Among books about the war, the works of Boris Vasiliev occupy a special place. There are several reasons for this: firstly, he knows how to simply, clearly and concisely, in literally a couple of sentences, draw three-dimensional picture war and man at war. Probably no one has ever written about the war as harshly, accurately and piercingly clearly as Vasiliev.
Secondly, Vasiliev knew what he was writing about firsthand: his early years fell during the Great Patriotic War, which he went through to the end, miraculously surviving.
The novel “Not on the Lists” summary which can be conveyed in several sentences, read in one breath. What is it about? About the beginning of the war, about the heroic and tragic defense Brest Fortress, who, even dying, did not surrender to the enemy - she simply bled to death, according to one of the heroes of the novel.
And this novel is also about freedom, about duty, about love and hatred, about devotion and betrayal, in a word, about what our ordinary life. Only in war do all these concepts become larger and more voluminous, and a person, his whole soul, can be seen as if through a magnifying glass...
The main characters are Lieutenant Nikolai Pluzhnikov, his colleagues Salnikov and Denishchik, as well as a young girl, almost a girl, Mirra, who by the will of fate became Kolya Pluzhnikov’s only lover.
Central location the author assigns it to Nikolai Pluzhnikov. A college graduate who has just received the shoulder straps of a lieutenant arrives at the Brest Fortress before the first dawn of the war, a few hours before the volleys of guns that forever crossed out his former peaceful life.
The image of the main character
At the beginning of the novel, the author calls the young man simply by name - Kolya - emphasizing his youth and inexperience. Kolya himself asked the school management to send him to a combat unit, to a special section - he wanted to become a real fighter, to “smell gunpowder.” Only in this way, he believed, can one gain the right to command others, instruct and train young people.
Kolya was heading to the fortress authorities to submit a report about himself when shots rang out. So he took the first battle without being included in the list of defenders. Well, and then there was no time for lists - there was no one and there was no time to compile and verify them.
It was hard for Nikolai baptism of fire: at some point he could not stand it, abandoned the church, which he was supposed to hold without surrendering to the fascists, and tried to instinctively save himself, his life. But he overcomes the horror, so natural in this situation, and again goes to the rescue of his comrades. The incessant battle, the need to fight to the death, to think and make decisions not only for oneself, but also for those who are weaker - all this gradually changes the lieutenant. In a couple of months mortal battles In front of us is no longer Kolya, but battle-hardened Lieutenant Pluzhnikov - a tough, determined man. For every month in the Brest Fortress he lived like ten years.
And yet youth still lived in him, still bursting through with a stubborn faith in the future, in the fact that our people would come, that help was close. This hope did not fade even with the loss of two friends found in the fortress - the cheerful, cheerful Salnikov and the stern border guard Volodya Denishchik.
They were with Pluzhnikov from the first fight. Salnikov turned from a funny boy into a man, into a friend who would save at any cost, even at the cost of his life. Denishchik looked after Pluzhnikov until he himself was mortally wounded.
Both died saving Pluzhnikov’s life.
Among the main characters, we must definitely name one more person - the quiet, modest, inconspicuous girl Mirra. The war found her at 16 years old.
Mirra was crippled since childhood: she wore a prosthesis. The lameness forced her to come to terms with the sentence of never having her own family, but always being a helper to others, living for others. In the fortress she worked part-time in peacetime, helping to cook.
The war cut her off from all her loved ones and walled her up in a dungeon. The whole being of this young girl was permeated by a strong need for love. She didn't know anything about life yet, but life played such a trick on her cruel joke. This is how Mirra perceived the war until the destinies of her and Lieutenant Pluzhnikov crossed. What inevitably had to happen when two young creatures met happened - love broke out. And for the short happiness of love, Mirra paid with her life: she died under the blows of the butts of the camp guards. Her last thoughts were only about her beloved, about how to protect him from the terrible spectacle of a monstrous murder - her and the child she was already carrying in her womb. Mirra succeeded. And this was her personal human feat.
The main idea of the book
At first glance, it seems that the author’s main desire was to show the reader the feat of the defenders of the Brest Fortress, to reveal the details of the battles, to talk about the courage of the people who fought for several months without help, practically without water and food, and without medical care. They fought, at first stubbornly hoping that our people would come and take the fight, and then without this hope, they simply fought because they could not, did not consider themselves entitled to give up the fortress to the enemy.
But if you read “Not on the Lists” more thoughtfully, you understand: this book is about a person. It is about the fact that human possibilities are limitless. A person cannot be defeated until he himself wants it. He can be tortured, starved, deprived of physical strength, even killed - but he cannot be defeated.
Lieutenant Pluzhnikov was not included in the lists of those who served in the fortress. But he gave himself the order to fight, without anyone’s commands from above. He did not leave - he remained where his own inner voice ordered him to stay.
No force can destroy the spiritual power of someone who has faith in victory and faith in himself.
The summary of the novel “Not on the Lists” is easy to remember, but without carefully reading the book, it is impossible to grasp the idea that the author wanted to convey to us.
The action covers 10 months - the first 10 months of the war. This is how long the endless battle lasted for Lieutenant Pluzhnikov. He found and lost friends and his beloved in this battle. He lost and found himself - in the very first battle, the young man, out of fatigue, horror and confusion, abandoned the building of the church, which he should have held until the last. But the words of the senior soldier inspired him with courage, and he returned to his combat post. In a matter of hours, a core matured in the soul of the 19-year-old boy, which remained his support until the very end.
Officers and soldiers continued to fight. Half-dead, with their backs and heads shot through, their legs torn off, half-blind, they fought, slowly going one by one into oblivion.
Of course, there were also those in whom the natural instinct of survival turned out to be stronger than the voice of conscience, the sense of responsibility for others. They just wanted to live - and nothing more. The war quickly turned such people into weak-willed slaves, ready to do anything just for the opportunity to survive at least one more day. That's how it turned out former musician Reuben Svitsky. " Former man“, as Vasiliev writes about him, having found himself in a ghetto for Jews, he resigned himself to his fate immediately and irrevocably: he walked with his head bowed low, obeyed any orders, did not dare to raise his eyes to his tormentors - to those who turned him into a subhuman, nothing not wanting and not hoping for anything.
The war molded traitors out of other weak-spirited people. Sergeant Major Fedorchuk voluntarily surrendered. A healthy, strong man who could fight, made the decision to survive at any cost. This opportunity was taken away from him by Pluzhnikov, who destroyed the traitor with a shot in the back. War has its own laws: there is value here greater than value human life. This value: victory. They died and killed for her without hesitation.
Pluzhnikov continued to make forays, undermining the enemy’s forces, until he was left completely alone in the dilapidated fortress. But even then, until the last bullet, he fought an unequal battle against the fascists. Finally they discovered the shelter where he had been hiding for many months.
The end of the novel is tragic - it simply could not be otherwise. An almost blind, skeletal-thin man with black frostbitten feet and shoulder-length gray hair is taken out of the shelter. This man has no age, and no one would believe that according to his passport he is only 20 years old. He left the shelter voluntarily and only after the news that Moscow had not been taken.
A man stands among enemies, looking at the sun with blind eyes from which tears flow. And - an unthinkable thing - the Nazis give him the highest military honors: everyone, including the general. But he doesn't care anymore. He became higher than people, higher than life, higher than death itself. He seemed to have reached the limit of human capabilities - and realized that they were limitless.
“Not on the lists” - to the modern generation
The novel “Not on the Lists” should be read by all of us living today. We did not know the horrors of war, our childhood was cloudless, our youth was calm and happy. A real explosion in the soul modern man accustomed to comfort, confidence in tomorrow, security, this book evokes.
But the core of the work is still not a narrative about the war. Vasiliev invites the reader to look at himself from the outside, to probe all the secret places of his soul: could I do the same? Is there any in me inner strength- the same as those of these defenders of the fortress, just emerging from childhood? Am I worthy to be called a Human?
Let these questions forever remain rhetorical. May fate never confront us with such a terrible choice as that great, courageous generation faced. But let's always remember them. They died so that we could live. But they died undefeated.
4.8 (95%) 8 votes
A hero is a person who, at a decisive moment, does what necessary to do in the interests of human society.
Julius Fucik
Hero, heroism, heroic... These words enter our lives from childhood, forming the traits of a citizen and patriot in a person. An important role in this process belongs to Russian literature, in which the depiction of a person’s feat has been and remains traditional since the times of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” and “Zadonshchina”. In Russian literature of the 20th century, the feat of man turns out to be closely connected with the theme of the Great Patriotic War, which has truly become “ people's war” for our compatriots.
Among those who went through this war there were many future writers: Yu. Bondarev, V. Bykov, V. Zakrutkin, K. Vorobyov, V. Astafiev and others.
Boris Lvovich Vasiliev, the author of many books dedicated to this sacred topic for everyone, also became a volunteer of the Great Patriotic War, who went through it from beginning to end.
The most famous story is B. Vasilyev’s story “And the Dawns Here Are Quiet...”, in which the idea of the incompatibility of war with the nature of man, especially of a woman, called upon to give life, is expressed with particular insight.
But in my essay I would like to refer to B. Vasiliev’s novel “Not on the Lists,” which was published in the magazine “Yunost” in 1974.
At the center of the novel is the fate of the young lieutenant Nikolai Pluzhnikov, who arrived at his place of duty - the Brest Fortress - late in the evening of June 21, 1941, and therefore did not have time to get on the list of the garrison, but later became the last defender of the heroic fortress.
“Not on the Lists” is the story of the formation of a heroic character who matures in the fire of war.
The novel is compositionally divided into three parts, chronologically continuing each other.
So, Kolya Pluzhnikov arrives at the Brest Fortress on the night of June 22, 1941. He is almost still a boy, very naive and spontaneous. But in this naivety lies, it seems to me, the great truth of the time, which B. Vasiliev paints, avoiding even a hint of modernization, modernizing the past for the sake of fashion, power, etc.
Kolya is sincerely confident that famous message TASS, which calls rumors about the outbreak of war a provocation, exhausts all the problems: “We have a non-aggression treaty with Germany. Rumors about the concentration of German troops on our border... are the result of the machinations of the Anglo-French imperialists.” And when asked whether there will be a war, the young man quickly answers: “It will be a quick war. The most important thing is the decisive power of the Red Army. On the enemy terrain we will deal a crushing blow to the enemy.” To us people beginning of the XXI century, knowing about the difficult retreats of the Red Army in 1941, about the terrible Kharkov encirclement in 1942, these words of the hero cannot be read without a bitter smile.
But not in order to laugh, B. Vasiliev introduces his Kolya Pluzhnikov into the pages of the novel. This, if you like, is the starting point in the development of the hero.
The war dramatically changes Nikolai's life and consciousness. At the cost of grave mistakes, having experienced high love and low betrayal, Pluzhnikov comes to the understanding that much depends on his personal participation.
Nikolai did not immediately manage to go through the “science of hatred” that M. A. Sholokhov wrote about. In the second part of the novel, the hero’s transition to a new state takes place: the boy turns into a warrior, into a “comrade commander.”
However, it seems to me that the first and second parts are a kind of set-up for the third part. It is when all of Pluzhnikov’s friends died, when he remains the only active fighter in the occupied but undefeated fortress, that the main action of the novel unfolds. The tone and even the rhythm of the narrative changes sharply, the dramatic notes of the military plot disappear, the descriptions of combat episodes disappear; a high psychological intensity arises, the drama is replaced by a high tragedy that turns the young man into a Hero, the culmination and denouement of which at the same time becomes the last chapter of the novel. Hence the solemnity and special significant meaning each phrase.
The unconquered son of an unconquered homeland does not feel defeated. The Brest Fortress did not fall, but simply bled to death, and Pluzhnikov is its last straw. He is above death, which means he is above oblivion. The Nazis are afraid of the half-dead, hungry Pluzhnikov: “At the entrance to the basement stood an incredibly thin, ageless man..., long gray hair touched his shoulders. He stood strictly straight... and, without looking up, looked at the sun with blinded eyes. And from those unblinking, staring eyes, tears flowed uncontrollably.” Pluzhnikov's feat is so high that he even amazes his enemies. As he walked toward the ambulance, “suddenly the German general, clicking his heels, raised his hand to the visor. The soldiers stood up and froze.” But the one whom the enemies saluted no longer saw anything. He was above glory and above death. “He walked proudly and stubbornly, as he lived, and fell only when he got there.” It's impossible to read this without tears. last chapter a novel in which the author never once called his hero by name. At the beginning of the novel, he was Kolya Pluzhnikov for us, then “comrade commander,” and we say goodbye to an unknown Russian soldier, whose name remained forever in people’s memory, although he himself was not on the lists. I think that the theme of heroism will forever exist in Russian literature, not only because the memory of the heroes does not die in our hearts, but also because these days, unfortunately, nineteen-year-old boys are dying again, and mothers are once again wearing mourning clothes. Very briefly A young lieutenant ends up in the Brest Fortress on the first day of the war. For ten months he stubbornly resists the Nazis and dies unbroken. Nineteen-year-old Kolya Pluzhnikov graduates military school with the rank of junior lieutenant. Instead of a vacation, the commissioner asks him to help sort out the school’s property, which is expanding due to the complicated situation in Europe. For two weeks, Pluzhnikov sorts out and accounts for military property. Then the general calls him and offers him to remain at his native school as the commander of a training platoon with the prospect of continuing his studies at the Military Academy. Kolya refuses - he wants to serve in the army. Kolya is appointed platoon commander and sent to the Special Western District with the condition that in a year he will return to school. Kolya goes to his duty station via Moscow. He finds a few hours to see his mother and younger sister - Kolya’s father died in Central Asia at the hands of the Basmachi. At home, Kolya meets his sister’s friend. The girl has been in love with him for a long time. She promises to wait for Kolya and is going to visit him at his new duty station. The girl believes that war will start soon, but Kolya is convinced that these are empty rumors, and the Red Army is strong and will not allow the enemy into our territory. Kolya arrives in Brest in the evening. Not finding a canteen, he and random fellow travelers go to a restaurant where a self-taught violinist plays. Brest is restless; every night beyond the Bug you can hear the roar of engines, tanks and tractors. After dinner, Kolya parts with his fellow travelers. They invite him with them, but Pluzhnikov remains in the restaurant. The violinist plays for the lieutenant, and the musician’s niece Mirra accompanies Kolya to the Brest Fortress. At the checkpoint, Kolya is sent to the barracks for business travelers. Mirrochka undertakes to accompany him. Mirra, a lame Jewish girl who works in the fortress, is aware of everything that happens both in the city and in the garrison. This seems suspicious to Kolya. Before the next checkpoint, he tries to open the holster of his service weapon and a moment later he is already lying in the dust under the gun of the duty officer. Having settled the misunderstanding, Mirra undertakes to clean Kolya of dust and takes him to a warehouse in a large basement. There the lieutenant meets two middle-aged women, a mustachioed foreman, a gloomy sergeant and an eternally sleepy young soldier. While Kolya is cleaning himself, it begins to get light, and the night of June 22, 1941 ends. Kolya sits down to drink tea, and then the roar of explosions is heard. The foreman is sure that war has begun. Kolya rushes upstairs to get to his regiment in time, because he is not on the lists. Pluzhnikov finds himself in the center of an unfamiliar fortress. Everything around is on fire, people are burning alive in the garage. On the way to the KPK, Kolya hides in a crater along with an unfamiliar soldier, who reports: the Germans are already in the fortress. Pluzhnikov understands that the war has really begun. Following a fighter named Salnikov, Kolya joins his own people and, under the command of a deputy political officer, recaptures a club occupied by the Germans - a former church. Kolya is entrusted with holding the church. The fortress is bombed for the rest of the day. Kolya and a dozen fighters fight off fascist attacks captured weapons. All the water is used to cool the machine guns, the river bank is already occupied by the Nazis, and the soldiers are tormented by thirst. Between the attacks, Pluzhnikov and Salnikov explore the vast basement of the church - the women hiding there seemed to have seen the Germans - but find no one. In the evening, nimble Salnikov brings water. Kolya begins to understand that the Red Army will not help them. In the morning the Germans break through the basement. Kolya and Salnikov, under fire, run across to another basement, where a small detachment of soldiers led by a senior lieutenant is holed up. He believes that the church had to be abandoned because of Pluzhnikov. Kolya also feels his guilt - he overlooked it - and undertakes to atone for it. Kolya receives an order to correct the mistake and recapture the church. It is repulsed, and yesterday is repeated - bombings, attacks. Kolya lies behind the machine gun and shoots, burning himself on the hot body. They are replaced in the morning. Kolya, Salnikov and the tall border guard retreat, come under fire and break into a basement compartment from which there is no exit. Only at night do they break through to the ring barracks, under which there is also a network of basements. Meanwhile, the enemy is changing tactics. Now German sappers are methodically blowing up the ruins, destroying places where they can hide. In the basements, Kolya meets a wounded political instructor and learns from him that the Germans promise a heavenly life to the surrendered “valiant defenders of the fortress.” The political instructor believes that the Germans need to be beaten so that they are afraid of every stone, tree and hole in the ground. Kolya understands that the political instructor is right. The next day Kolya ends up in the common basements. The political instructor dies, taking several fascists with him, a high border guard is mortally wounded during the storming of the bridge, then the commanders send women and children into German captivity so that they do not die of thirst in the basements. Kolya gets water for the wounded. The border guard asks to be taken to the exit from the basement - he wants to die under open air. Helping his friend, Kolya says that everyone was ordered to “scatter in all directions.” But there are no cartridges, and breaking through without ammunition is senseless suicide. Leaving the border guard to die, Kolya and Salnikov go to look for an ammunition depot. The Germans had already occupied the fortress. During the day they destroy ruins, and at night these ruins come to life. Friends make their way to the warehouse during the day, hiding in craters. A German discovers them in one of the craters. They begin to beat Salnikov, and they chase Pluzhnikov in a circle, “encouraging” them with machine gun fire, until he dives into an unnoticeable hole in the ground. Kolya ends up in an isolated bunker, where he meets Mirra and her companions - senior sergeant Fedorchuk, foreman, Red Army soldier Vasya Volkov. They have a supply of food, they got water by breaking through the floor and digging a well. Having come to his senses, Kolya feels that he is at home. While Kolya was fighting, they made their way through the basements into this isolated bunker with two exits - to the surface and to the weapons warehouse. Pluzhnikov decides to make his way to the remnants of the garrison holed up in the distant basements, but is late: before his eyes, the Germans blow up the shelter and destroy the last defenders of the fortress. Now only scattered individuals remain in the ruins. Pluzhnikov returns to the basement and lies on the bench for a long time, remembering those with whom he fought all these days. Kolya pronounces a death sentence on himself and decides to shoot himself. Mirra stops him. The next morning, Pluzhnikov finally comes to his senses, arms the men under his command and arranges forays to the surface, hoping to find at least one of his own. Kolya believes that Salnikov is still alive and is constantly looking for him. During one of the raids, a shootout begins and the foreman is wounded in the leg. The next day Fedorchuk disappears. Kolya, together with Vasya Volkov, goes to look for him and sees how he voluntarily surrenders to the Germans. Pluzhnikov kills the traitor with a shot in the back. Vasya begins to fear his commander. Meanwhile, the Germans enter the fortress and begin to clear the ruins. Kolya and Volkov retreat and stumble upon prisoners, among whom Pluzhnikov sees a Red Army soldier he knows. He informs Kolya that Salnikov is alive and is in a German hospital. The prisoner tries to give him away. Kolya has to run away and loses Volkov. Pluzhnikov notices that a different kind of Germans came to the fortress - not so agile and fast. He takes one prisoner and finds out that he is a mobilized German worker from the guard team. Kolya understands that he must kill the prisoner, but he cannot do this and lets him go. The foreman's wound is rotting, he feels that he will not last long, and decides to sell his life dearly. The foreman blows up the gate through which the enemy enters the fortress, along with himself and a large group of Germans. On the advice of the foreman, Kolya wants to send Mirra to the Germans as a prisoner, hoping that she can survive. The girl thinks that Kolya wants to get rid of her as a burden. She understands that the Germans will kill her, a cripple and a Jew. Pluzhnikov explores the labyrinth of basements and stumbles upon two survivors - a sergeant and a corporal. They are about to leave the fortress and call Kolya with them. New acquaintances do not want to take Mirra with them. They believe that the Red Army has been defeated and want to escape as quickly as possible. Kolya refuses to leave the girl alone and forces the sergeant and corporal to leave, supplying them with cartridges. Mirra is in love with Kolya, and he shares her feelings. They become husband and wife. Time passes. Pluzhnikov patrols the fortress every day. On one of these forays he meets Vasya Volkov. He has gone crazy, but he is still afraid of Pluzhnikov. Seeing Kolya, Volkov runs away, runs into the Germans and dies. Autumn is coming. Mirra admits to Kolya that she is expecting a child and must leave. Kolya had already seen a detachment of captive women in the fortress who were clearing away the rubble. He takes Mirra to them, she tries to mix with the prisoners, but they notice the extra woman. She is recognized by a German, whom Kolya once spared. Mirra tries to move away so that Pluzhnikov, who is watching everything from a hole in the basement, does not understand anything and does not interfere. The girl is brutally beaten and pierced with a bayonet. The half-dead girl is buried in a small crater with bricks. Kolya gets sick and loses track of the days. When Pluzhnikov recovers and gets out, there is already snow in the fortress. He starts hunting German patrols again. Pluzhnikov is sure that Mirra has returned to her family and tries not to think about her. Kolya ends up in a church, remembers how he fought for it, and understands: there is no death and loneliness, “because it exists, this is the past.” The Germans try to catch him by quietly cordoning off the church, but Pluzhnikov escapes. In the evening, Kolya returns to his habitable corner and discovers that it has been blown up - Pluzhnikov’s footprints were revealed in the freshly fallen snow. Kolya goes to the unexplored basements and meets the surviving foreman Semishny there. He is wounded in the spine and can no longer walk - he is gradually paralyzed. But the spirit of the foreman is not broken, he is sure that every meter is resisting the enemy native land. He forces Kolya to leave the basement every day and kill the invaders. Kolya gradually begins to lose his sight, but stubbornly goes “hunting.” The foreman is also getting worse, he can hardly sit, but does not give up, “fighting every millimeter of his body to death.” On the first day of 1942, Semishny dies. Before his death, he gives Kolya the regimental banner, which he had been wearing under his clothes all this time. On April 12, the Germans find Pluzhnikov. As a translator, they bring a self-taught violinist who once played for Kolya. From him Pluzhnikov learns that the Germans were defeated near Moscow. Kolya feels that he has fulfilled his duty and goes out to his enemies. He is sick, almost blind, but he stands upright. He goes to the ambulance through a line of German soldiers, and at the officer’s command, they raise their hands to their caps. Near the car he falls “free and after life, tramples death with death.” Visitors who come to the Brest Fortress Museum will definitely be told the legend about a man who was not on the lists, but defended the fortress for ten months, will be shown the only surviving regimental banner and “a small wooden artificial limb with the remnant of a woman’s shoe,” found in a crater under the bricks. Composition Hero, heroism, heroic... These words enter our lives from childhood, forming in a person the traits of a citizen and patriot. An important role in this process belongs to Russian literature, in which the depiction of a person’s feat has been and remains traditional since the times of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” and “Zadonshchina”. In Russian literature of the 20th century, the feat of man turns out to be closely connected with the theme of the Great Patriotic War, which truly became a “people's war” for our compatriots. Among those who went through this war there were many future writers: Yu. Bondarev, V. Bykov, V. Zakrutkin, K. Vorobyov, V. Astafiev and others. Boris Lvovich Vasiliev, the author of many books dedicated to this sacred topic for everyone, also became a volunteer of the Great Patriotic War, who went through it from beginning to end. But in my essay I would like to refer to B. Vasiliev’s novel “Not on the Lists,” which was published in the magazine “Yunost” in 1974. At the center of the novel is the fate of the young lieutenant Nikolai Pluzhnikov, who arrived at his place of duty - the Brest Fortress - late in the evening of June 21, 1941, and therefore did not have time to get on the list of the garrison, but later became the last defender of the heroic fortress. “Not on the Lists” is the story of the formation of a heroic character who matures in the fire of war. The novel is compositionally divided into three parts, chronologically continuing each other. Kolya is sincerely confident that the well-known TASS report, in which rumors about the outbreak of war are called a provocation, exhausts all the problems: “We have a non-aggression treaty with Germany. Rumors about the concentration of German troops on our border... are the result of the machinations of the Anglo-French imperialists.” And when asked whether there will be war, the young man quickly answers: “It will be a quick war. The most important thing is the decisive power of the Red Army. We will deal a crushing blow to the enemy on enemy territory.” For us, people of the beginning of the 21st century, who know about the difficult retreats of the Red Army in 1941, about the terrible Kharkov encirclement in 1942, it is impossible to read these words of the hero without a bitter smile. But not in order to laugh, B. Vasiliev introduces his Kolya Pluzhnikov into the pages of the novel. This, if you like, is the starting point in the development of the hero. The Nazis are afraid of the half-dead, hungry Pluzhnikov: “At the entrance to the basement stood an incredibly thin, ageless man..., long gray hair touched his shoulders. He stood sternly straight... and, without looking up, looked at the sun with blinded eyes. And from those unblinking, staring eyes, tears flowed uncontrollably.” It is impossible to read this last chapter of the novel without tears, in which the author never once called his hero by name. At the beginning of the novel, he was Kolya Pluzhnikov for us, then “comrade commander,” and we say goodbye to an unknown Russian soldier, whose name remained forever in the people’s memory, although he himself was not on the lists. When a person commits this or that moral act, then by this he is not yet virtuous; he is virtuous only if this mode of behavior is a permanent feature of his character. Hegel The plots of Vasil Bykov's stories usually represent some small military episode. Moral problem it also serves as the key that opens the door to the work. This is how the “Kruglyansky Bridge”, “Obelisk”, “Sotnikov”, “Wolf Pack” and some other works of the writer were built. Bykov is especially interested in situations in which a person must be guided not by a direct order, but by his own moral compass. Teacher Moroz from the story “Obelisk” brought up good, bright, honest things in children. And when the war came, his students made an attempt on the life of a policeman. The children were arrested. The Germans promised to release the boys if the teacher hiding with the partisans showed up. From the point of view of common sense, it was useless for Moroz to appear at the police station: the Nazis would not have spared the teenagers anyway. But from a moral point of view, Moroz had to confirm with his action what he taught the children, what he convinced them of. Frost could not live if even one person thought that he was cowardly and abandoned the children at a fatal moment. The teacher was executed along with the children. Some may regard his action as reckless suicide. But I don't think so. After the war, his name was not on the obelisk at the site of the execution of schoolchildren! But there were those in whose souls the good seed that Frost planted with his feat sprouted. They managed to achieve justice: the teacher’s name was written on the obelisk along with the names of the hero children. At the conclusion of his story, Bykov makes the reader a witness to an argument in which one of today's wise men disdainfully says that there is no special feat behind this Frost, since he did not even kill a single German. In response to this, the interlocutor, who has a grateful memory of the war heroes, sharply says: “He did more than if he killed a hundred. He put his life on the chopping block. Myself. Voluntarily. Do you understand what this argument is? And in whose favor..." This argument specifically relates to the moral concept: to prove to everyone that your beliefs are stronger than the threat of death. The frost overstepped the natural thirst to survive, to survive. This is where the heroism of one person begins, which is so necessary to raise the moral spirit of society. Vasil Bykov's heroes always face a choice. In the book “Sotnikov” we have two main characters - Sotnikov and Rybak. The fisherman is more adapted to life than Sotnikov. He is strong, dexterous, resilient, he is not a coward - he himself volunteered to go on reconnaissance with Sotnikov. Once in the partisan detachment, he did not refuse any work. The fisherman hates the Germans and policemen who betrayed their people. Throughout the story, he takes care of his comrade Sotnikov. He carries him on himself, although at first he showed weakness and abandoned his wounded comrade. Fear for his life gripped Rybak. And it is not surprising, because the instinct of self-preservation lives in every person. But he overcame his fear, although it was not easy for him. Conscience triumphed over self-pity. It would seem that all is well that ends well. But the story doesn't end there. Having been captured, Rybak chooses the path of betrayal, unlike Sotnikov. Sotnikov is inferior to Rybak in physical strength. He is less adapted to life in war. But even being sick, he goes on reconnaissance, because if not him, then who? All the way, Sotnikov feels guilty before Rybak, because he is sick, injured, because he is lagging behind. There is no time to waste. Both heroes are faced with a choice. And so they found themselves on opposite sides of the same line separating friends and enemies. The fisherman, feeling guilty, tries to convince himself that he is not greatly to blame. The fisherman tries to drown out the voice of conscience, but he fails. He must knock the block of wood out from under Sotnikov’s feet when he is hanged. And he is horrified by this! Sotnikov is disgusted by Rybak’s betrayal. He looks around the crowd, and the last person he sees is a boy who is watching the execution with fear. Sotnikov could not resist smiling at the boy with his eyes alone. He seems to want to say that it is better to die than to be a traitor. The problems of the collision of good and evil, indifference and humanism are always relevant, and, it seems to me, the more complex the moral situation, the stronger the interest in it. Of course, these problems cannot be solved by one work or even by all literature as a whole. Each time it is a personal matter. But maybe it will be easier for people to make a choice when they have a moral compass. Problem historical memory(based on the story “Not on the Lists” by Boris Vasiliev) Why do many writers in our time continue to talk about the Great Patriotic War? And why, as some people now think, should we remember those tragic events in peacetime by visiting museums and laying flowers at monuments to fallen soldiers? An excerpt from Boris Vasiliev’s story “Not on the Lists” makes you think about this. The description of the Brest Fortress Museum touches to the core. You can feel the atmosphere of reverence that reigns in this museum. The writer admires the feat of the fortress’s defenders: “The fortress did not fall. The fortress is bleeding." He urges visitors: “Don’t rush. Remember. And bow down." The author watches an old woman who stands for a long time at a marble slab, where there is no soldier’s surname. She places a bouquet of flowers on the grave. This is probably a mother who lost her son in the war. For the writer, it doesn’t matter who lies in this grave. The only thing that matters is what they died for. The main thing is why! Boris Vasiliev thinks so. Remember and respect the memory of them, even if their names are unknown, because they died defending our destinies, our lives. After all, as Robert Rozhdestvensky said, “it’s not the dead who need this, it’s the living who need it!” Boris Vasiliev often wrote about the war. I especially remember his story “The Dawns Here Are Quiet.” It is impossible to forget the main characters of the story: Rita Osyanina, Lisa Brichkina, Zhenya Komelkova, Sonya Gurvich, Galyu Chetvertak. Each has its own life story, its unique character. And each has its own scores to settle with the war. Everyone became anti-aircraft gunners. During his last conversation with the mortally wounded Rita Osyanina, Sergeant Major Vaskov reproaches himself for not saving all five from death when they tried not to let the Nazis through to the White Sea Canal.Part one
The commander... becomes a real commander only after serving in the troops, having shared the same pot with the soldiers, and learning to command them.
It was very quiet and very warm, and he was a little dizzy, and he thought with pleasure that he had nowhere to rush yet, because he was not yet on the lists.
Part two
He no longer felt either fear or time: his stuffy ears were ringing, his dry throat was painfully sore, and his hands were unaccustomed to the shaking German machine gun.
He sat on the floor, motionless, gloomily thinking that he had done the worst thing: he had betrayed his comrades. He did not look for excuses for himself, did not feel sorry for himself: he sought to understand why this happened.
Days and nights merged into a single chain of forays and bombings, ... battles with the enemy and short, fainting-like minutes of oblivion. And a constant, debilitating desire to drink that does not go away even in sleep.
Wounded, scorched, exhausted by thirst and battles, skeletons in rags rose from under the bricks, crawled out of the dungeons and... destroyed those who risked staying overnight. And the Germans were afraid of the nights.
Part three
For them, walled up alive in a remote casemate, the whole war was now going on above.
With amazing clarity he now saw them all. Everyone who, covering him, rushed forward, rushed without hesitation, without thinking, driven by something incomprehensible, incomprehensible to him.
He felt no remorse in shooting a man with whom he had sat at a common table more than once. On the contrary, he felt an angry, joyful excitement.
Part four
And again there was no darkness, no basement, no rats squeaking in the corners. And again there was no war, but two. Two on Earth. Man and Woman.
A bright light flashed before her tightly closed eyes, and in this merciless light she suddenly saw that she would never have a child, a husband, or life itself.
Part five
He was alive and still felt like the master of the Brest Fortress, silent under the snow.
So that they know: the fortress is alive. So that they fear the dead too. So that their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are ordered to go to Russia!
But he did not see these honors, and if he had, he would no longer care. He was above all conceivable honors, above glory, above life and above death.
Epilogue
The most famous story is B. Vasilyev’s story “The Dawns Here Are Quiet...”, in which the idea of the incompatibility of war with the nature of man, especially of a woman, called upon to give life, is expressed with particular insight.
So, Kolya Pluzhnikov arrives at the Brest Fortress on the night of June 22, 1941. He is almost still a boy, very naive and spontaneous. But in this naivety lies, it seems to me, the great truth of the time, which B. Vasiliev paints, avoiding even a hint of modernization, modernizing the past for the sake of fashion, power, etc.
The war dramatically changes Nikolai's life and consciousness. At the cost of grave mistakes, having experienced high love and low betrayal, Pluzhnikov comes to the understanding that much depends on his personal participation.
Nikolai did not immediately manage to go through the “science of hatred” that M. A. Sholokhov wrote about. In the second part of the novel, the hero transitions to a new state: the boy turns into a warrior, into a “comrade commander.”
However, it seems to me that the first and second parts are a kind of set-up for the third part. It is when all of Pluzhnikov’s friends died, when he remains the only active fighter in the occupied but undefeated fortress, that the main action of the novel unfolds. The tone and even the rhythm of the narrative changes sharply, the dramatic notes of the military plot disappear, the descriptions of combat episodes disappear; a high psychological intensity arises, the drama is replaced by a high tragedy that turns the young man into a Hero, the culmination and denouement of which at the same time becomes the last chapter of the novel. Hence the solemnity and the special, significant meaning of each phrase.
The unconquered son of an unconquered homeland does not feel defeated. The Brest Fortress did not fall, but simply bled to death, and Pluzhnikov is its last straw. He is above death, which means he is above oblivion.
Pluzhnikov's feat is so high that he even amazes his enemies. As he walked toward the ambulance, “suddenly the German general, clicking his heels, raised his hand to the visor. The soldiers stood up and froze.” But the one whom the enemies saluted no longer saw anything. He was above glory and above death. “He walked proudly and stubbornly, as he lived, and fell only when he got there.”
I think that the theme of the feat will forever exist in Russian literature, not only because the memory of the heroes does not die in our hearts, but also because nowadays, unfortunately, nineteen-year-old boys are dying again, and mothers are once again putting on mourning clothes.
Sotnikov's suffering ended with his execution. But Rybak began to have problems with his conscience. And here an analogy arises with the biblical story of Judas Iscariot. The fisherman realizes that he cannot escape and decides to take his own life, “...to hell, forever... this is the only possible way out...” But fate does not even give him such an opportunity. And he continues to live, languishing from the pangs of conscience.
But Rita steadfastly answers him: “The Motherland does not begin with canals. Not from there at all. And we protected her. First her, and then the channel.” I admire the inner strength, conviction, and courage of the girls and heroines of the story. They knew what they were fighting for!
Historical memory is often reflected not only by front-line writers, but also by people who did not fight, but who nevertheless take the events of those years to heart. Let us remember Vladimir Vysotsky’s song “Mass Graves”. The author of the song is sure that the defenders of the Motherland had one destiny, one goal. And after the war there is one, common memory.
There are no crosses on mass graves,
And widows do not cry for them.
Someone brings bouquets of flowers to them,
And the Eternal Flame is lit.
The poet is convinced that people standing at the Eternal Flame cannot help but remember the “burning heart of a soldier” who died for hometown or a village.
The eternal memory of those killed during the Great Patriotic War is the duty of post-war generations. And the main thing, of course, is not in the outward manifestation of respect, not in ceremonial events. The main thing is that the memory of the events of the war years awakens our conscience and does not give us peace. Memory makes us think about what we would do if we found ourselves in war, whether we are ready for a feat. After all, everyone always has a choice: “me or the Motherland?”
I would like to believe that Boris Vasiliev’s heartfelt story about the Brest Fortress will touch the hearts of readers, and we will always remember the feat of those who gave their lives for their Motherland and honor their memory.
Updated: 2017-03-21
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