Mikhail SOLOMINTSEV

Mikhail Mikhailovich SOLOMINTSEV (1967) - teacher of literature and Russian at the Novokhopyorsk secondary school No. 2 of the Voronezh region.

The monstrous absurdity of war in the image of M.A. Sholokhov

Based on the novel "Quiet Flows the Don"

The purpose of the lesson. Show the development of the humanistic traditions of Russian literature in depicting the war and the significance of The Quiet Flows the Don as a novel that conveyed the truth about the Civil War, about the tragedy of the people.

Roman M.A. Sholokhov "Quiet Flows the Don" among books about pre-revolutionary events, the Civil War stands out for its originality. How did this book captivate contemporaries? It seems that, first of all, the significance and scale of the events described in it, the depth and truth of the characters. The first book of the novel is devoted to the life and life of the Don Cossacks before and at the very beginning of the imperialist war.

(A recording of a Cossack song sounds, which is taken as an epigraph to the novel.)

What is the role of the epigraph in this work?

In the old Cossack songs, taken by the author as an epigraph to the novel, a story about an unnatural, fratricidal war, about the death of Cossack families, about the tragedy of the people, when the steppe is plowed with the wrong thing (“horse hooves”), is sown with the wrong thing (“Cossack heads”), the wrong watered and the wrong crop will be harvested. In the songs composed by the Cossacks, the inconsistency of their entire unfortunate tribe is indicated - a tribe of warriors and farmers at the same time, truthfully explaining and revealing the essence of the tragedy that happened to the descendants of unknown authors already in the 20th century. In addition, the very elegiac structure of the Cossack song is composed according to the formula of negative parallelism at the beginning (“Our glorious little land is not plowed with plows ... our little land is plowed with horse hooves ...”) and is continued by a single-term parallel, the silent part of which is too terrible (“And the glorious little land is sown with Cossack heads"). These are not ordinary peasant everyday life, not sowing, but that terrible, disgusting thing that blows up the peaceful way of life and fills the waves “in the quiet Don with fatherly, motherly tears.” Here, the atmosphere of the Cossack way of life is not simply written out, the main idea of ​​the whole work is anticipated here.

How are the epigraphs related to the title of the novel?

(In this case, the quiet Don is not a majestically calm river, but the land of the Don, long sown with Cossacks, not knowing peace. And then the “quiet Don” is an oxymoron, a mutually contradictory combination of words: this is exactly what the old Cossack songs are composed of, taken by Sholokhov as an epigraph to the novel .)

Consider how the First World War is depicted in the novel Quiet Flows the Don.

Let's listen to the message of the student-historian "From the history of the Don Cossacks."

The war with Germany invaded the life of the Cossacks of the Tatarsky farm with great national grief. (Message from a history teacher about World War I.)

In the spirit of old beliefs, the writer draws a gloomy landscape, foreshadowing trouble: “At night, clouds thickened beyond the Don, burst dry and rolling thunderclaps, but did not fall on the ground, puffing with feverish heat, rain, lightning fired in vain ... At night, an owl roared on the bell tower. Unsteady and terrible screams hung over the farm, and the owl flew from the bell tower to the cemetery ...

To be thin, - the old people prophesied ... - The war will overtake.

And now the well-established peaceful life is sharply violated, events are developing more and more disturbingly and rapidly. In their formidable whirlpool, people whirl like chips in a flood, and the peaceful, quiet Don is shrouded in powder smoke and the burning of conflagrations (we can see this in the mobilization scene - part 3, ch. IV).

As a tragedy, Gregory experienced the first human blood shed by him. Let's see a fragment of the movie "Quiet Flows the Don". And now let's read the episode of the novel - the emotional experiences of the hero (part 3, ch. X).

Killing a person, even an enemy in battle, deeply contradicts the humane nature of Gregory. It torments him, does not allow him to live in peace, breaks, cripples his soul.

The scene of the collision of the Cossacks with the Germans resembles the pages of the works of L.N. Tolstoy.

- Give examples of a true image of the war in the novel by L.N. Tolstoy's "War and Peace".

The war in the image of Sholokhov is completely devoid of a touch of romance, a heroic halo. The people didn't do the work. This skirmish of people distraught with fear was called a feat. (Retelling of Chapter IX, Part 3.)

Sholokhov in his novel depicts not only the Cossacks, but also their officers. Many of them are honest, brave, but there are also cruel ones.

Which officer can be classified as cruel? (Chubaty.) Describe it.

(Such an inhuman position of Chubaty, even in the conditions of war, turns out to be unacceptable for Grigory. That is why he shoots at Chubaty when he cut down the captured Magyar for no reason.)

The war in the novel is presented in blood, suffering.

Give examples of the suffering of the heroes of the novel in the war.

How did the war affect Grigory Melekhov?

(“... Grigory firmly cherished the honor of the Cossacks, seized the opportunity to show selfless courage, took risks, went wild, went disguised to the rear of the Austrians, removed outposts without bloodshed<...>the Cossack was horse-riding and felt that the pain over the person that crushed him in the first days of the war had gone irrevocably. The heart became hardened, hardened, and just as the salt marsh does not absorb water, so Gregory's heart did not absorb pity ... ”- part 4, ch. IV.)

Sholokhov portrays Grigory Melekhov as a courageous warrior who deservedly received a high award - the St. George Cross. (Retelling of the episode - part 3, ch. XX.)

But the war brings Gregory to different people, communication with which makes him think about the war, and about the world in which he lives.

Fate brings him to Garanzha, who turned Grigory's life upside down.

Why did Garanga's instructions sink into Gregory's soul?

The war brought complete disappointment, I wanted to return to civilian life. It was on this fertile soil that the seeds of “Bolshevik truth,” the promise of peace, fell.

Here begins Gregory's attempts to understand the complex structure of life. Here begins his tragic path to the truth, to the people's truth.

How is the change in the mood of the fighting Cossacks between the two revolutions shown?

(The student makes a generalizing report on the topic: “Sholokhov’s depiction of the events of the First World War in the novel “Quiet Flows the Don””.)

Consider how the Civil War is depicted in the novel.

The history teacher tells about the events on the Don after the October Revolution.

Grigory is asked painful questions by the October Revolution, which split the whole world, and the Cossacks in particular, into friends and foes. Sholokhov again puts his hero before a choice, and again different people inspire him with different truths.

How does communication with Izvarin and Podtelkov affect Grigory?

(The centurion Efim Izvarin, a well-educated man, was an “inveterate autonomist Cossack.” Not believing in universal equality, Izvarin is convinced of the special fate of the Cossacks and advocates the independence of the Don region. Melekhov tries to argue with him, but the semi-literate Grigory was unarmed compared to his opponent, and Izvarin easily defeated him in verbal battles (part 5, ch. II).It is no coincidence that the hero falls under the influence of separatist ideas.

Fedor Podtelkov inspires Grigory quite differently, believing that the Cossacks have common interests with all Russian peasants and workers, and defending the idea of ​​elected people's power. And not so much education and logic, as in the case of Izvarin, but the strength of inner conviction makes Grigory believe Podtelkov. This strength is clearly expressed in portrait details: Grigory felt the “lead weight” of Podtelkov’s eyes when he “fixed his unhappy gaze on his interlocutor” (Part 5, Ch. II). After the conversation with Podtelkov, Grigory painfully tried to sort out the confusion of thoughts, to think over something, to decide.)

The search for truth for Gregory is not an abstract task, but a problem of life choice, because they occur at the moment of the most acute confrontation between various political forces that decide the fate of the Cossacks and the whole country. The tension of this confrontation is evidenced by the scene of the arrival in Novocherkassk for negotiations with the government of Kaledin of the delegation of the Military Revolutionary Committee, headed by the same Podtelkov (Part 5, Ch. X).

After the revolution, Gregory fights on the side of the Reds, but this choice is far from final, and Gregory will refuse it more than once on his painful life path.

What will affect the fate of the protagonist of the novel?

(Let's look at a fragment of the movie "The Execution of Officers".)

What is Grigory going through after these tragic events?

(“The weariness acquired in the war also broke. He wanted to turn away from everything seething with hatred, hostile and incomprehensible world. There, behind, everything was confused, contradictory. It was difficult to find the right path; , and there was no certainty - whether he was walking along the right path. He was drawn to the Bolsheviks - he was walking, he led others, and then he took thought, his heart went cold. "Is Izvarin really right? Whom to lean against?" Grigory, leaning against the back of the bag, but when he imagined how he would prepare harrows, carts for spring, weave a manger out of red rattan, and when ... the earth dries up, he will leave for the steppe; its lively beating and tremors; imagining how it would inhale the sweet spirit of young grass and the black soil raised by plowshares, which had not yet lost the insipid aroma of snow dampness, it warmed my soul. ika, couch grass, spicy manure scent. I wanted peace and quiet”- part 5, ch. XIII.)

Unjustified inhumanity pushed Melekhov away from the Bolsheviks, as it contradicted his ideas of conscience and honor. Grigory Melekhov many times had to observe the cruelty of both whites and reds, so the slogans of class hatred began to seem fruitless to him: “I wanted to turn away from the whole hostile and incomprehensible world seething with hatred. He was drawn to the Bolsheviks - he walked, he led others, and then he took thought, his heart went cold. Kotlyarov, enthusiastically arguing that the new government gave the poor Cossacks rights, equality, Grigory objects: “This government, besides ruin, does not give anything to the Cossacks!”

Gregory after some time begins his service in the White Cossack units.

Viewing a fragment of the film "The Execution of Podtelkovites" or reading a fragment from the novel (part 5, ch. XXX), from the biography of the writer himself.

Before watching, ask a question:

How does Gregory perceive the execution?

(He perceives it as retribution, as evidenced by his passionate monologue addressed to Podtelkov.)

From 1918 to the beginning of 1920, the Sholokhov family was alternately in the villages of Elanskaya and Karginskaya in the Verkhnedonsky district. It was a difficult time: white and red waves swept the Don region - the Civil War was raging. The teenager Misha “absorbed” the events that were taking place (and his head is good - his mind is bold and daring, his memory is excellent): battles, executions, poverty. Whites against reds, reds against whites, Cossacks against Cossacks. The stories are one more terrible than the other ... One, Migulin, a handsome, light-haired guy did not want to get under a bullet, he begged: “Do not kill! Have pity! .. Three kids ... a girl ... ”What a pity there is! With a shoed heel in the ear - blood shot out of the other with a tarsal. They lifted it up and put it in the pit... And this guy, they say, deserved four crosses in German, a full Knight of St. George... Here Kharlampy Yermakov entered the hut. Usually cheerful, today he was gloomy and angry. He began to talk about the execution of the Podtelkovites in the Ponomarev farm. And Podtyolkov was also good, he says. Under Glubokaya, on his orders, officers were also shot without any pity ... He was not the only one to tan other people's skins. Regurgitated.

Read an excerpt from Andrei Vorontsov's novel "Sholokhov" and answer the question: who is to blame for the outbreak of war on the Don?

“The February days of 1919 on the Upper Don were languid, cold, gray. The inhabitants of the hushed farms and villages, with a kind of nasty, sucking feeling in their stomachs, were waiting for the onset of twilight, listening to the footsteps, the screeching of the sleigh runners behind the wall. The hour of arrests was approaching, when the Red Army teams cordoned off the streets, broke into the huts and took the Cossacks to the jail. No one came back from the prison alive. At the same time, when a new batch of arrested people was brought to the cold one, the old ones were taken out of it, and the place was vacated. There were no spacious prison houses on the Don, there was no need for them in the old days. Those sentenced to death were taken out of the basement with their hands tied behind their backs, they were beaten with rifle butts in the back, which caused them to fall on the sled like sacks of flour, stacked, alive, in piles and carried out of the outskirts.

After midnight, for the inhabitants of the huts, which had already been visited by the Chekists, a terrible torture began. Behind the outskirts, a machine gun started its tatakane - sometimes in short, but frequent bursts, then long, choking, hysterical. Then there was silence, but not for long, it was interrupted by rifle and revolver shots dryly clicking like firewood in the stove - they finished off the wounded. Often after that, at someone's base, a dog began to howl - apparently he smelled the death of the owner-breadwinner. And in the huts, women howled at him, holding their heads, whose son or husband could take a fierce death that night. Until his death, Mikhail remembered this howl, from which the blood ran cold in his veins.

Most of the Cossacks who rebelled against Soviet power in April and did not leave with the Don army to the lower reaches of the Don, fled from the kurens at the first news of the arrests, hid in distant farms and winter quarters, those who were mobilized by Krasnov against their will remained. They arbitrarily withdrew from the front in January, let the Reds into the Upper Don, believing the promises of the Soviet government and its new henchmen Mironov and Fomin that they would all be given an amnesty for this. These people had already fought to the point of nausea - both for the German war and for the 18th year, and now they wanted only a peaceful life in their kurens. They have already forgotten to think about defending their rights before people from other cities, as in December 17, when they supported the Kamensky Revolutionary Committee with this condition. It became clear to everyone - they would have to share, against the red muzhik Russia, with all its might, leaning from the north, you can’t trample. The agreement with the Red Army was simple - you do not touch us, we do not touch you, and whoever remembers the old will be out of sight. The neutrality of the Don was beneficial to Moscow: if successful, the Kubans, exhausted by the war, could follow the example of the Dons, and this promised an early victory for the Red Army in the south, since Denikin's army consisted mainly of Kubans and Dons. But people called “commissioners of arrests and searches” arrived in the villages, and punitive teams went to the kurens ... They took away not only the front-line soldiers who laid down their arms, but also the “grandfathers” - the Knights of St. George, the living glory of the Don, who refused to take off their crosses, Cossack caps, rip stripes off your pants. Machine guns rattled behind the outskirts of the villages, in which, until recently, on Christmas holidays, lively dark-haired young people in excellent fur coats, with diamond rings on short thick fingers, came from Trotsky’s headquarters, congratulated on a bright holiday, generously treated them to wine brought on a troika, gave packs of royal money, convinced: “You live in peace in your villages, and we will live in peace. We fought, and that's enough." In the village of Migulinskaya, 62 Cossacks were shot without any trial, and in the villages of Kazanskaya and Shumilinskaya in just one week - more than 400 people, and in total about eight thousand people died on the Upper Don at that time. But the executions of the envoys of Sverdlov Syrtsov and Beloborodov-Weisbart, the regicide, were not enough ... In Vyoshenskaya, dark-haired young people ordered the bells to ring, drunken Red Army soldiers herded Cossacks, women and children into the cathedral. Here, a blasphemous act awaited them: an 80-year-old priest, who served in Vyoshenskaya even during the abolition of serfdom, was married with a mare...

The secret directive on "decossackization", signed on January 24, 1919 by Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov, was carried out. A cadaverous smell was drawn to the Quiet Don, which in its entire history did not know either enemy occupation or mass executions ...

The next morning mournful caravans were equipped for the outskirts. Relatives of the executed dug them up, somehow covered with earth, convulsively, with difficulty overcoming dizziness and holding back sobs, turned the bodies over, pulled the dead by the arms and legs, looking for their own, peered into the white faces with frosted hair. If they found it, they dragged the dead man to the sleigh under the mittens, and his head, with the pupils stopped forever, dangled like a drunkard's. The horses neighed uneasily, squinting their big eyes at the terrible load. But it was also considered a good thing to get the deceased to relatives in those days of pitch sorrow - Bukanovsky commissar Malkin, for example, left the executed to lie naked in a ravine, and forbade burying ...

Chekists at that time sang a ditty:

Here is your honor in the dead of midnight -
Fast march to rest!
Let the bastard rot under the snow
With us - a hammer-sickle with a star.

The Sholokhovs, like everyone else, with chilling fear awaited the onset of twilight, burned a lamp under the images, prayed that Alexander Mikhailovich would not be taken away. At that time they lived on the Pleshakov farm, rented half the kuren from the Drozdov brothers, Alexei and Pavel. Pavel came with a German officer. The brothers, as soon as the arrests began, disappeared to no one knows where. Chekists were already coming for them from the Yelanskaya village, for a long time, suspiciously asking Alexander Mikhailovich who he was, then they left, leaving before leaving, saying: "Maybe we'll see each other again ..." And now my father had reason to be afraid of such dates, for nothing Cossack. At the very beginning of the 17th year, he received an inheritance from his mother, the merchant's wife Maria Vasilievna, nee Mokhova, but not a small one - 70 thousand rubles. At that time, Alexander Mikhailovich served as the manager of a steam mill in Pleshakovo, and he decided to buy it, along with the mill and the forge, from the owner, the Elan merchant Ivan Simonov. Meanwhile, the February Revolution broke out.

Let's read and analyze the last episode of the second book.

(“... And a little later, right next to the chapel, under a tussock, under the shaggy cover of an old wormwood, a little bustard female laid nine smoky-blue spotted eggs and sat on them, warming them with the warmth of her body, protecting them with a glossy feathered wing.”)

The ending of the second book of the novel has a symbolic meaning. What do you think? Sholokhov contrasts the fratricidal war, the mutual cruelty of people with the life-giving force of nature. Reading these lines, we involuntarily recall the finale of the novel by I.S. Turgenev “Fathers and Sons”: “No matter how passionate, sinful, rebellious heart hides in the grave, the flowers growing on it serenely look at us with their innocent eyes; they tell us not only about eternal calmness, about that great calmness of “indifferent nature”; they speak of eternal reconciliation and endless life…”

I would like to end today's lesson with Maximilian Voloshin's poem "Civil War". Although the political views and aesthetic attitudes of Voloshin and the author of The Quiet Flows the Don are very far from each other, the great humanistic idea of ​​Russian literature connects these artists.

Some have risen from the underground
From links, factories, mines,
Poisoned by dark will
And the bitter smoke of cities.
Others from the ranks of the military,
Noble ruined nests,
Where they spent on the graveyard
Fathers and brothers of the slain.
In some hitherto not extinguished
Hops of immemorial fires
And the steppe, wild spirit is alive
And Razins, and Kudeyarov.
In others - devoid of all roots -
The pernicious spirit of the capital Neva:
Tolstoy and Chekhov, Dostoevsky -
Anguish and confusion of our days.
Some lift up on posters
Your nonsense about bourgeois evil,
About bright proletariats,
Petty-bourgeois paradise on earth...
In others, all the color, all the rot of empires,
All gold, all the ashes of ideas,
Shine all great fetishes
And all scientific superstitions.
Some go to free
Moscow and bind Russia again,
Others, having unbridled the elements,
They want to remake the whole world.
In both, the war breathed
Anger, greed, the dark drunkenness of revelry.
And after the heroes and leaders
A predator is sneaking in a greedy flock,
So that the power of Russia is boundless
Open and give to enemies;
To rot her heaps of wheat,
To dishonor her heaven
Devour riches, burn forests
And suck out the seas and ores.
And the roar of battles does not stop
All over the southern steppe
Among the golden splendors
Horses trampled reapers.
And there, and here between the rows
The same voice sounds:
“Whoever is not for us is against us.
No one is indifferent: the truth is with us.”
And I stand alone between them
In roaring flames and smoke
And with all your might
I pray for both.
(1919)

The monstrous absurdity of war in the image of Sholokhov. Give an example of the effect of war on any hero and get the best answer

Answer from Stanislawa[guru]
Consider how the First World War is depicted in the novel Quiet Flows the Don.
The war with Germany invaded the life of the Cossacks of the Tatarsky farm with great national grief.
In the spirit of old beliefs, the writer draws a gloomy landscape, foreshadowing trouble: “At night, clouds thickened beyond the Don, burst dry and rolling thunderclaps, but did not fall on the ground, puffing with feverish heat, rain, lightning fired in vain ... At night, an owl roared on the bell tower. Unsteady and terrible screams hung over the farm, and the owl flew from the bell tower to the cemetery ...
- To be thin, - the old people prophesied ... - The war will overtake.
And now the well-established peaceful life is sharply violated, events are developing more and more disturbingly and rapidly. In their formidable whirlpool, people whirl like chips in a flood, and the peaceful, quiet Don is shrouded in gunpowder smoke and the burning of conflagrations (Part 3, Ch. IV).
As a tragedy, Gregory experienced the first human blood shed by him.
episode of the novel - the emotional experiences of the hero (part 3, ch. X). Killing a person, even an enemy in battle, deeply contradicts the humane nature of Gregory. It torments him, does not allow him to live in peace, breaks, cripples his soul.
The war brought complete disappointment, I wanted to return to civilian life. It was on this fertile soil that the seeds of “Bolshevik truth,” the promise of peace, fell.
Here begins Gregory's attempts to understand the complex structure of life. Here begins his tragic path to the truth, to the people's truth.
Unjustified inhumanity pushed Melekhov away from the Bolsheviks, as it contradicted his ideas of conscience and honor. Grigory Melekhov many times had to observe the cruelty of both whites and reds, so the slogans of class hatred began to seem fruitless to him: “I wanted to turn away from the whole hostile and incomprehensible world seething with hatred. He was drawn to the Bolsheviks - he walked, he led others, and then he took thought, his heart went cold. Kotlyarov, enthusiastically arguing that the new government gave the poor Cossacks rights, equality, Grigory objects: “This government, besides ruin, does not give anything to the Cossacks! "
Gregory after some time begins his service in the White Cossack units.
Most of the Cossacks who rebelled against Soviet power in April and did not leave with the Don army to the lower reaches of the Don, fled from the kurens at the first news of the arrests, hid in distant farms and winter quarters, those who were mobilized by Krasnov against their will remained. They arbitrarily withdrew from the front in January, let the Reds into the Upper Don, believing the promises of the Soviet government and its new henchmen Mironov and Fomin that they would all be given an amnesty for this. These people had already fought to the point of nausea - both for the German war and for the 18th year, and now they wanted only a peaceful life in their kurens. They have already forgotten to think about defending their rights before people from other cities, as in December 17, when they supported the Kamensky Revolutionary Committee with this condition. It became clear to everyone - they would have to share, against the red muzhik Russia, with all its might, leaning from the north, you can’t trample. The agreement with the Red Army was simple - you do not touch us, we do not touch you, and whoever remembers the old will be out of sight. The neutrality of the Don was beneficial to Moscow: if successful, the Kubans, exhausted by the war, could follow the example of the Dons, and this promised an early victory for the Red Army in the south, since Denikin's army consisted mainly of Kubans and Dons. But people called “commissioners of arrests and searches” arrived in the villages, and punitive teams went to the kurens ... They took away not only the front-line soldiers who laid down their arms, but also the “grandfathers” - the Knights of St. George, the living glory of the Don, who refused to take off their crosses, Cossack caps, rip stripes off your pants. Machine guns rattled behind the outskirts of the villages, in which, until recently, on Christmas holidays, lively dark-haired young people in excellent fur coats, with diamond rings on short thick fingers, came from Trotsky's headquarters ...

Lesson 68
Paintings of the Civil War
in Sholokhov's novel Quiet Flows the Don

Goals: to determine the methods of depicting pictures of the Civil War in Sholokhov's novel, to trace how the tragedy of an entire nation and the fate of one person are intertwined, how the problem of humanism is reflected in the epic.

During the classes

I. Introductory talk.

- You have already got acquainted with the novel by M. A. Sholokhov "Quiet Flows the Don". What is this book about?

Already in the title of the epic novel by M. A. Sholokhov there is a symbolic meaning. Don is a flat river, quiet and calm. In bad weather, it is stormy and dangerous, like the sea, like the ocean. He covers Grigory and Aksinya with a terrible wave during fishing, like the elements of passion that united their destinies. In winter, the horse with the sleigh of Panteley Prokofievich Melekhov instantly falls into the wormwood, he miraculously escapes himself ...

In the old Cossack songs about the father "Quiet Don", who is either "clean" or "muten" runs, the main contradiction inherent in the Cossack tribe is concentrated, combining in the same people the incompatible: the most peaceful creative profession of a farmer with military prowess, with constant readiness for war, which means death, destruction.

- What do you know from the history of the Cossacks?

Historically, the Cossacks are a freedom-loving people; Russian rebels - Stepan Razin, Emelyan Pugachev from the Cossacks. But even the most loyal, elite tsarist troops, who suppressed revolutions and carried out pogroms, were Cossack hundreds. The detachments that were the first to march across the battlefield during the First World War were Cossack hundreds.

These contradictions are even more acute in a bitter time, when the Don becomes a place of fratricidal war and no longer separates the banks, but people, bringing terrible news to the Cossacks' huts. This is the theme of war. Sholokhov's novel is about this.

There are also battle scenes in the "military" chapters, but they are not interesting to the author in and of themselves. The writer in his own way solves the collision "a man at war". In "The Quiet Don" we will not find descriptions of exploits, admiration for heroism, military courage, rapture in battle, which would be natural in a story about the Cossacks. Sholokhov is interested in something else - what war does to a person.

II. Lecture based on the text.

"Quiet Don" is a novel about the fate of the people in a critical era. Getting acquainted with the heroes of the work, we will notice that everyone has their own ability to experience and comprehend the war, but everyone will feel the “monstrous absurdity of war”.

1. Student Message about the depiction of the First World War in the novel.

The antithesis of peaceful life in the Quiet Don will be war, first World War I, then civil war. These wars will go through farms and villages, each family will have victims. Starting from the third part of the novel, the tragic determines the tone of the story. This motif sounds already in the epigraph and is indicated by the date "In March 1914 ..."

The linkage of short episodes, the disturbing tone conveyed by the words: "alarm", "mobilization", "war" - all this is connected with the date - 1914. The writer puts the word "War ..." in a separate line twice, "War!" Pronounced with different intonation, it makes the reader think about the terrible meaning of what is happening. This word echoes the remark of an old railway worker who looked into the car, where “Petro Melekhov was steaming with the other thirty Cossacks”:

“- You are my dear ... beef! And he shook his head reproachfully for a long time.

The emotion expressed in these words also contains a generalization. More openly, it is expressed at the end of the seventh chapter: “Echelons ... Uncountable echelons! Through the arteries of the country, along the railways to the western border, the turbulent Russia is driving gray overcoat blood.

Through the eyes of the Cossacks, we will see how “the ripened bread was trampled by the cavalry”, how a hundred “crumples bread with iron horseshoes”, how “the first shrapnel covered the rows of unharvested wheat”. And each, looking at the "unharvested shafts of wheat, at the bread lying under the hooves," remembered his tithes and "hardened in heart." These memoirs-influxes illuminate, as it were, from within the dramatic situation in which the Cossacks found themselves in the war.

The episode "Gregory kills an Austrian" is reread (part 3, chapter 5).

After reading the episode, the words of Leo Tolstoy are recalled: "War is madness." Madness not only because it devalues ​​life, but also because it cripples the soul and overshadows the mind.

It is precisely “inflamed by the madness that was happening all around” that Grigory Melekhov will rush with a saber at the Austrian, unconscious with fear, “without a rifle, with a cap clenched in his fist” (book 1, part 3, chapter 5).

Feeling his defenselessness, the Austrian in the image of Sholokhov is doomed to death: “The Austrian’s square, elongated face with fear turned cast-iron black. He kept his hands at his sides, often moving his ashy lips... Grigory met the Austrian's gaze. Eyes filled with mortal horror looked at him deadly ... "

A terrible picture in all its details will long stand before Grigory's eyes, painful memories will disturb him for a long time. When meeting with his brother, he confesses: “I, Petro, have worn out my soul. I’m so unfinished all at once… It’s as if I’ve been under the millstones, they crumpled and spat out… My conscience is killing me…”

Gregory watched with interest the changes that took place with his comrades in a hundred: “Changes were made on every face, each in his own way nurtured and grew the seeds sown by the war.” The author draws our attention to those whom he considers "morally crippled" by the war.

Through the eyes of Grigory, the reader will see the “pain and bewilderment” lurking in the corners of Prokhor Zykov’s lips, notice how Grigory’s fellow farmer Yemelyan Groshev “charred and blackened, laughed ridiculously”, hear how Yegorka Zharkov’s speech was filled with “heavy obscene curses”.

The most sinister figure will, of course, be Alexei Uryupin, nicknamed Chubaty, who teaches Grigory not so much the “complex hitting technique” as the easy killing technique: “Chop a man boldly. He is soft, a man, like dough ... You are a Cossack, your job is to chop without asking. In battle, to kill the enemy is a sacred thing ... He is a filthy man ... evil spirits, stinks on the ground, lives like a toadstool mushroom ”(book 1, part 3, ch. 12).

The changes in Gregory himself were striking: he was "bent ... by the war, sucked the blush from his face, painted him with bile." And internally, he became completely different: “The heart became coarse, hardened, like a salt marsh in a drought, and just as the salt marsh does not absorb water, so Gregory’s heart did not absorb pity ... he knew that he would no longer laugh at him, as before; he knew that it was difficult for him, kissing a child, to openly look into clear eyes; Gregory knew what price he had paid for the full bow of crosses and production” (Part 4, Chapter 4).

The voice of the author bursts into the epic narrative: “The native kurens were imperiously drawn to themselves, and there was no such force that could keep the Cossacks from spontaneous attraction home.” Everyone wanted to be at home, "just look with one eye." And, as if fulfilling this desire, Sholokhov draws a farmstead, "like a widow's bloodless", where "life went on sale - like hollow water in the Don." The author's text sounds in unison with the words of the old Cossack song, which became the epigraph of the novel.

So through the battle scenes, through the sharp experiences of the characters, through landscape sketches, description-generalization, lyrical digressions, Sholokhov leads us to comprehend the "monstrous absurdity of war."

2. Sholokhov's depiction of pictures of the civil war.

Teacher. The writer B. Vasiliev gives his assessment of the novel “Quiet Flows the Don”, interpreting the essence of the civil war in his own way: (can be written on the board and in notebooks): “This is an epic in the full sense of the word, reflecting the most important thing in our civil war - monstrous fluctuations, throwing normal, calm family man. And it's done, from my point of view, great. On one fate, the whole fracture of society is shown. Even though he is a Cossack, he is still primarily a peasant, a farmer. He is the breadwinner. And the breaking of this breadwinner is the whole civil war in my understanding.

At the end of the lesson, you have the opportunity to compare your impressions of Sholokhov's depiction of the civil war with this opinion.

Sholokhov's novel is concrete-historical in its plot. The Donshchina is the center of attraction for all events. Villages, farms along the banks of the Don, Khopra, Medveditsa. Cossack kurens. Wormwood steppes with a harassed nesting trace of a horse's hoof. Mounds in wise silence, protecting the ancient Cossack glory. The land through which the internecine strife of the civil war passed so devastatingly. The novel contains the very history of the Don, verified, documented - real events, historical names, exact dating, orders, resolutions, telegrams, letters, absolutely exact routes of military campaigns. The fates of the heroes are correlated with this historical reality.

Some researchers of the novel, referring to the tragic events on the Don, blamed the Cossacks. There is truth in this. But far from complete. The Don problem was hotly discussed already in the 1920s and 1930s. V. A. Antonov-Ovseenko, for example, in the book Notes on the Civil War, speaking about the shaky behavior of the peasantry in the Don, Ukraine and other places, noted for a number of reasons not only the economic basis of the middle strata of the population, but also the fact that increased fluctuations, caused excesses: excesses in the conduct of land policy, the forcible planting of communes, tactlessness on the part of some leaders who did not take into account the indigenous population, the gangster behavior of the "anarchist rabble" that joined the Red Army detachments.

Sholokhov tells about the difficult morale of the people, who are experiencing cruelty from both the “Reds” and the “Whites”. The author does not forgive anyone cruelty. And she was everywhere. Cossack Fyodor Podtelkov staged lynching of captured officers, cuts down Yesaul Chernetsov, and then, losing all self-control, gives the command: "Chop them all!" Sholokhov does not forgive this, as does the no less reckless and even more bloody trial in the Ponomarev farm - the execution of Podtelkov and the entire detachment. He does not forgive the sadist Mitka Korshunov for the reprisals against the captured Red Army soldiers and the old woman, the mother of Mikhail Koshevoy. But there is no justification for many of the actions of Koshevoy himself: remember how he executed Grishaka, a hundred-year-old grandfather, who enjoyed universal respect in the farm for his disinterestedness and justice, set fire to the Cossacks' huts.

Many in 1928 were surprised by an unusual thing in our literature - the ending in the second book of the novel. A civil war rages on the Don. The Red Guard Jack dies. Yablonovsky Cossacks buried him. “Soon an old man came from a nearby farm, dug a hole in the head of the grave, and placed a chapel on a freshly planed oak abutment. Under its triangular canopy, in the darkness, the mournful face of the Mother of God glimmered, below, on the eaves of the canopy, the black ligature of the Slavic letter fluttered:

In a time of turmoil and depravity

Do not judge, brothers, brother.

The old man left, and the chapel remained in the steppe to mourn the eyes of passers-by and passers-by with an eternally dull look, to awaken an indistinct longing in their hearts.

- What is the essence of such a finale?

The bottom line was that Sholokhov recalls the desire of the people to approve the norms of morality that have evolved over the centuries and are often associated with images of religious origin. The mournful face of the Mother of God and the inscription said that it was time to stop the strife and bloodshed, the fratricidal war, stop, think again, find harmony, remember the purpose of life, which nature affirms.

III. Outcome. Creative work.

What are your impressions of the pictures of the "monstrous absurdity of war"?

Write your reasoning, taking the words as an epigraph

In a time of turmoil and depravity

Do not judge, brothers, brother.

Homework.

Prepare (in groups) for a seminar in the image of Grigory Melekhov, the protagonist of Sholokhov's novel The Quiet Flows the Don.

The scene of the collision of the Cossacks with the Germans resembles the pages of Tolstoy's works. The war in the image of Sholokhov is completely devoid of a touch of romance, a heroic halo. The people didn't do the work. This skirmish of people distraught with fear was called a feat. (Part 3 Ch.9)

Let us recall the scene of Napoleon awarding a randomly selected Russian soldier (“War and Peace”). “It was an explosion of bestial enthusiasm,” as it was written in the diary of a murdered Cossack (entry of September 2, part 3, ch. 11), over whose life the staff clerks laughed. This diary just mentions "War and Peace", where Tolstoy speaks of a line between two enemy troops - a line of uncertainty, as if separating the living from the dead

Killing a person, even an enemy in battle, is contrary to the humane nature of Gregory. Love for everything, a keen sense of someone else's pain, the ability to compassion - this is the essence of the character of Sholokhov's hero. The madness of a war in which innocent people die (senseless sacrifices laid on the altar of someone's ambition) - that's what the hero thinks about.

Sholokhov's figurative means are varied: he shows how the Cossacks write off "Prayer from the gun", "Prayer from the battle", "Prayer during the raid"; gives pages of the diary of one of the Cossacks, letters from the front; scenes by the fire are lyrically painted - the Cossacks sing "The Cossack went to a foreign land far away ..."; the voice of the author bursts into the epic narrative, addressing the widows: “Tear on yourself, dear, the collar of the last shirt! Tear your hair, which is liquid from a bleak, hard life, bite your blood-bitten lips, break your hands mutilated by work and fight on the ground at the threshold of an empty hut!

Following the traditions of Russian literature, through battle scenes, through the sharp experiences of the characters, through landscape sketches, lyrical digressions (the campfire scene is a soldier's song), Sholokhov leads to an understanding of the strangeness, unnaturalness, inhumanity of war.

Homework: (book 2 each) 1) How did the events of the World War affect the peaceful life of the Cossacks? 2) The new government and the attitude of the Cossacks towards it. 3) The Civil War as a tragedy of the people (pick up episodes). 4) Reread v.2, part 5, ch. 1, 12, 13,24,30 5) Make a plan "The fate of Grigory Melekhov."

The purpose of the lesson. Show the development of the humanistic traditions of Russian literature in depicting the war and the significance of The Quiet Flows the Don as a novel that conveyed the truth about the Civil War, about the tragedy of the people.

The novel (immortal work) by M. A. Sholokhov “The Quiet Don” among books about pre-revolutionary events, the Civil War stands out for its originality. How did this book captivate contemporaries? It seems that, first of all, the significance and scale of the events described in it, the depth and truth of the characters. The first book of the novel is devoted to the life and life of the Don Cossacks before and at the very beginning of the imperialist war.

(A recording of a Cossack song sounds, which is taken as an epigraph to the novel.)

What is the role of the epigraph in this work?

In the old Cossack songs, taken by the author as an epigraph to the novel, a story about an unnatural, fratricidal war, about the death of Cossack families, about the tragedy of the people, when the steppe is plowed with the wrong thing (“horse hooves”), is sown with the wrong thing (“Cossack heads”), the wrong watered and the wrong crop will be harvested. In the songs composed by the Cossacks, the inconsistency of their entire unfortunate tribe is indicated - a tribe of warriors and farmers at the same time, truthfully explaining and revealing the essence of the tragedy that happened to the descendants of unknown authors already in the 20th century. In addition, the very elegiac structure of the Cossack song is composed according to the formula of negative parallelism at the beginning (“Our glorious little land is not plowed with plows ... our little land is plowed with horse hooves ...”) and is continued by a single-term parallel, the silent part of which is too terrible (“And the glorious little land is sown with Cossack heads"). These are not ordinary peasant everyday life, not sowing, but that terrible, disgusting thing that blows up the peaceful way of life and fills the waves “in the quiet Don with fatherly, motherly tears.” Here, the atmosphere of the Cossack way of life is not simply written out, the main idea of ​​the whole work is anticipated here.

How are the epigraphs related to the title of the novel?

(In this case, the quiet Don is not a majestically calm river, but the land of the Don, long sown with Cossacks, not knowing peace. And then the “quiet Don” is an oxymoron, a mutually contradictory combination of words: this is exactly what the old Cossack songs are composed of, taken by Sholokhov as an epigraph to the novel .)

Consider how the First World War is depicted in the novel Quiet Flows the Don.

Let's listen to the message of the student-historian "From the history of the Don Cossacks."

The war with Germany invaded the life of the Cossacks of the Tatarsky farm with great national grief. (Message from a history teacher about World War I.)

In the spirit of old beliefs, the writer draws a gloomy landscape, foreshadowing trouble: “At night, clouds thickened beyond the Don, burst dry and rolling thunderclaps, but did not fall on the ground, puffing with feverish heat, rain, lightning fired in vain ... At night, an owl roared on the bell tower. Unsteady and terrible screams hung over the farm, and the owl flew from the bell tower to the cemetery ...

To be thin, - the old people prophesied ... - The war will overtake.

And now the well-established peaceful life is sharply violated, events are developing more and more disturbingly and rapidly. In their formidable whirlpool, people whirl like chips in a flood, and the peaceful, quiet Don is shrouded in powder smoke and the burning of conflagrations (we can see this in the mobilization scene - part 3, ch. IV).

As a tragedy, Gregory experienced the first human blood shed by him. Let's see a fragment of the movie "Quiet Flows the Don". And now let's read the episode of the novel - the emotional experiences of the hero (part 3, ch. X).

Killing a person, even an enemy in battle, deeply contradicts the humane nature of Gregory. It torments him, does not allow him to live in peace, breaks, cripples his soul.

The scene of the collision of the Cossacks with the Germans resembles the pages of the works of L. N. Tolstoy.

- Give examples of the truthful depiction of war in Leo Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace".

The war in the image of Sholokhov is completely devoid of a touch of romance, a heroic halo. The people didn't do the work. This skirmish of people distraught with fear was called a feat. (Retelling of Chapter IX, Part 3.)

Sholokhov in his novel depicts not only the Cossacks, but also their officers. Many of them are honest, brave, but there are also cruel ones.

Which officer can be classified as cruel? (Chubaty.) Describe it.

(Such an inhuman position of Chubaty, even in the conditions of war, turns out to be unacceptable for Grigory. That is why he shoots at Chubaty when he cut down the captured Magyar for no reason.)

The war in the novel is presented in blood, suffering.

Give examples of the suffering of the heroes of the novel in the war.

How did the war affect Grigory Melekhov?

(“... Grigory firmly cherished the honor of the Cossacks, seized the opportunity to show selfless courage, took risks, went wild, went disguised to the rear of the Austrians, removed outposts without bloodshed<...>the Cossack was horse-riding and felt that the pain over the person that crushed him in the first days of the war had gone irrevocably. The heart became hardened, hardened, and just as the salt marsh does not absorb water, so Gregory's heart did not absorb pity ... ”- part 4, ch. IV.)

Sholokhov portrays Grigory Melekhov as a courageous warrior who deservedly received a high award - the St. George Cross. (Retelling of the episode - part 3, ch. XX.)

But the war brings Gregory to different people, communication with which makes him think about the war, and about the world in which he lives.

Fate brings him to Garanzha, who turned Grigory's life upside down.

Why did Garanga's instructions sink into Gregory's soul?

The war brought complete disappointment, I wanted to return to civilian life. It was on this fertile soil that the seeds of “Bolshevik truth,” the promise of peace, fell.

Here begins Gregory's attempts to understand the complex structure of life. Here begins his tragic path to the truth, to the people's truth.

How is the change in the mood of the fighting Cossacks between the two revolutions shown?

(The student makes a generalizing report on the topic: “Sholokhov’s depiction of the events of the First World War in the novel “Quiet Flows the Don””.)

Consider how the Civil War is depicted in the novel.

The history teacher tells about the events on the Don after the October Revolution.

Grigory is asked painful questions by the October Revolution, which split the whole world, and the Cossacks in particular, into friends and foes. Sholokhov again puts his hero before a choice, and again different people inspire him with different truths.

How does communication with Izvarin and Podtelkov affect Grigory?

(The centurion Efim Izvarin, a well-educated man, was an “inveterate autonomist Cossack.” Not believing in universal equality, Izvarin is convinced of the special fate of the Cossacks and advocates the independence of the Don region. Melekhov tries to argue with him, but the semi-literate Grigory was unarmed compared to his opponent, and Izvarin easily defeated him in verbal battles (part 5, ch. II).It is no coincidence that the hero falls under the influence of separatist ideas.

Fedor Podtelkov inspires Grigory quite differently, believing that the Cossacks have common interests with all Russian peasants and workers, and defending the idea of ​​elected people's power. And not so much education and logic, as in the case of Izvarin, but the strength of inner conviction makes Grigory believe Podtelkov. This strength is clearly expressed in portrait details: Grigory felt the “lead weight” of Podtelkov’s eyes when he “fixed his unhappy gaze on his interlocutor” (Part 5, Ch. II). After the conversation with Podtelkov, Grigory painfully tried to sort out the confusion of thoughts, to think over something, to decide.)

The search for truth for Gregory is not an abstract task, but a problem of life choice, because they occur at the moment of the most acute confrontation between various political forces that decide the fate of the Cossacks and the whole country. The tension of this confrontation is evidenced by the scene of the arrival in Novocherkassk for negotiations with the government of Kaledin of the delegation of the Military Revolutionary Committee, headed by the same Podtelkov (Part 5, Ch. X).

After the revolution, Gregory fights on the side of the Reds, but this choice is far from final, and Gregory will refuse it more than once on his painful life path.

What will affect the fate of the protagonist of the novel?

(Let's look at a fragment of the movie "The Execution of Officers".)

What is Grigory going through after these tragic events?

(“The weariness acquired in the war also broke. He wanted to turn away from everything seething with hatred, hostile and incomprehensible world. There, behind, everything was confused, contradictory. It was difficult to find the right path; , and there was no certainty - whether he was walking along the right path. He was drawn to the Bolsheviks - he was walking, he led others, and then he took thought, his heart went cold. "Is Izvarin really right? Whom to lean against?" Grigory, leaning against the back of the bag, but when he imagined how he would prepare harrows, carts for spring, weave a manger out of red rattan, and when ... the earth dries up, he will leave for the steppe; its lively beating and tremors; imagining how it would inhale the sweet spirit of young grass and the black soil raised by plowshares, which had not yet lost the insipid aroma of snow dampness, it warmed my soul. ika, couch grass, spicy manure scent. I wanted peace and quiet”- part 5, ch. XIII.)

Unjustified inhumanity pushed Melekhov away from the Bolsheviks, as it contradicted his ideas of conscience and honor. Grigory Melekhov many times had to observe the cruelty of both whites and reds, so the slogans of class hatred began to seem fruitless to him: “I wanted to turn away from the whole hostile and incomprehensible world seething with hatred. He was drawn to the Bolsheviks - he walked, he led others, and then he took thought, his heart went cold. Kotlyarov, enthusiastically arguing that the new government gave the poor Cossacks rights, equality, Grigory objects: “This government, besides ruin, does not give anything to the Cossacks!”

Gregory after some time begins his service in the White Cossack units.

Viewing a fragment of the film "The Execution of Podtelkovites" or reading a fragment from the novel (part 5, ch. XXX), from the biography of the writer himself.

Before watching, ask a question:

How does Gregory perceive the execution?

(He perceives it as retribution, as evidenced by his passionate monologue addressed to Podtelkov.)

From 1918 to the beginning of 1920, the Sholokhov family was alternately in the villages of Elanskaya and Karginskaya in the Verkhnedonsky district. It was a difficult time: white and red waves swept the Don region - the Civil War was raging. The teenager Misha “absorbed” the events that were taking place (and his head is good - his mind is bold and daring, his memory is excellent): battles, executions, poverty. Whites against reds, reds against whites, Cossacks against Cossacks. The stories are one more terrible than the other ... One, Migulin, a handsome, light-haired guy did not want to get under a bullet, he begged: “Do not kill! Have pity! .. Three kids ... a girl ... ”What a pity there is! With a shoed heel in the ear - blood shot out of the other with a tarsal. They lifted it up and put it in the pit... And this guy, they say, deserved four crosses in German, a full Knight of St. George... Here Kharlampy Yermakov entered the hut. Usually cheerful, today he was gloomy and angry. He began to talk about the execution of the Podtelkovites in the Ponomarev farm. And Podtyolkov was also good, he says. Under Glubokaya, on his orders, officers were also shot without any pity ... He was not the only one to tan other people's skins. Regurgitated.

Read an excerpt from Andrei Vorontsov's novel "Sholokhov" and answer the question: who is to blame for the outbreak of war on the Don?

“The February days of 1919 on the Upper Don were languid, cold, gray. The inhabitants of the hushed farms and villages, with a kind of nasty, sucking feeling in their stomachs, were waiting for the onset of twilight, listening to the footsteps, the screeching of the sleigh runners behind the wall. The hour of arrests was approaching, when the Red Army teams cordoned off the streets, broke into the huts and took the Cossacks to the jail. No one came back from the prison alive. At the same time, when a new batch of arrested people was brought to the cold one, the old ones were taken out of it, and the place was vacated. There were no spacious prison houses on the Don, there was no need for them in the old days. Those sentenced to death were taken out of the basement with their hands tied behind their backs, they were beaten with rifle butts in the back, which caused them to fall on the sled like sacks of flour, stacked, alive, in piles and carried out of the outskirts.

After midnight, for the inhabitants of the huts, which had already been visited by the Chekists, a terrible torture began. Behind the outskirts, a machine gun started its tatakane - sometimes in short, but frequent bursts, then long, choking, hysterical. Then there was silence, but not for long, it was interrupted by rifle and revolver shots dryly clicking like firewood in the stove - they finished off the wounded. Often after that, at someone's base, a dog began to howl - apparently he smelled the death of the owner-breadwinner. And in the huts, women howled at him, holding their heads, whose son or husband could take a fierce death that night. Until his death, Mikhail remembered this howl, from which the blood ran cold in his veins.

Most of the Cossacks who rebelled against Soviet power in April and did not leave with the Don army to the lower reaches of the Don, fled from the kurens at the first news of the arrests, hid in distant farms and winter quarters, those who were mobilized by Krasnov against their will remained. They arbitrarily withdrew from the front in January, let the Reds into the Upper Don, believing the promises of the Soviet government and its new henchmen Mironov and Fomin that they would all be given an amnesty for this. These people had already fought to the point of nausea - both for the German war and for the 18th year, and now they wanted only a peaceful life in their kurens. They have already forgotten to think about defending their rights before people from other cities, as in December 17, when they supported the Kamensky Revolutionary Committee with this condition. It became clear to everyone - they would have to share, against the red muzhik Russia, with all its might, leaning from the north, you can’t trample. The agreement with the Red Army was simple - you do not touch us, we do not touch you, and whoever remembers the old will be out of sight. The neutrality of the Don was beneficial to Moscow: if successful, the Kubans, exhausted by the war, could follow the example of the Dons, and this promised an early victory for the Red Army in the south, since Denikin's army consisted mainly of Kubans and Dons. But people called “commissioners of arrests and searches” arrived in the villages, and punitive teams went to the kurens ... They took away not only the front-line soldiers who laid down their arms, but also the “grandfathers” - the Knights of St. George, the living glory of the Don, who refused to take off their crosses, Cossack caps, rip stripes off your pants. Machine guns rattled behind the outskirts of the villages, in which, until recently, on Christmas holidays, lively dark-haired young people in excellent fur coats, with diamond rings on short thick fingers, came from Trotsky’s headquarters, congratulated on a bright holiday, generously treated them to wine brought on a troika, gave packs of royal money, convinced: “You live in peace in your villages, and we will live in peace. We fought, and that's enough." In the village of Migulinskaya, 62 Cossacks were shot without any trial, and in the villages of Kazanskaya and Shumilinskaya in just one week - more than 400 people, and in total about eight thousand people died on the Upper Don at that time. But the executions of the envoys of Sverdlov Syrtsov and Beloborodov-Weisbart, the regicide, were not enough ... In Vyoshenskaya, dark-haired young people ordered the bells to ring, drunken Red Army soldiers herded Cossacks, women and children into the cathedral. Here, a blasphemous act awaited them: an 80-year-old priest, who served in Vyoshenskaya even during the abolition of serfdom, was married with a mare...

The secret directive on "decossackization", signed on January 24, 1919 by Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov, was carried out. A cadaverous smell was drawn to the Quiet Don, which in its entire history did not know either enemy occupation or mass executions ...

The next morning mournful caravans were equipped for the outskirts. Relatives of the executed dug them up, somehow covered with earth, convulsively, with difficulty overcoming dizziness and holding back sobs, turned the bodies over, pulled the dead by the arms and legs, looking for their own, peered into the white faces with frosted hair. If they found it, they dragged the dead man to the sleigh under the mittens, and his head, with the pupils stopped forever, dangled like a drunkard's. The horses neighed uneasily, squinting their big eyes at the terrible load. But it was also considered a good thing to get the deceased to relatives in those days of pitch sorrow - Bukanovsky commissar Malkin, for example, left the executed to lie naked in a ravine, and forbade burying ...

Chekists at that time sang a ditty:

Here is your honor in the dead of midnight -
Fast march to rest!
Let the bastard rot under the snow
With us - a hammer-sickle with a star.

The Sholokhovs, like everyone else, with chilling fear awaited the onset of twilight, burned a lamp under the images, prayed that Alexander Mikhailovich would not be taken away. At that time they lived on the Pleshakov farm, rented half the kuren from the Drozdov brothers, Alexei and Pavel. Pavel came with a German officer. The brothers, as soon as the arrests began, disappeared to no one knows where. Chekists were already coming for them from the Yelanskaya village, for a long time, suspiciously asking Alexander Mikhailovich who he was, then they left, leaving before leaving, saying: "Maybe we'll see each other again ..." And now my father had reason to be afraid of such dates, for nothing Cossack. At the very beginning of the 17th year, he received an inheritance from his mother, the merchant's wife Maria Vasilievna, nee Mokhova, but not a small one - 70 thousand rubles. At that time, Alexander Mikhailovich served as the manager of a steam mill in Pleshakovo, and he decided to buy it, along with the mill and the forge, from the owner, the Elan merchant Ivan Simonov. Meanwhile, the February Revolution broke out.

Let's read and analyze the last episode of the second book.

(“... And a little later, right next to the chapel, under a tussock, under the shaggy cover of an old wormwood, a little bustard female laid nine smoky-blue spotted eggs and sat on them, warming them with the warmth of her body, protecting them with a glossy feathered wing.”)

The ending of the second book of the novel has a symbolic meaning. What do you think? Sholokhov contrasts the fratricidal war, the mutual cruelty of people with the life-giving force of nature. Reading these lines, we involuntarily recall the finale of I. S. Turgenev’s novel “Fathers and Sons”: “No matter how passionate, sinful, rebellious heart hides in the grave, the flowers growing on it serenely look at us with their innocent eyes; they tell us not only about eternal calmness, about that great calmness of “indifferent nature”; they speak of eternal reconciliation and endless life…”

I would like to end today's lesson with Maximilian Voloshin's poem "Civil War". Although the political views and aesthetic attitudes of Voloshin and the author of The Quiet Flows the Don are very far from each other, the great humanistic idea of ​​Russian literature connects these artists.

Some have risen from the underground
From links, factories, mines,
Poisoned by dark will
And the bitter smoke of cities.
Others from the ranks of the military,
Noble ruined nests,
Where they spent on the graveyard
Fathers and brothers of the slain.
In some hitherto not extinguished
Hops of immemorial fires
And the steppe, wild spirit is alive
And Razins, and Kudeyarov.
In others - devoid of all roots -
The pernicious spirit of the capital Neva:
Tolstoy and Chekhov, Dostoevsky -
Anguish and confusion of our days.
Some lift up on posters
Your nonsense about bourgeois evil,
About bright proletariats,
Petty-bourgeois paradise on earth...
In others, all the color, all the rot of empires,
All gold, all the ashes of ideas,
Shine all great fetishes
And all scientific superstitions.
Some go to free
Moscow and bind Russia again,
Others, having unbridled the elements,
They want to remake the whole world.
In both, the war breathed
Anger, greed, the dark drunkenness of revelry.
And after the heroes and leaders
A predator is sneaking in a greedy flock,
So that the power of Russia is boundless
Open and give to enemies;
To rot her heaps of wheat,
To dishonor her heaven
Devour riches, burn forests
And suck out the seas and ores.
And the roar of battles does not stop
All over the southern steppe
Among the golden splendors
Horses trampled reapers.
And there, and here between the rows
The same voice sounds:
“Whoever is not for us is against us.
No one is indifferent: the truth is with us.”
And I stand alone between them
In roaring flames and smoke
And with all your might
I pray for both.
(1919)