Chapter one

Leonid Soshnin returned home in the worst mood. AND
although it was a long walk, almost to the outskirts of the city, to the railway village,
he didn’t get on the bus - his wounded leg may ache, but walking will calm him down and
he will think over everything that was told to him at the publishing house, think it over and judge how
what should he do next?
Actually, there was no publishing house as such in the city of Veisk, from
a department remained there, but the publishing house itself was transferred to the city more
large, and, as the liquidators probably thought, more cultured,
possessing a powerful printing base. But the "base" was exactly the same as
in Veisk - a decrepit legacy of old Russian cities. Printing house
was located in a pre-revolutionary building made of strong brown brick, stitched
gratings of narrow windows at the bottom and shaped curved windows at the top, also narrow,
but already raised upward like an exclamation mark. Half a building
Wei printing house, where there were typesetting shops and printing machines, has long been
fell into the bowels of the earth, and although there were lamps in continuous rows along the ceiling
daylight, it was still uncomfortable, chilly and
something was always ticking, as if in the ears that were blocked, or was working, buried
in the dungeon, a delayed-action explosive mechanism.
The publishing department huddled in two and a half rooms, creaking
highlighted by the regional newspaper. In one of them, shrouded in cigarette smoke,
twitched, squirmed in the chair, grabbed the phone, littered the local
cultural luminary - Oktyabrina Perfilyevna Syrokvasova, moving forward and
then local literature. Syrovasova considered herself the most knowledgeable
person: if not in the whole country, then in Veisk she has no equal in intelligence
was. She made presentations and reports on current literature, shared plans
publishers through the newspaper, sometimes in newspapers, and reviewed books
local authors, inappropriately and inappropriately inserting quotes from Virgil and Dante,
from Savonarola, Spinoza, Rabelais, Hegel and Exupery, Kant and Ehrenburg, Yuri
Olesha, Tregub and Ermilov, however, and the ashes of Einstein and Lunacharsky sometimes
worried, and did not ignore the leaders of the world proletariat.
Everything has long been decided with Soshnin’s book. Let the stories from it be published
and in thin but metropolitan magazines, three times they were condescendingly mentioned in
review critical articles, he stood in the back of his head for five years, got into
The plan was established, all that remained was to edit and design the book.
Having set the time for a business meeting at exactly ten, Syrovasova appeared at
publishing department by twelve. Smelling Soshnin with tobacco,
out of breath, she rushed past him along the dark corridor - light bulbs
someone “stole”, hoarsely said “Sorry!” and crunched the key for a long time
faulty lock, swearing in a low voice.

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Russian writers

The novel “The Sad Detective” was published in 1985, during a turning point in the life of our society. It was written in the style of harsh realism and therefore caused a surge of criticism. The reviews were mostly positive. The events of the novel are relevant today, just as works about honor and duty, good and evil, honesty and lies are always relevant.
The novel describes various moments in the life of former policeman Leonid Soshnin, who at the age of forty-two was retired due to injuries received in the service.
I remember the events of different years of his life.
Leonid Soshnin's childhood, like almost all children of the post-war period, was difficult. But, like many children, he did not think about such complex issues of life. After his mother and father died, he stayed to live with his aunt Lipa, whom he called Lina. He loved her, and when she began to walk, he could not understand how she could leave him when she had given him her whole life. It was ordinary childish selfishness. She died shortly after his marriage. He married a girl, Lera, whom he saved from pestering hooligans. There was no special love, he just, as a decent person, could not help but marry the girl after he was received in her house as a groom.
After his first feat (capturing a criminal), he became a hero. After this he was wounded in the arm. This happened when one day he went to calm down Vanka Fomin, and he pierced his shoulder with a pitchfork.
With a heightened sense of responsibility for everything and everyone, with his sense of duty, honesty and fight for justice, he could only work in the police.
Leonid Soshnin always thinks about people and the motives of their actions. Why and why do people commit crimes? He reads a lot of philosophical books to understand this. And he comes to the conclusion that thieves are born, not made.
For a completely stupid reason, his wife leaves him; after the accident he became disabled. After such troubles, he retired and found himself in a completely new and unfamiliar world, where he was trying to save himself with a “pen”. He did not know how to get his stories and books published, so they lay on the shelf for five years with the editor Syrokvasova, a “gray” woman.
One day he was attacked by bandits, but he overcame them. He felt bad and lonely, then he called his wife, and she immediately realized that something had happened to him. She understood that he always lived some kind of stressful life.
And at some point he looked at life differently. He realized that life doesn't always have to be a struggle. Life is communication with people, caring for loved ones, making concessions to each other. After he realized this, his affairs went better: they promised to publish his stories and even gave him an advance, his wife returned, and some kind of peace began to appear in his soul.
The main theme of the novel is a man who finds himself among the crowd. A man lost among people, confused in his thoughts. The author wanted to show the individuality of a person among the crowd with his thoughts, actions, feelings. His problem is to understand the crowd, to blend in with it. It seems to him that in the crowd he does not recognize people whom he knew well before. Among the crowd, they are all the same, good and evil, honest and deceitful. They all become the same in the crowd. Soshnin is trying to find a way out of this situation with the help of the books he reads, and with the help of the books he himself tries to write.
I liked this work because it touches on the eternal problems of man and the crowd, man and his thoughts. I liked how the author describes the hero’s relatives and friends. With what kindness and tenderness he treats Aunt Grana and Aunt Lina. The author portrays them as kind and hardworking women who love children. How the girl Pasha is described, Soshnin’s attitude towards her and his indignation at the fact that she was not loved at the institute. The hero loves them all, and it seems to me that his life becomes much better because of these people’s love for him.

NOVEL BY V. P. ASTAFIEV "THE SAD DETECTIVE"

V.P. Astafiev is a writer whose works reflect the life of people of the 20th century. Astafiev is a person who knows and is close to all the problems of our sometimes difficult life.

Viktor Petrovich went through the war as a private and knows all the hardships of post-war life. I think that with his wisdom and experience he is one of those people whose advice and orders you should not only listen to, but try to follow. But Astafiev does not act as a prophet, he simply writes about what is close to him and what worries him. Although the works of Viktor Petrovich belong to modern Russian literature, the problems that are often raised in them are more than one thousand years old.

Eternal questions of good and evil, punishment and justice have long forced people to look for answers to them. But this turned out to be a very difficult matter, because the answers lie in the person himself, and good and evil, honesty and dishonor are intertwined in us. Having a soul, we are often indifferent. Everyone has a heart, but we are often called heartless. Astafiev’s novel “The Sad Detective” raises the problems of crime, punishment and the triumph of justice. The theme of the novel is the current intelligentsia and the current people. The work tells about the life of two small towns: Veisk and Khailovsk, about the people living in them, about modern morals. When people talk about small towns, the image of a quiet, peaceful place appears in the mind, where life, filled with joys, flows slowly, without any special incidents. A feeling of peace appears in the soul. But those who think so are mistaken. In fact, life in Veisk and Khailovsk flows in a stormy stream. Young people, drunk to the point where a person turns into an animal, rape a woman old enough to be their mother, and the parents leave the child locked in the apartment for a week. All these pictures described by Astafiev terrify the reader. It becomes scary and creepy at the thought that the concepts of honesty, decency and love are disappearing. The description of these cases in the form of summaries is, in my opinion, an important artistic feature.

Hearing every day about various incidents, we sometimes don’t pay attention, but collected in the novel, they force us to take off our rose-colored glasses and understand: if it didn’t happen to you, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t concern you. The novel makes you think about your actions, look back and see what you have done over the years. After reading, you ask yourself the question: “What good and good did I do? Did I notice when the person next to me felt bad?” You begin to think that indifference is as evil as cruelty. I think that finding answers to these questions is the purpose of the work.

In the novel "The Sad Detective" Astafiev created a whole system of images. The author introduces the reader to each hero of the work, talking about his life. The main character is police operative Leonid Soshnin. He is a forty-year-old man who was injured several times in the line of duty and should retire. Having retired, he begins to write, trying to figure out where there is so much anger and cruelty in a person. Where does he keep it? Why, along with this cruelty, does the Russian people have pity for the prisoners and indifference to themselves, to their neighbor - a disabled person of war and labor? Astafiev contrasts the main character, an honest and brave operative worker, with policeman Fyodor Lebed, who quietly serves, moving from one position to another. On especially dangerous trips, he tries not to risk his life and gives the right to neutralize armed criminals to his partners, and it is not very important that his partner does not have a service weapon, because he is a recent graduate of a police school, and Fedor has a service weapon. A striking image in the novel is Aunt Granya - a woman who, without having children of her own, gave all her love to the children who played near her house at the railway station, and then to the children in the Children's Home. Often the heroes of the work, who should cause disgust, cause pity. Urna, who has transformed from a self-employed woman into a drunkard without a home or family, evokes sympathy. She screams songs and pesters passers-by, but she becomes ashamed not for her, but for the society that has turned its back on the Urn. Soshnin says that they tried to help her, but nothing worked, and now they simply don’t pay attention to her. The city of Veisk has its own Dobchinsky and Bobchinsky. Astafiev does not even change the names of these people and characterizes them with a quote from Gogol’s “The Inspector General,” thereby refuting the well-known saying that nothing lasts forever under the sun. Everything flows, everything changes, but such people remain, exchanging clothes of the 19th century for a fashionable suit and shirt with gold cufflinks of the 20th century. The city of Veisk also has its own literary luminary, who, sitting in his office, “enveloped in cigarette smoke, twitched, squirmed in his chair and littered with ashes.” This is Oktyabrina Perfilyevna Syrokvasova. It is this man, whose description brings a smile, that moves local literature forward and further. This woman decides what works to print. But not everything is so bad, because if there is evil, then there is also good. Leonid Soshnin makes peace with his wife, and she returns to him again along with her daughter. It’s a little sad that the death of Soshnin’s neighbor, Tutyshikha’s grandmother, forces them to make peace. It is grief that brings Leonid and Lera closer together. The blank sheet of paper in front of Soshnin, who usually writes at night, is a symbol of the beginning of a new stage in the life of the protagonist’s family. And I want to believe that their future life will be happy and joyful, and they will cope with grief, because they will be together.

The novel "The Sad Detective" is an exciting work. Although it is difficult to read, because Astafiev describes too terrible pictures. But such works need to be read, because they make you think about the meaning of life, so that it does not pass colorlessly and emptyly. I liked the work. I learned a lot of important things and understood a lot. I met a new writer and I know for sure that this is not the last work by Astafiev that I will read.

References

To prepare this work, materials from the site were used http://sochok.by.ru/

Viktor Petrovich Astafiev

"The Sad Detective"

Forty-two-year-old Leonid Soshnin, a former criminal investigation operative, returns home from a local publishing house to an empty apartment, in the worst mood. The manuscript of his first book, “Life is More Precious than Everything,” after five years of waiting, has finally been accepted for production, but this news does not make Soshnin happy. A conversation with the editor, Oktyabrina Perfilyevna Syrovasova, who tried to humiliate the author-policeman who dared to call himself a writer with arrogant remarks, stirred up Soshnin’s already gloomy thoughts and experiences. “How to live in the world? Lonely? - he thinks on the way home, and his thoughts are heavy.

He served his time in the police: after two wounds, Soshnin was sent to a disability pension. After another quarrel, Lerka’s wife leaves him, taking with her his little daughter Svetka.

Soshnin remembers his whole life. He cannot answer his own question: why is there so much room in life for grief and suffering, but always close to love and happiness? Soshnin understands that, among other incomprehensible things and phenomena, he has to comprehend the so-called Russian soul, and he needs to start with the people closest to him, with the episodes he witnessed, with the destinies of the people with whom his life encountered... Why are Russian people ready to regret bonebreaker and bloodletter and not notice how a helpless war invalid is dying nearby, in the next apartment?.. Why does a criminal live so freely and cheerfully among such kind-hearted people?..

In order to escape from his gloomy thoughts at least for a minute, Leonid imagines how he will come home, cook himself a bachelor’s dinner, read, sleep a little so that he has enough strength for the whole night - sitting at the table, over a blank sheet of paper. Soshnin especially loves this night time, when he lives in some isolated world created by his imagination.

Leonid Soshnin's apartment is located on the outskirts of Veysk, in an old two-story house where he grew up. From this house my father went to war, from which he did not return, and here, towards the end of the war, my mother also died from a severe cold. Leonid stayed with his mother’s sister, Aunt Lipa, whom he used to call Lina since childhood. Aunt Lina, after the death of her sister, went to work in the commercial department of Veyskaya railway. This department was “judged and replanted at once.” The aunt tried to poison herself, but she was saved and after the trial she was sent to a colony. By this time, Lenya was already studying at the regional special school of the Internal Affairs Directorate, from where he was almost kicked out because of his convicted aunt. But the neighbors, and mainly Father Lavrya’s fellow Cossack soldier, interceded for Leonid with the regional police authorities, and everything turned out okay.

Aunt Lina was released under an amnesty. Soshnin had already worked as a district police officer in the remote Khailovsky district, from where he brought his wife. Before her death, Aunt Lina managed to nurse Leonid’s daughter, Sveta, whom she considered her granddaughter. After Lina’s death, Soshniny passed under the protection of another, no less reliable aunt named Granya, a switchwoman on the shunting hill. Aunt Granya spent her whole life taking care of other people’s children, and even little Lenya Soshnin comprehended in a peculiar way kindergarten the first skills of brotherhood and hard work.

Once, after returning from Khailovsk, Soshnin was on duty with a police squad at a mass celebration on the occasion of Railway Worker's Day. Four guys who were drunk to the point of losing their memory raped Aunt Granya, and if it weren’t for his patrol partner, Soshnin would have shot these drunken guys sleeping on the lawn. They were convicted, and after this incident, Aunt Granya began to avoid people. One day she expressed to Soshnin the terrible thought that by convicting the criminals, they had thereby ruined young lives. Soshnin shouted at the old woman for feeling sorry for non-humans, and they began to avoid each other...

In the dirty and spit-stained entrance of the house, three drunks accost Soshnin, demanding to say hello and then to apologize for their disrespectful behavior. He agrees, trying to cool their ardor with peaceful remarks, but the main one, a young bully, does not calm down. Fueled by alcohol, the guys attack Soshnin. He, having gathered his strength - his wounds and hospital “rest” took their toll - defeats the hooligans. One of them hits his head on the heating radiator when he falls. Soshnin picks up a knife on the floor, staggers into the apartment. And he immediately calls the police and reports the fight: “One hero’s head was split on a radiator. If so, don’t look for it. The villain is me."

Coming to his senses after what happened, Soshnin again remembers his life.

He and his partner were chasing a drunk on a motorcycle who had stolen a truck. The truck rushed like a deadly ram through the streets of the town, having already ended more than one life. Soshnin, the senior patrol officer, decided to shoot the criminal. His partner fired, but before he died, the truck driver managed to hit the motorcycle of the pursuing policemen. On the operating table, Soshnina’s leg was miraculously saved from amputation. But he remained lame; it took him a long time to learn to walk. During his recovery, the investigator tormented him for a long time and persistently with an investigation: was the use of weapons legal?

Leonid also remembers how he met his future wife, saving her from hooligans who were trying to take off the girl’s jeans right behind the Soyuzpechat kiosk. At first, life between him and Lerka went in peace and harmony, but gradually mutual reproaches began. His wife especially did not like his literary studies. “Such Leo Tolstoy with a seven-shooter pistol, with rusty handcuffs in his belt...” she said.

Soshnin recalls how one “took” a stray guest performer, a repeat offender, Demon, in a hotel in the town.

And finally, he remembers how Venka Fomin, who was drunk and returned from prison, put a final end to his career as an operative... Soshnin brought his daughter to his wife’s parents in a distant village and was about to return to the city when his father-in-law told him that a drunk man had locked him up in a neighboring village in the barn of old women and threatens to set them on fire if they do not give him ten rubles for a hangover. During the detention, when Soshnin slipped on manure and fell, the frightened Venka Fomin stuck a pitchfork into him... Soshnin was barely taken to the hospital - and he barely escaped certain death. But the second group of disability and retirement could not be avoided.

At night Leonid is awakened from sleep terrible scream neighbor girl Yulka. He hurries to the apartment on the first floor, where Yulka lives with her grandmother Tutyshikha. Having drunk a bottle of Riga balsam from the gifts brought by Yulka’s father and stepmother from the Baltic sanatorium, Grandma Tutyshikha is already fast asleep.

At the funeral of grandmother Tutyshikha, Soshnin meets his wife and daughter. At the wake they sit next to each other.

Lerka and Sveta stay with Soshnin, at night he hears his daughter sniffling behind the partition, and feels his wife sleeping next to him, timidly clinging to him. He gets up, approaches his daughter, straightens her pillow, presses his cheek to her head and loses himself in some kind of sweet grief, in a resurrecting, life-giving sadness. Leonid goes to the kitchen, reads “Proverbs of the Russian People” collected by Dahl - the section “Husband and Wife” - and is surprised at the wisdom contained in simple words.

"Dawn is damp, snowball was already rolling into the kitchen window when, enjoying the peace among the quietly sleeping family, with a feeling of long-unknown confidence in his capabilities and strength, without irritation or melancholy in his heart, Soshnin stuck to the table, placed a blank sheet of paper in the spot of light and froze for a long time over it.” .

Leonid Soshnin walked home with his head down, immersed in his joyless black thoughts. He recalled his past and tried to understand why, at forty-two, he was left with nothing, and how he deserved such a sad fate. Soshnin felt like an old, useless thing that had served its purpose. Everything is in the past - both work in the criminal investigation department and a happy family life with his beloved wife and daughter. No one took the former operative’s attempts at self-expression seriously; editor Syrovasova accepted his book “Life Is More Expensive” for production, but showered the author with humiliating ridicule. According to others, the policeman and the writer could not get along in one person; it simply went beyond the scope of their perception of reality.

Soshnin could not answer his own questions. He absolutely did not understand why in the lives of most people suffering and grief rule the show, while love and happiness do not play their roles for long and leave the stage forever.

Leonid liked to sit at night over a blank sheet of paper, mentally creating his own imaginary world. He philosophized and created in an old house on the outskirts of Weisk. His childhood passed there, his mother died of a serious illness, his father went to war... Soshnin only had his aunt Lina left, who was unjustly convicted and sent to a colony. She tried to take her own life and took poison, but they pumped her out - it was impossible to avoid imprisonment. Because of this incident, Soshnin almost flew out of the regional special school of the Internal Affairs Directorate, but Father Lavrya’s fellow Cossack soldier saved the situation by putting in a good word for him with the regional police authorities. Aunt Granya, who raised other people's children all her life, took care of the orphan.

Lenya was already working as a district police officer in the Khailovsky district when Lina was released under an amnesty.

Many sad events flashed before the former operative's mind's eye. Evil fate did not spare even the good old aunt Granya - she was raped by drunken revelers, and Soshnin almost carried out lynching on the guilty guys. Despite everything, Leonid always tried to resolve conflicts peacefully, he wanted justice to prevail, but life did not spare him and presented him with unpleasant surprises. The criminals rushed at him in the gateways, tried to crush him along with the motorcycle in a truck, the operative fought back, but again and again received serious injuries, and “rested” in a hospital bed.

It seemed that fortune finally smiled on Soshnin when he saved his future wife Lera from rapists. They had a wedding, the young people lived in perfect harmony and their daughter Svetlana was born, but joy did not reign in their home for long. The wife could not understand her husband’s passion for literature and jokingly called him “Tolstoy with a seven-shooter pistol.” Gradually, mutual reproaches became more and more poisonous family life and one day Lera took her daughter and left.

Leonid’s police career ended with a sad episode: former prisoner Venka Fomin pierced the operative with a pitchfork and forced him to look death straight in the face. Soshnin miraculously survived, but he could not avoid disability and had to retire.

At his neighbor’s funeral, Lenya met his wife and sat next to her at the wake. Lerka and her daughter stayed overnight in the old apartment, and Soshnin did not sleep a wink, bent over a blank sheet of paper, enjoying the peace of his peacefully sleeping family.

“Cruel” realism by V. Astafiev (based on the story “Sad Detective”)