars, the earth resignedly accepted new fragments, suppressed the echoes of the battles.”

Even earlier, in the story “The Trenches Are Overgrown with Grass,” Astafiev wrote: “The earth knew how to preserve, the earth knew how to be silent, the earth knew how to grieve.” It was like a refrain, like the credo of a man who knew what “earth weighed down with metal and blood” was. This is why we need peace, this is why we need a passionate appeal to an overseas boy singing about the sun, an old soldier, so that these echoes do not rise from underground, so that they do not turn into new deadly sounds: understand, people, the sun is the same for everyone! Block the path to war!

At one of the meetings of young writers, Astafiev noted: many young writers master the laws of the craft, but this “does not yet make it possible to talk about the skill of the young. Behind fine literature there is often neither fate nor revelation. I remember how my peers began to write, rougher, more clumsy, but there was so much life in their first books.”

“Revelation and fate” were embodied in the union of Mitrofanich and Pani. There is no swagger or prowess in the former soldier, maybe there was before the war, but now all that remains is slowness and thoroughness. He is gentle, wise and deep. Astafiev, however, is attracted to other characters, prickly, ruff. In the story "Wild Onion" - a mischievous, reckless guy Genka, who worked in the polar port of Igarka. However, let’s take a closer look at Genka: maybe this is the future Mitrofanich? There is a little, but not quite.

Genka, “Mom’s grief,” “ever since my birthday, I opened my mouth and didn’t seem to close it.” And he’s such a freak, he “does everything topsy-turvy,” even turning off the electricity with his foot. Yes, there’s just a strong spirit wandering around in him, a strong spirit and a gambling curiosity for life.

However, you need to take a closer look at Genka, and not judge him out of hand, like a notorious babble. He also has grief, but he does not express it. Isn’t he sick of his misfortune, the fact that his father and two brothers were killed at the front, and the third was burned in a furnace in Mauthausen? “If war happens,” he says to his mother, “I definitely need to take revenge for you, for my father, for my brothers and for myself.”

Genka also has joy - his hometown. With a happy smile, he shows Igarka to the girl Katya who came to visit him. And everything here, it turns out, is good.

I read from Astafiev about the Yenisei and Igarka, and these summer places come to mind. Together with Genka, I see their greatness and beauty. The mighty Yenisei with slightly ashen wide waters, a semi-wooden city on a high bank, wooden, at first surprising, linings of pipes stretched over the ground (after all, permafrost!). And flowers, many flowers, grown by the labors and love of people on these difficult lands. And I remember the “pillowcase” shore, so enthusiastically described by Astafiev. It is stepped, and along these steps “forbs are raging. The vegetation of the Arctic is thin. But the eye will not be pleased when you look at the pillowcase. From the very sands, washed to such a shine that it’s painful to look at them, grass begins, first small, sparse, and then higher and thicker, and then bushes... Wild onions grow along the pillowcase bank.” And this onion, thick and juicy, saved the inhabitants when vegetables had not yet been brought here. This is Genka, an irrepressible guy. True, it happens that Genka does something out of mischief that he himself suffers for a long time. Katya pushed him away, and he shot a seagull. For what? Why?.. And there is a kind soul who undertakes to teach him life, to develop the best in him. Only... only towards the end the story breaks down, so organically blossoming imagery and poetry fades. The guy's lively, active nature falls into the hands of a rational person. After all, Katya did the thinking for him and made all the conclusions herself. Now she is already imagining how she will go to the brigade that “threw out” Genka from her midst, who prevented her from becoming a brigade of communist labor. Now she is already pronouncing a moralizing speech to herself, full of thunderous denunciations. Correct speech, but not very natural, and certainly not Astafievsky.

In Astafiev’s way it’s different... The boat hurries to the shore. The wind is rising. Everything in nature bends under its power. Only the wild onion does not bend. He “still stubbornly aims his swelling arrows at the sky... The wild onion has a tenacious root, a tenacious root.”

Of course, this is about Genk.

Genka’s mother, who gave him a moral basis for life, is the grandmother from “The Last Bow.” Or a mother who can not only give life, but also take it away if circumstances force her to do so (“Soldier and Mother”).

A woman often appears in Astafiev’s stories as selfless, loving, forever devoted. This is Panya. This is Nadezhda from the story “The Hands of a Wife.” She once managed to break the pride of her beloved, a soldier who lost both arms at the front. “This was a case when a woman broke the resistance of a man and, amazed at what she had done, lay with her face turned away and silently bit the grass in order to suppress the stored tears with which they say goodbye to girlhood and meet the inevitable share of a woman.”

This scene was written with admiration for the determination and dedication of a woman, her ardent desire to give her life to her beloved, who at first did not accept her as a sacrifice. There is not a shadow of naturalism here, everything is chaste and, I would say, wise.

In this short story, Astafiev admits through the lips of his hero that he does not know how to talk about love in words worthy of this woman. Feelings are bursting in my chest, but I can’t talk about them. And to the journalist who came to write about him, about Stepan Tvorogov, a farm worker and hunter, he says: “It was necessary, dear man, to take a closer look at Nadezhda. Her hands, that’s what’s important, brother. And there are only two of them, like every person. But then the hands!.. Yes, it’s a tricky thing - to express everything that’s in your heart.”

In this little story there is “revelation and fate.” A revelation of great feeling in a man who, by the power of love, did not succumb to his misfortune, adapted all kinds of hooks and pieces of iron, with which he did peasant work: “I cut down the hut myself, I put up the hay myself, I mined furs myself, I made skis for my son myself, I myself made a weather vane for the plane.” smoothed the roof of the house...” Such is the will to live, such is the power of love.

Tvorogov's arms were blown off during an explosion in a mine. And more often Astafiev’s works are war invalids. And in general, he wrote a lot about the war that still “walks” through man, although it has died down long ago. In A. Makarov’s talented and thorough article “In the Depths of Russia” it is rightly said that Astafiev is not worried about the battle scenes and paintings themselves, but “those rare intervals between battles when a person seems to return to himself. Astafiev is not interested in the thunder of battles, but in the consequences left by the war, the trace of war in the human soul.”

There is some kind of glow, some kind of ray in a person who has gone through the war. And its reflections are primarily in the most beautiful human feeling - love.

Astafiev began writing about love not so long ago. Now, in recent years, we often meet men and women happy in love with him, as in the stories “On a Clear Day” and “The Hands of a Wife.” Otherwise, it happens that the narrator will stop for a moment and think, as if in passing: what kind of feeling is this, love? This is what happened during the respite between battles, when the soldiers learned that the driver Andryukha Kolupaev, like a rude, nondescript little man, suddenly fell in love. So much so that he forced the entire regiment to follow his love (“Respite”). And there was a discrepancy that cost Kolupaev great suffering. My wife found out about everything. The commander called, and Kolupaev, a meek, hard-working quiet man, rebelled. This love spoke in him, not the one forcefully imposed on him in his youth, but a new feeling for the Ukrainian girl Gala, who met the soldier during a “respite” in a small village. “A fighter of great dignity,” states the narrator, telephone operator Kostya Samopryakhin, who told us this funny story. But the story is not funny at all, and even the daredevil Kostya understands this. This humorously bitter story ends with the fact that the driver Kolupaev did not wait in the wings, he was killed in the war. And here is a phrase behind which, as often with Astafiev, there is a lot: “We respected Andryukha, who seemed to reassure us all for the future with his love.” Back in love - dignity and hope.

A different, lyrical-epic tonality, however, prevailing in Astafiev, is in the “modern pastoral” “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess.”

“Art should be charming,” Repin wrote to Kuprin, “without this it is nothing.” Astafiev, an increasingly powerful artist who knows how to write the cruelest truth, sees the “charm of art” in the bright and beautiful manifestations of the human soul. He went to his “pastoral” with stories about love.

The elegiac picture immediately captivates the reader and squeezes his heart when he opens the “pastoral.” Gray autumn field. Not a green spikelet, not a flower. A woman is wandering across the field. Wrinkles lined her face. Gray hair escapes from under an old gray scarf. Her bent figure can be seen from a distance. She's looking for something. He finds a mound, almost level with the field, and falls to it, whispering: “Why are you lying alone, in the middle of Russia?” And at the end of the story: she left, and he “remained in a silent land, entangled in the roots of herbs and flowers that died down until spring, left alone, in the middle of Russia.” This means that this “pastoral” is not only about one personal drama. A soldier lies in the middle of Russia, for which the battalion commander gave his young life, and he was born for great love. Piercingly bitter words. They will be understood by those who knew irreparable losses, who looked for such abandoned hills, who even then, after the death of their loved ones, remained faithful to their memory, preserved for the rest of their lives.

The tragedy of two lives... So much for “pastoral”. A serene existence is associated with this idyllic word. But Astafiev’s pastoral is modern. There is no idyll in it.

Since it’s a pastoral, that means there should also be a shepherd and a shepherdess, according to the classical canons of the genre.

True, I cannot accept everything from Astafiev in this work of his. The episode in which the soldiers discover the corpses of an old man and an old woman, a shepherd and a shepherdess seemed deliberate to me. One couple, one tragedy of Boris and Lucy was enough.

Having become a master of prose, Astafiev in “pastoral” seemed to combine two elements of his creativity: the poetic and musical perception of the world and the drama of life, its severity and even cruelty. At the same time, there is no declarativeness. And if in criticism there were voices about Astafiev’s “teaching”, that is, about the openness of his thoughts, then this so-called teaching occurs because the author has something to say. He does not impose his judgments. It is important for him that his thought, his call be heard. He combines the poetic and the dramatic, often in one plot, or even in one person. These are facets of character, facets of personality - a person has all shades of feelings.

Astafiev’s artistic skill can be easily traced in his “small prose”, in his miniatures - sketches. As has been written many times, these are prose poems. A mood, a short event, some bright touch of life and reflection, always reflection on everything that the writer encountered. The hero of the plot is still the same person, from the indigenous Astafiev world, if not a hero, then a storyteller, in whom it is also not difficult to recognize the author. The characters of these people may be different, but their mood, worldview, attitude towards people and towards life are the same.

Intoxication with the beautiful world, greedy knowledge of new things in it, compassionate love for all living things, including animals. And this love is most strongly expressed in the short story “Yashka the Elk”. This poetic story-allegory, story-parable was written with pain. The foal Yashka, capricious and freedom-loving, fell behind his mother mare. He fought back and disappeared into the forest, warmed by a moose cow. And he fell in love with the forest and the free life here so much that he disappeared from people. People crawled around, turned everything over, but they couldn’t find Yashka. But the forest betrayed Yashka. The moose, expecting her cub, lost interest in Yashka, and the foal was left alone. “Again he ran to the village, again something distant, half-forgotten was calling him, he even remembered the drunken, lame foreman. Yashka will draw in a breath with a wheeze, listen to the taiga, neigh long, iridescently - and his voice flies through the mountains, repeating itself in the valleys, rolls into the taiga distance, freezes somewhere high, high.” “Who, Yashka, are you calling, who are you calling?” - this is what the narrator, a person who sympathizes with the foal, asks.

The parable-like nature of the story is obvious. The foreman killed Yashka, and because he was drunk, he drove him onto the ice... Yashka carried the man onto the solid ice, and he himself broke off. Whether it is a man or a beast, it will not take long for him to perish from ill-treatment and injustice. I had to read that Astafiev has these sorts of moral teachings at the end of things, immutable conclusions. As a rule, these are always the thoughts of the characters, and not the conclusions of the author.

Poems in Astafiev’s prose are always effective, they were not written in order to see a blooming bird cherry bush, or admire the article of a thoroughbred stallion, or listen to a beautiful song of a girl - no, the author has other tasks.

The drama of the undertaking is replaced by a light, bright sadness, a dream, like that of the girl Gali, the daughter of a widowed beacon keeper (“The Song Singer”). Her poetic world on the river was not as serene as it might seem. First of all, the father, like all the closed heroes of Astafiev, was unable to tell his daughter what she meant to him, how she brightened up his loneliness, how he loved her. And she, the “song singer,” as her father called her, kept singing and singing adult songs in her thin voice, because she had no childhood, and she didn’t know children’s songs at all. Her father has already died, and she lives in the city, and everything from her distant childhood suddenly pops up in her, and the girl “goes out to the embankment... looks at the river, at the flashing buoys... follows with her eyes the multi-windowed light steamers with cheerful music and waiting for something. She is waiting for one of these ships to come to her, take her with him, take her to where she wants to land. Maybe there, in the darkness, that single light glows and burns, alive and warm, which she has dreamed of for so long and patiently.”

Mental experiences are always specific in Astafiev’s stories. And if a writer talks about beauty, he will certainly do it in everyday life, or in the military, or in some other specific conditions. In the story “How the Goddess was Treated,” a Soviet soldier and an elderly Pole tirelessly, without eating, and not paying attention to the shelling, “treated the goddess Venus.” They “cured” the damaged statue of the goddess, and suddenly there was shelling again. And “stood the mutilated, disfigured goddess Venus. And at her feet, in a pool of blood, two people lay hugging each other - a Soviet soldier and a gray-haired Polish citizen, trying alone to heal the beaten beauty.” Again about beauty, which is akin to love, again - against evil, against fascism. And again I note: all this is not declarative, but in the very artistic basis of the works, untouched by excessive edification. Everything is deduced from the characters and actions of the person whom the author so masterfully sculpts.

Keywords: Victor Astafiev, criticism of the works of Victor Astafiev, criticism of the works of Victor Astafiev, analysis of the stories of Victor Astafiev, download criticism, download analysis, download for free, Russian literature of the 20th century.