Pekashin's peasant Stepan Andreyanovich Stavrov cut down a house on the side of a mountain, in the cool gloom of a huge larch. Yes, not a house - a two-story horomina with a small side hut to boot.
There was a war going on. Old people, children and women remained in Pekashin. Without a glance before our eyes, buildings were dilapidated and falling apart. But Stavrov's house is strong, solid, for all times. The funeral for his son has cut down on the strong old man. He stayed with the old woman and grandson Yegorsha.
Anna Pryaslina's family was not spared either: her husband Ivan, the only breadwinner, died. And Anna's guys are small and small - Mishka, Lizka, the twins Petka and Grishka, Fedyushka and Tatyanka. In the village, the woman was called Anna the doll. She was small and thin, with a good face, but she was not a worker. Two days have passed since the funeral was received and the eldest, Mishka, sat in the father's empty seat at the table. Mother brushed a tear from her face and silently nodded her head.
She herself could not pull the guys out. She and so, in order to fulfill the norm, remained on the arable land until night. One day, when they were working with the wives, they saw a stranger. The arm is in a sling. It turned out he was from the front. He sat and talked with the women about collective farm life, and at parting they asked how to call him, to dignify him and what village he was from. “Lukashin,” he answered, “Ivan Dmitrievich. I have been sent from the district committee to your sowing campaign. "
Sowing was oh and difficult. There are few people, but the district committee ordered to increase the sown area: the front needs bread. Unexpectedly for everyone, Mishka Pryaslin turned out to be an indispensable worker. Something I didn’t do in my fourteen years. On a collective farm he worked for an adult man, and even for a family. His sister, twelve-year-old Lizka, also had her hands full of work and trouble. Heat the stove, handle the cow, feed the children, clean up the hut, wash the linen ...
For the sowing season - mowing, then harvesting ... The chairman of the collective farm Anfisa Minina returned to her empty hut late in the evening and, without undressing, fell on the bed. A little light, she is already on her feet - milking the cow, and she herself thinks with fear that the collective farm pantry is running out of bread. And still happy. Because I remembered how I spoke to Ivan Dmitrievich at the board.
Autumn is just around the corner. The guys will soon go to school, and Mishka Pryaslin will go to logging. We have to pull the family. Dunyashka Inyakhina decided to study at a technical school. Gave Misha a lace handkerchief goodbye.
The reports from the front are more and more alarming. The Germans have already reached the Volga. And the district committee, finally, responded to Lukashin's persistent request - they let him go to fight. He wanted to finally have an explanation with Anfisa, but it did not work out. In the morning, she herself deliberately left for the grooming station, and there Varvara Inyakhina rushed to her. She swore to everyone in the world that she had nothing with Lukashin. Anfisa rushed to the translation, at the very water jumped from her horse onto the wet sand. On the other side the figure of Lukashin flashed and melted.
"Brothers and sisters"
"Two winters and three summers"
"Crossroads"
"Fatherlessness"
"A trip to the past"
"Wooden horses"
"Pelageya" and "Alka"
The tetralogy - "Brothers and Sisters" (1958), "Two winters and three summers" (1968), "Crossroads" (1973), "Home" (1978) - highlights the great feat and suffering of those who remained in the rear and ensured Victory in the terrible hard times of World War II, tells about the fate of the Russian village after the war.
In the novel "House", which became the writer's testament, a bitter but true picture is drawn: old people leave, former front-line soldiers drink too much, Lizaveta Pryaslina, the keeper of Pryaslin's conscience and home, dies, and Mikhail Pryaslin, the owner and worker, can do nothing with destruction Houses amid general decay.
The action of the tetralogy "Pryaslina" takes place in the village of Pekashino in northern Russia and covers the period from World War II to the early 1970s.
Abramov the artist appears as a true master of creating a variety of characters, depicting all the colors of life both in nature and in human relations. In the center - the vicissitudes of the fate of the Pryaslin family. After the death of his father at the front, fourteen-year-old Mikhail Pryaslin becomes the head of the family. The teenager bears not only the care of his younger brothers and sisters, but also the obligation to work on a collective farm on an equal basis with adults.
The story of the Pryaslins, a typical Russian peasant family that experienced all the cruel twists and turns of the 20th century, made Abramov one of the most notable representatives of "village prose" - a galaxy of writers who were engaged in artistic research of the deep layers of popular life. The tetralogy is characterized by an epic style, a scrupulous description of the village life and the fate of the heroes.
Tetralogy "Pryasliny"
"Brothers and sisters"
Abramov's first novel "Brothers and Sisters", dedicated to the life of the Russian countryside during the war years, was published in 1958. The writer explained the reason for its appearance by the impossibility of forgetting "the great feat of the Russian woman, who opened a second front in 1941, a front, perhaps no less difficult than the front of the Russian peasant." The original title of the tetralogy "Pryasliny", bringing to the fore the story of the Pekashin family of Pryaslin, somewhat narrowed the author's intention.
The novel "Brothers and Sisters" reflected Abramov's own authorial position, his desire to capture the dedication, sacrifice and sorrow of rural workers during the war. The title of the novel is explained not only by the fact that the main place in it is occupied by the life of a large family, but the post-war reader is also remembered by the words of J.V. Stalin in his speech on the radio in the first tragic days of the war:
“Brothers and sisters, I am addressing you, my friends ...” The book was conceived at a time when official propaganda in every possible way extolled the role of the leader in the victory won, clearly pleading for the heroic deed of the people - “brothers and sisters”.
The idea of \u200b\u200bthe novel "Brothers and Sisters" is perhaps most evidently expressed in the words of the secretary of the regional party committee Novozhilov, who talks heart to heart with Lukashin: “They say that war awakens different instincts in a person, he thinks out loud. - You probably had to read it too. And I see - we have quite the opposite. People from the latter help each other. And such a conscience has risen among the people - the soul of everyone shines through and through. And mind you: quarrels, squabbles there - after all, there is almost no. Well, how can I tell you? you understand, brothers and sisters ... Well, do you understand what I am thinking? "
Brothers and Sisters was created with a desire to challenge the dominant literature of the 4050s. the point of view of the Russian countryside as the edge of prosperity.
Abramov admits that he could not help writing Brothers and Sisters: “I knew the village of the war years and the literature about it, in which there was a lot of pink water ... I wanted to argue with the authors of those works, to express my point of view. But the main thing, of course, was different. Pictures of living reality stood before my eyes, they pressed on the memory, demanded a word about themselves. " Abramov made a demand to literature - to show the truth and the hard-hitting truth. "
"Two winters and three summers"
AT Tvardovsky, having read the manuscript, wrote to the author on August 29, 1967: "... You wrote a book that has not yet been in our literature ... The book is full of bitter bewilderment, fiery pain for the people of the village and deep love for them ...".
However, with considerable difficulty the novel “Two winters and three summers” was published in Novy Mir (1968), which continued “Brothers and Sisters” and a story about the post-war period. The war is over, but the "funerals" are still going on. And the timid joy of those who waited for theirs from the front melts away, chokes in a sea of \u200b\u200btears. And those who have returned next to widows and orphans seem to be embarrassed that they were left to live.
The war is over, but people, more than ever, are torn between the collective farm cornfield and the forest plot: the country needs a forest, a lot of forest.
The war is over, but as before, the lion's share of what they produce is handed over to the state, while they themselves eat bread in half with grass.
This book noticeably surpassed the previous capacity and expressiveness of writing, the brightness of the speech characteristics of the characters, the tension, the acute conflict of the narrative. The fate of the Pryaslin family and other residents of the village of Pekashino, for example, the recent front-line soldier Ilya Nepesov, who was knocked out of his strength in vain attempts to feed his family, and Timofey Lobanov, who returned from captivity, are dramatic. The earnest hard worker Liza Pryaslina, according to the sad definition of brother Mikhail, is only "a girl on the spit", but looks "like a swamp pine tree - a wretch"; their smaller brothers are "thin, pale like grass grown underground." In the novel, everything, from the main thing to the smallest detail, is dictated by the harsh time to which it is dedicated, bears its stamp. The hardships and hardships that fell to the lot of the Pryaslins and all Pekashin residents are nothing more than a particle of the nation's burden, and their share is not yet the heaviest, if only because the fiery shaft raged far away. Pekashin residents constantly feel indebted to the country and do not grumble, bringing their great sacrifices when they clearly see their need.
In the work, Abramov explores the life of the village at different social levels. He is interested in both a simple peasant and a person assigned to manage people. The relief that the residents of Pekashin hoped for, expecting victory, did not come. Blood related by a common goal, until recently they were like "brothers and sisters." The author compares the village to a fist, each finger of which wants its own life. Exorbitant government obligations, hunger, lack of a stable way of life lead the heroes to the idea of \u200b\u200bthe necessary changes. Mikhail Pryaslin (a hero very close to Abramov) at the end of the novel asks the question: “How to live on? Where to go? " The doubts and hopes of the hero, reflecting on the future in the novel's finale, are embodied in the symbolic image of a flared up and "crumbled" star.
"Crossroads"
The third novel of the "Pryasliny" tetralogy is the novel "Crossroads", which takes place in the early 50s. It appeared in print five after the second part of the tetralogy. Its duration is 1951. No matter how much the people of Pekashin expected changes for the better in the village, the difficult time was not over for her. In the six years that have passed since the war, the life of the northern village has changed a little. In general, there are almost no more men and there are still not enough workers, and in fact, in addition to collective farm production, the labor force is constantly mobilized either for logging or for timber floating. Once again, the heroes dear to the writer's heart are faced with insoluble problems.
In the opinion of literary critics, "Crossroads" is the most socially poignant novel by Abramov, which has not been properly understood.
Why is poverty and mismanagement reigning? Why, even six years after the war, they "shoveled every grain" out of the village? Why does a peasant who obtains bread and feed the country himself remain without bread and milk? Who is the real master of the country? People and power. Party and people. Economy. Politics. Person. Management methods and management methods. Conscience, duty, responsibility, self-awareness and fanaticism, demagoguery, opportunism, cynicism. The tragedy of the people, country, personality. This is the circle of burning and most important problems posed in the novel.
Abramov shows negative changes in the character of the Russian peasant. The state policy, which does not allow workers to take advantage of the results of their labor, eventually weaned him from working, undermined the spiritual foundations of his life. One of the most important themes in the novel is the fate of the head of a collective farm, who will try to change the established order in them - to give the peasants the grain they have grown. The illegal action resulted in arrest. A serious test for Pekashin residents is a letter in defense of the chairman, which they need to sign - only a few will commit this moral act.
The drama of the novel "Crossroads" is purely eventual, situational, no longer directly, not directly related to the war and its consequences, and sometimes not at all related to it.
"House"
For about six years, the prose writer worked on the final book of the tetralogy "House" (1978) - a sample of writing "in hot pursuit of events." The novel is no longer in the past, but in the present. The action begins at most a year before the book starts, in the hot, stifling summer of 1972. The narrative makes the longest "leap" of all that there is in a fictional chronicle, at twenty-one years. For the fate of the main characters, this period of life results, for the writer, is an opportunity, referring to the running day, to summarize the fruits of the post-war development of the village, to show what it all turned into, what it came to.
Pekashino has now become different, "well-fed", has grown into fifty new good-quality houses, acquired nickel-plated beds, carpets, motorcycles ... But it is not joyful to live, it is difficult to breathe. We got used to it and became the norm already orders and mores, which were finally consolidated by the new (stagnant - as they say now) era. The whole atmosphere of the narrative is filled with its suffocating objects ... People eat a lot, sleep a lot, easily get involved in idle conversations, work for the state, as a rule, carelessly and without fatigue. The majority, as if by an epidemic, are seized by the excitement of the household device, the competition in it, languish in the "everyday crush", are constantly worried about who what, and most importantly, how not to miss something from what others have gotten, to get what is "supposed ”, Do not miss“ yours ”.
In general, in the novel "House" the characters think a lot, argue, talk. Therefore, if in the previous books of the tetralogy (the novels "Brothers and Sisters" and "Two Winters and Three Summers"), social and then sociopolitical content prevailed ("Paths-Crossroads" - with its theme of "leading" and "grassroots" Stalinism), then Dom can be called primarily a socio-philosophical novel.
"Home" is a book of results, a book of farewells and returns. In any case, for the Pryaslin's it is high time to look around, who will think again, who will come to his senses, and get together. For the author, it is a mess of the final artistic thought that connects all Pekashin's beginnings and ends, all paths and crossroads, all winters and summers. But the final thought of a true artist is always an open thought: for continuation, for development, for exciting new thoughts. Results are summed up not for the sake of results, but for the sake of a new movement of life. “... A man builds a house all his life. And at the same time he builds himself, ”Abramov wrote in his diary. These words are repeated in a modified form in the novel by Yevsey Moshkin: “The main thing is that a man builds a house in his soul. And that house neither burns in fire, nor drowns in water. "
This happened in wartime. At that time, the village of Pekashino was inhabited by only old people, small children and women.
Stavrov Stepan built himself a solid house, under a huge larch, it seemed that this house would stand for another thousand years. Yes, trouble knocked on Stepan's, the funeral for his son came, they stayed with his wife and granddaughter Yegorsha.
Stavrov's fellow villager, Anna Pryaslina, received the same letter. The war took the husband of her beloved. She found herself without a breadwinner, and even with six young children in her arms. It was hard for her then. After the death of the head of the family, Mishka, the eldest son of Anna, took on the burden of the breadwinner. Pryaslina alone would simply not have coped with such a turbulent time.
A wounded front-line soldier, Lukashin, appeared in the village, sent for sowing. Soon, Anna's son, the elder Mishka, went to work for the sowing campaign. Mikhail tried no worse than an adult man. His sister, Liza, ran the house. The guys did a good job, and it was very handy, they had to work a lot, they didn't have enough hands.
First they sowed, then they mowed, and then they harvested. Minina Anfisa was the chairman of the collective farm, serving all day long. School was to begin soon, the little ones should go to study, and Mishka should work.
News from the front came more and more terrible. Hitler was already leading his troops to the Volga.
Lukashin was sent to the war. Before leaving, the front-line soldier was impatient to talk to Anfisa, but he could not. Anfisa went to the senopartment in the morning, where Varya Inyakhina found her. She swore that she had nothing with Lukashin. Anfisa understood everything, rushed after the front-line soldier, but it was too late, he had already left.
Picture or Drawing Brothers and Sisters
Other retellings and reviews for the reader's diary
- Summary of Andersen's Ugly Duckling
Summer sunny days have come. White eggs were incubated by a young duck in the deep thickets of burdock. She chose a quiet and peaceful place. Very few people came to her, everyone liked to relax on the water more: swimming and diving.
One of the most touching, heartfelt and tragic works about the Great Patriotic War. There are no historical facts, grandiose battles or the greatest personalities here, it is simple and at the same time very
The writing
Fedor Alexandrovich Abramov was born in 1920 in Pinega, in the village of Verkole, Arkhangelsk region. He is connected with his native northern land not only by biography: here he began his working life, he defended this land at the front near Leningrad, here he was brought wounded after hospitals - he is connected with this land by his work, his books.
After graduating from the philological faculty of Leningrad University in 1948, then graduate school, F. Abramov works as an assistant professor and head of the department at the university and appears in print with critical articles on Soviet literature.
Fyodor Abramov is often called the writer of “village themes.” Unlimited respect for hard peasant labor is inherent in both his novels and novellas and short stories. He persistently makes the reader think about the complex and contradictory processes, social and economic, which are taking place in the life of a collective farm village.
In 1958 his novel Brothers and Sisters was published in the Neva magazine. The book is set in the most difficult war years. In the fields of a distant northern village, women, old men and adolescents, almost children, are waging a selfless struggle for victory over the enemy, for bread and timber for our country. People opened up differently in the war. Anfisa Petrovna Minina was straightened by the common misfortune, made her believe in her strength, she with dignity bears the heavy burden of the collective farm chairman, sharing with her fellow villagers work, and need, and grief. And, closing the book, we understand that the author has led us to the origins of heroism.
Miraculously survived after being seriously wounded near Leningrad, after a siege hospital, in the summer of 1942, while on injury leave, he ended up in his native Pinega. For the rest of his life Abramov remembered that summer, that feat, that "battle for bread, for life", which was waged by half-starved women, old people, teenagers. "The shells did not burst, the bullets did not whistle. But there were funerals, there was a terrible need and work. Hard work for men in the field and in the meadow."
"I just could not write" Brothers and Sisters "... Before my eyes there were pictures of living, real reality, they pressed on the memory, demanded words about themselves. The great feat of the Russian woman, who opened the second front in 1941, perhaps not less difficult than the front of a Russian peasant, how could I forget about it. ”The novel" Brothers and Sisters "was the first expression of love, compassion and admiration for a Russian northern peasant woman.
For eight years, the idea of \u200b\u200bthe novel was ripening. The war ended, Abramov returned to study at Leningrad University, completed his postgraduate studies, defended his Ph.D. thesis, and began working at the Department of Soviet Literature. All these years he thought about the novel, dreamed of writing, but the debt to his elder brother's family, which needed help, did not give him the opportunity to devote himself entirely to literature.
Abramov began writing the first chapters during the summer holidays of 1950 at the Dorishche farm in the Novgorod region.
For six years, during vacations, weekends, evenings and even nights, Abramov worked on the novel. Behind the shoulders of the author of the novel "Brothers and Sisters" was a difficult life-biography: There was a tragic experience of a village teenager who experienced the troubles of collectivization and a half-starved existence of the 1930s, there was an early experience of fatherlessness and fraternal mutual assistance, there was the experience of a front-line militia, and then the experience a person, with his own eyes, on his fellow countrymen, on the family of his brother, who faced the post-war hard times, with the disenfranchised position of a peasant, deprived of even a passport, receiving almost nothing for work days and paying taxes for what he did not have.
Abramov came to literature not only with vast life experience, with the convictions of the people's defender, but also with his own words. In the novel "Brothers and Sisters", a lively polyphonic folk speech, assimilated by the writer from childhood and always nourishing his books, sounded powerfully.
The tragedy of war, the unity of the people in the face of a common misfortune revealed unprecedented spiritual forces in people - brotherhood, mutual assistance, compassion, the ability to great self-denial and self-sacrifice. This thought permeates the entire narrative, determines the pathos of the novel. And yet the author thought that it should be clarified, deepened, made more polysyllabic, multi-shaded. This required the introduction of ambiguous disputes, doubts, reflections of the heroes about life, about military conscience, about asceticism.
He wanted to think for himself and make the reader think about the "existential" questions, not lying on the surface, but rooted in the comprehension of the very essence of life and its laws. Over the years, he increasingly connected social problems with moral, philosophical, universal. I think that's why he wanted to redo the beginning. Open the novel with a poetic and philosophical picture of flying cranes, correlate the eternal laws of nature, which wise birds obey, with the barbarity of people.
"The unprecedented, incomprehensible was happening on earth. The forests were on fire. The conflagrations rose to the sky. Thunders thundered not from heaven, from the earth! Iron rain flooded both from below and from above - and then their comrades who had flown for weeks fell, the wedge lost its original, established from time immemorial The feeding was bad - they often did not find old fat, they were not waved from the ground, as before, the boys did not shout: cranes, where
you? .. And they all flew and flew, obeying the ancient law, to their ancient nests, to the northern forests, to the swamps, to the life-giving waters of the Arctic. "
Nature, people, war, life ... The writer wanted to introduce such reflections into the novel. Anfisa's inner monologue is about this: "The grass grows, flowers are no worse than in peaceful years, the foal is jumping and rejoicing around the mother. And why people - the most intelligent of all creatures - do not rejoice in earthly joy, kill each other? .. Yes what is this happening? What are we, people? After all, Germans are people too. And they have mothers and fathers. And what kind of mothers are they who bless their sons for murder? Yes, it cannot be, it cannot be .. There are no such mothers. Something else here, something else ... But what? Who will tell her this? And who should she contact with this? Do people need to do this now? .. But is it necessary to think about it now? do I need to think? " Stepan Andreyanovich reflects on the meaning of life after the death of his son and the death of his wife: "So life has been lived. Why? Why work? Well, they will defeat the German. They will return home. And what does he have? He has something? And maybe he should have lived. , for Makarovna. The only person was near him, and missed that. So why do we live? Is it really just to work? " And then the author marked the transition to the next chapter: "And life took its toll. Makarovna left, and people worked." But the main question that Abramov wanted to enlarge was the question of conscience, of asceticism, of renunciation of the personal in the name of the common. "Does a person have the right to privacy if everyone is suffering?" The most difficult question. At first, the author leaned towards the idea of \u200b\u200bsacrifice. In further notes on the characters and situations associated with Anfisa, Varvara, Lukashin, he complicated the problem. Record of December 11, 1966: "Is it possible to live in full blood when there are troubles all around? This is a question that both Lukashin and Anfisa have to solve. It is impossible. Conscience, etc. You cannot live fully now. And when will a person live?"
Civil war, five-year plans, collectivization, war ... Lukashin is full of doubts, but in the end the question "Is love possible now?" he replies: "It is possible! It is now possible. Life cannot be canceled. And at the front? Do you think everyone has a great post? Is it possible?" Anfisa thinks differently: "Everyone decides the way he can. I do not judge. But I myself cannot. How can I look women in the eyes?" The author wanted to explain the maximalism of Anfisa by strong moral foundations in her Old Believer family. "Since grief in the house - every day there are dead - how can she surrender to joy? Isn't it criminal? All great-grandmothers and grandmothers, who remained faithful to their husbands in their family until the grave, rebelled against her love, against passion. But Anfisa was forced by the author more Anfisa is tormented: she should have loved Nastya, she should have been given all the gifts of life, but in fact love fell to her, Anfisa. Is it fair? Who, who determines all this, calculates in advance? Why does one person die in his youth, and the other lives ?.
Anfisa, when she learned that Nastya was burned, became a cripple, put on chains. Stop. No love! She became severe, ascetic, as they say, in step with her time. And I thought: this is how it should be. This is her duty. But people didn't like it. People, it turns out, liked the former Anfisa more - cheerful, cheerful, greedy for life. And it was then that the women spoke about her with delight:
Well, little wife! He does not lose heart, and we are also attracted.
And when she became an ascetic, people became ill too! And the women even ask her: what's wrong with you, Anfisa? Are you sick? You walk around - you don't have your face and you can't part your eyebrows ... It's scary to look at you. And people don't go to her. But she wanted them well, she put on a hair shirt for them.
The writer wanted to introduce ideas that were dear to him about the old traditions of northerners who did not even know constipation in the house: they put a prefix - and that's it. "The house is open - at least take it all. Amazing gullibility of the northerners ... Hunting huts. Everything remains. Luchina. Bread. Mutual assistance. And Lukashin was grateful to this land. He bathed in key springs ... he got stronger, gained strength. And not only physical, but also spiritual. He plunged into living, spring water ... He fell in love with this pristine land. "
The novel did not immediately find favorable publishers. “For two years the editorial staff kicked him off,” the writer recalled. He was not accepted by the magazines "October", "New World". "Brothers and Sisters" was published in 1958 in the "Neva" magazine. And then almost a miracle happened. The novel was immediately greeted by critics kindly. During 1959-1960 more than thirty reviews appeared in newspapers and magazines. In 1959 it was published as a separate book in Lenizdat, in 1960 - in Roman-Gazeta, and in 1961 it was translated and excellently published in Czechoslovakia.
The first reviewers of "Brothers and Sisters" noted the courage of Abramov, who managed to adequately tell about the tragedy of the people, about the troubles and sufferings, about the price of self-sacrifice of ordinary workers. Abramov was able to "look into the soul of a common man", he introduced into literature the whole Pekashin world, represented by various characters. If there were no subsequent books of the tetralogy, the Pryaslin family, Anfisa, Varvara, Marfa Repishnaya, Stepan Andreyanovich would still be remembered.
The novels "Brothers and Sisters" and "Two Winters and Three Summers" together with the novels "Crossroads" and "House" make up the tetralogy of the writer Fyodor Abramov "Brothers and Sisters", or, as the author called the work, "a novel in four books" ... United by common heroes and a place of action (the northern village of Pekashino), these books tell about the thirty-year fate of the Russian northern peasantry, beginning in the war of 1942. During this time, one generation has grown old, the second has matured and the third has grown. And the author himself gained wisdom with his heroes, posed more and more complex problems, pondered and looked at the fate of the country, Russia and the person. The tetralogy was created for more than twenty-five years (1950-1978).
For more than twenty-five years, the author did not part with his beloved heroes, looking with them for an answer to painful questions: what is this Russia? What kind of people are we? Why did we manage to survive literally in inhuman conditions and defeat the enemy, and why in peacetime we were unable to feed people, create truly human, humane relations based on brotherhood, mutual assistance, and justice?
Fyodor Abramov repeatedly spoke about the concept of the first novel, Brothers and Sisters, at meetings with readers, in interviews, and in prefaces. Miraculously survived after being seriously wounded near Leningrad, after a siege hospital, in the summer of 1942, while on injury leave, he ended up in his native Pinega. For the rest of his life Abramov remembered that summer, that heroic deed, that “battle for bread, for life”, which was fought by half-starved women, old people, teenagers. “The shells did not burst, the bullets did not whistle. But there were funerals, there was a terrible need and work. Hard work for men in the field and in the meadow. " “I just couldn’t write“ Brothers and Sisters ”... Before my eyes there were pictures of living, real reality, they pressed on the memory, demanded a word about themselves. The great feat of the Russian woman who opened the second front in 1941, perhaps no less difficult than the front of the Russian peasant - how could I forget about it? " "Only the truth - straight - May and hard-hitting" - is Abramov's literary credo. Later he will clarify: "... The feat of a man, the feat of the people is measured by the scale of the deed, the measure of sacrifices and suffering that he brings to the altar of victory."
Immediately after the release of the novel, the writer faced the discontent of his fellow countrymen, who recognized their omens in some of the characters. Then F.A.Abramov, perhaps for the first time, felt how difficult it is to tell the truth about the people to the people themselves, corrupted both by varnishing literature and by propaganda speeches of praise addressed to them. F. A. Abramov wrote: “The fellow countrymen met me well, but some barely hide their annoyance: it seems to them that some of them were brought out in my heroes, and they were not brought out in a completely flattering light. And it is useless to dissuade. By the way, do you know what the varnishing theory, the theory of ideal art, is based on? The opinion of the people. The people hate prose in art. He will now prefer different fables to a sober story about his life. One thing is his real life, and another thing is a book, a picture. Therefore, the bitter truth in art is not for the people, it must be addressed to the intelligentsia. Here's the thing: to do something for the people, you sometimes have to go against the people. And so in everything, even in the economy. " This difficult problem will occupy F.A.Abramov all subsequent years. The writer himself was sure: “The people, like life itself, are contradictory. And among the people there is great and small, exalted and base, good and evil. " “The people are a victim of evil. But he is the support of evil, which means he is also the creator, or at least the fertile soil of evil, ”reflects F. A. Abramov.
FA Abramov was able to adequately tell about the tragedy of the people, about the troubles and sufferings, about the price of self-sacrifice of ordinary workers. He managed to "look into the soul of a common man", he introduced the whole Pekashin world, represented by various characters, into literature. If there were no subsequent books of the tetralogy, the Pryaslin family, Anfisa, Varvara, Marfa Repishnaya, Stepan Andreyanovich would still remain in the memory.
The tragedy of war, the unity of the people in the face of a common misfortune revealed unprecedented spiritual forces in people - brotherhood, mutual assistance, compassion, the ability to great self-denial and self-sacrifice. This thought permeates the entire narrative, determines the pathos of the novel. And yet the author thought that it should be clarified, deepened, made more polysyllabic, ambiguous. This required the introduction of ambiguous disputes, doubts, reflections of the heroes about life, about military conscience, about asceticism. He wanted to think for himself and make the reader think about the issues of "existential", not lying on the surface, but rooted in the comprehension of the very essence of life and its laws. Over the years, he increasingly linked social problems with moral, philosophical, and universal.
Nature, people, war, life ... The writer wanted to introduce such reflections into the novel. Anfisa's inner monologue is about this: “The grass grows, flowers are no worse than in years of peace, the foal gallops and rejoices around the mother. And why people - the most intelligent of all creatures - do not rejoice in earthly joy, kill each other? .. But why is this happening? What are we, people? " Stepan Andreyanovich reflects on the meaning of life after the death of his son and the death of his wife: “So life has been lived. What for? Why work? Well, the German will be defeated. Come back home. And what does he have? What is it to him? And, perhaps, one should have lived for Makarovna. The only person was near him, and he missed it. So why do we live? Is it really just to work? "
And then the author marked the transition to the next chapter: “But life took its toll. Makarovna left, and the people were working. " But the main question that Abramov wanted to highlight is the question of conscience, of asceticism, of renunciation of the personal in the name of the common. "Does a person have the right to privacy if everyone around is tormented?" The most difficult question. At first, the author leaned towards the idea of \u200b\u200bsacrifice. In further notes on the characters and situations associated with Anfisa, Varvara, Lukashin, he complicated the problem. Entry dated December 11, 1966: “Is it possible to live in full blood when there are troubles all around? This is the question that both Lukashin and Anfisa have to solve. You can't. Conscience, etc. You cannot live fully now. And when will a person live? "
Civil war, five-year plans, collectivization, war ... Lukashin is full of doubts, but in the end the question "Is love possible now?" he replies: “Possible! It is now possible. Life cannot be canceled. And at the front? Do you think everyone has a great post? Is it possible? " Anfisa thinks differently: “Everyone decides the way he can. I am not judging. But I myself cannot. How can I look women in the eye? " The author wanted to explain the maximalism of Anfisa by strong moral foundations in her Old Believer family. “Since grief is in the house — every day there are dead people — how can she surrender to joy? Isn't it criminal? All great-grandmothers and grandmothers, who remained faithful to their husbands in their family until the grave, rebelled against her love, against passion. " But Anfisa also made the author doubt more, look for an answer. Anfisa is tormented: Nastya was supposed to love, life should have given her all the gifts, but in fact it fell to her, Anfisa, to love. Is this true? Who, who determines all this, calculates in advance? Why does one person die young while another lives?
When Anfisa finds out that Nastya was burned, became a cripple, she puts on chains. Stop. No love! She became severe, ascetic, as they say, in step with her time. And I thought: this is how it should be. This is her duty. But people didn't like it. People, it turns out, liked the old Anfisa more - cheerful, cheerful, greedy for life. And it was then that the women spoke with delight about her: “Well, little wife! Does not lose heart. It also pulls us in ”. And when Anfisa becomes an ascetic, it becomes bad for people too. And people don't go to her. But she wanted them well, she put on a hair shirt for them.
A morally ascetic and pagan life-loving attitude towards the world took on the most diverse forms in the novel and in other works of F. A. Abramov. Extreme asceticism and selfishly thoughtless love of life were equally unacceptable to the writer. But he understood how difficult it is to find the truth - the truth in this world. Therefore, again and again he pitted opposite natures, views, beliefs, searches in difficult life situations.
What, according to the writer, should help a person find answers to those difficult questions that life puts before him? Only life itself, nature dear to the author's heart, those "key springs" in which the hero of the novel is washed and from which strength is gained, "and not only physical, but also spiritual."