A novel for a just cause. Book: "For a just cause
Vasily Grossman
For a just cause
FOR A RIGHT CASE
Part one
[On April 29, 1942, the train of the dictator of fascist Italy, Benito Mussolini, approached the Salzburg train station, decorated with Italian and German flags.
After the usual ceremony at the station, Mussolini and the people accompanying him went to the ancient castle of the Salzburg princes-bishops of Klessheim.
Here, in large, cold rooms, recently furnished with furniture taken out of France, the next meeting between Hitler and Mussolini was to take place, the conversations of Ribbentrop, Keitel, Jodl and other Hitler's close associates with the ministers - Ciano, General Cavalero, the Italian ambassador to Berlin Alfieri, who accompanied Mussolini, who accompanied Mussolini.
These two people, who considered themselves the masters of Europe, met every time Hitler was preparing a new catastrophe in the life of the peoples. Their private conversations on the border of the Austrian and Italian Alps marked the usual military incursions, continental sabotage, strikes of multimillion-dollar motorized armies. Brief newspaper reports of the dictators' meetings filled human hearts with anxious expectation.
The seven-year offensive of fascism in Europe and Africa went on successfully, and it would probably be difficult for both dictators to list a long list of large and small victories that brought them to power over vast areas and hundreds of millions of people. After the bloodless conquests of the Rhineland, Austria and Czechoslovakia, Hitler invaded Poland in August 1939 and defeated the armies of Rydz Smigly. He crushed in 1940 one of the victors of Germany in the First World War - France, along the way captured Luxembourg, Belgium, Holland, crushed Denmark, Norway. He threw England off the European mainland, expelling her troops from Norway and France. He crushed at the turn of 1940 and 1941 the armies of the Balkan states - Greece and Yugoslavia. Mussolini's Abyssinian and Albanian robbery seemed provincial in comparison with the enormous pan-European scale of Hitler's conquests.
The fascist empires extended their power over the territories of North Africa, seized Abyssinia, Algeria, Tunisia, the ports of the West Bank, and threatened Alexandria and Cairo.
Japan, Hungary, Romania and Finland were in a military alliance with Germany and Italy. The fascist circles of Spain, Portugal, Turkey and Bulgaria were in predatory friendship with Germany.
In the ten months that have passed since the beginning of the invasion of the USSR, Hitler's armies captured Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, occupied Pskov, Smolensk, Oryol, Kursk and part of Leningrad, Kalinin, Tula, Voronezh regions.
The military-economic machine created by Hitler absorbed great wealth: French steel, machine-building and automobile factories, iron mines of Lorraine, Belgian metallurgy and coal mines, Dutch precision mechanics and radio factories, Austrian metal-working enterprises, Škoda military factories and oil refineries in Czechoslovakia factories in Romania, iron ore Norway, tungsten and mercury mines in Spain, textile factories in Lodz. At the same time, the long drive belt of the "new order" forced the wheels to turn and machine tools of hundreds of thousands of smaller enterprises in all cities of occupied Europe to work.
Plows of twenty states plowed the land, and millstones ground barley and wheat for the occupiers. Fishing nets in three oceans and five seas caught fish for the fascist metropolises. Hydraulic presses squeezed out grape juice and olive, linseed, sunflower oil on plantations in Africa and Europe. A rich harvest was ripening on the branches of millions of apple, plum, orange and lemon trees, and ripe fruits were packed in wooden boxes stamped with the sign of a black one-headed eagle. Iron fingers milked Danish, Dutch and Polish cows, sheared sheep in the Balkans and Hungary.
Vasily Grossman
FOR A RIGHT CASE
LIFE AND FATE
Human life and the fate of humanity
“I don’t know if you feel how everyone expects from you books about Stalingrad - after all, this thing will be about Stalingrad?” - either asked, or stated Valentin Ovechkin in a letter sent on August 3, 1945. A. Tvardovsky also wrote to Vasily Semenovich in 1944 about the same: “I am very glad for you what is being written to you, and with great interest I await what you write. Just to say, I don't expect from anyone as much as from you, and I don't bet on anyone as I do on you. "
Indeed, there was every reason to expect from Grossman a great book about the battle on the Volga. Not only because the Stalingrad essays contained only a small part of the writer's life impressions, but also because the events of the battle shook the artistic imagination of everyone who visited there - let us recall, for example, In the Trenches of Stalingrad by V. Nekrasov, Days and Nights. . Simonova; and, finally, because the description of this battle corresponded to the analytical direction of Vasily Grossman's talent: how the Battle of Stalingrad pulled together all the fundamental problems of the confrontation between the two forces, absorbed all the previous events of the war and predetermined the future, so the novel about her allowed not only to present an artistic picture battles in its entirety, but also try to explain those historical patterns that predetermined the inevitability of our victory and those real circumstances due to which the decisive battle took place not on enemy soil, but in the depths of Russia.
The idea of the novel was dictated not only by the desire to preserve a great time in the memory of people - which in itself was already a huge and noble task - but also by the desire to get to the bottom of the deepest movements of this time, critical for the fate of humanity. ‹…›
‹…› Dilogy “Life and Fate” (the author wanted to give it such a general name) ‹…› the closest thing to the Russian epic tradition, which was approved by L. Tolstoy in “War and Peace”. And if in general it is difficult to imagine that a prose writer striving to faithfully reproduce the terrible everyday work of the war could bypass the experience of the great novelist, then Grossman took these classical lessons quite consciously, consistently, purposefully. ‹…›
‹…› Using different weapons - philosophical reasoning, historical parallels, analysis of military campaigns - Tolstoy carries out his concept of war as a second plane of narration and, even more broadly, the concept of history.
‹…› In one of the sketches for the final part of the epilogue to War and Peace, Tolstoy wrote: “‹… ›I began to write a book about the past. In describing this past, I found that not only is it unknown, but that it is known and described completely in reverse of what was. And involuntarily I felt the need to prove what I said and express the views on the basis of which I wrote ... <...> If there were no such reasoning, there would be no descriptions. " ‹…›
Here you are. Grossman openly and consistently drew on Tolstoy's experience. He could also say about his dilogy: had it not been for these considerations, there would have been no descriptions.
Anyway, in the novel one can feel the strong influence of War and Peace.
‹…› Just as the Tolstoyan epic was, with all the ramifications of the historical plot, "gathered" around the Bolkonsky-Rostov family, so in the center of the dilogy is the Shaposhnikovs-Shtrum family, various kinds of ties - friendly, kindred, just the fact of being in a given place - connected with other actors by persons. ‹…›
In addition to this fundamental principle, much more can be noted that is close to L. Tolstoy: a rapid change in scale, the correlation of private destinies with the main historical event; dispersion of "focus" on several characters.
As the key scenes there were associated with the battle for Moscow, so here with the battle for Stalingrad; in a similar way, the story is transferred from the rear to the army in the field and the enemy army. Introduced into the narrative is the figure of Hitler, who, like Napoleon, personifies the imaginary strength of a man who intends to control the course of history.
Tolstoy's dialecticism in the construction of phrases, determined by the nature of artistic thinking, is also felt more than once. It manifests itself both in philosophical reasoning - when the writer tries to prove that an inconspicuous phenomenon contains "a sign of the real, not false and imaginary course of historical forces", and in the depiction of the psychology of people - when Vera "knew that he was ugly, but so as she liked him, she saw in this ugliness the dignity of Viktorov, and not his lack. "
It is easy to find many rather characteristic private analogies: Platon Karataev - the Red Army soldier Vavilov, Natasha Rostova - Yevgeny Shaposhnikova, etc .; and in general, both the author and the heroes often recall phrases and situations from "War and Peace" - apparently, the Tolstoyan epic strongly possessed the soul of the writer. ‹…›
But following Tolstoy's traditions, the dilogy did not so obediently echo the classical sample: it was a talented continuation of those main - and not only in "War and Peace" emerging - conquests of Russian epic thinking, when an epoch-making light falls on the events depicted, and the social characters chosen by the author, while retaining their individuality, become typologically significant. ‹…›
‹…› The "Life and Fate" dilogy is great not because it is an epic, but because it is deep in its historical and philosophical concept and perfect in its artistic performance.
The composition of the dilogy resembles a system of "probes" directed to the most distant spheres of life and revealing historically significant events and destinies. As in any epic novel, especially a novel about war, some characters leave the stage or die, others appear. The author does not artificially bring the heroes together, they move along their life orbits, but, as in the universe, they are linked by a single force of attraction, opposing the constant pressure of entropy.
Either long or short signals of "probes" are intended to convey the feeling of the fullness of life: after all, the events of reality themselves do not always have completeness, but some important particle of life and fate is always revealed: the life and fate of the people, life and human fate. And what richness of intonation is created thanks to this fullness of life - now unhurried meditation, now the drama of events, now a heartfelt feeling, now the almost intolerable intensity of dialogues ...
It is extraordinarily difficult to maintain such a huge epic building for a historically short span of several months. Battle of Stalingrad... The novels of the dilogy seem to be based on spatial distribution: from Hitler's headquarters to the Kolyma camp, from the Jewish ghetto to the Ural tank forge, from the Lubyanka chamber to the Kalmyk steppe, but in fact we are dealing with not only novels of space, but also novels of time. The time was artistically compressed, which is fully justified not only by the swiftness of the war, where a year of service at the front was counted as three (or even a whole life!), But above all by the movement of the author's thought.
One of the direct author's arguments says that time creates a feeling of long life, then shrinks, shrinks - depending on events in which there is always "a simultaneous feeling of duration and brevity ... There are an infinite number of terms here." So the author is trying to capture and convey this set of terms, forming a special novel rhythm, in which swiftness and slowness are combined, which are just as essential for the epic movement of the dilogy as the change in spatial scales.
Since an epic novel is necessarily a narrative about the fate of the people in those dramatic epochs that turn the wheel of history, its frame is made up of genuine events. ‹…›
The basis of a large episode in the novel was a laconic message from the essay “Volga - Stalingrad” about how they stopped the enemy who broke through at the Tractor Plant: “The name of the cheerful and fiery captain Sargsyan, who was the first to meet with heavy mortars german tanks... The battery of Lieutenant Steed will forever be remembered. Having lost contact with the command of the anti-aircraft regiment, she fought on her own with the air and ground enemy for more than a day ... "
Of course, all this appears in a novel form, according to ordinary artistic logic, when certain real episodes give impetus to the writer's creative imagination: the commanders of the units in reserve Sarkisyan, Svistun (this is how the name of Skakun is changed in the novel) and Morozov are going to the city to drink beer, conduct "everyday" conversations - and suddenly a battle ensues with the enemy who has broken through, a battle in which Morozov is killed and Whistler is wounded. And yet, this episode remained a kind of essay chapter: Sargsyan and Svistun were not included in the further narrative, their images were not developed.
The novel For a Just Cause by Vasily Semenovich Grossman is a dilogy with the later work Life and Fate. It describes the events of the Battle of Stalingrad, which the author went through from the first to the last day. Farewell to the house and the bombing of the city, the death of children and the battles of local significance - everything is shown so vividly, so gifted that the hand of a real master is easily recognized. The fate of the novel was not easy: it was not published for a long time, forced to edit for the sake of the party line. In spite of everything, he came out to tell people the truth. The truth about the terrible days of 1942 in Stalingrad.
journalist, war correspondent, novelist
Biography
Vasily Grossman was born into an intelligent family. His father - Solomon Iosifovich (Semyon Osipovich) Grossman, a chemical engineer by profession - was a university graduate and came from merchant family... Mother - Ekaterina (Malka) Savelievna Vitis, teacher - was educated in and came from a wealthy family. Vasily Grossman's parents divorced, and he was brought up by his mother. Even as a child, the diminutive form of his name Yosya evolved into Vasya, and later became his literary pseudonym.
Graduated from high school.
In graduated. For three years he worked in a coal mine as a chemical engineer. He worked as an assistant chemist at the Regional Institute of Pathology and Occupational Hygiene and as an assistant at the department general chemistry in Stalin medical institute... With permanently lived and worked in Moscow.
In published a story from the life of miners and factory intelligentsia "Gluckauf", which met with support, and a story about "In the city of Berdichev." The success of these works strengthened Grossman's desire to become a professional writer.
In, collections of his stories were published, in 1937-
About the book
- 2005 The year the book was first published
The novel "For a Just Cause" - the first part of V. Grossman's dilogy about the great "miracle" of Stalingrad - is devoted to many events and includes many heroes: from Soviet soldier and worker to commanders, from the first battles on the border to great battle on the Volga, from small hand-to-hand combat to the general strategy of war. The writer more than once visited many places of the battles for Stalingrad, which went down in history with extremely fierce battles, which is why the dilogy is imbued with true knowledge of the events described. V. Grossman's large-scale epic novel Life and Fate, the second part of the Stalingrad dilogy, is a revelation of his era. The novel is imbued with true patriotism, freedom of spirit, genuine courage to express thoughts.
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Pyotr Semyonovich Vavilov was brought a summons.
Something clenched in his soul when he saw Masha Balashova walking across the street straight to his yard, holding a white sheet in her hand. She walked under the window without looking into the house, and for a second it seemed that she would pass by, but then Vavilov remembered that there were no young men left in the next house, and it was not the old people who were being summoned. And indeed, not to the old people - at once it rattled in the entryway, apparently, Masha stumbled in the semi-darkness and the rocker, falling, rattled on the bucket.
Masha Balashova sometimes stopped by the Vavilovs in the evenings, until recently she studied in the same class with Nastya Vavilov, and they had their own business. She called Vavilov "Uncle Peter", but this time she did.
Sign the receipt of the summons, - and did not speak with a friend.
Vavilov sat down at the table and signed.
That's it, ”he said, standing up.
And this "everything" did not refer to the signature in the travel book, but to the ended home, family life, which was cut short for him at that moment. And the house, which he was about to leave, appeared before him kind and good. The stove that smoked on damp March days, the stove with a brick exposed from under the whitewash, with a side bulging from old age, seemed to him glorious, like a living creature who had lived nearby all his life. In winter he, entering the house and spreading his fingers closed by frost, breathed in her warmth, and at night he warmed himself on a sheepskin sheepskin coat, knowing where the stove was hotter and where it was cooler. In the dark, getting ready for work, he got out of bed, walked over to the stove, habitually fumbled for a box of matches, footcloths that had dried up overnight. And that's it, everything - a table and a small bench by the door, sitting on which the wife was peeling potatoes, and the gap between the floorboards at the threshold, where the children looked to spy on the underground life of a mouse, and white curtains on the windows, and cast iron, so black with soot, that in the morning you cannot distinguish him in the warm gloom of the stove, and the window sill, where there was a red indoor flower in a jar, and a towel on a carnation - all this became especially sweet and dear to him, so sweet, so dear, as can be dear and expensive only living beings. Of his three children, the eldest son Aleksey went to war, and his daughter Nastya and his four-year-old, at the same time smart and stupid son Vanya, whom Vavilov called "samovar", lived at home. Indeed, he looked like a samovar, red-cheeked, pot-bellied, with a little krantik, always visible from his open pants, busily and importantly sniffing.
Sixteen-year-old Nastya was already working on a collective farm and with her own money bought herself a dress, boots and a red cloth beret, which seemed to her very elegant. Vavilov, looking as his daughter, excited and cheerful, in the famous beret, went out for a walk, walked along the street among her friends, usually sadly thought that after the war there would be more girls than suitors.
Yes, his life went on here. At this table, Alexei sat at night, preparing for an agronomic technical school, together with his comrades, he solved problems in algebra, geometry, physics. At this table, Nastya read the reader "Rodnaya Literatura" with her friends. At this table sat the sons of neighbors who came to visit from Moscow and Gorky, talked about their life, work, and Vavilov's wife, Marya Nikolaevna, flushed from the heat of the stove and from excitement, treated the guests pies, tea with honey and said:
Well, our people will also go to the city to study professors and engineers.
Vavilov took out a red kerchief from the chest, in which certificates and metrics were wrapped, took out his military card. When he put the parcel with the certificates of his wife and daughter and the birth certificate of Vanya into the chest again, and put his documents into his jacket pocket, he felt that he was, as it were, separated from his family. And the daughter looked at him with a new, inquisitive look. In these moments, he became something different for her, as if an invisible veil lay between him and her. The wife had to return late, she was sent with other women to level the road to the station - along this road, military trucks carried hay and grain to the trains.
Here, daughter, and my time has come, - he said, She quietly answered him:
Don't worry about mom and me. We will work. If only you returned healthy, - and, looking at him from the bottom up, added - Maybe you will meet our Alyosha, you two will also be more fun there.
Vavilov had not yet thought about what lay ahead of him, his thoughts were occupied by the house and unfinished collective farm affairs, but these thoughts became new, different from those a few minutes ago. First, it was necessary to do something that his wife herself could not cope with. He began with the easiest thing: he planted an ax on a ready-made, stocked hatchet. Then he replaced the thin rung in the staircase and started to fix the roof. He brought with him several new cracks, an ax, a hacksaw, and a bag of nails. For a moment it seemed to him that he was not a forty-five-year-old man, the father of a family, but a boy who had climbed the roof for the sake of a mischievous game, now his mother would come out of the hut and, shading his eyes from the sun with his palm, would look up, shout:
Petka, get off you! - and stomps his foot impatiently, annoyed that it is impossible to grab his ear. - Get down, they tell you!
And he involuntarily looked at the hill overgrown with elder and rowan trees beyond the village, where he could see rare crosses that had sunk into the ground. For a moment it seemed to him that he was to blame all around: before the children, and before the deceased mother, now he would not be in time to fix the cross on her grave, and before the land that he would not plow this autumn, and before his wife, he would shift onto her shoulders the heaviness that I carried. He looked around the village, the wide street, the huts and courtyards, the forest darkening in the distance, the high clear sky- this is where his life went. The new school stood out as a white spot, the sun shone in its spacious windows, long wall collective farm barnyard, the red roof of the hospital was visible from behind the distant trees.
He worked a lot here! It was he and his fellow villagers who erected a dam, built a mill, smashed stones for the construction of an inventory barn and a stockyard, transported timber for a new school, dug foundation pits. And how much he plowed the collective farm land, mowed hay, threshed grain! And how many bricks he and his teammates have molded! From this brick - and the hospital, and the school, and the club, and even in the district, its brick was transported. For two seasons he worked on peat - there is such a buzz from mosquitoes in the swamp that the diesel engine cannot be heard. He hit a lot, a lot with a hammer, and chopped down with an ax, and dug with a shovel, and did carpentry, and put glass in, and sharpened tools, and worked as a locksmith.
He looked around everything, houses, gardens, streets, paths, looked around the village, how they look at life. Two old men went to the collective farm's board - the angry arguer Pukhov and Vavilov's neighbor Kozlov, behind his back they called him Kozlik. Natalya Degtyareva, a neighbor, came out of the hut, went up to the thieves, looked to the right, to the left, swung at the neighboring chickens and returned back to the house.
No, traces of his work will remain.
He saw how a tractor and a combine, mowers and threshers invaded the village, where his father knew only a plow and a flail, a scythe and a sickle. He saw how young boys and girls left the village to study and return as agronomists, teachers, mechanics, livestock specialists. He knew that the son of the blacksmith Pachkin had become a general, that before the war, village guys came to visit their relatives, who became engineers, directors of factories, regional party workers.
Vavilov looked around again.
He always wanted a person's life to be spacious, bright, like the sky, and he worked, raising life. And it was not in vain that he worked and millions of people like him. Life went uphill.
Having finished his work, Vavilov got off the roof and went to the gate. He suddenly remembered the last peaceful night, on Sunday 22 June: all huge, young workers and collective farm Russia sang, played accordions in city gardens, on dance floors, on rural streets, in groves, in copses, in meadows, near native rivers.
