Introduction
The fate of Grigory Melekhov in the novel “ Quiet Don" Sholokhov becomes the center of the reader's attention. This hero, who by the will of fate found himself in the midst of difficult historical events, has been forced to search for his own path in life for many years.
Description of Grigory Melekhov
Already from the first pages of the novel, Sholokhov introduces us to the unusual fate of grandfather Grigory, explaining why the Melekhovs are outwardly different from the rest of the inhabitants of the farm. Grigory, like his father, had “a drooping kite nose, in slightly slanting slits there were bluish almonds of hot eyes, sharp slabs of cheekbones.” Remembering the origin of Pantelei Prokofievich, everyone in the farmstead called the Melekhovs “Turks.”
Life changing inner world Gregory. His appearance also changes. From a carefree, cheerful guy, he turns into a stern warrior whose heart has hardened. Gregory “knew that he would no longer laugh as before; knew that his eyes were sunken and his cheekbones were sticking out sharply,” and in his gaze “a light of senseless cruelty began to shine through more and more often.”
At the end of the novel, a completely different Gregory appears before us. This is a mature man, tired of life, “with tired squinting eyes, with the reddish tips of a black mustache, with premature gray hair at the temples and hard wrinkles on the forehead.”
Characteristics of Gregory
At the beginning of the work, Grigory Melekhov is a young Cossack living according to the laws of his ancestors. The main thing for him is farming and family. He enthusiastically helps his father with mowing and fishing. He is unable to contradict his parents when they marry him to the unloved Natalya Korshunova.
But, for all that, Gregory is a passionate, addicted person. Contrary to his father's prohibitions, he continues to go to night games. He meets Aksinya Astakhova, his neighbor’s wife, and then leaves his home with her.
Gregory, like most Cossacks, is characterized by courage, sometimes reaching the point of recklessness. He behaves heroically at the front, participating in the most dangerous forays. At the same time, the hero is not alien to humanity. He is worried about a gosling he accidentally killed while mowing. For a long time suffers because of the murdered unarmed Austrian. “By obeying his heart,” Grigory saves his sworn enemy Stepan from death. He goes against a whole platoon of Cossacks, defending Franya.
In Gregory, passion and obedience, madness and gentleness, kindness and hatred coexist at the same time.
The fate of Grigory Melekhov and his path of quest
The fate of Melekhov in the novel “Quiet Don” is tragic. He is constantly forced to look for a “way out,” the right road. It's not easy for him in the war. His personal life is also complicated.
Like the beloved heroes of L.N. Tolstoy, Grigory goes through a difficult path of life’s quest. At the beginning, everything seemed clear to him. Like other Cossacks, he is called up for war. For him there is no doubt that he must defend the Fatherland. But, getting to the front, the hero understands that his whole nature is opposed to murder.
Grigory moves from white to red, but even here he will be disappointed. Seeing how Podtyolkov deals with captured young officers, he loses faith both in this power and in next year again finds himself in the white army.
Tossing between the whites and the reds, the hero himself becomes embittered. He loots and kills. He tries to forget himself in drunkenness and fornication. In the end, fleeing the persecution of the new government, he finds himself among the bandits. Then he becomes a deserter.
Grigory is exhausted from throwing. He wants to live on his land, raise bread and children. Although life hardens the hero and gives his features something “wolfish,” in essence, he is not a killer. Having lost everything and not having found his way, Grigory returns to his native farm, realizing that, most likely, death awaits him here. But a son and a home are the only things that keep the hero alive.
Gregory's relationship with Aksinya and Natalya
Fate sends the hero two passionate loving women. But Gregory’s relationship with them is not easy. While still single, Grigory falls in love with Aksinya, the wife of Stepan Astakhov, his neighbor. Over time, the woman reciprocates his feelings, and their relationship develops into unbridled passion. “So unusual and obvious was their crazy connection, they burned so frantically with one shameless flame, people without conscience and without hiding, losing weight and blackening their faces in front of their neighbors, that now for some reason people were ashamed to look at them when they met.”
Despite this, he cannot resist his father’s will and marries Natalya Korshunova, promising himself to forget Aksinya and settle down. But Grigory is unable to keep his vow to himself. Although Natalya is beautiful and selflessly loves her husband, he gets back together with Aksinya and leaves his wife and parental home.
After Aksinya's betrayal, Grigory returns to his wife again. She accepts him and forgives past grievances. But he was not destined for a calm family life. The image of Aksinya haunts him. Fate brings them together again. Unable to withstand the shame and betrayal, Natalya has an abortion and dies. Grigory blames himself for the death of his wife and experiences this loss cruelly.
Now, it would seem, nothing can stop him from finding happiness with the woman he loves. But circumstances force him to leave his place and, together with Aksinya, set off on the road again, the last for his beloved.
With the death of Aksinya, Gregory's life loses all meaning. The hero no longer has even a ghostly hope for happiness. “And Grigory, dying of horror, realized that it was all over, that the worst thing that could happen in his life had already happened.”
Conclusion
In conclusion of my essay on the topic “The Fate of Grigory Melekhov in the novel “Quiet Don””, I want to fully agree with critics who believe that in “Quiet Don” the fate of Grigory Melekhov is the most difficult and one of the most tragic. Using the example of Grigory Sholokhov, he showed how the whirlpool of political events breaks human destiny. And the one who sees his destiny in peaceful work suddenly becomes a cruel killer with a devastated soul.
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Essay on the topic “The Image of Grigory Melekhov” briefly: characteristics, life story and description of the hero in search of the truth
In Sholokhov's epic novel "Quiet Don" Grigory Melekhov occupies a central place. He is the most complex Sholokhov hero. This is a truth seeker. He suffered such cruel trials that a person, it would seem, is not able to endure. The life path of Grigory Melekhov is difficult and tortuous: first there was the First World War, then civil, and finally, an attempt to destroy the Cossacks, an uprising and its suppression.
The tragedy of Grigory Melekhov is the tragedy of a man who broke away from the people and became a renegade. His detachment becomes tragic, because he is a confused person. He went against himself, against millions of workers just like himself.
From his grandfather Prokofy Gregory, he inherited a hot-tempered and independent character, as well as the ability for tender love. The blood of the “Turkish” grandmother manifested itself in his appearance, in love, on the battlefield and in the ranks. And from his father he inherited a tough disposition, and it was because of this that integrity and rebellion haunted Gregory from his youth. He fell in love with a married woman Aksinya (this is a turning point in his life) and soon decides to leave with her, despite all the prohibitions of his father and the condemnation of society. The origins of Melekhov's tragedy lie in his rebellious character. This is the predetermination of a tragic fate.
Gregory is a kind, brave and courageous hero who always tries to fight for truth and justice. But war comes, and it destroys all his ideas about the truth and justice of life. The war appears to the writer and his characters as a series of losses and terrible deaths: it cripples people from the inside and destroys everything dear and dear to them. It forces all the heroes to take a fresh look at the problems of duty and justice, to look for the truth and not find it in any of their warring camps. Once among the Reds, Gregory sees the same cruelty and thirst for blood as the Whites. He can't understand why all this? After all, war destroys the smooth life of families, peaceful work, it takes away the last things from people and kills love. Grigory and Pyotr Melekhov, Stepan Astakhov, Koshevoy and other heroes of Sholokhov are unable to understand why this fratricidal massacre is happening? For whose sake and what should people die when they still have a long life ahead of them?
The fate of Grigory Melekhov is a life incinerated by war. The characters' personal relationships unfold against the backdrop of the country's tragic history. Gregory will never again be able to forget how he killed his first enemy, an Austrian soldier. He cut him down with a saber, it was terrible for him. The moment of murder changed him beyond recognition. The hero has lost his point of support, his kind and fair soul protests, cannot survive such violence against common sense. But the war is on, Melekhov understands that he needs to continue killing. Soon his decision changes: he realizes that the war is killing the best people of his time, that among thousands of deaths the truth cannot be found, Grigory throws down his weapon and returns to his native farm to work on his native land and raise his children. At almost 30 years old, the hero is almost an old man. The path of Melekhov’s search turned out to be an impassable thicket. Sholokhov in his work raises the question of the responsibility of history to the individual. The author sympathizes with his hero Grigory Melekhov, whose life is already broken in such young years.
As a result of his search, Melekhov is left alone: Aksinya is killed by his recklessness, he is hopelessly distant from his children, if only because he will bring disaster on them with his closeness. Trying to remain true to himself, he betrays everyone: the warring parties, women, and ideas. This means that he was initially looking in the wrong place. Thinking only about himself, about his “truth,” he did not love and did not serve. At the hour when a strong man’s word was required from him, Gregory could only provide doubts and soul-searching. But the war did not need philosophers, and women did not need a love of wisdom. Thus, Melekhov is the result of the transformation of the “superfluous man” type in the conditions of a severe historical conflict.
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The main character of "Quiet Don" Grigory Panteleevich Melekhov was born in 1892 in the Tatarsky farm of the Veshenskaya village of the Don Army Region. The farm is large - in 1912 it had three hundred yards, it was located on the right bank of the Don, opposite the village of Veshenskaya. Grigory's parents: retired officer of the Life Guards Ataman Regiment Panteley Prokofievich and his wife Vasilisa Ilyinichna.
Of course, there is no such personal information in the novel. Moreover, there are no direct indications in the text about the age of Gregory, as well as his parents, brother Peter, Aksinya and almost all other central characters. The date of birth of Gregory is established as follows. As is known, in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, men who had reached the full age of 21 were called up for active service in peacetime through military conscription. Gregory was called up for service, as can be accurately determined by the circumstances of the action, at the beginning of January 1914; He, therefore, turned the age required for conscription last year.
So, he was born in 1892, neither earlier nor later. The novel repeatedly emphasizes that Gregory is strikingly similar to his father, and Peter is both in face and character like his mother. These are not only external appearance features, this is an image: according to widespread folk superstition
a child will be happy in life if the son is like his mother and the daughter like her father. Gregory's open, direct and sharp disposition promises him a difficult, harsh fate, and this was initially noted in his generic characteristics. On the contrary, brother Peter is the opposite of Gregory in everything: he is flexible, cheerful, cheerful, compliant, not very smart, but cunning, he is an easy person in life. In the appearance of Grigory, like his father, oriental features are noticeable, it is not for nothing that the Melekhovs’ street nickname is “Turks”. Prokofiy, Pantelei’s father, at the end of the “penultimate
There is indirect confirmation of this in the novel. After a quarrel with his brother, Peter shouts to Gregory in his heart: “He has degenerated into his father’s breed, a tortured Circassian. It is likely that the grandmother of Peter and Gregory was a Circassian, whose beauty and harmony have long been famous in the Caucasus and Russia. Prokofy could and even had to tell his only son Panteleius who his tragically deceased mother was and where his tragically deceased mother was from; this family legend could not have been unknown to her grandchildren; that is why Peter speaks not about the Turkish, but specifically about the Circassian breed in his younger brother.
Moreover. Old General Listnitsky also remembered Pantelei Prokofievich in a very remarkable sense from his service in the Ataman Regiment. He recalls: “So lame, from the Circassians?” An educated, highly experienced officer who knew the Cossacks well, he, one must believe, gave the exact ethnic nuance here.
Grigory was born a Cossack, at that time this was a social sign: like all male members of the Cossack class, he was exempt from taxes and had the right to a land plot. According to the regulations from 1869, which did not change significantly until the revolution, the allotment (“share”) was determined at 30 dessiatinas (practically from 10 to 50 dessiatinas), that is, significantly higher than the average for the peasantry in Russia as a whole.
For this, the Cossack had to serve military service (mainly in the cavalry), and all equipment, except firearms, was purchased by him at his own expense. Since 1909, a Cossack served for 18 years: one year in the “preparatory category”, four years of active service, eight years on “benefits”, that is, with periodic calls for military training, the second and third stages for four years each and, finally, five years stock. In case of war, all Cossacks were subject to immediate conscription into the army.
The action of “Quiet Don” begins in May 1912: Cossacks of the second stage of conscription (in particular, Pyotr Melekhov and Stepan Astakhov) go to camps for summer military training. Gregory was about twenty years old at that time. Their romance with Aksinya begins during haymaking, in June, that is. Aksinya is also about twenty, she has been married to Stepan Astakhov since she was seventeen.
Further, the chronology of events develops as follows. In the middle of summer, Stepan returns from the camps, having already learned about his wife’s betrayal.
There is a fight between him and the Melekhov brothers. Soon Panteley Prokofievich married Natalya Korshunova to Grigory. There is an exact chronological sign in the novel: “they decided to bring the bride and groom together on the first day of salvation,” that is, according to the Orthodox calendar, August 1. “The wedding was scheduled for the first meat eater,” it continues. "The First Meat-Eater" lasted from August 15 to November 14, but there is a clarification in the novel. At the Dormition, that is, on August 15, Gregory came to visit the bride. Natalya calculates to herself: “Eleven days left.”
So, their wedding took place on August 26, 1912. Natalya was eighteen years old at that time (her mother tells the Melekhovs on the day of matchmaking: “The eighteenth spring has just passed”), which means she was born in 1894.
Grigory's life with Natalya turned out badly right away. They went to mow the winter crops “three days before the Intercession,” that is, September 28 (the feast of the Intercession of the Virgin Mary is October 1). Then, at night, their first painful explanation occurred: “I don’t love you, Natalya, don’t be angry. I didn’t want to talk about it, but no, apparently I can’t live like that...” Grigory and Aksinya are drawn to each other. suffer silently from the inability to connect. But soon chance brings them together. After a snowfall, when a sled track has been established, farmers go into the forest to cut brushwood. They met on a deserted road: “Well, Grisha, as you wish, I can’t live without you...” He thievishly moved the low-lowered pupils of his intoxicated eyes and jerked Aksinya towards him.” This happened some time after the cover, apparently in October.
In the summer, Grigory was supposed to go to summer military training (before being called up for service), but Listnitsky Jr. talked with the ataman and obtained his release. All summer Grigory worked in the field. Aksinya came to Yagodnoye pregnant, but hid it from him, because she did not know “from which of the two she conceived,” from Stepan or Gregory. She opened up only “in the sixth month, when it was no longer possible to hide the pregnancy.” She assures Grigory that the child is his: “Calculate it yourself... From the felling it is...”
Aksinya gave birth during the barley harvest, which means in July.
The girl was named Tanya. Grigory became very attached to her, fell in love with her, although he was still not sure that the child was his. A year later, the girl began to look very much like him with characteristic Melekhov facial features, which even the obstinate Panteley Prokofievich admitted. But Grigory did not have a chance to see that: he had already served in the army, then the war began... And Tanechka suddenly died, this happened in September 1914 (the date is established in connection with the letter about Listnitsky’s injury), she was just over a year old, she was sick , as one might assume, scarlet fever.
The time of Gregory's conscription into the army is given exactly in the novel: the second day of Christmas 1913, that is, December 26. During the examination at the medical commission, Grigory’s weight is measured - 82.6 kilograms (five pounds, six and a half pounds), his powerful build leaves seasoned officers in amazement: “What the hell, not particularly tall...” Farm comrades, knowing the strength and Gregory’s dexterity, they expected that he would be taken into the guard (when he leaves the commission, they immediately ask him: “To Atamansky, I suppose?”). However, Gregory is not accepted into the guard. Right there at the commission table the following conversation takes place, degrading his human dignity: “To the guard?..
Bandit mug... Very wild...
No way. Imagine, the sovereign sees such a face, what then? He has only eyes...
Pervert! From the East, probably.
Then the body is unclean, boils..."
So, thanks to the “bandit mug”, Gregory is not taken into the guard. Sparingly and as if in passing, the novel notes what a strong impression this derogatory lordship of the so-called “educated people” makes on him. That was Gregory’s first clash with the Russian nobility alien to the people; Since then, reinforced by new impressions, the feeling of hostility towards them grows stronger and worsens. Already on last pages In the novel, Grigory reproaches the spiritually disorganized, neurasthenic intellectual Kaparin: “You can expect anything from you, learned people.”
“Learned people” in Gregory’s vocabulary are the Bare, a class alien to the people. “The learned people have confused us... They have confused the Lord!” - Grigory thinks in rage five years later, during the Civil War, vaguely feeling the falsity of his path among the White Guards. In these words of his, gentlemen are directly identified with “learned people.” From his point of view, Gregory is right, because in old Russia
education was, unfortunately, the privilege of the ruling classes.
Their bookish “learning” is dead to him, and he is right in his feeling, for with his natural wisdom he catches there the verbal play, terminological scholasticism, and self-intoxicated idle talk. In this sense, Gregory’s dialogue with an officer from former teachers Kopylov (in 1919 during the Veshensky uprising) is characteristic. Grigory is annoyed by the appearance of the British on the Don soil; he sees this - and rightly so - as a foreign invasion.
Long after his conscription into the army, having the experience of war and the great revolution behind him, Gregory quite consciously understands the gap between himself, the son of a Cossack peasant, and them, the “learned people” from the bar: “I have an officer’s rank since the German war . He deserved it with his blood! And when I get into the officer society, it’s like I’ll leave the hut in the cold wearing only my underpants. So: they will trample on me with such coldness that I can feel it all over my back!.. Yes, because for them I am a black sheep. I am a stranger to them from head to toe. That’s why all this!”
Gregory’s first communication with the “educated class” back in 1914 in the person of the medical commission was essential for the development of the image: the abyss that separated the working people from the lordly or lordly intelligentsia was impassable. Only a great popular revolution could destroy this split.
The 12th Don Cossack Regiment, where Gregory was enlisted, had already been stationed near the Russian-Austrian border since the spring of 1914, judging by some signs - in Volyn. Gregory's mood is twilight. Deep down, he is not satisfied with life with Aksinya, he is drawn home. The duality and instability of such an existence contradict its integral, deeply positive nature.
He misses his daughter very much, even in his dreams he dreams of her, but Aksinye rarely writes, “the letters breathed a chill, as if he wrote them on orders.”
After the start of the war, in August, Gregory met with his brother. Peter says meaningfully: “And Natalya is still waiting for you. She has the idea that you will return to her.” Grigory answers very restrainedly: “Why does she... want to tie up what was torn?” As you can see, he speaks more in a questioning form than in an affirmative one. Then he asks about Aksinya.
Peter’s answer is unfriendly: “She is smooth and cheerful. Apparently, it’s easy to live on the master’s grub.” Gregory remained silent here too, did not flare up, did not interrupt Peter, which otherwise would have been natural for his frantic character.
He did not stay in the rear for long. The next day, that is, September 16, he ended up at a dressing station, and a day later, on the 18th, he “secretly left the dressing station.” He searched for his unit for some time and returned no later than the 20th, for it was then that Peter wrote a letter home that everything was fine with Gregory. However, misfortune has already befallen Gregory again: on the same day he receives a second, much more serious wound - a concussion, which causes him to partially lose his sight.
Grigory was treated in Moscow, in the eye hospital of Dr. Snegirev (according to the collection “All Moscow” for 1914, Dr. K. V. Snegirev’s hospital was on Kolpachnaya, building 1). There he met the Bolshevik Garanzha. The influence of this revolutionary worker on Gregory turned out to be strong (which is discussed in detail by the authors of studies on the “Quiet Don”). Garanja no longer appears in the novel, but this is by no means a passing character; on the contrary, his strongly described character allows us to better understand the figure of the central character of the novel.
Gregory first heard words from Garanzhi about social injustice, and caught his unshakable belief that such an order is not eternal and is the path to a different, properly organized life. Garanzha speaks - and this is important to emphasize - as “one of our own”, and not as “learned people” alien to Gregory. And he easily and willingly accepts the instructive words of a worker soldier, although he did not tolerate any didactics from those same “learned people.”
In this regard, the scene in the hospital, when Gregory is rudely insolent to one of the members of the imperial family, is full of deep meaning; Feeling the falseness and humiliating lordly condescension of what is happening, he protests, not wanting to hide his protest and not being able to make it meaningful. And this is not a manifestation of anarchism or hooliganism - Gregory, on the contrary, is disciplined and socially stable - this is his natural hostility to the anti-people lordship, which regards the worker as a “cattle”, a draft animal.
He spent the entire month of October 1914 in the hospital. He was cured, and successfully: his vision was not affected, his good health was not impaired. From Moscow, having received leave after being wounded, Grigory goes to Yagodnoye.
He appears there, as the text precisely says, on the night of November 5th. Aksinya's betrayal is revealed to him immediately. Grigory is depressed by what happened; At first he is strangely restrained, and only the next morning a violent outburst follows: he beats young Listnitsky and insults Aksinya. Without hesitation, as if such a decision had long been ripe in his soul, he went to Tatarsky, to his family. Here he spent his two weeks of vacation.
Throughout 1915 and almost all of 1916, Grigory was continuously at the front. His military fate at that time is outlined very sparingly in the novel; only a few combat episodes are described, and it is told how the hero himself remembers it.
In May 1915, in a counterattack against the 13th German Iron Regiment, Gregory captured three soldiers. Then the 12th regiment, where he continues to serve, together with the 28th, where Stepan Astakhov serves, participates in battles in East Prussia. Here the famous scene takes place between Grigory and Stepan, their conversation about Aksinya, after Stepan “before three once” unsuccessfully shot at Gregory, and Gregory carried him, wounded and left without a horse, from the battlefield. The situation was extremely acute: the regiments were retreating, and the Germans, as both Grigory and Stepan knew well, at that time did not take the Cossacks alive as prisoners, they killed them on the spot, Stepan was threatened with imminent death - in such circumstances, Grigory’s act looks especially expressive.
Here it is appropriate to talk about the factual basis of the named episode. The Bru"i-lov offensive of 1916 lasted a long time, more than two months, from May 22 to August 13. The text, however, precisely states: the time when Gregory operates is May. And it is no coincidence: according to the Military Historical Archive, The 12th Don Regiment took part in these battles relatively a short time- from May 25 to June 12. As you can see, the chronological sign here is extremely accurate.
“In early November,” the novel says, Gregory’s regiment was transferred to the Romanian front. On November 7 - this date is directly named in the text - the Cossacks on foot attacked the heights, and Gregory was wounded in the arm. After treatment, he received leave and came home (coachman Emel-yan tells Aksinya about this). Thus ended 1916 in the life of Gregory. By that time, he had already “served four St. George’s crosses and four medals,” he was one of the respected veterans of the regiment, in the days ceremonies stands by the regimental banner.
Grigory is still at odds with Aksinya, although he often thinks about her. Children appeared in his family: Natalya gave birth to twins - Polyushka and Misha. The date of their birth is established quite precisely: “at the beginning of autumn,” that is, in September 1915. And one more thing: “Natalia fed children up to a year.
In September I took them away...” The year 1917 in Gregory’s life is almost not described. IN different places
The stinginess in the description of Gregory’s life in the turbulent year of 1917, presumably, is not accidental. Apparently, until the end of the year, Gregory remained aloof from the political struggle that swept the country. And this is understandable. Gregory's behavior in that specific period of history was determined by the socio-psychological properties of his personality. The class Cossack feelings and ideas, even the prejudices of his environment, were strong in him.
The highest dignity of a Cossack, according to this morality, is courage and bravery, honest military service, and everything else is not our Cossack business, our business is to wield a saber and plow the rich Don soil. Awards, promotions in rank, respectful respect from fellow villagers and comrades, all this, as M. Sholokhov wonderfully said, “the subtle poison of flattery” gradually faded in Gregory’s mind that bitter social truth that the Bolshevik Garanzha told him about in the fall of 1914.
On the other hand, Gregory organically does not accept the bourgeois-noble counter-revolution, for it is rightly associated in his mind with that arrogant nobility that he so hates. It is no coincidence that this camp is personified for him in Listnitsky - the one for whom Grigory was a groom. whose cold disdain he felt well, who seduced his beloved. That is why it is natural that the Cossack officer Grigory Melekhov did not take any part in the counter-revolutionary affairs of the then Don Ataman A.M. Kaledin and his entourage, although, presumably, some of his colleagues and fellow countrymen acted in all this.
It is difficult, simply impossible, to imagine Gregory in the role of a rally speaker or an active member of any political committee.
People like him do not like to come to the forefront, although, as Gregory himself proved, a strong character makes them, if necessary, strong leaders.
It is clear that in the rally and rebellious year of 1917, Gregory had to remain aloof from the political rapids. In addition, fate threw him into a provincial reserve regiment; he was not able to witness the major events of the revolutionary time. It is no coincidence that the depiction of such events is given through the perception of Bunchuk or Listnitsky - people who are well-defined and politically active, or in the direct author’s depiction of specific historical characters.
However, from the very end of 1917, Gregory again enters the focus of the narrative. It is understandable: the logic of revolutionary development involved more and more broad masses in the struggle, and personal fate placed Gregory in one of the epicenters of this struggle on the Don, in the region of the “Russian Vendee,” where a cruel and bloody civil war did not subside for more than three years. So, the end of 1917 finds Gregory a hundred-man commander in a reserve regiment, the regiment was located in the large village of Kamenskaya, in the west of the Don region, near the working-class Donbass. Political life was in full swing. For some time, Gregory found himself under the influence of his colleague, centurion Izvarin - he, as established from archival materials, is a real historical figure, later a member of the Military Circle (something like a local parliament), a future active ideologist of the anti-Soviet Don “government”. Energetic and educated, Izvarin for some time won Grigory over to the side of the so-called “Cossack autonomy”; he painted Manilov’s pictures of the creation of an independent “Don Republic”, which, they say, would conduct relations “with Moscow...” on equal terms. who for the first time embarked on broad civil activities;
This fad lasted, naturally, very briefly. It is not surprising that the politically naive Gregory, being also a patriot of his region and a 100% Cossack, for some time became carried away by Izvarin’s rantings. But his relationship with the Don autonomists was very short. Already in November, Grigory met the outstanding Cossack revolutionary Fyodor Podtelkov. Strong and imperious, adamantly confident in the correctness of the Bolshevik cause, he easily overturned the unsteady Izvarin constructions in Gregory’s soul. In addition, we emphasize that in social sense
the simple Cossack Podtelkov is immeasurably closer to Gregory than the intellectual Izvarin.
The point here, of course, is not only a matter of personal impression: Gregory even then, in November 1917, after the October Revolution, could not help but see the forces of the old world gathered on the Don, could not help but guess, not feel at least what was behind the beautiful-spirited concoctions There are still the same generals and officers who are not their favorite bar, the Listnitsa landowners and others.
(By the way, this is how it happened historically: the autonomist and intelligent talkative General P. N. Krasnov with his “Don Republic” soon became an outright instrument of bourgeois-landowner restoration.)
There is no exact information in the novel whether Grigory was a participant in the congress of front-line soldiers in Kamenskaya, but he met there with Ivan Alekseevich Kotlyarov and Christonya - they were delegates from the Tatarsky farm - he was pro-Bolshevik. A detachment of Chernetsov, one of the first “heroes” of the White Guard, was moving towards Kamenskaya from the south. The Red Cossacks hastily form their armed forces to fight back. On January 21, a decisive battle takes place; The Red Cossacks are led by a former military foreman (in modern terms, lieutenant colonel) Golubov. Grigory in his detachment commands a division of three hundred; he makes a roundabout maneuver, which ultimately led to the death of the Chernetsov detachment. In the midst of the battle, “at three o’clock in the afternoon,” Grigory received a bullet wound in the leg,
That same day, in the evening, at the Glubokaya station, Grigory witnesses how the prisoner Chernetsov was hacked to death by Podtelkov, and then, on his orders, other captured officers were killed. That cruel scene makes a strong impression on Grigory; in anger, he even tries to rush at Podtelkov with a revolver, but he is restrained.
This episode is extremely important in the further political fate of Gregory. He cannot and does not want to accept the harsh inevitability of civil war, when opponents are irreconcilable and the victory of one means the death of the other. By the nature of his nature, Gregory is generous and kind, he is disgusted by the cruel laws of war. Here it is appropriate to recall how, in the first days of the war in 1914, he almost shot his fellow soldier, the Cossack Chubaty (Uryupin), when he hacked to death a captured Austrian hussar. A man of a different social cast, Ivan Alekseevich, will not immediately accept the harsh inevitability of an inexorable class battle, but for him, a proletarian, a pupil of the communist Shtokman, there is a clear political ideal and a clear goal. Grigory doesn’t have all this, which is why his reaction to the events in Glubokaya is so sharp.
It is also necessary to emphasize here that individual excesses of the civil war were not at all caused by social necessity and were the result of acute discontent accumulated among the masses towards the old world and its defenders. Fedor Podtelkov himself - typical example this kind of impulsive, emotional people's revolutionary who did not, and could not have, the necessary political prudence and state outlook.
Be that as it may, Gregory is shocked. In addition, fate separates him from the Red Army environment - he is wounded, he is taken for treatment to the remote farm of Tatarsky, far from the noisy Kamenskaya, crowded with Red Cossacks... A week later, Panteley Prokofievich comes to Millerovo for him, and “the next morning”, then On January 29, Gregory was taken home on a sleigh. The path was not short - one hundred and forty miles. Gregory's mood on the road is vague; “...Grigory could neither forgive nor forget the death of Chernetsov and the reckless execution of captured officers.” “I’ll come home, get some rest, heal the wound, and then...” he thought and mentally waved his hand, “we’ll see.” The matter itself will show...” He longs for one thing with all his soul - peaceful labor, peace. With such thoughts, Grigory arrived in Tatarsky on January 31, 1918.
Grigory spent the end of winter and the beginning of spring in his native farm.
At that time, the civil war had not yet begun in the Upper Don. That precarious world is depicted in the novel as follows: “The Cossacks who returned from the front rested near their wives, ate their fill, and did not sense that at the thresholds of the kurens they were watching for worse troubles than those they had to endure in the war they had experienced.” That's right: it was the calm before the storm. By the spring of 1918, Soviet power was largely victorious throughout Russia. The overthrown classes resisted, blood was shed, but these battles were still of a small scale and took place mainly around cities, on roads and junction stations. Fronts and mass armies did not yet exist. The small Volunteer Army of General Kornilov was driven out of Rostov and wandered, surrounded, throughout the Kuban. The head of the Don counter-revolution, General Kaledin, shot himself in Novocherkassk, after which the most active enemies
Soviet power left the Don for the remote Salsk steppes. There are red banners over Rostov and Novocherkassk. Meanwhile, foreign intervention began. On February 18 (new style), the Kaiser and Austro-Hungarian troops became more active. On May 8 they approached Rostov and took it. In March-April on the northern and eastern shores
Soviet Russia The armies of the Entente countries land: Japanese, Americans, British, French. The internal counter-revolution revived everywhere and became stronger organizationally and materially. in April, F. Podtelkov with a small detachment of Red Cossacks moved to the Upper Don districts in order to replenish his forces there. However, they did not reach their goal. On April 27 (May 10, new style), the entire detachment was surrounded by White Cossacks and captured along with their commander.
In April, the civil war first broke into the Tatarsky farm; on April 17, near the Setrakov farm, southwest of Veshenskaya, the Cossacks destroyed the Tiraspol detachment of the 2nd Socialist Army; this unit, having lost discipline and control, retreated under the blows of the interventionists from Ukraine. Cases of looting and violence on the part of the corrupted Red Army soldiers gave counter-revolutionary instigators a good reason to speak out. Throughout the Upper Don, bodies of Soviet power were overthrown, atamans were elected, and armed detachments were formed.
On April 18, a Cossack circle took place in Tatarskoye. The day before this, in the morning, expecting the inevitable mobilization, Hristonya, Koshevoy, Grigory and Valet gathered in Ivan Alekseevich’s house and decided what to do: should they make their way to the Reds or stay and wait for events? Valet and Koshevoy confidently offer to escape, and immediately. The rest hesitate. A painful struggle takes place in Gregory’s soul: he does not know what to decide. He takes out his irritation on Knave, insulting him. He leaves, followed by Koshevoy. Gregory and others make a half-hearted decision - to wait.
And a circle is already being convened on the square: mobilization has been announced.
They are creating a hundred farms. Grigory was nominated as a commander, but some of the more conservative old men objected, citing his service with the Reds;
Brother Peter is elected commander instead. Grigory gets nervous and defiantly leaves the circle.
A large crowd of Cossack women and Cossacks gathered for the execution; they were hostile to those being executed, because they were explained that these were enemies who had come to rob and rape. And what? A disgusting picture of beating - who?!
their own, simple Cossacks! - quickly disperses the crowd; people flee, ashamed of their - even involuntary - involvement in the crime. “Only the front-line soldiers remained, who had seen death enough, and the most frenzied old men,” says the novel, that is, only hardened souls or inflamed with anger could withstand the cruel spectacle. A characteristic detail: the officers who hang Podtelkov and Krivoshlykov are wearing masks. Even they, apparently conscious enemies of the Soviets, are ashamed of their role and resort to an intellectual-decadent masquerade.
This scene should have made no less an impression on Grigory than the reprisal against the captured Chernetsovites three months later. With amazing psychological accuracy, M. Sholokhov shows how in the first minutes of an unexpected meeting with Podtelkov, Grigory even experiences something similar to schadenfreude. He nervously throws cruel words into the face of the doomed Podtelkov: “Do you remember the Battle of Deep? Do you remember how the officers were shot... They shot on your orders! A? Now it's time for you to get even! Well, don't worry! You're not the only one to tan other people's skins! You have left, Chairman of the Don Council of People's Commissars! You, toadstool, sold the Cossacks to the Jews! It's clear? What should I say?
But then... He, too, saw at close range the terrible beating of unarmed people.
The White Cossack army of the German henchman General Krasnov began active military operations against the Soviet state in the summer of 1918. Grigory was mobilized to the front. As a commander of a hundred in the 26th Veshensky Regiment, he is in the Krasnov army on its so-called Northern Front, in the direction of Voronezh. It was a peripheral area for the Whites; the main battles between them and the Red Army took place in the summer and autumn in the Tsaritsyn area.
Gregory fights sluggishly, indifferently and reluctantly. It is characteristic that in the description of that relatively long war, nothing is said in the novel about his military affairs, about the manifestation of courage or commander's ingenuity. But he is always in battle, he does not hide in the rear. Here is a condensed, as if summary, summary of his life’s fate at that time: “Three horses were killed near Gregory in the fall, the overcoat was holed in five places... Once a bullet pierced right through the copper head of a saber, the lanyard fell at the horse’s feet, as if it had been bitten.
“Someone is praying strongly to God for you, Grigory,” Mitka Korshunov told him and was surprised at Grigoriev’s gloomy smile.”
Yes, Gregory fights “not fun.” The goals of the war, as Krasnov’s stupid propaganda cracked about it, “the defense of the Don Republic from the Bolsheviks”, are deeply alien to him. He sees looting, decay, the tired indifference of the Cossacks, the complete futility of the banner under which he was called by the will of circumstances. He fights robberies among the Cossacks of his hundred, stops reprisals against prisoners, that is, he does the opposite of what the Krasnov command encouraged. Characteristic in this regard is his harsh, even impudent for an obedient son, as Grigory has always been, his abuse of his father when he, succumbing to the general mood, shamelessly robs a family whose owner left with the Reds. By the way, this is the first time he judges his father so harshly.
It is clear that Grigory’s career in the Krasnov army is going very badly.
He is called to division headquarters. Some authorities not named in the novel begin to scold him: “Are you ruining a hundred for me, cornet? Are you being liberal? Apparently, Grigory was insolent about something, because the scolder continues: “How can I not shout at you?..” And as a result: “I order you to hand over a hundred today.”
Grigory is demoted and becomes platoon commander. There is no date in the text, but it can be restored, and this is important. Further in the novel there is a chronological sign: “At the end of the month the regiment... occupied the village of Gremyachiy Log.” It doesn’t say what month, but it describes the height of harvesting, the heat, and there are no signs of the coming autumn in the landscape. Finally, Grigory learns from his father the day before that Stepan Astakhov has returned from German captivity, and in the corresponding place in the novel it is precisely said that he came “in early August.” So, Gregory was demoted around mid-August 1918.
A fact that is important for the hero’s fate is also noted here: he learns that Aksinya has returned to Stepan. Neither in the author's speech, nor in the description of Gregory's feelings and thoughts is his attitude to this event expressed.
But it is certain that his depressed state should have worsened: the painful memory of Aksinya never left his heart.
At the end of 1918, the Krasnov army completely disintegrated, the White Cossack front was bursting at all the seams. The Red Army, strengthened and gaining strength and experience, goes on a victorious offensive. On December 16 (hereinafter according to the old style) the 26th regiment, where Gregory continued to serve, was knocked down from its positions by a detachment of red sailors. A non-stop retreat began, lasting another day. And then, at night, Grigory voluntarily leaves the regiment and flees from the Krasnovskaya artillery. mii, heading straight to the house: “The next day, in the evening, he was already leading into his father’s base a horse that had made a two-hundred mile run, staggering from fatigue.” This happened, therefore, on December 19
The novel notes that Gregory escapes with “joyful determination.” The word “joy” is typical here: it is the only positive emotion that Grigory experienced during his eight long months of service in the Krasnov army. I experienced it when I left its ranks.
The Reds came to Tatarsky in January
1919. Gregory, like many others
gym, waits for them with intense anxiety:
How will recent enemies behave somehow?
whose villages? Won't they take revenge?
commit violence?.. No, nothing like that
not happening. Red Army discipline
stern and strict. No robbery and
oppression. Relations between the Red Army
the Tsami and Cossack population are the most
there are friendly ones. They're even going
together, sing, dance, walk: neither give nor
take two neighboring villages, recently
but those who were at enmity made peace and so
But... Fate has something else in store for Gregory. Most of the Cossack farmers are “friends” for the arriving Red Army soldiers, because most of them are recent grain farmers with a similar life and worldview. It seems that Grigory is also “one of our own”. But he is an officer, and this word at that time was considered an antonym to the word “Council”. And what an officer - a Cossack, a White Cossack! A breed that has already proven itself sufficiently in the bloodshed of the civil war.
It is clear that this alone should cause an increased nervous reaction among the Red Army soldiers in relation to Gregory. And so it happens, and immediately.
On the very first day the Reds arrived, a group of Red Army soldiers came to billet with the Melekhovs, including Alexander from Lugansk, whose family was shot by white officers - he was naturally an embittered, even neurasthenic man. He immediately begins to bully Grigory, in his words, gestures, and gaze there is burning, frantic hatred - after all, it was precisely such Cossack officers who tortured his family and flooded the working Donbass with blood. Alexander is held back only by the harsh discipline of the Red Army: the commissar's intervention eliminates the impending clash between him and Gregory.
What can former White Cossack officer Grigory Melekhov explain to Alexander and many others like him? That he ended up in the Krasnov army against his will? That he was “liberal,” as the division headquarters accused him? That he voluntarily abandoned the front and never wants to pick up the hateful weapon again? So Gregory tries to tell Alexander: “We abandoned the front ourselves, let you in, but you came to a conquered country...”, to which he receives an inexorable answer: “Don’t tell me! We know you! “The front has been abandoned”! If they hadn’t stuffed you, they wouldn’t have left you. “I can talk to you in any way.”
For many years Grigory walked under bullets, escaped from the blow of a checker, looked death in the face, and more than once he would have to do this more than once in the future. But of all mortal dangers, he remembers this one, because he was attacked - he is convinced - without guilt. Later, having experienced a lot, having experienced the pain of new wounds and losses, Grigory, in his fateful conversation with Mikhail Koshev, will remember exactly this episode at the party, remember it in sparing, as usual, words, and it will become clear how hard that absurd event affected him :
“...If the Red Army soldiers weren’t going to kill me at the party then, I might not have participated in the uprising.
If you weren't an officer, no one would touch you.
If I hadn’t been hired, I wouldn’t have been an officer... Well, it’s a long song!”
This personal moment cannot be ignored in order to understand the future fate of Gregory. He is nervously tense, constantly waiting for a blow, he cannot perceive the new power being created objectively, his position seems too precarious to him. Grigory’s irritation and bias are clearly manifested in a night conversation with Ivan Alekseevich in the Revolutionary Committee at the end of January.
Ivan Alekseevich has just returned to the farm from the chairman of the district revolutionary committee, he is joyfully excited, he tells how respectfully and simply they talked to him: “And how was it before?
It is clear that Gregory is wrong here. Should he, who was so acutely aware of the humiliation of his social position in old Russia, not understand the simple-minded joy of Ivan Alekseevich? And he understands no worse than his opponent that the generals said goodbye “out of necessity,” for the time being.
Gregory’s arguments against the new government, which he brought up in the dispute, are simply frivolous: they say, a Red Army soldier in bandages, a platoon commander in chrome boots, and the commissar “got all over his skin.” Does Grigory, a professional military man, not know that there is not and cannot be equalization in the army, that different responsibilities give rise to different positions; he himself will then scold his orderly and friend Prokhor Zykov for his familiarity. In Gregory’s words, irritation and unspoken anxiety for his own fate, which, in his opinion, is under undeserved danger, sounds too clearly.
But neither Ivan Alekseevich nor Mishka Koshevoy, in the heat of a simmering struggle, can no longer see in Grigory’s words only the nervousness of an unjustly offended person. All this nervous night conversation can convince them of only one thing: officers cannot be trusted, even former friends...
Grigory leaves the Revolutionary Committee even more alienated from the new government. He will not go back to talk with his former comrades; he accumulates irritation and anxiety within himself.
Winter was coming to an end (“drops were falling from the branches,” etc.), when Grigory was sent to take the shells to Bokovskaya. This was in February, but before Shtokman arrived in Tatarsky - therefore, around mid-February. Grigory warns his family ahead of time: “But I won’t come to the farm. I’ll pass the time at Singin’s, at my aunt’s.” (Here, of course, we mean maternal aunt, since Panteley Prokofievich had neither brothers nor sisters.) It turned out to be a long way for him, after Vo-kovskaya he had to go to Chernyshevskaya (station on
After resting for half an hour, Grigory rode off on horseback to visit a distant relative at the Rybny farm, while Peter promised to say that his brother had gone to his aunt in Singin. The next day, Shtokman and Koshevoy with four horsemen went there for Grigory, searched the house, but did not find him...
Grigory lay in the barn for two days, hiding behind dung and crawling out of the shelter only at night. From this voluntary imprisonment he was rescued by the unexpected outbreak of the Cossack uprising, which is usually called the Veshensky or (more precisely) the Verkhnedonsky. The text of the novel precisely states that the uprising began in the Yelanskaya village; the date is given - February 24. The date is given according to the old style; documents from the Archives of the Soviet Army call the beginning of the rebellion March 10-11, 1919. But M. Sholokhov deliberately cites the old style here: the population of the Upper Don lived for too short a period under Soviet rule and could not get used to the new calendar (in all regions under White Guard control the old style was preserved or restored); since the action of the third book of the novel takes place exclusively within the Verkhnedonsky district, then this calendar is typical for the heroes.
Grigory rode to Tatarsky when hundreds of cavalry and foot soldiers had already been formed there; Pyotr Melekhov commanded them. Grigory becomes the commander of fifty (that is, two platoons). He's everything time ahead, in the vanguard, in advanced outposts. On March 6, Peter was captured by the Reds and shot by Mikhail Koshev. The very next day, Gregory is appointed commander of the Veshensky regiment and leads his hundreds against the Reds. He orders the twenty-seven Red Army soldiers captured in the first battle to be cut down. He is blinded by hatred, stirs it up in himself, brushing aside the doubts that stir at the bottom of his clouded consciousness: the thought flashes through his mind: “the rich are with the poor, and not the Cossacks with Russia...” The death of his brother for some time embittered him even more his.
The uprising on the Upper Don flared up rapidly. In addition to the general social reasons that caused the Cossack counter-revolution in many outskirts. Russia, there was also a subjective factor mixed in: the Trotskyist policy of the notorious “decossackization,” which caused unjustified repression of the working population in the area. Objectively, such actions were provocative and significantly helped the kulaks to revolt against Soviet power. This circumstance is described in detail in the literature about the Quiet Don. The anti-Soviet rebellion took on a wide scope: within a month the number of rebels reached 30 thousand fighters - this was a huge force on the scale of the civil war, and the rebels mainly consisted of experienced and skilled people in military affairs. To eliminate the rebellion, special Expeditionary Forces were formed from parts of the Southern Front of the Red Army (according to the Archives of the Soviet Army - consisting of two divisions). Soon, fierce battles began throughout the Upper Don.
The Veshensky regiment is quickly deployed into the 1st rebel division - Grigory commands it. Very soon the veil of hatred that clouded his consciousness in the first days of the rebellion subsides. With even greater force than before, doubts gnaw at him: “And most importantly, who am I leading against? Against the people... Who is right? - Grigory thinks, gritting his teeth.” Already on March 18, he openly expressed his doubts at a meeting of the rebel leadership: “And I think that we got lost when we went to the uprising...”
Ordinary Cossacks know about these sentiments of his. One of the rebel commanders proposes to stage a coup in Veshki: “Let’s fight both the Reds and the Cadets.” Grigory objects, disguised for appearance with a wry smile: “let’s bow at the feet of the Soviet government: we are guilty...” He stops reprisals against prisoners. He arbitrarily opens the prison in Veshki, releasing those arrested. The leader of the uprising, Kudinov, does not really trust Grigory - he is bypassed by invitation to important meetings.
Seeing no way out ahead, he acts mechanically, by inertia. He drinks and goes on a rampage, which has never happened to him. He is driven by only one thing: to save his family, loved ones and the Cossacks, for whose lives he is responsible as a commander.
In mid-April, Grigory comes home to plow. There he meets Aksinya, and again the relationship between them, interrupted five and a half years ago, is resumed.
On April 28, having returned to the division, he receives a letter from Kudinov that communists from Tatarsky: Kotlyarov and Koshevoy were captured by the rebels (there is a mistake here, Koshevoy escaped captivity). Grigory quickly gallops to the place of their captivity, wants to save them from inevitable death: “Blood has fallen between us, but are we not strangers?!” - he thought as he galloped. He was late: the prisoners had already been killed...
The Red Army in mid-May 1919 (the date here, naturally, according to the old style) began decisive action against the Upper Don rebels: the offensive of Denikin’s troops in the Donbass began, so the most dangerous hostile center in the rear of the Soviet Southern Front had to be destroyed as soon as possible. The main blow came from the south. The rebels could not stand it and retreated to the left bank of the Don. Gregory's division covered the retreat, and he himself crossed with the rearguard. The Tatarsky farm was occupied by the Reds.
In Veshki, under fire from the Red batteries, in anticipation of the possible destruction of the entire uprising, Gregory is haunted by the same deathly indifference. “He was not heartbroken about the outcome of the uprising,” the novel says. He diligently drove away thoughts about the future: “To hell with him! When it ends, it will be all right!”
And here, being in a hopeless state of soul and mind, Grigory calls Aksinya from Tatarsky. Just before the start of the general retreat, that is, around May 20, he sends Prokhor Zykov after her.
And here is Aksinya in Veshki. Having abandoned the division, he spends two days with it. “The only thing left in his life (so, at least, it seemed to him) was the passion for Aksinya that flared up with pain and irrepressible force,” the novel says. What is noteworthy here is the word “passion”: it is not love, but passion. The remark in parentheses has an even deeper meaning: “it seemed to him...” His nervous, flawed passion is something like an escape from a shocked world, in which Grigory does not find a place or business for himself, but is busy with someone else’s business... In the summer of 1919, the southern Russian The counter-resolution experienced its greatest success. The volunteer army, equipped with a strong military and socially homogeneous composition, having received military equipment from England and France, launched a broad offensive with a decisive goal: to defeat the Red Army, take Moscow and eliminate Soviet power. For some time, success accompanied the White Guards: they occupied the entire Donbass and took Kharkov on June 12 (old style). The White command was in dire need of replenishing its not very large army, which is why it set an important goal for itself to capture the entire territory of the Don region in order to use the population of the Cossack villages as human reserves. For this purpose, preparations were being made for a breakthrough of the Soviet Southern Front in the direction of the Verkhnedonsky uprising area. On June 10, the equestrian group of General A.S. Sekretov made a breakthrough, and three days later reached the rebel lines. From now on, all of them, by military order, joined the White Guard Don Army of General V.I. Sidorin.
Grigory did not expect anything good from the meeting with the “cadets” - neither for himself nor for his fellow countrymen. And so it happened.
A slightly updated old order returned to the Don, the same familiar bar people in uniform, with contemptuous glances. Grigory, as a rebel commander, attends a banquet given in honor of Sekregov, listening with disgust to the drunken general's chatter, which is insulting to the Cossacks present. At the same time, Stepan Astakhov appears in Veshki. Aksinya stays with him. The last straw that Gregory was clinging to in his unsettled life seemed to have disappeared.
He gets a short vacation and comes home. The whole family is assembled, everyone survived. Grigory caresses the children, is discreetly friendly with Natalya, and respectful with the parents.
Leaving for his unit, saying goodbye to his family, he cries. “Grigory never left his native farm with such a heavy heart,” the novel notes. Vaguely he senses great events approaching... And they really are waiting for him.
In the heat of continuous battles with the Red Army, the White Guard command was not immediately able to disband the semi-partisan, disorderly organized rebel units. Gregory continues to command his division for some time. But he is no longer independent, the same generals are again standing over him. He is summoned by General Fitzkhelaurov, the commander of a regular, so to speak, division of the White Army - the same Fitzkhelaurov who was in senior command posts back in 1918 in the “Rasnov army, which ingloriously advanced on Tsaritsyn. And now again Gregory sees the same lordship, hears the same rude, disdainful words that - only on a different, much less important occasion - he heard many years ago when being drafted into the tsarist army. Grigory explodes and threatens the elderly general with a saber. This insolence is more than dangerous. Fitzkhelaurov has many reasons to finally threaten him with a court-martial. But, apparently, they did not dare to bring him to trial.
Gregory doesn't care. He longs for one thing - to get away from the war, from the need to make decisions, from the political struggle, in which he cannot find a solid foundation and goal. The White command disbands the rebel units, including Gregory's division. Former rebels, who are not very trusted, are scattered to different units of Denikin’s army. Grigory does not believe in the “white idea”, although there is a drunken celebration all around, it would be a victory!..
Having announced to the Cossacks the disbandment of the division, Grigory, without hiding his mood, openly tells them:
“Don’t remember it badly, villagers! We served together, forced by bondage, and from now on we’ll be kicking ass like Erez. The most important thing is to take care of your heads so that the Reds don’t make holes in them. Although you have bad heads, there is no need to expose them to bullets. Isho will have to think, think hard about what to do next...”
Denikin’s “march against Moscow” is, according to Grigory, “their”, the lord’s business, and not his, not the ordinary Cossacks. At Sekretov’s headquarters, he asks to be transferred to the rear units (“I have been wounded and shell-shocked fourteen times in two wars,” he says), no, he is left in the active army and transferred as a commander of hundreds to the 19th regiment, giving him a worthless “encouragement.” " - he rises in rank, becoming a centurion (senior lieutenant).
And now a new terrible blow awaits him. Natalya found out that Grigory was meeting with Aksinya again. Shocked, she decides to have an abortion; some dark woman performs an “operation” on her. The next day at noon she dies. Natalya's death, as can be established from the text, occurred around July 10, 1919. She was then twenty-five years old, and the children were not yet four...
Grigory received a telegram about the death of his wife, he was sent home; he galloped up when Natalya had already been buried. Immediately upon arrival, he did not find the strength to go to the grave. “The dead are not offended...” he told his mother.
Due to the death of his wife, Grigory received leave from the regiment for a month. He harvested the already ripened bread, worked around the house, and looked after the children. He became especially attached to his son Mishatka. The boy rendered... Xia, having matured a little, is of a purely “Melekhov” breed - both in appearance and disposition, similar to his father and grandfather.
And so Grigory leaves again for war - he leaves without even taking a vacation, at the very end of July. The novel says absolutely nothing about where he fought in the second half of 1919, what happened to him, he did not write home, and “only at the end of October Panteley Prokofievich learned that Grigory was in full health and together with his regiment is located somewhere in the Voronezh province.” Based on this more than brief information, only a little can be established. He could not participate in the famous raid of the White Cossack cavalry under the command of General K. K. Mamontov along the rear of the Soviet troops (Tambov - Kozlov - Yelets - Voronezh), for this raid, marked by ferocious robberies and violence, began on August 10, according to the new style, - therefore , July 28, old time, that is, at the very time when Gregory was still on vacation. In October, Grigory, according to rumors, ended up at the front near Voronezh, where, after heavy fighting, the White Guard Don Army stopped, bloodless and demoralized.
At this time he fell ill with typhus, a terrible epidemic of which throughout the autumn and winter of 1919 decimated the ranks of both warring armies. They bring him home. This was at the end of October, for what follows is an exact chronological note: “A month later, Gregory recovered. He first got out of bed on the twentieth of November...”
By that time, the White Guard armies had already suffered a crushing defeat. In a grandiose cavalry battle on October 19-24, 1919, near Voronezh and Kastornaya, the White Cossack corps of Mamontov and Shkuro were defeated. The Denikins still tried to hold on to the Orel-Elets line, but from November 9 (here and above the date according to the new calendar) the non-stop retreat of the white armies began. Soon it became not a retreat, but a flight.
Soldier of the First Cavalry Army.
Grigory no longer took part in these decisive battles, since his sick man was taken away on a cart, and he ended up at home at the very beginning of November according to the new style, however, such a move along the muddy autumn roads should have taken at least ten days (but the roads from Voronezh to Veshenskaya more than 300 kilometers); in addition, Grigory could have spent some time in a front-line hospital - at least to establish a diagnosis.
In December 1919, the Red Army victoriously entered the territory of the Don region, Cossack regiments and divisions retreated almost without resistance, falling apart and falling apart more and more. Disobedience and desertion became widespread. The “government” of Don gave an order for the complete evacuation to the south of the entire male population; those who evaded were caught and punished by punitive detachments.
On December 12 (old style), as precisely stated in the novel, Panteley Prokofyevich went “in retreat” along with the farm workers. Grigory, meanwhile, went to Veshenskaya to find out where his retreating unit was, but did not find out anything except one thing: the Reds were approaching the Don. He returned to the farm shortly after his father left. The next day, together with Aksinya and Prokhor Zykov, they went south along the sled road, heading to Millerovo (there, they told Grigory, his part could pass through), it was around December 15th.
We drove slowly along a road clogged with refugees and in disarray with retreating Cossacks. Aksinya fell ill with typhus, as can be established from the text, on the third day of the journey. She lost consciousness. With difficulty, she was able to be placed in the care of a random person in the village of Novo-Mikhailovsky.
was falling apart. Gregory passively retreated along with the masses of his own kind, without making the slightest attempt to somehow actively intervene in events, avoiding joining any part and remaining in the position of a refugee. In January, he no longer believes in any possibility of resistance, because he learns about the abandonment of Rostov by the White Guards (it was taken by the Red Army on January 9, 1920, according to the new style). Together with the faithful Prokhor, they go to Kuban, Grigory makes his usual decision in moments of mental decline: “... we’ll see there.”
The day after his father’s funeral, Grigory leaves for Novopokrovskaya, then ends up in Korenovskaya - these are large Kuban villages on the road to Ekaterinodar.
Then Gregory fell ill. With difficulty, a half-drunk doctor found: relapsing fever, you can’t go - death. Nevertheless, Grigory and Prokhor leave. The steam-horse carriage slowly pulls along, Grigory lies motionless, wrapped in a sheepskin coat, and often loses consciousness. There is a “hasty southern spring” all around - obviously, the second half of February or early March. It was at this time that the last major battle with Denikin’s troops took place, the so-called Yegorlyk operation, during which their last combat-ready units were defeated.
Already on February 22, the Red Army entered Belaya Glinka. The White Guard troops in southern Russia were now completely defeated, they surrendered or fled to the sea.
The cart with the sick Gregory slowly pulled south.
One day Prokhor invited him to stay in the village, but heard in response what he said with all his might: “Take him... until I die...” Prokhor fed him “by hand”, forced milk into his mouth, and one day Gregory almost choked. In Yekaterinodar, his fellow Cossack soldiers accidentally found him, helped him, and put him up with a doctor they knew. Within a week, Grigory recovered, and at Abinskaya - a village 84 kilometers beyond Yekaterinodar - he was able to mount a horse. Grigory and his comrades arrived in Novorossiysk on March 25: it is noteworthy that the date is given here in the new style. We emphasize: later in the novel, the countdown of time and date is given according to the new calendar. And it’s clear - Grigory and other heroes of “Quiet Don” have been living under the conditions of the Soviet state since the beginning of 1920. and officers of Denikin's army. No “mass executions,” as White Guard propaganda prophesied, were carried out. On the contrary, many prisoners, including officers who had not tainted themselves by participating in the repressions, were accepted into the Red Army.
Much later, from the story of Prokhor Zykov, it becomes known that there, in Novorossiysk, Grigory joined the First Cavalry Army and became a squadron commander in the 14th Cavalry Division. Previously, he passed through a special commission, which decided on the issue of enlisting former military personnel from various types of White Guard formations into the Red Army; Obviously, the commission did not find any aggravating circumstances in Grigory Melekhov’s past.
“Let’s go on a folk march near Kyiv,” continues Prokhor. This, as always, is historically accurate. Indeed, the 14th Cavalry Division was formed only in April 1920 and was largely composed of Cossacks who, like the hero of “Quiet Don,” went over to the Soviet side.
It is interesting to note that the division commander was the famous A. Parkhomenko.
However, even now, in what seems to be the best time for him, Gregory’s fate is still not all rosy. It couldn’t have been otherwise in his broken fate, he himself understands this: “I’m not blind, I saw how the commissar and the communists in the squadron looked at me...” There are no words, the squadron communists not only had a moral right - they had to closely monitor Melekhov; a difficult war was going on, and cases of former officers defecting often occurred. Gregory himself told Mikhail Koshevoy that their entire unit had gone to the Poles... The communists are right, you can’t look into a person’s soul, and Gregory’s biography could not help but arouse suspicion. However, for him, who went over to the side of the Soviets with pure thoughts, this could not but cause feelings of bitterness and resentment, and besides, one must remember his impressionable nature and ardent, straightforward character.
Grigory is not shown at all serving in the Red Army, although it lasted a long time - from April to October 1920. We learn about this time only from indirect information, and even then there is not much of it in the novel. In the fall, Dunyashka received a letter from Grigory, which said that he “was wounded on the Wrangel front and that after recovery he would, in all likelihood, be demobilized.”
Gregory arrived in Millerovo, as they say, “in late autumn.” Only one thought dominates him: “Gregory dreamed of how he would take off his overcoat and boots at home, put on his spacious boots... and, throwing a homespun jacket over his warm jacket, go to the field.” For several more days he traveled to Tatarskoye by cart and on foot, and when he approached the house at night, snow began to fall. The next day the ground was already covered with the “first blue snow.”
Apparently, only at home he learned about his mother’s death - without waiting for him, Vasilisa Ilyinichna died in August. Shortly before this, sister Dunya married Mikhail Koshevoy.
On the very first day after his arrival, towards nightfall, Grigory had a difficult conversation with his former friend and fellow soldier Koshev, who became the chairman of the farm revolutionary committee. Grigory said that he only wanted to work around the house and raise children, that he was mortally tired and wanted nothing more than peace. Mikhail does not believe him, he knows that the area is restless, that the Cossacks are offended by the hardships of the surplus appropriation system, but Grigory is a popular and influential person in this environment. “If some kind of mess happens, you will go over to the Other Side,” Mikhail tells him, and he, from his point of view, has every right to judge so. The conversation ends abruptly: Mikhail orders him to go to Veshenskaya tomorrow morning and register with the Cheka as a former officer.
The date of Grigory's call to Donchek can be established quite accurately. This happened on Saturday (for he should have appeared again in a week, and the novel says: “you had to go to Veshenskaya on Saturday”). According to the Soviet calendar of 1920, the first Saturday of December fell on the fourth day.
Most likely, it is this Saturday that we should be talking about, since Grigory would hardly have had time to come to Tatarsky a week earlier, and it is doubtful that he would have gotten home from Millerovo (where he found it “late autumn”) almost until mid-December. So, Grigory returned to his native village on December 3, and was in Donchek for the first time the next day.
He settled with Aksinya with his children. It is noteworthy, however, that when asked by his sister whether he is going to marry her, “He will manage to do so,” Gregory answered vaguely. His soul is heavy; he cannot and does not want to plan his life.
“He spent several days in depressing idleness,” it continues. “I tried to make something on the Aksin farm and immediately felt that I couldn’t do anything.” The uncertainty of the situation oppresses him and the possibility of arrest frightens him. But in his soul he had already made a decision: he would not go to Veshenskaya again, he would hide, although he still did not know where.
Circumstances accelerated the expected course of events. “On Thursday night” (that is, on the night of December 10), Grigory was told by the pale Dunyashka, who came running to him, that Mikhail Koshevoy and “four horsemen from the village” were going to arrest him. Grigory pulled himself together instantly, “he acted as if in battle - hastily but confidently,” kissed his sister, the sleeping children, the crying Aksinya and stepped over the threshold into the cold darkness.
Here it is necessary to clarify the chronology. So. Grigory left Aksinya’s house on the night of December 10 and then spent about two months in hiding. Consequently, the meeting with the Fominovites should have taken place around February 10. But here there is an obvious mistake in the “internal chronology” of the novel. It's a typo, not an error. For Grigory gets to Fomin around March 10, that is, M. Sholokhov simply “lost” one month.
The uprising of the squadron under the command of Fomin (these are real historical events, reflected in the documents of the North Caucasus Military District) began in the village of Veshenskaya in early March 1921. This small anti-Soviet rebellion was one of many phenomena of the same kind that occurred at that time in different parts of the country: the peasantry, dissatisfied with the surplus appropriation system, in some places followed the lead of the Cossacks. Soon the surplus appropriation system was abolished (10th Party Congress, mid-March), which led to the rapid elimination of political banditry. Having failed in an attempt to capture Veshenskaya, Fomin and his gang began to travel around the surrounding villages, in vain inciting the Cossacks to revolt. By the time they met Gregory, they had been wandering for several days. Let us also note that Fomin mentions the famous Kronstadt rebellion: this means that the conversation takes place before March 20, because already on the night of March 18 the rebellion was suppressed.
So Grigory ends up with Fomin, he can no longer wander around the farms, there is nowhere and it’s dangerous, he’s afraid to confess to Veshenskaya. He sadly jokes about his situation: “I have a choice, like in a fairy tale about heroes... Three roads, and not a single one is a guide...” Of course, he doesn’t agree with Fomin’s loud and simply stupid demagoguery about “liberating the Cossacks from the yoke of commissars.” believes, doesn't even take it into account. He just says: “I’m joining your gang,” which terribly offends the petty and smug Fomin. Gregory's plan is simple;
Together with the Fominovites, Grigory wanders around the villages of the Verkhnedonsky district. Of course, no “rebellion” is taking place. On the contrary, ordinary bandits secretly desert and surrender - fortunately, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee declared an amnesty for those gang members who voluntarily surrender to the authorities, they even retained their land allotment. Drunkenness and looting flourish in Fominov's motley squad. Grigory decisively demands that Fomin stop offending the population; For some time they obeyed him, but the asocial nature of the gang, naturally, does not change from this.
As an experienced military man, Grigory understood perfectly well that in a collision with a regular cavalry unit of the Red Army, the gang would be completely defeated. And so it happened. On April 18 (this date is given in the novel) near the Ozhogin farm, the Fominovites were unexpectedly attacked. Almost everyone died, only Grigory, Fomin and three others managed to escape. They took refuge on the island and lived hidden for ten days, like animals, without lighting fires. Here a remarkable conversation between Gregory and an officer from the intelligentsia, Kanarin, takes place. Gregory says: “Since the fifteenth year, as I looked at the war enough, I thought that there was no God.
None! If there were, I would not have the right to allow people to get into such a mess. We, the front-line soldiers, abolished God and left him to the old men and women. Let them have fun. And there is no finger, and there cannot be a monarchy.
The people ended it once and for all.”
“At the end of April,” as the text says, we crossed the Don. Again, aimless wanderings around the villages began, fleeing from Soviet units, waiting for imminent death.
That same night he is in his native village. Aksinya quickly got ready for the trip and ran to get Dunyashka. Left alone for a minute, “he hurriedly went to the bed and kissed the children for a long time, and then he remembered Natalya and remembered a lot more from his difficult life and began to cry.” The children never woke up and did not see their father. And Grigory looked at Porlyushka for the last time...
By morning they were eight miles from the farm, hiding in the forest. Grigory, exhausted from the endless marches, fell asleep. Aksinya, happy and full of hope, picked flowers and, “remembering her youth,” wove a beautiful wreath and placed it at Gregory’s head. “We will find our share too!”
- she thought that morning.
Grigory intended to move to Morozovskaya (a large village on the Donbass - Tsaritsyn railway). We left at night. We immediately came across a patrol. A rifle bullet hit Aksinya in the left shoulder blade and pierced her chest. She did not utter a groan or a word, and by morning she died in the arms of Gregory, distraught with grief. He buried her right there in a ravine, digging a grave with a saber. It was then that he saw a black sky and a black sun above him... Aksinya was about twenty-nine years old. She died at the very beginning of June 1921.
Having lost his Aksinya, Grigory was sure “that they would not part for long.” His strength and will have left him; he lives as if half asleep. For three days he wandered aimlessly across the steppe. Then he swam across the Don and went to Slashchevskaya Dubrava, where, he knew, deserters lived “settledly”, having taken refuge there since the time of mobilization in the fall of 1920. I wandered through the huge forest for several days until I found them. Consequently, from mid-June he settled with them. Throughout the second half of the year and the beginning of the next, Grigory lived in the forest, during the day he carved spoons and toys from wood, and at night he grieved and cried.
And so he crossed the Don “on the blue March ice eaten away by the rosteppel” and moved towards the house. He meets his son, who, recognizing him, lowers his eyes. He hears the last sad news in his life: his daughter Polyushka died of scarlet fever last fall (the girl was barely six years old). This is the seventh death of loved ones that Gregory has experienced: daughter Tanya, brother Peter, wife, father, mother, Aksinya, daughter Polya...
So, on a March morning in 1922, the biography of Grigory Panteleevich Melekhov, a Cossack from the village of Veshenskaya, thirty years old, Russian, and by social status - a middle peasant, ends.
/ / / The image of Grigory Melekhov in Sholokhov’s novel “Quiet Don”
Grigory Melekhov is the main character of the novel by M.A. Sholokhov "Quiet Don". He belonged to the Cossack family, and he had to live in a rather difficult time, when Russia was plunged into bloody wars.
Gregory has the First World War, Civil War and Revolution behind him. Of course, the events he saw and experienced could not pass without a trace and not affect the hero’s worldview, his understanding of this cruel and evil world.
The whole novel is based on the problem of finding your place in history, in the events that happen around you.
Participation in the First World War turned Gregory into a real, strong, strong man. He earned the respect of his comrades and received the rank of officer. However, military events made him a hardened person. Melekhov constantly asked the question about what the point of military action was, what benefit this war would bring to the Cossacks and to him in particular.
Grigory was able to find a temporary answer to his questions during his stay in the hospital. So he studied and learned the basics of Bolshevik ideology, which allowed him to believe in universal equality. However, such clarification of thoughts did not remain in his memory for long.
Further, the events of the civil war are revealed to the readers. Now main character acts on behalf of the white detachment, led by his brother. Melekhov, like the rest of the Cossacks, blames the Bolsheviks for dividing the people. The hero simply hates the ruling power.
While in search of the truth, Gregory realizes that he does not support either the “whites” or the “reds”. Now he is considered a thorn in both camps. Gregory cannot find peace and consolation. The Bolsheviks constantly persecute him for his “white” past. The main character has no choice but to join the bandits’ camp. However, even among them he is not at home, because he cannot create chaos, he cannot look at the life of real scavengers.
In order to come to his senses from everything, Melekhov returns to his native farm, sees his little son and breathes in again full breasts fresh and fragrant air. For a moment the hero comes to life, but fate is preparing another blow for him. Grigory loses the most precious thing in life - . And the worst thing is that the woman dies from a bullet aimed at a Cossack.
Having finished reading the novel, I understand how unhappy and difficult the fate of the main character was. At the beginning of the novel, a young and perky guy appears before the reader, full of strength and energy. However, in war he sees a lot of grief, pain and death. By coincidence, the Cossack also has a lot of blood on his hands. He had to kill. From such events, Melekhov became gray very early. In addition, Gregory lost his entire family during the war. The only hope left alive is my little son.
The hero of the novel “Quiet Don” was born and lived during a turning point in Russia. He tried to build his own separate path in life, fair and justified. Gregory is not like the rest of the mass of people who live according to established customs and do not particularly worry about their calling in life. Melekhov's soul is filled with emotions and suffering. He is constantly trying to find answers to his questions, assess the necessity of what is happening and understand reality.
At the end of the novel, the reader observes Gregory's return to the Cossack plains. Only in that place does he feel peace and tranquility. It would seem that the right circle of life has closed. The Cossack has returned to his place and can continue his peaceful and correct existence. Only now the war and an innumerable number of tragic events turned the hero into a hermit, detached from everyone around him. He became a bandit, he was constantly in search of truth and truth.
At the end of the novel, Grigory Melekhov can simply be called an unfortunate man who suffered a difficult fate.
Grigory Melekhov is the main character of M. Sholokhov’s epic novel “Quiet Don”. His image cannot be called typical, because it also contains special individual traits.
Grigory Melekhov is ordinary Don Cossack, who grew up in a fairly wealthy family with a patriarchal way of life. From the very first pages of the novel, he is depicted in everyday peasant life, which helps the reader to immediately see the main character traits of Gregory. He reveals a love for nature and for all living things: “with a sudden feeling of acute pity” he looks at a duckling accidentally cut with a scythe while mowing a meadow. In addition, the hero is characterized by sincerity and honesty. He forever retains his love for Aksinya in his soul, and he immediately admits to his wife Natalya that he feels nothing for her: “And I feel sorry for you... to die, during these days you became close, but there is nothing in your heart... Empty.” However, I think that all this can be attributed to the typical traits of a hero.
In my opinion, the individual traits of Grigory Melekhov include his desire to find his way in life, to find himself. The hero seeks the truth, despite all the difficulties and vicissitudes of fate. He is an uneducated and politically illiterate person, so he is easily instilled with different views on war and life in general. However, Gregory does not give up and, when those around him offer him different paths, he firmly answers: “I myself am looking for an entrance.”
Throughout his life, the hero often commits terrible offenses, but Gregory looks for the root of all mistakes in himself, in his actions. He is not without self-condemnation. The war could not destroy his soul and all that goodness that was originally in it. She broke the hero, but did not break him completely. By the end of the novel, the most important values for Melekhov are home, family, and children. War, murder and death only disgust him. Therefore, one can even say that Gregory is an epic hero who takes upon himself all historical responsibility. His image is equal to the image of an entire people. And Melekhov’s path to truth is the tragic path of man’s wanderings, full of mistakes and losses, evidence of man’s deep connection with history. This is the special individuality inherent only in the image of Gregory.
Melekhov is a complex hero, combining both typical and individual traits. However, this gives his image versatility and tragedy, making it memorable and very original.