Georgy cormorants are forever nineteen years old to read. Grigory Baklanov’s story “Forever - Nineteen Years Old”

IN Soviet era, decades after the end of the Great Patriotic War, a number of works of art, in which the first place was put forward not by the abstract image of the victorious people, but by the fate of individual people who went through the war. The authors of such literature in their work were guided by the principle of truthfulness and reliability. The topic of this article is one of these works and its summary. “Forever Nineteen Years Old” is a story by Grigory Baklanov, a representative of the so-called lieutenant prose.

About the author

Born in 1923. In the first year of the war he was called up to the front. He graduated from artillery school and fought on the South-Western and Third Ukrainian fronts. In 1952, the future writer entered the Literary Institute and in the same year published his first work. Undoubtedly, main theme his work contained his own experience, that is, everything that he witnessed during the war. In 1979, he wrote the work in question by Baklanov (“Forever Nineteen Years Old”). A summary of this book is given below.

Tretyakov

This is the name of the main character of the story. What theme did Grigory Baklanov devote to the work (“Forever Nineteen Years Old”)? A brief summary will answer this question. Already thanks to a small curriculum vitae it becomes clear that this writer spoke in his own words about its destructive power. But different authors wrote about this tragedy in different ways. And to give a brief summary, “Forever Nineteen” is a short story about a man whose dreams and plans were destroyed by a merciless war. Tretyakov remained young forever, like the twenty-five million Russian people who died during the most terrible war of the 20th century.

Forever nineteen-year-olds are people who did not live to see their twentieth birthday. One of them was Tretyakov. But Grigory Baklanov (“Forever Nineteen Years Old”) did not begin the story with a description of his hero. A summary of the work, written more than thirty years after the end of the war, should begin with the first chapter. It talks about a terrible discovery by film crew workers. At the place where bloody battles were once fought, they filmed feature film. Only a buckle with a star indicated that the body found in the trench once belonged to a Soviet officer.

To the front

What can a summary tell you? “Forever Nineteen” is the story of the last days of a young lieutenant. Tretyakov graduated from college and headed to the front. And along the way he meets military and civilian people. Hunger and deprivation are everywhere. But even this unsightly picture may seem beautiful in comparison with what Tretyakov has yet to see. After all, the closer the front, the more noticeable are the traces of the terrible massacre.

When the war began, Tretyakov was seventeen years old. He grew up at the front. And here he remembered from time to time the time of peace, his difficult relationship with his mother.

The most terrible military issue is the death of young people. And it is to her that Baklanov’s work “Forever Nineteen Years” is dedicated. A summary of the chapters will perhaps give a detailed description of the hero. But it is worth saying that in this story, in the foreground are the thoughts of the young lieutenant, his emotional experiences. You can understand the tragedy of a man whose conscious life was spent at the front only by reading the work of Grigory Baklanov in full.

Memories of Home

The conditions in which the lieutenant finds himself have a significant impact on his personality. He grows up and understands what was impossible for a teenager living in a peaceful, calm time to comprehend. During the war, Tretyakov realizes his stupidity and cruelty towards his mother. After her husband's arrest, she married again. The son saw in this act a betrayal towards his innocently convicted father. And only during the war, having seen many deaths and real human grief, Tretyakov realized that he had no right to condemn his mother.

First love

The summary can be formulated very succinctly. “Forever Nineteen” is a tragic story of a young lieutenant whose life was cut short before it even began. What could be worse than the death of a person who did not even have time to love? During his stay in the hospital, a pure tender feeling arises in Tretyakov’s heart towards the girl Sasha. However, young people have no future. Their feeling will forever remain a small emotional outburst. It will never develop into strong ones that can bind people for many years.

He dies, but until the last minutes of his life he never deviates from his moral values. Baklanov's hero is the personification of all the best that was in the Soviet soldier. The story “Forever Nineteen Years Old” is a tribute to those who died on the battlefield, those who, like the famous Soviet poetess Drunina, “did not come from childhood, but from war.”

Review of the story

Grigory Baklanov “Forever nineteen years old”

Forties fatal,

Lead, gunpowder...

The war is sweeping across Russia,

And we are so young!

D. Samoilov .

One of the central themes in world literature has been and remains the theme of young people at war. Whatever the war, whatever the nationality of the soldier, we always empathize with our peers. They, like us today, dreamed, made plans, believed in the future. And all this collapses in an instant. War changes everything.

The military theme became the basis for those writers who traveled the front roads. Vasil Bykov, Vladimir Bogomolov, Ales Adamovich, Anatoly Ananyev, Viktor Astafiev, Grigory Baklanov, Yuri Bondarev went to the front at nineteen years old. What they talked about in their works was common to their generation. As front-line poets Pavel Kogan and Mikhail Kulchitsky said:

We were everyone, everyone,

Not very smart sometimes.

We loved our girls

Jealous, tormented, hot...

We are the dreamers. About lake eyes

Unique boyish nonsense.

We are the last dreamers with you

To longing, to the shore, to death.

Front-line writers fulfilled their civic duty.

For Baklanov, a story about the war is a story about his generation. Of the twenty classmates who went to the front, he returned alone. Baklanov graduated from the Literary Institute and became a prose writer. The main focus of his work was the theme: war and man. Baklanov’s passionate desire to talk about what he and his peers experienced, to recreate the true picture that only front-line soldiers saw, can be understood. Reading his works, we young people remember those who fought and understand the meaning of their lives.

I learned about my contemporaries by reading G. Baklanov’s story “Forever Nineteen Years Old.” The emotional impetus for writing this work was an incident that occurred during the filming of the film “An Inch of Earth.” The film crew came across the remains of a war buried in a trench: “... they took out into the light a buckle with a star, caked in the sand, green with oxide. It was carefully passed from hand to hand, and they identified it as ours. And he must be an officer.” And for many years the writer was tormented by the thought: who was he, this unknown officer. Maybe a fellow soldier?

Undoubtedly, the main figure in the war has always been and remains a soldier. The story “Forever Nineteen” is a story about young lieutenants in the war. They had to be responsible for themselves and for others, without any allowance for age. Having gone to the front straight from school, they, as Alexander Tvardovsky once so well said, “did not rise higher than lieutenants and did not go further than regiment commanders” and “saw the sweat and blood of war on their tunic.” After all, it was they, the nineteen-year-old platoon leaders, who were the first to go on the attack, inspiring the soldiers, replacing the killed machine gunners, and organizing a perimeter defense.

And most importantly, they bore the burden of responsibility: for the outcome of the battle, for the composition of the platoon, for the lives of the people entrusted to them, many of whom were old enough to be fathers. The lieutenants decided who to send on dangerous reconnaissance, who to leave to cover the retreat, how to complete the task while losing as few soldiers as possible.

This feeling of lieutenant responsibility is well said in Baklanov’s story: “All of them, together and individually, were each responsible for the country, and for the war, and for everything that is in the world and will be after them. But he alone was responsible for bringing the battery to the deadline.”

It was just such a brave lieutenant, faithful to his sense of civic duty and officer’s honor, who was still quite a young man, that the writer presented to us in the image of Vladimir Tretyakov. Baklanov's hero becomes a generalized image of an entire generation. That is why the title of the story contains the plural - nineteen-year-olds.

The success of the story is also facilitated by the natural unity of the truth of past years and our current worldview. Sometimes you wonder who is thinking: Volodya Tretyakov or Grigory Baklanov: “Here, in the hospital, the same thought haunted me: will it ever turn out that this war might not have happened? What could people do to prevent this? And millions would have remained alive?..” These lines from the work once again emphasize the lyrical closeness of the author to his hero.

Speaking about his story, G. Baklanov noted two circumstances: “Those who write about the war have this need to tell everything while they are alive. And only the truth.” And the second: “Now, at a distance of years, a slightly different, more generalized view of the event arises.”

To combine such a distant view with the truthful atmosphere of the past is a difficult task. Baklanov succeeded.

This tone is stated in the poetic epigraphs. After reading the story, only then do you understand why Baklanov directed exactly two. Philosophically generalized lines of Tyutchev:

Blessed is he who has visited this world

His moments are fatal! -

contribute with a polemically pugnacious assertion of the “prose of war” in Orlov’s poems:

And we just walked through this life,

In heavy-duty boots.

This combination, the correlation of generality and truth, reveals the main idea of the story. Baklanov accurately depicts the details of life at the front. Particularly important are the psychological details that create the effect of our presence there, in those years, next to Lieutenant Tretyakov. And at the same time, the story carefully and unobtrusively relies on thoughts and generalizations that have already been born. Here is a description of the minutes before the attack: “Here they are, these last irreversible minutes. In the dark, breakfast was served to the infantry, and although everyone did not talk about it, they thought, scraping the pot: maybe in last time... With this thought, I hid the wiped spoon behind the wrapping: maybe it won’t be useful anymore.”

The wiped spoon behind the winding is a detail of front-line life. But what everyone thought about the irreversibility of these minutes is already today’s generalized vision.

Baklanov is meticulously accurate in any details of front-line life. He rightly believed that without the truth of small facts there is no truth of the great time: “He looked at them, alive, cheerful near death. Dipping the meat into coarse salt poured into the lid of the pot, he told about the North-Western Front. And the sun rose higher above the forest, and in its turn something else came to mind. Is it really only great people who don’t disappear at all? Are they really the only ones destined to remain among the living posthumously? And from ordinary people, from people like them all who are now sitting in this forest - before them they were also sitting here on the grass - will there really be nothing left of them? He lived, buried him, and it was as if you weren’t there, as if you hadn’t lived under the sun, under this eternal blue sky, where the plane is now imperiously humming, having climbed to an unattainable height. Does the unspoken thought and pain really all disappear without a trace? Or will it still resonate in someone’s soul? And who will separate the great and the not great when they have not yet had time to live? Perhaps the greatest - the future Pushkin, Tolstoy - remained nameless on the fields of war during these years and will never say anything to people again. Can’t you really feel this emptiness in life?”

These lines sound like a philosophical generalization, like a conclusion, like the thought of Baklanov himself. The simplicity of the plot and intense lyrical pathos determine, in my opinion, the secret of the aesthetic effect of the story.

And, of course, the love of Volodya Tretyakov is organically woven into the mood of the story. The one that these “unkissed” lieutenants, who stepped from school into the whirlwind of death, could barely touch or did not have time to know at all. A poignant lyrical note sounds all the time in the story, increasing its internal tension, its high tragic pathos.

Lieutenant Tretyakov had to meet different people on a short front route. But there were more good ones. His neighbors in the hospital ward and his fellow batterymates are uniquely different in their temperament, energy, and spiritual feeling. But all in all, they are a front-line community that strengthened Tretyakov’s forces.

Life given twice Baklanov Grigory

Forever - nineteen years old

How do books come about? Well, of course, this happens in different ways, I can only speak about my experience. I was once on a train and heard a story about a driver who ran over a man; it seemed that he was not guilty, but he was judged to the fullest extent: just another fight against drunkenness was taking place. In general, it’s like in the forest: a hare runs, not remembering itself. What happened, where are you running? The commission has arrived in the forest; whoever has five legs, one is immediately cut off! So you have four. Yes, they cut first, then count.

The story about the driver came from afar, to the sound of carriage wheels, through voices arguing about something, and I didn’t hear everything, and I forgot what I heard. But it turns out I didn’t forget. And as luck would have it, similar stories began to appear. It’s like this with us: if some kind of campaign is being carried out, let’s say, they’re fighting against drunkenness, whether you’re sober or drunk, you’d better stay at home and don’t get noticed until everything calms down. So this driver (either the one they were talking about, or the one they were thinking about) fell under the hot hand when a fresh example was needed. And here, guilty or not guilty, it doesn’t matter: it’s a state event, the example of one must be taught to the rest.

I also knew similar stories on the front, the mechanism was the same, only there they were bloody. Here is a train coming, carrying a marching company. At some stop, or even in an open field - formation. They bring out one, two or three poor fellows. They are no longer wearing belts. The verdict of the tribunal is read over their shorn heads: deserters tried to escape from the train. They immediately shot him, buried him, and the train moved on. But they are not deserters at all, they weren’t planning anything, they pulled them out in order to scare others, so that no one would think of running away.

Now people have learned to go to the courts and look for their violated honor there, valuing it at so many millions: honor now has a price. Before, I received a lot of letters, and every second one was a cry for help. Someone managed to help. But I can’t get this driver out of my head, whom I didn’t know, didn’t see. And this whole terrible mechanism with which we have become accustomed and do not notice until it hits us on the back of the head. To understand and explain how we live is the task of literature, and not to invent something extraordinary. Our troubles are simple, one might say - they are all in plain sight, but we have forgotten how to see, we have learned main principle: They didn’t pull you out, sit and be silent.

In a word, the story is ordinary, but that’s why it’s interesting, a lot of things come together in it. Once outside the city we were digging a post for a gate, I looked at the carpenter’s hands, these are the hands of that same driver, his hands. And I began to meet his face among many faces, the look of a man who had suffered a lot, seemingly resigned to fate, but no, who had not lost himself. And at times I heard his voice so clearly. He is already alive for me. And the last name came, as if I remembered: Karpukhin. And the town where this happens, and the people who decided its fate. Their garden chores, quiet summer evenings, when you can sit on a bench by the gate, smoke, watching the sun go down. In general, they are all good people in everyday life, but the most shameful, most terrible things are most often committed with the participation of good people.

I started walking around the courts without a specific goal, looking at what was happening there and how. Smells, faces. These walls, these cubicle halls, these corridors have a special smell. It happened that you would suddenly wake up at night with a premonition of trouble. Nothing seems to have happened to any of the people close to me. And all the same, until you smoke a cigarette in the heating boiler, you won’t fall asleep: I was still smoking then. It would seem that everything is already tangible, visible, everything is there, sit down and write. But something important was missing. Another time you sit down at your desk, still not really imagining anything, and it begins to reveal itself to you, something you didn’t even suspect. And at the same time I have short story, which I couldn’t write for ten years, and then wrote instantly.

But this time there was something else that got in the way: the novel “July ’41,” which I started writing. Every book, as I call it, has an intrauterine period when you still don’t know anything about it, don’t feel it, but it’s already ripening. There was a time when I couldn't read at all fiction, read documents, memoirs, talked with people who knew what happened in the border areas before the war, in the first hours of the war, experienced it themselves. These were ordinary people and military leaders, men, women, children's memory is very interesting and accurate. I was interested in the smallest details. And behind all this was the fate of my brother Yura, I knew nothing about him then, and even now I know little: he himself went into this terrible inferno of 1941 and died. I didn’t think about writing about it, I wanted to understand how it happened, when and how it began, how the consequences themselves became the cause and events took a disastrous course. And then one day I was reading a book, the title of which wouldn’t tell you anything, and I stopped at one phrase. And, having stopped reading, he walked from corner to corner, terribly excited. Everything suddenly began to organize itself. Has a plot emerged? No, this is not a plot, this is something more significant. Let's call it a funnel. It drew both events and people into itself, often against their will, because the logic of events is more significant than the logic of people. And a sequence began to emerge, the inevitability of something that seemed not to have been planned. And a feeling arose, an image of a novel, which you strive for in the future, but never manage to achieve.

In short, I started writing the novel “July ’41”, the first chapter was quickly written, but it didn’t go any further. I don’t know why. Chekhov said that you should sit down to the table completely cold. Perhaps so. I tried to take it with persistence, I wrote and rewrote it many times, but you can’t take it by force. Then I put the novel aside and started the story “Karpukhin”. And the first chapter was also written easily, as they say, for my own pleasure. And then stop. And now two things have been started, and neither is progressing. Then I started carving a stick; I knew how to do this as a child. I sit on the terrace and carve and try not to think about anything. But when you don’t think, it thinks itself. And gradually, gradually the main thing returned. First, the novel “July 41” was written, followed by the story “Karpukhin”.

But this story was haunted by some kind of fate. They asked me to publish the chapter in the newspaper. Read it, smell it - you can’t: there is another campaign to combat drunkenness. And when the story was filmed, the film was about to be accepted - the campaign against drunkenness began again.

They tried to film “July 41” more than once. I even once concluded an agreement with the film studio named after. Gorky, wrote the script, but from conversations with the director I realized that the film would have very little relation to my novel. And I returned the advance. That was the end of the matter.

After the story “An Inch of Earth”, the story “The Dead Have No Shame”, the novel “July of 1941”, after the story “How Much is a Pound,” for which we later wrote a script together with Marlen Khutsiev and he directed the television film “It Was the Month of May” , I thought that I would not write anything more about the past war. And Brezhnev’s dead timelessness was not inspiring. I took up cinema. The first, most unsuccessful film gave me the impression of a miracle: people who once appeared in my imagination - here they are, on the screen, as if alive. Yes, so similar! But the amazement quickly passed.

It was good to work with Joseph Efimovich Kheifits. We met him soon after, when at the Cannes Film Festival his “Lady with a Dog” and G. Chukhrai’s “Ballad of a Soldier” shared the first prize. Kheifits returned to Leningrad and became interested in one of my works. We met briefly at the studio, and in the evening at the home of Mikhail Dudin and Irina Tarsanova.

It was time for white nights in Leningrad. We were driving with Alexei Batalov to Kirochnaya Street, and in the strange light of neither morning nor evening, I saw him in the beard in which he played Gurov, talked to him and at the same time saw a frame, or rather, a scene where Gurov and Anna Sergeevna are sitting in Oreanda above the sea on a bench.

This scene is amazing. It was staged and filmed not exactly as Chekhov wrote it. But the main thing is conveyed: the feeling of eternity. The horses are dozing in the harness, their manes are wet with dew, you can feel it. The driver prays with his knees on the rocky ground, turning his face towards the sunrise. And in the sound of the sea, in the ancient mountains illuminated by the dawn, the crumbling stones of which are ground by the waves below, in everything there is eternity.

For me, a person not theatrical, and at that time still far from cinema, it was strange to ride with the living Gurov on a white night along empty stone streets. And in the stone entrance, where the noise of a taxi leaving was heard, at the late hour there was the same twilight light of the early morning.

We entered. Kheifitz, dark from a tan, graying, in a white collar, dazzlingly white with electricity, looked very impressive. Tan, white collar - all this, as I thought, was festival style, from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. That was my first impression.

Kheifitz sometimes put on glasses, their convex lenses reflected electricity in stripes, and he became even more personable. Later, I saw more than once how, when choosing an actor for a role, he would be obscured by glasses like this, watching a person from behind the shiny darkened glasses.

And “The Lady with the Dog” made its own procession, as if separate from the director, across the screens of the world. English film critics recognized this film as the best foreign film shown in England in 1962. Film and Filming magazine asked famous figures in world cinema with a question: what ten films would each of them take with them to a desert island? Ten films were named, and among them was "The Lady with the Dog." The International Confederation of Cinema Arts selected 31 films from the entire history of cinema, assessing them as films of the highest quality. These included “Ivan the Terrible” by S. Eisenstein and “The Lady with a Dog” by I. Kheifits. “The Lady with the Dog is a blessing to me, like a glass of healing spring water after being forced to take Pernod for a long time,” wrote Ingmar Bergman.

It’s good for you writers,” Joseph Kheifits said more than once, when we had already become friends and worked together, “if you want, sit down at the table, if you don’t want to, don’t sit down.” And I can’t help but go to the set: the group is waiting, the counter is on. But I don’t know what I’ll shoot tomorrow, there’s no solid feeling.

But he walked in the morning, and the work began, and take after take, and another new take. Having put on a fur vest under his coat, a canvas raincoat with a hood on top of the coat, putting on warm boots, at eight o'clock in the morning Kheifitz was already on the set. And so until late evening in the wind, in the cold with a red, stiff face. This is how what will later be called “a blessing, like a glass of healing spring water” is created. This is how this tan occurs, which, with a white collar and tie, looks like a resort, Mediterranean.

Iosif Efimovich Kheifits and I had almost twenty years of friendship and became family friends. Here is one of his letters: “Haven't written to you for ages. Correspondence with friends is a luxury for me as I reach the finish line. I'm in a state where napping after lunch, reading newspapers and thinking about what's what seem to be the lot of happy, normal individuals. I finish the picture, relying only on instinct and some experience. In a month or a month and a half, that is, by the New Year, I will show you what came of it. I choose the road like an old crane leading a flock along the blind path of its ancestors. The younger ones flap their wings behind me.” And another letter, when he was already directing a film based on Chekhov, whom he loved endlessly: “And I miss these years, Komarov’s, Pakhrin’s evenings,” he wrote from the set. “But the images of that picture that have passed and are already lingering in my memory and are beginning to move away.”

I am grateful to fate that I met Joseph Efimovich Kheifits, became friends, and worked together. But even in the best moments I could not leave the feeling that I was not busy with the main thing of my life, but with a kind of secondary occupation.

The film based on my story “An Inch of Earth” was directed by Andrei Smirnov and Boris Yashin, they had just graduated from VGIK, this was their first film after their diploma. They tried to write a script, but it’s good that I didn’t give them that, I wrote the script myself. Many years later, Andrei Smirnov will tell me: “We drank your film, Grigory Yakovlevich.” Indeed, there was a lot of drinking during filming; I came for a week and was able to verify this. They were both young, they didn’t feel everything yet and didn’t know how to do everything, but they chose good actors, Motovilov was played by Zbruev, this was perhaps his first film role. And what was dear to me was that they tried to show the war as it was. Therefore, the filming location was chosen to be the bridgehead from which the Germans tried to throw us into the Dniester and from where we later went on the offensive when the Iasi-Chisinau operation began. And the trenches for filming were dug on the site of old, filled-in and swollen trenches from the war. A skeleton was discovered in one of them. He sat, for a long time he sat, covered with earth, forgotten. And he was probably my age, his teeth were all young and strong. And maybe I saw him in battle, I knew him, but now I’m already forty, I have two children, I lived the second life that was given to me, and he remained here, forever - nineteen. These words did not come to me on their own, there is a lament poem by Pavel Antokolsky: about his son who died at the front. And there - “forever and ever - nineteen years old.”

When I wrote the story “An Inch of Earth,” I was still relatively young, and everything was so vivid before my eyes, as if it had happened yesterday. And twelve years have passed since the war ended. Perhaps this figure, this period is not accidental: the books about the First World War that remain in literature were also written at such a distance. And one could explain why this is so, but a theory is a theory, I present the facts here. And here’s another curious thing: these books are written in the first person, written as if from the war itself. And because the heroes are young, the authors, having been transported and reincarnated in them, seem younger than their years. They see and feel a lot as they saw and felt then, and this absolute authenticity has given the books a long life.

But I wrote the story “Forever Nineteen Years Old” when I was fifty. Vyacheslav Kondratyev in one of his articles called it a requiem. Perhaps this is so. I wrote it with a fatherly feeling: my son was the same age as these boys, as I was at that time of the war. And when I wrote the story, I already knew, I was convinced that World War II might not have happened. But it was, it happened, and with bitterness, and with pride, and with pain, I thought about these boys, about their young lives, which they gave so fearlessly. And how much the world that they obscured, how much poorer the world became without them.

In many letters, especially letters from mothers, I read that they had a son like Volodya Tretyakov, who did not spare himself for the sake of others. These letters are bitter: “Evening. We are finishing the sowing season, my disabled daughter and I. We rejoice in June, the warmth. On Pobeda I heard a zozulenka, and yesterday - a nightingale. That’s when I feel especially acutely that my son is gone, and gone forever.”

I dedicated this story “To those who did not return from the war. And among them - Dima Mansurov, Volodya Khudyakov - nineteen years old,” I took Tyutchev’s words to the story as a blessing: “Blessed is he who visited this world / In its fatal moments!”, and - the view of a contemporary and my friend Sergei Orlov: “A We walked through this life simply, / In savvy, heavy-duty boots.”

The story “Forever Nineteen” was also filmed, but I never wanted to watch this film a second time, as sometimes I want to re-read my favorite book.

... Around the same time when the story “Forever Nineteen Years” was published, our play “Fasten your seat belts!” with Yuri Petrovich Lyubimov was supposed to be staged at the Taganka Theater. It was preceded by my trip to the construction site. Then they began to build the Kama Automobile Plant, the future KamAZ, in Tatarstan, I went to see it, wrote an essay for Literaturnaya Gazeta, I had visited many construction sites before: it was interesting to know what was happening in the country and how.

The head of the literary department of the Taganka Theater, Ella Petrovna Levina, read this essay, gave it to Yuri Petrovich Lyubimov to read, and they began to persuade me to write a play: the theater needed and demanded something modern from it. To be honest, I’ve wanted to write a play for a long time. Later, one of my plays was staged at the Vakhtangov Theater, a dramatization of the story “Forever Nineteen Years” was staged at the Sovremennik Theater, plays were performed in several regional theaters, but I’m not a playwright, this is a special genre, it’s not given to me. For example, I want to write a good comedy, but what can you do...

So, they persuaded me, they persuaded me, and I suggested to Yuri Petrovich: let’s go together to KamAZ, we’ll go, we’ll travel, we’ll look, and then we’ll think about it. And off we went. It was interesting, and we drank a lot with good, interesting people under a fresh ear. However, having returned and thought, we realized that if we could write something, it would not be about the construction site itself, but about our life, about ourselves, about the years we have lived, and some of the scenes will take place at the construction site.

One day Lyubimov and I were standing at my house by the window, talking about the possible structure of the play; somehow it had never been thought of. And then I said that actually, I’ve long wanted to write a play that would take place on an airplane. What will happen there, I don’t know yet, but what’s interesting is that it’s between heaven and earth. And although it seems that people are already accustomed to flying, for many it has become an everyday occurrence, but still the feeling that you’ve taken off and whether you’ll land remains latent, although they don’t show it. And that’s why the conversations are more frank than on earth. Lyubimov immediately said: give this to our play. It's a pity. Nothing, nothing. Give it back. And I immediately began to fantasize about what a wonderful decoration it would be: the view of the salon, real seats, the seats go down on one side and go up on the other - the full impression of a turn. And off we go. And he even came up with the name right away - “Fasten your seat belts!” How can you not give it back after this? In general, we wrote the play: we discussed it together, I wrote it, of course. Then I read it aloud, then everything was redone again. Lyubimov read at the artistic council.

It was difficult to accept the play; the management at this theater accepted everything through “I don’t want to.” This will be discussed later. But they accepted it, word spread throughout Moscow, and suddenly they announced that Grishin personally wanted to see the performance.

In those not so long ago times, Grishin was an all-powerful man in Moscow: the first secretary of the city party committee, a member of the Politburo, in a word - the First. Already the population of Moscow was approaching nine million, people lived here whose names will go down in the history of the people, will become its glory and pride, but Grishin was the First. This is how it was said in hardware language, this is how it was thought. There was a First in Leningrad, and in every city and village there was a First. And the word of the First is law.

There are now some seemingly unfinished buildings near the Turgenevskaya metro station in Moscow. Something big was planned, but then, as the architect told me, they showed Grishin in the model, perhaps they were looking for favor. He aimed his gaze - high. And, as if it was built on his own money, he cut it off in half with a wave of his finger. They stand truncated.

And so he goes to watch the play “Fasten your seat belts!” The director of the theater, Dupak, whose duties included knowing and foreseeing everything, assured that members of the Politburo were in the habit of visiting theaters on Wednesdays, and persistently inserted our performance on Wednesdays. I can’t say what kind of favors he was expecting, but he was a determined man, during the war he served in the cavalry and in films about the war he played bit parts as commanders... I tried to explain to him that nothing good would come from such a visit, that’s enough. that people are rushing. In those years it was impossible to get into the Taganka Theater at all; people signed up for tickets early in the night, and the most famous, influential people, and, of course, trade workers in considerable numbers came to the premiere. It was prestigious, this to some extent measured one’s position in society: invited to the premiere, not invited... It was interesting to watch how the guests walked in the foyer before the start, as if in proportion to their height.

The play “Fasten your seat belts!” It was going on with a lot of noise, foreign delegations began to come to it: they say, what kind of free-thinking we have. I don’t know what was translated to them and how.

By the way, this noise reached the ears of Shelest, the former First Man of Ukraine, by that time a pensioner, that is, by our standards, sunk into oblivion. Under Stalin, in relation to the “former”, everything was decided fundamentally and simply; if it has sunk, it has sunk without a trace: “Andrei Sergeevich Bubnov... On August 1, 1938, the military collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced to death and was executed on the same day... Rykov Alexey Ivanovich ... On March 13, 1938 he was sentenced to death, executed on March 15, 1938...” And everyone who knew and was close, and came into contact, and came into contact with those who came into contact, everyone, as a rule, was swept away.

It was Khrushchev, perhaps foreseeing his fate, who introduced soft rules: not to execute his comrades-in-arms, but to send them into retirement with all convenience. They soon sent him away, and then they began to unseat each other from their chairs, and so the former First of Ukraine, like all former ones, found a place of residence in Moscow, and not among the people who had been blessed by him, who on holidays, jubilantly, carried over his numerous portraits , rejuvenated by fifteen, twenty years, innocently believing that he wouldn’t even want to look at his current, brutal self. And the living Shelest in a hat propped up with his ears, surrounded by his associates, greeted his portraits and columns of workers from the height of the podium with a gesture of his hand. All this happened, and now he became an ex and wanted to watch our performance at his leisure.

He didn’t remember, of course, that just as Grishin cut down a building with a wave of his finger, he, too, almost banned our film with Kheifitz. He himself had not seen the film, but the “writers” reported, whispered in his ear, that the Makhnovists in the film all spoke Ukrainian, so what happens? He immediately put the receiver of a government telephone in Kyiv to his ear, and it rang in Moscow.

At that time, as they said, the Romanov dynasty ruled: one Romanov sat in Leningrad, another headed the censorship, and the third Romanov sat comfortably in the chair of the chairman of the cinematography committee. And the chairs were too big for all three of them. So the cinematic Romanov received a phone call from Kyiv. And he already had the imprudence to praise the film. And he even solemnly invited Kheifits and me to his place, tea was brought (to him alone!), and he, slumping back in his chair, his short legs barely able to fit him, sipped tastefully from a glass in a silver glass holder, congratulated him, and shared his conclusions , I even thought, a sinful thing, is there something shameful in the film if it is so praised. But a call came from Kyiv and - “I loved you, Malanya, / Before the party meeting, / As the debate opened, / My opinion changed.”

Remake Ukrainian, which the Makhnovists spoke, well, for example, change it into Surzhik, that is, a mixture of Russian and Ukrainian, I refused, suggesting: let them speak Hebrew, the authorities and those same “writers” should arrange this. All the alterations were made without my participation, and Romanov, who initially announced that he was nominating the film for some kind of award, now, pleasing Shelest, ensured that the award was given to the Ukrainian actress.

And so I stood in the foyer, watching from afar as Shelest walked into the hall in the general crowd; his round, closely shaved head with thick lips and a fat fold on the neck under the back of the head was noticeable. But at the door itself, Deputy Minister of Culture Voronkov, hurrying in a businesslike manner, pushed him aside, or, more simply, pushed him away with his elbow and walked on without apologizing, without even looking back. The official didn’t even notice Shelest!

Voronkov was from the Komsomol army, and the Komsomol, as is well known, trained personnel not only for the party, but also for the KGB, and over time, it was no coincidence that Voronkov was placed in the Writers' Union to exercise supervision. With such a position, could he not become a writer? Writer Voronkov! To make this happen, Anatoly Aleksin offered him his services: he wrote something, Voronkov was a co-author, and he organized the Lenin Komsomol Prize for both of them, since he was from there and had not broken ties.

But even the old woman gets into trouble. At the very height of his successful activity, Anatoly Kuznetsov, now deceased, went to England, and disappeared there, asking for political asylum. They said that he had been preparing for a long time, there was even a plan to cross the border underwater and emerge from Turkish waters... But in the end he chose the most proven path: he was going, supposedly, to collect materials about Lenin. Voronkov personally interceded on his behalf. And when it happened and reprimands rained down on everyone involved and not involved, only Voronkov, he was the only one who did not suffer. And not being a prophet, I said at the same time: they will not forgive him for this, his injured friends will not forgive him. Indeed, he was soon transferred to the chair of Deputy Minister of Culture, which, according to the invisible table of ranks, meant a demotion. How could he not try hard in his new position? And he managed to ban the play “Alive” based on the story by Boris Mozhaev at the Taganka Theater and did it masterfully.

There was a year of terrible drought and fires; Moscow was covered in smoke from burning peat bogs. And in this heat and dryness, the collective farm chairmen were brought to the theater, and workers from the Ministry of Agriculture arrived. All the first rows shone with the Golden Stars of Heroes of Socialist Labor, the stuffiness in the hall was terrible, and the actors... They knew that they had come to ban them, they saw how gloomily they were looking at them from the hall, but they played with inspiration. When, having played, they retired to listen from behind the scenes, this is where the main performance began. One by one, according to the list, the chairmen of collective farms came to the microphone and, sweating from the heat, angrily branded the authors, as if they had read the same editorial of Pravda: denigration, distortion of collective farm reality... Meanwhile, watering machines were being driven from Moscow to their collective farms near Moscow in order to save at least something from drought in the gardens. And the director of this entire performance was Voronkov. So he pushed the former Shelest away at the door.

Now, through these doors, into this hall, for the first time since the foundation of the theater, Viktor Vasilyevich Grishin was to be welcomed as an honorary guest. Already at one o'clock in the afternoon, comrades in civilian clothes appeared, inspected the premises, examined all the passages and exits, checked everything. And life in the theater went on as usual. Usually at four, at the beginning of five, the barmaid began preparing sandwiches. Sometimes it was hot smoked beluga and sturgeon, but more often it was pink salmon and chum salmon. Using a very sharp knife, they removed the skin and separated the tender meat, so that it could be sliced thinly and placed into sandwiches. The stagehand, who helped the barmaid carry weights, was waiting for this hour, waiting for his share. He carried away the skin, something inevitably remained on it, sometimes he carried away the head of a fish, a good snack for beer, the smell alone could be enough. Gradually, the actors, who had separated for a short time after the morning rehearsal, converged. By six o'clock, by eighteen zero-zero, everyone was in the theater. I arrived at half past six. In Lyubimov’s office, where all the walls are covered in autographs famous people, two comrades in civilian clothes were on duty at the telephone, with something similar friend on a friend. I said hello and introduced myself; they modestly did not identify themselves. Then I needed to make a phone call, and I spoke under their watchful eye.

From the windows of the office, Taganskaya Square was visible, empty, as if extinct: no cars, no trolleybuses, no pedestrians: traffic was blocked, only police officers with striped batons walking in the middle, on the bare asphalt. At about a quarter to seven, the radio waves carried something, everything in the square shuddered, tensed, and a black ZIL appeared, a black escort car following. They turned in a wide arc, turning the heads of the policemen behind them. They stood in front of the service entrance. The guests of honor were greeted by the hosts: Lyubimov, Dupak. I didn’t go to meet; feeling behind his back two comrades in civilian clothes who did not identify themselves, he looked from above: how the car doors opened, how smiles beamed, and the whole company - Grishin and his wife in the center - moved from the cars to the service entrance into a space that was no longer visible from above.

Meanwhile, unsuspecting people were walking in the foyer, and the buffet, as always, was full: a theater buffet for people who came to the performance is the beginning of the holiday. There was also something prepared for the guests in the office - tea, mineral water, sandwiches - prepared for appearances: distinguished guests would not eat or drink anything untested.

Later, I found out by chance that on that very day Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov also wanted to go to the performance, but it was considered inappropriate; the presence of the disgraced academician could overshadow the impression. If only they knew what life had in store...

We went up the service ladder, which, it must be said, was not very comfortable, into the office, where for some reason they talked for some time while standing and in quiet voices, the distinguished guest spreading a special kindness and silence around him. Behind the doors one could feel the invisible presence of those accompanying them. Perhaps due to the fact that they were constantly there, everything that happened next happened.

At five minutes to seven the light above the office door flashed: the first bell.

Maybe we shouldn't make people wait for us? - said Grishin.

They will come for us,” Dupak assured. He was just showing the guests on whatman paper, on a specially brought in tablet, the future theater building, thanking them in advance for their concern, and this was received favorably. And the fact that earlier the same Grishin almost closed the theater and Lyubimov was already sitting in his waiting room, waiting for the call to expel him from the party, preparing, not foreseeing his further fate - so whoever remembers the old is out of his sight . Well, to greet with gratitude, to present any deed as the personal merit of a distinguished guest, this was an established ritual, even schoolchildren knew the ditty: “The blizzard has subsided outside, two rooks have arrived, this is the personal merit of Leonid Ilyich.”

The red light above the door flashed again and blinked for a long time: seven o’clock, the third bell was given. And again Dupak assured: they will come for us. However, they didn’t go. It’s five minutes past seven... It’s starting to feel a bit uncomfortable. We moved on our own.

The buffet that we had to go through was empty, the dishes were not cleared away on the tables. The wide staircase down is empty and deserted, and there, below, there is not a soul, the doors to the hall are closed, the performance has begun. Only the actors are crowding around the doors closest to the stage; now they should enter. Someone hastily rushed to detain them, and I, lagging behind, see and hear guests descending down the wide empty staircase with a quiet, blissful conversation, with them the hosts, speechless from the impending shame, and below they are pushing the actors away from the doors just under the ironic portrait Brecht, he seems to understand what is about to happen.

I have already said that the stage in the play was the interior of an airplane, the passage in the middle is the line between the past and the present, between what happened to people and what became of them. And everything in this salon was natural, and the chairs were natural, and when the turn was made under the roar of the turbines, the stage seemed to tilt. And the stewardess announced on the radio the same thing that they announce in flight... True, when builders and aviators were invited to the first showing of the play, the builders approved everything except the construction problems, the aviators praised the performance, but did not approve of the flight attendant: could they really not have consulted, she’s completely he says something wrong... They didn’t know that the voice of the winner of the flight attendant competition was recorded on tape.

The scene was loaded in two steps. First, actors in soldier's uniform ran noisily through the hall from the back doors: raincoats, helmets, greatcoats... These are soldiers of the year 1941, those who are no longer alive; they sat on one side of the aisle in the semi-darkness. And then, with honor, the commission entered from the nearby doors, sent on this flight to the construction site to cause destruction. The spotlight caught her and led her from the door all the way to the seats, where there are white napkins on the headrests, where the flight attendants immediately begin to flutter over them. This commission, these actors, were urgently pushed away from the doors in order to let the distinguished guest pass first, out of fright they themselves did not understand what they were doing. And Viktor Vasilyevich and his wife entered the hall at the head of the commission, as if heading it. And the spotlight illuminated them and led them, and led them...

At first none of the spectators understood anything, then there was a chuckle, then laughter. In this theater, unfortunately, there was no box, so that, hiding in the depths, only white hands could be laid out on the velvet barrier. With the general, as they say, revival of the hall, guided by the spotlight, they sat down, with guards sitting on their sides and behind them.

Afterwards they said in the theater that all this did not happen by chance, someone specially arranged everything so that Lyubimov was removed. They even conducted their own investigation. But I think everything was simpler: they created too much fear. It’s a joke, at one o’clock in the afternoon comrades in civilian clothes appeared at the theater, traffic in the square was blocked, they were on duty at the telephone... When there is fear, people become stupid unpredictably.

I had the opportunity to observe something similar after the war in Bulgaria, in the wonderful city of Pazardzhik, where we were then standing. Then the command found out that the general was coming with an inspection from the army top, from Sofia. And it’s as if this general loves flowers. As you know, flowers are not allowed in the barracks. But since he loves... The officers of our regiment were ordered to hand over so many leva, they brought flowers, apparently or invisibly, and placed them in pots everywhere. And this general, as it turned out, respected the charter above all else and did not like flowers. Getting into the car, he briefly ordered: “Demines!” It was such a laugh when these flowers later didn’t know where to put them. But what is that general in comparison!..

And now we are sitting in Lyubimov’s office upstairs (Yuri Petrovich himself is in the hall), listening to the performance broadcast. Of course, guests are not put in such a position, to say the least. But now it’s important: will Grishin leave the performance or not? The performance, as if on purpose, without an intermission, with everyone’s curiosity, sat for two hours... And even if this happened without a wife, leading wives are especially sensitive. But to stand up, to go out in full view of the entire hall, tomorrow all this will spread throughout Moscow, people will laugh...

And how difficult the play was, there were so many different commissions. Vladimir Vysotsky wrote the song “Earthball” especially for the performance. And when he walked across the stage with a guitar, through the entire hall and sang: “...We spun the Earth back from the border, that was the case at first, but our battalion commander spun it back, pushing off with his foot from the Urals...”, a frost ran down my cheeks. Words, music, his voice, himself! But the commission selects insensitive people, nothing flashes on their faces, neither thought nor feeling. They will get up, thank you and head to the exit, put on their coat in the cloakroom: they were present, they go to report. They don’t express their opinions. Not people, microphones on legs. But at least the microphone reproduces with accuracy, and these are trained to predict the opinion of their superiors. And often the bosses get their opinion from them.

One time I couldn't stand it. There was a retired colonel of the armored forces on the commission, and he, too, headed for the exit like that, without dropping a word. And then I loudly, to the entire empty foyer, followed him: “Comrade Colonel! You are a front-line soldier! Were you that shy at the front too?” And something in him trembled: he turned around and went not to the wardrobe, but to Lyubimov’s office on the second floor. The commission is his. But whatever they said, in order not to say anything, it would have been better not to have stayed.

And the last time they accepted the performance was just New Year, December 31, when Christmas trees are decorated in apartments. The person in charge of culture in Moscow at that time, that is, in charge of it in the Moscow City Council, was a certain Pokarzhevsky. And there, to him, to the headquarters they called Lyubimov and me. We are two, and on the other side there are, apparently and invisibly, fighters, and everyone is tested. Pokarzhevsky’s deputy was Shkodin, famous for the fact that someone, confused or deliberately, said: “Comrade Paskudin spoke here...” So it stuck with him.

Once upon a time he graduated from Shkodin either from the faculty or from the theater directors course, and it just so happened that he was sent to Lyubimov for an internship. He looked at it and listened: “You don’t need to do this, you won’t make a director.” This is not given to you." And Shkodin began to direct art in strict accordance with the principle: those who can, do, those who are not able, teach. It was he, together with Pokarzhevsky, who decided the fate of the performance.

During the discussion, Lyubimov became ill. A break was announced. In the reception area, where it was not so smoky, he sat in a chair under the open window and breathed. I also felt his pulse: it was frequent and then dropped out. They brought a glass of water, our first Russian medicine. Then Shkodin came out of the office, looked, stuck a cigarette in his mouth, and lit a cigarette. It stands and smokes.

When the discussion began again, I warned: if Shkodin is given the floor, I will leave: for this act of his. Shkodin was given his word. I went out. They sent for me: I must continue. He gets up again and starts talking. I went out again...

And after all that we had endured, when the performance finally went on, this had to happen! And you can hear from the broadcast that it’s going on dashingly, cheerfully, maybe because the addressee is in the hall, this is not the first time the remark has hit him, although it was not written about him. And every time there is laughter in the hall, the administrator grabs his head: “They’ll ban it!” But some feeling tells me: no, they won’t ban it. After all, it will turn out like this: he came, he saw, he forbade... We are used to doing things not with our own hands, not leaving traces.

And another consideration, which in the old days should have frightened: a certain Uruguayan newspaper, having distorted both the title and the content, stated sensationally: an anti-Soviet play was being performed in Moscow, at the Taganka Theater. Uruguay is far from us, but we are traditionally sensitive to what the most seedy foreigner thinks or says about us. And the chairman of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions Shelepin, the head of our then trade unions, the “school of communism”, a member of the Politburo, which for some reason was called the presidium at that moment, immediately picked up: I personally haven’t seen it myself, but they report to me...

Nicknamed Iron Shurik, Shelepin, although he still held a high position, actually lived to last days in the political arena, his star rolled towards sunset, and everyone who should know knew: he exists, but it’s as if he is no longer there, he is a former one.

The world is small, and you are constantly convinced of this. Shelepin is from Voronezh, my fellow countryman, and even his younger brother studied in the same class with my cousin Yura Zelkind, who died near Kharkov. I don’t know whether the younger Shelepin was at the front, but the eldest studied successfully in Moscow, prepared himself for great deeds, and already in his student years, when there was a conversation in the dormitory about who he wanted to be in the future, he stated firmly: I want to become a member of the Central Committee and I will. And so he did. And Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya helped him in what she could not know: either he gave her a Komsomol ticket, or he gave her instructions when she and other similar girls were sent to feat and martyrdom, and he, a healthy man, remained in the rear .

In a long officer's overcoat, with the rank of captain, and not having spent a day at the front, Shelepin walked behind the coffin of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, accompanied on her last journey the heroine, as if raised by him, there is this chronicle, I saw her. From that day on, he quickly went up: first along the Komsomol line, then along the party line, and higher and steeper, and in 1958 he already took the post of chairman of the KGB, later handing it over to Semichastny, also a Komsomol secretary, who grew up under him , participated in Khrushchev’s retirement, after which they whispered, and the “voices” spoke confidently that Brezhnev was a temporary figure, soon Shelepin, Iron Shurik, would take over power, and he would restore order.

But in what, in what, and in hardware games, Leonid Ilyich was not a simpleton. By chance or not, Shelepin was sent on a mission to England, where he was met and seen off with such disgrace that his rapid decline became inevitable.

Whether Grishin calculated all this while he was sitting in the auditorium, but unity with Shelepin even on the most insignificant occasion (and the banning of a play was not considered for anything in our country) would not have added either fame or points to him.

When the performance ended, I saw a completely lost man. We went up to Lyubimov’s office and walked as if we were going to our own funeral. We thought he would leave right away. Didn't leave. We entered. We're standing. Long pause.

So, should I not get into my car now? - he asked in a quiet and even painful voice.

It is necessary to clarify here, otherwise the meaning of these words and the depth of the offense will remain not understood. The play ends with the fact that on the way back to the capital, the plane almost crashed and landed somewhere in the depths of Russia. And so, not fully realizing what had happened, in some shock the chairman of the commission habitually orders: “So, this is how it is: a car will come for me. For you too. And then you take it with you in the car...” And only when they whispered in his ear that they were not in Moscow, a bus had been sent for everyone, he suddenly wised up: “Huh? Then - on a general basis. On a general basis...” This is what the words said were treated with quiet bitterness and resentment: “So, should I not get into my car now?” And everyone heard the wife’s violent breathing. Why, that’s not what you meant at all, sit down, sit down... Oh!

The quiet conversation lasted for about half an hour, and again for some reason while standing. And I tried to listen, the moment was serious, the fate of the performance was being decided, but something prevented me from listening. It’s like when a person has one living eye, his own, and the other glass, you are drawn to look into this dead eye, even though you understand that it’s not good. And there was some kind of inconsistency in Grishin’s face that attracted me. It seems that his chin is not heavy, but this part of the face, this distance from the bottom of the chin to the nose, to put it simply, the chewing part was more spacious, larger than the lowered forehead. Not the forehead that was revealed by a bald spot and thin, combed hair receding further and further, but a forehead where something wrinkles if a thought or some consideration suddenly arises. And I was drawn to watch how this chewing part moved up and down, but I didn’t perceive all the words; I might have missed something.

Here's your infantry... Warm words were said about the infantry. This is good: kind words. Why not about pilots? Pilots are a heroic tribe. “I was with the pilots during the war,” he said, modestly half-closing his eyes.

True, I knew that during the war Viktor Vasilyevich Grishin, how can I put it more accurately, was only mentally “with the pilots.” Since 1941, he has been in party work: secretary, second secretary, first secretary of the Serpukhov city party committee, then he rose higher and higher, reaching Moscow. And just like Shelepin (or maybe this is not a completely random coincidence of biographies), throughout the war the homeland needed its golden personnel in the rear, and at some point in his career he took the post of head of trade unions - schools, as has already been said , communism... And his only education, not counting the party school, is the Moscow Locomotive Technical School. But we stand, listen to the First Man of Moscow.

Just before the war, I had only a small, fourth rank as a metalworker. So I am now, whether better or worse, but I can still hold a file in my hands. During the war I was a soldier, commander of a control platoon. Even now I could fire a projectile to the target, although those guns are no longer there and, thank God, I don’t need to do this. Or give the same combat command: “Bat-tar-ray!..” It will roll out throughout the entire formation, and this will be with me to the grave. But my children grew up, and if they got sick, I went to the doctor. And he did not give medical advice to other people's children.

Still, when we started talking about the infantry (and the words there were taken from “An Inch of Earth”, the most ordinary words about what it meant to be an infantryman in war), I said, although the experience of communicating with such people teaches: nod, but do it your own way :

The pilots, of course, are a heroic tribe, but the most people were in the infantry. And countless people died there.

Here it was heard:

The people and the party were united during the war!

It's not him himself, it's his wife behind his back. And everyone heard stormy breathing. They are united, but even then one grew in service, the other froze in the trenches.

Then they left. And traffic in the square was restored: trolleybuses started moving, cars poured in in a continuous stream. And we were sitting in the office of Yuri Petrovich Lyubimov: something had to be decided. And a simple thought came: there is an appetizer, the guests disdained it, but it’s just right for us. There was also something for the appetizer. And my soul brightened, I remembered with laughter how the director always inserted a performance into the program on Wednesday, every Wednesday: in anticipation of favors. So we waited.

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Slezina Victoria

Victoria Slezina’s work “The Image of Vladimir Tretyakov, the Defender of the Motherland in G. Baklanov’s story “Forever Nineteen Years Old” is dedicated to revealing the heroic character of the main character of the story. The author set herself the goal of revealing the main character traits of the defender of the Motherland in G. Baklanov’s story “Forever Nineteen Years Old.”
The relevance of this work is great, since on May 9, 2015 the anniversary date is celebrated - 70 years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War. The feat of the soldiers - defenders of the Fatherland - must live in the memory of the people. The younger generation should be brought up with examples of the heroic and selfless characters of young people who selflessly loved their country and defended it, not sparing their lives.
The advantage of the work is that the student independently analyzed the image literary hero Vladimir Tretyakov in the story “Forever Nineteen Years” by G. Baklanov, highlighting the stages of growth of the hero’s self-awareness. I compiled a table that reflected the character traits of the hero-defender native land. She also drew parallels between the images of soldiers of the Great Patriotic War and the characters of the defenders of their native land in the war in Ukraine

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School-student scientific-practical conference

them. E.A. Zubchaninova

Section "Literature"

The image of Vladimir Tretyakov - defender of the Motherland

in G. Baklanov’s story “Forever – Nineteen Years Old”

Completed

Slezina Victoria,

student of class 7 "B" MBOU secondary school No. 176

g.o. Samara

Scientific supervisor

Nizova Alla Valentinovna,

teacher of Russian language and literature

Samara 2015

Introduction 3

Chapter 1. “Isn’t it because I live because they died”

1.1. The fate of the writer and the grief of the Motherland 4

1.2. A book about the immortality of an entire generation 5

Chapter 2. The image of Vladimir Tretyakov - the defender of the Motherland in G. Baklanov’s story “Forever - Nineteen Years Old”

2.1. Ordinary guy 7

2.2. War 8

2.3. Character qualities that appear in war. Responsibility

for the assigned task 8

2.4. Courage and courage in battles 10

2.5. The unvarnished truth about war 11

2.6. Philosophical reflections Tretyakova 14

2.7. Lyubov Volodya Tretyakova 15

2.8. Death of Tretyakov 15

2.9. The generation that remains forever nineteen years old 17

G. Baklanov “Forever - nineteen years old,” with the characters of the defenders of their native land, now fighting in Ukraine 20

Conclusion 25

References 26

Introduction

One of the central themes in literature has been and remains the theme of young people at war. We, today's readers, empathize with our peers who defended their native land and died in the name of a peaceful life. They, like us, dreamed, made plans, believed in a happy future. And all this collapsed in an instant. The war changed everything.

I am addressing this topic becauseI want to use an example of a story

G. Baklanov to analyze what these young guys who died in the war were like.

The relevance of this work is great, since May 9, 2015 marks the anniversary of the 70th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War. The feat of the soldiers - defenders of the Fatherland - must live in the memory of the people. The work also traces the characters of the heroes-defenders of their native land of two wars: the Great Patriotic War and the modern war in Ukraine.

Object of study- G. Baklanov’s story “Forever Nineteen Years” and journalistic articles about the modern war in Ukraine.

Subject of research- patriotism, heroism of the soldiers of the Great Patriotic War and the modern war in Ukraine.

Target – Reveal the heroic character of the main character of G. Baklanov’s story “Forever - Nineteen Years Old”

Tasks:

Select and analyze literature on this topic;
Carry out research work in the image of the main character of the story by G. Baklanov;
Reveal the main character traits of the defender of the Motherland in G. Baklanov’s story “Forever - Nineteen Years Old”;
Compare the image of V. Tretyakov, the main character of the story

G. Baklanov “Forever - nineteen years old,” with the characters of the defenders of their native land, now fighting in Ukraine.

Research methods:

Observation;
Theoretical analysis.

Abstract structure:

The abstract consists of an introduction; Chapter 1, in which I briefly review the biography of G. Baklanov and emphasize that the author in his work talks about what he and his peers experienced during the war, recreates the true picture that the participants in the hostilities saw; 2 chapters in which I tried to reveal the main character traits of the main character of the story

G. Baklanov “Forever - nineteen years old”; 3 chapters in which I triedcompare the image of V. Tretyakov, the main character of G. Baklanov’s story “Forever Nineteen Years Old,” with the characters of the defenders of their native land in the war in Ukraine; conclusions, list of references.

Chapter 1. “Isn’t it because I live because they died”

1.1. The fate of the writer and the grief of the Motherland

Grigory Yakovlevich Baklanov was born in Voronezh in 1923. He lost his parents early and was raised in his uncle's family. The war was the beginning for him adult life. In 1941, from his school days, he volunteered for the front; his path from private to division intelligence chief was difficult. He commanded a battery until the end of the war on the Southwestern Front.

After the end of the war, G. Baklanov considered it his duty to talk about what he had experienced, about those who, defending their Motherland, immortalized themselves with the beauty of their feat.

After graduating from the Literary Institute in 1951. A.M. Gorky focused on military topics. The author of the stories “South of the Main Strike”, “An Inch of Earth”, “The Dead Have No Shame”, which were at the center of critical discussions about “trench truth”, “lieutenant prose”. In 1964 he published the story “July of 1941”. The story “Forever - Nineteen Years” was awarded the USSR State Prize in 1979.

From 1986 to 1996, he headed the editorial board of the Znamya magazine.

In 1988, the book of short stories “Evening Light” was published, in 1993 - the collection of stories and short stories “One of Our Own”, in 1995 - the book “I Was Not Killed in the War”.

1.2. A book about the immortality of an entire generation

For G. Baklanov, a story about the war is a story about his generation. Of the twenty classmates who went to the front, he returned alone. The author in his work talks about what he and his peers experienced, recreating the true picture that only front-line soldiers saw.“Forever Nineteen Years Old” is a book about the immortality of an entire generation. G. Baklanov said: “This is a worthy generation, proud, with a keen sense of duty. Almost all of it remained on the battlefields. I think about these young men - saints, honest, selflessly fulfilling their duty - I think about them with a fatherly feeling, it hurts me that their lives were cut short so early. A heavy, terrible responsibility, beyond their age, fell on their shoulders.”

I learned about how young boys of nineteen remained forever after reading the story of the same name by G. Baklanov. Reading this work, you understand the meaning of life for nineteen-year-olds of that time. The author dedicates the story to those who remained nineteen years old, to those whose lives were cut short on the battlefields. They did not open the door to their home, their loved ones never waited for them. War stood in their way.

The emotional impetus for writing the book was an incident that occurred during the filming of the film “An Inch of Earth.” The film crew came across the remains of a war buried in a trench: “... They brought out a buckle with a star, caked in the sand, green with oxide. It was carefully passed from hand to hand, and they identified it as ours. And he must be an officer." And for many years the writer was tormented by the thought: who was he, this unknown officer. Maybe a fellow soldier? Before us modern readers, unknown dead soldier. Who is he? Both scary and creepy from this picture. The sun has risen, warming the living, but it is powerless to warm the one who died here more than thirty years ago, defending the Fatherland.

Undoubtedly, the main figure in the war has always been and remains a soldier. The story “Forever Nineteen Years” is a story about young lieutenants in the war. They had to be responsible for themselves and for others, without any allowance for age. Having gone to the front straight from school, they, as Alexander Tvardovsky once so well said, “did not rise above lieutenants and did not go further than regiment commanders” and “saw the sweat and blood of war on their tunic.” After all, it was they, the nineteen-year-old platoon leaders, who were the first to go on the attack, inspiring the soldiers, replacing the killed machine gunners, and organizing a perimeter defense. And most importantly, they bore the burden of responsibility: for the outcome of the battle, for the composition of the platoon, for the lives of the people entrusted to them, many of whom were old enough to be fathers. The lieutenants decided who to send on dangerous reconnaissance, who to leave to cover the retreat, how to complete the task while losing as few soldiers as possible. This sense of lieutenant responsibility is well said in Baklanov’s story: “All of them, together and individually, were each responsible for the country, and for the war, and for everything that is in the world and will be after them. But he alone was responsible for bringing the battery to its deadline.” It was just such a brave lieutenant, faithful to his sense of civic duty and officer’s honor, who was still quite a young man, that the writer presented to us in the image of Vladimir Tretyakov. Baklanov's hero becomes a generalized image of an entire generation. That is why the title of the story contains the plural - nineteen-year-olds.

Chapter 2. The image of my peer - the defender of the Motherland in the story

G. Baklanova “Forever - nineteen years old”

2.1. Ordinary guy

The hero of the story, Vladimir Tretyakov, was called up to the front from school, bearing the burden of responsibility, without any allowance for age: “I went to the front myself, when they had not yet been called up for a year.”

At the hospital, Tretyakov meets a classmate. Memories of peaceful life, mixed with military events, came flooding back to the hero: “Tretyakov felt something familiar in the respectable man whom the superintendent let forward, in his manner of raising his shoulders. Oleg sat on the edge of the bed, covering his full knee, covered with cloth riding breeches, with the hollow of his robe. Military uniform, shoulder straps under the robe, sword belt, belt. And in the lenses of the glasses are the same gentle, homely eyes. It used to be that Oleg stood at the blackboard, all dirty with chalk, sweating with shame: “Ask your mother, honestly, I taught. ...Do you know who I met here at the market? - Oleg put on his glasses, his gaze behind the glasses became clearer. - Sonya Baturina’s mother, do you remember her? She also bandaged your head during military lessons. In my opinion, Sonya was a little in love with you. She was killed, didn't you know? ... Do you remember how we played toy soldiers in my gallery? You had the Japanese army, and I had the Hungarian hussars. Do you remember how beautiful my Hungarian hussars were?

From behind the glasses, children's eyes, in which time had stood still, looked at Tretyakov from a wide man's face. They looked at him from that life when they were all still immortal. Adults died, old people died, but they were immortal.” .

2.2. War

War is depicted as a cruel, terrible, destructive force. War isdoom is death.Before the war, Tretyakov lived like all ordinary people. The boy was happy, loved his father and mother, but the war took everything from him.“Tretyakov looked and worried, and had all sorts of thoughts, like for the first time... I haven’t been at the front for eight months, I’ve lost the habit, I have to get used to it again. It was in the first months at the front that he was ashamed of himself, he thought he was the only one like this. Everything is so in these moments, everyone overcomes them alone with themselves: there will be no other life. It’s in these moments, when it’s as if nothing is happening, you’re just waiting, and it’s moving irreversibly towards its last feature, towards an explosion, and neither you nor anyone can stop it, in such moments we feel the silent progress of history. You suddenly feel clearly how this whole colossus, made up of thousands and thousands of efforts of different people, has moved, is moving not by someone else’s will, but by itself, having received its own move, and therefore unstoppable.” .

2.3. Character qualities that manifest themselves in war. Responsibility for the assigned work.

The lieutenant's character is revealed through specific facts: he is hungry, shares his rations with a girl, could have stayed at headquarters, but goes to the front line to convince others of the safety of others, risking his life and standing under a bridge. The life of a soldier and the outcome of the operation depend on his skill, patience and rationality of actions. He confidently commands the platoon, everyone unquestioningly follows his orders, because he takes full responsibility for the outcome of the operation: “Gun commanders, tractor drivers, come to me! - Tretyakov ordered, thereby separating them from the battery. - Surname? - What is your last name, Comrade Lieutenant? Semakin is my last name. - You, Semakin, will lead the first gun. - I, Comrade Lieutenant, will lead! - Semakin spoke loudly and waved his hand desperately: they say, he doesn’t feel sorry for himself. “I’ll lead.” I always follow orders! - At the same time, he shook his head negatively. - Just how are we going to pull out the tractor? He should lie under the bridge. And the weapon is the same... He spoke, supported by the sympathetic silence of the batteries. All of them, together and individually, were each responsible for the country, and for the war, and for everything that exists in the world and will happen after them. But he alone was responsible for bringing the battery to its deadline.” .

When everyone doubted the strength of the bridge and were afraid to transport guns, Tretyakov again showed strictness in fulfilling the order, because it was he who had to deliver the battery to the battlefield on time: “Come on!” - He waved his hand and shouted from below, even though they couldn’t hear him there, next to the tractor. And how he entered his destiny under the bridge.

Everything bent over the head, over the raised face, transferring the rolling weight from log to log. It seemed that the supports were settling. And then the cannon drove onto the bridge. The bridge groaned and began to shake. “It will collapse!” - even my breath was taken away. The logs rubbed against each other, and dust fell from above. Blinking his dusty eyes, not seeing anything, he rubbed them with rough fingers, tried to blindly see what was above him, but everything flickered. And through the exhaust of the engine you could hear the crackling of wood. Without being able to see it, he felt all this huge weight slide off the bridge onto the earth's surface, and the bridge sighed above him. Only now did he feel the force pressing from above: from his tense muscles, he felt as if he himself was propping up the bridge with his back.” . I believe that the hero behaves with dignity, takes responsibility without getting lost in a difficult, deadly situation, and carries out the order.

2.4. Courage and courage in battles

Horrible pictures of war make you shudder.“The mortar battery conducted destructive rapid fire, the mines exploded on the very field between the planting and the sunflowers where our sprawled infantry lay.” “In the ravine, the Germans suddenly rushed away from the mortars. They served on the run, spread out in all directions. The long, endless moment of waiting lasted. Tretyakov now clearly saw through his binoculars an abandoned firing position: boxes with mines, mortar barrels raised up, the shine of the sun on the dusty barrels - empty, time stood still. One mortarman could not stand it, jumped up from the ground... And then it exploded from the lowland. - There are three shells in the battery - rapid fire! - Tretyakov shouted. And while it was exploding and taking off, the roof on which he lay trembled beneath him.

And when the earth thrown out by the explosions fell away, when the smoke was carried by the wind, there was nothing at the firing position that opened again. Only plowed ground, craters" . “...he was hit and knocked down. Clods of earth crashed down from above, hitting his bent back and head as he, kneeling over the apparatus, held back nausea. Sticky saliva flowed from his mouth, and he wiped it away with his sleeve. I thought: “This is it...” And I was amazed: it’s not scary.

At the bottom of the trench, a long-haired sergeant lay face down, his arm thrown out in front of him. The fingers on it moved. And where the battalion commander had just shouted and shook his visor, a loose crater was smoking.” .

The hero is wounded at the moment when he is trying to save private Nasrullaev. Tretyakov behaves heroically. He doesn't hide behind his friends, now the soldiers trust him. The author shows that victory consists of the actions of those who dot the battlefield. It was they who obscured and covered their Motherland with their breasts. Almost the entire Tretyakov platoon was killed in these battles. “The arable field, where wheat was sown and harvested year after year, became their last battlefield.” . And across this field the living, with difficulty pulling their boots out of the black soil, walked, looking for and recognizing the dead, and they, killed, “lay in boots covered in pounds of black soil.” This fact in the reader’s mind is associated with the words of the hero: “The living are always guilty of those who are not.”

2.5. The unvarnished truth about war

The story is realistic. The author depicts scary pictures battles where innocent people die. “Puddles glistened in the sun, and among them, all over the field, lay the dead. In overcoats that had absorbed water, in wet padded jackets, numb, they lay where death overtook them. The arable field near the Kravtsy farm, where wheat was sown and harvested year after year and where geese were driven out into the stubble every autumn, became their last battlefield.” .

G. Baklanov accurately depicts the details of life at the front. Particularly important are the psychological details that create the effect of our presence there, in those years, next to Lieutenant Tretyakov: “All this time, there was a howl over the forest with a rustling sound in the heights: our heavy artillery fired from closed positions, sent shells, and the explosions rained down leaves from the trees . Coming to the edge of the forest, he jumped into a sandy trench that had collapsed in many places and almost stepped on the feet of an infantryman lying at the bottom. In all his equipment, belted, he lay as if he was sleeping. But his yellow, non-Russian face was bloodless, his loosely squinted eye glittered dully. And the black, round head, cropped like a clipper, was all covered with earth: already killed, another shell was burying him.... He looked through binoculars, wondering how at dusk, when the sun sets behind the mound, he would pull communications from here to the infantry, if he was ordered to go there, where it would be better to lay the wire so that a shell would not interrupt him. And when he left, he came across another dead infantryman. He sat, completely slid to the bottom. The overcoat on the chest is covered in fresh blood clots, but there is no face at all. On the sandy parapet of the trench, the bloody-gray lumps of brain seemed to be still shuddering. Tretyakov saw a lot of deaths and killed during the war, but he didn’t look here. It was something a person should not see. And the distance ahead, behind the trunks of the pine trees, all golden, beckoned like an unlived life.” .

The minutes of calm before the attack are also realistically described: “Here they are, these last irreversible minutes. In the dark, breakfast was served to the infantry, and although everyone didn’t talk about it, they thought as they scraped the pot: maybe for the last time... With this thought, he hid the wiped spoon behind the wrapper: maybe it won’t be useful anymore.” . The wiped spoon behind the winding is a detail of front-line life. But what everyone thought about the irreversibility of these minutes is already today’s generalized vision.

G. Baklanov is meticulously accurate in any details of front-line life. He rightly believed that without the truth of small facts there is no truth of the great time: “He looked at them, alive, cheerful near death. Dipping the meat into coarse salt poured into the lid of the pot, he told them, to their delight, about the North-Western Front. And the sun rose higher above the forest, and in its turn something else came to mind. Is it really only great people who don’t disappear at all? Are they really the only ones destined to remain among the living posthumously? And from the ordinary ones, from people like them all who are now sitting in this forest before them, who were also sitting here on the grass, will there really be nothing left of them? He lived, buried him, and it was as if you weren’t there, as if you hadn’t lived under the sun, under this eternal blue sky, where the plane is now imperiously humming, having climbed to an unattainable height. Does the unspoken thought and pain really all disappear without a trace? Or will it still resonate in someone’s soul? And who will separate the great and the not great when they have not yet had time to live? Perhaps the greatest - the future Pushkin, Tolstoy - remained nameless on the fields of war during these years and will never say anything to people again. Can’t you really feel this emptiness in life?” . These lines sound like a philosophical generalization, like a conclusion, like the thought of Baklanov himself.

2.6. Philosophical reflections of Tretyakov

“From the upper bunks, Tretyakov looked and looked at this autumn beauty of the world, which he might never have seen again. It wasn’t enough this time, for one fight and not all the way through. And my soul is calm. How much do people need this, if the war has been going on for three years and one person has been given so little in it?” ... This question arises in Tretyakov’s thoughts, and we, the readers, develop a feeling of pain, regret and hatred for those who started the war.

“That night, the rest of it, Tretyakov sat in the dugout with the company commander, whom he had to support with fire. We didn't sleep. "..."

Tretyakov listened to him, spoke himself, but suddenly it became strange, as if all this was not happening to him: here they were sitting underground, drinking tea, waiting for the hour. And on the other side, among the Germans, they may also be awake, waiting. And then it will catch you like a wave, and they will jump out of the trenches and run to kill each other... It will all seem strange to people someday.” . These words of the author contain all the senselessness and cruelty of people’s behavior in war.

And in the hospital, the wounded do not stop remembering the battles. At the front, the soldier did not have time to rest between battles, he did not have time to evaluate what was happening, to look at himself from the outside, but in the hospital there is a lot of time. Therefore, each wounded person, including Tretyakov, replayed his military life, battles for high-rise buildings, all-round defense, attacks on the move. In the hospital, Volodya had the opportunity to think, evaluate, reflect on the death of millions, on the overall account of the war and the inevitability of accidental losses. These scenes help to see the power and scale of people's suffering.

2.7. Love Volodya Tretyakov

The love of Volodya Tretyakov is organically woven into the mood of the story. The one that these “unkissed” lieutenants, who stepped from school into the whirlwind of death, were barely able to touch or did not have time to know at all.

A striking event in Tretyakov’s life was his meeting with Sasha. He liked her eyelashes in the snow, her cheerful laughter, her slightly childish habits, but adults who had seen quite a lot in a life that had not yet begun. Tretyakov was ready to do anything for her: he ran away from the hospital more than once to see her, got a car of firewood so that Sasha would not have to collect coal under the trains. A feeling arises between Tretyakov and Sasha, the first one is timid, but very sincere.

2.8. Death of Tretyakov

“The star goes out, but the field of attraction remains” - Tretyakov hears these words in the hospital. The field of attraction that was created by that generation and which arises as the main and integral mood of the story. G. Baklanov wanted to talk about a generation, and not about one hero. Just as at the front, the whole life sometimes fit into one moment, so in one front-line fate the traits of a generation were embodied. Therefore, Tretyakov’s death does not return us to the beginning of the story: to those remains discovered in a buried trench on the banks of the Dniester. Death, as it were, introduces the hero into the cycle of life, into an ever-renewing and eternally lasting existence: “He did not hear the machine-gun fire: he was hit, his leg was knocked out under him, he was torn away from the cart, and he fell. Everything happened instantly. Lying on the ground, he saw how the horses ran downhill, how the medical instructor, a girl, snatched the reins from the rider, and with his gaze he measured the distance that had already separated him from them. And he shot at random. And then there was a burst of machine gun fire. He managed to notice where the shots were coming from, and he also thought that he was lying in a bad place, on the road, in plain sight, and should have slipped into a ditch. But at that moment there was a movement ahead. The world has become smaller. He saw him now through the combat slot. There, at the point of the pistol, at the end of his outstretched hand, it moved again, a smoky gray began to rise against the background of the sky. Tretyakov fired. When the medical instructor, leaving the horses, looked back, there was nothing in the place where they were fired upon and he fell. The cloud of explosion that flew off from the ground was just rising. And formation after formation of dazzling white clouds, inspired by the wind, floated in the heavenly heights.” , as if raising the immortal memory of them, nineteen years old. Forever, the heroes of the story by Baklanov, a front-line writer, like their prototypes, will remain young. A feeling of the beauty and value of life, a keen sense of responsibility to the fallen for everything that happens on earth—this is the mental attitude that remains in the reading of the story “Forever Nineteen Years Old.”

2.9. The generation that remains nineteen years old forever

It was this brave lieutenant, true to his sense of civic duty and officer’s honor, who was still quite a youth, that he introduced to us.writer in the image of Vladimir Tretyakov.

In the story, G. Baklanov refers to military everyday life: “The war was in its third year, and, what is not clear, it became familiar and simple.” From a peaceful distance, the writer peers into that war, which after the publication of his book will be called “lieutenant’s prose,” i.e. seen not from the general headquarters, but from the battlefield by young men who had just become lieutenants - “honest, pure boys” who gave their lives in battle. This story seems to concentrate the main advantages of Baklanov’s prose. Critics wrote about G. Baklanov: “Nothing meaningful, ostensibly philosophical... He always tries to speak simply and frankly. He knows how to acutely experience what is happening to the world and people.” . “Lieutenants” - Baklanov’s young heroes - acutely feel the value of every day they live, every moment. Baklanov's heroes are counting down their time; they appreciate it with those moments of joy that they managed to experience in the pre-war past, they remember the centuries and millennia they once studied in school ancient history and therefore they perceive more vividly every day they live, every day they survive at the front. “Forever nineteen years old,” Tretyakov remembers all the moments of life - a random kiss from a girl, winter light outside the window, a tree branch under the snow. War changes the very feeling of life, where death, happiness, and beauty are nearby. The death of a hero enhances the uniqueness and tragedy of life. Hence the power of artistic detail in Baklanov. The writer proves artistic truth not by logic. For him, a person is impulsive, the choice is momentary, subject to instant action, but inherent in the hero initially or prepared by his entire previous life. A person is what he is now, at this moment. But the past made him this way, which is why the memory of this past is so important in the writer’s books.

Forever, the heroes of the story by Baklanov, a front-line writer, like their prototypes, will remain young. A feeling of the beauty and foam of life, a keen sense of responsibility towards the fallen for everything that happens on earth - this is the spiritual mood that remains in the field of reading the story “Forever - Nineteen Years Old”.

Analyzing the image of Vladimir Tretyakov, I identified the following character traits of the hero:

Character traits of the main character	Analyzed material. Quotes from the text
Ordinary guy	“He went to the front himself, when they had not yet been called up for a year, if everything went as expected, then it was his father who raised him.”
The war took everything from the hero	“... there will be no other life. It’s in these moments, when it’s as if nothing is happening, you’re just waiting, and it’s moving irreversibly towards its last feature, towards an explosion, and neither you nor anyone can stop it, in such moments we feel the silent progress of history. You suddenly feel clearly howthis whole colossus, made up of thousands and thousands of efforts of different people, moved,moves not by someone else’s will, but by herself, having received her move, and therefore unstoppable."
Character qualities demonstrated during the war:
Responsibility for assigned work	“He spoke, supported by the sympathetic silence of the batteries. All of them, together and individually, were each responsible for the country, and for the war, and for everything that exists in the world and will happen after them.But he alone was responsible for bringing the battery to its deadline.»
Courage and courage in battles	“The mortar battery was firing destructively in rapid succession, the mines were exploding in the very field between the planting and the sunflowers where our sprawled infantry lay... Tretyakov now clearly saw the abandoned firing position through his binoculars. ...He was hit and knocked down. Clods of earth crashed down from above, hitting his bent back and head as he, kneeling over the apparatus, held back nausea. Sticky saliva flowed from his mouth, and he wiped it away with his sleeve. I thought: “This is it...” And I was amazed: it’s not scary.”
They covered their Motherland with their breasts	Almost the entire Tretyakov platoon was killed in these battles. “The arable field, where wheat was sown and harvested year after year, became their last battlefield.” And across this field the living, with difficulty pulling their boots out of the black soil, walked, looking for and recognizing the dead, and they, killed, “lay in boots covered in pounds of black soil.”

Chapter 3. Analogy of the image of V. Tretyakov, the main character of the story

G. Baklanov “Forever - nineteen years old,” with the characters of the defenders of their native land in the war in Ukraine

Look how much evil there is in life!
How hatred bubbles across the planet...
In the twentieth century, anger has surpassed
marks of all previous centuries.

And everyone is right. There are no more wrong people.
And who wouldn’t rip out anyone’s throat -
Everyone has a confirmed answer:
"In the name of justice and duty."

And I'm afraid that after a certain period of time
people will win complete victory:
and there will be justice, there will be duty -
but there will be no people on earth.

Yu.S. Belash

There is currently a war going on in southeastern Ukraine. “There is fierce fighting going on now. They are trying to destroy the militia using artillery and airplanes, trying to surround them. Warriors of the Army of New Russia are fighting to the death for their native land and do not allow the neo-Nazis to implement the order from Washington to clean up the Donbass.

The mood of the city residents is different. Some people support the entire militia, while others look at it warily, because war is a terrible thing and it’s not easy to see people with weapons. But in general, of course, the local population is completely on the side of their defenders." .

What are the soldiers of the Army of New Russia fighting for? «… For the Russian language and your home. Ordinary men, some of whom had not even served in the army. Each of them has made a choice, and there is no turning back for them, which is why they do not hide their names or faces. I remember one said: “I may have to die, but I’m sure my son will be proud of me...” And another: “Once I lived and didn’t think about the fact that I was Russian until they started killing me for it. And now I understand who I am - I’ve returned to my family.”Memories of the Great Patriotic War have acquired enormous, special significance: partisans, punitive forces, the Great Land...» .

“Lead clouds are floating over the Donetsk steppe and everything around is filled with screams, groans and screams of shell explosions, the crying of Novorossiya - there is a life-and-death battle with the resurrected vermin of fascism, which has risen in the minds of the maddened generation of the two thousandth.

She, this headless hydra in the victorious forty-fifth, came to life again in the minds of crazy youth to the delight of their patrons and ideological inspirers of bloody Ukrainian nationalism, and their overseas masters. ...And here is the result - civil war, but, according to the militias who were forced to take up arms, this is not a civil war, this is a holy war, a war against resurgent fascism. For residents of the Lugansk and Donetsk regions, for the entire Novorossiya, this is a war for the memory of their fathers and grandfathers, who laid down their lives in the Donetsk steppes, liberating their lands from the brown plague, liberating long-suffering Ukraine from the Nazi invaders. And now the young warriors of New Russia are dying with their heads held high, their souls filled with the awareness of a great mission.Here is just one cry from the heart of a militiaman about his dead comrade:

“It’s been forty days since he’s been with us. Forty days since he received his last Stand- one against one and a half dozen SSB men, Cains, who sold their souls for thirty pieces of silver, betrayed the ideals of their fathers and grandfathers and the future of their children.

They have already paid dearly for the death of our battle brother. The rest will also pay for the thousands maimed and tortured in the dungeons of the SBU, in the cities and villages of Donbass, for the tears of children and mothers, for the horrors of war.

Today, the fascists are becoming more sophisticated in atrocities - tearing out nails, burning out stars, breaking bones, killing children. They are served - some out of fear, some out of servile habit, some out of greed. Whoever they are - military personnel, police officers, SSB officers, prosecutors, judges, officials of all ranks, businessmen or just traders - they will never get rid of the stigma of executioners and the curse of the people.

There is no Orthodox cross on Anton’s grave, because there is no grave itself - he died in a city occupied by the last of the fascists on the land they occupied. And the Russian land accepted him, our ancient long-suffering land, watered with the blood of our ancestors, and now his. I believe that the time will come and the streets of cities, and perhaps new cities, will be named after those who, at the call of their hearts and consciences, stood up to defend the Russian land and fell in an unequal battle for our Orthodox faith.

Anton died, but the spirit of resistance was not broken, our primordial faith did not die, Russia is alive. We will liberate Ukraine, just as our fathers and grandfathers liberated it in 1943. We will save you, multinational people of Ukraine.

The kingdom of heaven to the Orthodox warrior Anton and eternal peace to his soul!”

Such words cannot be invented, they can only be suffered, and the militiaman who wrote these lines, in all likelihood, is also ready to give his life for the great truth, this truth nourishes these people, gives strength and powerful will. Such people cannot be defeated." . Comparative characteristics hero-defender of his native land in the Great Patriotic War and heroes of the soldiers of New Russia in the modern war in Ukraine

For those who did not return from the war.

And among them - Dima Mansurov,

Volodya Khudyakov is nineteen years old.

Blessed is he who has visited this world

His moments are fatal!

And we just walked through this life,

In heavy-duty boots.

CHAPTER I

The living stood at the edge of the dug trench, and he sat below. Nothing survived on him that distinguishes people from each other during life, and it was impossible to determine who he was: our soldier? German? And the teeth were all young and strong.

Something clanked under the shovel blade. And they took out into the light a buckle with a star, caked in sand, green with oxide. It was carefully passed from hand to hand, and they identified it as ours. And it must be an officer.

It started to rain. He sprinkled soldiers' tunics on their backs and shoulders, which the actors wore before filming began. The battles in this area took place more than thirty years ago, when many of these people were not yet alive, and all these years he sat like this in a trench, and spring waters and rains seeped into the depths of the earth, from where tree roots sucked them out , roots of grass, and again clouds floated across the sky. Now the rain was washing him. Drops flowed from the dark eye sockets, leaving black soil traces; Water flowed along exposed collarbones and wet ribs, washing away sand and earth from where the lungs used to breathe, where the heart beat. And, washed by the rain, young teeth filled with a vibrant shine.

“Cover with a raincoat,” said the director. He arrived here with a film expedition to shoot a film about the past war, and trenches were dug in the place of former trenches that had long since swollen and overgrown.

Taking hold of the corners, the workers stretched out the raincoat, and the rain pounded on it from above, as if pouring harder. It was summer rain, in the sun, steam rose from the ground. After such rain, all living things grow.

At night, stars shone brightly throughout the sky. Just like thirty-odd years ago, he sat that night in a blurry trench, and the August stars broke above him and fell, leaving a bright trail across the sky. And in the morning the sun rose behind him. It rose from behind the cities, which did not exist then, from behind the steppes, which were then forests, and rose, as always, warming the living.

CHAPTER II

In Kupyansk, steam locomotives screamed on the tracks, and the sun shone through the soot and smoke above the shell-damaged brick water pump. The front had rolled so far away from these places that it no longer rumbled. Our bombers were just passing to the west, shaking everything on the ground, crushed by the roar. And the steam burst silently from the locomotive whistle, the trains silently rolled along the rails. And then, no matter how much Tretyakov listened, not even the roar of the bombing could be heard from there.

The days that he traveled from school to home, and then from home across the whole country, merged, like endlessly flowing steel threads of rails merge. And so, having laid a soldier’s overcoat with a lieutenant’s shoulder straps on the rusty gravel, he sat on the rail in a dead end and had a dry lunch. The autumn sun was shining, the wind stirred the growing hair on my head. How his curly forelock rolled out from under the machine in December '41 and, together with other curly, dark, tar, red, flaxen, soft, coarse hair, was swept by a broom across the floor into one ball of wool, and has not grown back since then never yet. Only on a small passport photograph, now kept by his mother, did he survive in all his pre-war glory.

The colliding iron buffers of the cars clanged, the suffocating smell of burnt coal came, steam hissed, people suddenly rushed and ran somewhere, jumping over the rails; It seems he was the only one in no hurry throughout the entire station. Twice today he stood in line at the checkpoint. I already went to the window once, handed over my certificate, and then it turned out that I still had to pay something. During the war, he completely forgot how to buy, and he didn’t have any money with him. At the front, everything you were entitled to was given out like this, or it was lying around, abandoned during the retreat: take as much as you can carry. But at this time the soldier’s harness is too heavy. And then, during the long defense, and even more acutely - in the school, where they were fed according to the cadet rear standard, I remembered more than once how they walked through a broken dairy plant and scooped up condensed milk with pots, and it trailed behind them like threads of honey. But then they walked in the heat, with parched lips black with dust - that sweet milk got stuck in their parched throat. Or I remembered the roaring herds being driven away, how they were milked straight into the dust of the roads...

Tretyakov had to go behind the water pump and take out from his duffel bag the waffle towel with the brand that had been issued to him at the school. He didn’t have time to unwrap it when several people ran into the rag at once. And all these were men of military age, but saved from the war, somehow twitchy, fast: they tore from their hands and looked around, ready to disappear in an instant. Without haggling, he gave it away with disgust at half price, and stood in line a second time. She slowly moved towards the window, lieutenants, captains, senior lieutenants. On some, everything was brand new, unwrinkled, on others, returning from hospitals, someone’s used cotton was used. The one who first received it from the warehouse, still smelling of kerosene, may have already been buried in the ground, and the uniform, washed and mended, where it was damaged by a bullet or shrapnel, had a second service life.

This whole long line on the way to the front passed in front of the window of the checkpoint, everyone bowed their heads here: some with a frown, others with an inexplicable, searching smile.

- Next! - came from there.

Submitting to vague curiosity, Tretyakov also looked into the window cut low. Among the bags, opened boxes, sacks, among all this might, two pairs of chrome boots were trampling on the sagging boards. The dusty boots, pulled tightly over the calves, shone; the soles under the boots were thin, leather; These are not the kind to knead dirt or walk on planks.

The grasping hands of the rear soldier - the golden hair on them was dusted with flour - pulled the food certificate from his fingers, put everything out of the window at once: a tin can of canned fish, sugar, bread, lard, half a pack of light tobacco:

- Next!

And the next one was already in a hurry, thrusting his certificate over his head.

Having now chosen a less crowded place, Tretyakov untied his duffel bag and, sitting in front of it on the rail, as if in front of a table, had a dry lunch and looked from afar at the bustle of the station. There was peace and tranquility in his soul, as if everything that was before his eyes - this red day with soot, and the locomotives screaming on the tracks, and the sun over the water pump - all this was granted to him for the last time to see like this.

A woman passed behind him, crunching the crumbling gravel, and stopped not far away:

- Treat me to a cigarette, Lieutenant!

She said with a challenge, and her eyes were hungry and shining. It is easier for a hungry person to ask for a drink or a cigarette.

“Sit down,” he said simply. And he chuckled at himself in his heart: I was just about to tie up my duffel bag, and deliberately didn’t cut myself any more bread so that there would be enough for the front. The correct law at the front: they don’t eat until they’re full, but until they’re done.

She willingly sat down next to him on the rusty rail, pulled the edge of her skirt over her thin knees, and tried not to look while he cut off her bread and lard. Everything she wore was put together: a soldier’s tunic without a collar, a civilian skirt pinned at the side, shriveled and cracked German boots on her feet with flattened, upturned toes. She ate, turning away, and he saw how her back and thin shoulder blades trembled as she swallowed a piece. He cut off more bread and lard. She looked at him questioningly. He understood her look and blushed: his weathered cheekbones, from which the tan had not faded for three years, turned brown. A knowing smile wrinkled the corners of her thin lips. With a dark hand with white nails and dark skin at the folds, she boldly took the bread into her oily fingers.

A thin dog, with tufts of hair on its ribs torn out from under the carriage, crawled out from under the carriage, looked at them from afar, whined, dropping saliva. The woman bent down to pick up a stone, and the dog squealed and darted to the side, tucking its tail. A growing iron roar passed through the train, the cars trembled, rolled, and rolled along the rails. From everywhere across the tracks, policemen in blue greatcoats ran towards them, jumped on the steps, climbed as they walked, tumbling over the high side into the iron platforms - coal fires.

“Hooks,” the woman said. - Let's go and catch the people.

And she looked at him appraisingly:

- From school?

-Your hair is growing blond. And those eyebrows... First time there?

He grinned:

- Last!

– Don’t joke like that! My brother was in the partisans...

And she began to talk about her brother, how at first he was also a commander, how he came home from encirclement, how he joined the partisans, how he died. She told the story as usual, it was clear that this was not the first time, maybe she was lying: he listened to such stories a lot.

A locomotive that stopped nearby was filling up with water; a column-thick stream collapsed from the iron sleeve, everything hissed.

– I was also a partisan liaison! – she shouted. Tretyakov nodded. – Now you can’t prove anything!..

Steam from a thin tube behind the pipe hit an iron sheet like a stick, nothing could be heard nearby.

- Let's go get a drink? – she shouted in my ear.

- There's a column!

He picked up the duffel bag:

- And then we’ll smoke, right? – she agreed in advance, keeping up with him.

Only at the pump they realized: he left his overcoat! She volunteered willingly:

- I'll bring it!

She ran in her short boots, jumping over the rails. Will he bring it? But it was a shame to run after her. A freight car, launched from a distance by a shunting locomotive, rolled along the rails of its own accord and temporarily obscured it.

She brought it. She returned proudly, carrying his overcoat on her arm, and placed the cap on her head like a comb. They took turns drinking from the water pump, laughing and splashing water at each other. Pressing the lever, he watched her drink, squeezing his eyes shut, snatching away the icy stream with his mouth. Her hair sparkled with water splashes, and her eyes in the sun turned out to be light red and sparkling. And he was surprised to see that she was probably the same age as him. And at first she seemed middle-aged and gloomy: she was very hungry.

She washed her boots under the stream: she washed them and looked at him. The boots sparkled. She brushed off the splashes from her skirt with her palm. She accompanied him through the entire station. They walked side by side, he threw his duffel bag over his shoulder, she carried his overcoat. As if it was his sister who saw him off. Or she was his girlfriend. They had already begun to say goodbye when it turned out that they were on their way.

He stopped a military truck on the highway and lifted her into the back. Having placed her boot on the rubber slope, she could not throw her leg over the high side: her narrow skirt was in the way. She shouted to him:

- Look away!

And when the heels clicked on the boards above, he jumped into the back in one fell swoop.

The road was rushing back and became covered with lime dust. Tretyakov unwrapped his overcoat and threw it behind their backs. With their heads covered from the wind, they kissed like crazy.

- Stay! - she said.

His heart was pounding and jumping out of his chest. The car was thrown up and their teeth were knocking.

- For a day...

And they knew that they were destined for nothing but nothing ever again. That's why they couldn't tear themselves away from each other. They overtook a platoon of military girls. Row after row a formation appeared, lagging behind the vehicle, and a sergeant major marched to the side, silently opening his mouth as dust rushed into it. All this was seen and covered with a lime cloud.

At the entrance to the village, she jumped off and, with a farewell wave of her hand, disappeared forever. All I heard was:

– Don’t lose your overcoat!

And soon he got down: the truck was turning at a fork. He sat on the side of the road, smoked, and waited for a passing car. And I already regretted that I didn’t stay. He didn't even ask her name. But what's the name?

A platoon of girls marched through the dust, whom they had overtaken as they rushed by.

“Whoa-whoop...” letting go of the formation, the sergeant-major pranced in place. - Stop!

They stomped out of tune, they began to stomp. Their faces are copper-red from the sun, their hair is full of dust.

- Nali-i... - woo!

Straining his calves, backing away from the formation, the foreman raised his voice loudly:

- Be equal! Smi-i-rrna!

The girls have dark circles of sweat from their armpits to the pockets of their tunics. On the other side of the highway, an autumn grove was dusting its leaves in the wind. Squinting with a tense, bulging eye, the foreman walked in front of the formation, as if on horseshoes:

- R-disperse...

And he relishedly said why they should leave. Laughing, kicking their boots, the girls ran across the highway, taking off their carbines over their heads as they ran. The foreman, pleased with himself, came up, saluted, and sat down next to Tretyakov on the side of the road, like superiors with superiors. From under his cap, sweat flowed down his brown temple and down his uncooled cheek, making a shiny trail.

- I’m driving the signalman! - And he winked with a cheerful eye, the whites of it were inflamed from dust and sun. – The position couldn’t be more harmful.

They rolled up a cigarette. Across the highway, voices echoed in the grove. Gradually the platoon assembled. In caps, in shoulder straps, with carbines on their shoulders, the girls were returning from the grove, some carrying a plucked flower in their hand, others a bunch of autumn leaves. We lined up and aligned ourselves. The foreman commanded:

- From the spot - a song!

Laughter answered him. He only showed from afar: this is how my people are supposed to be.

Sitting on the side of the road, waiting for a passing car, Tretyakov watched the line of military girls merrily stomping through the dust.

CHAPTER III

The closer to the front, the more noticeable are the traces of a huge massacre everywhere. Funeral teams have already passed through the fields, burying the dead; the trophy teams had already been collected and transported, which were again suitable for battle; The surrounding residents each took to themselves what the war that rumbled over them had left behind, and was now suitable for living. Burnt, broken equipment rusted in the fields, and above everything, above the silence of death, there was the prickly clarity and blue of the autumn sky, from which the rains poured onto the earth.

And past the infantry clattered with their horseshoes on the grader, their chained butts clinked against their bowler hats, and the tails of their greatcoats whipped their legs as they walked, their legs being rather thin in the windings. Soldiers of all sizes and ages, equipped and loaded, replaced those who had fallen here. And the youngest, who had not yet seen anything, stretched their necks from the uncrumpled collars of their greatcoats, peered into the field of the recent battle with aching curiosity and the timidity of the living before the eternal mystery of death. Where they walked into the light of sunset, at times it was as if the locomotive furnace was dissolving: an intensifying hum could be heard and the air shuddered. And in himself, surprised and ashamed, Tretyakov felt this anxiety. I saw a burnt German tank right next to the highway and stopped to look. The tank was some kind of new, larger than those he had seen on the Northwestern Front. A blue melted hole in the armor: the projectile must have been a sub-caliber one, as if it had gone through butter. And the armor is powerful, thicker than before.

The wind stirred the damp shreds of our gray greatcoat cloth pressed into the black soil. In the fragments of puddles, in the tank's trail, the cold sky shone, the sunset shone freshly and clearly, covered with ripples. Tretyakov looked and worried, and had all sorts of thoughts, like for the first time... I haven’t been at the front for eight months, I’ve lost the habit, I have to get used to it again.

The last night, together with a random fellow traveler, he spent the night on the edge of a large village burned by the Germans. The fellow traveler was no longer young, reddish, a wrinkled face with almost nothing to shave, his hands covered in large freckles and white hair.

- Senior Lieutenant Taranov! - he introduced himself - and clearly, as if he had been burned, he pulled his palm away from the lacquered visor of his cap. By bearing he is a combat soldier. Everything on him was not from someone else's shoulder: a greenish cloth tunic, blue diagonal breeches - the color of table cloth and ink. The boots are remade in the style of chrome ones. And on his arm he carried an officer-cut overcoat made of dark, lint-free cloth. Even on her arm, she retained her figure: her back was padded, her chest was a wheel, epaulettes on her shoulders were like planks, a slit from the bottom to the strap. Such an overcoat looks good in a parade, on a horse, but it is impossible to hide it: no matter which side you pull on you, the wind blows and the stars are visible. It was with her, in the third year of the war, that Senior Lieutenant Taranov traveled from the reserve regiment to the front.

“You understand how impatient I was to participate all this time,” he said, looking sternly into his eyes and shaking his hand with feeling.

Taranov himself chose the house for the night and was very successful. The hostess, about forty, Ukrainian, stately, smoothly combed, black-haired and dark-skinned, was glad to see the officers: at least the hut would not be filled with troops. And soon Taranov, with a towel tied across him, was helping her in the kitchen to organize dinner, opening cans, and the woman was trying next to him. And behind her, attracted by the smell of food, walked a boy of about three years old, reaching out to look at the table.

- Go to bed, my grief! – the hostess shouted and, as if angry with him, thrust a piece of American sausage mince from the table. And she herself looked humbly and fearfully at Taranov.

Running across the road to the drivers, Tretyakov filled a kerosene lamp with gasoline, poured a handful of salt into it so that the gasoline would not explode, and when he returned, three people were already sitting at the table.

- Look, lieutenant, who the mistress was hiding from us! - Taranov noisily greeted him, his golden crowns gleaming from under his pale lips, as if they were damp from the inside. And he winked and pointed with his eyes.

Next to the hostess sat a daughter of about seventeen. She was also large and pretty, but she sat like a nun, her black eyelashes lowered. When Tretyakov sat down next to him, she raised them and looked at him with curiosity. The eyes are blue-blue. The first one spoke:

-Aren't we going to explode?

- What do you! - Tretyakov began to reassure. – Tested at the front. I poured salt into gasoline, it will never explode.

And he stumbled over her gaze. She smiled indulgently:

- I’m such a coward, I’m afraid of everything...

And her mother watched over her with black eyes and told her, told her, poured out words like from a machine gun:

- Here the Germans are leaving, here I am, writing the operation of Wusya, and I’m lying cut up. Oh my goodness! Oksanochka is fourteen rokiv and te, male... Why bother me?

– Is your name Oksana? – Tretyakov asked quietly.

- Oksana. What about you?

- Volodya.

She offered her hand under the table, soft, hot, wet. His heart skipped a beat and began beating as if it were going crazy.

- Oksanochka! – the hostess called, getting up from the table. She sighed, smiled at the lieutenant, and reluctantly followed her mother.

– Don’t get lost, Lieutenant! - Taranov whispered. The two of them sat at the table, waiting. The muffled voice of the hostess could be heard behind the door: she was saying something quickly, not a single word could be understood. - We're going to the front.

He winked and quickly poured glasses. We drank. One by one they lit a light from the lamp.

- Maybe this is the last day, maybe they’ll kill you tomorrow, huh?

And he called loudly:

- Katerina Vasilievna! Kate! Why did you leave us alone? Not good, not good. We might get offended. – The voices outside the door fell silent. Then the hostess came out, alone, beaming with a smile.

- Where is Oksanochka? – Taranov became worried.

- We went to bed. “The hostess sat close to him, her full shoulder touching his shoulder. - If only you were doctors...

- And what? What disease? – asked Taranov.

- It’s not a disease. They are rushing to build roads. If you were doctors, you would free the girl.

- And we are doctors! – Taranov winked at him intensely, his eyes pointing to the door behind which Oksana was standing.

- You're joking! – And she waved her full hand at him. Taranov grabbed the hand and pulled it towards him. – Doctors’ shoulder straps are not like that.

– What are they like for doctors?

- Manesenki, manesenki. - And with the finger of her other hand she drew on his shoulder, on the chase. - Manesenki, manesenki...

- And not more blue ones? “Taranov’s golden crowns gleamed damply, and a sore had dried to his lower lip, which was whitish on the inside. - No more blue?

The conversation was already happening with the eyes. Tretyakov stood up and said that he would go have a smoke. In the corridor I felt my overcoat and duffel bag in the dark. Closing the outer door, I heard Taranov’s muffled voice and a woman’s laughter.

He leaned his back against the surviving fence post and smoked in the yard. I felt bad at heart. The woman, of course, shields her daughter. Maybe, even under the Germans, she shielded her like that, distracted her from her. And this one was happy: “We’re going to the front...”

Silently, the sky on the western side shook like artillery lightning. Washed by the rain, the narrow crescent of the newly born month, filled to the brim with blue, stood over the conflagration, the gnarled shadow of a tree burned alive was spread across the yard. The burning came from a neighboring area: there, charred apple trees, once planted under the windows, surrounded a collapsed chimney in the ashes.

Across the street, in the yard, drivers could be heard hustling around their cars. Tretyakov went there. In the house they slept side by side on the floor. He climbed up the rickety ladder to the hayloft, gropingly grabbed an armful of hay that smelled of dust, lay down, and covered his head with his overcoat. I wanted to get to the place - and quickly. While falling asleep, I heard the voices of the drivers below and the slow hum of an airplane somewhere high above the roof.

...And the next day he met Senior Lieutenant Taranov at the headquarters of the artillery brigade. Having walked six kilometers on foot at sunrise, Tretyakov arrived early; the clerks were just being seated at their desks. After breakfast, they didn’t want to take on anything until their bosses arrived; they opened and slammed drawers with a businesslike air.

Regiments of an artillery brigade, subdivisionally, per battery attached rifle regiments and battalions, were scattered along a wide front, and the headquarters was in a farmstead, four kilometers from the front line. Distant artillery explosions shook the silence and laziness hanging under the low ceiling of the hut. When the wind turned from there, the frequent line of machine guns could be heard, but the wasp buzzing on the glass was more audible. In the dusty window sash that was open outward, she crawled from bottom to top along the glass, supporting herself with fluttering wings, and the clerk on the windowsill leaned over, voluptuously and cautiously aiming to crush her.

The smoke from the summer kitchen wafted from the yard: there, under the cherry trees, the housewife was washing in a wooden trough. Pants and tunics lay in a heap on the grass, and a full vat of foot wraps was boiling over the fire. Clerk Fetisov, young but already bald, volunteered to help and walked around the trough as if on claws. Either he would break a branch over his knee, throw it into the fire, or stir it into a vat, and he himself could not take his eyes off the stone breasts swaying in the neckline of the shirt, from the hands of the hostess, bare to the shoulders, scurrying in the soapy foam. They gave him advice from the window. And only the senior clerk Kalistratov, getting ready to do the job, cleaned the type-setting mouthpiece and pulled the straw through it. He pulled it out all tarry, brown and wet with nicotine, sniffed it with disgust, and shook his head.

The clerk on the window finally managed to kill the wasp. Satisfied, he wiped his fingers on the whitewashed wall, took an apple out of his pocket, chewed it with a crack - the white juice boiled on his teeth.

- So what kind of watch did the scout lock up for you, Semioshkin? – asked Kalistratov. And he diligently tilted his combed, forelocked head to his shoulder, carefully, so as not to tear it off, pulled a new straw through the mouthpiece, and cleaned it clean.

Semioshkin shifted his pants on the windowsill:

- “Doxu”!

- They are lucky... the scouts. - Kalistratov looked into the light at the cleaned mouthpiece through the hole. - They are coming ahead, more and more of them. What do they need?..

Tretyakov's clerk was not noticed at all. You never know how many such lieutenants, uniformed and equipped, pass through headquarters on the way from the school to the front. Some people don’t even have time to wear out their uniforms, but the notice has already started moving back, crossing them off the lists, removing them from all types of allowances that are no longer necessary for them.

And it was also his own fault that the clerks did not notice him, and he knew his guilt. Before breakfast, the brigade intelligence chief dropped into the headquarters - the clerks were suddenly pulled out from behind their desks. Papers appeared on the tables from somewhere, and a clerk in glasses appeared behind a typewriter in the corner, who had not been there until then, as if he had been sitting under the table. Crawling his glasses over the keys, he typed with one finger: knock... knock... - the letters stuck to the tape for a long time.

The brigade intelligence chief liked Tretyakov for some reason: “Kalistratov, you say, I’m taking a lieutenant! He will remain here, with me, as a platoon commander.” And instead of being happy, instead of gratitude, Tretyakov asked to join the battery. From that moment on, the clerks unanimously stopped noticing him. Having gathered in a crowd, they were now looking at Semioshkin’s watch, lying on the table. Even the bespectacled clerk, apparently the lowest in the local hierarchy, came out from behind the typewriter to also take a look, but he was told:

- Print, print, there’s nothing here...

With a knife, Kalistratov opened the back cover of the clock, naked, the pendulum was pulsating in full view of everyone.

“Ie-ve-li-sy...” Kalistratov read the non-Russian letters from the letters. He swallowed his saliva, stood up, and shook his forelock. - Evels! What is this?

“These stones are even better than ruby ones,” Semioshkin boasted and sweetly smacked his apple. - On sixteen stones!

– “Evels”... Lucky for the scouts.

Someone laughed:

“It doesn’t last long for them.”

Tretyakov went out into the yard to wait for a messenger from the regiment, so as not to get lost in vain. The hostess, having removed the vat from the stove, overturned it, a lump of boiled footcloths in soapy boiling water fell into the trough, from where the steam hit her face. And on the grass, on a pile of tunics, with his bare feet apart, a boy of about two years old was sitting next to her, pressing a tomato with his fists to his mouth, sucking the juice out of it. The whole shirt on my stomach was covered in tomato grains and juice. “Probably born without a father,” Tretyakov thought lazily. He got up early today, and in the morning sun, under the distant thud of guns, he felt sleepy. The heads of the reverse leather boots, which he had greased with grease, were all rusty from dust. I thought about cleaning them with grass, I even looked at where to pick the weeds, but then from a distance I noticed a messenger.

With a carbine slung over his shoulders, looking up at the wires converging towards the headquarters, the soldier walked quickly with a lumbering gait, the shadows of the picket fence and the sunlight rolling through him. After waiting, Tretyakov followed him into the headquarters. The messenger who managed to hand over the report drank water at the door. He finished his drink, shook the drops dry behind him, and turned the tin mug upside down next to the buckets. Right there, at the door, he squatted down and wiped his suddenly sweaty face with the cap he had taken off his head; the soft shoulder straps on his shoulders swelled with bubbles.

- From three hundred and sixteen? – Tretyakov asked.

The messenger slobbered on the edge of the newspaper with his tongue and blinked benevolently from below. He lit a cigarette, took a sweet drag, and asked, squinting from the smoke:

- Is this you, Comrade Lieutenant, to accompany you?

His sun-burnt eyebrows were white from accumulated dust, his steamed face looked like it had been washed. Wet, darkened, hair that had grown at the temples stuck to it. After taking several drags in a row, wrapped in a hanging cloud of shag, the messenger suddenly realized:

- I completely forgot... How lost my memory... - And, standing up, he unbuttoned the pocket of his tunic. He pulled out a rag gray with dust and unfolded it in his palm - it contained a silver medal “For Courage”.

The clerks got together, read the accompanying note, and looked at the medal, as they had recently looked at the watch. It was an old model, with a red, oily ribbon on a small block. The silver was blackened, as if smoked in a fire, and there was a dent and a hole in the middle. The bullet passed obliquely through the soft metal, and the number on the back could not be seen.

– What kind of Suntsov is this? – asked the senior clerk Kalistratov, apparently proud of his knowledge of the personnel. - Which arrived to us in Gulkevichi with reinforcements?

“I don’t know,” the coherent man smiled benevolently and wiped his face and neck again with his folded cap. He was glad for the rest, cooled down before walking again in the sun, and the water he drank came out of him later. - They ordered: take it to headquarters, give it back, they say.

- So how did he get killed?

- How? On NP, it should. Scout.

- Telephone operator. It says: signalman.

- Is it a signalman? Well, then, through communication... - the soldier agreed even more readily. - Communication was provided...

For some reason, the senior clerk frowned, took the medal from the clerks, and pinned the accompanying paper to it. And when he opened the creaking lid of the iron box, he was solemn and strict, as if he was performing some kind of ritual. The silver medal clinked against the iron bottom, and again the lid came down with a grinding and clanging sound.

Soon, following the messenger, Tretyakov went to the regiment. They turned into an alley. The entire width of it, from fence to fence, was met by officers coming from breakfast. The sun was shining from the side, and the shadows with their heads reached through the dust to the fence, and the neighbors went over it.

The senior in rank, the major, was confidently telling something, and the officer walking from the right edge looked along the line, participating in the conversation with a smile. And with surprise, Tretyakov recognized him as Senior Lieutenant Taranov, his golden fang flashed from his flabby lips. But with his appearance and his drill bearing, he fit right in with that line of those returning from breakfast, as if he had always been here.