Grigory Melekhov during the First World War. "Grigory Melekhov" was shot. Melekhov and Aksinya

The main impression of the Soviet people about the First World War is, of course, Mikhail Sholokhov's "Quiet Flows the Don"

For several decades, the events of the First World War seemed to have remained in the shadows, away from public attention. But the memories of that war came back to haunt me, echoed in many books, poems, songs. Here are the satirical revelations of Hasek, and the novels of Alexei Tolstoy, Sergei Sergeev-Tsensky - very capital, by the way, with many quotes from the press of 1914 - 17th ...

Recall the textbook - "At the position, the girl saw off the fighter ...". Mikhail Isakovsky wrote these poems at the beginning of the war, and the young composer Igor Lavrentiev gave them a melody that became popular. We are accustomed to this wonderful song and, of course, we associate it with the image of the Great Patriotic War. But in 1941, they almost didn’t say “at the position”, then another expression was in use - “seeing off to the front”. And the positions are precisely the 1914th or 15th year, as they used to say in the years “ great war"- and the poet remembered this proverb.

But the main impression of the Soviet people about that war is, of course, Sholokhov. Several generations of Soviet people learned about the First World War from Sholokhov, from the novel Quiet Flows the Don. Already in the early thirties, the book (or rather, the parts that had come out by that time) received the widest recognition. The source is, of course, subjective: fiction. But it is useful not to forget about him today, when leafy, smoothed, ceremonial assessments of that war are in use.

And some celebrate the centenary of the beginning of this tragic historical milestone as a kind of patriotic holiday, forgetting to comprehend the often not fanfare course of battles, not to mention the catastrophe in the rear, in the capitals ...

And it is impossible to forget (and surpass!) Sholokhov's poetic images... His prose is remembered in pieces, powerful fragments - like poetry. The Cossack Iliad begins on the eve of the war, in the penultimate peaceful year. The next decade after the peaceful 1912 will be catastrophic for the Don Cossacks (and, accordingly, for the heroes of the novel). Yes, Sholokhov's novel is the death of the Nibelungs of the twentieth century in a Cossack way. Because the reader Quiet Don” and it is difficult to doubt that we have an epic before us.

The war is approaching as in a fairy tale or in an epic - with alarming signs. “At night, an owl roared in the bell tower. Unsteady and terrible cries hung over the farm, and the owl flew over to the cemetery, groaning over the brown, haunted graves. - To be thin, - the old people prophesied. “The war will come.” How many disputes, gossip did Don hear: to be or not to be a war? But even experienced Cossacks, veterans of many campaigns, could not imagine the scale of the disaster. They knew nothing about the war of the twentieth century. Nobody knew!

Sholokhov draws attention to the drama of the first days of the war: the scrapping of civilian life, the tears of mothers and future widows. He is interested in this particular angle, this particular layer of truth. Aleksey Tolstoy, who became a war correspondent, interpreted the beginning of the war in a completely different way. “And the whole people, the one who had just been dark, and sleepy, and drunk, for whom we always feared, whom we taught reason with such difficulties, rose to this unprecedented war, resolutely, courageously and seriously.” Another mood, another intonation. True, Tolstoy wrote these lines during the war, and Sholokhov comprehended the events of 1914 even after the next war - the Civil War. And yet, the usual features of two writers, contemporaries, but not like-minded people, are manifested here. Aleksei Tolstoy was by no means a Tolstoyan... He invariably showed through as a sovereign - even when it seemed irremediably old-fashioned.

The Great War is at the center of the Don epic, it unites and separates heroes, plays with destinies. Sholokhov began working on the novel as a very young man (and L.N. Tolstoy wrote the first volume of the novel War and Peace at the age of 36 - today it’s hard to believe). It seems that he did not visit the headquarters, did not fight in Galicia, did not communicate with the generals, could not participate in that war, but in the novel the author's voice sounds impressive. It was as if he had seen the chronicle of battles both in reality and in documentary films - although when Russia withdrew from the First World War, Mikhail Sholokhov was twelve years old.

This happens with great writers - and therefore the talk about Sholokhov's "plagiarism" is unconvincing, implicated, among other things, on such an argument: "it's hard to believe that a young man penetrated so deeply into the logic of history." The artist has a lot to do.

Revealing the fates of fictional characters, he knows how to look at the events and strategically: “From the Baltic, the front was stretched with a deadly cord. The headquarters developed plans for a broad offensive, generals pored over maps, orderlies rushed, delivering ammunition, hundreds of thousands of soldiers went to their deaths. And again - a sense of the meaninglessness of war, the futility of efforts. Sholokhov has no doubts: the war could have been avoided, the enemy would not have invaded the territory of Russia, if ...

It is difficult for a novelist - especially a Russian one, and especially one who writes about war and peace - not to fall under the influence of Leo Tolstoy. Not only artistic, but also ideological. Leo Tolstoy was perhaps the first to try to look at the battles through the eyes of a peasant, a forced soldier, for whom war is primarily overwork and separation from his native peasant home. Sholokhov is not alien to Tolstoy's pacifism - with a folk, peasant bias. Sholokhov was also a communist, and the "First Imperialist" should have been treated accordingly. " Monstrous nonsense war" - as it is in Tolstoy. Several times Sholokhov compares the war with a meat grinder - even in the echelon, the old railway worker will say about the Cossacks heading "to the position": "You are my dear beef." Sholokhov shows the Cossacks going to war as doomed.

In the mouth of a Cossack, such thoughts would have seemed strange. Although... Nobody knows how to hate war as much as experienced warriors. After all, even in 1914, neither generals nor officers were the initiators and perpetrators of the all-European tragedy. If you need to fight, orders are not discussed and you should serve, as it was formulated back in the years of Peter the Great, not sparing your stomach. “War is like a military one,” is how a popular French saying is translated into Russian.

But the main culprits of bloodshed, by and large, are always diplomats, politicians and, most importantly, big business sharks - no matter how they were called in different eras.

Only they, as a rule, remain on the sidelines, remain behind the scenes, their names are not known to the general public, and, if known, they are not directly associated with the outbreak of wars.

The patriotic canon of tsarist Russia is alien to the writer. For example, it is impossible to imagine that Sholokhov wrote such words: “In the face of the formidable judgment of history, the Russian state must become worthy of the name of Holy Russia and Great Russia. And then in the victory, which, we believe, will crown our national efforts, we will see not the mercy bestowed on us, but the right we deserve. This is an excerpt from an article by Nikolai Ustryalov, written when the war had been going on for more than a year, and before the revolutions it was a stone's throw away.

And Sholokhov, even about the most heroic episodes of the war, narrates with sadness, with a share of skepticism: “But it happened like this: people collided on the death field ..., stumbled, collided, delivered blind blows, disfigured themselves and horses and scattered, frightened by a shot that killed a man, dispersed morally crippled. They called it a feat."

Here we are not talking about an abstract feat, but about the famous battle of the Cossack Kozma Kryuchkov. As a child - and it fell on the years of the First World War - Sholokhov, along with other boys, played "Kozma Kryuchkov", but the children's enthusiasm was not preserved. “Kryuchkov, a favorite of the commander of the hundred, received Georgy according to his report. His comrades remained in the shadows. The hero was sent to the headquarters of the division, where he hung around until the end of the war, receiving the remaining three crosses for the fact that influential ladies and gentlemen officers came to look at him from Petrograd and Moscow. The ladies gasped, the ladies treated the Don Cossack with expensive cigarettes and sweets, and at first he smacked them with a thousand obscenities, and then, under the beneficial influence of staff sycophants in officer epaulettes, he made a profitable profession out of this: he talked about the "feat", exaggerating the colors to blackness, lied without a twinge of conscience, and the ladies were delighted, looked with admiration at the pock-marked robber face of the Cossack hero ”- this is how Sholokhov saw Kryuchkov.

During the Great War, it was customary to talk about this most dashing Cossack in folklore (opponents will say: pseudo-folklore) spirit. The young Sholokhov did not like the peppy style. But by the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, either maximalism will weaken, or Sholokhov will become more acute in his perception of the topic of defending the Motherland. His front-line journalism is full of admiration for the heroes, and "The Fate of a Man" will be on the same shelf as Alexei Tolstoy's "Stories of Ivan Sudarev" ... Sholokhov will understand: the fighting people need an epic story about exploits, about heroism, about skillful and unbending warriors - such as Kozma Kryuchkov.

In Civil War, Kryuchkov ended up in the camp of the Whites, fought against the First Cavalry in the rank of cornet. Died in 1919 native land, perhaps from a Cossack bullet. And his comrade Mikhail Ivankov (participant in the legendary battle) entered the Red Army. It was he who told Sholokhov about the feat and about Kryuchkov in detail. It seems that the writer treated the hero with prejudice: a hare, and besides, a symbol of tsarist propaganda during the war. Propaganda is necessary at all times - especially during the war years.

And Kryuchkov's feat was not a falsification! At the very beginning of the war, on patrol, four Cossacks fought with 27 German uhlans. As a result, only three Germans escaped. The Cossacks captured two, and the rest was accepted by the land.

His George Kozma Firsovich Kryuchkov deserved courage and combat skill. Yes, they trumpeted the feat - and they did it right. At the beginning of the war, it was such news that inspired recruits - those who had to pull the military strap. During the years of the Great Patriotic Sholokhov will learn to appreciate both such feats and the propaganda charge that is associated with them.

The fate of Kozma Kryuchkov's comrades is like a plot from Don Stories or Quiet Don. Brothers in arms were on opposite sides of the front line. Could a fratricidal schism have been avoided? In "Quiet Flows the Don" contradictions are shown, from which it is incredibly difficult to get out. There are no accidents in history.

Grigory Melekhov knew how to fight, was a savvy leader and a patient fighter, Sholokhov does not underestimate his prowess. But the writer’s favorite hero is dissatisfied with himself: “The Cossack was horse-riding and felt that the pain over the person that crushed him in the first days of the war had gone forever. The heart became hardened, hardened, and just as the salt marsh does not absorb water, so Gregory's heart did not absorb pity. Very soon he begins to reject the war - for him, as for Hamlet, the world has split. Perhaps it happened when he met the eyes of the Austrians he had hacked to death.

Why was World War I considered an unfair war? In Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, "industrialists and bankers" rushed to power. The traditional foundations of the merchant class were revised. In previous centuries, merchants could not even conceive of political influence on the scale of the empire: they would have coped with the governors ... But here - as a result of the "development of capitalism in Russia" - they got the opportunity to openly profit from the war, and even influence the government. The semi-oligarchic system did not last long in Russia - and during the war it showed instability. Merchant arrogance cost Russia dearly: the victims were the best, including among the Cossacks.

For them, “The Quiet Don” sounds like a requiem: “Many Cossacks were missing, they were lost on the fields of Galicia, Bukovina, East Prussia, the Carpathian region, Romania, they lay down with corpses and decayed under a cannon memorial service, and now the high hills of mass graves are overgrown with weeds, crushed their rains, covered with quicksand... The graves are overgrown with grass - the pain is overgrown with prescription. The wind licked follow the departed - time will lick both the blood pain and the memory of those who did not wait, because it is short human life and not a lot of us are destined to trample the grass ... ".

It was. The dead cannot be returned.

But the memory still does not die, this is proved by the current attention to the fate of the heroes and victims of the First World War.

G.R. Derzhavin, a lieutenant of the guard, dedicated the following lines to the heroes of Ishmael:

And the glory of those does not die,

Who will die for the fatherland;

She shines forever

Like moonlight in the sea at night.

This is also true in relation to the fallen in the First World War, to the dead and mutilated Sholokhov Cossacks.

Special for the Centenary

I'm such a boring reader. Again we will try to understand the military ranks of one famous literary hero. This time the object of my “research” was also my favorite main character in the epic of Mikhail Sholokhov “Quiet Flows the Don” - Cossack Grigory Melekhov. I will not retell the content of the novel. Every cultured person knows it. If only because for this magnificent work the author was awarded Nobel Prize. So, let's consider the events that interested me in chronological order. 1914 First World War. But first short review Cossack ranks of that time in ascending order (in brackets for a better perception, the correspondence to the ranks of the Soviet or Russian army by position and some similarity of shoulder straps):
1. Cossack (ordinary)
2. Orderly (corporal)
3. Junior officer (junior sergeant)
4. Senior officer (sergeant)
5.Wahmister (St. Sergeant)
6. Podhorunzhy (foreman)
7. Cornet (lieutenant)
8. Centurion (senior lieutenant)
9. Podesaul (captain)
10. Yesaul (major)
11. Military foreman (lieutenant colonel)
12. Colonel

Book 1, ch.XVII- At the KAZAK front (highlighted by me) Gregory performed a feat - he saved a wounded officer. We read an excerpt from a letter from his brother Peter home "... And for this he received an award - the St. George Cross, and Grishka was promoted to JUNIOR OFFICERS (emphasis mine)"
Next, ch. XX- “Extract from the order. For saving the life of the commander of the 9th Dragoon Regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Gustav Grozberg, the Cossack of the 12th Don Cossack Regiment Grigory Melekhov is promoted to the order (highlighted by me) and presented to the St. George Cross of the 4th degree.
So, what title did Melekhov receive?
Further, Sholokhov writes in Book 2, Part 5, ch. II - “Melekhov Grigory in January 1917 was promoted for military distinction in the cornet, appointed to the 2nd reserve regiment as a platoon officer.”
Rapid career growth from a junior sergeant (or orderly?) For a simple illiterate Cossack. My grandfather, having a higher education, and having fought from 1914 to 1915, was sent to the school of ensigns (the rank corresponds to our junior lieutenant, i.e. the first officer rank) and only after studying he was released in an officer rank as a platoon commander. But that's not the point. We read further:
Book 3, part 6, ch. XXIV Events of April 1918. "A list of arrested enemies of the Soviet government, being transferred to the disposal of the investigative commission at the Revolutionary Tribunal of the 15th Inza Division ..." No. 6 is listed as “Melekhov Grigory Panteleevich - PODESAUL (highlighted by me), opposed. Dangerous"
Further, Book 4, ch. XIX. End of July 1919. Melekhvo is drinking in a village near Balashov with an army lieutenant and an English lieutenant. Lieutenant: “I like you, SOTNIK (emphasis mine). You feel, I would say, strength and sincerity.
Nowhere in the novel did I find that Melekhov was demoted from podsauls to centurions. And again the classics were corrected by filmmakers. In the 1957 film by Sergei Gerasimov, The Quiet Flows the Don, Melekhov (actor Pyotr Glebov) is shown with the shoulder straps of a coroner (the rank made it possible under certain circumstances to become an officer) and in a conversation with an army lieutenant (actor Alexander Grave), he utters the phrase: “And you tell me like it, PODESAUL. And Melekhov's shoulder straps match.
It can be seen that Gerasimov, like me, turned out to be boring.

Reviews

I liked your "nerdiness", Andrey. So not everyone will read carefully. I read this work, but never thought about the titles. It's good that you brought it all up. Not so long ago I read on prose.ru: “The last truth of the secrets of the Quiet Don, Prince. II" (Vladimir Konyukov). Very interesting research regarding the writing of "The Quiet Flows the Don". If you are interested in this topic, then it is worth reading. I was interested in the question of whether Sholokhov is really the author of this work.
best wishes, Anita

Thanks Anita It’s just that some moments are stored in memory, and then at the most inopportune moment they pop up. And the "fermentation of the mind" begins. I smile.

The daily audience of the Proza.ru portal is about 100 thousand visitors, who in total view more than half a million pages according to the traffic counter, which is located to the right of this text. Each column contains two numbers: the number of views and the number of visitors.

The first film adaptation - 1931. Historical background: The years 1930-31 were the years of the "great turning point", complete collectivization and liquidation of the kulaks as a class.

The second film adaptation - 1955-1958. Historical background: the death of IV Stalin, the processes of liberalization in the domestic and foreign policy of the USSR, the beginning of the "Khrushchev thaw".

The third film adaptation: - 1990-1992. Historical background: Declaration of Independence of Russia, political chaos, reforms.

Grigory Melekhov, Don Cossack

In the first film adaptation of The Quiet Flows the Don, an unknown actor played the main role -.
In 1925, Abrikosov came to Moscow to enter the theater studio, but was late. Accidentally saw an advertisement for recruitment to the film studio of A.S. Khokhlova, he went to study there, although he knew nothing about cinema. Since 1926, he began working on the theater stage, becoming an employee of the Maly Theater studio. However, the novice actor was not given roles.

From the memoirs of Andrei Abrikosov:
“In the summer, it should be the twenty-ninth, for sure, I’m not mistaken, the directors of the then widely known painting and Ivan Pravov Started filming "The Quiet Don". Many actors immediately poured into the studio.
I went and try my luck. Then I worked at the studio of the Maly Theater. Not yet considered an actor. fluttered. He was shy, timid and had the remotest idea of ​​cinema. Yes, and it turned out that I was late - all the performers have already been recruited. They did not have only an actor for the role of Grigory Melekhov. I was about to leave when I heard: "Wait a minute. Maybe you will come. Let's try. Have you read The Quiet Flows the Don"? I wanted to frankly confess, but I was cunning. And I see, I was immediately invited for a test: I had to play a quarrel between Gregory and his father. I was made up, dressed, told about the tasks of the episode. And I tried, climbed out of my skin! Yes! He banged his fists on the table, slammed the door, gesticulated, struck a pose. It seemed to me that this is exactly what is needed in the cinema, but it turned out - stamps. There was no question of any truth of the image. I knew absolutely nothing about Gregory. I played and felt like a winner. And how offensive and, most importantly, incomprehensible the refusal seemed to me. A month has passed. I went to play with the theater to the south. I am lying on the top bunk and suddenly I see the Quiet Don in the hands of one of the passengers. I asked my neighbor for a book. He began to read, then began to swallow separate pieces at random. "Fate!" - pounded in the temples, as much as the heart went cold. Suddenly I understood a lot and decided! I packed my things, begged the administration, and got off at the first stop. He returned to Moscow and - directly to the studio. Lucky there. The performer of the role of Melekhov still could not be found.
I said, let's audition for Gregory again. Now I'm ready!"
And fortune finally smiled at the young actor - who did not play a single role in the theater, Abrikosov was approved for the role of Grigory Melekhov in the silent film "Quiet Flows the Don", striking the directors Olga Preobrazhenskaya and Ivan Pravov with the similarity with their idea of ​​Sholokhov's hero. The release of the film in 1931 brought the actor wide popularity. He managed to show the strong but controversial character of Gregory, who is considered one of the best among the film adaptations of the novel.

According to Andrei Abrikosov, Grigory Melekhov is one of his favorite film roles. And he named his son - Gregory ...

Surprisingly, the roads of Andrei Abrikosov and the performer of the role of Grigory Melekhov crossed in the second film adaptation of The Quiet Don. No less amazing in its "similarity" is the path of these wonderful actors to their main role in the movie.

From the memoirs of Pyotr Glebov (based on the book by Y. Paporov "Peter Glebov. The fate of an actor ..."):
“I met Andrei Lvovich Abrikosov when I was twelve years old and was immediately captivated by his masculine beauty. Most of all I was fascinated by a charming smile. To me then, as a boy, he seemed the ideal in everything - tall, with a perky forelock, he had a handsome, a strong voice with some kind of nobly colored sound.
He came to our village in the winter with a group of actors from the Blue Blouse. With passion he sawed birch firewood with me. We were ten years apart.
My brother Grisha brought him to our family when they attended classes together with Zinaida Sergeevna Sokolova, Stanislavsky's sister. A group of assistants from the future studio of K. S. Stanislavsky worked there. Then, when I saw Abrikosov in the role of Grigory Melekhov in the film "Quiet Don", I wanted to be like Andrei.
It was his first role, but it stunned me, and I fell in love with my older friend like a teenager. It made me want to be an actor even more."

In 1940, Pyotr Glebov graduated from the Stanislavsky Opera and Drama Studio. Acting fate was not easy at first. Movie episodes, small roles in the Moscow Theater. K.S. Stanislavsky. Then the war began, and Pyotr Petrovich, along with other young actors, volunteered for the front. He served in the anti-aircraft artillery regiment, and at the end of the war began to combine service with acting. The news of the Victory came during the play "Three Sisters". Both the audience and the actors in stage costumes ran out of the theater, mingling with the cheering crowd.

Another ten years have passed, not marked for Glebov by bright roles ....

Based on the materials of the book by Y. Paporov "Peter Glebov. An actor's fate ...":

In the summer of 1956, a friend of Pyotr Glebov, actor Alexander Shvorin, offered to go with him to the "Det-Film", where they auditioned for Grigory Melekhov: "You can easily play a Cossack officer there. Come tomorrow at nine."

At the Film Studio. Gorky was noisier than usual. On that day, director Sergei Gerasimov continued to select actors for roles and for participation in episodes and extras of the film adaptation of Sholokhov's "Quiet Flows the Don" conceived by him.

Pyotr Glebov also came up to the director's assistant's table. Pomrezh Glebov really seemed like an excellent Cossack officer from the entourage of General Listnitsky, who was supposed to be played by the actor A. Shatov. Glebov was dressed and taken to the pavilion. There immediately began a rehearsal of an episode in which the officers, trying on the text, played preference and loudly argued about the February revolution. Sergei Gerasimov was in a very dejected state, close to despair, since all the deadlines had already passed, and a worthy performer for the main role of Melekhov had not yet been approved. Suddenly, Gerasimov heard the voice of one of the officers, who seemed to him very suitable for Melekhov. The assistant explained that this was the Stanislavsky theater artist Glebov, who was trying out for the role of the second officer. The director demanded to "give full light". When the light came on, the director did not find a single characteristic feature described by Sholokhov. However, the eyes were attractive, and the voice sounded simple, not theatrical, and the actor's hands seemed especially "Cossack" to the director. Despite the objections of the second director, Gerasimov appointed make-up tests.

And then Glebov saw the make-up artist Alexei Smirnov winking conspiratorially at him. When they were alone, the makeup artist suggested to Glebov:
"Appear on Monday at my studio an hour earlier. I will make you up so that Sholokhov himself recognizes Melekhov in you." And indeed, he made such a make-up that Gerasimov was simply dumbfounded - Glebov was even better than in the illustrations of the book "Quiet Flows the Don" by artist O. Vereisky. For a month, Glebov "tried out" in scenes of different psychology and age, the director wanted to be completely convinced that the forty-year-old actor would be able to truthfully play the twenty-year-old Grigory. But doubts remained, and Gerasimov appointed a reading of Sholokhov's text. In less than twenty minutes, his doubts were completely dispelled - Grigory Melekhov was found. It remained only to get the approval of Mikhail Sholokhov and the director invited the writer to watch screen tests. After the very first shots, Sholokhov's confident voice was heard: "So it's him! He is. A real Cossack." And Peter Glebov was approved for the role and work began, which lasted almost two years ...

Peter Glebov: "We worked without understudies. I had to learn how to ride. I had a kind, smart horse. I fell in love with him. It was a pity to part with him at the end of filming."

Glebov was convinced of Glebov's ability to sit in the saddle after filming the very first, very important extras. The artist Pyotr Glebov conducted the first equestrian battle of Melekhov with great force, which shocked even the director.

Pyotr Glebov: “On the set, I lived the life of Grigory Melekhov, suffered from his doubts, loved him with love ... One scene was very memorable. A drunken Cossack revelry in a hut. The third series of the film. My idea was. the Cossacks often gathered at the bank in the evenings, drank wine, sang choral songs, and I loved to sing with them. Well, Gerasimov agreed: "Only that the song was heavy, sad, about fate." I asked the old women on the farm, and one suggested a song to me "The Canary Bird". The song is both riotous and piercingly melancholy. And at the end of the third series, when the scene of drunken revelry and complete raskos already: it is not known where and for whom to go - here are red ones, here are white ones, Grigory sings: “Fly, bird-ashka, ka-anary, fly high up the mountain ... sing a song about misfortune about mine ... ""

Gerasimov shot the film with passion. He did not admit to his colleagues that he was worried about how ridiculous the fate of the Cossacks was after the time described by Sholokhov in The Quiet Don. With special warmth, Gerasimov, together with the actor, tried to properly display the image of Grigory Melekhov, a worthy person in all respects, on the screen.

Sergei Gerasimov: "I unconditionally believe that for Glebov the luck of the role of Melekhov is not accidental. He knew a lot about Melekhov even before he met the role. And then, apparently deeply sympathizing with him, fell in love with this character. I always think about the actor, as about the author of the image. Therefore, I rejoice sincerely, because life brought me together with a performer standing in such a position. I thank fate for giving me the opportunity to work with Peter Glebov. "

And finally, another version of the performer of the role of Grigory Melekhov is Rupert Everett.

Rupert Everett (Rupert Everett) was born May 29, 1959 in a wealthy and privileged family in Norfolk, UK, studied at the prestigious Catholic Ampleforth College. At the age of 15, he left college and entered the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, and honed his acting skills by studying at the Glasgow Citizen's Theatre. He became famous for his role in the London production of "Another Country" in 1982. The debut in the film version of the same performance two years later made Everett one of the brightest rising stars in Britain.

In 1990, Rupert Everett, an aristocrat and esthete, doomed to play kings and lords, received an offer to star in the role of Grigory Melekhov.

Rupert Everett (based on various interviews): "When I was invited to star in Sholokhov's novel, I was very surprised: it seemed to me that I was not very suitable for the role of Grigory Melekhov, the Russian Cossack. I was stunned. We have nothing in common. I was , probably the strangest choice for this role.I understand that this is a dream role for any actor, but it is also a terrible role.After reading the novel, and more than once, I was still able to approach this role in a very limited way ."

Now it is difficult to understand why the choice of Sergei Bondarchuk fell on this particular actor. Of course, the director was bound by the terms of the contract concluded with Vincenzo Rispoli's company - after all, one of the main conditions of the contract was the participation of foreign stars capable of providing wide distribution in the West. Perhaps the director saw some features of the brutal Grishka Melekhov in the face of the British dandy. Perhaps the choice was simply imposed on him ...

Rupert Everett (based on various interviews): “When director Sergei Bondarchuk, a very elderly man, found out that he had invited an actor with a non-traditional sexual orientation to play Grigory Melekhov, he almost died. But I turned out to be the best adapted to Spartan life, thanks to my childhood in the monastery school. In the first week, a tenant of a neighboring apartment died in a fire. His body and charred furniture were dragged up the stairs for a long time, then the body was taken away, and the furniture was thrown in the yard. It was summer. In autumn, a mattress with a burnt hole, a sofa and a standard lamp were covered with leaves , in winter - it was covered with snow, and in the spring it was finally washed away somewhere. And my assistant, who cooked for me, was almost stabbed to death for giving leftover food to pigeons, and not to beggars. The third strong impression was the incessant cold. But I still liked it terribly.We were all involved in the process of film production, in discussions with Sergei Bondarchuk, in the madness of Mosfilm.

For me, shooting in "Quiet Don" and living in Russia was an important turning point in my life, an amazing experience. I lived in a very interesting time: the Soviet era was not over yet, but changes were already brewing. To be there then and realize that you are one of the very few people who have experienced it... Real exclusivity! Real glamour!

You know, Chekhov always surprised me before. His character can be absolutely happy and totally unhappy for one hour. How does it work? Mystery. For me, this is a manifestation of the Russian mentality. In America, in England, people are trying to find a rationale for such a rapid change in the emotional background. When I lived in Russia, I realized that it was impossible to comprehend this, but there is a problem: for Russian people, the rise is really followed by a rapid decline. I also began to experience something similar - from euphoria to depression and back.

Sergei Bondarchuk was an incredibly talented, strong, temperamental person. He was merciless with his actors. I also got it from him - then it seemed that I did not fit the role of Grigory Melekhov at all. I didn't understand how to play it. I repeatedly re-read the novel before my arrival in Moscow, and on the plane, and already being here. I kept trying to figure out why they invited me? Yes, this role is a dream for any actor. But what a difficult one! There are such passions, sufferings, doubts, throwings that a person who was not born in Russia will never play! After all, all this must be understood, passed through oneself. At least that's what I used to think. But, in the end, he seemed to cope with the role."

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 the inner world of 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 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 a cruel killer with a devastated soul.

Artwork test

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 others 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 aforementioned war, the military operations of the Russian troops on the territory of Turkey proper were carried out 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 his tragically deceased mother was from, this family tradition could not be known to his grandchildren; that is why Peter is not talking about the Turkish, but specifically about the Circassian breed in his younger brother.

Furthermore. 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’s no urinal to live without you ...” He thievishly led the low-drooped pupils of his intoxicated eyes and pulled Aksinya to him with a jerk. This happened some time after the cover, apparently in October.

Family life Gregory 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 the last pages of 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 in a rage five years later, during 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 "learning" is dead to him, and he is right in his feeling, for by natural wisdom he catches there a verbal game, terminological scholasticism, self-intoxicated idle talk. In this sense, Grigory's dialogue with an officer from the former teachers Kopylov (in 1919 during the Veshensky uprising) is typical. 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 Gregory served, took part in the Battle of Galicia as part of the 11th cavalry division. 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 city of Kamen-ka-Strumilov, when the Russians were strategically attacking Lvov (we emphasize: historical sources clearly indicate 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). Garanja no longer appears in the novel, but this is by no means a passing character, on the contrary, his strongly described character allows us to better understand the figure of the central 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 reveres the worker for "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, Grigory 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 spectacular.

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, on 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 faded 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 image similar events 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 happened historically: the autonomist and intelligent rhetorician 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 have, 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, the armies of the Entente countries land on the northern and eastern shores of Soviet Russia: 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! BUT? 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 oppressed 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 for understanding. further fate 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. “The generals have also begun to wear shirts made of sacks lately,” 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. Grigory's arguments against the new government, which he cites 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 the nervousness of an unjustly 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 Vokovskaya he had to go to Chernyshevskaya (a station on the Donoass-Tsaritsyn railway), in total from Veshenskaya it would 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 30,000 fighters - that was a huge force in terms of the scale of the civil war, and the rebels mainly consisted of experienced and skilled people in military affairs. To eliminate the rebellion, special Expeditionary Forces were formed from 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 strong militantly 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 a rebel 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. It is possible on the basis of these more than summary install just a few. 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 Social 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 Kyiv,” 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 an offensive south of Kyiv, 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 went over to the side of the Soviets with pure thoughts, this could not but cause a feeling 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 managed to come to Tatarsky a week earlier, and it is doubtful that he would get home from Millerov (where he found “late autumn”) almost until 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), 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 the first days of 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 situation: “I have a choice, like in a fairy tale about heroes ... Three roads, and not a single one is travel ...” Of course, Fomin’s noisy and simply stupid demagoguery 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 to 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 Gregory, 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 lived "settled". 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.