List of used literature. War books Literature of the Second World War

Behind the front line. Memoirs

The former commander of the submarine fleet of Nazi Germany, Werner, introduces the reader in his memoirs to the actions of German submarines in the waters. The Atlantic Ocean, in the Bay of Biscay and the English Channel against the British and American fleets during the Second World War.

Herbert Werner

Preface

Review of the book by an American war veteran

Who would not be embarrassed by the opportunity to write, as I did, an introduction to a book by a foreigner, and even a soldier of a former hostile state, whose military fate almost exactly repeats the own fate of the author of the preface? We studied at the higher naval schools in 1939, both completed the course of training to become submariners and first reported to our duty station in 1941. We both served throughout the war, from lower ranks to submarine commanders. Each of us heard the explosions of enemy depth charges, although we were protected from them, unlike some of our combat friends. It is clear, however, that these explosions sound remarkably the same whether the bombs are British, American or Japanese. We both took part in torpedo attacks on combat and merchant ships. Each of us has seen how they drown big ships, when their bottoms are pierced by torpedoes, sometimes majestic, sometimes unsightly. German submarines used the same tactics as us. Both Werner and I uselessly cursed our opponent simply because he had done his duty conscientiously.

So, Herbert Werner and I had a lot in common, although I knew nothing about him before reading his book. But having said all this, it is necessary to avoid two pitfalls. The first is respect for professionalism, which may obscure important differences between us, arising from the contrast of the conditions in which we found ourselves and the goals we pursued. The second is that the objective assessment of the past that we strive for today may, wittingly or unwittingly, be hindered by wartime feelings and sentiments. By avoiding these pitfalls, we will eventually find the right approach to the problem. Because we can admire the people who fought for Germany, even if we condemn Hitler and the Nazis. To properly evaluate the book, it is important to keep this in mind and take into account the positions of the parties in each specific case.

In the preface, Werner explains why he felt it necessary to write his book. According to him, he thereby fulfilled a long-standing commitment and wanted to pay tribute to the thousands of battle friends who are forever buried in steel coffins in the depths of the sea. Political predilections are completely absent both in his narrative and in the interpretation of professional tasks. Werner does not allow himself to make harsh attacks against his opponent, although it is clear that at times he, like all of us, is capable of experiencing bouts of irritation. In such cases, Werner's book acquires greater dramatic power and the bestial, bestial essence of war comes to the fore. This may seem unusual, but think about this: submarine sailors, regardless of their affiliation with any of the warring parties, most admired the time when they went to sea and were in the steel shells of boats, in the cramped confined space of which The noise of operating diesel engines continued unabated, and with a lack of oxygen in the stale air, the stench of human excrement and rotting food could be felt. In such conditions, submarine crews frantically attacked the enemy with torpedoes, carried out a grueling search for his naval convoys, or waited in fear for the end of the attack with enemy depth charges.

The book details the creation of Detachment K, a naval commando corps that was used in risky operations in the final stages of the war. The sailors of this team fought in mini-submarines, carried guided torpedoes into battle and controlled boats filled with explosives by radio.

Laptezhnik against the “Black Death”. Review of development... Mikhail Zefirov

The book, based on extensive factual material, gives comparative analysis the organizational structure and tactics of German and Soviet attack aviation in 1941–1945, as well as the systems for rewarding pilots adopted in them. Particular attention is paid to two aircraft: the German Ju-87 and the Soviet Il-2, which became truly legendary during the Second World War. Intended for both specialists and military history buffs.

The German fifth column in the Second World War... de Luis

The book describes the subversive activities carried out outside Germany by various German organizations and institutions on the eve and during the Second World War (hostile propaganda, bribery of government officials, espionage, sabotage, sabotage). The author speaks in detail about the role that German national minority groups or German colonists played in this or that country, as well as about the assistance provided Hitler's Germany traitors and traitors like Quisling. The book is intended for a wide range of readers.

German naval saboteurs in World War II... Caius Becker

Caius Becker's book "German naval saboteurs in the Second World War" is devoted to the activities of units "K" - sabotage and assault formations of the German Navy. The author characterizes in detail the main sabotage and assault weapons and the tactical principles underlying their use, talks about the most famous sabotage operations of his unit - the fight against the Allied invasion fleet in the Bay of the Seine and in the Pas-de-Calais Strait, the blowing up of bridges across the Orne River and near Nijmegen, the destruction of the gateway in the port of Antwerp, etc....

World War II: torn out pages Sergey Verevkin

Did you know that more than 150 thousand Jews fought in the ranks of the Wehrmacht and SS during World War II? Did you know that virtually every German division that fought in Eastern Front, a quarter consisted of former Soviet citizens, that every fourth soldier of Paulus, surrounded at Stalingrad, was Russian? Did you know that in the German rear for two years there existed huge - larger than Belgium - territories under Russian national self-government, where the occupier had never set foot, and that there was a civil war on these lands, called ...

The Second World War. And Taylor

Taylor is characterized by the desire to draw conclusions independently, rather than follow general trends in historical science. Therefore, he objectively assesses our country’s contribution to the victory in World War II. This contribution is decisive. Taylor not only “tells” how it all happened, but also pays great importance reasons for events. Taylor also gives a lot little known facts, for example, that the population of the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane was destroyed by Alsatians who voluntarily joined the SS after the annexation of Alsace to Germany. More important…

History of World War II Kurt Tippelskirch

The book is one of the first major works on the history of the Second World War, which describes events in all theaters of war and on all fronts in the period 1939-1945. The author focuses on the war between Germany and the USSR, analyzing in detail the most important operations of the Soviet and German troops. An assessment of the activities of prominent government and military leaders of the warring parties is also given. Like Liddell Hart's History... is something like the official British version of the history of the Second World War, and the American view of the Second...

Sea wolves. German submarines... Wolfgang Frank

This book was written around 1955. It was written by a German author - apparently, at the request of an American publishing house (this translation was made from English, but taking into account the fact that the original was made in German; perhaps the book was not published in German). From 1958 to 1972, when memories of World War II were still fresh in the minds of millions and millions of people, the book went through seven (!) editions in the New World - five in the United States and two in Canada. Read now, more than six decades after World War II, what Americans...

Finland's entry into World War II... In Baryshnikov

The monograph examines events previously unexplored by Russian historians related to Finland’s entry into the Second World War on the side of Germany. Hidden preparation for this in 1940–1941. is revealed on the basis of Finnish, German and Russian archives, as well as other sources. The book traces the stages of rapprochement in military, economic and political relations between Finland and Germany on the eve of the Great Patriotic War. The changes in the position of the USSR towards Finland in the pre-war period are especially studied. For historians...

World War II Anatoly Utkin

People's memory can only be killed together with the people. We will never forget those who tore veins at countless crossings, who burst into burned cities, who burned in tanks, who said goodbye to their comrades in the last dive, who threw themselves from a trench under hurricane fire, who lay down with their chests on the embrasure, who were dragged from the field battle of a comrade, who threw himself under enemy tanks with a bunch of grenades, who did not spare his life and overcame everything. Not for the sake of stripes and distinctions, but for the sake of the honor and freedom of the country, so that no one in the world would impose their will on us. The best among them did not know bravado...

Results of the Second World War. Conclusions of the defeated German Experts

This book is an attempt by a group of German military specialists and government officials to summarize the experience gained during the war of 1939–1945 and to draw some conclusions for the future, mainly based on an analysis of the decisions of the Wehrmacht operational leadership at the most important moments of the war on land, at sea and in air. The book also deals with the development of weapons and military equipment, the use various types transport, organization of war financing, etc. The material in the collection is of significant interest when studying...

White emigrants and the Second World War. Attempt… Yuri Tsurganov

The book by historian Yu. Tsurganov is devoted to an exceptionally difficult page in the history of the Russian diaspora: attempts to take advantage of the outbreak of World War II to overthrow the Bolshevik regime in the USSR and bring the national Russian government to power. The collaboration of Russian emigrants with the Nazi regime is the most tricky aspect of the history of the anti-Bolshevik movement, so the author is especially careful in covering it. Yu. Tsurganov pays special attention to the clash of two anti-Bolshevik “civilizations”: the old...

General Maltsev. History of the Air Force... Boris Plushov

History of the Air Force of the Russian Liberation Movement during the Second World War (1942–1945). Edited and with a foreword by I. Shtifanov. Publishing house SBONR. Author Archpriest Boris Vlasenko (Boris Petrovich Plushov) was born in 1923 (according to other sources, in 1921) in Mogilev. Lieutenant of the Red Army. During the Second World War in 1941 he was taken into German captivity(according to other sources, a Russian emigrant, studied at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Munich). In 1942 he ended up in Berlin, where he met a colonel of the Russian liberation...

"The Witch's Cauldron" on the Eastern Front. Decisive… Wolf Aaken

This book is dedicated to the most dramatic moments of the Second World War: Smolensk, Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk, Breslau... The battles for these cities went down in history as the bloodiest and fiercest, they were decisive and determined the further course of military operations on the Eastern Front. But the main characters of the book are ordinary soldiers. Numerous vivid eyewitness accounts make the reader feel the horror of everyday life in war of ordinary privates...

Truth and fiction about the Second World War Georgy Reutov

About the preparation of the Second World War, the legends and falsifications that English bourgeois historians, publicists and statesmen are piling up around it, about foreign policy and England international relations This book tells about the years 1939-1945. Using the memoirs of Churchill and Eden, Montgomery and Alan Brooke, and also the works of major English scientists, the author shows that most of the legends and versions of the war spread in the West contradict the truth. This publication has been supplemented by an analysis of research that has appeared in England in recent...

Flag of St. George: The English Navy in... Stephen Roskill

Publisher's abstract: The work of Stephen Wentworth Roskill, one of the leading military historians, was prepared at the request of the Annapolis Naval Institute (USNI) for the series “Naval Actions in the Second World War” - the most authoritative publication on this topic. “The Hunt for Bismarck” and the Battle of the Mediterranean, polar convoys and the fight against German submarines, fighting in the Pacific Ocean and landing operations- all phases of the war are reflected in this book. The fighting of one of the largest fleets of the Second World War, described...

The book tells about the combat operations of the German submarine fleet during the Second World War. The author, based on factual data, documents, submarine logbooks, submariners' diaries, and memories of combat participants, reveals the reasons for the defeat of the German submarine fleet.

Failed rematch. White emigration in the Second... Yuri Tsurganov

The book tells about the attempts of wide circles of Russian emigration to carry out “white revenge” during the Second World War. Based on numerous sources, some of which are introduced for the first time in scientific circulation, the author comprehends the unique experience of emigration, who learned the essence of different social systems: Bolshevism, democracy, fascism. The focus is on the psychological, economic, political, social, philosophical prerequisites of the revanchist worldview; practical activities to translate ideas into reality; reasons for failure.

Victories of the Third Reich. Alternate History... PETER TSAOURAS

“Germany emerged victorious from World War II” - in this book, such a statement does not look like a paradox, but rather a frightening alternative. It also makes you think. Too often the history of mankind, especially its military history, is considered by us as something moving along an already given and well-trodden track, “We won the Second World War because we were destined to win” - such a line of reasoning gives pleasure. However, following it is a dangerous undertaking. If anything is known about history...

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Graduate work

Literature of the 2nd World War

Udintseva Valentina

Prose about the Great Patriotic War

According to the encyclopedia "Great Patriotic War", over a thousand writers served in the active army; of the eight hundred members of the Moscow writers' organization, two hundred and fifty went to the front in the first days of the war. Four hundred and seventy-one writers did not return from the war - these are big losses. They are explained by the fact that the writers, most of whom became front-line journalists, it sometimes happened not only to engage in their direct correspondent duties, but to take up arms - this is how the situation developed (however, bullets and shrapnel did not spare those who did not find themselves in such situations.) Many simply found themselves in the ranks - they fought in the army units, in the militia, in the partisans!

In military prose, two periods can be distinguished: 1) prose of the war years: stories, essays, novels written directly during military operations, or rather, in short intervals between offensives and retreats; 2) post-war prose, in which many painful questions were understood, such as, for example, why did the Russian people endure such difficult trials? Why did the Russians find themselves in such a helpless and humiliating position in the first days and months of the war? Who is to blame for all the suffering? And other questions that arose with closer attention to documents and memories of eyewitnesses in an already distant time. But still, this is a conditional division, because the literary process is sometimes a contradictory and paradoxical phenomenon, and understanding the theme of war in the post-war period was more difficult than during the period of hostilities.

The war was the greatest test and test of all the strength of the people, and he passed this test with honor. The war was also a serious test for Soviet literature. During the Great Patriotic War, literature, enriched with the traditions of Soviet literature of previous periods, not only immediately responded to the events taking place, but also became an effective weapon in the fight against the enemy. Celebrating the intense, truly heroic creative work writers during the war, M. Sholokhov said: “They had one task: if only their word would defeat the enemy, if only it would hold our fighter under the elbow, ignite and not allow it to fade in the hearts Soviet people burning hatred for enemies and love for the Motherland." The theme of the Great Patriotic War remains extremely modern even now.

The Great Patriotic War is reflected in Russian literature deeply and comprehensively, in all its manifestations: the army and the rear, the partisan movement and the underground, the tragic beginning of the war, individual battles, heroism and betrayal, the greatness and drama of the Victory. Authors military prose, as a rule, are front-line soldiers; in their works they rely on real events, on their own front-line experience. In the books about the war by front-line writers, the main line is soldier's friendship, front-line camaraderie, the hardship of life on the field, desertion and heroism. Dramatic human destinies unfold in war; life or death sometimes depends on a person’s actions. Front-line writers are a whole generation of courageous, conscientious, experienced, gifted individuals who endured war and post-war hardships. Front-line writers are those authors who in their works express the point of view that the outcome of the war is decided by a hero who recognizes himself as a part of the warring people, bearing his cross and a common burden.

Based on the heroic traditions of Russian and Soviet literature, the prose of the Great Patriotic War reached great creative heights. The prose of the war years is characterized by the strengthening of romantic and lyrical elements, the widespread use by artists of declamatory and song intonations, oratorical turns, and appeal to such poetic means, as an allegory, symbol, metaphor.

One of the first books about the war was the story by V.P. Nekrasov "In the Trenches of Stalingrad", published immediately after the war in the magazine "Znamya" in 1946, and in 1947 the story "Star" by E.G. Kazakevich. One of the first A.P. Platonov wrote a dramatic story of a front-line soldier returning home in the story “Return,” which was published in Novy Mir already in 1946. The hero of the story, Alexey Ivanov, is in no hurry to go home, he has found a second family among his fellow soldiers, he has lost the habit of being at home, from his family. The heroes of Platonov's works "...were now going to live as if for the first time, vaguely remembering what they were like three or four years ago, because they had turned into completely different people...". And in the family, next to his wife and children, another man appeared, who was orphaned by the war. It is difficult for a front-line soldier to return to another life, to his children.

The most reliable works about the war were created by front-line writers: V.K. Kondratyev, V.O. Bogomolov, K.D. Vorobyov, V.P. Astafiev, G.Ya. Baklanov, V.V. Bykov, B.L. Vasiliev, Yu.V. Bondarev, V.P. Nekrasov, E.I. Nosov, E.G. Kazakevich, M.A. Sholokhov. On the pages of prose works we find a kind of chronicle of the war, reliably conveying all stages of the great battle Soviet people with fascism. Front-line writers, contrary to the tendencies that developed in Soviet times to gloss over the truth about the war, depicted the harsh and tragic war and post-war reality. Their works are a true testimony of the time when Russia fought and won.

A great contribution to the development of Soviet military prose was made by the writers of the so-called “second war,” front-line writers who entered the mainstream literature in the late 50s and early 60s. These are such prose writers as Bondarev, Bykov, Ananyev, Baklanov, Goncharov, Bogomolov, Kurochkin, Astafiev, Rasputin. In the works of front-line writers, in their works of the 50s and 60s, in comparison with the books of the previous decade, the tragic emphasis in the depiction of war increased. War, as depicted by front-line prose writers, is not only and not even so much about spectacular heroic deeds, outstanding deeds, but about tedious everyday work, hard, bloody, but vital work. And it was precisely in this everyday work that the writers of the “second war” saw the Soviet man.

The distance of time, helping front-line writers to see the picture of the war much more clearly and in greater volume when their first works appeared, was one of the reasons that determined the evolution of their creative approach to the military theme. Prose writers, on the one hand, used their military experience, and on the other, artistic experience, which allowed them to successfully realize their creative ideas. It can be noted that the development of prose about the Great Patriotic War clearly shows that among its main problems, the main one, standing for more than sixty years at the center of the creative search of our writers, was and is the problem of heroism. This is especially noticeable in the works of front-line writers, who in their works showed in close-up the heroism of our people and the fortitude of soldiers.

Front-line writer Boris Lvovich Vasilyev, author of everyone’s favorite books “And the Dawns Here Are Quiet” (1968), “Tomorrow There Was War”, “Not on the Lists” (1975), “Soldiers Came from Aty-Baty”, which were filmed in the Soviet time, in an interview" Rossiyskaya newspaper" dated May 20, 2004, noted the demand for military prose. A whole generation of youth was brought up on the war stories of B.L. Vasilyev. Everyone remembers the bright images of girls who combined love of truth and perseverance (Zhenya from the story “And the dawns here are quiet...” , Spark from the story “Tomorrow there was a war”, etc.) and sacrificial devotion to a high cause and loved ones (the heroine of the story “Not on the Lists”, etc.). In 1997, the writer was awarded the A.D. Sakharov Prize “For Civil courage".

The first work about the war by E.I. Nosov had a story “Red Wine of Victory” (1969), in which the hero celebrated Victory Day on a government bed in a hospital and received, along with all the suffering wounded, a glass of red wine in honor of this long-awaited holiday. “A true trencher, an ordinary soldier, he doesn’t like to talk about the war... A fighter’s wounds will speak more and more powerfully about the war. You can’t rattle off holy words in vain. By the way, you can’t lie about the war. And it’s shameful to write badly about the suffering of the people.” In the story "Khutor Beloglin" Alexey, the hero of the story, lost everything in the war - no family, no home, no health, but, nevertheless, he remained kind and generous. Yevgeny Nosov wrote a number of works at the turn of the century, about which Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn said, presenting him with a prize named after him: “And, 40 years later, conveying the same military theme, with bitter bitterness Nosov stirs up what hurts today... This undivided Nosov closes his half-century wound with grief Great War and everything that has not been told about her even today." Works: "Apple Savior," "Commemorative Medal," "Fanfare and Bells" are from this series.

In 1992, Astafiev V.P. Published the novel Cursed and Killed. In the novel “Cursed and Killed,” Viktor Petrovich conveys the war not in “the correct, beautiful and brilliant system with music and drums and battle, with fluttering banners and prancing generals,” but in “its real expression - in blood, in suffering, in of death".

The Belarusian front-line writer Vasil Vladimirovich Bykov believed that the military theme “is leaving our literature for the same reason... why valor, honor, self-sacrifice are gone... The heroic has been expelled from everyday life, why do we still need war, where this inferiority is most obvious?” "Incomplete truth" and outright lies about the war for many years have diminished the meaning and significance of our war (or anti-war, as they sometimes say) literature." V. Bykov's depiction of war in the story "Swamp" provokes protest among many Russian readers. It shows the ruthlessness of Soviet soldiers towards local residents. The plot is this, judge for yourself: paratroopers landed behind enemy lines in occupied Belarus in search of a partisan base, having lost their bearings, they took a boy as their guide... and kill him for reasons of safety and secrecy of the mission. An equally scary story by Vasil Bykov - "On the Swamp Stitch" - is " new truth"about the war, again about the ruthless and cruel partisans who dealt with a local teacher just because she asked them not to destroy the bridge, otherwise the Germans would destroy the entire village. The teacher in the village is the last savior and protector, but she was killed by the partisans as a traitor. The works of the Belarusian front-line writer Vasil Bykov cause not only controversy, but also reflection.

Leonid Borodin published the story “The Detachment Left.” The military story also depicts another truth about the war, about the partisans, the heroes of which are soldiers who were surrounded by the first days of the war, in the German rear in a partisan detachment. The author takes a fresh look at the relationship between occupied villages and the partisans they must feed. The commander of the partisan detachment shot the village headman, but not the traitorous headman, but his own man for the villagers, just for one word against. This story can be placed on a par with the works of Vasil Bykov in its depiction of military conflict, the psychological struggle between good and bad, meanness and heroism.

It was not for nothing that front-line writers complained that not the whole truth about the war had been written. Time passed, a historical distance appeared, which made it possible to see the past and what was experienced in its true light, they came the right words, other books have been written about the war that will lead us to spiritual knowledge of the past. Now it is difficult to imagine modern literature about war without large quantity memoir literature created not just by war participants, but by outstanding commanders.

Alexander Beck (1902-1972)

Born in Saratov in the family of a military doctor. His childhood and youth years passed in Saratov, and there he graduated from a real school. At the age of 16, A. Beck volunteered for the Red Army during the Civil War. After the war, he wrote essays and reviews for central newspapers. Beck's essays and reviews began to appear in Komsomolskaya Pravda and Izvestia. Since 1931, A. Beck collaborated in the editors of Gorky’s “History of Factories and Plants.” During the Great Patriotic War he was a war correspondent. The story "Volokolamsk Highway" about the events of the defense of Moscow, written in 1943-1944, became widely known. In 1960 he published the stories “A Few Days” and “The Reserve of General Panfilov.”

In 1971, the novel "New Assignment" was published abroad. The author finished the novel in mid-1964 and handed over the manuscript to the editors of Novy Mir. After lengthy ordeals through various editors and authorities, the novel was never published in the homeland during the author’s lifetime. According to the author himself, already in October 1964, he gave the novel to friends and some close acquaintances to read. The first publication of the novel in the homeland was in the magazine "Znamya", N 10-11, in 1986. The novel describes life path a major Soviet statesman who sincerely believes in the justice and productivity of the socialist system and is ready to serve it faithfully, despite any personal difficulties and turmoil.

"Volokolamsk highway"

The plot of "Volokolamsk Highway" by Alexander Bek: after heavy fighting in October 1941 near Volokolamsk, a battalion of the Panfilov division was surrounded, breaks through the enemy ring and unites with the main forces of the division. Beck closes the narrative within the framework of one battalion. Beck is documentarily accurate (this is how he characterized his creative method: “Searching for heroes active in life, long-term communication with them, conversations with many people, patient collection of grains, details, relying not only on one’s own observation, but also on the vigilance of the interlocutor.. . "), and in "Volokolamsk Highway" he recreates the true history of one of the battalions of Panfilov's division, everything in him corresponds to what happened in reality: geography and chronicle of battles, characters.

The narrator is battalion commander Baurdzhan Momysh-Uly. Through his eyes we see what happened to his battalion, he shares his thoughts and doubts, explains his decisions and actions. The author recommends himself to readers only as an attentive listener and “a conscientious and diligent scribe,” which cannot be taken at face value. This is nothing more than an artistic device, because, talking with the hero, the writer inquired about what seemed important to him, Bek, and compiled from these stories both the image of Momysh-Ula himself and the image of General Panfilov, “who knew how to control and influence without shouting.” , but with the mind, in the past of an ordinary soldier who retained a soldier’s modesty until his death,” - this is what Beck wrote in his autobiography about the second hero of the book, very dear to him.

"Volokolamsk Highway" is an original artistic and documentary work associated with the literary tradition that it personifies in the literature of the 19th century. Gleb Uspensky. “Under the guise of a purely documentary story,” Beck admitted, “I wrote a work subject to the laws of the novel, did not constrain the imagination, created characters and scenes to the best of my ability...” Of course, both in the author’s declarations of documentary, and in his statement that that he did not constrain the imagination, there is a certain slyness, they seem to have a double bottom: the reader may think that this is a technique, a game. But Beck’s naked, demonstrative documentary is not a stylization, well known to literature (let’s remember, for example, “Robinson Crusoe”), not poetic clothes of an essay-documentary cut, but a way of comprehending, researching and recreating life and man. And the story “Volokolamsk Highway” is distinguished by its impeccable authenticity (even in small things - if Beck writes that on October thirteenth “everything was in snow”, there is no need to turn to the archives of the weather service, there is no doubt that this was the case in reality), it is a peculiar, but an accurate chronicle of the bloody defensive battles near Moscow (as the author himself defined the genre of his book), revealing why german army Having reached the walls of our capital, I could not take it.

And most importantly, why Volokolamsk Highway should be considered fiction, not journalism. Behind professional army, military concerns - discipline, combat training, battle tactics, which Momysh-Uly is absorbed in, for the author there arise moral, universal problems, aggravated to the limit by the circumstances of war, constantly putting a person on the line between life and death: fear and courage, selflessness and selfishness, loyalty and betrayal. In the artistic structure of Beck's story, a significant place is occupied by polemics with propaganda stereotypes, with battle cliches, open and hidden polemics. Explicit, because this is the character of the main character - he is harsh, not inclined to bypass sharp corners, does not even forgive himself for weaknesses and mistakes, does not tolerate idle talk and pomp. Here is a typical episode:

“After thinking, he said: “Knowing no fear, Panfilov’s men rushed into the first battle... What do you think: a suitable start?”

“I don’t know,” I said hesitantly.

This is how the corporals of literature write,” he said harshly. “During these days that you are living here, I deliberately ordered you to be taken to places where sometimes two or three mines burst, where bullets whistle. I wanted you to feel fear. You don’t have to confirm it, I know without even admitting it that you had to suppress your fear.

So why do you and your fellow writers imagine that some supernatural people are fighting, and not people like you? "

The hidden, authorial polemic that permeates the entire story is deeper and more comprehensive. It is directed against those who demanded that literature “serve” today’s “demands” and “instructions”, and not serve the truth. Beck’s archive contains a draft of the author’s preface, in which this is stated unequivocally: “The other day they told me: “We are not interested in whether you wrote the truth or not. We are interested in whether it is useful or harmful... I didn’t argue. It probably happens.” that a lie is also useful. Otherwise, why would it exist? I know, this is how they argue, this is what many writers, my colleagues in the shop, do. Sometimes I want to be the same. But at my desk, talking about our cruel and beautiful century, I forget about this intention. At the desk I see nature in front of me and lovingly sketch it, as I know it."

It is clear that Beck did not print this preface; it exposed the position of the author, it contained a challenge that he could not easily get away with. But what he talks about has become the foundation of his work. And in his story he turned out to be true to the truth.

Alexander Fadeev

Fadeev (Bulyga) Alexander Alexandrovich - prose writer, critic, literary theorist, public figure. Born on December 24 (10), 1901 in the village of Kimry, Korchevsky district, Tver province. He spent his early childhood in Vilna and Ufa. In 1908, the Fadeev family moved to the Far East. From 1912 to 1919, Alexander Fadeev studied at the Vladivostok Commercial School (he left without finishing the 8th grade). During the civil war, Fadeev took an active part in the fighting in Far East. In the battle near Spassk he was wounded. Alexander Fadeev wrote his first completed story, “The Spill,” in 1922-1923, and the story “Against the Current,” in 1923. In 1925-1926, while working on the novel “Razgrom,” he decided to engage in literary work professionally.

During the Great Patriotic War, Fadeev worked as a publicist. As a correspondent for the newspaper Pravda and the Sovinformburo, he traveled to a number of fronts. On January 14, 1942, Fadeev published a correspondence in Pravda, “Monster Destroyers and People-Creators,” in which he spoke about what he saw in the region and the city of Kalinin after the expulsion of the fascist occupiers. In the fall of 1943, the writer traveled to the city of Krasnodon, liberated from enemies. Subsequently, the material collected there formed the basis of the novel “The Young Guard.”

"Young guard"

During the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. Fadeev writes a number of essays and articles about the heroic struggle of the people, and creates the book “Leningrad in the Days of the Siege” (1944). Heroic, romantic notes, increasingly strengthened in Fadeev’s work, sound with particular force in the novel “The Young Guard” (1945; 2nd edition 1951; USSR State Prize, 1946; film of the same name, 1948) , which was based on the patriotic deeds of the Krasnodon underground Komsomol organization "Young Guard". The novel glorifies the struggle of the Soviet people against the Nazi invaders. The bright socialist ideal was embodied in the images of Oleg Koshevoy, Sergei Tyulenin, Lyubov Shevtsova, Ulyana Gromova, Ivan Zemnukhov and other Young Guards. The writer paints his characters in a romantic light; The book combines pathos and lyricism, psychological sketches and author's digressions. In the 2nd edition, taking into account the criticism, the writer included scenes showing the connections of Komsomol members with senior underground communists, whose images he deepened and made more prominent.

Developing the best traditions of Russian literature, Fadeev created works that have become classic examples of the literature of socialist realism. Fadeev’s latest creative idea, the novel “Ferrous Metallurgy,” is dedicated to modern times, but remained unfinished. Fadeev's literary critical speeches are collected in the book "For Thirty Years" (1957), showing the evolution of the literary views of the writer, who made a great contribution to the development of socialist aesthetics. Fadeev's works have been staged and filmed, translated into the languages of the peoples of the USSR, and many foreign languages.

In a state of mental depression, he committed suicide. For many years Fadeev was in the leadership of writers' organizations: in 1926-1932. one of the leaders of RAPP; in 1939-1944 and 1954-1956 - Secretary, 1946-1954 - General Secretary and Chairman of the Board of the USSR Joint Venture. Vice-President of the World Peace Council (since 1950). Member of the CPSU Central Committee (1939-1956); At the 20th Congress of the CPSU (1956) he was elected a candidate member of the CPSU Central Committee. Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the 2nd-4th convocations and the Supreme Council of the RSFSR of the 3rd convocation. Awarded 2 Orders of Lenin, as well as medals.

“Do not cross out the past, without it there is no present and future” (analysis of Fadeev’s novel “Destruction”)

Time passes - the days of history flow. We change, our ideas about the past, even about ourselves, change. We begin to reevaluate and rethink a lot, but the main thing is not to erase from our memory what happened to us; We can appreciate today only when we know our past well.

The processes of rethinking affected not only socio-political life, but also culture, especially literature. Many works of Soviet literature have become irrelevant for our time, largely incomprehensible and contradictory. But no matter what they were about, they were, they are a fact of our life, our culture.

Among such works is the novel by A. A. Fadeev “Destruction”.

“Destruction” is the first mature and modern work of the writer for that time. The novel is distinguished by the integrity of complex ideological concepts and the depth of artistic generalization of revolutionary reality. The novel answers questions that worried many writers of that time. What is the content of the revolutionary struggle? How does the fate of the individual relate to the fate of the revolution? The fate of the people and the individual? What is a hero of the revolutionary era like?

The writer's intention leads us to understand the ideological concept of the work. Telling his readers about the work on “Destruction,” Fadeev highlighted the “first” thought: “... in a civil war, a selection of human material occurs, everything hostile is swept away by the revolution, everything incapable of a real revolutionary struggle, accidentally falling into the camp of the revolution, from the millions of people, tempers, grows, develops in this struggle. A huge transformation of people is taking place. This transformation is taking place successfully because the revolution is led by advanced representatives of the working class - communists who clearly see the goal of the movement and who lead the more backward ones and help them re-educate.” These are, of course, typical words for that time. And from the standpoint of our time, this is extreme communist maximalism, but it is part of that time, part of universal thinking.

Of course, this writer’s conclusion does not cover the entire richness of the novel’s content. The value of Fadeev’s understanding of reality lies in the fact that he considers the period of revolutionary struggle as an entire era of spiritual change in the masses of the people, their social and moral education. This approach to reality already presupposes an analytical depiction of characters, a study of the very process of spiritual growth, changes in man and people in the revolution. Of course, Fadeev’s worldview and the prevailing worldview of the “era” and country played a decisive role in the artistic concept of the work - but this was how it should have been piece of art of that time, this is how they wanted to see him, although this cannot always be attributed to Fadeev. An analytical approach to depicting a person during the Civil War, and even a hero of the era, was uncharacteristic.

The heroes of the novel are shown at a turning point towards something new, in the struggle for the socialist transformation of the world. The criterion of a person’s value, the truth of his behavior, becomes his attitude to revolution, to action. In this sense, the plot of the novel is extremely dynamic: each hero, by force of circumstances, finds himself on the brink of life and death and is revealed mainly at moments of the highest physical and moral stress.

To understand the origins of the feat of Morozka, Metelitsa, Dubov, Levinson, Frolov, the writer widely uses psychological analysis: in the spiritual structure, in the movement of thoughts and feelings that are extremely open, naked in critical moments, the writer finds the answer to the question, what are the motives that prompt them to action.

Fadeev’s merit lies in the fact that the spiritual quest of his heroes reflected the most complex process of the formation of a new person. And this process is presented in all its drama: in the clash of contradictions, in the struggle of ideologies, in the contrasts of new and old, so obvious at a turning point in history. The use of contrasts allows the author to most clearly emphasize the high and low, the polarity of the characters’ actions and actions. Of course, based on the requirements of the time, Fadeev depicts the heroism of the communists, which is shown as the everyday performance of duties, as a conscious feat in the name of the revolution; the whole system artistic means the writer rejected naturalism in depicting the civil war and abstract romanticization of heroes. It's all there. But we must not forget about something else: the polemical nature of Levinson’s image, the spiritual quest of the heroes, psychological analysis. After all, this also exists. And the novel, whatever it may be from the point of view of history and artistry, still deserves our attention, if only because it exists, that it is a page big book- our history and culture, without which it is impossible to understand the essence of our life fully and to the end.

Vasily Grossman

Grossman Vasily Semenovich (real name Grossman Joseph Solomonovich), prose writer, playwright, was born on November 29 (December 12) in the city of Berdichev in the family of a chemist, which determined the choice of his profession: he entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University and graduated from it in 1929. Until 1932 he worked in the Donbass as a chemical engineer, then he began to actively collaborate in the magazine “Literary Donbass”: in 1934 his first story “Gluckauf” (from the life of Soviet miners) appeared, then the story “In the City of Berdichev”. M. Gorky drew attention to the young author and supported him by publishing “Gluckauf” in a new edition in the almanac “Year XVII” (1934). Grossman moves to Moscow and becomes a professional writer.

Before the war, the writer's first novel, "Stepan Kolchugin" (1937-1940), was published. During the Patriotic War, he was a correspondent for the newspaper "Red Star", traveling with the army to Berlin, and published a series of essays about the people's struggle against the fascist invaders. In 1942, the story “The People is Immortal” was published in “Red Star” - one of the most successful works about the events of the war. The play "If You Believe the Pythagoreans", written before the war and published in 1946, aroused sharp criticism. In 1952, he began publishing the novel “For a Just Cause,” which was also criticized because it did not correspond to the official point of view on the war. Grossman had to rework the book. Continuation - the novel "Life and Fate" was confiscated in 1961. Fortunately, the book was preserved and in 1975 it came to the West. In 1980, the novel was published. In parallel, Grossman has been writing another since 1955 - “Everything Flows”, also confiscated in 1961, but the version completed in 1963 was published through samizdat in 1970 in Frankfurt am Main. V. Grossman died on September 14, 1964 in Moscow.

"The people are immortal"

Vasily Grossman began writing the story “The People Are Immortal” in the spring of 1942, when the German army was driven away from Moscow and the situation at the front had stabilized. We could try to put it in some order, to comprehend the bitter experience of the first months of the war that seared our souls, to identify what was the true basis of our resistance and inspired hopes of victory over a strong and skillful enemy, to find an organic figurative structure for this.

The plot of the story reproduces a very common front-line situation of that time - our units, who were surrounded, in a fierce battle, suffering heavy losses, break through the enemy ring. But this local episode is considered by the author with an eye on Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”; it moves apart, expands, and the story acquires the features of a “mini-epic”. The action moves from the front headquarters to the ancient city, which was attacked by enemy aircraft, from the front line, from the battlefield - to a village captured by the Nazis, from the front road - to the location of German troops. The story is densely populated: our soldiers and commanders - both those who turned out to be strong in spirit, for whom the trials that befell became a school of “great hardening and wise responsibility”, and official optimists who always shouted “hurray”, but were broken by defeats; German officers and soldiers, intoxicated by the strength of their army and the victories won; townspeople and Ukrainian collective farmers - both patriotically minded and ready to become servants of the invaders. All this is dictated by “people's thought,” which was the most important for Tolstoy in “War and Peace,” and in the story “The People are Immortal” it is highlighted.

“Let there be no word more majestic and holy than the word “people!” writes Grossman. It is no coincidence that the main characters of his story were not career military men, but civilians - a collective farmer from Tula region Ignatiev and the Moscow intellectual, historian Bogarev. They are a significant detail, being drafted into the army on the same day, symbolizing the unity of the people in the face of the fascist invasion. The ending of the story is also symbolic: “From where the flame was burning out, two people walked. Everyone knew them. They were Commissar Bogarev and Red Army soldier Ignatiev. Blood flowed down their clothes. They walked, supporting each other, walking heavily and slowly.”

The combat is also symbolic - “as if the ancient times of duels were revived” - Ignatiev with a German tank driver, “huge, broad-shouldered”, “who marched through Belgium, France, trampled the soil of Belgrade and Athens”, “whose chest Hitler himself decorated with the “iron cross”. Tvardovsky’s later description of Terkin’s fight with a “well-fed, shaved, careful, freely fed” German: Like on an ancient battlefield, Instead of thousands, two are fighting, Chest to chest, like shield to shield, - As if the fight will decide everything." Semyon Ignatiev, - writes Grossman, “he immediately became famous in the company. Everyone knew this cheerful, tireless man. He was an amazing worker: every instrument in his hands seemed to be playing and having fun. And he had the amazing ability to work so easily and cordially that a person who looked at him for even a minute wanted to take up an ax, a saw, a shovel himself, in order to do the work as easily and well as Semyon Ignatiev did. He had a good voice, and he knew a lot of old songs... "Ignatiev has so much in common with Terkin. Even Ignatiev’s guitar has the same function as Terkin’s accordion. And the kinship of these heroes suggests that Grossman discovered the features of modern Russian folk character.

"Life and Fate"

The writer managed to reflect in this work the heroism of people in the war, the fight against the crimes of the Nazis, as well as the complete truth about the events that took place then within the country: exile in Stalin's camps, arrests and everything related to this. In the destinies of the main characters of the work, Vasily Grossman captures the suffering, loss, and death that are inevitable during war. The tragic events of this era give rise to internal contradictions in a person and disrupt his harmony with the outside world. This can be seen in the fate of the heroes of the novel “Life and Fate” - Krymov, Shtrum, Novikov, Grekov, Evgenia Nikolaevna Shaposhnikova.

The people's suffering in the Patriotic War in Grossman's Life and Fate is more painful and deeper than in the previous one. Soviet literature. The author of the novel leads us to the idea that the heroism of the victory won in spite of Stalin's tyranny is more significant. Grossman shows not only the facts and events of Stalin's time: camps, arrests, repressions. The main thing in Grossman's Stalinist theme is the influence of this era on the souls of people, on their morality. We see the brave turn into cowards good people- in the cruel, and honest and persistent - in the cowardly. We are no longer even surprised that the closest people are sometimes permeated by distrust (Evgenia Nikolaevna suspected Novikov of denouncing her, Krymov - Zhenya).

The conflict between man and the state is conveyed in the thoughts of the heroes about collectivization, about the fate of the “special settlers”; it is felt in the picture of the Kolyma camp, in the thoughts of the author and the heroes about the year thirty-seven. Vasily Grossman's truthful story about the previously hidden tragic pages of our history gives us the opportunity to see the events of the war more fully. We notice that the Kolyma camp and the course of the war, both in reality itself and in the novel, are interconnected. And it was Grossman who was the first to show this. The writer was convinced that “part of the truth is not the truth.”

The heroes of the novel have different attitudes to the problem of life and fate, freedom and necessity. Therefore, they have different attitudes towards responsibility for their actions. For example, Sturmbannführer Kaltluft, the executioner at the furnaces, who killed five hundred and ninety thousand people, tries to justify himself by an order from above, by the power of the Fuhrer, by fate (“fate pushed... on the path of the executioner”). But then the author says: “Fate leads a person, but a person goes because he wants, and he is free not to want.” Drawing a parallel between Stalin and Hitler, the fascist concentration camp and the camp in Kolyma, Vasily Grossman says that the signs of any dictatorship are the same. And its influence on a person’s personality is destructive. Having shown the weakness of man, the inability to resist the power of a totalitarian state, Vasily Grossman at the same time creates images of truly free people. The significance of the victory in the Great Patriotic War, won despite the dictatorship of Stalin, is more significant. This victory became possible precisely thanks to the inner freedom of a person who is capable of resisting whatever fate has in store for him.

The writer himself fully experienced the tragic complexity of the conflict between man and state in Stalin era. Therefore, he knows the price of freedom: “Only people who have not experienced the similar power of an authoritarian state, its pressure, are able to be surprised by those who submit to it. People who have experienced such power are surprised by something else - the ability to flare up even for a moment, at least for one person, with anger a broken word, a timid, quick gesture of protest."

Yuri Bondarev

Bondarev Yuri Vasilievich (born March 15, 1924 in Orsk, Orenburg region), Russian Soviet writer. In 1941, Yu.V. Bondarev, along with thousands of young Muscovites, participated in the construction of defensive fortifications near Smolensk. Then there was an evacuation, where Yuri graduated from the 10th grade. In the summer of 1942, he was sent to study at the 2nd Berdichev Infantry School, which was evacuated to the city of Aktyubinsk. In October of the same year, the cadets were sent to Stalingrad. Bondarev was enlisted as commander of the mortar crew of the 308th regiment of the 98th rifle division.

In the battles near Kotelnikovsky, he was shell-shocked, received frostbite and was slightly wounded in the back. After treatment in the hospital, he served as a gun commander in the 23rd Kiev-Zhitomir Division. Participated in the crossing of the Dnieper and the liberation of Kyiv. In the battles for Zhitomir he was wounded and again ended up in a field hospital. Since January 1944, Yu. Bondarev fought in the ranks of the 121st Red Banner Rylsko-Kyiv Rifle Division in Poland and on the border with Czechoslovakia.

Graduated from the Literary Institute named after. M. Gorky (1951). The first collection of stories is “On the Big River” (1953). In the stories “Battalions Ask for Fire” (1957), “The Last Salvos” (1959; film of the same name, 1961), in the novel “Hot Snow” (1969) Bondarev reveals the heroism of Soviet soldiers, officers, generals , psychology of participants in military events. The novel “Silence” (1962; film of the same name, 1964) and its sequel, the novel “Two” (1964), depict post-war life in which people who went through the war are looking for their place and calling. The collection of stories “Late in the Evening” (1962) and the story “Relatives” (1969) are dedicated to modern youth. Bondarev is one of the co-authors of the script for the film "Liberation" (1970). In books literary articles“The Search for Truth” (1976), “A Look at Biography” (1977), “Keepers of Values” (1978), also in the works of Bondarev recent years“Temptation”, “Bermuda Triangle”, the prose writer’s talent opened up new facets. In 2004, the writer published new novel called "Without Mercy".

Awarded two Orders of Lenin, the Orders of the October Revolution, the Red Banner of Labor, the Patriotic War, 1st degree, the Badge of Honor, two medals "For Courage", medals "For the Defense of Stalingrad", "For Victory over Germany", the order "Big Star of Peoples' Friendship" " (Germany), "Order of Honor" (Transnistria), gold medal of A.A. Fadeeva, many awards foreign countries. Winner of the Lenin Prize (1972), two USSR State Prizes (1974, 1983 - for the novels "The Shore" and "Choice"), the State Prize of the RSFSR (1975 - for the screenplay of the film "Hot Snow").

"Hot Snow"

The events of the novel "Hot Snow" take place near Stalingrad, south of the blockaded Soviet troops The 6th Army of General Paulus, in the cold December 1942, when one of our armies withstood in the Volga steppe the attack of the tank divisions of Field Marshal Manstein, who sought to break through a corridor to Paulus’s army and lead it out of encirclement. The outcome of the Battle of the Volga and maybe even the timing of the end of the war itself largely depended on the success or failure of this operation. The duration of the novel is limited to just a few days, during which Yuri Bondarev’s heroes selflessly defend a tiny patch of land from German tanks.

In "Hot Snow" time is compressed even more tightly than in the story "Battalions Ask for Fire." “Hot Snow” is the short march of General Bessonov’s army disembarking from the echelons and the battle that decided so much in the fate of the country; these are cold frosty dawns, two days and two endless December nights. Knowing no respite or lyrical digressions, as if the author had lost his breath from constant tension, the novel “Hot Snow” is distinguished by its directness, direct connection of the plot with the true events of the Great Patriotic War, with one of its decisive moments. The life and death of the novel's heroes, their very destinies are illuminated with an alarming light true history, as a result of which everything acquires special weight and significance.

In the novel, Drozdovsky's battery absorbs almost all the reader's attention; the action is concentrated primarily around a small number of characters. Kuznetsov, Ukhanov, Rubin and their comrades are a part of the great army, they are the people, the people to the extent that the typified personality of the hero expresses the spiritual, moral traits of the people.

In "Hot Snow"

In “Hot Snow” the image of a people who have risen to war appears before us in a completeness of expression previously unknown in Yuri Bondarev, in the richness and diversity of characters, and at the same time in integrity. This image is not limited to the figures of young lieutenants - commanders of artillery platoons, nor the colorful figures of those who are traditionally considered to be people from the people - such as the slightly cowardly Chibisov, the calm and experienced gunner Evstigneev or the straightforward and rude driver Rubin; nor by senior officers, such as the division commander, Colonel Deev, or the army commander, General Bessonov. Only collectively understood and accepted emotionally as something unified, despite all the differences in ranks and titles, do they form the image of a fighting people. The strength and novelty of the novel lies in the fact that this unity is achieved as if by itself, captured without much effort by the author - with living, moving life. The image of the people, as the result of the entire book, perhaps most of all feeds the epic, novelistic beginning of the story.

Yuri Bondarev is characterized by a desire for tragedy, the nature of which is close to the events of the war itself. It would seem that nothing corresponds to this artist’s aspiration more than the most difficult time for the country at the beginning of the war, the summer of 1941. But the writer’s books are about a different time, when the defeat of the Nazis and the victory of the Russian army are almost certain.

The death of heroes on the eve of victory, the criminal inevitability of death contains a high tragedy and provokes a protest against the cruelty of the war and the forces that unleashed it. The heroes of “Hot Snow” die - battery medical instructor Zoya Elagina, shy Edova Sergunenkov, member of the Military Council Vesnin, Kasymov and many others die... And the war is to blame for all these deaths. Even if the callousness of Lieutenant Drozdovsky is to blame for the death of Sergunenkov, even if the blame for Zoya’s death falls partly on him, but no matter how great Drozdovsky’s guilt, they are, first of all, victims of war.

The novel expresses the understanding of death as a violation of the highest justice and harmony. Let us remember how Kuznetsov looks at the murdered Kasymov: “now a shell box lay under Kasymov’s head, and his youthful, mustacheless face, recently alive, dark, had become deathly white, thinned by the eerie beauty of death, looked in surprise with damp cherry half-open eyes at his chest , at the torn into shreds, dissected padded jacket, as if even after death he did not understand how it killed him and why he could not stand up to the gun sight. In this unseeing squint of Kasymov there was a quiet curiosity about his unlived life on this earth and at the same time the calm mystery of death, into which the red-hot pain of the fragments threw him as he tried to rise to the sight."

Kuznetsov feels even more acutely the irreversibility of the loss of his driver Sergunenkov. After all, the very mechanism of his death is revealed here. Kuznetsov turned out to be a powerless witness to how Drozdovsky sent Sergunenkov to certain death, and he, Kuznetsov, already knows that he will forever curse himself for what he saw, was present, but was unable to change anything.

In "Hot Snow", with all the tension of events, everything human in people, their characters are revealed not separately from the war, but interconnected with it, under its fire, when, it seems, they cannot even raise their heads. Usually the chronicle of battles can be retold separately from the individuality of its participants - the battle in “Hot Snow” cannot be retold otherwise than through the fate and characters of people.

The past of the characters in the novel is significant and significant. For some it is almost cloudless, for others it is so complex and dramatic that the former drama is not left behind, pushed aside by the war, but accompanies the person in the battle southwest of Stalingrad. The events of the past determined Ukhanov’s military fate: a gifted, full of energy officer who should have commanded a battery, but he is only a sergeant. Ukhanov’s cool, rebellious character also determines his movement within the novel. Chibisov's past troubles, which almost broke him (he spent several months in German captivity), resonated with fear in him and determine a lot in his behavior. One way or another, the novel glimpses the past of Zoya Elagina, Kasymov, Sergunenkov, and the unsociable Rubin, whose courage and loyalty to soldier’s duty we will be able to appreciate only by the end of the novel.

The past of General Bessonov is especially important in the novel. The thought of his son being captured by the Germans complicates his position both at Headquarters and at the front. And when a fascist leaflet informing that Bessonov’s son was captured falls into the hands of Lieutenant Colonel Osin from the counterintelligence department of the front, it seems that a threat has arisen to Bessonov’s service.

All this retrospective material fits into the novel so naturally that the reader does not feel it separate. The past does not require a separate space for itself, separate chapters - it merged with the present, revealing its depths and the living interconnectedness of one and the other. The past does not burden the story of the present, but gives it greater dramatic poignancy, psychologism and historicism.

Yuri Bondarev does the same with portraits of characters: the appearance and characters of his heroes are shown in development, and only towards the end of the novel or with the death of the hero does the author create a complete portrait of him. How unexpected in this light is the portrait of the always smart and collected Drozdovsky on the very last page - with a relaxed, sluggish gait and unusually bent shoulders.

Such an image requires from the author special vigilance and spontaneity in perceiving the characters, feeling them as real, living people, in whom there is always the possibility of mystery or sudden insight. Before us is the whole person, understandable, close, and yet we are not left with the feeling that we have only touched the edge of his spiritual world - and with his death you feel that you have not yet managed to fully understand him inner world. Commissioner Vesnin, looking at the truck thrown from the bridge onto the river ice, says: “What a monstrous destruction war is. Nothing has a price.” The monstrosity of war is most expressed - and the novel reveals this with brutal directness - in the murder of a person. But the novel also shows the high price of life given for the Motherland.

Probably the most mysterious of the world human relations in the novel it is the love that arises between Kuznetsov and Zoya. The war, its cruelty and blood, its timing, overturning the usual ideas about time - it was precisely this that contributed to such a rapid development of this love. After all, this feeling developed in those short time march and battle, when there is no time to think and analyze your feelings. And it all begins with Kuznetsov’s quiet, incomprehensible jealousy of the relationship between Zoya and Drozdovsky. And soon - so little time passes - Kuznetsov is already bitterly mourning the deceased Zoya, and it is from these lines that the title of the novel is taken, when Kuznetsov wiped his face wet from tears, “the snow on the sleeve of his quilted jacket was hot from his tears.”

Having initially been deceived by Lieutenant Drozdovsky, the best cadet at that time, Zoya throughout the novel reveals herself to us as a moral person, whole, ready for self-sacrifice, capable of embracing with her heart the pain and suffering of many... Zoya’s personality is recognized in a tense, as if electrified space, which is almost inevitable arises in a trench with the appearance of a woman. She seems to go through many tests, from annoying interest to rude rejection. But her kindness, her patience and compassion reach everyone; she is truly a sister to the soldiers. The image of Zoya somehow imperceptibly filled the atmosphere of the book, its main events, its harsh, cruel reality with the feminine principle, affection and tenderness.

One of the most important conflicts in the novel is the conflict between Kuznetsov and Drozdovsky. A lot of space is given to this conflict, it is exposed very sharply, and is easily traced from beginning to end. At first there is tension, going back to the background of the novel; inconsistency of characters, manners, temperaments, even style of speech: the soft, thoughtful Kuznetsov seems to find it difficult to endure Drozdovsky’s abrupt, commanding, indisputable speech. Long hours of battle, the senseless death of Sergunenkov, the fatal wound of Zoya, for which Drozdovsky was partly to blame - all this forms a gap between the two young officers, the moral incompatibility of their existences.

In the finale, this abyss is indicated even more sharply: the four surviving artillerymen consecrate the newly received orders in a soldier’s bowler hat, and the sip that each of them takes is, first of all, a funeral sip - it contains bitterness and grief of loss. Drozdovsky also received the order, because for Bessonov, who awarded him, he is a survivor, a wounded commander of a surviving battery, the general does not know about Drozdovsky’s grave guilt and most likely will never know. This is also the reality of war. But it’s not for nothing that the writer leaves Drozdovsky aside from those gathered at the soldier’s honest bowler hat.

It is extremely important that all of Kuznetsov’s connections with people, and above all with the people subordinate to him, are true, meaningful and have a remarkable ability to develop. They are extremely non-official - in contrast to the emphatically official relations that Drozdovsky so strictly and stubbornly establishes between himself and people. During the battle, Kuznetsov fights next to the soldiers, here he shows his composure, courage, and lively mind. But he also matures spiritually in this battle, becomes fairer, closer, kinder to those people with whom the war brought him together.

The relationship between Kuznetsov and Senior Sergeant Ukhanov, the gun commander, deserves a separate story. Like Kuznetsov, he had already been fired upon in difficult battles in 1941, and due to his military ingenuity and decisive character, he could probably be an excellent commander. But life decreed otherwise, and at first we find Ukhanov and Kuznetsov in conflict: this is a clash of a sweeping, harsh and autocratic nature with another - restrained, initially modest. At first glance, it may seem that Kuznetsov will have to fight both Drozdovsky’s callousness and Ukhanov’s anarchic nature. But in reality it turns out that without yielding to each other in any fundamental position, remaining themselves, Kuznetsov and Ukhanov become close people. Not just people fighting together, but people who got to know each other and are now forever close. And the absence of author’s comments, the preservation of the rough context of life makes their brotherhood real and significant.

The ethical and philosophical thought of the novel, as well as its emotional intensity, reaches its greatest heights in the finale, when an unexpected rapprochement between Bessonov and Kuznetsov occurs. This is rapprochement without immediate proximity: Bessonov awarded his officer along with others and moved on. For him, Kuznetsov is just one of those who stood to death at the turn of the Myshkova River. Their closeness turns out to be more sublime: it is the closeness of thought, spirit, and outlook on life. For example, shocked by the death of Vesnin, Bessonov blames himself for the fact that, due to his unsociability and suspicion, he prevented friendly relations from developing between them (“the way Vesnin wanted and the way they should be”). Or Kuznetsov, who could do nothing to help Chubarikov’s crew, which was dying before his eyes, tormented by the piercing thought that all this “seemed to have happened because he did not have time to get close to them, to understand each one, to love them...”.