“The Fate of Man” by Sholokhov in abbreviation will remind the basis of the events of the story.
"The Fate of Man" in abbreviation
The man's name was Andrey Sokolov. He was originally from Voronezh province. During the Civil War he was in the Red Army, then went to serve in Kuban. Andrei's parents died of hunger, but he survived. Upon his return, he sold the house and moved to Voronezh. There he worked as a carpenter, then as a mechanic. Soon he married a very nice girl, Irina, an orphan from an orphanage. They loved each other, raised a son and two daughters. From 1929 he worked as a truck driver. When the war began, he was drafted.
The first post-war winter... Moving across the Don to the village of Bukanskaya, the narrator got stuck in impassable mud. The snow was melting, and the river overflowed for a whole kilometer. Together with some driver, he swam across the river, sat down on a fence, and wanted to have a smoke, but the cigarettes got wet during the crossing. The driver had already set off back and promised to return in two hours. So he was left alone, bored. Soon a man approached him with a child of about five or six years old and a conversation began between them. The man was a truck driver and served at the front during the war. Noticing the wet cigarettes, he treated the narrator to his tobacco and shared a story from his life.
His name was Andrey Sokolov. He was a native of the Voronezh province. During the Civil War he was in the Red Army, then went to serve in Kuban. Andrei's parents died of hunger, but he survived. Upon his return, he sold the house and moved to Voronezh. There he worked as a carpenter, then as a mechanic. Soon he married a very nice girl, Irina, an orphan from an orphanage. They loved each other, raised a son and two daughters. From 1929 he worked as a truck driver. When the war began, he was drafted.
The whole family saw off Andrei to the front. If the children still somehow held on, then his wife Irina was completely upset, saying that perhaps this was their last meeting. At the front he was a driver, he wrote infrequently, since there was little good, the Russians retreated more often then. He was slightly wounded twice. In 1942, he found himself near Lozovenki and had the imprudence to be captured while transporting ammunition for his own people. The car was shot down on the way, when he woke up, he was surrounded by Germans. He didn’t hide, he wanted to die with dignity, but they didn’t kill him, they just took his boots and sent him back. After some time, a column of prisoners caught up with him. We spent the night in the church. Several things happened overnight important events. Firstly, some military doctor set his dislocated arm. Secondly, he himself saved a platoon commander who was about to be handed over to the Germans as a communist. Well, thirdly, the Nazis shot a believer who asked to leave the church to go to the toilet.
The next day they shot a Jew, perhaps that same military doctor, and three more Russians who looked like Jews. The column of prisoners was led further west. Sokolov thought about escaping more than once, but he never had the opportunity. Somehow he managed to escape while the guards were distracted, but on the way he was caught up by Germans with shepherd dogs. He spent a month in a punishment cell, and then was sent to Germany, where he spent two years. More than once I was on the verge of death. So, one day he was summoned by the camp commandant Müller for careless statements about the Germans. The commandant spoke Russian perfectly, so there was no need for a translator. All the camp authorities were in the office. Müller was going to take him out into the yard and shoot him, but before his death he offered to drink vodka for the victory of German weapons and eat bread and lard. Sokolov refused, saying that he doesn’t drink. After this, the camp commandant told him: “That's it, Sokolov, you are a real Russian soldier. You are a brave soldier. I am also a soldier and respect worthy opponents. I won't shoot you."
Moreover, they captured Stalingrad entirely, so the Germans had a joyful day; they did not want to spoil their mood. Müller let him go to the block, and in addition gave him a whole loaf of bread with a piece of lard. He returned pretty tipsy. He told his surprised comrades what had happened and shared food with them.
In 1944, the situation at the front changed in favor Soviet army. The prisoners were already treated better and given more feasible work. Andrei was the driver of a German engineer major who treated him well. One day in June, on the way to the city, Sokolov stunned the major, took his pistol and fled. As luck would have it, machine gunners jumped out of the dugout and started shooting, and on the other side they started firing at their own people. The windshield was broken and the radiator was shot through. But then a forest appeared above the lake. Our guys rushed to the car, and Andrei got out of it and began to kiss his native soil, so much so that he could hardly breathe. He was immediately sent to the hospital to receive treatment and gain strength. He immediately wrote to his wife from there, but in response he received a letter from his neighbor Ivan Timofeevich. It said that in 1942 a bomb hit his house, his wife and daughters were killed, and his son was not at home.
As soon as Sokolov was discharged, he immediately went to Voronezh. I wanted to look at the crater that remained from his house and at the place where his relatives died. Then he went to the station and returned to his division the same day. Three months later, his son Anatoly was found, about which the same neighbor wrote to him. It turns out that the son studied at the artillery school and was famous for his good mathematical abilities. After graduating from college with honors, he quickly received the rank of captain and commanded a battery. He had many awards and medals. In May 1945, Anatoly was killed by a German sniper. When Andrei was demobilized, he did not want to return to Voronezh, but went to visit a friend in Uryupinsk. A friend and his wife were childless and lived in a small house. A friend had a disability, but he worked as a driver. So, they sheltered him.
Soon Sokolov met the orphan Vanya. The boy’s mother died during the evacuation, and his father died at the front. Andrey picked up Vanyushka and told him that he was his father. He believed and was very happy. So they lived in Uryupinsk. A friend's wife helped look after him. Soon a strange surprise happened to Sokolov. One day in November, he was driving through the mud on the road, the car skidded, and he hit a cow. The women started screaming, the traffic inspector took away his driver's book, and the cow, as if nothing had happened, got up and started to gallop. In the winter I had to work as a carpenter, and then a driver friend from the Kashar region invited me to his place. He said that he might have to work as a carpenter for six months, and then they would give him a new book. So he and his son Vanyusha were sent to Kashary.
If this accident with the cow had not happened, Sokolov would still not have stayed long in Uryupinsk. Melancholy did not allow him to stay in one place for a long time. He hoped to calm down when Vanyusha grew up and went to school. Then maybe it will settle somewhere. Here the story came to an end, as a boat approached for Sokolov and his son. The narrator warmly said goodbye to these strangers, but in a couple of hours they became close people to him. Two orphaned people, two grains of sand in a huge world, he thought. Where will fate take them now?
Article menu:
Mikhail Sholokhov’s sad story “The Fate of a Man” touches the heartstrings. Written by the author in 1956, it reveals the naked truth about the atrocities of the Great Patriotic War and what Andrei Sokolov, a Soviet soldier, experienced in German captivity. But first things first.
The main characters of the story:
Andrei Sokolov is a Soviet soldier who had to experience a lot of grief during the Great Patriotic War. But, despite adversity, even captivity, where the hero suffered brutal abuse from the Nazis, he survived. The smile of an adopted orphan boy shone like a ray of light in the darkness of hopelessness, when the hero of the story lost his entire family in the war.
We invite you to read Mikhail Sholokhov’s story “They Fought for the Motherland,” which talks about the perseverance and courage of Soviet soldiers during the Great Patriotic War
Andrei's wife Irina: a meek, calm woman, a real wife, loving her husband, who knew how to console and support in difficult times. When Andrei left for the front, I was in great despair. She died along with her two children when a shell hit the house. 
Meeting at the crossing
Mikhail Sholokhov writes his work in the first person. It was the first post-war spring, and the narrator had to get to the Bukanovskaya station, which was sixty kilometers away, at any cost. Swimming along with the driver of the car to the other side of the river called Epanka, he began to wait for the driver, who had left for two hours.
Suddenly, a man with a little boy moving towards the crossing attracted attention. They stopped, said hello, and a casual conversation ensued, in which Andrei Sokolov - that was the name of the new acquaintance - told about his bitter life during the war years.
Andrey's difficult fate
Whatever kind of torment a person endures terrible years confrontation between peoples.
The Great Patriotic War maimed and wounded human bodies and souls, especially those who had to be in German captivity and drink the bitter cup of inhuman suffering. One of these was Andrei Sokolov.
Life of Andrei Sokolov before the Great Patriotic War
Fierce troubles befell the guy since his youth: his parents and sister died of hunger, loneliness, the war in the Red Army. But at that difficult time, Andrei’s clever wife, meek, quiet and affectionate, became a joy for Andrei.
And life seemed to be getting better: work as a driver, good earnings, three smart children who were excellent students (they even wrote about the eldest, Anatoly, in the newspaper). And finally, a cozy two-room house, which they built with the money they had saved just before the war... It suddenly fell on Soviet soil and turned out to be much worse than the previous, civil one. And Andrei Sokolov’s happiness, achieved with such difficulty, was broken into small fragments.
We invite you to familiarize yourself with the biography of Mikhail Sholokhov, whose works are a reflection of the historical upheavals that the whole country was then experiencing.
Farewell to family
Andrei went to the front. His wife Irina and three children saw him off in tears. The wife was especially heartbroken: “My dear... Andryusha... we won’t see each other... you and I... anymore... in this... world.”
“Until my death,” Andrei recalls, “I will not forgive myself for pushing her away then.” He remembers everything, although he wants to forget: the white lips of the desperate Irina, who whispered something when they boarded the train; and the children, who, no matter how hard they tried, could not smile through their tears... And the train carried Andrei further and further, towards military everyday life and bad weather.
First years at the front
At the front, Andrei worked as a driver. Two minor wounds could not be compared with what he had to endure later, when, seriously wounded, he was captured by the Nazis.
In captivity
What kind of abuse did you have to endure from the Germans along the way: they hit you on the head with a rifle butt, and in front of Andrei they shot the wounded, and then they drove everyone into the church to spend the night. I would suffer even more main character, if there had not been a military doctor among the prisoners, who offered his help and put his dislocated arm in place. There was immediate relief.
Preventing Betrayal
Among the prisoners was a man who planned the next morning, when the question was asked whether there were commissars, Jews and communists among the prisoners, to hand over his platoon commander to the Germans. I was very afraid for my life. Andrei, having heard the conversation about this, was not taken aback and strangled the traitor. And subsequently I didn’t regret it one bit.
The escape
From the time of his captivity, Andrei became more and more obsessed with the idea of escaping. And now a real opportunity presented itself to accomplish the plan. The prisoners were digging graves for their own dead and, seeing that the guards were distracted, Andrei quietly escaped. Unfortunately, the attempt was unsuccessful: after four days of searching, he was returned, the dogs were released, he was tortured for a long time, he was put in a punishment cell for a month and, finally, he was sent to Germany.
In a foreign land
To say that life in Germany was terrible is an understatement. Andrei, listed as prisoner number 331, was constantly beaten, fed very poorly, and forced to work hard at the Stone Quarry. And once, for reckless words about the Germans, uttered inadvertently in the barracks, he was summoned to Herr Lagerfuehrer. However, Andrei was not afraid: he confirmed what was said earlier: “four cubic meters of production is a lot...” They wanted to shoot him first, and would have carried out the sentence, but, seeing the courage of the Russian soldier who was not afraid of death, the commandant respected him, changed his mind and released him. barracks, even at the same time supplying food.
Release from captivity
While working as a driver for the Nazis (he drove a German major), Andrei Sokolov began to think about a second escape, which could be more successful than the previous one. And so it happened.
On the road in the direction of Trosnitsa, having changed into a German uniform, Andrei stopped a car with a major sleeping in the back seat and stunned the German. And then he turned to where the Russians were fighting.
Among their
Finally, finding himself on the territory among Soviet soldiers, Andrei was able to breathe easy. He missed his native land so much that he fell to her and kissed her. At first, his own people did not recognize him, but then they realized that it was not a Fritz who had gotten lost at all, but his own, dear, Voronezh resident had escaped from captivity, and even brought important documents with him. They fed him, bathed him in the bathhouse, gave him uniform, but the colonel refused his request to take him into the rifle unit: it was necessary to receive medical treatment.
Terrible news
So Andrei ended up in the hospital. He was well fed, cared for, and after German captivity life might seem almost good, if not for one “but”. The soldier's soul yearned for his wife and children, he wrote a letter home, waited for news from them, but still no answer. And suddenly - terrible news from a neighbor, a carpenter, Ivan Timofeevich. He writes that neither Irina nor his younger daughter and son are alive. Their hut was hit by a heavy shell... And after that the elder Anatoly volunteered for the front. My heart sank from burning pain. After being discharged from the hospital, Andrei decided to go himself to the place where his native home. The sight turned out to be so depressing - a deep crater and waist-deep weeds - that the ex-husband and father of the family could not stay there for a minute. I asked to go back to the division.
First joy, then sorrow
Among the impenetrable darkness of despair, a ray of hope flashed - the eldest son of Andrei Sokolov, Anatoly, sent a letter from the front. It turns out that he graduated from an artillery school - and has already received the rank of captain, “commands a battery of forty-fives, has six orders and medals...”
How happy this unexpected news made my father! How many dreams awoke in him: his son would return from the front, get married, and his grandfather would nurse his long-awaited grandchildren. Alas, this short-term happiness was shattered: on May 9, just on Victory Day, a German sniper killed Anatoly. And it was terrible, unbearably painful for my father to see him dead, in a coffin!
Sokolov's new son is a boy named Vanya
It was as if something had snapped inside Andrey. And he would not have lived at all, but simply existed, if he had not then adopted a little six-year-old boy, whose mother and father had both died in the war.
In Uryupinsk (due to the misfortunes that befell him, the main character of the story did not want to return to Voronezh), a childless couple took in Andrei. He worked as a truck driver, sometimes transporting bread. Several times, stopping at a teahouse for a snack, Sokolov saw a hungry orphan boy - and his heart grew attached to the child. I decided to take it for myself. “Hey, Vanyushka! Get in the car quickly, I’ll take you to the elevator, and from there we’ll come back here and have lunch,” Andrei called the baby.
- Do you know who I am? - asked, having learned from the boy that he was an orphan.
- Who? – Vanya asked.
- I am your father!
At that moment, such joy gripped both the newly acquired son and Sokolov himself, such bright feelings that he realized former soldier: did the right thing. And he will no longer be able to live without Vanya. Since then they have never been apart - neither day nor night. Andrei's petrified heart became softer with the arrival of this mischievous baby into his life.
Only he didn’t have to stay long in Uryupinsk - another friend invited the hero to the Kashira district. So now they walk with their son on Russian soil, because Andrei is not used to staying in one place.
Spring. Upper Don. The narrator and a friend rode on a chaise drawn by two horses to the village of Bukanovskaya. It was difficult to travel - the snow began to melt, the mud was impassable. And here near the Mokhovsky farm there is the Elanka River. Small in the summer, now it has spilled over a whole kilometer. Together with a driver who has appeared from nowhere, the narrator swims across the river on some dilapidated boat. The driver drove a Willis car parked in the barn to the river, got into the boat and went back. He promised to return in 2 hours.
The narrator sat down on a fallen fence and wanted to smoke - but the cigarettes got wet during the crossing. He would have been bored for two hours in silence, alone, without food, water, booze or smoking - when a man with a child came up to him and said hello. The man (this was the main character of the further story, Andrei Sokolov) mistook the narrator for a driver - because of the car standing next to him and came up to talk with a colleague: he himself was a driver, only in a truck. The narrator did not upset his interlocutor by revealing his true profession (which remained unknown to the reader) and lied about what the authorities were waiting for.
Sokolov replied that he was in no hurry, but wanted to take a smoke break. Smoking alone is boring. Seeing the cigarettes laid out to dry, he treated the narrator to his own tobacco.
They lit a cigarette and started talking. The narrator was embarrassed because of the petty deception, so he listened more, and Sokolov spoke.
Pre-war life of Sokolov
At first my life was ordinary. I myself am a native of the Voronezh province, born in 1900. IN civil war was in the Red Army, in the Kikvidze division. In the hungry year of twenty-two, he went to Kuban to fight the kulaks, and that’s why he survived. And the father, mother and sister died of hunger at home. One left. Rodney - even if you roll a ball - nowhere, no one, not a single soul. Well, a year later he returned from Kuban, sold his little house, and went to Voronezh. At first he worked in a carpentry artel, then he went to a factory and learned to be a mechanic. Soon he got married. The wife was brought up in an orphanage. Orphan. I got a good girl! Quiet, cheerful, obsequious and smart, no match for me. Since childhood, she learned how much a pound is worth, maybe this affected her character. Looking from the outside, she wasn’t all that distinguished, but I wasn’t looking at her from the side, but point-blank. And for me there was nothing more beautiful and desirable than her, there was not in the world and there never will be!
You come home from work tired, and sometimes angry as hell. No, she will not be rude to you in response to a rude word. Affectionate, quiet, doesn’t know where to sit you, struggles to prepare a sweet piece for you even with little income. You look at her and move away with your heart, and after a little you hug her and say: “Sorry, dear Irinka, I was rude to you. You see, my work isn’t going well these days.” And again we have peace, and I have peace of mind.
Then he talked again about his wife, how she loved him and did not reproach him even when he had to drink too much with his comrades. But soon they had children - a son, and then two daughters. Then the drinking was over - unless I allowed myself a glass of beer on the day off.
In 1929 he became interested in cars. He became a truck driver. Lived well and made good. And then there is war.
War and Captivity
The whole family accompanied him to the front. The children kept themselves under control, but the wife was very upset - in last time they say see you, Andryusha... In general, it’s already sickening, and then my wife is burying me alive. In upset feelings he went to the front.
During the war he was also a driver. Lightly wounded twice.
In May 1942 he found himself near Lozovenki. The Germans were going on the offensive, and he volunteered to go to the front line to carry ammunition to our artillery battery. It didn’t deliver the ammunition - the shell fell very close, and the blast wave overturned the car. Sokolov lost consciousness. When I woke up, I realized that I was behind enemy lines: the battle was thundering somewhere behind, and tanks were walking past. Pretended to be dead. When he decided that everyone had passed, he raised his head and saw six fascists with machine guns walking straight towards him. There was nowhere to hide, so I decided to die with dignity - I stood up, although I could barely stand on my feet, and looked at them. One of the soldiers wanted to shoot him, but the other held him back. They took off Sokolov's boots and sent him on foot to the west.
After some time, a column of prisoners from the same division as himself caught up with the barely walking Sokolov. I walked on with them.
We spent the night in the church. Three noteworthy events happened overnight:
a) A certain person, who introduced himself as a military doctor, set Sokolov’s arm, which was dislocated during a fall from a truck.
b) Sokolov saved from death a platoon commander unfamiliar to him, whom his colleague Kryzhnev was going to hand over to the Nazis as a communist. Sokolov strangled the traitor.
c) The Nazis shot a believer who was bothering them with requests to be let out of the church to go to the toilet.
The next morning they began to ask who was the commander, the commissar, the communist. There were no traitors, so the communists, commissars and commanders remained alive. They shot a Jew (perhaps it was a military doctor - at least that’s how the case is presented in the film) and three Russians who looked like Jews. They drove the prisoners further west.
All the way to Poznan, Sokolov thought about escape. Finally, an opportunity presented itself: the prisoners were sent to dig graves, the guards were distracted - he pulled to the east. On the fourth day, the Nazis and their shepherd dogs caught up with him, and Sokolov’s dogs almost killed him. He was kept in a punishment cell for a month, then sent to Germany.
“They sent me everywhere during my two years of captivity! During this time he traveled through half of Germany: he was in Saxony, he worked at a silicate plant, and in the Ruhr region he rolled out coal at a mine, and in Bavaria he made a living on earthworks, and he was in Thuringia, and the devil, wherever he had to, according to German walk the earth"
On the brink of death
In camp B-14 near Dresden, Sokolov and others worked in a stone quarry. He managed to return one day after work to say, in the barracks, among other prisoners:
They need four cubic meters of production, but for the grave of each of us, one cubic meter through the eyes is enough
Someone reported these words to the authorities and the commandant of the camp, Müller, summoned him to his office. Muller knew Russian perfectly, so he communicated with Sokolov without an interpreter.
“I will do you a great honor, now I will personally shoot you for these words. It’s inconvenient here, let’s go into the yard and sign there.” “Your will,” I tell him. He stood there, thought, and then threw the pistol on the table and poured a full glass of schnapps, took a piece of bread, put a slice of bacon on it and gave it all to me and said: “Before you die, Russian Ivan, drink to the victory of German weapons.”
I put the glass on the table, put down the snack and said: “Thank you for the treat, but I don’t drink.” He smiles: “Would you like to drink to our victory? In that case, drink to your death.” What did I have to lose? “I will drink to my death and deliverance from torment,” I tell him. With that, he took the glass and in two gulps -
but I poured it into myself, but didn’t touch the snack, politely wiped my lips with my palm and said: “Thank you for the treat. I’m ready, Herr Commandant, come and sign me.”
But he looks attentively and says: “At least have a bite before you die.” I answer him: “I don’t have a snack after the first glass.” He pours a second one and gives it to me. I drank the second one and again I don’t touch the snack, I’m trying to be brave, I think: “At least I’ll get drunk before I go out into the yard and give up my life.” The commandant raised his white eyebrows high and asked: “Why aren’t you having a snack, Russian Ivan? Do not be shy!" And I told him: “Sorry, Herr Commandant, I’m not used to having a snack even after the second glass.” He puffed out his cheeks, snorted, and then burst into laughter and through his laughter said something quickly in German: apparently, he was translating my words to his friends. They also laughed, moved their chairs, turned their faces towards me and already, I noticed, they were looking at me differently, seemingly softer.
The commandant pours me a third glass, and his hands are shaking with laughter. I drank this glass, took a small bite of bread, and put the rest on the table. I wanted to show them, the damned one, that although I was dying of hunger, I was not going to choke on their handouts, that I had my own, Russian dignity and pride, and that they did not turn me into a beast, no matter how hard they tried.
After this, the commandant became serious in appearance, adjusted two iron crosses on his chest, came out from behind the table unarmed and said: “That’s what, Sokolov, you are a real Russian soldier. You are a brave soldier. I am also a soldier and respect worthy opponents. I won't shoot you. In addition, today our valiant troops reached the Volga and completely captured Stalingrad. This is a great joy for us, and therefore I generously give you life. Go to your block, and this is for your courage,” and from the table he hands me a small loaf of bread and a piece of lard.
Kharchi divided Sokolov with his comrades - everyone equally.
Release from captivity
In 1944, Sokolov was assigned as a driver. He drove a German major engineer. He treated him well, sometimes sharing food.
On the morning of June twenty-ninth, my major orders him to be taken out of town, in the direction of Trosnitsa. There he supervised the construction of fortifications. We left.
On the way, Sokolov stunned the major, took the pistol and drove the car straight to where the earth was humming, where the battle was going on.
The machine gunners jumped out of the dugout, and I deliberately slowed down so that they could see that the major was coming. But they started shouting, waving their arms, saying you can’t go there, but I didn’t seem to understand, I threw on the gas and went at full eighty. Until they came to their senses and began firing machine guns at the car, and I was already in no man’s land between the craters, weaving like a hare.
Here the Germans are hitting me from behind, and here their outlines are firing towards me from machine guns. The windshield was pierced in four places, the radiator was pierced by bullets... But now there was a forest above the lake, our people were running towards the car, and I jumped into this forest, opened the door, fell to the ground and kissed it, and I couldn’t breathe...
They sent Sokolov to the hospital for treatment and food. In the hospital I immediately wrote a letter to my wife. Two weeks later I received a response from neighbor Ivan Timofeevich. In June 1942, a bomb hit his house, killing his wife and both daughters. My son was not at home. Having learned about the death of his relatives, he volunteered for the front.
Sokolov was discharged from the hospital and received a month's leave. A week later I reached Voronezh. He looked at the crater in the place where his house was - and that same day he went to the station. Back to the division.
Son Anatoly
But three months later, joy flashed through me, like the sun from behind a cloud: Anatoly was found. He sent a letter to me at the front, apparently from another front. I learned my address from a neighbor, Ivan Timofeevich. It turns out that he first ended up in an artillery school; This is where his talents for mathematics came in handy. A year later he graduated from college with honors, went to the front and now writes that he received the rank of captain, commands a battery of “forty-fives”, has six orders and medals.
After the war
Andrey was demobilized. Where to go? I didn’t want to go to Voronezh.
I remembered that my friend lived in Uryupinsk, demobilized in the winter due to injury - he once invited me to his place - I remembered and went to Uryupinsk.
My friend and his wife were childless and lived in their own house on the edge of the city. Although he had a disability, he worked as a driver in an auto company, and I got a job there too. I stayed with a friend and they gave me shelter.
Near the teahouse he met a homeless boy, Vanya. His mother died in an air raid (during the evacuation, probably), his father died at the front. One day, on the way to the elevator, Sokolov took Vanyushka with him and told him that he was his father. The boy believed and was very happy. He adopted Vanyushka. A friend's wife helped look after the child.
Maybe we could have lived with him for another year in Uryupinsk, but in November a sin happened to me: I was driving through the mud, in one farm my car skidded, and then a cow turned up, and I knocked her down. Well, as you know, the women started screaming, people came running, and the traffic inspector was right there. He took my driver’s book from me, no matter how much I asked him to have mercy. The cow got up, lifted her tail and started galloping along the alleys, and I lost my book. I worked as a carpenter for the winter, and then got in touch with a friend, also a colleague - he works as a driver in your region, in the Kasharsky district - and he invited me to his place. He writes that if you work for six months in carpentry, then in our region they will give you a new book. So my son and I are going on a business trip to Kashary.
Yes, how can I tell you, and if I hadn’t had this accident with the cow, I would still have left Uryupinsk. Melancholy does not allow me to stay in one place for a long time. When my Vanyushka grows up and I have to send him to school, then maybe I’ll calm down and settle down in one place
Then the boat arrived and the narrator said goodbye to his unexpected acquaintance. And he began to think about the story he had heard.
Two orphaned people, two grains of sand, thrown into foreign lands by a military hurricane of unprecedented force... What awaits them ahead? And I would like to think that this Russian man, a man of unbending will, will endure and grow up next to his father’s shoulder, one who, having matured, will be able to endure everything, overcome everything on his way, if his Motherland calls him to it.
With heavy sadness I looked after them... Maybe everything would have turned out well if we parted, but Vanyushka, walking away a few steps and braiding his scanty legs, turned to face me as he walked and waved his pink little hand. And suddenly, as if a soft but clawed paw squeezed my heart, I hastily turned away. No, it’s not only in their sleep that elderly men, who have turned gray during the years of war, cry. They cry in reality. The main thing here is to be able to turn away in time. The most important thing here is not to hurt the child’s heart, so that he doesn’t see a burning and stingy man’s tear running down your cheek...
Good retelling? Tell your friends on social networks and let them prepare for the lesson too!
The story “The Fate of a Man,” written by Sholokhov, is Andrei Sokolov’s story about military and post-war life, which the narrator heard from Andrei himself on the Upper Don. This work included in school curriculum, so we provide a summary below.
The first spring after the war began on the Upper Don. A flood came, due to which all the roads turned into washed-out mud, which was impossible to drive through. At this time, the narrator needed to get to the Bukanovskaya station; it was about sixty kilometers to get there. Together with his driver, he swam across the Elanka River using a boat that had become full of holes from time to time. The driver sailed away again, and the author remained waiting for him. The driver said he would be back in two hours. The narrator took out the cigarettes that had gotten wet during the crossing and put them in the sun to dry.
Soon a man approached him, with a little boy with him. The man said hello and asked when the boat would arrive. We decided to have a smoke break together; the author wanted to ask where his new acquaintance was going to go in such off-road conditions, but the man got ahead of him. He started talking about the war. This is how the narrator learned the life story of this man, whose name was Andrei Sokolov.
Life before the war
Difficulties in Andrei's life arose even before war time. In his youth he went to Kuban, where he worked for wealthy peasants. It was in the hungry year of nineteen twenty-two, a difficult year for the whole country. Andrei's parents and sister died of hunger; he was left alone. A year later, he came to his native place, sold the house and took Irina, also an orphan, as his wife. She loved her husband, did not grumble and listened to him. Soon they had children: son Anatoly, daughters Olyushka and Nastenka. The family lived well, even built their own house. Previously, Andrei used to drink after work in the company of friends, but now such cases have stopped: he was in a hurry to see his wife and children. In 1929, he left the factory and began working as a driver. The next ten years flew by happily and unnoticed. Suddenly the war began; Sokolov received a summons, and he went to the front.
War time
The whole family accompanied Andrei to the war. It seemed to Irina that she was seeing her husband for the last time in her life.
On assignment, Andrei was appointed military driver. Soon, during an enemy offensive, he received a task: to take ammunition to our soldiers to a hot spot. But Andrei failed to do this: the truck was blown up by the Nazis. However, Andrei survived; Having come to his senses, he realized that he was surrounded by Germans. They did not kill him, and he was captured.
At night, the prisoners were driven to spend the night in a church. One of them was a military doctor. He asked each soldier if he had any wounds. Andrei's arm was dislocated: this happened during the explosion. The doctor set his arm.
At night, one of the prisoners asked the Nazis to let him out to relieve himself, but was refused: it was forbidden to let anyone out. Then the man began to cry, saying that he, as a Christian, could not insult the holy temple. The guards shot him, and with him several other soldiers. After that, the church became quiet. After some time, people began to talk: who was captured how, who was from which city. Sokolov heard what the prisoners next to him were saying: soldier Kryzhnev threatened the platoon commander to tell the Germans that he was a communist. The platoon commander asked Kryzhnev not to hand him over, but he refused. Andrei became very angry and killed Kryzhnev. Andrei took the life of a person for the first time; he felt disgusted in his soul, as if he were “strangling some creeping reptile.”
Camp work
The next morning, the Germans began to ask which of the prisoners was a Jew, which was a communist, and which was a commissar. However, there were no such people, just as there were no those who could extradite their compatriot. Soon the prisoners were brought to the camp. Andrey began to develop an escape plan; after some time he managed to escape from the camp. He covered forty kilometers when he was overtaken by a chase with dogs. The dogs tore all his clothes and bit him until he bled. Andrei was put in a punishment cell for a month, and after that there were two years of hard work, hunger and torment.
Sokolov was assigned to work in a stone quarry; there it was necessary to chisel the stones by hand. Many prisoners died from hard work. One day Andrei could not restrain himself and said: “They need four cubic meters of production, but for the grave of each of us, one cubic meter through the eyes is enough.” There was a traitor among the workers and he conveyed these words to the fascists. The next day Sokolov was summoned to the authorities. The commandant of the Bloc, Müller, invited him to drink to the German victory. Andrey refused; the commandant with a smile ordered him to drink to his death. Sokolov complied, drinking to rid himself of his suffering. But he didn’t touch the snack; after the second glass, he also refused to have a snack: “Sorry, Herr Commandant, I’m not used to having a snack even after the second glass.” The Nazis poured him a third glass and decided to save Andrey’s life; he behaved like a man devoted to his homeland. He was also given a piece of bacon and a loaf of bread. Returning to the block, Sokolov divided the food among all the prisoners.
The escape
In 1944, Andrei was assigned to work in the mines in the Ruhr region. There, the Nazis accidentally learned that Sokolov used to be a driver. They sent him to the office, where he became the major's personal driver German army. Soon this major needed to go to the front line. Andrei again began to think about escape; Once, having met a drunken fascist, Sokolov took his uniform and hid it in the car along with a weight and a telephone wire. Everything was ready to put the plan into action.
A few days later, the major ordered Andrei to take him out of town. On the way, he dozed off, and then Sokolov stunned the German with a weight, and then changed into the prepared German uniform and went towards the front. This time he managed to get to his people. Andrei was greeted as a hero and promised to be nominated for a state award. He was also given a month off.
First, Andrei was admitted to the hospital and from there he immediately wrote a letter to Irina. Two weeks later, an answer came, but not from his wife, but from a neighbor, Ivan Timofeevich: Sokolov’s wife and daughters died two years ago when the Nazis blew up their house. Son Anatoly then went to the front.
Sokolov went to Voronezh, looked at the place where his house used to be, and immediately returned back to the division.
Waiting to meet my son
For a long time Andrei could not come to terms with the loss of his dearest people. He dreamed of seeing his son. From his letters, Sokolov learned that Anatoly is now a commander, awarded many awards. Andrei was proud of his son, and imagined that when he returned from the front, he would become a grandfather and raise his grandchildren.
Soviet troops at this time were conducting a rapid offensive. It became almost impossible to correspond with my son; only once did Andrei receive a message from him. On May 9 the war ended. Sokolov was waiting to meet his son, but soon he was informed that on Victory Day, Anatoly was shot by a German sniper. Andrei saw him off on his last journey, burying him far from his native land.
Post-war time
Soon Sokolov was demobilized. He did not want to return to Voronezh, but went to Uryupinsk, to visit a military friend. He lived on the edge of the city with his wife. A friend helped Andrey get a job as a driver. After work, Sokolov often went to the teahouse to drink a couple of glasses. Near her he noticed a street boy who was no more than five or six years old. The boy's name was Vanya; his parents died during the war. Andrey decided to adopt Vanyushka.
He brought the boy into the house; there he was fed, clothed and bathed. After that, he traveled with Sokolov on every flight, not agreeing to stay in the house without him.
One day, in bad weather, Andrei’s car skidded and he hit a cow. The animal was not harmed, but Sokolov’s driver’s license was taken away. Andrey wrote a letter to a colleague from Kashara. He called Sokolov to his place, promising to help him find a job and get other rights. Andrei said that due to melancholy, which does not allow him to stay in one place for a long time, he still could not live in Uryupinsk for a long time. Now he and Vanya are just heading to the Kasharsky district.
Recently, Andrei’s heart began to hurt: the man is worried that Vanyushka will be left alone again. Sokolov sees his deceased relatives every day and it seems to him that they are calling him to them.
At that moment a boat arrived. Andrei said goodbye to the narrator and, together with his son, went towards the crossing. The author looked after the two orphaned people who had become so close to him over the past two hours; he hoped everything would be fine with them.
In parting, little Vanyushka turned around and waved to the narrator.
Retelling plan
1. The life of Andrei Sokolov before the war.
2. The tragic trials that befell him during the war.
3. Sokolov’s devastation after the death of his entire family.
4. Andrey takes in an orphan boy and is reborn to a new life.
Retelling
Sokolov says: “At first my life was ordinary. I myself am a native of the Voronezh province, born in 1900. During the civil war he was in the Red Army. In the hungry year of twenty-two, he went to Kuban to fight against the kulaks, and that’s why he survived. And the father, mother and sister died of hunger at home. One left. Rodney couldn't care less - nowhere, no one, not a single soul. A year later I went to Voronezh. At first I worked in a carpentry artel, then I went to a factory, learned to be a mechanic, got married, had children... We lived no worse than people.”
When the war began, on its third day Andrei Sokolov went to the front. The narrator describes his difficult and tragic path on the roads of the Great Patriotic War. Maintaining moral superiority over the enemy, without reconciliation and without recognizing the enemy’s power over himself, Andrei Sokolov commits truly heroic deeds. He was wounded twice and then captured.
One of the central episodes of the story is the episode in the church. What is important is the image of a doctor who “both in captivity and in the darkness did his great work” - he treated the wounded. Life confronts Andrei Sokolov with a cruel choice: in order to save others, he must kill the traitor, and Sokolov did it. The hero tried to escape from captivity, but he was caught and dogs were set on him: “only the skin and meat flew into shreds... I spent a month in a punishment cell for escaping, but still alive... I remained alive!..”
In a moral duel with the camp commandant Müller, the dignity of the Russian soldier, to whom the fascist capitulated, wins. Sokolov, with his proud behavior in the camp, forced the Germans to respect himself: “I wanted to show them, damned, that although I am perishing from hunger, I am not going to choke on their handouts, that I have my own, Russian dignity and pride, and that I am a beast They didn’t convert me, no matter how hard they tried.” He divided the bread that Sokolov obtained among all his fellow sufferers.
The hero still managed to escape from captivity, and even get a “tongue” - a fascist major. In the hospital he received a letter about the death of his wife and daughters. He passed this test too, returned to the front, and soon joy “shone like the sun from behind a cloud”: his son was found and he sent a letter to his father from another front. But on the last day of the war, his son was killed by a German sniper... Having gone through the crucible of war, Andrei Sokolov lost everything: his family died, his house was destroyed. Returning from the front, Sokolov looks at the world eyes “as if sprinkled with ashes”, “filled with inescapable melancholy.” The words escape his lips: “Why have you, life, maimed me so much? Why did you distort it like that? I don’t have an answer, either in the dark or in the clear sun... There isn’t and I can’t wait!!!”
And yet Andrei Sokolov did not waste his sensitivity, the need to give his warmth and care to others. Andrei Sokolov generously opens his broken, orphaned soul to a fellow orphan - a boy. He adopted the boy and began to take care of him as the person closest to him. The boy, this “splinter of the war,” who unexpectedly found his “folder,” looks at the world with “eyes as bright as the sky.” Modesty and courage, selflessness and responsibility are the traits characteristic of Sokolov. Describing the life of an “ordinary person,” Sholokhov shows him as a guardian and defender of life and universal spiritual shrines.
