Sad detective. The theme of the loss of moral guidelines in the work of V. P. Astafiev “Sad Detective

V.P. Astafiev is a writer whose works reflect the life of people of the 20th century. Astafiev is a person who knows and is close to all the problems of our sometimes difficult life. Viktor Petrovich went through the war as a private and knows all the hardships of post-war life. I think that with his wisdom and experience he is one of those people whose advice and orders you should not only listen to, but try to follow. But Astafiev does not act as a prophet, he simply writes about what is close to him and what worries him.

Although the works of Viktor Petrovich belong to modern Russian literature, the problems that are often raised in them are more than one thousand years old. Eternal questions good and evil, punishment and justice have long forced people to look for answers to them. But this turned out to be a very difficult matter, because the answers lie in the person himself, and good and evil, honesty and dishonor are intertwined in us. Having a soul, we are often indifferent. We all have a heart, but we are often called heartless.

In Astafiev’s novel “ Sad detective“The problems of crime, punishment and the triumph of justice are raised. The theme of the novel is the current intelligentsia and the current people. The work tells about the life of two small towns: Veisk and Khailovsk, about the people living in them, about modern morals. When people talk about small towns, the image of a quiet, peaceful place appears in the mind, where life, filled with joys, flows slowly, without special emergencies. A feeling of peace appears in the soul. But those who think so are mistaken. In fact, life in Veisk and Khailovsk flows torrent. Young people, drunk to the point where a person turns into an animal, rape a woman old enough to be their mother, and the parents leave the child locked in the apartment for a week. All these pictures described by Astafiev terrify the reader. It becomes scary and creepy at the thought that the concepts of honesty, decency and love are disappearing. The description of these cases in the form of summaries is, in my opinion, important artistic feature. Hearing every day about various incidents, we sometimes don’t pay attention, but collected in the novel, they force us to take off our rose-colored glasses and understand: if it didn’t happen to you, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t concern you.

The novel makes you think about your actions, look back and see what you have done over the years. After reading, you ask yourself the question: “What good and good have I done? Did I notice when the person next to me felt bad? You begin to think that indifference is as evil as cruelty. I think that finding answers to these questions is the purpose of the work. In the novel “The Sad Detective” Astafiev created a whole system of images. The author introduces the reader to each hero of the work, talking about his life. The main character is police operative Leonid Soshnin.

He is a forty-year-old man who received several wounds while performing official duties- must retire. Having retired, he begins to write, trying to figure out where there is so much anger and cruelty in a person. Where does he keep it? Why, along with this cruelty, does the Russian people have pity for the prisoners and indifference to themselves, to their neighbor - a disabled person of war and labor? Astafiev contrasts the main character, an honest and brave operative worker, with policeman Fyodor Lebed, who quietly serves, moving from one position to another. On especially dangerous trips, he tries not to risk his life and gives the right to neutralize armed criminals to his partners, and it is not very important that his partner does not have a service weapon, because he is a recent graduate of a police school, and Fedor has a service weapon. In a bright way in the novel is Aunt Granya - a woman who, without having children of her own, gave all her love to the children who played near her house at the railway station, and then to the children in the Children's Home.

Often the heroes of a work, who should cause disgust, cause pity. Urna, who has transformed from a self-employed woman into a drunkard without a home or family, evokes sympathy. She screams songs and pesters passers-by, but she becomes ashamed not for her, but for the society that has turned its back on the Urn. Soshnin says that they tried to help her, but nothing worked, and now they simply don’t pay attention to her.

The city of Veisk has its own Dobchinsky and Bobchinsky. Astafiev does not even change the names of these people and characterizes them with a quote from Gogol’s “The Inspector General,” thereby refuting famous saying about how nothing lasts forever under the moon. Everything flows, everything changes, but such people remain, changing clothes from the 19th century to fashionable suit and a shirt with gold cufflinks from the 20th century. The city of Veisk also has its own literary luminary, who, sitting in his office, “enveloped in cigarette smoke, twitched, squirmed in his chair and littered with ashes.”

This is Oktyabrina Perfilyevna Syrovasova. It is this man, whose description brings a smile, that moves local literature forward and further. This woman decides what works to print. But not everything is so bad, because if there is evil, then there is also good.

Leonid Soshnin makes peace with his wife, and she returns to him again along with her daughter. It’s a little sad that the death of Soshnin’s neighbor, Tutyshikha’s grandmother, forces them to make peace. It is grief that brings Leonid and Lera closer together. Blank sheet paper in front of Soshni-ny, who usually writes at night, is a symbol of the beginning of a new stage in the life of the protagonist’s family. And I want to believe that their future life will be happy and joyful, and they will cope with grief, because they will be together.

The novel "The Sad Detective" is an exciting work. Although it is difficult to read because it is too scary pictures describes Astafiev. But such works need to be read, because they make you think about the meaning of life, so that it does not pass colorlessly and empty.

I liked the piece. I learned a lot of important things and understood a lot. I met a new writer and I know for sure that this is not last piece Astafiev, which I will read.

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 topics in this work there is a 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 is like 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 King Fish” by V. Astafiev is called a novel. We can agree with this, bearing in mind the main ideological and semantic core of the work - the idea of ​​​​the unity of human and natural world, about the philosophical subtext of life, where there is little chance. Genre feature of this work is that it consists of memories, short stories, stories - life stories, without general plot. This seemingly heterogeneous material is united general mood, leisurely consideration human destinies, individual actions, 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 breeze over the heroes higher power, God's judgment.

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 one contains the 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 guilty... This is how a writer comprehends life modern man, philosophically reduces cause and effect. 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 motive in “The King Fish” sounds in different options, 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 universal human moral standards, affirming the value of man and his spirituality as a priority.

(1 option)

The main task of literature has always been the task of relating and developing the most current problems: in the 19th century there was a problem of searching for the ideal of a freedom fighter, at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries there was a problem of revolution. In our time, the most pressing topic is morality. Reflecting the problems and contradictions of our time, wordsmiths go one step ahead of their contemporaries, illuminating the path to the future.

Victor Astafiev in the novel “The Sad Detective” addresses the topic of morality. He writes about the everyday life of people, which is typical for peacetime. His heroes do not stand out from the gray crowd, but merge with it. Showing ordinary people suffering from imperfection surrounding life, Astafiev raises the question of the Russian soul, the uniqueness of the Russian character. All the writers of our country have tried to solve this issue in one way or another. The content of the novel is unique: main character Soshnin believes that we invented this riddle of the soul ourselves in order to keep silent from others. Peculiarities of the Russian character, such as pity, sympathy for others and indifference towards ourselves, we develop in ourselves. The writer tries to disturb the reader's souls with the fate of the heroes. Behind the little things described in the novel, there is a problem posed: how to help people? The life of the heroes evokes sympathy and pity. The author went through the war, and he, like no one else, knows these feelings. What we saw in war can hardly leave anyone indifferent or not evoke compassion, heartache. The events described take place in Peaceful time, but one cannot help but feel the similarity, the connection with the war, because the time shown is no less difficult. Together with V. Astafiev, we think about the destinies of people and ask the question: how did we get to this?

The title "The Sad Detective" doesn't say much. But if you think about it, you will notice that the main character really looks like a sad detective. Responsive and compassionate, he is ready to respond to any misfortune, a cry for help, to sacrifice himself for the sake of the good completely strangers. The problems of his life are directly related to the contradictions of society. He cannot help but be sad, because he sees what the lives of the people around him are like, what their destinies are. Soshnin is not just a former policeman, he brought benefit to people not only on duty, but also by the call of his soul, he kind heart. Astafiev gave a description of his main character through the title. The events described in the novel could happen now. In Russia ordinary people It has never been easy. The time period of which events are described in the book is not specified. One can only guess what it was after the war.

Astafiev talks about Soshnin’s childhood, about how he grew up without parents with Aunt Lina, then with Aunt Granya. The period when Soshnin was a policeman was also described, catching criminals, risking his life. Soshnin recalls the years he has lived and wants to write a book about the world around him.

Unlike the main character, Syrokvasova is far from positive image. She is a typical figure of modern fiction. She is tasked with choosing whose works to publish and whose not. Soshnin is just a defenseless author, under her power among many others. He is still at the very beginning of his journey, but he understands what an incredibly difficult task he has taken on, how weak his stories are, how much he will take from him without giving anything in return, literary work, to which he doomed himself.

The reader is attracted to the image of Aunt Granya. Her tolerance, kindness and hard work are admirable. She devoted her life to raising children, although she never had her own. Aunt Granya never lived in abundance, did not have great joys and happiness, but she gave all the best she had to the orphans.

At the end, the novel turns into a discussion, a reflection of the protagonist about the fate of the people around him, about the hopelessness of existence. In its details the book does not have the character of a tragedy, but in general outline it makes you think about sad things. A writer often sees and feels much more behind the seemingly ordinary fact of personal relationships. The fact is that, unlike others, he analyzes his own feelings more deeply and comprehensively. And then a single case is elevated to general beginning, prevails over private. Eternity is expressed in a moment. Simple at first glance, small in volume, the novel is fraught with very complex philosophical, social and psychological content.

It seems to me that the words of I. Repin are suitable for “The Sad Detective”: “In the soul of a Russian person there is a trait of special, hidden heroism... It lies under the cover of personality, it is invisible. But this - greatest power life, she moves mountains... She merges completely with her idea, “is not afraid to die.” This is where her greatest strength lies: “she is not afraid of death.”

Astafiev, in my opinion, does not let the moral aspect of human existence out of sight for a minute. This is probably what attracted my attention to his work.

(Option 2)

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. Events are remembered different years 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 feat (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.

main topic novel - 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 eternal problems 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.

(option 3)

V.P. Astafiev is a writer whose works reflect the life of people of the 20th century. Astafiev is a person who knows and is close to all the problems of our sometimes difficult life. Viktor Petrovich went through the war as a private and knows all the hardships of post-war life. I think that with his wisdom and experience he is one of those people whose advice and orders you should not only listen to, but try to follow. But Astafiev does not act as a prophet, he simply writes about what is close to him and what worries him.

Although the works of Viktor Petrovich belong to modern Russian literature, the problems that are often raised in them are more than one thousand years old. Eternal questions of good and evil, punishment and justice have long forced people to look for answers to them. But this turned out to be a very difficult matter, because the answers lie in the person himself, and good and evil, honesty and dishonor are intertwined in us. Having a soul, we are often indifferent. We all have a heart, but we are often called heartless.

Astafiev’s novel “The Sad Detective” raises the problems of crime, punishment and the triumph of justice. The theme of the novel is the current intelligentsia and the current people. The work tells about the life of two small towns: Veisk and Khailovsk, about the people living in them, about modern morals. When people talk about small towns, the image of a quiet, peaceful place appears in the mind, where life, filled with joys, flows slowly, without any special incidents. A feeling of peace appears in the soul. But those who think so are mistaken. In fact, life in Veisk and Khailovsk flows in a stormy stream. Young people, drunk to the point where a person turns into an animal, rape a woman old enough to be their mother, and the parents leave the child locked in the apartment for a week. All these pictures described by Astafiev terrify the reader. It becomes scary and creepy at the thought that the concepts of honesty, decency and love are disappearing. The description of these cases in the form of summaries is, in my opinion, an important artistic feature. Hearing every day about various incidents, we sometimes don’t pay attention, but collected in the novel, they force us to take off our rose-colored glasses and understand: if it didn’t happen to you, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t concern you. The novel makes you think about your actions, look back and see what you have done over the years. After reading, you ask yourself the question: “What good and good have I done? Did I notice when the person next to me felt bad? You begin to think that indifference is as evil as cruelty.

I think that finding answers to these questions is the purpose of the work. In the novel “The Sad Detective” Astafiev created a whole system of images. The author introduces the reader to each hero of the work, talking about his life. The main character is police operative Leonid Soshnin. He, a forty-year-old man who was injured several times in the line of duty, must retire. Having retired, he begins to write, trying to figure out where there is so much anger and cruelty in a person. Where does he keep it? Why, along with this cruelty, does the Russian people have pity for the prisoners and indifference to themselves, to their neighbor - a disabled person of war and labor? Astafiev contrasts the main character, an honest and brave operative worker, with policeman Fyodor Lebed, who quietly serves, moving from one position to another. On especially dangerous trips, he tries not to risk his life and gives the right to neutralize armed criminals to his partners, and it is not very important that his partner does not have a service weapon, because he is a recent graduate of a police school, and Fedor has a service weapon. A striking image in the novel is Aunt Granya - a woman who, without children of her own, gave all her love to the children who played near her house at the railway station, and then to the children in the Children's Home.

Often the heroes of a work, who should cause disgust, cause pity. Urna, who has transformed from a self-employed woman into a drunkard without a home or family, evokes sympathy. She screams songs and pesters passers-by, but she becomes ashamed not for her, but for the society that has turned its back on the Urn. Soshnin says that they tried to help her, but nothing worked, and now they simply don’t pay attention to her.

The city of Veisk has its own Dobchinsky and Bobchinsky. Astafiev does not even change the names of these people and characterizes them with a quote from Gogol’s “The Inspector General,” thereby refuting the well-known saying that nothing lasts forever under the sun. Everything flows, everything changes, but such people remain, exchanging clothes of the 19th century for a fashionable suit and shirt with gold cufflinks of the 20th century. The city of Veisk also has its own literary luminary, who, sitting in his office, “enveloped in cigarette smoke, twitched, squirmed in his chair and littered with ashes.”

This is Oktyabrina Perfilyevna Syrovasova. It is this man, whose description brings a smile, that moves local literature forward and further. This woman decides what works to print. But not everything is so bad, because if there is evil, then there is also good.

Leonid Soshnin makes peace with his wife, and she returns to him again along with her daughter. It’s a little sad that the death of Soshnin’s neighbor, Tutyshikha’s grandmother, forces them to make peace. It is grief that brings Leonid and Lera closer together. The blank sheet of paper in front of Soshnin, who usually writes at night, is a symbol of the beginning of a new stage in the life of the protagonist’s family. And I want to believe that their future life will be happy and joyful, and they will cope with grief, because they will be together.

The novel "The Sad Detective" is an exciting work. Although it is difficult to read, because Astafiev describes too terrible pictures. But such works need to be read, because they make you think about the meaning of life, so that it does not pass colorlessly and empty.

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, cloying expressions from writing- like: “does not react to anything”, “remove from labor collective", "lead to conflicts", " big drama experienced”, “subtleties of a pedagogical nature”, “waiting for mercy from nature.”) The author’s style is not created, the language that is needed is picked up.

Soshnin himself is a combat operative who almost lost a leg in one battle, almost died from the rusty pitchforks of a bandit in another and, one against two, unarmedly defeated two large bandits - this is with a gentle character and good feelings, – it 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 a prosperous metropolitan researcher Pushkin era Nathan Eidelman - inventively unscrewed this line and announced it in full Soviet Union(and then it thundered in the West) that Astafiev showed up 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

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 feat (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.