History of creation

The story is of a documentary nature and introduces the reader to the life of prisoners of criminals in Siberia. half of the XIX century. The writer artistically comprehended everything he saw and experienced during the four years of hard labor (from to), being exiled there in the Petrashevsky case. The work was created from year to year, the first chapters were published in the magazine "Time".

Plot

The narration is on behalf of the main character, Alexander Petrovich Goryanchikov, a nobleman who was in hard labor for 10 years for the murder of his wife. Having killed his wife out of jealousy, Alexander Petrovich himself confessed to the murder, and after serving hard labor, he cut off all ties with relatives and remained in a settlement in the Siberian city of K., leading a secluded life and earning a living by tutoring. Reading and literary sketches about hard labor remains one of his few entertainment. Actually, "the House of the Dead", which gave the title of the story, the author calls the prison, where convicts are serving their sentences, and his notes - "Scenes from dead house».

Characters (edit)

• Goryanchikov Alexander Petrovich - the main character the story, on whose behalf the story is being told.
• Akim Akimych - one of the four former nobles, comrade Goryanchikova, senior prisoner in the barracks. He was sentenced to 12 years for the execution of a Caucasian prince who lit his fortress. Extremely pedantic and foolishly well-behaved person.
• Gazin is a kisser convict, wine merchant, Tatar, the most powerful convict in the prison.
• Sirotkin is a 23-year-old former recruit who was sent to hard labor for the murder of a commander.
• Dutov is a former soldier who rushed at a guard officer to postpone punishment (running through the ranks) and received an even longer term.
• Orlov is a strong-willed assassin, completely fearless in the face of punishment and trials.
• Nurra is a highlander, Lezgin, cheerful, intolerant of theft, drunkenness, devout, a favorite of convicts.
• Alei is a Dagestani, 22 years old, who was sent to hard labor with his older brothers for attacking an Armenian merchant. A neighbor in the bunks of Goryanchikov, who became close to him and taught Alei to read and write in Russian.
• Isai Fomich is a Jew who was sentenced to hard labor for murder. Usurer and jeweler. He was on friendly terms with Goryanchikov.
• Osip, a smuggler who elevated smuggling to the rank of art, brought wine in the prison. He was terrified of punishment and many times refused to engage in carrying, but still broke down. Most of the time he worked as a cook, for the money of the prisoners preparing a separate (not state-owned) food (including Goryanchikova).
• Sushilov is a prisoner who changed his name at the stage with another prisoner: for a ruble in silver and a red shirt, he changed the settlement to eternal hard labor. Served Goryanchikov.
• A-in - one of the four nobles. Received 10 years in hard labor for false denunciation, on which he wanted to make money. Hard labor did not lead him to repentance, but corrupted him, turning him into an informer and a scoundrel. The author uses this character to depict the complete moral decline of a person. One of the participants in the escape.
• Nastasya Ivanovna is a widow who disinterestedly takes care of the convicts.
• Petrov - a former soldier, ended up in hard labor, stabbing the colonel in training, because he unjustly hit him. Characterized as the most resolute convict. He sympathized with Goryanchikov, but treated him as a dependent person, a curiosity of the prison.
• Baklushin - ended up in hard labor for the murder of a German who married his bride. Organizer of the theater in prison.
• Luchka is a Ukrainian, was sent to hard labor for the murder of six people, and in the end he killed the head of the prison.
• Ustyantsev, a former soldier, in order to avoid punishment, drank wine infused with tea to induce consumption, from which he later died.
• Mikhailov is a convict who died in a military hospital from consumption.
• Foals - a lieutenant, an executor with sadistic inclinations.
• Smekalov was a lieutenant, an executor who was popular among convicts.
• Shishkov is a prisoner who went to hard labor for the murder of his wife (story "Akulkin's husband").
• Kulikov is a gypsy, horse thief, cautious veterinarian. One of the participants in the escape.
• Elkin is a Siberian who was sent to hard labor for counterfeiting. A keen veterinarian who quickly took his practice away from Kulikov.
• The story features an unnamed fourth nobleman, a frivolous, eccentric, reckless and non-cruel person, falsely accused of murdering his father, acquitted and released from hard labor only ten years later. Dmitry's prototype from the novel The Brothers Karamazov.

Part one

• I. House of the dead
• II. First impressions
• III. First impressions
• IV. First impressions
• V. First month
• Vi. First month
• Vii. New acquaintances. Petrov
• VIII. Decisive people. Luchka
• IX. Isai Fomich. Bath. Baklushin's story
• X. Feast of the Nativity of Christrov
• XI. Performance

Part two

• I. Hospital
• II. Continuation
• III. Continuation
• IV. Akulkin husband. Story
• V. Summer couple
• Vi. Convict animals
• Vii. Claim
• VIII. Comrades
• IX. The escape
• X. Exit from penal servitude

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See what "Notes from the House of the Dead" is in other dictionaries:

- "NOTES FROM A DEAD HOUSE", Russia, REN TV, 1997, color, 36 min. Documentary... Film confession about the inhabitants of the island of Fiery, near Vologda. The pardoned murderers are one hundred and fifty “death row prisoners” for whom the capital punishment by the Decree of the President ... ... Encyclopedia of Cinema

Notes from the House of the Dead ... Wikipedia

Writer, born on October 30, 1821 in Moscow, died on January 29, 1881, in St. Petersburg. His father, Mikhail Andreevich, married to the daughter of a merchant, Marya Fedorovna Nechayeva, occupied the post of the doctor's headquarters at the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor. Busy in the hospital and ... ... Big biographical encyclopedia

Famous novelist, b. 30 oct. 1821 in Moscow, in the building of the Maryinsky hospital, where his father served as the headquarters as a doctor. Mother, nee Nechayeva, came from the Moscow merchants (from a family, apparently, intelligent). D.'s family was ... ...

For the convenience of reviewing the main phenomena of its development, the history of Russian literature can be divided into three periods: I from the first monuments to the Tatar yoke; II until the end of the 17th century; III to our time. In reality, these periods are not sharply ... ... encyclopedic Dictionary F. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron

Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

"Notes from the House of the Dead"

Part one

Introduction

I met Alexander Petrovich Goryanchikov in a small Siberian town. Born in Russia as a nobleman, he became a second-class convict for the murder of his wife. After serving 10 years in hard labor, he lived out his life in the town of K. He was a pale and thin man of about thirty-five, small and puny, unsociable and suspicious. Driving past his windows one night, I noticed a light in them and decided that he was writing something.

Returning to the town three months later, I learned that Alexander Petrovich had died. His mistress gave me his papers. Among them was a notebook with a description of the deceased's convict life. These notes - "Scenes from the House of the Dead," as he called them - struck me as curious. I select several chapters for trial.

I. Dead House

The jail stood at the rampart. The large courtyard was surrounded by a fence of tall, pointed posts. There was a strong gate in the fence, guarded by sentries. There was a special world here, with its own laws, clothing, customs and customs.

Along the sides of the wide courtyard were two long, one-story barracks for prisoners. In the back of the yard there is a kitchen, cellars, barns, sheds. In the middle of the yard there is a flat area for checks and roll calls. There was a large space between the buildings and the fence, where some prisoners liked to be alone.

We were locked up at night in the barracks, a long and stuffy room lit by tallow candles. In winter they locked up early, and in the barracks there was a din, laughter, curses and the clang of chains for four hours. There were 250 people constantly in the prison. Each strip of Russia had its representatives here.

Most of the prisoners are civilian convicts, criminals, deprived of all rights, with branded faces. They were sent for periods ranging from 8 to 12 years, and then sent to the settlement in Siberia. Military criminals were sent for short periods, and then returned to where they came from. Many of them returned to prison for repeated crimes. This category was called "everlasting". Criminals were sent to the "special department" from all over Russia. They did not know their term and worked more than the rest of the convicts.

December evening I entered this strange house... I had to get used to the fact that I would never be alone. The prisoners did not like to talk about the past. Most are proficient in reading and writing. The grades were distinguished by their multi-colored clothing and differently shaved heads. Most of the convicts were gloomy, envious, conceited, boastful, and resentful people. What was most appreciated was the ability not to be surprised at anything.

Endless gossip and intrigues were conducted in the barracks, but no one dared to rebel against the internal regulations of the prison. There were outstanding characters who obeyed with difficulty. People who committed crimes out of vanity came to the prison. Such newcomers quickly realized that there was no one here to surprise, and fell into the general tone of special dignity that was adopted in the prison. Swearing was elevated to a science, which was developed by incessant quarrels. Strong people did not enter into quarrels, they were reasonable and obedient - it was profitable.

They hated hard labor. Many in the prison had their own business, without which they could not survive. The prisoners were forbidden to have tools, but the authorities turned a blind eye to this. All kinds of crafts met here. Work orders were obtained from the city.

Money and tobacco saved from scurvy, and work saved from crime. Despite this, both work and money were prohibited. Searches were carried out at night, everything forbidden was taken away, so the money was immediately spent on drink.

Anyone who could not do anything became a reseller or a usurer. even government items were accepted on bail. Almost everyone had a chest with a lock, but this did not save them from theft. There were also kissers who sold wine. Former smugglers quickly found use of their skills. There was another permanent income - alms, which were always divided equally.

II. First impressions

I soon realized that the burden of hard labor was that it was forced and useless. In winter, there was little government work. All returned to the prison, where only a third of the prisoners were engaged in their craft, the rest gossiped, drank and played cards.

It was stuffy in the barracks in the mornings. In each barracks there was a prisoner who was called a parashnik and did not go to work. He had to wash the bunks and floors, take out the night tub and bring two buckets of fresh water - for washing and for drinking.

At first they looked at me askance. Former nobles in hard labor are never recognized as their own. We especially got it at work, because we had little strength, and we could not help them. The Polish gentry, of whom there were five people, were disliked even more. There were four Russian noblemen. One is a spy and informer, the other is a parricide. The third was Akim Akimych, a tall, thin eccentric, honest, naive and neat.

He served as an officer in the Caucasus. One neighboring prince, considered peaceful, attacked his fortress at night, but unsuccessfully. Akim Akimych shot this prince in front of his detachment. He was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted and sent to Siberia for 12 years. The prisoners respected Akim Akimych for his accuracy and skill. There was no craft that he did not know.

While waiting in the workshop to change the shackles, I asked Akim Akimych about our major. He turned out to be dishonest and an evil person... He regarded the prisoners as his enemies. In prison, they hated him, feared him like the plague, and even wanted to kill him.

Meanwhile, several Kalashnits came to the workshop. Until adulthood, they sold rolls that their mothers baked. Growing up, they sold very different services. This was fraught with great difficulties. It was necessary to choose the time, place, make an appointment and bribe the escorts. Still, I was able to sometimes witness love scenes.

The prisoners dined in shifts. On my first lunch, between the prisoners, the conversation about a certain Gazin came up. The Pole, who was sitting next to him, said that Gazin was selling wine and wasting his earnings on drink. I asked why many of the prisoners looked askance at me. He explained that they are angry with me for being a nobleman, many of them would like to humiliate me, and added that I will face troubles and abuse more than once.

III. First impressions

The prisoners valued money on a par with freedom, but it was difficult to keep it. Either the major took the money, or they stole it. Subsequently, we gave the money for safekeeping to an old Old Believer who came to us from the Starodub settlements.

He was a small, gray-haired old man of sixty, calm and quiet, with clear, bright eyes surrounded by small radiant wrinkles. The old man, along with other fanatics, set fire to the church of the same faith. As one of the ringleaders, he was exiled to hard labor. The old man was a well-to-do bourgeois, he left his family at home, but he went into exile with firmness, considering it "torment for the faith." The prisoners respected him and were sure that the old man could not steal.

It was melancholy in the prison. The prisoners were drawn to wrap up all their capital in order to forget their melancholy. Sometimes a person worked for several months only in order to lose all his earnings in one day. Many of them loved to get themselves bright new clothes and go to the barracks on holidays.

The wine trade was risky but profitable. For the first time, the kissing man himself brought wine into the prison and sold it profitably. After the second and third time, he founded a real trade and found agents and assistants who took risks in his place. The agents were usually squandered revelers.

In the first days of my imprisonment, I became interested in a young prisoner named Sirotkin. He was no more than 23 years old. He was considered one of the most dangerous war criminals. He ended up in prison for killing his company commander, who was always unhappy with him. Sirotkin was friends with Gazin.

Gazin was a Tatar, very strong, tall and powerful, with a disproportionately huge head. In the prison they said that he was a fugitive soldier from Nerchinsk, was exiled to Siberia more than once, and finally ended up in a special department. In prison, he behaved prudently, did not quarrel with anyone and was uncommunicative. It was noticeable that he was clever and cunning.

All the atrocities of Gazin's nature manifested itself when he got drunk. He got into a terrible rage, grabbed a knife and threw himself at people. The prisoners found a way to deal with him. About ten people rushed at him and started beating him until he lost consciousness. Then he was wrapped in a sheepskin coat and carried to the bunk. The next morning he got up healthy and went to work.

Bursting into the kitchen, Gazin began to find fault with me and my friend. Seeing that we decided to be silent, he trembled with rage, grabbed a heavy bread tray and swung. Despite the fact that the murder threatened the entire prison with troubles, everyone quieted down and waited - to such an extent was their hatred of the nobles. As soon as he wanted to lower the tray, someone shouted that his wine had been stolen, and he rushed out of the kitchen.

The whole evening I was occupied with the idea of ​​inequality of punishment for the same crimes. Sometimes crimes cannot be compared. For example, one killed a person just like that, and the other killed, defending the honor of the bride, sister, daughter. Another difference is in the punished people. An educated person with a developed conscience will condemn himself for his crime. The other does not even think about the murder he committed and considers himself right. There are also those who commit crimes in order to get into hard labor and get rid of a hard life in freedom.

IV. First impressions

After the last verification from the authorities in the barracks, there remained an invalid who was watching the order, and the eldest of the prisoners, appointed by the parade-major for good behavior. In our barracks, Akim Akimych turned out to be the senior. The prisoners did not pay attention to the disabled person.

The convict authorities have always treated the prisoners with caution. The prisoners realized that they were afraid, and this gave them courage. The best boss for prisoners is the one who is not afraid of them, and the prisoners themselves are pleased with such trust.

In the evening our barracks took on a homely look. A bunch of revelers sat around the rug for cards. In every barracks there was a prisoner who rented out a rug, a candle, and greasy cards. All this was called "Maidan". A servant at the Maidan stood guard all night and warned about the appearance of a parade-major or sentries.

My seat was on the bunk by the door. Next to me was Akim Akimych. On the left was a bunch of Caucasian highlanders convicted of robbery: three Dagestani Tatars, two Lezgins and one Chechen. Dagestani Tatars were siblings. The youngest, Alei, a handsome guy with big black eyes, was about 22 years old. They ended up in hard labor for robbing and stabbing an Armenian merchant. The brothers loved Alei very much. Despite the outward softness, Alei had a strong character. He was fair, smart and modest, avoided quarrels, although he knew how to stand up for himself. In a few months I taught him to speak Russian. Alei mastered several crafts, and the brothers were proud of him. With the help of the New Testament, I taught him to read and write in Russian, which earned him the gratitude of his brothers.

Poles in hard labor constituted a separate family. Some of them were educated. Educated person in hard labor, he must get used to a foreign environment for him. Often the same punishment for everyone becomes ten times more painful for him.

Of all the convicts, the Poles loved only the Jew Isaiah Fomich, who looked like a plucked chicken of a man of about 50, small and weak. He came on a murder charge. It was easy for him to live in hard labor. As a jeweler, he was inundated with work from the city.

There were also four Old Believers in our barracks; several Little Russians; a young convict, 23 years old, who killed eight people; a bunch of counterfeiters and a few gloomy personalities. All this flashed before me on the first evening of my new life among the smoke and soot, with the clang of shackles, amid curses and shameless laughter.

V. First month

Three days later I went to work. At that time, among the hostile faces, I could not discern a single benevolent one. Akim Akimych was the friendliest of all. Next to me was another person whom I got to know well only after many years. It was the prisoner Sushilov, who served me. I also had another servant, Osip, one of the four cooks chosen by the prisoners. The cooks did not go to work, and at any time they could resign from this position. Osip was chosen for several years in a row. He was an honest and meek man, although he came for smuggling. Together with other chefs, he traded in wine.

Osip prepared food for me. Sushilov himself began to wash me, run on various errands and mend my clothes. He could not help but serve someone. Sushilov was a pitiful, unrequited and naturally downtrodden man. The conversation was given to him with great difficulty. He was of medium height and undefined appearance.

The prisoners laughed at Sushilov because he changed on the way to Siberia. To change means to change the name and fate with someone. Usually this is done by prisoners who have a long term in hard labor. They find such nonsense as Sushilov and deceive them.

I looked at the hard labor with eager attention, I was amazed by such phenomena as the meeting with the prisoner A-v. He was from the nobility and reported to our parade-major about everything that was going on in the prison. Having quarreled with his family, A-s left Moscow and arrived in St. Petersburg. To get money, he went to a sneaky denunciation. He was convicted and exiled to Siberia for ten years. Hard labor untied his hands. To satisfy his brutal instincts, he was ready for anything. It was a monster, cunning, intelligent, beautiful and educated.

Vi. First month

I had a few rubles hidden in the binding of the Gospel. This book with money was presented to me in Tobolsk by other exiles. There are people in Siberia who unselfishly help the exiles. In the city where our prison was located, lived a widow, Nastasya Ivanovna. She could not do much because of poverty, but we felt that there, behind the prison, we had a friend.

During those first days I thought about how I would put myself in prison. I decided to do what my conscience dictated. On the fourth day I was sent to dismantle the old state barges. This old material was worth nothing, and the prisoners were sent in order not to sit idly by, which the prisoners themselves well understood.

They set to work listlessly, reluctantly, clumsily. An hour later, the conductor came and announced a lesson, after completing which it would be possible to go home. The prisoners quickly set to work, and went home tired, but satisfied, although they won only half an hour.

I got in the way everywhere, they drove me away almost with abuse. When I stepped aside, they immediately shouted that I was a bad worker. They were happy to make fun of the former nobleman. Despite this, I decided to keep myself as simple and independent as possible, without fear of their threats and hatred.

According to them, I should have behaved like a white-handed nobleman. They would have scolded me for it, but they would have respect for themselves. This role was not for me; I promised myself not to belittle my education or my way of thinking before them. If I began to suck up and be familiar with them, they would think that I am doing it out of fear, and they would treat me with contempt. But I didn't want to close in front of them either.

In the evening I was wandering alone behind the barracks and suddenly I saw Sharik, our cautious dog, rather large, black with white spots, with intelligent eyes and a fluffy tail. I stroked her and gave her bread. Now, returning from work, I hurried behind the barracks with a ball squealing with joy, clasping his head, and a bittersweet feeling ached in my heart.

Vii. New acquaintances. Petrov

I began to get used to it. I no longer wandered around the prison as lost, the curious glances of the convicts did not stop on me so often. I was amazed at the frivolity of the convicts. Free man hopes, but he lives, acts. The prisoner's hope is of a completely different kind. Even terrible criminals, chained to the wall, dream of walking around the courtyard of the prison.

For my love of work, convicts mocked me, but I knew that work would save me, and did not pay attention to them. The engineering bosses made it easier for the nobles, as people who were weak and inept. Three or four people were appointed to burn and crush alabaster, led by the master Almazov, a stern, dark and lean man in his years, uncommunicative and obese. Another job I was sent to was to turn the grinding wheel in the workshop. If they made something big, another nobleman was sent to help me. This work remained with us for several years.

The circle of my acquaintances gradually began to expand. Prisoner Petrov was the first to visit me. He lived in a special compartment, in the barracks farthest from me. Petrov was of short stature, strong build, with a pleasant broad-cheeked face and a bold look. He was 40 years old. He spoke to me at ease, behaved decently and delicately. This relationship continued between us for several years and never got closer.

Petrov was the most resolute and fearless of all convicts. His passions, like hot coals, were sprinkled with ash and smoldered quietly. He rarely quarreled, but he was not friendly with anyone. He was interested in everything, but he remained indifferent to everything and wandered around the prison idle. Such people show themselves sharply at critical moments. They are not the instigators of the case, but the main executors of it. They are the first to jump over the main obstacle, everyone rushes after them and blindly goes to the last line, where they lay their heads.

VIII. Decisive people. Luchka

There were few decisive people in hard labor. At first I shunned these people, but then I changed my views on even the most terrible murderers. It was difficult to form an opinion about some crimes, there was so much strange in them.

The prisoners loved to boast of their "exploits". Once I heard a story about how prisoner Luka Kuzmich killed one major for his own pleasure. This Luka Kuzmich was a small, slender, young prisoner from the Ukrainians. He was boastful, arrogant, proud, convicts did not respect him and called him Luchka.

Luchka told his story to a dull and limited, but kind guy, neighbor on the bunk, prisoner Kobylin. Luchka spoke out loud: he wanted everyone to hear him. This happened during the shipment. With him sat about 12 Ukrainians, tall, healthy, but meek. The food is bad, but the Major turns them around as he pleases. Luchka agitated Ukrainians, demanded a major, and in the morning he took a knife from a neighbor. The major ran in, drunk, shouting. "I am the king, I am the god!" Luchka got closer and stuck a knife in his stomach.

Unfortunately, expressions such as: "I am the king, I and the god" were used by many officers, especially those who came from the lower ranks. They are obsequious to their superiors, but for subordinates they become unlimited overlords. This is very annoying to the prisoners. Every prisoner, no matter how humiliated he may be, demands respect for himself. I saw what action the noble and kind officers performed on these humiliated ones. They, like children, began to love.

For the murder of an officer, Luchka was given 105 lashes. Although Luchka killed six people, no one was afraid of him in prison, although in his heart he dreamed of being known as a terrible person.

IX. Isai Fomich. Bath. Baklushin's story

About four days before Christmas we were taken to the bathhouse. Isai Fomich Bumstein was most happy. It seemed that he did not regret at all that he had ended up in hard labor. He only did jewelry work and lived richly. City Jews patronized him. On Saturdays, he went under escort to the city synagogue and waited for the end of his twelve-year term to get married. There was a mixture of naivety, stupidity, cunning, insolence, innocence, timidity, boastfulness and insolence in him. Isai Fomich served everyone for entertainment. He understood this and was proud of his significance.

There were only two public baths in the city. The first was paid, the other was dilapidated, dirty and cramped. They took us to this bathhouse. The prisoners were glad that they would leave the fortress. In the bath we were divided into two shifts, but, despite this, it was cramped. Petrov helped me to undress - because of the shackles it was difficult. The prisoners were given a small piece of government soap, but right there, in the dressing room, in addition to soap, one could buy sbiten, rolls and hot water.

The bathhouse was like hell. There were about a hundred people crowded into the small room. Petrov bought a seat on a bench from a man, who immediately ducked under the bench, where it was dark, dirty and everything was busy. It all screamed and giggled to the sound of the chains dragging across the floor. Mud poured from all directions. Baklushin brought hot water, and Petrov washed me with such ceremonies, as if I were porcelain. When we got home, I treated him to a kosushka. I invited Baklushin to my place for tea.

Everyone loved Baklushin. He was a tall guy, about 30 years old, with a brave and simple-minded face. He was full of fire and life. Having met me, Baklushin said that he was from the cantonists, served in the pioneers and was loved by some tall people. He even read books. When he came to me for tea, he announced to me that a theatrical performance would soon take place, which the prisoners were staging in the prison on holidays. Baklushin was one of the main instigators of the theater.

Baklushin told me that he served as a non-commissioned officer in a garrison battalion. There he fell in love with a German woman, the washerwoman Louise, who lived with her aunt, and decided to marry her. He expressed a desire to marry Louise and her distant relative, a middle-aged and wealthy watchmaker, German Schultz. Louise was not against this marriage. A few days later it became known that Schultz made Louise swear not to meet with Baklushin, that the German kept them with his aunt in a black body, and that his aunt would meet with Schultz on Sunday in his store to finally agree on everything. On Sunday, Baklushin took a pistol, went to the store and shot Schultz. Two weeks after that, he was happy with Louise, and then he was arrested.

X. Feast of the Nativity of Christ

Finally, the holiday came, from which everyone expected something. In the evening, the disabled who went to the bazaar brought a lot of all kinds of provisions. Even the most frugal prisoners wanted to celebrate Christmas with dignity. On this day, the prisoners were not sent to work, there were three such days a year.

Akim Akimych did not have family memories - he grew up an orphan in someone else's house and from the age of fifteen he went into heavy service. He was not especially religious, so he was preparing to celebrate Christmas not with dreary memories, but with quiet decency. He did not like to think and lived by the rules established forever. Only once in his life did he try to live with his mind - and ended up in hard labor. He deduced from this rule - never to reason.

In the military barracks, where bunks stood only along the walls, the priest held a Christmas service and consecrated all the barracks. Immediately after that, the parade-major and the commandant arrived, whom we loved and even respected. They went around all the barracks and congratulated everyone.

Gradually, the people walked around, but there were much more sober, and there was someone to look after the drunk. Gazin was sober. He intended to go for a walk at the end of the holiday, collecting all the money from the prisoners' pockets. Songs were heard in the barracks. Many walked around with their own balalaikas, and even a choir of eight was formed in a special section.

In the meantime, dusk was beginning. Sadness and melancholy were visible among the drunkenness. The people wanted to have a great holiday cheerfully - and what a hard and sad day it was for almost everyone. It became unbearable and disgusting in the barracks. I was sad and sorry for all of them.

XI. Performance

On the third day of the holiday, a performance took place in our theater. We did not know whether our parade-major knew about the theater. Such a person as the parade-major had to take something away, to deprive someone of the right. The senior non-commissioned officer did not contradict the prisoners, taking their word that everything would be quiet. The poster was written by Baklushin for gentlemen officers and noble visitors who honored our theater with their visit.

The first play was called Filatka and Miroshka rivals, in which Baklushin played Filatka, and Sirotkin played Filatka's bride. The second play was called "Cedril the Glutton". In conclusion, a "pantomime to music" was presented.

The theater was set up in a military barracks. Half of the room was given to the audience, the other half was a stage. The curtain stretched across the barracks was painted with oil paint and sewn from canvas. In front of the curtain there were two benches and several chairs for officers and outsiders, which were not translated during the whole holiday. There were prisoners behind the benches, and the tightness there was incredible.

The crowd of spectators, squeezed from all sides, with bliss on their faces awaited the start of the performance. A gleam of childish joy shone on the branded faces. The prisoners were delighted. They were allowed to have fun, forget about the shackles and long years of imprisonment.

Part two

I. Hospital

After the holidays, I fell ill and went to our military hospital, in the main building of which there were 2 prison wards. Sick prisoners announced their illness to a non-commissioned officer. They were recorded in a book and sent with a convoy to the battalion infirmary, where the doctor recorded the really sick in the hospital.

Prescribing drugs and distributing portions were handled by the resident, who was in charge of the prison wards. We were dressed in hospital clothes, and I walked down a clean corridor and found myself in a long, narrow room with 22 wooden beds.

There were few seriously ill patients. To my right lay a counterfeiter, a former clerk, the illegitimate son of a retired captain. He was a stocky guy of 28 years old, intelligent, cheeky, confident in his innocence. He told me in detail about the procedures in the hospital.

After him, a patient from the correctional company came up to me. It was already a gray-haired soldier named Chekunov. He began to serve me, which caused several poisonous ridicule from a consumptive patient by the name of Ustyantsev, who, frightened of punishment, drank a glass of wine infused with tobacco and poisoned himself. I felt that his anger was directed at me rather than at Chekunov.

All diseases, even venereal diseases, were collected here. There were also a few who came just to "rest". The doctors let them in out of compassion. Outwardly, the room was relatively clean, but we did not flaunt the inner cleanliness. The patients got used to it and even believed that it was necessary. The punished with gauntlets were greeted with us very seriously and silently courted the unfortunate. The paramedics knew that they were handing over the beaten into experienced hands.

After the evening visit to the doctor, the ward was locked with a night tub. At night, the prisoners were not allowed out of the wards. This useless cruelty was explained by the fact that the prisoner would go to the toilet at night and run away, despite the fact that there is a window with an iron grating, and an armed sentry accompanies the prisoner to the toilet. And where to run in the winter in hospital clothes. From the shackles of a convict, no illness can save him. For the sick, the shackles are too heavy, and this heaviness aggravates their suffering.

II. Continuation

The doctors went around the wards in the morning. Before them, our resident, a young but knowledgeable doctor, visited the ward. Many doctors in Russia enjoy the love and respect of the common people, despite the general distrust of medicine. When the resident noticed that the prisoner came to take a break from work, he wrote down a nonexistent illness for him and left him lying. The senior doctor was much more severe than the resident, and for this he was respected by us.

Some patients asked to be discharged with their backs not healed from the first sticks in order to get out of court as soon as possible. Habit helped to punish some. The prisoners, with extraordinary good nature, talked about how they were beaten and about those who beat them.

However, not all stories were cold-blooded and indifferent. They talked about Lieutenant Zherebyatnikov with indignation. He was a man of about 30 years old, tall, fat, with ruddy cheeks, white teeth and rolling laughter. He loved to flog and punish with sticks. The lieutenant was a refined gourmet in the executive business: he invented various unnatural things in order to pleasantly tickle his soul swollen with fat.

Lieutenant Smekalov, who was the commander at our prison, was remembered with joy and pleasure. The Russian people are ready to forget any torment for one kind word, but Lieutenant Smekalov gained particular popularity. He was a simple man, even kind in his own way, and we recognized him as one of our own.

III. Continuation

In the hospital, I got a visual representation of all types of punishment. All those punished with gauges were brought to our chambers. I wanted to know all the degrees of sentences, I tried to imagine the psychological state of those going to execution.

If the convict could not stand the prescribed number of blows, then, by the verdict of the doctor, this number was divided into several parts. The prisoners endured the execution itself courageously. I noticed that a lot of rods is the most severe punishment. With five hundred rods, a person can be detected to death, and five hundred sticks can be carried without danger to life.

Almost every person has the qualities of an executioner, but they develop unevenly. There are two types of executioners: voluntary and forced. The people experience an unaccountable, mystical fear of a forced executioner.

A forced executioner is an exiled prisoner who became an apprentice to another executioner and was left forever in prison, where he has his own farm and is under guard. The executioners have money, they eat well, they drink wine. The executioner cannot punish weakly; but for a bribe, he promises the victim that he will not beat her very painfully. If his proposal is not agreed, he punishes barbarously.

It was boring to lie in the hospital. The arrival of a newcomer has always produced excitement. They even rejoiced at the madmen who were brought to the test. The defendants pretended to be crazy in order to get rid of the punishment. Some of them, after spending two or three days, calmed down and asked to be discharged. Real madmen were the punishment for the entire ward.

The seriously ill loved to be treated. Bloodletting was accepted with pleasure. Our banks were of a special kind. The paramedic lost or damaged the machine, which cut the skin, and had to make 12 cuts for each can with a lancet.

The saddest time was late in the evening. It was getting stuffy, bright pictures were recalled past life... One night I heard a story that struck me as a feverish dream.

IV. Akulkin husband

Late at night I woke up and heard two whispering among themselves not far from me. The narrator Shishkov was still young, about 30 years old, a civilian prisoner, an empty, flighty and cowardly man of short stature, thin, with restless or stupidly pensive eyes.

It was about the father of Shishkov's wife, Ankudim Trofimych. He was a wealthy and respected old man of 70 years old, had tenders and a large loan, kept three workers. Ankudim Trofimych was married for the second time, had two sons and the eldest daughter Akulina. Shishkov's friend Filka Morozov was considered her lover. Filka's parents died at that time, and he was going to skip the inheritance and become a soldier. He did not want to marry Akulka. Shishkov then also buried his father, and his mother worked for Ankudim - she baked gingerbread for sale.

Once Filka knocked Shishkov down to smear the gates with tar on Akulka - Filka did not want her to marry an old rich man who wooed her. He heard that there were rumors about Akulka - and backtracked. Mother advised Shishkov to marry Akulka - now no one took her in marriage, and a good dowry was given for her.

Until the wedding, Shishkov drank without waking up. Filka Morozov threatened to break all his ribs, and sleep with his wife every night. Ankudim shed tears at the wedding, he knew that his daughter was giving up for torment. And Shishkov, even before the crown, had a whip with him, and decided to make fun of Akulka so that she knew how to marry with dishonest deception.

After the wedding, they left them with Akulka in the cage. She sits white, not bloody in her face with fear. Shishkov prepared a whip and laid it by the bed, but Akulka turned out to be innocent. Then he knelt in front of her, asked for forgiveness, and vowed to take revenge on Filka Morozov for the shame.

Some time later, Filka offered Shishkov to sell him his wife. To force Shishkov, Filka spread a rumor that he was not sleeping with his wife, because he was always drunk, and his wife was accepting others at that time. Shishkov was offended, and since then he began to beat his wife from morning to evening. Old man Ankudim came to intercede, and then backed down. Shishkov did not allow his mother to interfere; he threatened to kill her.

Filka, meanwhile, completely drunk himself and went into the mercenary to the tradesman, for the eldest son. Filka lived with a bourgeois for his own pleasure, drank, slept with his daughters, dragged the owner by the beard. The tradesman endured - Filka had to go to the soldiers for his eldest son. When they were taking Filka to the soldiers to surrender, he saw Akulka on the way, stopped, bowed to her in the ground and asked for forgiveness for his meanness. Akulka forgave him, and & n

This story does not have a strictly outlined plot and is a sketches from the life of convicts, presented in chronological order. In this work, Dostoevsky describes his personal impressions of being in exile, tells stories from the lives of other prisoners, and also creates psychological sketches and expresses philosophical reflections.

Alexander Goryanchikov, a hereditary nobleman, receives 10 years of hard labor for the murder of his wife. Alexander Petrovich killed his wife out of jealousy, which he himself admitted to the investigation, after hard labor, he breaks off all contacts with relatives and friends and remains to live in the Siberian town of K., in which he leads a secluded life, earning his living by tutoring.

The nobleman Goryanchikov is going through his imprisonment in a prison hard, since he is not used to being among ordinary peasants. Many prisoners take him for a sissy, despise him for his noble clumsiness in everyday matters, deliberate disgust, but respect his high origin. At first, Alexander Petrovich is in shock from being in a difficult peasant atmosphere, but this impression soon passes and Goryanchikov begins to study the prisoners of Ostroh with genuine interest, discovering the essence of the common people, their vices and nobility.

Alexander Petrovich falls into the second category of Siberian penal servitude - a fortress, the first category in this system was directly penal servitude, the third - factories. The convicts believed that the severity of hard labor decreases from hard labor to the factory, but the second-class slaves were under constant supervision of the military and often dreamed of going first to the first category, then to the third. Along with ordinary prisoners, in the fortress, where Goryanchikov was serving his sentence, there was a specific department of prisoners convicted of especially grave crimes.

Alexander Petrovich meets many of the prisoners. Akim Akimych, a former nobleman with whom Goryanchikov made friends, was sentenced to 12 years in hard labor for reprisals against a Caucasian prince. Akim is an extremely pedantic and well-behaved person. Another nobleman, A-v, was sentenced to ten years in hard labor for false denunciation, on which he wanted to make a fortune. Hard work in hard labor did not lead A-v to repentance, but rather corrupted, turning the nobleman into an informer and a scoundrel. A-v is a symbol of complete moral decay person.

The terrible kisser Gazin, the toughest convict in the fortress, convicted of killing young children. It was rumored that Gazin enjoyed the fear and torment of innocent children. The smuggler Osip, who raised smuggling to the level of art, brought wine and forbidden products into the fortress, worked as a cook in the prison and prepared tolerable food for the prisoners' money.

A nobleman lives among the common people and learns such worldly wisdom as how you can earn money in hard labor, how to bring wine to prison. He learns about what kind of work the prisoners are involved in, how they relate to the authorities and to the hard labor itself. What the convicts dream of, what is allowed and what is forbidden, what the prison authorities will turn a blind eye to, and for which the convicts will receive a severe punishment.

Scrapbook from a dead house Fedor Dostoevsky

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Title: Notes from the House of the Dead

About the book "Notes from the House of the Dead" Fyodor Dostoevsky

"Notes from the House of the Dead" Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky wrote shortly after he returned from hard labor. Arrested on the political case of the Petrashevites, he spent four years in hard labor in Omsk. So practically all events unfold in the convict barracks in the prison, one of many hundreds in Russia, where thousands and thousands of prisoners were sent.

Alexander Petrovich Goryanchikov is a nobleman who was exiled to prison for the murder of his wife, to which he himself confessed. In hard labor, the hero is under double oppression. On the one hand, he never found himself in conditions similar to those of hard labor. Bondage seems to him the most terrible punishment. On the other hand, other prisoners do not like him and despise him for being unprepared. After all, Alexander Petrovich is a gentleman, although he was a former, and earlier could command ordinary peasants.

"Notes from the House of the Dead" does not contain a coherent plot, although they have the main character - Alexander Goryanchikov (although there is no doubt whose thoughts, words and feelings he is relaying). All the events of the novel are told in chronological order and reflect how slowly and painfully the hero adapted to hard labor. The story consists of small sketches, the heroes of which are people from the entourage of Alexander Goryanchikov, he himself and the warders, or they have the form of inserted stories heard by the heroes.

In them, Fyodor Dostoevsky tried to record what he experienced during his own stay in hard labor, so the work is more of a documentary nature. The chapters contain the author's personal impressions, retelling of the stories of other convicts, experiences, discussions about religion, honor, life and death.

The main place in the "Notes from the House of the Dead" is given to a detailed description of life and the unspoken code of conduct of convicts. Auto tells about their attitude towards each other, about hard work and almost army discipline, faith in God, the fate of prisoners and the crimes for which they were convicted. Fyodor Dostoevsky talks about the daily life of convicts, about entertainment, dreams, relationships, punishments and little joys. In this story, the author managed to collect the entire spectrum of human morality: from an informer and a traitor, capable of slandering for money, to a kind-hearted widow who disinterestedly cares for prisoners. The author talks about the ethnic composition and different classes (nobles, peasants, soldiers) of people who fell into inhuman conditions. Almost all the stories from their lives (and some of them can be traced to the end) are anxiously conveyed by the author. Dostoevsky also mentions what happens to these people when their hard labor (and this is a whole life of years) ends.

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Quotes from the book "Notes from the House of the Dead" Fyodor Dostoevsky

The highest and sharpest characteristic of our people is a sense of justice and a thirst for it.

Money is minted freedom, and therefore for a person who is completely deprived of freedom, it is ten times more expensive.

In a word, the right of corporal punishment, given to one over the other, is one of the ulcers of society, is one of the most powerful means for destroying every embryo in it, every attempt at civic consciousness, and a full basis for its inevitable and irresistible decay.

Tyranny is a habit; it is gifted with development, it develops, at last, into a disease.

But all his charm was gone, he had just taken off his uniform. In his uniform he was a thunderstorm, god. In his frock coat he suddenly became completely nothing and looked like a footman. It's amazing how much these people wear.

Part one

Introduction

In the remote regions of Siberia, among the steppes, mountains or impenetrable forests, occasionally come across small cities, with one, many with two thousand inhabitants, wooden, nondescript, with two churches - one in the city, the other in a cemetery - cities that look more like good a village near Moscow than a city. They are usually very well equipped with police officers, assessors and all other subaltern ranks. In general, in Siberia, despite the cold, it is extremely warm to serve. People live simple, illiberal; the order is old, strong, consecrated for centuries. Officials, who justly play the role of the Siberian nobility, are either natives, inveterate Siberians, or immigrants from Russia, mostly from capitals, seduced by an off-set salary, double runs and seductive hopes in the future. Of these, those who know how to solve the riddle of life almost always remain in Siberia and take root in it with pleasure. Subsequently, they bear rich and sweet fruits. But others, a frivolous people who do not know how to solve the riddle of life, will soon get bored with Siberia and ask themselves longingly: why did they come to it? They are impatiently serving their legal term of service, three years, and after it has expired they immediately bother about their transfer and return home, scolding Siberia and laughing at it. They are wrong: not only from the official, but even from many points of view, one can be blissful in Siberia. The climate is excellent; there are many remarkably wealthy and hospitable merchants; there are many extremely sufficient foreigners. The young ladies bloom with roses and are moral to the last extreme. Game flies through the streets and stumbles upon the hunter itself. An unnatural amount of champagne is drunk. The caviar is amazing. The harvest happens in other places sampyteen ... In general, the land is blessed. You just need to know how to use it. In Siberia, they know how to use it.

In one of such cheerful and self-satisfied towns, with the sweetest population, the memory of which will remain indelible in my heart, I met Alexander Petrovich Goryanchikov, a settler who was born in Russia a nobleman and landowner, who later became a second-class convict for the murder of his wife, and, after the expiration of the ten-year term of hard labor determined by him by law, who humbly and silently lived out his life in the town of K. as a settler. He was actually assigned to one suburban volost; but he lived in the city, having the opportunity to earn at least some food there by educating his children. In Siberian cities, teachers from exiled settlers are often found; they do not disdain. They teach mainly French, which is so necessary in the field of life and about which in the remote regions of Siberia they would have had no idea. The first time I met Alexander Petrovich in the house of an old, honored and hospitable official, Ivan Ivanich Gvozdikov, who had five daughters different years who showed great promise. Alexander Petrovich gave them lessons four times a week, thirty kopecks in silver per lesson. His appearance interested me. He was an extremely pale and thin man, not yet old, about thirty-five, small and frail. He was always dressed very cleanly, in a European style. If you spoke to him, then he looked at you extremely intently and attentively, with strict courtesy he listened to your every word, as if pondering it, as if you asked him a problem with your question or wanted to extort some secret from him, and, finally, he answered clearly and briefly, but weighing every word of his answer to such an extent that you suddenly felt uncomfortable for some reason and you, at last, yourself were glad at the end of the conversation. I then asked Ivan Ivanitch about him and learned that Goryanchikov lived impeccably and morally and that otherwise Ivan Ivanovich would not have invited him for his daughters, but that he was a terrible unsociable, hiding from everyone, extremely learned, reads a lot, but spoke very little and that in general it is rather difficult to talk to him. Others argued that he was positively insane, although they found that, in essence, this was not yet such an important drawback, that many of the honorary members of the city were ready to kindness Alexander Petrovich in every possible way, that he could even be useful, write requests, and so on. It was believed that he should have decent relatives in Russia, maybe not even last people, but they knew that from the very exile he had stubbornly cut off all relations with them - in a word, he was hurting himself. In addition, we all knew his story, they knew that he killed his wife in the first year of his marriage, killed out of jealousy and reported himself on himself (which greatly facilitated his punishment). Such crimes are always looked upon as misfortunes and are regretted. But, despite all this, the eccentric stubbornly kept away from everyone and appeared in people only to give lessons.

At first I didn’t pay much attention to him; but, I myself do not know why, he gradually began to interest me. There was something mysterious about him. There was not the slightest opportunity to talk to him. Of course, he always answered my questions, and even with the air as if he considered it his primary duty; but after his answers I somehow felt weary about asking him longer; and on his face, after such conversations, one could always see some kind of suffering and fatigue. I remember walking with him one fine summer evening from Ivan Ivanitch. Suddenly I thought of inviting him to smoke a cigarette for a minute. I cannot describe the horror expressed on his face; he was completely lost, began to mutter some incoherent words, and suddenly, glaring at me with an angry glance, he rushed to run in the opposite direction. I was even surprised. Since then, meeting with me, he looked at me as if with some kind of fear. But I did not quit; I was drawn to him, and a month later, for no reason at all, I went to Goryanchikov's. Of course, I acted stupidly and indelicately. He lodged on the very edge of the city, with an old bourgeois woman who had a daughter who was sick in consumption, and that one had an illegitimate daughter, a child of about ten, a pretty and cheerful little girl. Alexander Petrovich was sitting with her and teaching her to read the minute I entered his room. Seeing me, he was so confused, as if I had caught him in some crime. He was completely at a loss, jumped up from his chair and looked at me with all his eyes. We finally sat down; he closely followed my every gaze, as if in each of them he suspected some special mysterious meaning. I guessed that he was suspicious to the point of madness. He looked at me with hatred, almost asking: "But will you soon leave here?" I spoke to him about our town, about current news; he kept silent and smiled maliciously; it turned out that he not only did not know the most ordinary, well-known city news, but was not even interested in knowing them. Then I started talking about our land, about its needs; he listened to me in silence and looked so strangely into my eyes that I finally felt ashamed of our conversation. However, I almost pissed him off with new books and magazines; I had them in my hands, just from the post office, I offered them to him not yet cut. He gave them an eager glance, but immediately changed his mind and declined the offer, responding with lack of time. Finally, I took leave of him and, leaving him, felt that some unbearable weight had fallen from my heart. I was ashamed and it seemed extremely stupid to pester a person who sets his main task as his main task - to hide as far as possible from the whole world. But the deed was done. I remember that I hardly noticed any books at his place, and therefore it was unfairly said about him that he reads a lot. However, passing once or twice, very late at night, past its windows, I noticed a light in them. What did he do, sitting until dawn? Didn't he write? And if so, what exactly?

Circumstances removed me from our town for three months. Returning home in the winter, I learned that Alexander Petrovich had died in the fall, died in solitude, and had never even called a doctor to him. He was almost forgotten in the town. His apartment was empty. I immediately made the acquaintance of the deceased's mistress, intending to find out from her: what was her tenant especially busy with and was he not writing anything? For two kopecks, she brought me a whole basket of papers left over from the deceased. The old woman admitted that she had already spent two notebooks. She was a sullen and silent woman, from whom it was difficult to get anything worthwhile. She could tell me nothing particularly new about her tenant. According to her, he almost never did anything and for months did not open books and did not take a pen in his hands; on the other hand, he walked up and down the room for whole nights, thinking something, and sometimes talking to himself; that he was very fond of and very caressed her granddaughter, Katya, especially since he learned that her name was Katya, and that on Katherine's day he went to serve a requiem for someone every time. The guests could not stand; I only left the yard to teach children; he even looked askance at her, the old woman, when, once a week, she came to clean up his room a little, and almost never said a single word with her for three whole years. I asked Katya: does she remember her teacher? She looked at me in silence, turned to the wall and began to cry. Therefore, this man could at least force someone to love himself.

I took away his papers and went through them all day. Three-quarters of these papers were blank, insignificant scraps or student exercises with words. But then there was one notebook, quite voluminous, finely scribbled and unfinished, perhaps abandoned and forgotten by the author himself. It was a description, albeit an incoherent one, of a ten-year convict life endured by Alexander Petrovich. In places this description was interrupted by some other story, some strange, terrible memories, sketched unevenly, convulsively, as if under some kind of compulsion. I reread these passages several times and almost became convinced that they were written in madness. But the convict notes - "Scenes from the House of the Dead" - as he himself calls them somewhere in his manuscript, seemed to me not entirely uninteresting. A completely new world, still unknown, the strangeness of other facts, some special notes about the lost people carried me away, and I read something with curiosity. Of course, I could be wrong. First, I choose two or three chapters for testing; let the public judge ...

I. House of the dead

Our jail stood on the edge of the fortress, at the very rampart. It happened, you look through the cracks of the fence at the light of God: will you see at least something? - and only you will see that the edge of the sky and the high earthen rampart, overgrown with weeds, and the sentries are pacing up and down the rampart day and night, and then you will think that whole years will pass, and you will just go to look through the cracks of the fence and you will see the same rampart, the same sentries and the same small edge of the sky, not the sky that is above the prison, but another, distant, free sky. Imagine a large courtyard, two hundred steps in length and one and a half hundred steps in width, all enclosed in a circle, in the form of an irregular hexagon, with a high rear, that is, a fence of high pillars (pal), dug deep into the ground, firmly leaning against each other by the ribs, fastened with transverse slats and pointed on top: here is the outer fence of the prison. On one side of the fence there is a strong gate, always locked, always guarded day and night by sentries; they were unlocked on demand, for release to work. Behind these gates was a bright, free world, people lived, like everyone else. But on this side of the fence, they imagined that world as some kind of unrealizable fairy tale. It had its own special world, unlike anything else; it had its own special laws, its own costumes, its own manners and customs, and a dead house alive, life - like nowhere else, and special people. It is this particular corner that I begin to describe.

As you enter the fence, you see several buildings inside it. On both sides of the wide courtyard, there are two long one-story log cabins. This is the barracks. Here live prisoners, placed in categories. Then, in the depths of the fence, there is also the same blockhouse: this is a kitchen, divided into two artels; then there is another building where cellars, barns, sheds are placed under one roof. The middle of the yard is empty and flat, rather large area... Here prisoners are lined up, there is a check and roll call in the morning, at noon and in the evening, sometimes several more times a day, judging by the suspiciousness of the sentries and their ability to quickly count. Around, between the buildings and the fence, there is still a fairly large space. Here, at the backs of the buildings, some of the prisoners, more intimate and gloomy in character, like to walk outside working hours, closed from all eyes, and think their little thing. When I met them on these walks, I loved to gaze at their gloomy, branded faces and guess what they were thinking. There was one exile whose favorite pastime in his free time was to count as fallen. There were a thousand and a half of them, and he had them all in the account and in mind. Each fire meant a day for him; every day he counted out one palette and thus, according to the remaining number of uncounted fingers, he could clearly see how many days he still had to stay in prison before his term of work. He was genuinely glad when he finished some side of the hexagon. For many years he still had to wait; but in prison there was time to learn patience. I once saw how one prisoner said goodbye to his comrades, who had been in hard labor for twenty years and was finally released. There were people who remembered how he entered the prison for the first time, young, carefree, not thinking about his crime or his punishment. He came out with a gray-haired old man, with a gloomy and sad face. Silently he walked around all our six barracks. Entering each barracks, he prayed for the icon and then low, in the belt, bowed to his comrades, asking not to commemorate him dashingly. I also remember how one prisoner, formerly a well-to-do Siberian peasant, was once called to the gate in the evening. Six months before that, he received the news that his ex-wife had married, and was deeply saddened. Now she herself drove up to the prison, summoned him and gave him alms. They talked for two minutes, both burst into tears and said goodbye forever. I saw his face when he returned to the barracks ... Yes, in this place one could learn patience.

When it got dark, we were all taken to the barracks, where they were locked up all night. It was always difficult for me to return from the yard to our barracks. It was a long, low and stuffy room, dimly lit by tallow candles, with a heavy, suffocating odor. Now I don’t understand how I survived in it for ten years. On the bunk I had three boards: this was my whole place. On the same bunks, about thirty people were accommodated in one of our rooms. They locked up early in the winter; four hours it was necessary to wait until everyone fell asleep. And before that - noise, din, laughter, curses, the sound of chains, fumes and soot, shaved heads, branded faces, patchwork dresses, everything - cursed, defamed ... yes, a man is tenacious! Man is a being who gets used to everything, and I think this is the best definition of him.

There were only two hundred and fifty of us in the prison - the figure is almost constant. Some came, others finished their sentences and left, others died. And what kind of people were not there! I think every province, every strip of Russia had its representatives here. There were also foreigners, there were several exiles, even from the Caucasian highlanders. All this was divided according to the degree of crimes, and therefore, according to the number of years determined for the crime. It must be assumed that there was no crime that did not have a representative here. The main base of the entire prison population was made up of civilian prisoners ( strongly convicts, as the prisoners themselves naively said). These were criminals, completely deprived of any rights of the state, cut off from society, with a branded face for the eternal testimony of their rejection. They were sent to work for periods ranging from eight to twelve years and then sent somewhere along the Siberian volosts to settlers. There were also criminals of the military category, not deprived of the rights of the state, as in general in the Russian military prison companies. They were sent for a short time; at the end of them they turned to the same place where they came from, to the soldiers, to the Siberian line battalions. Many of them almost immediately returned back to prison for secondary important crimes, but not for short periods, but for twenty years. This category was called "everlasting". But the "eternal" were still not completely deprived of all the rights of the state. Finally, there was another special category of the most terrible criminals, mostly military ones, quite numerous. It was called the "special department". Criminals were sent here from all over Russia. They themselves considered themselves eternal and did not know the term of their work. According to the law, they were supposed to double and triple the work lessons. They were kept in prison until the opening of the most difficult hard labor in Siberia. “You will be sentenced, but we will go along to hard labor,” they said to other prisoners. I heard later that this discharge was destroyed. In addition, civil order was destroyed at our fortress, and one general military prisoner company was established. Of course, along with this, the administration also changed. I am describing, therefore, the old days, things long past and past ...

It was a long time ago; I now dream all this, as in a dream. I remember how I entered the prison. It was in the evening, in the month of December. It was already getting dark; people were returning from work; preparing for verification. The mustachioed non-commissioned officer finally opened the doors to this strange house in which I had to stay for so many years, to endure so many such sensations that, without actually experiencing them, I could not have even a rough idea. For example, I would never have imagined: what is terrible and painful in the fact that in all ten years of my hard labor, I will never, not for one minute be alone? At work, always under escort, at home with two hundred comrades, and never, never - alone! However, did I still have to get used to this!

There were murderers here by chance and murderers by trade, robbers and atamans of robbers. There were just mazuriks and vagabonds-industrialists for the money they found or for the Stolievsky part. There were also those about whom it was difficult to decide: for what, it seems, they could come here? Meanwhile, everyone had their own story, vague and heavy, like the frenzy from yesterday's hops. In general, they spoke little about their past, did not like to talk and, apparently, tried not to think about the past. I knew of them even murderers so funny, so never thoughtful that one could bet that their conscience never told them any reproach. But there were also gloomy faces, almost always silent. In general, rarely did anyone tell his life, and curiosity was out of fashion, somehow out of custom, not accepted. So perhaps, from time to time, someone will start talking out of idleness, while the other listens calmly and gloomily. No one here could surprise anyone. "We are a literate people!" - they often said with some strange self-satisfaction. I remember how one day a robber, intoxicated (in hard labor it was sometimes possible to get drunk), began to tell how he stabbed a five-year-old boy, how he first deceived him with a toy, took him somewhere in an empty barn, and there he stabbed him. All the barracks, hitherto laughing at his jokes, cried out like one man, and the robber was forced to shut up; the barracks did not shout out of indignation, but because no need to talk about it talk; because to speak about it not accepted. By the way, I will note that these people were really literate, and not even in a figurative, but in a literal sense. Probably more than half of them can read and write skillfully. In what other place, where the Russian people gather in large masses, would you separate from them a bunch of two hundred and fifty people, half of whom would be literate? Later I heard that someone began to deduce from similar data that literacy is ruining the people. This is a mistake: there are completely different reasons; although one cannot but agree that literacy develops arrogance in a people. But this is not a disadvantage at all. All categories of dress differed: some had half of the jacket dark brown, and the other gray, as well as on the pantaloons - one leg was gray and the other was dark brown. Once, at work, the Kalashnitsa girl, who approached the prisoners, peered at me for a long time and then suddenly burst out laughing. “Fu, how glorious it is! - she cried, - and the gray cloth was not enough, and the black cloth was not enough! " There were also those whose whole jacket was of one gray cloth, but only the sleeves were dark brown. The head was also shaved in different ways: in some, half of the head was shaved along the skull, in others - across.

At first glance, one could notice some sharp commonality in this whole strange family; even the harshest, most original personalities, who reigned over others involuntarily, tried to fall into the general tone of the entire prison. In general, I will say that all this people, with a few exceptions of inexhaustible cheerful people who enjoyed universal contempt for this, were gloomy, envious, terribly vain, boastful, touchy and highly formalistic people. The ability not to be surprised at anything was the greatest virtue. Everyone was obsessed with how to behave outwardly. But often the most arrogant look was replaced with the speed of lightning by the most cowardly. There were a few truly strong people; they were simple and did not grimace. But a strange thing: of these real, strong people, there were several vain to the last extreme, almost to the point of illness. In general, vanity and appearance were in the foreground. Most were corrupted and terribly disguised. Gossip and gossip were incessant: it was hell, pitch darkness. But no one dared to rebel against the internal regulations and accepted customs of the prison; everyone obeyed. There were characters that were sharply outstanding, submissive with difficulty, but still submissive. Those who came to prison were too overwhelmed, too out of measure, so that in the end they did not commit their crimes by themselves, as if they themselves did not know why, as if in delirium, in a daze; often out of vanity, excited to the highest degree. But with us they were immediately besieged, despite the fact that some, before arriving in the prison, were the terror of entire villages and cities. Looking around, the newcomer soon noticed that he was in the wrong place, that there was already no one to astonish, and imperceptibly resigned himself, and fell into the general tone. This general tone was formed on the outside from some special, personal dignity, which was imbued with almost every inhabitant of the prison. Precisely, in fact, the title of convict, resolved, was some rank, and even an honorary one. No signs of shame or remorse! However, there was also some kind of outward humility, so to speak, official, some kind of calm reasoning: "We are a lost people," they said, "we did not know how to live in freedom, now break the green street, check the ranks." - "I did not obey my father and mother, listen now to the drum skin." - "I didn't want to sew with gold, now hit the stones with a hammer." All this was said often, both in the form of moralizing, and in the form of ordinary sayings and sayings, but never seriously. These were all just words. It is unlikely that even one of them confessed inwardly to his lawlessness. Try someone who is not a convict to reproach the prisoner with his crime, to elect him (although, however, not in the Russian spirit to reproach the criminal) - there will be no end to the curses. And what were they all masters of swearing! They swore exquisitely, artistically. Swearing was elevated to them as a science; they tried to take it not so much with an offensive word as with an offensive meaning, spirit, idea - and this is more refined, more poisonous. Continuous quarrels further developed this science between them. All these people worked out of the bargain, consequently they were idle, and consequently they were corrupted: if they had not been corrupted before, then they were corrupted in hard labor. They all gathered here not by their own will; they were all strangers to each other.

"Damn three bast shoes demolished before we gathered in one heap!" - they said to themselves; and therefore gossip, intrigue, slanderous women, envy, quarrels, anger were always in the foreground in this pitch life. No woman was able to be such a woman as some of these murderers. I repeat, there were strong people among them, characters, accustomed to breaking and commanding all their lives, tempered, fearless. These were somehow involuntarily respected; for their part, although they were often very jealous of their glory, they generally tried not to be a burden to others, did not enter into empty curses, behaved with extraordinary dignity, were reasonable and almost always obedient to their superiors - not from the principle of obedience , not from the consciousness of responsibilities, but as if under some kind of contract, realizing the mutual benefits. However, they were treated with caution. I remember how one of these prisoners, a fearless and decisive man, known to the authorities for his brutal inclinations, was once called to punishment for some crime. It was a summer day, it was a non-working day. The headquarters officer, the closest and immediate commander of the prison, himself came to the guardhouse, which was at our very gates, to be present at the punishment. This major was some kind of fatal creature for the prisoners, he brought them to the point that they trembled him. He was insanely strict, "rushed at people," as the convicts said. Most of all, they were afraid in him of his penetrating, lynx gaze, from which it was impossible to hide anything. He saw somehow without looking. Entering the prison, he already knew what was going on at the other end of it. The prisoners called him eight-eyed. His system was false. He only embittered the already embittered people with his furious, evil actions, and if there had not been a commandant over him, a noble and reasonable man, who sometimes died out of his wild antics, then he would have done great troubles with his management. I don't understand how he could have ended up safely; he retired alive and well, although, incidentally, he was put on trial.

The prisoner turned pale when he was called. As a rule, he silently and decisively lay down under the cane, silently endured the punishment and got up after the punishment, as if shaken up, calmly and philosophically looking at the failure that had happened. With him, however, there were always careful. But this time, for some reason, he considered himself right. He turned pale and softly from the convoy, managed to slip into the sleeve sharp English shoemaker's knife. Knives and all sorts of scary sharp instruments is forbidden in prison. Searches were frequent, sudden and with serious, severe punishments; but since it is difficult to find a thief when he decided to hide something especially, and since knives and tools were always a necessity in the prison, they were not translated, despite the searches. And if they were selected, then new ones were immediately started up. All the penal servitude rushed to the fence and with a sinking heart looked through the slits of the fingers. Everyone knew that Petrov this time would not want to lie under the cane and that the major had come to an end. But the most decisive moment our Major took the droshky and drove off, instructing the execution of execution to another officer. "God himself saved!" The prisoners said later. As for Petrov, he quietly endured the punishment. His anger was a major departure. The prisoner is obedient and submissive to a certain extent; but there is an extreme that should not be crossed. By the way: nothing could be more curious of these strange outbursts of impatience and stubbornness. Often a person suffers for several years, resigns himself, endures the most severe punishments and suddenly breaks through on some little thing, on some trifle, almost for nothing. At a glance, you can even call it crazy; and so they do.

I have already said that for several years I did not see between these people the slightest sign of remorse, not the slightest painful thought about my crime, and that most of of them internally considers himself completely right. It is a fact. Of course, vanity, bad examples, molodchestvo, false shame is largely the cause of it. On the other hand, who can say that the depth of these tracked lost hearts and read in them the secret from the whole world? But after all, one could, at so many years, at least notice something, catch, catch in these hearts at least some trait that would testify to inner longing, about suffering. But this was not, positively not. Yes, crime, it seems, cannot be comprehended from data, ready-made points of view, and its philosophy is somewhat more difficult than it is believed. Of course, the forts and the system of forced works not correct the offender; they are just being punished, and provide the public from further attacks of the villain on his mind. In a criminal, the prison and the most intense hard labor develop only hatred, a thirst for forbidden pleasures and terrible frivolity. But I firmly believe that the famous privately system reaches only a false, misleading, outdoor purpose. She sucks the life juice from a person, enervates his soul, weakens it, frightens her and then a morally withered mummy, presents a half-madman as a model of correction and repentance. Of course, the criminal, rebellious society, hates him and almost always feels right, and his guilt. In addition, he has suffered from his punishment, and through it almost feels purified, to get even. Can be judged, finally, with these points of view, that almost do not have to justify the criminal himself. But, despite all sorts of points of view, everyone will agree that there are crimes that are always and everywhere, according to all kinds of laws, from the beginning of the world are considered indisputable crimes and will be considered such as long as a person remains a person. Only in prison did I hear stories about the most terrible, the most unnatural deeds, about the most monstrous murders, told with the most irrepressible, with the most childishly cheerful laugh. I especially remember one patricide. He was from the nobility, served and was with his sixty-year-old father something like prodigal son... Behavior was completely dissipated, got into debt. Father limited him, persuaded him; but his father was a house was farm, suspected of money, and - son killed him, craving inheritance. The crime was tracked down only a month later. The killer himself submitted an announcement to the police that his father had disappeared to no one knows where. All of this month he spent most depraved manner. Finally, in his absence, the police found the body. On the court, in its entire length, there was a groove for drainage of sewage, covered with boards. The body lay in this groove. It was dressed and tucked away, the gray head was cut off, put to the body, and the killer put a pillow under the head. He did not confess; was deprived of the nobility, rank and exiled to work for twenty years. All the time, I lived with him, he was in excellent, in a cheerful mood. It was a flighty, frivolous, foolish in the extreme persons, although it is not a fool. I never noticed it some particularly cruel. The prisoners despised him not for a crime, which was not even mentioned, but for nonsense, for not knowing how to behave. In conversations, he sometimes thought of his father. Once, talking to me about a healthy addition, hereditary in their family, he added: "Here my parent

... ... break the green street, check the ranks. - The expression is significant: to pass the gauntlet of soldiers with shpitsrutenami getting a certain number of strokes on the court bare back.

The headquarters officer, the closest and immediate commander of the prison ... - It is known that the prototype of this officer was the parade major of the Omsk prison VG Krivtsov. In a letter to his brother on February 22, 1854, Dostoevsky wrote: "Platz-major Kryvtsov is a canal, of which there are few, a petty barbarian, a barbarian, a drunkard, everything that can be imagined as disgusting." Krivtsov was dismissed, and then brought to trial for abuse.

... ... commandant, a noble and reasonable man ... - The commandant of the Omsk fortress was Colonel AF de Grave, according to the recollections of the senior adjutant of the Omsk corps headquarters NT Cherevin, "the kindest and most worthy man."

Petrov. - In the documents of the Omsk prison there is a record that the prisoner Andrei Shalomentsev was punished "for resistance against the parade ground major Krivtsov when punishing him with rods and uttering the words that he would certainly do something over himself or kill Krivtsov." The prisoner may have been the prototype of Petrov, he went to prison for "sorvanie a company commander epaulettes."

... ... famous privately system ... - solitary confinement system. Question about the device in a single Russian prisons modeled on London prison was put forward by Nicholas I.

... ... one patricide ... - The prototype of the “patricide” nobleman was DN Ilyinsky, about whom seven volumes of his court case have come down to us. Outwardly, in an event-plot relationship, this imaginary "patricide" is the prototype of Mitya Karamazov in Dostoevsky's last novel.

"Notes from the House of the Dead" can rightfully be called the book of the century. If Dostoevsky had left behind only one "Notes from the House of the Dead," he would have entered the history of Russian and world literature as its original celebrity. It is no coincidence that critics assigned him, while still alive, a metonymic "middle name" - "the author of Notes from the House of the Dead" "and used it instead of the writer's surname. This book Dostoevsky's books sparked as he accurately anticipated as early as in 1859, ie, at the beginning of work on it, the interest was "most critical" and became a sensational literary and social event of the era.
The reader was shocked by pictures from the hitherto unknown world of the Siberian "military penal servitude" (the military one was heavier than the civilian one), honestly and courageously painted by the hand of its prisoner - a master of psychological prose. "Notes from the House of the Dead" made a strong (though not the same) impression on A.I. Herzen, L.N. Tolstoy, I.S. Turgenev, NG Chernyshevsky, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin and others. To the triumphant, but over the years, seemingly forgotten glory of the author of Poor People, a mighty refreshing addition was added to the new glory - the great martyr and Dante of the House of the Dead at the same time. The book not only restored, but raised to new heights Dostoevsky's literary and civic popularity.
However, the idyllic existence of "Notes from the House of the Dead" in Russian literature not name. These stupid and ridiculous carped censorship. Their "mixed" newspaper and magazine first publication (the weekly "Russian World" and the magazine "Vremya") stretched out for more than two years. The enthusiastic reception of the reader does not mean understanding, which is calculated on Dostoevsky. How distressing it assessed the results of the literary-critical assessment of his book: "The criticism of the" 3<аписки>from Merthe<вого>Home "mean that Dostoevsky denounced the forts, but now it is out of date. It said in the Book<ых>boutiques<нах>It is offering another near reproof forts "(notebooks Notebooks 1876-1877.). The criticism and belittled the importance of losing the meaning of "Notes from the House of the Dead." Such one-sided and opportunistic approaches to the "Notes from the House of the Dead" only as a "denunciation" of the penitentiary-convict system and - figuratively and symbolically - in general "the house of the Romanovs" (assessed by V.I. Lenin), the institute state power not completely overcome to this day. The writer, meanwhile, did not focus on "accusatory" goals, and they did not go beyond the immanent literary and artistic necessity. Because politically biased interpretation of the books in being sterile. As always, Dostoevsky here, as a heart expert, is immersed in the element of the personality of a modern person, develops his concept of the characterological motives of people's behavior in conditions of extreme social evil and violence.
The catastrophe that occurred in 1849 had grave consequences for Dostoevsky's resident of Petrashevsky. A prominent connoisseur and historian of the tsarist prison M.N. Gernet terribly, but not exaggerating, comments on Dostoevsky's stay in the Omsk prison: “We must be amazed that the writer did not die here” ( Gernet M.N. The history of the imperial prison. M., 1961. 2. T. S. 232). However, Dostoevsky took full advantage of the unique opportunity to comprehend, up close and from within, in all details inaccessible to the outside, the life of the common people, constrained by hellish circumstances, and to lay the foundations of his own literary folklore. "You are not worthy of talking about the people - you do not understand it. You did not live with him, but I lived with him, ”he wrote to his opponents a quarter of a century later (Notebooks 1875-1876). "House of the Dead" - worthy of the people (peoples) Russian book is entirely based on the grave personal experience a writer.
Creative story "Notes from the House of the Dead" begins with the secret recordings in the "my notebook convict<ую>"Which Dostoevsky, violated the law, conducted in Omsk prison; Semipalatinsk with sketches "of memories<...>stay in prison "(letter to AN Maikov on January 18th. 1856) and Letters 1854-1859 gg. (MM and AM Dostoevsky, AN Maikov, ND Fonvizina and others), as well as from oral stories in the circle of people close to him. The book was created and nurtured for many years and has surpassed in duration to give her creative time. Hence, in particular, its extraordinary for Dostoevsky in terms of thoroughness genre-stylistic finish (not a shadow of the style of "Poor People" or), the graceful simplicity of the narrative entirely - the peak and perfection of form.
The problem of defining the genre of "Notes from the House of the Dead" has puzzled researchers. In the set of definitions proposed for "Notes ..." there are almost all types of literary prose: memoirs, book, novel, essay, research ... And yet none of them agree in the aggregate of features with the original. The aesthetic phenomenon of this original work consists in intergenre borderline, hybridity. Only the author of "Notes from the House of the Dead," the subservient combination of document and targeting with the poetry of complex artistic and psychological writing determined the chased originality of the book.
The elementary position of the remembrancer was initially rejected by Dostoevsky (see the instruction: “My personality will disappear” - in a letter to my brother Mikhail dated October 9, 1859) as unacceptable for a number of reasons. The fact of his condemnation to hard labor, which is generally known in itself, did not represent a plot forbidden in the censorship-political sense (with the accession of Alexander II, censorship indulgences were outlined). Figure invented caught in jail for the murder of his wife, too, could not mislead anyone. In fact, it was all clear mask Dostoevsky-convict. In other words, the autobiographical (and thus valuable and captivating) narrative about the Omsk penal servitude and its inhabitants in 1850-1854, although overshadowed by a certain glance at censorship, was written according to the laws artistic text Free from self-sufficient and hard-nosed person in the household vospominatelya memoir empiricism.
A satisfactory explanation has not yet been offered how the writer managed to achieve harmonious conjugation in a single creative process of annals (factography) with personal confession, cognition of the people - with self-knowledge, analyticism of thought, philosophical meditation - with the epic image, meticulous microscopic analysis of psychological reality - with belles-lettres entertaining and succinctly artless, Pushkin-like storytelling. Moreover, "Notes from the House of the Dead" became an encyclopedia of Siberian penal servitude in the middle of the nineteenth century. The external and internal life of its population is covered - with the laconicism of the story - as much as possible, with an unrivaled completeness. Dostoevsky did not disregard a single undertaking of convict consciousness. The scenes from the life of the prison, which were chosen by the author for scrupulous consideration and unhurried comprehension, were recognized as amazing: "Bathhouse", "Performance", "Hospital", "Claim", "Exit from penal servitude". Their large, panoramic plan does not overshadow the masses of all-encompassing in their totality particulars and details, no less piercing and necessary in their ideological and artistic significance in the general humanistic composition of the work (a penny alms given by a girl to Goryanchikov; undressing shackles in a bath; flowers of prison argotic eloquence and etc)
The pictorial philosophy of "Notes from the House of the Dead" proves: "a realist in the highest sense" - as Dostoevsky will call himself later - did not allow his most humane (by no means "cruel"!) Talent to deviate one iota from the truth of life, no matter how impartial and tragic it is It was. Book of the Dead house he courageously defied the literature half truths about man. Goryanchikov the narrator (behind whom Dostoevsky himself apparently and tangibly stands), observing a sense of proportion and tact, looks into all corners of the human soul, not avoiding the most distant and gloomy ones. This is how not only the savagely sadistic antics of prisoners in prison (Gazin, Akulkin's husband) and executioners-executors by office (lieutenants of Zherebyatnikov, Smekalov) came into his field of vision. Anatomy of the ugly and vicious knows no bounds. “Brothers in misfortune” steal and drink up the Bible, talk about “the most unnatural acts, with the most childishly cheerful laugh,” drink and fight on holy days, rave about knives and “Raskolnikov's” axes in their sleep, go crazy, engage in sodomy (obscene "Partnership", to which Sirotkin and Sushilov belong), get used to all kinds of abominations. One after another, from private observations of the current life of convict people, generalizing aphoristic judgments-maxims follow: “Man is a being who gets used to everything, and, I think, this is his best definition”; “There are people like tigers, eager to lick blood”; “It’s hard to imagine how much human nature can be distorted”, etc. - then they will merge into the artistic philosophical and anthropological fund of the “Great Five Books” and “Diary of a Writer”. Scientists are right who believe not "Notes from the Underground", but "Notes from the House of the Dead" as the beginning of many beginnings in the poetics and ideology of Dostoevsky, a novelist and publicist. It is in this work that the sources of the main literary ideological-thematic and compositional complexes and decisions of Dostoevsky the artist are found: crime and punishment; tyrant sensualist and their victims; freedom and money; suffering and love; shackled "our extraordinary people" and nobles - "iron noses" and "muhodavs"; the narrator-chronicler and described them in the spirit of confessional diary of people and events. The "House of the Dead," the writer has found a blessing for a further career.
For all the transparency of the artistic and autobiographical relationship between Dostoevsky (author; prototype; imaginary publisher) and Goryanchikov (narrator; character; imaginary memoirist), there is no reason to simplify them. A complex poetic and psychological mechanism... It is rightly noted: “Dostoevsky typed his cautious fate” (Zakharov). This allowed him to remain in "Notes ..." himself, unconditional Dostoevsky, and at the same time, in principle, following the model of Pushkin's Belkin, not to be him. The advantage of such a creative "double world" lies in the freedom of artistic thought, which, however, comes from actually documented, historically confirmed sources.
The ideological and artistic significance of the "Notes from the House of the Dead" seems immeasurable, the questions raised in them - innumerable. This is - without exaggeration - a kind of poetic universe of Dostoevsky, a short version of his complete confession about man. Here, the colossal spiritual experience of a genius who lived for four years "in a heap" with people from the people, robbers, murderers, vagabonds, when, without getting the proper creative outlet, "inner work was in full swing" is directly summed up, and rare, from time to time, fragmentary notes in the "Siberian Notebook" only kindled a passion for full-blooded literary pursuits.
Dostoevsky Goryanchikov thinking across geographical and national great Russia. There is a paradox of the image space. Behind the prison fence ("fires") of the Dead House, the outlines of an immense state appear dotted: Danube, Taganrog, Starodubye, Chernigov, Poltava, Riga, Petersburg, Moscow, "Moscow Region", Kursk, Dagestan, Caucasus, Perm, Siberia, Tyumen, Tobolsk , Irtysh, Omsk, Kyrgyz "free Steppe" (in Dostoevsky's dictionary this word is written with a capital letter), Ust-Kamenogorsk, Eastern Siberia, Nerchinsk, Petropavlovsk port. Accordingly, for sovereign thinking, America, the Red (Red) Sea, Mount Vesuvius, the island of Sumatra and, indirectly, France and Germany are mentioned. It emphasizes vivid storyteller contact with the East (Oriental motifs "The Steppe", Muslim countries). This consonant of character multi-ethnic and multi-confessional "Notes ...". The artel is composed of Great Russians (including Siberians), Ukrainians, Poles, Jews, Kalmyks, Tatars, “Circassians” - Lezgins, Chechens. The story outlined Baklushina Russian-Baltic Germans. The Kirghiz (Kazakhs), “Muslims”, Chukhonka, Armenian, Turks, Gypsies, French, Frenchwoman are named and in varying degrees act in “Notes from the House of the Dead”. The poetically conditioned scatter and clutch topos and ethnic groups - own, have "novel" expressive logic. Not only House of the Dead - a part of Russia, but also Russia - part of the House of the Dead.
The main spiritual collision of Dostoevsky-Goryanchikov is connected with the theme of Russia: bewilderment and pain in front of the fact of the estates alienation of the people from the noble intelligentsia, its best part. In the chapter "Claim" - the key to understanding what has happened to the narrator-character and the author of the tragedy. Their attempt to stand in solidarity with the rebels was rejected with deadly categoricality: they - under no guise and never - are "comrades" for their people. Leaving penal servitude solved the most painful problem for all prisoners: de jure and de facto, prison bondage was over. The ending of "Notes from the House of the Dead" is bright and uplifting: "Freedom, new life, resurrection from the dead ... What a glorious moment! ". But the problem of disunity with the people, not foreseen by any Russian law-enforcers, but piercing Dostoevsky's heart forever ("the robber taught me a lot" - Notebook 1875-1876), remained. Gradually, in the writer's desire to solve it, at least for himself, it democratized the direction of Dostoevsky's creative development and ultimately led him to a kind of native populism.
A modern researcher aptly calls "Notes from the House of the Dead" "a book about the people" (Tunimanov). Russian literature to Dostoevsky did not know anything like that. Tsentroobrazuyuschee position folk theme v conceptual framework the book forces you to reckon with it in the first place. "Notes ..." testified to Dostoevsky's tremendous successes in understanding the personality of the people. The content of "Notes from the House of the Dead" is not limited to the fact that the saw firsthand and personally have experienced Dostoevsky Goryanchikov. Another, no less significant half - what came to the "Notes ..." from the environment that tightly surrounded the author-narrator, by oral, "sound" way (and the corpus of records of the "Siberian Notebook" reminds of this).
Folk storytellers, jokers, witches, Petrovich Conversations and other Zlatoust played an invaluable co-author's role in the artistic conception and implementation of Notes from the House of the Dead. Without what they heard and directly borrowed from them, the book - in the form as it is - would not have taken place. Prisoner's stories, or "chatter" (Dostoevsky-Goryanchikov's expression neutralizing censorship) recreate the living - as if according to the dictionary of a certain prisoner Vladimir Dahl - the charm of folk colloquial speech of the middle of the last century. The masterpiece inside the "Notes from the House of the Dead", the story "Akul's husband", no matter what stylization we recognize, is based on everyday folklore prose of the highest artistic and psychological merit. In fact, this ingenious interpretation of an oral folk story is akin to Pushkin's Fairy Tales and Gogol's Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka. The same can be said about Baklushin's fabulous romantic story-confession. Of exceptional importance for the book are constant narrative references to rumors, rumors, rumors, visits - grains of everyday folklore life. With the appropriate reservations "Notes from the House of the Dead" should be considered a book, to a certain extent told by the people, "brothers in misfortune" - so great is the share of colloquial tradition, legends, stories, momentary living word.
Dostoevsky was one of the first in our literature to outline the types and varieties of folk storytellers, and brought stylized (and improved by him) samples of their oral creativity. The House of the Dead, which, among other things, was also a “house of folklore”, taught the writer to distinguish between storytellers: “realists” (Baklushin, Shishkov, Sirotkin), “comedians” and “buffoons” (Skuratov), ​​“psychologists” and “anecdotes” ( Shapkin), whipping "veils" (Luchka). Dostoevsky, the novelist, found the analytical study of the convict Conversations of the Petrovichs as useful as possible, the lexicon-characterological experience that was concentrated and poetically processed in Notes from the House of the Dead came in handy and further fed his narrative skills (Chronicler, biographer of the Karamazovs, writer in "Diary," et al.).
Dostoevsky-Goryanchikov equally listens to his fellow prisoners - "good" and "bad", "near" and "distant", "famous" and "ordinary", "alive" and "dead". In his "social class" is not hostile to the soul, "lordly" or squeamish feelings for fellow-prisoner-commoner. On the contrary, he finds Christian compassionate, truly "comradely" and "brotherhood" of people's attention to the prisoner's weight. Attention, extraordinary in its ideological and psychological predestination and ultimate goals - through the prism of the people to explain both oneself, and a person in general, and the principles of his life. It was caught An. A. Grigoriev immediately after the release of "Notes from the House of the Dead" into the light: their author, the critic noted, "reached the point that in the" House of the Dead "he completely merged with the people ..." ( Grigoriev Ap. A. Lit. criticism. M., 1967. S. 483).
Dostoevsky wrote not a dispassionately objectified chronicle of penal servitude, but a confessional-epic and, moreover, “Christian” and “edifying” story about “the most gifted, the most powerful people of all our people”, about his “mighty forces”, which “died in vain in the House of the Dead ". In the poetic folk human history "Notes from the House of the Dead", attempts at most of the main characters of the late Dostoevsky artist were expressed: "soft-hearted", "kind", "persistent", "sympathetic" and "sincere" (Alei); indigenous Great Russian, "the most premium" and "full of fire and life" (Baklushin); "Kazan orphan", "quiet and gentle", but capable to extremes to revolt (Sirotkin); "The most resolute, the most fearless of all convicts", heroic in potency (Petrov); in Avvakum's way, stoically suffering "for the faith", "meek and meek like a child," a rebel schismatic ("grandfather"); "Spider" (Gazin); artistic (Potseykin); The "superman" of penal servitude (Orlov) - the entire socio-psychological collection of human types revealed in the "Notes from the House of the Dead" cannot be enumerated. In the end, one thing remains important: the characterological studies of the Russian prison opened to the writer the horizonless spiritual world of a man of the people. On these empirical grounds, Dostoevsky's novelistic and publicistic thought was renewed and confirmed. Internal creative rapprochement with the folk element, which began in the era of the House of the Dead, brought it to the formulated by the writer in 1871 “ law turn to nationality ”.

The historical merits of the author of "Notes from the House of the Dead" to the national ethnological culture will be infringed upon if we do not pay more attention to some aspects of the people's life, which found their discoverer and first interpreter in Dostoevsky.
The chapters "Performance" and "Convict Animals" are assigned a special ideological and aesthetic status in "Notes ...". They depict life and customs of the prisoners in conditions close to the natural, primordial, ie, careless folk activity. The essay on the "folk theater" (the term was invented by Dostoevsky and entered the circulation of folklore and theater studies), which formed the core of the famous eleventh chapter of "Notes from the House of the Dead", is priceless. This is the only one in Russian literature and ethnography so complete ("reporting and reporter") and competent description of the phenomenon folk theater XIX century. - an irreplaceable and classic source for the history of Russia theatrical.
The drawing of the composition "Notes from the House of the Dead" is like a convict chain. The shackles are the heavy, melancholic emblem of the House of the Dead. But the chain arrangement of the chapters in the book is asymmetric. The chain, consisting of 21 links, is divided in half by the middle (unpaired) eleventh chapter. Chapter eleven in the general low-plot architectonics of Notes from the House of the Dead is out of the ordinary, compositionally singled out. Dostoevsky poetically endowed her with tremendous life-affirming strength. This is the pre-programmed culmination of the story. The whole measure of the talent of the writer pays tribute here spiritual power and beauty of the people. In a joyful impulse to the light and eternal, the soul of Dostoevsky-Goryanchikov, exulting, merges with the soul of the people(actors and spectators). The principle of human freedom and the inalienable right to it triumphs. Folk art is set as a model, which can be verified by the highest authorities of Russia: "This is Kamarinskaya in all its scope, and the right would be good if Glinka even accidentally heard her in our prison."
Behind the guarded palisade has developed its own, if it is permissible to put it this way, "prison-convict" civilization - a direct reflection in the first place traditional culture Russian peasant. Usually the chapter on animals is viewed from a stereotypical point of view: our smaller brothers share with the prisoners the fate of slaves, figuratively and symbolically complement, duplicate and shade it. It is undeniably true. Animalistic page really correlate with animal origins in humans from the Dead House and outside it. But the idea is alien to Dostoevsky external similarity between human and animal. Both in the bestiary plots of "Notes from the House of the Dead" are linked by ties of natural-historical relationship. The narrator does not follow the Christian tradition of prescribing to see for the real properties of chimerical creatures similarity divine or diabolical. It is entirely in the power of healthy, this-worldly folk peasant ideas about the daily close to the people and animals of the unity with them. The poetry of the chapter "Convict animals" is in the chaste simplicity of the story about a man from the people, taken in his eternal relationship to animals (horse, dog, goat and eagle); relations, respectively: love-economic, utilitarian-skinning, amusing-carnival and merciful-respectful. Chapter-bestiary is involved in a single "passive psychological process "and completes the picture of the tragedy of life in the space of the House of the Dead.
Books on Russian prison have been many. From "The Life of Archpriest Avvakum" to the grandiose paintings of A.I. Solzhenitsyn's camp and VT stories Shalamov. But comprehensively fundamental in this literary line remained and will remain "Notes from the House of the Dead." They are immortal parable or providential mythology, a vseznachaschy archetype of Russian literature and history. What could be more unfair than looking for the so-called. "False dostoevschiny" (Kirpotin)!
The book is about the great, albeit "unintentional" closeness of Dostoevsky to the people, about the kind, intercessory and infinitely sympathetic attitude towards him - "Notes from the House of the Dead" are imbued with a primordial "Christian human-folk" view ( Grigoriev Ap. A. Lit. criticism. P. 503) to an uncomfortable world. This is the secret of their perfection and charm.

V.P. Vladimirtsev Notes from the House of the Dead // Dostoevsky: Works, letters, documents: Dictionary-reference book. SPb .: Pushkin house, 2008. S. 70-74.

"Notes from the House of the Dead" is the summit work of Dostoevsky's mature, irregular work. The essay story "Notes from the House of the Dead", which is based on the impressions of the four-year Omsk convict imprisonment of the writer, occupies a special place both in the work of Dostoevsky and in Russian literature of the mid-19th century.
Being dramatic and sorrowful in terms of problems and life material, "Notes from the House of the Dead" is one of the most harmonious, perfect, "Pushkin" works of Dostoevsky. The innovative nature of the "Notes from the House of the Dead" was realized in the synthetic and polygenre form of the essay story, approaching in the organization of the whole to the Book (Bible). The way of telling the story, the nature of the story from the inside overcome the tragedy of the event outline of the "notes" and brings the reader to the light of the "truly Christian", according to L.N. Tolstoy, a view of the world, the fate of Russia and the biography of the main storyteller, indirectly related to the biography of Dostoevsky himself. "House of the Dead" - a book about the fate of Russia in the unity of the particular historical and meta-historical aspects of the spiritual journey Goryanchikova, like Dante's pilgrim in the "Divine Comedy", the power of creativity and love overcomes the "dead" the beginning of Russian life, and finds the spiritual homeland ( House). Unfortunately, the acute historical and social relevance of the problems of the "Notes from the House of the Dead" overshadowed its artistic perfection, innovation of this type of prose and moral and philosophical uniqueness from both contemporaries and researchers of the 20th century. Modern literature, despite the huge number of private empirical work on the problems and understanding the social and historical material of the book, making the first steps in the direction of studying the unique nature of artistic integrity "Notes from the House of the Dead", poetics, innovation, the author's position and the nature of intertextuality.
This article gives a modern interpretation of the "Notes from the House of the Dead" through the analysis of the narrative, understood as a process of implementation of the author's integral activity. The author of "Notes from the House of the Dead", as a kind of dynamic integrating principle, realizes his position in constant fluctuations between two opposite (and never fully realized) possibilities - to enter the world he created, striving to interact with the heroes as with living people (this technique is called "Getting used to it"), and at the same time to distance as much as possible from the work he created, emphasizing the fictionalism, "composition" of characters and situations (a technique called by MM Bakhtin "alienation").
Historical and literary situation in the early 1860s. with its active diffusion of genres, giving rise to the need for hybrid, mixed forms, made possible the implementation of the epic of folk life in Notes from the House of the Dead, which, with a certain degree of convention, can be called a “sketch story”. As in any story, the movement of artistic meaning in Notes from the House of the Dead is realized not in the plot, but in the interaction of different narrative plans (speech of the main narrator, oral storytellers-convicts, publisher, rumor).
The very name "Notes from the House of the Dead" belongs not to the person who wrote them (Goryanchikov calls his work "Scenes from the House of the Dead"), but to the publisher. The title seems to have met two voices, two points of view (Goryanchikov and the publisher), even two semantic principles (specifically, chronicle: "Notes from the House of the Dead" - as an indication of the genre nature - and the symbolic-conceptual formula-oxymoron "The House of the Dead" ).
The figurative formula "House of the Dead" appears as a kind of moment of concentration of the semantic energy of the narrative and at the same time, in its most general form, outlines the intertextual channel in which the author's value activity will unfold (from the symbolic name Russian Empire Necropolis in PY Chaadaev to allusions to the story VF Odoevsky's "Dead Man's Mock", "Ball", "Living Dead" and wider - theme of the dead soulless reality in the prose of Russian romanticism and, finally, to the internal polemic with the title of Gogol's poem "Dead Souls"), the oxymoricity of such a name is, as it were, repeated by Dostoevsky on a different semantic level.
The bitter paradoxicality of the Gogol name (the immortal soul is declared dead) is opposed by the internal tension of the opposing principles in the definition of "House of death": "Dead" due to stagnation, lack of freedom, isolation from big world, and most of all from the unconscious spontaneity of life, but still "home" - not only as housing, the warmth of the hearth, refuge, sphere of existence, but also as a family, clan, community of people ("strange family"), belonging to one national integrity ...
The depth and semantic capacity of the fictional prose of "Notes from the House of the Dead" are especially vividly revealed in the introduction about Siberia, which opens the introduction. Here the result of spiritual communication between the provincial publisher and the author of the notes is given: at the level of plot-event understanding, it would seem, did not take place, but the structure of the narrative reveals the interaction and gradual penetration of Goryanchikov's worldview into the publisher's style.
The publisher, who also is the first reader of "Notes from the House of the Dead", learning life of the dead at home, at the same time looking for a clue to Goryanchikov, is moving towards an ever greater understanding of him not through the facts and circumstances of life in hard labor, but rather through the process of familiarizing himself with the narrator's worldview. And the measure of this familiarization and understanding is recorded in Chapter VII of Part Two, in the publisher's message about the further fate of the prisoner - the alleged parricide.
But Goryanchikov himself is looking for a solution to the people's soul through a painfully difficult introduction to the unity of people's life. Across different types consciousness refracts the reality of the House of the Dead: publisher, A.P. Goryanchikov, Shishkov, tells the story of a girl ruined (chapter "Akulka husband"); all these ways of perception of the world look into each other, interact, are corrected by one another, on the border of them a new universal vision of the world is born.
The introduction provides a view of the "Notes from the House of the Dead" from the outside; it ends with a description of the publisher's first impression of reading them. It is important that in the mind of the publisher there are both principles that determine the internal tension of the narrative: this is interest both in the object and in the subject of the story.
"Notes from the House of the Dead" is a story of life, not in a biographical, but rather in an existential sense, it is not a story of survival, but of life in the conditions of the House of the Dead. Two interrelated processes determine the nature of the narration of the Notes from the House of the Dead: this is the history of the formation and growth of the living soul of Goryanchikov, which takes place as he comprehends the living, fruitful foundations of folk life, manifested in the life of the House of the Dead. Spiritual self-knowledge of the narrator and his comprehension of the folk element are accomplished simultaneously. The compositional structure of "Notes from the House of the Dead" is mainly determined by the change in the narrator's gaze - both by the patterns of psychological reflection of reality in his mind, and by the focus of his attention on the phenomena of life.
According to the external and internal type of compositional organization, "Notes from the House of the Dead" reproduce the annual circle, the circle of life in hard labor, comprehended as the circle of being. Of the twenty-two chapters of the book, the first and last are open outside the prison, in the introduction is given Short story Goryanchikova life after hard labor. The remaining twenty chapters of the book are constructed not as a simple description of a convict life, but as a skillful translation of the vision, the perception of the reader from external to internal, from everyday to invisible, essential. The first chapter implements the final symbolic formula "House of the Dead", the following three chapters are called "First Impressions", which emphasizes the personality of the narrator's holistic experience. Then two chapters were named "The First Month", which continued the chronicle-dynamic inertia of the reader's perception. Further three chapters contain a multi-part indication of "new acquaintances", unusual situations, colorful characters of the prison. Two chapters are culminating - X and XI ("The Feast of the Nativity of Christ" and "Presentation"), and in the X chapter the deceived expectations of convicts about the failed internal holiday are given, and in the chapter "Presentation" the law of the need for personal spiritual and creative participation is disclosed in order to real holiday took place. The second part contains four chapters with the most tragic experiences of the hospital, human suffering, executioners, victims. This part of the book ends with the overheard story "Akulkin's husband", where the narrator, yesterday's executioner, turned out to be today's victim, but he did not see the meaning of what happened to him. The next five concluding chapters give a picture of spontaneous impulses, delusions, external actions without understanding inner meaning the characters of the people. The final tenth chapter "Coming out of hard labor" marks not only the physical acquisition of freedom, but also gives Goryanchikov an inner transformation with the light of sympathy and understanding of the tragedy of people's life from within.
Based on all of the above, the following conclusions can be drawn: the narrative in the "Notes from the House of the Dead" develops a new type of relationship with the reader; house of the Dead. The publisher acts as a reader of the "Notes from the House of the Dead" and is both a subject and an object of changes in the perception of the world.
The word of the narrator, on the one hand, lives a constant correlation with the opinion of all, in other words, the truth of public life; on the other hand, it is actively addressed to the reader, organizing the integrity of his perception.
The dialogic nature of Goryanchikov's interaction with the horizons of other storytellers is not aimed at their self-determination, as in the novel, but at identifying their position in relation to common life, therefore, in many cases, the narrator's word interacts with non-personalized voices that help shape his way of seeing.
Finding a truly epic sight becomes a form of spiritual overcoming fragmentation in a House of the Dead, which the narrator shares with readers; This epic event defines how the dynamics of narrative and genre of "Notes from the House of the Dead" as the sketch of the story.
The dynamics of the narrator's narration is entirely determined by the genre nature of the work, subordinated to the implementation of the aesthetic task of the genre: from a generalized view from afar, "from a bird's eye view" to the development of a specific phenomenon, which is carried out by comparing different points of view and identifying their commonality based on popular perception; further, these elaborated measures of the people's consciousness become the property of the reader's inner spiritual experience. Thus, the point of view, finding in the process of familiarizing with the elements of national life, acts as the event works simultaneously means and end.
The nature of the author's activity in Notes from the House of the Dead is determined by the dialectical unity of the personal and impersonal principles, which organizes the whole narrative world.
So, the introduction from the publisher gives an orientation to the genre, defuses the figure of the main storyteller, Goryanchikov, makes it possible to show him both from the inside and from the outside, as the subject and object of the story at the same time. The movement of the narrative within the "Notes from the House of the Dead" is determined by two interrelated processes: the spiritual formation of Goryanchikov and the self-development of folk life, to the extent that it is revealed as the hero-narrator comprehends it.
The internal tension of the interaction of individual and collective world outlook is realized in the alternation of the concrete-momentary point of view of the eyewitness narrator and his final point of view, distanced into the future as the time of the creation of the "Notes from the House of the Dead", as well as the point of view of common life, which appears in her concrete -the everyday version of mass psychology, then in the essential being of the universal national whole.

Akelkina E.A. Notes from the House of the Dead // Dostoevsky: Works, letters, documents: Dictionary-reference book. SPb., 2008. S. 74-77.

Lifetime publications (editions):

1860—1861 — Russian world. Political, social and literary newspaper. Edited by A.S. Hieroglyph. SPb .: Type. F. Stellovsky. Second year. 1860.September 1. No. 67, pp. 1-8. Year three. 1861.4 January. No. 1. P. 1-14 (I. House of the dead. II. First impressions). January 11. No. 3. P. 49-54 (III. First impressions). The 25th of January. No. 7. P. 129-135 (IV. First impressions).

1861—1862 — ... SPb .: Type. E Pratsa.
1861: April. S. 1-68. September. S. 243-272. October. S. 461-496. November. S. 325-360.
1862: January. S. 321-336. February. S. 565-597. March. S. 313-351. May. S. 291-326. December. S. 235-249.

1862 — Part one. SPb .: Type. E. Pratsa, 1862.167 p.

1862 — Second edition. SPb .: Publishing house. A.F. Bazunov. Type of. I. Ogrizko, 1862. Part one. 269 ​​s. Part two. 198 p.

1863 - SPb .: Type. O.I. Bakst, 1863. - S. 108-124.

1864 — For the upper grades of secondary educational institutions. Compiled by Andrey Filonov. Second edition, revised and enlarged. Volume one. Epic poetry... SPb .: Type. I. Ogrizko, 1864. - S. 686-700.

1864 -: nach dem Tagebuche eines nach Sibirien Verbannten: nach dem Russischen bearbeitet / herausgegeben von Th. M. Dostojewski. Leipzig: Wolfgang Gerhard, 1864. B. I. 251 s. B. II. 191 s.

1865 — The edition revised and supplemented by the author himself. Published and owned by F. Stellovsky. SPb .: Type. F. Stellovsky, 1865. T. I. S. 70-194.

1865 — In two parts. Third edition, revised and updated with a new chapter. Published and owned by F. Stellovsky. SPb .: Type. F. Stellovsky, 1865.415 p.

1868 - First release [and only]. [B.m.], 1868. - Notes from the House of the Dead. Akulkin husband. S. 80-92.

1869 - For the upper grades of secondary educational institutions. Compiled by Andrey Filonov. Third edition, significantly revised. Part one. Epic poetry. SPb .: Type. F.S. Sushchinsky, 1869.- Notes from the House of the Dead. Performance. S. 665-679.

1871 - For the upper grades of secondary educational institutions. Compiled by Andrey Filonov. Fourth edition, significantly revised. Part one. Epic poetry. SPb .: Type. I.I. Glazunov, 1871.- Notes from the House of the Dead. Performance. S. 655-670.

1875 - For the upper grades of secondary educational institutions. Compiled by Andrey Filonov. Fifth edition, significantly revised. Part one. Epic poetry. SPb .: Type. I.I. Glazunov, 1875.- Notes from the House of the Dead. Performance. S. 611-624.

1875 — Fourth edition. SPb .: Type. br. Panteleevs, 1875. Part one. 244 s. Part two. 180 s.

SPb .: Type. br. Panteleevs, 1875. Part one. 244 s. Part two. 180 s.

1880 - For the upper grades of secondary educational institutions. Compiled by Andrey Filonov. Sixth edition (printed from the third edition). Part one. Epic poetry. SPb .: Type. I.I. Glazunov, 1879 (in the region - 1880). - Notes from the House of the Dead. Performance. S. 609-623.

Posthumous edition prepared for publication by A.G. Dostoevskaya:

1881 — Fifth edition. SPb .: [Ed. A.G. Dostoevskaya]. Type of. brother. Panteleev, 1881. Part 1.217 p. Part 2.160 p.