“The Thaw”: why a book is needed after the series. The Thaw in Soviet-Era Literature

The club in a large industrial city is sold out. The hall is packed, people are standing in the aisles. An extraordinary event: a novel by a young local writer has been published. Participants in the reading conference praise the debutant: everyday work is reflected accurately and vividly. The heroes of the book are truly heroes of our time.

But about them " personal life“One can argue,” says one of the leading engineers of the plant, Dmitry Koroteev. Not a penny is typical here: a serious and honest agronomist could not fall in love with a frivolous and flirtatious woman, with whom he has no common spiritual interests, and, in addition, the wife of his comrade! The love described in the novel seems to have been mechanically transferred from the pages of bourgeois literature!

Koroteev's speech causes a heated debate. More discouraged than others - although they do not express it out loud - are his closest friends: the young engineer Grisha Savchenko and the teacher Lena Zhuravleva (her husband is the director of the plant, sitting on the presidium of the conference and openly pleased with the harshness of Koroteev’s criticism).

The dispute about the book continues at Sonya Pukhova’s birthday party, where Savchenko comes straight from the club. " Smart man, but performed according to a stencil! - Grisha gets excited. - It turns out that the personal has no place in literature. And the book touched a nerve in everyone: too often we still say one thing, but in our personal lives we act differently. Readers are yearning for books like these!” “You’re right,” nods one of the guests, the artist Saburov. “It’s time to remember what art is!” “But in my opinion, Koroteev is right,” Sonya objects. - Soviet man learned to control nature, but he must learn to control his feelings..."

Lena Zhuravleva has no one to exchange opinions with about what she heard at the conference: she has long lost interest in her husband, it seems, from the day when, at the height of the “doctors’ case,” she heard from him: “You can’t trust them too much, that’s indisputable.” The disdainful and merciless “im” shocked Lena. And when, after the fire at the factory, where Zhuravlev showed himself to be a fine fellow, Koroteev spoke of him with praise, she wanted to shout: “You know nothing about him. This is a soulless person!

That’s also why Koroteev’s performance at the club upset her: he seemed so whole to her, extremely honest, both in public, and in conversation face to face, and alone with own conscience…

The choice between truth and lies, the ability to distinguish one from the other - this is what all the heroes of the story of the “thaw” call for, without exception. The thaw is not only in the social climate (Koroteev’s stepfather returns after seventeen years in prison; relations with the West and the possibility of meeting foreigners are openly discussed at the feast; at the meeting there are always daredevils ready to contradict the authorities and the opinion of the majority). This is also the thaw of everything “personal”, which for so long was customary to hide from people, not to let out the door of your home. Koroteev is a front-line soldier, there was a lot of bitterness in his life, but this choice is given to him painfully. At the party bureau, he did not find the courage to stand up for the leading engineer Sokolovsky, for whom Zhuravlev disliked. And although after the ill-fated party bureau Koroteev changed his decision and directly stated this to the head of the department of the city committee of the CPSU, his conscience was not calmed: “I have no right to judge Zhuravlev, I am the same as him. I say one thing, but live differently. Probably, today we need other, new people - romantics like Savchenko. Where can I get them from? Gorky once said that our Soviet humanism is needed. And Gorky is long gone, and the word “humanism” has disappeared from circulation - but the task remains. And it will be decided today.”

The reason for the conflict between Zhuravlev and Sokolovsky is that the director is disrupting the housing construction plan. Storm, for the first time spring days flying into the city, destroying several dilapidated barracks, causes a retaliatory storm - in Moscow. Zhuravlev is on an urgent call to Moscow for a new assignment (with a demotion, of course). For the collapse of his career, he does not blame the storm, and especially not himself - Lena who left him: leaving his wife is immoral! In the old days, for this... And Sokolovsky is also to blame for what happened (he was almost certainly the one who hastened to report the storm to the capital): “It’s a pity, after all, that I didn’t kill him...”

There was a storm and it blew away. Who will remember her? Who will remember the director Ivan Vasilyevich Zhuravlev? Who remembers last winter, when loud drops were falling from the icicles, and spring was just around the corner?..

It was difficult and long - like the path through snowy winter to the thaw - the path to happiness for Sokolovsky and the “saboteur doctor” Vera Grigorievna, Savchenko and Sonya Pukhova, the drama theater actress Tanechka and Sonya’s brother the artist Volodya. Volodya goes through his temptation of lies and cowardice: at the discussion art exhibition he attacks his childhood friend Saburov - “for formalism.” Repenting of his baseness, asking Saburov for forgiveness, Volodya admits to himself the main thing that he did not realize for too long: he has no talent. In art, as in life, the main thing is talent, and not loud words about ideology and popular demands.

Be people need Now Lena, who has found herself again with Koroteev, is striving. Sonya Pukhova also experiences this feeling - she admits to herself her love for Savchenko. In love, conquering the trials of both time and space: she and Grisha barely had time to get used to the same separation (after college, Sonya was assigned to a plant in Penza) - and then Grisha had a long way to go, to Paris, for an internship, in a group of young specialists.

Spring. Thaw. It is felt everywhere, it is felt by everyone: both those who did not believe in it, and those who were waiting for it - like Sokolovsky, traveling to Moscow, to meet his daughter Mashenka, Mary, a ballerina from Brussels, completely unknown to him and dearest to him, whom he dreamed of seeing all his life.

Contents of the article

LITERATURE OF THE THAW, conventional name for the period of literature of the Soviet Union of the 1950s–early 1960s. The death of Stalin in 1953, the XX (1956) and XXII (1961) congresses of the CPSU, which condemned the “cult of personality”, the easing of censorship and ideological restrictions - these events determined the changes reflected in the work of writers and poets of the Thaw.

In the early 1950s, on the pages literary magazines articles and works began to appear that played the role of a pathogen public opinion. The story of Ilya Ehrenburg caused heated controversy among readers and critics Thaw. The images of the heroes were given in an unexpected way. Main character, parting with a loved one, the director of a plant, an adherent of Soviet ideology, in his person, breaks with the country’s past. In addition to the main storyline, describing the fate of two painters, the writer raises the question of the artist’s right to be independent of any attitudes.

In 1956, a novel by Vladimir Dudintsev was published Not by bread alone and stories by Pavel Nilin Cruelty, Sergei Antonov It happened in Penkovo. Dudintsev's novel traces the tragic path of an inventor in a bureaucratic system. The main characters of the stories by Nilin and Antonov attracted people with their lively characters, their sincere attitude to the events around them, and their search for their own truth.

The most striking works of this period were focused on participation in solving pressing socio-political issues for the country, on reconsidering the role of the individual in the state. Society was in the process of mastering the space of newly opened freedom. Most of the participants in the debate did not abandon socialist ideas.

The preconditions for the Thaw were laid in 1945. Many writers were front-line soldiers. Prose about the war by real participants in hostilities, or, as it was called, “officer's prose,” carried an important understanding of the truth about the past war.

He was the first to raise this topic, which became central in military prose 1950–1960, Viktor Nekrasov in the story In the trenches of Stalingrad, published in 1946. Konstantin Simonov, who served as a front-line journalist, described his impressions in a trilogy Living and dead(1959–1979). In the stories of front-line writers Grigory Baklanov inch of land(1959) and The dead have no shame(1961), Yuri Bondarev Battalions ask for fire(1957) and Last salvos(1959), Konstantin Vorobyov Killed near Moscow(1963), against the backdrop of a detailed, unvarnished description of military life, the theme of conscious personal choice in a situation between life and death was heard for the first time. Knowledge of front-line life and experience of survival in the camps formed the basis of the work of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who subjected the Soviet regime to the most consistent criticism.

Issues of literary almanacs and periodicals—various literary magazines—played a major role in the “warming” process. It was they who reacted most vividly to new trends, contributed to the emergence of new names, and brought the authors of the 1920s–1930s out of oblivion.

From 1950 to 1970 the magazine " New world" was headed by A.T. Tvardovsky. As editor-in-chief, he contributed to the appearance of bright and bold publications in the magazine, gathering around him the best writers and publicists. “Novomirskaya prose” brought to the readers serious social and moral issues.

In 1952, a series of essays by Valentin Ovechkin was published in Novy Mir. District everyday life, where the topic of optimal management of agriculture was first discussed. It was debated what was better: strong-willed pressure or providing rural farms with the necessary independence. This publication marked the beginning of a whole movement in literature - “village prose”. Leisurely reflections Village Diary Efim Dorosh about the destinies of rural residents juxtaposed with the nervous, electrified prose of Vladimir Tendryakov - stories Potholes, Mayfly – short lifespan. Village prose showed the wisdom of peasants living with nature in the same rhythm and sensitively reacting to any falsehood. One of the brightest later “villageists,” Fyodor Abramov, began publishing in Novy Mir as a critic. His article was published in 1954 People of a collective farm village in post-war prose, where he called for writing “only the truth—direct and impartial.”

In 1956, two issues of the almanac “Literary Moscow” were published, edited by Emmanuel Kazakevich. I. Erenburg, K. Chukovsky, P. Antokolsky, V. Tendryakov, A. Yashin and others, as well as poets N. Zabolotsky and A. Akhmatova, published here; for the first time after a 30-year break, the works of M. Tsvetaeva were published. In 1961, the almanac “Tarussa Pages” was published, edited by Nikolai Otten, where M. Tsvetaeva, B. Slutsky, D. Samoilov, M. Kazakov, and the story of the war by Bulat Okudzhava were published Be healthy, student, chapters from golden rose and essays by K. Paustovsky.

Despite the atmosphere of renewal, opposition to new trends was significant. Poets and writers who worked according to the principles of socialist realism consistently defended them in literature. Vsevolod Kochetov, editor-in-chief of the magazine “October,” conducted a polemic with “New World.” Discussions on the pages of magazines and periodicals maintained an atmosphere of dialogue in society.

In 1955–1956, many new magazines appeared - “Youth”, “Moscow”, “Young Guard”, “Friendship of Peoples”, “Ural”, “Volga”, etc.

“Youth prose” was published mainly in the magazine “Yunost”. Its editor, Valentin Kataev, relied on young and unknown prose writers and poets. The works of the young people were characterized by a confessional intonation, youth slang, and a sincere upbeat mood.

In the stories of Anatoly Gladilin published on the pages of Youth Chronicle of the times of Viktor Podgursky(1956) and Anatoly Kuznetsov Continuation of the legend(1957) described the younger generation’s search for their path on the “construction sites of the century” and in their personal lives. The heroes were also attractive because of their sincerity and rejection of falsehood. In the story by Vasily Aksenov Star ticket, published in Youth, was described new type Soviet youth, later called “star boys” by critics. This is a new romantic, thirsting for maximum freedom, believing that in searching for himself he has the right to make mistakes.

During the Thaw period, many new bright names appeared in Russian literature. For short stories Yuri Kazakov is characterized by attention to shades psychological state ordinary people from the people (stories Manka, 1958, Trali-wali, 1959). A postman girl, a drunken beacon man, singing old songs on the river - they embody their understanding of life, focusing on their own idea of its values. Ironic story Constellation Kozlotur(1961) brought popularity to the young author Fazil Iskander. The story ridicules the emasculated bureaucratic functioning that creates fuss around unnecessary “innovative undertakings.” Subtle irony became not only a characteristic feature of Iskander’s author’s style, but also migrated into oral speech.

The science fiction genre, whose traditions were laid in the 1920s and 1930s, continues to develop. Significant works were written by Ivan Efremov - Andromeda Nebula (1958), Heart of the Snake(1959). Utopian novel Andromeda Nebula resembles a philosophical treatise on the cosmic communist future to which the development of society will lead.

In the 1950s, brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky came to literature - From outside (1959), Country of Crimson Clouds (1959), The path to Amalthea (1960), Noon, 21st century (1962), Distant Rainbow (1962), It's hard to be a god(1964). Unlike other science fiction writers who dealt with the themes of cosmic messianism in an abstract and heroic manner, the problems of cosmic “progressors” were revealed by the Strugatskys at the level of philosophical understanding of the mutual influences of civilizations different levels. In the story It's hard to be a god the question is asked what is better: the slow, painful, but natural development of society or the artificial introduction and expansion of the values of a more civilized society into a less developed one in order to direct its movement in a more progressive direction. In subsequent books by the authors, reflection on this issue becomes deeper. There comes an awareness of moral responsibility for considerable sacrifices - the so-called payment. "primitive" societies for the progress imposed on them.

It was in the 1960–1980s that Yuri Trifonov, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Venedikt Erofeev, and Joseph Brodsky came to realize themselves as writers and poets.

So, in 1950 Trifonov’s story was published Students. During his years of exile and teaching in the Ryazan region, Solzhenitsyn worked on a novel Cancer building , research Gulag Archipelago; in 1959 he wrote the story One day of Ivan Denisovich, published in 1962. In the 1950s, Venedikt Erofeev led the life of a student, wandering around different universities. He tried his pen in a lyrical diary Notes from a Psychopath(1956–1957), where a special Erofeev style was already felt.

The thaw period was accompanied by the flowering of poetry. The euphoria from the new possibilities required an emotional outburst. Since 1955, the country began to celebrate Poetry Day. On one September Sunday, poetry was read in libraries and theaters all over the country. Since 1956, an almanac with the same name began to be published. Poets spoke from the stands and packed stadiums. Poetry evenings at the Polytechnic Museum attracted thousands of enthusiastic listeners. Since the monument to the poet was inaugurated on Mayakovsky Square in 1958, this place has become a place of pilgrimage and meeting for poets and poetry lovers. Here poetry was read, books and magazines were exchanged, and there was a dialogue about what was happening in the country and the world.

The greatest popularity during the period of the poetic boom was gained by poets with a bright journalistic temperament - Robert Rozhdestvensky and Evgeny Yevtushenko. Their civic lyrics were imbued with the pathos of understanding the place of their country in the scale of world achievements. Hence a different approach to understanding civic duty and social romance. The images of leaders were revised - the image of Lenin was romanticized, Stalin was criticized. Many songs were written based on Rozhdestvensky’s poems, which formed the basis of the “big style” in the genre of Soviet pop song. In addition to civil themes, Yevgeny Yevtushenko was known for his deep and fairly frank love lyrics and cycles written based on his impressions of trips around the world.

The no less popular Andrei Voznesensky was more focused on aesthetics new modernity– airports, neon, new brands of cars, etc. However, he also paid tribute to attempts to comprehend the images of Soviet leaders in a new way. Over time, the theme of searching for the true values of existence began to emerge in Voznesensky’s work. The chamber, intimate motifs of Bella Akhmadulina, her unique, melodious author's style of performance were subtly reminiscent of the poetess Silver Age, attracting many fans to her.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the art song genre became popular. Most a prominent representative and the founder of this direction was Bulat Okudzhava. Together with Rozhdestvensky, Yevtushenko, Voznesensky and Akhmadulina, he performed at noisy poetry evenings at the Polytechnic Museum. His work became the starting point, the impetus for the emergence of a galaxy of popular domestic bards - Vizbor, Gorodnitsky, Galich, Vladimir Vysotsky and others. Many bards performed songs not only with their own words, often lines of poets of the Silver Age - Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Mandelstam were set to music.

The entire palette of the poetic process of the Thaw period was not limited to the bright young voices that were widely heard by the general reader. The collections of poets of the older generation - Nikolai Aseev - are imbued with a premonition of change Thoughts(1955), Leonid Martynov Poetry(1957). Understanding the lessons of war - main topic front-line poets Semyon Gudzenko, Alexander Mezhirov, Olga Berggolts, Yulia Drunina. The motives of courageous asceticism, which helped to survive in the camps, were heard in the works of Yaroslav Smelyakov. “Quiet lyricists” Vladimir Sokolov and Nikolai Rubtsov turned to nature in search of authenticity of being and harmony with the world. David Samoilov and Boris Slutsky based their work on broad cultural and historical reflection.

In addition to the generally recognized published authors, there were a significant number of poets and writers who were not published. They united in groups - poetry circles of like-minded people, which existed either as private associations or as literary associations at universities. In Leningrad, the association of poets at the university (V. Uflyand, M. Eremin, L. Vinogradov, etc.) was inspired by the poetry of the Oberiuts. In a circle at the Leningrad Technological Institute (E. Rein, D. Bobyshev, A. Naiman), whose common hobby was Acmeism, a young poet Joseph Brodsky appeared. He attracted attention for his lack of conformity - his reluctance to play by the accepted rules, for which in 1964 he was brought to court for “parasitism.”

Most of the creative heritage of the Moscow “Lianozov group,” which included G. Sapgir, I. Kholin, Vs. Nekrasov, was published only 30–40 years after it was written. The Lianozovites experimented with colloquial, everyday speech, achieving paradoxical connections and consonances through dissonance. In Moscow at the end of the 1950s there was also a circle of students of the institute foreign languages, which included the poet Stanislav Krasovitsky. In 1964, on the initiative of the poet Leonid Gubanov, the student association of poets and artists SMOG was born (V. Aleynikov, V. Delone, A. Basilova, S. Morozov, V. Batshev, A. Sokolov, Yu. Kublanovsky, etc.), which, in addition to literary experiments carried out radical actions, which accelerated its collapse.

The reaction of the authorities to the publications of some authors abroad was painful and acute. This was given the status of almost high treason, which was accompanied by forced expulsion, scandals, trials, etc. The state still considered itself to have the right to determine the norms and boundaries of thinking and creativity for its citizens. That is why in 1958 a scandal broke out over the award Nobel Prize Boris Pasternak for a novel published abroad Doctor Zhivago. The writer had to refuse the prize. In 1965 there followed a scandal with the writers Andrei Sinyavsky (stories The trial is underway, Lyubimov, treatise What is socialist realism) and Julius Daniel (stories Moscow speaks, Redemption), who published their works in the West since the late 1950s. They were sentenced “for anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda” to five and seven years in the camps. Vladimir Voinovich after the publication of the novel in the West The life and extraordinary adventures of soldier Ivan Chonkin had to leave the USSR because He could no longer hope to publish his books in his homeland.

In addition to “tamizdat,” “samizdat” became a characteristic phenomenon of the society of that time. Many works passed from hand to hand, reprinted on typewriters or simple duplicating equipment. The very fact of prohibition fueled interest in these publications and contributed to their popularity.

After Brezhnev came to power, it is believed that the “thaw” ended. Criticism was allowed within limits that did not undermine the existing system. There was a rethinking of the role of Lenin - Stalin in history - different interpretations were proposed. Criticism of Stalin waned.

Essential for understanding the boundaries of freedom was the attitude towards literary heritage beginning of the century. The event was the last work of Ilya Erenburg - memoirs People, years, life(1961–1966). For the first time, many learned about the existence of such historical figures as Mandelstam, Balmont, Tsvetaeva, Falk, Modigliani, Savinkov and others. Names suppressed by Soviet ideology, described in detail and vividly, became the reality of national history, the artificially interrupted connection between the eras - pre-revolutionary and Soviet - was restored. Some of the authors of the Silver Age, in particular Blok and Yesenin, already began to be mentioned and published in the 1950s. Other authors were still banned.

Self-censorship developed. The internal censor told the author which topics could be raised and which should not be discussed. Certain elements of ideology were perceived as a formality, a convention that must be taken into account.

Olga Loshchilina

DRAMATURGY OF “THAW”

The “Thaw” not only debunked the myth of the holiness of the “father of all nations.” For the first time, it made it possible to raise the ideological scenery above the Soviet stage and drama. Of course, not all, but a very significant part of them. Before talking about the happiness of all mankind, it would be nice to think about the happiness and unhappiness of an individual person.

The process of “humanization” declared itself in playwrights both in its literary basis and in its production.

Search artistic means, capable of conveying the leading trends of the time within the framework of everyday, chamber drama, led to the creation of such a significant work as the play by Alexei Arbuzov Irkutsk history(1959–1960). The depiction of everyday human drama rose in it to the height of poetic reflections on the moral principles of a contemporary, and the features of the new historical era were vividly imprinted in the appearance of the heroes themselves.

At the beginning, the heroine of the play, a young girl Valya, experiences a state of deep mental loneliness. Having lost faith in the existence of true love, she lost faith in people, in the possibility of happiness for herself. She tries to compensate for the painful spiritual emptiness, boredom and prose of everyday work with a frequent change of love affairs, the illusory romance of a thoughtless life. Loving Victor, suffering humiliation from him, she decides to “revenge” him - she marries Sergei.

Another life begins, Sergei helps the heroine find herself again. He has a strong-willed, strong, persistent and at the same time humanly charming character, full of warmth. It is this character that makes him, without hesitation, rush to the aid of a drowning boy. The boy is saved, but Sergei dies. The tragic shock experienced by the heroine completes the turning point in her soul. Victor also changes; the death of a friend forces him to reconsider many things in his life. own life. Now, after real tests, it becomes possible true love heroes.

It is significant that Arbuzov widely used stage convention techniques in the play. A sharp mixture of real and conventional plans, a retrospective way of organizing action, transferring events from the recent past to the present day - all this was necessary for the author in order to activate the reader, viewer, make his contact with the characters more lively and direct, as if bringing problems to the surface. space for broad, open discussion.

Prominent place in artistic structure The Chorus occupies the pieces. He introduces into this drama journalistic elements that were extremely popular in the society of that time.

“Even the day before death is not too late to start life over again” - this is the main thesis of Arbuzov’s play My poor Marat(1064), the approval of which the heroes come to in the finale after many years of spiritual quest. Both plot-wise and from the point of view of the dramatic techniques used here My poor Marat constructed as a chronicle. At the same time, the play is subtitled “dialogues in three parts.” Each such part has its own precise, up to month, designation of time. With these constant dates, the author seeks to emphasize the connection of the heroes with the world around them, evaluating them throughout the entire historical period.

The main characters are tested for mental strength. Despite the happy ending, the author seems to be saying: everyday life, simple human relationships require great spiritual strength if you want your dreams of success and happiness not to collapse.

In the most famous dramatic works those years, the problems of everyday life, family, love are not separated from issues of moral and civic duty. At the same time, of course, the severity and relevance of social and moral issues in themselves were not a guarantor creative success– it was achieved only when the authors found new dramatic ways of considering life’s contradictions and sought to enrich and develop the aesthetic system.

The work of Alexander Vampilov is very interesting. His main achievement is a complex polyphony of living human characters, in many ways dialectically continuing each other and at the same time endowed with pronounced individual traits.

Already in the first lyrical comedy Farewell in June(1965) The signs of a hero were clearly identified, who then passed through Vampilov’s other plays in different guises.

Busygin takes complex psychological paths to achieve spiritual integrity, main character plays by Vampilov Eldest son(1967). The plot of the play is constructed in a very unusual way. Busygin and his random travel companion Sevostyanov, nicknamed Silva, find themselves in the Sarafanov family, unknown to them, who are going through difficult times. Busygin unwittingly becomes responsible for what is happening to his “relatives.” As he ceases to be a stranger in the Sarafanovs’ house, the previous connection with Silva, who turns out to be an ordinary vulgar, gradually disappears. But Busygin himself is increasingly burdened by the game he has started, by his frivolous but cruel act. He discovers a spiritual kinship with Sarafanov, for whom, by the way, it doesn’t matter at all whether the main character is a blood relative or not. Therefore, the long-awaited revelation leads to a happy ending to the entire play. Busygin takes a difficult and therefore conscious, purposeful step forward in his spiritual development.

The problem is solved even more complexly and dramatically moral choice in the play Duck hunting(1967). The comic element, so natural in Vampilov’s previous plays, is here reduced to a minimum. The author examines in detail the character of a person drowned in the vanity of life, and shows how, by making immorality the norm of behavior, without thinking about the good for others, a person kills the humanity in himself.

The duck hunt, which the hero of the drama Viktor Zilov is going on throughout the entire action, is not at all an expression of his spiritual essence. He is a bad shot because he admits that he feels bad about killing ducks. As it turns out, he feels sorry for himself, too, although once he reaches a dead end in his senseless whirling among seemingly beloved women and seemingly friendly men, he tries to stop everything with one shot. Of course, there was not enough strength for this.

On the one hand, comic, obviously invented, and on the other, small everyday situations in which Vampilov places his heroes, with a more serious acquaintance with them, each time turn out to be serious tests for a contemporary trying to answer the question: “Who are you, man?”

Ethical problems were clearly revealed in the drama of Viktor Rozov On your wedding day(1964). Here, quite young people are tested for moral maturity. On the wedding day, the bride suddenly declares that the wedding will not happen and that she is parting with the groom forever, although she loves him endlessly. Despite all the unexpectedness of such a decisive act, the behavior of the heroine - Nyura Salova, the daughter of a night watchman in a small Volga town - has its own inexorable internal logic, leading her close to the need to renounce happiness. As the story progresses, Nyura becomes convinced of a bitter but immutable truth: the man she is marrying has long loved another woman.

Originality conflict situation that arises in the play is that the struggle does not flare up between the heroes within a closed and fairly traditional love “triangle”. Rozov, having retrospectively outlined the real origins of the acute conflict that has arisen, follows, first of all, the intense confrontation that takes place in the soul of the heroine, because ultimately she herself must make a conscious choice, utter the decisive word.

Rozov opposed the dogmatic concept of the “ideal hero”, who certainly manifests himself against a historical and social background. The action of his plays always takes place in a narrow circle of characters. If this is not a family, then a group of graduates and classmates who have gathered at school for their evening after many years of separation. Sergei Usov, the main character of the play Traditional collection(1967), directly speaks about the value of the individual, independent of professional achievements, positions, social roles– the fundamental principles of human spirituality are important to him. Therefore, he becomes a kind of arbiter in the dispute between matured graduates trying to separate the wheat from the chaff in assessing the viability of this or that fate. The gathering of graduates becomes a review of their moral achievements.

In the same way, Alexander Volodin separates and disconnects his characters from numerous public connections - Older sister(1961),Purpose(1963); Edward Radzinsky - 104 pages about love(1964),Filming (1965).

This is especially typical for female images, to whom the author's undivided sympathy is given. The heroines are touchingly romantic and, despite the very difficult relationship with those around them, as if pushing them to give up any dreams, they always remain true to their ideals. They are quiet, not very noticeable, but, warming the souls of loved ones, they find strength for themselves to live with faith and love. Girl stewardess ( 104 pages about love), chance meeting which did not foreshadow for the hero, the young and talented physicist Electron, seemingly any changes in his rationally correct life, in fact showed that a person without love, without affection, without a feeling of his daily need for another person is not a person at all. In the finale, the hero receives unexpected news about the death of his girlfriend and realizes that he will never again be able to feel life the way he once did - that is, just three and a half months ago...

Interestingly, much changed in the 1960s even for so-called revolutionary drama. On the one hand, she began to resort to the possibilities of documentary filmmaking, which is largely explained by the desire of the authors to be reliable down to the smallest detail. On the other hand, the images of historical figures acquired the features of completely “living” people, that is, contradictory, doubting people going through an internal spiritual struggle.

In the play by Mikhail Shatrov sixth of july(1964), called in the subtitle “an experience in documentary drama,” the history of the revolution itself was directly recreated in a dramatic combination of circumstances and characters. The author set himself the task of discovering this drama and introducing it into the framework theatrical action. However, Shatrov did not take the path of simply reproducing the chronicle of events; he tried to reveal their internal logic, revealing the socio-psychological motives for the behavior of their participants.

The historical facts underlying the play - the Left Socialist Revolutionary rebellion in Moscow on July 6, 1918 - gave the author ample opportunity to search for exciting scenic situations, free flight creative imagination. However, following the principle he had chosen, Shatrov sought to discover the power of drama in the very real story. The intensity of the dramatic action intensifies as the political and moral combat between the two politicians– Lenin and the leader of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries Maria Spiridonova.

But in another play, Bolsheviks(1967), Shatrov is already in many ways, according to own confession, departs from the document, from the exact chronology “for the sake of creating a more integral artistic image era." The action takes place over just a few hours on the evening of August 30, 1918 (with the stage time more or less exactly corresponding to the real one). Uritsky was killed in Petrograd, and an attempt was made on Lenin's life in Moscow. If in Sixth of July the mainspring of the stage action was the rapid, condensed movement of events, the development historical fact, then in Bolsheviks the emphasis is shifted to the artistic understanding of the fact, to penetration into its deep philosophical essence. Not the tragic events themselves (they happen behind the scenes), but their refraction in the spiritual life of people, the moral problems they put forward form the basis of the ideological and artistic concept of the play.

Collision different views on the moral responsibilities of the individual in society, the processes of the hero’s internal, spiritual development, the formation of his ethical principles, which takes place in intense and acute mental struggles, in difficult searches, in conflicts with others - these contradictions constitute the driving principle of most plays of the 1960s. By turning the content of their works primarily to issues of morality and personal behavior, playwrights significantly expanded the range of artistic solutions and genres. The basis of such searches and experiments was the desire to strengthen the intellectual element of the drama, and most importantly, to find new opportunities for identifying spiritual and moral potential in a person’s character.

Elena Sirotkina

Literature:

Goldstein A. Farewell to Narcissus. M., UFO, 1997
Matusevich V. Notes of a Soviet editor. M., UFO, 2000
Weil P., Genis A. 1960s: the world of Soviet man. M., UFO, 2001
Voinovich V. Anti-Soviet Soviet Union . M., Mainland, 2002
Kara-Murza S. "Scoop" remembers. M., Eksmo, 2002
Savitsky S. underground. M., UFO, 2002
Soviet wealth. St. Petersburg, Academic project, 2002

But one can argue about their “personal life,” says one of the leading engineers of the plant, Dmitry Koroteev. Not a penny is typical here: a serious and honest agronomist could not fall in love with a frivolous and flirtatious woman, with whom he has no common spiritual interests, and, in addition, the wife of his comrade! The love described in the novel seems to have been mechanically transferred from the pages of bourgeois literature!

The dispute about the book continues at Sonya Pukhova’s birthday party, where Savchenko comes straight from the club. “A smart man, but he performed according to a stencil! - Grisha gets excited. - It turns out that the personal has no place in literature. And the book touched a nerve in everyone: too often we say one thing, but in our personal lives we act differently. Readers are yearning for books like these!” “You’re right,” nods one of the guests, the artist Saburov. “It’s time to remember what art is!” “But in my opinion, Koroteev is right,” Sonya objects. “Soviet man has learned to control nature, but he must learn to control his feelings...”

That’s also why Koroteev’s performance at the club upset her: he seemed so whole to her, extremely honest, both in public, and in a face-to-face conversation, and alone with his own conscience...

The choice between truth and lies, the ability to distinguish one from the other - this is what all the heroes of the story of the “thaw” call for, without exception. The thaw is not only in the social climate (Koroteev’s stepfather returns after seventeen years in prison; relations with the West and the possibility of meeting foreigners are openly discussed at the feast; at the meeting there are always daredevils ready to contradict the authorities and the opinion of the majority). This is also the thaw of everything “personal”, which for so long was customary to hide from people, not to let out the door of your home. Koroteev is a front-line soldier, there was a lot of bitterness in his life, but this choice is given to him painfully. At the party bureau, he did not find the courage to stand up for the leading engineer Sokolovsky, for whom Zhuravlev disliked. And although after the ill-fated party bureau, Koroteev changed his decision and directly stated this to the head of the department of the city committee of the CPSU, his conscience was not calmed: “I have no right to judge Zhuravlev, I am the same as him. I say one thing, but live differently. Probably, today we need other, new people - romantics like Savchenko. Where can I get them from? Gorky once said that our Soviet humanism is needed. And Gorky is long gone, and the word “humanism” has disappeared from circulation - but the task remains. And it will be decided today.”

The reason for the conflict between Zhuravlev and Sokolovsky is that the director is disrupting the housing construction plan. A storm that hit the city in the first spring days, destroying several dilapidated barracks, causes a response storm - in Moscow. Zhuravlev is on an urgent call to Moscow for a new assignment (with a demotion, of course). For the collapse of his career, he does not blame the storm, and especially not himself - Lena who left him: leaving his wife is immoral! In the old days, for this... And Sokolovsky is also to blame for what happened (he was almost certainly the one who hastened to report the storm to the capital): “It’s a pity, after all, that I didn’t kill him...”

Difficult and long was - like the path through the snowy winter to the thaw - the path to happiness of Sokolovsky and the “pest doctor” Vera Grigorievna, Savchenko and Sonya Pukhova, the drama theater actress Tanechka and Sonya’s artist brother Volodya. Volodya goes through his temptation with lies and cowardice: during a discussion of an art exhibition, he attacks his childhood friend Saburov - “for formalism.” Repenting of his baseness, asking Saburov for forgiveness, Volodya admits to himself the main thing that he did not realize for too long: he has no talent. In art, as in life, the main thing is talent, and not loud words about ideology and popular demands.

Now Lena, who has found herself again with Koroteev, strives to be needed by people. Sonya Pukhova also experiences this feeling - she admits to herself her love for Savchenko. In love, conquering the trials of both time and space: she and Grisha barely had time to get used to the same separation (after college, Sonya was assigned to a plant in Penza) - and then Grisha had a long way to go, to Paris, for an internship, in a group of young specialists.

Rubashkin A.

There are works in the history of literature that left a mark on the public consciousness primarily due to the timeliness of their publication. After them, books that are artistically more significant may come out, but they won’t be remembered that way. Ehrenburg’s “Thaw” determined the turn of our lives; the very concept of the “post-Stalin Thaw” came from this story. The name has become a household name.

The story says nothing about the March days of 1963, when we mourned, saying goodbye to the past. Stalin's name is not mentioned at all - all this happened after him, in a different era. In “The Thaw” there is an atmosphere of the autumn of 1953 - winter of 1954, a story about what the author and his heroes experienced at a turning point in our existence... Monuments to Stalin were still firmly standing, his seventy-fifth birthday was still celebrated in the press, but something was already leaving. And the story was perceived as anti-cult even before the official condemnation of what was later called the “cult of personality.”

What is this anti-cultism? In approaching a person. For years it has been argued that a person is a cog in a huge state mechanism. And here, through the mouth of his hero, the old Bolshevik Andrei Ivanovich Pukhov, the author proclaimed: “Society consists of living people, you can’t solve anything with arithmetic. It is not enough to develop reasonable measures, you need to be able to implement them, and every person is responsible for this. You can’t reduce everything to the protocol of “listened and decided.”

It is not easy for the heroes to achieve their happiness - it is difficult for them to understand their feelings. Lena reaches out to Koroteev and is tormented: how to leave Zhuravlev, after all, they have a daughter, and she chose it herself. At his age, Dr. Scherer does not want to believe in the possibility of happiness with Sokolovsky. Sonya Pukhova suffers herself and torments her chosen one, making her equal with others when “on a sultry August he walked across the steppe with a retreating division.” During the war, he lost his love; before the war, his faith was undermined. Is it possible to calculate what was more bad or good in Koroteev’s life?

There is no broad canvas of life in Ehrenburg's story, but his characters knew what he knew. Everyone had problems not only of a personal nature. The quarrelsome Sokolovsky is at the same time silent, he seems strange to people, but much is clarified from the details of his biography that are given in the story. An old Bolshevik, a participant in the civil war, a talented engineer, he is gripped by fear that he will be reminded of his adult daughter living abroad. “Is the questionnaire really the most important thing?” - he thinks. Sokolovsky has already suffered because of the questionnaire, he was driven out of the Ural plant, a feuilleton about him appeared in the newspaper. And here comes the same threat again, now Zhuravlev is ready to remind him of his Belgian kinship. Upon learning of this, Sokolovsky becomes seriously ill...

Maybe Ehrenburg is “stimulating” bitter fates? But he knows that Sokolovsky’s generation drank much more than this hero. His peers not only read feuilletons about themselves, but also lost their lives in Stalin’s dungeons, like the writer’s Bolshevik friend Semyon Chlenov, like his Bolshevik comrade in Spain Mikhail Koltsov.

The writer knew that drama past years was more than he could say about it, he knew that Simonov did not remain ignorant. The (then secret) poems of Olga Berggolts had already been written - “No, not from our meager books...” Ehrenburg read them. And he knew about Akhmatova’s “Requiem” from the author himself. So Ehrenburg was sincere when he wrote: “I would not dispute the judgments of K. Simonov if they were limited to an assessment of the artistic merits or shortcomings of my story.” It was about something else. About the characteristics of time, about the colors with which our lives are painted.

Now is the time to turn to 1954. Warm winds had already blown, but there were still so many ice sheets and shadowy sides. With the active participation of the same Simonov, they once again “worked” Zoshchenko. Articles by Mikhail Livshits, Vladimir Pomerantsev, and Fyodor Abramov published in Novy Mir were sharply criticized. All of them were included in the slanderers. As a result of this criticism, the editor of the magazine, Alexander Tvardovsky, was removed from his post for the first time. Instead they appointed... Simonov. So Ehrenburg was not alone in his experiences. A year later. criticism fell on Pavel Nilin - he wrote the story “Cruelty”, talked about how time tested a person to the breaking point, argued that it is impossible to achieve high goals by immoral methods...

As for Ehrenburg, his “Thaw” was on the “black board” for a long time. I didn’t like the characters, I didn’t like the way the writer talked about art. Simonov devoted more than half of his article to this, arguing that the author gives “an incorrect assessment of our art and promotes incorrect views on the path of its development.”

Meanwhile, in his short story, Ehrenburg did not even think of presenting a “picture of the state of art.” In it, along with other characters, there are two artist-antagonists - Pukhov and Saburov, there is individual statements about books and plays. It is clear that the author looks at many things critically. And it's not just about art. “She (Tanya - A.R.) played in a Soviet play a laboratory assistant who exposes a professor guilty of sycophancy.” It is unlikely that a play with such a conflict can be good, therefore the situation itself in which such conflicts are possible is more important. And Ehrenburg himself had to hear these reproaches of “sycophancy.”

Perhaps most of all, the story talks about painting. The cynical artist Pukhov, who has already betrayed art, reflects on her. The author was criticized most of all for these reflections: he, they say, does not expose Pukhov, making him almost a victim of circumstances. Along the way, critics, and above all Simonov, argued that Ehrenburg should have shown a wide palette of art and his achievements. “The author of the story considered it good to close his eyes and see through the crack only the Poohs and Saburovs Tanya.”

In the Ehrenburg archive there is a letter to him from director Grigory Lozintsev: “Even the most dashing critics did not reproach Ostrovsky for the fact that in “The Forest” he distorted the entire state of the Russian theatrical arts, in which both Shchepkin and Martynov were then present; and Sadovsky... And the most lively official pen would not dare to ask Ostrovsky a question - who does he classify himself as, Neschastlivtsev or Arkashka, and yet there were no other theater figures in the play.”

Pukhov and Saburov are different poles of art. The first is alien to Ehrenburg, who sees him as an opportunist, a hack, while the author deeply sympathizes with the second. Of course, there are artists of a different kind, but the writer talks about what worries him and focuses his attention on these phenomena. Simonov “guessed” in the story some influential and high-ranking opportunists, much more noticeable and therefore harmful, such as the artist Alexander Gerasimov. As for the other pole, at that time one could occasionally see first of all Falk, a wonderful landscape painter, who was not recognized and was “beaten with a ruble,” accusing, of course, of formalism.

The desire of the critics of that time for Ehrenburg to at least “hint” that everything is not limited to these poles is very strange, the writer is talking about real phenomena artistic life, without pretending to review them. Otherwise, he could have “hinted” at a lot of things: for example, how his favorite composers, Prokofiev and Shostakovich, were treated in the forties (one of the latter’s symphonies is mentioned in “The Thaw”), how the theater was closed and thus the life of a wonderful director was shortened. He could also recall the fate of Akhmatova and Zoshchenko.

Without whitewashing the Pukhovs, Ehrenburg emphasizes that society has the conditions for their emergence, that our art contains many unnecessary regulations and established stereotypes. The same Simonov “agrees” - let Pukhov appear in the story, but the author must expose him more definitely. As if the hero doesn’t expose himself enough. “Of course, I’m a hack, but in general everyone is more or less a hack, only some don’t want to understand this.” Does Volodya Pukhov really think so? Rather, he calms himself down. This “everything” removes responsibility, it makes life easier. “After all, everyone maneuvers, cheats, lies, some are smarter, others are stupider,” Pukhov repeats to himself. Those “everyone” again. But do all artists paint paintings under the odious title “Feast on the Collective Farm”? Does everyone agree to draw a portrait of Zhuravlev, realizing that he “has a face like dirty cotton wool between two frames”? Does everyone write such novels and such music? From the story it is clear - not everything. There is Saburov, who will not refer to the era (“Now everyone is shouting about art and no one loves it,” Pukhov justifies himself), there are writers about whom the heroes of the story want to argue. Koroteev directly repeats Ehrenburg’s assessment of Vasily Grossman’s novel “For a Just Cause”: “He showed the war honestly, that’s how it really happened...”

Not everyone maneuvers, not everyone remains silent, seeing the disgrace. The elder Pukhov is not silent, he attacks both the director of the plant and the newspapermen - Sokolovsky (“they described the plant as if it were heaven”). Volodya Pukhov is left with a consolation born of the passing time: “I didn’t drip on anyone, I didn’t drown anyone.” The fact that he betrayed himself and art does not seem to count.

Critics found Saburov's image unexpected and unjustifiably elevated. They didn’t see how polemical the author is in portraying just such an artist, whose paintings are not bought or exhibited. Time seems to have left him no place in art. There was a simplified, pragmatic idea of the tasks of painting; a monumental, large-scale idea was supported. Everything else went under the rubric of “formalism.” And I was already dreaming that Ehrenburg was calling all our art to “take the path of Saburov, the path of isolation, separation from life.” Of course, the writer was ironic when talking about another of Pukhov’s hackworks - a panel for an agricultural exhibition depicting cows and chickens. No one would see a “break from life” here, but the portrait of the artist Saburov’s wife, his landscapes are something not “mainstream”, outdated, like discussions about Raphael, about the sense of color, about composition.

Ehrenburg argued in his objections to critics that his story was not dedicated to art. But he hoped for a renewal of society, the whole atmosphere of life. What has become a pattern of life these days was a revelation in 1954. The characters talk about what they don’t want to put up with. Saburov - about photographs replacing paintings, engineer Savchenko - about double-mindedness that has settled in people. “You probably haven’t been to such discussions for a long time, but a lot has changed... The book touched a sore spot - people too often say one thing, but act differently in their personal lives.” Sokolovsky cannot find the words to explain himself to Vera Grigorievna; he is not a timid boy and expresses his condition, feeling the full severity of what he has experienced: “It seems that our hearts are frozen through.”

We prevail over I. Utopian novel. Society has come to complete communism and all that remains personal is sex, both on coupons and behind curtains, imagination. Revolutions will never go away. The whole society exists without ideas, it is boring, monotonous, a completely utopian scenario. In the end they become us.

Historical and literary situation of the “thaw” era.

1956 Death of Stalin, 20th Congress, report on the destruction of the cult of personality, release of prisoners, since it is unprofitable to keep them

Literature during the Thaw

Back in 1948, a poem was published in the magazine “New World” N. Zabolotsky“The Thaw”, which described an ordinary natural phenomenon, however, in the context of the then events of social life it was perceived as a metaphor:

Thaw after a snowstorm.

The blizzard has just died down,

The snowdrifts settled at once

And the snow darkened...

Let it be a silent slumber

White fields breathe

Immeasurable work

The land is occupied again.

The trees will wake up soon.

Soon, having lined up,

Migratory birds nomads

The trumpets of spring will sound.

In 1954, I. Ehrenburg’s story “The Thaw” appeared, which caused heated discussions. It was written on the topic of the day and is now almost forgotten, but its title reflected the essence of the changes. “Many people were confused by the name, because in explanatory dictionaries it has two meanings: a thaw in the middle of winter and a thaw as the end of winter - I was thinking about the latter,” this is how I. Ehrenburg explained his understanding of what was happening.

The processes that took place in the spiritual life of society were reflected in the literature and art of those years. A struggle developed against the varnishing, the ceremonial display of reality.

The first essays were published in the magazine "New World" V. Ovechkina“District everyday life”, “On one collective farm”, “In the same area” (1952-1956), dedicated to the village and compiled into a book. The author truthfully described the difficult life of the collective farm, the activities of the district committee secretary, the soulless, arrogant official Borzov, while the features of social generalization appeared in specific details. In those years, this required unprecedented courage. Ovechkin's book has become a topical fact not only of literary, but also of social life. It was discussed at collective farm meetings and party conferences.

Although to the modern reader the essays may seem sketchy and even naive, they meant a lot for their time. Published in a leading thick magazine and partially reprinted in Pravda, they marked the beginning of overcoming the rigid canons and cliches established in literature.

The times urgently demanded a deep renewal. In the twelfth issue of the magazine “New World” for 1953, an article by V. Pomerantsev “On Sincerity in Literature” was published. He was one of the first to talk about the major miscalculations of modern literature - the idealization of life, the artificiality of plots and characters: “The history of art and the basics of psychology cry out against made-up novels and plays...”

In August 1954, the CPSU Central Committee adopted a decision “On the mistakes of the New World.” It was published as a decision of the Secretariat of the Writers' Union. Articles by Pomerantsev, Abramov. Lifshits and Shcheglova were recognized as “defamatory”. Tvardovsky was removed from his post as editor-in-chief. The set of his poem “Terkin in the Other World,” which was being prepared for the fifth issue, was scattered, but they were waiting for it! L. Kopelev testifies: “We perceived this poem as a reckoning with the past, as a joyful, thawed stream, washing away the dust and mold of Stalin’s carrion.”

The central event of the 1950s was the 20th Congress of the CPSU, at which N. S. Khrushchev made a speech “On the cult of personality and its consequences.” “Khrushchev’s report had a stronger and deeper effect than anything that had happened before. It shook the very foundations of our lives. He made me doubt the fairness of our social system for the first time.<...>This report was read in factories, factories, institutions, and institutes.<...>

Even those who knew a lot before, even those who never believed what I believed, and they hoped that renewal would begin with the 20th Congress,” recalls the famous human rights activist R. Orlova.

The Stalinist myth about a single Soviet culture, about a single and best method has been shaken Soviet art- socialist realism. It turned out that neither the traditions of the Silver Age nor the impressionistic and expressionistic searches of the 1920s were forgotten. “Movism” by V. Kataev, prose by V. Aksenov, etc., the conventionally metaphorical style of poetry by A. Voznesensky, R. Rozhdestvensky, the emergence of the “Lianozovo” school of painting and poetry, exhibitions of avant-garde artists, experimental theatrical productions - this phenomena of the same order. There was a revival of art, developing according to immanent laws, which the state has no right to encroach on.

The art of the “thaw” lived in hope. New names burst into poetry, theater, and cinema: B. Slutsky, A. Voznesensky, E. Yevtushenko, B. Akhmadulina, B. Okudzhava. N. Matveeva. N. Aseev, M. Svetlov, N. Zabolotsky, L. Martynov, who had been silent for a long time, spoke up.

After the 20th Party Congress, the opportunity arose to rethink the events of the Great Patriotic War. The true truth, of course, was far from being true, but the stilted images were replaced by ordinary, ordinary people who bore the brunt of the war on their shoulders. The truth was asserted, which some critics contemptuously and unfairly called “trench truth.” During these years, the books by Yu. Bondarev “Battalions Ask for Lights” (1957), “Silence” (1962), “Last Salvos” (1959) were published; G. Baklanov “South of the Main Impact” (1958), “An Inch of Earth” (1959); K. Simonov “The Living and the Dead” (1959), “They are not born soldiers” (1964); S. Smirnov’s “Brest Fortress” (1957 - 1964), etc. The military theme was heard in a new way in the very first program performance of “Contemporary” “Eternally Living” (1956) based on the play by V. Rozov.

During the “thaw”, the problem of youth, their ideals and place in society acquired particular prominence. The credo of this generation was expressed by V. Aksenov in the story “Colleagues” (1960): “My generation of people walking with open eyes. We look forward and backward, and at our feet... We look at things clearly and will not allow anyone to speculate on what is sacred to us.”

New publications appeared: the magazines “Young Guard” by A. Makarov, “Moscow” by N. Atarov, the almanacs “Literary Moscow” and “Tarussky Pages”, etc.

During the “thaw” years, beautiful prose and poetry returned to the reader. The publications of the poems of A. Akhmatova and B. Pasternak aroused interest in their early work, they again remembered I. Ilf and E. Petrov, S. Yesenin, M. Zoshchenko, and the recently banned books of B. Yasensky and I. Babel were published. .. On December 26, 1962, an evening in memory of M. Tsvetaeva was held in the Great Hall of the Central House of Writers. Before this, a small collection of hers was published. Contemporaries perceived this as a triumph of freedom.

At the beginning of September 1956, the All-Union Poetry Day was held for the first time in many cities.

The most significant achievement of “thaw” prose was the appearance in 1962 of the story “The New World” A. Solzhenitsyn"One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich." She made a strong impression on A. Tvardovsky, who again headed the magazine. The decision to publish came immediately, but it took all of Tvardovsky’s diplomatic talent to carry out his plans. He collected rave reviews from the most eminent writers - S. Marshak, K. Fedin, I. Ehrenburg, K. Chukovsky, who called the work a “literary miracle”, wrote an introduction and, through Khrushchev’s assistant, handed the text to the General Secretary, who persuaded the Politburo to allow publication of the story.

According to R. Orlova, the publication of “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” caused an extraordinary shock. Laudatory reviews were published not only by K. Simonov in Izvestia and G. Baklanov in Litgazeta, but also by V. Ermilov in Pravda and A. Dymshits in Literature and Life. The recent die-hard Stalinists, the vigilant “workers,” praised the exile, the prisoner of Stalin’s camps.

The very fact of the publication of Solzhenitsyn’s story inspired hope that the opportunity had arisen to tell the truth. In January 1963, Novy Mir published his stories “Matrenin's Dvor” and “An Incident at Krechetovka Station.” The Writers' Union nominated Solzhenitsyn for the Lenin Prize.

Ehrenburg published “People, Years, Life.” The memoir seemed more modern than topical novels. Decades later, the writer reflected on the life of the country emerging from the muteness of Stalin’s tyranny. Ehrenburg brought the bill both to himself and to the state, which had inflicted heavy damage on the national culture. This is the acute social relevance of these memoirs, which were nevertheless published with banknotes restored only in the late 1980s.

During these same years A. Akhmatova decided to record “Requiem” for the first time, which for many years existed only in the memory of the author and people close to him. L. Chukovskaya was preparing for publication “Sofya Petrovna” - a story about the years of terror, written in 1939. The literary community made attempts to defend in print the prose of V. Shalamov, “Steep Route” by E. Ginzburg, sought the rehabilitation of O. Mandelstam, I. Babel , P. Vasilyev, I. Kataev and other repressed writers and poets.