Dear friends, the program "One Hundred Years - One Hundred Books" made it to 1986, to the little novel by Viktor Astafiev "The Sad Detective".

I must say that just as Russia had two thaws, relatively speaking, 1953-1958 and 1961-1964, so there were two perestroika, Soviet and post-Soviet. Relatively speaking, they are divided into perestroika and glasnost, or even there is another division - glasnost and freedom of speech. First, perestroika was announced, and publicity came only later. At first, they carefully began to return forgotten Russian classics, Gumilyov, for example, they began to publish Gorky's "Untimely Thoughts", Korolenko's letters, then gradually began to touch on modernity. And the first two texts about modernity, sensational and defining a lot, were Rasputin's story "Fire" and Astafiev's novel "Sad Detective".

I must say that Astafiev's novel played a rather sad role in his life. One of his best books, and according to my feelings, the best, before the novel "Cursed and Killed", was for some time, I will not say that I am injured, I will not say slandered, but gave rise to very sad and very dark episodes, almost to the persecution to which Astafyev was subjected. The reason was that in the story "Catching minnows in Georgia" and, accordingly, then in "The Sad Detective", they found xenophobic attacks. The story about catching minnows, or crucians, now I don’t remember exactly, was considered Georgianophobic, anti-Georgian, and the novel “The Sad Detective” contained a mention of “Jews”, which the historian Nathan Eidelman did not like, and he wrote a fierce letter to Astafiev.

The letter was correct, the rage lurked there in the depths. They entered into a correspondence, this correspondence went widely from hand to hand, and Astafyev appeared in it, perhaps, somewhat irritable, perhaps overwhelming, but in general, he looked there as an anti-Semite, which, of course, he was not in life. Real anti-Semites happily took advantage of this, tried to attract Astafiev to themselves, but nothing came of it. Astafyev remained that absolutely honest and lonely artist who, in general, did not adhere to anyone and until the end of his life continued to say things that quarreled him with some, then with others. But in any case, it didn’t work to make such an anti-Semite Russopie out of him.

Of course, The Sad Detective is not a book about the Jewish question or about perestroika, it is a book about the Russian soul. And this is its amazing feature: then, at the beginning of the first perestroika, the Soviet Union was still looking for ways of salvation, it was not yet doomed, no one considered it an unequivocally loser, unambiguously subject to, shall we say, historical utilization, there were unobvious options on the board ... Whoever said anything today about the doom of the Soviet project, I remember well that in 1986 this doom was not yet obvious. In 1986, the Union had not yet received a funeral service, had not been buried, no one knew that he had five years left, but they tried to find ways of salvation. And Astafyev, with his unique instinct, was the only person who proposed the image of a new hero - a hero who could somehow keep this sprawling country on himself.

And here is its main character, this Leonid Soshnin, this sad detective, a policeman who is 42 years old and who has been sent to retirement with the second group of disabilities, he is an aspiring writer, trying to print some stories in Moscow in thin police magazines, now he has maybe a book will be published at home. He lives in Veisk, he almost lost his leg once when he was saving the population of his hometown from a drunk truck driver, this truck was rushing, and he managed to knock many down, and he hardly made the decision to liquidate, the decision to shoot this drunk driver, but he managed to push a police truck, and the hero was nearly amputated. Then, after that, he somehow returned to duty, he was tortured for a long time with inquires why he shot, although his partner shot, whether the use of weapons was justified.

He still serves for some time, and then as a result he saves the old women who were locked in a hut by a local alcoholic and threatens to set fire to the shed if they do not give him ten rubles for a drink, and they do not have ten rubles. And then this Leonidas bursts into this village, runs to the barn, but slips on the manure, and then the drunk manages to put a pitchfork into him. After that, he was miraculously pumped out, and, of course, after that he cannot serve, he was sent to retire with the second group of disabilities.

He also has a wife, Lerka, whom he met when they took off her jeans at the kiosk, and he miraculously managed to save her. There is a daughter, Lenka, whom he loves very much, but after another quarrel, Lerka leaves him, because there is no money in the house. Then she returns, and everything ends almost idyllically. At night, this Leonid is awakened by the wild horror of the girls from the first floor, because her old grandmother died, but not from an overdose, but from drinking, and Lerka and Lenka return at a commemoration for this grandmother. And in this miserable shack, in the miserable apartment of this Soshnin, they fall asleep, and he sits over a sheet of blank paper. The novel ends with this rather pitiful idyll.

Why do people die in this novel all the time? Not only from drunkenness, not only from accidents, from neglect of their own lives, not only from wild mutual anger. They are dying because the brutality is universal, the loss of meaning, they have reached their climax, there is no need to live. There is no need to take care of each other, there is no need to work, there is no need to do everything, this is ...

You see, I recently watched a large selection of contemporary Russian films at a film festival. All this looks like a direct film adaptation of episodes from the "Sad Detective". We had a short period when, instead of "chernukha", they began to shoot stories about bandits, then melodramas, then serials, now again this wild wave of "chernukha". I am not in a complaint, because listen, what else to show?

And here Astafyev for the first time unfolded before the reader the whole panorama of perestroika plots. There they drank themselves, they were kicked out of their jobs, here the disabled person has nothing to earn extra money, here is a lonely old woman. And there is a terrible thought there, which this Leonidas thinks all the time: why are we so beasts to each other? This is what Solzhenitsyn said later, many years later, in his book Two Hundred Years Together - “we Russians are worse than dogs to each other”. Why is this so? Why is this, whatever, internal solidarity is completely absent? Why is there no feeling that the person living next to you, he is still your tribesman, peer, relative, he is your brother, in the end?

And, unfortunately, we can only hope for the conscience of people like this Leonid, this former operative. Where she got it from there is not very clear. He grew up an orphan, his father did not return from the war, his mother fell ill and died. He is raised by his aunt Lipa, whom he calls Aunt Lina. Then they put her in prison on false charges, she did not live long after that when she was released. And as a result, he went to another aunt, and this, another aunt, the younger sister in the family, when he was already a young operative, she was raped by four drunken scum, he wanted to shoot them, but did not give him. And she, here's an amazing episode, when they were imprisoned, she cries that she broke the lives of four young guys. This one, such a somewhat foolish kindness, like that of Solzhenitsyn's Matryona, which this hero cannot understand at all, he calls her an old fool when she cries for them.

Here, perhaps, at this strange intersection of kindness, reaching the point of foolishness, and feelings for a long time, reaching the level of fanaticism, which sits in this hero, it is probably at this intersection that the Russian character is retained. But Astafyev's book is that this character died, that he was killed. This book is perceived, oddly enough, not as a hope, but as a requiem. And Astafyev, in one of the last entries in his, probably, his spiritual testament, said: “I came into a kind world, full of warmth and meaning, and I am leaving the world of complete coldness and anger. I have nothing to say goodbye to you. " These are terrible words, I saw the late Astafiev, knew, spoke to him, and this feeling of despair that sat in him could not be masked by anything. All hope, all hope was on these heroes.

Incidentally, I asked him then: “The sad detective still gives the impression of a certain concentration, a certain exaggeration. Was it really possible? " He says: “There isn't a single episode that didn't happen. Everything that they reproach me for, everything they say, I invented, it was before my eyes. " And indeed, yes, it probably was, because some things cannot be imagined.

Finally, Astafiev, in his last years, this is a very rare case, has reached incredible creative heights. He wrote everything he dreamed of, what he wanted, he told the whole truth about time and about the people among whom he lived. And, unfortunately, I am afraid that his diagnosis is confirmed today, today that Leonid, on whom everything rests, that sad detective, twice wounded, almost killed and abandoned by everyone, he continues to hold on to himself, on the only, by the way, real vertical, continues to bear the entire burden of Russian life. But how long it will last, I do not know who will replace him, it is not yet clear. There is some hope for a new beautiful generation, but it is very difficult to say whether they associate their lives with Russia.

What cannot be ignored here is the incredible plasticity, the incredible visual power of this Astafiev novel. When you read it, you feel this stench, this risk, this horror all over your skin. There is a scene there when Soshnin comes home from the publishing house, where he was just about to be boarded, but they said that maybe he would have a book, he goes in a disgusting mood to eat his bachelor dinner, and he is attacked by three mocking drunken teenagers ... They just mock, they say that you, impolite, apologize to us. And this pisses him off, he remembers everything that he was taught in the police, and begins to thrash them, and throws one of them so that he flies off his head against the corner of the battery. And he himself calls the police and says that there, it seems, one’s skull cracked, don’t look for the villain, it’s me.

But it turned out that nothing split there, everything ended relatively well for him, but the description of this fight, these mocking types ... Then, when Astafyev wrote the story "Lyudochka", about the same mocking drunken bastard, which bred so much, I think, that Rasputin did not achieve such strength and fury. But this book, which all just shines with white heat, from the inner trembling, rage, hatred that is in it, because this is a person, indeed, brought up by kind people, people of duty, and suddenly there are those for whom there are no moral there are no rules, for which there is only one pleasure - to defiantly be rude, to mock, to cross all the time the border that separates the beast from the person. This wild cynicism and this constant smell of shit and vomit that haunts the hero, this does not let the reader go for a long time. It is written with such graphic power that one cannot help thinking.

You see, there is such an idea of \u200b\u200bRussian literature as kind, loving, somewhat leafy, such as, remember, Georgy Ivanov wrote, “sentimental masturbating Russian consciousness”. In fact, of course, Russian literature wrote its best pages with boiling bile. It was with Herzen, it was with Tolstoy, it was with the terrible, icy mocker Turgenev, with Saltykov-Shchedrin. How much of this Dostoevsky had, of course. Kindness itself is a good incentive, but hate, when mixed with ink, also lends some incredible power to literature.

And to this day, the light of this novel, I must say, it is still coming and going. Not only because this book is still moderately optimistic, there is still a struggling hero in it, but the main thing in it is that it brings joy, you will not believe, from a long silence, finally resolved by speech. The man endured, endured, and finally said what he felt obligated to say. In this sense, The Sad Detective is the highest achievement of perestroika literature. And that is why it is so unfortunate that Astafiev's hopes associated with his hero were dashed in the very near future, and perhaps not completely dashed.

Well, we will talk about the literature of 1987 and the novel Children of the Arbat, which separates publicity from freedom of speech, next time.

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Victor Astafiev
Sad detective

Chapter 1

Leonid Soshnin returned home in a very bad mood. And although it was a long way to go, almost to the outskirts of the city, to a railway settlement, he did not get on the bus - let his wounded leg ache, but walking would calm him down and he would think over everything that he was told in the publishing house, ponder and judge how he would continue to live and what to do.

Actually, there was no publishing house as such in the city of Veisk, a branch remained from it, the publishing house itself was transferred to a larger city and, as the liquidators probably thought, more cultured, with a powerful printing base. But this base was exactly the same as in Veisk, a decrepit legacy of old Russian cities. The printing house was located in a pre-revolutionary building made of strong brown bricks, sewn with lattices of narrow ends at the bottom and shapedly curved at the top, also narrow, but already ascended upward like an exclamation mark. Half of the building of the Wei printing house, where there were typesetting shops and printing machines, had long since sunk into the bowels of the earth, and although fluorescent lamps were molded on the ceiling in continuous rows, it was still uncomfortable in the typesetting and printing shops, and something all the time, as if ears filled, crumbled, or a delayed explosive buried underground.

The department of the publishing house huddled in two and a half rooms, creakily marked out by the regional newspaper. In one of them, wrapped in cigarette smoke, twitched, crawled on a chair, grabbed the telephone, littered with ashes a local cultural luminary - Syrokvasova Oktyabrina Perfilievna, moving forward and further local literature. Syrokvasova considered herself the most knowledgeable person: if not in the whole country, then in Veisk she had no equal in intelligence. She made reports and reports on current literature, shared plans of the publishing house through the newspaper, sometimes in newspapers, and reviewed the books of local authors, in place and out of place inserting quotations from Virgil and Dante, from Savonarola, Spinoza, Rabelais, Hegel and Exupery , Kant and Ehrenburg, Yuri Olesha, Tregub and Ermilov, however, even the ashes of Einstein and Lunacharsky sometimes disturbed, the leaders of the world proletariat also did not ignore them.

Everything has long been decided with Soshnin's book. Stories from it were published, albeit in thin, but metropolitan magazines, three of them were condescendingly mentioned in review critical articles, he stood behind the head for five years, got into the plan, established himself in it, it remains to edit and arrange the book.

Having set the time for a business meeting at exactly ten, Syrokvasova showed up at the publishing house at twelve. Smelling Soshnin with tobacco, out of breath, she rushed past him along the dark corridor - someone "took away" the light bulbs, - she said hoarsely "Sorry!" and for a long time crunched the key in the faulty lock, swearing in an undertone.

Finally, the door grunted angrily, and the old, tightly not pretending slab let a slit of gray, dull light into the corridor: for the second week on the street there was a fine rain that washed the snow into mush, turned streets and alleys into coils. Ice drift began on the river - in December!

His leg ached dully and continuously, burned and drilled his shoulder from a recent wound, pressed fatigue, felt sleepy - he could not sleep at night, and again he was saving himself with pen and paper. "This is an incurable disease - graphomania," Soshnin chuckled and, it seems, dozed off, but then the silence shook with a knock on the echoing wall.

- Galya! - arrogantly threw Syrokvasov into space. - Call this genius to me!

Galya is a typist, accountant, and even a secretary. Soshnin looked around: there was no one else in the corridor, a genius, so he was.

- Hey! Where are you here? - Opening the door with her foot, Galya stuck her short-cropped head into the corridor. - Go. Name is.

Soshnin shrugged his shoulders, straightened a new satin tie around his neck, smoothed his hair to one side with his palm. In moments of excitement, he always stroked his hair - his little one was often stroked by neighbors and Aunt Lina, so he learned to iron himself. “Calm down! Calm down! " Soshnin ordered himself and, coughing well-mannered, asked:

- May I see you? - With the trained eye of the former operative, he immediately captured everything in Syrokvasova's office: an old chiseled bookcase in the corner; worn on a chiseled wooden lance, a wet red fur coat, familiar to everyone in the city, hung hunchbacked. The fur coat did not have a hanger. Behind the fur coat, on a planed but unpainted rack, are the literary products of the united publishing house. In the foreground were a few not badly decorated advertising and gift books in ice-bound bindings.

- Take off your clothes, - Syrokvasova nodded at the old yellow wardrobe made of thick wood. - There are no hangers, nails are driven in. Sit down, ”she pointed to a chair across from her. And when Soshnin took off his cloak, Oktyabrina Perfilievna with irritation threw the folder in front of her, taking it out almost from under the hem.

Soshnin barely recognized the folder with his manuscript. She has gone through a difficult creative path since he handed it over to the publishing house. With the glance of the former operative, he noted that they had also put a kettle on it, and the cat was sitting on it, someone spilled tea on the folder. If tea? The prodigies Syrokvasova - she has three sons from different creative producers - painted a dove of peace, a tank with a star and an airplane on the folder. I remember that he deliberately picked up and kept a motley daddy for his first collection of stories, made a white sticker in the middle, the name, albeit not very original, was neatly drawn out with a felt-tip pen: "Life is more precious." At that time, he had every reason to assert this, and he carried a folder to the publishing house with a feeling of yet unexplored renewal in his heart and a thirst to live, create, be useful to people - this is the case with all people who have been resurrected and have gotten out of there.

The white sticker has become gray in five years, someone picked it with a fingernail, maybe the glue was bad, but the festive mood and grace in the heart - where is all this? He saw on the table a carelessly stored manuscript with two reviews, written on the go by the brisk local drunkards-thinkers, working part-time with Syrokvasova and seeing the police, which was reflected in this motley folder, most often in a sobering-up station. Soshnin knew how dear human negligence cost every life, every society. I learned something. Firmly. Forever and ever.

“Well, that means life is the most precious thing,” Syrokvasov curled her lips and took a drag on her cigarette, wrapped herself in smoke, quickly flipping through the reviews, repeating and repeating everything in thoughtful detachment: “The most expensive ... the most expensive ...

- I thought so five years ago.

- What did you say? - Syrokvasova raised her head, and Soshnin saw flabby cheeks, sloppy blue eyelids, eyelashes and eyebrows drawn in with sloppy dry paint - small black lumps got stuck in already hardened, half-caked eyelashes and eyebrows. Syrokvasova is dressed in comfortable clothes - a sort of modern woman's overalls: a black turtleneck - no need to wash often, a denim sundress on top - no need to iron.

- I thought so five years ago, Oktyabrina Perfilievna.

- Don't you think so now? - The sarcasm could be seen in the appearance and words of Syrokvasova, rummaging through the manuscript, as if in cabbage waste. - Disappointed in life?

- Not quite yet.

- Here's how! Interesting interesting! Commendable, commendable! Not really, then? ..

“She forgot the manuscript! She wins time to at least somehow, on the go, get to know her again. Curious how it will get out? Really curious!" Soshnin waited without answering the editor's last half-question.

- I think we won't be able to have a long conversation. And there is no need to waste time. Planned manuscript. I’ll correct something here, I’ll bring your composition into the form of God, and give it to the artist. In the summer, I suppose you will be holding your first printed creation in your hands. If, of course, they give you paper, if nothing goes wrong in the printing house, if the plan is not shortened by both te de and te pe. But that's what I would like to talk to you about for the future. Judging by the press, you stubbornly continue to work, you publish, although infrequently, but topically, and your topic is topical - miraculous!

- Human, Oktyabrina Perfilievna.

- What did you say? Your right to think so. And frankly - to human, especially universal, problems you are still oh how far away! As Goethe said: "Unerreichbar vi der himmel". High and inaccessible like the sky.

Something Soshnin did not meet with the great German poet such a statement. Apparently, Syrokvasova, in the vanity of life, confused Goethe with someone, or inaccurately quoted him.

- You have not yet learned what a plot is, and without it, excuse me, your police stories are chaff, chaff from threshed grain. And the rhythm of prose, its quintessence, so to speak, is sealed with seven seals. There is also form, eternally renewing, mobile form ...

- What is a form - I know.

- What did you say? - Syrokvasova woke up. During an inspired sermon, she closed her eyes, scattered ashes on the glass, under which were the drawings of her brilliant children, a wrinkled photograph of a visiting poet who hanged himself for drunkenness in a hotel three years ago and, for this reason, ended up in the fashionable, almost holy ranks of departed personalities. Ashes scattered on the hem of a sundress, on a chair, on the floor, and even an ashen-colored sundress, and the whole of Syrokvasova seems to be covered with ashes or the decay of time.

- I said I know the shape. Wore it.

- I did not mean the police uniform.

- I do not understand your subtleties. Excuse me. - Leonidas got up, feeling that he was beginning to overwhelm with rage. “If you no longer need me, I will allow myself to take my leave.

- Yes, yes, let me, - Syrokvasova mixed a little and switched to a business tone: - An advance payment will be written to you in the accounting department. Sixty percent at once. But our money is, as always, bad.

- Thanks. I am receiving a pension. I have enough.

- Pension? At forty ?!

- I'm forty-two, Oktyabrina Perfilievna.

- What is the age for a man? - Like any eternally irritated female creature, Syrokvasova caught herself, wagged her tail, tried to change the sarcastic tone to half-joking confidence.

But Soshnin did not accept the change in her tone, bowed, and shaved off into the semi-dark corridor.

“I'll keep the door open so you don't get killed! - shouted after Syrokvasova.

Soshnin did not answer her, went out onto the porch, stood under a canopy, decorated with antique wooden lace along the rim. They are scattered with bored hands, like rye gingerbread. Raising the collar of a warmed police cloak, Leonid pulled his head into his shoulders and stepped under the silent pillowcase, as if into a failed desert. He walked into a local bar, where regular customers greeted him with an approving hum, took a glass of brandy, drank it in a swing, and went out, feeling the dryness in his mouth and warmth in his chest. The burning sensation in his shoulder seemed to be erased by the warmth, but he seemed accustomed to the pain in his leg, perhaps he had just made peace with it.

“Maybe another drink? No, don't, - he decided, - I haven't dealt with this business for a long time, I'll get drunk ... "

He walked through his hometown, from under the visor of his wet cap, as taught by the service, he habitually noted what was being done around, what was standing, walking, driving. Ice covered not only traffic, but life itself. People sat at home, preferred to work under the roof, it was pouring from above, squelching everywhere, flowing, the water did not run in streams, not rivers, somehow colorless, solid, flat, disorganized: lay, circled, poured from puddle to puddle, from crack to slit. Everywhere was covered rubbish: paper, cigarette butts, limp boxes, cellophane fluttering in the wind. On black lindens, on gray poplars, crows and jackdaws clung, they moved, another bird was dropped by the wind, and she immediately blindly and heavily clung to a branch, sleepily, with an old grumbled pavement on it and, as if choking on a bone, nodding, fell silent.

And Soshnin's thoughts to match the weather slowly, thickened, barely stirred in his head, did not flow, did not run, but just sluggishly stirred, and in this stirring there was no distant light, no dream, only anxiety, only concern: how to live further?

It was absolutely clear to him: he served in the police, fought back. Forever and ever! The familiar line, knurled, single-track - exterminate evil, fight criminals, provide peace to people - at once, like a railway dead end, near which he grew up and played his childhood "as a railroad worker", was cut short. The rails are over, the sleepers connecting them are over, there is no further direction, there is no way, then the whole earth, immediately, beyond the dead end - go in all directions, or twirl in place, or sit on the last one at the dead end, cracked with time, already and not sticky from impregnation, weathered sleepers and, immersed in thought, dozed or shout loudly: "I'll sit at the table and think about how to live alone in the world ..."

How can a lonely man live in the world? It is difficult in the world to live without the usual service, without work, even without government ammunition and a canteen, you even have to bother about clothes and food, wash somewhere, iron, cook, wash dishes.

But this is not, this is not the main thing, the main thing is how to be and live among the people who have been divided for a long time into the criminal world and the inaccessible world. Criminal, he is still familiar and one-sided, but this one? What is he like in his diversity, in the crowd, vanity and constant movement? Where? What for? What are his intentions? What is the temper? “Brothers! Take me! Let me in! " - Soshnin wanted to shout at first, as if in jest, as usual, to play a bit, but the game is over. And it was revealed, came close to life, her everyday life, oh, what they are, everyday life, everyday people have.

Soshnin wanted to go to the market, buy apples, but near the gate of the market with twisted plywood letters on an arc: "Welcome", a drunken woman, nicknamed Urn, was wrestling and tied to passers-by. For her toothless, black and dirty mouth, she received a nickname, no longer a woman, some isolated creature with a blind, half-insane craving for drunkenness and disgrace. She had a family, husband, children, she sang in an amateur performance of the railway recreation center under Mordasov - she drank everything, lost everything, became a shameful landmark of the city of Veisk. They did not take her to the police, even in the reception center of the Internal Affairs Directorate, which is popularly called the "scourge", and in the rough old days was called a prison for vagabonds, they did not keep her, they drove from the sobering-up center, they did not take her to the nursing home because she was old only in appearance. She behaved in public places shamelessly, ashamed, with an arrogant and vindictive challenge to everyone. It is impossible and nothing to fight with Urna, although she was lying on the street, sleeping in attics and on benches, did not die or freeze.

Ah-ah, my vesse-olai laugh
Always had success ... -

urn screamed hoarsely, and with a drizzle, cold spaciousness did not absorb her voices, nature seemed to separate, repel her fiend. Soshnin passed the market and the Urn by the side. Everything just flowed, floated, oozed like a brain emptiness along the ground, across the sky, and there was no end to the gray light, gray earth, gray longing. And suddenly, in the middle of this hopeless, gray planet, there was a revival, there was talk, laughter, at the crossroads a car gave a frightened cheek.

A skewbald horse with a collar around its neck followed slowly along a wide street that was only marked in autumn, more precisely, along Prospekt Mira, in its very middle, along the white dotted lines, occasionally chilling with a wet, forcedly trimmed tail. The horse knew the rules of movement and clinked with horseshoes, like a fashionista with imported boots, in the most no-man's land. Both the horse itself and the harness on it were tidied up, groomed, the animal did not pay any attention to anyone or anything, slowly stomping about its business.

The people unanimously watched the horse with their eyes, brightened their faces, smiled, sprinkled the following remarks after the horse: “I got it from a stingy owner!”, “She went to surrender for a sausage,” “No, to the sobering-up station - it's warmer there than in the stable”, “Nothing like that! He is going to report to Lavri the Cossack's wife about his whereabouts "...

Soshnin also smiled from under the collar, watched the horse - it was walking towards the brewery. There is her stable. Its owner, the horse carrier of the brewery Lavrya Kazakov, popularly - Lavrya-Cossack, an old guard from the corps of General Belov, holder of three Orders of Glory and many more military orders and medals, delivered citro and other soft drinks to the “points”, sat down with the peasants on a permanent "To the point" - in the buffet of the Sazontievskaya bathhouse - to talk about past military campaigns, about modern urban order, about the ferocity of women and the spinelessness of men, his reasonable horse, so that the animal under the sky would not get wet and not tremble, let it go to the brewery on its own. All the Veysk police, and not only them, all the indigenous inhabitants of Veisk knew: where the brewery cart was, there was a Cossack Lavrya talking and resting. And his horse is learned, independent, understands everything and will not let itself be lost.

So something has shifted in my soul, and the bad weather is not so oppressive, Soshnin decided, it's time to get used to it - he was born here, in a rotten corner of Russia. A visit to a publishing house? Conversation with Syrokvasova? Fuck her! Well, you fool! Well, they will remove it someday. The book is really not so hot - the first, naive, helluva lot of imitation, and it has become outdated in five years. The next one should be done better in order to publish in addition to Syrokvasovaya; maybe in Moscow itself ...

Soshnin bought a loaf of bread, a can of Bulgarian compote, a bottle of milk, a chicken in the grocery store, if it is a mournfully screwed-up, bluish-naked creature, right from the neck of which many paws seemed to stick out, one could call a chicken. But the price is downright goose! However, this is not a matter of annoyance. He cooks vermicelli soup, sips hot and, you see, after a hearty dinner according to the law of Archimedes, under the monotonous drops from the battery, under the knock of an old wall clock - do not forget to start, - under the splashing rain he reads to his heart's content, then naps and for the whole night at the table - to create. Well, to create is not to create, but still to live in some isolated world created by your imagination.

Soshnin lived in a new railway microdistrict, but in an old two-story wooden house at number seven, which they forgot to demolish, after oblivion they legalized, they hooked up the house to a highway with warm water, to gas, to sewers - built in the thirties according to a simple architectural project, with an internal staircase dividing the house in two, with a sharp hut above the entrance, where there was once a glazed frame, a little yellow on the outer walls and a brown house on the roof, modestly squinting its eyes and obediently disappearing into the ground between the blind ends of two panel structures. A landmark, a milestone, a childhood memory and a good shelter for people. Residents of the modern microdistrict guided the visiting people and themselves along it, a wooden proletarian building: "As you go past the yellow house ..."

Soshnin loved his native home or regretted it - not to understand. Probably, he loved and regretted, because he grew up in it and did not know any other houses, he did not live anywhere except hostels. His father fought in the cavalry and also in Belov's corps, together with Lavrey the Cossack, Lavrya was a private, his father was a platoon commander. Father did not return from the war, he died during a cavalry corps raid on the enemy's rear. Mother worked in the technical office of the Weisk station in a large, flat, semi-dark room and lived with her sister in this house here, in apartment number four, on the second floor. The apartment consisted of two square rooms and a kitchen. Two windows of one room overlooked the railway line, two windows of the other room - into the courtyard. The apartment was once given to a young family of railway workers, his mother's sister, Soshnin's aunt, came from the village to tinker with him, he remembered her and knew her more than his mother because during the war all office workers were often dressed up to unload wagons, for snow fighting, for harvesting crops in collective farms , the mother was rarely at home, she broke down during the war, at the end of the war she caught a bad cold, fell ill and died.

They were left alone with aunt Lipa, whom Lenya, having made a mistake at an early age, called Lina, and so Lina she stuck in his memory. Aunt Lina followed in her sister's footsteps and took her place in the technical office. They lived, like all honest people of their village, a neighborhood, a potato plot outside the city, from pay to pay they could hardly live. Sometimes, if it happened to celebrate an update or take a walk on a holiday, they did not hold out. Aunt did not marry and did not try to get out, repeating: "I have Lenya." But she loved to walk widely, in a village noisy, with songs, dances, and squealing.

Who! What have you done to this pure, poor woman? Time? People? Fever? Perhaps, that, and another, and the third. In the same office, at the same station, she moved to a separate table, behind a partition, then she was transferred "up the mountain", to the commercial department of the Weisk branch of the road. Aunt Lina began to bring home money, wine, groceries, became excited and cheerful, was late home from work, tried to force, tint. “Oh, Lyonka, Lyonka! If I am lost, and you will be lost! .. ”The gentlemen called my aunt. Lyonka used to pick up the phone and, without greeting, asks rudely: "Who do you need?" - Lipu. - "We don't have one!" - "How is it not?" - "No, that's it!" The aunt will scratch the pipe with her paw: “This is for me, for me ...” - “Oh, do you want Aunt Lina? They would say so! .. Yes, please! You're welcome!" And not immediately, but rubbing his aunt, he will hand her the phone. She will squeeze her into a handful: “Why are you calling? I told you, then ... Then, then! When-when? .. ”Both laughter and sin. No experience, take it and blabber: "When Lenya leaves for school."

Lenya is already a teenager, with ambition already: “I can leave now! How much, tell me, and it will be done ... "-" Come on, Lenya! - hiding her eyes, the aunt blushes. - They call from the office, and you God knows what ... "

He smiled at her and scorched her with a contemptuous look, especially when Aunt Lina forgot herself: she would put down her worn-out slippers, twist her legs with her feet, stretch out on her toe - a sort of fifa tenth grader in a public machine shows her eyes and “di-di-di, di-di-di ... ". The boy needs revenge on the floor, and he will definitely fix his aunt's leg with a broom, put it in its place or foolishly sing in a brittle bass: "Quiet-and-and-go, excitement of passion."

All her life a kind woman lived with him and for him, how could he share her with someone? A modern boy! An egoist!

Near the building of the regional department of internal affairs, faced for some reason with ceramic tiles, imported as much from the Carpathians, but it did not become more beautiful from this, it did not become, even as it were, even more gloomy, in the "Volga" cherry color, leaning on the door, the driver Vanka Strigalev in a leather jacket was dozing and a rabbit hat - also a very interesting person: he could sit in the car for a day without reading, slowly thinking about something. Soshnin had a chance to go fishing together with the police officers, Uncle Pasha and his friend, Elder Aristarkh Kapustin, and many even experienced a feeling of awkwardness because a young guy with sideburns sits in the car all day and waits for fishermen. "You should at least read, Vanya, magazines, newspapers or a book." - “Why read them? What's the use of them? " - Vanya will say, yawns sweetly and platonically distorts himself.

There is Uncle Pasha too. He always sweeps. And scratches. There is no snow, it’s washed away, so he sweeps the water, drives it out of the gates of the Uvedeva courtyard, into the street. Revenge and hammering is not the most self-important action for Uncle Pasha. He was a completely mad fisherman and a hockey fan, he went as a janitor to achieve his goal: a man who does not drink, but who drinks, Uncle Pasha goes to hockey and fishing, so as not to ruin his pension, not to tear it apart, he earned money with a janitor's broom - for “his expenses ”, He gave his pension to the reliable hands of his wife. That every time with a calculation and a reprimand gave him "Sunday": "This is for you, Pasha, five for fishing, this is three for you - for your kokkei damned."

There were several more horses and a small stable in the Internal Affairs Directorate, which was in charge of Uncle Pashin's friend, Elder Aristarkh Kapustin. Together they dug up their own militia, reached the hot pipes, to the heating plant laid in the building of the Internal Affairs Directorate, piled horse land, earth, humus on these pipes, camouflaged them on top with slate slabs - and such worms were bred all year round in a tunnel that they were taken for bait on any transport, even the boss. Uncle Pasha and Elder Aristarkh Kapustin did not like to ride with their superiors. They got tired of their bosses and their wives in everyday life, they wanted to be completely free in nature, to rest, to forget themselves from both.

At four o'clock the old men went out into the street, stood at the crossroads, leaning on the pawns, and soon a car, most often a body car, covered with a tarpaulin or a box of plywood, slowed down and seemed to lick them off the asphalt - someone's hands picked up the old people, shoved them behind back, in the midst of the people. “Ah, Pasha! Ah, Aristasha? Are you still alive? " - exclamations were heard, and from that moment experienced fishermen, having fallen into their native element, dismissed in body and soul, talking about "theirs" and with "theirs."

Uncle Pasha's entire right hand was covered with white scars, and fishermen, and not only fishermen, but the rest of the city's public, treated these uncle-Pasha's scars, perhaps, even more respectfully than his battle wounds.

The mass fisherman is prone to psychosis, he splashes in waves on the reservoir, hollows, twirls, swears, recalls previous fishing, curses the progress that killed the fish, regrets that he did not go to another reservoir.

Uncle Pasha is not such a fisherman. He will fall to one place and wait for favors from nature, although the master in fishing is not the last, at least, he always brings to the ears, it happened, and a full organ-box, a bag and a lower shirt, tied up its sleeves, was stuffed with fish by Uncle Pasha - all then the management of the ear, especially the grassroots apparatus, all were endowed with fish by Uncle Pasha. Elder Aristarkh Kapustin, he was more tight-fisted, he dried the fish between the frames in his apartment, then, filling his pockets with dried dried milk, appeared in the buffet of the Sazontievskaya bathhouse, knocked on the table with a fish - and there were always hunters to squeeze salty teeth with their teeth and gave Elder Aristarkh Kapustin free beer.

A tricky fiction was told about Uncle Pasha, to which he himself, however, laughed approvingly. As if he fell to the hole, but every fisherman passing by pesters: "How biting?" Uncle Pasha is silent, does not answer. They are shaking and shaking him! Uncle Pasha could not resist, spat out live worms from behind his cheeks and swore: "Freeze all the bait with you! .."

One spring, his faithful messenger, Elder Aristarkh Kapustin, picked up the whim of a search - in the evening a large river flowing into the Bright Lake gushed out, broke, brought ice, and with a muddy, feeding wave pushed the fish to the middle of the lake. They said that in the evening, almost in the dark, he began to take myself - hardened pike perch, and local fishermen have fish firmly. But by morning the border of the muddy water shifted and somewhere, even further, the fish recoiled. And where to? Lake Svetloye is fifteen miles wide and seventy miles long. Uncle Pasha hissed at the binder Aristarkh Kapustin: “Nishkni! Sit down! There she will be ... "But where is there! The Evil One carried Elder Aristarkh Kapustin like a broomstick across the lake.

For half a day, Uncle Pasha was angry with Aristarkh Kapustin, tugged at a sorozhon with fishing rods, there was a strong perch, twice on the go, a pike clung to a fish and tore the fishing line. Uncle Pasha lowered a spoon under the ice, teased the pike and turned it up - don't spoil it! Here she is, the predator of the underwater world, splashing on the spring ice, already splashes are flying, in her mouth there are scraps of thin woods with mormyshka, like inserted, glittering teeth, an insolent mouth is decorated. Uncle Pasha does not take out a jig, let him remember, fulyugan, how to ruin poor fishermen!

By noon, two youths, two brothers, Anton and Sanka, nine and twelve years old, came out of the gaping gates of the quieted monastery, albeit with dilapidated, but incorruptible turrets, which has a modest signboard "Boarding School" at the entrance and dragged to the lake. "They ran away from their last lessons," Uncle Pasha guessed, but did not condemn the Maltsov - learning them for a long time, maybe all their lives, spring fishing is a festive time, if you flicker, you will not notice. The youths went through a great drama that day together with Uncle Pasha. As soon as the guys sat down next to the fishing rods, a large fish took and left in the hole of one of them. I went to the youngest, he cried bitterly. “Nothing, nothing, lad,” Uncle Pasha consoled him in a tense whisper, “it will be ours! Will not go anywhere! You are wearing candy and isshho city pretzel with poppy seeds. "

Uncle Pasha had a presentiment of everything and calculated: by noon, to the muddy water, where smelt and other small fish feed on plankton, a river would push even further into the lake, carry the turbidity and bring down a large "khychnik" to hunt. The detachments of fishermen, brutally plumping with pesh, thundering with boots, swearing the surroundings with obscenities, her, fearful and sensitive fish, who cannot tolerate the perfect mat, will be driven into the "no-man's land", therefore, here, where, together with the boys from the very early morning - not a single one! - a swear word, uncle Pasha endures and waits for her!

And his strategic calculation was fully confirmed, his patience and modesty in expressions were rewarded: three pike perch, weighing a kilo, lay on the ice and mournfully stared into the sky with tin pupils. Moreover, the largest, of course, two large pike perch descended! But who pleased Uncle Pasha's unenviable heart were the little fishermen - the youths Anton and Sanka. They also took out two pike perch for their waste, riveted baubles from a rifle cartridge. The younger one shouted, laughed, talked over and over again about how he got the bite, how he flooded! .. Uncle Pasha encouraged him with emotion: “Well! Are you crying? In life it is always like this: it bites, then it does not bite ... "

Here it happened that not only the fishermen, but almost the entire lakeside population, and part of the city of Veisk, was shaken by a heroic event.

Consumed by Satan, whether the fisherman's devil, Uncle Pasha, so as not to knock with a pesha, moved to the children's holes drilled with an ice ax. And as soon as he lowered his famous, well-worn spoon under the smelt, it was tweaked with a test push, then blasted, so much so that he is - what an experienced fisherman! - I barely held a fishing rod in my hand! Dolbanulo, pressed, led into a block of lake waters.

The seven kilograms and fifty-seven grams of Sudachina - it was then hung out with pharmaceutical precision - got stuck in a narrow hole. Uncle Pasha, plopping down on his belly, put his hand into the hole and squeezed the fish under the gills. "Hit!" - he commanded the youths, shaking his head at the pest. The older boy jumped, grabbed the pest, swung and froze: how to "hit" ?! And the hand? And then the hardened front-line soldier, madly rolling his eyes, barked: "And how in the war!" And the poor guy, sweating in advance, began to grind the hole.

Soon the hole was pierced with red strings of blood. “Right! Left! In the spade! Take the spade! In the spade! Don't cut the line ... "- Uncle Pasha was in command. There was a full hole of blood when Uncle Pasha took out of the water and threw the already sluggish body of a fish onto the ice. And right there, kicking up his legs with twisted rheumatism, Uncle Pasha danced, yelled, and soon came to his senses and, chewing his teeth, opened the organ, thrust the children a flask of vodka, ordered them to rub their numb hand, to neutralize the wounds.

During his life, the Soviet writer Viktor Astafiev created many outstanding works. Recognized as an outstanding author, he deservedly has several state awards in his creative collection. “Sad Detective” is a short story that left a strong impression on the readers. In our article, we will analyze its summary. Astafiev's "Sad Detective" is one of those works in which the writer worries about the fate of his country and its individual citizens.

Live life - write a book

Victor Petrovich Astafiev wrote the work in 1987. At that time, he had already received wide public recognition, having published his best books - "Until the next spring" and "The snow is melting." As critics noted, "Detective ..." could have turned out differently if it had been written at a different time. Here the experience of the past years affected, and the author put all his personal experiences into the work.

A brief summary will help us get acquainted with the story. "Sad Detective" Astafyev tells about the difficult life of the former policeman Leonid Soshnin, who at 42 was left alone. All that pleases him is an empty apartment, to which he is accustomed, and the opportunity to do what he loves. In the evenings, when the lights go out, in the stillness of the night, he sits down in front of a piece of paper and begins to write. Probably, the presentation of thoughts on behalf of the “expounder” (Soshnin, as it were, conveys the thoughts of the author) creates for the reader an additional atmosphere of perception, filled with a large number of everyday worries.

The essence of the book: about the main thing

Many admitted that it is not a detective story as a genre that distinguishes the story “Sad Detective” (Astafiev). can directly say that it is based on a deep drama. Sadness became a faithful companion of the protagonist when he separated from his wife and now hardly sees his little daughter. A provincial policeman is eager but unable to completely eradicate crime. He reflects on why the surrounding reality is full of grief and suffering, and love and happiness are crowded somewhere nearby. Through memories of his own life, Soshnin learns previously incomprehensible things in the hope that this, perhaps, will provide, if not answers, then at least peace of mind.

Fragments of memories

Astafiev loves to explore the human soul, giving in this case this right to the main character. The novel "Sad Detective" is fragmentary. Lenya Soshnin looks at people close to him in a new way, analyzes individual episodes of the past, recalls the events that he witnessed. Fate confronted him with different people, and now, as if summing up, he wonders about their role in his life. Injustice and partial lawlessness do not give him as a servant of the law of rest. Why does a helpless person who has gone through a war die alone, while those who have committed a crime, but received the forgiveness of society, feel free? Apparently, such an imbalance will always weigh on Soshnin ...

The criminal components of the book

From the description of criminal incidents, some of which are really terrible, the story "Sad Detective" consists. Astafiev (we will analyze the work below) does not describe scenes of violence in vain, proving the simple thing that is so difficult to fit in the head.

Looking at any work in which murders appear, the possible motives for the crime seem clear to us. What better precondition than power, money, revenge? Refuting this, Viktor Petrovich opens his readers' eyes to the fact that even murder "for the sake of counting" or "just like that" is also considered a crime. The author fully demonstrates the life disorder of the murderer, his negative attitude towards society, as well as family and household showdowns, which often end very badly.

In a similar way, the character of the Russian soul is boldly revealed by the realist V.P. Astafiev. “Sad Detective” clearly shows how well our people like to walk. “Break away to the fullest” - this is the main motto of any feast, while the boundaries of what is permitted are often violated.

Failure in the service, joy in creativity

And although the work is distinguished by a small number of pages that can be mastered in a short period of time, if desired, for those who are not familiar with the book, its summary is interesting. Astafiev's "Sad Detective" is also a detailed description of the main character's service. And if in this area he left an unpleasant aftertaste, often reminiscent of himself, then in terms of creativity, Soshnin is more or less all right. Leonidas dreams of writing his manuscript. The only salvation for him is to spill his experiences on paper. The cynical editor makes it clear that an inexperienced layman still has a lot to learn, but it seems that Soshnin doesn't care much about this yet ...

Kind "Sad Detective" (Astafiev)

Without revealing the details of the ending, it should be said that fate will return the hero's family as a reward. Having met his wife and daughter, he will not be able to let them go, just as they, filled with “resurrecting, life-giving sorrow,” will return to his house.

Modern techniques of old history

Victor Astafiev used a distinctive technique when creating the story. "Sad Detective" includes plot inserts, which today would be called flashbacks. In other words, from time to time the narration is transferred to the past, to individual and most striking episodes of Soshnin's life that influenced him. For example, echoes of a sad, difficult childhood, when his aunts were engaged in raising him. One of them was attacked by hooligans, and Soshnin managed to pull himself together so as not to shoot them. On another occasion, adolescents pestered him in a dirty entrance, provoking him to retaliate. The hero tries to cool their ardor, and when the young "bull" is badly wounded, Leonid first calls the police station, confessing what he had done. But, as if wishing to evoke them, he summons him to himself ...

Such motives clearly indicate the key message of the story "The Sad Detective" - \u200b\u200bthe moral problems of the modern world. How does it manifest? Observing the ongoing chaos, Soshnin himself involuntarily becomes a participant in it. At the same time, he retains his dignity to the last. But will it be possible to change the world? Or is it easier to force others to change their attitude towards the world?

Strengths of the work

If you rely on the summary, Astafiev's “Sad Detective” quickly develops the storyline of the protagonist, not letting it stagnate in place. According to readers, the story is impressive, despite the peculiarities of the language with which Soshnin as a narrator presents the material. This is seen as a special charm, as if Astafiev gave up the author's chair to someone who wanted to become a writer. On the pages of the work, we each time see with what difficulty the service was given to Soshnin and with what dignity he emerged from various situations that put his life in real danger. At the same time, he loves his profession and does not want to cheat on it, remaining an honest, fair policeman fighting for truth and peace.

Role model

Creating Soshnina Astafiev showed a worthy example of what should be not only the servants of law and order, but also ordinary citizens. For such simplicity and reliability, the author and his story have earned the recognition of readers and critics.

Victor Petrovich Astafiev left a bright legacy to the modern generation. The main works, in addition to the "Sad Detective", include: the novel "Cursed and Killed", the novellas "Somewhere War Thunders", "Starfall", "Pass", "Oberton" and others. Feature films were made based on some of the author's works.

The main task of literature has always been the problem of attitudes and development of the most pressing problems: in the 19th century there was the problem of finding the ideal of a freedom fighter, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries - the problem of revolution. In our time, the most relevant topic is morality. Reflecting the problems and contradictions of our time, the masters of words go one step ahead of their contemporaries, illuminating the path to the future. Victor Astafiev in his novel "Sad Detective" addresses the theme of morality. He writes about the everyday life of people, which is typical for peacetime. His heroes do not stand out from the gray crowd, but merge with it. Showing ordinary people suffering from the imperfection of life around him, Astafyev raises the question of the Russian soul, of the originality of the Russian character. All the writers of our country in one way or another tried to resolve this issue. The novel is peculiar in its content: the main character Soshnin believes that we invented this mystery of the soul ourselves in order to keep silent from others. The peculiarities of the Russian character, such as pity, sympathy for others and indifference to ourselves, we develop in ourselves. The writer tries to disturb the souls of the reader with the fate of the heroes. Behind the little things described in the novel, there is a posed problem: how to help people? The lives of heroes evoke sympathy and pity. The author went through the war, and he, like no one else, is familiar with these feelings. What he saw in the war can hardly leave someone indifferent, not arouse compassion, mental pain. The events described take place in peacetime, but one cannot but feel the similarity, the connection with the war, for the time shown is no less difficult. Together with V. Astafiev we reflect on the fate of people and ask ourselves the question: how did we get to this point? The title "Sad Detective" says little. But if you think about it, you will notice that the main character really looks like a sad detective. Responsive and compassionate, he is ready to respond to any trouble, a cry for help, to sacrifice himself for the good of complete strangers. The problems of his life are directly related to the contradictions of society. He cannot be sad, because he sees what the life of the people around him is like, what their fates are. Soshnin is not just a former policeman, he brought benefits to people not only by duty, but also at the call of his soul, he has a good heart. Astafiev, through the name, gave a description of his main character. The events described in the novel could take place now. It has always been difficult for ordinary people in Russia. The time is not specified, the events of which are described in the book. One can only guess that it was after the war. Astafyev talks about Soshnin's childhood, about how he grew up without parents with aunt Lina, then with aunt Grani. The period when Soshnin was a policeman is also described, he caught criminals, risking his life. Soshnin recalls his past years, wants to write a book about the world around him. Unlike the protagonist, Syrokvasova is far from a positive image. She is a typical figure in contemporary fiction. She is tasked with choosing whose works to publish and whose not. Soshnin is just a defenseless author who is under her rule among many others. He is still at the very beginning of his path, but he understands what an incredibly difficult task he has undertaken, how weak his stories are, how much he will take from him, without giving anything in return, the literary work to which he doomed himself. The reader is attracted by the image of Aunt Grani. Her tolerance, kindness and hard work are admirable. She devoted her life to raising children, although she never had her own. Aunt Granya never lived in prosperity, did not have great joys and happiness, but she gave all the best that she had to orphans. At the end, the novel turns into reasoning, the meditation of the protagonist about the fate of the people around him, about the hopelessness of existence. In its details, the book does not have the character of a tragedy, but in general terms it makes you think about sad things. The writer often sees and feels much more behind the seemingly commonplace fact of personal relationships. The fact is that, unlike the others, he analyzes his own feeling deeper and more comprehensive. And then a single case is elevated to the general beginning, prevails over the particular. Eternity is expressed in the moment. The novel, simple at first glance, small in volume, conceals a very complex philosophical, social and psychological content. It seems to me that the words of I. Repin fit the "Sad Detective": "In the soul of a Russian man there is a trait of special, hidden heroism ... He lies under the cover of personality, he is invisible. But this is the greatest force of life, it moves mountains .. She merges completely with her idea, “is not afraid to die.” This is where her greatest strength is: “she is not afraid of death.” Astafyev, in my opinion, does not even for a moment lose sight of the moral aspect of a person's being. his work caught my attention.
The novel "The Sad Detective" was published in 1985, during a turning point in the life of our society. It was written in the style of o hard realism and therefore caused a surge of criticism. The reviews were mostly positive. The events of the novel are relevant today, as are always the works about honor and duty, about good and evil, about honesty and lies. The novel describes different moments in the life of the former policeman Leonid Soshnin, who at forty-two was retired due to injuries received in the service. The events of different years of his life are recalled. Childhood of Leonid Soshnin, like almost all children of the post-war period, was difficult. But, like many children, he did not think about such complex issues of life. After his mother and father died, he stayed with his aunt Lipa, whom he called Lina. He loved her, and when she began to walk, he could not understand how she could leave him when she gave him all her life. It was the usual childish selfishness. She died shortly after his marriage. He married the girl Lera, whom he saved from the harassing hooligans. There was no special love, just as a decent person he could not help but marry a girl after he was accepted in her house as a groom. After his first feat (capturing a criminal), he became a hero. After that he was wounded in the arm. It happened when one day he went to calm Vanka Fomin, and he pierced his shoulder with a pitchfork. With a heightened sense of responsibility for everything and everyone, with his sense of duty, honesty and the fight for justice, he could only work in the police. Leonid Soshnin always thinks about people, the motives of their actions. Why and why do people commit crimes? He reads many philosophical books to understand this. And he comes to the conclusion that thieves are born, not become. For a completely stupid reason, his wife leaves him; after the accident, he became disabled. After such troubles, he retired and found himself in a completely new and unfamiliar world, where he was trying to escape with a pen. He did not know how to break through the printing of his stories and books, so for five years they lay on the shelf with the editor Syrokvasova, a "gray" woman. Once he was attacked by bandits, but he coped with them. He felt bad and lonely, then he called his wife, and she immediately realized that something had happened to him. She understood that he had always lived a stressful life. And at some point, he looked at life differently. He realized that life should not always be a struggle. Life is talking with people, caring for loved ones, making concessions to each other. After he realized this, his affairs went better: they promised to publish the stories and even gave an advance payment, his wife returned, and some kind of calm began to appear in his soul. The main theme of the novel is a man who finds himself among the crowd. A man lost among people, confused in thoughts. The author wanted to show the individuality of a person among the crowd with his thoughts, actions, feelings. His problem is to understand the crowd, to merge with it. It seems to him that in the crowd he does not recognize people whom he knew well before. Among the crowd, they are all the same and kind, and evil, and honest, and deceitful. They all become the same in the crowd. Soshnin is trying to find a way out of this situation with the help of books that he reads and with the help of books that he himself tries to write. I liked this work because it touches upon the eternal problems of man and the crowd, man and his thoughts. I liked the way the author describes the hero's relatives and friends. With what kindness and affection he treats Aunt Grana and Aunt Lina. The author paints them as kind and hardworking women who love children. As the girl Pasha is described, Soshnin's attitude towards her and his indignation at the fact that they did not like her at the institute. The hero loves them all, and it seems to me that his life is getting much better because of the love of these people for him.
V.P. Astafiev is a writer, whose works reflect the life of people of the 20th century. Astafiev is a person who knows and is close to all the problems of our sometimes difficult life. Viktor Petrovich went through the war as a private, knows all the hardships of post-war life. I think that, with his wisdom and experience, he is one of those people whose advice and commands one should not only listen to, but try to fulfill them. But Astafyev does not act as a prophet, he simply writes about what is close to him and what worries him. Although the works of Viktor Petrovich belong to modern Russian literature, the problems that are often raised in them are more than one thousand years old. Eternal questions of good and evil, punishment and justice have long forced a person to seek answers to them. But this turned out to be a very difficult matter, because the answers lie in the person himself, and good and evil, honesty and dishonor are intertwined in us. With a soul, we are often indifferent. We all have a heart, but we are often called heartless. Astafiev's novel "Sad Detective" raises the problem of crime, punishment and the triumph of justice. The theme of the novel is the current intelligentsia and the current people. The work tells about the life of two small towns: Veisk and Khaylovsk, about the people living in them, about modern customs. When people talk about small towns, the image of a quiet, peaceful place arises in the mind, where life, filled with joys, flows slowly, without any special emergencies. A feeling of peace appears in the soul. But the one who thinks so is mistaken. In fact, life in Veisk and Khaylovsk flows in a stormy stream. Young people, getting drunk to the point where a person turns into an animal, rape a woman who is suitable for them as a mother, and the parents leave the child locked in an apartment for a week. All these pictures, described by Astafiev, terrify the reader. It becomes scary and creepy at the thought that the concepts of honesty, decency and love are disappearing. The description of these cases in the form of summaries is, in my opinion, an important artistic feature. Hearing every day about various incidents, we sometimes do not pay attention, but collected in the novel, they make you take off your rose-colored glasses and understand: if this did not happen to you, it does not mean that it does not concern you. The novel makes you think about your actions, look back and see what you have done over the years. After reading, you ask yourself the question: “What did I do good and good? Did I notice when a person next to me felt bad? "You start to think that indifference is as evil as cruelty. I think that finding answers to these questions is the purpose of the work. In the novel" Sad Detective "Astafyev created a whole system of images. The author introduces the reader to each hero of the work, talking about his life. The main character is an operative police officer Leonid Soshnin. He is a forty-year-old man who received several injuries in the line of duty, and must retire. Having retired, he begins to write, trying to figure out where there are so many Anger and cruelty. Where does it accumulate? Why, along with this cruelty, there is in Russian people pity for the prisoners and indifference to themselves, to a neighbor - a disabled war and labor? The main character, an honest and courageous operative worker, Astafyev opposes the policeman Fyodor Lebed , who quietly serves, moving from one position to another. not to risk life and grants the right to neutralize armed criminals to his partners, and it is not very important that the partner does not have a service weapon, because he is a recent graduate of a police school, and Fyodor has a service weapon. Aunt Granya is a vivid image in the novel - a woman who, without her children, gave all her love to the children who played near her house at the railway station, and then to the children in the Children's Home. Often the heroes of the work, who should be disgusting, evoke pity. The urn, which has turned from an amateur woman into a drunkard without a home and family, evokes sympathy. She screams songs and sticks to passers-by, but she becomes ashamed not of her, but of the society that turned away from the Urn. Soshnin says that they tried to help her, but nothing worked, and now they simply do not pay attention to her. There are Dobchinsky and Bobchinsky in the city of Veisk. Astafyev does not even change the names of these people and characterizes them with a quote from Gogol's "Inspector General", thereby refuting the well-known dictum that nothing lasts forever under the moon. Everything flows, everything changes, but such people remain, changing clothes of the 19th century for a fashionable suit and a shirt with gold cufflinks of the 20th century. There is in the city of Veisk and its own literary luminary, which, sitting in its cabin, "enveloped in cigarette smoke, twitched, crawled on the chair and littered with ashes." This is Syrokvasova Oktyabrina Perfilyevna. It is this person, whose description makes you smile, who moves the local literature forward and further. This woman decides which works to print. But not everything is so bad, because if there is evil, then there is good. Leonid Soshnin makes peace with his wife, and she again returns to him with her daughter. It's a little sad that the death of Soshnin's neighbor, Tutyshiha's grandmother, makes them reconcile. It is grief that brings Leonid closer to Leroy. A blank sheet of paper in front of Soshnin, who usually writes at night, is a symbol of the beginning of a new stage in the life of the protagonist's family. And I want to believe that their future life will be happy and joyful, and they will cope with grief, because they will be together. The novel "The Sad Detective" is a gripping work. Although it is difficult to read it, because Astafiev describes too scary pictures. But such works should be read, because they make you think about the meaning of life so that it does not pass colorlessly and empty. I liked the piece. I learned a lot of important things for myself, I understood a lot. I met a new writer and I know for sure that this is not the last work of Astafiev that I will read.

The main task of literature has always been the problem of attitudes and development of the most pressing problems: in the 19th century there was the problem of finding the ideal of a freedom fighter, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries - the problem of revolution. In our time, the most relevant topic is morality. Reflecting the problems and contradictions of our time, the masters of words go one step ahead of their contemporaries, illuminating the path to the future. Victor Astafiev in his novel "Sad Detective" addresses the theme of morality. He writes about the everyday life of people, which is typical for peacetime. His heroes do not stand out from the gray crowd, but merge with it. Showing ordinary people suffering from the imperfection of life around him, Astafyev raises the question of the Russian soul, of the originality of the Russian character. All the writers of our country in one way or another tried to resolve this issue. The novel is peculiar in its content: the main character Soshnin believes that we invented this mystery of the soul ourselves in order to keep silent from others. The peculiarities of the Russian character, such as pity, sympathy for others and indifference to ourselves, we develop in ourselves. The writer tries to disturb the souls of the reader with the fate of the heroes. Behind the little things described in the novel, there is a posed problem: how to help people? The lives of heroes evoke sympathy and pity. The author went through the war, and he, like no one else, is familiar with these feelings. What he saw in the war can hardly leave someone indifferent, not arouse compassion, mental pain. The events described take place in peacetime, but one cannot but feel the similarity, the connection with the war, for the time shown is no less difficult. Together with V. Astafiev we reflect on the fate of people and ask ourselves the question: how did we get to this point? The title "Sad Detective" says little. But if you think about it, you will notice that the main character really looks like a sad detective. Responsive and compassionate, he is ready to respond to any trouble, a cry for help, to sacrifice himself for the good of complete strangers. The problems of his life are directly related to the contradictions of society. He cannot be sad, because he sees what the life of the people around him is like, what their fates are. Soshnin is not just a former policeman, he brought benefits to people not only by duty, but also at the call of his soul, he has a good heart. Astafiev, through the name, gave a description of his main character. The events described in the novel could take place now. It has always been difficult for ordinary people in Russia. The time is not specified, the events of which are described in the book. One can only guess that it was after the war. Astafyev talks about Soshnin's childhood, about how he grew up without parents with aunt Lina, then with aunt Grani. The period when Soshnin was a policeman is also described, he caught criminals, risking his life. Soshnin recalls his past years, wants to write a book about the world around him. Unlike the protagonist, Syrokvasova is far from a positive image. She is a typical figure in contemporary fiction. She is tasked with choosing whose works to publish and whose not. Soshnin is just a defenseless author who is under her rule among many others. He is still at the very beginning of his path, but he understands what an incredibly difficult task he has undertaken, how weak his stories are, how much he will take from him, without giving anything in return, the literary work to which he doomed himself. The reader is attracted by the image of Aunt Grani. Her tolerance, kindness and hard work are admirable. She devoted her life to raising children, although she never had her own. Aunt Granya never lived in prosperity, did not have great joys and happiness, but she gave all the best that she had to orphans. At the end, the novel turns into reasoning, the meditation of the protagonist about the fate of the people around him, about the hopelessness of existence. In its details, the book does not have the character of a tragedy, but in general terms it makes you think about sad things. The writer often sees and feels much more behind the seemingly commonplace fact of personal relationships. The fact is that, unlike the others, he analyzes his own feeling deeper and more comprehensive. And then a single case is elevated to the general beginning, prevails over the particular. Eternity is expressed in the moment. The novel, simple at first glance, small in volume, conceals a very complex philosophical, social and psychological content. It seems to me that the words of I. Repin fit the "Sad Detective": "In the soul of a Russian man there is a trait of special, hidden heroism ... He lies under the cover of personality, he is invisible. But this is the greatest force of life, it moves mountains .. She merges completely with her idea, “is not afraid to die.” This is where her greatest strength is: “she is not afraid of death.” Astafyev, in my opinion, does not even for a moment lose sight of the moral aspect of a person's being. his work caught my attention.

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

V.P. Astafiev is a writer whose works reflect the life of people of the 20th century. Astafiev is a person who knows and is close to all the problems of our sometimes difficult life. Viktor Petrovich went through the war as a private, knows all the hardships of post-war life. I think that, with his wisdom and experience, he is one of those people whose advice and orders one should not only listen to, but try to fulfill them. But Astafyev does not act as a prophet, he simply writes about what is close to him and what worries him. Although the works of Viktor Petrovich belong to modern Russian literature, the problems that are often raised in them are more than one thousand years old. Eternal questions of good and evil, punishment and justice have long forced a person to seek answers to them. But this turned out to be a very difficult matter, because the answers lie in the person himself, and good and evil, honesty and dishonor are intertwined in us. With a soul, we are often indifferent. We all have a heart, but we are often called heartless. Astafiev's novel "Sad Detective" raises the problem of crime, punishment and the triumph of justice. The theme of the novel is the current intelligentsia and the current people. The work tells about the life of two small towns: Veisk and Khaylovsk, about the people living in them, about modern customs. When people talk about small towns, the mind arises an image of a quiet, peaceful place where life, filled with joys, flows slowly, without any special emergencies. A feeling of peace appears in the soul. But the one who thinks so is mistaken. In fact, life in Veisk and Khaylovsk flows in a stormy stream. Young people, getting drunk to the point where a person turns into an animal, rape a woman who is suitable for them as a mother, and the parents leave the child locked in an apartment for a week. All these pictures, described by Astafiev, terrify the reader. It becomes scary and creepy at the thought that the concepts of honesty, decency and love are disappearing. The description of these cases in the form of summaries is, in my opinion, an important artistic feature. Hearing every day about various incidents, we sometimes do not pay attention, but collected in the novel, they make you take off your rose-colored glasses and understand: if this did not happen to you, it does not mean that it does not concern you. The novel makes you think about your actions, look back and see what you have done over the years. After reading, you ask yourself the question: “What did I do good and good? Did I notice when a person next to me felt bad? "You start to think that indifference is as evil as cruelty. I think that finding answers to these questions is the purpose of the work. In the novel" Sad Detective "Astafyev created a whole system of images. The author introduces the reader to each hero of the work, talking about his life. The main character is an operative police officer Leonid Soshnin. He is a forty-year-old man who received several injuries in the line of duty, and must retire. Having retired, he begins to write, trying to figure out where there are so many Anger and cruelty. Where does it accumulate? Why, along with this cruelty, there is in Russian people pity for the prisoners and indifference to themselves, to a neighbor - a disabled war and labor? The main character, an honest and courageous operative worker, Astafyev opposes the policeman Fyodor Lebed , who quietly serves, moving from one position to another. not to risk life and grants the right to neutralize armed criminals to his partners, and it is not very important that the partner does not have a service weapon, because he is a recent graduate of a police school, and Fyodor has a service weapon. Aunt Granya is a vivid image in the novel - a woman who, without her children, gave all her love to the children who played near her house at the railway station, and then to the children in the Children's Home. Often the heroes of the work, who should be disgusting, evoke pity. The urn, which has turned from an amateur woman into a drunkard without a home and family, evokes sympathy. She screams songs and sticks to passers-by, but she becomes ashamed not of her, but of the society that turned away from the Urn. Soshnin says that they tried to help her, but nothing worked, and now they simply do not pay attention to her. There are Dobchinsky and Bobchinsky in the city of Veisk. Astafyev does not even change the names of these people and characterizes them with a quote from Gogol's "Inspector General", thereby refuting the well-known dictum that nothing lasts forever under the moon. Everything flows, everything changes, but such people remain, changing clothes of the 19th century for a fashionable suit and a shirt with gold cufflinks of the 20th century. There is in the city of Veisk and its own literary luminary, which, sitting in its cabin, "enveloped in cigarette smoke, twitched, crawled on the chair and littered with ashes." This is Syrokvasova Oktyabrina Perfilyevna. It is this person, whose description makes you smile, who moves the local literature forward and further. This woman decides which works to print. But not everything is so bad, because if there is evil, then there is good. Leonid Soshnin makes peace with his wife, and she again returns to him with her daughter. It's a little sad that the death of Soshnin's neighbor, Tutyshiha's grandmother, makes them reconcile. It is grief that brings Leonid closer to Leroy. A blank sheet of paper in front of Soshnin, who usually writes at night, is a symbol of the beginning of a new stage in the life of the protagonist's family. And I want to believe that their future life will be happy and joyful, and they will cope with grief, because they will be together. The Sad Detective novel is a gripping work. Although it is difficult to read it, because Astafiev describes too scary pictures. But such works must be read, because they make you think about the meaning of life so that it does not pass colorlessly and empty. I liked the piece. I learned a lot of important things for myself, I understood a lot. I met a new writer and I know for sure that this is not the last work of Astafiev that I will read.

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