Novel by V. Astafiev “Cursed and Killed”
Details Category: Works about the Great Patriotic War Published 11/28/2018 12:16
The novel “Cursed and Killed” was created in 1990-1994. and after its publication it caused a lot of contradictory assessments and controversy.
It showed a fundamentally new vision of the harsh time of our history - the Great Patriotic War, as well as a personal understanding of the fate of an ordinary soldier: in the writer’s opinion, it was tragic. Nobody wrote about this war like that. The author had the right to his own opinion, because personally experienced all the hardships of the war: he himself volunteered for the front in 1942. His experiences during the war became the central theme of the writer’s work. Astafiev explained the creation of his book this way: “it is impossible to remain silent.” The annotation of the publishing house “Krasnoyarsk: offset”, 1997, says that “it was with this novel that Astafiev summed up his thoughts on war as a “crime against reason.” But when the novel appeared in print, the writer was reproached for everything! - in naturalism, unconvincing religious themes (the writer believed that war is a sin), excessive rhetoric, extreme pessimism, violation of tradition in the interpretation of war, etc.
Victor Astafiev
Astafiev expressed doubts in the novel about the triumphant nature of the victory and was convinced that the numerous victims suffered by the Soviet people were criminal miscalculations of the Soviet command. However, the novel is still relevant today, when military conflicts continue around us and people are dying, so it is worth listening to the words of the author, although he himself believed that “only God knows the whole truth about the war, and this truth is overwhelming.” The novel “Cursed and Killed” is not finished; the author himself announced that he had stopped working on it.
Features of the work[ | ]
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[1].
The title of the novel is taken from its text: it is reported that on one of the stichera owned by the Siberian Old Believers, “it was written that everyone who sows unrest, war and fratricide on earth will be cursed and killed by God.”
The novel 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 relationships with each other and their commanders, and the actual military operations. The book was written, among other things, based on the personal impressions of a front-line writer.
The writer raises moral issues. These are problems of relationships between people in conditions of war, conflict between Christian morality, patriotism and a totalitarian state, problems of the formation of people whose youth fell on the most difficult years. The red thread running through the novel is the idea of God's punishment of Soviet people through war.
The writer's characteristic philosophical reflections and descriptions of nature contrast in the novel with extremely naturalistic descriptions of the life of soldiers, lively, often colloquial and dialect dialogues of the characters in the novel, whose characters and fates are diverse and individual [ source not specified 2375 days
].
As stated in the preface to one of the editions of the novel: “It was with this novel that Astafiev summed up his thoughts on war as a “crime against reason.”[2]
About the plot of the novel
Book 1 "Devil's Pit"
But if you bite and devour each other, beware lest you be destroyed by each other. Holy Apostle Paul
The novel takes place in the late autumn of 1942 and winter of 1943 near the city of Berdsk in the Novosibirsk region. Recruits arrived here in the fall to the 21st Reserve Rifle Regiment. These are just boys, mostly just reaching military age. They are all very different in nationality, character, and social status. The writer depicts the personalities of many of them in detail, and while reading the novel, we experience certain feelings for each of them: the Old Believer Kolya Ryndin attracts us with his strength, sincerity, and the appearance of a real hero: “he is an unbending person. He bends only before God in prayer,” but military science was not given to Kolya; he could not use a rifle bayonet in training. The commander was powerless and said:
“You and your saints will be finished off in the first battle.” “Everything is God’s will,” answered Kolya Ryndin.
Lyokha Buldakov is self-willed, but kind, he is a breadwinner, in any situation he does not remain hungry, and he always shares with his comrades. Ashot Vaskonyan is an intellectual who loves the truth, everyone respects him for his intelligence and knowledge, he generously shares it with the guys, who are mostly illiterate, they were recruited from remote towns and villages. Some of them have already managed to break the laws.
And from this motley crowd of conscripts, under the most difficult conditions, a completely combat-ready and generally united team is formed. But the conditions in which the conscripts found themselves, even by military standards, are inhumane: the guys are constantly malnourished, live in the cold, damp, and lack basic amenities, so constant conflicts arise between the conscripts themselves and between the conscripts and their commanders. Astafiev writes: “The country was not ready for a protracted war, not only in terms of equipment, weapons, planes, tanks - it did not prepare people for a long, difficult battle and did it on the move, in convulsions, in a hurry, shuddering from defeats at the fronts, complete mismanagement, disorder of life and economy in the rear. Stalin habitually deceived the people, lying outright in his festive November speech that there was already complete order in the rear, which means that everything would soon change at the front too.” I would like to consider some of the descriptions to be a monstrous lie, but... the writer felt everything personally. “With every month, week, day, more and more goons came to the regiment. Having taken possession of the empty bowl, the goons jostled near the dispensing windows, whined, whined, begged for more, preventing the older ten from receiving bowls of stew, porridge, tea, if the muddy, bath broom-smelling slurry could be called tea, but, having frozen in class, in the evenings They drank a lot of that tea, drank greedily, urinated at night, these falcons were beaten mercilessly. Gray shadows of depressed, sick people scurried between the tables - before the soldier had time to spit out a fish bone on the table, a hand stuck out from behind his back, grabbed that bone, asked to lick the bowl, scratched along the bottom of the basin with a spoon or finger. These restless people who left the barracks without permission were caught by patrols, orderlies, punished, admonished. But the goners lost all human dignity, forgot where they were and why they were there, they even went to garbage dumps, garbage stalls, picked something out there with sticks, iron, stuffed them into their pockets, and took them into the forests to the fires.” The commanders were also different: fair, caring, thinking about their subordinates (junior lieutenant Shchus, sergeant major Shpator), but also heartless and cruel, such as company commander Pshenny, who, in a fit of angry rage in front of the boys, beat to death the sick recruit Poptsov. “Discipline in the regiment not only shook, but every day it became more and more difficult to control people.” “Gradually dispersing in righteous anger, heating up, the company duty officer, most often it was Yashkin, who also gave up a lot, completely yellow, began to pull the soldiers off the bunks who were closer. Closer to everyone, on the lower bunks, huddled poor sick people, on whom the draft from the loosely closed door was drawn from the damp floor, and no matter how they were forbidden, no matter how they were punished, they dragged all sorts of rags onto themselves, making nests on the bunks. Pulled by their legs, thrown to the floor, they stubbornly crawled onto the bunk again and again, climbed into a dirty, torn-up, but still slightly insulated nest - just not on the street, just not in the cold in wet, dog-smelling pants, white with urine. on the backside and in the crotch.” “People are getting weaker - the conditions in the barracks are unbearable, not all livestock can withstand it, there are a lot of sick people.” One of the most tragic episodes of the first book is the execution of the Snegirev brothers. The conscripts died not only because of their inexperience and naivety, but also because of the lack of God's mercy in people and society. The main plot of the novel is interrupted by detailed descriptions of the pre-war life of the characters in the novel; the entire national tragedy is expressed in their destinies. And so the marching companies of the regiment were sent to the front. Before being sent to the front, the conscripts were sent for a short time to the village of Osipovo for winter grain procurements, where they slightly improved their health. The writer claims that military training itself was limited only to drill on the parade ground, and most conscripts during the exercises did not hold real weapons in their hands, but only wooden models. The epigraph to the first book conveys the idea of the priority of universal human values - it is not only about the Great Patriotic War, but also about the centuries-long enmity between peoples. War is a great world tragedy.
Book 2 “Beachhead”
You have heard what was said to the ancients: “Do not kill. Whoever kills is subject to judgment.” But I tell you that everyone who is angry with his brother without cause will be subject to judgment... Gospel of Matthew, 5, 2122
In the second book, the heroes of the novel are at the front. The combat operations during the crossing of the Dnieper, the capture and retention of a bridgehead on its bank for seven and “all subsequent” days are described in detail and naturalistically. The author describes the war in extreme detail and cruelty, clearly distinguishing between those on the bridgehead (mostly the same boys and a number of commanders) and those who remained on the eastern bank (political department, special department, field wives, barrier detachments and just cowards) . At the same time, the war is described both through the eyes of Soviet soldiers and, partly, German ones. In the second book, the main plot is also interrupted by descriptions of the pre-war or already war life of individual characters. Military events are described vividly, but this can be seen in other works about the war, but the description of a soldier’s life, the differences in the life of an ordinary soldier and those of a slightly higher rank are the traditions of Leo Tolstoy in military literature. Political instructor Musyonok with his political slogans evokes a feeling of disgust, as does the chief of the artillerymen - well-fed, well-fed, smelling of cologne, indulging in foreign wines, dried fruits, chocolate, when ordinary soldiers on the other side of the Dnieper were chewing wormwood...
Many of the book's characters were killed or seriously wounded at the beachhead; the fate of others remains unknown to readers. The book “Bridgehead” also tells about those who could not withstand the enormous burden of war that befell them. War suppresses a person, turns his soul inside out, sometimes distorting the best in it. The terrible time of war gave rise to ugly phenomena of military everyday life: short-sighted decisions, stupid miscalculations, irresponsibility of the military leadership, which fell heavily on the shoulders of the country's defenders. According to the author, the most terrible crime in war is betrayal, and it “begins in the high, important offices of leaders ... and ends here ... where front-line soldiers set each other up.” Sometimes even honest and pure-minded people felt confused before the war: Felix Boyarchik, not ready for military life, rushes to the Germans, begging to kill him. Astafiev believes that war inevitably leads a person to spiritual devastation. The honest soldier Lyoshka Shestakov understands: “The main destructive impact of the war is that ... the approaching mass death becomes an everyday occurrence.” However, war also brings out the highest feelings in a person: patriotism, a sense of unity among soldiers, a willingness to share the latter, the ability to preserve human dignity and inner strength. These are Shchus, Shestakov, Buldakov, Ryndin and others in the novel. The Germans in Astafiev’s novel are, first of all, ordinary people who never wanted and do not want to be participants in this war. Nurses Faya and Nelya receive medicine and food from the hands of the enemy. The German Lemke believes in God and recognizes the war as a universal catastrophe. Astafiev tried to convey to readers the idea that war is a tragedy, regardless of who dies: a Russian or a German soldier. But man is defenseless and cannot withstand the elements of war. One of the tragic pages of “Bridgehead” is the crossing on the Dnieper, where Russian and German soldiers are senselessly dying.
"Devil's Pit"[ | ]
The epigraph to the first book of the novel is a quote from the New Testament:
If you bite and eat each other. Take heed that you are not destroyed one another. — Galatians 5:15
The action of the first book of the novel takes place near Berdsk in the late autumn of 1942 and winter of 1943, in the 21st reserve [3] rifle regiment. The regiment number and its location correspond to those that actually existed during the Great Patriotic War[4]. Today there is no location for the reserve regiment; this place is flooded by the Ob Sea[5].
The action begins with the arrival in the fall of 1942 of young recruits, mostly just reaching conscription age, into the reserve regiment. Their composition is very diverse: the Khan Lyoshka Shestakov, who arrived from the lower reaches of the Ob River partly by blood, the Old Believer, the strongman Kolya Ryndin, the criminal Zelentsov, the malingerer Petka Musikov, the willful Lyokha Buldakov and others. Later, they were joined by conscripted Kazakhs and two more significant heroes of the novel: Ashot Vaskonyan and Felix Boyarchik. After quarantine, they end up in one company of the regiment, where they are met by Sergeant Major Shpator, and the command of the company is taken by Lieutenant Shchus, who is also one of the main characters in the novel. The conscripts are mostly illiterate, recruited from remote towns and villages, many have had conflicts with the law.
It tells the story of how a motley crowd of conscripts, in the most difficult conditions, forms a completely combat-ready and generally cohesive team. Constant malnutrition, cold, dampness, and lack of basic conditions are aggravated by conflicts between conscripts, between conscripts and their commanders, and not everything is smooth between commanders. In front of the boys, the commander beats the degraded goner to death, two twin brothers are shot, who, out of ignorance, left their unit temporarily without permission, and a show trial of Zelentsov is held. The author describes a hopeless picture of the life of soldiers in reserve units, young people, whose life before that “for the most part was wretched, humiliating, poverty, consisted of standing in queues, receiving rations, coupons, and even fighting 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 sent 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 begin 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 [ source not specified 2375 days
].
