Depiction of the civil war in the novel "Quiet Don". Ivan Vladimirov
Photos of the victims of the Red Terror in Russia during the Civil War and their executioners.
Attention! Shock content! Not to look nervous!
A corpse found in the courtyard of the Kherson Cheka.
Head chopped off, right leg broken, body burned
Mutilated corpses of victims of the Kherson Cheka
Village headman in the Kherson province E.V. Marchenko,
tortured in the Cheka
The corpses of the tortured at one of the stations of the Kherson province.
The heads and limbs of the victims were mutilated.
The corpse of Colonel Franin, tortured in the Kherson Cheka
in Tulipov's house on Bogorodskaya street,
where was the Kherson emergency
Corpses of hostages found in the Kherson Cheka
in the basement of Tulipov's house
Captain Fedorov with signs of torture on his hands.
On the left hand is a trace of a bullet wound received during torture.
At the last minute he managed to escape from the execution.
Below are photographs of instruments of torture,
depicted by Fedorov
Skin found in the basement of the Kharkov Cheka,
torn from the hands of victims with a metal comb
and special forceps
Skin flayed from victims' limbs
in the house of Rabinovich on the street. Lomonosov in Kherson,
where the Kherson emergency was tortured
Executioner - N.M. Demyshev.
Chairman of the Executive Committee of Evpatoria,
one of the organizers of the red "St. Bartholomew's Night".
Executed by the Whites after the liberation of Evpatoria
The executioner is Kebabchants, nicknamed "bloody".
Deputy Chairman of the Evpatoria Executive Committee,
participant of the "St. Bartholomew's Night".
Executed by whites
Woman executioner - Varvara Grebennikova (Nemich).
In January 1920, she sentenced officers to death
and the "bourgeoisie" aboard the steamship "Romania".
Executed by whites
Executioners.
Participants of Bartholomew's Night
in Evpatoria and executions on the "Romania".
Executed by whites
Executioners of the Kherson Cheka
Dora Evlinskaya, under 20 years old, female executioner,
executed in the Odessa Cheka with her own hands 400 officers
Saenko Stepan Afanasyevich,
commandant of the concentration camp in Kharkov
Corpses of hostages shot in Kharkov prison
Kharkiv. Corpses of hostages who died under Bolshevik torture
Kharkiv. The corpses of tortured female hostages.
Second left - S. Ivanova, owner of a small shop.
Third from the left - A.I. Karolskaya, wife of a colonel.
Fourth - L. Khlopkova, landowner.
All have their breasts cut open and husked alive,
the genitals were burned and coals were found in them
Kharkiv. The body of the hostage lieutenant Bobrov,
to whom the executioners cut off the tongue, chopped off the hands
and removed the skin along the left leg
Kharkov, court of the emergency.
The corpse of the hostage I. Ponomarenko, a former telegraph operator.
The right hand is chopped off. Several deep incisions across the chest.
There are two more corpses in the background.
Corpse of hostage Ilya Sidorenko,
the owner of a fashion store in the city of Sumy.
The dead man's arms are broken, his ribs are broken,
sexual organs were cut.
Tortured in Kharkov
Station Snegirevka, near Kharkov.
The corpse of a tortured woman.
No clothes were found on the body.
Head and shoulders were cut off
(during the opening of the grave, they were never found)
Kharkiv. The corpses of the dead, dumped in a cart
Kharkiv. The corpses of those tortured in the Cheka
Yard of the Kharkiv Gubchek (Sadovaya street, 5)
with the corpses of the executed
concentration camp in Kharkov. Tortured to death
Kharkiv. Photograph of the head of Archimandrite Rodion,
Spassovsky Monastery, scalped by the Bolsheviks
Excavations of one of the mass graves
near the building of the Kharkov Cheka
Kharkiv. Excavations of a mass grave
with the victims of the red terror
Farmers I. Afanasiuk and S. Prokopovich,
scalped alive. At the neighbor, I. Afanasyuk,
on the body there are traces of burns of a hot checker
The bodies of three hostage workers from a factory on strike.
The middle one, A. Ivanenko, has burnt eyes,
cut off lips and nose. Others have their hands cut off
The corpse of an officer killed by the Reds
Bodies of four peasant hostages
(Bondarenko, Plokhikh, Levenets and Sidorchuk).
The faces of the dead are terribly cut.
The genitals were mutilated in a special savage way.
The doctors conducting the examination expressed the opinion that
that such a technique should be known only
Chinese executioners and according to the degree of pain
exceeds all human imagination
On the left is the corpse of the hostage S. Mikhailov,
grocery store clerk
apparently hacked to death with a saber.
In the middle is the body of a man hacked to death with ramrods,
with a broken lower back, teacher Petrenko.
On the right is the corpse of Agapov, with twisted
previously described genital torture
The corpse of a 17-18-year-old boy,
with a cut side and a mutilated face
Permian. Georgievskaya station.
The body of a woman.
Three fingers of the right hand are clenched for baptism
Yakov Chus, a seriously wounded Cossack,
abandoned by the retreating White Guard.
Approached red doused with gasoline
and burned alive
Siberia. Yenisei province.
Officer Ivanov, tortured to death
Siberia. Yenisei province.
The corpses of tortured victims of the Bolshevik terror.
In the Soviet encyclopedia
"Civil War and Military Intervention in the USSR" (M., 1983, p. 264)
this photograph, from a slightly different angle, is given as an example
"Victims of Kolchakism" in Siberia in 1919
Dr. Belyaev, Czech.
Brutally killed in Verkhneudinsk.
The photograph shows a severed hand
and a disfigured face
Yeniseisk. Captured Cossack officer
brutally murdered by the Reds (legs, hands and head burned)
The victim's legs were broken before death.
Odessa. Reburial of victims from mass graves,
excavated after the departure of the Bolsheviks
Pyatigorsk, 1919. Excavations of mass graves
with the corpses of hostages executed by the Bolsheviks in 1918
Pyatigorsk, 1919.
Reburial of the victims of the Bolshevik terror.
memorial service
In fiction
Babel I. Cavalry (1926)
· Bulgakov. M. "White Guard" (1924)
Ostrovsky N. "How the steel was tempered" (1934)
Sholokhov. M. Quiet Don (1926-1940)
Serafimovich A. "Iron Stream" (1924)
Tolstoy A. "The Adventure of Nevzorov, or Ibicus" (1924)
Tolstoy A. "Walking through the agony" (1922-1941)
Fadeev A. "Defeat" (1927)
Furmanov D. "Chapaev" (1923)
The book consists of 38 short stories, which are sketches of the life and life of the First Cavalry Army, united by single heroes and the time of the story. The book in a rather harsh and unsightly form shows the characters of Russian revolutionaries, their lack of education and cruelty, which contrasts sharply with the character of the main character, the educated correspondent Kirill Lyutov, whose image is quite closely connected with the image of Babel himself. Some episodes of the work are autobiographical. A striking feature of the story is that the main character has Jewish roots (although he bears the Russian surname Lyutov). The issue of the persecution of Jews before and during the civil war is given a special place in the book.
"White Guard"- Mikhail Bulgakov's first novel. The events of the Civil War at the end of 1918 are described; The action takes place in Ukraine. The action of the novel takes place in 1918, when the Germans who occupied Ukraine leave the City, and Petliura's troops capture it. The heroes - Aleksey Turbin (28 years old), Elena Turbina - Talberg (24 years old) and Nikolka (17 years old) - are involved in the cycle of military and political events. The city (in which Kyiv is easily guessed) is occupied by the German army. As a result of the signing of the Brest Peace, it does not fall under the rule of the Bolsheviks and becomes a refuge for many Russian intellectuals and military men who flee the RSFSR. Officer combat organizations are being created in the city under the auspices of the hetman - an ally of the Germans, recent enemies. Petliura's army advances on the City. By the time of the events of the novel, the Compiègne truce has been concluded and the Germans are preparing to leave the City. In fact, only volunteers defend him from Petliura. Realizing the complexity of their situation, they console themselves with rumors about the approach of French troops, who allegedly landed in Odessa (in accordance with the terms of the armistice, they had the right to occupy the occupied territories of Russia up to the Vistula in the west). Residents of the city - Alexei (front-line soldier, military doctor) and Nikolka Turbina volunteer to join the city's defenders, and Elena protects the house, which becomes a refuge for officers of the Russian army. Since it is impossible to defend the city on its own, the hetman's command and administration leave it to its fate and leave with the Germans (the hetman himself disguises himself as a wounded German officer). Volunteers - Russian officers and cadets unsuccessfully defend the City without command against superior enemy forces (the author created a brilliant heroic image of Colonel Nai-Tours). Some commanders, realizing the futility of resistance, send their fighters home, others actively organize resistance and perish along with their subordinates. Petlyura occupies the City, arranges a magnificent parade, but after a few months he is forced to surrender it to the Bolsheviks. The main character, Aleksey Turbin, is faithful to his duty, tries to join his unit (not knowing that it has been disbanded), enters into battle with the Petliurists, gets wounded and, by chance, finds love in the face of a woman who saves him from the persecution of enemies. The social cataclysm exposes the characters - someone runs, someone prefers death in battle. The people as a whole accept the new government (Petlyura) and, after her arrival, demonstrate hostility towards the officers.
"As the Steel Was Tempered"- an autobiographical novel by the Soviet writer Nikolai Alekseevich Ostrovsky (1932). The book is written in the style of socialist realism. The novel tells about the fate of the young revolutionary Pavka (Paul) Korchagin, who defended the gains of Soviet power in the Civil War. Ostrovsky Nikolai Alekseevich. Born into a working class family. In July 1919 he joined the Komsomol and went to the front as a volunteer. He fought in parts of the cavalry brigade of G. I. Kotovsky and the 1st Cavalry Army. In August 1920 he was seriously wounded. Since 1927, O. was bedridden by a severe progressive illness; in 1928 he lost his sight. Mobilizing all mental strength, O. fought for life, engaged in self-education. Blind, motionless, he created the book "How the steel was tempered." The image of the protagonist of the novel "How the Steel Was Tempered" - Pavel Korchagin - is autobiographical. Using the right to fiction, the writer talentedly rethought personal impressions, documents, creating paintings and images of wide artistic significance. The novel conveys the revolutionary impulse of the people, a particle of which Korchagin feels himself to be. For many generations of Soviet youth, for advanced youth circles abroad, Korchagin became a moral model. The novel played a mobilizing role during the years of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45 and during the days of peaceful construction.
Quiet Don" - epic novel by Mikhail Sholokhov in 4 volumes. Volumes 1-3 were written from 1926 to 1928, volume 4 was completed in 1940. One of the most significant works of Russian literature of the 20th century, depicting a broad panorama of the life of the Don Cossacks during the First World War, the revolutionary events of 1917 and the civil war in Russia. Most of the action of the novel takes place in the village of Tatarsky in the village of Vyoshenskaya approximately between 1912 and 1922. In the center of the plot is the life of the Cossack Melekhov family, which went through the First World War and the Civil War. The Melekhovs experienced a lot with the farmers and with all the Don Cossacks in these troubled years. From a strong and prosperous family, by the end of the novel, Grigory Melekhov, his son Misha and sister Dunya remain alive. The protagonist of the book, Grigory Melekhov, is a peasant, a Cossack, an officer who has risen from the ranks. The historical turning point, which completely changed the ancient way of the Don Cossacks, coincided with a tragic turning point in his personal life. Grigory cannot understand with whom he should stay: with the Reds, or with the Whites. Melekhov, by virtue of his natural abilities, first rises from ordinary Cossacks to the rank of officer, and then to the position of general (commanders an insurgent division in the Civil War), but his military career was not destined to take shape. Melekhov also rushes between two women: his initially unloved wife Natalya, feelings for whom woke up only after the birth of the children of Polyushka and Mishatka, and Aksinya Astakhova, Grigory's first and strongest love. And he couldn't keep both women. At the end of the book, Gregory abandons everything and returns home to the only son left of the entire Melekhov family and to his native land. The novel contains a description of the life and way of life of the peasants at the beginning of the 20th century: rituals and traditions characteristic of the Don Cossacks. The role of the Cossacks in hostilities, anti-Soviet uprisings and their suppression, the formation of Soviet power in the village of Vyoshenskaya are described in detail. Sholokhov worked on the novel Quiet Flows the Don for 15 years, work on the novel Virgin Soil Upturned lasted for 30 years (the first book was published in 1932, the second in 1960). In The Quiet Don (1928-40), Sholokhov explores the theme of personality in history, creates pictures of a national tragedy that destroyed the entire way of people's life. The Quiet Flows the Don is a large-scale work with more than 600 characters. The action of the novel covers ten years (from May 1912 to March 1922), these are the years of the imperialist war, the February and October revolutions and the Civil War. The events of history, a holistic image of the era Sholokhov traces through the fate of the heroes: Cossacks, farmers, workers and warriors living on the Tatar farm, on the high bank of the Don. The fates of these people reflected social changes, changes in consciousness, life, psychology. The core of the book is the history of the Melekhov family. Portraying the truth-seeker Grigory Melekhov, Sholokhov reveals the confrontation between the natural person and social cataclysms. Gregory appears as a natural person, an uncompromising personality who does not accept half-truths. The civil war, the revolution, the split world in two throw it into a bloody mess, turn it into a meat grinder of civil strife, atrocities both on the part of the Reds and on the part of the Whites. The innate sense of freedom, honor, dignity will not allow him to bend his back either before the white generals or before the red commissars. The tragedy of Grigory Melekhov is the tragedy of an honest man in a tragically torn world. The finale of the novel is Grigory's departure from the deserters hiding in anticipation of an amnesty, returning to his native kuren. On the banks of the Don, Grigory will throw a rifle, a revolver into the water; it is a symbolic gesture. The novel organically includes the old Cossack songs “How are you, father, the glorious quiet Don” and “Oh you, our father the quiet Don”, taken epigraphs to the 1st and 3rd books of the novel, they appeal to the moral ideas of the people. The Quiet Don contains about 250 descriptions of nature, emphasizing the eternal triumph of life itself, the priority of natural values.
During the years of the “thaw”, Sholokhov published the story “The Fate of a Man” (1956), which became a turning point in prose about the war. With this story, Sholokhov managed to reverse the barbaric cruelty of the system in relation to many thousands of soldiers who, against their will, found themselves in fascist captivity. In a small work, Sholokhov managed to achieve the image of a separate human fate as the fate of the people in the era of the most severe disasters, to see in this life a huge universal content and meaning. The hero of the story, Andrei Sokolov, is an ordinary person who has survived innumerable torments, captivity. “A military hurricane of unprecedented strength” blew the house, the Sokolov family off the face of the earth, but he did not break. Having met a child, whom the war also deprived of all relatives and friends, he assumed responsibility for his life and upbringing. Through the whole story runs the thought of the anti-human nature of fascism, war, distorting fate, destroying homes. The story about irreparable losses, about terrible grief is permeated with faith in a person, his kindness, mercy, fortitude and prudence. Reflections of the author-narrator, sensitive to someone else's misfortune, endowed with great power of empathy, increase the emotional intensity of the story.
rout- a novel by the Soviet writer Alexander. A. Fadeeva. The novel tells about the history of the partisan red detachment. The events take place in the 1920s during the Civil War in the Ussuri region. The inner world of the main characters of the novel is shown: the commander of the detachment Levinson and the fighters of the detachment Mechik, Morozka, his wife Varya. The partisan detachment (like other detachments) stands in the village and does not conduct combat operations for a long time. People get used to a deceptive calmness. But soon the enemy launches a large-scale offensive, crushing partisan detachments one by one, and a ring of enemies closes around the detachment. The squad leader is doing everything possible to save people and continue the fight. The detachment, pressed against the bog, makes a path and goes along it into the taiga. In the finale, the detachment falls into a Cossack ambush, but, having suffered monstrous losses, breaks through the ring. The novel was written in 1924-1926 by the then little-known writer Alexander Fadeev. The novel "The Rout" is about human relationships, about the difficult conditions in which one must survive, about loyalty to the cause. It is no coincidence that Fadeev chooses to describe in the novel the time when the detachment was already defeated. He wants to show not only the successes of the Red Army, but also its failures. One of the main positive characters of the novel is a man named Levinson. Fadeev made the positive hero of his work a Jew by nationality, in accordance with the internationalism of the 20s.
"Chapaev"- Dmitry Furmanov's novel of 1923 about the life and death of the hero of the civil war division commander Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev. The action takes place in 1919, mainly during the stay of Commissar Fyodor Klychkov in the 25th Chapaev division (the novel directly reflects Furmanov's personal experience as a commissar in Chapaev's division). The battles for Slomikhinskaya, Pilyugino, Ufa, as well as the death of Chapaev in the battle near Lbischensk are described.
The second volume of the epic novel by Mikhail Sholokhov tells about the civil war. It includes chapters about the Kornilov rebellion from the book "Donshchina", which the writer began to create a year before the "Quiet Flows the Don". This part of the work is exactly dated: the end of 1916 - April 1918.
The slogans of the Bolsheviks attracted the poor, who wanted to be free masters on their land. But the civil war poses new questions for the protagonist Grigory Melekhov. Each side, white and red, seeks its own truth by killing each other. Once at the Reds, Grigory sees cruelty, intransigence, thirst for the blood of enemies. War destroys everything: the well-established life of families, peaceful work, takes away the last, kills love. The heroes of Sholokhov, Grigory and Pyotr Melekhov, Stepan Astakhov, Koshevoy, almost the entire male population are drawn into battles, the meaning of which they do not understand. For whom and for what should they die in their prime? Life on the farm gives them a lot of joy, beauty, hopes, opportunities. War is only deprivation and death.
The Bolsheviks Shtokman and Bunchuk see the country exclusively as an arena of class battles, where people are like tin soldiers in someone else's game, where pity for a person is a crime. The hardships of war fall primarily on the shoulders of the civilian population, ordinary people; to starve and die - to them, not to the commissars. Bunchuk arranges lynching of Kalmykov, and in his defense he says: “They are us or we are them!.. There is no middle ground.” Hatred blinds, no one wants to stop and think, impunity unties hands. Grigory witnesses how Commissar Malkin sadistically mocks the population in the captured village. He sees terrible pictures of the robbery of the fighters of the Tiraspol detachment of the 2nd Socialist Army, who rob farms and rape women. As it is sung in an old song, you have become muddy, Father Quiet Don. Grigory understands that in fact, people who are distraught with blood are not looking for the truth, but a real turmoil is going on in the Don.
It is not by chance that Melekhov rushes between the two belligerents. Everywhere he encounters violence and cruelty, which he cannot accept. Podtelkov orders the execution of the prisoners, and the Cossacks, forgetting about military honor, cut down unarmed people. They carried out the order, but when Grigory realized that he was chopping prisoners, he fell into a frenzy: “Whom did he hack! .. Brothers, I have no forgiveness! Cut to death, for God's sake ... mother God ... Death ... betray! Khristonya, dragging the “enraged” Melekhov away from Podtelkov, bitterly says: “Lord God, what is happening to people?” And the captain Shein, who has already understood the essence of what is happening, prophetically promises Podtelkov that "the Cossacks will wake up - and they will hang you." Mother reproaches Gregory for participating in the execution of captured sailors, but he himself admits how cruel he became in the war: “I don’t regret even that child.” Leaving the Reds, Grigory rushes to the Whites, where he sees the execution of Podtelkov. Melekhov tells him: “Do you remember under the Deep Battle? Do you remember how they shot officers?.. They shot at your order! A? Now you're burping! Well, don't worry! You are not the only one to tan other people's skins! You departed, chairman of the Don Council of People's Commissars!
War embitters and divides people. Gregory notices that the concepts of "brother", "honor", "fatherland" disappear from consciousness. The strong community of Cossacks is disintegrating for centuries. Now - every man for himself and for his family. Koshevoy, using his power, decided to execute the local wealthy Miron Korshunov. Miron's son, Mitka, avenges his father and kills Koshevoy's mother. Koshevoy kills Pyotr Melekhov, his wife Daria shot Ivan Alekseevich. Koshevoi for the death of his mother is already taking revenge on the entire Tatarsky farm: leaving, he sets fire to "seven houses in a row." Blood is looking for blood.
Peering into the past, Sholokhov recreates the events of the Upper Don uprising. When the uprising began, Melekhov perked up, decided that now everything would change for the better: “We must fight those who want to take life, the right to it ...” Almost driving his horse, he rushes to fight the Reds. The Cossacks protested against the destruction of their way of life, but, striving for justice, they tried to solve the problem with aggression and conflict, which led to the opposite result. And here Gregory was disappointed. Attached to Budyonny's cavalry, Gregory does not find an answer to bitter questions. He says: "I'm tired of everything: both the revolution and the counter-revolution ... I want to live near my kids."
The writer shows that there can be no truth where there is death. The truth is one, it is not “red” or “white”. War kills the best. Realizing this, Gregory throws down his weapons and returns to his native farm to work on his native land, raise children. The hero is not yet 30 years old, but the war turned him into an old man, took away, burned out the best part of his soul from him. Sholokhov, in his immortal work, raises the question of the responsibility of history to the individual. The writer sympathizes with his hero, whose life is broken: “Like a steppe scorched by fires, the life of Gregory became black ...”
In the epic novel, Sholokhov created a grandiose historical canvas, describing in detail the events of the civil war on the Don. The writer became a national hero for the Cossacks, having created an artistic epic about the life of the Cossacks in a tragic time of historical change.
46. Depiction of revolution and civil war in M. Bulgakov's novel "White Guard"
The novel action ends in 1925, and the work tells about the revolutionary events in Kyiv in the winter of 1918-1919. It tells about a very difficult time, when it was impossible to understand everything at once, to understand everything, to reconcile conflicting feelings and thoughts within themselves. This novel captures the still burning, burning memories of the city of Kyiv during the Civil War.
The White Guard (1925) is a work of fiction showing the inside of the White Army. These are warriors full of valor, honor, faithful to the duty of protecting Russia. They give their lives for Russia, its honor - as they understand it. Bulgakov appears as a tragic and romantic artist at the same time. The house of the Turbins, where there was so much warmth, tenderness, mutual understanding, is interpreted as a symbol of Russia. Bulgakov's heroes die defending their Russia.
The social cataclysm exposes the characters - someone runs, someone prefers death in battle.
The narration is complex and multifaceted: there is an objective narration, a fantastic, fairy-tale manner, lyrical essays. The composition is complex: the montage of various pieces: the history of the Turbin family, the change of power, the rampage of the elements during the civil war, battle scenes, the fate of individual heroes. The ring composition begins and ends with a premonition of the apocalypse, the symbolism of which permeates the entire novel. The bloody events of the civil war are depicted as the Last Judgment. The "end of the world" has come, but the Turbines continue to live on - their salvation, this is their home, the hearth that Elena looks after, it is not in vain that the old life, the details (up to the mother's service) are emphasized.
Through the fate of the Turbins, B opens up the drama of the revolution and the civil war. The problem of moral choice in the play: Alexey - either to remain faithful to the oath, or to save the lives of people, he chooses lives: “Tear off your shoulder straps, throw your rifles and immediately go home!”. Human life is the highest value. B. took the revolution of 17 not only as a turning point in the history of Russia, but also in the fate of the Russian intelligentsia. In The White Guard, the largely autobiographical intelligent family of the Turbins is drawn into the events of the civil war. The main distinguishing feature of the novel is that the events of the revolution are maximally humanized in it. B's departure from the negative portrayal of the white movement brought accusations against the writer of trying to justify the white movement. For B, the house of the Turbins is the embodiment of that R, which is dear to him. G. Adamovich noted that the author showed his heroes in "misfortunes and defeats." The events of the revolution in the novel are "humanized to the maximum." “This was especially noticeable against the background of the familiar image of the “revolutionary masses” in the works of A. Serafimovich, B. Pilnyak, A. Bely and others,” Muromsky wrote.
The main theme is a historical catastrophe. B connects the personal with the socio-historical, puts the fate of an individual in connection with the fate of the country. Pushkin's principle of depiction is tradition - historical events through the fate of individuals. The death of the City is like the collapse of an entire civilization. The rejection of the methods of revolutionary violence in order to create a society of social harmony, the condemnation of the fratricidal war is expressed in the images of the prophetic dream of Alexei Turbin, in which the sergeant major Zhilin appears to him, who died in 1916 along with a squadron of hussars, and talks about paradise, in which he ended up and about the events of the civil war. The image of paradise, in a cat there is a place for everyone, they are “lonely killed” and white and red. It is no coincidence that in the prophetic dream of Alexei Turbin, the Lord says to the deceased Zhilin: "All of you, Zhilin, are the same - killed in the battlefield."
The turning point for the Turbins and other heroes of the novel is December 14, 1918, the battle with the Petliura troops, which was supposed to be a test of strength before subsequent battles with the Red Army, but turned into a defeat, a rout. This is the turning point and climax of the novel. A hunch flashes that everything is a chain of mistakes and delusions, that the duty is not to protect the collapsed monarchy and the traitor hetman, and honor is in something else. Tsarist Russia is dying, but Russia is alive...
One of the play's comical characters, Zhytomyr's cousin Larion, delivers an exalted monologue: “... My fragile ship was battered by the waves of the civil war for a long time... Until it was washed up in this harbor with cream curtains, among the people that I liked so much .. .". Bulgakov saw the ideal in preserving the "cream curtain harbor", even though time had turned. Bulgakov clearly saw the Bolsheviks as a better alternative to the Petliura freemen and believed that the intellectuals who had survived the fire of the civil war should, reluctantly, come to terms with the Soviet regime. However, at the same time, one should preserve the dignity and inviolability of the inner spiritual world,
"White Guard" lies entirely in line with the traditions of Russian classical realistic prose. The society is depicted on the eve of its death. The task of the artist is to depict the dramatic reality of the real world as authentically as possible. Artistic means were not needed here.
A novel about historical upheaval. Bulgakov succeeded in portraying what Blok once foresaw, only without romantic pathos. There is no distance between the author and his hero - one of the main features of the work (although the novel is written in 3rd person). Psychologically, it does not exist, because. depicted the death of that part of society to which the author belongs, and he merges with his hero.
The only depoliticized novel about revolution and civil war. In other works, the confrontation of the parties was depicted everywhere, there was always a problem of choice. Sometimes the psychological complexity of the choice was demonstrated, sometimes the right to make a mistake. Complexity was required, the right to make mistakes too. An exception - perhaps, "Quiet Don".
Bulgakov portrays what is happening as a universal tragedy, without the possibility of choice. The very fact of the revolution for the artist is an act of destruction of the social environment to which the author and the characters belong. The White Guard is a novel about the end of life. The destruction of the environment necessarily entails the destruction of the meaning of existence. Physically, a person can be saved, but it will be a different person. The attitude of the author to what is happening is open. The last episode is symbolic: a picture close to the apocalypse is what the city expects. Final scene: night, city, freezing sentinel, he sees a red star - Mars - this is an apocalyptic picture.
The novel begins with a quiet bell ringing, and ends with a funeral, universal thunder of bells. (sic!) which heralds the death of the city.
M. Bulgakov's novel The White Guard (1922-1924) reflects the events of the civil war of the period 1918-1919. in his hometown of Kyiv. Bulgakov considers these events not from class or political positions, but from purely human ones. Whoever seizes the city - the hetman, the Petliurists or the Bolsheviks - blood inevitably flows, hundreds of people die in agony, while others become even more terribly hardened. Violence breeds more violence. This is what worries the writer the most.
The central image is the House, a symbol of the native hearth. Having gathered the heroes in the house on the eve of Christmas, the author thinks about the possible fate of both the characters themselves and the whole of Russia. “The year was great and terrible after the Nativity of Christ 1918, from the beginning of the second revolution ...” - this is how the novel begins, which tells about the fate of the Turbin family. They live in Kyiv, on Alekseevsky Spusk. Young people - Alexei, Elena, Nikolka - were left without parents. But they have a Home that contains not just things, but a way of life, traditions, inclusion in the national life. The Turbin House was erected on the "stone of faith" in Russia, Orthodoxy, the tsar, and culture. And so the House and the revolution became enemies. The Revolution came into conflict with the old House in order to leave children without faith, without a roof, without culture and destitute.
For the anniversary of the October Revolution, we remembered the ten most important works of art of that period - from Lissitzky's "Red Wedge to beat the Whites" to Deineka's "Defense of Petrograd".
El Lissitzky,
"Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge"
In the famous poster "Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge," El Lissitzky uses Malevich's Suprematist language for political purposes. Pure geometric forms serve as a description of a violent armed conflict. Thus, Lissitzky reduces the immediate event, the action, to a text and a slogan. All elements of the poster are rigidly intertwined with each other and interdependent. Figures lose their absolute freedom and become geometric text: this poster would be read from left to right even without letters. Lissitzky, like Malevich, designed a new world and created forms in which a new life was supposed to fit. This work, thanks to a new form and geometry, translates the topic of the day into some general timeless categories.
Kliment Redko
"Insurrection"
The work of Kliment Redko "Uprising" is the so-called Soviet neo-icon. The idea of this format is that the image printed on a plane is, first of all, a kind of general model, an image of what is desired. As in a traditional icon, the image is not real, but reflects a certain ideal world. It is the neoicon that underlies the art of socialist realism in the 1930s.
In this work, Redko dares to take a bold step - in the space of the picture, he combines geometric figures with portraits of Bolshevik leaders. To the right and left of Lenin are his associates - Trotsky, Krupskaya, Stalin and others. As in the icon, there is no familiar perspective here, the scale of a particular figure depends not on its distance from the viewer, but on its significance. In other words, Lenin is the most important here, and therefore the biggest. Redko also attached great importance to light.
The figures seem to emit a glow, which makes the picture look like a neon sign. The artist denoted this technique with the word “cinema”. He sought to overcome the materiality of paint and drew analogies between painting and radio, electricity, cinema and even the northern lights. Thus, he actually sets himself the same tasks that icon painters set themselves many centuries ago. He plays with the schemes familiar to everyone in a new way, replacing Paradise with the socialist world, and Christ and the saints with Lenin and his henchmen. The purpose of Redko's work is the deification and sacralization of the revolution.
Pavel Filonov
"Formula of the Petrograd proletariat"
The Formula of the Petrograd Proletariat was written during the civil war. In the center of the picture is a worker, whose majestic figure towers over a barely visible city. The composition of the painting is built on tense rhythms, creating a feeling of seething and growing movement. All the iconic symbols of the proletariat are captured here, for example, giant human hands - an instrument for transforming the world. At the same time, this is not just a picture, but a generalizing formula that reflects the Universe. Filonov seems to split the world down to the smallest atoms and immediately puts it together, simultaneously looking through both a telescope and a microscope.
The experience of participating in great and at the same time monstrous historical events (the First World War and the revolution) had a huge impact on the artist's work. The people in Filonov's paintings are crushed in the meat grinder of history. His works are difficult to perceive, sometimes painful - the painter endlessly splits the whole, sometimes bringing it to the level of a kaleidoscope. The viewer constantly has to keep in mind all the fragments of the picture in order to eventually catch a holistic image. Filonov's world is the world of the collective body, the world of the concept of "we" put forward by the era, where the private and the personal are abolished. The artist himself considered himself a spokesman for the ideas of the proletariat, and called the collective body, which is always present in his paintings, "the heyday of the world." However, it is possible that even against the will of the author, his "we" is filled with deep horror. In the work of Filonov, the new world appears as a bleak and terrible place where the dead penetrates into the living. The painter's works reflected not so much contemporary events as a premonition of the future - the horrors of the totalitarian regime, repressions.
Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin
"Petrograd Madonna"
Another name for this painting is "1918 in Petrograd". In the foreground is a young mother with a baby in her arms, in the background - a city where the revolution has just died down - and its inhabitants are getting used to a new life and power. The painting resembles either an icon or a fresco by an Italian Renaissance master.
Petrov-Vodkin interpreted the new era in the context of the new fate of Russia, but with his work he did not seek to completely destroy the entire old world and build a new one on its ruins. He drew plots for paintings in everyday life, but he takes the form for them from past eras. If medieval artists dressed biblical heroes in modern clothes in order to bring them closer to their time, then Petrov-Vodkin does exactly the opposite. He depicts a resident of Petrograd in the image of the Mother of God in order to give the ordinary, everyday plot an unusual significance and, at the same time, timelessness and universality.
Kazimir Malevich
"Peasant's Head"
Kazimir Malevich came to the revolutionary events of 1917 as an accomplished master, who had gone from impressionism, neo-primitivism to his own discovery - Suprematism. Malevich took the revolution ideologically; new people and propagandists of the Suprematist faith were to become members of the UNOVIS art group (“Affirmatives of the New Art”), who wore a bandage in the form of a black square on their sleeves. According to the painter, in the changed world, art had to create its own state and its own world order. The revolution made it possible for avant-garde artists to rewrite all past and future history in such a way as to occupy a central place in it. I must say that in many ways they succeeded, because the art of the avant-garde is one of the main visiting cards of Russia. Despite the programmatic rejection of the pictorial form as obsolete, in the second half of the 1920s the artist turned to figurativeness. He creates works of the peasant cycle, but dates them to 1908-1912. (that is, the period before the "Black Square"), so the rejection of non-objectivity does not look here as a betrayal of one's own ideals. Since this cycle is partly a hoax, the artist appears as a prophet who anticipates future popular unrest and revolution. One of the most noticeable features of this period of his work was the impersonality of people. Instead of faces and heads, their bodies are crowned with red, black and white ovals. From these figures comes, on the one hand, incredible tragedy, on the other, abstract grandeur and heroism. The “Head of a Peasant” resembles sacred images, for example, the icon “Savior the Fiery Eye”. Thus, Malevich creates a new "post-Suprematist icon".
Boris Kustodiev
"Bolshevik"
The name of Boris Kustodiev is associated primarily with bright, colorful paintings depicting the life of the merchants and idyllic festive festivities with characteristic Russian scenes. However, after the coup, the artist turned to revolutionary themes. The painting "Bolshevik" depicts a gigantic peasant in felt boots, a sheepskin coat and a hat; behind him, filling the whole sky, flutters the red banner of the revolution. With a giant step, he passes through the city, and far below, numerous people are swarming. The picture has a sharp poster expressiveness and speaks to the viewer in a very pretentious, direct and even somewhat rude symbolic language. The peasant is, of course, the revolution itself, bursting into the streets. Nothing can stop her, there is no hiding from her, and she will eventually crush and destroy everything in her path.
Kustodiev, despite the grandiose changes in the art world, remained true to his already archaic pictorialism at that time. But, oddly enough, the aesthetics of merchant Russia organically adapted to the needs of the new class. He replaced the recognizable Russian woman with a samovar, symbolizing the Russian way of life, with an equally recognizable man in a padded jacket - a kind of Pugachev. The fact is that in the first and second cases, the artist uses images-symbols that are understandable to anyone.
Vladimir Tatlin
Monument to the III International
Tatlin came up with the idea of the tower back in 1918. It was to become a symbol of the new relationship between art and the state. A year later, the artist managed to get an order for the construction of this utopian building. However, she was destined to remain unfulfilled. Tatlin planned to build a 400-meter tower, which would consist of three glass volumes rotating at different speeds. Outside, they were supposed to encircle two giant spirals of metal. The main idea of the monument was in dynamics, which corresponded to the spirit of the time. In each of the volumes, the artist intended to place premises for the "three powers" - legislative, public and informational. Its shape resembles the famous Tower of Babel from the painting by Pieter Brueghel - only Tatlin's tower, unlike the Tower of Babel, was supposed to serve as a symbol of the reunification of mankind after the world revolution, whose offensive everyone was so eagerly waiting for in the first years of Soviet power.
Gustav Klutsis
"Electrification of the whole country"
Constructivism, with more enthusiasm than other avant-garde movements, took responsibility for the rhetoric and aesthetics of power. A vivid example of this is the photo montage of the constructivist Gustav Klutsis, who combined the two most recognizable languages of the era - geometric constructions and the face of the leader. Here, as in many works of the 1920s, it is not the real picture of the world that is reflected, but the organization of reality through the eyes of the artist. The goal is not to show this or that event, but to show how the viewer should perceive this event.
Photography played a huge role in the state propaganda of that time, and photomontage was an ideal means of influencing the masses, a product that in the new world was to replace painting. Unlike the same picture, it can be reproduced countless times, placed in a magazine or on a poster, and thus conveyed to a huge audience. Soviet montage is created for the sake of mass reproduction, man-made here is abolished by a huge circulation. Socialist art excludes the concept of uniqueness, it is nothing more than a factory for the production of things and very specific ideas that must be assimilated by the masses.
David Shterenberg
"Curdled milk"
David Shterenberg, although he was a commissar, was not a radical in art. He realized his minimalist decorative style primarily in still lifes. The main technique of the artist is a tabletop slightly upturned vertically with flat objects on it. Bright, decorative, very applicative and fundamentally “superficial” still lifes were perceived in Soviet Russia as truly revolutionary, overturning the old way of life. However, the ultimate flatness here is combined with incredible tactility - almost always painting imitates a particular texture or material. Pictures depicting modest, and sometimes meager food, show the modest, and sometimes meager diet of the proletarians. Shterenberg places the main emphasis on the form of the table, which in a certain sense becomes a reflection of the culture of the cafe with its openness and exposure to the show. The loud and pathetic slogans of a new way of life captured the artist much less.
Alexander Deineka
"Defense of Petrograd"
The painting is divided into two tiers. The lower one depicts fighters briskly marching to the front, and the wounded returning from the battlefield at the top. Deineka uses the technique of reverse movement - first the action develops from left to right, and then from right to left, which creates a feeling of a cyclical composition. Full of determination, male and female figures are written out powerfully and very voluminously. They personify the readiness of the proletariat to go to the end, no matter how long it takes - since the composition of the picture is closed, it seems that the flow of people going to the front and returning
with him, does not dry out. In the hard, inexorable rhythm of the work, the heroic spirit of the era is expressed and the pathos of the civil war is romanticized.