The fate of man in a totalitarian state. Totalitarian man in a totalitarian state

Lesson 56

(based on the novel by E. I. Zamyatin "We")

The purpose of the lesson: to show the humanistic orientation of Zamyatin's work, the writer's statement of human values.

Methodical methods: discussion of homework questions, work with the text.

Your will is better.

F. M. Dostoevsky

During the classes

I. Comparative characteristics of works

Doesn't the description of the United State resemble the description of another state of the future from one Russian novel XIX century?

Let us recall the fourth dream of Vera Pavlovna from N. G. Chernyshevsky's novel "What to do?": the new "City of the Sun" - a crystal palace with aluminum columns, in which there are more than a thousand people. They work together, eat, have fun - a single, indivisible mass, always happy with everything. Zamyatin - "crystal-unshakable, eternal of the United State", "glass domes of auditoriums", "glass fire-breathing Integral", "glass cap of the Gas Bell" and "crystal bell at the head" as a symbol of the transparency (and ghostliness) of life, a constant reminder of belonging to the United State.

II. Discussion of homework questions

The life of the United State is mathematically verified, perfect. In the One State, everything is reasonable, everything is taken into account, everything is subordinated to one goal.

What is the model of this society?

(Above - the Benefactor - the head of state, the Bureau of Guardians - the police system, the Clock Tablet - "the heart and pulse of the United State", the Green Wall - an inviolable border; there is both art and science, and " personal watch". But music is released at the Musical Factory (“mechanical march”), literature is produced at the Institute of State Poets and Writers, journalism is replaced by the State Newspaper, science - by the Unified State Science (Entry 12th). "Sexual right" replaces love: "each number has a right - as a sexual product - to any number." Children grow up at the Children's Educational Plant.

One State subjugates everything; everything provides for and leaves under its control what is useful, reasonable. The rest is mercilessly destroyed: “I personally do not see anything beautiful in flowers - as in everything that belongs to the wild world, driven behind the Green Wall long ago. Only what is reasonable and useful is beautiful: cars, boots, formulas, food, etc. (Entry 9th). "Not happier numbers living according to the harmonious eternal laws of the multiplication table. No hesitation, no confusion. Truth is one, and the true way is one; and this truth is twice two, and this true way is four." (Entry 12th).)

What is cherished dream the protagonist of the novel, D-503?

(The cherished dream of D-503 is “to integrate the grandiose universal equation”, “to unbend the wild curve”, because the line of the United State is a straight line - the wisest of lines. ”

The formula of happiness is mathematically exact: “The state (humanity) forbade killing one to death and did not forbid killing millions by half. To kill one, that is, to reduce the sum of human lives by 50 years, is criminal, but to reduce the sum by 50 million years is not criminal. Well, isn't it funny?" (Entry 3rd).)

Teacher comment:

Let us recall Dostoevsky, "Crime and Punishment", a conversation between an officer and a student: one insignificant old woman - and thousands of young lives: "Yes, there is arithmetic!" An anonymous character in Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground rebels against mathematics that humiliates him human dignity and depriving him of his will: “Oh, gentlemen, what kind of will will there be when it comes to the tablet and to arithmetic, when there will be only one twice two four in a move? Twice two and without my will four will be. Is there such a will!

What is the place of a person, a person in such a state? How does the person behave?

(A person in the One State is just a cog in a well-oiled mechanism. The ideal of life behavior is “reasonable mechanism”, everything that goes beyond it is “wild fantasy”, and “fits of “inspiration” are an unknown form of epilepsy.” The most painful of fantasies is freedom. The concept of freedom is distorted, turned inside out: “Where could state logic come from when people lived in a state of freedom, that is, animals, monkeys, herds” (Entry 3).)

What is the “root of evil” that prevents universal happiness?

(“The root of evil” is in a person’s ability to fantasy, that is, free thought. This root must be pulled out - and the problems are solved. The Great Operation is being cauterized to cauterize the center of fantasy (Entry 40): “No nonsense, no ridiculous metaphors, no feelings : only the facts". The soul is a "disease".)

Is a person in the One State really happy?

(Discussion.)

What is opposed to spirituality, humanity in the novel?

(Science turns out to be paradoxically opposed to spirituality and humanity. The system of scientific ethics is based “on subtraction, addition, division, multiplication”; “Unified State Science cannot be wrong” (Entry 3rd).

The hero of Zamyatin, D-503, a mathematician who idolizes "square harmony", goes from absolute confidence in the correctness of the "wisest of lines" through doubts to faith in the triumph of "reason": "Reason must win." True, this final phrase of the novel was recorded after the Great Operation on his brain, cauterization of the “pathetic brain knot” responsible for fantasy (which made him human).)

How relevant is the problem of the responsibility of science in our time?

(The problem of the responsibility of science and people of science to society, to an individual, became acute already in the middle of the 10thXcentury. Let us recall, for example, environmental problems, the problem of the use of atomic energy (and Academician Sakharov), the problem of cloning.

The state intervenes in the structure of the personality, its entrance creative activity, subjugates the emotional sphere. “I” ceases to exist as such - it becomes only an organic cell of “we”, a component, of the crowd.)

What is opposed to the depersonalization of a person in the novel?

(Love. Unrecognized by D-503, his unconscious love forI-330, gradually awakens the personality of the hero, his "I". O-90's love for him gives hope for the future - the child of O-90 and D-503 finds himself behind the Green Wall and will grow up free.)

What do you think is the meaning of the title of Zamyatin's novel?

(The title of the novel reflects the main problem that worries Zamyatin, what will happen to man and humanity if he is forcibly driven into a “happy future.” “We” can be understood as “I” and “others.” Or it can be as a faceless, continuous, homogeneous something: mass, crowd, herd.

The question "what are we?" goes from record to record: “we are so the same” (Entry 1st), “we are the happiest arithmetic mean” (Entry 8th), “we will win” (Entry 40th). The individual consciousness of the hero dissolves into the "collective mind" of the masses.)

III. The novel "We" literary context time

Teacher comment:

During the years when Zamyatin was writing the novel, the question of the individual and the collective was very acute. The proletarian poet V. Kirillov has a poem with the same name - “We”:

We are countless, formidable legions of Labor.

We are the winners of the space of the seas, oceans and land...

We are everything, we are everything, we are the victorious flame and light,

Themselves Deity, and the Judge, and the Law.

Let us recall Blok's: "We are clearing the battlefield of steel machines, where the integral breathes, with the Mongolian wild horde!" ("Scythians").

In 1920, Mayakovsky wrote the poem "150,000,000". His name is demonstratively absent from the cover - he is one of those millions: "The Party is a million-fingered hand, clenched into one smashing fist"; "Unit! Who needs it?! .. One is nonsense, one is zero ... "," I am happy that I am a particle of this power, that even tears from my eyes are common.

VI. Teacher's closing remarks

One of Zamyatin's main ideas is what happens to a person, state, society, civilization, when they, worshiping an abstract rational idea, voluntarily renounce freedom and put an equal sign between lack of freedom and collective happiness. People turn into an appendage of the machine, into cogs. Zamyatin showed the tragedy of overcoming the human in a person, the loss of a name as the loss of one's own "I". This is what the author warns against. Berdyaev warns against this, how to avoid the "final realization" of utopias. All dystopian novels of the 20th century, and above all the novel We, warn against this.

2. Additional questions on the novel by E. Zamyatin "We":

What literary traditions does Zamyatin continue and develop?

What is "guessed" by Zamyatin in the novel? Find symbolic images.

Why did Zamyatin choose the form of a hero's diary for his novel?

Why did the dystopia genre become popular in the 20th century?

Lesson 56. Lesson-seminar. Benchmarking

novel by E. Zamyatin "We" and novel by M. Saltykov-Shchedrin

"History of a City"

The purpose of the lesson: spend comparative analysis two works, to identify their common features.

Methodical methods: discussion, work with the text of works.

Preliminary homework: reread Saltykov-Shchedrin's "History of a City"; prepare for the lesson-seminar: draw parallels between Zamyatin's novel "We" and "The History of a City", highlight the common features of Grim-Burcheev and the Benefactor.

During the classes

I. Teacher's word

In one of his autobiographies in 1922, Zamyatin wrote that the years of his moral maturation passed under the sign of the enormous spiritual influence of the work of Gogol, Turgenev, Saltykov-Shchedrin.

Images and symbols of Shchedrin's works Zamyatin often used in correspondence with relatives and friends. There are frequent references to Shchedrin's images in Zamyatin's journalistic and literary-critical works created in the first years of Soviet power.

In the article “On Service Art” (1918), he speaks with anger and sarcasm about ruling figures destroying ancient monuments: “The demolition of monuments is not done in the name of decorating our lives - is it really? - but in the name of decorating our fading pompadours with new laurels. Is it possible to believe that those who take care of decorating life are those who from the Kremlin, the citadel of beauty, made the Red Guard citadel? What does beauty matter to principled hippos, and what does beauty care about them?

II. Conversation

Let's open the chapter "Confirmation of repentance. Conclusion" from "The History of a City" by Saltykov-Shchedrin. What is this chapter about?

(In the chapter “Confirmation of repentance. Conclusion,” Shchedrin describes one of the most terrible mayors of the city of Glupov, Ugryum-Burcheev, who intended to remake the city into a fantastic barracks.)

What common features could you note in the two rulers?

(Already in some features of appearance and behavior, one can see much in common between the images of the mayor Shchedrin and the leader of the United State - the Benefactor - in Zamyatin.)

Exercise. Find descriptions of these characters in books. We read excerpts aloud.

Gloomy-Grumbling is endowed with "some kind of wooden face, never illuminated by a smile," a gaze as light as steel, inaccessible "neither to shades, nor to fluctuations." He has "naked determination" and acts with "the regularity of the most distinct mechanism". According to Shchedrin, he finally “abolished” any “nature” in himself, and this, in turn, led to “petrification”.

In his cruelly mechanical behavior, even the Foolovites, accustomed to all sorts of rulers, saw satanic manifestations. “In silence, they pointed out,” writes Shchedrin, “to their houses stretched out into a string, to the front gardens laid out in front of these houses, to uniform Cossacks, in which all the inhabitants were uniformly uniformed to one, and their quivering lips whispered: Satan!”.

In the guise of the Zamyatin Benefactor, the same features prevail as in Gloomy-Grumbling: inflexibility, cruelty, determination, automatism. Zamyatin repeatedly highlights in the portrait of the ideologist of the United State “heavy stone hands”, “slow, cast-iron gesture”, the absence of any hint of humanity. Suffice it to recall the scene of the execution of the disobedient poet during the so-called Feast of Justice: “Upstairs, in Cuba, near the Machine, there is a motionless, as if made of metal, figure of the one whom we call the Benefactor. From here, from below, one cannot make out the faces: one can only see that it is limited by strict, majestic, square outlines. But on the other hand, hands ... This is sometimes the case in photographs: too close, in the foreground, the placed hands come out huge, riveting the eye - they obscure everything. These heavy hands, still calmly lying on their knees, are clear: they are made of stone, and the knees can barely support their weight ... ".

How could you characterize the reign of Ugryum-Burcheev and the Benefactor?

(Both rulers rule with the inflexibility and cruelty of machines. Gloomy-Grumbling tries to reduce all the diversity of life to an elementary “straight line”: “Having drawn a straight line, he planned to squeeze the entire visible and invisible world into it, and, moreover, with such an indispensable calculation that was to turn neither back nor forward, neither to the right nor to the left, did he assume at the same time to become a benefactor of mankind? - it is difficult to answer this question in the affirmative.

Gloom-Burcheev's passion for a straight line was associated with his desire to simplify relations between people, to deprive a person of freedom, joy, and multidimensionality of experiences. This passion is due to his nature, nature. He is trying to level the vast and heterogeneous living world due to his idiocy, he is a “leveller” by nature.)

How do these images compare?

(Zamiatin, having created the image of the Benefactor, abandoned the grotesqueness and primitiveness of Ugryum-Burcheev. But at the same time, the writer, as it were, transferred the Shchedrin mayor’s love for a straight line into the future, linking it with the idea of ​​\u200b\u200buniversal happiness.

Zamyatin realized in the novel Shchedrin's idea about the appearance in new eras of gloomy grumblings, endowed with a thirst to make humanity happy, that is, genetically Zamyatin's Benefactor goes back to the mayor of Shchedrin.

“At that time, nothing was reliably known either about the “communists”, or about the socialists, or about the so-called levelers in general, - Shchedrin's narrator notes with irony. - Nevertheless, leveling existed, and, moreover, on the most extensive scale. There were levelers "walking in a string", levelers "ram's horn", levelers "hedgehogs" and so on. and so on. But no one saw in this anything threatening society or undermining its foundations ... The levelers themselves did not suspect that they were levelers, but called themselves kind and caring organizers, to the extent of their discretion, taking care of the happiness of their subordinates. It was only in later times (almost before our eyes) that the idea of ​​combining the idea of ​​straightforwardness with the idea of ​​general happiness was elevated into a rather complex and inextricable administrative theory of ideological tricks...”)

What is the "truth" for the Benefactor from the novel "We"?

(Zamiatin's benefactor is the highest being of the United State, standing guard over its norms and regulations. His leveling is sophisticated and has a philosophical and ideological justification.

For the Benefactor, there was only a miserable human herd that needed neither freedom nor truth, but only happiness based on satisfying satisfaction and well-being. He proclaims the cruel "truth" that the path to happiness lies through overcoming pity for man and violence against us. The benefactor takes on the role of executioner and is confident in his ability to lead people to an earthly paradise.

Accusing the builder of the "Integral" of a crime against the state, the Benefactor, with the arrogance of a leader, declares: "I ask: what did people - from the very cradle - pray, dream, suffer? About someone telling them once and for all what happiness is - and then chaining them to this happiness. What else are we doing now but this?”) lesson development on Russian literature XIX century. 10 Class. 1st half of the year. - M.: Vako, 2003. 4. Zolotareva I.V., Mikhailova T.I. lesson development on Russian literature ...

Man in a totalitarian state. This topic began to appear in the literature already in the 1920s-1930s, when it became clear that the policy of V.I. Lenin, I.V. Stalin led to the establishment of just such a regime. Of course, these works could not be printed at that time. Readers saw them only in the 1980s, during the period of perestroika and glasnost. Many of these works have become a real discovery. One of them was E. Zamyatin's novel "We", written in 1921. The dystopia depicted by the writer showed what totalitarianism, the silence of people, blind obedience to the regime could lead to. The novel is like a warning that everything depicted in it can happen if society does not resist the terrible system of repression, persecution, when any desire of a person to achieve the truth is literally strangled. The inaction of society in a totalitarian state can lead to the fact that everyone becomes part of a huge state machine, turning into a "faceless WE", losing individuality and even their name, receiving only a number among a huge crowd of people (D-503, 90, I-330) . "... naturalpath from insignificance to greatness: forget thatyou - a gram and feel like a millionth of a ton ... ". The value of a particular individual in such a society is lost. It would seem that people built it to be happy. But did it happen? Can life be called happiness by the clock in this United State, feeling like just a cog in a huge mechanism of the state machine (“Ideal is where nothing happens anymore…”)? No, not everyone agrees with such a regimented life when others think for them. They want to feel complete joy, happiness, love, suffering - in general, to be a person, not a number. Beyond the walls of the state real life, which so attracts the heroine - I-330.

The benefactor decides everything, it is according to his laws that numbers live. And if someone opposes, then there are ways to make people either submit or die. There is no other way out. The author showed that she could not capture some of the workers spaceship, involving one of the builders of the "Integral" D-503 (it was he who tried to charm I-330 for this purpose). Too strong is the Benefactor and his system. Dies in the Gas Bell I-330, unnecessary memory is erased from the number D-503, which continues to be confident in the justice of the state system (“ I am sure that we will win, because the mind must win!”) Everything in the state continues to go on as usual. How terrible the formula of happiness stated by the Benefactor sounds: “ True algebraic love for a person is certainly inhuman, and an indispensable sign of truth is its cruelty. But it is precisely in the victory of reason that the author believes, when society wakes up, understands that life cannot be like this, so that everyone would say to themselves: “ I ceased to be a term, as always, and became a unit. A person must be part of society, while continuing to be an individual. “WE”, consisting of many “I”, is one of the formulas of happiness, which readers of the novel come to realize.

Topic tragic fate of a Russian person in a totalitarian state appears in Russian literature of the 20th century already in the 1920s, when the very formation of this concept was just beginning. It was foreseen by the writer Yevgeny Zamyatin in the novel “We”, in the image of the United State, in which a person with his individuality is almost destroyed, reduced to a “number”, where everyone is dressed in the same clothes and must be happy, whether they want it or not. . E. Zamyatin's novel sounded a warning that did not reach the Soviet reader. The state soon began to actively intervene in his life, in some ways embodying the gloomy fantasy of E. Za-myatin in reality, in some ways retreating from it. There was one thing in common - the attitude towards the individual as a building material, the depreciation of a person, his life. All this acquired a particularly tragic turn in the years when there was a mass extermination of entire sections of the population on various grounds - they destroyed the nobles, organized decossackization / dispossession or "liquidation of the kulaks as a class." In the history of the country, 1937-1938 is the peak " great terror», terrible years Yezhovshchina, which were replaced by long decades of Berievshchina.

An important work on the theme of Stalinism is Zamyatin's novel We, written in 1921. The leading theme of the novel is the dramatic fate of the individual under the conditions of a totalitarian social order. The novel is written in an extraordinary genre of "dystopia". Zamyatin, a shipbuilding engineer by profession, knew better than anyone how a mechanism is created, where cogs are needed for the operation of a single whole. But people, society are not just “cogs” in a complex state machine, but living beings who have their own, one and only life. When a person is turned into a "cog", he loses his bright, unique individuality and degrades as a person. History has shown that the transformation of people into a set of "cogs" leads to a crime against humanity.

In the novel "We" in a fantastic guise, possible variant a future society where a dream comes true " the mighty of the world this" about human robots. The “mathematical perfect life” of the United State is unfolding before us. This is a world without love, without soul, without poetry. The “numbered” person, deprived of a name, was inspired that “our lack of freedom” is “our happiness”, and this “happiness” is in the rejection of one’s “I” and dissolution in the impersonal “we”. intimate life is also regarded as a state duty, performed according to the "report card of sexual days."

Roman Zamyatin is a warning about the great danger that threatens humanity and comes from the power of machines and the power of the state. Zamyatin, as it were, predicted the events of the history of our country in advance. The writer shows that in a society where everything is aimed at suppressing the individual, where the human "I" is ignored, where the sole power is unlimited, a rebellion is possible. The ability and desire to feel, to love, to be free in thoughts and actions push people to fight. But the authorities find a way out: with the help of an operation, the center responsible for fantasy is removed from a person - the last thing that made him raise his head proudly, feel reasonable and strong. Still, the hope remains that human dignity will not die under any regime. Zamyatin in the novel has an idea that is unusual for many of our contemporaries. The writer insists that there is no ideal society. Life is the pursuit of perfection. And when this desire is absent, a decaying period of stagnation sets in.

Tragic events in Russian literature real life country long years were a taboo subject. A poem by O. Mandelstam, written back in the 30s, which exposed Stalin, poems about the tragedy of mothers who raised children “for the chopping block, for the dungeon and prison”, A. Akhmatova and her poem "Requiem", the story of L. Chukovskaya "Sofya Petrovna" and many other works, which only in the last decades have become the property of the reader.

They tried to break the forced conspiracy of silence, to tell the truth about the terrible years of terror, about the tragedy of the individual with their work, such writers as Yuri Dombrovsky, the author of the novels "Keeper of Antiquities", "Faculty of Useless Things" (continuation of the first novel). This topic is addressed by the writer Varlam Shalamov, a man of tragic fate, he spent many years in the Kolyma camps. The writer became the author of amazing psychological impact works - a kind of Kolyma epic, which showed the merciless truth about the life of people in the camps. Man in inhuman conditions - this can be denoted cross-cutting theme"Kolyma stories" by V. Shalamov. Getting into the camp, a person, as it were, loses everything that connects him with a normal human environment, with his previous experience, which is no longer needed. Thus, V. Shalamov developed the concepts of “first life” (before the camp) and “second life” — life in the camp.

The writer does not spare the reader. In his stories appear terrible details which cannot be perceived without heartache- cold and hunger, sometimes depriving a person of reason, purulent ulcers on the legs, cruel lawlessness of criminals who were considered "friends of the people" in the camps, in contrast to political prisoners, primarily intellectuals, who were called "enemies of the people" and who were handed over full power to criminals.

In his stories, V. Shalamov shows what was worse than cold, hunger and disease - human humiliation, which reduced people to the level of animals. It simply plunges them into a state of non-existence, when all feelings and thoughts leave a person, when life is replaced by "semi-consciousness, existence."

In the story "Sentence" the author with almost scientific accuracy analyzes the state of the victim in this inhuman life, when anger remains the only feeling. When death recedes, and consciousness returns to a person, he notices with joy that his brain begins to work, the long-forgotten scientific word “maxim” emerges from the depths of memory.

In the story "Typhoid Quarantine" V. Shalamov shows another facet of human humiliation: the willingness to serve the leaders of the thieves' world, to become their lackeys, serfs. These leaders are surrounded by a "crowd of servants", ready for anything, if only they would break off a crust of bread or pour some soup. And when in this crowd the hero of the story sees a familiar face - Captain Schneider, a German communist, an expert on Goethe, an educated person who previously supported the spirit of his comrades, and in the camp plays the humiliating role of "scratching heels" at the vo-ra Senechka He doesn't want to live. The author describes the experiences of Andreev, the hero of the story: "Although it was a small and not terrible event compared to what he saw and what he was to see, he remembered Captain Schneider forever."

V. Shalamov's stories are not just an artistic document. This is a holistic picture of the world, rather the anti-world, the absurdity into which a person is thrown scary monster terror, grinding millions of people. In this anti-world everything is turned upside down. A man dreams of getting out of the camp not to freedom, but to prison. In the story “Tombstone” it is said: “Prison is freedom. This is the only place I know where people, without fear, said whatever they thought. Where did they rest their souls? The work of V. Shalamov became both a historical document and a fact of the philosophical thinking of the era. In general, Russian literature of the 20th century revealed the fate of a person in a totalitarian state from the standpoint of humanism, in the traditions of Russian classical literature.

In the wake of "perestroika", A. Rybakov's novel "Children of the Arbat" aroused great interest. This is explained by the fact that the writer for the first time in our literature described in detail and truthfully the psychology of Stalin as a statesman, a man who merged ideas about the good of the people and the good of his own. By one's own good was meant unlimited power, which helped to mercilessly remove from its path all those who did not agree with the regime. "Children of the Arbat" is a novel about the hundred-personal youth of the 30s, whose youth passed in the atmosphere of Stalin's personality cult. The author talks about how people showed themselves in different ways in severe trials. In the novel, we see a picture of cruelty and fear: every word spoken against could decide the fate of a person, everyone was afraid to express their opinion, to support a comrade at a meeting. Today it is easy for us to judge this time, now we know a lot about Stalin, and what it was like for him, who lived in a period of complete worship of the leader. Indeed, for many, Stalin was at that time more than an icon.

Stalin is a terrible figure. His victims are innumerable. He was obsessed with the idea of ​​immeasurable power. People for him are only material to achieve the goal. In the novel "Children of the Arbat" Rybakov tries to reveal the psychology of this man. Stalin believed that only suffering evokes the greatest energy. We clearly see those explanations and justifications that allowed him to doom millions of people to suffering and death with a light soul. In his opinion, the people must be forced to make sacrifices for the sake of the future, and this requires a strong government that can inspire fear. This cannibal theory only covers the main thing - the desire for unlimited power.

How can one not recall Raskolnikov's theory from F. M. Dostoevsky's novel "Crime and Punishment" about "the powers that be" and "trembling creatures". In Russia, a whole galaxy of executioners arises, where the investigator becomes the main figure. In Children of the Arbat, investigator Dyakov believed "not in real guilt, but in a general version of guilt." He confuses Sasha Pankratov: either plays on his honesty, or intimidates, or promises release. After all, that investigator is “good” who, by persuasion, torture, threats of reprisals against loved ones, with anything, will force him to sign a confession in non-existent crimes. With Rybakov, using the example of Sasha's classmate, Yuri Sharok, we see how people become such executioners.

In modern domestic literature the connection with the traditions of the literature of the previous "decades" is clearly manifested. In the press, works, sad in their tone, about mass violations of the law associated with the name of Stalin have appeared and continue to appear. Why are the 30s, the most difficult, the most dramatic in the history of our society? Apparently, this is not accidental: no one wants a repetition of such gloomy pages of our history. We in many ways feel the problems of that time as problems that are most directly related to today.

Writing

It is human nature to look into the future, to try to recognize its outlines. How many different writers historical eras sought to open the veil behind which the future is hidden, to predict what no one is allowed to know: Campanella's "City of the Sun", the literary works of Jules Verne, the literary work of J. Orwell "1984", "What to do?" N. Chernyshevsky and others.

Evgeny Zamyatin is no exception here. Dissatisfaction with the present, with Soviet reality, made him ask himself: what should be the future in which one can feel happy, in which one can realize one's hopes, realize one's ideals?

In the literary work "We" in a fantastic and grotesque guise, a possible variant of the society of the future appears before the reader. The dream of the powerful of this world is being realized: "Life should become a harmonious machine and with mechanical inevitability lead us to the desired goal." Unfortunately, in such a society there is nothing that would not already portend modern writer reality. Before us is unfolding the "Ma Example of Composing a Practically Perfect Life" of the One State. symbolic image"fire-breathing integral", a miracle of technical thought and at the same time a weapon of the most cruel enslavement opens the book. Soulless technology, together with despotic power, turned man into an appendage of the machine, took away his freedom, brought him up in voluntary slavery. A world without love, without a soul, without poetry. The “numbered” person, deprived of a name, was inspired that “our lack of freedom” is “our happiness” and that this “happiness” consists in the rejection of one’s own “I” and dissolution in the impersonal “we”.

Zamyatin's literary work is a warning about the double danger threatening humanity: the hypertrophied power of machines and the power of the state. "Uniformity" undividedly and vigilantly dominates the life of all members of society. This is ensured by absolute technique and the vigilant eye of the "keepers".

Zamyatin's writing is imbued with reflections on Russian post-revolutionary reality. In it, one can guess the innermost thoughts about the possible perversions of the socialist idea that were already revealed during the life of the writer.

The attitude to the policy of war communism became a stumbling block for the writer. This policy, which provided for the purely centralization of political and economic life in the country, a number of cruel measures, was temporary and forced in the conditions civil war and economic ruin. But Zamyatin (and not only him at that time) imagined that there would be nothing else and that the only model of further movement was imposed on people - new version totalitarianism.

Zamyatin's literary work is symbolic: he warns of possible distortions of socialism, of the danger of deviation from the democratic path and abuses expressed in violence against human personality. Subsequent events in national and world history showed that the writer's anxieties were not in vain. Our people have gone through the bitter lessons of collectivization, and Stalinism, and repressions, and universal fear, and stagnation.

Many scenes of a literary work make you remember the recent past. Manifestation in honor of the Benefactor, unanimous elections, "guardians" who watch every step of a person. But Zamyatin shows that in a society where everything is aimed at suppressing the individual, where the human "I" is ignored, where the sole power is immense, rebellion is possible. The ability and desire to feel, love, be free in thoughts and actions push people to fight. But even here the authorities find a way out: a person's fantasy is surgically removed - the last thing that made him raise his head proudly, feel reasonable and strong. Yet the hope remains that human dignity will not die under any regime. This hope is expressed by a woman who, with her beauty, inspires the fight.

In his work, Zamyatin argues that there is no ideal society. Life is a pursuit of the ideal. But when this desire is absent, an era of stagnation sets in.

Another example of an essay that is consonant with today is ecological. The "anti-society" depicted in the book brings death to the very nature of life, isolating man from nature. The author of the work dreams of expelling people “overgrown with numbers” “naked into the forests” so that they learn from birds, flowers, and the sun there. Only this, according to the writer, can restore the inner integrity of a person.

The author of the literary work “We” belongs to those major artists of the word who intensively riveted the attention of society to “ eternal values» in the context of global historical cataclysms of the 20th century. At one time the literary work was not accepted. His path to us, who live today, was very long and difficult. Reading this dystopian literary work, we can take a fresh look at the events of history, comprehend the role of man in them. Such works as "We" "squeeze" a slave out of a person, make him a personality.

J. Orwell said in 1932 about Yevgeny Zamyatin's literary work "We": "... This literary work is a signal of the danger threatening man, humanity from the hypertrophied power of machines and the power of the state - it doesn't matter what." This score ideological content literary work is true enough. But still, its meaning is not reduced only to criticism of machine civilization and the denial of any kind of power.

In Zamyatin's dystopia, written in 1920, “there is a clear allusion to the realities of revolutionary transformations in Russia. With his characteristic gift of foresight, Zamyatin says in his literary work that the path chosen by the new leadership of the country leads away from the bright ideas of socialism. Already in the first post-revolutionary years, the writer began to notice alarming trends in the “new” life: excessive cruelty of the authorities, the destruction of classical culture and other traditions in the life of society, for example, in the field of family relations. Time has proved the validity of Zamyatin's controversy with the political practice of the first years Soviet power- this is how you can define the task of the author of a literary work "We".

The action in a literary work is transferred to the distant future. After the end of the Great Bicentennial War between the city and the countryside, mankind solved the problem of hunger - oil food was invented. At the same time, 0.2% of the world's population survived. These people became citizens of the United State. After the victory over

Hunger, the state "launched an offensive against another ruler of the world - against Love." The historical sexual law was proclaimed: "Each of the numbers has the right, as a sexual product, to any number." For the numbers, a suitable report card of sexual days was determined and a pink coupon book was issued.

About the life of the United State - "the highest peaks in human history”- says the talented engineer D-503, who keeps records for posterity, in a literary work. His diaries reveal the features of politics, culture of the United State, the characteristic relationships between people. At the beginning of the literary work, D-503 adheres to the views traditional for the people of the United State. Then, under the influence of acquaintance with a revolutionary1-330 and love for her, much in his worldview changes.

First, D-503 appears before us as an enthusiastic admirer of the Benefactor. He admires the equality achieved in the state: all numbers are dressed the same, live in the same conditions, have equal sexual rights. It is obvious that the author of a literary work does not agree with the narrator. The fact that D-503 seems to be equal is regarded by Yevgeny Zamyatin as a terrifying similarity. This is how he describes the walk: "We walked as always, that is, as warriors are depicted on Assyrian monuments: a thousand heads - two integral integral legs, two integral ones in the span of an arm." The same can be seen during the election of the head of state, the result of which is predetermined: "The history of the United State does not know the case that on this solemn day at least one voice dared to break the solemn unison." In the arguments of D-503 about the disorderliness of the "elections among the ancients", as if by contradiction, the position of the author of the work is revealed. He considers democratic elections the only acceptable ones.

Zamyatin described with surprising perspicacity that parody of the elections, which for a long time in the Land of Soviets was passed off as the elections themselves. The candidate for the post of head of the United State is always the same - the Benefactor. At the same time, democracy was proclaimed in the state ...

The literary work shows the life of a typical totalitarian state, with all its inherent attributes. Here and shadowing the numbers, and the persecution of dissidents. The interests of the people are completely subordinated to the interests of the state. Numbers cannot have individuality, that's why they are numbers, in order to differ only in their ordinal number. The collective is in the foreground in such a state: “We” are from God, and “I” are from the devil.” The family here is replaced by a coupon right. And the housing provided to the numbers can hardly be called a house. They live in high-rise buildings, in rooms with transparent walls, so that they can be easily monitored.

The United State found justice for the disobedient - as a result great operation, to which all the numbers were forcibly subjected, a fantasy was cut out by him. Where more reliable protection from dissent! Zamyatin writes that as a result of this operation, the heroes become like "some kind of humanoid tractors." D-503 after the operation finally renounces the impudent thoughts that arose under the influence of “1-330”. Now he doesn't hesitate to go to the Guardian's Bureau and denounce the rebels. He becomes a "worthy citizen of the United State." Thus, the words of the Benefactor came true about paradise, as about a place where blissful, desireless people with a carved fantasy stay.

In the United State, experiments are carried out not only on people. We see what it turns into natural environment. In the city where the action takes place, there is nothing alive. We do not hear the birds, the rustle of trees, we do not see the sun (the sun that shone in the world of the ancients seemed to D-503 "wild"). The technocratic city-state is contrasted in a literary work with the world beyond the Wall - Nature. There, behind the Wall, "natural" people lived - the descendants of those who left after the two-hundred-year war in the forests. There is freedom in the lives of these people, they perceive the world emotionally. However, Zamyatin does not consider these people ideal - they are far from technological progress, therefore their society is in a primitive stage of development.

Thus, Evgeny Zamyatin advocates the formation of a harmonious person. Numbers and "natural" people are extremes. Zamyatin's dreams of a harmonious person can be found in D-503's reflections on “forest” people and numbers: “Who are they? The half we lost, H2 and O... need the halves to connect...”

Ideological meaning The work is revealed in the scene of the uprising of the members of the revolutionary organization "Mefi" and its supporters. The wall separating the totalitarian world of the city-state from the free world has been blown up. In the city, a bird's hubbub is immediately heard - life comes there. But the uprising in the literary work is defeated, and the city is again separated from outside world. The United State again erected a wall that forever cut off people from free life. But the end of the literary work is not hopeless: the “illegal mother” O-90 managed to escape behind the Wall, to the “forest” people. Born in the natural world, her child from D-503, according to Zamyatin's plan, should become one of the first perfect people in which two broken halves will unite.

His literary work Zamyatin solves a number of major universal and political problems. The main themes in the literary work are the themes of freedom and happiness, the state and the individual, the clash of the individual and the collective. Zamyatin shows that there can be no prosperous society that does not take into account the needs and interests of its citizens, with their right to choose. The political significance of the literary work “We” was precisely determined by the historian C. Walsh: “Zamiatin and other authors of the dystopian work warn us not political theories, but about the monstrous things that an initially good political movement can result in if it is perverted.

The fate of this work, which was first published in the homeland of the author of the work only after almost 70 years, in 1988, proves its acute problems and political orientation. No wonder the literary work aroused great interest in Russia in the 1920s, although Zamyatin's contemporaries could not see it printed. This work will always be relevant - as a warning about how totalitarianism destroys the natural harmony of the world and the individual.

Other writings on this work

Together with a huge number beautiful works of the last century, those “eternal questions” that worried the Russian classics so much and which someone tried to solve by preaching “non-resistance to evil by violence”, someone by building their own “crystal palace”, someone else called for the overthrow of hateful line...

Times have changed, but the problems remain the same: “what is good and what is evil”; what is the meaning of life and what is the goal towards which humanity aspires; why does a person need freedom and where is the line between freedom and self-will, violence, tyranny; what does “equality” mean, and what does “equivalence” mean; is there a god and is there a fate?.. Each writer gave his own answers to these questions, but new generations came, and the dispute about being was renewed. In the 1920s it was continued by the generation of "post-revolutionary" writers. Then Korolenko and Yesenin were still alive, Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Mandelstam, Pasternak, Gorky, Mayakovsky continued to create ... Bulgakov, Zoshchenko, Platonov and many "proletarian" writers who later became "classics" came to literature Soviet literature". All these were people who went through the fire of the revolution and saw firsthand the horrors of the civil war, in which both the Reds and the Whites committed atrocities, and it is difficult to say what was worse - the reprisals of the White Guards or the word "Cheka".

At a time when so depreciated human life when "unity" with the party was declared the highest truth, and the "swamp lights" of communism were the goal of life, few remembered the eternal moral principles, about the moral law, about honor, duty and conscience. All this was not necessary common man: the party removed all such worries from him, and at the same time destroyed his individuality. Throwing off responsibility for what is happening along with the burden of religious remnants and prejudices, people got rid of the "old, bourgeois" morality, without bothering to create a new, "proletarian" one, and therefore it was possible to take all the bread from the peasant by force, leaving only crumbs, shoot people without trial, burn objectionable books, desecrate temples and graves...

As never before, the problems of morality are acute for the society. And the writers were the first to sound the alarm. This is how the dystopian novel “We” by Yevgeny Zamyatin appeared in 1920. In it, the author draws a "society of the future", a society based on reason, logic, where everything is calculated and mathematically accurate. Each person knows his place in the system of a strict hierarchy, and at the head of all is the Benefactor, a higher, extraordinary and most “correct” being. In this society, one cannot think and feel differently than everyone else, and it is better not to think at all, one must be able to use mathematical formulas... The life of every person takes place in front of everyone (although there are “personal” hours) in houses with transparent walls (just like Chernyshevsky, and it seems that Zamyatin argues with his ideal happy life) and together with everyone, people even walk in formation four in each row (one cannot help but recall the Foolovites of Saltykov-Shchedrin), a person has no name - there is a number. Complete depersonalization, but no "mess". There is not a shadow of “wrongness” in this society, everything is pre-programmed. Human individuality is suppressed, everyone becomes "cogs" in one huge mechanism, where there is no place for natural human feelings and wishes. The writer emphasizes the inhumanity of this society. His position: inhuman means immoral. Therefore, Zamyatin debunks the idea that was fashionable in those years that it is necessary to “drop with the masses” and give up one’s own “I” in order to build a happy future.

Already in the late 1920s, Andrei Platonov wrote The Pit. The plot of "The Foundation Pit" is as follows: a group of excavators digs a huge hole for the foundation big house(again a projection on “What to do?” Chernyshevsky), in which they will live happy people. The writer believes that this society, what is called "communism", is not viable. Symbol future life- girl Nastya - dies.

In this work, the writer shows collectivization as the peasantry saw it, and therefore horror of inevitable disaster shines through the lines. At Platonov, dispossession is carried out by a bear-hammer, he stops and growls at each “strong and clean” hut ... And before uniting into a collective farm, people say goodbye to each other. "After the kiss, people bowed to the ground - each to everyone and stood on their feet, free and empty in heart." “Good,” they said from all over the Orgdvor. “We don’t smell anything now, only dust remains in us.” The writer believes that collectivization is not only associated with human casualties (Chiklin does not even notice how he kills a peasant; in order to eliminate classes, they decided to gather the “kulaks” on one raft so that “the kulak sector would travel along the river to the sea and beyond”). The writer understands the suffering of these people, who are deprived of faith, and hope, and the purpose of life, and the very desire to live ... Their ideas about good and evil, about honor, conscience, justice are trampled into the dirt, and instead the ideal is forcibly hammered into the only possible morality - class morality, "ruthless" and "merciless", justifying everything that is done in the name of the party.

In another novel by Platonov, "Chevengur", problems of no less importance are posed. One of the most important is the problem of man in the revolution. In the novel, we see very few "people of the revolution", those whom October helped to find a place in life and opened up new horizons, whose doubts were resolved. These are not only communists (Dvanov, Chepurny), but also non-party people, just people for whom the revolution has become the highest judge, the measure of morality. All the other heroes - the people, the peasants - live in completely different moral categories, it is as if the truth, the eternal laws of life are revealed to them ... The revolution for such people is an event that does not affect the deep processes of being, the course of history, almost does not affect own life. It is like a wind that plucks leaves from a tree, but does not disturb the roots... The writer asks the question about the possibility of creating a new life for people under the new system, about whether the revolution is moral and whether communism, for the construction of which it was made, is acceptable.

Platonov describes the fantastic city of Chevengur, where communism has allegedly already been built, and the picture of this "paradise on earth" is rather unattractive. People there do nothing at all, since “labor contributes to the origin of property, and property contributes to oppression”, “the only sun, declared in Chevengur the world proletarian, worked for everyone and for everyone.” And “labor was once and for all declared a relic of greed and exploitative-animal sensuality...” However, every Saturday people in Chevengur “worked”, dragged gardens from place to place “on their hands” or moved houses. There are very few inhabitants left in Chevengur, moreover, only the “working masses”: “The bourgeois in Chevengur were killed firmly, honestly, and even afterlife I couldn’t please them, because after the body their soul was shot.”

The fate of several dozen people who did not have the right to exist, because they lived a little better than others, was decided by the pre-revolutionary committee Chepurny personally. Theoretically, the execution of the "bourgeois" was justified by the "second coming ...", when the massacre of the "bourgeois" began, "comrade Piyusya" committed a "single murder", which caused indignation of the secretary of the Tsik Prokofy (communists "do not kill from behind"), in response to Piyus stated that the communists "need communism, not officer heroism! .." Platonov rebels against such a "philosophy", he, like Dostoevsky, believes that the end cannot justify the means, it is impossible to build people's happiness at the expense of human life. To deprive a person of the right to exist is to commit greatest crime against morality: this is a huge sin and atrocity.

In the novel, the writer also solves the problem of true and false. True is everything natural, sincere, coming out of the soul; it's all human. False - everything introduced, imposed "from above", contrary to healthy human morality; it's all immoral. For Platonov, unity, the fusion of man with nature, the perception of man as a part of nature, which nurtures him, gives him strength, forms his soul, is natural.

It's scary when a person is not free. The tragedy of a whole generation, deprived of the simple right to be human, rises with tremendous force in " Kolyma stories» Varlam Shalamov. He writes about how people, having lost their freedom, can no longer follow the moral law: after all, inner freedom is the ability to act according to conscience, according to principles. In the Stalinist camps, one principle operates: man is a wolf to man. And the reality is that it is impossible to survive without sacrificing convictions even in small things, without losing self-esteem. There is no third. The writer himself survived to tell the truth, no matter how terrible it may be. He showed how a totalitarian system, by killing some, makes moral freaks, criminals and murderers out of others.

The hero of the story "Berries" (the story is told in the first person) is so weak that he is unable to lift the fallen log. The guard Seroshapka threatens to shoot him. The next day, the prisoners felled stumps in the area delineated by "signs" - bundles of dry grass. Behind him is the "forbidden zone". One of the convicts - Rybakov - collects berries in a tin in order to exchange them with the cook for bread. The jar fills up too slowly, and Rybakov goes two meters beyond the “ban”. “The shot crackled dryly, and Rybakov fell face down between the bumps. “I wanted you,” said Seroshapka, “but he didn’t poke his head, you bastard! ..”

In Shalamov's stories, there are many deaths that can rightfully be considered violent, even if a person dies from starvation or exhaustion, and not from a guard's bullet or a foreman's blow. There are so many deaths that you seem to stop noticing them. The characters of the stories treat the death of other prisoners with casual indifference, as an inevitable, ordinary phenomenon that has almost completely lost its tragedy. The story "Sherry Brandy" describes psychologically accurately and in detail how the poet dies of exhaustion. He no longer gets up from the bunk, he no longer has the strength even to eat. When his life is over, he is not written off immediately, as it should be: “his ingenious neighbors managed to get bread for a dead man for two days when distributing bread; the dead man raised his hand like a puppet.” The writer has not forgotten anything. But from him, like from others, they demanded to forget! But Shalamov's position was firm: "There is nothing lower in the world than the intention to 'forget' these crimes."