Titles of Grigory Melekhov. Grigory Melekhov, Don Cossack. Gregory and Aksinya

Grigory Panteleevich Melekhov is the main character of M. A. Sholokhov’s epic novel “Quiet Don” (1928-1940), a Don Cossack, an officer who rose from the ranks. This is a young resident of the village of Tatarskaya, an ordinary farm boy, full of strength and thirst for life. At the beginning of the novel, it is difficult to classify Gregory as a positive or negative character. He is rather a freedom-loving truth-seeker. He lives thoughtlessly, but according to traditional principles. Despite her strong love for Aksinya, she allows her father to marry him to Natalya. Grigory spends his whole life tossing between two women. In the service, he also finds himself between the Reds and the Whites. Harsh life nevertheless put a saber in the hands of this man, not cruel by nature and not fond of bloodshed, and forced him to fight.

The tragic turning point in his personal life coincided with a sharp turning point in the history of the Don Cossacks. Thanks to his natural abilities, Gregory managed to rise first from an ordinary Cossack to an officer, and then to the commander of the rebel army. However, later it becomes clear that Melekhov’s military career was not destined to work out. The Civil War threw him either into the white formations or into the Budennovsky detachment. He did this not out of thoughtless submission to the way of life, but out of a search for the truth. Being an honest man, he fully believed in the promised equality, but the conclusions were disappointing. From his marriage to Natalya, Grigory had a son and a daughter, from Aksinya, the daughter died in childhood. At the end of the novel, having lost

GRIGORY MELEKHOV

GRIGORY MELEKHOV is the hero of M.A. Sholokhov’s novel “Quiet Don” (1928-1940). Some literary scholars are of the opinion that the true author of “The Quiet Don” is the Don writer Fyodor Dmitrievich Kryukov (1870-1920), whose manuscript was subjected to some revision. Doubts about the authorship have been expressed since the novel's appearance in print. In 1974, in Paris, with a foreword by A. Solzhenitsyn, a book by an anonymous author (pseudonym - D*) “The Stirrup of the Quiet Don” was published. In it, the author tries to substantiate this point of view textologically. In 1978, at the International Congress of Slavists in Zagreb, the results of the research work of a group of Scandinavian Slavists led by Professor G. Hoteo were reported: the textual analyzes they carried out confirmed the authorship of M.A. Sholokhov (the materials were published in the collection “Quiet Don,” Lessons from the Novel ", 1979).

The prototype of G.M., according to Sholokhov, is “hump-nosed,” like G.M., a Cossack from the Bazki farm (Veshenskaya village) Kharlampiy Vasilyevich Ermakov, whose fate is in many ways similar to the fate of G.M. Researchers, noting that “the image of G.M. is so typical that in every Don Cossack we can find something of him,” the prototype is considered to be G.M. one of the Drozdov brothers - Alexey, a resident of the Pleshakov farm. In Sholokhov's early works the name Grigory appears - “Shepherd” (1925), “Kolovert” (1925), “Path-Road” (1925). These namesakes G.M. are carriers of the ideology of “new life” and die at the hands of its enemies. _,-...-,-..,..,.....-.._,. , .......

G.M. - the image of a typical representative of the social stratum of Don Cossack peasants at the beginning of the 20th century. The main thing in him is a deep attachment to home and agricultural work. This is combined with the concept of military honor: G.M. - a brave and skillful warrior who earned the rank of officer during the First World War. He absorbed the best features of the Russian national character: openness, straightforwardness, deep inner morality, lack of class arrogance and cold calculation. This is an impulsive, noble nature with a heightened sense of honor.

After the release of the novel, some critics condescendingly considered the creator of the image G.M. to everyday life writers of a “narrow Cossack theme,” others demanded that G.M. “proletarian consciousness,” while others accused the author of defending “kulak life.” In 1939, V. Hoffenscherer was the first to express the opinion that G.M. - the hero is neither positive nor negative, that in his image the peasant problem with the contradictions characteristic of its bearer between the traits of the owner and the working man was concentrated.

G.M. - the central character of a historical epic novel, in which, on a basis as close as possible to documentary, the events that captured the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 20th century are described - the First World War, the events of 1917, the civil war and the victory of Soviet power. The behavior of G.M., captured by the flow of these events, dictates the socio-psychological appearance of the environment of which he is a representative. G.M., a native Don Cossack, a grain grower, an ardent patriot of the region, devoid of the desire to conquer and rule, according to the concepts of the time the novel appeared in print, is a “middle peasant”. As a professional warrior, he is of interest to the warring forces, but pursues only his peasant class goals. The concepts of any discipline other than that which exists in his Cossack military unit are alien to him. A full Knight of St. George in the First World War, during the Civil War he rushes from one fighting side to another, eventually coming to the conclusion that the “learned people” have “confused” the working people. Having lost everything, he cannot leave his native land and comes to the only thing dear to him - his father's house, finding hope for the continuation of life in his son.

G.M. personifies the type of noble hero, combining military valor with spiritual subtlety and the ability to feel deeply. The tragedy of his relationship with his beloved woman, Aksinya, lies in his inability to bring their union into agreement with the moral principles accepted among him, which makes him an outcast and separates him from the only acceptable way of life for him. The tragedy of his love is aggravated by his low social status and the ongoing socio-political upheavals. G.M. - the main character of a great literary work about the fate of a farmer, his life, struggle, psychology. The image of G.M., “a peasant farmer in uniform” (in the words of A. Serafimovich), an image of enormous generalizing power with a clearly expressed, integral, deeply positive individuality of the hero, stood among the most significant in world literature, such as, for example, Andrei Bolkonsky.

Lit.: Dairedzhiev B.L. About "Quiet Don". M., 1962; Kalinin A.V. Time of the Quiet Don. M., 1975; Semanov S.N. "Quiet Don" - literature and history. M., 1977; Kuznetsova N.T., Bashtannik V.S. At the origins of the “Quiet Don”

//"Quiet Don": lessons from the novel. Ros-tov-on-Don, 1979; Semanov S.N. In the world of "Quiet Don". M., 1987.

L.G.Vyazmitinova

Literary heroes. - Academician. 2009 .

See what "GRIGORY MELEKHOV" is in other dictionaries:

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The TV series “Quiet Don” has ended on the Rossiya channel. It became the fourth version of the film adaptation of the great novel by Mikhail Sholokhov, who managed to use the example of his hero to show the catastrophe of human fate during the Civil War era. Did Grigory Melekhov really exist? After the publication of the work, Sholokhov was asked this question thousands of times.

For half a century, the writer stated unequivocally: his hero is a completely fictitious character. And only in his later years did the writer Sholokhov admit: Melekhov actually had a real prototype. But it was impossible to talk about this, because by the time the first volume of “Quiet Don” was published, Gregory’s prototype was lying in a mass grave, shot as an “enemy of the people.”

It is worth noting that Sholokhov still made attempts to reveal the secret. So, back in 1951, at a meeting with Bulgarian writers, he said that Gregory had a prototype. However, he responded with silence to further attempts to extort details from him. Only in 1972, the Nobel laureate told the literary critic Konstantin Priyma the name of the one from whose biography he almost completely copied the image of his hero: a full Knight of St. George, the Upper Don Cossack Kharlampiy Vasilyevich Ermakov.

From red to white and back

“Almost completely” is not a figure of speech in this case. Now that researchers have studied “Quiet Don” from the first to the last line, having compared the plot with the life of Ermakov, we can admit: Sholokhov’s novel was almost biographical, down to the smallest detail. Do you remember where “Quiet Don” begins? “Melekhovsky yard is on the very edge of the farm…”. So the house in which Kharlampy grew up also stood on the very outskirts. And even Grigory’s appearance is based on him - Ermakov’s grandfather actually brought his Turkish wife back from the war, which is why the dark-haired children came from him. Except that Kharlampy went to war not as an ordinary Cossack, but as a platoon sergeant, having managed to graduate from the training team. And, apparently, he fought desperately - in two and a half years he earned four soldiers' St. George Crosses and four St. George medals, becoming one of the few full holders. However, at the end of 1917 he caught a bullet and returned to his native farm.

On the Don, as well as throughout the country, confusion and vacillation reigned at that time. The Whites and Ataman Kaledin called to continue fighting for “one indivisible”, the Reds promised peace, land and justice. Coming out of the Cossack poverty, Ermakov, naturally, joined the Reds. Soon, the Cossack commander Podtyolkov appoints an experienced warrior as his deputy. It is Ermakov who destroys the detachment of Colonel Chernetsov - the last counter-revolutionary force on the Don. However, immediately after the fight, a fatal twist occurs. Podtyolkov ordered the execution of all prisoners, for example, personally hacking to death a dozen of them.

“It’s not a matter of killing without a trial,” Ermakov objected. – Many were taken because of mobilization, and many were drugged due to their darkness. The revolution was not made to disperse dozens of people.” After this, Ermakov, citing injury, left the detachment and returned home. Apparently, that bloody execution was firmly ingrained in his memory, since with the beginning of the Cossack uprising on the Upper Don, he immediately sided with the whites. And again fate threw a surprise: now the former commander and comrade Podtyolkov with his staff was himself captured. The “traitors to the Cossacks” were sentenced to hanging. Ermakov was assigned to carry out the sentence.

And again he refused. A military court sentenced the apostate to death, but hundreds of Cossacks threatened to start a riot and the case was put on hold.

Ermakov fought in the Volunteer Army for another year, rising to the rank of colonel

shoulder straps However, by that time victory had gone to the Reds. Having retreated with his detachment to Novorossiysk, where the defeated units of the White movement boarded ships, Ermakov decided that Turkish emigration was not for him. After which he went to meet the advancing squadron of the First Cavalry. As it turned out, yesterday’s opponents had heard a lot about his glory as a soldier, not an executioner. Ermakov was received personally by Budyonny, giving him command of a separate cavalry regiment. For two years, the former White Captain, who replaced his cockade with a star, alternately fights on the Polish front, crushes Wrangel’s cavalry in the Crimea, and chases Makhno’s troops, for which Trotsky himself gives him a personalized watch. In 1923, Ermakov was appointed head of the Maikop cavalry school. He retires from this position, settling in his native farm. Why did they decide to forget the owner of such a glorious biography?

Sentence without trial

The archives of the FSB directorate for the Rostov region still contain volumes of investigative case No. 45529. Their contents answer the question posed above. Apparently, the new government simply could not leave Ermakov alive.

From his military biography it is not difficult to understand: the brave Cossack ran from one side to the other not at all because he was looking for a warmer place for himself. “He always stood for justice,” Ermakov’s daughter said years later. So, having returned to peaceful life, the retired Red commander soon began to notice that he actually fought for something else. “Everyone thinks that the war is over, but now it’s going against its own people, it’s worse than the German war...” he once remarked.

In the Bazki farm Ermakov was met by young Sholokhov. The story of Kharlampy, who rushed in search of the truth from the Reds to the Whites, greatly interested the writer. In conversations with the writer, he openly talked about his service, without hiding what both the whites and the reds did during the Civil War. In Kharlampy’s file there is a letter sent to him by Sholokhov in the spring of 1926, when he was just planning “Quiet Don”: “Dear comrade Ermakov! I need to get some information from you regarding the 1919 era. This information concerns the details of the Upper Don Uprising. Tell me what time would be most convenient for me to come to you?”

Naturally, such conversations could not go unnoticed - a GPU detective came to Bazki.

It is unlikely that the security officers were pointed at Ermakov himself - as follows from the investigative file, the former white officer was already under surveillance.

At the beginning of 1927, Ermakov was arrested. Based on the testimony of eight witnesses, he was found guilty of counter-revolutionary agitation and participation in a counter-revolutionary uprising. Fellow villagers tried to intercede for their fellow countryman. “Very, very many can testify that they remained alive only thanks to Ermakov. Always and everywhere, when catching spies and taking prisoners, dozens of hands reached out to tear those captured to pieces, but Ermakov said that if you allow the prisoners to be shot, then I will shoot you too, like dogs,” they wrote in their appeal. However, it remained unnoticed. On June 6, 1927, the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee, chaired by Kalinin, allowed Kharlampy Ermakov to be given an “extrajudicial verdict.” After 11 days it was carried out. By that time, Grigory Melekhov’s prototype was 33 years old.

On August 18, 1989, by a decision of the Presidium of the Rostov Regional Court H.V. Ermakov was rehabilitated “for lack of corpus delicti.” For obvious reasons, Ermakov’s burial place remains unknown. According to some reports, his body was thrown into a mass grave in the vicinity of Rostov.

The main character of "Quiet Don" Grigory Panteleevich Melekhov born in 1892 in the Tatarsky farm of the Veshenskaya village of the Don Army Region. The farm is large - in 1912 it had three hundred yards, it was located on the right bank of the Don, opposite the village of Veshenskaya. Grigory's parents: retired officer of the Life Guards Ataman Regiment Panteley Prokofievich and his wife Vasilisa Ilyinichna.

Of course, there is no such personal information in the novel. Moreover, there are no direct indications in the text about the age of Gregory, as well as his parents, brother Peter, Aksinya and almost all other central characters. The date of birth of Gregory is established as follows. As is known, in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, men who had reached the full age of 21 were called up for active service in peacetime through military conscription. Gregory was called up for service, as can be accurately determined by the circumstances of the action, at the beginning of January 1914; He, therefore, turned the age required for conscription last year. So, he was born in 1892, neither earlier nor later.

The novel repeatedly emphasizes that Gregory is strikingly similar to his father, and Peter is both in face and character like his mother. These are not only external appearance features, this is an image: according to a common folk belief, a child will be happy in life if the son looks like his mother, and the daughter looks like her father. Gregory's open, direct and sharp disposition promises him a difficult, harsh fate, and this was initially noted in his generic characteristics. On the contrary, brother Peter is the opposite of Gregory in everything: he is flexible, cheerful, cheerful, compliant, not very smart, but cunning, he is an easy person in life.

In the appearance of Grigory, like his father, oriental features are noticeable, it is not for nothing that the Melekhovs’ street nickname is “Turks”. Prokofiy, Pantelei’s father, at the end of the “penultimate Turkish war” (meaning the war with Turkey and its allies in 1853-1856) brought his wife, whom the farmers called “Turkish”. Most likely, we should not be talking about a Turkish woman in the exact ethnic sense of the word. During the aforementioned war, the military operations of Russian troops on the territory of Turkey proper were carried out in remote, sparsely populated areas of Transcaucasia, moreover, populated at that time mainly by Armenians and Kurds. In those same years, there was a fierce war in the North Caucasus against the state of Shamil, which was in alliance with Turkey. Cossacks and soldiers often in those days married women from among the North Caucasian peoples; this fact is described in detail in memoirs. Therefore, Gregory’s grandmother is most likely from there.

There is indirect confirmation of this in the novel. After a quarrel with his brother, Peter shouts to Gregory in his heart: “He has degenerated into his father’s breed, a tortured Circassian. It is likely that the grandmother of Peter and Gregory was a Circassian, whose beauty and harmony have long been famous in the Caucasus and Russia. Prokofy could and even had to tell his only son Panteleius who his tragically deceased mother was and where his tragically deceased mother was from; this family legend could not have been unknown to her grandchildren; that is why Peter speaks not about the Turkish, but specifically about the Circassian breed in his younger brother.

Moreover. Old General Listnitsky also remembered Pantelei Prokofievich in a very remarkable sense from his service in the Ataman Regiment. He recalls: “So lame, from the Circassians?” An educated, highly experienced officer who knew the Cossacks well, he, one must believe, gave the exact ethnic nuance here.

Grigory Melekhov was born a Cossack, at that time this was a social sign: like all male members of the Cossack class, he was exempt from taxes and had the right to a land plot . According to the regulations from 1869, which did not change significantly until the revolution, the allotment (“share”) was determined at 30 dessiatinas (practically from 10 to 50 dessiatinas), that is, significantly higher than the average for the peasantry in Russia as a whole.

For this, the Cossack had to serve military service (mainly in the cavalry), and all equipment, except firearms, was purchased by him at his own expense. Since 1909, a Cossack served for 18 years: one year in the “preparatory category”, four years of active service, eight years on “benefits”, that is, with periodic calls for military training, the second and third stages for four years each and, finally, five years stock. In case of war, all Cossacks were subject to immediate conscription into the army.

The action of "Quiet Don" begins in May 1912: Cossacks of the second stage of conscription (in particular, Pyotr Melekhov and Stepan Astakhov) go to camps for summer military training. Gregory was about twenty years old at that time. Their romance with Aksinya begins during haymaking, in June, that is. Aksinya is also about twenty, she has been married to Stepan Astakhov since she was seventeen.

Further, the chronology of events develops as follows. In the middle of summer, Stepan returns from the camps, having already learned about his wife’s betrayal. There is a fight between him and the Melekhov brothers. Soon Panteley Prokofievich married Natalya Korshunova to Grigory. There is an exact chronological sign in the novel: “they decided to bring the bride and groom together on the first day of salvation,” that is, according to the Orthodox calendar, August 1. “The wedding was scheduled for the first meat eater,” it continues. "The First Meat-Eater" lasted from August 15 to November 14, but there is a clarification in the novel. At the Dormition, that is, on August 15, Gregory came to visit the bride. Natalya calculates to herself: “Eleven days left.” So, their wedding took place on August 26, 1912. Natalya was eighteen years old at that time (her mother tells the Melekhovs on the day of matchmaking: “The eighteenth spring has just passed”), which means she was born in 1894.

Grigory's life with Natalya turned out badly right away. They went to mow the winter crops “three days before the Intercession,” that is, September 28 (the feast of the Intercession of the Virgin Mary is October 1). Then, at night, their first painful explanation occurred: “I don’t love you, Natalya, don’t be angry. I didn’t want to talk about it, but no, apparently I can’t live like that...”

Gregory and Aksinya are drawn to each other. suffer silently from the inability to connect. But soon chance brings them together. After a snowfall, when a sled track has been established, farmers go into the forest to cut brushwood. They met on a deserted road: “Well, Grisha, as you wish, I can’t live without you...” He thievishly moved the low-lowered pupils of his intoxicated eyes and jerked Aksinya towards him.” This happened some time after the cover, apparently in October.

Grigory’s family life is completely falling apart, Natalya is suffering and crying. A stormy scene takes place between Grigory and his father in the Melekhovs' house. Panteley Prokofievich drives him out of the house. This event follows the day after “on December Sunday” Gregory took the oath in Veshenskaya. After spending the night with Mishka Koshevoy, he comes to Yagodnoye, the estate of General Listnitsky, which is 12 versts from Tatarsky. A few days later Aksinya runs to him from his house. So, at the very end of 1912, Grigory and Aksinya begin to work in Yagodnoye: he as an assistant groom, she as a cook.

In the summer, Grigory was supposed to go to summer military training (before being called up for service), but Listnitsky Jr. talked with the ataman and obtained his release. All summer Grigory worked in the field. Aksinya came to Yagodnoye pregnant, but hid it from him, because she did not know “from which of the two she conceived,” from Stepan or Gregory. She opened up only “in the sixth month, when it was no longer possible to hide the pregnancy.” She assures Grigory that the child is his: “Calculate it yourself... From the felling it is...”

Aksinya gave birth during the barley harvest, which means in July. The girl was named Tanya. Grigory became very attached to her, fell in love with her, although he was still not sure that the child was his. A year later, the girl began to look very much like him with characteristic Melekhov facial features, which even the obstinate Panteley Prokofievich admitted. But Grigory did not have a chance to see that: he had already served in the army, then the war began... And Tanechka suddenly died, this happened in September 1914 (the date is established in connection with the letter about Listnitsky’s injury), she was just over a year old, she was sick , as one might assume, scarlet fever.

The time of Gregory's conscription into the army is given exactly in the novel: the second day of Christmas 1913, that is, December 26. During the examination at the medical commission, Grigory’s weight is measured - 82.6 kilograms (five pounds, six and a half pounds), his powerful build leaves seasoned officers in amazement: “What the hell, not particularly tall...” Farm comrades, knowing the strength and Gregory’s dexterity, they expected that he would be taken into the guard (when he leaves the commission, they immediately ask him: “To Atamansky, I suppose?”). However, Gregory is not accepted into the guard. Right there at the commission table the following conversation takes place, degrading his human dignity: “To the guard?..

Bandit mug... Very wild...

No way. Imagine, the sovereign sees such a face, what then? He has only eyes...

Pervert! From the East, probably.

Then the body is unclean, boils..."

From the very first steps of his soldier’s life, Gregory is constantly made aware of his “low” social nature. Here is a military bailiff, while inspecting Cossack equipment, counting ukhnali (horseshoe nails) and missing one: “Gregory fussily turned back the crooked corner that covered the twenty-fourth ukhnal, his fingers, rough and black, lightly touched the bailiff’s white sugar fingers. He jerked his hand, as if he had been stabbed, and rubbed it on the side of his gray overcoat; frowning with disgust, he put on the glove.”

So, thanks to the “bandit face”, Gregory is not taken into the guard. Sparingly and as if in passing, the novel notes what a strong impression this derogatory lordship of the so-called “educated people” makes on him. That was Gregory’s first clash with the Russian nobility alien to the people; Since then, reinforced by new impressions, the feeling of hostility towards them grows stronger and worsens. Already on the last pages of the novel, Gregory reproaches the spiritually neurasthenic intellectual Kaparin: “You can expect everything from you, learned people.”

“Learned people” in Gregory’s vocabulary are the Bare, a class alien to the people. “The learned people have confused us... They have confused the Lord!” - Grigory thinks in rage five years later, during the Civil War, vaguely feeling the falsity of his path among the White Guards. In these words of his, gentlemen are directly identified with “learned people.” From his point of view, Gregory is right, because in old Russia education was, unfortunately, the privilege of the ruling classes.

Their bookish “learning” is dead to him, and he is right in his feeling, for with his natural wisdom he catches there the verbal play, terminological scholasticism, and self-intoxicated idle talk. In this sense, Gregory’s dialogue with an officer from former teachers Kopylov (in 1919 during the Veshensky uprising) is characteristic. Grigory is annoyed by the appearance of the British on the Don soil; he sees this - and rightly so - as a foreign invasion. Kopylov objects, citing the Chinese, who allegedly also serve in the Red Army. Grigory does not find what to answer, although he senses that his opponent is wrong: “You, learned people, are always like this... You make discounts like hares in the snow! I, brother, feel that you are speaking incorrectly here, but I don’t know how to pin you down...”

But Grigory understands the essence of things better than the “scientist” Kopylov: the Chinese workers went to. The Red Army out of a sense of international duty, with faith in the supreme justice of the Russian revolution and its liberating significance for the whole world, and the British officers are indifferent mercenaries trying to enslave foreign people. It is Gregory who later formulates to himself: “The Chinese go to the Reds with their bare hands, they join them for one worthless soldier’s salary, they risk their lives every day. And what does the salary have to do with it? What the hell can you buy with it? Unless you lose at cards... Therefore, there is no self-interest here, but something else..."

Long after his conscription into the army, having the experience of war and the great revolution behind him, Gregory quite consciously understands the gap between himself, the son of a Cossack peasant, and them, the “learned people” from the bar: “I have an officer’s rank since the German war . He deserved it with his blood! And when I get into the officer society, it’s like I’ll leave the hut in the cold wearing only my underpants. So: they will trample on me with such coldness that I can feel it all over my back!.. Yes, because for them I am a black sheep. I am a stranger to them from head to toe. That’s why all this!”

Gregory’s first communication with the “educated class” back in 1914 in the person of the medical commission was essential for the development of the image: the abyss that separated the working people from the lordly or lordly intelligentsia was impassable. Only a great popular revolution could destroy this split.

The 12th Don Cossack Regiment, where Gregory was enlisted, had already been stationed near the Russian-Austrian border since the spring of 1914, judging by some signs - in Volyn. Gregory's mood is twilight. Deep down, he is not satisfied with life with Aksinya, he is drawn home. The duality and instability of such an existence contradict its integral, deeply positive nature. He misses his daughter very much, even in his dreams he dreams of her, but Aksinye rarely writes, “the letters breathed a chill, as if he wrote them on orders.”

Back in the spring of 1914 (“before Easter”) Panteley Prokofievich in the letter he directly asked Gregory whether “on his return from service he would live with his wife or continue with Aksinya.” There is a remarkable detail in the novel: “Gregory delayed the answer.” And then he wrote that “you can’t stick a cut piece back on,” and then, avoiding a decisive answer, referred to the expected war: “Maybe I won’t be alive, there’s nothing to decide in advance.” The uncertainty of the answer here is obvious. After all, a year ago, in Yagodnoye, having received a note from Natalya asking how she should live next, he briefly and sharply answered: “Live alone.”

After the start of the war, in August, Gregory met with his brother. Peter says meaningfully: “And Natalya is still waiting for you. She has the idea that you will return to her.” Grigory answers very restrainedly: “Why does she... want to tie up what was torn?” As you can see, he speaks more in a questioning form than in an affirmative one. Then he asks about Aksinya. Peter’s answer is unfriendly: “She is smooth and cheerful. Apparently, it’s easy to live on the master’s grub.” Gregory remained silent here too, did not flare up, did not interrupt Peter, which otherwise would have been natural for his frantic character. Later, already in October, in one of his rare letters home, he sent “his lowest bow to Natalya Mironovna.” Obviously, the decision to return to his family is already ripening in Gregory’s soul; he cannot live a restless, unsettled life, he is burdened by the ambiguity of his position. The death of his daughter, and then Aksinya’s revealed betrayal, pushes him to take a decisive step, to break with her, but internally he has been ready for this for a long time.

With the outbreak of World War II, the 12th regiment, where Gregory served, took part in the Battle of Galicia as part of the 11th Cavalry Division. The novel details and accurately indicates the signs of place and time. In one of the skirmishes with the Hungarian hussars, Gregory received a blow to the head with a broadsword, fell from his horse, and lost consciousness. This happened, as can be established from the text, on September 15, 1914, near the city of Kamen-ka-Strumilov, when the Russian strategic offensive against Lvov was underway (we emphasize: historical sources clearly indicate the participation of the 11th Cavalry Division in these battles). Weakened and suffering from a wound, Grigory, however, carried the wounded officer for six miles. For this feat, he received his reward: the soldier's St. George Cross (the order had four degrees; in the Russian army, the sequence of awards from lowest to highest degree was strictly observed, therefore, Gregory was awarded the silver "George" of the 4th degree; subsequently he earned all four, as they said then - “a complete bow”). Gregory’s feat, as stated, was written in the newspapers.

He did not stay in the rear for long. The next day, that is, September 16, he ended up at a dressing station, and a day later, on the 18th, he “secretly left the dressing station.” He searched for his unit for some time and returned no later than the 20th, for it was then that Peter wrote a letter home that everything was fine with Gregory. However, misfortune has already befallen Gregory again: on the same day he receives a second, much more serious wound - a concussion, which causes him to partially lose his sight.

Grigory was treated in Moscow, in the eye hospital of Dr. Snegirev (according to the collection “All Moscow” for 1914, Dr. K. V. Snegirev’s hospital was on Kolpachnaya, building 1). There he met the Bolshevik Garanzha. The influence of this revolutionary worker on Gregory turned out to be strong (which is discussed in detail by the authors of studies on the “Quiet Don”). Garanja no longer appears in the novel, but this is by no means a passing character; on the contrary, his strongly described character allows us to better understand the figure of the central character of the novel.

Gregory first heard words from Garanzhi about social injustice, and caught his unshakable belief that such an order is not eternal and is the path to a different, properly organized life. Garanzha speaks - and this is important to emphasize - as “one of our own”, and not as “learned people” alien to Gregory. And he easily and willingly accepts the instructive words of a worker soldier, although he did not tolerate any didactics from those same “learned people.”

In this regard, the scene in the hospital, when Gregory is rudely insolent to one of the members of the imperial family, is full of deep meaning; Feeling the falseness and humiliating lordly condescension of what is happening, he protests, not wanting to hide his protest and not being able to make it meaningful. And this is not a manifestation of anarchism or hooliganism - Gregory, on the contrary, is disciplined and socially stable - this is his natural hostility to the anti-people lordship, which regards the worker as a “cattle”, a working animal. Proud and hot-tempered, Gregory organically cannot tolerate such an attitude; he always reacts sharply to any attempt to humiliate his human dignity.

He spent the entire month of October 1914 in the hospital. He was cured, and successfully: his vision was not affected, his good health was not impaired. From Moscow, having received leave after being wounded, Grigory goes to Yagodnoye. He appears there, as the text precisely says, on the night of November 5th. Aksinya's betrayal is revealed to him immediately. Grigory is depressed by what happened; At first he is strangely restrained, and only the next morning a violent outburst follows: he beats young Listnitsky and insults Aksinya. Without hesitation, as if such a decision had long been ripe in his soul, he went to Tatarsky, to his family. Here he spent his two weeks of vacation.

Throughout 1915 and almost all of 1916, Grigory was continuously at the front. His military fate at that time is outlined very sparingly in the novel; only a few combat episodes are described, and it is told how the hero himself remembers it.

In May 1915, in a counterattack against the 13th German Iron Regiment, Gregory captured three soldiers. Then the 12th regiment, where he continues to serve, together with the 28th, where Stepan Astakhov serves, participates in battles in East Prussia. Here the famous scene takes place between Grigory and Stepan, their conversation about Aksinya, after Stepan “before three once” unsuccessfully shot at Gregory, and Gregory carried him, wounded and left without a horse, from the battlefield. The situation was extremely acute: the regiments were retreating, and the Germans, as both Grigory and Stepan knew well, at that time did not take the Cossacks alive as prisoners, they killed them on the spot, Stepan was threatened with imminent death - in such circumstances, Grigory’s act looks especially expressive.

In May 1916, Gregory took part in the famous Brusilov breakthrough (named after the famous general A.A. Brusilov, who commanded the Southwestern Front). Gregory swam across the Bug and captured the “tongue”. Then he arbitrarily raised the entire hundred to attack and repulsed the “Austrian howitzer battery along with its servants.” This briefly described episode is significant. Firstly, Gregory is only a non-commissioned officer, therefore, he must enjoy extraordinary authority among the Cossacks, so that at his word they would rise into battle without an order from above. Secondly, the howitzer battery of that time consisted of large-caliber guns, the so-called “heavy artillery”; Taking this into account, Gregory’s success looks even more impressive.

Here it is appropriate to talk about the factual basis of the named episode. The Bru"i-lov offensive of 1916 lasted a long time, more than two months, from May 22 to August 13. The text, however, precisely states: the time when Gregory operates is May. And it is no coincidence: according to the Military Historical Archive, The 12th Don Regiment participated in these battles for a relatively short time - from May 25 to June 12. As you can see, the chronological sign here is extremely accurate.

“In early November,” the novel says, Gregory’s regiment was transferred to the Romanian front. On November 7 - this date is directly named in the text - the Cossacks on foot attacked the heights, and Gregory was wounded in the arm. After treatment, he received leave and came home (coachman Emel-yan tells Aksinya about this). Thus ended 1916 in the life of Gregory. By that time, he had already “served four St. George’s crosses and four medals,” he is one of the respected veterans of the regiment, and on the days of solemn ceremonies he stands at the regimental banner.

Grigory is still at odds with Aksinya, although he often thinks about her. Children appeared in his family: Natalya gave birth to twins - Polyushka and Misha. The date of their birth is established quite precisely: “at the beginning of autumn,” that is, in September 1915. And one more thing: “Natalia fed children up to a year. In September I took them away...”

The year 1917 in Gregory’s life is almost not described. In various places there are only a few terse phrases of an almost informational nature. So, in January (apparently upon returning to duty after being wounded) he “was promoted to Khorunzhiy for military distinction” (Khorunzhiy is a Cossack officer rank corresponding to a modern lieutenant). At the same time, Grigory leaves the 12th regiment and is appointed to the 2nd reserve regiment as a “platoon officer” (that is, a platoon commander, there are four of them in a hundred). Apparently. Grigory no longer goes to the front: the reserve regiments were training recruits to replenish the active army. It is further known that he suffered from pneumonia, apparently in a severe form, since in September he received leave for a month and a half (a very long period in war conditions) and went home. Upon his return, the medical commission again recognized Gregory as fit for combat service, and he returned to the same 2nd regiment. “After the October Revolution, he was appointed to the post of commander of hundreds,” this happened, therefore, in early November according to the old style or in mid-November according to the new style.

The stinginess in the description of Gregory’s life in the turbulent year of 1917, presumably, is not accidental. Apparently, until the end of the year, Gregory remained aloof from the political struggle that swept the country. And this is understandable. Gregory's behavior in that specific period of history was determined by the socio-psychological properties of his personality. The class Cossack feelings and ideas, even the prejudices of his environment, were strong in him. The highest dignity of a Cossack, according to this morality, is courage and bravery, honest military service, and everything else is not our Cossack business, our business is to wield a saber and plow the rich Don soil. Awards, promotions in rank, respectful respect from fellow villagers and comrades, all this, as M. Sholokhov wonderfully said, “the subtle poison of flattery” gradually faded in Gregory’s mind that bitter social truth that the Bolshevik Garanzha told him about in the fall of 1914.

On the other hand, Gregory organically does not accept the bourgeois-noble counter-revolution, for it is rightly associated in his mind with that arrogant nobility that he so hates. It is no coincidence that this camp is personified for him in Listnitsky - the one for whom Grigory was a groom. whose cold disdain he felt well, who seduced his beloved. That is why it is natural that the Cossack officer Grigory Melekhov did not take any part in the counter-revolutionary affairs of the then Don Ataman A.M. Kaledin and his entourage, although, presumably, some of his colleagues and fellow countrymen acted in all this. So, unstable political consciousness and the locality of social experience largely predetermined Gregory’s civic passivity in 1917.

But there was another reason for this - a purely psychological one. Gregory is by nature unusually modest, alien to the desire to advance, to command, his ambition manifests itself only in protecting his reputation as a daring Cossack and brave soldier. It is characteristic that, having become a division commander during the Veshensky Uprising of 1919, that is, having reached seemingly dizzying heights for a simple Cossack, he is burdened by this title, he dreams of only one thing - to throw away the hateful weapon, return to his native kuren and plow the land. He longs to work and raise children; he is not tempted by ranks, honors, ambitious vanity, or fame.

It is difficult, simply impossible, to imagine Gregory in the role of a rally speaker or an active member of any political committee. People like him do not like to come to the forefront, although, as Gregory himself proved, a strong character makes them, if necessary, strong leaders. It is clear that in the rally and rebellious year of 1917, Gregory had to remain aloof from the political rapids. In addition, fate threw him into a provincial reserve regiment; he was not able to witness the major events of the revolutionary time. It is no coincidence that the depiction of such events is given through the perception of Bunchuk or Listnitsky - people who are well-defined and politically active, or in the direct author’s depiction of specific historical characters.

However, from the very end of 1917, Gregory again enters the focus of the narrative. It is understandable: the logic of revolutionary development involved more and more broad masses in the struggle, and personal fate placed Gregory in one of the epicenters of this struggle on the Don, in the region of the “Russian Vendee,” where a cruel and bloody civil war did not subside for more than three years.

So, the end of 1917 finds Gregory a hundred-man commander in a reserve regiment, the regiment was located in the large village of Kamenskaya, in the west of the Don region, near the working-class Donbass. Political life was in full swing. For some time, Gregory found himself under the influence of his colleague, centurion Izvarin - he, as established from archival materials, is a real historical figure, later a member of the Military Circle (something like a local parliament), a future active ideologist of the anti-Soviet Don “government”. Energetic and educated, Izvarin for some time won Grigory over to the side of the so-called “Cossack autonomy”; he painted Manilov’s pictures of the creation of an independent “Don Republic”, which, they say, would conduct relations “with Moscow...” on equal terms.

There are no words, for today’s reader such “ideas” seem ridiculous, but in the time described, many different kinds of ephemeral, one-day “republics” arose, and there were even more projects. This was a consequence of the political inexperience of the broad masses of the former Russian Empire, who for the first time embarked on broad civil activities; This fad lasted, naturally, very briefly. It is not surprising that the politically naive Gregory, being also a patriot of his region and a 100% Cossack, was carried away for some time by Izvarin’s rantings. But his relationship with the Don autonomists was very short.

Already in November, Grigory met the outstanding Cossack revolutionary Fyodor Podtelkov. Strong and imperious, adamantly confident in the correctness of the Bolshevik cause, he easily overturned the unsteady Izvarin constructions in Gregory’s soul. In addition, we emphasize that in the social sense, the simple Cossack Podtelkov is immeasurably closer to Gregory than the intellectual Izvarin.

The point here, of course, is not only a matter of personal impression: Gregory even then, in November 1917, after the October Revolution, could not help but see the forces of the old world gathered on the Don, could not help but guess, not feel at least what was behind the beautiful-spirited concoctions There are still the same generals and officers who are not their favorite bar, the Listnitsa landowners and others. (By the way, this is how it happened historically: the autonomist and intelligent talkative General P. N. Krasnov with his “Don Republic” soon became an outright instrument of bourgeois-landowner restoration.)

Izvarin was the first to sense the change in his soldier’s mood: “I’m afraid that we, Grigory, will meet as enemies,” “You can’t guess friends on the battlefield, Efim Ivanovich,” Grigory smiled.”

On January 10, 1918, a congress of front-line Cossacks opened in the village of Kamenskaya. This was an exceptional event in the history of the region at that time: the Bolshevik Party gathered its banners among the working people of the Don, trying to wrest them from the influence of the generals and reactionary officers; at the same time, they formed a “government” in Novocherkassk with General A. M. Kaledin at its head. A civil war was already raging on the Don. Already in the mining Donbass there were fierce battles between the Red Guard and the White Guard volunteers of Yesaul Chernetsov. And from the north, from Kharkov, units of the young Red Army were already moving towards Rostov. The irreconcilable class war had begun, and from now on it was destined to flare up more and more widely...

There is no exact information in the novel whether Grigory was a participant in the congress of front-line soldiers in Kamenskaya, but he met there with Ivan Alekseevich Kotlyarov and Christonya - they were delegates from the Tatarsky farm - he was pro-Bolshevik. A detachment of Chernetsov, one of the first “heroes” of the White Guard, was moving towards Kamenskaya from the south. The Red Cossacks hastily form their armed forces to fight back. On January 21, a decisive battle takes place; The Red Cossacks are led by a former military foreman (in modern terms, lieutenant colonel) Golubov. Grigory in his detachment commands a division of three hundred; he makes a roundabout maneuver, which ultimately led to the death of the Chernetsov detachment. In the midst of the battle, “at three o’clock in the afternoon,” Grigory received a bullet wound in the leg,

That same day, in the evening, at Glubokaya station, Grigory witnesses how the prisoner Chernetsov was hacked to death by Podtelkov, and then, on his orders, other captured officers were killed. That cruel scene makes a strong impression on Grigory; in anger, he even tries to rush at Podtelkov with a revolver, but he is restrained.

This episode is extremely important in the further political fate of Gregory. He cannot and does not want to accept the harsh inevitability of civil war, when opponents are irreconcilable and the victory of one means the death of the other. By the nature of his nature, Gregory is generous and kind, he is disgusted by the cruel laws of war. Here it is appropriate to recall how, in the first days of the war in 1914, he almost shot his fellow soldier, the Cossack Chubaty (Uryupin), when he hacked to death a captured Austrian hussar. A man of a different social cast, Ivan Alekseevich, will not immediately accept the harsh inevitability of an inexorable class battle, but for him, a proletarian, a pupil of the communist Shtokman, there is a clear political ideal and a clear goal. Grigory doesn’t have all this, which is why his reaction to the events in Glubokaya is so sharp.

It is also necessary to emphasize here that individual excesses of the civil war were not at all caused by social necessity and were the result of acute discontent accumulated among the masses towards the old world and its defenders. Fyodor Podtelkov himself is a typical example of this kind of impulsive, emotional people's revolutionary who did not have, and could not have, the necessary political prudence and state outlook.

Be that as it may, Gregory is shocked. In addition, fate separates him from the Red Army environment - he is wounded, he is taken for treatment to the remote farm of Tatarsky, far from the noisy Kamenskaya, crowded with Red Cossacks... A week later, Panteley Prokofievich comes to Millerovo for him, and “the next morning”, then On January 29, Gregory was taken home on a sleigh. The path was not short - one hundred and forty miles. Gregory's mood on the road is vague; “...Grigory could neither forgive nor forget the death of Chernetsov and the reckless execution of captured officers.” “I’ll come home, get some rest, heal the wound, and then...” he thought and mentally waved his hand, “we’ll see.” The matter itself will show...” He longs for one thing with all his soul - peaceful labor, peace. With such thoughts, Grigory arrived in Tatarsky on January 31, 1918.

Grigory spent the end of winter and the beginning of spring in his native farm. At that time, the civil war had not yet begun in the Upper Don. That precarious world is depicted in the novel as follows: “The Cossacks who returned from the front rested near their wives, ate their fill, and did not sense that at the thresholds of the kurens they were watching for worse troubles than those they had to endure in the war they had experienced.”

That's right: it was the calm before the storm. By the spring of 1918, Soviet power was largely victorious throughout Russia. The overthrown classes resisted, blood was shed, but these battles were still of a small scale and took place mainly around cities, on roads and junction stations. Fronts and mass armies did not yet exist. The small Volunteer Army of General Kornilov was driven out of Rostov and wandered, surrounded, throughout the Kuban. The head of the Don counter-revolution, General Kaledin, shot himself in Novocherkassk, after which the most active enemies of Soviet power left the Don for the remote Salsky steppes. There are red banners over Rostov and Novocherkassk.

Meanwhile, foreign intervention began. On February 18 (new style), the Kaiser and Austro-Hungarian troops became more active. On May 8 they approached Rostov and took it. In March-April, the armies of the Entente countries landed on the northern and eastern shores of Soviet Russia: Japanese, Americans, British, French. The internal counter-revolution revived everywhere and became stronger organizationally and materially.

On the Don, where, for obvious reasons, there were enough personnel for the White Guard armies, the counter-revolution went on the offensive in the spring of 1918. On behalf of the government of the Don Soviet Republic, in April F. Podtelkov with a small detachment of Red Cossacks moved to the Upper Don districts in order to replenish his forces there. However, they did not reach their goal. On April 27 (May 10, new style), the entire detachment was surrounded by White Cossacks and captured along with their commander.

In April, the civil war first broke into the Tatarsky farm; on April 17, near the Setrakov farm, southwest of Veshenskaya, the Cossacks destroyed the Tiraspol detachment of the 2nd Socialist Army; this unit, having lost discipline and control, retreated under the blows of the interventionists from Ukraine. Cases of looting and violence on the part of the corrupted Red Army soldiers gave counter-revolutionary instigators a good reason to speak out. Throughout the Upper Don, bodies of Soviet power were overthrown, atamans were elected, and armed detachments were formed.

On April 18, a Cossack circle took place in Tatarskoye. The day before this, in the morning, expecting the inevitable mobilization, Hristonya, Koshevoy, Grigory and Valet gathered in Ivan Alekseevich’s house and decided what to do: should they make their way to the Reds or stay and wait for events? Valet and Koshevoy confidently offer to escape, and immediately. The rest hesitate. A painful struggle takes place in Gregory’s soul: he does not know what to decide. He takes out his irritation on Knave, insulting him. He leaves, followed by Koshevoy. Gregory and others make a half-hearted decision - to wait.

And a circle is already being convened on the square: mobilization has been announced. They are creating a hundred farms. Grigory was nominated as a commander, but some of the more conservative old men objected, citing his service with the Reds; Brother Peter is elected commander instead. Grigory gets nervous and defiantly leaves the circle.

On April 28, the Tatar hundred, among other Cossack detachments from neighboring farms and villages, arrived at the Ponomarev farm, where they surrounded Podtelkov’s expedition. A hundred Tatars are led by Pyotr Melekhov. Gregory is apparently among the rank and file. They were late: the Red Cossacks had been captured the day before, a quick “trial” took place in the evening, and execution the next morning.

The extended scene of the execution of the Podtelkovs is one of the most memorable in the novel. Much is expressed here with extraordinary depth. The rabid brutality of the old world, ready to do anything to save itself, even to exterminate its own people. The courage and unshakable faith in the future of Podtelkov, Bunchuk and many of their comrades, which makes a strong impression even on the hardened enemies of the new Russia.

A large crowd of Cossack women and Cossacks gathered for the execution; they were hostile to those being executed, because they were explained that these were enemies who had come to rob and rape. And what? A disgusting picture of beating - who?! their own, simple Cossacks! - quickly disperses the crowd; people flee, ashamed of their - even involuntary - involvement in the crime. “Only the front-line soldiers remained, who had seen death enough, and the most frenzied old men,” says the novel, that is, only hardened souls or inflamed with anger could withstand the cruel spectacle. A characteristic detail: the officers who hang Podtelkov and Krivoshlykov are wearing masks. Even they, apparently conscious enemies of the Soviets, are ashamed of their role and resort to an intellectual-decadent masquerade.

This scene should have made no less impression on Grigory than the reprisal against the captured Chernetsovites three months later. With amazing psychological accuracy, M. Sholokhov shows how, in the first minutes of an unexpected meeting with Podtelkov, Grigory even experiences something similar to schadenfreude. He nervously throws cruel words into the face of the doomed Podtelkov: “Do you remember the Battle of Deep? Do you remember how the officers were shot... They shot on your orders! A? Now is the time for you to get even! Well, don't worry! You're not the only one to tan other people's skins! You have left, Chairman of the Don Council of People's Commissars! You, toadstool, sold the Cossacks to the Jews! It's clear? What should I say?

But then... He, too, saw at close range the terrible beating of unarmed people. Our own - Cossacks, simple grain growers, front-line soldiers, fellow soldiers, our own! There, in Glubokaya, Podtelkov ordered to cut down also unarmed people, and their death is also terrible, but they... are strangers, they are one of those who for centuries despised and humiliated people like him, Grigory. And the same as those who are now standing at the edge of the terrible pit, waiting for a volley...

Gregory is morally broken. The author of “Quiet Don,” with rare artistic tact, never speaks about this head-on, with a direct assessment. But the life of the hero of the novel throughout 1918 seems to pass under the impression of the mental trauma received on the day of the beating of the Podtelkovites. The fate of Gregory at this time is described by some intermittent, unclear dotted line. And here the vagueness and oppressive duality of his mental state is deeply and accurately expressed.

The White Cossack army of the German henchman General Krasnov began active military operations against the Soviet state in the summer of 1918. Grigory was mobilized to the front. As a commander of a hundred in the 26th Veshensky Regiment, he is in the Krasnov army on its so-called Northern Front, in the direction of Voronezh. This was a peripheral area for the Whites; the main battles between them and the Red Army took place in the summer and autumn in the Tsaritsyn area.

Gregory fights sluggishly, indifferently and reluctantly. It is characteristic that in the description of that relatively long war, nothing is said in the novel about his military affairs, about the manifestation of courage or commander's ingenuity. But he is always in battle, he does not hide in the rear. Here is a condensed, as if summation of his life’s fate at that time: “Three horses were killed near Gregory in the fall, the overcoat was holed in five places... Once a bullet pierced through the copper head of a saber, the lanyard fell at the horse’s feet, as if it had been bitten.

“Someone is praying strongly to God for you, Grigory,” Mitka Korshunov told him and was surprised at Grigoriev’s gloomy smile.”

Yes, Gregory fights “not fun.” The goals of the war, as Krasnov’s stupid propaganda cracked about it, “the defense of the Don Republic from the Bolsheviks”, are deeply alien to him. He sees looting, decay, the tired indifference of the Cossacks, the complete futility of the banner under which he was called by the will of circumstances. He fights robberies among the Cossacks of his hundred, stops reprisals against prisoners, that is, he does the opposite of what the Krasnov command encouraged. Characteristic in this regard is his harsh, even impudent for an obedient son, as Grigory has always been, his abuse of his father when he, succumbing to the general mood, shamelessly robs a family whose owner left with the Reds. By the way, this is the first time he judges his father so harshly.

It is clear that Grigory’s career in the Krasnov army is going very badly.

He is called to division headquarters. Some authorities not named in the novel begin to scold him: “Are you ruining a hundred for me, cornet? Are you being liberal? Apparently, Grigory was insolent about something, because the scolder continues: “How can I not shout at you?..” And as a result: “I order you to hand over a hundred today.”

Grigory is demoted and becomes platoon commander. There is no date in the text, but it can be restored, and this is important. Further in the novel there is a chronological sign: “At the end of the month the regiment... occupied the village of Gremyachiy Log.” It doesn’t say what month, but it describes the height of harvesting, the heat, and there are no signs of the coming autumn in the landscape. Finally, Grigory learns from his father the day before that Stepan Astakhov has returned from German captivity, and in the corresponding place in the novel it is precisely said that he came “in early August.” So, Gregory was demoted around mid-August 1918.

A fact that is important for the hero’s fate is also noted here: he learns that Aksinya has returned to Stepan. Neither in the author's speech, nor in the description of Gregory's feelings and thoughts is his attitude to this event expressed. But it is certain that his depressed state should have worsened: the painful memory of Aksinya never left his heart.

At the end of 1918, the Krasnov army completely disintegrated, the White Cossack front was bursting at all the seams. The Red Army, strengthened and gaining strength and experience, goes on a victorious offensive. On December 16 (hereinafter according to the old style) the 26th regiment, where Gregory continued to serve, was knocked down from its positions by a detachment of red sailors. A non-stop retreat began, lasting another day. And then, at night, Grigory voluntarily leaves the regiment and flees from the Krasnovskaya artillery. mii, heading straight to the house: “The next day, in the evening, he was already leading into his father’s base a horse that had made a two-hundred mile run, staggering from fatigue.” This happened, therefore, on December 19, 1918.

The novel notes that Gregory escapes with “joyful determination.” The word “joy” is typical here: it is the only positive emotion that Grigory experienced during his eight long months of service in the Krasnov army. I experienced it when I left its ranks.

The Reds came to Tatarsky in January

1919. Gregory, like many others

gym, waits for them with intense anxiety:

How will recent enemies behave somehow?

whose villages? Won't they take revenge?

commit violence?.. No, nothing like that

not happening. Red Army discipline

stern and strict. No robbery and

oppression. Relations between the Red Army

the Tsami and Cossack population are the most

there are friendly ones. They're even going

together, sing, dance, walk: neither give nor

take two neighboring villages, recently

but those who were at enmity made peace and so

celebrate reconciliation.

But... Fate has something else in store for Gregory. Most of the Cossack farmers are “friends” for the arriving Red Army soldiers, because most of them are recent grain farmers with a similar life and worldview. It seems that Grigory is also “one of our own”. But he is an officer, and this word at that time was considered an antonym to the word “Council”. And what an officer - a Cossack, a White Cossack! A breed that has already proven itself sufficiently in the bloodshed of the civil war. It is clear that this alone should cause an increased nervous reaction among the Red Army soldiers in relation to Gregory. And so it happens, and immediately.

On the very first day the Reds arrived, a group of Red Army soldiers came to billet with the Melekhovs, including Alexander from Lugansk, whose family was shot by white officers - he was naturally an embittered, even neurasthenic man. He immediately begins to bully Grigory, in his words, gestures, and gaze there is burning, frantic hatred - after all, it was precisely such Cossack officers who tortured his family and flooded the working Donbass with blood. Alexander is held back only by the harsh discipline of the Red Army: the commissar's intervention eliminates the impending clash between him and Gregory.

What can former White Cossack officer Grigory Melekhov explain to Alexander and many others like him? That he ended up in the Krasnov army against his will? That he was “liberal,” as the division headquarters accused him? That he voluntarily abandoned the front and never wants to pick up the hateful weapon again? So Gregory tries to tell Alexander: “We abandoned the front ourselves, let you in, but you came to a conquered country...”, to which he receives an inexorable answer: “Don’t tell me! We know you! “The front has been abandoned”! If they hadn’t stuffed you, they wouldn’t have left you. “I can talk to you in any way.”

Thus begins a new act of drama in the fate of Gregory. Two days later, his friends dragged him to Anikushka’s party. Soldiers and farmers are walking and drinking. Grigory sits sober and alert. And then some “young woman” suddenly whispers to him while dancing: “They are conspiring to kill you... Someone has proven that you are an officer... Run...” Grigory goes out into the street, they are already guarding him. He breaks free and runs away into the darkness of the night like a criminal.

For many years Grigory walked under bullets, escaped from the blow of a checker, looked death in the face, and more than once he would have to do this more than once in the future. But of all mortal dangers, he remembers this one, because he was attacked - he is convinced - without guilt. Later, having experienced a lot, having experienced the pain of new wounds and losses, Grigory, in his fateful conversation with Mikhail Koshev, will remember exactly this episode at the party, remember it in sparing, as usual, words, and it will become clear how hard that absurd event affected him :

“...If the Red Army soldiers weren’t going to kill me at the party then, I might not have participated in the uprising.

If you weren't an officer, no one would touch you.

If I hadn’t been hired, I wouldn’t have been an officer... Well, it’s a long song!”

This personal moment cannot be ignored in order to understand the future fate of Gregory. He is nervously tense, constantly waiting for a blow, he cannot perceive the new power being created objectively, his position seems too precarious to him. Grigory’s irritation and bias are clearly manifested in a night conversation with Ivan Alekseevich in the Revolutionary Committee at the end of January.

Ivan Alekseevich has just returned to the farm from the chairman of the district revolutionary committee, he is joyfully excited, he tells how respectfully and simply they talked to him: “And how was it before? Major General! How should you stand in front of him? Here it is, our beloved Soviet power! Everything is equal!” Gregory makes a skeptical remark. “They saw the man in me, how can I not rejoice?” - Ivan Alekseevich is perplexed. “Generals have also started wearing shirts made from sacks lately,” Grigory continues to grumble. “The generals are from necessity, but these are from nature. Difference?" - Ivan Alekseevich objected temperamentally. "No difference!" - Grigory lashes out with words. The conversation turns into an argument and ends coldly, with hidden threats.

It is clear that Gregory is wrong here. Should he, who was so acutely aware of the humiliation of his social position in old Russia, not understand the simple-minded joy of Ivan Alekseevich? And he understands no worse than his opponent that the generals said goodbye “out of necessity,” for the time being. Gregory’s arguments against the new government, which he brought up in the dispute, are simply frivolous: they say, a Red Army soldier in bandages, a platoon commander in chrome boots, and the commissar “got all over his skin.” Does Grigory, a professional military man, not know that there is not and cannot be equalization in the army, that different responsibilities give rise to different positions; he himself will then scold his orderly and friend Prokhor Zykov for his familiarity. In Gregory’s words, irritation and unspoken anxiety for his own fate, which, in his opinion, is under undeserved danger, sounds too clearly.

But neither Ivan Alekseevich nor Mishka Koshevoy, in the heat of a simmering struggle, can no longer see in Grigory’s words only the nervousness of an unjustly offended person. All this nervous night conversation can convince them of only one thing: officers cannot be trusted, even former friends...

Grigory leaves the Revolutionary Committee even more alienated from the new government. He will not go back to talk with his former comrades; he accumulates irritation and anxiety within himself.

Winter was coming to an end (“drops were falling from the branches,” etc.), when Grigory was sent to take the shells to Bokovskaya. This was in February, but before Shtokman arrived in Tatarsky - therefore, around mid-February. Grigory warns his family ahead of time: “But I won’t come to the farm. I’ll pass the time at Singin’s, at my aunt’s.” (Here, of course, we mean maternal aunt, since Panteley Prokofievich had neither brothers nor sisters.)

It was a long journey for him, after Vokovskaya he had to go to Chernyshevskaya (a station on the Donoass - Tsaritsyn railway), in total it would be more than 175 kilometers from Veshenskaya. For some reason, Grigory did not stay with his aunt; he returned home in the evening a week and a half later. Here he learned about his father's arrest and what happened to him. looking for. Already on February 19, Shtokman, who had arrived, announced at the gathering a list of arrested Cossacks (as it turned out, they had been shot by that time in Veshki), among them was Grigory Melekhov. In the column “Why arrested” it was said: “He came up, opposed. Dangerous". (By the way, Grigory was a cornet, that is, a lieutenant, and the captain was a captain.) It was further specified that he would be arrested “on arrival.”

After resting for half an hour, Grigory rode off on horseback to visit a distant relative at the Rybny farm, while Peter promised to say that his brother had gone to his aunt in Singin. The next day, Shtokman and Koshevoy with four horsemen went there for Grigory, searched the house, but did not find him...

Grigory lay in the barn for two days, hiding behind dung and crawling out of the shelter only at night. From this voluntary imprisonment he was rescued by the unexpected outbreak of the Cossack uprising, which is usually called the Veshensky or (more precisely) the Verkhnedonsky. The text of the novel precisely states that the uprising began in the Yelanskaya village; the date is given - February 24. The date is given according to the old style; documents from the Archives of the Soviet Army call the beginning of the rebellion March 10-11, 1919. But M. Sholokhov deliberately cites the old style here: the population of the Upper Don lived for too short a period under Soviet rule and could not get used to the new calendar (in all regions under White Guard control the old style was preserved or restored); since the action of the third book of the novel takes place exclusively within the Verkhnedonsky district, then this calendar is typical for the heroes.

Grigory rode to Tatarsky when hundreds of cavalry and foot soldiers had already been formed there; Pyotr Melekhov commanded them. Grigory becomes the commander of fifty (that is, two platoons). He is always ahead, in the vanguard, in the advanced outposts. On March 6, Peter was captured by the Reds and shot by Mikhail Koshev. The very next day, Gregory is appointed commander of the Veshensky regiment and leads his hundreds against the Reds. He orders the twenty-seven Red Army soldiers captured in the first battle to be cut down. He is blinded by hatred, stirs it up in himself, brushing aside the doubts that stir at the bottom of his clouded consciousness: the thought flashes through his mind: “the rich are with the poor, and not the Cossacks with Russia...” The death of his brother for some time embittered him even more his.

The uprising on the Upper Don flared up rapidly. In addition to the general social reasons that caused the Cossack counter-revolution in many outskirts. Russia, there was also a subjective factor mixed in: the Trotskyist policy of the notorious “decossackization,” which caused unjustified repression of the working population in the area. Objectively, such actions were provocative and significantly helped the kulaks to revolt against Soviet power. This circumstance is described in detail in the literature about the Quiet Don. The anti-Soviet rebellion took on a wide scope: within a month the number of rebels reached 30 thousand fighters - this was a huge force on the scale of the civil war, and the rebels mainly consisted of experienced and skilled people in military affairs. To eliminate the rebellion, special Expeditionary Forces were formed from parts of the Southern Front of the Red Army (according to the Archives of the Soviet Army - consisting of two divisions). Soon, fierce battles began throughout the Upper Don.

The Veshensky regiment is quickly deployed into the 1st rebel division - Grigory commands it. Very soon the veil of hatred that clouded his consciousness in the first days of the rebellion subsides. With even greater force than before, doubts gnaw at him: “And most importantly, who am I leading against? Against the people... Who is right? - Grigory thinks, gritting his teeth.” Already on March 18, he openly expressed his doubts at a meeting of the rebel leadership: “And I think that we got lost when we went to the uprising...”

Ordinary Cossacks know about these sentiments of his. One of the rebel commanders proposes to stage a coup in Veshki: “Let’s fight both the Reds and the Cadets.” Grigory objects, disguised for appearance with a wry smile: “let’s bow at the feet of the Soviet government: we are guilty...” He stops reprisals against prisoners. He arbitrarily opens the prison in Veshki, releasing those arrested. The leader of the uprising, Kudinov, does not really trust Grigory - he is bypassed by invitation to important meetings.

Seeing no way out ahead, he acts mechanically, by inertia. He drinks and goes on a rampage, which has never happened to him. He is driven by only one thing: to save his family, loved ones and the Cossacks, for whose lives he is responsible as a commander.

In mid-April, Grigory comes home to plow. There he meets Aksinya, and again the relationship between them, interrupted five and a half years ago, is resumed.

On April 28, having returned to the division, he receives a letter from Kudinov that communists from Tatarsky: Kotlyarov and Koshevoy were captured by the rebels (there is a mistake here, Koshevoy escaped captivity). Grigory quickly gallops to the place of their captivity, wants to save them from inevitable death: “Blood has fallen between us, but are we not strangers?!” - he thought as he galloped. He was late: the prisoners had already been killed...

The Red Army in mid-May 1919 (the date here, of course, is in the old style) began decisive actions against the Upper Don rebels: the offensive of Denikin’s troops in the Donbass began, so the most dangerous hostile hotbed in the rear of the Soviet Southern Front had to be destroyed as soon as possible. The main blow came from the south. The rebels could not stand it and retreated to the left bank of the Don. Gregory's division covered the retreat, and he himself crossed with the rearguard. The Tatarsky farm was occupied by the Reds.

In Veshki, under fire from the Red batteries, in anticipation of the possible destruction of the entire uprising, Gregory is haunted by the same deathly indifference. “He was not heartbroken about the outcome of the uprising,” the novel says. He diligently drove away thoughts about the future: “To hell with him! When it ends, it will be all right!”

And here, being in a hopeless state of soul and mind, Grigory calls Aksinya from Tatarsky. Just before the start of the general retreat, that is, around May 20, he sends Prokhor Zykov after her. Grigory already knows that his native farm will be occupied by the Reds, and he tells Prokhor to warn his relatives to drive away the cattle and so on, but... that’s all.

And here is Aksinya in Veshki. Having abandoned the division, he spends two days with it. “The only thing left in his life (so, at least, it seemed to him) was the passion for Aksinya that flared up with pain and irrepressible force,” the novel says. What is noteworthy here is the word “passion”: it is not love, but passion. The remark in parentheses has an even deeper meaning: “it seemed to him...” His nervous, flawed passion is something like an escape from a shocked world, in which Gregory does not find a place or business for himself, but is busy with someone else’s business... In the summer of 1919, the southern Russian The counter-resolution experienced its greatest success. The volunteer army, equipped with a strong military and socially homogeneous composition, having received military equipment from England and France, launched a broad offensive with a decisive goal: to defeat the Red Army, take Moscow and eliminate Soviet power. For some time, success accompanied the White Guards: they occupied the entire Donbass and took Kharkov on June 12 (old style). The White command was in dire need of replenishing its not very large army, which is why it set an important goal for itself to capture the entire territory of the Don region in order to use the population of the Cossack villages as human reserves. For this purpose, preparations were being made for a breakthrough of the Soviet Southern Front in the direction of the Verkhnedonsky uprising area. On June 10, the equestrian group of General A.S. Sekretov made a breakthrough, and three days later reached the rebel lines. From now on, all of them, by military order, joined the White Guard Don Army of General V.I. Sidorin.

Grigory did not expect anything good from the meeting with the “cadets” - neither for himself nor for his fellow countrymen. And so it happened.

A slightly updated old order returned to the Don, the same familiar bar people in uniform, with contemptuous glances. Grigory, as a rebel commander, attends a banquet given in honor of Sekregov, listening with disgust to the drunken general's chatter, which is insulting to the Cossacks present. At the same time, Stepan Astakhov appears in Veshki. Aksinya stays with him. The last straw that Gregory was clinging to in his unsettled life seemed to have disappeared.

He gets a short vacation and comes home. The whole family is assembled, everyone survived. Grigory caresses the children, is discreetly friendly with Natalya, and respectful with the parents.

Leaving for his unit, saying goodbye to his family, he cries. “Grigory never left his native farm with such a heavy heart,” the novel notes. Vaguely he senses great events approaching... And they really are waiting for him.

In the heat of continuous battles with the Red Army, the White Guard command was not immediately able to disband the semi-partisan, disorderly organized rebel units. Gregory continues to command his division for some time. But he is no longer independent, the same generals are again standing over him. He is summoned by General Fitzkhelaurov, the commander of a regular, so to speak, division of the White Army - the same Fitzkhelaurov who was in senior command posts back in 1918 in the “Rasnov army, which ingloriously advanced on Tsaritsyn. And now again Gregory sees the same lordship, hears the same rude, disdainful words that - only on a different, much less important occasion - he heard many years ago when being drafted into the tsarist army. Grigory explodes and threatens the elderly general with a saber. This insolence is more than dangerous. Fitzkhelaurov has many reasons to finally threaten him with a court-martial. But, apparently, they did not dare to bring him to trial.

Gregory doesn't care. He longs for one thing - to get away from the war, from the need to make decisions, from the political struggle, in which he cannot find a solid foundation and goal. The White command disbands the rebel units, including Gregory's division. Former rebels, who are not very trusted, are scattered to different units of Denikin’s army. Grigory does not believe in the “white idea”, although there is a drunken celebration all around, it would be a victory!..

Having announced to the Cossacks the disbandment of the division, Grigory, without hiding his mood, openly tells them:

“Don’t remember it badly, villagers! We served together, forced by bondage, and from now on we’ll be kicking ass like Erez. The most important thing is to take care of your heads so that the Reds don’t make holes in them. Although you have bad heads, there is no need to expose them to bullets. Isho will have to think, think hard about what to do next...”

Denikin’s “march against Moscow” is, according to Grigory, “their”, the lord’s business, and not his, not the ordinary Cossacks. At Sekretov’s headquarters, he asks to be transferred to the rear units (“I have been wounded and shell-shocked fourteen times in two wars,” he says), no, he is left in the active army and transferred as a commander of hundreds to the 19th regiment, giving him a worthless “encouragement.” " - he rises in rank, becoming a centurion (senior lieutenant).

And now a new terrible blow awaits him. Natalya found out that Grigory was meeting with Aksinya again. Shocked, she decides to have an abortion; some dark woman performs an “operation” on her. The next day at noon she dies. Natalya's death, as can be established from the text, occurred around July 10, 1919. She was then twenty-five years old, and the children were not yet four...

Grigory received a telegram about the death of his wife, he was sent home; he galloped up when Natalya had already been buried. Immediately upon arrival, he did not find the strength to go to the grave. “The dead are not offended...” he told his mother.

Due to the death of his wife, Grigory received leave from the regiment for a month. He harvested the already ripened bread, worked around the house, and looked after the children. He became especially attached to his son Mishatka. The boy rendered... Xia, having matured a little, is of a purely “Melekhov” breed - both in appearance and disposition, similar to his father and grandfather.

And so Grigory leaves again for war - he leaves without even taking a vacation, at the very end of July. The novel says absolutely nothing about where he fought in the second half of 1919, what happened to him, he did not write home, and “only at the end of October Panteley Prokofievich learned that Grigory was in full health and together with his regiment is located somewhere in the Voronezh province.” Based on this more than brief information, only a little can be established. He could not participate in the famous raid of the White Cossack cavalry under the command of General K. K. Mamontov along the rear of the Soviet troops (Tambov - Kozlov - Yelets - Voronezh), for this raid, marked by ferocious robberies and violence, began on August 10, according to the new style, - therefore , July 28, old time, that is, at the very time when Gregory was still on vacation. In October, Grigory, according to rumors, ended up at the front near Voronezh, where, after heavy fighting, the White Guard Don Army stopped, bloodless and demoralized.

At this time he fell ill with typhus, a terrible epidemic of which throughout the autumn and winter of 1919 decimated the ranks of both warring armies. They bring him home. This was at the end of October, for what follows is an exact chronological note: “A month later, Gregory recovered. He first got out of bed on the twentieth of November...”

By that time, the White Guard armies had already suffered a crushing defeat. In a grandiose cavalry battle on October 19-24, 1919, near Voronezh and Kastornaya, they were defeated White Cossack corps Mamontov and Shkuro. Denikin's people they still tried to hold on to the Orel-Elets line, but from November 9 (here and above the date according to the new calendar) the non-stop retreat of the white armies began. Soon it became not a retreat, but a flight.

Soldier of the First Cavalry Army.

Grigory no longer took part in these decisive battles, since his sick man was taken away on a cart, and he ended up at home at the very beginning of November according to the new style, however, such a move along the muddy autumn roads should have taken at least ten days (but the roads from Voronezh to Veshenskaya more than 300 kilometers); in addition, Grigory could have spent some time in a front-line hospital - at least to establish a diagnosis.

In December 1919, the Red Army victoriously entered the territory of the Don region, Cossack regiments and divisions retreated almost without resistance, falling apart and falling apart more and more. Disobedience and desertion became widespread. The “government” of Don gave an order for the complete evacuation to the south of the entire male population; those who evaded were caught and punished by punitive detachments.

On December 12 (old style), as precisely stated in the novel, Panteley Prokofyevich went “in retreat” along with the farm workers. Grigory, meanwhile, went to Veshenskaya to find out where his retreating unit was, but did not find out anything except one thing: the Reds were approaching the Don. He returned to the farm shortly after his father left. The next day, together with Aksinya and Prokhor Zykov, they went south along the sled road, heading to Millerovo (there, they told Grigory, his part could pass through), it was around December 15th.

We drove slowly along a road clogged with refugees and in disarray with retreating Cossacks. Aksinya fell ill with typhus, as can be established from the text, on the third day of the journey. She lost consciousness. With difficulty, she was able to be placed in the care of a random person in the village of Novo-Mikhailovsky. “Having left Aksinya, Grigory immediately lost interest in his surroundings,” the novel continues. So they broke up around December 20th.

The White Army was falling apart. Gregory passively retreated along with the masses of his own kind, without making the slightest attempt to somehow actively intervene in events, avoiding joining any part and remaining in the position of a refugee. In January, he no longer believes in any possibility of resistance, because he learns about the abandonment of Rostov by the White Guards (it was taken by the Red Army on January 9, 1920, according to the new style). Together with the faithful Prokhor, they go to Kuban, Grigory makes his usual decision in moments of mental decline: “... we’ll see there.”

The retreat, aimless and passive, continued. “At the end of January,” as specified in the novel, Grigory and Prokhor arrived in Belaya Glinka, a village in Northern Kuban on the Tsaritsyn-Ekaterinodar railway. Prokhor hesitantly offered to join the “greens” - that was the name of the partisans in the Kuban, led to some extent by the Socialist Revolutionaries; they set themselves the utopian and politically absurd goal of fighting “the reds and the whites”; they consisted mainly of deserters and declassed rabble. Gregory resolutely refused. And here, in Belaya Glinka, he learns about the death of his father. Panteley Prokofievich died of typhus in a strange house, lonely, homeless, exhausted by a serious illness. Grigory saw his already cold corpse...

The day after his father’s funeral, Grigory leaves for Novopokrovskaya, then ends up in Korenovskaya - these are large Kuban villages on the road to Ekaterinodar. Then Gregory fell ill. With difficulty, a half-drunk doctor found: relapsing fever, you can’t go - death. Nevertheless, Grigory and Prokhor leave. The steam-horse carriage slowly pulls along, Grigory lies motionless, wrapped in a sheepskin coat, and often loses consciousness. There is a “hasty southern spring” all around - obviously, the second half of February or early March. It was at this time that the last major battle with Denikin’s troops took place, the so-called Yegorlyk operation, during which their last combat-ready units were defeated. Already on February 22, the Red Army entered Belaya Glinka. The White Guard troops in southern Russia were now completely defeated, they surrendered or fled to the sea.

The cart with the sick Gregory slowly pulled south. One day Prokhor invited him to stay in the village, but heard in response what he said with all his might: “Take him... until I die...” Prokhor fed him “by hand”, forced milk into his mouth, and one day Gregory almost choked. In Yekaterinodar, his fellow Cossack soldiers accidentally found him, helped him, and put him up with a doctor they knew. Within a week, Grigory recovered, and at Abinskaya - a village 84 kilometers beyond Yekaterinodar - he was able to mount a horse.

Grigory and his comrades arrived in Novorossiysk on March 25: it is noteworthy that the date is given here in the new style. We emphasize: later in the novel, the countdown of time and date is given according to the new calendar. And it’s clear - Grigory and other heroes of “Quiet Don” have been living under the conditions of the Soviet state since the beginning of 1920.

So, the Red Army is two steps away from the city, there is a chaotic evacuation in the port, confusion and panic reign. General A.I. Denikin tried to take his defeated troops to Crimea, but the evacuation was organized disgracefully; many soldiers and white officers were unable to leave. Grigory and several of his friends are trying to get on the ship, but in vain. However, Gregory is not very persistent. He decisively announces to his comrades that he is staying and will ask to serve with the Reds. He does not persuade anyone, but Gregory’s authority is great, all his friends, after hesitating, follow his example. Before the Reds arrived, they drank sadly.

On the morning of March 27, units of the 8th and 9th Soviet armies entered Novorossiysk. 22 thousand former soldiers and officers of Denikin’s army were captured in the city. No “mass executions,” as White Guard propaganda prophesied, were carried out. On the contrary, many prisoners, including officers who had not tainted themselves by participating in the repressions, were accepted into the Red Army.

Much later, from the story of Prokhor Zykov, it becomes known that there, in Novorossiysk, Grigory joined the First Cavalry Army and became a squadron commander in the 14th Cavalry Division. Previously, he passed through a special commission, which decided on the issue of enlisting former military personnel from various types of White Guard formations into the Red Army; Obviously, the commission did not find any aggravating circumstances in Grigory Melekhov’s past.

“Let’s go on a folk march near Kyiv,” continues Prokhor. This, as always, is historically accurate. Indeed, the 14th Cavalry Division was formed only in April 1920 and was largely composed of Cossacks who, like the hero of “Quiet Don,” went over to the Soviet side. It is interesting to note that the division commander was the famous A. Parkhomenko. In April, the First Cavalry was transferred to Ukraine in connection with the beginning of the intervention of lordly Poland. Due to the disruption of railway transport, it was necessary to make a thousand-mile march on horseback. By the beginning of June, the army concentrated for an offensive south of Kyiv, which was then still occupied by the White Poles.

Even the simple-minded Prokhor noticed a striking change in Gregory’s mood at that time: “He changed when he joined the Red Army, he became cheerful, smooth, like a gelding.” And again: “He says, I will serve until I have forgiven my past sins.” Gregory's service started well. According to the same Prokhor, the famous army commander Budyonny himself thanked him for his courage in battle. When they meet, Grigory will tell Prokhor that he later became an assistant regiment commander. He spent the entire campaign against the White Poles in the active army. It is curious that he had to fight in the same places as in 1914 during the Battle of Galicia and in 1916 during the Brusilov breakthrough - in Western Ukraine, on the territory of what is now the Lviv and Volyn regions.

However, even now, in what seems to be the best time for him, Gregory’s fate is still not all rosy. It couldn’t have been otherwise in his broken fate, he himself understands this: “I’m not blind, I saw how the commissar and the communists in the squadron looked at me...” There are no words, the squadron communists not only had a moral right - they had to closely monitor Melekhov; a difficult war was going on, and cases of former officers defecting often occurred. Gregory himself told Mikhail Koshevoy that their entire unit had gone to the Poles... The communists are right, you can’t look into a person’s soul, and Gregory’s biography could not help but arouse suspicion. However, for him, who went over to the side of the Soviets with pure thoughts, this could not but cause feelings of bitterness and resentment, and besides, one must remember his impressionable nature and ardent, straightforward character.

Grigory is not shown at all serving in the Red Army, although it lasted a long time - from April to October 1920. We learn about this time only from indirect information, and even then there is not much of it in the novel. In the fall, Dunyashka received a letter from Grigory, which said that he “was wounded on the Wrangel front and that after recovery he would, in all likelihood, be demobilized.” Later he will tell how he had to participate in battles “when they approached the Crimea.” It is known that the First Cavalry began military operations against Wrangel on October 28 from the Kakhovsky bridgehead. Consequently, Gregory could only be wounded later. The wound, obviously, was not serious, because it did not affect his health in any way. Then, as he expected, he was demobilized. It can be assumed that suspicions against people like Grigory intensified with the transition to the Wrangel front: many Don Cossacks settled in the Crimea behind Perekop, the First Cavalry fought with them - this could influence the command’s decision to demobilize the former Cossack officer Melekhov.

Gregory arrived in Millerovo, as they say, “in late autumn.” Only one thought dominates him: “Gregory dreamed of how he would take off his overcoat and boots at home, put on his spacious boots... and, throwing a homespun jacket over his warm jacket, go to the field.” For several more days he traveled to Tatarskoye by cart and on foot, and when he approached the house at night, snow began to fall. The next day the ground was already covered with the “first blue snow.” Apparently, only at home he learned about his mother’s death - without waiting for him, Vasilisa Ilyinichna died in August. Shortly before this, sister Dunya married Mikhail Koshevoy.

On the very first day after his arrival, towards nightfall, Grigory had a difficult conversation with his former friend and fellow soldier Koshev, who became the chairman of the farm revolutionary committee. Grigory said that he only wanted to work around the house and raise children, that he was mortally tired and wanted nothing more than peace. Mikhail does not believe him, he knows that the area is restless, that the Cossacks are offended by the hardships of the surplus appropriation system, but Grigory is a popular and influential person in this environment. “If some kind of mess happens, you will go over to the Other Side,” Mikhail tells him, and he, from his point of view, has every right to judge so. The conversation ends abruptly: Mikhail orders him to go to Veshenskaya tomorrow morning and register with the Cheka as a former officer.

The next day, Grigory is in Veshki, speaking with representatives of Donchek’s Politburo. He was asked to fill out a questionnaire, asked in detail about his participation in the 1919 uprising, and finally ordered to report back in a week. The situation in the district was complicated by that time by the fact that an anti-Soviet rebellion had broken out on its northern border, in the Voronezh province. He learns from a former colleague, and now squadron commander in Veshenskaya, Fomin, that arrests of former officers are underway in the Upper Don. Gregory understands that the same fate may await him; this worries him extraordinarily; accustomed to risking his life in open battle, not afraid of pain and death, he is desperately afraid of captivity. “I haven’t been in prison for a long time and I’m afraid of prison worse than death,” he says, and at the same time he doesn’t show off or joke at all. For him, a freedom-loving person with a heightened sense of self-worth, accustomed to deciding his own fate, prison must really seem worse than death.

The date of Grigory's call to Donchek can be established quite accurately. This happened on Saturday (for he should have appeared again in a week, and the novel says: “you had to go to Veshenskaya on Saturday”). According to the Soviet calendar of 1920, the first Saturday of December fell on the fourth day. Most likely, it is this Saturday that we should be talking about, since Grigory would hardly have had time to come to Tatarsky a week earlier, and it is doubtful that he would have gotten home from Millerovo (where he found it “late autumn”) almost until mid-December. So, Grigory returned to his native farm on December 3, and was in Donchek for the first time the next day.

He settled with Aksinya with his children. It is noteworthy, however, that when asked by his sister whether he is going to marry her, “He will manage to do so,” Gregory answered vaguely. His soul is heavy; he cannot and does not want to plan his life.

“He spent several days in depressing idleness,” it continues. “I tried to make something on the Aksin farm and immediately felt that I couldn’t do anything.” The uncertainty of the situation oppresses him and the possibility of arrest frightens him. But in his soul he had already made a decision: he would not go to Veshenskaya again, he would hide, although he still did not know where.

Circumstances accelerated the expected course of events. “On Thursday night” (that is, on the night of December 10), Grigory was told by the pale Dunyashka, who came running to him, that Mikhail Koshevoy and “four horsemen from the village” were going to arrest him. Grigory pulled himself together instantly, “he acted as if in battle - hastily but confidently,” kissed his sister, the sleeping children, the crying Aksinya and stepped over the threshold into the cold darkness.

For three weeks he hid with a fellow soldier he knew in the Verkhne-Krivsky farm, then secretly moved to the Gorbatovsky farm, to a distant relative of Aksinya, with whom he lived for another “more than a month.” He has no plans for the future; he lay in the upper room all day long. Sometimes he was overcome by a passionate desire to return to his children, to Aksinya, but he suppressed it. Finally, the owner directly said that he could no longer keep him and advised him to go to the Yagodny farm to hide with his matchmaker. “Late at night” Grigory leaves the farm - and is immediately caught on the road by a horse patrol. It turned out that he fell into the hands of Fomin’s gang, who had recently rebelled against Soviet power.

Here it is necessary to clarify the chronology. So. Grigory left Aksinya’s house on the night of December 10 and then spent about two months in hiding. Consequently, the meeting with the Fominovites should have taken place around February 10. But here there is an obvious mistake in the “internal chronology” of the novel. It's a typo, not an error. For Grigory gets to Fomin around March 10, that is, M. Sholokhov simply “lost” one month.

The uprising of the squadron under the command of Fomin (these are real historical events reflected in the documents of the North Caucasus Military District) began in the village of Veshenskaya in early March 1921. This small anti-Soviet rebellion was one of many phenomena of the same kind that occurred at that time in different parts of the country: the peasantry, dissatisfied with the surplus appropriation system, in some places followed the lead of the Cossacks. Soon the surplus appropriation system was abolished (10th Party Congress, mid-March), which led to the rapid elimination of political banditry. Having failed in an attempt to capture Veshenskaya, Fomin and his gang began to travel around the surrounding villages, in vain inciting the Cossacks to revolt. By the time they met Gregory, they had been wandering for several days. Let us also note that Fomin mentions the famous Kronstadt rebellion: this means that the conversation takes place before March 20, because already on the night of March 18 the rebellion was suppressed.

So Grigory ends up with Fomin, he can no longer wander around the farms, there is nowhere and it’s dangerous, he’s afraid to confess to Veshenskaya. He sadly jokes about his situation: “I have a choice, like in a fairy tale about heroes... Three roads, and not a single one is a guide...” Of course, he doesn’t agree with Fomin’s loud and simply stupid demagoguery about “liberating the Cossacks from the yoke of commissars.” believes, doesn't even take it into account. He just says: “I’m joining your gang,” which terribly offends the petty and smug Fomin. Gregory's plan is simple; somehow survive until the summer, and then, having obtained horses, leave with Aksinya somewhere further and somehow change his hateful life.

Together with the Fominovites, Grigory wanders around the villages of the Verkhnedonsky district. Of course, no “rebellion” is taking place. On the contrary, ordinary bandits secretly desert and surrender - fortunately, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee declared an amnesty for those gang members who voluntarily surrender to the authorities, they even retained their land allotment. Drunkenness and looting flourish in Fominov's motley squad. Grigory decisively demands that Fomin stop offending the population; For some time they obeyed him, but the asocial nature of the gang, naturally, does not change from this.

As an experienced military man, Grigory understood perfectly well that in a collision with a regular cavalry unit of the Red Army, the gang would be completely defeated. And so it happened. On April 18 (this date is given in the novel) near the Ozhogin farm, the Fominovites were unexpectedly attacked. Almost everyone died, only Grigory, Fomin and three others managed to escape. They took refuge on the island and lived hidden for ten days, like animals, without lighting fires. Here a remarkable conversation between Gregory and an officer from the intelligentsia, Kanarin, takes place. Gregory says: “Since the fifteenth year, as I looked at the war enough, I thought that there was no God. None! If there were, I would not have the right to allow people to get into such a mess. We, the front-line soldiers, abolished God and left him to the old men and women. Let them have fun. And there is no finger, and there cannot be a monarchy. The people ended it once and for all.”

“At the end of April,” as the text says, we crossed the Don. Again, aimless wanderings around the villages began, fleeing from Soviet units, waiting for imminent death.

For three days they traveled along the right bank, trying to find Maslen’s gang in order to unite with him, but in vain. Gradually Fomin became surrounded by people again. All sorts of declassed rabble now flocked to him, who had nothing to lose and didn’t care who to serve.

Finally, the favorable moment has come, and one night Grigory lags behind the gang and, with two good horses, hurries to his native farm. This happened at the very end of May - beginning of June 1921. (Earlier in the text it was mentioned about the heavy battle that the gang waged “in mid-May”, then: “in two weeks Fomin made an extensive circle throughout all the villages of the Upper Don.”) Grigory had documents taken from the murdered policeman; he intended to leave with Aksinya to Kuban, leaving the children with his sister for the time being.

That same night he is in his native village. Aksinya quickly got ready for the trip and ran to get Dunyashka. Left alone for a minute, “he hurriedly went to the bed and kissed the children for a long time, and then he remembered Natalya and remembered a lot more from his difficult life and began to cry.” The children never woke up and did not see their father. And Grigory looked at Porlyushka for the last time...

By morning they were eight miles from the farm, hiding in the forest. Grigory, exhausted from the endless marches, fell asleep. Aksinya, happy and full of hope, picked flowers and, “remembering her youth,” wove a beautiful wreath and placed it at Gregory’s head. “We will find our share too!” - she thought that morning.

Grigory intended to move to Morozovskaya (a large village on the Donbass - Tsaritsyn railway). We left at night. We immediately came across a patrol. A rifle bullet hit Aksinya in the left shoulder blade and pierced her chest. She did not utter a groan or a word, and by morning she died in the arms of Gregory, distraught with grief. He buried her right there in a ravine, digging a grave with a saber. It was then that he saw a black sky and a black sun above him... Aksinya was about twenty-nine years old. She died at the very beginning of June 1921.

Having lost his Aksinya, Grigory was sure “that they would not part for long.” His strength and will have left him; he lives as if half asleep. For three days he wandered aimlessly across the steppe. Then he swam across the Don and went to Slashchevskaya Dubrava, where, he knew, deserters lived “settledly”, having taken refuge there since the time of mobilization in the fall of 1920. I wandered through the huge forest for several days until I found them. Consequently, from mid-June he settled with them. Throughout the second half of the year and the beginning of the next, Grigory lived in the forest, during the day he carved spoons and toys from wood, and at night he grieved and cried.

“In the spring,” as it is said in the novel, that is, in March, one of Fominov’s men appeared in the forest, from him Grigory learns that the gang was defeated and its ataman was killed. After that, Grigory walked in the forest for “another week,” then suddenly, unexpectedly for everyone, he got ready and went home. He is advised to wait until May 1, before the expected amnesty, but he doesn’t even listen. He has only one thought, one goal: “If only I could go around my native places, show off to the kids, then I could die.”

And so he crossed the Don “on the blue March ice eaten away by the rosteppel” and moved towards the house. He meets his son, who, recognizing him, lowers his eyes. He hears the last sad news in his life: his daughter Polyushka died of scarlet fever last fall (the girl was barely six years old). This is the seventh death of loved ones that Gregory has experienced: daughter Tanya, brother Peter, wife, father, mother, Aksinya, daughter Polya...

So, on a March morning in 1922, the biography of Grigory Panteleevich Melekhov, a Cossack from the village of Veshenskaya, thirty years old, Russian, and by social status - a middle peasant, ends.

Cossack Grigory Melekhov is one of the central characters of the historical epic novel by Mikhail Sholokhov “Quiet Don”. The storyline of this work is based on his life path, the formation and formation of Melekhov as a person, his love, successes and disappointments, as well as the search for truth and justice.

Difficult life trials befall this simple Don Cossack, because he finds himself in a whirlwind of bloody events of the early twentieth century: the First World War, revolution, civil war in Russia. The millstones of war into which the main character finds himself “grind” and cripple his soul, forever leaving their bloody mark.

Characteristics of the main character

(Pyotr Glebov as Grigory Melekhov, still from the film "Quiet Don", USSR 1958)

Grigory Panteleevich Melekhov is the most ordinary Don Cossack. We first meet him at the age of twenty in his native Tatar village of the Cossack village of Veshenskaya, located on the banks of the Don River. The guy is neither from a rich nor from a poor family, one might say he is average, but he lives in prosperity, he has a younger sister Dunya and an older brother Peter. A quarter Turkish through his grandmother, Melekhov has an attractive and slightly wild appearance: dark skin, a hooked nose, jet-black curly hair, expressive almond-shaped eyes.

At first, Grigory is shown to us as an ordinary guy living on a farm. He has certain household responsibilities and is immersed in his worries and daily activities. He doesn’t particularly worry about his life; he lives as the traditions and customs of the Cossack village dictate. Even the violent passion that flared up between the young Cossack and his married neighbor Aksinya does not change anything in his life. At the insistence of his father, he marries the unloved Natalya Korshunova, and, as is customary among young Cossacks, begins preparations for military service. It turns out that during this period of his quiet and measured life, he weakly and mechanically fulfills what is destined for him, and does not decide anything special in his life.

(Melekhov at war)

However, everything changes when Melekhov finds himself on the battlefields of the First World War. Here he shows himself as a brave and brave warrior, a defender of the Fatherland, for which he receives the well-deserved rank of officer. However, in his soul Melekhov is the most ordinary worker, accustomed to working on the land, taking care of his farm, but war comes and not a shovel, but a gun is placed in his hands, calloused from work, and he is ordered to destroy the enemy. For Gregory, the first killed Austrian came as a real shock, and his death was a tragedy that he experienced again and again. He begins to be tormented by questions about the meaning of the war, why people kill each other and who needs it, what is his personal role in this bloody chaos? So he begins to grow up and live a more conscious life. Little by little his soul hardens and is tempered by difficult trials, but still in its depths he retains both conscience and humanity.

Life throws him from one extreme to another; in the civil war he fights either on the side of the whites, or joins the Budennovsky detachment, or in bandit formations. He no longer just goes with the flow, but confidently and consciously seeks his path in life. Distinguished by his sharp mind and observation, the “honest to the core” Melekhov immediately sees the deception and empty promises of the Bolsheviks, the bestial cruelty of the bandits and cannot in any way understand the “truth” of the officer-nobles. Only one thing matters to him in this crazy chaos of a fratricidal war, this is his father's house and his usual, peaceful work in his native land.

(Evgeny Tkachuk plays Grigory Melekhov, still from the film "Quiet Don", Russia 2015)

As a result, he escapes from Fomin’s disgusted gang and dreams of returning home and living a quiet life with Aksinya, without killing anyone, but simply working on his land. It is precisely for her that he is ready to shed the last drop of blood, to kill anyone who encroaches on her. This is how the war once changed an ordinary hard worker, who keenly felt the beauty of the surrounding nature and sincerely felt sorry for the duckling he accidentally killed.

On the way home, a huge emotional shock awaits him: Aksinya dies from a bullet, his love collapses, his hope for a happy and free life dies. Crushed and unhappy, he finally reaches the threshold of his home, where he is met by his surviving son and the land, waiting for its owner.

The image of the hero in the work

(Gregory with his son)

The whole truth of that terrible and bloody time in the history of the Cossack Don was shown by the outstanding Soviet writer Mikhail Sholokhov in the image of a simple Cossack Grigory Melekhov. All his contradictions, complex spiritual tossings and experiences are described by the author with amazing psychological authenticity and historical validity.

It is impossible to say unequivocally that Melekhov is a negative or a positive hero. Sometimes his actions are terrible, and sometimes they are noble and generous. A simple Cossack and hard worker, accustomed to working from morning to night, he becomes a hostage to those bloody historical events that the entire Russian people experienced. The war broke and maimed him, took away his closest and dearest people, forced him to do terrible things, but he did not break and managed to retain in himself those particles of goodness and light that were once in him. In the end, he understands that the most important value for a person is his family, home and native land, and weapons, murder and death cause only disgust and horror in him.

The image of Melekhov, a simple “peasant farmer in uniform,” embodies the long-suffering fate of the entire simple Russian people, and his difficult life path is a path of struggle, quest, tragic mistakes and bitter experience, and finally knowledge of the truth and oneself.