Images of swindlers in classical Russian literature. The image of a servant in Russian literature. King of criminal Odessa

Are you here: Hand protection

One of the most prominent representatives of humanist writers was Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821-1881), who devoted his work to protecting the rights of the “humiliated and insulted.” As an active participant in the Petrashevites circle, he was arrested in 1849 and sentenced to death, which was replaced by hard labor and subsequent military service. Upon his return to St. Petersburg, Dostoevsky was engaged in literary activities, and together with his brother he published the soil journals “Time” and “Epoch”. His works realistically reflected the sharp social contrasts of Russian reality, the clash of bright, original characters, the passionate search for social and human harmony, the finest psychologism and humanism.

V. G. Perov “Portrait of F. M. Dostoevsky”

Already in the writer’s first novel, “Poor People,” the problem of the “little” person began to speak loudly as a social problem. The fate of the heroes of the novel, Makar Devushkin and Varenka Dobroselova, is an angry protest against a society in which a person’s dignity is humiliated and his personality is deformed.

In 1862, Dostoevsky published “Notes from the House of the Dead” - one of his most outstanding works, which reflected the author’s impressions of his four-year stay in the Omsk prison.

From the very beginning, the reader is immersed in the ominous atmosphere of hard labor, where prisoners are no longer seen as people. The depersonalization of a person begins from the moment he enters the prison. Half of his head is shaved, he is dressed in a two-color jacket with a yellow ace on the back, and shackled. Thus, from his first steps in prison, the prisoner, purely outwardly, loses the right to his human individuality. Some especially dangerous criminals have a brand burned into their faces. It is no coincidence that Dostoevsky calls the prison the House of the Dead, where all the spiritual and mental forces of the people are buried.

Dostoevsky saw that the living conditions in the prison did not contribute to the re-education of people, but, on the contrary, aggravated the base qualities of character, which were encouraged and reinforced by frequent searches, cruel punishments, and hard work. Continuous quarrels, fights and forced cohabitation also corrupt the inhabitants of the prison. The prison system itself, designed to punish rather than correct people, contributes to the corruption of the individual. The subtle psychologist Dostoevsky highlights the state of a person before punishment, which causes physical fear in him, suppressing the entire moral being of a person.

In “Notes,” Dostoevsky for the first time tries to comprehend the psychology of criminals. He notes that many of these people ended up behind bars by coincidence; they are responsive to kindness, smart, and full of self-esteem. But along with them there are also hardened criminals. However, they are all subject to the same punishment and are sent to the same penal servitude. According to the firm conviction of the writer, this should not happen, just as there should not be the same punishment. Dostoevsky does not share the theory of the Italian psychiatrist Cesare Lombroso, who explained crime by biological properties, an innate tendency to crime.

It is also to the credit of the author of the Notes that he was one of the first to talk about the role of prison authorities in the re-education of a criminal, and about the beneficial influence of the moral qualities of the boss on the resurrection of the fallen soul. In this regard, he recalls the commandant of the prison, “a noble and sensible man,” who moderated the wild antics of his subordinates. True, such representatives of the authorities are extremely rare on the pages of the Notes.

The four years spent in the Omsk prison became a harsh school for the writer. Hence his angry protest against the despotism and tyranny that reigned in the royal prisons, his excited voice in defense of the humiliated and disadvantaged._

Subsequently, Dostoevsky will continue his study of the psychology of the criminal in the novels “Crime and Punishment”, “The Idiot”, “Demons”, “The Brothers Karamazov”.

“Crime and Punishment” is the first philosophical novel based on crime. At the same time, this is a psychological novel.

From the first pages, the reader gets acquainted with the main character, Rodion Raskolnikov, enslaved by a philosophical idea that allows for “blood according to conscience.” A hungry, beggarly existence leads him to this idea. Reflecting on historical events, Raskolnikov comes to the conclusion that the development of society is necessarily carried out on someone’s suffering and blood. Therefore, all people can be divided into two categories - “ordinary”, who meekly accept any order of things, and “extraordinary”, “the powerful of this world”. These latter have the right, if necessary, to violate the moral principles of society and step over blood.

Similar thoughts were inspired by Raskolnikov’s idea of a “strong personality,” which was literally in the air in the 60s of the 19th century, and later took shape in F. Nietzsche’s theory of the “superman.” Imbued with this idea, Raskolnikov tries to solve the question: which of these two categories does he himself belong to? To answer this question, he decides to kill the old pawnbroker and thus join the ranks of the “chosen ones.”

However, having committed a crime, Raskolnikov begins to be tormented by remorse. The novel presents a complex psychological struggle of the hero with himself and at the same time with a representative of the authorities - the highly intelligent investigator Porfiry Petrovich. In Dostoevsky’s portrayal, he is an example of a professional who, step by step, from conversation to conversation, skillfully and prudently closes a thin psychological ring around Raskolnikov.

The writer pays special attention to the psychological state of the criminal’s soul, to his nervous disorder, expressed in illusions and hallucinations, which, according to Dostoevsky, must be taken into account by the investigator.

In the epilogue of the novel, we see how Raskolnikov’s individualism collapses. Among the labors and torments of the exiled convicts, he understands “the groundlessness of his claims to the title of hero and the role of ruler,” realizes his guilt and the highest meaning of goodness and justice.

In the novel “The Idiot” Dostoevsky again turns to the criminal theme. The writer focuses on the tragic fate of the noble dreamer Prince Myshkin and the extraordinary Russian woman Nastasya Filippovna. Having suffered deep humiliation in her youth from the rich man Totsky, she hates this world of businessmen, predators and cynics who outraged her youth and purity. In her soul there is a growing feeling of protest against the unjust structure of society, against the lawlessness and arbitrariness that reign in the harsh world of capital.

The image of Prince Myshkin embodies the writer’s idea of a wonderful person. In the soul of the prince, as in the soul of Dostoevsky himself, there live feelings of compassion for all the “humiliated and disadvantaged”, the desire to help them, for which he is subjected to ridicule from the prosperous members of society, who called him a “fool” and an “idiot”.

Having met Nastasya Filippovna, the prince is imbued with love and sympathy for her and offers her his hand and heart. However, the tragic fate of these noble people is predetermined by the bestial customs of the world around them.

The merchant Rogozhin, unbridled in his passions and desires, is madly in love with Nastasya Filippovna. On the day of Nastasya Filippovna’s wedding to Prince Myshkin, the selfish Rogozhin takes her straight from the church and kills her. This is the plot of the novel. But Dostoevsky, as a psychologist and a real lawyer, convincingly reveals the reasons for the manifestation of such a character.

The image of Rogozhin in the novel is expressive and colorful. Illiterate, not subject to any education since childhood, psychologically he is, in the words of Dostoevsky, “the embodiment of an impulsive and consuming passion” that sweeps away everything in its path. Love and passion burn Rogozhin's soul. He hates Prince Myshkin and is jealous of Nastasya Filippovna. This is the reason for the bloody tragedy.

Despite the tragic collisions, the novel “The Idiot” is Dostoevsky’s most lyrical work, because its central images are deeply lyrical. The novel resembles a lyrical treatise, rich in wonderful aphorisms about beauty, which, according to the writer, is a great force capable of transforming the world. It is here that Dostoevsky expresses his innermost thought: “The world will be saved by beauty.” What is implied, undoubtedly, is the beauty of Christ and his divine-human personality.

The novel “Demons” was created during the period of intensified revolutionary movement in Russia. The actual basis of the work was the murder of student Ivanov by members of the secret terrorist organization “People's Retribution Committee,” headed by S. Nechaev, a friend and follower of the anarchist M. Bakunin. Dostoevsky perceived this event itself as a kind of “sign of the times,” as the beginning of future tragic upheavals, which, in the writer’s opinion, would inevitably lead humanity to the brink of disaster. He carefully studied the political document of this organization, “Catechism of a Revolutionary,” and subsequently used it in one of the chapters of the novel.

The writer portrays his heroes as a group of ambitious adventurers who have chosen the terrible, complete and merciless destruction of the social order as their life credo. Intimidation and lies have become their main means of achieving their goals.

The inspirer of the organization is the impostor Pyotr Verkhovensky, who calls himself a representative of a non-existent center and demands complete submission from his associates. To this end, he decides to seal their union with blood, for which purpose he kills one of the members of the organization, who intends to leave the secret society. Verkhovensky advocates rapprochement with robbers and public women in order to influence high-ranking officials through them.

Another type of “revolutionary” is represented by Nikolai Stavrogin, whom Dostoevsky wanted to show as the ideological bearer of nihilism. This is a man of high intelligence, unusually developed intellect, but his mind is cold and cruel. He instills negative ideas in others and pushes them to commit crimes. At the end of the novel, despairing and having lost faith in everything, Stavrogin commits suicide. The author himself considered Stavrogin a “tragic face.”

Through his main characters, Dostoevsky conveys the idea that revolutionary ideas, no matter in what form they appear, have no soil in Russia, that they have a detrimental effect on a person and only corrupt and disfigure his consciousness.

The result of the writer’s many years of creativity was his novel “The Brothers Karamazov”. The author focuses on the relationships in the Karamazov family: the father and his sons Dmitry, Ivan and Alexei. Father and eldest son Dmitry are at odds with each other over the provincial beauty Grushenka. This conflict ends with Dmitry's arrest on charges of parricide, the reason for which was traces of blood found on him. They were mistaken for the blood of the murdered father, although in reality it belonged to another person, the lackey Smerdyakov.

The murder of Karamazov the father reveals the tragedy of the fate of his second son, Ivan. It was he who seduced Smerdyakov into killing his father under the anarchic slogan “Everything is allowed.”

Dostoevsky examines in detail the process of investigation and legal proceedings. He shows that the investigation is persistently leading the case to a pre-drawn conclusion, since it is known both about the enmity between father and son, and about Dmitry’s threats to deal with his father. As a result, soulless and incompetent officials, on purely formal grounds, accuse Dmitry Karamazov of parricide.

The opponent of the unprofessional investigation in the novel is Dmitry’s lawyer, Fetyukovich. Dostoevsky characterizes him as an “adulterer of thought.” He uses his oratory to prove the innocence of his client, who, they say, became a “victim” of the upbringing of his dissolute father. Undoubtedly, moral qualities and good feelings are formed in the process of education. But the conclusion that the lawyer comes to contradicts the very idea of justice: after all, any murder is a crime against the person. However, the lawyer's speech makes a strong impression on the public and allows him to manipulate public opinion.

The picture of arbitrariness and lawlessness typical of Tsarist Russia appears no less vividly in the works of Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky (1823-1886). With all the power of artistic skill, he shows the ignorance and covetousness of officials, the callousness and bureaucracy of the entire state apparatus, the corruption and dependence of the court on the propertied classes. In his works, he branded the savage forms of violence of the rich over the poor, the barbarity and tyranny of those in power.

D. Svyatopolk-Mirsky. A. N. Ostrovsky

Ostrovsky knew firsthand the state of affairs in Russian justice. Even in his youth, after leaving the university, he served in the Moscow Conscientious Court, and then in the Moscow Commercial Court. These seven years became a good school for him, from which he learned practical knowledge about judicial procedures and bureaucratic morals.

One of Ostrovsky’s first comedies, “Our People – Let’s Be Numbered,” was written by him when he worked in the Commercial Court. Its plot is taken from the very “thick of life”, from legal practice and merchant life that are well known to the author. With expressive force, he draws the business and moral physiognomy of the merchants, who, in their pursuit of wealth, did not recognize any laws or barriers.

This is the clerk of the rich merchant Podkhalyuzin. The merchant's daughter, Lipochka, is a match for him. Together they send their master and father to debt prison, guided by the bourgeois principle “I’ve seen it in my time, now it’s time for us.”

Among the characters in the play there are also representatives of bureaucrats who “administer justice” according to the morals of rogue merchants and rogue clerks. These “servants of Themis” are not far from their clients and petitioners in moral terms.

The comedy "Our People - Let's Count" was immediately noticed by the general public. A sharp satire on tyranny and its origins, rooted in the social conditions of that time, denunciation of autocratic-serf relations based on the actual and legal inequality of people, attracted the attention of the authorities. Tsar Nicholas I himself ordered the play to be banned from production. From that time on, the name of the aspiring writer was included in the list of unreliable elements, and secret police surveillance was established over him. As a result, Ostrovsky had to submit a petition for dismissal from service. Which, apparently, he did not without pleasure, focusing entirely on literary creativity.

Ostrovsky remained faithful to the fight against the vices of the autocratic system, exposing corruption, intrigue, careerism, and sycophancy in the bureaucratic and merchant environment in all subsequent years. These problems were clearly reflected in a number of his works - “Profitable Place”, “Forest”, “It’s not all Maslenitsa for cats”, “Warm Heart”, etc. In them, in particular, he showed with amazing depth the depravity of the entire state system service, in which an official, for successful career growth, was recommended not to reason, but to obey, to demonstrate his humility and submission in every possible way.

It should be noted that it was not just his civic position, and especially not idle curiosity, that prompted Ostrovsky to delve deeply into the essence of the processes taking place in society. As a true artist and legal practitioner, he observed clashes of characters, colorful figures, and many pictures of social reality. And his inquisitive thoughts as a researcher of morals, a person with rich life and professional experience, forced him to analyze the facts, correctly see the general behind the particular, and make broad social generalizations concerning good and evil, truth and untruth. Such generalizations, born of his insightful mind, served as the basis for building the main storylines in his other famous plays - “The Last Victim”, “Guilty Without Guilt” and others, which took a strong place in the golden fund of Russian drama.

Speaking about the reflection of the history of Russian justice in Russian classical literature, one cannot ignore the works of Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin (1826-1889). They are of interest not only to scientists, but also to those who are just mastering legal science.

N. Yaroshenko. M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin

Following his great predecessors, who illuminated the problem of legality and its connection with the general structure of life, Shchedrin especially deeply identified this connection and showed that robbery and oppression of the people are integral parts of the general mechanism of the autocratic state.

For almost eight years, from 1848 to 1856, he pulled the bureaucratic “shoulder” in Vyatka, where he was exiled for the “harmful” direction of his story “A Confused Affair.” Then he served in Ryazan, Tver, Penza, where he had the opportunity to become familiar with the structure of the state machine in every detail. In subsequent years, Shchedrin focused on journalistic and literary activities. In 1863-1864, he chronicled in the Sovremennik magazine, and later for almost 20 years (1868-1884) he was the editor of the Otechestvennye Zapiski magazine (until 1878, together with N. A. Nekrasov).

Shchedrin's Vyatka observations are vividly captured in “Provincial Sketches,” written in 1856-1857, when the revolutionary crisis was growing in the country. It is no coincidence that the “Essays” open with stories dedicated to the terrible pre-reform judicial order.

In the essay “Torn,” the writer, with his characteristic psychological skill, showed the type of official who, in his “zeal,” reached the point of frenzy, to the loss of human feelings. No wonder the locals nicknamed him “the dog.” And he was not indignant at this, but, on the contrary, he was proud. However, the fate of innocent people was so tragic that one day even his petrified heart trembled. But just for a moment, and he immediately stopped himself: “As an investigator, I have no right to reason, much less condole...”. This is the philosophy of a typical representative of Russian justice as depicted by Shchedrin.

Some chapters of the “Provincial Sketches” contain sketches of the prison and its inhabitants. Dramas are played out in them, as the author himself puts it, “one more intricate and intricate than the other.” He talks about several such dramas with deep insight into the spiritual world of their participants. One of them ended up in prison because he is “a fan of truth and a hater of lies.” Another warmed a sick old woman in his house, and she died on his stove. As a result, the compassionate man was condemned. Shchedrin is deeply outraged by the injustice of the court and connects this with the injustice of the entire state system.

“Provincial Sketches” in many ways summed up the achievements of Russian realistic literature with its harshly truthful portrayal of the savage nobility and all-powerful bureaucracy. In them, Shchedrin develops the thoughts of many Russian humanist writers, filled with deep compassion for the common man.

In his works “Pompadour and Pompadours”, “The History of a City”, “Poshekhon Antiquity” and many others, Shchedrin in a satirical form talks about the remnants of serfdom in social relations in post-reform Russia.

Speaking about post-reform “trends,” he convincingly shows that these “trends” are sheer verbiage. Here the pompadour governor “accidentally” finds out that the law, it turns out, has prohibitive and permissive powers. And he was still convinced that his governor’s decision was the law. However, he has doubts: who can limit his justice? Auditor? But they still know that the auditor is a pompadour himself, only in a square. And the governor resolves all his doubts with a simple conclusion - “either the law or me.”

Thus, in a caricature form, Shchedrin branded the terrible arbitrariness of the administration, which was a characteristic feature of the autocratic police system. The omnipotence of arbitrariness, he believed, had distorted the very concepts of justice and legality.

The Judicial Reform of 1864 gave a certain impetus to the development of legal science. Many of Shchedrin's statements indicate that he was thoroughly familiar with the latest views of bourgeois jurists and had his own opinion on this matter. When, for example, the developers of the reform began to theoretically justify the independence of the court under the new statutes, Shchedrin answered them that there cannot be an independent court where judges are made financially dependent on the authorities. “The independence of the judges,” he wrote ironically, “was happily balanced by the prospect of promotion and awards.”

Shchedrin's depiction of the judicial system was organically woven into the broad picture of the social reality of Tsarist Russia, where the connection between capitalist predation, administrative arbitrariness, careerism, bloody pacification of the people and unjust courts was clearly visible. Aesopian language, which the writer masterfully used, allowed him to call all the bearers of vices by their proper names: gudgeon, predators, dodgers, etc., which acquired a nominal meaning not only in literature, but also in everyday life.

Legal ideas and problems are widely reflected in the works of the great Russian writer Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy (1828-1910). In his youth, he was interested in jurisprudence and studied at the Faculty of Law of Kazan University. In 1861, the writer was appointed as a peace mediator in one of the districts of the Tula province. Lev Nikolaevich devoted a lot of energy and time to protecting the interests of the peasants, which caused discontent among the landowners. Arrested people, exiles and their relatives turned to him for help. And he conscientiously delved into their affairs, writing petitions to influential persons. It can be assumed that it was this activity, along with active participation in the organization of schools for peasant children, that was the reason that, from 1862 until the end of his life, Tolstoy was under secret police surveillance.

L.N. Tolstoy. Photo by S.V. Levitsky

Throughout his life, Tolstoy was invariably interested in issues of legality and justice, studied professional literature, including “Siberia and Exile” by D. Kennan, “The Russian Community in Prison and Exile” by N. M. Yadrintsev, “In the World of the Outcasts” by P. F. Yakubovich, knew well the latest legal theories of Garofalo, Ferri, Tarde, Lombroso. All this was reflected in his work.

Tolstoy also had an excellent knowledge of the judicial practice of his time. One of his close friends was the famous judicial figure A.F. Koni, who suggested the writer the plot for the novel “Resurrection.” Tolstoy constantly turned to his other friend, Chairman of the Moscow District Court N.V. Davydov, for advice on legal issues, was interested in the details of legal proceedings, the process of executing sentences, and various details of prison life. At Tolstoy’s request, Davydov wrote the text of the indictment in the case of Katerina Maslova for the novel “Resurrection” and formulated the court’s questions for the jurors. With the assistance of Koni and Davydov, Tolstoy visited prisons many times, talked with prisoners, and attended court hearings. In 1863, having come to the conclusion that the tsarist court was complete lawlessness, Tolstoy refused to take part in “justice.”

In the drama “The Power of Darkness”, or “The Claw Got Stuck, the Whole Bird Is Lost,” Tolstoy reveals the psychology of the criminal and exposes the social roots of the crime. The plot for the play was the real criminal case of a peasant in the Tula province, whom the writer visited in prison. Taking this matter as a basis, Tolstoy clothed it in a highly artistic form and filled it with deeply human, moral content. The humanist Tolstoy convincingly shows in his drama how retribution inevitably comes for the evil committed. The worker Nikita deceived an innocent orphan girl, entered into an illegal relationship with the owner’s wife, who treated him kindly, and became the involuntary cause of the death of her husband. Then - a relationship with his stepdaughter, the murder of a child, and Nikita completely lost himself. He cannot bear his grave sin before God and people, he repents publicly and, in the end, commits suicide.

Theater censorship did not allow the play to pass. Meanwhile, “The Power of Darkness” was a huge success on many stages in Western Europe: in France, Germany, Italy, Holland, Switzerland. And only in 1895, i.e. 7 years later, it was first staged on the Russian stage.

A deep social and psychological conflict underlies many of the writer’s subsequent works - “Anna Karenina”, “The Kreutzer Sonata”, “Resurrection”, “The Living Corpse”, “Hadji Murat”, “After the Ball”, etc. In them, Tolstoy mercilessly exposed the autocratic order, the bourgeois institution of marriage, sanctified by the church, the immorality of representatives of the upper strata of society, corrupted and morally devastated, as a result of which they are not able to see in the people close to them individuals who have the right to their own thoughts, feelings and experiences, to their own dignity and private life.

I. Pchelko. Illustration for L. N. Tolstoy’s story “After the Ball”

One of Tolstoy’s outstanding works in terms of its artistic, psychological and ideological content is the novel “Resurrection.” Without exaggeration, it can be called a genuine legal study of the class nature of the court and its purpose in a socially antagonistic society, the cognitive significance of which is enhanced by the clarity of the images and the accuracy of the psychological characteristics so inherent in Tolstoy’s writing talent.

After the chapters revealing the tragic story of the fall of Katerina Maslova and introducing Dmitry Nekhlyudov, the most important chapters of the novel follow, which describe the trial of the accused. The environment in which the trial takes place is described in detail. Against this background, Tolstoy draws the figures of judges, jurors, and defendants.

The author's comments allow you to see the whole farce of what is happening, which is far from true justice. It seemed that no one cared about the defendant: neither the judges, nor the prosecutor, nor the lawyer, nor the jury wanted to delve into the fate of the unfortunate woman. Everyone had their own “business”, which overshadowed everything that was happening, and turned the process into an empty formality. The case is being considered, the defendant is facing hard labor, and the judges are languishing with melancholy and are only pretending to participate in the hearing.

Even bourgeois law entrusts the presiding officer with the active conduct of the process, and his thoughts are occupied with the upcoming meeting. The prosecutor, in turn, deliberately condemned Maslova and, for the sake of form, makes a pretentious speech with references to Roman lawyers, without even making an attempt to delve into the circumstances of the case.

The novel shows that the jury also does not bother with its duties. Each of them is preoccupied with their own affairs and problems. In addition, these are people of different worldviews and social status, so it is difficult for them to come to a common opinion. However, they unanimously convict the defendant.

Well familiar with the tsarist system of punishment, Tolstoy was one of the first to raise his voice in defense of the rights of convicts. Having walked with his heroes through all circles of courts and institutions of the so-called correctional system, the writer concludes that most of the people whom this system doomed to torment as criminals were not criminals at all: they were victims. Legal science and the judicial process do not at all serve to find the truth. Moreover, with false scientific explanations, such as references to natural crime, they justify the evil of the entire system of justice and punishment of the autocratic state.

L. O. Pasternak. "Morning of Katyusha Maslova"

Tolstoy condemned the dominance of capital, state administration in a police, class society, its church, its court, its science. He saw a way out of this situation in changing the very system of life, which legitimized the oppression of ordinary people. This conclusion contradicted Tolstoy’s teaching about non-resistance to evil, about moral improvement as a means of salvation from all troubles. These reactionary views of Tolstoy were reflected in the novel “Resurrection”. But they faded and retreated before the great truth of Tolstoy’s genius.

One cannot help but say something about Tolstoy’s journalism. Almost all of his famous journalistic articles and appeals are full of thoughts about legality and justice.

In the article “Shame,” he angrily protested against the beating of peasants, against this most absurd and insulting punishment to which one of its classes, “the most industrious, useful, moral and numerous,” is subjected in an autocratic state.

In 1908, indignant at the brutal reprisals against the revolutionary people, against executions and gallows, Tolstoy issued the appeal “They cannot remain silent.” In it, he brands the executioners, whose atrocities, in his opinion, will not calm or frighten the Russian people.

Of particular interest is Tolstoy’s article “Letter to a Student about Law.” Here he, again and again expressing his hard-won thoughts on issues of legality and justice, exposes the anti-people essence of bourgeois jurisprudence, designed to protect private property and the well-being of the powerful.

Tolstoy believed that legal laws must be in accordance with moral standards. These unshakable convictions became the basis of his civic position, from the height of which he condemned the system based on private property and branded its vices.

Justice and execution of punishments in works of Russian literature of the late XIX-XX centuries.

The problems of Russian law and court at the end of the 19th century were widely reflected in the diverse works of another classic of Russian literature, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860-1904). The approach to this topic was due to the rich life experience of the writer.

Chekhov was interested in many areas of knowledge: medicine, law, legal proceedings. Having graduated from the medical faculty of Moscow University in 1884, he was appointed district doctor. In this capacity, he has to go to calls, see patients, participate in forensic autopsies, and act as an expert at court hearings. Impressions from this period of his life served as the basis for a number of his famous works: “Drama on the Hunt”, “Swedish Match”, “Intruder”, “Night before the Court”, “Investigator” and many others.

A.P. Chekhov and L.N. Tolstoy (photo).

In the story “The Intruder,” Chekhov talks about an investigator who has neither flexibility of mind, nor professionalism, and has no idea about psychology at all. Otherwise, he would have realized at first glance that in front of him was a dark, uneducated man who was not aware of the consequences of his action - unscrewing the nuts on the railway. The investigator suspects the man of malicious intent, but does not even bother to explain to him what he is accused of. According to Chekhov, a guardian of the law should not be such a “blockhead,” both professionally and personally.

The language of the story is very laconic and conveys all the comedy of the situation. Chekhov describes the beginning of the interrogation as follows: “In front of the forensic investigator stands a small, extremely skinny little man in a motley shirt and patched ports. His hairy and rowan-eaten face and eyes, barely visible because of thick, overhanging eyebrows, have an expression of gloomy severity. On his head there is a whole cap of unkempt, tangled hair that has long been unkempt, which gives him even greater, spider-like severity. He's barefoot." In fact, the reader again encounters the theme of the “little man,” so characteristic of classical Russian literature, but the comedy of the situation lies in the fact that the further interrogation of the investigator is a conversation between two “little people.” The investigator believes that he has caught an important criminal, because the train crash could have entailed not only material consequences, but also the death of people. The second hero of the story, Denis Grigoriev, does not understand at all: what illegal thing did he do that the investigator is interrogating him? And in response to the question: why was the nut unscrewed, he answers without embarrassment at all: “We make sinkers from nuts... We, the people... Klimovsky men, that is.” The subsequent conversation is similar to a conversation between a deaf man and a mute, but when the investigator announces that Denis is going to be sent to prison, the man is sincerely perplexed: “To prison... If only there was a reason for it, I would have gone, otherwise... you live great ... For what? And he didn’t steal, it seems, and didn’t fight... And if you have doubts about the arrears, your honor, then don’t believe the headman... You ask Mr. the indispensable member... There’s no cross on him, the headman...” .

But the final phrase of the “malefactor” Grigoriev is especially impressive: “The deceased master-general, the kingdom of heaven, died, otherwise he would have shown you, the judges... We must judge skillfully, not in vain... Even if you flog, but for the cause, according to conscience..."

We see a completely different type of investigator in the story “The Swedish Match”. His hero, using only one piece of material evidence - a match - achieves the final goal of the investigation and finds the missing landowner. He is young, hot-tempered, builds various fantastic versions of what happened, but a thorough examination of the scene and the ability to think logically lead him to the true circumstances of the case.

In the story “Sleepy Stupidity,” undoubtedly written from life, the writer caricatured a district court hearing. The time is the beginning of the 20th century, but how surprisingly the trial resembles the district court that Gogol described in “The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich.” The same sleepy secretary reads in a mournful voice the indictment without commas and periods. His reading is like the babbling of a stream. The same judge, prosecutor, jury were laughing out of boredom. They are not at all interested in the substance of the matter. But they will have to decide the fate of the defendant. About such “guardians of justice” Chekhov wrote: “With a formal, soulless attitude towards the individual, in order to deprive an innocent person of the rights of his fortune and sentence him to hard labor, the judge needs only one thing: time. Just time to comply with some formalities for which the judge is paid a salary, and then it’s all over.”

A. P. Chekhov (photography)

"Drama on the Hunt" is an unusual crime story about how

the forensic investigator commits a murder and then investigates it himself. As a result, the innocent person receives 15 years of exile, and the criminal walks free. In this story, Chekhov convincingly shows how socially dangerous is such a phenomenon as the immorality of the servant of Themis, who represents the law and is invested with a certain power. This results in violation of the law and violation of justice.

In 1890, Chekhov makes a long and dangerous trip to Sakhalin. He was prompted to this not by idle curiosity and the romance of travel, but by the desire to become more acquainted with the “world of the outcasts” and to arouse, as he himself said, public attention to the justice that reigned in the country and to its victims. The result of the trip was a voluminous book “Sakhalin Island”, containing a wealth of information on the history, statistics, ethnography of this outskirts of Russia, a description of gloomy prisons, hard labor, and a system of cruel punishments.

The humanist writer is deeply outraged by the fact that convicts are often the servants of their superiors and officers. “...The giving of convicts to the service of private individuals is in complete contradiction with the legislator’s views on punishment,” he writes, “this is not hard labor, but serfdom, since the convict serves not the state, but a person who does not care about correctional goals... " Such slavery, Chekhov believes, has a detrimental effect on the prisoner’s personality, corrupts it, suppresses the prisoner’s human dignity, and deprives him of all rights.

In his book, Chekhov develops Dostoevsky’s idea, which is still relevant today, about the important role of prison authorities in the re-education of criminals. He notes the stupidity and dishonesty of prison governors, when a suspect whose guilt has not yet been proven is kept in a dark cell of a convict prison, and often in a common cell with inveterate murderers, rapists, etc. Such an attitude of people who are obliged to educate prisoners has a corrupting effect on those being educated and only aggravates their base inclinations.

Chekhov is especially indignant at the humiliated and powerless position of women. There is almost no hard labor on the island for them. Sometimes they wash the floors in the office, work in the garden, but most often they are appointed as servants to officials or sent to the “harems” of clerks and overseers. The tragic consequence of this unearned, depraved life is the complete moral degradation of women who are capable of selling their children “for a glass of alcohol.”

Against the background of these terrible pictures, clean children’s faces sometimes flash on the pages of the book. They, together with their parents, endure poverty, deprivation, and humbly endure the atrocities of their parents tormented by life. However, Chekhov still believes that children provide moral support to the exiles, save mothers from idleness, and somehow tie the exiled parents to life, saving them from their final fall.

Chekhov's book caused a great public outcry. The reader saw closely and vividly the enormous tragedy of the humiliated and disadvantaged inhabitants of Russian prisons. The advanced part of society perceived the book as a warning about the tragic death of the country's human resources.

It can be said with good reason that with his book Chekhov achieved the goal that he set for himself when he took on the Sakhalin theme. Even the official authorities were forced to pay attention to the problems raised in it. In any case, after the book was published, by order of the Ministry of Justice, several officials of the Main Prison Directorate were sent to Sakhalin, who practically confirmed that Chekhov was right. The result of these trips were reforms in the field of hard labor and exile. In particular, over the next few years, heavy punishments were abolished, funds were allocated for the maintenance of orphanages, and court sentences to eternal exile and lifelong hard labor were abolished.

Such was the social impact of the book “Sakhalin Island”, brought to life by the civic feat of the Russian writer Anton Pavlovich Chekhov.

Control questions:

1. What characteristic features of the trial are captured in the works of Gogol and Chekhov?

2. How is their civic position manifested in the works of classics of Russian literature about the court?

3. What did Saltykov-Shchedrin see as the main defects of tsarist justice?

4. What, according to Dostoevsky and Chekhov, should an investigator be? And what should it not be?

5. For what reasons did Ostrovsky end up on the police list of unreliable elements?

6. How can you explain the title of Dostoevsky’s novel “Demons”?

7. What did Russian writers see as the main causes of crime? Do you agree with Lombroso's theory of an innate tendency to crime?

8. How are the victims of autocratic justice shown in the novels of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky?

9. What goals did Chekhov pursue when going to the island? Sakhalin? Has he achieved these goals?

10. Which Russian writer owns the words “The world will be saved by beauty”? How do you understand this?

Golyakov I.T. Court and legality in fiction. M.: Legal literature, 1959. P. 92-94.

Radishchev A. N. Complete works in 3 volumes. M.; L.: Publishing House of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1938. T. 1. P. 445-446.

Right there. P. 446.

Latkin V.N. Textbook on the history of Russian law during the imperial period (XVIII and XIX centuries). M.: Zertsalo, 2004. pp. 434-437.

Nepomnyashchiy V.S. Pushkin's lyrics as a spiritual biography. M.: Moscow University Publishing House, 2001. P. 106-107.

Koni A.F. Pushkin’s social views // Honoring the memory of A.S. Pushkin imp. Academy of Sciences on the hundredth anniversary of his birth. May 1899". St. Petersburg, 1900. pp. 2-3.

Right there. pp. 10-11.

Quote by: Koni A.F. Pushkin’s social views // Honoring the memory of A.S. Pushkin imp. Academy of Sciences on the hundredth anniversary of his birth. May 1899". St. Petersburg, 1900. P. 15.

See: Bazhenov A.M. To the mystery of “Grief” (A.S. Griboyedov and his immortal comedy). M.: Moscow University Publishing House, 2001. P. 3-5.

Bazhenov A.M. Decree. op. pp. 7-9.

See also: Kulikova, K. A. S. Griboedov and his comedy “Woe from Wit” // A. S. Griboedov. Woe from the mind. L.: Children's literature, 1979. P.9-11.

Smirnova E.A. Gogol's poem "Dead Souls". L., 1987. pp. 24-25.

Bocharov S.G. About Gogol’s style // Typology of stylistic development of modern literature. M., 1976. S. 415-116.

See also: Vetlovskaya V. E. Religious ideas of utopian socialism and the young F. M. Dostoevsky // Christianity and Russian literature. St. Petersburg, 1994. pp. 229-230.

Nedvesitsky V. A. From Pushkin to Chekhov. 3rd ed. M.: Moscow University Publishing House, 2002. pp. 136-140.

Miller O.F. Materials for the biography of F. M. Dostaevsky. St. Petersburg, 1883. P. 94.

Golyakov I.T. Court and legality in fiction. M.: Legal literature, 1959. pp. 178-182.

Golyakov I.T. Court and legality in fiction. M.: Legal literature, 1959. P. 200-201.

Linkov V.Ya. War and Peace by L. Tolstoy. M.: Moscow University Publishing House, 2007. pp. 5-7.

Golyakov I.T. Court and legality in fiction. M.: Legal literature, 1959. pp. 233-235.

Russian culture of the mid-century is beginning to be attracted by themes of marriage scams - plots that have spread in society thanks to the emergence of enterprising people with character and ambition, but who do not have the ancestral means to make their desires come true. The heroes of Ostrovsky and Pisemsky are not similar in their demands for the world, but are united in their chosen means: in order to improve their financial situation, they do not stop at the irritating pangs of conscience, they struggle for existence, compensating for the inferiority of their social status with hypocrisy. The ethical side of the issue worries the authors only to the extent that all parties to the conflict are punished. There are no obvious victims here; money of one group of characters and seeker activity "profitable place" in life, regardless of whether it is marriage or a new service, are equally immoral. The plot of family-domestic commerce excludes any hint of compassion for the victim; it simply cannot exist where financial conflicts are resolved and the results ultimately satisfy everyone equally.

Ostrovsky immerses the reader in the exotic life of the merchants, commenting on the themes of previous literature with the help of farce. In the play “Poverty is not a Vice,” the problem of fathers and children is completely mediated by monetary relations; images of nobly unhappy brides are accompanied by frank conversations about dowries (“Guilty Without Guilt”). Without much sentimentality and frankly, the characters discuss money problems, all kinds of matchmakers eagerly arrange weddings, seekers of rich hands walk around the living rooms, trade and marriage deals are discussed. Already the titles of the playwright’s works - “There wasn’t a penny, but suddenly it was Altyn”, “Bankrupt”, “Mad Money”, “Profitable Place” - indicate a change in the vector of cultural development of the phenomenon of money, offering various ways to strengthen social position. More radical recommendations are discussed in Shchedrin’s “Diary of a Provincial in St. Petersburg,” the fourth chapter of which presents a picturesque catalog of enrichment options. Stories about people who have achieved wealth are framed by the dream genre, which allows us to imagine human enterprise without false social modesty and bypassing pathetic assessments: "black-haired" that he prays so earnestly to God before dinner, “he took away his mother’s estate from his own son”, brought candies from Moscow to his other dear aunt, and “Having eaten them, two hours later she gave her soul to God”, third financial fraud with peasant serfs "arranged in the best possible way", With remained a profit. The author needed the devilish phantasmagoria of sleep in order, avoiding edification, to reveal the universal law of life: “We rob without shame, and if anything upsets us in such financial transactions, it is only failure. The operation was a success - good luck to you, good fellow! It didn’t work out - it’s a waste!”

In “The Diary of a Provincial...” there is a sense of following the trends that occupied the literature of the second half of the 19th century. Motives already familiar from Goncharov are revealed. For example, in “Ordinary History” the difference between metropolitan and provincial morals is indicated by the attitude towards phenomena given, it would seem, to the full and free possession of man: “You breathe fresh air there all year round,- the elder Aduev edifyingly admonishes the younger, - and here this pleasure costs money - that’s all true! perfect antipodes! In Saltykov-Shchedrin, this theme is played out in the context of the motive of theft, explained as follows: “Obviously, he has already become infected with the St. Petersburg air; he stole without provincial spontaneity, but calculating in advance what his chances of acquittal might be.”.

Criminal extraction of money, theft is introduced into the philosophical system of human society, when people begin to be divided into those who are rich and die, and those who want the right to become an heir, "like two and two are four", capable “sprinkle with poison, suffocate with pillows, hack to death with an axe!”. The author is not inclined to categorically accuse those in need of money; on the contrary, he resorts to comparisons with the animal world in order to somehow clarify the strange feeling experienced by the poor towards the rich: “The cat sees a piece of bacon in the distance, and since the experience of past days proves that she cannot see this piece like her ears, she naturally begins to hate it. But, alas! the motive for this hatred is false. It is not lard that she hates, but the fate that separates her from it... Lard is such a thing that it is impossible not to love it. And so she begins to love him. To love - and at the same time to hate..."

The categorical vocabulary of this pseudo-philosophical passage is very vaguely reminiscent of the syllogisms of Chernyshevsky’s novel “What is to be done?”, the heroes of which strive to elevate every life event, a single fact, to a generalization that invariably proves the theory of rational egoism. Calculations, figures, commercial calculations, balance sheets are in one way or another confirmed by moral summaries that certify the truth of the total accounting view of a person. Perhaps only Vera Pavlovna’s dreams are free from calculation; they are given over to the contemplation of fantastic events. It can be assumed that the future, as it is seen in the heroine’s dreams, does not know the need for money, but no less convincing is the assumption that Vera Pavlovna in her dreams is taking a break from calculating theory; The good thing about otherness is that in it you can free yourself from the need to save, miser, and count. But it still remains a strange circumstance why the heroine leaves her pragmatic genius, it is enough for her to close her eyes. Shchedrin, as if polemicizing with Chernyshevsky, saturates the plot of the dream with hyper-commercial operations; frees the feelings of the characters from the yoke of public protective morality, allowing them to listen to the financial voice of the soul.

Chernyshevsky's novel offers two plans for the heroine's existential realization - a rational present and an ideal future. The past is associated with a dark time, not connected with the new reality by the idea of conscious self-comprehension and rationalization of all spheres of individual existence. Vera Pavlovna successfully learned the lessons of the pragmatic worldview that had spread in Russia. The handicraft production she started, reminiscent of the industrial experiments of the West, is deliberately idealized by the author, who provides evidence of the prospects of the enterprise. Only the psychological well-being of female workers who dedicate working and personal time to the rational philosophy of communist labor is unclear. In the novel there are enthusiastic apologies for living together, but even without questioning them, it is difficult to imagine that for anyone, excluding the hostess, the possibility of individual improvisation within the rigid structure of prescribed duties is allowed. In the best case, the apprenticeship of female workers can result in the opening of their own business or re-education: this is not at all bad, but it narrows the space for private initiative. At the level of a probable formula, Vera Pavlovna’s experiment is good, but as a reflection of reality, it is utopian and turns the narrative itself more towards a fantastic recommendation “how to honestly make your first million” than to an artistic document of the morals of people who make money.

In portraying merchants and “other financial people,” the dramatic scenes of the play “What is Commerce” by Saltykov-Shchedrin are an example of an attempt to encyclopedically present the history of hoarding in Russia. The characters chosen are domestic merchants, already rich, and a beginner, just dreaming “about the possibility of becoming a “merchant” over time”. Introduction to the text of another hero - "loitering" - allows us to connect Saltykov-Shchedrin’s play with the creative tradition of N.V. Gogol - “a gentleman of suspicious character, engaged... in the composition of morally descriptive articles a la Tryapichkin”. Over tea and a bottle of Tenerife, there is a leisurely conversation about the art of trading, costs and benefits. The merchant plot, unlike the small-scale plot from “What is to be done?”, is unthinkable without an invariable projection of the past onto the present. The future here is vague, it is not written out in joyful tones, as it contradicts business patriarchal wisdom: “Happiness is not what you rave about at night, but what you sit and ride on”. Those gathered nostalgically remember the bygone times when they lived “as if in girlhood, they knew no grief”, capital was made by deceiving the peasants, and “in old age, sins were atoned for before God”. Now both morals and habits have changed, everyone, - the merchants complain, - “he strives to snatch his share and make fun of the merchant: the bribes have increased - before it was enough to give him something to drink, but now the official is strutting, he can no longer get drunk, so “let’s, he says, now water the river with shinpan!”.”

Gogol's loitering Tryapichkin listens to a story about how it is profitable for the treasury to supply goods and to deceive the state by covering a successful business with a bribe to the clerk of the police officer, who sold off state grain to the side "for a quarter" described it like this "...what am I, - the merchant Izhburdin admits, - I even marveled at it myself. There is both flood and shallow water here: only there was no enemy invasion.”. In the final scene "lounging" sums up what he heard, assessing the activities of the merchants in emotional terms that ideally express the essence of the issue: “fraud... deceit... bribes... ignorance... stupidity... general disgrace!” In general terms, this is the content of the new “Inspector General,” but there is no one to give its plot to, except perhaps Saltykov-Shchedrin himself. In “The History of One City,” the writer conducts a large-scale revision of the entire Russian Empire, and the chapter “Worship of Mammon and Repentance” pronounces a stinging verdict on those who, already in the consciousness of the end of the 20th century, will personify the sovereign conscience and selfless love for the lofty; those same merchants and those in power who care about the welfare of the people, who built their benevolent image, taking more into account the forgetful descendants and completely ignoring those who are poor from "awareness of one's poverty": “...if a person who has alienated several million rubles in his favor later even becomes a philanthropist and builds a marble palazzo in which he will concentrate all the wonders of science and art, then he still cannot be called a skilled public figure, but should can only be called a skilled swindler". The writer notes with caustic despair that “these truths were not yet known” in the mythical Foolov, and as for the native Fatherland, it has been persistently proven at all times: “Russia is a vast, abundant and rich state - but some people are stupid, starving to death in an abundant state.”.

Russian thought is faced with the task of determining the place of money in the essential coordinates of social and individual existence; the problem of finding a compromise is long overdue. It is no longer possible to blanketly deny the role of economic factors in the formation of national character. The Slavophiles' poeticization of patriarchal life and morality collides with a reality that is increasingly inclined towards a new type of consciousness, so unpleasantly reminiscent of Western models of self-realization, erected on the philosophy of calculation. Contrasting them as antagonistic ideas of spirituality does not seem very convincing. The idealization of the merchants by early Ostrovsky unexpectedly reveals a frightening set of properties, even more terrible than European pragmatism. The urban theme reveals conflicts initiated by monetary relations that cannot be ignored. But how to portray a portrait of a new national type of merchant, who has undoubted advantages over the classical cultural characters of the beginning of the century, who have long since discredited themselves in public life? The merchant is interesting as a person, attractive in his strong-willed character, but "petty tyrant", - states Ostrovsky, - and "outspoken thief", insists Saltykov-Shchedrin. Literature's search for a new hero is a phenomenon, although spontaneous, but reflecting the need to discover prospects, that goal-setting that acts as a paradigm of national thought, becoming a significant link in the new hierarchy of practical and moral values. Russian literature of the mid-century is fascinated by the merchant, the man who created himself, yesterday's peasant, and now the owner of the business; most importantly, with its authority and the scale of its enterprises it can prove the depravity of the myth about the beautiful little and poor man. Writers sympathize with poverty, but also realize the dead end of its artistic contemplation and analysis, as if anticipating an impending catastrophe in the form of the philosophical objectification of poverty, destroying the classical set of ideas about universals - freedom, duty, evil, etc. With all the love, for example, Leskov for The characters from the people in the writer’s works are no less obvious about their keen interest in the trading people. Shchedrin's invective is somewhat softened by Leskov; he does not look so far as to detect a thieves' nature in future patrons. The author of the novel “Nowhere”, in the position of one of the heroines, steps back from ideological discussions and looks at dramatically complicated issues through the eyes of everyday life, no less truthful than the views of the poets.

One of the scenes of the work represents a domestic discussion about the purpose of women; comes to real-life evidence, stories are told that would have horrified the heroes of the first half of the century and which will be called openly vicious more than once - about the happy marriage of a girl and a general, that “although not old, but in real age”. Discussion "real" love, condemnation of young husbands ( “there’s no use, everyone only thinks about themselves”) is interrupted by frankness "a sentimental forty-year-old housewife", a mother of three daughters, listing practical reasons and doubts regarding their family well-being: “Rich nobles are quite rare these days; officials depend on the place: a profitable place, and good; otherwise there is nothing to eat; scientists receive a small allowance: I decided to give all my daughters to merchants.”.

There is an objection to such a statement: “Only will their inclination be?”, causing a categorical rebuke from the landlady to Russian novels, which, she is sure, instill in readers bad thoughts. Preference is given to French literature, which no longer has such an influence on girlish minds as at the beginning of the century. Zarnitsyn's question: “Who will marry poor people?” does not confuse a mother of many children, who remains true to her principles, but outlines a serious theme of culture: the literary typology, proposed by the artistic model of reality, the standard of not always obligatory, but obligatory in the organization of thought and action, created by the novels of Pushkin and Lermontov, is exhausting itself, losing its norm-creating direction. The absence in real life of rich nobles, culturally identical to the classical characters, frees up the space for their existential and mental habitat. This place turns out to be vacant, which is why the model of literary and practical self-identification of the reader is destroyed. The hierarchy of literary types, ways of thinking and embodiment is being destroyed. Type of so-called extra person turns into a cultural relic, loses its resemblance to life; Accordingly, the remaining levels of the system are adjusted. Small man, previously interpreted primarily from ethical positions, without balance in the destroyed discredit extra person a figure of balance, acquires a new vital and cultural status; it begins to be perceived in the context not of potential moral goodness, but in the concrete reality of the opposition “poverty - wealth”.

The characters of novels of the second half of the century, if they retain the features of the classical typology, then only as traditional masks of external forms of cultural existence. Money turns into an idea that reveals the viability of the individual, his existential rights. The question of obligations does not arise immediately and is distinguished by the plebeian plot of a petty official and a commoner, whose plot positions boil down to pathetic attempts to survive. The genre of physiological essay reduces the problem of poverty - wealth to a natural-philosophical critique of capital and does not resolve the dilemma itself. The statement seems too superficial: wealth is evil, and poverty requires compassion. The objective economic factors that led to such a state of society are not taken into account. On the other hand, cultural interest in the psychology of poverty and wealth is intensifying. If earlier both of these hypostases were only defined as a given, now there has been increased attention to the existential nature of the antinomies.

Poverty turns out to be more accessible to artistic research; it is clothed in moral concepts, centered in sovereign ethical categories. An apology is created for the marginal state of a person who deliberately does not compromise with his conscience. This plot also exhausts peasant images in literature. The topic of wealth turns out to be completely squeezed out of the moral continuum of the integrity of the world. Such a situation, based on a radical opposition, cannot long suit a culture interested in forms of contact between two marginal limits. The intra-subjective relationship between honest poverty and vicious wealth begins to be explored, and it is discovered that a convincing paradigm does not always correspond to the true position of people on the conventional axis of ethical coordinates. The moment of unpredictability of the seemingly socially programmed behavior of the heroes is explored by Leskov in the story “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk”. The merchant Zinovy Borisovich, whom the author sympathizes with, is strangled by folk characters - Ekaterina Lvovna and Sergei. They have a poisoned old man and a murdered baby on their conscience. Leskov does not simplify the conflict. The reasons for murder are said to be passion and money. The saturation of intrigue with such unequal concepts elevates the plot to a mystical picture that requires consideration from a different point of view from the everyday one. The co-creation of two heroes, seemingly straight out of Nekrasov’s poems, leads to the total destruction of the world. Exposure-inert people become attached to the idea of passion; it is not just an incentive for feeling or money, but a concentrated image of a new meaning, an ecstatic sphere of application of forces, beyond which the significance of everyday experience is lost, and a feeling of liberation from reflexive patterns of behavior occurs. One reason (money or love) would be enough to illustrate the idea of passion. Leskov deliberately combines both impulses in order to avoid identifying the heroes’ actions with culturally approved plots. The resulting integrity of the unity of aspirations in the metaphysical plane allows us to take money out of the simulation, optional space of individual life activity to the level of a beginning equal in parameters to love, which previously exhausted the content of the idea of passion.

The falsity of this synonymy is revealed only in the bloody methods of achieving the goal, the criminal implementation of plans: the radicalism of the very dream of becoming rich and happy is not questioned. If the heroes had to strangle the villains, there would be many reader justifications for the idea of passion. Leskov's experiment consists of an attempt to endow the heroine with the intention of comprehending an infinitely complete existence, gaining the much-needed freedom. The impracticability of the goal lies in the inversion of moral dominants, an attempt on the unlawful and incomprehensible. Positive experience, if we can talk about a plot oversaturated with murders (we mean, first of all, the philosophical revelation of the monetary plot of Leskov’s text), is contained in an attempt to push the boundaries of equally global emotions, through false forms of self-realization of characters to come to the formulation of the idea of passion as rationalized and in that the same type of chaotic activity, regardless of what it is aimed at - love or money. Equalized concepts exchange their genetic fundamentals and can equally act as a prelude to vice or the existential formation of a person.

The Shakespearean allusion noted in the title of the work becomes a thematic exposition of the Russian character. Lady Macbeth's will to power suppresses even hints of other desires; Gerogni's plot focuses on the dominant urge. Katerina Lvovna is trying to change the world of objective laws, and the willpower of her chosen one does little to correct her ideas about morality. Shakespeare's concentrated image implies the revelation of an integral character in the process of devastation of the surrounding world. Everything that interferes with the achievement of the intended goal is physically destroyed, a self-sufficient character displaces those who are not viable from the sphere criminally created to calm the soul, embodied by the idea of passion.

Russian literature has not yet known such a character. The dedication of classical heroines is associated with a one-time action resulting from the impulsiveness of the decision. Katerina Lvovna differs from them in her consistency in realizing her dreams, which undoubtedly indicates the emergence of a new character in culture. The vicious score of self-manifestation indicates spiritual degradation, while simultaneously signifying the ability to claim one's own identity as an unattainable goal. In this regard, the heroine Leskova marks the beginning of a qualitative transformation of the dilapidated literary typology. The general classification paradigm of “rich-poor” is confirmed by the appearance of a character that gives the image scheme a special philosophical scale. The rich no longer appear as opposition to poverty, but are revealed in the thirst for power over circumstances. The merchant plot points to a similar phenomenon, but a chain of small machinations and compromises opens up the theme of the merchant for social satire, externalizing and exaggerating the global philosophy of acquisition, deception and crime, leading to freedom and the ability to dictate one’s will. The appearance of Leskov's heroine provoked culture into ideological experimentation, unthinkable without an ideological impulse, directly or indirectly based on a pragmatic basis, then displaced by a borderline psychological state beyond the limits of spiritual and practical experience. Within a year, Dostoevsky’s novel “Crime and Punishment” will be published, in which the semantics of the will of a self-aware being will be revealed in the transcendental uncertainty of perspectives (punishment) and the concreteness of the measurement of empirical reality (crime). In terms of the reflexivity of consciousness, Raskolnikov can be likened to Shakespeare’s Macbeth, in whom logos triumphs over rationality. “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” expands the interpretative horizon of Raskolnikov’s plot with a naturalistic-pragmatic version of the implementation of a global, individual utopia that extends to the universe.

In Dostoevsky's novel, the presence of textual memory, an integral set of motives outlined by Leskov, is palpable. The tragedy of Katerina Lvovna is in the hypertrophied will, the defeat of Raskolnikov is in the atrophied character, painful self- and worldview. Writers offer two hypostases of the philosophy of action, equally based on the image of money; they are expected, but turn out to be insignificant, since they are replaced by ethical concepts. Russian literature reveals the line that will begin to separate the sphere of absolute subjectivity of the spirit from objectified forms "commercial" self-realization of characters. After the dramatic experience of Katerina Lvovna and Raskolnikov, a new period of mastering the topic of money begins. Now they are offered as a reason for talking about the transtemporal and are not condemned, but are stated as a consequence of some other-existential meaning. On the other hand, the financial plot takes on a new meaning, becoming a symbolic territory that excludes superficial satirical commentary, organically accepting the mythological signs of sacred categories - love, will, power, law, virtue and vice. Money appears in this list of ontological parameters of being as a unit of their measurement, an operational number that creates sums of human and cosmological scales and crushes concrete and empirical nature into negligible quantities.

It should be noted, however, that money in “Lady Macbeth...” and “Crime and Punishment” does not play the main role; it only mediates plot situations and determines them dramatically. The financial side of life does not exhaust the activities of the characters, being only the background of the plot world. The philosophy of thoughts and actions of the heroes is unusually flexible, transforming depending on the circumstances. An example of a different type of human existence is presented in Leskov’s “Iron Will”. The German Hugo Karlovich Pectoralis demonstrates a radical pattern of behavior, elevating money, as well as principles, into a paradigm of self-realization. Constant declarations of the hero's own "iron will" initially they give predictable dividends; The desired amount has finally been collected, great production prospects are opening up: “He set up a factory and at the same time maintained his reputation at every step as a man who rises above circumstances and puts everything on his own everywhere.”. Everything is going well until now "iron will" Germans do not encounter Russians with weakness of will, poverty, kindness, arrogance and carelessness. The position of the antagonist Vasily Safronovich, because of whose reckless unprincipledness the dispute arose, is folklore no wonder: “...we... are Russian people- With heads are bony, fleshy below. It’s not like German sausage, you can chew it all up and there will be something left of us.”.

For a reader accustomed to literary glorification of the businesslike spirit of the Germans, familiar with Goncharov’s Stolz and the students of European economists, preachers of rational egoism - Chernyshevsky’s heroes, it is not difficult to imagine how Pectoralis’s litigation with "bony and fleshy". The German will achieve his goal, that’s why he is a good worker, and stubborn, and a smart engineer, and an expert in the laws. But the situation is not developing in favor of Hugo Karlovich. Leskov, for the first time in Russian literature, describes the plot of the idle life of a worthless person on interest seized from an adamant enemy. The reader's expectations are not even disappointed; the phantasmagoric story destroys the usual stereotypes of culture. Russian "maybe", hope for chance, coupled with the familiar clerk Zhiga, make up a capital of five thousand rubles "lazy, sluggish and careless" Safronych. True, money does not benefit anyone. Leskov's story reveals original, not yet explored trends in the movement of the financial plot. It turns out that pragmatism, strengthened by ambition and will, is not always successful in the art of making money. The purposeful German goes broke, the spineless Safronich ensures that he goes to the tavern every day. Fate decrees that the vast Russian space for financial initiative turns out to be extremely narrowed; it is aimed at a person who does not trust calculation and relies more on the usual course of things. It is no coincidence in this regard that the scene of the discussion between the police chief and Pectoralis about the plan for the new house becomes. The essence of the discussion is whether it is possible to place six windows on a façade of six fathoms, “and in the middle there is a balcony and a door”. The engineer objects: “The scale won’t allow it”. To which he receives the answer: “What scale do we have in our village... I’m telling you, we don’t have scale.”.

The author's irony reveals signs of reality that is not subject to the influence of time; the wretched patriarchal reality does not know the wisdom of capitalist accumulation, it is not trained in Western tricks and trusts desire more than profit and common sense. The conflict between Leskov’s heroes, like the duel between Oblomov and Stolz, ends in a draw, the heroes of “Iron Will” die, which symbolically indicates their equal uselessness for the Russian "scale". Pectoralis was never able to give up his principles "iron will", too provocative and incomprehensible to others. Safronych, out of the happiness of his free life, drinks himself to death, leaving behind a literary heir - Chekhov's Simeonov-Pishchik, who is constantly under fear of complete ruin, but thanks to another accident, he is improving his financial affairs.

In Leskov's story, the issue of German entrepreneurship is discussed too often for this cultural and historical fact to be confirmed once again. Russian literature of the 70s. XIX century felt the need to say goodbye to the myth of the foreigner-merchant and the overseas founder of large enterprises. The image of the German has exhausted itself and transferred its already considerably weakened potential to domestic merchants and industrialists. The answer to the question of why Leskov pits the interests of a businesslike German against a banal man in the street, and not a figure equal to Goncharov’s Stolz, lies in the writer’s attempt to free up literary space to depict the activities of the future Morozovs, Shchukins, Prokhorovs, Khludovs, Alekseevs and hundreds of other enterprising domestic entrepreneurs, acquaintances with Russian "scale" and showing miracles of perseverance and resourcefulness in achieving the goal. The German turns out to be too straightforward to understand all the subtleties of the relations prevailing in the provinces. What is needed here is a mobile mind, ingenuity, worldly cunning, youthful enthusiasm, and not a manifestation of iron will and principles. The author of the story deliberately compares the energy of the self-builder and everyday life mired in entropy: such a striking contrast in Chernyshevsky’s interpretation would turn out to be an ideal sphere for cultivating life for a very effective idea. Such decisions are also necessary for culture; the biased preaching of beautiful and too calculating views one way or another reflects the essence of the worldview of social reality. Tactical literary conflicts cannot exhaust all of its cultural, historical and philosophical content. Leskov's artistic experience belongs to the strategic level of commentary on problems; classification of qualities and properties of people, their unification in a new literary conflict destroys well-known typological models, polemicizes with unconditional thematic myths.

Starting with Leskov, culture no longer solves specific problems of characters’ adaptation to society or the universe, but diagnoses categorical hierarchies of the bodily-spiritual, material-sensory, private-national. The mythology of the Russian character is being revised, painfully familiar themes and images are being revised.

QUESTIONS FOR CONSIDERATION AND DISCUSSION

SATIRICAL MASTERY OF M. E. SALTYKOV-SHCHEDRIN

Early stories (“Contradictions”, “Entangled Affair”) and philosophical discussions of the 50-60s. 19th century:

a) the theme of social injustice and images of despair;

b) interpretation of Gogol’s motifs.

“The History of a City” as a grotesque panorama of Russia:
“Fairy tales” in the context of social and aesthetic issues:

Turkov A. M. Saltykov-Shchedrin. - M., 1981
Bushmin A. S. The artistic world of Saltykov-Shchedrin. - L., 1987
Prozorov V.V. Saltykov-Shchedrin. - M., 1988
Nikolaev D.P. Shchedrin’s laughter. Essays on satirical poetics. - M., 1988

"Woe from Wit." Maid Lisa

Lisa is a classic type of maid who arranges her mistress’s love affairs. She is a serf of the Famusovs, but in the house of her masters, Lisa is in the position of a servant-friend of Sophia. She has a sharp tongue, she has free manners and freedom in dealing with Chatsky and Sophia. Since Lisa grew up with her educated young lady, her speech is a mixture of common people and affectation, so natural in the mouth of a maid. This half-young lady, half-servant plays the role of Sophia's companion. Lisa is an active participant in the comedy, she is cunning, shielding the young lady, and laughs at her, dodging Famusova’s lordly advances. She says: “Let me go, you flighty people, come to your senses, you are old people.” He remembers Chatsky, with whom Sophia grew up together, regretting that the young lady has lost interest in him. Molchalin is on an equal footing with Lisa, trying to look after her until the young lady sees it.

She comes to him, and he comes to me,

And I... I’m the only one who’s scared to death in love.-

How can you not love the bartender Petrusha!

Carrying out instructions for her young lady, Lisa almost sympathizes with the love affair and even tries to reason with Sophia, saying that “love will be of no use.” Lisa, unlike Sophia, understands perfectly well that Molchalin is not a match for her mistress and that Famusov will never give Sophia as his wife to Molchalin. He needs a son-in-law who has a position in society and a fortune. Fearing a scandal, Famusov will send Sophia to her aunt in the Saratov wilderness, but after a while he will try to marry her to a man in his circle. A more brutal reprisal awaits the serfs. Famusov first of all takes out his anger on the servants. He orders Liza: “Go to the hut, march, go after the birds.” And the doorman Filka threatens to exile to Siberia: “To work for you, to settle you.” From the lips of the serf-owner, the servants hear their own sentence.

"Captain's daughter". "Dubrovsky". Anton, nanny

Anton and the nanny……….- servants from the work “Dubrovsky”. They are representatives of serf courtyard people, devoted to the point of selflessness to their masters, who respected them for their high honesty and devotion. Despite the difficult living conditions, these servants retained a warm human heart, a bright mind, and attention to people.

In the image of Anton, Pushkin captured the sober and sharp mind of the people, a sense of self-esteem and independence, the gift of wit and accurate and vivid speech. In his speech there is an abundance of proverbs and figurative speech: “often he is his own judge,” “he doesn’t give a damn,” “on parcels,” “not only the skin, but also the meat.”

Anton knew Vladimir as a child, taught him to ride a horse, amused him. He was strongly attached to Vladimir, whom he remembered as a child and then still loved, but at the same time he expresses his feelings for Vladimir in a form familiar to him as a serf (“bowed to him to the ground”)

Anton has no slavish fear in relation to masters. He, like other serfs, hates the cruel landowner Troekurov, he is not going to submit to him, he is ready to fight with him.

Nanny of Vladimir Dubrovsky She was a kind woman, attentive to people, although she was far from thinking about the possibility of fighting the landowners.

She was very attached to the Dubrovsky family: pity and care for the old man Dubrovsky, concern about his affairs, about the court decision, love for Vladimir, whom she nursed and affectionately calls in her letter “my clear falcon.” Her letter also indicates expressions that were familiar to a serf when addressing a master and which were explained by his servitude (“your faithful slave,” “and we have been yours from time immemorial,” “does he serve you well”). But when she meets Vladimir, the nanny behaves not like a master, but like a loved one (“she hugged her with tears…”).

“The Captain's Daughter” Servant Savelich.

One of the brightest images from the people is the servant Savelich (“The Captain’s Daughter”). Savelich appears before us without the “shadow of slavish humiliation.” The great inner nobility and spiritual richness of his nature are fully revealed in the completely unselfish and deep human affection of a poor, lonely old man for his pet.

Pushkinsky Savelich is convinced that serfs must faithfully serve their masters. But his devotion to his masters is far from slavish humiliation. Let us remember his words in a letter to his master Grinev-father, who, having learned about his son’s duel, reproaches Savelich for his oversight. The servant, in response to rude, unfair reproaches, writes: “... I am not an old dog, but your faithful servant, I obey the master’s orders and have always served you diligently and lived to see my gray hair.” In the letter, Savelich calls himself a “slave,” as was customary then when serfs addressed their masters, but the entire tone of his letter breathes with a feeling of great human dignity, imbued with a bitter reproach for an undeserved insult.

A serf, a courtyard man, Savelich is filled with a sense of dignity, he is smart, intelligent, and has a sense of responsibility for the assigned work. And he has been entrusted with a lot - he is actually raising the boy. He taught him to read and write. Forcibly deprived of his family, Savelich felt truly fatherly love for the boy and young man, and showed not servile, but sincere, heartfelt care for Pyotr Grinev.

A more detailed acquaintance with Savelich begins after Pyotr Grinev’s departure from his parental home. And every time Pushkin creates situations in which Grinev commits actions, mistakes, and Savelich helps him out, helps him, saves him. The very next day after leaving home, Grinev got drunk, lost a hundred rubles to Zurin, and “had dinner at Arinushka’s.” Savelich “gasped” when he saw the drunken master, but Grinev called him a “bastard” and ordered him to put himself to bed. The next morning, showing lordly power, Grinev orders the lost money to be paid, telling Savelich that he is his master. This is the morality that justifies Grinev’s behavior.

The landowner's "child" deliberately assumes "adult" rudeness, wanting to escape from the "uncle's" care and prove that he is no longer a child. At the same time, he “feels sorry for the poor old man,” he experiences remorse and “silent repentance.” After some time, Grinev directly asks Savelich for forgiveness and makes peace with him.

When Savelich finds out about Grinev’s duel with Shvabrin, he rushes to the place of the duel with the intention of protecting his master. Grinev not only did not thank the old man, but also accused him of informing his parents. If it were not for Savelich’s intervention at the time of the trial and the oath to Pugachev, Grinev would have been hanged. He was ready to take Grinev’s place under the gallows. And Pyotr Grinev will also risk his life when he rushes to the rescue of Savelich, captured by the Pugachevites.

Savelich, unlike the rebellious peasants, is betrayed by the Grinevs, he defends their property and, like the gentlemen, considers Pugachev a robber. A striking episode of the work is Savelich’s demand to return the things taken by the rebels.

Savelich left the crowd to give Pugachev his register. Serf Savelich knows how to read and write. The rebel and leader of the uprising is illiterate. "What's this?" - Pugachev asked importantly. “Read it, you’ll see it,” Savelich answered. Pugachev accepted the paper and looked at it for a long time with a significant look. “Why are you writing so cleverly?” - he finally said, “Our bright eyes can’t make out anything here. Where is my chief secretary?

The comical behavior of Pugachev and the childishness of his play do not humiliate the rebel, but Savelich, thanks to the created situation, does not humiliate himself with a servile request to return the stolen master's robes, linen Dutch shirts with cuffs, a cellar with tea utensils. The scale of interests of Pugachev and Savelich are incommensurable. But, defending the plundered goods, Savelich is right in his own way. And we cannot be left indifferent by the old man’s courage and dedication. He boldly and fearlessly turns to the impostor, not thinking about what the demand for the return of things “stolen by the villains” threatens him; he also remembered the hare sheepskin coat given to Pugachev by Grinev at the first meeting in the snowstorm. Grinev’s generous gift to the unknown “peasant” who saved the heroes during a snowstorm, Savelich’s ingenuity and dedication will prove to be life-saving for both the servant and the young officer.

"Dead Souls". Parsley, Selifan.

Selifan and Petrushka are two serf servants. They are given as a convincing example of the destructive influence of the serfdom system on the people. But neither Selifan nor Petrushka can be considered as representatives of the peasant people as a whole.

The coachman Selifan and the footman Petrushka are two serf servants of Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, these are courtyards, that is, serfs torn from the land by the master and taken into personal service. In order for them to better look after the master, courtyard servants were very often not allowed to get married (and women were not allowed to get married). Their life is hard.

Petrushka “even had a noble impulse to enlightenment, that is, to read books whose contents were not difficult for him: he did not care at all whether it was the adventures of a hero in love, just a primer or a prayer book - he read everything with equal attention... Although Gogol humorously describes the reading process serf servant Chichikov, his “passion for reading,” but still the fact of spreading literacy among serfs is important in itself. Petrushka’s entire appearance and behavior, his gloomy appearance, silence, and drunkenness reveal his deep dissatisfaction with life and hopeless despair.

Chichikov shows much more “participation” for the dead peasants than for the living Selifan or Petrushka who belong to him.

Petrushka’s friend Selifan is also curious. We can learn something about Selifan’s concepts when he, blissfully drunk, takes his master from Malinovka and, as usual, talks to the horses. He praises the venerable bay horse and the brown Assessor, who “do their duty” and reproaches the crafty sloth Chubary: “Uh, barbarian!” Damn Bonaparte!.. No, you live in truth when you want to be respected.”

Chichikov’s servants are also characterized by that “in their own mind” secrecy of peasants who will appear when the masters are talking to them and asking something from them: here the “men” play fools, because who knows what the gentlemen are up to, but of course something bad. This is what Petrushka and Selifan did when officials of the city of NN began to extort information about Chichikov from them, because “this class of people has a very strange custom. If you ask him directly about something, he will never remember, will not get it all into his head, and will even simply answer that he doesn’t know, but if you ask him about something else, then he will drag it in and tell him in such detail , although you don’t want to know.

In his works, he first raised the topic of the “idiocy” of slavery, downtrodden, powerless and hopeless existence; This theme is embodied in the image of Petrushka with his strange way of reading books and all the features of his sad appearance, and partly in Selifan, in his habitual patience, his conversations with horses (who should he talk to if not horses!), his reasoning about the dignity of his master and about the fact that flogging a person is not harmful.

"Inspector". Osip.

Osip's words about the delights of metropolitan life, in essence, give an idea of St. Petersburg, in which tens of thousands of servants, huddled in the miserable closets of noble mansions, lead a forced, idle, essentially bitter and hateful existence.

Osip's monologue occupies a significant place in comedy. It is in it that some aspects of St. Petersburg life arise, the product of which Khlestakov was. Osip reports that Khlestakov is not an auditor, but an emissary, and this gives the entire further action an acutely comical overtones.

Osip pronounces the first lines of his monologue with annoyance. He seems to be complaining about the unlucky master, because of whom the servant must experience hunger and humiliation.

Osip talks irritably and grumpily about Khlestakov. But when he remembered the village, where he could lie on a bed all his life and eat pies, his intonation changed, it became dreamily melodious. However, Osip has no antipathy towards St. Petersburg either. Talking about the “delicate conversations” and “haberdashery treatment” of St. Petersburg residents, Osip becomes more and more animated and reaches almost delight.

The memory of the owner makes him preoccupied and angry again, and he begins to read morals to Khlestakov. The conflict of the situation is obvious: Khlestakov is not in the room. Osip himself eventually understands the helplessness of his teachings addressed to an absent face, and his tone becomes sad, even melancholy: “Oh, my God, if only there was some cabbage soup!” It seems like now the whole world has been eaten.”

The appearance of Khlestakov and the scenes with Osip make it possible to notice in Khlestakov a strange mixture of beggary and lordly arrogance, helplessness and self-confident contempt, frivolity and demandingness, courteous courtesy and arrogance.

Internal tension is born of another conflict, deep and not only comic. It is a conflict between truth and deception, error and truth. The beginning of this conflict is Osip’s monologue, who, after Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky’s gossip about a passing inspector, tells us about Khlestakov, makes us understand how little his owner resembles the “incognito damned.” Obviously, it is no coincidence that Gogol instructs Osip, a man from the people, with clear common sense and an independent mind, to reveal the conflict between truth and deception.

"Oblomov." Zakhar.

The image of Zakhar, a valet and servant of Ilya Ilyich since childhood, also helps to better understand the image of the main character. Zakhar is the second Oblomov, his kind of double. The techniques for revealing the image are the same. The novel traces the fate of the hero, his relationship with the master, character, and preferences. A detailed description of the room and a portrait of the hero are given. Several details in the description of Zakhar’s appearance are interesting. The author especially highlights sideburns. They are also mentioned at the end of the novel: “The sideburns are still big, but wrinkled and tangled like felt.”. Just like the robe and sofa, Oblomov’s constant companions, the couch and frock coat are Zakhar’s irreplaceable things. These are symbolic details. The couch tells us about laziness, contempt for work, the frock coat (by the way, with a hole) about reverence for the master; This is also a memory of my beloved Oblomovka. Goncharov describes in detail the character of Zakhar, noting his laziness, impracticality (everything falls out of hand) and devotion to the master. Devotion is noted not only in the story about the service in the Oblomovs’ house, but also in the comparison of Zakhar with a faithful dog: “At the master’s call “Zakhar!” You can hear the grumbling of a chained dog.". As in Oblomov, there is both bad and good in Zakhara. Despite his laziness and untidiness, Zakhar is not disgusted; Goncharov describes him with humor. (For example: “...Zakhar could not bear the reproach written in the master’s eyes and lowered his gaze to his feet: here again, in the carpet, saturated with dust and stains, he read a sad certificate of his zeal.”) The writer seems to be making fun of Zakhar, watching him, his life. And the hero's fate is tragic. Zakhar, like his master, is afraid of change. He believes that what he has is the best. He felt the impracticality and his wretchedness when he married Anisya, but this did not make him any better. He did not change his lifestyle, even when Stolz suggested that he change his vagabond lifestyle. Zakhar is a typical Oblomovite. Before us is another sad result of the corrupting influence of nobility and serfdom on people.

Comparison of Savelich’s servant from “The Captain’s Daughter”

with servant Zakhar from “Oblomov”

If we compare the servant Savelich from “The Captain’s Daughter” with the servant Zakhar from “Oblomov”, then both of them are representatives of serf courtyard people, devoted to their masters to the point of selflessness, servants of the household, filling our ideal of a servant, outlined in “Domostroi” by priest Sylvester. But there is a big difference between them, which can be explained very simply: after all, Savelich is seventy to eighty years older than Zakhar. Savelich, indeed, was a member of the family, the gentlemen respected his high honesty and devotion. He treated Pyotr Andreevich Grinev more like a mentor with his young charge, not forgetting at the same time that he was his future serf. But this consciousness manifests itself not in the form of a purely slavish, fearful attitude towards him, but in the fact that he considers his master above all other masters. He responds to Andrei Petrovich’s unfair letter with his own, expressing complete submission to his will, and is ready to be a swineherd; This expresses the age-old dependence of the Russian peasant on the landowner, the age-old obedience of the serf. Savelich does not do this out of fear, he is not afraid of either death or deprivation (it is enough just to remember his words: “and for the sake of example and fear, at least order me, an old man, to be hanged! "), but prompted by his inner conviction that he is a servant of the Grinev family. Therefore, when young Grinev strictly demands obedience from him, he obeys, although he grumbles and regrets the involuntary waste of property. His concerns in this regard sometimes reach the point of being funny, mixed with tragic. Forgetting about his safety, he presents Pugachev with a bill for the items damaged and taken by him and his gang; He talks for a long time about losing a hundred rubles and giving Pugachev a hare sheepskin coat. But he cares not only about property: he spends 5 days constantly over the head of the wounded Pyotr Andreevich, does not write to his parents about his duel, not wanting to disturb them in vain. We have already had occasion to talk about his self-sacrifice. In addition, Savelich is ideally honest, he will not hide for himself a penny of the master’s goods; he does not lie, does not chat in vain, behaves simply and sedately, however, showing youthful liveliness when it comes to the benefit of his masters. In general, it is difficult to find unattractive traits in his character.

Zakhar, according to Goncharov, is also a lackey’s knight, but a knight with fear and reproach. He is also devoted to the Oblomov family, considers them real bars, and often does not even allow comparisons between them and other landowners. He is ready to die for Ilya Ilyich, but he does not like work, he even cannot stand it at all, and therefore he would not be able to care for the sick the way Savelich does. He has once and for all outlined his responsibilities and will never do more, unless after repeated orders. Because of this, he has constant bickering with Oblomov. Having become accustomed to Ilya Ilyich, whom he looked after when he was a child, and knowing that he would not punish him except with a “pathetic word,” Zakhar allows himself to be rude towards the master; this rudeness is a consequence of his rather complex character, which is full of contradictions: Zakhar does not give his coat to Tarantiev, despite Oblomov’s order, and at the same time does not hesitate to steal change from his master, which Savelich would never do; In order to hide his tricks, get rid of work, and boast, Zakhar constantly resorts to lies, differing here from the frank, truthful Savelich. He does not take care of the master’s property, constantly breaks dishes and spoils things, carouses with friends in a tavern, “runs to a godfather of a suspicious nature,” while Savelich not only does not allow himself to carouse, but also keeps his master from carousing. Zakhar is extremely stubborn and will never change his habits; if, suppose, he usually sweeps the room only in the middle, without looking into the corners, then there is no way to force him to do this; There is only one remedy left; repeat the order every time, but even after repeating it a hundred times, Zakhar will not get used to the new type of duties.

An aversion to work due to the need to do at least something gave rise to gloom and grumpiness in Zakhara; he doesn’t even speak as people usually speak, but somehow wheezes and wheezes. But behind this rough, dirty, unattractive appearance, Zakhara hides a kind heart. For example, he is capable of playing for hours with children who mercilessly pinch his thick sideburns. In general, Zakhar is a mixture of serf patriarchy with the most coarse, external manifestations of urban culture. After comparing him with Savelich, the integral, sympathetic character of the latter is outlined even more clearly, his typical features as a real Russian serf servant - a member of the household in the spirit of “Domostroy” - appear even more sharply. In the type of Zakhar, the unattractive features of the later liberated, often dissolute servants, who served the masters already on the basis of hiring, are already strongly noticeable. Having received freedom, some of them were not prepared for it, they used it to develop their bad qualities, until the softening and ennobling influence of the new era, already free from the bonds of serfdom, penetrated into their midst.

Russian literature is our everything; it is more influential than philosophy, social and political thought, and even than laws and traditions. It was literature that described and illuminated the “correct concepts,” patterns and scenarios of behavior. This means that the foundations of entrepreneurial ethics should also be sought in it. But in the 19th and 20th centuries, Russian literature as a whole, alas, did not like business and those who were involved in it. And only a special interest and point of view allowed us to find in it vivid examples of entrepreneurs and see how the image of a Russian businessman has evolved

01. Adrian Prokhorov

Literary work
Alexander Pushkin “The Undertaker” (“Tales of the late Ivan Petrovich Belkin”), 1830

Business
Production, repair, sale and rental of coffins

Peculiarities
The business is small, profitable, although it does not always bring good money. Over eleven years of work, Prokhorov was able to save up for a house, but he is always immersed in gloomy thoughts about the prospects of his enterprise. Prokhorov lives from client to client: at the beginning of the story, he is waiting for the death of a long-ill merchant's wife and is afraid that more efficient competitors will take away the lucrative order. In order to live and earn money, he is forced to cheat on little things. The very first order was fulfilled dishonestly: for the retired guard sergeant Pyotr Petrovich Kurilkin, he promised to make an oak coffin, but in the end he slipped a cheaper pine one - the deceased himself tells Prokhorov about this, appearing to him in a dream.

Motto
“Why is my craft more dishonest than others? Is the undertaker the brother of the executioner? Why are the Basurmans laughing? Is the undertaker a yuletide guy?”

Image
Prokhorov chose a difficult, risky and non-prestigious market for himself, but considers his business to be an extremely worthy endeavor. And he repents that he is not always honest: at the key moment of the story, he dreams of retribution for cheating. A small Russian private owner first entered literature at the time of its formation. He entered poor but proud.

02. Kostanzhoglo Konstantin Fedorovich

Literary work
Nikolai Gogol “Dead Souls. Volume two", 1843-1845

Business
Production and sale of agricultural products, light industry

Peculiarities
Kostanzhoglo is a real strong business executive who has made the evolution from small to large. He created an agricultural complex on his lands that worked like clockwork, and then manufactories. “He needs a forest, in addition to being for the forest, so that in such and such a place he can add so much moisture to the fields, add so much manure from falling leaves, and provide so much shade. When there is a drought around, he does not have a drought; when there is a bad harvest around, he doesn’t have a bad harvest,” the neighbors are amazed.

The success of the farm is not based on innovation - Kostanzhoglo despises them - but on the correct use of experience and traditions. All profits are immediately reinvested in production, rather than spent on luxury or services; part of the money goes to purchasing neighboring lands. At the same time, the Kostanzhoglo economy has some features of a closed economic system. Manufactories produce goods for domestic consumption: the main buyers of cloth are its own peasants.

Motto
“If you want to get rich quickly, you will never get rich; if you want to get rich without asking about time, then you will get rich soon.<…>You must have a love of work. Without this, nothing can be done. You have to love farming, yes! And, believe me, it's not boring at all. They thought that there was melancholy in the village... yes, I would die of melancholy if I spent even one day in the city the way they spend it! The owner has no time to be bored. There is no emptiness in his life - everything is complete.”

Image
For Kostanzhoglo, it is not the income that is important, but the “legality” of the activity. If there is “legitimacy,” it means that the business will be successful and will begin to develop on its own. Any activity that is not related to a “legitimate” business is obviously rejected.

He dresses simply, has a modest home, is not interested in his origins - all this has no value for Kostanzhoglo. He is also against education for peasants: this will not be of any benefit to either the landowner himself or the peasants; they live so well with such a successful owner.

Kostanzhoglo has all the qualities that were later described by Max Weber in “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”: he is pragmatic and purposeful, but he does not earn money for the sake of money, he earns it for the sake of business. It’s amazing how early the missionary oligarch and socially responsible business appear in Russian culture.

03. Andrey Stolts

Literary work
Ivan Goncharov “Oblomov”, 1859

Business
international trade

Peculiarities
Goncharov does not write in detail about the nature of Stolz’s activities, but, apparently, he is one of the shareholders and managing directors of a company that exports various Russian goods to Europe, primarily England and Belgium. The business is clearly profitable: it allows Stolz to buy himself a house.

Motto
“Man was created to arrange himself and even change his nature, but he grew a belly and thinks that nature sent him this burden!<…>There is no person who can’t do something, by God, no!”

Image
Stolz is a self made man. He received a good education, gained experience and connections in the civil service, then went into business on his own. He spends his free time on self-education and taught his wife to do the same. Stolz believes in progress and that everyone is the master of their own destiny.

It’s hard to find fault with him: he is not only a smart businessman, but also an honest person and a good friend, he is almost ideal, but at the same time he is too practical and calculating. He simply has no soul: instead of feelings, he is a machine for planning the future. Thus was born the myth, fatal for Russian capitalism, that even the most positive businessman will inevitably be deprived of some important human qualities.

04. Firs Knyazev

Literary work
Nikolai Leskov “Spendthrift”, 1867

Business
Industry and trade operations, raiding

Peculiarities
Firs Grigorievich Knyazev is the first merchant in a large trading city, a real oligarch. A representative of big business who has become closely associated with the authorities. From the play it can be understood that this is a pre-reform situation; after the reforms of Alexander II, life became more difficult for such oligarchs.

Nevertheless, thanks to his status, Knyazev crushed all competitors. The play, the only one in Leskov’s work, shows the raider takeover of the business of merchant Ivan Molchanov, Knyazev’s competitor. The tactics are simple: Molchanov is imprisoned in an insane asylum, Knyazev becomes his guardian and takes the business for himself.

Image
The largest businessman in the area corrupted the courts and became a de facto regional dictator. It’s not enough for him to just take over his competitor’s business - he also wants to get his mistress, as well as humiliate him as much as possible in front of the townspeople. At the same time, Knyazev constantly talks about morality and always hides behind public interests. Thus, willy-nilly, the townspeople become accomplices of his crimes.

It is characteristic that, being a completely negative character, Knyazev is nevertheless the main character of the play, completely overshadowing the positive merchant Molchanov. An honest merchant is invisible against the background of a dishonest one. It is clear that Knyazev is smart and charismatic, but he is a man of the era when there was a “fashion for opportunity.” He is afraid of the law, he explains this more than once in his monologues, he is simply used to acting in different conditions. Knyazev is the first demonic oligarch in Russian literature.

05. Mikhail Ignatievich Ryabinin

Literary work
Leo Tolstoy "Anna Karenina", 1873-1877

Business
Forestry

Peculiarities
Appearing in one short episode of Anna Karenina, Ryabinin buys forest from Stepan Oblonsky, for next to nothing, and even in installments. To do this, he enters into an agreement with other merchants: he pays them extra so that they do not offer a decent price for the timber to a narrow-minded aristocrat.

But Ryabinin knows who he is dealing with: at the moment when the dubiousness of the deal becomes obvious, he begins to appeal to the ambition of the seller - he, they say, takes the forest “for the glory alone, that Ryabinin, and not someone else, bought the grove from Oblonsky” .

Motto
“For mercy, nowadays it is absolutely impossible to steal. Everything is final in this day and age, public legal proceedings, everything is now noble; and not like stealing. We spoke in honor. They charge a lot for the timber, it’s impossible to make payments.”

Image
A cunning businessman, ready to collude with other market participants to achieve the best price, and well versed in psychology. He profits from the shortsightedness of impoverished aristocrats.

Ryabinin looks like a new person who will replace the old people who have not learned to survive. “Ryabinin’s children will have a means of living and education, but yours, perhaps, will not!” - Konstantin Levin explains to Oblonsky. The aristocrats laugh and despise the merchant, but at the same time they are afraid of him. Ryabinin is a classic forest orderly. In the future, this will be an important function of a businessman in the Russian consciousness.

06. Mokiy Parmenych Knurov

Literary work
Alexander Ostrovsky "Dowry", 1878

Business
Wide profile, in particular river transportation

Peculiarities
The largest businessman in the city, who has lost interest in further business development and is gradually retiring. Now his hobbies are gastronomy, health, mistresses and intrigue.

Motto
“For me, the impossible is not enough.”

Image
Ryabinin in Anna Karenina, deceiving the nobles, understands that they are higher in the social hierarchy than even the most enterprising merchant. Mokiy Knurov feels superior to the nobles who are poorer than him. He sneers at the unsuccessful business of the master-shipowner Paratov: “Of course, where can he [find profit]! This is not a lordly matter.” The power in the new world is already with Knurov and those who, like Vozhevatov, follow his advice.

Unlike Knyazev from “The Spendthrift,” Knurov does not resort to drastic actions and violent operations to achieve his goal, he simply waits for the combinations he has thought out to work. Inviting Larisa Ogudalova to become his mistress, he promises to give her “such enormous content that the most evil critics of other people’s morality will have to shut up and open their mouths in surprise.”

Knurov is the first all-powerful merchant in Russian literature. However, his omnipotence is explained by the reasonableness of his demands.

07. Sergey Privalov

Literary work
Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak “Privalovsky millions”, 1887

Business
Factories and mill

Peculiarities
Sergei Privalov, heir to a wealthy industrialist, is not your typical businessman. Business for him is, first of all, a debt to society that must be repaid. He is not interested in income, but for his soul he likes to work at the mill.

Motto
“In order not to offend both of them, I must install the plants perfectly and then gradually pay off my historical creditors. In what form all this will take place - I still cannot tell you now, but I will only say one thing - namely, that I will not take a single penny for myself.”

Image
For Mamin-Sibiryak, the story of the unmercenary businessman Sergei Privalov, around whom unscrupulous local managers and entrepreneurs weaved intrigues, was needed in order to criticize Russian capitalism. However, the image of Privalov itself is extremely interesting: unlike other characters, he did not make himself, he is not the creator of a business empire, he is its heir with all the attendant psychological and economic problems. The ending of the book shows that in such a situation it is more important not to save capital, but to continue the family line. In Russian conditions, an invariably valuable recommendation.

08. Ermolai Alekseevich Lopakhin

Literary work
Anton Chekhov "The Cherry Orchard", 1903

Business
Various types, in particular the rental of country real estate.

Peculiarities
Only Lopakhin’s business plan for the cherry orchard is known for sure: he plans to cut down the trees, divide the territory into small plots and rent them out as dachas. This is an important business trend of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. That is, Lopakhin monitors profitable types of business and is ready to invest in new industries.

What confuses me is a rather reckless HR decision: having drawn up a competent business plan and invested funds, Lopakhin hires a loser manager, Epikhodov, who, even while playing billiards, broke his cue.

Motto
“Music, play clearly! Let everything be as I wish! A new landowner is coming, the owner of the cherry orchard! I can pay for everything!”

Image
Lopakhin is the most tragic of all businessmen in Russian literature. He is overly sentimental, sensitive, but absolutely helpless in his personal life.

It turns out that the conditions for doing business in Russia had changed a lot by the beginning of the twentieth century: if earlier it was accessible to people completely devoid of feelings, like Stolz or Knurov, now it was taken up by neurasthenics like Lopakhin.

09. Vassa Zheleznova

Literary work
Maxim Gorky “Vassa Zheleznova”, 1910

Business
River steamship transportation

Peculiarities
Vassa Zheleznova conducts business in conditions close to extreme: everyone around her is either drunkards, or predators who dream of getting her company, or weak people who cannot cope with difficulties. Moreover, the main character is a woman of quite conservative views in a purely male world. Surviving in such an environment has turned her almost into a monster; she is merciless in business.

Motto
“You see: here is a woman! No, no, dogs don’t keep the house, we keep it.”

Image
The first vivid image of a Russian businesswoman came out both negative and tragic. Vassa cannot find a worthy heir, or even an equal figure, except for her hated daughter-in-law Rachel, a revolutionary, with whom she has a persistent mutual hostility.

10. Sergei Ivanovich

Literary work
Ivan Shmelev “The Lord's Summer”, 1933-1948

Business
Medium business, carpentry, agriculture

Peculiarities
Shmelev’s father, Sergei Ivanovich, is a wise entrepreneur who thinks about his employees, adheres to traditions, lives according to the folk calendar and observes “God’s laws.” He can sacrifice profit for the sake of what he considers justice or necessity, he is kind and sentimental. However, in this world, money is important and earning it is a worthy endeavor. Workers and children adore Sergei Ivanovich.

Motto
“Do just that, take your daddy’s example... never offend people. And especially when you need to take care of your soul... ovens. He gave Vasil-Vasilich a quarter ticket for shitting... I also got a quarter ticket, for no reason... the foreman received five rubles, and the robots received fifty rubles for snow. This is how you treat people. Our guys are good, they appreciate...” (carpenter about his boss).

Image
Sergei Ivanovich is an ideal patriarchal businessman. He is similar to Kostanzhoglo, but if he was the absolute owner of his peasants, then Sergei Ivanovich is simply a boss. However, he treats his subordinates like children. This is how the dream of a socially responsible business returns, pure and unclouded.

Let's remember charming literary swindlers, eloquent movie characters-liars and resourceful adventurers, and at the same time think about why we love them so much.

The entire experience of Russian culture insists that deceivers and scoundrels are not held in high esteem. The search for truth, morality, conscientiousness, openness and honesty - this is what we are taught from childhood through the example of classical literature and cinema. "A thief should sit in jail!" - Gleb Zheglov categorically declares, and no halftones or additional circumstances interest him. “Strength is in truth,” Danila Bagrov is sure, and it would seem difficult to disagree with him. But at the same time, although we agree with their maxims, we do not always admire only the positive heroes, their courageous deeds and moral quests. Agree: without charming villains, handsome swindlers, petty pranksters and other bad guys, life would be boring. It’s like chewing unleavened crackers, washing it down with water at room temperature. Who would our respectable and conscientious knights fight with then, and how could we understand what is good and what is bad?

And in general, do scoundrels always bring evil? Or, on the contrary, with their flowery lies and virtuoso deception, are they fighting the vices of society in their own way? Let's try to answer all these questions.

Great schemer Ostap Bender

Who is the main rogue, elegant schemer and great schemer in our culture? There cannot be two opinions here: of course, Ostap-Suleiman-Bertha-Maria-Benderbey, invented by the writers Ilf and Petrov. Who is he? Answering this question will confuse even the most confident storyteller. Literally speaking, then Bender, of course, is a fraudster, an “ideological fighter for banknotes” and an expert in at least 400 methods of deception.

How can such a figure, who has repeatedly violated the biblical commandment “thou shalt not steal,” be captivated? And here lies the most interesting thing: an ordinary everyday liar and thief would hardly ever become hero No. 1, but our Ostap absolutely does not fit into the banal criminal framework, he is an extravagant and even creative person. In addition, Bender is handsome: a tall brunette, wearing a tight suit, a scarf and patent leather boots “with an orange-colored suede upper.” He also has a “long, noble nose.”

As you know, attractive appearance is half the success, and if you add to it courteous manners, eloquence and the ability to show off, then even the most fantastic scam will be perceived as something natural.

Ostap Bender lies like he breathes, and he is so organic in his lies that it is no longer clear whether there is even a grain of truth in it. Was our hero's father a Turkish subject, and his mother a countess? Was he born in Odessa? Was he Ukrainian, Jewish or half Turkish? Everyone is free to think for themselves. But one thing is clear: Bender’s incredible tales captivate the audience, like a good theatrical performance. Moreover, each of his machinations is different from the other: either he reincarnated as an honored artist, a yogi and a Brahmin, then he introduced himself as the son of Lieutenant Schmidt and received financial assistance for a fictitious relationship, or he posed as the leader of an organization called to overthrow the Soviet regime who had “arrived from Berlin.” Unfortunately, we won’t be able to list all 400 “relatively honest ways of taking away (withdrawing) money”: how can an ordinary person keep up with the speed of the great strategist. One can only admire his enterprise and masterly ability to make a spectacle out of any scam.

Why else do we love Ostap Bender? For his incredible hedonism (with our penchant for suffering and reflection, such a character is worth his weight in gold), liveliness of mind and aphoristic capacity of statements. “Nobody likes us, except for the criminal investigation department, which doesn’t like us either,” “And your janitor is quite a big vulgar. Is it possible to get so drunk on a ruble?”, “Or maybe they’ll give you the key to the apartment where the money is?”, “How much is opium for the people?”- all these remarks are included in the treasury of Russian humor.

By the way, one of the possible prototypes of our hero was Osip Shor, an employee of the Odessa criminal investigation department (what a paradox!) and part-time ex-adventurer, lover of adventure literature, friend of Yuri Olesha and dreamer. The most cherished desire of this extraordinary personality was a trip to sunny Rio de Janeiro, in fact, this is where his fashionable image was formed: a light suit, a captain’s cap and, of course, a scarf. (At least, this is how the movie Ostap looks.)

We cannot help but love Bender also because his image was brought to life by wonderful and different artists: Sergei Yursky, Andrei Mironov, Archil Gomiashvili and many others. Each of us is free to choose our own Ostap, and this versatility lies one of the main secrets of the popularity of this truly iconic character.

King of criminal Odessa - Benya Krik

Odessa is not a city for pessimists. She does not favor pale, anemic decadents and sad, silent recluses, but she willingly encourages nimble, adventurous and humorous people. Even if they are not entirely honest. Take, for example, Babel’s Benya Krik, for whom everyone in Odessa knows. (As, indeed, for his real prototype - the “noble thief” Mishka Yaponchik.) What is good about Benya?

Firstly, he is a typical Odessa resident, which means that no matter what phrase comes out of his lips, it always turns out witty and apt. “Dad, have a drink and a snack, don’t let this nonsense bother you,” “Manya, you’re not at work,<...>cold-blooded, Manya”, “My brain stood on end along with my hair when I heard this news.” We love Benya because he never gets confused and always wins any verbal duel. Secondly, Crick is a dandy, wears a chocolate jacket, cream trousers and raspberry boots and also knows social manners, calling everyone “Madame” and “Monsieur”. Thirdly, Benya, despite his criminal activities, has his own code of honor: for example, he does not rob the poor (but he masterfully strips the rich to the skin). He sends a polite letter to his future victim asking him to put money under a barrel of rainwater. " If you refuse, as you have recently begun to allow yourself to do, you will face great disappointment in your family life.“,” the King adds sarcastically. Fourthly, Crick is a lover of sensual pleasures and a beautiful life, he is full-blooded and not boring, and such heroes are interesting at all times. Remember the recent success of the modern series “The Life and Adventures of Mishka Yaponchik,” filmed by Sergei Ginzburg. Viewers immediately fell in love with the elegant raider with a characteristic dialect and the southern flavor, distracting from the endless conveyor belt of movie sagas about corrupt officials and honest police officers scurrying around against the backdrop of the same type of new buildings. On the screen they drink and eat, walk along the azure sea, joke, dance, sing, celebrate weddings and go to funerals. And of course, some rich citizens are being cheated. Be that as it may, the tragic ending of the life of Yaponchik (as, by the way, of Benny Krik) evokes sympathy from the viewer, which means that this hero is rightfully considered one of the most beloved and charming swindlers in our culture.

Great literary rogues: Chichikov and Khlestakov

Gogol's "The Inspector General" has not left the theater stage for 180 years. The image of the braggart and liar Ivan Aleksandrovich Khlestakov created by the writer not only does not become covered with dust, but blooms every time depending on the director’s interpretation and the general context of the era. What is interesting about this character? " Everyone, at least for a minute, if not for several minutes, was or is being done by Khlestakov"- said Nikolai Vasilyevich. And indeed, who among us has not at least once embellished reality, who among us has not tried to impress and exalt our own figure in the eyes of the public? This is precisely why the final phrase of the play is so significant: “ Why are you laughing? You're laughing at yourself!"(in the theatrical version it was slightly altered). So the adventures of the main character and local officials give us the opportunity to look at ourselves from the outside. Satirically.

« The figure of Khlestakov: airy; at any moment she is ready to blur into a foggy blur", wrote Soviet critic Alexander Voronsky. And this elusiveness (it appears in a provincial town, then suddenly disappears), and one hundred percent “getting used to” the image of a significant figure make the hero a typical rogue, a flamboyant swindler and a lover of pleasure, who easily defrauds narrow-minded and servile officials.

“...Based on my St. Petersburg physiognomy and costume, the whole city took me for the Governor General. And now I live with the mayor, chew, and recklessly follow his wife and daughter.<...>Everyone lends me as much as they want. The originals are terrible. You'd die laughing“, notes Khlestakov.

And it is unlikely that anyone will risk accusing him of this deception, because his intoxicated lies have once again revealed the typical vices of our society.

Another Gogolian rogue, relevant at all times, is the hero of “Dead Souls” Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov. He is a dandy, always dressed to the nines and “sprinkled with cologne,” a lover of fast driving, easy money and, of course, a schemer who buys up information about dead peasants and passes them off as living. Local ladies, residents of the city of N, are fascinated by the secular manners of Pavel Ivanovich, call him a charmer and constantly find in him “a lot of pleasantries and courtesies.” And what about Chichikov? Our enterprising hero does not waste time in vain: he is an ace in deception. And how could anyone suspect such an educated person as a banal swindler? Of course not. The relevance of the image of this hero lies not in the fact that “Dead Souls” is an integral work of the school curriculum and theatrical repertoire, the point is that it is truly universal for any era. For example, the same Bulgakov wrote a witty feuilleton “The Adventures of Chichikov,” in which Pavel Ivanovich finds himself in Soviet reality, where instead of a chaise there is a car, instead of a hotel there is a hostel, and all around “ there was such dirt and muck that Gogol had no idea about" So every time has its own roguish Chichikov - be it the 19th century, the years of perestroika or the cool 2000s.

The matter is unclean: the cat Behemoth and Woland's retinue

In the novel “The Master and Margarita,” Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov managed to do something unheard of, namely, to take and shift all our moral accents and show that generally accepted evil can create good. Perhaps no one before him had ever described evil spirits and black magic so easily, ironically and wittily. For example, the cat Behemoth is a demon, but at the same time a cute, charming and cheerful glutton who doesn’t play pranks, doesn’t bother anyone and fixes the primus stove. Is he scary? More likely no than yes (even despite the fact that he infernally tears off the head of the same Bengali). And you can’t deny his quickness of mind: “For some reason they always say “you” to cats, although not a single cat has ever drunk brotherhood with anyone!”, “Would I allow myself to pour vodka for a lady? This is pure alcohol!- says Behemoth to Margarita at Woland’s ball.

Or remember Koroviev, the owner of a “mocking face” and “ironic and half-drunk eyes.” How bright and caricatured the image appears! However, at the end of the novel Koroviev leaves Moscow with the gloomiest face; as Woland explains, he was doomed to constantly joke for an unsuccessful pun about Light and Darkness, and in the end “he paid and closed his account.”

But we won’t go into philosophical subtleties, especially since many researchers consider this episode to be one of the strangest and most incomplete; something else is important to us. This whole demonic company - ridiculous, awkward, extravagant - ends up in Soviet Moscow, not just to have fun and show off, exposing the ladies in a variety show, but in order to establish justice and punish those who have completely lost their conscience. Actually, that's why we love them.

Grigory Gorin's rogues

Special mention should be made of the charming adventurers from Western stories, transferred by the playwright and satirical writer Grigory Gorin to Russian soil. Take, for example, Baron Munchausen, whose insidious tales are familiar to us since childhood. Who is this character? Literally, a real-life German baron, depicted by Rudolf Erich Raspe. He is a great inventor who claimed that a cherry tree once grew on the head of a deer (Munchausen talked about all this in a tavern over a glass of hot punch and smoking a fragrant pipe). Meanwhile, screenwriter Grigory Gorin and director Mark Zakharov created their own character, different from the prototype and the original plot. No, the visionary and dreamer remained, and the cherry trees still bloomed magnificently on the deer’s heads, but the accents had shifted. Munchausen, whose image was embodied on the screen by the unsurpassed Oleg Yankovsky, was not just an inventor who met with Shakespeare and Newton: in fact, it turned out that these same heroes contrasted their extraordinary thoughts, ideas and dreams with a static society that was deceitful and hypocritical. Meanwhile, the main dreamer turned out to be the most truthful and courageous of all, and moreover, not so much a comic as a tragic character. In fact, he embodies not a rogue, but a real artist who is so unconventional and lonely that he does not fit into the conventions of society with its false values and is not perceived even by close people. That is why Munchausen’s final line sounds somewhat sad: “ I understood what your problem is: you are too serious! An intelligent face is not yet a sign of intelligence, gentlemen. All stupid things on earth are done with this facial expression. Smile, gentlemen! Smile!”

Another brilliant adventurer and at the same time a mystic who managed to leave a legacy in Russia is the Italian Count Cagliostro from the film “Formula of Love” by Mark Zakharov, filmed according to the script by Grigory Gorin. Of course, he is a skilled swindler, illusionist and businessman, who himself says this: “ Everyone deceives everyone, they just do it too primitively. I alone have turned deception into a great art" And Cagliostro is indeed talented, witty and ironic (what is the phrase: “ I was warned that staying in Russia is bad for fragile minds"). Thanks to the talented tandem of director and screenwriter, the controversial figure of the count invariably evokes positive emotions in most of us.

Afterword

Stories of ironic rogues, charming and extraordinary swindlers captivate our imagination. Because their lies are not always destructive and evil, and besides, they are not boring, insipid and often look more interesting and deeper (and here’s the paradox - more honest) than many saints who insist on their decency. And such heroes not only entertain us and make us laugh, but also invite us to look at the situation more broadly, to reevaluate something in ourselves and those around us. That is why we can only join the classic, exclaiming: “Smile, gentlemen, smile!”

Editor's Choice

Day of Remembrance of Fallen Russian Internal Affairs Officers Heroism of Police Officers

In recent years, the bodies and troops of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs have been performing service and combat missions in a difficult operational environment. Wherein...

Northern coast of Neva Bay

Members of the St. Petersburg Ornithological Society adopted a resolution on the inadmissibility of removal from the Southern Coast...

Enviable beauties in politics (17 photos)

Russian State Duma deputy Alexander Khinshtein published photographs of the new “chief cook of the State Duma” on his Twitter. According to the deputy, in...

The best ballet performances

Home Welcome to the site, which aims to make you as healthy and beautiful as possible! Healthy lifestyle in...

Biography, political activity

The son of moral fighter Elena Mizulina lives and works in a country with gay marriages. Bloggers and activists called on Nikolai Mizulin...

The magical world of crystals

Purpose of the study: With the help of literary and Internet sources, find out what crystals are, what science studies - crystallography. To know...

How to salt milk mushrooms: a quick recipe

WHERE DOES PEOPLE'S LOVE FOR SALTY COME FROM? The widespread use of salt has its reasons. Firstly, the more salt you consume, the more you want...

Ten Surprisingly Profitable Illegal Trades

The Ministry of Finance intends to submit a proposal to the government to expand the experiment on taxation of the self-employed to include regions with high...

Management project based on the example of an enterprise presentation

To use presentation previews, create a Google account and sign in:...

New

Popular

Images of swindlers in classical Russian literature. The image of a servant in Russian literature. King of criminal Odessa - Benya Krik