Astafyev are cursed and killed plot. Victor Astafiev

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Cursed and killed- a novel in two books by Viktor Astafiev, written in 1995. The first book of the novel was written in 1990-1992, the second book in 1992-1994. The novel is unfinished, in March 2000 the writer announced the termination of work on the novel

The title of the novel is taken from its text: it is reported that on one of the stichera that the Siberian Old Believers had, “it was written that everyone who sows unrest, wars and fratricide on earth will be cursed and killed by God”

From a historical point of view, the novel very plausibly describes the Great Patriotic War and the historical events in the USSR that preceded it, the process of preparing reinforcements, the life of soldiers and officers and their relationship between themselves and their commanders, and the actual fighting. The book was written, among other things, on the basis of the personal impressions of the front-line writer.

However, the most important are the moral issues raised by the writer in the novel. These are the problems of relationships between people in the conditions of war, the conflict between Christian morality, patriotism and the totalitarian state, the problems of the formation of people whose youth fell on the hardest years. The idea of God's punishment through the war of the Soviet people runs like a red thread through the novel.

The writer's characteristic philosophical reflections and talented descriptions of nature contrast in the novel with extremely naturalistic descriptions of the life of soldiers, lively, often colloquial and dialectal dialogues of the characters of the novel, whose characters and fate are diverse and individual.

As stated in the preface to one of the editions of the novel: “It was with this novel that Astafiev summed up his reflections on the war as a“ crime against reason ””.

The first part of the novel was awarded the Triumph Prize

Devil's pit

The epigraph to the first book of the novel is a quote from the Bible:

If you bite and eat each other.
Beware that you are not
destroyed by each other.
— Galatians 5:15

The book consists of two parts. The action of the first book of the novel takes place near Berdsk in the late autumn of 1942 and in the winter of 1943, in the 21st reserve rifle regiment. The number of the regiment and the place of its deployment correspond to those that actually existed during the Great Patriotic War. . There is no place for the deployment of the reserve regiment today, this place is flooded by the Ob Sea

The action begins with the arrival in the autumn of 1942 in the reserve regiment of young recruits, mostly just reached military age. Their composition is the most diverse: the Hansi Lyoshka Shestakov, who arrived from the lower reaches of the Ob, partly by blood, the Hansi Lyoshka Shestakov, the Old Believer, the strongman Kolya Ryndin, the thieves Zelentsov, the simulator Petka Musikov, the masterful Lyokha Buldakov and others. Later, the called Kazakhs and two other significant characters of the novel joined them: Ashot Vaskonyan and Felix Boyarchik. After quarantine, they end up in one company of the regiment, where they are met by foreman Shpator, and the command of the company is taken by Lieutenant Shchus, who is also one of the main characters in the novel. Conscripts for the most part are illiterate, recruited from remote towns and villages, many had conflicts with the law.

The first book of the novel tells how a motley crowd of conscripts in the most difficult conditions develops into a fully combat-ready and generally cohesive team. Future soldiers go through a lot: constant malnutrition, cold, dampness, lack of elementary conditions are exacerbated by conflicts between conscripts, between conscripts and their commanders, and even between commanders, not everything is going smoothly. Before the eyes of the boys, the commander beats to death a downcast goner, two twin brothers are shot, who, out of ignorance, arbitrarily left the unit temporarily, a show trial is held over Zelentsov. The author describes an apocalyptic hopeless picture of a soldier's life in the rear units, young people, whose life before that, and so "for the most part was miserable, humiliating, poverty, consisted of standing in lines, receiving rations, coupons, and even from the struggle for the harvest, which is right there seized for the benefit of society. A special place in the book is occupied by winter grain procurements, for which the first company was dispatched to the village of Osipovo. During the preparations, where the soldiers were provided with good food and care, the gray mass of downtrodden people is transformed, romances are struck up with local residents (for many, the first and last), and it is clearly visible that the soldiers are just boys.

The linear plot of the book is interspersed with more detailed descriptions of the pre-war life of the characters in the novel.

The first book ends with the sending of the marching companies of the regiment to the front.

Bridgehead

Epigraph to the second book

You have heard what the ancients said:
"Dont kill. Whoever kills is subject to judgment."
But I tell you that everyone who is angry
against his brother in vain, subject to judgment ...
- Gospel of Matthew 5, 2122

The action of the second book of the novel takes place in late September 1943 and apparently early October 1943 on the Dnieper. Judging by the fact that the airborne operation is mentioned in the book, the Bukrinsky bridgehead served as the prototype of the bridgehead for the author. Military units are fictional.

At the beginning of the book, the combat path of the regiment, which left Berdsk in January 1943, is briefly described, and the action begins at the moment the unit is preparing to cross the Dnieper. In previous battles, the main characters of the first part of the book survived, and more characters were added to them, many of the commanders: the corps commander Lakhonin, the deputy commander of the artillery regiment Zarubin, the head of the political department of the Musenok division and others. Also put into action colorful sergeant Finifatiev, two nurses and several German soldiers.

The second book is a naturalistic description of the fighting during the crossing of the Dnieper, the capture and holding of a bridgehead on its banks for seven and "all subsequent" days. The author describes the war in extreme detail and cruelly, clearly distinguishing between those who are on the bridgehead (mostly the same boys and a number of commanders) and those who remained on the east coast (political department, special department, field wives, detachments and just cowards) . At the same time, the war is described both through the eyes of Soviet soldiers, and partly German.

Just like in the first part of the book, the linear plot is interspersed with descriptions of the pre-war and already military life of the characters in the book. However, the narration of the second part is more dynamic in comparison with the first, which is quite understandable: “if in the first book of The Devil's Pit reign obscenity and stench, then in the second part of The Bridgehead it is death. If in the first - obscenity and vileness of a soldier's rear life, then in the second - retribution for what he did.

Many of the book's characters were killed or badly wounded on the beachhead; about some, the author leaves the reader to think.

Again, the second book intersects with the first one in that the place of action, the bridgehead on the Dnieper, as well as the "Devil's Pit", the author sent under water, flooding it with a reservoir.

Reviews

"The book shocked me." Vasil Bykov
“You have torn my whole soul apart. I read about the Pit in Novy Mir... Everything is as it was. And if someone has even a drop of distrust for what is written, he is ready to confirm it himself. Yu.I. Alabovsky, war veteran, doctor of medical sciences, professor.

Editions

Prose of War. Volume One St. Petersburg: Litera, 1993. Circulation: 100,000 copies. ISBN 5-900490-02-5 (Vol. 1) Book One
M.: Veche, 1994 Series: Military novel Circulation: 100,000 copies. ISBN: 5-7141-0072-1 Book One
M.: Veche, 1995 Series: Military novel Circulation: 20,000 copies. ISBN: 5-7141-0072-1 Book Two
Cursed and killed. Springboard Moscow: Veche, 1995 Series: Dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the Great Victory Circulation: 20,000 copies. ISBN: 5-7141-0072-1 Book Two
Collected works in 15 volumes. Volume ten. Krasnoyarsk: Offset, 1997. Circulation: 10,000 copies.
Cursed and Killed M.: Eksmo, 2002 Series: The Red Book of Russian Prose Circulation: 4000 copies. + 12000 copies (reprint) ISBN: 5-04-009706-9, 5-699-12053-X, 978-5-699-12053-6
Cursed and killed M.: Eksmo, 2003 Circulation: 5100 copies. ISBN: 5-699-04253-9
Cursed and killed M.: Eksmo, 2005 Series: Russian classics of the XX century Circulation: 4100 copies. + 4100 copies. (reprint) ISBN: 5-699-11435-1
Cursed and Killed M.: Eksmo, 2007 Series: Library of World Literature (Eksmo) Circulation: 5000 copies. + 4000 copies (reprint) ISBN: 978-5-699-20146-4, 5-699-20146-7
Cursed and killed M.: Eksmo, 2009 Series: Russian classics Circulation: 4100 copies. ISBN: 978-5-699-33805-4
Cursed and killed M.: Eksmo, 2010 Series: To the 65th anniversary of the Great Victory Circulation: 4000 copies. ISBN: 978-5-699-40494-0
Cursed and killed M.: Eksmo, 2010 Series: Russian classics Circulation: 4000 copies. ISBN: 978-5-699-36702-3

Notes

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See what "Cursed and Killed" is in other dictionaries:

Cursed and killed Cursed and killed Author: Viktor Astafiev Genre: historical novel Original language: Russian Design: Andrey Bondarenko Series: The Red Book of Russian prose ... Wikipedia

Viktor Petrovich Astafiev Date of birth: May 1, 1924 (1924 05 01) Place of birth: Ovsyanka, Krasnoyarsk district ... Wikipedia

Viktor Petrovich (1924, Ovsyanka village, Krasnoyarsk Territory - 2001, Krasnoyarsk Academgorodok), Russian prose writer. He lost his mother early, was brought up in an orphanage, graduated from a vocational school. In the fall of 1942, he volunteered for the front, was seriously wounded. ... ... Literary Encyclopedia

- (1924 2001), Russian writer, Hero of Socialist Labor (1989). In psychological stories and novels about the war and the modern Siberian village "Theft" (1966), "Shepherd and Shepherdess" (1971), "Tsar Fish" (1976; State Prize of the USSR, 1978), in ... encyclopedic Dictionary

The events of the novel take place during the Great Patriotic War. Winter, late 1942, Siberia. A new batch of prisoners arrives at a quarantine camp near Berdsk. For several days, recruits are being prepared for life in the camp - they are assigned to companies, duties are determined, and their heads are shaved. The camp life and the horrors of the life of prisoners are described in detail - the lack of suitable clothing, hunger, poverty, cold, beatings, the loss of everything human. One of the most poignant episodes of the first part of the novel is the arrival of a train with Kazakh soldiers at the station. They are in such a state - invalids who have lost limbs; living corpses (and the lifeless bodies of people who did not reach the camp alive) - horrify even the prisoners.

The trial of the artist Felix Boryachik and the prisoner Zelentsov, who fell under the hot hand, is described. This is one of the few relatively "bright" episodes of the novel - the trial does not end with the execution, which is desirable for justice, but the convict sent to the penal company is escorted like a real local hero.

After this event and until the new year, discipline in the camps gradually deteriorates. This leads the authorities to the idea of the need for executions - including innocent ones - for educational purposes. After the New Year, in January, survivors of the horrors of winter are sent to the front.

The events from the winter of 1943 to the autumn of the same year are described quite briefly - before the crossing over the Dnieper (the companies spend all this time in battles). The crossing itself and the living conditions of a front-line soldier are described in great detail, not much different from the living conditions of a prisoner in a quarantine camp. For many, the crossing turns out to be the last military operation - the army suffers unprecedented losses. The main characters of the novel - Shestakov, Buldakov, Ryndin - get off with wounds, however, quite severe.

Despite the fact that this crossing operation is considered by many to be a failure, it is it that becomes the turning point of the war - the advantage gradually passes to the Soviet troops and the enemy army begins to retreat.

The novel teaches to preserve humanity and remain strong in spirit no matter what.

Picture or drawing Cursed and killed

"Cursed and Killed"

Even during the war of 1941-45, and after it in even greater abundance and density, poems, poems, stories and novels began to flow about this formidable and protracted war. And they began to dry up, perhaps only towards the end of the 20th century. At first glance, it may seem strange that Viktor Astafiev, who experienced the worst conditions of this war, wounded, shell-shocked, almost killed, for almost 40 years of his literary activity, almost kept silent about that Great War, except occasionally slips of the tongue. And only in the 1990s suddenly - and late from so many? - made a two-volume "Cursed and killed."

Victor Astafiev The terrible truth about the war

I reject any idea that Astafiev deliberately kept silent, realizing the impassability of his book through censorship. Especially - for reasons of comfort: not to be naked? Not like that, not like his character! Astafiev - was silent for a long time according to the law of the Russian people's lips, not invented by him. Our people, through all the depths of their history, have always been late to express themselves, except in melodious folklore. Astafiev was crowded everything experienced is so inexhaustible that he had to experience human impotence to express all this beyond-humanity, and even compete with a multitude of easily sliding explanations. And when did he publish? At 70 years old, a one-eyed disabled person, far from successful capitals.

And his book turned out to be so impossible to habitual acceptance that the public had better not notice it, not notice it too much - or unconvincingly smash it as "slander". Outweighed the first.

Astafiev begins the picture of the war with cruel fidelity from a reserve rifle regiment in front of Novosibirsk - in a place unsuitable for human life - with a ferocious situation of damp basements in the forest, in fact, without arranged latrines (instead - a district forest), without arranged heating, without baths - cave life, where sanitation measures are a solution of carbolic acid and chlorine squelching on the floors. In these "barracks", here, at the end of 1942, 18-year-old recruits were brought in the winter, completely sweeping the Siberian expanse from 1924 of birth. (The breath of the disturbed people's bowels! - from the Old Believer hinterland to the most modern thieves at rock.) A horrifying picture of filth and untidiness - and it's called quarantine. After a while, after sending marching companies to the front, the quarantine ones are transferred to the vacated, but no better arranged premises of those sent. Uniforms and shoes are not adjusted in size, everyone is in anything, they are still smeared with some kind of fetid disinfection in hairy places. Lice are swarming (and only crawl away from the dead). Do not wash yourself in an unheated bath. Potatoes are poured into the cauldron not only unpeeled, but not washed from the ground. And through such a chilling life, the defenders of the motherland are trained on the “parade ground” (dug up field) with wooden mock-ups of rifles - and on straw effigies of the Fritz. (At the fallen one: “get up, scoundrel!” - and kick them with their feet.) Under such conditions, the author writes, “half of the business is engaged in business, and the other half earns grub for itself” (binge for at rock!). (It turns out that the inhabitants - with a dracula and axes, protect themselves from thieves.) Goners appear, and at the transition to spring - the storerooms are massively covered by "night blindness". The general helplessness of all, "sluggish agreement with everything that happens." Yes, “would rather go to the front”, “they won’t send them further than the front, they won’t keep them worse than here”, “to one end, or something.” - Placed on the bulkhead of vegetable stores - they steal potatoes, but where to bake them? They contrive to lower officers' dugouts into the sparkling pipes - and how burned out and how half-baked - to burst until diarrhea. (Astafiev calls these barracks the "Devil's Pit" more than once, and so he called the first half of the book.)

But for the storekeepers sharpened in health, political studies are still carefully and regularly flowing. Astafiev also quotes fragments from the reports of the Information Bureau - now again striking our forgetful memory: what terrible losses the Germans suffer, how many tanks and guns are destroyed daily! - only the places of battles, settlements, dark fog for clearing were not named. But political studies in themselves are a “blissful comfort” for soldiers: while the political commissar murmurs how carefully “the country and the party think of you”, everyone, and the storekeepers can sit at least a little in peace and relative warmth. (However, the commissar sees their drowsiness, at times commands: "Get up! Sit down!") But who - and believes these victorious reports, and on November 7, after reading Stalin's speech - amazing! - “tears flowed from the storekeepers,” and “they parted with a friendly formidable song.” (And of course, violent singing to the march of the hungry and exhausted.)

All this flows with Astafiev not as a literary exposition, not as a literary claim, but - like a sick memory of natural life, he is tormented, overwhelmed by cruel real knowledge. The author singles out a dozen fighters, about whom digressions are lengthy - and so sometimes that even inserts their previous life in separate chapters. (The inflexible Old Believer giant Ryndin is convexly drawn in detail. The author, as it were, removed himself from the book.) This method enhances our carnal sensation from 18-year-old poor fellows. Where he gets very annoyed - and gives himself direct will to express himself on his own behalf: "this rogue, arrogant snout, spasmodically splashing saliva, rogue inclinations, moral monster, stuffed animal ..."

These major authorial distractions in time greatly enrich the reader's glance (and Astafiev himself is given channels for the pain of the past). Here and the dispossession of the Cossacks throughout the Irtysh and Ob. And How special settlers died in barges during their rafting to the North. (And how the victims were redeemed from the escorts; one baby, someone else's child, was saved by a beautiful woman by surrendering her body to the escort, and we know other cases of such ransom.) "Special settlers" in Arkhangelsk also get here. Many sad family biographies. With sympathy and the truth about the dispossessed family: “Evil not remembering, downtrodden Russian people - where did they learn delicacy?” - The battle near Khasan also comes here - and with details, probably not yet covered: as a cadet company, senselessly holding it for a day in the rain, - they sent an attack on the hill "to smash the presumptuous samurai to smithereens, to cover our banners with unfading glory" - and exhausted cadets "We went to a steep slope in a frontal attack, and the Japanese shot them from a height, they did not allow them to fight with a bayonet." And after, at the negotiations, the Japanese swaggered over the tyrannical Soviet rulers and received all the compensation. (But in Soviet memory ... our glorious victory remained.) - And many more, from an eyewitness, details of the disorder in the Red Army. - Here is the memory of his platoon commander recovering from a wound - about the battles near Smolensk in 1941: "fresh units, late for the battles for the city, swept away the avalanche of retreating troops", became involved in its panicked movement. “They tried to gain a foothold on poorly prepared lines, but the cursed word “encirclement” immediately caught up with people - and they fled in heaps, crowds, herds and loose.” "The best fighters died without seeing the enemy, without even having been in the trenches."

Such deep digressions, which are very characteristic of Astafiev's pen, often violate the structure of the book, but they always enrich the content with newly attracted material. Here General Lakhonin flashes by, a representative of the Voronezh Front, awaiting replenishment from our rifle regiment (and reasonably setting aside the weakest from sending, let them heal). Meanwhile, he also recalls the Totsk camps in the Orenburg region - more ferocious than ours here. There they are - in the desert steppe, the building material for the barracks - willow and bushes, of which - and canes instead of sticks for the "gun" layout and support for the goners. The storekeepers slept in the sand and dust without undressing. Sandstorms, dysentery epidemic. “It happened that the dead Red Army soldiers lay forgotten for weeks in half-collapsed dugouts, and their rations were received alive. In order not to dig graves, they buried them in dugouts" - "They dug up the burial grounds of dead cattle, cut off the meat from it." And "none of the inspectors dared to report on the disastrous state and insist on the closure of such a military town: all the ranks firmly remembered the words of Comrade Stalin that "we have never had such a strong rear"".

During the difficult months of their stay in the reserve regiment, the reserve more and more understand the aimlessness of their existence here: there is no shooting training, no tactical training, everything is with mock-ups, not the same war in reality. And they are expelled from the barracks on the rise. Primitive life. All the same blind-haired soldiers, supporting themselves behind the walls, wander if not to the garbage heap, for cleanings and potato peels, then they strive for the barracks, and there are still fights for places on the upper bunk. The number of goners in the regiment is growing. When a company gets to be on duty in the battalion in the kitchen, everyone rushes to fill their mouths with other people's edibles and wild artificial lard instead of natural fat.

Suddenly, two tribunal meetings burst into this barracks life one after another. The first of them quickly ends with the victory of the defendant thieves and such a helpless disgrace of the tribunal that at first the whole episode seems invented: it doesn’t happen! (Why would socially close and not win?) But soon the next second tribunal "corrects" the impression: a genuine reprisal against defenseless simpletons, privates, the two Snegiryov brothers. Their native village is about thirty versts from the barracks, and by simplicity they dared to go home in bad weather. (here mother wrote about domestic joy: the cow calved!) But their absence lasted up to two days (they returned with treats for friends), was spotted, filed in a special department - and at that point the tribunal did not falter: shoot both, immediately and publicly. Many, even the condemned themselves, did not believe at first: they frighten them, soften them. No matter how! And this execution, described in detail by Astafiev, will cut into Russian literature with the most cruel picture. (And the mother of those who were shot was subsequently sent to prison, where she soon went mad.) And our readers, who had been brought up on Soviet "military prose" for half a century, have not experienced such stupefaction.

Numerous voluminous and weightless deviations, of course, break the overall structure, the composition is not fastened, and the language of the book is not easy, the texture of the text becomes heavy. From the early works of Astafiev, those spontaneous linguistic flashes, bright self-born words, faded and decreased in number. The author's speech pulled itself up to a worn out business presentation, alternating its levels, sometimes undeveloped sets flash, like "surrounding reality", "negatively influenced", "who did not want to lag behind advanced culture", "scientifically speaking, spent energy", "confusion in the battle ranks "(at the entrance of the general), "according to the historical moment." And directly explanatory phrases, such as “Stalin habitually deceived the people, lied recklessly in a festive November speech”, “our beloved baptized people are on the rails of excellence”, and often inappropriate irony, attempts at sad jokes: “disapproved by the progressive public”, “alien ideas of the proletariat”, “working vigilantly in the field of maintaining morale”. - And he often expresses his dislike bluntly, on the forehead: “dexterous little bells and whistles with the faces and tricks of yard lackeys”, “during rampant demonism, in the kingdom of the holy fool despot”. Doesn't try to arrange the warehouse of the phrase. - Sometimes - quotes from the prayers of the Old Believer (the title of the whole book is taken from there, according to an unknown stump: "And they will be cursed and killed by God" - that's where).

The last chapters of The Devil's Pit suddenly bring us a relief change in the whole atmosphere. This is why: two companies (which the author followed in more detail) were transferred to a state farm near the nearby Iskitim for a belated harvest of perishing grain (a typical picture for the villages of the first two war winters, exposed from male labor, is the most important thing for us to see the whole situation in a whole ): which grain crumbled in frosts, which dampened in thaws. Broken tubules of stems - "as if memorial candles were smoldering day and night over a dead grain field, grains already weeping with tears." In the economy of that state farm, “everything blew with decay”, “harvesters looked like antediluvian animals that wandered, wandered along the drooping grain waves and stopped, lowering their trunks dejectedly.” The reserve soldiers are animated, inspired - by separation from the "stinky, dark barracks, almost already rotten, giving away the grave", and receiving healthy peasant food, and from the abundant presence of girls. But most of all, Astafiev himself comes to life with his soul - from dipping into his native rural environment. And in general, he is always prone to deviations from the narrative core - here Astafiev willingly surrenders, as it were, even to a complete change of genre: chapter after chapter flows poem rural living. Here is a place for saving labor, and for songs, for youth courtship, club dances. And here nature also sparkled with the author, he brandishes his gaze, speech and soul - at the entire history of agriculture from its inception in humanity - when "the planet with sprouts will attach a person to the earth, reward him with invincible love for the grain field, for every earthly plant." And - century after century, when "the shameless parasite rose up on the earth" and "spit in the hand that gives bread", "brought barrenness to the most fertile Russian land, extinguished humility in the minds of the most good-natured people." “It is not known before whom the guilty land. And she is to blame only for longsuffering. In these speculative considerations, we will also read about "galifast drunken commissars", "dishonored gangs yelling about world proletarian equality." Here, nearby, we are told the details of the life of the wolves, yes, for balance to everything, do not forget the intelligent life: there is one Armenian soldier in the company, and his mother comes to him, and the level of their conversations is corresponding. - Suddenly - episodes of good-natured humor, suddenly - and lyrical.

And the happy days are slipping away - and the hour comes for these children of the Narym special settlers "to throw into the fire of war, like straw with a filament." While Voronezh has not yet been completely handed over to the Germans (a small patch of the city remains), the Siberian Rifle Division is being formed. To treat sick soldiers - yes, you need to simplify the barracks, props up the set born in 1925. But - when these to teach combat "in an environment close to combat"? The executed Snegiryov brothers are still fresh in everyone's memory ... Marching companies are suddenly dressed in real combat uniforms, they are transformed! They leave the village in an embrace with the girls. “The storm roared, the rain roared” broke through before the waste, so they had never sung together for “mean barracks life, cattle existence”. Through this farewell song, “the power hidden in these young guys” broke through. And only among them the platoon commander, who had already been at the front and wounded, cried from the song: "he knew what awaits those singers in the war." - Who will baptize them after them (to baptize now is inconvenient, not supposed to, even adult peasants do not all dare.) - The corroded political commissar admonishes - and the brass band soars up. (Sent now - to a military town near Novosibirsk, to the old pre-revolutionary barracks - "brick, with thick walls, dry, warm, spacious, with many service rooms, washrooms, toilets" ... They will see how it was under the tsar. And the author sighs widely after : “Russian people, how naked and unforgiving is your heart!”)

-----------------------

In the very transition from the rear half of the book to the second, front-line, Astafiev, of course, could not stay at a point in And knowledge, understanding and language of a simple ordinary soldier. This transition of eight months, through the height of the stormy year of 1943 right up to its autumn, could only be described with a rare dotted line - in the understanding of the general and in terms of general reports (“they completed the task with honor”, etc.) - yes, go ahead and refrain from general manner. However, interspersed with that - and about the devastating battle around Kharkov, hushed up in our country (and still forgotten), in the spring of 1943: armies”, “the valiant troops scrambled even more zealously”, the Germans, having closed the ring, “captured twenty pieces of Soviet generals at once”, “Russia does not stop supplying cannon fodder”. (Yes, for such we have printed judgments - after all, it was necessary to wait half a century ...) And then, by the summer, we already know the Siberian Rifle Division, with the already known gene. Lakhonin, "passed over to a tough active defense", with her and the artillery regiment of Major Zarubin, also known to us from the first part.

Through all the contradictory nature of these revelations - the author must, by the beginning of the autumn actions on the Dnieper, hold out intact as many of his characters from the first half of the book. And many of them have already faded and dissolved. But after all the exhaustion, they also got a late, non-brief stop in the spring in the "republic of the Volga Germans" cleared of the Germans. All the same, they recovered from the reserve zone - and now they are ready to fight further. (Here is the unfunny, even snarky humor of their internecine conversations.) Here is the surviving commander of their company Shchus (the same one, once saved as a boy, into dispossession, by an escort from the Yenisei barge) - and now the battalion commander, captain. And the fighter Lyoshka Shestakov, modestly carried out as a second plan in the 1st part, now, as if an experienced liaison officer, has become a senior telephone operator of a howitzer battery, thus in the center of the upcoming battle on the Dnieper.

This entire transition through 1943 could not be given a coherent presentation, especially with Astafiev’s organic manner to distractions - landscape (Lyoshka’s longing for the Ob in comparison with the Dnieper), to soldiers’ and commanders’ laughter, and their previous family stories, or their sluggish philosophical reasoning (not without quoting Merezhkovsky...). Taken together, all these episodes (also brushing aside political officers - which should not be forgotten either) create a slow prolongation. The letter is sweeping, unrestrained, the transitions from piece to piece are not clearly marked, do not ask for a single through style, the work is going on, as it were, not with a chisel, but with a very disheveled brush. And the Dnieper - here, in front of us, it is inevitable to cross - and with weapons and heavy telephone coils - on what? everyone is scouring for "watercraft", breaking down sheds for the sake of boards - and Lyoshka cleverly finds a hidden boat - and hides it from rivals further. And all this took many, many pages.

There are no watercraft, and they will not be sent from anywhere - to swim on their stomachs. And you can’t wait: the enemy is strengthening his shore. Send a reconnaissance platoon across the river - a platoon of suicide bombers, and, already at the beginning of artillery preparation, the battalion should begin crossing to the steep right bank, and then make their way, climb the ravines - to the German heights. But during a night operation - what will you foresee? .. The first intended ferrymen "were given vodka, sugar, tobacco and porridge without a norm in advance." And the political officer of the regiment opens a party meeting - to hurry at the last moment to accept fighters into the party - “do not disgrace the honor of a Soviet soldier! to the last drop of blood! Motherland is behind us! Comrade Stalin hopes. (Some will forget about this reception - and then they will look for them in hospitals and after the war, collect increased party dues.) - And here, in the last hours before the start of the night crossing, - Astafyev shows patience on three or four pages to state an old insignificant meeting two very minor characters. And that's not all. Astafiev experiences a constant spiritual thirst from time to time, at a moment that he considers important, to be interrupted in the presentation - for his direct moral appeal to the reader. So here, before the crossing: “How should the human mind be clouded, how should the heart rust, so that it tunes in only to black, vengeful deeds, because they, the great sins, will then have to be repented of” (I interrupt the quotation, the author will still remember the medieval customs - and that's not all.)

This book is a unique case in which the war is described by a simple infantryman, a "black war worker", who at that time did not even imagine that he would become a writer.

The description of the Dnieper crossing, with all its disorder, obscurity, even contradictions and invisibility of individual movements, is vital precisely because of its confusion, not covered by a single general explanation. But the operational review is not available even to an experienced officer, and then after a long time from the event. Also, with a huge delay, with an inclusive look, Astafiev can write about this crossing: “These first units will certainly die, not even reaching the shore, but still an hour, another, third, fifth people will go, fall into the river, swim, gurgle in the water until the German runs out of breath and runs out of ammunition. Can the author be reproached for not showing this mass character, as “20 thousand were killed during the crossing”? But we read how the telephone operator Lyoshka, saving himself and his coils in the boat (the major’s task to stretch the connection along the bottom of the river), hits the heads of others, our drowning fighters, with an oar, so that they, clinging, would not capsize the boat, would not ruin the operation. No and no one's ahs over the freshly killed, simple life. Although you can whine from this mess from the immediacy of the retelling - but more and more new episodes, and all are true. There is no stable meaningful connection between the episodes - so the soldier only sees fragments of events, especially not to understand the tactical situation.

Is it with a plank longboat: it is loaded ahead of time with ammunition, weapons, it needs to be pushed to the river island. “Hundreds of times it has been said where, to whom, with whom, how to sail, but it all got confused, mixed up” at the beginning of cannon and machine-gun fire from both sides. The battalion commander Shchus and his company commanders drive in strained, hoarse voices: “Forward! hurry up! To the island! And the fighters, throwing their shoes and pouches on the longboat, wander, swim and pull as much as they themselves grab onto the sides. Someone screams that he is drowning. In an inscrutable way, the longboat still reaches the island. Now - go around the island and into the channel under the steep right bank! “But the channel was raised into the air, splashed, explosions tore at its bottom” - and filled the water with liquid mud. In wet clothes, they dragged on, and the Germans continuously illuminated the channel with rockets for better shelling. Some of our people got stuck on the island, some of them already ran into the cracks of the right-bank ravines, and there they squeezed into the saving ground or tried to climb higher. Who drank water, who drowned their weapons, and in a matter of minutes German planes appeared and hung yellow lanterns on parachutes - right there and Soviet ones, sowing tracer bullets. Grabbing each other, people drowned in bundles.

At this height, Astafyev, true to himself, also inserts a preaching digression: “God, dear, why did you choose these people and throw them here, into the fiery boiling earthly hell, created by them? Why did you turn your face away from them and leave them to Satan to be torn to pieces? Has the guilt of all mankind fallen on the heads of these unfortunate ones, driven to death by someone else's will ... Here, in the place of disastrous, answer, why are you punishing the innocent? Blind and terrible is Your judgment, Your vengeance with a smashing arrow flies not there and not in those who need to be struck. You look badly, badly the order, created by You, You observe. (Astafyev’s appeals to God, according to his various works, are not rare, but is he a believer? Or a theomachist? Let us recall here how the title of the book was born: cursed by whom?)

V. Rasputin reproached Astafiev for this book in "negative patriotism." Indeed, not a single fighter with him, not even the best officers, think at all about their homeland: at best, only about their duty, and the fighters - how to survive, where to get food, well, their revenue and funerals. But this is the truth. “Let me donate for the motherland, risk for the motherland” - this does not happen.

The end of the crossing and subsequent battles on the German coast - Astafiev described a lot and in detail.

Fresh - a few scenes with penalties (and for what they got into the penalty area, by some wild chance). But although there are episodes in the book with NKVDist landings- they seem to have passed in the souls of people without consequence. Unless they talk about sexots unnaturally openly. And understanding what exactly is being introduced Soviet regime- almost not. Could the author's own biography have taught him bitterly? But the feeling that by that war how many millions hated the Soviet regime and would like to "die" from it - this not at all. (If the author is horrified by the war, then only as a pacifist, and not as a victim of this regime. His philosophy seems to be anarchism, no sign of statehood.)

“Corpses that began to limp with pecked out eyes, with foaming, as if soapy faces, torn, broken by shells, mines, riddled with bullets, were densely floating in the river. The river smelled bad, but the sugary-sweet spirit of fried human meat covered all sorts of smells with a layer, floating under the ravine in a stable place. The sappers sent to pull the corpses out of the water and bury them could not cope with the work. Clamping their noses with caps, they dragged the dead into the water with hooks, but the corpses, stubbornly whirling, stuck to the shore, beat against stones, an arm or leg was torn off by a hook, they threw it into the water. Cursed place, dead world”; and “sometimes carrying the mutilated corpse to the pool, on guard, there the corpse was picked up, put on its feet and, holding up its hands, spinning in a dead dance, it plunged into the sleepy depths.” And later in the autumn, “the water in the river subsided. And that’s why the corpses dried up ... All the creeks, bends were littered with black, swollen corpses, a gray, washed-out rag was dragging along the river, in which, already indifferent to everything, the dead were floating face down somewhere ... Fly, crows, rats celebrated their terrible feast. The crows pecked out the eyes of the drowned, ate human flesh and, sitting comfortably, dozed on the floating dead. (And also: sappers completely rob the dead, rummaging through pockets.)

After how many millions of dead this soldier had to survive in order to write this to us after half a century!

But there are (“First Day”, after the crossing) and strange peppy inserts.

Separate chapters follow the biblical rhythm: "Second Day", "Third Day", "Fourth Day", "Fifth Day", "Sixth Day", "Seventh Day" ... All this is a volume, boundless here.

What the author is completely unsuccessful with is all the skits on the German side. Oh, it would be better if he didn't give them at all. After all, he does not know, does not feel, uses secondary caricature descriptions from Soviet publicity. The false notion is just rushing, it only increases the general looseness and collapse of the narrative. For some reason, it is also taken to tell the pre-war stories of some German soldiers - well, quite superficially, from some read fragments. It reaches the language of the anti-German newspaper revelations of that wartime, almost to the "Crocodile". So he, in many stripes, loses his taste, his sense of proportion. Even the German general is taken to describe - well, already out of hand. (And when he returns to the Russian side - what an immediate revival and meaningfulness.)

Astafiev wants tell the whole truth about the war, but it does not rise in the disclosure to the top state and does not descend to the depths of causes. His irritation, considerable in places, remains at the level of political officers, their slogans and their behavior. Ridicule of political officers and their chatter - in places farcical, fearless. Here is a true scene: how the commissar of the division Musyonok, who knows no boundaries for himself, mocks the exhausted, barely saved officers on the bridgehead. Captain Shusya, half-dead, is forced to get up from his bed to listen to the dressing. (Later it was hinted to us that Shchus blew up Musyonok in an inexplicable way - and is not even suspected.)

The conscientious political instructor Martemyanov, who is ashamed of his position and role, is plausibly added.

Tone.- Strangely, it does not fit such a formidable plot - the author's tone, often with unnecessary or even aimless enthusiasm. There are many attempts - humor (to make it easier for the reader?). But the humor is somehow forced, artificial. (And he himself responds in the dialogue: “don’t crush me with humor”, “don’t have time for humor now.”) There is too much cheap, unfunny soldier jokes - to the detriment of all deep feelings, as if the soldiers do not have them even in moments of great danger. Zuboskaly idleness, clowning - and not funny, and even impossible with that stunned, which most of all happens with a lot of shooting and acute danger. - And here is from the author himself: about such a major event as the death of our airborne assault, - the adoption of a critical tone without understanding the essence.

And at the same time, sometimes - quite suddenly, in dissonance, nothing prepared, pathetic prayers break out from Astafyev. And they just work out for him, because they come from the heart. “Good God! Why did You give such a terrible power into the hands of an unreasoning being? Why did You, before his mind mature and become strong, put fire into his hands? ..”

And so: “Blessed be, the Creator of heaven, who left for this restless planet a particle of darkness called night. He knew, knew, therefore, that his children would need time of rest in order to build up strength for the creation of evil, devastation, extermination, and murder. If it were daylight all the time, be it light - all wars would have ended long ago, people would have killed each other. There would be no one to stir up the white light.

The officers slowly call each other by their first names, as it almost never happens in a warring army. Dialogues between officers are lifeless, and there are few of them.

Language- rich. Astafiev easily picks up the most diverse words, and how many of them are non-ordinary, the freest and brightest. Lots of soldier jargon. Rough forms of words are numerous, but natural. (However, less cursing would be enough.)

Astafiev's habit of repeated repetitions is tiring, as soon as he needs to be reminded of a character (about one, well, up to 20 times: “a bar does not have a beard”, about another, not much less often: “a poor mountain man”). In the author's speech, it imprudently breaks down sometimes into bureaucracy, then into "culture" ("intellectually", "limited in the cultural sense"). Allows standard expressions or from official military reports: “passed over to hard active defense”; "bloodless by continuous battles"; "imperialist war" (World War I).

That battle on the Dnieper is described in the book (the author did not find another word for "novel") abundantly, on many days, in skirmishes on the bridgehead, and there were two more daytime crossings. As from an immense bag, many and many very diverse episodes have been poured out on us, but not in a single semantic linkage - actually combative, and politically tense (collisions with political officers), and everyday, personal. All of them are vividly real and saturated with accumulated bitterness, they are not at all fascinating for every reader, I admit that many people miss it, not everyone follows this bloody work.

It's a pity! Oh, not everyone, not everyone fully imagines, can feel the ferocious air of that War: much has been smoothed out both by time and by liars.

Astafiev - even if only towards the old age of his years, even if without a harmonious structure, even if in a variable level and tone - put forward this truth to us.

An excerpt from an essay about Viktor Astafiev from the "Literary Collection" written by A. I. Solzhenitsyn.

Solzhenitsyn wrote the first version of the essay about Astafiev in 1997: he limited himself to the analysis of the second part of the novel Cursed and Killed. In a substantially revised form, this version is included in the present essay. A.S. read the first and second parts of the novel in the Novy Mir magazine (1993. No. 10-12; 1994. No. 10-12). (In the library of A. I. Solzhenitsyn, the last three issues of the journal are with notes in the text and in the margins.)

Written in the first half of the 1990s.

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✪ VICTOR ASTAFYEV. "Cursed and killed." bible story

✪ Cursed and forgotten

✪ Cursed and killed

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The first book of the novel was written in 1990-1992, the second book in 1992-1994. The novel is not finished, in March 2000 the writer announced the termination of work on the novel.

As stated in the preface to one of the editions of the novel: “It was with this novel that Astafiev summed up his reflections on the war as a“ crime against reason ””.

"Damn Pit"

The epigraph to the first book of the novel is a quote from the New Testament:

If you bite and eat each other.
Beware that you are not
destroyed by each other.
-

The action of the first book of the novel takes place near Berdsk in the late autumn of 1942 and in the winter of 1943, in the 21st reserve rifle regiment. The number of the regiment and the place of its deployment correspond to those that really existed during the Great Patriotic War. There is no place for the deployment of the reserve regiment today, this place is flooded by the Ob Sea.

The action begins with the arrival in the autumn of 1942 in the reserve regiment of young recruits, mostly just reached military age. Their composition is the most diverse: the hunter Lyoshka Shestakov, who arrived from the lower reaches of the Ob, partly by blood, the Old Believer, the strongman Kolya Ryndin, the thieves Zelentsov, the simulator Petka Musikov, the masterful Lyokha Buldakov and others. Later, the called Kazakhs and two other significant characters of the novel joined them: Ashot Vaskonyan and Felix Boyarchik. After quarantine, they end up in one company of the regiment, where they are met by foreman Shpator, and the command of the company is taken by Lieutenant Shchus, who is also one of the main characters in the novel. Conscripts for the most part are illiterate, recruited from remote towns and villages, many had conflicts with the law.

It tells how a motley crowd of conscripts in the most difficult conditions develops a fully combat-ready and generally cohesive team. Constant malnutrition, cold, dampness, lack of elementary conditions are exacerbated by conflicts between conscripts, between conscripts and their commanders, and even between commanders, not everything is going smoothly. Before the eyes of the boys, the commander beats to death a downcast goner, two twin brothers are shot, who, out of ignorance, arbitrarily left the unit temporarily, a show trial is held over Zelentsov. The author describes the hopeless picture of a soldier's life in spare parts, young people, whose life before that and so "for the most part was wretched, humiliating, poverty, consisted of standing in lines, receiving rations, coupons, and even from the struggle for the harvest, which was immediately confiscated for the benefit of society." A special place in the book is occupied by winter grain procurements, for which the first company was dispatched to the village of Osipovo. During the preparations, where the soldiers were provided with good food and care, the gray mass of downtrodden people is transformed, romances are struck up with local residents (for many, the first and last), and it is clear that the soldiers are just boys.

The linear plot of the book is interspersed with more detailed descriptions of the pre-war life of the characters in the novel.

The first book ends with the sending of the marching companies of the regiment to the front [ ] .

"Bridgehead"

Epigraph to the second book.

You have heard what the ancients said:
"Dont kill. Whoever kills is subject to judgment."
But I tell you that everyone who is angry
against his brother in vain, subject to judgment ...

The second book of the novel is set in late September 1943 and apparently early October 1943 on the Dnieper. Judging by the fact that the airborne operation is mentioned in the book, the Bukrinsky bridgehead near the village of Veliky Bukrin, in the battles where the author participated, served as the prototype of the Velikokrinitsky bridgehead. Military units are fictional.

Many of the book's characters were killed or badly wounded on the beachhead; about some, the author leaves the reader to think.

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Editions

Prose war. Volume One St. Petersburg: Litera, 1993. Circulation: 100,000 copies. ISBN 5-900490-02-5 (vol. 1)
Cursed and killed. Book 1 M.: Veche, 1994 Series: Military novel Circulation: 100,000 copies. ISBN 5-7141-0072-1
Cursed and killed. Book 2 M.: Veche, 1995 Series: Military novel Circulation: 20,000 copies. ISBN 5-7141-0072-1 Book Two]
Cursed and killed. Book second. Springboard Moscow: Veche, 1995 Series: Dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the Great Victory Circulation: 20,000 copies. ISBN 5-7141-0072-1
Collected works in 15 volumes. Volume ten. Krasnoyarsk: Offset, 1997. Circulation: 10,000 copies.
Selected M.: Terra, 1999 Series: Literature ISBN 5-300-02704-9
Cursed and killed M.: Eksmo, 2002 Series: The Red Book of Russian Prose Circulation: 4000 copies. + 12000 copies (extra edition) ISBN 5-04-009706-9 , ISBN 5-699-12053-X , ISBN 978-5-699-12053-6
Cursed and killed M.: Eksmo, 2003. Circulation: 5100 copies. ISBN 5-699-04253-9
Cursed and killed M.: Eksmo, 2005 Series: Russian classics of the XX century Circulation: 4100 copies. + 4100 copies. (reprint) ISBN 5-699-11435-1
Cursed and killed M.: Eksmo, 2006
Cursed and killed M.: Eksmo, 2007 Series: Library of World Literature (Eksmo) Circulation: 5000 copies. + 4000 copies (additional edition) ISBN 978-5-699-20146-4 , ISBN 5-699-20146-7
Cursed and killed M.: Eksmo, 2009 Series: Russian classics Circulation: 4100 copies. ISBN 978-5-699-33805-4
Cursed and killed M.: Eksmo, 2010 Series: To the 65th anniversary of the Great Victory Circulation: 4000 copies. ISBN 978-5-699-40494-0
Cursed and killed M.: Eksmo, 2010 Series: Russian classics Circulation: 4000 copies. ISBN 978-5-699-36702-3

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"Bridgehead"

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