Why Grigory Melekhov is the main character. Grigory Melekhov in the novel "Quiet Flows the Don": characteristics

The protagonist of "The Quiet Flows the Don" Grigory Panteleevich Melekhov was born in 1892 in the Tatarsky farm of the Veshenskaya village of the Don Cossack Region. The farm is large - in 1912 it had three hundred households, located on the right bank of the Don, opposite the village of Veshenskaya. Grigory's parents: a retired sergeant of the Life Guards Ataman Regiment Pantelei Prokofievich and his wife Vasilisa Ilyinichna.

Of course, there is no such personal information in the novel. Moreover, about the age of Gregory, as well as his parents, brother Peter, Aksinya and almost all other central characters, there are no direct indications in the text. Gregory's date of birth is established as follows. As you know, in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, men who had reached the full 21 years of age were called up for active service in peacetime in the order of military service. Gregory was called up for service, as can be accurately determined from the circumstances of the action, at the beginning of January 1914; he, therefore, in the past year fulfilled the age required for conscription. So, he was born in 1892, not earlier and not later.

The novel repeatedly emphasizes that Gregory is strikingly similar to his father, and Peter - both in face and character to his mother. These are not only features of appearance, this is an image: according to a common folk sign, a child will be happy in life if the son looks like a mother, and the daughter looks like a father. Gregory's open, direct and sharp disposition promises him a difficult, harsh fate, and this was initially noted in his generic characteristics. On the contrary, brother Peter is the antipode of Gregory in everything: he is accommodating, cheerful, cheerful, compliant, not very smart, but cunning, he is an easy person in life.

In the guise of Grigory, like his father, oriental features are noticeable, it is not for nothing that the street nickname of the Melekhovs is “Turks”. Prokofiy, Panteley's father, at the end of the "penultimate Turkish war" (meaning the war with Turkey and its allies in 1853-1856) brought his wife, whom the farmers called "Turkish". Most likely, we should not be talking about a Turkish woman in the exact ethnic sense of the word. During the said war fighting Russian troops on the territory of Turkey proper were conducted in the remote, sparsely populated areas of Transcaucasia, moreover, inhabited at that time mainly by Armenians and Kurds. In those same years, there was a fierce war in the North Caucasus against the state of Shamil, who acted in alliance with Turkey. Cossacks and soldiers often in those days married women from among the North Caucasian peoples, this fact is described in detail in memoirs. Therefore, Gregory's grandmother is most likely from there.

Indirect confirmation of this is in the novel. After a quarrel with his brother, Peter shouts to Grigory in his hearts: “The whole breed has degenerated into a father’s breed, an exhausted Circassian. It is likely that the grandmother of Peter and Grigory was a Circassian, whose beauty and harmony have long been famous in the Caucasus and Russia. Prokofy could and even had to tell his only son Panteley who and where he was tragically dead mother, this family tradition could not be known to grandchildren; that is why Peter is not talking about the Turkish, but specifically about the Circassian breed in his younger brother.

Moreover. The old General Listnitsky also remembered Panteley Prokofievich in a very remarkable sense from his service in the Ataman regiment. He recalls: “A lame one, from the Circassians?” An educated, highly experienced officer who knew the Cossacks well, it must be believed that he gave an exact ethnic connotation here.

Grigory Melekhov was born a Cossack, at that time it was a social sign: like all male Cossacks, he was exempt from taxes and had the right to a land plot . According to the regulation of 1869, which did not change significantly until the revolution, the allotment (“share”) was determined at 30 acres (practically from 10 to 50 acres), that is, significantly higher than the average for the peasantry in Russia as a whole.

For this, the Cossack had to serve military service (mainly in the cavalry), and all the equipment, except for firearms, was purchased by him at his own expense. Since 1909, the Cossack served 18 years: one year in the “preparatory category”, four years of active service, eight years on the “benefits”, that is, with a periodic call for military training, the second and third stages of four years each, and finally five years stock. In the event of war, all Cossacks were subject to immediate conscription into the army.

The action of the "Quiet Don" begins in May 1912: the Cossacks of the second line of conscription (in particular, Pyotr Melekhov and Stepan Astakhov) go to camps for summer military training. Gregory at that time was about twenty years old. Their romance with Aksinya begins during haymaking, in June, that means. Aksinya is also about twenty, she has been married to Stepan Astakhov since the age of seventeen.

Further, the chronology of events develops as follows. In the middle of summer, Stepan returns from the camps, having already learned about his wife's betrayal. There is a fight between him and the Melekhov brothers. Soon Pantelei Prokofievich married Natalya Korshunova to Grigory. There is an exact chronological sign in the novel: “it was decided to bring the bride and groom to the first savior,” that is, according to the Orthodox calendar, August 1. "The wedding was set for the first meat-eater," it goes on. "The First Meat-Eater" lasted from August 15 to November 14, but there is a clarification in the novel. On the doom, that is, on August 15, Gregory came to visit the bride. Natalya counts to herself: "Eleven den left." So, their wedding took place on August 26, 1912. Natalya was eighteen years old at that time (her mother says to the Melekhovs on the day of the matchmaking: “The eighteenth spring has just passed”), she, therefore, was born in 1894.

The life of Gregory with Natalia did not work out well right away. They went to mow the winter crop "three days before the cover," that is, September 28 (the feast of the protection of the Virgin - October 1). Then, at night, their first painful explanation took place: “I don’t love you, Natalya, don’t be angry. I didn’t want to talk about it, but no, apparently, you can’t live like that ... "

Grigory and Aksinya are drawn to each other. silently suffer from the inability to connect. But soon the case brings them alone. After a snowfall, when the sledge track is established, the farmers go to the forest to cut brushwood. They met on a deserted road: “Well, Grisha, as you wish, there is no urinal to live without you ...” He thievishly led the low-down pupils of drunken eyes and jerked Aksinya to him. This happened some time after the cover, apparently in October.

Grigory's family life is completely falling apart, Natalya is suffering, crying. In the Melekhovs' house, a stormy scene takes place between Grigory and his father. Pantelei Prokofievich drives him out of the house. This event follows on the day after Gregory took the oath in Veshenskaya on "December Sunday". After spending the night with Mishka Koshevoy, he comes to Yagodnoye, the estate of General Listnitsky, which is 12 versts from Tatarsky. A few days later, Aksinya runs to him from the house. So, at the very end of 1912, Grigory and Aksinya begin to work in Yagodny: he is an assistant groom, she is a cook.

In the summer, Grigory was supposed to go to summer military training (before being called up for service), but Listnitsky Jr. spoke with the ataman and secured his release. All summer Grigory worked in the field. Aksinya came to Yagodnoye pregnant, but hid it from him, because she did not know "from which of the two conceived", from Stepan or Grigory. She opened only "on the sixth month, when it was no longer possible to hide the pregnancy." She assures Grigory that the child is his: “Calculate it yourself ... From the felling it is ...”

Aksinya gave birth during the harvest of barley, which means in July. The girl was named Tanya. Gregory became very attached to her, fell in love with her, although he was not sure that the child was his. A year later, the girl began to look very much like him with her characteristic Melekhovian features, which even the obstinate Pantelei Prokofievich recognized. But Grigory did not have a chance to see that: he was already serving in the army, then the war began ... And Tanechka suddenly died, this happened in September 1914 (the date is being established in connection with the letter about Listnitsky's injury), she was a little over a year old, she was ill , as you might imagine, scarlet fever.

The time of Gregory's conscription into the army is given exactly in the novel: the second day of Christmas in 1913, that is, December 26th. At the examination in the medical commission, Grigory's weight is measured - 82.6 kilograms (five pounds, six and a half pounds), his powerful addition surprises experienced officers: "What the hell, not particularly tall ..." The farm comrades, knowing the strength and Gregory’s agility, they expected him to be taken to the guard (when he leaves the commission, he is immediately asked: “I suppose to Ataman?”). However, Gregory is not taken into the guard. Right there at the commission table, such a conversation humiliating his human dignity takes place: “To the guards? ..

Gangster face... Very wild...

Impossible. Imagine if the sovereign sees such a face, what then? He has only one eye...

Transfiguration! Probably from the East.

Then the body is unclean, boils ... "

From the very first steps of a soldier's life, Gregory is constantly made to understand his "low" social nature. Here is a military bailiff at the inspection of Cossack equipment counts uhnali (nails for horseshoes) and does not count one: “Grigory fussily pushed back the corner that covered the twenty-fourth uhnal, his fingers, rough and black, lightly touched the white sugar fingers of the bailiff. He pulled his hand, as if pricked, rubbed it on the side of the gray overcoat; grimacing in disgust, he put on a glove.

So, thanks to the "gangster face" Gregory is not taken to the guard. Sparingly and, as it were, in passing, the novel notes what a strong impression this derogatory nobility of the so-called "educated people" makes on him. That first clash of Gregory with the Russian nobility, alien to the people; since then, reinforced by new impressions, the feeling of hostility towards them has grown stronger and sharper. Already on last pages In the novel, Grigory blames the spiritually decomposed neurasthenic intellectual Kaparin: "One can expect everything from you, learned people."

"Learned people" in the lexicon of Gregory - this is the bar, a class alien to the people. “Scientists have confused us ... They have confused the Lord!” - Grigory thinks furiously five years later, during the civil war, vaguely feeling the falsity of his path among the White Guards. In these words of his, the gentlemen, the bare, are directly identified with "learned people." From his point of view, Gregory is right, for in old Russia education was, unfortunately, the privilege of the ruling classes.

Their book "scholarship" is dead to him, and he is right in his feeling, because by natural wisdom he catches there verbal play, terminological scholasticism, self-intoxicated idle talk. In this sense, Grigory's dialogue with an officer from former teachers Kopylov (in 1919 during the Veshensky uprising). Grigory is annoyed by the appearance of the British on the Don land, he sees in this - and rightly - a foreign invasion. Kopylov objects, referring to the Chinese, who, they say, also serve in the Red Army. Grigory does not find what to answer, although he feels that his opponent is wrong: “Here you are, learned people, it’s always like this ... You will make discounts like hares in the snow! I, brother, feel that you are talking wrong here, but I don’t know how to pin you down ... "

But Grigory understands the essence of things better than the "scientist" Kopylov: the Chinese workers went to The Red Army out of a sense of international duty, with faith in the supreme justice of the Russian revolution and its liberating significance for the whole world, and the British officers are indifferent mercenaries trying to enslave a foreign people. Grigory later formulates this to himself: “The Chinese go to the Reds with their bare hands, they come to them for one worthless soldier's salary, risking their lives every day. And what's with the salary? What the hell can you buy with it? Is it possible to lose in cards ... Therefore, there is no self-interest here, but something else ... "

Already long after his conscription into the army, having behind him the experience of war and the great revolution, Grigory quite consciously understands the abyss between himself, the son of a Cossack peasant, and them, “learned people” from the bar: “I now have an officer rank from the German war . He deserved it with his blood! And as soon as I get into the officer society, it’s like I’ll go out of the hut in the cold in my underpants. So:> they will trample me with cold, that I can smell it with my whole back! .. Yes, because I am a white crow for them. I am a stranger to them from head to toe. That's all why!"

Gregory's first contact with the "educated estate" back in 1914, represented by a medical commission, is essential for the development of the image: the abyss that separated the working people from the lordly or lordly intelligentsia was impassable. Only a great popular revolution could destroy this split.

The 12th Don Cossack Regiment, where Gregory was enrolled, had been stationed near the Russian-Austrian border since the spring of 1914, judging by some signs, in Volhynia. Gregory's mood is twilight. In the depths of his soul, he is not satisfied with life with Aksinya, he is drawn to home. The duality and unsteadiness of such an existence contradict its integral, deeply positive nature. He is very homesick for his daughter, even in a dream he dreams of her, but Aksinye rarely writes, "the letters breathed a chill, as if he wrote them on orders."

Back in the spring of 1914 (“before Easter”) Panteley Prokofievich in a letter he directly asked Grigory whether he "would live with his wife upon his return from service or still with Aksinya." There is a remarkable detail in the novel: "Grigory delayed the answer." And then he wrote that, they say, “you can’t stick a cut-off edge,” and further, moving away from a decisive answer, he referred to the expected war: “Maybe I won’t be alive, there’s nothing to decide ahead of time.” The uncertainty of the answer here is obvious. After all, a year ago, in Yagodnoye, having received a note from Natalya asking how she should live on, he briefly and sharply answered: “Live alone.”

After the outbreak of the war, in August, Gregory met with his brother. Peter pointedly says: “And Natalya is still waiting for you. She holds the thought that you will return to her. Grigory replies very restrainedly: “Well, does she ... want to tie up what has been torn?” As you can see, he speaks more in an interrogative form than in an affirmative one. Then he asks about Aksinya. Peter's answer is unfriendly: “She is smooth of herself, cheerful. Looks like it’s easy to live on pansky grubs. ” Grigory kept silent even here, did not flare up, did not cut off Peter, which otherwise would have been natural for his frantic nature. Later, already in October, in one of his rare letters home, he sent "the lowest bow to Natalya Mironovna." Obviously, the decision to return to the family is already ripening in the soul of Gregory, he cannot live a restless, unsettled life, he is burdened by the ambiguity of the situation. The death of his daughter, and then the revealed betrayal of Aksinya, push him to take a decisive step, to break with her, but inwardly he was ready for this for a long time.

With the outbreak of World War II, the 12th regiment, where Grigory served, as part of the 11th cavalry division took part in the Battle of Galicia. In the novel, signs of place and time are indicated in detail and precisely. In one of the skirmishes with the Hungarian hussars, Gregory was hit with a broadsword in the head, fell off his horse, and lost consciousness. This happened, as can be established from the text, on September 15, 1914, near the town of Kamen-ka-Strumilovo, when the Russians were strategically attacking Lvov (we emphasize: historical sources accurately testify to the participation of the 11th Cavalry Division in these battles). Weakened, suffering from a wound, Grigory, however, carried a wounded officer for six miles. For this feat, he received his award: the soldier's St. George's Cross (the order had four degrees; in the Russian army, the sequence of awards from the lowest to the highest degree was strictly observed, therefore, Grigory was awarded the silver "George" of the 4th degree; subsequently he earned all four, as they said then - "full bow"). About the feat of Gregory, as said, they wrote in the newspapers.

He did not stay long in the rear. The next day, that is, September 16, he got to the dressing station, and a day later, on the 18th, "secretly left the dressing station." For some time he was looking for his unit, he returned no later than the 20th, because it was then that Peter wrote a letter home that everything was fine with Grigory. However, misfortune has already guarded Grigory again: on the same day he receives a second, much more serious wound - a shell shock, which is why he partially loses his sight.

Grigory was treated in Moscow, in the eye clinic of Dr. Snegirev (according to the collection "All Moscow" for 1914, the hospital of Dr. K.V. Snegirev was on Kolpachnaya, house 1). There he met the Bolshevik Garanzha. The influence of this revolutionary worker on Gregory turned out to be strong (which is considered in detail by the authors of studies on the Quiet Don). Garanga no longer appears in the novel, but this is by no means a passing character, on the contrary, his strongly described character allows us to better understand the figure of the central hero of the novel.

For the first time, Gregory heard from Garangi words about social injustice, caught his unshakable belief that such an order is not eternal and is the way to a different, properly arranged life. Garanzha speaks - and this is important to emphasize - as "his own", and not as "learned people" alien to Gregory. And he easily and willingly accepts the instructive words of a worker soldier, although he did not tolerate any kind of didactics on the part of those very "learned people."

In this regard, the scene in the hospital is full of deep meaning, when Gregory is rudely insolent to one of the members of the imperial family; sensing the falsity and humiliating lordly indulgence of what is happening, he protests, not wanting to hide his protest and not being able to make it meaningful. And that is not a manifestation of anarchism or hooliganism - Gregory, on the contrary, is disciplined and socially stable - this is his natural dislike for the anti-people nobility, who regards the worker as "cattle", working cattle. Proud and quick-tempered, Gregory organically cannot endure such an attitude, he always reacts sharply to any attempt to humiliate his human dignity.

He spent the whole of October 1914 in the hospital. He was cured, and successfully: his eyesight was not affected, his good health was not disturbed. From Moscow, having received leave after being wounded, Grigory goes to Yagodnoye. He appears there, as the text accurately says, on the night of November 5th. Aksinya's betrayal is revealed to him immediately. Gregory is depressed by what happened; at first he is strangely restrained, and only in the morning a furious outburst follows: he beats the young Listnitsky, insults Aksinya. Without hesitation, as if such a decision had long ripened in his soul, he went to Tatarsky, to his family. Here he lived his two weeks of vacation.

Throughout 1915 and almost all of 1916, Grigory was continuously at the front. His then military fate is outlined in the novel very sparingly, only a few combat episodes are described, and it is told how the hero himself recalls this.

In May 1915, in a counterattack against the 13th German Iron Regiment, Gregory captured three soldiers. Then the 12th regiment, where he continues to serve, together with the 28th, where Stepan Astakhov serves, takes part in the battles in East Prussia. Here the famous scene between Grigory and Stepan takes place, their conversation about Aksinya, after Stepan "until three times" unsuccessfully shot at Grigory, and Grigory carried him, wounded and left without a horse, from the battlefield. The situation was extremely acute: the regiments were retreating, and the Germans, as Grigory and Stepan knew well, at that time did not take the Cossacks alive, they finished on the spot, Stepan was threatened with imminent death - in such circumstances, Grigory's act looks especially expressive.

In May 1916, Gregory participates in the famous Brusilov breakthrough (named after the famous General A. A. Brusilov, who commanded the Southwestern Front). Gregory swam across the Bug and captured the "language". At the same time, he arbitrarily raised the entire hundred to attack and recaptured the "Austrian howitzer battery along with the servants." Briefly described this episode is significant. Firstly, Gregory is only a non-commissioned officer, therefore, he must enjoy extraordinary authority among the Cossacks, so that, at his word, they rise into battle without an order from above. Secondly, the howitzer battery of that time consisted of large-caliber guns, that was the so-called "heavy artillery"; With this in mind, Grigory's success looks even more impressive.

Here it is appropriate to say about the factual basis of the named episode. The Bru and Lovsky offensive of 1916 lasted a long time, more than two months, from May 22 to August 13. The text, however, accurately indicates: the time when Gregory acts is May. And it is no coincidence: according to the Military Historical Archive, The 12th Don Regiment participated in these battles for a relatively short time - from May 25 to June 12. As you can see, the chronological sign here is extremely accurate.

"In the first days of November," says the novel, Gregory's regiment was transferred to the Romanian front. November 7 - this date is directly mentioned in the text - the Cossacks on foot attacked the height, and Grigory was wounded in the arm. After the treatment, he received a leave of absence and came home (the coachman Emel-yan tells Aksinya about this). Thus ended 1916 in the life of Gregory. By that time, he had already served "four St. George's crosses and four medals", he is one of the respected veterans of the regiment, during the days of solemn ceremonies he stands at the regimental banner.

With Aksinya, Grigory is still in a break, although he often remembers her. Children appeared in his family: Natalya gave birth to twins - Polyushka and Misha. The date of their birth is established quite accurately: "at the beginning of autumn", that is, in September 1915. And one more thing: “Natalya fed children up to a year. In September, I took them ... "

1917 in the life of Gregory is almost not described. In various places there are only a few mean phrases of an almost informational nature. So, in January (obviously, upon returning to service after being wounded), he "was promoted to cornet for military distinctions" (cornet is a Cossack officer rank corresponding to a modern lieutenant). Then Grigory left the 12th regiment and was assigned to the 2nd reserve regiment as a "platoon officer" (that is, a platoon commander, there are four of them in a hundred). Apparently. Grigory no longer gets to the front: the reserve regiments were preparing recruits to replenish the army in the field. Further, it is known that he suffered pneumonia, apparently in a severe form, since in September he received a month and a half leave (a very long period under war conditions) and went home. Upon his return, the medical commission again recognized Gregory as fit for military service, and he returned to the same 2nd regiment. “After the October Revolution, he was appointed to the post of commander of a hundred,” this happened, therefore, in early November according to the old style or in mid-November according to the new one.

The stinginess in describing the life of Gregory in the stormy year of 1917, presumably, is not accidental. Apparently, until the end of the year, Gregory remained aloof from the political struggle that swept the country. And this is understandable. Gregory's behavior in that specific period of history was determined by the socio-psychological properties of his personality. The class Cossack feelings and ideas were strong in him, even the prejudices of his environment. The highest dignity of a Cossack, according to this morality, is courage and courage, honest military service, and everything else is not our Cossack business, our business is to own a sword and plow the rich Don land. Awards, promotions in ranks, respectful respect of fellow villagers and comrades, all this, as M. Sholokhov remarkably puts it, “the subtle poison of flattery” gradually blurred in Grigory’s mind that bitter social truth that the Bolshevik Garanzha had told him about in the autumn of 1914.

On the other hand, Gregory organically does not accept the bourgeois-noble counter-revolution, for it is justly connected in his mind with that arrogant nobility that he so hates. It is no coincidence that this camp is personified for him in Listnitsky - the one with whom Gregory visited the grooms. whose cold disdain was well felt, who seduced his beloved. That is why it is natural that the Cossack officer Grigory Melekhov did not take any part in the counter-revolutionary affairs of the then Don ataman A. M. Kaledin and his entourage, although, presumably, some of his colleagues and countrymen acted in all this. So, the unsteady political consciousness and the locality of social experience largely predetermined the civil passivity of Gregory in 1917.

But there was another reason for that - already purely psychological. Gregory is by nature unusually modest, alien to the desire to advance, to command, his ambition is manifested only in protecting his reputation as a daring Cossack and a brave soldier. It is characteristic that, having become a division commander during the Veshensky uprising of 1919, that is, having reached seemingly dizzying heights for a simple Cossack, he is burdened by this title of his, he dreams of only one thing - to discard the hateful weapon, return to his native hut and plow the land. He longs to work and raise children, he is not tempted by ranks, honors, ambitious vanity, glory.

It is difficult, simply impossible, to imagine Gregory as a rally speaker or an active member of any political committee. People like him do not like to get out on the forefront, although, as Grigory himself proved, a strong character makes them, if necessary, strong leaders. It is clear that in the rallying and rebellious year of 1917, Gregory had to remain aloof from the political rapids. In addition, fate threw him into a provincial reserve regiment, he did not manage to witness the major events of the revolutionary time. It is no coincidence that the depiction of such events is given through the perception of Bunchuk or Listnitsky - people who are fully determined and politically active, or in the author's direct depiction of specific historical characters.

However, from the very end of 1917, Gregory again enters the focus of the story. It is understandable: the logic of revolutionary development involved ever wider masses in the struggle, and personal fate placed Gregory in one of the epicenters of this struggle on the Don, in the region of the “Russian Vendée”, where a cruel and bloody civil war did not subside for more than three years.

So, the end of 1917 finds Gregory as a hundred commander in a reserve regiment, the regiment was located in the large village of Kamenskaya, in the west of the Don region, near the working Donbass. Political life was in full swing. For some time, Grigory was under the influence of his colleague centurion Izvarin - he, as established from archival materials, is a real historical person, later a member of the Military Circle (something like a local parliament), a future active ideologist of the anti-Soviet Don "government". Energetic and educated, Izvarin for some time persuaded Grigory to the side of the so-called "Cossack autonomy", he painted Manilov pictures of the creation of an independent "Don Republic", which, they say, will have equal relations "with Moscow ...".

There are no words, for today's reader such "ideas" seem ridiculous, but in the time being described, various kinds of ephemeral, one-day "republics" arose, and even more of their projects. This was a consequence of the political inexperience of the broad masses of the former Russian Empire, who for the first time embarked on a broad civil activity; This fad lasted, of course, for a very short time. It is not surprising that the politically naive Gregory, being, moreover, a patriot of his region and a 100% Cossack, for some time was carried away by Izvarin's rantings. But with the Don autonomists, he did not go very long.

Already in November, Grigory met the outstanding Cossack revolutionary Fyodor Podtelkov. Strong and imperious, adamantly confident in the correctness of the Bolshevik cause, he easily overturned the unsteady Izvarian constructions in Grigory's soul. In addition, we emphasize that in the social sense, the simple Cossack Podtelkov is immeasurably closer to Grigory than the intellectual Izvarin.

The point here, of course, is not only a personal impression: even then, in November 1917, after the October Revolution, Grigory could not help but see the forces of the old world gathered on the Don, could not help but guess, not feel at least what was behind the beautiful-hearted concoctions there are still the same generals and officers whom he did not like in the bar, the landlords of the Listnitsky and others. (By the way, this is what happened historically: the autonomist and intelligent rhetoric General P. N. Krasnov with his “Don Republic” soon became an open instrument of the bourgeois-landowner restoration.)

Izvarin was the first to feel the change in the mood of his soldier: “I’m afraid that we, Grigory, will meet as enemies,” “You don’t guess friends on the battlefield, Yefim Ivanovich,” Grigory smiled.”

On January 10, 1918, a congress of front-line Cossacks opened in the village of Kamenskaya. This was an exceptional event in the history of the region at that time: the Bolshevik Party collected its banners from the working people of the Don, trying to wrest it from the influence of generals and reactionary officers; at the same time, they formed a “government” in Novocherkassk with General A. M. Kaledin at the head. A civil war was already raging on the Don. Already in the mining Donbass, fierce clashes took place between the Red Guard and the White Guard volunteers of Yesaul Chernetsov. And from the north, from Kharkov, units of the young Red Army were already moving towards Rostov. An irreconcilable class war had begun, from now on it was to flare up more and more ...

There is no exact data in the novel whether Grigory was a participant in the congress of front-line soldiers in Kamenskaya, but he met there with Ivan Alekseevich Kotlyarov and Khristonya - they were delegates from the Tatarsky farm, - he was pro-Bolshevik. A detachment of Chernetsov, one of the first "heroes" of the White Guard, was moving towards Kamenskaya from the south. The Red Cossacks hastily forms their armed forces to fight back. On January 21, a decisive battle takes place; the Red Cossacks are led by the former military foreman (in modern terms - lieutenant colonel) Golubov. Grigory in his detachment commands a division of three hundred, he makes a roundabout maneuver, which ultimately led to the death of the Chernetsov detachment. In the midst of the battle, "at three o'clock in the afternoon", Grigory received a bullet wound in the leg,

On the same day, towards evening, at the Glubokaya station, Grigory witnesses how the captive Chernetsov was hacked to death by Podtelkov, and then, on his orders, other captured officers were also killed. That cruel scene makes a strong impression on Grigory, in anger he even tries to rush at Podtelkov with a revolver, but he is restrained.

This episode is extremely important in the further political fate of Gregory. He cannot and does not want to accept the harsh inevitability of a civil war, when the opponents are irreconcilable and the victory of one means the death of the other. By the nature of his nature, Gregory is generous and kind, he is repelled by the cruel laws of war. Here it is appropriate to recall how, in the first war days of 1914, he almost shot his fellow soldier, Cossack Chubaty (Uryupin), when he hacked to death a captured Austrian hussar. A man of a different social disposition, Ivan Alekseevich, even he will not immediately accept the harsh inevitability of an inexorable class struggle, but for him, a proletarian, a pupil of the communist Shtokman, there is a clear political ideal and a clear goal. Grigory does not have all this, which is why his reaction to the events in Glubokaya is so sharp.

Here it is also necessary to emphasize that the individual excesses of the civil war were not at all caused by social necessity and were the result of acute discontent accumulated among the masses towards the old world and its defenders. Fedor Podtelkov himself is a typical example of this kind of impulsive, emotional popular revolutionary who did not, and could not have, the necessary political prudence and state outlook.

Be that as it may, Gregory is shocked. In addition, fate tears him away from the Red Army environment - he is wounded, he is taken away for treatment to the remote Tatarsky farm, far from the noisy Kamenskaya, crowded with red Cossacks ... A week later, Pantelei Pro-kofievich comes to Millerovo for him, and On January 29, Gregory was taken home on a sleigh. The path was not close - one hundred and forty miles. Gregory's mood on the road is vague; "... Grigory could neither forgive nor forget the death of Chernetsov and the reckless execution of captured officers." “I’ll come home, have a little rest, well, I’ll heal the wound, and there ... - he thought and mentally waved his hand, - it will be visible there. The case itself will show ... ”He longs for one thing with all his soul - peaceful work, peace. With such thoughts, Grigory arrived in Tatarsky on January 31, 1918.

Grigory spent the end of winter and the beginning of spring in his native farm. On the Upper Don at that time the civil war had not yet begun. The unsteady that world is described in the novel as follows: “The Cossacks who returned from the front rested near their wives, ate, did not sense that at the thresholds of the kurens they were guarded by bitter misfortunes than those that they had to endure in the war they had experienced.”

Indeed, it was the calm before the storm. By the spring of 1918, Soviet power had largely won throughout Russia. The overthrown classes resisted, blood was shed, but these fights were still of a small scale, they went mainly around cities, on roads and junction stations. Fronts and mass armies did not yet exist. The small Volunteer Army of General Kornilov was driven out of Rostov and wandered, surrounded, around the Kuban. The head of the Don counter-revolution, General Kaledin, shot himself in Novocherkassk, after which the most active enemies of Soviet power left the Don for the remote Salsky steppes. Over Rostov and Novocherkassk - red banners.

Meanwhile, foreign intervention began. On February 18 (new style), the Kaiser and Austro-Hungarian troops became more active. On May 8, they approached Rostov and took it. In March-April on the northern and eastern shores Soviet Russia the armies of the Entente countries landed: Japanese, Americans, British, French. The internal counter-revolution revived everywhere, it was strengthened organizationally and materially.

On the Don, where, for obvious reasons, there were enough personnel for the White Guard armies, the counter-revolution went on the offensive in the spring of 1918. On behalf of the government of the Don Soviet Republic, in April, F. Podtelkov, with a small detachment of Red Cossacks, moved to the Upper Don districts in order to replenish his forces there. However, they did not reach their goal. On April 27 (May 10, new style), the entire detachment was surrounded by White Cossacks and captured along with their commander.

In April, the civil war broke into the Tatarsky farm for the first time; on April 17, near the village of Setrakov, southwest of Veshenskaya, the Cossacks destroyed the Tiraspol detachment of the 2nd Socialist Army; this part, having lost discipline and control, retreated under the blows of the interventionists from Ukraine. Incidents of looting and violence by corrupted Red Army soldiers gave the counter-revolutionary instigators a good excuse to come out. Throughout the Upper Don, bodies of Soviet power were thrown off, chieftains were elected, and armed detachments were formed.

On April 18, a Cossack circle took place in Tatarsky. On the eve of this, in the morning, waiting for the inevitable mobilization, Khristonya, Koshevoy, Grigory and Valet gathered in the house of Ivan Alekseevich and decided what to do: whether to break through to the Reds or stay and wait for events? Knave and Koshevoy confidently offer to run away, and immediately. The rest hesitate. A painful struggle takes place in the soul of Gregory: he does not know what to decide on. He takes out his irritation on Jack, insulting him. He leaves, followed by Koshevoy. Gregory and the others make a half-hearted decision - to wait.

And a circle is already being called on the square: mobilization has been announced. Create a farm hundred. Gregory is nominated as a commander, but some of the most conservative old people object, referring to his service with the Reds; Brother Peter is elected commander instead of him. Grigory is nervous, defiantly leaves the circle.

On April 28, a Tatar hundred, among other Cossack detachments from neighboring farms and villages, arrived at the Ponomarev farm, where they surrounded Podtelkov's expedition. A hundred Tatars are led by Petr Melekhov. Gregory, apparently, among the rank and file. They were late: the Red Cossacks were captured the day before, an early “trial” took place in the evening, and the execution took place the next morning.

The extended scene of the execution of the scoundrels is one of the most memorable in the novel. Much is expressed here with extraordinary depth. The rabid atrocity of the old world, ready to do anything for its own salvation, even to exterminate its own people. The courage and unshakable faith in the future of Podtelkov, Bunchuk and many of their comrades, which makes a strong impression even on the hardened enemies of the new Russia.

A large crowd of Cossacks and Cossacks gathered for the execution, they are hostile to the executed, because they were told that they were enemies who had come to rob and rape. And what? A disgusting picture of a beating - whom ?! their own, ordinary Cossacks! - quickly disperses the crowd; people flee, ashamed of their - even if unwitting - involvement in villainy. “Only front-line soldiers remained, who saw death to their heart's content, and the old people from the most frenzied,” the novel says, that is, only souls stale or inflamed with anger could endure a fierce spectacle. A characteristic detail: the officers who hang Podtelkov and Krivoshlykov are wearing masks. Even they, apparently conscious enemies of the Soviets, are ashamed of their role and resort to an intellectual-decadent masquerade.

This scene should have made no less impression on Grigory than the massacre of the captive Chernetsovites three months later. With amazing psychological accuracy, M. Sholokhov shows how, in the first minutes of an unexpected meeting with Podtelkov, Grigory even experiences something similar to gloating. He nervously throws cruel words in the face of the doomed Podtelkov: “Do you remember under the Deep Battle? Do you remember how they shot officers... They shot at your order! A? Now you win back! Well, don't worry! You are not the only one to tan other people's skins! You departed, chairman of the Don Council of People's Commissars! You, grebe, sold the Cossacks to the Jews! Clear? Is it to say?"

But then... He also saw at point-blank range the terrible beating of the unarmed. Their own - Cossacks, simple grain growers, front-line soldiers, fellow soldiers, their own! There, in Glubokaya, Podtelkov ordered the unarmed, too, to be cut down, and their death is also terrible, but they are ... strangers, they are one of those who for centuries despised and humiliated people like him, Grigory. And the same as those that are now standing at the edge of a terrible pit, waiting for a volley ...

Gregory is morally broken. The author of The Quiet Flows the Don, with a rare artistic tact, nowhere speaks about this directly, in a direct assessment. But the life of the hero of the novel during the whole of 1918 seems to pass under the impression of a mental trauma received on the day of the beating of the podtelkovites. The fate of Gregory at this time is described by some intermittent, unclear dotted line. And here the vagueness and oppressive duality of his state of mind is deeply and precisely expressed.

The White Cossack army of the German henchman General Krasnov in the summer of 1918 began active military operations against the Soviet state. Gregory is mobilized to the front. As commander of a hundred in the 26th Veshensky regiment, he is in the Krasnov army on its so-called Northern Front, in the direction of Voronezh. It was a peripheral area for the Whites, the main battles between them and the Red Army unfolded in the summer and autumn in the Tsaritsyn region.

Gregory fights sluggishly, indifferently and reluctantly. It is characteristic that in the description of that relatively long war, nothing is said in the novel about his military deeds, about the manifestation of courage or commander's ingenuity. But he is always in battle, he does not hide in the rear. Here is a concise, like a summary of his life's fate at that time: “Three horses were killed near Gregory during the autumn, an overcoat was pierced in five places ... Once a bullet pierced through the copper head of a saber, the lanyard fell to the horse's feet, as if bitten.

Someone is praying to God for you, Grigory, - Mitka Korshunov told him and was surprised at Grigoriev's sad smile.

Yes, Grigory fights "not fun". The goals of the war, as the stupid Krasnov propaganda crackled about - "protection of the Don Republic from the Bolsheviks" - are deeply alien to him. He sees looting, decay, the weary indifference of the Cossacks, the complete hopelessness of the banner under which he is called by the will of circumstances. He fights robberies among the Cossacks of his hundred, suppresses reprisals against prisoners, that is, he does the opposite of what the Krasnov command encouraged. Characteristic in this regard is the harsh, even impudent for an obedient son, as Grigory always was, his scolding of his father, when he, succumbing to the general mood, shamelessly robs the family, whose owner left with the Reds. By the way, this is the first time he has condemned his father so severely.

It is clear that Grigory's service career is going badly in the Krasnov army.

He is summoned to divisional headquarters. Some authorities not named in the novel begin to scold him: “Are you spoiling a hundred for me, cornet? Are you liberal?" Apparently, Grigory was insolent, because the scolding continues: “How can you not shout at you? ..” And as a result: “I order you to hand over a hundred today.”

Grigory is demoted, becomes a platoon commander. There is no date in the text, but it can be restored, and this is important. Further in the novel follows a chronological sign: "At the end of the month, the regiment ... occupied the Gremyachiy Log farm." What month is not said, but the peak of cleaning, heat is described, there are no signs of the coming autumn in the landscape. Finally, Gregory learns from his father the day before that Stepan Astakhov has returned from German captivity, and in the corresponding place of the novel it is precisely said that he came "in the first days of August." So, Gregory was demoted around mid-August 1918.

Here, such an important fact for the fate of the hero is noted: he learns that Aksinya returned to Stepan. Neither in the author's speech, nor in the description of Grigory's feelings and thoughts, is any relation to this event expressed. But there is no doubt that his depressed state should have been aggravated: the aching memory of Aksinya never left his heart.

At the end of 1918, the Krasnov army completely decomposed, the White Cossack front was bursting at the seams. Strengthened, gaining strength and experience, the Red Army goes on a victorious offensive. On December 16 (hereinafter, according to the old style), the 26th regiment, where Grigory continued to serve, was knocked out of position by a detachment of red sailors. A non-stop retreat began, lasting another day. And then, at night, Grigory arbitrarily leaves the regiment, runs from the Krasnovskaya ar-. Mii, heading straight for the house: “The next day, by evening, he was already introducing a horse that had made a two-hundred-mile run, reeling from fatigue, to his father’s bases.” This happened, therefore, on December 19, 1918.

The novel notes that Gregory makes his escape with "joyful determination". The word "joy" is characteristic here: it is the only positive emotion that Grigory experienced during the eight long months of service in the Krasnov army. Experienced when he left its ranks.

The Reds came to Tatarsky in January

1919. Gregory, like many others

Gym, waiting for them with intense anxiety:

how will recent enemies behave in ka

whose villages? Won't they take revenge

to create violence? .. No, nothing like that

not happening. Red Army of discipline

rough and strict. no robberies and

oppression. Relations between the Red Army

tsami and the Cossack population the most that neither

on there are friendly. They are even going

together, sing, dance, walk: neither give nor

take two neighboring villages, recently

but those who were at enmity reconciled, and behold

celebrate reconciliation.

But... Fate prepares something else for Gregory. Most of the Cossack farmers are “their own” for the Red Army soldiers who came, because most of them are recent grain growers with a similar way of life and worldview. It seems that Gregory is also “his own”. But he is an officer, and at that time this word was considered an antonym to the word "Council". And what an officer - a Cossack, white Cossack! A breed that has already shown itself sufficiently in the bloodshed of the civil war. It is clear that this alone should cause an increased nervous reaction in the Red Army towards Grigory. This is what happens, and right away.

On the very first day of the arrival of the Reds, a group of Red Army soldiers comes to stay with the Melekhovs, including Alexander from Lugansk, whose family was shot by white officers - he is naturally embittered, even neurotic. He immediately begins to bully Grigory, in his words, gestures, eyes, burning, violent hatred - after all, it was precisely such Cossack officers who tortured his family, flooded the working Donbass with blood. Alexander is held back only by the harsh discipline of the Red Army: the intervention of the commissar eliminates the impending clash between him and Grigory.

What can the former White Cossack officer Grigory Melekhov explain to Alexander and many like him? That he ended up in the Krasnov army involuntarily? That he was "liberalizing", as they accused him at the division headquarters? That he arbitrarily abandoned the front and never again wants to take up a hateful weapon? So Grigory tries to tell Alexander: “We ourselves abandoned the front, let you in, and you came to the conquered country ...”, to which he receives an inexorable answer: “Don’t tell me! We know you! "Front abandoned"! If they hadn't stuffed you, they wouldn't have left. Ti I can talk to you in any way.

Thus begins a new act of drama in the fate of Gregory. Two days later, his friends dragged him to Anikushka's party. Soldiers and farmers walk, drink. Gregory sits sober, alert. And then some “young woman” suddenly whispers to him during the dance: “They are conspiring to kill you ... Someone proved that you are an officer ... Run ...” Grigory goes out into the street, they are already guarding him. He breaks out, runs away into the darkness of the night, like a criminal.

For many years Grigory walked under bullets, slipped away from the blow of a checker, looked death in the face, and more than once he will have to do this in the future. But of all mortal dangers, he remembers this one, because he was attacked - he is convinced - without guilt. Later, having gone through a lot, having experienced the pain of new wounds and losses, Grigory, in his fatal conversation with Mikhail Koshev, will remember this particular episode at the party, remember in mean, as usual, words, and it will become clear how hard that ridiculous event affected him :

“... If at that time the Red Army men were not going to kill me at a party, I might not have participated in the uprising.

If you weren't an officer, no one would touch you.

If I had not been hired, I would not have been an officer ... Well, this is a long song!

This personal moment cannot be ignored in order to understand the future fate of Gregory. He is nervously tense, constantly waiting for a blow, he cannot perceive the emerging new power objectively, his position seems too unsteady to him. Irritation, bias Grigory clearly manifested in a night conversation with Ivan Alekseevich in the Revolutionary Committee at the end of January.

Ivan Alekseevich has just returned to the farm from the chairman of the district revolutionary committee, he is joyfully excited, tells how respectfully and simply they talked to him: “How was it before? Major General! How was it necessary to stand in front of him? Here it is, our beloved Soviet power! Everyone is equal!” Gregory releases a skeptical remark. “They saw a person in me, how can I not rejoice?” - Ivan Alekseevich is perplexed. “Generals, too, in shirts made of bags became the last time to walk”, Grigory continues to grumble. “The generals are from need, but these are from nature. Difference?" - Ivan Alekseevich temperamentally objects. "No difference!" - cuts words Gregory. The conversation breaks into a squabble, ends coldly, with hidden threats.

It is clear that Gregory is wrong here. Can he, who was so acutely aware of the humiliation of his social position in old Russia, fail to understand the ingenuous joy of Ivan Alekseevich? And no worse than his opponent, he understands that the generals were forgiven "from need", before the time. Gregory's arguments against new government, cited by him in the dispute, are simply not serious: they say, a Red Army soldier in windings, a platoon commander in chrome boots, and the commissar "got all into his skin." Grigory, a professional military man, should not know that there is not and cannot be equalization in the army, that different responsibilities give rise to different positions; he himself will later scold his orderly and friend Prokhor Zykov for familiarity. In Grigory's words, irritation is too obvious, unspoken anxiety for his own fate, which, in his opinion, is threatened by undeserved danger.

But neither Ivan Alekseevich nor Mishka Koshevoy, in the heat of the boiling struggle, can no longer see in Grigory's words only nervousness, unfairly offended person. All this nervous nightly conversation can only convince them of one thing: officers cannot be trusted, even former friends ...

Gregory leaves the Revolutionary Committee even more alienated from the new government. He will no longer go to talk with his former comrades again, he accumulates irritation and anxiety in himself.

The winter was coming to an end (“drops fell from the branches”, etc.), when Grigory was sent to take the shells to Bokovskaya. It was in February, but before the arrival of Shtokman in Tatarsky - therefore, around mid-February. Gregory warns his family ahead of time: “Only I won’t come to the farm. I'm staying out of time at Singin, at my aunt's. (Here, of course, the mother's aunt is meant, since Pantelei Prokofievich had neither brothers nor sisters.)

The path turned out to be long, after Vo-kovskaya he had to go to Chernyshevskaya (station on railway Donoass - Tsaritsyn), in total from Veshenskaya it will be more than 175 kilometers. For some reason, Grigory did not stay with his aunt, he returned home in the evening a week and a half later. Here he learned about the arrest of his father and that of himself. looking for. Already on February 19, Shtokman, who had arrived, announced at the meeting a list of arrested Cossacks (as it turned out, they had been shot by that time in Veshki), Grigory Melekhov was listed among them. In the column “For what he was arrested” it was said: “Jesusal, opposed. Dangerous". (By the way, Grigory was a cornet, that is, a lieutenant, and the captain was a captain.) It was further specified that he would be arrested "on arrival."

After resting for half an hour, Grigory galloped off on horseback to a distant relative at the Rybny farm, while Peter promised to say that his brother had gone to his aunt on Singin. The next day, Shtokman and Koshevoy, with four horsemen, rode there for Grigory, searched the house, but did not find him ...

For two days Grigory lay in the barn, hiding behind dung and crawling out of the shelter only at night. From this voluntary imprisonment, he was rescued by an unexpected outbreak of an uprising of the Cossacks, which is usually called Veshensky or (more precisely) Verkhnedonsky. The text of the novel says exactly that the uprising began in the Yelanskaya village, the date is given - February 24th. The date is given according to the old style, the documents of the Archive of the Soviet Army call the beginning of the rebellion March 10-11, 1919. But M. Sholokhov deliberately cites the old style here: the population of the Upper Don lived for too short a period under Soviet rule and could not get used to the new calendar (in all areas under the White Guards the old style was preserved or restored); since the action of the third book of the novel takes place exclusively within the Verkhnedonsky district, such a calendar is typical for the heroes.

Grigory galloped to Tatarsky, when the horse and foot hundreds were already formed there, commanded by Pyotr Melekhov. Grigory becomes the head of fifty (that is, two platoons). He is always ahead, in the forefront, in the advanced outposts. On March 6, Peter was taken prisoner by the Reds and shot dead by Mikhail Koshev. The very next day, Grigory was appointed commander of the Veshensky regiment and led his hundreds against the Reds. Twenty-seven Red Army soldiers taken prisoner in the first battle, he orders to chop. He is blinded by hatred, inflates it in himself, brushing aside the doubts that stir at the bottom of his clouded consciousness: the thought flashes through him: “the rich with the poor, and not the Cossacks with Russia ...” The death of his brother for some time embittered even more his.

The uprising on the Upper Don flared up rapidly. In addition to the general social causes that caused the Cossack counter-revolution in many suburbs. Russia, a subjective factor was also mixed in here: the Trotskyist policy of the notorious “decossackization”, which caused unreasonable repressions of the working population in this area. Objectively, such actions were provocative and to a large extent helped the kulaks raise a revolt against Soviet power. This circumstance is described in detail in the literature on the Quiet Don. The anti-Soviet rebellion took on a wide scope: a month later, the number of rebels reached 30 thousand fighters - that was great power on the scale of the civil war, and mostly the rebels consisted of experienced and skillful people in military affairs. To eliminate the rebellion, special Expeditionary Forces were formed from units of the Southern Front of the Red Army (according to the Archive of the Soviet Army - consisting of two divisions). Soon, fierce battles began throughout the Upper Don.

The Veshensky Regiment quickly deploys into the 1st rebel division - Grigory commands it. Very soon, the veil of hatred that covered his mind in the first days of the rebellion subsides. With even greater force than before, doubts gnaw at him: “And most importantly, whom am I fighting against? Against the people... Who is right? Gregory thinks, gritting his teeth. Already on March 18, he openly expresses his doubts at a meeting of the rebel leadership: “But I think that we got lost when we went to the uprising ...”

Ordinary Cossacks know about these moods of his. One of the insurgent commanders proposes to arrange a coup in Veshki: "Let's fight both the Reds and the Cadets." Grigory objects, disguising himself with a wry smile: “Let's bow at the feet of the Soviet government: we are guilty ...” He stops the reprisals against prisoners. He arbitrarily opens the prison in Veshki, releasing those arrested into the wild. The leader of the uprising, Kudinov, does not really trust Grigory - he is bypassed with an invitation to important meetings.

Seeing no way out ahead, he acts mechanically, out of inertia. He drinks and falls into revelry, which has never happened to him. He is driven by only one thing: to save his family, relatives and Cossacks, for whose life he is responsible as a commander.

In mid-April, Gregory comes home to plow. There he meets with Aksinya, and again relations between them resume, interrupted five and a half years ago.

On April 28, returning to the division, he receives a letter from Kudinov that communists from Tatarsky were captured by the rebels: Kotlyarov and Koshevoy (here is a mistake, Koshevoy escaped captivity). Gregory gallops swiftly to the place of their captivity, wants to save them from imminent death: “Blood has fallen between us, but are we not strangers?!” he thought at a gallop. He was late: the prisoners had already been killed ...

The Red Army in mid-May 1919 (the date here, of course, according to the old style) began decisive actions against the Upper Don rebels: the offensive of Denikin's troops in the Donbass began, so the most dangerous hostile center in the rear of the Soviet Southern Front should be destroyed as soon as possible. The main blow came from the south. The rebels could not stand it and retreated to the left bank of the Don. Gregory's division covered the retreat, he himself crossed with the rearguard. The Tatarsky farm was occupied by the Reds.

In Veshki, under fire from red batteries, in anticipation of the possible destruction of the entire uprising, Gregory does not leave the same deadly indifference. “He did not hurt his soul for the outcome of the uprising,” the novel says. He diligently drove away thoughts of the future from himself: “To hell with him! As soon as it ends, it will be fine!”

And here, being in a hopeless state of soul and mind, Grigory calls Aksinya from Tatarsky. Just before the start of the general retreat, that is, around May 20, he sends Prokhor Zykov after her. Grigory already knows that his native farm will be occupied by the Reds, and orders Prokhor to warn his relatives to drive away the cattle and so on, but ... and nothing more.

And here is Aksinya in Veshki. Having abandoned the division, he spends two days with it. “The only thing left for him in life (so, at least, it seemed to him) is a passion for Aksinya that flared up with no-za and irrepressible strength,” the novel says. Noteworthy here is the word "passion": it is not love, but passion. The remark in brackets has an even deeper meaning: “it seemed to him ...” His nervous, flawed passion is something like an escape from a shocked world, in which Grigory does not find a place and business for himself, but is engaged in someone else’s business ... In the summer of 1919, the South Russian the counter-resolution experienced its greatest success. The Volunteer Army, manned by a militantly strong and socially homogeneous composition, having received military equipment from England and France, launched a broad offensive with a decisive goal: to defeat the Red Army, take Moscow and liquidate Soviet power. For some time, success accompanied the Whites: they occupied the entire Donbass and on June 12 (old style) took Kharkov. The White Command was in dire need of replenishing its not too numerous army, which is why it set an important goal for itself to capture the entire territory of the Don region in order to use the population of the Cossack villages as human reserves. For this purpose, a breakthrough of the Soviet Southern Front was being prepared in the direction of the region of the Upper Don uprising. On June 10, the cavalry group of General A. S. Secretov made a breakthrough, and three days later reached the rebel lines. From now on, all of them, in the order of a military order, poured into the White Guard Don Army of General V.I. Sidorin.

Grigory did not expect anything good from the meeting with the "cadets" - either for himself or for his countrymen. And so it happened.

A slightly renewed old order returned to the Don, the same familiar bar in uniform, with contemptuous glances. Grigory, as an insurgent commander, is present at a banquet arranged in honor of Sekregov, listening with disgust to the general's drunken chatter, insulting to the Cossacks present. Then Stepan Astakhov appears in Veshki. Aksinya stays with him. The last straw that Gregory clung to in his unsettled life seemed to have disappeared.

He gets a short vacation, comes home. The whole family is together, everyone survived. Grigory caresses the children, is reservedly friendly with Natalia, respectful with his parents.

Leaving for the unit, saying goodbye to his relatives, he cries. “Grigory never left his native farm with such a heavy heart,” the novel notes. Dimly, he feels the great events approaching... And they really are waiting for him.

In the heat of continuous battles with the Red Army, the White Guard command was not immediately able to disband the semi-partisan, disorderly organized parts of the rebels. Gregory continues to command his division for some time. But he is no longer independent, the same generals again stand above him. He is summoned by General Fitzhelaurov, the commander of a regular, so to speak, division of the White Army - the same Fitzhelaurov, who was in the highest command posts back in 1918 in the “Rasnov army, ingloriously advancing on Tsaritsyn. And here again Grigory sees the same nobility, hears the same rude, disparaging words, which - only on a different, much less important occasion - he happened to hear many years ago when he was drafted into the tsarist army. Grigory explodes, threatening the elderly general with a saber. This audacity is more than dangerous. Fitskhelaurov has many reasons to threaten him with a final court-martial. But they apparently did not dare to take him to court.

Gregory doesn't care. He longs for one thing - to get away from the war, from the need to make decisions, from the political struggle, in which he cannot find a solid foundation and goal. The White command disbands the rebel units, including the division of Gregory. Former rebels, who are not very trusted, are shuffled into different units of Denikin's army. Grigory does not believe in the "white idea", although a drunken holiday is noisy all around, still - a victory! ..

Having announced to the Cossacks about the disbandment of the division, Grigory, without hiding his mood, openly tells them:

“- Do not remember dashingly, stanishniks! We served together, captivity forced us, and from now on we will wag the torment like Eroz. The most important thing is to take care of your heads so that the red ones do not make holes in them. You have them, heads, although they are bad, but in vain there is no need to expose them to bullets. Isho will have to think, think hard about how to proceed ... "

Denikin's "campaign against Moscow" is, according to Grigory, "their", the master's business, and not his, not ordinary Cossacks. At Secretov’s headquarters, he asks to be transferred to the rear units (“I was wounded and shell-shocked fourteen times in two wars,” he says), no, they leave him in the army and transfer him to the commander of a hundred in the 19th regiment, providing him with useless “encouragement "- he rises in rank, becoming a centurion (senior lieutenant).

And now a new terrible blow awaits him. Natalya found out that Grigory was dating Aksinya again. Shocked, she decides to have an abortion, some dark woman makes her an "operation". The next day at noon she dies. The death of Natalia, as can be established from the text, happened around July 10, 1919. She was then twenty-five years old, and the children had not yet passed four ...

Grigory received a telegram about the death of his wife, he was allowed to go home; he rode when Natalia had already been buried. Immediately upon arrival, he did not find the strength to go to the grave. "The dead are not offended ..." - he said to his mother.

Gregory, in view of the death of his wife, received a month's leave from the regiment. He cleaned the bread that had already ripened, worked on the housework, and nursed the kids. He became especially attached to his son Mishatka. The boy rendered. Xia, having matured a little, is a purely "Melekhov" breed - both outwardly and in disposition similar to his father and grandfather.

And so Grigory again leaves for voy-NU - he leaves without even taking a vacation, at the very end of July. About where he fought in the second half of 1919, what happened to him, the novel says absolutely nothing, he did not write home, and “it was only at the end of October that Pantelei Prokofievich found out that Grigory was in perfect health and together with his regiment is somewhere in the Voronezh province. Only a little can be established on the basis of this more than brief information. He could not participate in the well-known raid of the White Cossack cavalry under the command of General K. K. Mamontov along the rear of the Soviet troops (Tambov - Kozlov - Yelets - Voronezh), because this raid, marked by ferocious robberies and violence, began on August 10 according to a new style, - therefore , July 28 according to the old, that is, at the very time when Grigory was still on vacation. In October, Grigory, according to rumors, ended up at the front near Voronezh, where, after heavy fighting, the White Guard Don Army stopped, bleeding and demoralized.

At this time, he fell ill with typhus, a terrible epidemic of which throughout the autumn and winter of 1919 mowed down the ranks of both warring armies. They bring him home. It was at the end of October, for what follows is an exact chronological mark: “A month later, Gregory recovered. For the first time he got out of bed on the twentieth of November ... "

By that time, the White Guard armies had already suffered a crushing defeat. In a grandiose cavalry battle on October 19-24, 1919, near Voronezh and Kastorna, white Cossack corps of Mamontov and Shkuro. Denikin they still tried to hold on to the Orel-Yelets line, but from November 9 (here and above the date according to the new calendar), the non-stop retreat of the white armies began. Soon it was no longer a retreat, but a flight.

Soldier of the First Cavalry Army.

Grigory no longer participated in these decisive battles, since his patient was taken away on a cart, and he ended up at home at the very beginning of November according to the new style, however, such a move along the muddy autumn roads should have taken at least ten days (but the roads from Voronezh to Veshenskaya more than 300 kilometers); in addition, Grigory could lie in a front-line hospital for some time - at least to establish a diagnosis.

In December 1919, the Red Army victoriously entered the territory of the Don region, the Cossack regiments and divisions retreated almost without resistance, falling apart and disintegrating more and more. Disobedience and desertion took on a mass character. The “government” of the Don issued an order for the complete evacuation of the entire male population to the south, those who evaded were caught and punished by punitive detachments.

On December 12 (old style), as accurately indicated in the novel, Pantelei Prokofievich set off "to retreat" along with the farmsteaders. Grigory, meanwhile, went to Veshenskaya to find out where his retreating unit was, but he did not find out anything, except for one thing: the Reds were approaching the Don. He returned to the farm shortly after his father's departure. The next day, together with Aksinya and Prokhor Zykov, they went south on a toboggan road, heading for Millerovo (there, they told Grigory, part of it could pass), it was around December 15th.

They drove slowly, along a road clogged with refugees and retreating Cossacks in disorder. Aksinya fell ill with typhus, as can be established from the text, on the third day of the journey. She lost consciousness. With difficulty, she managed to arrange for the care of a random person in the village of Novo-Mikhailovsky. “Leaving Aksinya, Grigory immediately lost interest in his surroundings,” the novel says further. So, they broke up around December 20th.

The White Army was falling apart. Grigory passively retreated along with a mass of his own kind, without making the slightest attempt to somehow actively intervene in events, avoiding joining any part and remaining in the position of a refugee. In January, he no longer believes in any possibility of resistance, because he learns about the abandonment of Rostov by the White Guards (it was taken by the Red Army on January 9, 1920 according to the new style). Together with the faithful Prokhor, they are sent to the Kuban, Grigory makes his usual decision in moments of spiritual decline: "... we'll see there."

The retreat, aimless and passive, continued. “At the end of January,” as specified in the novel, Grigory and Prokhor arrived at Belaya Glinka, a village in the Northern Kuban on the Tsaritsyn-Ekaterinodar railway. Prokhor hesitantly offered to join the "greens" - that was the name of the partisans in the Kuban, led to some extent by the Socialist-Revolutionaries, they set themselves a utopian and politically absurd goal to fight "with the Reds and the Whites", consisted mainly of deserters and declassed rabble. Gregory firmly refused. And here, in Belaya Glinka, he learns about the death of his father. Pantelei Prokofievich died of typhus in a strange hut, lonely, homeless, exhausted by a serious illness. Grigory saw his already cold corpse...

The next day after his father's funeral, Grigory leaves for Novopokrovskaya, then ends up in Korenovskaya - these are large Kuban villages on the way to Yekaterinodar. Here Gregory fell ill. A half-drunk doctor found with difficulty determined: relapsing fever, you can’t go - death. Nevertheless, Grigory and Prokhor leave. A two-horse wagon slowly drags on, Grigory lies motionless, wrapped in a sheepskin coat, often losing consciousness. Around the "hurried southern spring" - obviously, the second half of February or the beginning of March. Just at this time, the last major battle with Denikin, the so-called Yegorlyk operation, took place, during which the last of their combat-ready units were defeated. Already on February 22, the Red Army entered Belaya Glinka. The White Guard troops in southern Russia were now completely defeated, they surrendered or fled to the sea.

The wagon with the sick Gregory slowly pulled south. Once Prokhor offered him to stay in the village, but he heard in response what was said with all his might: “Take it ... until I die ...” Prokhor fed him “from his hands”, poured milk into his mouth by force, once Grigory nearly choked. In Ekaterinodar, he was accidentally found by fellow Cossacks, helped, settled with a doctor friend. In a week, Grigory recovered, and at Abinskaya - a village 84 kilometers beyond Ekaterinodar - he was already able to mount a horse.

Grigory and his comrades ended up in Novorossiysk on March 25: it is noteworthy that the date is given here according to the new style. We emphasize that further in the novel, the countdown of time and date is already given according to the new calendar. And it is understandable - Grigory and other heroes of the "Quiet Flows the Don" from the beginning of 1920 already live in the conditions of the Soviet state.

So, the Red Army is a stone's throw from the city, a disorderly evacuation is going on in the port, confusion and panic reigns. General A. I. Denikin tried to take his defeated troops to the Crimea, but the evacuation was organized ugly, many soldiers and white officers could not leave. Gregory and several of his friends try to get on the ship, but in vain. However, Gregory is not very persistent. He resolutely announces to his comrades that he is staying and will be asked to serve with the Reds. He does not persuade anyone, but the authority of Gregory is great, all his friends, after hesitating, follow his example. Before the arrival of the Reds, they drank sadly.

On the morning of March 27, units of the 8th and 9th troops entered Novorossiysk. Soviet armies. 22 thousand former soldiers and officers of Denikin's army were captured in the city. There were no "mass executions", as prophesied by the White Guard propaganda. On the contrary, many prisoners, including officers who did not stain themselves with participation in repressions, were accepted into the Red Army.

Much later, from the story of Prokhor Zykov, it becomes known that in the same place, in Novorossiysk, Grigory joined the First Cavalry Army, became a squadron commander in the 14th Cavalry Division. Previously, he went through a special commission that decided on the enrollment in the Red Army of former military personnel from among various kinds of White Guard formations; Obviously, the commission did not find any aggravating circumstances in Grigory Melekhov's past.

“We sent marching people near Kiev,” Prokhor continues. This, as always, is historically accurate. Indeed, the 14th Cavalry Division was formed only in April 1920 and, to a large extent, from among the Cossacks, who, like the hero of the Quiet Don, went over to the Soviet side. It is interesting to note that the famous A. Parkhomenko was the division commander. In April, the First Cavalry was transferred to Ukraine in connection with the beginning of the intervention of Pan Poland. Due to the breakdown of railway transport, a thousand-mile march on horseback had to be made. By the beginning of June, the army concentrated for the offensive south of Kiev, which was then still occupied by the White Poles.

Even the rustic Prokhor noticed a striking change in Grigory’s mood at that time: “He changed, as he entered the Red Army, he became cheerful, smooth as a gelding.” And again: “He says I will serve until I atone for my past sins.” Gregory's service started well. According to the same Prokhor, the illustrious commander Budyonny himself thanked him for his courage in battle. At the meeting, Grigory will tell Prokhor that he later became an assistant to the regiment commander. He spent the entire campaign against the White Poles in the army. It is curious that he had to fight in the same places as in 1914 during the Battle of Galicia and in 1916 during the Brusilov breakthrough - in Western Ukraine, on the territory of the present Lvov and Volyn regions.

However, in the fate of Gregory even now, at the best time for him, everything is still not cloudless. It could not be otherwise in his broken fate, he himself understands this: “I’m not blind, I saw how the commissar and the communists in the squadron looked at me ...” No words, the squadron communists not only had a moral right - they were obliged watch Melekhov closely; there was a hard war, and cases of defections of former officers were not uncommon. Grigory himself told Mikhail Koshevoy that a whole part of them went over to the Poles ... The Communists are right, you can’t look into a person’s soul, and Grigory’s biography could not but arouse suspicion. However, for him, who had gone over to the side of the Soviets with pure thoughts, this could not but cause feelings of bitterness and resentment, moreover, one must remember his impressionable nature and ardent, straightforward character.

Grigory is not shown at all in the service in the Red Army, although it lasted a lot - from April to October 1920. We learn about this time only from indirect information, and even then they are not rich in the novel. In the autumn, Dunyashka received a letter from Grigory stating that he "was wounded on the Wrangel front and that after his recovery he would, in all likelihood, be demobilized." Later he will tell how he had to participate in the battles, "when they approached the Crimea." It is known that the First Cavalry began hostilities against Wrangel on October 28 from the Kakhovka bridgehead. Therefore, Gregory could only be wounded later. The wound, obviously, was not serious, because it did not affect his health in any way. Then, as he expected, he was demobilized. It can be assumed that suspicions about people like Grigory intensified with the transition to the Wrangel front: many White Cossacks-Donets settled in the Crimea behind Perekop, the First Horse fought with them - this could influence the decision of the command to demobilize the former Cossack officer Melekhov.

Grigory arrived in Millerovo, as they say, "in late autumn." Only one thought completely owns him: “Gregory dreamed of how he would take off his overcoat and boots at home, put on spacious tweets ... and, throwing a homespun zipun over a warm jacket, would go to the field.” For a few more days he traveled to Tatarsky in carts and on foot, and when he approached the house at night, snow began to fall. The next day, the ground was already covered with "the first blue snow". Obviously, only at home he found out about the death of his mother - without waiting for him, Vasilisa Ilyinichna died in August. Shortly before this, Sister Dunya married Mikhail Koshevoy.

On the very first day after arrival, toward nightfall, Grigory had a difficult conversation with a former friend and fellow soldier, Koshev, who had become chairman of the farm revolutionary committee. Grigory said that he only wanted to work around the house and raise children, that he was deadly tired and wanted nothing but peace. Mikhail does not believe him, he knows that the district is restless, that the Cossacks are offended by the hardships of the surplus, while Grigory is a popular and influential person in this environment. “Some kind of mess happens - and you go over to the Other Side,” Mikhail tells him, and he, from his point of view, has every right to judge so. The conversation ends abruptly: Mikhail orders him to go to Veshenskaya tomorrow morning, to register with the Cheka as a former officer.

The next day, Grigory is in Veshki, talking with representatives of the Politburo of Donchek. He was asked to fill out a questionnaire, asked in detail about his participation in the 1919 uprising, and in conclusion was told to come for a mark in a week. The situation in the district was complicated by that time by the fact that an anti-Soviet rebellion had risen on its northern border, in the Voronezh province. He learns from a former colleague, and now the squadron commander in Veshenskaya, Fomin, that arrests of former officers are underway on the Upper Don. Gregory understands that the same fate may await him; it worries him unusually; accustomed to risking his life in open combat, not afraid of pain and death, he is desperately afraid of captivity. “I haven’t been in prison for a long time and I’m afraid of prison worse than death,” he says, and at the same time he doesn’t draw at all and doesn’t joke. For him, a freedom-loving man with a heightened sense of his own dignity, who is accustomed to decide his own fate, for him the prison must really seem more terrible than death.

The date of Grigory's call to Donchek can be established quite accurately. This happened on Saturday (for he should have reappeared in a week, and the novel says: “You should have gone to Veshenskaya on Saturday”). According to the Soviet calendar of 1920, the first Saturday of December fell on the fourth day. Most likely, it is this Saturday that we should be talking about, since Grigory would hardly have had time to come to Tatarsky a week earlier, and it is doubtful that he would get home from Millerov (where he found " late autumn”) until almost mid-December. So, Grigory returned to his native farm on December 3, and the first time was in Donchek the next day.

He settled with Aksinya with his children. It is noteworthy, however, that when asked by his sister whether he was going to marry her, “He will succeed with this,” Gregory answered vaguely. His heart is heavy, he cannot and does not want to plan his life.

“He spent several days in oppressive idleness,” it says further. “I tried to make something at Aksin’s farm and immediately felt that I couldn’t do anything.” The uncertainty of the situation oppresses him, frightens the possibility of arrest. But in his heart he had already made a decision: he would no longer go to Veshenskaya, he would hide, although he himself did not yet know where.

Circumstances hastened the supposed course of events. “On Thursday night” (that is, on the night of December 10), a pale Dunyashka, who ran up to him, told Grigory that Mikhail Koshevoy and “four horsemen from the village” were going to arrest him. Grigory gathered himself instantly, "he acted as in a battle - hastily but confidently," kissed his sister, sleeping children, crying Aksinya and stepped over the threshold into the cold darkness.

For three weeks he hid with a fellow soldier he knew in the Verkhne-Krivsky farm, then secretly moved to the Gorbatovsky farm, to a distant relative of Aksinya, with whom he lived for another "more than a month." He has no plans for the future, he lay in the upper room for days on end. Sometimes he was seized by a passionate desire to return to the children, to Aksinya, but he suppressed it. Finally, the owner bluntly said that he could no longer keep him, advised him to go to the Yagodny farm to hide with his matchmaker. “Late at night” Grigory leaves the farm - and right there he is caught on the road by a mounted patrol. It turned out that he fell into the hands of the Fomin gang, who had recently rebelled against Soviet power.

Here it is necessary to clarify the chronology. So. Grigory left Aksinya's house on the night of December 10 and then spent about two months hiding. Consequently, the meeting with the Fominists was to take place around February 10th. But here in the "internal chronology" of the novel there is an obvious typo. It's a typo, not an error. For Grigory gets to Fomin around March 10, that is, M. Sholokhov simply “missed” one month.

The uprising of the squadron under the command of Fomin (these are real historical events reflected in the documents of the North Caucasian Military District) began in the village of Veshenskaya in early March 1921. This petty anti-Soviet rebellion was one of many phenomena of the same kind that took place at that time in different parts of the country: the peasantry, dissatisfied with the surplus appropriation, in some places followed the lead of the Cossacks. Soon, the surplus appraisal was canceled (X Party Congress, mid-March), which led to the rapid elimination of political banditry. Having failed in an attempt to capture Veshenskaya, Fomin and his gang began to travel around the surrounding villages, in vain inciting the Cossacks to revolt. By the time they met Grigory, they had already been wandering for several days. We also note that Fomin mentions the well-known Kronstadt rebellion: this means that the conversation takes place before March 20, because already on the night of March 18 the rebellion was suppressed.

So Grigory ends up at Fomin's, he can no longer wander around the farms, there is nowhere and it is dangerous, he is afraid to go to Veshenskaya with confession. He sadly jokes about his position: “I have a choice, like in a fairy tale about heroes ... Three roads, and not a single one has a travel ...” Of course, Fomin’s noisy and simply stupid demagogy about “liberating the Cossacks from the yoke of commissars” believes, does not even take into account. He says so: “I’m joining your gang,” which terribly offends the petty and self-satisfied Fomin. Gregory's plan is simple; somehow get by until the summer, and then, having obtained horses, leave with Aksinya somewhere further away and somehow change their hateful life.

Together with the Fominites, Grigory wanders around the villages of the Verkhnedonsky district. No "uprising", of course, is happening. On the contrary, ordinary bandits secretly desert and surrender - fortunately, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee announced an amnesty for those gang members who voluntarily surrender to the authorities, they even kept their land allotment. Drunkenness and looting flourish in the motley Fomin detachment. Grigory resolutely demands from Fomin to stop offending the population; for some time they obeyed him, but the asocial nature of the gang, of course, does not change from this.

As an experienced military man, Grigory was well aware that in a collision with a regular cavalry unit of the Red Army, the gang would be utterly smashed. And so it happened. On April 18 (this date is given in the novel), the Fominists were unexpectedly attacked near the Ozhogin farm. Almost everyone died, only Grigory, Fomin and three others managed to ride away. They took refuge on the island, lived for ten days in hiding, like animals, without kindling fires. Here is a remarkable conversation between Gregory and an officer from the intelligentsia, Kanarin. Gregory says: “From the fifteenth year, as I saw enough of the war, I thought that there is no God. None! If he had, he would not have had the right to allow people to such a mess. We, the front-line soldiers, canceled God, left him only to old men and women. Let them have fun. And there is no finger, and there can be no monarchy. The people finished it once and for all.

“At the end of April,” as the text says, they crossed the Don. Again, aimless wanderings through the villages, flight from the Soviet units, the expectation of imminent death began.

For three days they traveled along the right bank, trying to find Maslen's gang in order to join him, but in vain. Gradually, Fomin again overgrown with people. All sorts of declassed rabble flocked to him now, who had nothing to lose and still whom to serve.

Finally, a favorable moment has come, and one night Grigory lags behind the gang and hurries to his native farm with two good horses. It happened at the very end of May - beginning of June 1921. (Earlier, the text mentioned the heavy battle that the gang waged “in mid-May”, then: “in two weeks, Fomin made an extensive circle around all the villages of the Upper Don.”) Grigory had documents taken from the murdered policeman, he intended to leave with Aksinya to the Kuban, leaving for the time being the children with his sister.

On the same night he is in his native farm. Aksinya quickly got ready for the road, ran after Dunyashka. Left alone for a minute, “he hurriedly went to the bed and kissed the children for a long time, and then he remembered Natalya and remembered a lot more from his difficult life and cried.” The children never woke up and did not see their father. And Grigory looked at Polyushka for the last time...

By morning they were eight miles from the farm, hiding in the forest. Grigory, exhausted by endless transitions, fell asleep. Aksinya, happy and full of hope, picked flowers and, "remembering her youth", wove a beautiful wreath and laid it at the head of Gregory. “We will find our share!” she thought this morning.

Grigory intended to move to Morozovskaya (a large village on the Donbass-Tsaritsyn railway). We left at night. Immediately ran into a patrol. A rifle bullet hit Aksinya in the left shoulder blade and pierced his chest. She did not utter a groan or a word, and by morning she died in the arms of Grigory, distraught with grief. He buried her right there in the ravine, digging out the grave with a saber. It was then that he saw a black sky and a black sun above him ... Aksinya was about twenty-nine years old. She died at the very beginning of June 1921.

Having lost his Aksinya, Grigory was sure "that they would not part for long." Strength and will have left him, he lives as if half asleep. For three days he wandered aimlessly across the steppe. Then he swam across the Don and went to the Slashchevskaya Dubrava, where, he knew, the deserters who had taken refuge there since the time of mobilization in the fall of 1920 "settled" lived. I wandered through the vast forest for several days until I found them. Consequently, from mid-June he settled with them. Throughout the second half of the year and the beginning of the next, Gregory lived in the forest, during the day he carved spoons and toys from wood, at night he yearned and cried.

“On the spring”, as it is said in the novel, that is, in March, one of the Fominovites appeared in the forest, Grigory learns from him that the gang was defeated, and its chieftain was killed. After that, Grigory pierced through the forest “for another week”, then suddenly, unexpectedly for everyone, he got ready and went home. He is advised to wait until May 1, before the expected amnesty, but he does not even hear. He has only one thought, one goal: "If only he could walk around his native places, show off at the kids, then he could die."

And so he crossed the Don "on the blue, eroded March ice" and moved towards the house. He meets his son, who, recognizing him, lowers his eyes. He hears the last sad news in his life: daughter Polyushka died of scarlet fever last autumn (the girl was barely six years old). This is the seventh death of loved ones that Grigory experienced: daughter Tanya, brother Peter, wife, father, mother, Aksinya, daughter of Field ...

So, on a March morning in 1922, the biography of Grigory Panteleevich Melekhov, a Cossack from the village of Veshenskaya, thirty years old, Russian, by social status - the middle peasant, ends.

Grigory Melekhov is the central character of the novel Quiet Flows the Don, unsuccessfully looking for his place in a changing world. cutaway historical events showed the difficult fate of the Don Cossack, who knows how to love passionately and selflessly fight.

History of creation

thinking new novel, Mikhail Sholokhov did not imagine that the work would eventually turn into an epic. It all started innocently. In the middle of autumn 1925, the writer began the first chapters of Donshchina, which was the original title of the work in which the author wanted to show the life of the Don Cossacks during the years of the revolution. From that he began - the Cossacks went as part of the army to Petrograd. Suddenly, the author was stopped by the thought that readers are unlikely to understand the motives of the Cossacks in suppressing the revolution without background, and he put the manuscript in the far corner.

Only a year later, the idea fully matured: in the novel, Mikhail Alexandrovich wanted to reflect the life of individuals through the prism of historical events that occurred in the period from 1914 to 1921. The tragic fates of the main characters, including Grigory Melekhov, had to be written into the epic theme, and for this it was worth getting to know the customs and characters of the inhabitants of the Cossack farm. The author of The Quiet Don moved to his homeland, to the village of Vishnevskaya, where he plunged headlong into the life of the Don.

In search of bright characters and a special atmosphere that settled on the pages of the work, the writer traveled around the neighborhood, met with witnesses of the First World War and revolutionary events, collected a mosaic of tales, beliefs and elements of folklore of local residents, and also stormed the Moscow and Rostov archives in search of the truth about the life of those dashing years.

Finally, the first volume of The Quiet Flows the Don was published. Russian troops appeared in it on the fronts of the war. The second book added the February coup and October Revolution, whose echoes reached the Don. Only in the first two parts of the novel, Sholokhov placed about a hundred heroes, later 70 more characters joined them. In total, the epic stretched into four volumes, the last one was completed in 1940.

The work was published in the publications "October", "Roman-gazeta", "New World" and "Izvestia", rapidly gaining recognition from readers. They bought up magazines, flooded editorial offices with reviews, and the author with letters. Soviet book readers perceived the tragedies of heroes as personal upheavals. Among the favorites, of course, was Grigory Melekhov.

It is interesting that Gregory was absent in the first drafts, but a character with that name was found in the writer's early stories - there the hero is already endowed with some features of the future "resident" of the "Quiet Don". Researchers of Sholokhov's work consider the Cossack Kharlampy Ermakov, who was sentenced to death in the late 1920s, to be the prototype of Melekhov. The author himself did not admit that it was this man who became the prototype of the book Cossack. Meanwhile, during the collection of the historical basis of the novel, Mikhail Alexandrovich met Yermakov and even corresponded with him.

Biography

The novel sets out the entire chronology of Grigory Melekhov's life before and after the war. The Don Cossack was born in 1892 on the Tatarsky farm (the village of Veshenskaya), while the writer does not indicate the exact date of birth. His father Pantelei Melekhov once served as a constable in the Ataman Life Guards Regiment, but was retired due to old age. The life of a young guy for the time being passes in serenity, in ordinary peasant affairs: mowing, fishing, housekeeping. At night - passionate meetings with the beautiful Aksinya Astakhova, a married lady, but passionately in love with a young man.

His father is dissatisfied with this cordial affection and hastily marries his son to an unloved girl - meek Natalya Korshunova. However, marriage does not solve the problem. Grigory understands that he cannot forget Aksinya, so he leaves his legal wife and settles with his mistress on the estate of the local pan. On a summer day in 1913, Melekhov becomes a father - his first daughter was born. The happiness of the couple turned out to be short-lived: life was destroyed by the beginning of the First World War, who called Gregory to pay his debt to the Motherland.

Melekhov fought in the war selflessly and desperately, in one of the battles he was wounded in the eye. For the courage of the warrior, he was awarded the St. George Cross and promotion, and in the future, three more crosses and four medals will be added to the awards of the man. The hero’s acquaintance in the hospital with the Bolshevik Garanzha, who convinces him of the injustice of tsarist rule, turned the political views of the hero upside down.

Meanwhile, a blow awaits Grigory Melekhov's house - Aksinya, heartbroken (by the death of her little daughter), succumbs to the spell of the son of the owner of the Listnitsky estate. The common-law husband who arrived on a visit did not forgive the betrayal and returned to his legal wife, who later bore him two children.

In the outbreak of the Civil War, Gregory takes the side of the "Reds". But by 1918, he became disillusioned with the Bolsheviks and joined the ranks of those who launched an uprising against the Red Army on the Don, becoming a division commander. Even greater anger towards the Bolsheviks in the soul of the hero awakens the death of his older brother Petro at the hands of a fellow villager, an ardent supporter of Soviet power Mishki Koshevoy.

Passions are also seething on the love front - Grigory cannot find peace and is literally torn between his women. Because of still living feelings for Aksinya, Melekhov cannot live in peace in his family. The constant infidelity of her husband pushes Natalia to an abortion, which destroys her. A man endures the premature death of a woman with difficulty, because he also had peculiar, but tender feelings for his wife.

The offensive of the Red Army on the Cossacks forces Grigory Melekhov to go on the run to Novorossiysk. There, driven into a dead end, the hero joins the Bolsheviks. 1920 was marked by the return of Gregory to his homeland, where he settled with his children at Aksinya. The new government began the persecution of the former "whites", and during the escape to the Kuban for a "quiet life" Aksinya was mortally wounded. After wandering around the world a little more, Grigory returned to his native village, because the new authorities promised an amnesty to the rebel Cossacks.

Mikhail Sholokhov put an end to the story at the most interesting place, without telling readers about the further fate of Melekhov. However, it is not difficult to guess what happened to him. Historians urge curious lovers of the writer's work to consider the date of death of the beloved character the year of the execution of his prototype - 1927.

Image

The author conveyed the difficult fate and internal changes of Grigory Melekhov through a description of his appearance. By the end of the novel, a handsome, carefree young man in love with life turns into a stern warrior with gray hair and a frozen heart:

“... knew that he would no longer laugh at him, as before; He knew that his eyes were hollow and his cheekbones were sharply sticking out, and in his eyes a light of senseless cruelty began to shine more and more often.

Gregory is a typical choleric: temperamental, quick-tempered and unbalanced, which manifests itself both in love affairs and in relations with the environment in general. The character of the protagonist of The Quiet Flows the Don is an alloy of courage, heroism and even recklessness, it combines passion and humility, gentleness and cruelty, hatred and infinite kindness.

Gregory is a typical choleric

Sholokhov created a hero with an open soul, capable of compassion, forgiveness and humanity: Grigory is tormented by a caterpillar accidentally killed while mowing, defends Franya, not being afraid of a whole platoon of Cossacks, saves Stepan Astakhov, his sworn enemy, Aksinya's husband, in the war

In search of the truth, Melekhov rushes from the Reds to the Whites, eventually becoming a renegade who is not accepted by either side. The man appears as a real hero of his time. His tragedy lies in history itself, when upheavals disturbed a calm life, turning peaceful workers into unhappy people. The spiritual quest of the character was accurately conveyed by the phrase of the novel:

"He stood on the edge in the struggle of two principles, denying both of them."

All illusions were dispelled in the battles of the civil war: anger towards the Bolsheviks and disappointment in the "whites" makes the hero look for a third way in the revolution, but he understands that in the "middle it is impossible - they will crush him." Once passionately loving life, Grigory Melekhov never finds faith in himself, remaining at the same time a folk character and an extra person in the current fate of the country.

Screen versions of the novel "Quiet Flows the Don"

The epic of Mikhail Sholokhov appeared on movie screens four times. Based on the first two books, a silent film was made in 1931, where the main roles were played by Andrei Abrikosov (Grigory Melekhov) and Emma Tsesarskaya (Aksinya). Rumor has it that, with an eye on the characters of the characters of this production, the writer created a sequel to The Quiet Flows the Don.

A poignant picture based on the work was presented to the Soviet audience in 1958 by the director. The beautiful half of the country fell in love with the hero in performance. A mustachioed handsome Cossack twisted love with, which convincingly appeared in the role of passionate Aksinya. Melekhov's wife Natalya played. The film's box of awards consists of seven awards, including a diploma from the Directors Guild of the USA.

Another multi-part film adaptation of the novel belongs to. Russia, Great Britain and Italy worked on the film "Quiet Flows the Don" in 2006. On the leading role approved and.

For "Quiet Don" Mikhail Sholokhov was accused of plagiarism. The "greatest epic" researchers considered stolen from a white officer who died in the Civil War. The author even had to temporarily postpone the work on writing the continuation of the novel, while a special commission investigated the information received. However, the problem of authorship has not yet been resolved.

Aspiring actor of the Maly Theater Andrey Abrikosov woke up famous after the premiere of The Quiet Flows the Don. It is noteworthy that before that, in the temple of Melpomene, he never went on stage - they simply did not give a role. The man also did not bother to get acquainted with the work, he read the novel when the shooting was already in full swing.

Quotes

"You have a smart head, but the fool got it."

"The blind man said, 'We'll see.'

“Like a steppe scorched by fires, Gregory’s life became black. He lost everything that was dear to his heart. Everything was taken away from him, everything was destroyed by a ruthless death. Only the children remained. But he himself still convulsively clung to the ground, as if in fact his broken life was of some value to him and to others.

"Sometimes, remembering your whole life, you look - and she is like an empty pocket, turned inside out."

“Life turned out to be sarcastic, wisely simple. Now it already seemed to him that from eternity there was no such truth in it, under the wing of which anyone could warm up, and, embittered to the extreme, he thought: everyone has his own truth, his own furrow.

“There is no truth in life. It can be seen whoever defeats whom will devour him ... And I was looking for the bad truth.

Introduction

The fate of Grigory Melekhov in the novel "Quiet Flows the Don" by Sholokhov is in the center of the reader's attention. This hero, who, by the will of fate, fell into the thick of complex historical events, has been forced to search for his life path for many years.

Description Grigory Melekhov

Already from the first pages of the novel, Sholokhov introduces us to the unusual fate of grandfather Grigory, explaining why the Melekhovs outwardly differ from the rest of the inhabitants of the farm. Grigory, like his father, had "a drooping vulture nose, blue tonsils of hot eyes in slightly oblique slits, sharp cheekbones." Remembering the origin of Panteley Prokofievich, everyone in the farm called the Melekhovs "Turks".
life changes inner world Gregory. His appearance also changes. From a carefree cheerful guy, he turns into a stern warrior whose heart is hardened. Grigory “knew that he would no longer laugh as before; He knew that his eyes were hollow and his cheekbones were sticking out sharply, ”and in his eyes“ the light of senseless cruelty began to shine through more and more often.

At the end of the novel, a completely different Gregory appears before us. This is a mature man tired of life "with a tired squint of eyes, with reddish tips of a black mustache, with premature gray hair at the temples and hard wrinkles on the forehead."

Characteristics of Gregory

At the beginning of the work, Grigory Melekhov is a young Cossack living according to the laws of his ancestors. The main thing for him is the household and the family. He enthusiastically helps his father with mowing and fishing. Unable to argue with his parents when they marry him to the unloved Natalya Korshunova.

But, for all that, Gregory is a passionate, addicted nature. Despite the prohibitions of his father, he continues to go to night games. Meets with Aksinya Astakhova, the neighbor's wife, and then leaves her home with her.

Gregory, like most Cossacks, is inherent in courage, sometimes reaching recklessness. He behaves heroically at the front, participates in the most dangerous sorties. At the same time, the hero is not alien to humanity. He is worried about a gosling that he accidentally slaughtered while mowing. For a long time he suffers because of the murdered unarmed Austrian. “Subjecting to the heart”, Gregory saves his sworn enemy Stepan from death. Goes against a whole platoon of Cossacks, protecting Franya.

In Gregory, passion and obedience, madness and gentleness, kindness and hatred coexist at the same time.

The fate of Grigory Melekhov and his path of quest

The fate of Melekhov in the novel "Quiet Don" is tragic. He is constantly forced to look for a "way out", the right path. It is not easy for him in the war. His personal life is also complicated.

Like the favorite heroes of L.N. Tolstoy, Grigory goes through a difficult path of life quests. In the beginning, everything seemed clear to him. Like other Cossacks, he is called to war. For him there is no doubt that he must defend the Fatherland. But, getting to the front, the hero realizes that his whole nature resists the murder.

Gregory goes from white to red, but here he will be disappointed. Seeing how Podtelkov dealt with the captured young officers, he loses faith in this government and the next year he again finds himself in the white army.

Tossing between the whites and the reds, the hero himself becomes hardened. He loots and kills. Tries to forget himself in drunkenness and fornication. In the end, fleeing from the persecution of the new government, he finds himself among the bandits. Then he becomes a deserter.

Grigory is exhausted by throwing. He wants to live on his own land, raise bread and children. Although life hardens the hero, gives his features something "wolf", in fact, he is not a killer. Having lost everything and never found his way, Grigory returns to his native farm, realizing that, most likely, death awaits him here. But, the son and the house is the only thing that keeps the hero in the world.

Grigory's relationship with Aksinya and Natalya

Fate sends the hero two passionately loving women. But, relations with them are not easy for Gregory. While still single, Grigory falls in love with Aksinya, the wife of Stepan Astakhov, his neighbor. Over time, the woman reciprocates his feelings, and their relationship develops into unbridled passion. “So unusual and obvious was their crazy connection, so frenziedly they burned with one shameless fire, people without conscience and without hiding, losing weight and turning black in their faces in front of their neighbors, that now people were ashamed to look at them when they met for some reason.”

Despite this, he cannot resist the will of his father and marries Natalya Korshunova, promising himself to forget Aksinya and settle down. But, Gregory is not able to keep the oath given to himself. Although Natalya is beautiful and selflessly loves her husband, he again converges with Aksinya and leaves his wife and parental home.

After Aksinya's betrayal, Grigory returns to his wife again. She accepts him and forgives past wrongs. But he was not destined for a quiet family life. The image of Aksinya haunts him. Once again fate brings them together. Unable to bear the shame and betrayal, Natalia has an abortion and dies. Gregory blames himself for the death of his wife, severely experiences this loss.

Now, it would seem, nothing can prevent him from finding happiness with his beloved woman. But, circumstances force him to leave the place and, together with Aksinya, again set off on the road, the last for his beloved.

With the death of Aksinya, Grigory's life loses all meaning. The hero no longer has even an illusory hope for happiness. “And Gregory, dying of horror, realized that it was all over, that the worst thing that could have happened in his life had already happened.”

Conclusion

In conclusion of my essay on the topic “The Fate of Grigory Melekhov in the Novel “Quiet Flows the Don””, I want to fully agree with the critics who believe that in “The Quiet Don” the fate of Grigory Melekhov is the most difficult and one of the most tragic. Using the example of Grigory Sholokhov, he showed how the whirlpool of political events breaks human destiny. And the one who sees his destiny in peaceful labor suddenly becomes brutal killer with a devastated soul.

Artwork test

A restless nature, a difficult fate, a strong character, a man on the border of two eras are the main epithets of the main character of Sholokhov's novel. The image and characterization of Grigory Melekhov in the novel Quiet Flows the Don is an artistic description of the fate of one Cossack. But behind him stands a whole generation of Don peasants, who were born in a vague and incomprehensible time, when family ties collapsed, the fate of the entire diverse country changed.

Appearance and family of Gregory

It is not difficult to introduce Grigory Panteleevich Melekhov. The young Cossack is the youngest son of Pantelei Prokofievich. There are three children in the family: Peter, Grigory and Dunyasha. The roots of the surname came from crossing Turkish blood (grandmother) with Cossack (grandfather). This origin left its mark on the character of the hero. How many scientific papers are now devoted to Turkish roots that have changed the Russian character. The Melekhovs' yard is located on the outskirts of the farm. The family is not rich, but not poor either. The average income for some is enviable, which means that there are poorer families in the village. For the father of Natalia, the bride of Gregory, the Cossack is not rich. At the beginning of the novel, Grishka is about 19-20 years old. Age should be calculated at the beginning of the service. The draft age of those years is 21 years old. Gregory is waiting for a call.

Character traits:

• nose: hook-nosed, kite;
• look: wild;
• cheekbones: sharp;
• skin: swarthy, brown blushing;
• black like a gypsy;
• teeth: wolf, dazzling white:
• height: not particularly tall, half a head taller than his brother, 6 years older than him;
• eyes: bluish tonsils, hot, black, non-Russian;
• smile: beastly.

They say about the beauty of a guy in different ways: handsome, handsome. The epithet beautiful accompanies Gregory throughout the novel, even when he has grown old, he retains his attractiveness and attractiveness. But there is a lot of masculine in his attractiveness: coarse hair, male hands unyielding to affection, curly growth on his chest, legs overgrown with thick hair. Even for those whom he scares, Gregory stands out from the crowd: a degenerate, wild, gangster face. It is felt that by the look of a Cossack one can determine his mood. It seems to some that there are only eyes on the face, burning, clear and piercing.

Cossack clothes

Melekhov dresses in the usual Cossack uniform. Traditional Cossack set:

• everyday bloomers;
• festive with bright stripes;
• white wool stockings;
• tweets;
• satin shirts;
• short fur coat;
• hat.

Of the elegant clothes, the Cossack has a frock coat, in which he goes to woo Natalia. But he is not comfortable for the guy. Grisha tugs at the skirts of his coat, trying to take it off as soon as possible.

Attitude towards children

Gregory loves children, but the realization of complete love comes to him very late. The son of Mishatok is the last thread that connects him with life after the loss of his beloved. He accepts Tanya, Aksinya's daughter, but is tormented by thoughts that she might not be his. In the letter, the man confesses that he dreams of the girl in a red dress. There are few lines about the Cossack and children, they are mean and not bright. It's probably right. It is difficult to imagine a strong Cossack playing with a child. He is passionate about communicating with children from Natalia when he returns on a visit from the war. He wants to forget everything he has experienced, plunging into household chores. For Gregory, children are not just a continuation of the family, they are a shrine, part of the homeland.

Male character traits

Grigory Melekhov is a male image. He is a bright representative of the Cossacks. Character traits help to understand the complex problems that are happening around.

Waywardness. The guy is not afraid of his opinion, he cannot retreat from it. He does not listen to advice, does not tolerate ridicule, is not afraid of fights and brawls.

Physical strength. The guy is liked for his valiant prowess, strength and endurance. He receives his first St. George Cross for patience and endurance. Overcoming fatigue and pain, he carries the wounded from the battlefield.

Diligence. A working Cossack is not afraid of any work. He is ready to do anything to support his family, to help his parents.

Honesty. Gregory's conscience is constantly with him, he is tormented by doing things, not of his own free will, but due to circumstances. The Cossack is not ready for looting. He refuses even his father when he comes to him for the loot.

Pride. The son does not allow his father to beat him. He doesn't ask for help when he needs it.

Education. Gregory is a literate Cossack. He knows how to write, and conveys thoughts on paper clearly and understandably. Melekhov rarely writes, as befits secretive natures. Everything is in their soul, on paper only mean, precise phrases.

Gregory loves his farm, village life. He likes nature and the Don. He can admire the water and the horses splashing in it.

Gregory, war and homeland

The most difficult storyline is the Cossack and power. The war from different sides appears before the eyes of the reader as the hero of the novel saw it. There are practically no differences between whites and reds, bandits and ordinary soldiers. Both kill, loot, rape, humiliate. Melekhov is tormented, he does not understand the meaning of killing people. He is struck by the Cossacks, who live in war, enjoying the deaths around. But time changes. Grigory becomes more callous, cold-blooded, although he does not agree with unnecessary murders. Humanity is the basis of his soul. Melekhov does not have the categoricalness of Mishka Korshunov, the prototype of revolutionary activists who see only enemies around them. Melekhov does not allow his superiors to speak rudely to him. He fights back, immediately puts in place those who want to command him.

An essay on the topic “The Image of Grigory Melekhov” briefly: characterization, life story and description of the hero in search of truth

In Sholokhov's epic novel The Quiet Flows the Don, Grigory Melekhov occupies a central place. He is the most complex Sholokhov hero. This is a seeker of truth. Such cruel tests fell on his lot, which a person, it would seem, is not able to endure. The life path of Grigory Melekhov is difficult and tortuous: first there was the First World War, then the civil war, and, finally, an attempt to destroy the Cossacks, an uprising and its suppression.

The tragedy of Grigory Melekhov is the tragedy of a man who has broken away from the people, who has become a renegade. His detachment becomes tragic, because he is a confused person. He went against himself, against millions of workers just like himself.

From his grandfather Prokofy Gregory, he inherited a quick-tempered and independent character, as well as the ability for tender love. The blood of the grandmother of the “Turkish woman” manifested itself in his appearance, in love, on the battlefields and in the ranks. And from his father he inherited a strong temper, and it was precisely because of this that adherence to principles and rebelliousness haunted Grigory from his youth. He fell in love with a married woman Aksinya (this is a turning point in his life) and soon decides to leave with her, despite all the prohibitions of his father and the condemnation of society. The origins of Melekhov's tragedy lie in his rebellious character. This is the predetermination of a tragic fate.

Gregory is a kind, brave and courageous hero who always tries to fight for truth and justice. But the war comes, and it destroys all his ideas about the truth and justice of life. The war appears to the writer and his heroes as a series of losses and terrible deaths: it cripples people from the inside and destroys everything dear and dear. It forces all the heroes to take a fresh look at the problems of duty and justice, to seek the truth and not find it in any of their warring camps. Once at the Reds, Grigory sees the same cruelty and thirst for blood as the Whites. He can not understand why all this? After all, war destroys the well-established life of families, peaceful work, it takes away the last things from people and kills love. Grigory and Pyotr Melekhov, Stepan Astakhov, Koshevoy and other heroes of Sholokhov are unable to understand why this fratricidal massacre is taking place? For whom and for what should people die when they still have a long life ahead of them?

The fate of Grigory Melekhov is a life incinerated by war. The personal relationships of the characters unfold against the backdrop of the tragic history of the country. Gregory will never again be able to forget how he killed the first enemy, an Austrian soldier. He hacked him to death with a saber, it's terrible for him. The moment of murder unrecognizably changed him. The hero has lost his foothold, his kind and fair soul protests, cannot survive such violence against common sense. But the war is on, Melekhov understands that he must continue to kill. Soon his mind changes: he realizes that war kills the best people of his time, that among thousands of deaths one cannot find the truth, Gregory throws down his weapon and returns to his native farm to work on his native land and raise children. At almost 30 years old, the hero is already almost an old man. The path of Melekhov's searches turned out to be an impassable thicket. Sholokhov in his work raises the question of the responsibility of history to the individual. The author sympathizes with his hero Grigory Melekhov, whose life is already broken at such a young age.

As a result of his search, Melekhov is left alone: ​​Aksinya is killed by his recklessness, he is hopelessly far from children, if only because he will bring trouble on them with his closeness. Trying to remain true to himself, he cheats on everyone: the warring parties, women, and ideas. So he was looking in the wrong place in the first place. Thinking only about himself, about his "truth", he did not like and did not serve. At an hour when a weighty man's word was required of him, Gregory could only provide doubts and self-examination. But the war did not need philosophers, and women did not need the love of wisdom. Thus, Melekhov is the result of the transformation of the “superfluous person” type in the conditions of the most severe historical conflict.

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