Roman Peter 1 heroes. “Peter the Great” - a novel about a turning point in the life of Russia
"Peter the Great" is a historical novel. Genre specifics historical novel predetermined by the time distance between the moment of creation of the work and the one to which the author addresses. Unlike a novel about modernity, which is addressed to the realities of today, to the study of emerging conflicts, emerging characters and literary types, a historical novel is fundamentally addressed to previous eras. This is the specificity of the position of a historical novelist: unlike a writer who recreates modernity, he knows how the conflicts described by him were resolved in a real historical retrospective, how the fate of the people who became specific historical prototypes of his heroes developed.
However, the presence of temporal distance and a fundamental focus on the past do not at all deprive the historical novelist of interest in the present. On the contrary, most often interest in the past is dictated by the need to read in it the answers to the questions of today, to find analogies, parallels between the logic of two historical moments, connected by the temporal distance of a historical novel. Thus, one or another interpretation historical events is not completely “disinterested”, but is rather subordinated to the need to understand the present and the desire to look into the future.
Alexei Tolstoy, with his historical novel “Peter the Great,” which we will analyze, compares two eras of Russian life, in which he finds common impulses, common conflicts, and a common national-historical pathos: this is the turn of the 17th-18th centuries and the 30s of the 20th century. The writer himself spoke about the coincidence of the historical pathos of both eras: “Despite the difference in goals,” he wrote, “the era of Peter and our era resonate precisely with some kind of riot of forces, explosions of human energy and will aimed at liberation from foreign dependence.”
This coincidence, which Tolstoy thought of as programmatic at the time of creating the novel, predetermines both the artistic concept of the work and the concept of the personality of its main character.
In order to show this, it is necessary to turn to the central conflict of the historical novel. The ideological and plot-compositional structure of the work is formed by the conflict between Peter, with his desire for renewal, reform of Russia, with the need to direct the country along the Western path of economic, scientific and technical, cultural development, and the historical intractability of the Russian people, the strength of ancient tradition, the resistance of the boyars, in a word, everything that is perceived by the author and hero as inertia, the age-old sleep of the people and the authorities. The qualities of his personality help Peter win this conflict: determination, the ability to exert enormous willpower, uncompromisingness, and the ability to go to the end. Its goal is to speed up the passage of historical time, which may enable Russia to catch up with what it lost during its centuries-long sleep. Peter literally “grabs Fortuna by the hair” and forcibly forces her to turn to face him. Victory is achieved by the incredible willpower of the king and his associates.
This historical perception of the world characterizes not only the Peter the Great era, it turns out to be highly consonant with the 30s, Tolstoy’s time. Creating the novel “Peter the Great,” he correlated Peter’s transformations with Stalin’s, finding much in common in them. First of all, this commonality lay in the scale of the truly global achievements of the two eras and the incredible expenditure of people’s energy, strength, and lives that these transformations required. Neither in one nor in another era did they think about the cost of historical achievements that were capable of making Russia the strongest and most militarily powerful power in Europe. To achieve their goals, both historical eras chose strong, rigid centralized power. Peter, depicted in Tolstoy’s novel, who does not take into account human waste and achieves his goals with incredible willpower, seemed to sanction the actions of Tolstoy’s contemporary government, justifying the monstrous waste of people’s resources released by collectivization and aimed at industrializing the country.
The image of Peter in Tolstoy’s novel “Peter the Great”
In order to understand the personality of Peter the Great, as it is presented in Tolstoy’s novel, one must remember that in the second half of the 20s - 30s the concept heroic personality, characteristic of literature socialist realism. It affirms an exceptional, sacrificial personality, capable of self-restraint, renunciation of natural human needs, and complete subordination of oneself to work and duty. It is this type of heroic personality that is affirmed by N. Ostrovsky’s novel “How the Steel Was Tempered” (the image of Pavel Korchagin), and A. Fadeev’s novel “Destruction” (the image of Levinson). In both cases, the hero discovers the ability to overcome natural human weakness, to dominate his body (Levinson), for the strength of spirit makes it possible to overcome weakness, rise above illness, and remain in service, even when bedridden (Korchagin). The hero, faced with illness, feeling physical weakness, strengthens spiritually, overcomes the contradictions of his own consciousness, and gains inner integrity.
Tolstoy also makes his contribution to the formation of a general literary concept of personality, creating the image of Peter in the novel “Peter the First”. However, the contradictions he has to face are of a slightly different nature. Possessing remarkable physical strength and health, Peter does not know what illness is, and the heroic beginning of his character does not manifest itself in the fight against it. His heroism lies in his ability to shoulder the entire burden of responsibility for reforming the country, discarding natural human weakness, timidity, and doubt.
The heroic concept of personality, which developed in the literature of the 30s, affirmed an active person, capable of overcoming doubts and reflection and entering into direct interaction with reality in order to transform it in accordance with accepted plans. In creating just such a character, Tolstoy resorts to the technique of antithesis. In the system of characters in the novel, Peter and Prince Vasily Golitsyn, Sophia’s favorite, who held all the levers of state power in his hands throughout her reign, are contrasted. A literate, thoughtful, European-educated man, he is well aware of the historical need to reform Russian life. For several years, he has been drawing up his “projects” - plans for socio-political government reforms that are unconditionally progressive in nature and go beyond Peter’s reforms. One of the points of his “projects” even included the liberation of peasants from serfdom. However, things did not go further than “projects” and notes: Golitsyn’s plans, according to the purely Russian tradition, remained on paper. Peter is the one who acts, and that is why he wins the struggle with Sophia for power. Action, emotional and impulsive, often thoughtless, whether we are talking about public policy or relationships with the closest and most devoted people, becomes the main dominant character of the character created by Tolstoy. He can beat Aleksashka Menshikov, elbow Lefort in the nose, obeying outbursts of anger or equally unexpected surges of generosity, execute and pardon. But this is precisely a man of active action, which, on the one hand, ensures the success of all his state plans, on the other, forms the main contradiction in his character.
Tolstoy sees the most important contradiction in the character of his hero in the fact that Peter is fighting the historical backwardness of Russia (as he understands the state of his country at that time) with barbaric means, monstrous cruelty and violence, suppressing resistance and forcing the people to rise to historical achievements with a whip, batogs, and rack. and the gallows.
Thus, the main contradiction in the image of Peter is the contradiction between a good and historically justified goal and the ways and means of achieving it.
The author's position is expressed in the fact that the highest criterion for assessing the activities of the tsar is the perception of his policies by the people. If Peter manages, having broken the boyar resistance and suppressed the Moscow Streltsy riots, to enlist the support of people from the people, breaking the existing patriarchal social hierarchy, then such support will be the highest and absolute proof of the historical promise of Peter's reforms.
The system of characters in Tolstoy’s novel “Peter the Great”
The study of this issue determines the system of characters in the novel. It is structured in such a way as to evaluate the actions of Peter from various social and cultural points of view. These points of view are formed both by people from the people who are able to most accurately and concentratedly express the general perception of what is happening, and by the boyars, and by schismatics, and by people from foreign embassies.
The system of characters in the novel “Peter the Great” is built according to the “heliocentric” principle: in the center is the image of the main character, after whom the novel is named, the remaining characters are important insofar as they are close to him, express one or another point of view on Peter or attitude towards historical processes predetermined by his policies. The system of characters includes several groups, each of which is united by a common attitude towards the personality of Peter and his reforms. It is traditional for the historical novel genre to combine real historical characters with fictional ones.
The fate of the Brovkin family, fictional characters, reflects a typical phenomenon of Peter the Great's time: people promoted from among the people occupy important government positions. Ivashka Brovkin, as his neighbors called him, an enslaved backyard peasant, turns into Ivan Artemyevich, a wealthy merchant, supplier to the court of His Imperial Majesty, who is entrusted with the supply of ammunition to the army of the new Russia.
The language of the novel “Peter the Great”
Is it possible to narrate events from a fairly distant history in modern language? Wouldn't the historical material come into some kind of comic contradiction if told about it in modern language? Or write a novel in the language of that era, in Russian at the end of the 17th century? But will it be clear then? to the modern reader? In addition, in the Peter the Great era, the tradition of the literary language had not yet been formed: the times of classicism, Fonvizin, Derzhavin, Sumarokov, Lomonosov, the Pushkin era, which created the Russian literary language, are still ahead.
Tolstoy solves this problem in a different way: he stylizes his narrative in the language of the turn of the 17th-18th centuries, creating in the linguistic element of his novel the illusion of the reader’s immersion in that era. The sharp turn carried out by Peter in the sphere of domestic and foreign state policy led to a radical change in the entire national life. The era of Peter is an era of fundamental changes, which could not but be reflected in the speech sphere. Language reflects the times better than any chronicler or historian. In the speech element of Tolstoy’s novel, words and lexical groups collide, mixing and coexisting, the meeting of which in another era would simply be impossible: this is Old Slavonic vocabulary belonging to previous, patriarchal forms of life; and many borrowings from European languages, German and Dutch primarily; and vernaculars, which always characterize the speech picture of the language at turning points in national life. Thus, using stylistic means, Tolstoy manages to show time and capture a turning point era that combined different cultural layers, mixed historical traditions, and included Byzantium and Europe.
The tragic and the originality of the comic
The Peter the Great era, like any turning point, inevitably combines fragments of the past and signs of the future that have not always been realized. Such a combination is always fraught with contradictions, which can turn either comic or tragic. Russia, turned by the iron hand of Peter onto a new path of development, is mastering new forms of historical existence, building a fleet, creating a regular army, pouring cannons, but at the same time suffering huge human losses. Tolstoy does not turn a blind eye to this; on the contrary, he introduces into the novel clearly audible voices coming from the rack or from under the whip, groans of horror and pain heard from the smoky huts of the torture investigation, where Prince Caesar Romodanovsky and Peter himself are in charge. The departure of old, Byzantine, patriarchal Rus' cannot but be painted in tragic tones. Contact last chapters the first volume, to descriptions of the Streltsy investigation and mass Streltsy executions. Show what is the essence of the tragic in historical events, reproduced with almost documentary accuracy by the writer.
The death of any significant phenomenon always carries with it a tragic beginning, even if its historical exhaustion is obvious. The tragic lies in the inevitable losses, in the farewell to the tradition created by previous generations. The tragic thing in the novel “Peter the Great” is that Orthodox Byzantine Rus', against which Peter raised his hand, finds many defenders who are ready to sacrifice themselves, rebelling in rebellion in order to elevate Sophia to the throne, even under terrible torture, not naming the instigators: “Sagittarius they only admitted guilt in armed rebellion, but not in plans... In this mortal stubbornness, Peter felt all the power of anger against him... "Before this stubbornness, the king really turns out to be powerless. Suspecting treason everywhere, arranging torture and executions, the tsar can physically destroy his opponents, but cannot make them repent, win them over to his side, or convince them of the promise of their chosen path. Showing the tragic sides of a turning point, Tolstoy cites historical documents: the diary of one of the foreign diplomats who witnessed the massacres of the Streltsy: “I was told that the tsar on that day complained to General Gordon about the stubbornness of the Streltsy, even under the ax they did not want to admit their guilt. Indeed, Russians are extremely stubborn.” How is the courage and uncompromisingness of the people who stood up to defend the old order shown? How do those sentenced to death behave? How do they express their disdain for the king? Contempt for executioners? The tragic does not simply consist in the depiction of mass torture and execution; it is expressed in the position of those executed, who by their death affirm the national ideals of patriarchal Rus'.
However, Tolstoy, without closing his eyes to tragic character a turning point, shows the transient nature of the tragic. To do this, he translates the same historical contradiction, which has just turned tragic, into a comic channel. The approval of a new historical way of life results not only in the execution of defenders of patriarchal life, but also... in the cutting of boyar beards. Read the 18th part of the seventh chapter of the first volume. How do the boyars behave when they hear that the sovereign is cheerful? How do they react when they see that the royal large, newly decorated chamber has been turned into a barber shop? How do they feel when they see “at the feet of Peter two godless Karls, Tomos and Seka, with sheep shears”? Show what is comic about this scene.
An inexhaustible source of comedy in the novel is the collision of elements of the old way of life with the new. Prince Buynosov, having difficulty surviving the invasion of elements of a new life into his everyday life, dreams of giving up “coffee”, doing it in such a way as not to ruin himself in the eyes of his daughters, “meticulous to the point of politeness”, which does not fit into the usual everyday skills. The arrival of noblewoman Volkova, forcing the prince to interrupt the meal, during which, however, there was no garlic, “no cabbage with lingonberries on the table, no chopped salted saffron milk caps, with onions,” but only “a small pie, the devil with what,” suggests him to very sad thoughts: “Reluctantly, Roman Borisovich got out from behind the table - to gallant the guest: shake his hat in front of him, kick his legs.”
Tolstoy in the novel “Peter the Great,” which we analyzed, shows a positive version of the interaction between personality and historical time. Requiring complete dedication from the protagonist and his associates and like-minded people, this interaction turns out to be a benefit for the state and fills the lives of people who are able to see and feel the global historical perspectives of Russia with true meaning.
The novel's time covers an entire era, limited, however, by the scope of activity central character- Peter I, whom the writer has been showing for 25 years. The action of the novel takes place over a vast geographical space: from the Black Sea to Arkhangelsk, from the Baltic Sea to the Urals; from Russia it is transferred to European capitals and cities. Together with Peter and the “chicks of Petrov’s nest,” the writer took us to the palaces of the Swedish king Charles XII and the Polish king Augustus, Elector of Saxony, Turkish Sultan; showed us battlefields and sea voyages, military camps and impregnable fortresses, a peasant hut, drowning in black, a schismatic monastery, a luxurious Menshikov palace and a rich merchant courtyard. As you can see, the scope is enormous.
And the actual historical fate of the main character determined the composition of the novel.
In the first volume, A. N. Tolstoy painted Peter’s childhood and early youth. Historically, this is outlined by the return of Peter from his first trip abroad and the events of the Streltsy revolt.
In the second volume, he recreated the first period of Peter’s transformative activity, which included the beginning of the Northern War and the founding of St. Petersburg.
The third book of the novel was written in the last period of creativity and remained unfinished.
Alexei Tolstoy argued that “the third book is the most important part of the novel,” since it refers to the most interesting period of the hero’s life and all the main tasks that the writer set for himself when starting to create “Peter the Great” should be accomplished in it.
According to A.V. Alpatov, despite the fact that Tolstoy failed to fully implement the plan he outlined for the third book, the six chapters written reveal rich content to us. New horizons have emerged in the narrative, new ones have emerged storylines... The image of Peter acquired much greater completeness and brightness.
The three books that make up the novel are linked together by the development of the plot - the gradual formation of the new Russian state and the personality of Peter - and by the characters common to all three books.
The personal fate of the reformer tsar is tightly woven into a romance with the historical fate of Russia. Sensitively perceiving the urgent need for fundamental changes in the life of the Russian state, the tsar began to act decisively.
Tolstoy showed how the era itself chose Peter, how historical circumstances shaped those qualities of his personality that helped him awaken Russia from centuries of hibernation, bring it to new stage development, when no longer the ghosts of merchant ships, but the real Russian fleet went to sea and the Russians gained a foothold on the Baltic coast, where the construction of a fortified city began.
Thus, the composition of the novel is connected with the main creative task of the writer - to show “the formation of personality in the era.” All components of the work are subordinated to this artistic task.
Especially significant, from the point of view of the artistic disclosure of Tolstoy’s concept of the role of the individual in history, is the comparison of the images of Peter and Vasily Golitsyn. An enlightened dreamer, Golitsyn, just like Peter, realized the need for a decisive social and state transformation of Russia, but personal weakness, passivity, and indecision led him to the camp of reactionary forces. In a systematic contrast to Golitsyn and Sophia, the writer depicts Peter in development, in the steady movement of his personality forward.
The principle of contrast was maintained by Tolstoy in subsequent chapters of the novel. Peter was constantly, but unobtrusively, contrasted with King Augustus (“charmant and sympathy”), the rude and limited martinet - Karl, the hard-nosed commandant of Narva - Horn, as well as his closest associates - Franz Lefort and Alexander Menshikov. From many episodes and pictures a reliable art world, in the center of which is the king-transformer and his activities. The contradictory image of the sovereign was the connecting link of all events and destinies in the novel.
The main aspirations of the era, its essence, were clearly manifested in the character of Peter and his activities. Alexey Tolstoy was able to provide an artistic study of an entire era, truthfully depict the scale of his hero’s activities and evaluate his historical place.
Unfortunately, the death of the writer stopped work on the manuscript, and the novel ended with the victory of Russian troops near Narva, although Alexey Tolstoy initially intended to bring the story about Peter to the Battle of Poltava.
The theme of Alexei Tolstoy’s novel was, so beautifully revealed by him, one of the key eras of Russia - the Peter the Great era, which had a huge impact on everything further development our country.
Tolstoy began work on the novel in 1929. The first two books were completed by 1934. Shortly before his death in 1943, the author began work on the third book, but only managed to bring the novel to the events of 1704.
The novel Peter the First covers the time after the death of Fyodor Alekseevich, the son of Alexei Mikhailovich, and almost before the capture of Narva by Russian troops.
The novel is as close as possible to real historical events. The Streletsky revolt, the treacherous princess Sophia, her lover, Prince Vasily Golitsyn, Lefort, Menshikov, Charles XII, Anna Mons - all these historical figures are present here.
Peter the Great has a stubborn character and fights for his decisions, which are often not carried out by crafty and lazy military leaders.
With difficulty, Azov was captured with the help of the fleet, which led Russia to a collision with the powerful Turkish Empire.
The meaning of the novel
Tolstoy wrote: “A historical novel cannot be written in the form of a chronicle, in the form of history. First of all, we need composition, the architectonics of the work. What is this composition? This is first of all the establishment of a center, a center of vision. In my novel, the center is the figure of Peter I.”
The boredom of the Preobrazhensky Palace leads Peter the Great to the settlement, to ordinary people.
The novel by Alexei Tolstoy shows the whole reality of that time. Ordinary people - Peter's contemporaries - are especially vividly depicted. They argue, agree, participate in historical events. On them, it is on them that Alexey Tolstoy shows the people’s opinion about the reforms of Peter the Great, about his policies and other actions.
The work of the people is depicted. Peter's first army was defeated in the war with the Swedes, but the future emperor did not give up - he began to create a new army and, having created it, defeated the Swedes and won the war.
The culmination and end of the novel - the result of the efforts and dream of the entire people who suffered through victory - was the capture of Narva. At the very end of the novel, on the last page, Peter the Great approaches the commandant of Narva, General Gorn, who was taken prisoner and says: “Take him to prison, on foot, through the whole city, so that he can see the sad work of his hands...”.
A. Tolstoy’s special narration style allows the reader to read this novel in one fell swoop, without much effort, delving into the meaning as he goes. This makes the novel itself more interesting and exciting.....
Characters
- Pyotr Alekseevich Romanov - Tsar
- Alexander Danilovich Menshikov - comrade-in-arms of the Tsar, His Serene Highness Prince
- Franz Lefort - Peter's comrade-in-arms, general
- Anna Mons - Peter's favorite
- Sofya Alekseevna Romanova - princess, Peter's sister
- Vasily Vasilyevich Golitsyn - prince, Sophia's lover
- Artamon Sergeevich Matveev - boyar
- Patriarch Joachim - patriarch
- Natalya Kirillovna Naryshkina - queen
- Ivan Kirillovich Naryshkin - the queen's brother
- Dwarf - servant of Ivan Kirillovich
- Alexey Ivanovich Brovkin (Alyoshka) - son of Ivashka Brovkin, friend of Alexashka
- Ivan Artemich Brovkin (Ivashka Brovkin) - serf, later - rich merchant, Alyosha’s father
Materials and documents that formed the basis for writing the novel
Torture records of the late 17th century, collected by Professor N. Ya. Novombergsky and transferred to the writer by historian V. V. Kalmash at the end of 1916. “History of the reign of Peter the Great” by N. Ustryalov, volumes 13-15 “History of Russia from ancient times” by S. Solovyov, “Acts of Peter the Great” by I. Golikov. As well as diaries and notes of Patrick Gordon, I. Zhelyabuzhsky, Johann Korb, D. Perry, B. Kurakin, Yust Yulya, N. Neplyuev, P. Tolstoy, F. Berchholtz and others.
Alexei Tolstoy in the novel “Peter the First” paid tribute to the image of Peter the Great, creating a novel of the same name. Having accepted the revolutionary events, Tolstoy chose for a better understanding of them the most accurate analogy in Russian history - with the era of Peter.
Works of historical genre, especially large shape, is distinguished by the presence of a pronounced artistic means the author's idea of the laws of history, its driving forces and conflicts.
In contrast to the novels of the 1920-1930s, which depicted popular uprisings and their leaders (“Razin Stepan” and “Walking People” by A. Chapygin, “Salavat Yulaev”
S. Zlobina, “The Tale of Bolotnikov” by G. Storm, etc.). A. Tolstoy placed at the center of the work the figure of the king, a figure of historical significance. In Peter, the writer first of all showed his transformative genius, his understanding of the need for fundamental changes in the life of the country (“In Russia, everything needs to be broken - everything is new”).
The author no longer doubts the historical prospects of reforms. The meaning of the Peter the Great era in A. Tolstoy’s novel is a breakthrough from the past to the future, from isolation and patriarchy to the number of the leading powers of the world, a time of sharp collision between the old and the new. In this Tolstoy saw a consonance between the “tragic and creative” era of Peter and the revolutionary history of Russia.
If the traditional historical novel is characterized by a focus on
depicting the past, A. Tolstoy sought to recreate the connection of times, to reveal the common features of critical historical eras. This approach has become a fundamentally new phenomenon for historical prose.
“The formation of personality in a historical era” - this is how A. Tolstoy defined it main principle images. The author not only recreates the biography of Peter, he seeks to show, on the one hand, how the era influenced the formation of the hero’s personality, and on the other, what was the impact of Peter’s
transformations on the fate of the country.
All other problems of the novel are also connected with the solution of this main problem: the question of the objective necessity and significance of Peter’s transformations; depiction of an acute struggle between the new and the old; “identifying the driving forces of the era”, the role of the individual and the people in history.
The concept of the work determined the features of the composition and plot.
The work is distinguished by its epic scope in depicting the life of the country at the turn of the 17th-18th centuries. The basis of the plot is real events a short period, but rich in content, from 1682 to 1704.
The first book of the novel (1930) represents the background to Peter's reforms. This is the period of Peter’s childhood and youth, cruel life lessons, studying with foreigners, the beginning of the creation of a fleet, military “embarrassment,” the suppression of the Streltsy rebellion.
The second book (1934) includes a description of the initial period of the Northern War and
ends with the construction of St. Petersburg.
Climax of the image government activities Peter was supposed to be the third book, but the novel remained unfinished. In the published chapters of the third book (1943-1944), in accordance with the spirit of the wartime when it was created, the main motive was the glorious victories of Russian weapons (the capture of Narva). The novel recreates a living, dynamic, multifaceted picture of the era.
The first chapter is historical exhibition, depicting the life of pre-Petrine Russia. The negative aspects of patriarchy are emphasized here. Russian life: “poverty, servility, lack of wealth,” lack of movement (“the sour twilight of a hundred years”).
The general dissatisfaction with life is emphasized by the author’s digressions (beginning of chapter 2; chapter 5, subchapter 12; beginning of chapter 7). They formulated a general conclusion: “What kind of Russia is this, a sworn country—when will you move?”
Creating an image of Russia awaiting change, the author uses the cinematic technique of changing camera angles. The action, which began in the peasant hut of Ivashka Brovkin, is transferred to the estate of Vasily Volkov,
from there to Moscow, will linger more than once on the roads of Russia, will lead to the royal chambers, where at the bedside of the dying Fyodor Alekseevich it is decided who will be king.
The scene of the action is the tavern on Varvarka, where the opinion of ordinary people is expressed, the room of Princess Sophia, the square where the archers are rioting, the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, Pereslavl, Arkhangelsk, Don, Voronezh, Germany and Holland, Narva.
The multifaceted composition gave the author the opportunity to depict the life of all classes and groups of Russian society: from royal family, boyars, foreigners to merchants and military people, peasants, schismatics, convicts, fugitives. Along with real facts and characters of history, fictional events and characters play an important role in the novel.
In this regard, we can especially note the story of the Brovkin family, closely connected with Peter, which illustrates specific changes in the lives of Russian people.
Life, morals, customs, the very spirit of a bygone era are recreated in the novel based on documents, historical works and other sources. The most important of them was the book of Professor N. Novombergsky “The Word and Deed of the Sovereign,” which contains acts of the Secret Chancery and the Preobrazhensky Order. In these “torture recordings” she “told, moaned, lied, screamed in pain and fear folk Rus'"(XIII, pp. 567-568).
Simple and accurate spoken language The 17th century formed the basis of the language of A. Tolstoy’s novel. This made it possible to give the work a historical flavor, liveliness and imagery, while making it accessible to the modern reader.
The language of the work reflects the spirit of Peter's reforms; it combines folk words and expressions, archaisms, and foreign borrowings. Researchers are unanimous in their opinion about Tolstoy’s novel as the pinnacle of the artist’s verbal and visual skills.
Image of Peter the Great.
The peculiarity of the portrayal of the hero is that the writer shows Peter not as an already established statesman, but traces the process of personality formation under the influence of historical circumstances.
The depicted events in the life of the country become milestones in Peter’s personal biography, stages of his growing up. Tolstoy makes the young hero a witness
massacres of the Streltsy with his loved ones, and this memory will be echoed in the future by an irreconcilable conflict with his sister Sophia and the boyars in the struggle for power and brutal reprisals against the Streltsy.
A visit to the German settlement awakens Peter's interest in European image life. A trip to Arkhangelsk and the sight of foreign ships strengthens in Peter’s mind the idea of the need for transformation.
The author repeatedly uses the technique of paired episodes, showing rapid changes in the character of the hero (for example, two meetings of the Boyar Duma - before
Azov campaign (book 1, chapter 5, subchapter 20.) and after it (book 1, chapter 7, subchapter 1) - they emphasize: Peter is now “... a different person: angry, stubborn, businesslike.”
These contrasts reveal the energy and determination of the main character, his willingness to learn from a variety of people, to learn lessons from defeats, his sincere pain for the poverty and backwardness of the country, simplicity and lack of arrogance.
Alexey Tolstoy shows Peter as a complex and contradictory personality (for example, scenes of the procession in the Assumption Cathedral - book 1, chapter 4, subchapter 2; the end of book 1 - the suppression of the Streltsy rebellion; Peter at the Elector - book 1, chapter 7 , subch. 8; in the forge of Zhemov, chapter 10; book 2, chapter 3; Peter In the dugout - book 3, chapter 2, subch.
He, using Pushkin’s definition, “raised Russia on its hind legs with an iron hand.” Transformations are carried out through brutal exploitation, at the cost of thousands of lives; the country is breaking out of backwardness through mass executions, torture, and the forcible introduction of elements of European culture.
But the author balances the acute drama of the situation with attention to the image
the results of Peter’s case (you can compare the description of the life of peasants on Volkov’s estate during the reign of Sophia (book 1, chapter 4, subchapter 1) and on the Buinosov estate during the reign of Peter (book 2, chapter 1, subchapter 3) ; follow the changes in the life of Ivashka Brovkin).
Peter is shown through the eyes of different people: his mother, Sophia, the boyars, his comrades-in-arms: Menshikov, Brovkin, the German Lefort, ordinary people - the blacksmith Zhemov, the artist Golikov, peasants, builders, soldiers. This allows us to convey a polyphony of opinions about the main content of the image - the case of Peter.
The writer captured a phenomenon unique to the era depicted: a change in traditional social trajectories, the promotion of people not according to the nobility of their family, but according to their intelligence, efficiency, commitment to the new (Menshikov, Alyoshka Brovkin and his sister Sanka, Demidov, etc.).
Defining the relationship between the characters, the writer places them between two poles: supporters and opponents of Peter’s reforms. In relation to all characters, even minor ones, the principle of versatility of the image applies (for example, the image of the boyar Buinosov).
In revealing the psychology of the hero, Tolstoy widely uses the “internal gesture” technique. We are talking about the transfer of internal state through external manifestation. through movement, gesture. The writer was convinced that “you cannot paint a portrait of a hero on ten whole pages”, “the portrait of a hero must appear from the very movement, struggle, in clashes, in behavior”) (XIII, p. 499)3. That is why movement and its expression - the verb - are the basis for creating an image.
The people in the novel Peter the Great.
Peter In the novel by A.N. Tolstoy appears as the brightest embodiment of the Russian national character. Placing the tsar-reformer at the center of the work, the writer paid special attention to depicting the active role of the people in Peter’s reforms. In the work one can constantly hear the people’s assessment of what is happening, and for the author this is the most important criterion for the historical justice of Peter’s cause. In crowd scenes, people are not depicted statically, but in a clash of contradictory moods. Tolstoy masterfully uses polylogue, distinguishes in generalized image people individual figures.
In the second and third books, the author shows the growth of popular discontent, evidenced by the frequent mention of the name of the rebellious Stepan Razin. The schismatic movement is also interpreted by Tolstoy as one of the forms of protest against increased oppression in the era of Peter the Great.
The conflict was embodied in close-up images of Ovdokim, the piebald Ivan and Fedka Wash Yourself with Mud. The ending of the second book of the novel sounds symbolically: a gloomy, branded, shackled man “Fedka washed himself with Mud, throwing his hair on his sore wet forehead, beat and hit the piles with an oak sledgehammer...”. Here the bloody efforts to create a passage from Ladoga to the open sea are emphasized, and the threat posed by the construction of the new capital of the empire is emphasized.
Talking about the life of a Russian person, A. Tolstoy emphasizes his hard work and talent (images of Kuzma Zhemov, Kondrat Vorobyov (book 2, chapter 5, subchapter 3); Palekh painter Andrei Golikov (book 2, chapter 5, subchapter 3; book 2, chapter 2, subch.
In the battles that Peter wages, such qualities of the Russian people as heroism and courage are clearly manifested. Thanks to the interaction of the images of Peter and the people, the author was able to show the turbulent, contradictory historical movement of Russia and reveal the fate of the nation at a turning point that determined the course of its history for many centuries.
The novel “Peter the Great” is Tolstoy’s pinnacle work, which has received recognition both in Russia and in the Russian diaspora. If not everyone accepted the historical concept of Peter the Great's era, then the highest mastery of depiction, living language, and inexhaustible humor made the novel a classic work of Russian literature.
War as a test of Russian character “During the days of the war, Alexei Tolstoy found himself at his post. His words encouraged, amused, and excited the fighters. Tolstoy did not go into silence, did not wait, did not refer to the estrangement of the muses from the music of battle. Tolstoy spoke in October 1941, and Russia will not forget this,” wrote Ilya Ehrenburg.
The leading theme of Tolstoy's work is the Russian character in its historical development - during the Great Patriotic War has acquired particular relevance. As in historical theme, the image of native land, watered with the blood of their ancestors, protected by “smart, clean, leisurely” Russian people who “protect their dignity”. Characteristic for public consciousness and culture of the period of the Great Patriotic War is the appeal to heroic images national history and culture, the exploits of fathers and grandfathers contributed to the strengthening of national identity. The writer saw the task of literature as being “the voice of the heroic soul
people."
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Despite all the exaggeration of the role of trading people, the author is not inclined to reveal the mechanism of commercial success. But in the depiction of a new way of life, a culture clumsily transplanted onto unprepared soil, absurdly fitting clothes, a mixture of foreign (often distorted) and Russian words in the speech of many characters, in a cheerfully ironic display of “politeness” (Sanka Brovkina-Volkova, her brother Artamon, “ maidens" Buinosovs and others) A. Tolstoy is completely in his element. He showed both the boyar’s aversion to coffee” and the belligerent non-recognition of potatoes by ordinary Russian people. Even the lies of the man Fedka, who has experienced a lot, Wash himself with Mud (a nickname that evokes a face dirtier than mud) about making a gun in front of Charles XII, allegedly with a bullet in his chest, raises him in the eyes of the men who are ready to marvel at everything and let him spend the night.
The change in the country and people is shown, starting with Peter himself. Being “frightened from a young age,” he hates antiquity and willingly parodies it at “the most humorous and most drunken cathedrals.” Milestones in the formation of a personality are highlighted: the first visit to a German settlement, a trip to Arkhangelsk, to the sea (A. Tolstoy omitted the second trip, like a number of other historical events, in the name of concentrated action, and highlighted some episodes of these events that were significant for him), and a serious conversation with Lefort, the first major failure near Azov, settling Peter (“... a different person: angry, stubborn, businesslike”), and the second, near Narva, subsequent experience leading to successes and victories.
The speech of the characters and partly the author, which is basically modern colloquial, is permeated with understandable or immediately explained archaisms and barbarisms that create a historical flavor; written documents, partly edited, partly stylized, more archaic. In general, in “Peter the Great” A. Tolstoy reached the pinnacle of his verbal and visual mastery. Here, for example, is a description of the dances of Russian guests at the Elector of Hanover: “Menshikov moved his shoulders, raised his eyebrows, got bored with his face and walked from toe to heel... Volunteers who arrived from the garden took apart the ladies and grabbed them in a squat with twists and Tatar frenzied squeals. Skirts were twisting, wigs were disheveled. They poured sweat on the German women.”
In the first and second books of the novel, not a single character is idealized. But the writer could not stay at this level. In 1934-1935, the play “On the Rack” was transformed into an almost new one - “Peter the Great”, where the emphasis on the psychological drama of the reformer was weakened, although the threat of the death of his cause remained. Almost simultaneously, the script for a two-part film of the same name began to be created (with the participation of director V. Petrov and his assistant N. Leshchenko), which was brilliantly brought to the screen in 1937 and 1939, but already very far from the novel. The originally written episodes were excluded: the self-immolation of the schismatics, the “all-joking council”, Catherine’s betrayal of Peter with Willim Mons (in the novel, which was not completed before this time, a similar role is played by the betrayal of Anchen Mons with Koenigsek), etc. To concentrate the action, a gross anachronism was allowed: in At the time of the Narva defeat (1700), Peter already had an adult son, an enemy of his cause (analogy to “enemies of the people”) - the historical Tsarevich Alexei was then ten years old. In the third edition of the play (1938), out of ten pictures of the original version, three remained, heavily altered. The scene of the Battle of Poltava was reworked, the action was moved to the battlefield. Pictures of popular resistance have disappeared, the scene in the fortress with the death of Alexei, etc. The play, like the film, ends not with a flood, but with Peter’s solemn speech after the victorious end of the Northern War and the Senate granting him the title of Father of the Fatherland.
In between the two books of Peter, Tolstoy wrote the novel Black Gold (1931) about emigrants and European politicians organizing an anti-Soviet conspiracy and terrorist group. The basis of the work is genuine (there are many portraits of those whom Tolstoy met before the revolution and in emigration). The writer said that he was creating a political novel, innovative in genre, which had not yet been seen in Soviet literature. But his characters were caricatured or turned out to be black villains (though the material provided grounds for this); This novel is more adventurous than political. In 1940, almost rewritten, it was published under the title “Emigrants.”
Children's story 1935 “The Golden Key” - a reworking of Collodi’s fairy tale (Carlo Loranzini, 1826-1890) “Pinocchio”, or “The Adventures of the Puppet”. The first chapters, before Buratino’s meeting with Malvina, are a free retelling; then there is an independent plot, without the didacticism of the original source and the transformation of a wooden doll into a real exemplary boy. In Tolstoy’s fairy tale, the dolls receive their own theater, and with its ideological transformation into a play and film script (1938), the key began to unlock the door to the “Land of Happiness” - the USSR.
After the abolition of RAPP (1932) social status A. Tolstoy, previously unenviable, became stronger, but the most independent people, like Akhmatova and Pasternak, treated him with hostility. In 1934, the former count received a slap in the face from the mendicant Jew O. Mandelstam. M. Bulgakov ridiculed him in the image of Fialkov (“Theatrical Novel”). True, during the war, in evacuation. Tolstoy easily became friends with Akhmatova in Tashkent and called her Annushka. The soul of any society, he literally spread the “joy of life” around him.
In 1934, according to the memoirs of L. Kogan, Tolstoy scolded his “Eighteenth Year” and spoke about the lack of starting points for further work. In anticipation of the continuation (“1919,” as the author first called his plan in accordance with the “historical” principle), the writer was influenced by the political leadership in the person of K. E. Voroshilov. He outlined his (and Stalin’s) version of the events of 1918, which were not covered in the second book of the trilogy, and assigned a General Staff employee to Tolstoy for instructions. The writer was provided with materials from the official “History” that was then being created civil war in the USSR”, a list of participants in the “Tsaritsyn epic”, were sent to the battlefields. Tolstoy stated in an interview with Stalingradskaya Pravda (1936) that the main characters of his new work about the defense of Tsaritsyn in 1918 “are Lenin. Stalin and Voroshilov. At the same time, in the article “On the Broad Road,” he wrote about the difficulties of “creating images of great people” (although he considered his experience “the beginning, perhaps, of a whole series of stories”): it was necessary to “understand their character,” “understand the line of their behavior. After all, the words that they spoke are not written down anywhere; you can give them (this is what I did) words that, of course, they did not say. But when they read them, they will say with confidence that they said them.”
Those in power were quite satisfied with the recognition as authentic not only of words they had not spoken, but also of deeds not committed (or done in a completely different way). The Tsaritsyn “epic” in the story “Bread (Defense of Tsaritsyn)” (1937) was presented as perhaps the main event of the civil war; Voroshilov and especially Stalin were presented as the saviors of all of Soviet Russia from famine. Lenin, before sending Stalin to Tsaritsyn (the future Stalingrad), consulted with him and accepted his proposal. Red Guard Ivan Gora, fixing the hungry leader's phone (there is no one else to fix it), simultaneously shares bread from his ration with him. The charming Voroshilov skillfully worked with people and was no less skillful in chopping with a saber. The commander of the detachment Dumenko (the creator of the first cavalry corps, repressed in 1920) appeared before the reader in a dressing gown, barefoot and drunk, but his assistant Budyonny turned out to be in every sense fine and fit. The “leader of the left communists,” i.e. Bukharin, appeared without a surname and was clearly a caricature. At the end of the story, Stalin and Voroshilov walked under targeted artillery fire, “without accelerating their pace,” and Stalin also stopped to light his pipe. When he sees a kite, he reflects on the creation of an “air fleet”: “... people can fly better if their strength is freed up...”
