Victor Petrovich Astafiev (1924-2001). V. Astafiev’s books “The Fish Tsar” (1976) and “The Sad Detective” (1986) are distinguished by their acute formulation of problems of the ecology of nature and the ecology of the soul.

“Tsar Fish”: analysis of the work

“The King Fish” is a book about man and his relationship with the world of people and nature, filled with wise generalizations. The writer says that the evil created by man returns to him, life takes revenge for the violation of justice. The author turns to biblical truths and finds confirmation of them in today's reality. He talks about the loneliness of man, the tragedy of his existence, his insecurity in this world.

One of the most important themes in this work is the theme of man and nature. A predatory attitude towards nature - poaching - determines the essence of human character and guides it both in the family and in society. The victims of a poacher are his relatives and society as a whole. He sows evil around himself. This is what the Commander says in the book. The writer draws our attention to the fact that many people do not perceive poaching as a wolf philosophy of life. In their eyes, a successful poacher is a hero and a winner, and victory seems to erase sins. The author convincingly shows that this is far from the case; retribution for the violation of nature and human laws will overtake anyone.

The book “The Tsar Fish” by V. Astafiev is called a novel. One can agree with this, bearing in mind the main ideological and semantic core of the work - the idea of ​​​​the unity of the human and natural world, of the philosophical subtext of life, where there is little chance. The genre feature of this work is that it consists of memoirs, short stories, stories - life stories that do not have a common plot. This seemingly heterogeneous material is united by a common mood, a leisurely consideration of human destinies, individual actions, and incidents that only at first seem random. The writer, as it were, glimpses the fate of his heroes, sees the hidden connection of “accidents”, feels the breath of a higher power, God’s judgment, over the heroes.

All the heroes of “The King of Fish” directly connected their lives with nature. These are commercial hunters, these are residents of a village on the banks of the great Yenisei River who are engaged in poaching, these are amateur fishermen, these are random people, these are those who returned to their native places after long wanderings. Each contains a whole world, each is interesting to the author - observer and storyteller.

After reading the book to the end, you think that poaching is a common phenomenon in life. But the retribution for it is cruel. Only often someone else pays along with the culprit... This is how the writer comprehends the life of a modern person, philosophically reduces causes and consequences. The psychology of destruction turns into tragedies, irreparable disasters. Sometimes, under the influence of some dramatic circumstances or accidents, a person begins to guess about the higher meaning of his life and destiny, he realizes that the hour of reckoning for the sins of his entire life is coming. This motif in “The King Fish” sounds in different versions, unobtrusively, philosophically calm.

The chapter “Tsar Fish” depicts Ignatyich, the Commander’s older brother, who is not at all like him, the same poacher, even more successful. And he came across the king fish, a huge sturgeon, in which there were two buckets of black caviar! Caught, entangled on self-made hooks. “You can’t miss such a sturgeon. The king fish comes across once in a lifetime, and not every Jacob.” Grandfather once taught: it is better to let her go, unnoticed, as if by accident. But Ignatyich decided to take the fish by the gills, and the whole conversation. He hit him on the head with a butt and stunned him, but the huge fish came to its senses, began to thrash, the fisherman ended up in the water, he himself ran into the samolov hooks, they dug into the body. And the fish rested the tip of its nose “on its warm side... and with a wet slurp, took the entrails into its gaping mouth, as if into the hole of a meat grinder.” Both the fish and the man were bleeding. At the edge of consciousness, Ignatyich began to persuade the fish to die. Barely holding onto the edge of the boat with his hands, leaning his chin on the side, he himself was in the water, and began to remember for what sins the king fish was drowning him. I thought it was a werewolf. I remembered my deceased niece Taika. Maybe she called her father and uncle in her death hour? Where were they? On the river. Did not hear. I also remembered a sin, a crime against a girl in my youth. I thought that by living a righteous life I would beg for forgiveness.

Such stories, in which man and nature come together in a mortal duel, are interpreted by the writer as a philosophy of life. Nature is not indifferent to human affairs. Somewhere, someday, there will be retribution for predation, for greed. Many chapters of “The Fish King” contain indirect, allegorical quotations from the Bible, calling and teaching a person to be more careful and wiser. The writer recalls the old truth that a person is not alone in the world and that he must build his life in accordance with his conscience. We must not spoil the world given by God and not pollute our soul with anger, envy, cruelty, and destruction. Someday you will have to answer for everything.

The depth of philosophical understanding of the world - man and nature - puts the writer V. Astafiev in a special place in modern literature. Many of his books are philosophical prose with a clearly expressed humanistic position. A wise, tolerant attitude towards the people of our cruel age is expressed in the calm and thoughtful intonation of the writer’s works, epic and at the same time lyrical narrative.

"Sad Detective": analysis

“The Sad Detective” (1986) tells about the dramatic fate of investigator Soshnin, who despaired in the fight against the vices and crimes of broken people, crushed by life. He sees the futility and even uselessness of his work and, after painful hesitation, leaves his position, seeing great benefit for society in the work of a writer, when, while depicting reality, he gets to the bottom of the origins of evil. Soshnin, and with him the author, question the tendency of Russian people (especially women) to forgive. He believes that evil can be eradicated (he means drunkenness and the futility of existence) if, on the one hand, the soil for it is not created in society itself. On the other hand, evil must be punished, not forgiven. This general formula in life has, of course, many variants and specific forms of implementation. The writer stands up for the defense of universal human moral norms, affirming the value of man and his spirituality as a priority.

The novel “The Sad Detective” was published in 1985, during a turning point in the life of our society. It was written in the style of harsh realism and therefore caused a surge of criticism. The reviews were mostly positive. The events of the novel are relevant today, just as works about honor and duty, good and evil, honesty and lies are always relevant.
The novel describes various moments in the life of former policeman Leonid Soshnin, who at the age of forty-two was retired due to injuries received in the service.
I remember the events of different years of his life.
Leonid Soshnin's childhood, like almost all children of the post-war period, was difficult. But, like many children, he did not think about such complex issues of life. After his mother and father died, he stayed to live with his aunt Lipa, whom he called Lina. He loved her, and when she began to walk, he could not understand how she could leave him when she had given him her whole life. It was ordinary childish selfishness. She died shortly after his marriage. He married a girl, Lera, whom he saved from pestering hooligans. There was no special love, he just, as a decent person, could not help but marry the girl after he was received in her house as a groom.
After his first exploit (capturing a criminal), he became a hero. After this he was wounded in the arm. This happened when one day he went to calm down Vanka Fomin, and he pierced his shoulder with a pitchfork.
With a heightened sense of responsibility for everything and everyone, with his sense of duty, honesty and fight for justice, he could only work in the police.
Leonid Soshnin always thinks about people and the motives of their actions. Why and why do people commit crimes? He reads a lot of philosophical books to understand this. And he comes to the conclusion that thieves are born, not made.
For a completely stupid reason, his wife leaves him; after the accident he became disabled. After such troubles, he retired and found himself in a completely new and unfamiliar world, where he was trying to save himself with a “pen”. He did not know how to get his stories and books published, so they lay on the shelf for five years with the editor Syrokvasova, a “gray” woman.
One day he was attacked by bandits, but he overcame them. He felt bad and lonely, then he called his wife, and she immediately realized that something had happened to him. She understood that he always lived some kind of stressful life.
And at some point he looked at life differently. He realized that life doesn't always have to be a struggle. Life is communication with people, caring for loved ones, making concessions to each other. After he realized this, his affairs went better: they promised to publish his stories and even gave him an advance, his wife returned, and some kind of peace began to appear in his soul.
The main theme of the novel is a man who finds himself among the crowd. A man lost among people, confused in his thoughts. The author wanted to show the individuality of a person among the crowd with his thoughts, actions, feelings. His problem is to understand the crowd, to blend in with it. It seems to him that in the crowd he does not recognize people whom he knew well before. Among the crowd, they are all the same, good and evil, honest and deceitful. They all become the same in the crowd. Soshnin is trying to find a way out of this situation with the help of the books he reads, and with the help of the books he himself tries to write.
I liked this work because it touches on the eternal problems of man and the crowd, man and his thoughts. I liked how the author describes the hero’s relatives and friends. With what kindness and tenderness he treats Aunt Grana and Aunt Lina. The author portrays them as kind and hardworking women who love children. How the girl Pasha is described, Soshnin’s attitude towards her and his indignation at the fact that she was not loved at the institute. The hero loves them all, and it seems to me that his life becomes much better because of these people’s love for him.

This story (the author called it a novel) is one of Astafiev’s most socially rich works. It vividly depicts to us the moral state of an entire era in the life of the Russian province, as it was towards the end of the Soviet era (there was also a place for the tortured collective farm) - and during the transition to “perestroika”, with its updated signs of distortion. The epithet “sad” in the title is weak for the main character Soshnin and too weak for the entire depressing surrounding situation - in the thick mass of upset, disorganized, twisted life, in many examples of this, picturesque cases and characters.

Already at that time, the “thieves” camp spirit victoriously invaded the existence of the Soviet “will”. The hero, a criminal police officer, was successfully chosen to observe this. The chain of crimes and criminal massacres stretches on and on. City front doors and internal staircases are defenseless from the presence of thieves, drunkenness and robbery. Whole fights on these stairs, types of hooligans and piggishness. The young brat stabbed three innocent people to death - and right there, next to him, he eats ice cream with appetite. Accordingly, the entire city (considerable, with institutions) is kept in debauchery and filth, and all city life is in debauchery. The merry “troops” of youth rape women, even very elderly ones, who turn up drunk. Drunk car thieves, and even dump trucks, knock down and crush dozens of people. And young people who are “advanced” in morals and fashion flaunt their intercepted style along the garbage streets. – But with particular pain, often, and with the greatest attention, Astafiev writes about the destruction of small children, their ugly upbringing, and especially in upset families.

At times (as in his other texts) Astafiev makes a direct moral appeal to the reader, with a question about the nature of human evil, then with a three-page monologue about the meaning of family, ending this story.

Unfortunately, in this story, too, the author allows himself careless liberties in the order of choosing the episodes depicted: in the general structure of the story you do not perceive integrity, even in the temporal order of its occurrence; random jumps and distortions of episodes and characters appear, fleeting, indistinct, the plots are fragmented. This shortcoming is further aggravated by frequent side digressions, anecdotal (here are fishing jokes, of course) distractions (and simply unfunny jokes) or ironic phrases that are in discord with the text. This fragments the feeling of cruel gloominess of the whole situation and violates the integrity of the linguistic flow. (Along with the vigorous thieves' jargon, folk sayings - suddenly abundant quotations from literature - and useless, clogged expressions from written speech - like: “does not react to anything”, “remove from the work collective”, “lead to conflicts”, “great survived the drama”, “subtleties of a pedagogical nature”, “waiting for mercy from nature.”) The author’s style is not created, whatever language is picked up.

Soshnin himself is a combat operative who almost lost his leg in one battle, almost died from the rusty pitchfork of a bandit in another and, one against two, unarmedly defeated two large bandits - this is with a gentle character and good feelings - he is very clearly visible and new in our literature. But Astafiev added to him in a completely unappealing way - beginner writing and reading Nietzsche in German. It’s not that it was impossible, but it wasn’t born organically: Soshnin, supposedly, went into overdrive because of numerous explanatory notes, and then, you see, he entered the correspondence department of the philological department of the Pedagogical Institute. Yes, his soul strives for light, but is too overloaded with the abominations of his current life.

But, truly anecdotally, this involvement of Soshnin in the philology department cost the author dearly. In a passing phrase it is mentioned about Soshnin that he, at the philology department, “toiled along with a dozen local Jewish children, comparing Lermontov’s translations with the primary sources” - the most good-natured thing said! - but the prosperous metropolitan researcher of the Pushkin era, Nathan Eidelman, ingeniously unscrewed this line and announced to the entire Soviet Union (and then it thundered in the West) that Astafiev came across here as a vile nationalist and anti-Semite! But the professor led skillfully: first, of course, with pain for the insulted Georgians, and the next step - to this terrifying line.

An excerpt from an essay about Viktor Astafiev from the “Literary Collection” written by

Viktor Petrovich Astafiev

"The Sad Detective"

Forty-two-year-old Leonid Soshnin, a former criminal investigation operative, returns home from a local publishing house to an empty apartment, in the worst mood. The manuscript of his first book, “Life is More Precious than Everything,” after five years of waiting, has finally been accepted for production, but this news does not make Soshnin happy. A conversation with the editor, Oktyabrina Perfilyevna Syrovasova, who tried to humiliate the author-policeman who dared to call himself a writer with arrogant remarks, stirred up Soshnin’s already gloomy thoughts and experiences. “How to live in the world? Lonely? - he thinks on the way home, and his thoughts are heavy.

He served his time in the police: after two wounds, Soshnin was sent to a disability pension. After another quarrel, Lerka’s wife leaves him, taking with her his little daughter Svetka.

Soshnin remembers his whole life. He cannot answer his own question: why is there so much room in life for grief and suffering, but always close to love and happiness? Soshnin understands that, among other incomprehensible things and phenomena, he has to comprehend the so-called Russian soul, and he needs to start with the people closest to him, with the episodes he witnessed, with the destinies of the people with whom his life encountered... Why are Russian people ready to regret bonebreaker and bloodletter and not notice how a helpless war invalid is dying nearby, in the next apartment?.. Why does a criminal live so freely and cheerfully among such kind-hearted people?..

In order to escape from his gloomy thoughts at least for a minute, Leonid imagines how he will come home, cook himself a bachelor’s dinner, read, sleep a little so that he has enough strength for the whole night - sitting at the table, over a blank sheet of paper. Soshnin especially loves this night time, when he lives in some isolated world created by his imagination.

Leonid Soshnin's apartment is located on the outskirts of Veysk, in an old two-story house where he grew up. From this house my father went to war, from which he did not return, and here, towards the end of the war, my mother also died from a severe cold. Leonid stayed with his mother’s sister, Aunt Lipa, whom he used to call Lina since childhood. Aunt Lina, after the death of her sister, went to work in the commercial department of the Wei Railway. This department was “judged and replanted at once.” The aunt tried to poison herself, but she was saved and after the trial she was sent to a colony. By this time, Lenya was already studying at the regional special school of the Internal Affairs Directorate, from where he was almost kicked out because of his convicted aunt. But the neighbors, and mainly Father Lavrya’s fellow Cossack soldier, interceded for Leonid with the regional police authorities, and everything turned out okay.

Aunt Lina was released under an amnesty. Soshnin had already worked as a district police officer in the remote Khailovsky district, from where he brought his wife. Before her death, Aunt Lina managed to nurse Leonid’s daughter, Sveta, whom she considered her granddaughter. After Lina’s death, Soshniny passed under the protection of another, no less reliable aunt named Granya, a switchwoman on the shunting hill. Aunt Granya spent her whole life taking care of other people’s children, and even little Lenya Soshnin learned the first skills of brotherhood and hard work in a kind of kindergarten.

Once, after returning from Khailovsk, Soshnin was on duty with a police squad at a mass celebration on the occasion of Railway Worker's Day. Four guys who were drunk to the point of losing their memory raped Aunt Granya, and if not for his patrol partner, Soshnin would have shot these drunken fellows sleeping on the lawn. They were convicted, and after this incident, Aunt Granya began to avoid people. One day she expressed to Soshnin the terrible thought that by convicting the criminals, they had thereby ruined young lives. Soshnin shouted at the old woman for feeling sorry for non-humans, and they began to avoid each other...

In the dirty and spit-stained entrance of the house, three drunks accost Soshnin, demanding to say hello and then to apologize for their disrespectful behavior. He agrees, trying to cool their ardor with peaceful remarks, but the main one, a young bully, does not calm down. Fueled by alcohol, the guys attack Soshnin. He, having gathered his strength - his wounds and hospital “rest” took their toll - defeats the hooligans. One of them hits his head on the heating radiator when he falls. Soshnin picks up a knife on the floor, staggers into the apartment. And he immediately calls the police and reports the fight: “One hero’s head was split on a radiator. If so, don’t look for it. The villain is me."

Coming to his senses after what happened, Soshnin again remembers his life.

He and his partner were chasing a drunk on a motorcycle who had stolen a truck. The truck rushed like a deadly ram through the streets of the town, having already ended more than one life. Soshnin, the senior patrol officer, decided to shoot the criminal. His partner fired, but before he died, the truck driver managed to hit the motorcycle of the pursuing policemen. On the operating table, Soshnina’s leg was miraculously saved from amputation. But he remained lame; it took him a long time to learn to walk. During his recovery, the investigator tormented him for a long time and persistently with an investigation: was the use of weapons legal?

Leonid also remembers how he met his future wife, saving her from hooligans who were trying to take off the girl’s jeans right behind the Soyuzpechat kiosk. At first, life between him and Lerka went in peace and harmony, but gradually mutual reproaches began. His wife especially did not like his literary studies. “Such Leo Tolstoy with a seven-shooter pistol, with rusty handcuffs in his belt...” she said.

Soshnin recalls how one “took” a stray guest performer, a repeat offender, Demon, in a hotel in the town.

And finally, he remembers how Venka Fomin, who was drunk and returned from prison, put a final end to his career as an operative... Soshnin brought his daughter to his wife’s parents in a distant village and was about to return to the city when his father-in-law told him that a drunk man had locked him up in a neighboring village in the barn of old women and threatens to set them on fire if they do not give him ten rubles for a hangover. During the detention, when Soshnin slipped on manure and fell, the frightened Venka Fomin stuck a pitchfork into him... Soshnin was barely taken to the hospital - and he barely escaped certain death. But the second group of disability and retirement could not be avoided.

At night, Leonid is awakened from sleep by the terrible scream of the neighbor girl Yulka. He hurries to the apartment on the first floor, where Yulka lives with her grandmother Tutyshikha. Having drunk a bottle of Riga balsam from the gifts brought by Yulka’s father and stepmother from the Baltic sanatorium, Grandma Tutyshikha is already fast asleep.

At the funeral of grandmother Tutyshikha, Soshnin meets his wife and daughter. At the wake they sit next to each other.

Lerka and Sveta stay with Soshnin, at night he hears his daughter sniffling behind the partition, and feels his wife sleeping next to him, timidly clinging to him. He gets up, approaches his daughter, adjusts her pillow, presses his cheek to her head and loses himself in some kind of sweet grief, in a resurrecting, life-giving sadness. Leonid goes to the kitchen, reads “Proverbs of the Russian People” collected by Dahl - the section “Husband and Wife” - and is surprised at the wisdom contained in simple words.

“Dawn was already rolling in like a damp snowball through the kitchen window, when, having enjoyed the peace among the quietly sleeping family, with a feeling of long-unknown confidence in his capabilities and strength, without irritation or melancholy in his heart, Soshnin stuck to the table and placed a blank sheet of paper in the spot of light and froze over him for a long time.”

Leonid Soshnin walked home with his head down, immersed in his joyless black thoughts. He recalled his past and tried to understand why, at forty-two, he was left with nothing, and how he deserved such a sad fate. Soshnin felt like an old, useless thing that had served its purpose. Everything is in the past - both work in the criminal investigation department and a happy family life with his beloved wife and daughter. No one took the former operative’s attempts at self-expression seriously; editor Syrovasova accepted his book “Life Is More Expensive” for production, but showered the author with humiliating ridicule. According to others, the policeman and the writer could not get along in one person; it simply went beyond their perception of reality.

Soshnin could not answer his own questions. He absolutely did not understand why in the lives of most people suffering and grief rule the show, while love and happiness do not play their roles for long and leave the stage forever.

Leonid liked to sit at night over a blank sheet of paper, mentally creating his own imaginary world. He philosophized and created in an old house on the outskirts of Weisk. His childhood passed there, his mother died of a serious illness, his father went to war... Soshnin only had his aunt Lina left, who was unjustly convicted and sent to a colony. She tried to take her own life and took poison, but they pumped her out - it was impossible to avoid imprisonment. Because of this incident, Soshnin almost flew out of the regional special school of the Internal Affairs Directorate, but Father Lavrya’s fellow Cossack soldier saved the situation by putting in a good word for him with the regional police authorities. Aunt Granya, who raised other people's children all her life, took care of the orphan.

Lenya was already working as a district police officer in the Khailovsky district when Lina was released under an amnesty.

Many sad events flashed before the former operative's mind's eye. Evil fate did not spare even the good old aunt Granya - she was raped by drunken revelers, and Soshnin almost carried out lynching on the guilty guys. Despite everything, Leonid always tried to resolve conflicts peacefully, he wanted justice to prevail, but life did not spare him and presented him with unpleasant surprises. The criminals rushed at him in the gateways, tried to crush him along with the motorcycle in a truck, the operative fought back, but again and again received serious injuries, and “rested” in a hospital bed.

It seemed that fortune finally smiled on Soshnin when he saved his future wife Lera from rapists. They had a wedding, the young people lived in perfect harmony and their daughter Svetlana was born, but joy did not reign in their home for long. The wife could not understand her husband’s passion for literature and jokingly called him “Tolstoy with a seven-shooter pistol.” Gradually, mutual reproaches increasingly poisoned family life, and one day Lera took her daughter and left.

Leonid’s police career ended with a sad episode: former prisoner Venka Fomin pierced the operative with a pitchfork and forced him to look death straight in the face. Soshnin miraculously survived, but he could not avoid disability and had to retire.

At his neighbor’s funeral, Lenya met his wife and sat next to her at the wake. Lerka and her daughter stayed overnight in the old apartment, and Soshnin did not sleep a wink, bent over a blank sheet of paper, enjoying the peace of his peacefully sleeping family.

“Cruel” realism by V. Astafiev (based on the story “Sad Detective”)

The journalistic beginning is palpable in V. Astafiev’s story “The Sad Detective,” but the main thing that defines this work is “cruel” realism. The prose of “cruel” realism is merciless in depicting the horrors of everyday life. The story concentrates criminal episodes from the life of the provincial town of Veysk, and in such quantity that it seems implausible that so much negativity, so much dirt, and blood could be concentrated in such a small geographical space. Here are collected monstrous manifestations of the collapse and degradation of society. But there is both an artistic and real justification for this.

V. Astafiev makes us horrified by reality, he awakens ears accustomed to information not only with the meaning of crimes, but also with their number. The pumped-up facts, destinies, and faces mercilessly plunge one into a reality that is terrible in its bitterness and lack of motive for crimes. This brutal realism combines fictional and real episodes into a single canvas, imbued with angry pathos.

This saturation with criminal events is also explained by the profession of the main character Leonid Soshnin. Soshnin is an investigator, a policeman, who daily deals with the fall of a person. He is also an aspiring writer. Everything that Soshnin sees around becomes material for his notes; with all facets of his soul he is turned towards people. But “work in the police eradicated from him pity for criminals, this universal, not fully understood by anyone and inexplicable Russian pity, which forever preserves in the living flesh of the Russian person an unquenchable thirst for compassion and the desire for good.”

V. Astafiev sharply raises the question of the people. That idealized image of a single people - a lover of truth, a passion-bearer, which was created in previous decades (1960-80s) in “village prose”, does not suit the writer. He shows in the Russian character not only what makes one touch. Where then does the dump truck hijacker, who killed several people in a drunken stupor, come from, or Venka Fomin, who threatens to burn the village women in the calf barn if they don’t give him a hangover? Or that pet guy who was humiliated in front of women by more arrogant suitors, and in revenge he decided to kill the first person he met. And for a long time, he brutally killed a beautiful student with a stone in the sixth month of pregnancy, and then at the trial he shouted: “Is it my fault that such a good woman was caught?..”

The writer discovers in man a “terrible, self-devouring beast.” He speaks the merciless truth about his contemporaries, adding new features to their portrait.

The children buried their father. “At home, as usual, the children and relatives cried for the deceased, drank heavily - out of pity, at the cemetery they added - damp, cold, bitter. Five empty bottles were later found in the grave. And two complete ones, with a muttering voice, are now a new, cheerful fashion among highly paid hard workers: with force, richly not only spend your free time, but also bury it - burn money over the grave, preferably a pack, throw after the departing bottle of wine - maybe the poor thing will want a hangover in the next world. The grieving children threw bottles into the hole, but they forgot to lower their parents into the land.”

Children forget their parents, parents leave a tiny child in an automatic storage room. Others lock the baby at home for a week, leading him to catch and eat cockroaches. The episodes are interconnected by a logical connection. Although V. As-tafiev does not make any direct comparisons, it seems that he simply strings one after another onto the core of the hero’s memory, but in the context of the story, between different episodes there is a force field of a certain idea: parents - children - parents; criminal - the reaction of others; people - “intelligentsia”. And all together adds new touches to the image of the Russian people.

V. Astafiev does not spare black tones in national self-criticism. He turns inside out those qualities that were elevated to the rank of virtues of the Russian character. He is not admired by patience and humility - in them the writer sees the causes of many troubles and crimes, the sources of philistine indifference and indifference. V. Astafiev does not admire the eternal compassion for the criminal, noticed in the Russian people by F. Dostoevsky. Material from the site

V. Astafiev, in his desire to understand the Russian character, is very close to Gorky’s “Untimely Thoughts,” who wrote: “We, Rus', are anarchists by nature, we are a cruel beast, dark and evil slave blood still flows in our veins... There are no words, which it would be impossible to scold a Russian person - you cry with blood, but you scold..." V. Astafiev also speaks with pain and suffering about the beast in man. He brings terrible episodes into the story not in order to humiliate the Russian people, to intimidate, but to make everyone think about the reasons for the brutality of people.

“The Sad Detective” is an artistic and journalistic story, marked by sharp analysis and merciless assessments. “Detective” by V. Astafiev is devoid of the happy ending element inherent in this genre, when a lone hero can tame the evil that has broken through and return the world to the norm of its existence. In the story, it is evil and crime that become almost the norm in everyday life, and Soshnin’s efforts cannot shake it. Therefore, the story is far from an ordinary detective story, although it includes crime stories. The title can be interpreted both as a sad crime story and as a sad hero whose profession is a detective.

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