If you've ever tried to root green cuttings, then you probably know that ...
The story was written in 1967, after V.T. Shalamov left the camp. The author spent a total of eighteen years in prison, and all his work is devoted to the theme of camp life.
A distinctive feature of his characters is that they no longer hope for anything and do not believe in anything. They have lost all human senses except hunger and cold. It is in the story of the ChKh that such a characteristic of the prisoner manifests itself especially clearly. The comrade entrusted the main character with a little bag of bread.
It was extremely difficult for him to restrain himself and not touch the ration: + I did not sleep + because I had bread in my head + You can imagine how hard it was for the prisoner then.
But the main thing that helped to survive was self-respect. You cannot compromise your pride, conscience and honor under any circumstances. And the main character showed not only all these qualities, but also strength of character, will, endurance. He did not begin to eat the bread of his comrade, and thus, as if he did not betray him, he remained faithful to him. I believe that this act is important primarily for the hero himself. He remained faithful not so much to his comrade as to himself: And I fell asleep, proud that I had not stolen my comrade's bread.
This story made a big impression on me. It fully reflects those terrible, unbearable conditions in which the prisoner's life passed. And yet the author shows that the Russian person, in spite of everything, does not deviate from his convictions and principles. And this helps him to survive to some extent.
The fusion of romanticism and realism, with which M. Gorky began his career, was a new progressive step in the development of Russian literature. The first brilliant work with which Gorky entered literature was “Makar Chudra”.
About the brutal events of Soviet times in Russia, described in the works of Solzhenitsyn, Shalamov, Dombrovsky and Vladimov.
The reform only exacerbated the already difficult position of the peasants in Russia. My beloved writer I. A. Bunina could not leave indifferent such a situation of workers who feed the fatherland with bread.
In Sholokhov's story "The Fate of a Man", through the fate of a simple hard worker, the fate of the entire people was shown. during the war years, such a life could be repeated many times. The main new device is story within story.
The path that fell to Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov was incredibly difficult, sometimes tragic. He spent seventeen years in prisons and camps: from 1929 to 1932 - in the North Ural camps, from 1937 to 1951 - in the Kolyma camps.
In the fiction of the post-war decades, the themes of the experiences experienced during the war and the rethinking of the events of those years come to the fore. It is to this period that the work of V. Bykov.
"Kolyma Tales" is a collection of short stories that was included in the Kolyma epic of Varlam Shalamov. The author himself went through this "most icy" hell of the Stalinist camps, so each of his stories is absolutely reliable.
In recent years, we have had the opportunity to get acquainted with many works from which the willful decision of the communist ideologists were forcibly excommunicated.
The works of the famous Belarusian writer Vasil Bykov are of great interest. A large number of stories, stories were dedicated to the Great Patriotic War, the heroism and courage of our people.
This time was very difficult for the peasants and left a big mark on the history of our country. If you look at collectivization on the surface, you get the impression that it was a difficult but rewarding time.
I would like to acquaint you with the work of Andrei Platonovich. Platonov is a Russian Soviet writer, in his works he creates a special world that amazes us and makes us think.
The subtle lyricist and psychologist - Ivan Alekseevich Bunin in the story "The gentleman from San Francisco" seems to be deviating from the laws of realism, approaching the romantic symbolists.
The main theme of A.I. Solzhenitsyn is the exposure of the totalitarian system, proof of the impossibility of human existence in it.
The "camp" theme rises sharply again in the twentieth century. Many writers such as Shalamov, Solzhenitsyn, Sinyavsky, Aleshkovsky, Ginzbur, Dombrovsky, Vladimov testified about the horrors of camps, prisons, and isolation wards.
The article is posted on a hard-to-reach Internet resource in a pdf extension, I duplicate it here.
Documentary artistry of the stories "The Sending" by V.T. Shalamov and "Sanochki" GS Zhzhenova
The article is related to the topic of the Kolyma penal camps and is devoted to the analysis of the documentary-artistic world of the stories "The Sending" by V.T. Shalamov and "Sanochki" GS Zhzhenova.
The exposition of Shalamov's story "The Parcel" directly introduces the main event of the narrative - the receipt of a parcel by one of the prisoners: “Parcels were given out on watch. The foremen verified the identity of the recipient. Plywood broke and cracked in its own way, in a plywood way. The local trees did not break like that, they shouted in a different voice. " It is no coincidence that the sound of parcel plywood is compared to the sound of breaking Kolyma trees, as if symbolizing two oppositely polar modes of human life - life in freedom and life in prison. The "different polarity" is clearly felt in another no less important circumstance: a prisoner who comes to receive the parcel notices behind the barrier people "with clean hands in an overly neat military uniform." The contrast from the very beginning creates an insurmountable barrier between powerless prisoners and those who stand above them - the arbiters of their destinies. The attitude of the "masters" to "slaves" is also noted in the plot of the plot, and the mockery of the prisoner will vary until the end of the story, forming a kind of event constant, emphasizing the absolute lack of rights of an ordinary inhabitant of the Stalinist labor camp.
The article deals with the GULAG theme. The author made an attempt to analyze the documentary and fi ction worlds of the two stories.
LITERATURE
1. Zhzhenov G.S. Sleigh // From "Capercaillie" to "Firebird": a story and stories. - M .: Contemporary, 1989.
2. Cress Vernon. Zekameron XX century: a novel. - M .: Art. lit., 1992.
3. Shalamov V.T. Collected Works. In 4 volumes. T. 1 // comp., Prepared. text and notes. I. Sirotinskaya. - M .: Art. lit., 1998.
4. Shalamov V.T. Collected Works. In 4 volumes. T. 2 // comp., Prepared. text and notes. I. Sirotinskaya. - M .: Art. lit., 1998.
5. Schiller F.P. Letters from a dead house / comp., Trans. with it., note., afterword. V.F. Diesendorf. - M .: Obshchest. acad. sciences grew. Germans, 2002.
NOTES
1. Note that dreams about food and bread do not give a hungry prisoner rest in the camp: "I slept and still saw my constant Kolyma dream - loaves of bread floating in the air, filling all the houses, all the streets, the whole earth."
2. Philologist F.P. Schiller wrote to his family in 1940 from a camp in Nakhodka Bay: "If you have not sent your boots and top shirt yet, then do not send it, otherwise I am afraid that you will send something completely inappropriate."
3. Shalamov recalls this case both in "Sketches of the Underworld" and in the story "Tombstone": “Burkas cost seven hundred, but it was a profitable sale.<…> And I bought a whole kilogram of butter at the store.<…> I also bought bread ... ".
4. Due to the constant hunger of prisoners and exhausting hard work, the diagnosis of "alimentary dystrophy" was common in the camps. This became a fertile ground for making adventures of unprecedented proportions: "all products were written off to the camp that matured for storage periods."
5. Something similar to this feeling is experienced by the hero-narrator of the story "The Conspiracy of Lawyers": “I have not been pushed out in this brigade yet. There were people here and weaker than me, and this brought some kind of comfort, some unexpected joy. " Kolyma resident Vernon Kress writes about human psychology in such conditions: “Our comrades pushed us, because the sight of a person who has reached it always irritates the healthier one, he guesses his own future in it, and besides, he pulls to find an even more defenseless one, to take revenge on it<...>» .
6. Not only blatari loved theatricality, other representatives of the camp population were also interested in it.
Cheslav Gorbachevsky, South Ural State University
The huge double door opened and a distributor entered the transit barracks. He stood in a wide strip of morning light reflected by the blue snow. Two thousand eyes looked at him from everywhere: from below - from under the bunks, directly, from the side and from above - from the height of the four-story bunks, where those who still retained strength climbed up the stairs. Today was a herring day, and a huge plywood tray was being carried behind the distributor, caved in under a mountain of herrings, chopped in half. Behind the tray was the guard on duty in a white sheepskin sheepskin coat, sparkling like the sun. Herring was handed out in the morning - half every other day. What calculations of proteins and calories were made here, no one knew, and no one was interested in such scholasticism. The whisper of hundreds of people repeated the same word: tails. Some wise boss, taking into account the prison psychology, ordered to issue either heads of herring or tails at the same time. The advantages of both have been discussed many times: there seemed to be more fish meat in the tails, but the head gave more pleasure. The process of eating food lasted until the gills were sucked, the head was eaten away. The herring was given out unpeeled, and everyone approved of this: after all, they ate it with all the bones and skin. But regret for the fish heads flashed and disappeared: the tails were a given, a fact. In addition, the tray was approaching, and the most exciting moment came: how big the cut would be, it was impossible to change, to protest too, everything was in the hands of luck - the card in this game with hunger. A person who inattentively cuts herring into portions does not always understand (or simply forgot) that ten grams more or less - ten grams, which seems ten grams to the eye - can lead to drama, to bloody drama, maybe. There is nothing to say about tears. Tears are frequent, they are understandable to everyone, and they do not laugh at the crying.
As the dispenser approaches, each has already calculated which piece will be extended to him with this indifferent hand. Everyone has already managed to be upset, rejoice, prepare for a miracle, reach the edge of despair, if he was mistaken in his hasty calculations. Some closed their eyes, unable to control their excitement, only to open them when the distributor pushed him and held out the herring ration. Grabbing the herring with dirty fingers, stroking it, squeezing it quickly and gently to determine whether the portion was dry or fat (however, Okhotsk herrings are never greasy, and this finger movement is also an expectation of a miracle), he cannot help but glance at the hands of those who surround him and who are also stroking and crushing the herring pieces, fearing to hasten to swallow this tiny tail. He doesn't eat herring. He licks her, licks her, and little by little the ponytail disappears from his fingers. Bones remain, and he chews the bones gently, chews gently, and the bones melt and disappear. Then he takes bread - five hundred grams is given out for a day in the morning - pinches off a tiny piece and sends it into his mouth. Everyone eats bread at once - so no one will steal it and no one will take it away, and there is no strength to save it. You just don't need to rush, you don't need to drink it with water, you don't need to chew. You gotta suck it like sugar, like candy. Then you can take a mug of tea - lukewarm water, blackened with a burnt crust.
A herring was eaten, bread was eaten, tea was drunk. It immediately gets hot and you don't want to go anywhere, you want to go to bed, but you have to get dressed - pull on the torn quilted jacket that was your blanket, tie the soles of the soles to the torn cloaks of quilted cotton wool, cloaks that were your pillow, and you need to hurry, because the doors are thrown open again, and behind the barbed wire fence of the courtyard there are guards and dogs ...
We are in quarantine, in typhoid quarantine, but we are not allowed to mess around. We are driven to work - not according to the lists, but simply counting the fives at the gate. There is a fairly reliable way of getting into comparatively profitable jobs every day. All you need is patience and endurance. A profitable job is always a job where few people are hired: two, three, four. The work where they take twenty, thirty, one hundred is hard work, mostly earthy. And although the prisoner is never announced in advance the place of work, he learns about it on the way, luck in this terrible lottery goes to people with patience. It is necessary to huddle behind, in other people's ranks, step aside and rush forward when they build a small group. For large parties, the most profitable is the bulkhead of vegetables in the warehouse, the bakery, in a word, all those places where work is connected with food, future or present - there are always leftovers, debris, trimmings of what you can eat.
We were lined up and taken along the dirty April road. The escorts' boots spanked cheerfully through the puddles. We were not allowed to break the formation in the city limits - no one bypassed the puddles. Legs were damp, but they did not pay attention to it - they were not afraid of colds. They have chilled a thousand times already, and moreover, the most formidable thing that could happen - pneumonia, say, - would lead to the desired hospital. They whispered abruptly through the rows:
- To the bakery, hey, you, to the bakery!
There are people who always know everything and guess everything. There are those who want to see the best in everything, and their sanguine temperament in the most difficult situation is always looking for some kind of formula for harmony with life. For others, on the contrary, events develop for the worse, and they perceive any improvement with distrust, as a kind of oversight of fate. And this difference in judgments depends little on personal experience: it is, as it were, given in childhood - for life ...
The wildest hopes came true - we stood in front of the gates of the bakery. Twenty people, with their hands in their sleeves, were stomping around, exposing their backs to the piercing wind. The escorts, stepping aside, lit a cigarette. From a small door cut through the gate, a man came out without a hat, in a blue robe. He spoke to the guards and came up to us. Slowly he looked around everyone. Kolyma makes everyone a psychologist, but he had to figure out a lot in one minute. Among the twenty ragamuffins it was necessary to choose two to work inside the bakery, in the shops. It is necessary that these people were stronger than others, so that they could carry a stretcher with broken bricks left over after the stove was moved. So that they are not thieves, thieves, because then the working day will be spent on all sorts of meetings, the transfer of "ksiv" - notes, and not at work. It is necessary that they have not yet reached the border, beyond which everyone can become a thief from hunger, because no one will guard them in the shops. They must not be inclined to escape. You gotta ...
And all this had to be read on twenty prisoners' faces in one minute, and then he had to choose and decide.
“Come out,” the man without the hat said to me. “And you,” he poked at my freckled, omniscient neighbor. “I'll take these,” he said to the guard.
“Okay,” he said indifferently. Envious glances followed us.
In humans, all five human senses never act simultaneously with full tension. I can't hear the radio when I read it carefully. The lines jump before my eyes when I listen to the radio broadcast, although the automatism of the reading remains, I follow the lines with my eyes, and suddenly it turns out that I do not remember anything from what I have just read. The same happens when one thinks about something else in the middle of reading - these are some kind of internal switches. A popular saying - when I eat, I am deaf and dumb - is known to everyone. One could add: "and blind", because the function of vision with such a meal with appetite focuses on helping taste perception. When I feel something with my hand deep in the closet and perception is localized at the fingertips, I see and hear nothing, everything is repressed by the tension of the tactile sensation. So now, having crossed the threshold of the bakery, I stood, not seeing the sympathetic and benevolent faces of the workers (both former and existing prisoners worked here), and did not hear the words of the master, a familiar person without a hat, explaining that we should pull out broken brick into the street that we should not go to other workshops, that we should not steal, that he will give bread anyway - I have not heard anything. I didn’t feel that warmth of a hotly heated workshop, the warmth that the body yearned for so much during the long winter.
I breathed in the scent of bread, the thick scent of loaves, where the scent of burning butter mingled with the scent of toasted flour. I greedily caught the smallest part of this overwhelming aroma in the morning, pressing my nose to the crust of the ration that had not yet been eaten. But here he was in all its thickness and power, and seemed to tear my poor nostrils.
The master interrupted the charm.
“Looked in,” he said. - Let's go to the boiler room. We went down to the basement. In a clean-swept boiler room, my partner was already sitting at the fireman's table. The fireman, in the same blue dressing gown as the master, smoked near the stove, and through the holes in the cast-iron door of the firebox one could see how flames rushed and sparkled inside - now red, now yellow, and the walls of the boiler trembled and hummed from the convulsions of fire.
The master put on the table a kettle, a mug of jam, and a loaf of white bread.
“Give them a drink,” he said to the fireman. - I'll be back in twenty minutes. Just don't wait, eat faster. In the evening we will give you more bread, break it into pieces, otherwise they will take it away from you in the camp.
The master is gone.
- Look, bitch, - said the fireman, twirling a loaf in his hands. - Sorry for thirty, bastard. Well, wait.
And he went out after the master, and a minute later returned, tossing a new loaf of bread in his hands.
“Lukewarm,” he said, tossing the loaf to the freckled guy. - From thirty. And then you see, I wanted to get off half-white! Give it here. - And, picking up the loaf that the master had left us, the stoker opened the boiler door and threw the loaf into the humming and howling fire. And slamming the door, he laughed. “That's it,” he said cheerfully, turning to us.
- Why is that, - I said, - it would be better if we took it with us.
"We'll give you some more with us," said the fireman. Neither I nor the freckled guy could break the loaves.
- Do you have a knife? I asked the stoker.
- Not. Why a knife?
The fireman took the loaf in two hands and easily broke it. Hot, fragrant steam came from the broken rug. The fireman jabbed a finger at the crumb.
- Fedka bakes well, well done, - he praised. But we didn't have time to find out who Fedka was. We started eating, scalding ourselves with bread and boiling water, into which we kneaded the jam. Hot sweat poured down from us. We were in a hurry - the master came back for us.
He had already brought a stretcher, dragged them to a pile of broken bricks, brought in shovels, and filled the first box himself. We got to work. And suddenly it became clear that for both of us the stretchers were unbearably heavy, that they were pulling on the veins, and the hand suddenly weakened, losing strength. My head was spinning, we were shaken. I loaded the next stretcher and put in half the first load.
“Enough, enough,” said the freckled guy. He was even paler than I was, or the freckles accentuated his pallor.
“Relax, guys,” said a baker passing by, cheerfully and not at all mockingly, and we obediently sat down to rest. The master passed by, but did not tell us anything.
After resting, we set to work again, but after every two stretchers we sat down again - the pile of garbage did not subside.
“Have a smoke, guys,” said the same baker, reappearing.
- No tobacco.
- Well, I'll give you a cigarette. You just have to get out. You cannot smoke here.
We shared the makhorka, and each lit his own cigarette - a luxury long forgotten. I took several slow puffs, gently extinguished the cigarette with my finger, wrapped it in a piece of paper and hid it in my bosom.
“That's right,” said the freckled guy. - I didn't think.
By lunchtime, we got used to it so much that we looked into the neighboring rooms with the same bakery ovens. Everywhere from the ovens creeped out iron molds and sheets, and bread and bread lay everywhere on the shelves. From time to time, a trolley on wheels came, the baked bread was loaded and taken away somewhere, just not where we had to return in the evening - it was white bread.
Through a wide window without bars, the sun could be seen moving towards sunset. A chill came from the door. The master came.
- Well, finish it. Leave the stretcher on the trash. Little did they do. You won't be able to drag this heap of workers in a week.
We were given a loaf of bread each, we broke it into pieces, filled our pockets ... But how much could go into our pockets?
“Hide it right in your trousers,” the freckled guy commanded.
We went out into the cold evening courtyard - the party was already under construction - they took us back. On the camp watch, they did not search us - no one carried bread in their hands. I returned to my place, shared the bread brought with the neighbors, lay down and fell asleep as soon as my wet, stiff legs warmed up.
All night long loaves of bread and the mischievous face of a stoker who threw bread into the fiery mouth of the furnace flashed before me.
Shalamov V.T.
Essay on the work on the topic: A short review of the story of V. Shalamov Alien bread.
A brief review of the story of V. Shalamov Alien bread. The ChKh story was written in 1967, after V.T.Shalamov left the camp. The author spent a total of eighteen years in prison, and all his work is devoted to the theme of camp life. A distinctive feature of his heroes is that they no longer hope for anything and do not believe in anything. They have lost all human senses except hunger and cold. It is in the story of ChKh that such a characteristic of the prisoner manifests itself especially clearly. The comrade entrusted the main character with a little bag of bread. It was extremely difficult for him to restrain himself and not touch the ration: I did not sleep because I had bread in my head. One can imagine how hard it was for the prisoner then. But the main thing that helped to survive was self-respect. You cannot compromise your pride, conscience and honor under any circumstances. And the main character showed not only all these qualities, but also strength of character, will, endurance. He did not begin to eat the bread of his comrade, and thus, as if he did not betray him, he remained faithful to him. I believe that this act is important first of all for the hero himself. He remained faithful not so much to his comrade as to himself: And I fell asleep, proud that I had not stolen my comrade's bread. This story made a great impression on me. It fully reflects those terrible, unbearable conditions in which the prisoner's life passed. And yet the author shows that the Russian person, in spite of everything, does not deviate from his convictions and principles. And this helps him to survive to some extent.
http://vsekratko.ru/shalamov/raznoe
The writing
Brief review of V. Shalamov's story Alien bread.
The ChKh story was written in 1967, after V.T. Shalamov left the camp. In conclusion, the author
spent a total of eighteen years, and all his work is devoted to the theme of camp life.
A distinctive feature of his characters is that they no longer hope for anything and for nothing.
believe. They have lost all human senses except hunger and cold. It is in the story of CH that
the characterization of the prisoner is especially vivid. The comrade entrusted the main character with a baulchik with
bread. It was extremely difficult for him to restrain himself and not touch the ration: + I did not sleep + because in
i had bread on my heads + One can imagine how hard it was for the prisoner then. But the main thing is that
self-respect helped to survive. You can not compromise your pride, conscience and honor in any
circumstances. And the main character showed not only all these qualities, but also strength of character,
will, endurance. He did not begin to eat the bread of his comrade, and thus, as if he did not betray him, he remained to him
faithful. I believe that this act is important first of all for the hero himself. He remained faithful not
as much to my friend as to myself: And I fell asleep, proud that I had not stolen my friend's bread.
This story made a big impression on me. It fully reflects those terrible
intolerable conditions in which the prisoner lived. And yet the author shows that Russian
a person, in spite of everything, does not deviate from his beliefs and principles. And it helps in some
degree to him to survive.
