Horse army babel. Cavalry. "letter" from the past - a warning to the present

One of the most difficult topics in the literature about the Civil War of 1918-1920 in Russia was the entry of an intellectual hero into the revolution. In the state of victorious socialism, where workers and peasants became the main classes, there was no place for representatives of the intelligentsia. With the light hand of D. Furmanov and his hero, the legendary divisional commander Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev, the motto of the era was the phrase: “We did not graduate from universities,” commenting on the famous thesis of V.I. Lenin that every cook can run the state. Consequently, the need for competent people, professionals in their field disappeared by itself.

The most important drawback of intelligent people was considered their "softness" - the inability to be "iron", that is, to make tough decisions and ruthlessly crack down on the enemies of the revolution. This problem is most clearly illuminated in the book Cavalry by Isaac Babel. Babel is a participant in the Civil War. In 1920, taking on the pseudonym Kirill Vasilyevich Lyutov (that will be the name of the storyteller in Cavalry), he joined the First Cavalry Army as a correspondent for the newspaper Krasny Kavalerist.

Babel's position among the Red Army was not easy. The researcher of his work, G. Belaya, very accurately and succinctly described him: “A Jew among the Cossacks,” he was doomed to loneliness. An intellectual whose heart trembled at the sight of cruelty and the destruction of culture, he could be doubly doomed to loneliness. His position, according to G. Belaya, can be expressed as follows: "inseparability and inseparability from the revolution."

This tragedy is most clearly expressed in story "My first goose". It describes the narrator's arrival at the First Cavalry Division, where he immediately feels like a second-class man, because he is literate, and in the assessment of the division commander - "lousy, glasses on his nose", for which they "cut" here. The fact that the narrator is a candidate for rights at St. Petersburg University does not do him credit either - it means that he is “from kinderbalms”, that is, a sissy. The Cossacks meet with hostility: they throw a chest out of the gate, mock him, reaching the lowest instincts.

To feed himself, Lyutov has to kill a goose walking around the yard. And only when "the goose's head cracked under the boot, cracked and flowed", one of the Cossacks said: "The guy is suitable for us." It turns out that it is possible to merge with the revolutionary masses only by committing a murder, in fact, by proving one's ability to violence and cruelty. Only now the heart of the narrator, "stained with murder", in a dream "creaked and flowed". This meant that Kirill Lyutov, accepted into the circle of the Red Army, would never become like them, because even in a dream he could not forget the price of such an act.

Lyutov is in many ways the opposite of these people. The difference between their positions and views, the very principles by which the inner world of the Cossacks is organized, is clearly visible in story "Letter". The work literally contains a letter from his mother, dictated to the narrator by Vasily, the youngest in the Kurdyukov family. In the first lines of the letter, he asks to “slaughter a pockmarked boar” and wash the legs of the horse left at home from scabies. And only after that it is reported that "dad chopped up the brother of Fyodor Timofeich Kurdyukov," and then another brother, Semyon Timofeich, "finished dad." The boy writes with pity that he cannot describe in detail how it all happened, because "he was sent away from the yard."

The author is sure that this letter “does not deserve to be forgotten”, because it is evidence of a terrible distortion of consciousness in the era of the Civil War, the loss of even the most primitive ideas about the distinction between good and evil, cruelty and mercy.

Lyutov himself cannot accept killing, even if it is a necessary measure. AT short story "The Death of Dolgushov" a Cossack, mortally wounded in the stomach, asks Lyutov to "spend a cartridge on him." For him, this is a real salvation, because "the gentry will jump in - they will make a mockery." It will no longer be possible to save him: "The stomach was torn out, the intestines crawled onto his knees and the heartbeats were visible." But even in this situation, the narrator cannot step over the blood of a person. The Cossack Afonka Bida will do it for him. Putting a gun in his mouth and shooting - this step is also not easy for Afonka: it is not without reason that he threatens to kill Lyutov himself later. So the author emphasizes how painful a choice can be for a person in a war.

Sometimes it is almost impossible to make the right choice, according to Babel, because it is impossible to distinguish a lie from the truth. Hero story "Gedali", an old Jew, a "tiny" old man in smoky glasses, "dressed in a funny green frock coat to the floor", in his old shop keeps the memory of humanity in the midst of general unconsciousness.

This is a "little man" whose dreams of happiness are quite simple. He knows: the revolution has proclaimed that it is being done for the common people, in the name of man, and "has the aim of affirming his happiness." However, Gedali fails to understand why counter-revolution and revolution are no different. And here and there they shoot, they kill, but good people should not kill. "Revolution is a good thing for good people," Gedali said. But if they kill, then they are bad people?

The old Jew asks the narrator to explain where the revolution is and where the counter-revolution is. He, a lonely little thinker, dreams of another revolution. He wants there to be an "International of good people" who do not eat with gunpowder, spiced with blood. These should be those who will come to people "with goodness, with God on their lips and in their souls."

Almost such a person will appear in another story of Cavalry: short story "Pan Apolek" expresses the author's idea of the brotherhood of all people. He wants to follow the example of the hero, a strange artist who paints people as saints while alive. Apolek tells Lyutov the "Gospel hidden from the world" - the story of Jesus and Deborah. Their son is hidden by the priests - which means that each of the living people can be a descendant of Jesus. According to Pan Apolek, he is. In every person there is a particle of God; to see it, to fix it, to remind the people themselves about it - this is the main meaning of Apolek's work.

Then the narrator, who felt all the “charm and wisdom” of the life of Pan Apolek, calls to sacrifice to the new vow “the sweetness of dreamy malice, bitter contempt for the dogs and pigs of mankind, the fire of silent and intoxicating revenge” - all that separates people.

This idea did not save Isaac Babel: his book received a negative assessment from the Soviet leadership, and in 1940 he was shot, and his works were banned until the end of the 50s.

Samosadkina Ekaterina

Isaac Babel

CONARMY

Crossing the Zbruch

The commander of six reported that Novograd-Volynsk was taken today at dawn. The headquarters set out from Krapivno, and our wagon train stretched out like a noisy rearguard along the highway that goes from Brest to Warsaw and was built on the bones of men by Nicholas the First.

Fields of purple poppies bloom all around us, midday wind plays in the yellowing rye, virgin buckwheat rises on the horizon like the wall of a distant monastery. Quiet Volyn bends, Volyn leaves us in the pearly fog of birch groves, it creeps into the flowery hillocks and with weakened hands gets tangled in the thickets of hops. The orange sun rolls across the sky like a severed head, a gentle light lights up in the gorges of the clouds, the standards of sunset blow over our heads. The smell of yesterday's blood and dead horses drips into the evening coolness. The blackened Zbruch makes noise and twists the foamy knots of its rapids. The bridges have been destroyed and we are fording the river. The majestic moon lies on the waves. Horses go into the water up to their backs, sonorous streams ooze between hundreds of horse legs. Someone drowns and loudly denigrates the Virgin. The river is littered with black squares of carts, it is full of hum, whistle and songs rattling over moon snakes and shining pits.

Late at night we arrive in Novograd. I find a pregnant woman in the apartment allotted to me and two red-haired Jews with thin necks; the third sleeps with his head covered and leaning against the wall. I find torn cupboards in the room allotted to me, scraps of women's fur coats on the floor, human feces and shards of sacred dishes used by Jews once a year - at Easter.

Take it away, I tell the woman. - How dirty you live, owners ...

Two Jews are removed from their seats. They hop on felt soles and clear debris from the floor, they hop in silence, monkey-like, like the Japanese in the circus, their necks swollen and twisting. They put an open feather bed on the floor, and I lie down against the wall, next to the third, asleep Jew. Fearful poverty closes over my bed.

Everything is killed by silence, and only the moon, clasping its blue hands around its round, shining, careless head, wanders under the window.

I stretch my stiff legs, I lie on an open feather bed and fall asleep. Having started six, I dream. He chases the brigade commander on a heavy stallion and puts two bullets into his eyes. Bullets pierce the brigade commander's head, and both his eyes fall to the ground. "Why did you turn the brigade around?" - Savitsky shouts to the wounded man, having started six, - and then I wake up, because the pregnant woman is rummaging her fingers over my face.

Pane, - she says to me, - you scream from sleep and you rush. I'll make a bed for you in the other corner because you're pushing my dad...

She lifts her thin legs and round belly from the floor and removes the blanket from the sleeping man. The dead old man lies there, thrown back. His throat is torn out, his face is cut in half, blue blood lies on his beard, like a piece of lead.

Pane, - says the Jewess and shakes the featherbed, - the Poles cut him, and he prayed to them: kill me in the black yard so that my daughter does not see how I die. But they did what they needed, - he ended up in this room and thought about me ... And now I want to know, - the woman suddenly said with terrible strength, - I want to know where else on earth you will find such a father, like my father...

Church in Novograd

Yesterday I went with a report to the military commissar, who was staying at the house of a fugitive priest. Pani Eliza, the Jesuit's housekeeper, met me in the kitchen. She gave me amber tea with biscuits. Her biscuits smelled like a crucifix. The evil juice was contained in them and the fragrant fury of the Vatican.

Near the house in the church bells roared, wound by a distraught bell ringer. It was an evening full of July stars. Pani Eliza, shaking her attentive gray hair, poured me cookies, I enjoyed the food of the Jesuits.

An old Polish woman called me "pan", gray old men with ossified ears stood at attention at the threshold, and somewhere in the serpentine twilight a monk's cassock writhed. Pater fled, but he left an assistant - Pan Romuald.

A nasal eunuch with the body of a giant, Romuald called us "comrades." With a yellow finger he ran across the map, pointing out the circles of the Polish rout. Overwhelmed by hoarse delight, he counted the wounds of his homeland. Let meek oblivion absorb the memory of Romuald, who betrayed us without regret and was shot in passing. But that evening, his narrow cassock moved at all the curtains, furiously swept all the roads and grinned at everyone who wanted to drink vodka. That evening the monk's shadow followed me relentlessly. He would have become a bishop - Pan Romuald, if he had not been a spy.

Isaac Babel

CONARMY

Crossing the Zbruch

Take it away, I tell the woman. - How dirty you live, owners ...

Everything is killed by silence, and only the moon, clasping its blue hands around its round, shining, careless head, wanders under the window.

Pane, - she says to me, - you scream from sleep and you rush. I'll make a bed for you in the other corner because you're pushing my dad...

Church in Novograd

I drank rum with him, the breath of an unprecedented way of life flickered under the ruins of the priest's house, and his insinuating temptations weakened me. Oh crucifixes, tiny as courtesan talismans, parchment of papal bulls and an atlas of women's letters, decayed in the blue silk of waistcoats! ..

I see you from here, unfaithful monk in a purple cassock, the swelling of your hands, your soul, tender and ruthless, like the soul of a cat, I see the wounds of your god, oozing with semen, a fragrant poison that intoxicates virgins.

We drank rum, waiting for the military commissar, but he did not return from headquarters. Romuald fell into a corner and fell asleep. He sleeps and trembles, and outside the window in the garden, under the black passion of the sky, an alley shimmers. Thirsty roses sway in the dark. Green lightning blazes in the domes. The undressed corpse lies down a slope. And the moonlight streams down the dead legs sticking out apart.

Here is Poland, here is the arrogant sorrow of the Commonwealth! Violent stranger, I scatter a lousy mattress in the temple left by the clergyman, I put folios under my head in which hosanna is printed to the clairvoyant and most luminous Head of the Panstvo, Joseph Pilsudski.

The impoverished hordes are rolling on your ancient cities, O Poland, the song of the unity of all serfs thunders over them, and woe to you. The Commonwealth, woe to you, Prince Radziwill, and to you, Prince Sapieha, who stood up for an hour! ..

Still not my military commissar. I'm looking for him at headquarters, in the garden, in the church. The gates of the church are open, I enter, towards me two silver skulls flare up on the lid of a broken coffin. Frightened, I rush down into the dungeon. An oak staircase leads from there to the altar. And I see a lot of lights running in the height, near the dome. I see the military commissar, the head of the special department and the Cossacks with candles in their hands. They respond to my weak cry and take me out of the cellar.

The skulls, which turned out to be the carvings of a church hearse, no longer frighten me, and together we continue the search, because it was a search initiated after piles of military uniforms were found in the priest's apartment.

Glittering with the embroidered muzzles of our cuffs, whispering and rattling our spurs, we whirl around the echoing building with dripping wax in our hands. The Mothers of God, studded with precious stones, follow our path with pink, like those of mice, pupils, the flame beats in our fingers, and square shadows writhe on the statues of St. Peter, St. Francis, St. Vincent, on their ruddy cheeks and curly beards, painted with carmine.

We circle and search. Bone buttons jump under our fingers, icons cut in half move apart, opening dungeons into moldy caverns. This temple is ancient and full of mystery. It hides in its glossy walls secret passages, niches and shutters that swing open silently.

O foolish priest, who hung the bras of his parishioners on the nails of the savior. Outside the royal gates, we found a suitcase with gold coins, a morocco bag with credit cards and cases of Parisian jewelers with emerald rings.

And then we counted the money in the military commissar's room. Pillars of gold, carpets of money, a gusty wind blowing on the flame of candles, the crow's madness in the eyes of Pani Eliza, the thunderous laughter of Romuald and the endless roar of bells wound by Pan Robatsky, the distraught ringer.

Away, - I said to myself, - away from these winking Madonnas, deceived by soldiers ...

Here is a letter to my homeland, dictated to me by a boy of our expedition, Kurdyukov. It doesn't deserve to be forgotten. I rewrote it without embellishment, and I convey it verbatim, in accordance with the truth.

“Dear mother Evdokia Fedorovna. In the first lines of this letter, I hasten to notify you that, thanks to the Lord, I am alive and well, which I wish to hear the same from you. And I also bow down to you from the white face to the damp earth ... "

(A list of relatives, godparents, godfathers follows. Let's omit this. Let's move on to the second paragraph.)

“Dear mother Evdokia Fedorovna Kurdyukova. I hasten to write to you that I am in Comrade Budyonny's Red Cavalry Army, and also here is your godfather Nikon Vasilyich, who is currently a red hero. They took me to their place, on the expedition of the Political Department, where we deliver literature and newspapers to the positions - Moskovsky Izvestia of the Central Executive Committee, Moskovskaya Pravda and their own merciless newspaper Red Cavalryman, which every soldier on the front line wants to read, and after that, with a heroic spirit, he cuts the vile the gentry, and I live very splendidly under Nikon Vasilyevich.

Dear mother Evdokia Feodorovna. Send what you can from your power-opportunity. I ask you to kill a pockmarked boar and send me a parcel to the Political Department of Comrade Budyonny, to receive Vasily Kurdyukov. Every day I go to bed without eating and without any clothes, so it is very cold. Write me a letter for my Styopa, whether he is alive or not, I ask you to inspect him and write to me for him - is he still detectable or has stopped, and also about scabies in his front legs, have he been shod or not? I ask you, dear mother Evdokia Fedorovna, to wash his front legs without fail with the soap that I left behind the icons, and if daddy has exterminated the soap, then buy it in Krasnodar, and God will not leave you. I can also describe to you that the country here is completely poor, the peasants with their horses are buried from our red eagles through the forests, wheat, you see, is not enough and it is terribly small, we laugh at it. The owners sow rye and the same oats. Hops grow on sticks here, so it comes out very neat; moonshine is made from it.

In the second line of this letter, I hasten to describe to you for daddy that they chopped up Fyodor Timofeyich Kurdyukov's brother about a year ago. Our Red Brigade of Comrade Pavlichenko was advancing on the city of Rostov when a betrayal occurred in our ranks. And dad was at that time with Denikin for the company commander. When people saw them, they said that they wore medals, as in the old regime. And on the occasion of that betrayal, we were all taken prisoner and brother Fyodor Timofeich caught my father's eye. And papa began to cut Fedya, saying - a skin, a red dog, a son of a bitch and various things, and they cut him until dark, until brother Fyodor Timofeich was finished. I wrote a letter to you then, how your Fedya is lying without a cross. But papa poked me with a letter and said: you are your mother’s children, you are her root, you bastard, I have belly fatted your uterus and will be bellying it, my life is lost, I will exhaust my seed for the truth, and many other things. I accepted suffering from them as the savior Jesus Christ. Only soon did I run away from my father and nailed myself to my unit, Comrade Pavlichenko. And our brigade was ordered to go to the city of Voronezh to replenish, and we received reinforcements there, as well as horses, bags, revolvers, and everything that belonged to us. For Voronezh, I can describe to you, dear mother Evdokia Fedorovna, that this is a very magnificent town, it will be bigger than Krasnodar, the people in it are very beautiful, the river is capable of swimming. They gave us two pounds of bread a day, half a pound of meat and a suitable amount of sugar, so that when we got up we drank sweet tea, we ate the same thing and forgot about hunger, and at dinner I went to brother Semyon Timofeich for pancakes or goose and after that I went to bed to rest. At that time, Semyon Timofeich, for his desperation, the whole regiment wanted to have a commander, and such an order came from Comrade Budyonny, and he received two horses, proper clothes, a cart for junk separately and the Order of the Red Banner, and I was considered a brother. What kind of neighbor starts to beat you up - then Semyon Timofeich can completely kill him. Then we started chasing General Denikin, slaughtered thousands of them and drove them into the Black Sea, but only dad was nowhere to be seen, and Semyon Timofeich was looking for them in all positions, because they really missed their brother Fedya. But only, dear mother, as you know for dad and for his stubborn character, he did what he did - impudently dyed his beard from red to black and was in the city of Maykop, in free clothes, so that none of the inhabitants knew that he there is the most that neither is the guard under the old regime. But only the truth - she will do herself, your godfather Nikon Vasilyich happened to see him in the hut of a resident and wrote a letter to Semyon Timofeich. We sat on the horses and ran two hundred miles - me, brother Senka and willing guys from the village.

And what did we see in the city of Maikop? We saw that the rear did not sympathize with the front in any way, and that there was treason everywhere and full of Jews, as under the old regime. And Semyon Timofeich in the city of Maykop had a great argument with the Jews, who did not let their father out of themselves and put him in a prison under lock and key, saying - the order came not to cut the prisoners, we will judge him ourselves, do not be angry, he will receive his own. But only Semyon Timofeich took his and proved that he was the commander of the regiment and had all the Orders of the Red Banner from Comrade Budyonny, and threatened to chop up everyone who argued for dad's personality and did not give it away, and the guys from the village also threatened. But as soon as Semyon Timofeich received their father, they began to whip the father and lined up all the soldiers in the yard, as they belong to the military order. And then Senka splashed papa Timofey Rodionich with water on his beard, and paint flowed from his beard. And Senka asked Timofey Rodionich:

Are you okay, daddy, in my arms?

No, - said the father, - it's bad for me.

Then Senka asked:

And Fede, when you cut him, was it good in your hands?

No, - said dad, - it was bad for Fedya.

Then Senka asked:

Did you think, father, that it would be bad for you too?

No, - said dad, - I didn’t think that it would be bad for me.

Then Senka turned to the people and said:

And I think that if I fall into yours, then there will be no mercy for me. And now, dad, we will finish you ...

And Timofey Rodionich began impudently scolding Senka after mother and mother of God and hitting Senka in the face, and Semyon Timofeyich sent me away from the yard, so I can’t, dear mother Evdokia Fyodorovna, describe to you how they ended up papa, because I was sent away from the yard.

After that, we got a parking lot in the city in Novorossiysk. For this city, you can tell that there is no more land behind it, but only water. The Black Sea, and we stayed there until May, when we went to the Polish front and beat the gentry for good reason ...

I remain your gracious son, Vasily Timofeevich Kurdyukov. Mom, keep an eye on Styopka, and God will not leave you.”

Here is Kurdyukov's letter, not changed in a single word. When I had finished, he took the sheet of paper with writing on it and hid it in his bosom, over his naked body.

Kurdyukov, - I asked the boy, - did you have an evil father?

My father was a dog, - he answered sullenly.

Is mother better?

Suitable mother. If you want - here is our name ...

He handed me a broken photograph. It depicted Timofey Kurdyukov, a broad-shouldered guard in a uniform cap and with a combed beard, motionless, with high cheekbones, with a sparkling gaze of colorless and meaningless eyes. Next to him, in a bamboo armchair, sat a tiny peasant woman in a loose jacket, with stunted, bright and shy features. And against the wall, next to this miserable provincial photographic backdrop, with flowers and doves, towered two guys - monstrously huge, stupid, broad-faced, goggle-eyed, frozen as if in training, the two Kurdyukov brothers - Fedor and Semyon.

Chief of stock

There is a groan in the village. The cavalry poisons the bread and changes horses. In exchange for the nags that have stuck, the cavalrymen take the working cattle. There is no one to scold here. There is no army without a horse.

But the peasants are not relieved by this consciousness. The peasants are relentlessly crowding in front of the headquarters building.

They drag on ropes resting, sliding from weakness odrov. Deprived of breadwinners, the peasants, feeling a surge of bitter courage in themselves and knowing that courage is not enough for a short time, rush without any hope to taunt the authorities, God and their miserable lot.

Chief of Staff J. in full uniform stands on the porch. Closing his inflamed eyelids, he listens with visible attention to the men's complaints. But his attention is nothing more than a welcome. Like any well-trained and overworked worker, he knows how to completely stop brain work in the empty moments of his existence. In these few moments of blissful nonsense, our chief of staff shakes up the worn-out machine.

So this time with the men.

To the soothing accompaniment of their incoherent and desperate rumble, Zh. watches from the side that soft pounding in the brain, which portends the purity and energy of thought. Having waited for the necessary interruption, he seizes the last masculine tear, snaps authoritatively and goes to his headquarters to work.

This time, there was no need to yell. On a fiery Anglo-Arab, Dyakov, a former circus athlete, and now the head of the horse reserve, galloped up to the porch - red-skinned, gray-whiskered, in a black cloak and with silver stripes along his red trousers.

Honest bitches abbess blessing! - he shouted, reining his horse in the quarry, and at the same moment a mangy horse, one of the exchanged Cossacks, crawled up to him under the stirrup.

There, comrade chief, - the man yelled, slapping his pants, - there is what your brother gives to our brother ... Did you see what they give? Manage her...

And for this horse, - then Dyakov began separately and weightily, - for this horse, respected friend, you have every right to receive fifteen thousand rubles in the horse reserve, and if this horse were more cheerful, then in that case you would receive, a welcome friend, twenty thousand rubles in horse stock. But, however, that the horse fell is not hvakt. If a horse has fallen and rises, then it is a horse; if, in reverse, he does not rise, then this is not a horse. But, by the way, this competent filly will rise with me ...

Oh my God, you are my all-merciful mother! The man waved his hands. - Where can she, an orphan, rise ... She, an orphan, will die ...

You offend the horse, godfather, - Dyakov answered with deep conviction, - you are downright blaspheming, godfather, - and he deftly removed his stately body of an athlete from the saddle. Spreading his beautiful legs, seized at the knees by a strap, magnificent and dexterous, as on a stage, he moved towards the dying animal. It stared dejectedly at Dyakov with its sharp deep eye, licked some invisible command from its crimson palm, and immediately the exhausted horse felt the skillful strength flowing from this gray-haired, blooming and valiant Romeo. Moving her muzzle and sliding her legs, feeling the impatient and imperious tickling of the whip under her belly, the nag slowly, attentively got to her feet. And then we all saw how a thin brush in a fluttering sleeve patted the dirty mane and the whip with a groan clung to the bleeding sides. Trembling all over, the nag stood on her fours and did not take her dog's, fearful, falling in love eyes on Dyakov.

It means that the horse, - said Dyakov to the peasant and added softly: - and you sting, dear friend ...

Throwing the reins to the orderly, the head of the reserve took four steps with a flurry and, throwing up an opera cloak, disappeared into the headquarters building.

Pan Apolek

The charming and wise life of Pan Apolek hit me in the head like old wine. In Novograd-Volynsk, in a hastily crumpled city, among twisted ruins, fate threw under my feet the gospel, hidden from the world. Surrounded by the ingenuous radiance of haloes, I then vowed to follow the example of Pan Apolek. And the sweetness of dreamy malice, bitter contempt for the dogs and pigs of mankind, the fire of silent and intoxicating vengeance - I sacrificed them to a new vow.

In the apartment of a fugitive Novograd priest, an icon hung high on the wall. On it was the inscription: "Death of the Baptist." Without hesitation, I recognized in John the image of a man I had once seen.

I remember: between the straight and light walls stood the cobweb silence of a summer morning. At the foot of the picture was placed by the sun a direct beam. Glittering dust swirled in it. Directly at me from the blue depths of the niche descended the long figure of John. A black cloak hung solemnly on this inexorable body, disgustingly thin. Drops of blood glittered in the round clasps of his cloak. John's head was cut obliquely from the skinned neck. She was lying on an earthenware dish, firmly grasped by the warrior's big yellow fingers. The dead man's face seemed familiar to me. The harbinger of the mystery touched me. On an earthenware platter lay a dead head, written off from Pan Romuald, an assistant to a fugitive priest. From its bared mouth, scales flashing flowery, hung the tiny torso of a snake. Her head, soft pink, full of animation, powerfully set off the deep background of the cloak.

I marveled at the art of the painter, at his gloomy invention. All the more surprising the next day seemed to me the red-cheeked Mother of God, hanging over the matrimonial bed of Mrs. Eliza, the old priest's housekeeper. Both canvases were printed with the same brush. The fleshy face of the Mother of God - it was a portrait of Pani Eliza. And then I came close to unraveling the Novograd icons. The clue led to the kitchen to Mrs. Elise, where the shadows of old servile Poland gathered in fragrant evenings, with a foolish artist at their head. But was Pan Apolek a holy fool, who populated the suburban villages with angels and made the lame conversion of Janek a saint?

He came here with the blind Gottfried thirty years ago on an invisible summer day. Friends - Apolek and Gottfried - approached Shmerel's tavern, which stands on the Rovno highway, two versts from the city limits. In his right hand Apolek had a box of paints, with his left hand he led a blind harmonist. The melodious step of their German nailed shoes sounded calm and hopeful. A canary scarf hung from Apolek's thin neck, and three chocolate feathers dangled from the blind man's Tyrolean hat.

In the tavern on the windowsill, the aliens laid out paints and an harmonica. The artist unwound his scarf, endless, like a fairground magician's ribbon. Then he went out into the yard, stripped naked and doused his rosy, narrow, frail body with icy water. Shmerel's wife brought raisin vodka and a bowl of zrazy to the guests. Satisfied, Gottfried laid the harmony on his sharp knees. He sighed, threw back his head, and wiggled his thin fingers. The sounds of Heidelberg songs filled the walls of the Jewish tavern. Apolek sang along with the blind man in a rattling voice. All this looked as if an organ had been brought to Schmerel from the church of St. Indegilda, and the muses sat side by side on the organ in colorful wadded scarves and shod German shoes.

The guests sang until sunset, then they put the harmonica and paints in linen bags, and Pan Apolek with a low bow handed Bryna, the tavern keeper's wife, a sheet of paper.

Gracious Mrs. Brian, he said, accept this portrait of yours from a wandering artist, baptized with the Christian name Apollinaris, as a sign of our servile gratitude, as evidence of your luxurious hospitality. If God Jesus prolongs my days and strengthens my art, I will return to repaint this portrait with paints. Pearls will suit your hair, and on your chest we will attribute an emerald necklace ...

On a small sheet of paper, in red pencil, a pencil as red and soft as clay, Pani Brayna's laughing face was drawn, outlined with copper curls.

My money! Shmerel exclaimed when he saw the portrait of his wife. He grabbed a stick and started chasing the guests. But on the way, Shmerel remembered the pink body of Apolek, flooded with water, and the sun in his courtyard, and the quiet ringing of the harmonica. The innkeeper was confused in spirit and, putting down his stick, returned home.

The next morning, Apolek presented the Novograd priest with a diploma of graduation from the Munich Academy and laid out in front of him twelve paintings on themes from the Holy Scriptures. These paintings were painted in oil on thin plates of cypress wood. The Pater saw on his table the burning purple of the robes, the gleam of the emerald fields, and the flowery veils thrown over the plains of Palestine.

Saints of Pan Apolek, this whole set of jubilant and rustic elders, gray-bearded, red-faced, was squeezed into the streams of silk and mighty evenings.

On the same day, Pan Apolek received an order to paint a new church. And behind the Benedictine, the father said to the artist.

Santa Maria, - he said, - the desired Pan Apollinaris, from what wonderful regions did your so joyful grace come down to us? ..

Apolek worked diligently, and within a month the new temple was full of the bleating of herds, the dusty gold of sunsets, and the fawn of cow's nipples. Buffaloes with frayed skins were drawn in a team, dogs with pink muzzles ran ahead of the flock, and fat babies rocked in cradles suspended from straight palm trunks. The brown rags of the Franciscans surrounded the cradle. The crowd of Magi was cut with gleaming bald heads and wrinkles as bloody as wounds. In the crowd of sorcerers, the old woman's face of Leo XIII flickered with a fox's grin, and the Novograd priest himself, fingering a Chinese carved rosary with one hand, blessed the free, newborn Jesus with the other.

For five months, Apolek, enclosed in his wooden seat, crawled along the walls, along the dome and in the choir stalls.

You are addicted to familiar faces, dear Pan Apolek, - the priest once said, recognizing himself in one of the Magi and Pan Romuald - in the severed head of John. He smiled, old priest, and sent a glass of cognac to the artist who worked under the dome.

Then Apolek finished the Last Supper and the stoning of Mary of Magdala. One Sunday he opened the painted walls. Eminent citizens, invited by the priest, recognized in the Apostle Pavel Janek, a lame cross, and in Mary Magdalene - the Jewish girl Elka, the daughter of unknown parents and the mother of many children under the fence. Eminent citizens ordered to close blasphemous images. The priest brought down threats on the blasphemer. But Apolek did not close the painted walls.

Thus began an unprecedented war between the powerful body of the Catholic Church, on the one hand, and the careless Bogomaz, on the other. It lasted three decades. Chance almost elevated the meek reveler to the founders of a new heresy. And then he would have been the most intricate and ridiculous fighter of all that the evasive and rebellious history of the Roman Church has known, a fighter who, in a blissful drunkenness, circled the earth with two white mice in his bosom and with a set of the finest brushes in his pocket.

Fifteen zlotys for the Mother of God, twenty-five zlotys for the holy family and fifty zlotys for the Last Supper with the image of all the relatives of the customer. The enemy of the customer can be depicted in the image of Judas Iscariot, and for this an extra ten zlotys are added, - this is what Apolek announced to the surrounding peasants after he was expelled from the temple under construction.

He knew no shortage of orders. And when a year later, prompted by the frantic messages of the Novograd priest, a commission arrived from the bishop in Zhytomyr, she found in the most rundown and stinking huts these monstrous family portraits, blasphemous, naive and picturesque. Josephs with a gray head combed in two, pomaded Jesuses, rural Marys with multiple births with their knees apart - these icons hung in red corners, surrounded by crowns of paper flowers.

He made you saints during your lifetime! - exclaimed the vicar of Dubensky and Novokonstantinovsky, answering the crowd defending Apolek. “He has surrounded you with the inexpressible paraphernalia of the sacred, you who have fallen into the sin of disobedience three times, secret distillers, ruthless lenders, makers of false scales and sellers of the innocence of your own daughters!”

Your priesthood, - then the shaky-legged Vitold, a buyer of stolen goods and a cemetery watchman, said to the vicar, - what the most merciful pan God sees the truth in, who will tell the dark people about this? And isn't there more truth in the pictures of Pan Apolek, who pleased our pride, than in your words, full of blasphemy and lordly wrath?

The cheers of the crowd sent the vicar to flight. The state of mind in the suburbs threatened the safety of church ministers. The artist, invited to take the place of Apolek, did not dare to cover up Elka and the lame Janek. They can still be seen in the side aisle of the Novograd church: Janek - the Apostle Paul, a timid lame man with a black ragged beard, a village renegade, and her, a harlot from Magdala, frail and insane, with a dancing body and sunken cheeks.

The struggle against the priests lasted three decades. Then the Cossack overflow expelled the old monk from his stone and odorous nest, and Apolek - about the vicissitudes of fate! - settled in the kitchen of Mrs. Eliza. And here I am, an instant guest, drinking the wine of his conversation in the evenings.

Conversations - about what? About the romantic times of the nobility, about the fury of the woman's fanaticism, about the artist Luca del Rabbio and about the family of a carpenter from Bethlehem.

I have to tell the clerk ... - Apolek mysteriously informs me before dinner.

Yes, - I answer, - yes, Apolek, I am listening to you ...

But the church servant, Pan Robatsky, stern and gray, bony and eared, sits too close to us. He hangs before us faded canvases of silence and hostility.

I have to tell the sir, - Apolek whispers and takes me aside, - that Jesus, the son of Mary, was married to Deborah, a Jerusalem maiden of an humble family ...

Oh ten man! Pan Robatsky shouts in despair. - Ten man will not die on his bed ... That man will be beaten by people ...

I please. Ignited by the beginning of the Apolek story, I pace the kitchen and wait for the cherished hour. And outside the window stands the night, like a black column. Outside the window, a living and dark garden froze. The road to the church flows like a milky and shining stream under the moon. The ground is paved with a gloomy radiance, necklaces of luminous fruits hung from the bushes. The smell of lilies is pure and strong, like alcohol. This fresh poison digs into the greasy turbulent breath of the stove and deadens the resinous stuffiness of spruce scattered in the kitchen.

An apolek in a pink bow and worn pink pants is scurrying around in his corner like a kind and graceful animal. His table is smeared with glue and paints. The old man works with small and frequent movements, the quietest melodic fraction comes from his corner. Old Gottfried knocks it out with his trembling fingers. The blind man sits motionless in the yellow and oily sheen of the lamp. Bowing his bald forehead, he listens to the endless music of his blindness and the muttering of Apolek, his eternal friend.

- ... And what the priests and the evangelist Mark and the evangelist Matthew say to the sir is not the truth ... But the truth can be revealed to the clerk, to whom for fifty marks I am ready to make a portrait under the guise of blessed Francis against the backdrop of greenery and sky. That was a very simple saint, Pan Francis. And if a pan clerk has a bride in Russia... Women love Blessed Francis, although not all women, sir...

Thus began, in a corner that smelled of fir, the story of the marriage of Jesus and Deborah. This girl had a fiancé, according to Apolek. Her fiancé was a young Israeli who sold elephant tusks. But Deborah's wedding night ended in bewilderment and tears. The woman was seized with fear when she saw her husband approaching her bed. A hiccup swelled her throat. She vomited up everything she ate at the wedding meal. Shame fell on Deborah, on her father, on her mother, and on her whole family. The groom left her, mocking, and called all the guests. Then Jesus, seeing the languor of a woman who longed for her husband and feared him, put on the clothes of the newlywed and, full of compassion, united with Deborah, who was lying in vomit. Then she went out to the guests, noisily triumphant, like a woman who is proud of her fall. And only Jesus stood aside. Deadly perspiration broke out on his body, the bee of sorrow stung him in the heart. Unnoticed by anyone, he left the banquet hall and retired to a desert country, east of Judea, where John was waiting for him. And Deborah's firstborn was born ...

Where is he? I cried.

The priests hid him, - Apolek said with importance and brought a light and chilly finger closer to his drunkard's nose.

Sir artist, - Robatsky suddenly cried, rising from the darkness, and his gray ears moved, - what are you talking about? The same is unthinkable...

So, so, - Apolek cringed and grabbed Gottfried, - so, so, sir ...

He dragged the blind man to the exit, but on the threshold he hesitated and beckoned me with his finger.

Blessed Francis,” he whispered, blinking his eyes, “with a bird on his sleeve, with a dove or a goldfinch, as the clerk pleases ...

And he disappeared with his blind and eternal friend.

Oh foolishness! - said then Robatsky, the church servant. - Ten man will not die on his bed ...

Pan Robatsky opened his mouth wide and yawned like a cat. I said goodbye and went to spend the night at my home, to my robbed Jews.

A homeless moon roamed the city. And I walked with her, warming in myself unfulfillable dreams and discordant songs.

Sun of Italy

Yesterday I again sat in the servants' room at Pani Eliza's under a heated crown of green spruce branches. I sat by the warm, lively, grumbling stove and then returned to my room in the dead of night. Below, at the edge, the noiseless Zbruch rolled a glassy dark wave.

The charred city - broken columns and hooks of evil old women's little fingers dug into the ground - seemed to me lifted into the air, comfortable and unprecedented, like a dream. The naked brilliance of the moon poured on him with inexhaustible force. The damp mold of the ruins bloomed like the marble of an opera bench. And I waited for a soul-troubled Romeo to come out from behind the clouds, a satin Romeo singing about love, while backstage a downcast electrician kept his finger on the moon switch.

Blue roads flowed past me like jets of milk from many breasts. Returning home, I was afraid of meeting Sidorov, my neighbor, who lowered the hairy paw of his melancholy at night. Fortunately, on this night, torn to pieces by the milk of the moon, Sidorov did not utter a word. Surrounded by books, he wrote. A humpbacked candle was smoking on the table - the ominous fire of dreamers. I sat aside, dozing, dreams jumping around me like kittens. And only late at night I was awakened by an orderly who called Sidorov to headquarters. They left together. I then ran up to the table on which Sidorov wrote and leafed through the books. It was an Italian language tutorial, a picture of the Roman forum and a plan of the city of Rome. The plan was all marked with crosses and dots. I leaned over the written sheet and, with a sinking heart, wringing my fingers, read someone else's letter. Sidorov, the yearning killer, tore apart the pink cotton wool of my imagination and dragged me into the corridors of his sane madness. The letter began on the second page, I did not dare to look for the beginning:

“... a lung was pierced and a little crazy, or, as Sergey says, he went crazy. Do not go with him, in fact, with this fool crazy. However, the tail is on one side and jokes aside ... Let's turn to the agenda, my friend Victoria ...

I did a three-month Makhnovist campaign - a tiresome swindle, and nothing more ... And only Volin is still there. Volin dresses up in apostolic robes and climbs into Lenin from anarchism. Terrible. And the father listens to him, strokes the dusty wire of his curls and passes his peasant smile through his rotten teeth. And now I don’t know whether there is a not weed grain of anarchy in all this, and whether we will blow your happy noses to you, self-made Central Committee members from a self-made Central Committee, made in Kharkov, in a self-made capital. Your shirt-boys now do not like to remember the sins of their anarchist youth and laugh at them from the height of state wisdom - to hell with them ...

And then I ended up in Moscow. How did I get to Moscow? The guys offended someone in the sense of requisition and otherwise. I, drooling, stood up. I was combed - and for the cause. The wound was trifling, but in Moscow, ah. Victoria, in Moscow I was numb from misfortunes. Every day the hospital nurses brought me a grain of porridge. Ridden with reverence, they dragged her on a large tray, and I hated this shock porridge, unscheduled supplies and planned Moscow. In the council he later met with a handful of anarchists. They are dudes, or half-crazed old men. I poked myself into the Kremlin with a plan of real work. They patted me on the head and promised to make me a deputy if I corrected myself. I didn't get better. What happened next? Next was the front, the Cavalry and soldiers, smelling of raw blood and human ashes.

Save me Victoria. State wisdom drives me crazy, boredom intoxicates. You will not help - and I will die without any plan. Who would want an employee to die in such a disorganized way, not you, Victoria, the bride who will never be a wife. Here is sentimentality, well, to such a mother ...

Now let's talk business. I'm bored in the army. I can't ride because of the wound, so I can't fight either. Use your influence, Victoria - send me to Italy. I am studying the language and in two months I will speak it. In Italy, the earth is smoldering. Much is ready. Missing a couple of shots. I will make one of them. There you need to send the king to the forefathers. It is very important. Their king is a glorious uncle, he plays popularity and is filmed with tame socialists for reproduction in family reading magazines.

In the Central Committee, in the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, you don't talk about shooting, about kings. You will be patted on the head and mumbled: "romantic." Simply say - he is sick, angry, drunk with longing, he wants the sun of Italy and bananas. Deserved after all, or maybe not deserved? To be treated - and that's it. And if not, let them send them to the Odessa Cheka ... It is very sensible and ...

How stupid, how undeserved and stupid I write, my friend Victoria...

Italy entered the heart as an obsession. The thought of this country, never seen before, is sweet to me, like the name of a woman, like your name, Victoria ... "

I read the letter and began to lie down on my sagging unclean bed, but sleep did not come. Behind the wall, a pregnant Jewish woman was sincerely crying, she was answered by the groaning muttering of her lanky husband. They reminisced about the things they had robbed and were angry at each other for being unlucky. Then, before dawn, Sidorov returned. A burnt-out candle was suffocating on the table. Sidorov took out another stub from his boot and, with extraordinary thoughtfulness, pressed it down on the swollen wick. Our room was dark, gloomy, everything in it breathed the damp night stink, and only the window, filled with moonlight, shone like deliverance.

He came and hid the letter, my weary neighbor. Stooping, he sat down at the table and opened the album of the city of Rome. A sumptuous, gold-edged book stood before his olive, expressionless face. Above his round back, the jagged ruins of the Capitol and the circus lit up by sunset gleamed. The photograph of the royal family was laid right there, between large glossy sheets. On a piece of paper torn from a calendar was a picture of the affable, puny King Victor Emmanuel with his black-haired wife, Crown Prince Umberto, and a whole litter of princesses.

... And now the night, full of distant and painful calls, a square of light in damp darkness - and in it the dead face of Sidorov, a lifeless mask hanging over the yellow flame of a candle.

On Saturday eve I am tormented by the thick sadness of memories. Sometime in these evenings my grandfather stroked the volumes of Ibn Ezr with his yellow beard. An old woman in a lace cap was telling fortunes with her knotted fingers over the Sabbath candle and sobbing sweetly. The children's heart swayed in these evenings, like a boat on enchanted waves ...

I circle around Zhytomyr and look for a timid star. At the ancient synagogue, at its yellow and indifferent walls, old Jews sell chalk, blue, wicks - Jews with the beards of the prophets, with passionate tatters on their hollow chest ...

Here before me is the bazaar and the death of the bazaar. Killed the fat soul of abundance. Silent locks hang on trays, and the pavement's granite is as pure as a dead man's bald head. It blinks and goes out - a timid star ...

Luck came to me later, luck came just before sunset. Gedali's shop hid in tightly closed trading rows. Dickens, where was your shadow that evening? In this antiques shop you would see gilded shoes and ship ropes, an antique compass and a stuffed eagle, a hunting winchester engraved with the date "1810" and a broken saucepan.

Old Gedali paces around his treasures in the rosy void of the evening, a small master in smoky spectacles and a floor-length green frock coat. He rubs his white hands, he plucks his gray beard and, bowing his head, listens to the invisible voices that have flocked to him.

This shop is like a box of an inquisitive and important boy, from which a professor of botany will emerge. This shop has both buttons and a dead butterfly. Her little master is called Gedali. Everyone left the market, Gedali remained. It winds its way through a labyrinth of globes, skulls, and dead flowers, swinging a motley rooster-feather duster and blowing dust from dead flowers.

We sit on beer kegs. Gedali rolls and unrolls his narrow beard. His top hat sways above us like a black turret. Warm air flows past us. The sky changes colors. Tender blood flows from an overturned bottle up there, and a faint smell of smoldering envelops me.

Revolution - let's say "yes" to it, but will we say "no" to Saturday? - so begins Gedali and wraps around me the silk straps of her smoky eyes. “Yes,” I shout to the revolution, “yes,” I shout to her, but she hides from Gedali and sends forward only shooting ...

The sun does not enter the closed eyes, - I answer the old man, - but we will open the closed eyes ...

The Pole closed my eyes,” the old man whispers in a barely audible voice. - The Pole is an evil dog. He takes a Jew and pulls out his beard - oh, dog! And now they beat him, an evil dog. It's wonderful, it's a revolution! And then the one who beat the Pole says to me: “Register your gramophone, Gedali ...” - “I love music, ladies,” I answer the revolution. - “You don’t know what you love, Gedali, I will shoot at you, then you will know it, and I cannot help but shoot, because I am a revolution ...”

She cannot stop shooting, Gedali, I tell the old man, because she is a revolution...

But the Pole fired, my gentle sir, because he is a counter-revolution. You shoot because you are the revolution. And revolution is fun. And pleasure does not like in the orphanage. Good things are done by a good person. Revolution is a good thing for good people. But good people don't kill. So, the revolution is made by evil people. But the Poles are also evil people. Who will tell Gedali where is the revolution and where is the counter-revolution? I once studied the Talmud, I love Rashe's commentaries and the books of Maimonides. And there are other understanding people in Zhytomyr. And here we are all, learned people, we fall on our faces and shout out loud: woe to us, where is the sweet revolution? ..

The old man was silent. And we saw the first star making its way along the Milky Way.

Saturday is coming, - Gedali said with importance, - the Jews need to go to the synagogue ... Panya comrade, - he said, getting up, and the cylinder, like a black turret, swayed on his head, - bring some good people to Zhitomir. Ay, there is a shortage in our city, ah, a shortage! Bring good people, and we will give them all the gramophones. We are not ignorant. The International... we know what the International is. And I want an International of good people, I want every soul to be registered and given rations in the first category. Here, soul, eat, please, have your pleasure from life. Internationale, sir comrade, you don’t know what they eat it with ...

They eat it with gunpowder, - I answered the old man, - and season it with the best blood ...

And so she rose to her chair from the blue darkness, young Saturday.

Gedali, I say, today is Friday and it is already evening. Where can I get a Jewish shortbread, a Jewish glass of tea, and a little bit of this retired god in a glass of tea?..

No, - Gedali answers me, putting a lock on his box, - no. There is a tavern nearby, and good people traded in it, but they don’t eat there anymore, they cry there ...

He buttoned his green frock coat with three bone buttons. He fanned himself with rooster feathers, splashed some water on his soft palms, and departed, tiny, lonely, dreamy, in a black top hat and with a large prayer book under his arm.

Saturday is coming. Gedali - the founder of the unrealizable International - went to the synagogue to pray.

My first goose

Savitsky, having started six, got up when he saw me, and I was surprised at the beauty of his gigantic body. He stood up and, with the purple of his breeches, his crimson cap knocked to one side, and the orders hammered into his chest, cut the hut in half, as a standard cuts the sky. He smelled of perfume and the cloying coolness of soap. His long legs looked like girls, clad to the shoulders in shiny boots.

He smiled at me, hit the table with his whip, and pulled towards him the order that had just been dictated by the Chief of Staff. This was an order to Ivan Chesnokov to set out with the regiment entrusted to him in the direction of Chugunov - Dobryvodka and, having come into contact with the enemy, to destroy such ...

“... What destruction,” the division commander began to write and smeared the entire sheet, “I place the responsibility of the same Chesnokov up to the highest measure, whom I will slap on the spot, in which you, Comrade Chesnokov, having been working with me at the front for more than a month, cannot doubt…"

Having started six, he signed the order with a curlicue, threw it to the orderlies and turned his gray eyes to me, in which merriment danced.

I gave him a paper about seconding me to the headquarters of the division.

Carry out the order! - said the chief. - Carry out by order and enroll for any pleasure, except for the front one. Are you literate?

Competent, - I answered, envying the iron and flowers of this youth, - Candidate of Laws of St. Petersburg University ...

You are from kinderbalms, - he shouted, laughing, - and glasses on his nose. What a lousy one! .. They send you without asking, but here they cut you for glasses. You will live with us, right?

I'll live, - I answered and went with the lodger to the village to look for an overnight stay.

The lodger carried my chest on his shoulders, the village street lay before us, round and yellow like a pumpkin, the dying sun emitted its pink spirit in the sky.

We went up to the hut with painted crowns, the lodger stopped and suddenly said with a guilty smile:

The rigmarole here with our glasses cannot be appeased. A man of the highest distinction - the soul is out of him here. And if you spoil a lady, the cleanest lady, then you will get caress from the fighters ...

He hesitated with my chest on his shoulders, came very close to me, then jumped back in despair and ran into the first courtyard. The Cossacks sat there on the hay and shaved each other.

Here, fighters, - said the lodger and put my chest on the ground. - According to the order of Comrade Savitsky, you are obliged to take this person to your premises and without stupidity, because this person has suffered from the scientific part ...

End of free trial.

Sections: Literature

LESSON OBJECTIVES:

Educational: Show the inevitability of the tragic fate of a person at turning points in history; to understand what is the peculiarity of Babel's depiction of historical contemporary events.

Developing: To form text analysis skills, develop oral monologue speech, form motivation for educational and cognitive activities (independent reading and analysis of works of art, research work).

Educational: To instill in students a civic position, to develop feelings of mercy, compassion, the ability to understand the pain of another person.

EQUIPMENT: portrait of the writer, song “March of Budyonny”, reproductions of paintings about the Civil War, epigraphs, text of the story “Letter” for analysis, table “Consequences of the Civil War”.

Board layout:

Epigraphs:

God forbid to see a Russian rebellion, senseless and merciless.

A.S. Pushkin

The chronicle of everyday atrocities presses me indefatigably, like a heart defect.

I.E.Babel

Table “Consequences of the Civil War”

8-13 million people died from hunger, cold, disease, terror.
Of these, 1 million soldiers of the Red Army.
No one counted how many “whites”, rebel peasants, died.
2 million people emigrated from Russia.
Industrial production fell to 20% of its 1913 level.
Agriculture has halved.
The damage to the national economy amounted to 50 billion gold rubles.

DURING THE CLASSES

Introductory conversation.

The Revolution and the Civil War radically changed Russia, entered the life of every person, breaking, maiming, mutilating human bodies and souls. Any war is terrible, because it brings death, grief, pain, destruction, but civil war is doubly terrible and inhuman.

The depiction of the civil war has become one of the main themes of Russian literature of the 20th century. This war, which shook a huge country, was perceived in literature in different ways: both as a tragedy of the people, and as a romantically colored great event that cemented the victory of the Bolsheviks in the revolution.

- Do you remember in the works of which writers the theme of the civil war was reflected? ( M. Bulgakov "The White Guard"; B. Pilnyak "The Naked Year", "The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon"; D. Furmanov “Chapaev”; A. Serafimovich “Iron Stream”; I. Babel "Cavalry"; A. Fadeev “Defeat”)

In Russia, the Civil War went on for 5 years, from 1917 to 1922. “Usually, the Civil War is defined as an armed struggle for power between representatives of various classes and social groups. In other words, this is a struggle within the country, within the people, nation, often between fellow countrymen, neighbors, colleagues or friends, and even relatives. This is a tragedy that leaves an unhealed wound in the heart of the nation and fractures in its soul for a long time.” (Civil War in lyrics and prose. M, 2002)

The teacher reads out the data from the table “Consequences of the Civil War”.

– How can you comment on this data? What feelings do they evoke in you?

Reading by a student of the poem “Civil War” by M. Voloshin:

Some have risen from the underground
From links, factories, mines,
Poisoned by dark will
And the bitter smoke of cities.
Others from the ranks of the military,
Noble ruined nests,
Where they spent on the graveyard
Fathers and brothers of the slain.
In some hitherto not extinguished
Hops of immemorial fires,
And the steppe, wild spirit is alive
And Razins, and Kudeyarov.
In others - devoid of all roots -
The pernicious spirit of the capital Neva:
Tolstoy and Chekhov, Dostoevsky -
Anguish and confusion of our days.
Some lift up on posters
Your nonsense about bourgeois evil,
About bright proletariats,
Petty-bourgeois paradise on earth...
In others, all the color, all the rot of empires,
All gold, all the ashes of ideas,
Shine all great fetishes
And all scientific superstitions.
Some go to free
Moscow and bind Russia again,
Others, having unbridled the elements,
They want to remake the whole world.
In both, the war breathed
Anger, greed, gloomy hops of revelry,
And after the heroes and leaders
A predator steals in a greedy flock,
So that the power of Russia is boundless
Open and sell to enemies:
To rot her heaps of wheat,
To dishonor her heaven,
Devour riches, burn forests
And suck out the seas and ores.
And the roar of battles does not stop
All over the southern steppe
Among the golden splendors
Horses trampled reapers.
And here and there between the rows
The same voice sounds:
“Whoever is not for us is against us.
No one is indifferent: the truth is with us.”
And I stand alone between them
In roaring flames and smoke
And with all your might
I pray for both.

Teacher: In the cavalry diary of I. Babel we find the following lines : “Why do I have persistent longing? Because far from home, because we destroy. We go like a whirlwind, like lava, hated by everyone, life flies away, I am at a big ongoing memorial service.

memorial service - This is a church service for the deceased, mourning speeches. Who, what mourns Babel? Today we have to figure it out. On the basis of his Cavalry diary, Babel wrote a collection of short stories Cavalry. The attitude of critics to this collection was different: someone saw here a “poeticization of banditry” alien to the revolutionary position, and Gorky said that he saw in the Cavalry Army heroes similar to Gogol's Cossacks. There were disputes about how to understand and accept this work. Either this is a slander of revolutionary history, or revolutionary romance. Who is this man who, with his work, has brought such confusion to the ranks of critics?

STUDENT'S STORY ABOUT BABEL

Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel was born in Odessa into a wealthy family. After graduating from the Odessa Commercial School and the Kyiv Commercial Institute, Babel went to Petrograd, hoping to publish his stories there, which by that time were already numerous. It was not published for a long time, until Babel got to Gorky, it was he who saw talent in this young man. However, Gorky did not like Babel's new stories, and he advised him to go "to the people."

For 7 years, Babel tried many professions and learned a lot. He was a soldier on the Romanian front, served in the Cheka, in the People's Commissariat of Education, in food expeditions, fought in the Northern Army against Yudenich, in the First Cavalry Army of Budyonny, worked in the Odessa Provincial Committee, and was a reporter for various newspapers. As Babel himself recalled, “It was only in 1923 that I learned to express my intentions clearly and not very long. Then I started writing again.”

Babel is known as the author of two cycles of very bright short stories: Odessa Stories and Cavalry. On false charges in May 1939 the writer was arrested, and in January 1940 he was shot. After 14 years, he was rehabilitated. The military prosecutor wrote in his conclusion: “What served as the basis for the arrest is not clear from the case file, since the arrest warrant was issued ... 35 days after Babel’s arrest.”

Teacher: Babel's service in the ranks of the First Cavalry Army, to which he dedicated his famous story "Konarmiya", left the strongest impression. The writer arrived there as a correspondent for the newspaper "Red Cavalryman" and had to write articles and keep a diary of military operations. Watching what was happening, Babel thought about the fate of the revolution. Now she seemed to him not the same as from the outside. He could not understand the unnecessary cruelty that was around.

He wrote down his observations in a personal diary, which later took shape in a cycle of stories.

The brief historical scenario is as follows: intoxicated with successes on the fronts, the Council of People's Commissars sends the Cavalry to march on Warsaw in order to restore the pre-war borders of Russia. The campaign ends in complete failure. Western Ukraine goes to Poland, and Bessarabia to Romania. The bulk of the cavalry army was made up of Cossacks, who during the time of the Russian Empire were a privileged class. And during the revolution they rushed between the “whites” and the “reds”. Against this dramatic background, the main events of the book take place.

(The song “March of Budyonny” sounds).

The whole country then sang this bravura march. The soldiers of the First Cavalry Army were the heroes of the era. And how did Babel see them? What did he show in his famous book?

Let's take a look at some of the stories.

ANALYSIS OF THE STORY "LETTER".

teacher question	Student response
What is the basis of the plot of this story?	The basis of the plot of this story is a letter from the boy Vasya Kurdyukov to his motherland.
What is the composition of the story?
	A letter is always something personal, a letter tells news, some events from one's life, it is a story about oneself, a story, often frank, without falsehood. Babel is interested in the person himself, participating in military events, and not in the military actions of the army. This letter allows us to see the history of the Kurdyukov family against the backdrop of the ideological struggle during the Civil War.
What characters are shown in this story?
Where does the letter begin?	Like any letter, it begins with greetings and bows to the mother and all relatives. The boy reports that he is in Comrade Budyonny's Red Cavalry Army, delivering newspapers and literature to positions.
What is Vasya worried about?	About his horse Styopa. It is felt that the boy is bored and worried about his four-legged friend. Even at the end of the letter, Kurdyukov once again reminds his mother to take good care of his horse: "... keep an eye on Styopka, and God will not leave you."
How does Vasya feel about his mother?	He writes to his mother with respect, calling her “dear mother”, “bowing low from her white face to the damp earth” and wishing her, “relatives, godparents and godfathers” health and well-being. He hurries to reassure her, the teenager notifies that “the red hero ... godfather Nikon Vasilyich” took him to his place, on the expedition of the Political Department, in order to deliver “literature and newspapers” to positions, and that he lives “under Nikon Vasilyich very fabulous".
How is the life of a boy?	He writes that he lives great, but here he asks his mother to slaughter a boar and send him a parcel. “Every day I go to bed without eating and without any clothes, so it’s very cold.”
How does the boy feel about the soldiers of the Red Cavalry?	He admires them, calls them "red heroes", "eagles".
How does Vasya describe to his mother the area in which he is with the Cavalry?	He, as a plowman, is primarily interested in what is grown in this area and what kind of harvest is here. From this we can conclude that, despite the fact that Kurdyukov is embraced by the romance of war days, he yearns for a peaceful life, for his horse Styopa, for the land, for peaceful working days.
What does Vasya describe in the main part of his letter?	He writes to his mother about how their father, the company commander of Denikin's army, killed his son, the Red Army soldier Fedya. As the second son Semyon, the commander of the Red Army regiment, avenged his brother and killed his father.
What is the tone of this part of the letter?	The boy talks about this terrible tragedy calmly and naturally, as if they were not his relatives, blood people. The events of the massacre are given next to the description of life. He describes all these tragic events in detail, with details. “And papa began to cut Fedya, saying - the skin, the red dog, the son of a bitch and various things, and they cut him until dark, until brother Fyodor Timofeich ran out.” And as if with regret that he does not know the details of the murder of his father by his brother Semyon, he writes to his mother: banished from the yard."
How is the elder brother Semyon shown in the letter, how does Vasya feel about him?	Semyon is a dashing warrior. Vasya, undoubtedly, likes the “desperation” of brother Semyon, with which he cuts heads right and left. I like this quality of the red fighter and the whole regiment, who wants Semyon Timofeich "to have a commander." “Comrade Budyonny” himself allocates “two horses, proper clothes, a cart for junk and separately the Order of the Red Banner” to the new commander for this. Vasily writes about this with sincere admiration, putting in the first place the material benefits received by his brother. We also see the significance of the brother-thug in the eyes of a teenager in those lines when he writes that if any neighbor mother “begins to beat, then Semyon Timofeich can completely kill him.”
How did you react to this bloody murder?	It's getting scary from all this nightmare. It seems that people have lost everything human. Even animals protect their children, take care of the family.
What can you say about the soul of the boy Vasya Kurdyukov?	His heart is deaf to human suffering, he is devoid of sympathy and mercy. For him, murder is a common thing. The boy's soul is crippled by the war. You understand that in the future it will be a cruel, angry person.
	Photography is all that remains of the former Kurdyukov family. The civil war went through this family with its steel sword and split it in two: “whites” and “reds”. There will never be happiness in this family: some are killed, others will live with the seal of their father's killers until the end of their days.
How is this photo described?	The description is read out: “Timofei Kurdyukov was depicted on it, a broad-shouldered guard in a uniform cap and with a combed beard, motionless, with high cheekbones, with a sparkling look of colorless and meaningless eyes ... And against the wall ... stood two guys - monstrously huge, stupid, broad-faced, pop-eyed, frozen , as for teaching, the two Kurdyukov brothers - Fedor and Semyon. The epithets that are given in the description of the family do not cause sympathy for them and once again emphasize their mental and spiritual limitations.
	The author does not evaluate either the events or the characters. He simply described what was, what he saw. Babel wants to understand his characters and maybe justify their actions, but he fails. He gives the reader, posterity, an opportunity to understand what is happening.
What is the main idea of this story?	Broken, mutilated, like photography, the fate of many people, their lives. The Revolution and the Civil War, which divided everyone into “whites” and “reds,” is the reason for this.

– What can you tell about the fate of the heroes of other stories of Cavalry? (Students' reflections)

– So what is Babel's book about?

This is a book about the suffering of the human soul, which frantically seeks the truth in an unjust, bleeding world. Any war is a terrible tragedy, and a civil one is doubly so, because it is fratricidal. War is disastrous for both belligerents - this is the result of Babel's reflections on the pages of his book.

- What is the peculiarity of Babel's depiction of contemporary historical events to him?

Babel shows living people with all their advantages and disadvantages. Along with heroism, the writer, without any silence, writes about the rudeness and even cruelty of the soldiers of the Budyonny Cavalry in relation to civilians. Babel sees both positive and negative aspects of the revolution and does not hush them up. He is for a new, bright, wonderful life, but against violence and cruelty. And we understand his unspoken thought that we need to look for another way, a way without blood and terror. We can confirm this with epigraphs for today's lesson.

Homework: Make a plan for an essay on the topic of the lesson.

Isaac Babel

CONARMY

Crossing the Zbruch

Take it away, I tell the woman. - How dirty you live, owners ...

Everything is killed by silence, and only the moon, clasping its blue hands around its round, shining, careless head, wanders under the window.

Pane, - she says to me, - you scream from sleep and you rush. I'll make a bed for you in the other corner because you're pushing my dad...

Church in Novograd