After the battle with the Whites, only a small detachment remained alive, which consists of Commissar Evsyukov, 23 Red Army soldiers and Maryutka. They broke through the front, but were left alone in the cold, unfamiliar desert of Turkmenistan, a couple of camels, a little food and water, that’s all they had. Special among them was the sniper Maryutka, an orphan. She worked from the age of seven, working in fishing factories for 12 years, and when the civil war came she went to fight for the Reds. She had no education, but she had a very subtle soul, so she wrote illiterate and mediocre, but very emotional poems. And if her poems were not very good, then she shot without a miss. This was Maryutka, who walked along with twenty-three and Evsyukov through the cold desert.
The transition was difficult, food and water were running out, morale and strength were fading. In the evening, the whole detachment decided to go to Kyrgyzstan. And in the morning Maryutka woke up Evsyukov with a report on intelligence. A caravan was walking not far from them. Everyone was raised at once, they went to meet the caravan. When approaching the caravan, they were fired upon; there were several White Guards among the merchants, but the Reds captured the caravan and captured the White Guard lieutenant Govorukh-Otrok, who was supposed to convey an important report to headquarters. Maryutka missed, her forty-first remained alive. And it was Maryutka who was assigned to guard the lieutenant. Having tied him with ropes, she tied the lieutenant to her. The Kirghiz stole their camels, so the detachment continued the transition on foot. The cold and hunger depleted the people's strength, but they finally made it to Kyrgyzstan, where they were received, fed and watered, and allowed to rest. At this time, a boat washed ashore and the commissioner decides to send Maryutka, the lieutenant and two others to headquarters.
During the voyage, a strong wind during a storm carries a small ship to the shore of a small fishing island, the Red Army soldiers die and Maryutka is left alone with the lieutenant. To escape the thunderstorm and rain, they hide in a small fishing shed. The lieutenant fell ill, and Maryutka began to nurse him; it was at this time that Maryutka awakened a tender feeling for her captive. When the lieutenant recovers, they move to another building, where Maryutka found food supplies abandoned by the owners. There they decided to wait until spring, when ships would start sailing and save them. Maryutka’s feelings for the lieutenant, who also fell in love with her, are growing stronger.
Govorukh-Otrok invites Maryutka to give up the war and leave with him, but she believes that she must help bring about the proletarian revolution. On this basis they had quarrels and after one such quarrel, they saw a ship passing. Their saviors were white and Maryutka, remembering Evsyukov’s order, shot at the lieutenant. He fell into the water and only afterward did Maryutka realize what she had done.
In days when all our attention is focused on understanding the grandiose event of a hundred years ago, the revolution of 1917, there are works that we want to re-read many times, rediscovering new meanings in them, comprehending the depth and relevance of the author’s intention. I would like to draw the readers’ attention to my favorite story by Boris Lavrenev, “The Forty-First.” It provides the clearest artistic explanation of the causes of the revolution and civil war. The consequences of these events are still being felt in our deeply divided society.
The writer's biography itself could well become a plot for adventure novel. Since childhood, Boris grew up in the world of books, stories of exploits and travels. His grandmother was a wealthy heiress who managed to give her daughter Maria an excellent education; his maternal ancestors served under Suvorov and Potemkin. The future writer's parents were school teachers. His godfather is M.E. Becker was the mayor of Kherson. Retired artilleryman and colleague of L.N. Tolstoy in the Sevastopol campaign, M. Becker created a good library in the city, which young Lavrenev, who read voraciously, happily used. Boris's favorite books were stories about sea voyages, discoveries and distant lands. Then, in early years, he read Daniel Defoe’s novel “Robinson Crusoe” and decided to run away from home and become a sailor. However, during the Italian period he was detained by the carabinieri and returned to his homeland.
The boy who grew up in Kherson, on the banks of the Dnieper, was by no means of proletarian origin. He graduated from the Faculty of Law of Moscow University in 1915 and was soon drafted into the army, where, like his godfather, he became an artilleryman. The revolution and the rapid collapse of the tsarist empire prompted him to deep reflection about the essence of the events taking place in Russia. On short time the young officer Lavrenev joined the white movement, but soon returned to Moscow, where in November 1918 he saw the first parade in honor of the anniversary of the revolution. Being a convinced statesman, he understood: since there is an army, it means there is a state. And from now on, once and for all, he linked his destiny with him, with his armed forces. As part of the armored train team, he stormed Kyiv, occupied by Petlyura. Participated in battles on the Crimean Peninsula. During the defeat of Ataman Zeleny's gang, he was wounded in the leg. After the hospital, he had to part with combat service and become a political worker in Central Asia. There, hot on the heels of the events of the Civil War, the plans for the story “The Wind” and several large stories were born. The most famous of them, “The Forty-First,” was written in November 1924.
The beginning of the story is dynamic and dramatic: the terrible reprisal of the White Cossacks over a detachment of Red Army soldiers who were surrounded: “One hundred and nineteen and almost all camels remained spread out on the frozen scree of sand, between snake saxaul loops and red tamarisk twigs.” Only twenty-three Red Army soldiers, led by Commissar Evsyukov, managed to escape to the north from the deadly saber circle. A special one in the detachment was the girl Maryutka, whose fate the author, like a painter, recreated with capacious and laconic strokes: “The orphan fishing orphan Maryutka, from a fishing village in the Volga, swollen with reed grass, wide-water delta near Astrakhan.
From the age of seven, for twelve years, I sat astride a bench greasy with fish innards, wearing stiff canvas pants, ripping open the silver-slippery bellies of herring with a knife.”
Think about what a social elevator in Tsarist Russia could have been like for a girl doomed to hard labor and dreaming of better life? Her subsequent action is quite motivated: “And when they announced in all cities and villages a recruitment of volunteers for the Red Guard, then still a guard, Maryutka suddenly stuck a knife into the bench, stood up and went in her stiff pants to sign up for the Red Guards.”
All ten chapters of the story are a magnificent combination of good humor, irony, lyricism and drama, where heroic pathos interacts with the tragic, and romanticism with realism and expressionism. Upon admission to the Red Guard, Maryutka “took a subscription to renounce the woman’s lifestyle and, by the way, childbearing until the final victory of labor over capital.”
Maryutka passionately wanted to express her impressions of the birth of a new world in poems about the revolution, about its leaders, about Lenin:
Lenin is our proletarian hero,
Let's put your statues in the square.
You overthrew that royal palace
And he began to work.
She took the poems to the editorial office, where, after she left, the employees rolled on the window sills laughing: there was no furniture in the editorial office in those days. Image main character the story has been recreated by the author in quite a multifaceted way: a laconic, retrospective biography, portrait and speech characteristics, and most importantly, her actions in a combat situation: “Maryutka’s poems were not successful, but she landed her rifle on the target with remarkable accuracy. She was the best shooter in the Yevsyukov detachment.” Each girl’s shot at the White Guards was nothing more than an act of her retaliation against the supporters of that Russia that doomed her and millions of fellow citizens to poverty and lawlessness. Maryutka kept a special account of the officers of the tsarist army she killed: “Thirty-ninth, fish cholera. Fortieth, fish cholera."
The second main character of the story - guard lieutenant Vadim Nikolaevich Govorukha-Otrok - under the pen of Lavrenev appeared before the readers as, in his own way, an extraordinary representative of the Romanov Empire. The writer draws a portrait of one of his colleagues in the tsarist army and does not even change his rank and surname. Having been captured by the Red Guards, the lieutenant behaves courageously: flatly, with irony and mockery in his response, he refuses to hand over his secret assignments to Monsieur Evsyukov. On the difficult journey to the Aral Sea, he walks alone straight and calmly, at a rest stop he listens carefully to Maryutka’s poems and explains to her that “every art of learning requires, it has its own rules and laws.”
Vadim Nikolaevich considers himself a human being European culture and traditions: in addition to knowledge of French, he, judging by the text, also speaks English, it is no coincidence that he named his former large yacht in St. Petersburg in honor of his sister “Nelly”, and not Elena.
Here we cannot help but recall Ivan Solonevich’s providential book “The People’s Monarchy,” the author of which sharply criticized the entire pro-Western Romanov empire for the fact that its ruling elite had completely fenced itself off from the common people with a different language, costumes, and customs, while at the same time continuing to live luxuriously at the expense of the masses of the people oppressed by it. According to I. Solonevich, if the monarchy is destined to be revived in the future Russia, then only Muscovite Rus' can serve as a model for it, all of whose institutions - from top to bottom - were monarchical, and the people and the ruling elite lived in the same socio-economic and cultural structure.
The core of the story is the forced Robinsonade of its two main characters, when after a storm in the Aral Sea they found themselves thrown ashore on an uninhabited fishing island, and the boat was carried out to sea. Once on land, the lieutenant, wet and cold, immediately gave an ironic assessment of the situation: “A perfect fairy tale! Robinson accompanied by Friday!
He continued to call Maryutka Friday both before and after she came out in the fishing shed and saved him, who had fallen into unconsciousness, from a severe cold: “I fed you all the flatbreads that were left in boiling water. And now there are only fish all around.”
The feeling of love that flared up among the heroes of the story for each other is also artistically motivated: for the lieutenant it arises from gratitude for the saved life, for Maryutka - for the world of culture that was opened to her, for those “fairy tales” that he told her in the evenings, starting with adventures Robinson Crusoe: “Lieutenant Govorukha-Otrok should have been forty-first on Maryutka’s death list of the Guard. And he became the first in the account of girlish joy.”
And yet, the island idyll of the heroes was not destined to last long: their ideas about their own future and the future of Russia remained diametrically opposed. The lieutenant dreamed of a quiet life at a dacha near Sukhum, Maryutka dreamed of continuing the struggle for the victory of the revolution. Their dialogue-argument is typical in this regard:
It’s only strange to me that you, girl, have become so coarse that you are drawn to go smash and kill with the drunken, lousy hordes.
They may have lice in their body, but your soul is lousy through and through!
For the lieutenant, the rebel people are “drunken, lousy hordes.” This definition is the whole point. social racism the ruling elite of the Romanov empire in relation to their own people.
A tragic ending is inevitable. When the White Guard longboat appears near the shore, Maryutka, grabbing a rifle, instinctively carries out the order of Commissar Evsyukov: “In the water, on a pink thread of nerve, an eye knocked out of its orbit swayed. The ball, blue as the sea, looked at her with bewilderment and pity.”
And yet the story ends with an impressive scene of Maryutka’s human grief and despair, her oppressive howl: “My dear! What have I done? The best representatives of two such different Russias were not destined to understand each other.
What is the modern meaning and lessons of this, in my opinion, brilliant story? Many political scientists and historians call the devastating events of the 1990s a counter-revolution in relation to 1917, and this has its own logic. Again, a class stratification unprecedented in its entire history arose in Russia. Once again, through the appropriation of natural and other resources, a class of oligarchs and their minions has emerged, for whom the people are “genetic rabble,” “cattle,” “rogues,” and this is nothing more than a return of social racism. For Courchevel regulars, education, knowledge, experience, decency, and the ability to sympathize and empathize have become unnecessary. How long will their celebration of life last? What would Boris Lavrenev say about the monument to Petlyura erected in Ukraine, from whose gangs he liberated Kyiv?
A verified, clear picture of the events currently taking place in Russia was given by journalist Maxim Shevchenko, a member of the Public Chamber under the President of the Russian Federation: “ Historical problem Russia has always been that it was the periphery of the West and was considered by the ruling elites as an annex to it. The only anti-Western, nationally oriented government in Russian history was the Soviet government. It perceived the West not as a role model and certainly not as a “big brother” determining the economic, political and cultural structure of Russia.
Today we face the same choice. Either Russia will be an annex to the West, or a nationally oriented state will be formed, putting the interests of the people at the forefront and working for their development.”
This is precisely where the enduring lessons of the revolution of 1917 and the civil war that followed are valuable to us, about which Boris Lavrenev’s stunningly influential story “The Forty-First” was written.
Every citizen of Russia must make his choice and create in the name of a nationally oriented state. Only on these paths is our worthy future real.
Galina Chudinova, member of the Writers' Union of Russia, Perm
Current page: 1 (book has 4 pages in total)
Boris Lavrenev
Forty-one
Pavel Dmitrievich Zhukov
Chapter One
Written by the author solely out of necessity
The sparkling ring of Cossack sabers in the morning disintegrated for an instant in the north, cut off by the hot streams of a machine gun, and the crimson commissar Evsyukov broke through the gap with a feverish last stop.
In total, the crimson Evsyukov, twenty-three and Maryutka escaped from the mortal circle in the velvet basin.
One hundred and nineteen and almost all camels remained spread out on the frozen scree of sand, between the snake saxaul loops and red tamarisk twigs.
When they reported to Captain Buryga that the remnants of the enemy had broken through, he twirled his shaggy mustache with his bestial paws, yawned, stretched out his mouth, similar to the hole in a cast-iron ashtray, and growled lazily:
- Hit them! Don't race, because there's no need to kill the horses, they'll die in the sand. Bara-bir!
And the crimson Evsyukov with twenty-three and Maryutka, with the evasive swing of an angry steppe coin, ran away into the endless grain-sands.
The reader is already impatient to know why “raspberry Evsyukov”?
Everything is in order.
When Kolchak plugged the Orenburg line with the rifle-scarred human mess, like a tight cork, putting stupefied steam locomotives on their backs - to rust in remote dead ends - there was no black paint in the Turkestan Republic for painting leather.
And the time has come, loud, vague, leathery.
Thrown from the sweet comfort of house walls into heat and ice, into rain and buckets, into the piercing whistle of a bullet, the human body needs a durable tire.
That's why leather jackets became popular among people.
Jackets were painted everywhere in black, shimmering steel blue, a stern and hard color, like the owners of the jackets.
And there was no such color in Turkestan.
The revolutionary headquarters had to requisition from the local population supplies of German aniline powders, with which the dry-lipped Turkmen wives colored the aerial silks of their shawls and the shaggy patterns of Tekin carpets in the firebird flashes.
They began to paint fresh sheep skins with these powders, and the Turkestan Red Army burst into flames with all the hues of the rainbow - crimson, orange, lemon, emerald, turquoise, lilac.
For Commissioner Evsyukov, fate, in the person of the pockmarked janitor of the clothing warehouse, gave bright crimson pants and a jacket as part of his staff uniform.
Since childhood, Evsyukov’s face has also been crimson, covered in red freckles, and on his head instead of hair there is delicate duck fluff.
If we add that Evsyukov is small in stature, has a well-built build and his whole figure represents a regular oval, then in a crimson jacket and pants he looks like two peas in a pod - like a painted Easter egg.
Straps cross on Evsyukov’s back combat equipment the letter “X”, and it seems that if the commissioner turns around, the letter “B” should appear.
Christ is Risen!
But this is not the case. Evsyukov does not believe in Easter and Christ.
He believes in the Council, in the International, the Cheka and in the heavy blued revolver in his knobby and strong fingers.
The twenty-three who left with Evsyukov to the north from the mortal saber circle are Red Army soldiers like Red Army soldiers. The most ordinary people.
And Maryutka is special among them.
The round fisher orphan Maryutka, from a fishing village in the Volga, swollen with reed grass, wide-water delta near Astrakhan.
From the age of seven, for twelve years, she sat astride a bench greasy with fish guts, wearing stiff canvas pants, cutting open the silver-slippery bellies of herring with a knife.
And when the recruitment of volunteers for the Red Guard, then still a guard, was announced in all cities and villages, Maryutka suddenly stuck a knife into the bench, stood up and went in her stiff pants to sign up for the Red Guards.
At first they kicked her out, then, seeing her persistently walking every day, they cackled and accepted her as a Red Guard, on equal rights with others, but they took a subscription to renounce the woman’s lifestyle and, by the way, childbearing until the final victory of labor over capital.
Maryutka is a thin coastal reed, she braids her red braids like a wreath under a Tekin brown hat, and Maryutka’s eyes are crazy, slanted, with a yellow cat-like fire.
The main thing in Maryutkina’s life is dreaming. She is very prone to dreaming and also loves to use a stub of a pencil on any piece of paper, wherever she comes across, to write poems in slanting letters in falling letters.
The whole squad knows this. As soon as they came somewhere in the city where there was a newspaper, Maryutka begged for a sheet of paper from the office.
Licking her lips, which were drying from excitement, with her tongue, she carefully copied the poems, putting a title above each one, and a signature at the bottom: a poem by Maria Basova.
The poems were different. About the revolution, about the struggle, about the leaders. Between others about Lenin.
Lenin is our proletarian hero,
Let's put your statues in the square.
You overthrew that royal palace
And he began to work.
I brought poems to the editor. In the editorial office they stared at the thin girl in a leather jacket, with a cavalry carbine, took the poems in surprise, and promised to read them.
After calmly looking at everyone, Maryutka left.
The interested editorial secretary read the poems. His shoulders rose and began to tremble, his mouth burst with uncontrollable guffaws. The employees gathered, and the secretary, choking, read poetry.
The employees rode on the window sills: there was no furniture in the editorial office in those days.
Maryutka appeared again in the morning. Stubbornly looking into the secretary’s twitching face with unblinking pupils, she collected the sheets of paper and said in a sing-song voice:
- So it’s impossible to create people? Unfinished? I chop them off from the very middle, just like with an axe, but everything is bad. Well, I’ll still work hard, nothing can be done! And why are they so difficult, fish cholera? A?
And she left, shrugging her shoulders, pulling her Turkmen hat over her forehead.
Maryutka was not successful in her poetry, but she aimed her rifle at the target with remarkable accuracy. She was the best shooter in the Yevsyukov detachment and was always with the crimson commissar in battles.
Evsyukov pointed with his finger:
- Maryutka! Look! Officer!
Maryutka narrowed her eyes, licked her lips and slowly moved the gun. The shot always fired without missing.
She lowered the rifle and said each time:
- Thirty-nine, fish cholera. Fortieth, fish cholera.
“Fish cholera” is Maryutka’s favorite word.
And she didn’t like swear words. When they cursed in front of her, she frowned, remained silent and blushed.
Maryutka firmly held onto the subscription given at headquarters. No one in the detachment could boast of Maryutka’s favor.
One night, Gucha, who had just joined the Magyar detachment, came up to her and showered her with bold glances for several days. It ended badly. The Magyar barely crawled away, missing three teeth and with a bruised temple. Finished with the handle of a revolver.
The Red Army soldiers laughed lovingly at Maryutka, but in battle they took better care of themselves.
They spoke of unconscious tenderness, deeply hidden under the hard, brightly colored shell of jackets, of longing for the hot, cozy women’s bodies abandoned at home.
Such were the twenty-three, crimson Evsyukov and Maryutka who went north, into the hopeless grain of frozen sands.
Stormy February sang with silver blizzard trills. It carried soft carpets of icy fluff over the ridges between the sandy mounds, and the sky whistled above them into the turbidity and storm - either with a wild wind, or with the annoying screech of enemy bullets crossing the air in pursuit.
It was difficult for the heavy legs in broken boots to be pulled out of the snow and sand; the hungry rough camels wheezed, howled and spat.
The wind-blown takyrs glittered with salt crystals, and for hundreds of miles around the sky was cut off from the earth, like a butcher knife, along a smooth and cloudy line of a low horizon.
This chapter, in fact, is completely unnecessary in my story.
It would be easier for me to start with the most important thing, with what will be discussed in the following chapters.
But the reader needs to know where and how the remnants of the special Guryev detachment appeared thirty-seven versts to the north-west from the Kara-Kuduk wells, why there was a woman in the Red Army detachment, why Commissar Evsyukov is crimson, and much more the reader needs to know.
Yielding to necessity, I wrote this chapter.
But, I dare to assure you, it does not matter.
Chapter two
In which a dark spot appears on the horizon, which, upon closer examination, turns into the guard of Lieutenant Govorukh-Otrok
From the wells of Dzhan-Gelda to the wells of Soi-Kuduk seventy miles, from there to the Ushkan spring another sixty-two.
At night, poking his rifle butt into an uprooted root, Evsyukov said in a frozen voice:
- Stop! Overnight!
We lit the saxaul scrap. It burned with a greasy, sooty flame, and the sand wetted around the fire in a dark circle.
We took rice and lard out of the packs. Porridge boiled in a cast-iron cauldron, smelling pungently of sheep.
They huddled close by the fire. They were silent, chattering their teeth, trying to save the body from the chilling fingers of the snowstorm, creeping into all the holes. They warmed their feet right on the fire, and the hardened leather of the boots cracked and hissed.
The hobbled camels sadly jingled their bells in the whitish drifting snow.
Evsyukov twisted the goat's leg with shaking fingers.
He blew out the smoke, and with the smoke he squeezed out strainedly:
“We need to discuss, comrades, where to go now.”
- Is it to Khiva?
- Hey! Said! Almost six hundred miles along the Kara-Kum in winter? What will you eat? Is it possible to breed lice in trousers into a mess?
- One end - die!
Yevsyukov’s heart sank under his crimson armor, but without showing it, he furiously interrupted the speaker:
- You, woodlouse! Don't panic! Every fool can die, but you have to use your brain so as not to die.
– You can go to hell with Aleksandrovsky. Tama your brother, fishing.
“It’s no good,” said Evsyukov, “there was a report, Denika landed troops.” Both Krasnovodsk and Aleksandrovsky are among the whites.
Someone groaned loudly through his sleep.
Evsyukov hit his knee, hot from the fire, with his palm. He cut off with his voice:
- Basta! One way, comrades, to the Aral! As soon as we get to the Aral Sea, there are Nemakans wandering along the shore, we’ll make some money - and then take a detour to Kazalinsk. And in Kazalinsk there is a front-line headquarters. We'll be home there too.
He cut it off and fell silent. I couldn’t believe that I could get there.
Raising his head, the person lying next to him asked:
– What are we going to do until the Aral Sea?
And again Evsyukov cut off:
- You'll have to pull up your pants. Not great princes! Should you serve sardines with honey? You go like this. There is still rice, and there is also a little flour.
- For three transitions?
- Well, three! – And to Chernysh Bay it’s ten minutes away. There are six camels. When we eat the product, we will slaughter camels. Everything is of no use. We'll slaughter one, meat for another and so on. So we’ll finish it.
They were silent. Maryutka was lying by the fire, leaning on her hands, looking into the fire with empty, unblinking cat pupils. Evsyukov felt confused.
He stood up and shook the snow off his jacket.
- Cum! My order is to set off at dawn. “We may not get there all the way,” the commissar’s voice staggered like a frightened bird, “but we must go... because, comrades... the revolution is going on... For the working people of the whole world!
The commissar looked one by one into the eyes of the twenty-three. I no longer saw the fire that I had become accustomed to in a year. The eyes were cloudy, evasive, and despair and mistrust darted under the lowered eyelashes.
“We’ll eat the camels, then we’ll have to eat each other.”
They were silent again.
- Without reasoning! Do you know revolutionary duty? Silence! Ordered it over! And then straight to the wall.
He coughed and sat down.
And the one who was stirring the porridge with a ramrod unexpectedly cheerfully threw it into the wind:
- Why are you hanging snot? Squeeze the porridge - you cooked it for nothing, or what? Warriors, damn it!
They grabbed thick lumps of fatty, swollen rice with spoons, burned themselves, swallowed to keep it warm, but while they swallowed, a thick crust of frozen, disgusting stearic lard stuck to their lips.
The fire smoldered, throwing out pale-orange fountains of sparks into the night. They snuggled even closer, fell asleep, snored, moaned and cursed in their sleep.
Already in the morning, Evsyukov was awakened by quick jolts on his shoulder. Having difficulty unraveling his frozen eyelashes, he grabbed hold and, out of habit, twitched with his ossified hand behind the rifle.
- Stop, don’t fidget!
Maryutka stood bending down. Cat lights gleamed in the yellow-gray smoke of the snowstorm.
- What are you doing?
- Get up, Comrade Commissar! Just no noise! While you were sleeping, I took a ride on a camel. The caravan of Kyrgyzstan goes from Dzhan-Geldy.
Evsyukov turned over on the other side. He asked, choking:
- What caravan, why are you lying?
- Really... get lost, fish cholera! Nemakana! Forty camels!
Evsyukov immediately jumped to his feet and whistled into his fingers. The twenty-three rose with difficulty, stretching their bodies from the cold, but when they heard about the caravan, they quickly came to their senses.
Twenty-two rose. The last one didn't get up. He lay there, wrapped in a blanket, and the blanket shook with unsteady tremors from his body thrashing in delirium.
- Ognevitsa! – Maryutka said confidently, feeling behind the collar with her fingers.
- Oh, damn! What will you do? Cover it with felts and let it lie. We'll come back and pick it up. Which direction is the caravan in, you say?
Maryutka waved her hand to the west.
- Not far! Six versts. Nemakana are rich. Packs on camels - wow!
- Well, we live! Just don't miss it. As we see, cover it on all sides. Don't spare your legs. Which ones are on the right, which are on the left. March!
We walked like a thread between the dunes, bending down, becoming more energetic, warming up from the fast pace.
With the tops of the dune flattened by sandy waves, we saw in the distance on a flat table, like a dining table, dark spots of camels stretched out in a line.
The packs swayed heavily on the camel's humps.
- He sent it to God! “He had mercy,” the pockmarked Molokan Gvozdev whispered rapturously.
Evsyukov could not resist, he overlaid:
- Lord?.. How long should I tell you that there is no Lord, but everything has its own physical line.
But there was no time to argue. On command they ran in leaps, taking advantage of every fold of sand, every gnarled crawl of bushes. They squeezed the butts until their fingers hurt: they knew that it was impossible, impossible to miss, that hope, life, salvation would go with these camels.
The caravan passed slowly and calmly. You could already see the colored felts on camel backs, the Kirghiz walking in warm robes and wolf malakhai.
Flashing his crimson jacket, Evsyukov rose on the crest of the dune and threw it at the ready. He shouted in a trumpet voice:
- Tokhta! If you have a gun, put it on the ground. Without tamasha, otherwise I’ll kill everyone.
Before he could finish shouting, the frightened Kyrgyz, sticking out their butts, fell into the sand.
Panting from running, Red Army soldiers galloped from all sides.
- Guys, take the camels! - Yevsyukov yelled.
Angry bullets barked like puppies, and next to Evsyukov someone stuck his head in the sand, stretching out his motionless arms.
“Lie down!.. Blow them, devils!” Evsyukov continued to shout, falling into the cesspool of the dune. Frequent shots were fired.
Unknown people were shooting from behind the lying camels.
It didn't look like they were Kyrgyz. The fire was too accurate and clear.
The bullets were stuck in the sand right next to the bodies of the lying Red Army soldiers.
The steppe rumbled with riffles, but the shots from the caravan gradually died down.
The Red Army soldiers began to rush forward.
Already about thirty paces, looking closely, Yevsyukov saw a head behind the camel in a fur hat and a white cap, and behind it a shoulder, and on the shoulder a golden stripe.
- Maryutka! Look! Officer! – he turned his head to Maryutka, who had crawled up behind him.
She slowly moved the barrel. The sound cracked.
Either Maryutka’s fingers were frozen, or they were trembling from excitement and running, but she just managed to say: “Forty-one, fish cholera!” - how, in a white hood and a blue sheepskin coat, a man rose from behind the camel and raised his rifle high. And on the bayonet dangled a pinned white handkerchief.
Maryutka threw the rifle into the sand and began to cry, smearing tears across her peeling, dirty face.
Evsyukov ran towards the officer. A Red Army soldier overtook him from behind, swinging his bayonet as he went for a better blow.
“Don’t touch it!.. Take it alive,” the commissar wheezed.
The man in the blue sheepskin coat was grabbed and thrown to the ground.
The five who were with the officer did not rise because of the camels, cut off by the thorny lead.
The Red Army soldiers, laughing and cursing, dragged the camels by the rings threaded through their nostrils and tied them up several at a time.
The Kirghiz ran after Yevsyukov, wagging their butts, grabbing him by the jacket, elbows, pants, equipment, muttering, looking into his face with pitiful narrow slits.
The commissar waved it off, ran away, became furious and, wincing with pity, poked his revolver at the flat noses and the chapped, sharp cheekbones.
- Tokhta, lay siege! No objections!
An elderly, gray-bearded man in a good sheepskin coat caught Evsyukov by the belt.
He spoke quickly, quickly, whispering affectionately:
- Oops... I did something bad... The Kyrgyz camel can't live. The Kyrgyz went to die without a camel... Yours, bai, don’t do that. Your money wants, ours gives. Silver money, tsar's money... Cyrenka paper... Tell me, how much is yours to give, give me the camel back?
- Yes, you understand, your oak head, that now we, too, will die without camels. I don’t rob, but out of revolutionary necessity, for temporary use. You, indestructible devils, will reach your own on foot, but we will die.
- Wow. Nikarosh. Give me the camel - biri abaz, kirenki biri, - the Kirghiz said.
Evsyukov escaped.
- Well, go to Satan! He said it and it was over. No talking. Get a receipt, and that's it.
He poked the Kirghiz with a receipt smeared on a piece of newspaper.
The Kirghiz threw her into the sand, fell and, covering his face, howled.
The rest stood silently, and silent drops trembled in their slanting black eyes.
Evsyukov turned away and remembered the captured officer.
I saw him between two Red Army soldiers. The officer stood calmly, his right leg slightly outstretched in a high Swedish felt boot, and smoked, looking at the commissar with a grin.
- Who is this? – asked Evsyukov.
- Lieutenant of the Guard Govorukha-Otrok. Who are you? – the officer asked in turn, releasing a cloud of smoke.
And he raised his head.
And when he looked into the faces of the Red Army soldiers, Evsyukov and everyone else saw that the lieutenant’s eyes were blue-blue, as if balls of first-class French blue were floating in the snow-white soap foam of the squirrel.
Chapter Three
About some of the inconveniences of traveling in Central Asia without camels and the feelings of Columbus’s companions
Lieutenant Govorukha-Otrok was to be forty-first in Maryutka’s guard account.
But either from the cold or from excitement, Maryutka missed.
And the lieutenant remained in the world as an extra figure in the account of living souls.
By order of Evsyukov, they turned out the prisoner’s pockets and found a secret pocket in his suede jacket on the back.
The lieutenant reared up like a steppe foal when the Red Army's hand groped for his pocket, but they held it tightly, and only trembling lips and pallor betrayed excitement and confusion.
Evsyukov carefully unfolded the obtained canvas bag on his field bag and, his eyes fixed on it, read the documents. He turned his head and thought.
It was indicated in the documents that Guard Lieutenant Govorukha-Otrok, Vadim Nikolaevich, was authorized by the government of the Supreme Ruler of Russia, Admiral Kolchak, to represent his person under the Trans-Caspian government of General Denikin.
Secret orders, as stated in the letter, were to be reported orally by the lieutenant to General Dratsenko.
Having folded the documents, Evsyukov carefully put them in his bosom and asked the lieutenant:
– What are your secret orders, Mr. Officer? I must tell you, without concealment, how you are captured by the Red fighters, and I am the commanding commissar Arsenty Evsyukov.
The lieutenants' ultramarine balls shot up at Evsyukov.
The lieutenant grinned and shuffled his foot.
– Monsieur Evsyukov?.. Very glad to meet you! Unfortunately, I do not have the authority from my government to negotiate diplomatically with such a remarkable person.
Evsyukov’s freckles became whiter than his face. The lieutenant laughed at him in front of the whole detachment.
The Commissioner pulled out his revolver.
- You white moth! Don't be stupid! Either lay it out, or you'll eat the bullet!
The lieutenant shrugged his shoulders.
– You’re a fool, even though you’re a commissar! If you kill, you won’t eat anything at all!
The commissioner lowered his revolver and cursed.
“I’ll make you dance, you fucking meat of a bitch.” “You’ll start singing with me,” he muttered.
The lieutenant also smiled at one corner of his lips.
Evsyukov spat and walked away.
- How, Comrade Commissar? Send to heaven, or what? – asked the Red Army soldier.
The commissar scratched his peeling nose with his fingernail.
- No... no good. This is a healthy splinter. It needs to be delivered to Kazalinsk. There, at headquarters, all investigations will be removed from him.
“Where the hell else should I take him?” Will we get there on our own?
- Have they started recruiting officers?
Evsyukov straightened his chest and tsked:
- What is your business? I take it and I am responsible. Said!
Turning around, I saw Maryutka.
- Wow! Maryutka! I entrust you with their honor. Look into both eyes. If you miss it, I’ll rip off seven skins from you!
Maryutka silently threw the rifle over her shoulder. She approached the prisoner.
- Come on, come here. You will be under my guard. Just don’t think that since I’m a woman, you can escape from me. I'll take pictures at three hundred steps while running. Once you missed, don’t hope again, fish cholera.
The lieutenant squinted his eyes, trembled with laughter and bowed elegantly.
“I’m flattered to be captured by a beautiful Amazon.”
- What?.. What else are you talking about? – Maryutka drawled, giving the lieutenant a scathing look. - Shantrapa! I suppose you don’t know anything else to do except dance? Don't talk empty talk! Stomp your hooves, march!
That day we spent the night on the shore of a small lake.
From under the ice there was a stink of salt water and iodine.
We slept great. They took off the felts and carpets from the Kyrgyz camels, wrapped themselves up, wrapped themselves up - the warmth of heaven.
For the night, Maryutka tightly tied the guard lieutenant's arms and legs with a woolen camel chumbur, curled the chumbur around her belt, and secured the end on her arm.
They were laughing all around. Lumpy Seed shouted:
“Look, sconce,” Maryutka charms you sweetly. A slanderous root!
Maryutka looked at the laughing people.
- Run to the dogs, fish cholera! Laughs... What if he runs away?
- Stupid! Well, does he have two heads? Where to run to the sands?
- In the sands - not in the sands, but more accurately. Sleep, you crazy gentleman.
Maryutka pushed the lieutenant under the felt and leaned on the side.
It’s sweet to sleep under a woolly felt, under fragrant felt. The felt smells like steppe July heat, wormwood, and the endless expanse of grain-sand. The body is basking, lulled into the sweetest slumber.
Evsyukov is snoring under the carpet, Maryutka is smiling dreamily, and guard Lieutenant Govorukha-Youth is sleeping, dryly stretched out on his back, pursing his thin, beautifully cut lips.
One sentry is awake. He sits on the edge of the felt, with a lovebird rifle on his knees, closer to his wife and sweetheart.
He looks into the whitish snowy darkness, where camel bells muffled.
Forty-four camels now. The path is straight, although difficult.
There is no more doubt in the hearts of the Red Army.
The wind howls and whistles, bursting with snow fluffs into the guard's sleeves. The sentry shudders, lifts the edge of the felt, throws it over his back. It immediately stops stabbing with ice knives and thaws the frozen body.
Snow, mud, grain-sand.
A troubled Asian country.
- Where are the camels?.. Damn camels!.. Anathema... the pockmarked bastard! Sleep?.. Sleep?.. What have you done, scoundrel? I'll release the guts!
The sentry's head is spinning from a terrible blow to the side with a boot. The sentry moves his eyes dully.
Snow and mud.
The daylight is smoky and morning. Grain-sands.
No camels.
Where camels grazed, camel and human tracks. Traces of sharp-nosed Kyrgyz Ichigs.
The Kirghiz, three of them, probably walked secretly all night, behind the detachment and stole the camels into the sentry's sleep.
The Red Army soldiers are crowded and silent. No camels. Where to go? If you don’t catch up, you won’t find it in the sand...
– Shooting you, son of a bitch, isn’t enough! - Evsyukov said to the sentry.
The sentry is silent, only the tears in his eyelashes are frozen into crystals.
The lieutenant turned out from under the felt. He looked and whistled. He said with a grin:
- Soviet discipline! The boobies of the king of heaven!
- At least shut up, you nit! – Evsyukov hissed furiously and said in a stiff, stiff whisper: “Well, why stand?” Let's go, brothers!
Only eleven, in single file, in rags, staggering, waddled up the dunes.
Ten lay down like markers on the black road.
In the morning, the eyes, dimmed with impotence, opened for the last time, the swollen legs froze like motionless logs, instead of a voice a stuffy wheeze was torn out.
The crimson-colored Evsyukov approached the lying man, but the commissar’s face was no longer the same color as his jacket. It has dried up, turned grey, and has freckles all over it, like old copper pennies.
I looked and shook my head. Then the icy barrel of Yevsyukov’s revolver burned his sunken temple, leaving a round, almost bloodless, blackened wound.
Jackets and trousers were torn, boots were broken into tatters, scraps of felt felt were wrapped around their legs, and frostbitten fingers were wrapped in rags.
Ten walk, stumbling, swaying from the wind.
One walks straight, calmly.
Guard Lieutenant Govorukha-Otrok.
More than once the Red Army soldiers said to Evsyukov:
- Comrade Commissioner! Why does it take so long to carry it? He just eats a portion for nothing. Again, his clothes are good, they can be divided.
But Evsyukov forbade him to touch the lieutenant.
“I’ll deliver him to headquarters or I’ll die with him.” He can tell you a lot. You can’t beat such a person in vain. He will not escape his destiny.
The lieutenant's hands are tied at the elbows with a chumbur, and Maryutka has the end of the chumbur in his belt. Maryutka can barely walk. The cat's yellow eyes, which have become huge, only play on the snowy face.
And at least something for the lieutenant. He only turned a little pale.
One day Evsyukov approached him, looked into the ultramarine balls, and squeezed out with a hoarse bark:
- The devil knows! Are you two-core, or what? You’re puny yourself, but you’re pulling for two. Why do you have such strength?
The lieutenant curled his lips with his usual smile. He calmly replied:
- You won't understand. Difference of cultures. Your body suppresses the spirit, but my spirit controls the body. I can tell myself not to suffer.
“That’s it,” the commissioner drawled.
The dunes rose up on the sides, soft, loose, wavy. On their tops the sand snaked hissing from the wind, and it seemed there would never be an end to it.
They fell into the sand, grinding their teeth. Howled in a strangled voice:
- I won’t go further. Leave it to rest. No urine.
Evsyukov came up and started yelling at me with insults and blows.
- Go! You cannot desert the revolution.
- Aral!.. Brothers!..
And fell on his face. Evsyukov ran up the dune with great strength. A blinding blue smeared across my sore eyes. He closed his eyes and scraped the sand with his crooked fingers.
The commissioner did not know about Columbus and that the Spanish sailors scraped the decks of the caravels with their fingers so accurately while shouting: “Earth!”
Every citizen of Russia is eventually determined in the national orientation of the state. Contemporaries view with interest the events of the 1917 revolution and the Civil War. The writer expressed his vision of these events in the story “The Forty-First.” After all, our divided society still feels the consequences of those events. This work is also called a “poem in prose”; it contains a lot of revolutionary elements, violent passions, and the most brutal fratricidal scenes. A summary of Lavrenev's "The Forty-First" (by chapter) proves that the book is small in volume, but fascinating and has a certain amount of humor. Well, we invite you to take a closer look at this work.
A little about the biography of Boris Lavrenev
The biography of the writer himself could make a plot for an adventure film. Little Borya loved books, stories about exploits and wanderings. His parents worked as school teachers. The boy's favorite book was "The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe." The writer’s homeland is Kherson, but he received his education at Moscow University, where he graduated from the Faculty of Law.
The rapid fall of the tsarist empire and revolutionary events in the country gave rise to many thoughts. At first he was in the ranks of the white movement, then he joined the ranks of the Red Army. After the civil war, Lavrenev began to serve as a political worker in Central Asia. He wrote several stories, but most famous work It was precisely the story we are describing, which appeared in 1924. Next, we invite you to get acquainted with summary"Forty-one" Lavrenev. This work is quite easy to read.
Dynamic beginning of the story
The summary of “The Forty-First” by Boris Lavrenev indicates that the book consists of 10 chapters. In the first of them, readers see the terrible reprisal of the White Cossacks against the Red Army soldiers who were captured. Of the entire Red detachment, only 24 people managed to escape. Among them was the girl shooter Maryutka. She was working with a sniper rifle. She already had forty killed White Guards on her account. The girl was an orphan and came from a fishing village. Since childhood, she worked hard and dreamed of a better life. This led her to volunteer for the Red Army.
The following chapters intertwine romanticism, realism, and expressionism. Maryutka swore an oath that she would not lead a woman’s lifestyle or give birth to children until she defeated the capitalists. She even began to write poems about the revolution and the birth of a new world. They weren't entirely successful. However, she was luckier in shooting: her accuracy was known. She considered every killed White Guard as retribution for the poverty and lawlessness of Tsarist Russia.
Portrait of Vadim Govorukha-Youth
The second chapter, in accordance with the summary of “The Forty-First” by Lavrenev, introduces the reader to another main character - guard lieutenant Vadim Nikolaevich Govorukha-Otrok. This is an extraordinary character representing the Romanov Empire. The prototype for the image was a friend of the writer who served in the tsarist army.
Vadim Govorukha is captured by the Red Army, where Maryutka served. His behavior was dignified and courageous. He refuses to tell the red commander about his secret mission. Maryutka was entrusted with guarding the lieutenant. At a rest stop, she reads her poems to him. He immediately notices all the shortcomings, because he himself was a person of European culture and traditions, knew French and German languages.
Opposite ideas of the heroes about the future of Russia
The detachment with the prisoner swam across the Aral Sea. Suddenly there was a storm, and Maryutka and the lieutenant were thrown onto an uninhabited fishing island. The heroes were very cold and chilled. On land they found a fishing shed and settled in it. Vadim jokingly called himself Robinson, and Maryutka - Friday.
The lieutenant became very ill and fell unconscious from a cold. The girl looked after him, fed him, gave him water. Soon a feeling of love broke out between the heroes. Maryutka saved Vadim’s life, and he opened the world of culture to her, telling her fairy tales in the evenings.
The heroes' idyll did not last long: they had different ideas about their own future and the fate of the country. The lieutenant dreamed of a quiet life in the country, and the girl dreamed of fighting for the victory of the revolution. They had arguments about this.
Tragic ending to the story
One day a White Guard longboat appeared near the shore. Delighted Vadim runs towards him. This is where the tragic ending of the story takes place. Maryutka, on instinct, grabbed the rifle and shot at her beloved lieutenant. The shot was accurate, it hit her right in the head and knocked out her eye. This was her forty-first victim.
After this, an impressive scene of human grief begins. Desperate Maryutka rushes to her beloved and howls oppressively over him: “My dear! Blue-eyed! What have I done?” Such an ending is a sign of condemnation for all civil wars.
Today in Russia one can again observe class stratification: oligarchs and ordinary people. Today the country is again faced with a choice. Every citizen must make a choice in order to protect the national interests of the state without sacrifice.
Sections: Literature
Lesson epigraph:
I can't forget anything.
Sizzling years!
Is there madness in you, is there hope?
From the days of war, from the days of freedom
There is a bloody glow in the faces.
Music is playing (Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons"). The candle is lit. Poems read:
We are children of the terrible days of Russia -
I can't forget anything.
Sizzling years!
Is there madness in you, is there hope?
From the days of war, from the days of freedom
There is a bloody glow in the faces.
Love and duty
Dignity and honor
There are so many concepts
You can't count them all.
But then she came
Civil war,
And there is no longer a clue
No honor, no kindness.
Here principles are more important
Human life.
Ideas of brotherhood, equality
Bathing in blood.
This has been the case for centuries.
And there is no love, no beauty, no goodness,
While the civil war is going on.
You are not my friend, not my brother -
Comrade in arms.
And we have no more happiness,
Than a whirlwind of a combat attack.
And only then, when we have finished the world in blood,
Then, then,
We'll wash ourselves off
And for some reason you are surprised
That we have neither honor nor love,
And that our descendants will not understand our ideas
And we will be recorded as executioners.
Teacher: Today we will turn to one of the most striking works of the 20s of the XX century about civil war– to the story “The Forty-First” by Boris Lavrenev. I would like that in our lesson we not only get to know each other and try to analyze this work, but also try, through the writer’s word, to understand the tragedy of this time, the tragedy of love.
A word about the writer
(Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata plays)
2 students: Let's take you back many years, to the distant spring of 1957. Evening. Apartment in the center of Moscow. The owner will be back soon, but for now let's look around. Antique – Pavlovsk – armchairs and sofa. On the walls are miniatures of court beauties in elegant frames; sketches, landscapes, portraits by modern brushes. There is a piano, above it there is an amazing portrait of Peter I - it looks like it is from the 18th century. Who lives here? Artist? Historian? But in this case, why and where is there a small copy of the Odessa port lighthouse, a ship bell? There is a portable typewriter on the table. Journalist? Writer?
Yes, he is an artist, a historian, a sailor, and above all this is a writer, Boris Andreevich Lavrenev.
He did not enter literature - he burst in, striking everyone, causing the ardent commitment of some, the indignation of others, leaving no one indifferent.
He himself, the years of his youth become history. Lavrenev wrote: “I was lucky enough to live in an era of great social changes, to observe the collapse of the old world and the birth of a new one. Remembering what I experienced, I always repeat the wonderful lines of Tyutchev:
"Blessed is he who has visited this world
In fatal moments."
I will always love the revolution. Everything seen and experienced was retained in memory and came into a coherent system.”
If it weren’t for Boris Sergeev’s escape to Odessa (Sergeev – real name writer, Lavrenev - pseudonym, surname of one of his relatives) if there had been no service on the ship, no wanderings, no participation (after graduating from university) in hostilities, there would have been no writer Lavrenev.
Out of times, windy and bloody, joyful and tragic, a writing program grew. "Literature should be short, clear, believable. Literature should excite and captivate. Read voraciously."
Teacher: Have you read it voraciously? Have you been captivated by Lavrenev’s story? What is your first impression of the piece?
How does the piece begin? What time is it?
- “And the time has come, loud, vague, leathery.” A detachment of Red Commissar Evsyukov is walking along the yellow sands of Turkestan. The squad was defeated, hungry, and frozen. “In total, the crimson Evsyukov, twenty-three and Maryutka escaped from the mortal circle in the velvet basin.
How do you see Arsentiy Evsyukov?
In a crimson jacket and pants, “Evsyukov’s face is also crimson, covered in red freckles, and on his head instead of hair there is delicate duck fluff... He is small in stature, has a strong build” and looks like two peas in a pod like a painted Easter egg. But he doesn’t believe in God - “he believes in the Council, in the International, the pin and the heavy revolver.”
What are the rest of the Red Army soldiers like?
The most common ones.
Who is special? And with what?
Maryutka is a Red Army soldier. “A thin coastal reed.” Maryutka’s life, which began quite ordinary, the further, the more it revealed the human uniqueness of an illiterate fisherman.
What are the main traits of her character?
Maryutka combines mercilessness towards her enemies with a tender poetic soul, lyricism with determination, intransigence with softness, rudeness with spiritual purity, cruelty with pity... She is always different, unpredictable, capable of anything. Paradoxical....
Fearless in battle, Maryutka’s main thing in life is her dreams. Naive, chaste. But he does not write lyrical poems, but about the revolution, battles, Lenin. Not the men, but she is the best shooter in the squad. He will shoot and name the number. Maryutka destroyed forty (!) enemies and suddenly missed. Forty-one was captured.
For the first time we meet a new hero. The forty-first was to be the Youth Govorukha. What kind of person is this? How did he behave?
Vadim Govorukha-Otrok - guard lieutenant, nobleman. The university, home library, and passion for philology are behind me. Young, handsome, educated, intelligent, sometimes tactful, sometimes ironic, sometimes simply hardened by the blows of the revolution. The very name “Vadim” sounds romantic, Lermontov-like. It is not for nothing that loneliness becomes the leitmotif of the youth’s image. One shot, one walked, not bending under the wind, he was alone in life in general. Seeing the sail, he shouted: “The lonely sail is white...” - this line is a metaphor for the fate of the hero, the fate of noble Russia... He does not deny himself the pleasure of sarcastic “Monsieur” Evsyukov, taking a ride at Maryutka’s address. Class hostility depersonalizes figures in the enemy camp. For Govorukha-Youth, the Red Army soldiers are gray cattle, for them he is an unfinished bastard. Where can the pampered Govorukha-Youth endure a hungry march through the dunes? And he - to everyone’s surprise - walks more firmly than others. Evsyukov wonders where the master got his self-control from? Evsyukov did not catch the smug notes of a superman.
What made Vadim take a fresh look at the “Amazon” and discover the inner life in it? Did the lieutenant expect this? What is the discussion between Maryutka and her captive about?
Why does Maryutka write poetry?
- “I have poems in the middle of my cradle. So the soul burns, so that they write it down in the book and sign it everywhere: “Poem by Maria Basova.” This means that for Maryutka, poetry is not only self-expression, but a way to become famous.
Lavrenev does not mock Maryutka’s poems. The heroine’s soul would like to break through to the beautiful, the lofty, and the author respects this desire.
What is the name of the island where the heroes ended up? What is the last order that Evsyukov gives to Maryutka?
Island in the Aral Sea Barsa-Kelmes, which means “human death”. The name is not accidental.
Evsyukov ordered Maryutka to deliver the lieutenant to headquarters. “If you accidentally run into white people, don’t hand him over alive.”
How did the heroes behave? What did the island become for them? (Staging of the scene of a quarrel between the heroes - chapter 9)
People are not born enemies, but they become them. This is not an inherent feeling, but an acquired one. However, it is so powerful that it overcomes seemingly irresistible love.
On the island there is a natural division of labor and responsibilities, prepared by the previous life. Arrogant Robinson is more helpless than Friday. Maryutka is practical, skillful, and tenacious. However, Vadim is not white-haired either.
Maryutka fell in love with the officer, ceasing to see him as an enemy. She saw only a handsome young blue-eyed man in need of her help. Evsyukov’s order to deliver the cadet to headquarters, alive or dead, became invalid. Instead of merciless orders, hostile distrust - selfless female pity. This is where love begins. Vadim is no less shocked than Maryutka. Immutable ideas and categories are being destroyed. The fisherman's attitude towards one person changes, while the Govorukha-Youth's whole philosophy changes.
What does Govorukha-Youth see as a way out?
The Youth Govorukha, disillusioned with the war, the revolution, and his homeland, clings to the illusory hope of a secluded refuge, books. Disappointment turned into fatal emptiness. And the way out is to hide with Maryutka in a quiet corner, fenced off with books, and there, at least the grass won’t grow. Paradise in a hut with bookshelves. But everything returned to its place, mercilessly indicated by history. The “blue blood” began to speak in Govorukha-Youth, and the officer’s arrogance leapt up. “You've grown wiser, my dear! Wise! Thank you - I taught you. If we now sit down to write books and leave you full ownership of the land, you will do such a thing on it that five generations will howl with tears of blood. Once culture is against culture, then so be it.”
How does the work end? Why did Maryutka do this?
It is impossible not to pay attention to the denouement, for the sake of which the entire edifice of the narrative was built. A sail flashing on the horizon interrupted the angry speech. Paradise in the hut collapsed. The shot is simply the execution of an order, it is one’s own impulse. But love is alive, mortal melancholy tore at her heart. Stolen happiness was born out of misfortune and ended in misfortune...
Love, which has conquered death for centuries, was defeated.
Both main characters are victims scary world, and Maryutka’s shot, which crushed Govorukha-Youth’s head, was aimed at her heart.
Finale of the work
(Expressive reading by the teacher of the end of the tenth chapter)
"The planet perishing in fire and storm." "The roar of the world's destruction." What does the author make you think about?
These words characterize not only the lieutenant’s dying feelings, but also the Apocalypse that has come for the entire country, torn not only into red and white, but into pink threads of nerves.
If such a situation is possible when a woman kills her only love, her future, this means, possibly, everything that follows - executions, camps, genocide.
The association of Vadim’s death with “the roar of a planet dying in fire and storm” is unusual. “In the water, on a pink thread of nerve, an eye knocked out of its orbit swayed. The ball, blue as the sea, looked at her in bewilderment and pity.” Perhaps the eye is like the globe, which has been engulfed by a terrible war - revolution, and the pink thread of the nerve is that intelligentsia that is still capable of saving the world from this catastrophe, but which is becoming less and less and soon this thread will break, leaving an indelible trace of the terrible years Russia and all over the world. The planet is dying, love can no longer exist.
Why is the work called that?
It was named not “Maryutka”, not “Vadim”, but after the number indicating the number of victims. This testifies to the author’s sympathy for the lieutenant, but the lieutenant, who fell in love with the savage Friday, did not understand one thing: poisoned by the ideology of the “crimson” Evsyukova, who personally committed forty (!) murders, Maryutka was not suitable for life on the lieutenant’s spiritual continent. He is a humanist, she is a killer?
Does this mean that revolution is opposed to love?
Sweeping away class boundaries, the revolution helped give birth to this love, but it also killed it.
Teacher: Boris Lavrenev told a love story, intertwining idyll with tragedy, the depth of psychologism with the aching pain of bewilderment: “What have I done?” This last cry of the distraught Maryutka was just right to be picked up by the whole country. Isn't this what the author wanted to say?
Many, after reading the story, ask themselves questions: “Why did Maryutka do this?” How could you kill your loved one? What would I do in her place? And can Maryutka be blamed for what happened? There is only one answer - no.
The revolution turns all life values upside down, and a person becomes just a pawn in a cruel game of death.
What does “Forty-one” mean for our days? Is the story relevant?
There is no need to say “no, because the revolution is in the past..” With the constant turmoil going on in our state, the possibility of a new revolution being brewing cannot be ruled out. They will wait for her again, like a deliverance from all troubles, like a whirlwind taking away everything old. This is what Lavrenev is trying to protect from: it was not in vain that the Youth Govorukha heard the crash of the dying planet - Russia was lost!
This story is relevant for our time, so the reader needs it not only as a beautiful short story about love, but also as a warning that nothing can be worse than fighting against ourselves.
(The music of Chopin's "Revolutionary Etude" is played, the words of Alexey Remizov are heard)
“Russian people, what have you done? I was looking for my happiness, I believed, who did you believe? Have you forgotten your lullaby? Where is your Russia? Where is your conscience, where is your wisdom, where is your cross? I was proud that I was Russian, I took care of and cherished the name of my homeland, I prayed to “Holy Rus'.” Now I bear punishment, I am pitiful, poor and naked. I don’t dare raise my eyes! Lord, what have I done! And I have one consolation, one hope: I will patiently bear the burden of days, I will cleanse my heart and mind and, if destined, I will rise on a Bright Day.
Russian people!
A bright day will come!”
Do you guys believe in the Bright Day of Russia?
It is impossible to live in the world without faith in your country!
A candle is lit and the student reads a poem of her own composition.
Why did love come to me?
Fate gave you to me
Teased me with a moment of happiness
And she took it away so cruelly!
Forgetting about duty to the country,
In your eyes the blue ones were drowning,
How happy I was
Under the enchanted wave.
I forgot about the sound of gunfire,
About the death of the guys in the dry desert,
Looking into the eyes... like a sea of blue -
Like a priceless gift from fate.
Moon and stars from above
They look so tenderly, silently,
And the waves gently lick the shore...
Everything breathes when you are near...
And now the fateful hour has come,
You have become a cadet for me again.
You didn't run away from the answer,
How the fortieth didn’t leave...
Then the shot rang out... you fell...
Becoming Maryutka’s forty-first,
For a woman - such a loss!
What has no one ever lost...
Love, why did you come to us,
Enchanted by magical powers?
"We are children of the terrible years of Russia."
Why did you burn our souls?
Teacher:We close Boris Lavrenev’s book “The Forty-First”... What remains in our souls is a pressing feeling of pity for Vadim, for Maryutka, a feeling of longing for lost Russia, the bright colors of Lavrenev’s landscapes. This work leaves a mark on the soul of every reader, it has become a classic, and classics are eternal! This trace will always ache in our soul for the fate of those who found themselves with Russia at the turning point of history. A.A. The block gave absolutely precise definition to his generation: “We are the children of the terrible years of Russia...”. Every nation deserves the fate it deserves. Russian people - great people, because he managed to survive what the country suffered. Russia. This word contains a lot. Love, the meaning of life, home. But this is also our past, our tragedy. And our duty is to love and take care of Russia, without dividing its people into whites and reds.
LITERATURE
1. GERONIMUS B.A. B.A. Lavrenev. - M., 1983.
2. CARDIN V. Finding. –M., 1989.
3. LAVRENEV B. Forty-first – M., 1989.
4. STARIKOVA E. B.A. Lavrenev (1891-1959) – M., 1982.
