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Quiet Don. Book: Mikhail Sholokhov. Quiet Don Bunchuk and Anna Love at War

When Daria told Natalya about the “sticky disease”, Natalya “was struck by the change that happened to Darya’s face: her cheeks were drawn and darkened, a deep wrinkle lay obliquely on her forehead, a hot, anxious gleam appeared in her eyes. All this could not be compared with the cynical tone she spoke, so it very clearly conveyed the real state of mind of the heroine.

The inner world of Grigory, Aksinya, Natalya, and other heroes is revealed through their perception of nature, this cannot be said about Daria. And this is no coincidence, since the feeling of nature did not play a role in her experiences. But after the misfortune that happened, she draws attention to her: “I look at the Don, and there is a swell on it, and from the sun it is pure silver, it shimmers all over, it hurts my eyes to look at it. I’ll turn around and look – oh my God, what a beauty! But I didn’t even notice her.”

In this monologue there is drama, the futility of her whole life. Daria with all immediacy shows in this speech the bright, human feelings that lurked in her soul. Sholokhov shows that this woman still has the ability to vividly perceive the world, but it appears only after realizing the hopelessness of her grief.

Daria is alien to the Melekhov family. She paid dearly for her frivolity. Afraid of waiting for the inevitable, lost from loneliness, Daria decided to commit suicide. And before merging with the waters of the Don, she shouted not to anyone, but to women, since only they could understand her: “Goodbye, little women!”

Daria herself says about herself that she lives like a roadside henbane blooms. The image of a poisonous flower is metaphorical: communication with a harlot woman is as deadly to the soul as poison is to the body. And Daria’s end is symbolic: her flesh becomes poison for those around her. She, as the embodiment of evil spirits, strives to drag as many people as possible into destruction. So, if Aksinya only for a moment imagined the opportunity to get rid of Stepan, then Daria kills Kotlyarov in cold blood, although he is her godfather, that is, at the baptism of the child they became related in Christ.

Lust and death go hand in hand in the artistic world of M. Sholokhov, for “everything is permitted” if there is no faith in a higher, absolute principle, which is associated with the concept of righteous judgment and retribution. Nevertheless, the image of Daria is not the last step on the path of turning a woman into a creature that tirelessly sows evil and destruction around herself. Daria, before her death, nevertheless came into contact with another world - harmony, beauty, divine majesty and order.

Elizaveta Mokhova

In the novel there is a female character who, in terms of following the path of evil

can be directly correlated with Gogol's witches. This is the image of Elizaveta Mokhovaya, who grew up "like a bush of wild wolf berries in the forest." She continues the series of female characters who realize themselves outside the home and family. These heroines line up a certain chain of comparisons: Aksinya with a drunkard, Daria with henbane, Liza with a wolfberry. Mokhova first confused the head of Mitka Korshunov, who offered her a “crown” to cover her sin, then she charmed an unknown Cossack student. The duality of female beauty in her image reaches its climax, which is manifested in the portrait: the smile “stings” or “burns” like a nettle, she has a very beautiful eyes"nutty, yet unpleasant at the same time." Men easily get along with Elizabeth, and without any feelings on her part. Perhaps this is the most cynical version of the relationship between a man and a woman in the novel, moreover, accompanied by "satanic" imagery: "This is not a woman, but a fire with smoke!" In his description of Mokhova, M. Sholokhov resorts to direct quotes from Gogol. The exclamation of the student: “She is devilishly good,” almost literally repeats the statement of the blacksmith Vakula about Oksana. The student’s fascination with Mokhova’s feminine charm is so great that, one might say, she

penetrated into all layers of his soul, determining his life choices. The student chooses characteristic expressions for his passion: “it entangled me like mud,” “it has grown into me.”

He tries to escape from his melancholy to the war, but even there he meets a nurse who is strikingly similar to Lisa: “I looked at her, and a trembling made me lean against the cart. The resemblance to Elizabeth is extraordinary. The same eyes, oval face, nose, hair. Even the voice is similar.” In this passage, the hero’s shock itself is significant, equivalent to how “all the veins shuddered” in the blacksmith Vakula when he heard Oksana’s laughter.

But if for Gogol’s heroes love-passion ends in a quiet family idyll, then Sholokhov’s heroine despises the family hearth, which would bind her with the responsibilities of a wife and mother. A Cossack student writes in his diary: “She is proud of the perfection of the forms of her body. The cult of self-reverence - the rest does not exist. Before us is a woman in whose soul a substitution has occurred:

instead of the “image and likeness of God,” Satan rules the ball, promoting the cult of the flesh

to self-deification. The “atmosphere of Artsybashevshchina”, in which the hero and his chosen one resides, is so suffocating that he prefers to go to war. And here, in the thoughts of the hero, another quote from Gogol arises, which allows us to assume that the Cossack in " Quiet Don"vaguely, but still

feels that in life there is another system of values, another world, which is based on opposite human-divine principles. He writes in his diary: “Exit! I'm going to war. Stupid? Very. Shameful? Come on, I have nowhere to put myself. At least a grain of other sensations.” Isn't it awakening?

here does Sholokhov’s character have an unconscious thirst for a conciliar, common cause that would destroy individualistic isolation, accompanied by the power of evil forces over the human soul?

Anna Pogudko

In the novel by M. A. Sholokhov, Cossack women are perhaps the only ones who do not succumb to the influence of political passions. However, in “Quiet Don” there is also the heiress of F. Dostoevsky’s “progressives” - the fiery revolutionary Anna Pogudko. M. Sholokhov the artist does not demonize the heroine, she is characterized by human weaknesses, love and pity for Bunchuk, but the spiritual nature, the spiritual essence of this type of personality - the female destroyer - remains unchanged. She volunteers to join a team of Red Guard machine gunners to learn how to kill. M. Sholokhov gives an expressive description: “Anna Pogudko delved into everything with acute curiosity. She persistently pestered Bunyk, grabbed him by the sleeves of his clumsy demi-season, and persistently stuck around the machine gun.”

The author notes the “unfaithful and warm sparkle of Anna’s eyes”, her predilection for speeches covered in sentimental romanticism. This compassion for those who are distant is paradoxically combined with hatred for those close to us. The desire to kill for the sake of a utopian dream is enormous: Pogudko leads people into the attack at an “unfaithful, stumbling trot.” Retribution follows immediately, her death is terrible, naturalism in the description of the agony is deliberately emphasized by the author. From a blooming woman, the heroine turns into a half-corpse, she seems to be burning alive in hell: “Blue-yellow, with streaks of frozen tears on her cheeks, with a pointed nose and a terribly painful fold of her lips,” the dying woman constantly demands water, which is not able to fill her internal, burning fire.

The passion for victory at any cost, including death, is higher than love; even on a date with Bunchuk, Anna did not forget about machine guns. She “bewitches” Bunchuk until his final spiritual and physical death, his behavior after the death of his girlfriend is infernal - he is likened to a beast. It seems symbolic that his volunteer executioner Mitka Korshunov kills him, giving him the following assessment: “Look at this devil - he bit his shoulder until it bled and died, like a wolf, in silence.”

Unrealized female ambitions and lack of humility result in the desire to destroy everything and everyone. People with “new” ideas come in handy here.

And yet, in Anna there is a feminine, maternal principle, which is dissolved to varying degrees in almost every true love of a woman for a man: in the love of Natalya and Aksinya for Grigory, and in the love of “deep-eyed” Anna Pogudko for Bunchuk... If For Bunchuk, the three weeks of his typhoid unconsciousness were weeks of wandering “in another, intangible and fantastic world,” but for the ideologically exalted girl they became a test of her first feeling, when “for the first time she had to look so closely and so nakedly at the underside of communication with her beloved.” , to encounter in “dirty care” lice-infested, hideously emaciated, foul-smelling flesh and its lower secretions. “Internally, everything reared up in her, resisted, but the dirt of the outside did not stain the deeply and securely stored feeling”, “unexperienced love and pity”, the love here is maternal and self-sacrificing. Two months later, Anna herself came to his bed for the first time, and Bunchuk, dried up and blackened from execution work in the revolutionary tribunal (although he left there that day), turned out to be powerless - all the erotic moisture of this, albeit an ideological executioner in the service revolution burned out into horror and breakdown. Anna, too, managed to step over “disgust and disgust” and, after listening to his stuttering, feverish explanations, “silently hugged him and calmly, like a mother, kissed him on the forehead.” And only a week later Anna’s affection and maternal care warmed Bunchuk and pulled him out of male impotence, burnt-out conditions, and a nightmare. But when Anna painfully dies in the arms of Bunchuk from a wound in battle, the loss of his beloved woman makes sense of everything in him and around him, leading him into a state of complete apathy, dispassionate automatism. It doesn’t help at all what you were holding on to and raging about before: hatred, struggle, ideas, ideals, historical optimism... everything goes to hell! Indifferently and half-asleep, he joins Podtelkov’s expedition, simply “just to move, just to get away from the melancholy that followed him.” And in the scene of the execution of the Podtelkovites, Bunchuk alone kept looking “at the gray distance swaddled with clouds”, “at the gray haze of the sky” - “it seemed that he was waiting for something unrealistic and joyful”, perhaps from childhood superstitions long trampled upon about meetings beyond the grave, madly hoping for the only thing that could satisfy his immense melancholy, that melancholy that had brought him down as an unbending Bolshevik and humanized him.

Anna Pogudko

Unrealized female ambitions and lack of humility result in the desire to destroy everything and everyone. People with “new” ideas come in handy here.

And yet, in Anna there is a feminine, maternal principle, which is dissolved to varying degrees in almost every true love of a woman for a man: in the love of Natalya and Aksinya for Grigory, and in the love of “deep-eyed” Anna Pogudko for Bunchuk... If For Bunchuk, the three weeks of his typhoid unconsciousness were weeks of wandering “in another, intangible and fantastic world,” but for the ideologically exalted girl they became a test of her first feeling, when “for the first time she had to look so closely and so nakedly at the underside of communication with her beloved.” , to encounter in “dirty care” lice-infested, hideously emaciated, foul-smelling flesh and its lower secretions. “Internally, everything reared up in her, resisted, but the dirt of the outside did not stain the deeply and securely stored feeling,” “unexperienced love and pity,” the love here of maternal self-sacrifice. Two months later, Anna herself came to his bed for the first time, and Bunchuk, dried up and blackened from execution work in the revolutionary tribunal (although he left there that day), turned out to be powerless - all the erotic moisture of this executioner, even though he was ideologically playing himself up, service of the revolution burned out into horror and breakdown. Anna, too, managed to step over “disgust and disgust” and, after listening to his stuttering, feverish explanations, “silently hugged him and calmly, like a mother, kissed him on the forehead.” And only a week later Anna’s affection and maternal care warmed Bunchuk and pulled him out of male impotence, burnt-out conditions, and a nightmare. But when Anna painfully dies in the arms of Bunchuk from a wound in battle, the loss of his beloved woman makes sense of everything in him and around him, leading him into a state of complete apathy, dispassionate automatism. It doesn’t help at all what you were holding on to and raging about before: hatred, struggle, ideas, ideals, historical optimism... everything goes to hell! Indifferently and half-asleep, he joins Podtelkov’s expedition, simply “just to move, just to get away from the melancholy that followed him.” And in the scene of the execution of the Podtelkovites, Bunchuk alone kept looking “at the gray distance swaddled with clouds”, “at the gray haze of the sky” - “it seemed that he was waiting for something unrealistic and joyful”, perhaps from childhood superstitions long trampled upon about meetings beyond the grave , madly hoping for the only thing that could quench his immense melancholy, that melancholy that had brought him down as an unbending Bolshevik and humanized him.

Dunyasha

After the death of Natalya and Ilyinichna, Dunyashka becomes the owner of the Melekhov kuren; she has to reconcile the antagonistic heroes in the same house: Melikhov and Koshevoy. Dunyashka is a particularly attractive female character in the novel.

The author introduces us to the youngest of the Melekhovs, Dunyasha, when she was still a long-armed, big-eyed teenager with thin pigtails. Growing up, Dunyasha turns into a black-browed, slender and proud Cossack girl with an obstinate and persistent Melekhov-like character.

Having fallen in love with Mishka Koshevoy, she does not want to think about anyone else, despite the threats of her father, mother and brother. All tragedies with household members are played out before her eyes. The death of his brother, Daria, Natalya, father, mother, and niece takes Dunyash very close to his heart. But despite all the losses, she needs to move on with her life. And Dunyasha becomes the main person in the ruined house of the Melekhovs.

Dunyasha is a new generation of Cossack women who will live in a different world than her mother and brothers, Aksinya and Natalya. She entered the novel as a loud-voiced, omnipresent, hardworking teenage girl and worked her way up to become a beautiful Cossack woman without tarnishing her dignity in any way. The image is permeated with the lyricism and dynamism of youth, openness to the whole world, the spontaneity of manifestation and the trepidation of the first dawn of feelings, which Sholokhov associates with the dawn - the rising hope for life in new conditions. In the daughter’s act, which Ilyinichna was forced to come to terms with, there is a rejection of some outdated elements of the traditionally Cossack (and not only Cossack) family, but there is no destruction of its foundations here. Yes, the personal choice of a future spouse seems “happier” for Dunyasha to create a family. But he also considers parental blessing obligatory, and, despite all the difficulties, receives it. With difficulty, but still, he obtains from the atheist and “extremely angry at himself and everything around him” Mikhail Koshevoy the church consecration of their marriage. She maintains an unshakable faith in the healing power of the Orthodox canons of family love.

Perhaps she managed to understand something in modern times that was not understood by many of her contemporaries: people are embittered and commit actions, sometimes vile and tragic in their consequences, not at all due to natural depravity, but becoming victims of circumstances. We must not only feel sorry for them, but, to the best of our ability, help them become themselves.

Lesson topic

“Eternal” themes in M.A. Sholokhov’s novel “Quiet Don”. Love and duty."

The purpose of the lesson: consider the contrast between “love-passion” and “family love” in Russian classical literature. Determine which love is more organic for the Cossack way of life and why; what is the ideal of love according to Sholokhov.

Tasks:

continue to develop the ability to analyze artistic text, argued to prove their own judgments;

check the degree of development of skills in deep reading of a work of art;

develop the creative and speech activity of students through the expression of their ideas about the heroes of the work;

improve the ability to prove, analyze, compare, and formulate generalized conclusions;

develop emotional sensitivity;

promote understanding of the value of family.

Equipment:

Computer, multimedia projector. slide presentation (to accompany the lesson).

Preliminary preparation.

Group assignments:

The contrast between “love-passion” and “family love” in Russian classical literature.

Analyze the love triangle Aksinya-Gregory-Natalia from the point of view of two types of love.

Peter and Daria.

Love in War: Contrasting Love and Duty (Bunchuk and Anna).

“Free love of Timofey and Lisa Mokhova.

The ideal of love according to Sholokhov.

During the classes.

I . Teacher's opening speech.

In days of terrible historical upheavals, when all the usual foundations suddenly collapse, life takes on some monstrous forms, a person is so helpless! How to resist, survive, and not break? What can become the straw that will support and save? Love is the basis of life.

What is true love - passion or duty? Madness, impulse or peace, security? What understanding of love is consistent with folk Christian traditions and, in particular, the Cossack way of life?

II . Working on the topic of the lesson.

Teacher. Traditionally, the popular understanding of love is procreation, which means the choice is up to family, duty, and ultimately, children.

Let's turn to Russian classical literature - the works of A.S. Pushkin, A.N. Ostrovsky, L.N. Tolstoy, N.A. Nekrasov. What is the choice of the main characters?

I group of students.

TatyanaLarina chooses honor and duty (“But I was given to another / And I will be faithful to him forever”), despite all the strength of her love for Onegin. She cannot break the vow of fidelity given in the church.

The love of Katerina, the heroine of Ostrovsky’s play “The Thunderstorm,” is the desire for light from the darkness and ignorance of the Kabanovs’ world; passion is contrasted with the sanctimonious way of life of the husband's family. But the patriarchal order is violated by vicious love, therefore, a tragic outcome is inevitable.

Natasha Rostova (L.N. Tolstoy “War and Peace”) from false (passionate) love for Anatoly Kuragin (ready to even go against the family, discredit her name and jeopardize the honor of the family) through understanding her duty comes to true love, leading a person to understand the highest purpose of a woman, when it is no longer important what she looks like, but children, husband, family are important.

The wives of the Decembrists left their relatives, sacrificed their position in society, their well-being in order to ease the lot of their husbands, to support them in difficult times, fulfilling the promise made before God and people to be there in sorrow and in joy, in sickness and in health.

Conclusion: in Russian classical literature there are many examples of understanding the family as a union of a man and a woman, based on loyalty, respect, mutual assistance, the main goal of which is procreation (slide 1).

Teacher: This position is closest to the Cossack understanding of the essence of family. The spiritual world of the Cossacks cannot be understood without realizing the family relations that were built on the basis of patriarchal Orthodox traditions, which is reflected in folklore. Let us give as an example lines from just some songs.

The Cossack, fulfilling his military duty, dreams of returning home as soon as possible, to his wife, family, children (the teacher quotes lines from the song “Kalinushka”):

Oh, how one of them prays to God,

Oh, he’s praying to God, asking to go home.

Oh, yes, my colonel, let me go home,

Oh, let me go home to us on the Quiet Don.

Oh, let me go home to us on the quiet Don,

Oh, come to us on the Quiet Don, to my father and mother.

Oh, come to us on the quiet Don, to my father and mother,

Oh, yes, to my father and mother and to my young wife.

Oh, yes to my wife and young wife, to the little children,

Oh, yes, to the little kids, the little kids.

A special place was occupied by ideas about Cossack traditions, among which one should highlight love of freedom, devotion to military duty, religious tolerance, moral and physical health. All this is very important for a Cossack if a faithful Cossack girl is waiting for him at home (the teacher reads out the lines of the songs “The Cossack went”, “At the meadow” - see appendix). If a girlfriend is unfaithful, life without love and fidelity loses its meaning (“The Cossack Jumped”).

Let us turn to Sholokhov's novel "Quiet Flows the Don" and try to understand the attitude to love, family, folk traditions the main characters of the work.

Not only a social, but also a personal tragedy is unfolding before us.

Analyze the relationship between Gregory, Aksinya and Natalya from the point of view of two types of love: “love is passion” and “family love”.

II group of students.

(Slide 2: “Gregory and Aksinya”). The relationship between Gregory and Aksinya is love - passion, a challenge to the patriarchal way of Cossack life, the destruction of the norm, the impossibility of peace. “Having coveted his neighbor’s wife,” Gregory obeys a reckless attraction. Aksinya (slide 3) is beautiful in her passion, readiness to follow her lover to the ends of the earth, and unquenchable desire for freedom. Having despised everything in the name of love for Gregory, violating all laws and foundations, she fights for her love (“I’ll throw away my husband and everything, if only you were...”, “I’ll go on foot, I’ll crawl after you, and I won’t be left alone anymore!” , “I will follow you everywhere, even to death”). Aksinya suffered for her right to love: she had to go through a lot, give up a lot. The heroine's strength, pride, and straightforwardness deserve respect. Undoubtedly, she deserves happiness, but not at the cost of other people's misfortune.

Teacher: The measure of the truth of the relationship between a man and a woman in the Cossack environment, as throughout the Christian world, is the family hearth and children. God gave Aksinya the happiness of motherhood. Why did Panteley Prokofievich no longer insist on his son returning to the farm after the birth of his daughter?

Remember the scene in Yagodnoye - Natalya’s attempt to defend her love and retreat in front of the “gloomy black eyes of Gregory” looking at her from the face of a child (1-3-XIX). (Slide 4)

Students: The birth of a child united Gregory and Aksinya more firmly than other bonds; abandoning your child is the greatest sin.

But God takes away Aksinya’s daughter, as if punishing her for her sins.

Teacher: What is Gregory’s love for Natalya?

Love for Natalya (slide 5) embodies the craving for normalcy, Cossack traditions, peace, family, and settled life. Natalya, true to her duty, is rewarded with the birth of children (slide 6). She is the embodiment of true love, which is spoken of in Scripture:

“Love is long-suffering, it is kind, love does not envy, love is not arrogant, is not proud, does not act rudely, does not seek its own, is not irritated, does not think evil, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; covers all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails, although prophecy will cease, and tongues will be silent, and knowledge will be abolished.”

The relationship between Grigory and Natalya is full of drama: self-awareness as “not loved”, a timid attempt to defend their love, motherhood and pride in their children, Grigory’s infidelities, the offended feeling of his mother and wife, the death of relatives, a break with his brother, collapsed hopes for saving the family.

Teacher: Can you call Natalya the ideal woman?

Students: Natalya is not ideal. She, a loving wife and mother, being offended in her feelings, turns out to be capable of killing an unborn child, asks God to send death to the father of her children (4-7-XVI). The world, family, destinies are collapsing.

Teacher: Natalya's death is a tragic result of life and retribution for violence against nature. Grief and despair obscured from her the simple, universal truth: unborn child is not guilty of anything and does not have to pay for the sins of his father. Natalya paid for the death of the child with her own life. But before her death, the heroine, as a true Christian and loving woman, forgave all insults (“... love covers all sins”).

What wins in Gregory: love - passion or love - duty?

Students: For Gregory, who is unable to make a choice between opposing political forces, the choice in the love sphere turns out to be painful. Two such different feelings are equally strong. It is no coincidence that he himself admits to himself the impossibility of choosing between his beloved women: “He would not mind living with both of them, loving each of them differently...” (4-7-XVIII)

Teacher: How was this situation resolved?

Students: Grigory took Natalia’s death hard (4-7-XVII). With the death of Aksinya it became dark for him. daylight: “...saw above me a black sky and a dazzlingly shining black disk of the sun” - an old folk symbol of trouble in the world (4-8-XVII).

Teacher: The hero returns to what he left: to his family, to his native kuren. True, only a younger sister and son remained from the family, and the kuren has long been a stranger. On the last pages, the “family thought” sounds with renewed vigor, an understanding of the great meaning of family, home, hearth, love and fidelity. They are the meaning of life and salvation. “He stood at the gates of his home, holding his son in his arms... This was all that was left in his life, what still connected him with the earth and with this whole huge world shining under the cold sun.”

Teacher: Give an assessment from the point of view of a person of the patriarchal way of life of the relationship between Daria and Peter Melekhov.

III group of students.

These relationships cannot be considered truly family. It is not possible for Daria, shameless and reveling, destroying the centuries-old foundations of the Cossack family with the cynicism of her behavior, to become a loving mother (her only, not yet named child died early). She never thought about the child, she never regretted that she had no more children. There is no loyalty or love in this family.

Teacher: Daria bypassed her deep feeling for the man. She turned out to be capable only of “dog love.” All her life she was led by her own carnal desires, not knowing other joys, and this ruined her. Daria thoughtlessly flew through life, leaving behind neither offspring nor good memory.

Conclusion: Such an attitude towards marriage is alien to the Cossack environment. All foundations have been violated: loyalty, mutual understanding, procreation. Vicious women have always been condemned, dishonoring the family, neglecting their duties, dropping their honor and the honor of their husband.

Teacher: During the terrible years of the Civil War, the question arose: is love possible during social upheavals? Perhaps it is worth postponing dreams of happiness for a more appropriate time, for the future? In an era of revolutions, one must devote oneself entirely to the fulfillment of duty. A similar position is inherent in Bunchuk and Anna. What distinguishes the relationship between Anna and Bunchuk from the love of the main characters of the novel?

IV group of students.

The relationship between Bunchuk and Anna is not love - passion, like Grigory and Aksinya's, and not family love, like Natalya's. The originality was initially determined by the characters and their family history: Bunchuk is a Cossack, but an urban one, Anna is a former high school student, then a worker from the Asmolovsky factory, “faithful comrade” is an epithet devoid of gender. In the truly popular understanding of the feminine essence, war and woman are incompatible concepts, especially woman and murder. And Anna is a machine gunner, raising male soldiers to attack, supporting Bunchuk in his difficult service as the executioner of the revolutionary tribunal, i.e. in the killing of unarmed people. The only natural female role fell to Anna when she looked after the sick Bunchuk. But just as Bunchuk was emasculated by his “execution” service (the inability to justify the monstrous sacrifices for today with tomorrow’s happiness, the inability to grow a beautiful garden for a son on the blood of those executed is confirmed by the fact that it was service in the revolutionary tribunal that deprives Bunchuk of the opportunity to become a father), so Anna lost the ability to embody a truly popular ideal of the love of a woman - a mother. Anna puts service to the idea above possible motherhood.

Anna's death (slide 7) was for Bunchuk not only the loss of a loved one, but also the final collapse of hopes for the birth of a son, which made all his activities and life meaningless (2-5-XXV).

Conclusion: Anna Pogudko and Bunchuk devote themselves to the cause of building a happy future, that “bright tomorrow” in which their son will live. But in order to grow a beautiful garden for their son, it seems to them, they first need to “exterminate human filth,” “clean off the dirt.” However, life convinces us of the opposite: human happiness cannot be built on blood and violence.

Teacher: Tell us about the history of the relationship between Timofey and Lisa Mokhova. How does their “free love” differ from the love of Aksinya and Gregory? (1-3-XI)

It is noteworthy that the story of this love appears in the chapter telling about a war that morally cripples simple souls with its murderous permissiveness. In the list of changes occurring with the Cossacks at the front, a story from the diary of a murdered student, immodestly read by the clerks, is suddenly inserted. Therefore, love itself is perceived as vulgar and immorally frank from the very beginning. Its content only complements the initial feeling: the student had money - boom, ran out - recession, breakup.

Liza and Aksinya have only an initial description in common: both are beautiful and vicious. However, by the end of the novel, this epithet disappears in the description of Aksinya, because she begins to think only about Gregory, forgetting about herself. Lisa remains vicious.

Can this relationship be called love? I think not. Calculation, lust, physiology - nothing more. Such relationships do not oblige you to anything, but is this good? Freedom - yes. But freedom from what? From kindness, understanding, care, loyalty, children...What remains? Emptiness…

Teacher: Everyone understands what love is in their own way. But no matter how life changes, people and “eternal values” remain unchanged. Love and family are the essence of any person’s life. What is the ideal of love according to Sholokhov?

VI group.

The ideal is “family love.” None of the couples fully corresponds to the ideal. The closest relationship to him is between Grigory and Natalya, because thanks to them the Melekhov family was not extinguished. Possibility of creating full-fledged family Aksinya and Gregory, which emerged after their last meeting, was destroyed by the war. Gregory returns home, to raise my son. Therefore, the ideal is home, family, children.

It is gratifying to see that attention to family and children has increased so much recently. A strong state consists of happy people. Complete happiness is possible only in the family. I would like to end with the words from Scripture: “Above all, put on love, which is the sum of perfection.”

Homework.

Prepare for an essay based on the novel “Quiet Don” by M.A. Sholokhov.

Sample essay topics:

Problem moral choice in the novel "Quiet Don".

Love in the destinies of Sholokhov's heroes.

The tragic fate of Grigory Melekhov.

The theme of motherhood in the novel “Quiet Don”

The truth is private and general (based on the novel by M.A. Sholokhov “Quiet Don”).

The meaning of the title of the novel "Quiet Don".

Annex 1.

KALINUSHKA

Oh yes you, Kalinushka, razmalinushka,
Oh, don’t just stand there, don’t stand on the steep mountain.

Oh, don’t stand, don’t stand on the steep mountain,
Oh, don’t let a leaf fall into the blue sea

Oh, don’t let your leaf down in the blue sea.

Oh yes, a ship is sailing in the blue sea,
Oh, the ship is sailing, the water is already roaring.

Oh yes, the ship is sailing, the water is already roaring.
Oh yeah, there are three regiments of soldiers on that ship

Oh yes, there are three regiments of soldiers on that ship,
Oh yes, three regiments of soldiers, young guys.

Oh yes, three regiments and soldiers, young guys,
Oh, how one of them prays to God.

Oh, how one of them prays to God,
Oh yes, he prays to God, he asks to go home.

Oh yes, my colonel, let me go home
Oh, let me go home to us on Quiet Don

Oh, let me go home to us on the Quiet Don,
Oh yes, come to us on the Quiet Don, with father and mother.

Oh yes, come to us on the Quiet Don, with father and mother,
Oh yes, to my father and mother and to my young wife.

Oh yes, to the wife and the young one, to the little children,
Oh yes to the little kids, the little kids.

Appendix 2

NOT FOR ME

Spring will not come for me,
It’s not for me that the Don will overflow,
And the girl’s heart will beat
With the delight of feelings - not for me.

Gardens do not bloom for me,
In the valley the grove is blooming.

There the nightingale meets spring,
He won't sing for me.

The streams gurgle not for me,
Flow like diamond streams.
There's a girl with black eyebrows,
She's not growing for me.

Easter will not come for me,
All the relatives will gather at the table,
“Christ is Risen” will flow from the lips.
Easter day is not for me.

Flowers don't bloom for me,
The rose will bloom its fragrant color.
If you pick a flower, it will wither.
This kind of life is not for me.

And for me a piece of lead,
He will dig into the white body,
And bitter tears will be shed.
Such a life, brother, awaits me.

Appendix 3.

THE COSSACK WENT

The Cossack went to a distant foreign land
He is on a good horse, his black one.
For a while he left his land,
I could not return to my father's house.

In vain his young Cossack
Both morning and evening he looks north,
Everything is waiting, waiting: from a distant edge -
Her dear Cossack, her soul will fly.

The Cossack was dying, and begged, and begged
Pour earthen mound in the heads,
On that mound, Kalinka would be dear
When she grew up she would show off in azure flowers.

On that mound in the distant side,
When spring spills over the Don,
Perhaps, dear, stray bird
Sometimes it chirps about the life of a Cossack.

Long beyond the mountains, where blizzards, blizzards,
Where evil frosts crackle from the wind,
Where the pines moved menacingly, and ate -
Cossack bones lie under the snow.

Appendix 4.

AT LUZHKU

At the meadow, meadow, meadow,
With a wide field,
With the camp herd
The horse was walking freely.

The horse walked freely
Cossack against his will.
“You walk, walk, my horse,
As long as it's your will.

Walk, walk, my horse,
As long as it's your will.
When I catch you, I'll bind you
Silk bridle.

I'll sit on my horse
On his bay.
I'll hit you, I'll hit you in the sides,
I'll fly like an arrow.

You fly, fly, little horse.
Fly, don't stumble.
Against the Milk yard
Stop, stop.

Stand in front of the gate
Hit with your hooves
For my dear to come out
With black eyebrows.

And I myself will get off the horse,
I'll go to the shrine.
I'll wake up a sweet dream
Darling girls."

And the girl did not sleep,
I took you by the hands,
I took you by the hands,
Yes, I kissed you.

Appendix 5.

COSSACK ROCKS

A Cossack galloped through the valley,
Through German fields.
Under him is a restless raven horse,
The ground trembles under the horseman.

He galloped, a lonely rider,
Pressed against the saddle pommel,
And the thought - about dear, about distant -
The ring glittered on his hand.

Gave a Cossack woman a ring,
When the Cossack went on a campaign.
She gave and said:
“I’ll be yours in a year.”

Now a year has passed - the Cossack strives
To my native village as soon as possible,
I saw a hut under the mountain -
The Cossack's heart began to beat.

An old woman walked towards him,
Joking speeches saying:
“In vain do you, Cossack, strive,
You're torturing your horse in vain.

The Cossack woman cheated on you
I gave my happiness to someone else.”

Here the Cossack took a turn to the left
And he galloped into the open field.
He took off his rifle
And his life ended forever.

Let the Cossack girl remember
Me, a Don Cossack.
Me, dashing, young,
That life is over forever.

The novel “Quiet Don” by Sholokhov is a monumental work of Russian literature of the twentieth century. The book depicts the life of the Don Cossacks during the First World War, the 1917 Revolution and the Russian Civil War. The events of the novel cover the period from May 1912 to March 1922.

Sholokhov wrote “Quiet Don” for 15 years: the first three volumes of the work were created and published in 1925-1932, the fourth in 1940. In the work, the author depicted a huge number of characters - 699, a quarter of which are genuine historical characters.

"Quiet Don" refers to literary direction socialist realism The work is one of the best examples of the embodiment of the genres of the epic novel and battle novel in Russian literature.
You can read an online summary of “The Quiet Don” chapter by chapter and part on our website.

Main characters

Grigory Melekhov- a hot-tempered, independent Cossack, the youngest son of Panteley Melekhov, the central character of the novel with a “beastly” look “in the slightly slanting slits of the bluish almonds of hot eyes.” In the image of Gregory, the author embodied the power of the national spirit; this is a composite image of the Don Cossacks of the early 20th century.

Petr Melekhov- eldest son of Panteley Melekhov (6 years older than Grigory). The man “resembled his mother: small, snub-nosed, with wild, wheat-colored hair, brown eyes.”

Panteley Prokofievich Melekhov- senior officer, son of Prokofy Melekhov and a captured Turkish woman, father of Peter and Gregory.

Stepan Astakhov- neighbor of the Melekhovs, Aksinya’s husband.

Aksinya Astakhova- Stepan’s wife, Gregory’s beloved.

Natalya Korshunova (Melekhova)- daughter of Miron Grigorievich Korshunov, official wife of Grigory.

Mitka Korshunov- son of Miron Grigorievich Korshunov, Natalya’s older brother.

Other characters

Vasilisa Ilyinichna Melekhova- wife of Panteley Melekhov, mother of Peter, Gregory and Dunyashka.

Dunyashka Melekhova- daughter of Vasilisa and Pantelei Melekhov, younger sister of Peter and Gregory.

Daria Melekhova- wife of Peter Melekhov.

Miron Grigorievich Korshunov- a rich Cossack, father of Natalya and Mitka.

Sergey Platonovich Mokhov- a wealthy merchant, owner of a mill and a store in the Tatar farm, was married twice.

Elizaveta and Vladimir Mokhov- Mokhov’s children from his first wife.

Nikolai Alekseevich Listnitsky- Cossack general, owner of the Yagodnoye estate, widower.

Evgeny Listnitsky- son of Nikolai Listnitsky, caring for Aksinya.

Shtokman Joseph Davydovich- a mechanic, a member of the RSDLP, was exiled to the Tatar farm to work.

Jack- resident of the Tatar farm, worker at the Mokhov mill, and then a soldier.

Mikhail Koshevoy- a poor Cossack, the same age as Gregory, was at first his friend, and then became his enemy.

Chrysanthos Tokin (Christonia)- Cossack of the Ataman Regiment.

Ilya Bunchuk- Bolshevik, Cossack from Novocherkassk, machine gunner.

Ivan Alekseevich Sinilin (Brech)- an old Cossack, served in the Ataman regiment.

Book one

Part one

Chapter 1

In the penultimate Turkish company, the Cossack Melekhov Prokofy returned to the Tatar farm with his Turkish wife, who gave birth to a boy, Pantelei. From them came the family of Melekhovs, nicknamed “Turks.”

When Panteley Melekhov grew up, he married his neighbor’s daughter, Cossack Vasilisa. Pantelei and Vasilisa had two sons - Petro and Grigory and a daughter Dunyashka.

Chapter 2

After fishing, on the way back, Panteley spoke with his son Grigory about Aksinya Astakhova, the wife of their neighbor Stepan Astakhov. There were rumors in the village that Gregory was courting a woman. The father threatened his son so that he "should cover all the games from now on."

Grigory and his friend Mitka Korshunov go to the merchant Mokhov to sell the caught carp. At the merchant's, Mitka meets Mokhov's daughter, Elizaveta.

Chapters 3-4

Despite the words of his father, Grigory continues to court Aksinya.

Stepan and Peter went to the Cossack camps in May, for regular training camps for those who were on preferential reserves.

Chapters 5-6

Peter and Stepan go to the camp meeting place - the Setrakova farm with other farmers. On the way, the men stopped to spend the night at the mound. Around the fire, Cossack Khristonya told a story about how he and his father once dug up a mound in search of treasure.

Chapter 7

Aksinya was married to Stepan at the age of 17. A year before the wedding, the girl was raped by her father. Upon learning of what had happened, Aksinya's brothers and mother beat Aksinya's father to death.

After the wedding with Stepan, the entire household of the Astakhovs fell on the shoulders of the daughter-in-law. Stepan could not forgive the “insult” (the girl did not save her honor until marriage) and brutally beat his wife and went to see other women. A year and a half later, the mother-in-law died, and then, before reaching the age of a year, Aksinya’s first-born son also died.

Soon Grigory began to flirt with Aksinya and “with horror she saw that she was drawn to the black affectionate guy"The woman" was frightened by this new thing that filled her whole feeling.

Chapter 8

The centurion Listnitsky showed off his horse, and he and Mitka argued about who would outrun whom. In front of everyone, Mitka overtook Listnitsky.

Chapters 9-10

The Melekhovs and Aksinya drove out to the meadow mowing. In the evening, when everyone was resting, Astakhova herself approached Grigory, and they spent the whole night together. Soon the whole farm heard about the incident. Panteley Prokofich personally went to Aksinya and forbade her to appear in their house, to which Aksinya said that she didn’t care: “My Grishka! My! My! I own it and I will own it! .. ". Angry, Panteley went home and, having beaten his son, said that he would marry him tomorrow.

Chapters 11-13

Stepan is brought news that Aksinya is cheating on him. The man thinks about revenge on his wife and Gregory, and begins to shun Peter (Gregory’s brother).

There was a week and a half left before the Cossacks arrived from the camps, but Aksinya and Grigory saw each other more and more often. In the farm they were avoided and discussed.

Chapter 14

Stepan returned to the farm. The man did not speak to his wife at first, and then suddenly hit her on the head. The woman ran out of the house, but her husband caught up with her and began beating her in the middle of the street. Gregory and Petro saw Stepan. The Melekhovs attacked Astakhov and beat them until they were separated by Christonya, who happened to be nearby.

Chapter 15

The Melekhovs went to woo the wealthy Korshunovs in order to marry Grigory to their daughter Natalya. The Korshunovs did not immediately answer, saying that they would think about it.

Chapter 16

Stepan realized that he loved Aksinya very much only after he learned about his wife’s betrayal. The man beat the woman every night and could not forgive her for what happened.

Aksinya still loved Gregory and hoped that he would do something for the sake of their love. However, at the meeting, Gregory said that he wanted to end their relationship forever.

Chapter 17

Peter and Gregory went to mow. Peter in the conversation mentioned the relationship between Gregory and Aksinya. Gregory became enraged and hit his brother in the side with a pitchfork.

Chapter 18-19

The Korshunovs were one of the richest on the farm, so Panteley Prokofievich was afraid that Miron Grigorievich would refuse the matchmakers, wanting a wealthier husband for his daughter. However, Natalya fell in love with Gregory and they decided to arrange the wedding as a matter of urgency.

Chapter 20

Aksinya could not forget Gregory. The woman was thinking about how to “take Grishka away from the happy Natalya Korshunova, who has never seen the grief or joy of love.”

Chapters 21-22

Wedding of Natalia and Gregory. Grigory draws attention to the girl’s flaws in appearance, and the wedding rituals anger him.

Part two

Chapter 1

The author tells in short the history of the Mokhov family - their family descended from Nikishka Mokhov, who came from Voronezh, who was the grandfather of Sergei Mokhov. The grandfather lost all his property, so the man “started a business with a chipped ruble,” began trading in various agricultural goods, and built a mill. From his first wife he had two children - Lisa, who looked very much like his mother, and Vladimir. “In the evenings, the farm intelligentsia gathered at Sergei Platonovich’s place.”

Chapter 2

At the end of August, Mitka invited Lisa Mokhova to go fishing. While fishing, the guy and the girl, feeling mutual attraction, indulged in passion. Rumors about what had happened quickly spread throughout the village. Mitka decided to marry Lisa. Sergei Platonovich, having learned about Mitka’s intention, became very angry, refused the guy and set the dogs on him.

Chapter 3

Natalya was loved in the Melekhov family, but Grigory still could not forget Aksinya. The neighbors were still quarreling with Stepan and did not speak.

Chapters 4-5

Locksmith Joseph Shtokman settled in the farmstead. One day he manages to stop a fierce fight at the mill between the Cossacks and the Tavrichans, during which Mitka Korshunov beat Sergei Mokhov.

Grigory admitted to Natalya that he did not love her.

Chapter 6

A couple of weeks after the fight at the mill, an investigator and a police officer arrived at the farm. Joseph Shtokman was summoned for questioning. As it turned out, he had a previous conviction.

Chapter 7-8

Panteley Prokofievich returned home after dividing the brushwood. Vasilisa Ilyinichna complains of poor health and shares her suspicions with her husband that Natalya and Grigory have a breakdown in their relationship.

The men of the Melekhov family went out to work, and on the way they met Stepan, who was leading unharnessed oxen to the farm, leaving behind a broken sleigh, which was guarded by Aksinya. Grigory waited until everyone had left to be alone with the woman. Aksinya admitted that she “wouldn’t be able to live without him.”

Chapter 9

In the evenings, Cossacks and workers gathered at Shtokman's - Hristonya, Valet, Kotlyarov Ivan Alekseevich, Filka-Chebotar, Mishka Koshevoy. Shtokman read Nekrasov and “A Brief History of the Don Cossacks” aloud to them, and everyone discussed what they had read. Joseph “sharpened, like a worm, wood, simple concepts and skills, instilled disgust and hatred towards the existing system”

Chapter 10

Gregory and Mitka took the oath, becoming real Cossacks.

Returning home, Grigory learned that Natalya was about to leave him. The man replied that he would not hold the woman by force. Having gotten drunk, Grigory went to spend the night with Mikhail Koshevoy, and in the morning he met with Aksinya. The woman was ready to give up everything and start living with Gregory, but she could not tell him that she was pregnant.

Chapter 11

In the morning, Grigory went to Mokhov, where he met Listnitsky. Listnitsky took Grigory to work as a coachman, promising to arrange Aksinya as a “black cook.”

Chapters 12-13

One evening, Mishka Koshevoy’s sister came running to Aksinya and told the woman to quickly pack her things and quickly go to them. Stepan returned when his wife was no longer there. Finding a forgotten blouse, he furiously chopped it into pieces.

Natalya returned to her parents.

Chapter 14

Evgeny Listnitsky served in the Life Guards of the Ataman Regiment, but after an injury at the races he came to Yagodnoye to visit his father. From the first days of Aksinya’s appearance in Yagodnoye, Evgeniy began to show an active interest in her.

Chapters 15-16

One evening at Shtokman’s, on Holy Thursday, they started talking about how a war would soon begin “between Germany and France for the grape fields,” “the struggle of capitalist states for markets and colonies.” Shtokman said that their farm would also end up in a war zone.

“On the night of Easter,” when people gathered at the church, an excited Mitka drove up to the crowd, and, finding his father, said that “Natalya is dying!”

Chapter 17-19

Natalya, missing her husband greatly, decided to write a letter to Gregory secretly from her parents to find out if the man was going to return. In response, my husband sent a few words: “Live alone. Melekhov Grigory".

On the eve of Easter, Natalya, trying to control herself and not burst into tears, got ready and went to the church. On the way, she heard the guys say that Gregory had left her, because she "got mixed up with her father-in-law, with the lame Pantelei." Unable to bear it, Natalya went to the barn and “cut [herself] in the throat with a point.”

On the hunt, Grigory and old Listnitsky, out of nowhere, Stepan, who has come from nowhere, helps to catch the seasoned wolf. Stepan promised Gregory that “sooner or later” he would kill him.

Chapter 20

Aksinya admitted to Grigory that she was pregnant, saying that it was his child. While mowing, Aksinya went into labor. Grigory, putting her on a wagon, thought that he would have time to take her to the estate, but his wife gave birth on a wagon.

Chapter 21

Aksinya gave birth to a girl. In December, Grigory was given a notice in the village administration that after Christmas he would need to appear at the collection site. Unexpectedly, Pantelei Prokofievich arrived in Yagodnoe to see his son off to the Cossack service. The man didn’t even speak to Aksinya.

Gregory was assigned to an army regiment.

Part three

Chapter 1

Natalya survived the suicide attempt. Relatives began to treat the woman coldly, and Natalya began to live in her father-in-law's house. Wishing to reconcile Natalya and Grigory, Pantelei asked his son in letters where he was going to live after the service. Gregory replied that he would return to Aksinya.

Dunyasha Melekhova grew up and began going to games. The girl tells Natalya about her relationship with Mishka Koshev.

Shtokman was arrested and taken away from the farm under escort - it turned out that Joseph was a member of the RSDLP (Russian Social Democratic Labor Party), they found books prohibited by law from him.

Chapter 2

Gregory's regiment is located on the Radzivillovo estate. The Warlords mocked the Cossacks, but Gregory fought back as best he could. The entire platoon of Cossacks raped the maid Franya. Grigory tried to stop them, but they tied him up and threatened to kill him if he told anyone about what had happened.

Chapters 3-5

Military mobilization began in the village. “Four days later, red trains took the Cossacks with regiments and batteries to the Russian-Austrian border.”

Grigory learns that there will be war, his regiment moves to the border. During the battle at the Verba station, Gregory killed an Austrian; during the battle the man experienced mixed feelings - “disgustingness and bewilderment crumpled his soul.”

Chapters 6-7

Cossacks of the second conscription on the way to the army (among them Petro and Stepan) spend the night on the Yeya farm, stopping with their grandfather, a participant in the Russian-Turkish war. The old man advised them: in order to get through the war and survive, it is important not to take what belongs to others, not to offend women, and to read prayers.

Mitka ended up in the 3rd Don Cossack Regiment named after Ermak Timofeevich.

Chapters 8-9

Stepan Astakhov was appointed head of the post. While examining the territory, the Cossack saw Germans approaching on horseback. During the battle with the enemy, Stepan killed an officer and the Germans, left without a commander, took flight.

The merits of Stepan and other Cossacks during the battle with the Germans went unnoticed - the award and all the glory went to Kryuchkov, the favorite of the commander of the hundred. “And it was like this: people collided on the field of death, who had not yet had time to break their hands in exterminating their own kind, in the animal horror that overwhelmed them, they stumbled, knocked down, dealt blind blows, mutilated themselves and their horses and fled, frightened by the shot that killed a person, they dispersed, morally crippled. They called it a feat."

Chapter 10

After his first battle, Gregory “hardly broke through the tedious internal pain,” remembering the constantly killed Austrian.

At the end of August, reinforcements arrived from the Don to Gregory’s regiment, which was located near Leszniow. Among those who arrived were many farmers and Petro. After talking with his brother, Grigory learned that Natalya lives in their house and misses her husband. On the way, the brothers met Stepan, who made it clear to Gregory that he had not forgiven him for the insult and would take revenge.

Chapter 11

Pages from a notebook - the diary of the Cossack Timofey, which Grigory found next to the murdered man. Timofey describes his affair with Elizaveta Mokhova. The girl insulted Timofey and demanded significant expenses from him. When Elizabeth left the man, he went to war.

Chapter 12

At the front, Grigory met the cruel, “blood-loving” Chubaty (Aleksey Uryupin), who began to teach Melekhov the Baklanov strike with a saber, instructed to be cruel to the enemy and people: “to kill the enemy in battle is a sacred thing.”

Chapter 13

In one of the battles, Gregory killed a Hungarian officer, but after that someone hit him in the head from behind, and the man lost consciousness.

Chapters 14-15

Evgeny Listnitsky, wanting to accomplish a feat in the name of the Russian monarchy, decided to transfer to a Cossack army regiment. He was assigned to headquarters in Bereznyaga. Evgeniy became friends with volunteer Ilya Bunchuk and helped him in his appointment to a machine-gun brigade.

Chapters 16-17

The Melekhovs receive news of the death of Grigory. The family grieved greatly for Gregory, and held a wake, inviting priest Vissarion. However, a letter soon arrived from Peter with the message that Gregory was in fact alive, awarded the Cross of St. George and appointed a junior constable.

Chapter 18

Natalya missed Gregory very much and hoped that upon his return from the war he would return to her. The woman, realizing that she is committing a stupid act, decides to go to Aksinya and ask her rival to return her husband to her.

While Peter was at war, Daria changed a lot. She went to games and accepted the advances of the young men remaining on the farm.

Chapter 19

Aksinya received infrequent letters from Gregory about how he was living in the war.

On Sunday Natalya came to Aksinya. Aksinya felt like a winner and spoke mockingly to Natalya, humiliating the woman. Natalya was especially struck by the fact that her rival’s daughter looked like Gregory. “Sobbing and rocking,” Natalya left.

Chapters 20-21

When Gregory woke up from his wound, he slowly walked east, picking up a wounded officer along the way. Soon the Cossacks noticed them and took them to the dressing point. For saving the life of officer Georgy, he was awarded the St. George Cross, 4th degree.

As soon as Melekhov returned to the regiment, machine-gun bombing from an airplane began. During the shelling, Grigory was wounded in the eye, and the front-line doctor sent the man for treatment to Moscow - to the eye hospital of Dr. Snegirev.

Chapter 22

During the shelling by the Austrians, centurion Listnitsky was wounded in the head and leg. The wounded Evgeniy was sent to a Warsaw hospital.

In Yagodnoye, Aksinya’s daughter fell ill with scarlet fever and soon died. Evgeniy came to the estate on vacation after treatment. The man again began to court Aksinya, and the woman, “burdened with despair,” could not refuse him.

Chapter 23

In Snegirev’s hospital, Grigory met the Ukrainian Andriy Garanzha, who quite harshly criticized the government, war and everything that he did not like. “With horror, Grigory realized that the smart and evil Ukrainian was gradually, steadily destroying all his previous concepts about the king, his homeland, about his Cossack military duty.”

At the end of October, Gregory was sent to a hospital in Tver to heal a wound on his head. When he, as a hero, was introduced to a “person of the imperial family” who had arrived at the hospital, the man deliberately behaved disrespectfully, for which he was deprived of food for three days and then sent home.

Chapter 24

Returning to Yagodnoye, Grigory learned from the Listnitsky groom, Sashka’s grandfather, about Aksinya’s betrayal with Evgeniy. Melekhov, pretending that he knew nothing, offered Evgeny a ride on a carriage and, moving away from the house, whipped his opponent with a whip and kicked him. Returning to the estate, Grigory hit Aksinya in the face with a whip and hurried away to his parents' house. The man stayed to live with Natalya.

Book two

Part four

Chapter 1

1916, October. Listnitsky, Bunchuk and other officers discuss the possibility of mutinies at the front. Bunchuk admits that he is a member of the RSDLP (Russian Social Democratic Labor Party) and speaks out about the inevitability of revolution,
which will lead to the establishment of a civilian dictatorship. Evgeniy hastened to inform the military leadership about this conversation, but that same night Bunchuk deserted.

Chapter 2

In the morning, Bolshevik leaflets appeared in the trenches with calls: “Workers of all countries, unite!.. Down with autocracy! Down with the imperialist war! Long live the indestructible unity of the working people of the whole world!” . The officers conducted a thorough search, trying to find the distributor among the Cossacks, but found nothing. At this time, Bunchuk contacts “his” people and they help him obtain false documents.

Chapter 3

With the headquarters of the 80th division, a Cossack hundred, consisting of third-rank fighters from the Tatar farm, also moved to the place of close combat. During a search of dugouts in one village, Valet encounters an Austrian soldier and lets him go, having learned that the enemy, like him, is a Social Democrat.

Chapter 4

While at home, Grigory, surrounded by the love of his family, still could not forget Aksinya. Returning to the front, Melekhov “seized an opportunity to show selfless courage, took risks, acted extravagantly.” “The heart became coarsened, hardened, like a salt marsh in a drought, and just as a salt marsh does not absorb water, so Gregory’s heart did not absorb pity. With cold contempt he played with someone else’s and his own life.” For his exploits, Gregory received four St. George's crosses and four medals.

During one of the enemy attacks, Gregory was again seriously wounded.

Melekhov became friends with Chubaty, who promoted the denial of war.

Chapters 5-6

It was difficult for Panteley to live without the help of his sons, but he managed the household as best he could. The old man’s joy was Natalya, who helped her father-in-laws with all her might, and soon gave birth to a boy and a girl from Gregory.

Daria continued to cheat on Peter, rumors reached her husband that the woman even went out with Stepan. Judging by the conversations, Astakhov died at the front, so Melekhov thought only about revenge on his wife - he wanted to knock out her eye. Unable to bear the rumors of people, Panteley flogged his daughter-in-law with a belt.

Chapter 7

Mokhov is given the news that the autocracy has been overthrown. Soon people in the village will learn about this. The Cossacks, excited by the news, come to Sergei Platonovich for advice on how to live now, to which the man replied: “They will compare you with the peasants, deprive you of privileges, and even remember old grievances. Hard times are coming." Mokhov thinks that he worked in vain all his life, making capital. The man worries about the children, although he understands that they are like strangers to him - the daughter in the letter has little interest in his life, but only asks her father for money.

Mokhov goes to Yagodnoye, Evgeny tells him that “the soldiers have turned into gangs of criminals, unbridled and wild.”

Chapters 8-9

The army announced the overthrow of Nicholas II. The Cossacks were forced to swear allegiance to the Provisional Government. People were tired of the war, everyone understood that if at least one goes on the run, then many will desert after him.

Daria came to the front to visit Peter. The man was so happy with his wife that he even forgot about his intention to take revenge.

Chapter 10

Evgeny Listnitsky was transferred to the 14th regiment, in which most of the Cossacks adhered to the ideas of restoring the dynasty.

Chapter 11

General Kornilov was appointed commander-in-chief of the Southwestern Front. Listnitsky is trying to convince the officers to support Kornilov - to begin holding political conversations among the Cossacks in order to get them out of Bolshevik influence.

Chapters 12-14

Listnitsky's plans did not bear fruit - the Cossacks did not want to support the monarchy.

Evgeniy meets with familiar officers in Petrograd. Listnitsky learns from them that Kornilov is going to seize power, establishing his dictatorship in Russia, and also turn the Cossacks into the main force of the counter-revolution.

The Bolsheviks are planning the arrest of Kornilov.

Chapter 15

The officers send echelons of Cossacks to reinforce Kornilov's forces. The ideas of Kerensky (the Minister-Chairman of the Provisional Government) are spreading among the Cossacks, but people do not like dual power; they believe that the authorities are “hanging a noose” on them.

Ivan Alekseevich Sinilin, an old Cossack, is firmly convinced that he will speak for the power that will come - for the Bolsheviks. The Cossack organizes a coup in his regiment and refuses to lead people to Petrograd to help Kornilov.

Chapters 16-17

Kornilov understands that the failure of his plans cannot be avoided, but asks for help from Kaledin (a figure in the White movement). At one of the stations, Bunchuk joins the Cossacks riding to help the commander-in-chief. A man talks about the situation in Petrograd, propagating to people the idea of the need to resist Kornilov’s power.

The next day a rally was held among the Cossacks. The officers tried to stop Bunchuk, but could not resist the Cossacks. When officer Kalmykov began to persuade the Cossacks to go to Petrograd to fight for Kornilov, Bunchuk shot him.

Chapter 18

The Provisional Government appointed General Alekseev to the post of Commander-in-Chief instead of Kornilov. Kornilov was soon arrested.

Chapter 19

Listnitsky is preparing Cossack troops to fight in support of Kornilov. After the order to prepare for battle, most of the Cossacks went over to the side of the “reds”.

Chapter 20

While in prison in Bykhovo, Kornilov learns about the October Revolution. At this time, Kornilov’s accomplice Kaledin was gathering forces on the Don, uniting the Terek, Kuban and Don troops. Since Kornilov was only guarded conditionally, at the right moment the prisoner freely left the place of detention.

Chapter 21

After the October Revolution, a large number of Cossacks deserted. Koshevoy, having caught three deserters, released them, realizing: “Well, it’s me... I’m against the war, but I’m holding people - what rights do I have?” .

Part five

Chapter 1

During the war, many Cossacks of the Tatar farm died, and Petro Melekhov returned among the survivors. He said that Gregory went over to the side of the Bolsheviks.

Chapter 2

Having become the commander of hundreds of Red Guards, Grigory meets the Cossack Izvarin, who preached the idea of autonomy for the Cossacks - an independent Don state led by the Cossack Circle. Izvarin believed that after the victory of the revolution, the Bolsheviks would seize the Cossack possessions.

In November 1917, Gregory met the commander of the revolutionary Cossacks, Fyodor Podtelkov, who promoted the idea that the Cossacks needed people's power.

Chapter 3

Russian generals and soldiers who fled the Bolshevik revolution came to Novocherkassk. Control over the situation in the city fell on Kaledin's shoulders.

Chapters 4-5

Bunchuk travels to Rostov, where the party leadership gives him the task of organizing a machine gun team. 16 people were assigned to the man as disciples, among whom was a young woman, Jewish Anna Pogudko. While teaching people how to use a machine gun, the man paid special attention to Anna, gradually falling in love with the woman.

Chapter 6

At the end of November, the White Guards began their offensive against Rostov; machine gunners were to meet them first. Bunchuk's team managed to provide cover for the counterattack.

Chapter 7

The fighting continued for 6 days with varying success. It was hard for Anna to kill people, and Bunchuk tried to support the woman whenever possible.

Bunchuk fell ill with typhus and was getting worse.

Chapters 8-9

The Bolsheviks decided to hold a Cossack congress in the village of Kamenskaya in order to win over the Cossacks to their side. Ivan Alekseevich and Khristonya invited people from their farm, Pyotr Melekhov and Mitka Korshunov immediately refused.
After the congress, power in the village was transferred to the Military Revolutionary Committee (Military Revolutionary Committee), of which Podtelkov was elected chairman, and Krivoshlykov as secretary. The Military Revolutionary Committee sent a delegation to Novocherkassk.

Chapters 10-11

In Novocherkassk, the delegation of the Military Revolutionary Committee was met with very hostility and was taken under escort to the regional government hall, where Kaledin himself arrived. After a lengthy discussion about the transfer of power to the Military Revolutionary Committee, the Don White government refused to comply with the committee’s demands.

At this time, White Guard troops under the command of Chernetsov captured the village of Kamenskaya, displacing the Red Guards.

Chapter 12

While in Kamenskaya Stanitsa, Grigory learns that Evgeny Listnitsky is also staying here. Melekhov understands that his feelings for Aksinya have not disappeared, and therefore cannot forgive his opponent.

Gregory and the Red Guards depart from Kamenka to Glubokaya. In the morning, the White Guards entered Glubokaya, the Cossacks began to scatter randomly. However, thanks to the active resistance of the “Reds”, among whom were Grigory Melekhov and the machine gunner Anna, the Bolsheviks won. The battle ended with the bloody massacre of the captured White Guards by the Reds on the orders of Podtelkov, this greatly shocked Grigory.

Chapter 13

During the battle near Glubokaya, Grigory was wounded in the leg. He spent a week in the infirmary, and then his father took him home. Panteley was dissatisfied with his son, since he went over to the side of the Bolsheviks. Grigory tried to defend his innocence, but deep down he was tormented by doubts - the man could not forgive the Red Army soldiers for reprisals against prisoners.

Gregory was welcomed home by the whole family. The Cossack noticed that Natasha “bloomed and became prettier,” and for the first time he held grown-up children in his arms.

Chapters 14-15

The Red Guard strengthened its position after the workers' uprising in Taganrog. Kaledin, having learned that the Volunteer Army had retreated to the Kuban, transferred power to the city duma, resigned and shot himself.

Chapters 16-17

Bunchuk, suffering from typhus, was unconscious for three weeks, he was transferred to Tsaritsyn. Anna was with the man all the time. When Bunchuk recovered a little, they moved to Voronezh, where they had to leave. Anna was sent to campaign in Lugansk, and Bunchuk was to serve on the Southern Front.

Chapter 18

In the south, power passed into the hands of General Nazarov. Mobilization was announced, which the Cossacks refused to obey. Thanks to active Bolshevik agitation, some Cossack regiments went over to the enemy.
On February 9, Captain Chernov’s detachment entered Rostov. Evgeny Listnitsky was also in one of his regiments. He missed Yagodny very much and remembered his father and Aksinya.

Chapter 19

Bunchuk with the Red Guards is at the Krivlyanskaya station. The Bolsheviks arrest the head of the Cossack Circle, Nazarov.

Bunchuk is transferred to Sivers' headquarters in Rostov, where he meets Anna. The woman invites him to live with her, since her relatives live in the city.

Chapter 20

In March, Bunchuk was transferred to serve in the Revolutionary Tribunal. The man had to command the execution of “enemies of the revolution” every night. This greatly exhausted Bunchuk, and Anna tried to persuade him to leave his position, but the man assured her: “I am strong... Don’t think that there are people made of iron. We are all made of the same material... There are no people in life who are not afraid in war, and no one who, while killing people, would not wear... would not be morally scarred.” Soon, murders and robberies began in the city, and Bunchuk, at his own request, was returned to the Revolutionary Committee.

Chapter 21

A detachment of Red Guards stopped in the Setrakov farm. After getting drunk, the Bolsheviks began to commit outrages. Hastily gathering an army, the Cossacks defeated the rowdy “Reds”.

At the end of April, unrest began in the upper villages of the Donetsk district - the villages broke away, forming the Verkhnedonsky district, led by General Alferov.

Chapters 22-23

Some of the Bolsheviks (including Koshevoy and Valet), having learned about the ongoing defeats of the “Reds”, decided to leave the Tatar farm. Grigory, Khristonya and Ivan Alekseevich stayed - each had their own reasons.

In connection with the “Reds” raids on the Setrakovskaya village, a Cossack meeting was held on the Maidan. To protect the Cossack farms in the village, they decided to form a detachment of front-line soldiers, restoring Cossack self-government. People chose Miron Korshunov as ataman, and Pyotr Melekhov as commander of the detachment. Cossacks enlist in the regiment, thinking that there will be no war.

Chapters 24-25

The Red Army was retreating from Rostov. Bunchuk and Anna were waiting for the Cossacks on the outskirts of one of the villages. Seeing the approaching enemy, the woman led the soldiers behind her, despite the fact that Bunchuk tried to stop her. During the shelling of the Cossacks, Anna receives a fatal bullet and dies in the arms of Bunchuk.

Chapter 26

For Bunchuk, Anna’s death became a tragedy - “he lived as if in typhoid delirium,” “his feelings temporarily atrophied: he didn’t want anything, didn’t think about anything.”

In the south, under the pressure of the German occupiers, the “Reds” had to retreat through the Don region.

Chapter 27

The closer the Red Guards moved to the Don stations, the more hostile and wary the local population greeted them. The soldiers noticed the Cossack patrol and began to prepare for the attack.

Chapters 28-29

The surrounded Red Guards under the command of Podtelkov had to surrender. The soldiers were disarmed and locked in a barn in the neighboring village of Ponomarev. The Cossacks decided to execute the prisoners.

Chapter 30

In the morning, Pyotr Melekhov’s detachment arrived at the farm. Peter is offered to select shooters for execution. Melekhov refuses, but Mitka Korshunov himself volunteers to participate in the execution.

During the execution, Grigory, squeezing through the crowd, finds himself near Podtelkov. The words of the “Red” commander: “What, are you shooting your brothers? Turned around?.. What are you like... Do you serve both ours and yours? Who will give more? touched Melekhov to the quick. The man recalled to Podtelkov how he himself ordered the execution of prisoners.

Podtelkov was the last to be executed. Before the hanging, the commander said that “Soviet power will be established throughout Russia.” The man could not be hanged right away - his feet reached the ground, so he had to be hanged twice.

Chapter 31

Valet and Mishka Koshevoy left the village of Karginskaya, but the Cossacks caught them near the Nizhne-Yablonovsky farm. Valet was killed on the spot, and Koshevoy, since he was a Cossack, was publicly flogged with rods, but left alive. The next day, "Mishka was sent to the front." Two days later, Valet was buried. “Soon an old man came from a nearby farm, dug a hole at the head of the grave, and erected a chapel on a freshly planed oak abutment. Under its triangular canopy, the mournful face of the Mother of God glimmered in the darkness.

Book three

Part six

Chapter 1

“In April 1918, the great division on the Don ended”: most of the Cossacks from the northern district went over to the side of the Red Army, the “Nizovtsy” “drove them and pushed them to the borders of the region.” At the end of April, the Don was completely liberated from the Red Army, the Cossacks decided to re-create the Circle. Panteley Melekhov and Bogatyrev became delegates from Tatarsky Khutor.

The Upper Don Cossacks were expecting a German attack. Soon the enemy appeared - first the Germans met Miron Korshunov (they tried to take the horses from the Cossack, but he fought back), and then Panteley Melekhov. The German gave Pantelei instructions on how to choose power: “remember that you need reasonable power. Choose a president, a tsar, or anyone, only on the condition that this person is not devoid of state intelligence and is able to pursue a policy that is loyal to our state.”

General Krasnov was elected ataman.

Chapters 2-3

The Germans began to behave like masters on the Don - “red trains of cars rolled from the Don through Ukraine, taking them to Germany wheat flour, eggs, butter, bulls." “And on the border with Ukraine, young Cossacks fought with the Petliurists.”
The Cossack hundred under the command of Pyotr Melekhov was included in the 22nd regiment and, by order of their superiors, the Cossacks advanced behind the retreating Reds. On the way, Peter talked to Gregory about whether, if something happened, he would go over to the side of the communists. The younger brother replied that he was not sure. Peter replied: “Look how the people have been divided, you bastards! It was as if we were driving with a plow: one - in one direction, the other - in the other, as if under a ploughshare. Damn life, and terrible times!” .

Koshevoy returned to Veshenskaya and became an “atarschik” (groom).

Chapter 4

An opposition appeared on the Don under the leadership of General Denikin, who did not like the actions of Krasnov, who allowed the Germans to enter the Don.

A “white” Eastern Front begins to form in Russia, aimed at defeating the Bolsheviks and Germans.

Chapter 5

During the retreat of the Kornilovites from Rostov to the Kuban, Yevgeny Listnitsky, who was among the White Guards, was wounded twice. To improve his health, the man stayed with Gorchakov’s friend in Novocherkassk and fell in love with Gorchakov’s wife, Olga Nikolaevna.

Listnitsky and Gorchakov go to the front. Evgeny's friend receives a mortal wound and asks Listnitsky not to leave Olga alone, to marry her. In the next battle, Evgenia’s arm was crushed by a shell and then had to be amputated. Listnitsky understands that the time has come to leave military service. Olga herself comes to Evgeniy in the hospital. Soon they got married and went to live in Yagodnoye.

Chapter 6

Koshevoy was sent on a business trip to the capital for his excellent service. On the way, Mishka met Stepan Astakhov, who had changed beyond recognition, who was considered dead in the farm. Stepan said that after being wounded he came to the Germans, recovered and settled in a foreign country, but after that he began to yearn for his homeland and decided to return.

Chapter 7

Returning to the Tatar farm, Stepan stayed with his wife Anikushka. Astakhov learns about Aksinya’s life and persuades her to return home. The woman at first refuses, but having received the settlement from the Listnitskys, she herself comes to Stepan.

Chapters 8-9

Grigory leads his hundred beyond the Don. After the battles, the Cossacks robbed and looted. Gregory forbade stealing from the vanquished. The authorities found out about this and, suspecting an accomplice of the Bolsheviks in Melekhov, deprived the man of a hundred, appointing him a platoon commander.

Panteley and Daria come to Grigory’s regiment. As it turned out, they had already visited Peter, where they received a decent share of the stolen goods and expected the same “gifts” from their youngest son. Having learned about this, Gregory became angry and quarreled with his father. Panteley was very upset when he learned that his son had been demoted to platoon commander.

Chapter 10

The Cossacks begin to retreat. Gregory voluntarily leaves the regiment and goes home.

Chapters 11-12

The tension in the Cossack units grew: people began to be more and more hostile to each other. Pyotr Melekhov understands that if he does not “grind” into the confidence of ordinary Cossacks, he can be shot like other officers.

Red agitators freely penetrated the Cossack environment, but their propaganda remained incomprehensible to many Cossacks. Unable to bear the tension, Petro went home to the farm.

Chapter 13

Returning home, Peter told his family about the critical situation on the Northern Front, the inevitability of the retreat of the Cossacks. After discussing their situation, the Melekhovs decide to stay in Tatarskoye.

Chapter 14

General Krasnov loses his position, and then the respect of the Cossacks.

Chapters 15-16

Red Army soldiers entered the farm, five of them stopped at the Melekhovs for the night. One of the guests behaved unworthily - he shot the owners’ dog, and then quarreled with Grigory. The Red commissar took the soldier away, promising to try him for “behavior unworthy of a Red Army soldier.” In the morning, the commander apologized to the Melekhovs for the soldiers and paid for the stay.

Chapter 17

The Red Army regiments continued to march through the farmstead. To prevent the Bolsheviks from taking the horses away, Panteley deliberately injured their legs. Once the Reds organized a party at Anikushka’s place and invited the Cossacks. Having recognized Gregory as a white officer, the Reds decided to shoot him, but the man was warned in time, and he fled across the Don.

Chapter 18

Bolshevik rule was established in the Tatar farm. Ivan Alekseevich was elected Red Ataman, and Koshevoy was elected his deputy. The Cossacks were forced to surrender their weapons.

Chapter 19

Rumors appeared that Red tribunals were traveling around the Don region, committing brutal reprisals against the Cossacks. The Melekhovs surrendered their weapons, but Panteley still hid rifles and a machine gun.

Panteley falls ill with typhus.

Chapters 20-21

Returning to the farm, Grigory went to see Ivan Alekseevich. The men begin to argue about the meaning of Bolshevik power. Grigory believes that this government is bad, because the communists have not yet given anything to the Cossacks, but they have deprived many of their lives; he does not believe in possible equality. Melekhov could not be convinced, and Ivan Alekseevich and Koshevoy became very angry with the Cossack.

Chapter 22

Security officers arrived in the Tatar farm and began to carry out reprisals against the “enemies of the revolution” - to shoot the Cossacks.

Chapter 23

The Reds shot Miron Korshunov. Peter, at Lukinichny’s request, found Miron’s body at night with another Cossack and took him to the Korshunovs for farewell.

Chapter 24

Management of the Revolutionary Committee passed into the hands of Shtokman. On May 4, Ivan Alekseevich gathered Cossacks on the Maidan to talk about the Bolshevik government - the farmers believed that the people were executed in vain, they were sure that the communists wanted to destroy them. Shtokman read out a list with the names of “enemies of the revolution,” including the Melekhovs.

Chapter 25

Upon learning of Grigory's return, Shtokman ordered the arrest of the man and a search of the Melekhovs to find hidden weapons. Gregory was not at home. Shtokman and Koshev tried to find Melekhov in Singin, but to no avail.

Chapter 26

Pantelei, who had recovered from typhus, was arrested by the communists. Peter told Gregory about what had happened, advising his brother to go to the Fish Farm to visit his relatives, promising to tell everyone that Gregory was with his aunt in Singin.

Chapter 27

Cossack uprisings break out in the villages. Koshevoy, frightened by the unrest, leaves Veshenskaya for the Tatar farm. However, on the way, Antip Brekhovich saw Mishka, severely wounded him with a pitchfork and left him to die. Waking up, Koshevoy hid at Astakhov's, and the next day, on the advice of his mother, he left the farm.

Chapter 28

Having learned about the Cossack uprising, Grigory returns to the farm to investigate the situation. The man firmly decided to fight for the Cossacks: “People have always fought for a piece of bread, for a plot of land, for the right to life and will fight as long as the sun shines on them, while warm blood oozes through their veins.”

Chapter 29

Koshevoy reached the Big Farm, which was still under the rule of the Bolsheviks. The bear was detained, but Shtokman, who was in the farm, explained to the Reds that he was his own.

Chapters 30-31

Two hundred Cossacks formed in Tatarskoe. Peter was appointed commander of the cavalry hundred. Gregory led some of the Cossacks into reconnaissance, and during one of the skirmishes with the Bolsheviks, the rebels captured the commander of the Red Army, Likhachev. Likhachev did not want to agree to the rebels’ conditions and was killed.

Chapter 32

The uprisings of the Cossacks spread throughout the Don, battles were already fought almost near Tatarsky itself.

Chapters 33-34

In one of the battles, the Reds made their way to the rear of the rebels. Peter's Cossacks hid from the enemies in a ditch. Koshevoy promised to release the rebels if they surrender. However, when the rebels came out of hiding, Koshevoy shot Peter, and the rest of the Reds hacked to pieces.

Chapter 35

Gregory was appointed commander of the Veshensky regiment. At the beginning of March, Melekhov led the people on the offensive and the Reds gave up their positions. The rebel regiment expanded. Grigory avenged his brother, brutally cracking down on captured Red Guards.

Chapters 36-37

Grigory received instructions from headquarters not to kill the prisoners, but to send them for interrogation. However, Melekhov ignored the recommendations, believing that he knew better how to act. Gregory led people into the attack himself, proving his military prowess many times in practice. Gradually, Melekhov began to get tired of the responsibility for the Cossacks, he suddenly woke up pity for the prisoners.

Chapter 38

By order of Kudinov, Grigory comes to Veshenskaya. After a military council with Kudinov, Grigory realizes that the supposedly free rebels are led by the same white generals: “Scientists have confused us ... They have confused the Lord! They have hobbled life and carry out their affairs with our hands. Even if it’s a trifle, you can’t trust anyone...”

Chapters 39-40

End of March. A balance of power was established at the front, which suspended for a couple of months fighting. “After fleeing from Tatarsky, Shtokman, Koshevoy, Ivan Alekseevich landed on the 4th Zaamursky regiment,” and then, through Ust-Khoperskaya, they went with other Reds to the Krutovsky farm.

Chapters 41-42

Stanitsa Karginskaya - a stronghold of the rebels, defended under the leadership of Gregory. According to Melekhov's plan, the Cossacks managed to defeat the Reds.

The rebels had a lot of vodka in stocks, so the days of the Cossacks passed in constant revelry, relaxing the army. Gregory begins to be tormented by unkind thoughts, he felt the satiety of life, he wanted to die. He also starts drinking and visiting women. Once, during a drinking bout, the Cossack Medvedev offered Grigory to take Kudinov's place, but Melekhov refused.

Chapter 43

The Cossacks were exhausted by the war, fearlessly went into battle, and mocked the prisoners. Kudinov led propaganda among the rebels that they should forget about the upcoming spring work in the field and continue to fight.

Chapter 44

Melekhov almost lost the battle near Klimovka: he turned the Cossacks in time and attacked the red machine gunners. However, after the battle, Grigory lost his nerve and for the first time in his life he huddled in a severe fit, the Cossacks had to tie him up.

Chapter 45

Grigory arrived in Veshenskaya, where the Cossacks told him that the new rebel government mocked people more than the communists. The Cossacks imprison even women and the elderly for being related to those who sided with the communists. Angry, Gregory released all the prisoners from prison.

Chapter 46

The Cossacks began to desert, leave the front, as the sowing season began. Grigory came to the farm to sow his land and his mother-in-law's land. During Melekhov’s conversation with grandfather Grishaka, the old man reads the Bible to the man, claiming that the Cossacks themselves do not understand why they are fighting, because “all power is from God,” so there is no need to resist it.

Natalya reproaches her husband about drunkenness and wild life at the front; the woman was especially angered by Daria’s comic advances towards Gregory. Husband and wife are quarreling.

Chapter 47

The former Red Commissar Voronovsky (now an officer) goes over to the Cossacks' side. tsarist army, commander of the Serdobsky regiment, which includes Shtokman, Koshevoy and Ivan Alekseevich). Kudinov receives the regiment, instructing the Serdob soldiers to hand over the communists, and then send the prisoners to Veshenskoye, where the locals will commit lynching against them. In case of disorder, the soldiers who trusted were ordered to be killed.

Chapter 48

“On April 12, the 1st Moscow Regiment was brutally battered in a battle with the rebels near the Antoyov farm of the Elan village. Not knowing the area well, the Red Army chains fought into the village.” During the battle, Ivan Alekseevich was wounded in the leg.

Shtokman notices that the people of Serdob do not want to fight the Cossacks and, suspecting that Voronovsky is agitating fighters against the communists, sends Koshevoy with a report to the political department.

Chapter 49

In the morning, Serdob residents held a rally. When Shtokman began to call on people to fight the whites, he was shot. Ivan Alekseevich and other communists were arrested.

Chapter 50

Grigory did not stay long on the farm - five days later he was informed about the uprising of the Serdobsky regiment. Melekhov was going to go to his Cossacks in Karginskaya, but near the river he met Aksinya. The man decides to postpone leaving. Panteley, who saw them, was very angry, but could no longer reproach his son for anything, because now Gregory was a general.

In the evening, Aksinya, having bribed Daria with a ring, asked the woman to call Gregory to her. At night Melekhov came to Astakhova.

Chapter 51

Returning home the next day, Grigory lied to Natalya that he had communicated with Kudinov at night.

Melekhov left the farm. In Karginskaya, Grigory is given command of the 1st division. Melekhov receives a letter from Kudinov, with the message that the Serdobsky regiment went over to the side of the Cossacks, and the communists were also captured. Grigory decides to release Koshevoy and Ivan Alekseevich in order to find out who killed Peter.

Chapters 52-53

Bogatyrev flies in an airplane to Singin Farm with the news that soon the Don army, having broken through the front, will join the Cossacks.

Chapter 54

The captured Reds, who were given out by the Serdobsky soldiers, were taken under escort for trial to Veshenskaya. Among them was Ivan Alekseevich. On the way, the prisoners were brutally beaten by angry villagers.

Chapter 55

The high command of the rebel forces decided to ask for help from the Don government. The authorities agreed to cooperate and began sending people and weapons.

Chapter 56

The beaten captive Red Guards were brought to Tatarsky, where they were surrounded by farmers. Seeing Ivan Alekseevich among the communists, Daria, having avenged her husband, shot the man with a rifle. Grigory was late for the reprisal. Having learned about the death of Ivan Alekseevich, and also that Koshevoy and Shtokman were not among the prisoners, Melekhov went to the front.

Chapters 57-58

In May, the Reds began an active offensive against the rebels. Gregory was summoned to Veshenskaya for a meeting. Kudinov ordered Melekhov to break through the front on his own. Grigory wrote a letter to Aksinya asking her to go with him.

Chapter 59

“On May 22, the retreat of the rebel troops began along the entire right bank. The units retreated in battle, stopping at each line. The population of the farmsteads of the steppe strip rushed to the Don in panic.”

Chapter 60

Farmer Prokhor Zykov gives Aksinya a note from Grigory. The Cossacks report that the Reds are occupying farmsteads and burning the huts of the rich.

Chapter 61

Having learned that military units and refugees had been transported, Melekhov ordered the army to retreat. Having crossed with his Cossacks to the other bank, Gregory gave the order to build fortifications and take positions.

Chapter 62

After the crossing, Aksinya settled in Veshenskaya with her aunt. On the instructions of Grigory, Prokhor Zykov found the woman and brought her to Melekhov. “They lived for two days as if in a dream, confusing days and nights, forgetting about their surroundings.”

Chapter 63

Grigory visits his relatives in Tatarskoye. Panteley told his son that Natalya fell ill with typhus, so she and Ilyinichna did not move with other farmers. The elder Melekhov was angry with his son: Grigory, instead of taking care of his children and wife, was back with Aksinya.

Chapter 64

Kudinov informs Melekhov that the White Guards have sent ammunition and are already on their way to help the rebels.

Chapter 65

Koshevoy, in the ranks of the 33rd Kuban Division, followed the retreating Cossacks of Melekhov. Once in Tatarskoye, Mishka found no one at home. Koshevoy goes to the Korshunovs, but meets only grandfather Grishaka there. The old man began to scold Mishka for going over to the communists. Angry, Mishka shot the old man and burned him along with the hut.

Having met Ilyinichna, Koshevoy said that he would woo Dunyashka, and if the girl was given away to someone else, he would take revenge. Mishka burned several more huts and went to the front again.

Book Four

Part seven

Chapter 1

After the Verkhnedonsky uprising, the Reds liberated the Southern Front, which allowed the command of the Don Army to regroup its forces and create a “powerful strike group of regiments” near Kamenskaya and Ust-Belocalitvenskaya villages.

The Cossacks from the Tatar Hundred lived quietly. Only Stepan was worried - “whether he learned from the farm Cossacks or his heart told him that Aksinya was meeting with Gregory in Veshenskaya.” At Astakhov’s request, Aksinya came to the hundred, but they were awkward together, so the woman left a day later.

Chapter 2

At night, near the village of Maly Gromchonok, the Reds crossed the Don and attacked the heavily drunk Cossacks. The pressure of the Bolsheviks was restrained only by the fact that they did not know the area and it was dark. Melekhov, seeing that the Cossacks were scattering, began to return people with a handful of those remaining, he managed to restore the front and defeat the Reds.

Chapter 3

The Red prisoners were first kept in the stables, and then taken under escort to the village for execution. Only one Bolshevik managed to escape - the man pretended to be crazy, and the Cossacks left him with the old woman. The woman noticed the soldier's deception and let her go to her own in the morning.

Chapter 4

Gradually, Natalya recovered from typhus. The Red Army soldiers, pursued by the Cossacks, quickly left the farm. Soon the rebels began to return to Tatarsky, and Panteley Prokofievich also arrived.

Chapter 5

On June 10, the cavalry of the Don Army “broke through the front near the village of Ust-Belocalitvenskaya and moved towards the village of Kazanskaya.” Near the Don, the Cossacks met with the 9th Don Regiment and at first were delighted with the allies. However, having fallen under the command of white officers who directed them at their own discretion, the rebels were disappointed: “And horseradish is not sweeter!” .

Chapter 6

Grigory arrives at the dilapidated, plundered Yagodnoye. From the cook Lukerya, who is hiding in the estate, Melekhov learns about the death of the groom Sashka and buries the old man near his daughter’s grave.

Chapter 7

General Secretaries and white officers arrived in Veshenskaya. They were greeted with a magnificent banquet. Having gotten drunk, the whites began to reproach the Cossacks for disobedience; Kudinov vowed to serve the white army forever. Grigory, listening to this, understood that soon the whites would begin to “step on the throats of the Cossacks,” “[the Cossacks] had lost the habit of trumping and reaching out to their nobility.”

Leaving the banquet, Melekhov went to Aksinya, who was visiting Stepan. Astakhov invited Grigory to sit down, and the three of them silently drank moonshine: “there was dead silence in the upper room.”

Chapter 8

Prokhor comes to the Astakhovs for Grigory - Sekretov urgently wants to see the Cossack. However, Melekhov first visits his relatives.

Grigory strictly forbade Dunyashka to communicate with Koshev, who killed Peter. Melekhov, having said goodbye to his wife and children, “tormented by vague forebodings, oppressive anxiety and melancholy,” left the farm.

Chapters 9-10

Melekhov is summoned to General Fitzhelaur. On the way to the headquarters, Grigory, in a conversation with Kopylov, says that the white officers are too arrogant, which causes hostility among the Cossacks. Kopylov, on the other hand, believes that the attitude of the whites towards the rebels is fair, while Grigory's views are very similar to those of the Bolsheviks. “Half-jokingly, half-seriously,” Melekhov replies that when he moves to the Reds, he will be more appreciated there.

Fitzhelaur informed the Cossacks that their army was joining the Don Army. The general tried to impose his tactics on Melekhov, the men quarreled. Grigory, reserving the right to obey only Kudinov, left.

Chapter 11

Contrary to Fitzhelaur's orders, Melekhov refused to lead men against the Red Army holding Ust-Medveditskaya. Gregory did not like the policy of the Whites, and the war with the Reds itself, in his opinion, lost its meaning. However, he did not intend to go over to the side of the Bolsheviks.

Chapter 12

Korshunov, serving in a punitive detachment, arrives in Tatarsky. For cruelty and personal execution of Red Army soldiers and deserters, Mitka was appointed an officer. Seeing that his home had burned down, Korshunov went to see the matchmaker, but after staying for a short time, he went to the farm. “Mitka and his companions had not yet had time to return to the Melekhovs, and rumors began to spread throughout the farmstead: “Korshunov arrived with the Kalmyks, Koshevoy’s entire family was slaughtered!” ". Having learned about what had happened, Panteley did not let Mitka in again.

The White command arrived in Tatarsky. Pantelei was assigned to bring bread and salt to the officers. Sidorin awarded the farmers who distinguished themselves in the fight against the Bolsheviks: he gave Daria a medal on a St. George’s ribbon for the murder of a Red Army soldier and money for the death of her husband.

Chapter 13

Life in the Melekhov family has changed. Panteley ceased to be the sovereign master, and relations between relatives deteriorated. Melekhov understood that the main reason for what was happening was war. Daria categorically refused to share the money she received for her husband.

Once, after another night of adventures, Daria admitted to Natalya that she had fallen ill with a “bad disease” - syphilis. A woman, afraid of people's rumors, decides to commit suicide.

Chapter 14

Angry at life, Daria decided that she should not suffer alone and told Natalya how she summoned Grigory to Aksinya. Natalya was upset, but understood Daria's motives.

Chapter 15

The Don army confidently pursues the Reds. Thanks to Melekhov’s competent command, it was possible to capture many Reds and recapture machine guns and ammunition wagons.

Grigory is appointed commander of hundreds, despite the fact that the man wanted to transfer to service in the rear. Soon Melekhov receives news that an accident has occurred at home and he is leaving on vacation.

Chapter 16

After the conversation with Daria, Natalya “lived, experiencing a feeling that happens in a dream, when a bad dream weighs heavily and there is no strength to wake up.” The woman goes to Prokhor’s wife to find out about the relationship between Grigory and Aksinya, but without finding out anything, she goes to Astakhova herself. Aksinya confirmed that she had again “taken possession of Gregory” and now she would definitely try “not to let him out of her hands.”

The next day, Natalya told Ilyinichna that Grigory was again with Aksinya, and also that she was pregnant by her husband, but wanted to get rid of this child. That same day, Natalya went to the farm midwife and returned late in the evening, bleeding. The paramedic brought by Panteley said that the woman could not be saved, as her wounds were torn female organs. By lunchtime Natalya died.

Chapter 17

Gregory was three days late for Natalya's funeral. Ilyinichna told the man that Natalya went for an abortion after she found out about his relationship with Aksinya.

Chapter 18

Grigory took the death of his wife very hard. The man considered himself guilty of Natalya’s death, he realized that he loved their children, loved her. Grigory began to spend more time with the children, especially with his son Mishatka.
It was time for Melekhov to return to the army.

Chapter 19

Heading to the front, Melekhov meets the servant Semak. Semak says that the whites encourage looting, robbery and banditry among privates and officers. Many Cossacks, unable to bear it, desert.

Grigory stops to spend the night in a village near Balashova, where he meets a white officer and an Englishman. During the conversation, a drunken Englishman said that he respects the Reds, since they are the people, and “the people cannot be defeated.”

Chapter 20

The Reds began to prepare for a large-scale offensive along the entire front. The Whites managed to break through the front and take Tambov. The Reds began to move towards Khopr and Don, gradually wasting the strength of the offensive breakthrough.

Chapter 21

“A week and a half after Gregory left for the front, Daria drowned herself in the Don.” Ilyinichna learns that Aksinya began to invite Mishatka to visit her, treating her and asking about Grigory. Melekhova got angry and forbade the boy to go to Astakhova. And then, having met Aksinya, she said that she would never become Gregory’s wife.

At the end of August, Panteley and all the able-bodied men of the farm were mobilized. A few days later, Melekhov returned, having fled from the front without permission. A punitive detachment arrived for the man, the Kalmyks arrested the old man and sent him to Karginskaya for trial.

Chapter 22

Since Panteley was the father of Gregory, he was punished only by deprivation of the rank of constable. The Reds were expected to attack, so the Melekhovs left Tatarskoye.

Chapter 23

On September 18, the last Cossack hundred left Veshenskaya under fire from the Reds. News began to come to the Cossacks that the Bolsheviks were not looting or burning kurens, but were generously paying for the food they took from the locals.

Chapter 24

The Melekhovs lived for two and a half weeks in the Latyshev farmstead. Having learned that “the Reds had retreated from the Don,” the family returned home.
Panteley received an exemption from service through a paramedic he knew in the village and set about restoring the farm. The murdered Anikushka and Christonya are brought to the farm, and soon Gregory, who is sick with typhus, is brought to the farm.

Chapter 25

“A month later, Gregory recovered. He first got out of bed on the twentieth of November.” Melekhov suddenly began to be interested in the household, he spent more and more time fiddling with the children, but it was difficult for the man to talk to them about the war, about his mother.

Grigory was summoned “to a medical commission for re-examination” and the man began to prepare with the Cossacks to retreat. Before leaving, Melekhov went to see Aksinya and invited her to leave with him. Astakhova agreed.

Chapter 26

“All the northern villages of the Don were moving south.” At each stop, Gregory tried to find out where his relatives, who joined the retreat later, were now. On the way, Aksinya fell ill with typhus, and Gregory had to leave the weakened woman in the care of one of the villages.

Chapter 27

“The days dragged on, gray and joyless. Having left Aksinya, Grigory immediately lost interest in his surroundings.”

“The war was coming to an end. The denouement came quickly and inevitably. The Donets were broken." Grigory arrives at the Belaya Glina farm, where he learns that Panteley died of typhus the day before. After burying his father, Melekhov falls ill with relapsing fever and Prokhor takes the man to Kuban.

Chapters 28-29

On the way, Grigory and Prokhor met Melekhov’s Cossack friends, who helped take the patient to a doctor in Yekaterinodar. Soon Gregory began to recover.

In Novorossiysk, people were evacuated by ship to Turkey. The first to leave were the families of landowners, White Guard generals, and rich people. Desperate to get on the ship, people committed suicide right on the pier. Gregory understands that he will not be able to leave and calmly awaits the Bolshevik invasion.

Before Melekhov’s eyes, Novorossiysk was occupied by the Reds.

Part Eight

Chapter 1

After recovery, Aksinya returned to Tatarsky. In the farm there were various rumors about the fate of Grigory, gradually "anxiety for the life of Grigory seemed to bring together and make related" Astakhova and Ilyinichna. The Melekhovs began to communicate with Aksinya and invite her to visit. They receive news that Stepan has left for Crimea. Soon Prokhor arrived at the farm, and he said that Melekhov had joined the Red Army.

Chapter 2

Koshevoy returns to Tatarsky. Ilyinichna received Mishka coldly, but Dunyashka stood up for her beloved. Koshevoy began to help the women little by little with the housework, and in Ilyinichna's heart a "wrenching maternal pity" woke up for him.

Chapter 3

Ilyinichna did not agree to the wedding of Dunyasha and Mishka for a long time, but when the girl threatened that she would leave with her beloved, the woman had to give in. They played a modest, quiet wedding. Koshevoy turned out to be a skillful owner. It was hard for Ilyinichna to accept a stranger, she felt unnecessary, living only in anticipation of the arrival of Gregory. Soon the woman became very ill and, without seeing her son, died. Astakhova took Gregory’s children to her place.

Chapter 4

Koshevoy was quickly tired of housework, the man increasingly thought that he had settled on the farm too early. Mishka was not happy that the Whites, who had gone over to the side of the Reds, were not responsible for the crimes committed against the Bolsheviks - according to Koshevoy, they still need to be dealt with in the Cheka.

Mishka is appointed chairman of the local revolutionary committee.

Chapter 5

Among the villagers there is dissatisfaction with the Soviet government - people lived very poorly. Dunya tried to talk to her husband about new government, but Koshevoy accused the woman of counter-revolutionary talk. When Dunyashka asked what would happen to Grigory for serving with the Whites, Mishka replied that he could be shot.

Chapter 6

Grigory returned to Tatarsky. Mishka greeted Melekhov coldly, but the Koshevoys gathered a table and invited Prokhor and Aksinya to celebrate the Cossack's return.

After the guests left, Mishka told Grigory that he considered Melekhov an enemy, since he could again go over to the side of the Whites. Koshevoy decided to move into his hut and demanded that Grigory urgently register with the Revolutionary Committee.

Chapter 7

Prokhor tells Grigory that old Listnitsky died of typhus, and Eugene, having learned about his wife's betrayal, shot himself. In addition, the Cossack reports an uprising that has broken out nearby and worries about Melekhov - he can be accused of being the instigator. After hesitating, Grigory decides to go through all the registration levels in the Revolutionary Committee.

Chapters 8-9

“After returning from Veshenskaya, Grigory went to the farm revolutionary committee, showed Koshevoy his military documents marked by the military registration and enlistment office and left without saying goodbye. He moved to Aksinya, took with him his children and some of his property." Melekhov was tormented by uncertainty; he could not live peacefully with his family. One night Dunyashka came running to them with a warning about the impending arrest. Grigory quickly got ready and left.

Chapter 10

In response to the actions of the Soviet authorities, unrest began among the Cossacks, and Cossack gangs appeared, dissatisfied with the surplus appraisal. The leader of the uprising near Veshenskaya was Melekhov’s former friend Yakov Fomin.

Chapter 11

Melekhov lived for a couple of months with a Cossack friend and relative of Aksinya, and after that he was going to Yagodnoye. On the way, the man was met by Fomin's people, and he joined Yakov's gang.

Chapter 12

Fomin tried to attract the Cossacks, but tired of the war, hungry people did not agree to support his gang. Seeing the detachment of the people, Fomin began to threaten the farmers.

Chapter 13

Melekhov did not like the fact that Fomin’s people were engaged in looting. Yakov's gang comes under fire from the Reds, after which Melekhov is completely convinced of Fomin's failure as a leader.

Chapter 14

Settled on a wooded island in the middle of the Don, Fomin's people sit back, waiting for action to begin. A close associate of Yakov Kaparin offers Melekhov to kill Fomin and the rest of the gang, and then surrender to the Reds. Grigory did not agree, but just in case he disarmed Kaparin. At night, the Fomintsy, having guessed everything, kill Kaparin in his sleep.

Chapters 15-16

At the end of April, the Fomints crossed the Don. They decide to link up with Maslak's famous gang, and more and more Cossacks join them. Despite the fact that Fomin argued that his people continue to fight for the happiness of the working people, in fact they were only engaged in robberies. Grigory decides to leave the gang and secretly leaves it one night.

Chapter 17

Grigory arrives in his native village and, having quietly made his way to Aksinya, offers to go with him to Kuban. The woman agreed, the children were temporarily left to Dunyashka. On the way, near Chir, they came across an outpost. Melekhov ordered the woman to go back. Shots were heard and Aksinya was mortally wounded. The man took her to the forest, where the woman, without regaining consciousness, died in his arms.

Chapter 18

“Like a steppe scorched by fires, Gregory’s life became black. He lost everything that was dear to his heart." After wandering aimlessly across the steppe for several days, Melekhov joined the deserters. Gregory constantly dreamed of children, Aksinya, and relatives.

At the beginning of spring, the man, unable to bear it, returns to the farm, where he learns that his daughter has died of scarlet fever. Gregory “stood at the gates of his home, holding his son in his arms... This was all that was left in his life, what still connected him with the earth and with this whole huge world shining under the cold sun.”

Conclusion

In “Quiet Flows the Flow”, Sholokhov portrays to the reader a comprehensive picture of the world, covering the fates of people from various walks of life. In the work, the author reveals the problem of personality formation at a turning point in history, touches on issues of love and betrayal, family happiness, friendship, relations between fathers and children, and covers the topic of war, morality and duty.

The brilliant novel was translated into many languages, and in 1965 Sholokhov was awarded Nobel Prize on literature.

A brief retelling of “The Quiet Don” will be of interest to both schoolchildren and students, as well as all connoisseurs of Russian literature who want to quickly remember the main plot lines of the work.

Quiet Don test

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Unrealized female ambitions and lack of humility result in the desire to destroy everything and everyone. People with “new” ideas come in handy here.

And yet, in Anna there is a feminine, maternal principle, which is dissolved to varying degrees in almost every true love of a woman for a man: in the love of Natalya and Aksinya for Grigory, and in the love of “deep-eyed” Anna Pogudko for Bunchuk... If For Bunchuk, the three weeks of his typhoid unconsciousness were weeks of wandering “in another, intangible and fantastic world,” but for the ideologically exalted girl they became a test of her first feeling, when “for the first time she had to look so closely and so nakedly at the underside of communication with her beloved.” , to encounter in “dirty care” lice-infested, hideously emaciated, foul-smelling flesh and its lower secretions. “Internally, everything reared up in her, resisted, but the dirt of the outside did not stain the deeply and securely stored feeling,” “unexperienced love and pity,” the love here of maternal self-sacrifice. Two months later, Anna herself came to his bed for the first time, and Bunchuk, dried up and blackened from execution work in the revolutionary tribunal (although he left there that day), turned out to be powerless - all the erotic moisture of this executioner, even though he was ideologically playing himself up, service of the revolution burned out into horror and breakdown. Anna, too, managed to step over “disgust and disgust” and, after listening to his stuttering, feverish explanations, “silently hugged him and calmly, like a mother, kissed him on the forehead.” And only a week later Anna’s affection and maternal care warmed Bunchuk and pulled him out of male impotence, burnt-out conditions, and a nightmare. But when Anna painfully dies in the arms of Bunchuk from a wound in battle, the loss of his beloved woman makes sense of everything in him and around him, leading him into a state of complete apathy, dispassionate automatism. It doesn’t help at all what you were holding on to and raging about before: hatred, struggle, ideas, ideals, historical optimism... everything goes to hell! Indifferently and half-asleep, he joins Podtelkov’s expedition, simply “just to move, just to get away from the melancholy that followed him.” And in the scene of the execution of the Podtelkovites, Bunchuk alone kept looking “at the gray distance swaddled with clouds”, “at the gray haze of the sky” - “it seemed that he was waiting for something unrealistic and joyful”, perhaps from childhood superstitions long trampled upon about meetings beyond the grave , madly hoping for the only thing that could quench his immense melancholy, that melancholy that had brought him down as an unbending Bolshevik and humanized him.

Dunyasha

Conclusion

So, as a result of our study, the hypothesis that was put forward as a working one was proved: the female images created by M. Sholokhov in the novel “Quiet Flows the Don” reflect the Russian concept of femininity and the tradition of creating the image of a woman in Russian culture.

Actually, the author’s plan for “Quiet Flows the Don” can be viewed as a confrontation between his heroes and the cruel circumstances of troubled times, in which both the base and sublime impulses of the human soul are manifested. Here are people who go to death in the name of an idea (Bunchuk, Yesaul Kalmykov, Shtokman), and those who are ready to kill in the name of it (Podtelkov, Mikhail Koshevoy) and avengers for loved ones (Daria Melekhova). In all the confusion of what is happening, only love can save a person and preserve him for life, while hatred destroys him - the main idea of the novel. And it is the female images of the novel that embody this idea most clearly.

The novel “Quiet Don” is a work about the life of an entire people, a co-ethnic group - the Don Cossacks. National features determine the features of the narrative, the meaning of the title, and, of course, the means of creating images. Aksinya, Natalya, Ilyinichna, Dunyasha reflect all the best that the author saw in Cossack women, who not only kept the family hearth, but were also real helpers and “beregins” of the border Cossack army.

In the complex, sometimes merciless struggle of the moral and immoral, the beautiful and the ugly, the creative and destructive in love of Sholokhov’s heroines, the spiritual and everyday culture of the unique ethnicity of the Russian nation - the Don Cossacks - unfolds before the reader more deeply and clearly. But the author does not limit himself only to the generalities in female characters. With utmost subjectivity, Sholokhov depicts both the original attractiveness of Cossack women and their tragic fate in the era of the breakdown of the traditional Orthodox way of life, the destruction of the patriarchal Cossack family.

Among the Cossack women, of course, there were also “playful natures,” but they were not typical of the Don ethnic group. Aksinya, for example, is not cheating on her husband out of vindictive cunning. She did not hide the feelings that horrified her with their “sinfulness.” Having drank to the bottom the bitter cup of the peasants' ridicule and Stepan's beatings, Aksinya remained open and consistent in her desire to keep Gregory until her tragic end. Moreover, the pure and immaculate Natalya, brought up on the Orthodox holiness of family love, did not even think of responding with infidelity to her “unlucky” husband for insulted love.

Cossack women well understood their personal responsibility “for preserving the family during the absence of their husband.” The motivation for devotion to a spouse and the sanctity of family ties among Donetsk women was of a deeper nature than among representatives of other ethnic groups of the Russian nation. It was this “otherness” that the older generation of farmers felt when Aksinya, in response to warning remarks, only “laughed defiantly” and “without shame and without hiding, people held her criminal head high.” Here new forms of morality were introduced, contradicting the traditional Orthodox ones.

The author of “Quiet Don” does not deny his heroines female attractiveness. But even here, Sholokhov retreats from the temptation to leave them the so-called “folklore”, where the Cossack woman is “white and white, and thin in the waist, with a white face, black eyebrows, pointed<...>just a thin cord." It is noteworthy, however, that the reader, having noticed the discrepancy between Sholokhov’s heroines and their “folklore relatives,” easily makes up for this “shortcoming” by switching to comparing them with mythological characters of other cultures.

The school or, as they sometimes say, the incubator for the education of feelings is, first of all, the family. Here individual inclinations and traits are filled with moral and social content, mature and are corrected. In the parental home, Aksinya could not go through such a school. The ancestral roots of Christian-Orthodox purity and holiness of family relationships were cut off: at the age of sixteen, her father abused her. Stepan also could not fill her life with all the richness and specific beauty of mutual feelings and relationships that characterize a happy family. From the very first wedding night, he began beating Aksinya, often getting terribly drunk, but did not “throw her out the door” (according to established custom) and did not tell anyone about her maiden shame. As if in gratitude for the silence, she tried to captivate her husband with the intensity of sensual passions, learned to extinguish his vindictive annoyance through caresses, stopping the development of family relationships at their lowest, only sexual phase. For a year and a half, Stepan did not forgive the offense, until the birth of a child. But the daughter died before she was a year old... It’s clear that everything that happened at the very peak of life was not Aksinya’s fault, but Aksinya’s misfortune. And yet, no matter what caused this stop in the development of a culture of feelings, for her husband she remained “spoiled”, and from a socio-ethnic point of view (already because of her behavior) - “not her own”. M.A. Sholokhov was not fond of speaking names, but in in this case and he shows some closeness, a consonance of the names Aksinya, Ksyusha with Ksenia, that is, “stranger”.

Grigory was unable to undergo such an education of feelings to the necessary extent. Panteley Prokofievich, due to too thick a mixture of eastern blood, turned out to be an insufficiently consistent assistant to Ilyinichna in raising her son. The experience of early youthful love could not help Gregory either. At the very first disagreements with Aksinya, when her parents demanded to end the relationship with her “husband’s wife,” such traits of her character appeared that not only alerted the young Cossack, but also decisively influenced his choice.

Natalya, deeply offended by her husband’s actions and words, has a hard time experiencing her “spit on her happiness.” The ingenuous and truthful look of her bold eyes, with which Gregory meets during the wedding arrangement, fades away and is often replaced by one filled with tears, mournful and yearning. After a tough conversation with their father, Grigory and Aksinya go to the Listnitsky estate. Finding herself spiritually unprepared for such humiliation, Natalya cannot cope with the unexpected blow of fate. In a desperate rush towards non-existence, she violates one of the main commandments of Christianity - the inviolability, holiness of the gift of life.

So, the female characters of the novel “Quiet Don” are built on a deep penetration into the peculiarities of the national culture and traditions of the Don Cossacks, reflect not only the value system, but also the author’s perception of the fate of the Cossacks during the years of the revolution and civil war.

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