The story of one book: “The Gulag Archipelago. "The Gulag Archipelago" (a monumental journalistic study of the repressive system)

The appearance of A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s work “The Gulag Archipelago,” which he himself called “an experience in artistic research,” became an event not only in Soviet but also in world literature. In 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Prize. And in home country During this period, the writer faced persecution, arrest and exile, which lasted almost two decades.

Autobiographical basis of the work

A. Solzhenitsyn came from the Cossacks. His parents were highly educated people and became young man(the father died shortly before the birth of his son) the embodiment of the image of the Russian people, free and unyielding.

The successful fate of the future writer - studying at Rostov University and MIFLI, the rank of lieutenant and being awarded two orders for military merit at the front - changed dramatically in 1944, when he was arrested for criticizing the policies of Lenin and Stalin. The thoughts expressed in one of the letters resulted in eight years of camps and three years of exile. All this time, Solzhenitsyn worked, memorizing almost everything by heart. And even after returning from the Kazakh steppes in the 50s, he was afraid to write down poems, plays and prose; he believed that it was necessary to “keep them secret, and himself with them.”

The author’s first publication, which appeared in the magazine “New World” in 1962, announced the emergence of a new “master of words” who had “not a drop of falsehood” (A. Tvardovsky). “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” evoked numerous responses from those who, like the author, went through horrors Stalin's camps and was ready to tell his compatriots about them. This is how Solzhenitsyn’s creative plan began to come true.

History of the creation of the work

The book is based on personal experience writer and 227 (later the list increased to 257) prisoners like him, as well as surviving documentary evidence.

The publication of volume 1 of the book “The Gulag Archipelago” appeared in December 1973 in Paris. Then, at intervals of a year, the same publishing house YMCA-PRESS releases volumes 2 and 3 of the work. Five years later, in 1980, a twenty-volume collected works of A. Solzhenitsyn appeared in Vermont. It also includes the work “The Gulag Archipelago” with additions by the author.

The writer began to be published in his homeland only in 1989. And 1990 was declared the year of Solzhenitsyn in the then USSR, which emphasizes the significance of his personality and creative heritage for the country.

Genre of the work

Artistic historical research. The definition itself indicates the realism of the events depicted. At the same time, this is the creation of a writer (not a historian, but a good connoisseur!), which allows for a subjective assessment of the events described. Solzhenitsyn was sometimes blamed for this, noting a certain grotesqueness of the narrative.

What is the Gulag Archipelago

The abbreviation arose from the abbreviated name of the Main Directorate of Camps that existed in the Soviet Union (it changed several times in the 20-40s), which is known today to almost every resident of Russia. It was, in fact, an artificially created country, a kind of closed space. Like a huge monster, it grew and occupied more and more new territories. And the main labor force in it were political prisoners.

"The Gulag Archipelago" is a generalized history of the emergence, development and existence of a huge system of concentration camps created by the Soviet regime. Consistently, in one chapter after another, the author, relying on his experiences, eyewitness accounts and documents, talks about who became the victim of the famous Stalin times 58 articles.

In the prisons and behind the barbed wire of the camps there were no moral or aesthetic standards whatsoever. The camp inmates (meaning the 58th, since against their background the life of “thieves” and real criminals was paradise) instantly turned into outcasts of society: murderers and bandits. Tormented by backbreaking work for 12 hours a day, always cold and hungry, constantly humiliated and not fully understanding why they were “taken”, they tried not to lose their human appearance, they thought and dreamed about something.

He also describes endless reforms in the judicial correctional system: either the abolition or return of torture and the death penalty, the constant increase in the terms and conditions of repeated arrests, the expansion of the circle of “traitors” to the homeland, which included even teenagers aged 12 years and older... Famous the entire USSR projects, such as the White Sea Canal, built on millions of bones of victims of the established system called the “GULAG Archipelago”.

It is impossible to list everything that comes into the writer’s field of vision. This is the case when, in order to understand all the horrors that millions of people went through (according to the author, the victims of the Second World War were 20 million people, the number of peasants exterminated in camps or died of hunger by 1932 was 21 million) it is necessary to read and feel what what Solzhenitsyn writes about.

"GULAG Archipelago": reviews

It is clear that the reaction to the work was ambiguous and quite contradictory. So G. P. Yakunin, a famous human rights activist and public figure, believed that with this work Solzhenitsyn was able to dispel “belief in a communist utopia” in Western countries. And V. Shalamov, who also passed through Solovki and initially had an interest in the writer’s work, later called him a businessman focused only “on personal success.”

Be that as it may, A. Solzhenitsyn (“The Gulag Archipelago” is not the author’s only work, but must be the most famous) made a considerable contribution to debunking the myth of well-being and happy life in Soviet Union.

Composition

Solzhenitsyn forces every reader to imagine himself as a “native” of the Archipelago - suspected, arrested, interrogated, tortured. Prisoners of prisons and camps... Anyone is inevitably imbued with the unnatural, perverted psychology of a person, disfigured by terror, even by the shadow of terror hanging over him, by fear; gets used to the role of a real and potential prisoner. Reading and dissemination of Solzhenitsyn's research - terrible secret; it attracts, attracts, but also burns, infects, forms the author’s like-minded people, recruits more and more opponents of the inhumane regime, its irreconcilable opponents, fighters against it, and therefore more and more of its victims, future prisoners of the Gulag (until he exists, lives, hungers for new “streams”, this terrible Archipelago).

And the Gulag Archipelago is not some other world: the boundaries between “that” and “this” world are ephemeral, blurred; it's one space! “We rushed happily along the long crooked street of our life or wandered unhappily past some fences - rotten, wooden, adobe duvals, brick, concrete, cast-iron fences. We didn't think - what's behind them? We didn’t try to look behind them either with our eyes or with our minds - and that’s where the Gulag country begins, very close by, two meters from us. And we also did not notice in these fences the myriad of tightly fitted, well-camouflaged doors and gates. All, all of these were prepared for us! - and then the fatal one quickly swung open, and four white male hands, not accustomed to work, but grasping, grabbed us by the hand, by the collar, by the hat, by the ear - they dragged us like a sack, and the gate behind us, the gate into our past life , slammed forever. All. You are under arrest! And there’s nothing you can answer to this other than lamb bleach: Me-ah?? For what??.. That’s what an arrest is: it’s a blinding flash and blow, from which the present immediately shifts into the past, and the impossible becomes a full-fledged present.” Solzhenitsyn shows what irreversible, pathological changes occur in the consciousness of an arrested person.

What kind of moral, political, aesthetic principles or beliefs! They are finished almost at the same moment when you move to the “other” space - on the other side of the nearest fence with barbed wire. Particularly striking and catastrophic is the change in the consciousness of a person brought up in classical traditions - sublime, idealistic ideas about the future and what is proper, moral and beautiful, honest and just. From the world of dreams and noble illusions, you immediately find yourself in a world of cruelty, unprincipledness, dishonesty, ugliness, dirt, violence, criminality: in a world where you can survive only by voluntarily accepting its ferocious, wolfish laws; into a world where being a human is not supposed to be, even mortally dangerous, and not being a human means to break down forever, stop respecting yourself, reduce yourself to the level of the scum of society and treat yourself the same way. To let the reader understand the inevitable changes with him , to experience more deeply the contrast between dreams and reality, A.I. Solzhenitsyn deliberately suggests recalling the ideals and moral principles of the pre-October “ silver age“- this is how to better understand the meaning of the psychological, social, cultural, ideological revolution that took place. “Nowadays, former prisoners, and even just people of the 60s, may not be surprised by the story about Solovki. But let the reader imagine himself as a man of Chekhov’s or after Chekhov’s Russia, a man of the Silver Age of our culture, as the 1910s were called, brought up there, well, let him be shocked civil war, - but still accustomed to people’s food, clothing, and mutual verbal treatment...” And now that same “man of the Silver Age” suddenly plunges into a world where people are dressed in gray camp rags or in sacks, have a bowl of gruel and four hundred, or maybe three hundred, or even a hundred grams of bread for food (!); and communication - swearing and thieves' jargon. " Fantasy world! This is an external breakdown. And the inner one is cooler. Start with the accusation. “In 1920, as Ehrenburg recalls, the Cheka posed the question to him like this: “Prove that you are not an agent of Wrangel.” And in 1950, one of the prominent lieutenant colonels of the MGB, Foma Fomich Zheleznov, announced to the prisoners: “We will not bother to prove his guilt to him (the arrested person). Let him prove to us that he had no hostile intentions.” And in between, countless memories of millions fit into this simple straight line. What an acceleration and simplification of the consequences, unknown to previous humanity! A caught rabbit, shaking and pale, not having the right to write to anyone, call anyone on the phone, bring anything from the outside, deprived of sleep, food, paper, pencil and even buttons, seated on a bare stool in the corner of the office, must find it himself and lay it out in front of the bum - the investigator proves that he had no hostile intentions!

And if he didn’t look for them (and where could he get them), then he thereby brought approximate evidence of his guilt to the investigation!” But this is only the beginning of the breakdown of consciousness. Here is the next stage of self-degradation. Giving up oneself, one’s beliefs, one’s consciousness of one’s innocence (hard!). It wouldn't be so hard! - Solzhenitsyn sums up, - yes, it’s unbearable to the human heart: having fallen under your own ax - justify it. And here is the next step of degradation. “All the firmness of the imprisoned faithful was enough only to destroy the traditions of political prisoners. They shunned dissident cellmates, hid from them, whispered about terrible consequences so that non-party people or Socialist Revolutionaries would not hear - “don’t give them material against the party!” And finally - the last one (for the “ideological”!): to help the party in its fight against enemies, at least at the cost of the lives of their comrades, including their own: the party is always right! (Article 58, paragraph 12 “On failure to report in any of the acts described under the same article, but in paragraphs 1-11” had no upper limit!! This paragraph was already such a comprehensive expansion that it did not require further. Knew and did not say - no matter what you did yourself!). “And what way out did they find for themselves? - Solzhenitsyn sneers. - What kind effective solution did their revolutionary theory tell them? Their decision is worth all their explanations! Here it is: the more they plant, the sooner those at the top will realize the mistake! And therefore - try to name as many names as possible! Give as much fantastic evidence against the innocent as possible! The whole party won't be arrested! (But Stalin didn’t need everything, he only needed a head and long-serving employees.).”

And the camp prisoners, meeting them, these true-believing communists, these “well-meaning orthodoxies,” these real “Soviet people,” “say to them with hatred: “Over there, in the wild, you are us, here we will be you!” "Loyalty? - asks the author of “Archipelago”. - And in our opinion: at least a stake on your head. These adherents of the theory of development saw loyalty to their development in the renunciation of any personal development.” And this, Solzhenitsyn is convinced, is not only the misfortune of the communists, but also their direct fault. And the main fault lies in self-justification, in justifying the native party and the native Soviet power, in removing from everyone, including Lenin and Stalin, responsibility for the Great Terror, for state terrorism as the basis of their policy, for the bloodthirsty theory of class struggle, which makes the destruction of “enemies” and violence a normal, natural phenomenon of social life.

T.V. Telitsyn

Attention to imagery in the structure of “The Gulag Archipelago” is determined primarily by the author’s definition of the genre of this book - “an experience in artistic research.” A.I. Solzhenitsyn explains it this way: “This is something other than rational research. For rational research, almost everything was destroyed: witnesses died, documents were destroyed. What I managed to do in “Archipelago,” which, fortunately, has influence throughout the world, was accomplished using a qualitatively different method than the rational and intellectual method.” “Where science lacks statistics, tables and documents, artistic method allows you to make a generalization based on particular cases. From this point of view, artistic research not only does not replace scientific research, but also surpasses it in its capabilities.”

The author consciously uses a method close to the artistic in the knowledge of real events, based on intuition, the creative capabilities of the artist, who in a particular case is able to see the general, typical. “Artistic research is the use of factual (not transformed) life material in such a way that from individual facts, fragments, connected, however, by the artist’s capabilities, - general idea would act with complete evidence, no weaker than in scientific research.”

Artistic research, according to the author, is not internally contradictory. The interaction of two different methods of understanding reality, research and art, suggests, at first glance, the destruction of one of them. In fact, there is a complementarity of one method with another, and, consequently, one system of structural elements embodying this method with another. A special type of narrative is created in which the artistic principle acts as a continuation of the research one, and the research one grows out of the artistic one. Therefore, it is especially important to analyze the figurative system of the “GULAG Archipelago” - an artistic and journalistic work, since, first of all, the artistic method is realized at the figurative level of its structure.

The main factor shaping the structure of this work, is a journalistic idea, the proof of which organizes the text into a single whole. This journalistic idea is so deep and multifaceted that the author did not express it in finished form anywhere in the work. Throughout the book, it develops, becomes more precise, and acquires new shades. In order for the reader to correctly understand the main idea, the author builds complex system her evidence. This system also includes imagery. It becomes an integral part of the structure of the text of the work. This is especially clearly visible when examining it linearly.

Already in the introduction a figurative impulse is given to the entire further narrative, and in the 1st chapter the main types of figurativeness are outlined.

The fact reported in an article from the journal “Nature” about how, during excavations on the Kolyma River, fish or newt meat was found in a lens of ice and then eaten by those present, is almost neutral in vocabulary. And it would not have attracted much reader attention if the author’s ironic modality had not been expressed in the presentation. She plays special role and is concentrated in the beginning, commentary and conclusion.

“In the year one thousand nine hundred and forty-nine” - this fairy-tale beginning contrasts with the subsequent presentation of the content, neutral in modality. In the course of the narrative, an ironic author's remark appears - “the learned correspondent testified.” The modality of vocabulary in the next paragraph emphasizes the incorrectness of the reader’s conclusions after reading the note, which was that the magazine surprised readers with the fish meat it found.

In the phrase that concludes the message, the correct logical emphasis is placed thanks to the author’s irony: “But few of them could heed the true heroic meaning of the careless note.”

The modality of the final phrase raises two questions for the reader: 1. What is the true heroic meaning of the note?

2. What is the carelessness of the note? What did she let out?

The author's ironic message about the note and its content already prepares the reader for the opposite, hidden meaning. Readers did not solve it because they were amazed at the freshness of the fish meat, but, according to the author, attention should have been attracted by those who ate the fish meat. These are those present at the excavations.

To focus the reader's attention on the “those present,” the author in the third paragraph creates a picture of eating fish meat. It is exaggerated, the burden of action is accelerated, as if in slow motion, the modality of the vocabulary is clearly expressed:

“We immediately understood. We saw the whole scene vividly down to the smallest detail: how those present crushed the ice with fierce haste; how, trampling on the lofty interests of ichthyology and pushing each other away with their elbows, they beat off pieces of thousand-year-old meat, dragged it to the fire, thawed it and ate it.”

The answer is given to the reader in the fourth paragraph. These present were “the only powerful tribe of prisoners on earth, which carried out excavations on the Kolyma River, and only the prisoners could willingly eat the newt.

The superphrasal unity, consisting of four paragraphs, is semantically complete and linked by thematic vocabulary. In three paragraphs the word present is repeated, and in the fourth, logical emphasis is placed on it. In the first and fourth, the expressions are repeated: willingly ate them (1st), willingly eat the newt (4th), as if bordering a superphrasal unity. (Repetitions are a sign of special authorial attention.) The third word - zeki - acts as an answer to the question: what is the “heroic” meaning of a careless note? The fact that she told about the prisoners.

And Kolyma no longer became just a place where frozen newt meat was found, but a place where a “mighty tribe of prisoners” lived.

The fifth paragraph is dedicated to Kolyma, represented by the following verbal images: Kolyma - “the largest and most famous island”, Kolyma - “the pole of cruelty of this amazing Gulag country, torn apart by geography into an archipelago, but by psychology shackled into a continent - an almost invisible, almost intangible country, which and inhabited by a people of prisoners.”

The image of the Archipelago - as a country of prisoners - logically arises from the author's reasoning about the article in the newspaper. It appears not just as a metaphor, but as a logically explained metaphor. The fact that the archipelago becomes a truly figurative version of the idea of the location of the camps in the USSR is confirmed by the further disclosure of its essence as a whole indivisible being, with its own character, its own psychology, its own way of life.

In the following paragraphs - the answer to the question, what is the negligence of the note. It is that it was not customary to talk about the country of the Gulag Archipelago. Historical changes in the country lifted the veil of secrecy over the Archipelago, but “insignificant things” came to light. The author understands that time carries away the signs of the Archipelago: “During this time, other islands trembled, spread out, the polar sea of oblivion splashes over them.”

The image of the Archipelago arose from logical reasoning, documentary material and associative comparison. This feature is characteristic of journalistic works, where imagery is closely related to the logic of reasoning and often arises as thought develops.

Already the introduction to the book makes it clear that this is not just a study of the amazing and cruel country of the Archipelago - it is a journalistic study. The last two paragraphs define the task facing the author: “I do not dare to write the history of the Archipelago: I did not get to read the documents...”, but “...maybe I will be able to convey something from bones and meat? - still, by the way, living meat, still, by the way, a living newt.”

Thus, the formulation of the research problem is completed with the image of a still living newt.

The semantic pieces of this text, complete in themselves, are united not only by the logic of thought, but also by the development of a figurative vision of the problem. In the first paragraph, it is simply a fact - an underground lens of ice with frozen representatives of fossil fauna. In the ninth paragraph - the bones of the inhabitants of the Archipelago, frozen into a lens of ice - this is an allegory, and in the last paragraph - bones and meat, still living meat, however, still a living newt - this is already an image. Thus, the introduction demonstrates the cohesion of the author’s journalistic thought with his imaginative vision of the topic of discussion.

The figurative tone set in this part of the book’s text is present in the subsequent narrative. The appeal to artistic imagery seems to pulsate depending on the development of the main journalistic idea, on the turns of the author’s thoughts when reasoning, on the presence or absence of documentary material provided as evidence.

In order to most accurately analyze the varieties of images and their organization into a system, it is necessary to determine the parameter of artistry.

The image of the Archipelago, already established in the introduction, runs through the entire book, enriching itself in each chapter with new documentary material. Passionate journalistic interpretation and presentation of the material imbues it with special meaning. This the only image, which develops throughout the book as the factual material is examined. Becoming capacious, the image of the Archipelago changes the reader’s perception of the document, the fact, in the further narration. Thanks to him, specific episodes, cases, situations receive, as it were, a single figurative point of refraction.

The logic of reasoning explains the sequence of chapters in the book, and within each chapter - the systematic ordering of the material. A component of this system is imagery included in solving research problems.

Part one is called “The Prison Industry.” This title is a metaphor that covers the entire path from arrest to imprisonment. The analogy with industrial production certainly expresses the author’s bitter irony, emphasizing the parallel between the faceless production process and the process of relocating people to the country of prisoners. Chapter One - "Arrest" - is the first stage of the "prison industry". It begins with a question that determined the logic of the subsequent narrative - “How do they get to this mysterious Archipelago?” And almost immediately the author answers: “Those who go to govern the Archipelago get there through the schools of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Those who go to protect the Archipelago are conscripted through military registration and enlistment offices.

And then the author, discussing the arrest, gives a metaphorical description of the feeling of arrest. In rhetorical questions, arrest is compared to a turning point in your whole life, to a lightning strike in you, to an unbearable spiritual shock, to a split universe. “An arrest is an instantaneous, dramatic transfer, a transfer, a changeover from one state to another.”

The author defines arrest precisely as a dynamic state, which in this and subsequent examples is lexically expressed by verbal nouns: management, breaking, ripping, dumping, tearing, throwing out, shaking out, scattering, tearing, cluttering, crunching.

The abundance of semantically related and figurative vocabulary conveys the shades of this state. The characteristics of the state of arrest are drawn up through details that fit organically into big picture: “This is the gallant entrance of the unwiped boots of awake operatives.” Not the incoming operatives, but the brave entrance of the boots. And further: “This is ... a frightened, nailed witness.”

And again, in this context, the witness is not a character, but a detail of the picture of the arrest.

The picture of the state of arrest is conveyed through visual and auditory signs - cluttering, tearing, knocking, hitting, ringing. This version of the image can be called a state-type image.

The image-type as a type of journalistic imagery is studied by M.I. in a number of works. Styuflyaev, but relates this type of imagery primarily to the creation of a generalized image of a person. However, this definition can also be used when analyzing the state picture. The image-type of state is close to lyrical image, but it shows more of a research beginning than an artistic one.

As the text moves, the figurative method of studying the arrest deepens and appears in a new version: “Down the long crooked street of our life, we rushed happily or unhappily wandered past some fences, fences, fences - rotten wooden, adobe duvals, brick, concrete, cast-iron fences . We didn't think - what's behind them? We didn’t try to look behind them either with our eyes or with our minds - and that’s where the Gulag country begins, very close by, two meters from us. And we also did not notice in these fences the myriad of tightly fitted, well-camouflaged doors and gates. Everything, all these wickets were prepared for us! - and then the fatal one quickly swung open, and four white male hands, not accustomed to work, but grasping, grabbed us by the leg, by the hand, by the collar, by the hat, by the ear - they dragged us like a sack, and the gate behind us, the gate into our past life is slammed shut forever.

All. You are under arrest!

This version of imagery could be called a model image. Abstraction from reality, specifics, appeal to fantasy, conventions allows us to say that we are dealing with a figurative simulation of an arrest situation. According to M.I. Styuflyaeva, “Model representation is inevitably associated with the impoverishment of the object, its deliberate primitivization; the model becomes approximate due to coarsening of the features of the phenomenon. But it is precisely these seemingly negative properties from the point of view of aesthetic laws that make it especially valuable for use in journalistic creativity.”

The model demonstrates the movement mechanism in a logically proven sequence. Lexically, this mechanism of interaction between the internal components of the model is expressed in verbs of movement, since they embody the dynamics of the situation: we rushed, wandered, didn’t think, didn’t try, didn’t notice, we were grabbed, dragged along; they are slamming behind us. All the verbs used are imperfect and create the impression of length, incompleteness, and duration of the process. The mechanism in the model is clearly expressed at the level characters: we are a generalized concept, this is both the author and the reader, and those who “trod happily” and those who “wandered unhappily.” We include everyone who has gone through this model of an arrest situation, and also those who could have gone through it just as unreasonably. Other characters - those who “grabbed”, “dragged”, “slammed” - are also presented in general terms: “four white male hands, not accustomed to work, but grasping...” Synecdoche in in this case acts as a method of typification, a method of generalization. The simulated situation presupposes a clear vision of the components of the model and the mechanism of their interaction: those who were “rushing” and “wandering” are grabbed by some others - “four white male hands” - dragged in, slammed.

But this model is not so bare as to become a scheme. She appeared in a figurative form. The life of those who are arrested is presented as a long crooked street, behind each fence of which “the country of the Gulag begins.” And in these fences there are a countless number of well-camouflaged doors, gates, where everyone can be dragged, and the gate can be slammed forever.

The dual nature of this image-model (on the one hand - an image, on the other hand - a model) is closely related to its functions in the work. There are two of them: the cognitive one is manifested in the model, the aesthetic one - in the image. This connection is also reinforced by the role of the author, his position in the work. On the one hand, he is a publicist who addresses the reader, models the situation, presenting the essence more clearly, and on the other hand, he is a hero - one of those who wanders or rushes along the long crooked street of life and behind whom the gate slams.

As we see, the image-model is actively included in the narrative and becomes the equivalent of logical reasoning.

State is a key concept at this stage of the study; only after the figurative disclosure of the state of arrest does documentary data about it appear. Repetitions of semantically similar words closely connect documentary examples with previous figurative definitions. The arrest status is as follows:

“This is hacking, ripping, throwing and tearing from the walls, throwing onto the floor from cabinets and tables, shaking out, scattering” and then we read: “When the locomotive driver Inoshin was arrested... The lawyers threw the child out of the coffin, they searched there too. And they shake the sick out of bed and undo the bandages.”

Next comes an explanation of what an arrest is, in a different way. The reasoning is logically structured, the phrases are precise and concise. This presentation represents a different type of research. First, the thesis is put forward: “And it is true that night arrest of the type described is our favorite because it has important advantages.” Further discussion about the arrest can hardly be attributed to scientific style presentation, this is a journalistic study. Despite the external precision of the phrases and the accuracy of the explanation, it is imbued with the author’s irony, which is especially noticeable in the scientific vocabulary: “Arrest science is an important section of the course of general prison studies, and a solid social theory is subsumed under it.” The journalistic quality of reasoning is also manifested in other forms: rhetorical exclamations, rhetorical appeals, appeals to the reader’s experience, hypothetical conclusions, etc.

The problem solved by the author of the book predetermines the need to turn to various options journalistic imagery. An example is the image-type of a hero. He appears already in the first chapter. This is the prisoner. The author writes: “The prisoner has been torn out of the warmth of his bed, he is still in a half-asleep helplessness, his mind is clouded.” This is some kind of average type. According to researchers, the “average person” is specific to journalism; he is a product of journalistic typification itself. If artistic image, generalizing reality, “...reveals in the individual, transitory, accidental - the essential, unchangeably abiding, eternal...”, then the image-type absorbs what is characteristic of many, sociological generalization dominates in it. But precisely because of this, it helps to more accurately reflect the social aspect of the problem being analyzed. On the other hand, an image-type becomes an image because it is completed, abstracted, and already exists independently as a complete whole by the author’s imagination. Its completeness is manifested in the desire to generalize all the shades of a hero of this type. So, the same arrested person can be malicious, he can appear in the form of some “unknown mortal”, frozen by the general arrests, or in the form of a “rabbit”. There is even a “freshly arrested” one.

But everything: the malicious arrested person, the freshly arrested person, and the “rabbit” are included in one image-type - the arrested person. In the text you can find an improperly direct speech belonging to a certain arrested person: “General innocence gives rise to general inaction. Maybe they won’t hire you yet? Maybe it will work out?” “Most remain stuck in a flickering hope. Since you are innocent, then why can they take you? This is mistake".

As we study the “tribe of prisoners,” the image-type appears repeatedly in the book by A.I. Solzhenitsyn. So, in the following chapters we meet with image-types: a new prisoner, an intelligent prisoner, a man of Chekhov and post-Chekhov Russia, a goner. Image-types of others appear, inhabitants of the Gulag country: a jailer, an OGPU officer. Type images largely determine the specificity of the book’s figurative system.

The journalistic part of the study of Chapter 1 is distinguished by the presence of an image-type of the hero (the arrested person) and verbal images. Separately, it should be said about the use of sayings in this part of the story and in further chapters of the book.

It is in the part of journalistic research that we first encounter the use of a proverb. She ends the episode where the author writes about the lack of resistance among those arrested, because political arrests “were different precisely in that they captured people who were innocent of anything, and therefore not prepared for any resistance.” This inactivity was convenient for the GPU - NKVD. The paragraph ends with the saying “A quiet sheep is too tough for a wolf.” In this case, the proverb becomes a figurative version of reasoning about the situation of inaction during political arrest. The model of relations between the characters in the proverb (wolf and sheep) seems to be superimposed on the model of relations “arrestee - GPU - NKVD”. A saying and a proverb, falling into the context of research, perform the same function as a model image. But if the model image is created by the author’s imagination, then the proverb or saying is borrowed by the researcher for his journalistic purposes at the level of speech imagery, as well as tropes.”

When analyzing the 1st chapter, it is necessary to highlight one more feature of the book - its memoir beginning. And although the author repeatedly emphasizes that his book is not a memoir, memories are an important component of the structure of the text. These parts of the book showed its artistry in a different way. There are three such episodes in Chapter 1. The function of the first episode could be conditionally called a memoir argument, since an episode from personal experience is cited as an argument for the thesis why the arrested did not resist or scream. The author not only reports his silence, but analyzes the reasons for it. It is as if he is separated from himself, arrested. He begins to exist separately, becomes one of the “majority”. The journalistic focus of the analysis is possible because the arrested person is removed from the author by time, life experience, and worldview. “I was silent in the Polish city of Brodnitsa - but maybe they don’t understand Russian there? I didn’t shout a word on the streets of Bialystok - but maybe this doesn’t concern the Poles? I didn’t utter a sound at the Volkovysk station - but it was sparsely populated, so why am I silent??!..”

The memoir passage is based on reasoning, devoid of figurative means, it seems to continue the previous journalistic presentation.

The second memoir episode is descriptive. In the context of the entire chapter, it looks like an illustration, like artistic argument- picture of the author's arrest. This is a special case in the study large number real events, but felt, deeply understood, reproduced in detail and figuratively described.

In this memoir passage, the image of a specific person - the brigade commander - attracts attention. All the characters involved in the arrest are named by name: the brigade commander, the officer's retinue, two counterintelligence officers, Smershevites. The given names are, as it were, conditional. The brigade commander in the general mass, he is one of them, but this is not a mask, not a role, but a living person. And him human essence is revealed precisely at the climax of the arrest. The brigade commander’s “inconceivable fairy-tale words” become the threshold of turning just a brigade commander into Zakhar Georgievich Travkin.

The author's description corresponds to this movement. It can be divided into two halves: one characterizes the brigade commander before the arrest, the other during the arrest. The arrest of the author for the brigade commander as a moment of self-purification, when hidden human qualities suddenly burst out. It’s as if it’s being born before our eyes new person: “His face always expressed an order, a command, and anger for me. And now it lit up thoughtfully - is it shame for its forced participation in a dirty business? an impulse to rise above a lifetime of miserable submission?”

All the other participants in the arrest remain faceless - “a retinue of staff in the corner.” The brigade commander’s action sets him apart from other characters.

“And at least Zakhar Georgievich Travkin could have stopped there!

But no! Continuing to cleanse himself and straighten up in front of himself, he rose from the table (he never stood up to meet me in that previous life!), extended his hand across the plague line to me (free, he never extended it to me!) and, in a handshake, in the silent horror of his retinue, with the warmth of his always stern face, he said fearlessly, separately:

I wish you happiness - captain!

A new person is born before the reader, as if being purified. His mental “straightening” even coincides with the movement of his body - “rose from the table.” The dynamics of the image are visible in the vocabulary we have highlighted: the face has always expressed an order, a command, anger - now it is illuminated; never got up - rose from the table; never extended it to me - extended his hand to me; always a stern face - warmth.

The image is complete, included in the episode, so information about future fate The brigade commander has been relegated to a footnote by the author.

There are two main options when creating an image of a specific person. The first is the one that we analyzed using the example of an image as a method close to artistic, where a person is represented in all his depth and versatility, even if he is created with strokes, briefly. (This option in A. Solzhenitsyn’s book is found mainly in memoir episodes.) The second option is a journalistic way of creating an image of a specific person, when the determining factor becomes social role personality. A person appears primarily in those circumstances in which he is revealed as a representative of a particular party, population group, or environment. For example, the image of Naftaliy Frenkel, one of the “ideologists” of Solovki. For the author, the documentary basis is important in this version of the image. He gives biographical information about Naftaliy and refers the reader to a photograph. The entire story about him is constructed as proof of the inhumane nature of those who helped create the camps. If the brigade commander is unique human personality against the backdrop of faceless mediocrity, then Nafgaly Frenkel is just one of many. “He was one of those successful figures whom History is already waiting and inviting with hunger.” A journalistic version of the image of a specific person can include the image of silicate engineer Olga Petrovna Matronina. The image is specific, but something else is important for the author’s research: “She is one of those unshakably well-intentioned people whom I have already met a little in the cells...”. The image of Aviation Major General Alexander Ivanovich Belyaev is a different type. He is a representative of the senior officers, who saw the world of prisoners and himself in it in a special way: “Elongated, he looked over the crowd, as if taking in a completely different parade, invisible to us.”

The third memoir episode of the first chapter continues the plot of the second - it is a description of what happened to the author after the arrest. And at the same time, it allows you to disconnect from the author’s personality and introduce into the narrative a story about other people arrested at the front. This episode concludes the chapter, creating a picture of the state of arrest and the first minutes of life of those arrested. It ends with the figurative expression: “These were the first sips of my prison breath.”

The chapter is not only logically, but also figuratively completed.

The complexity of a special research type of narrative determined its compositional complexity. The chapter begins with a figurative depiction of the arrest, then a journalistic discussion follows, and the chapter ends with memoir episodes that artistically recreate the picture of the arrest. Other chapters are structured differently depending on the material, purpose and objectives of the study. Accordingly, it develops figurative system within each chapter and the book as a whole. The indicated imagery options are only the main ones. In our analysis they may seem disjointed if we do not return to the cross-cutting, main image of the Archipelago.

Outlined in the book's introduction, this image continues to develop. As the narrative progresses, it begins to “come to life,” and by the end of the first part, the “insatiable Archipelago” has already “scattered to enormous proportions.” Often the image of the Archipelago opens a separate chapter, as if giving a figurative impulse for subsequent documentary material (in chapter 2, 4 of the second part, in chapter 1, 3, 7 of the third part) or ends the documentary material of the chapter (in the 5th, 14th chapter of the third part).

This generalizing image becomes a symbol. He is connected with the factual material and already stands above it, living some kind of life of his own. The image of the Archipelago is a symbol of lawlessness, a symbol of injustice and inhumanity. It expresses the ideological essence of the work. A.F. Losev writes: “... the symbol of a thing is its law and, as a result of this law, its certain orderliness, its ideological and figurative design.”

“The Gulag Archipelago” is an artistic and journalistic type of work on a documentary basis. Three principles coexist in it: documentary, journalistic and artistic. In accordance with these principles, a system of figurative means was organized. It consists of the following imagery options: image-type of a state, image-type of a person, image of a specific person, image-symbol, image-model, verbal images. The interaction of these figurative options and their organization into a system is determined by the journalistic task of each chapter and the book as a whole.

Keywords: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “The Gulag Archipelago”, criticism of the works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, criticism of the works of A. Solzhenitsyn, analysis of the works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, download criticism, download analysis, download for free, Russian literature of the 20th century.

The appearance of A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s work “The Gulag Archipelago,” which he himself called “an experience in artistic research,” became an event not only in Soviet but also in world literature. In 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Prize. And in the writer’s native country during this period, persecution, arrest and exile awaited, which lasted almost two decades.

Autobiographical basis of the work

A. Solzhenitsyn came from the Cossacks. His parents were highly educated people and became for the young man (his father died shortly before the birth of his son) the embodiment of the image of the Russian people, free and unyielding.

The author’s first publication, which appeared in the magazine “New World” in 1962, announced the emergence of a new “master of words” who had “not a drop of falsehood” (A. Tvardovsky). “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” evoked numerous responses from those who, like the author, went through the horrors of Stalin’s camps and were ready to tell their compatriots about them. This is how Solzhenitsyn’s creative plan began to come true.

History of the creation of the work

The basis of the book was the personal experience of the writer and 227 (later the list increased to 257) prisoners like him, as well as surviving documentary evidence.

Genre of the work

What is the Gulag Archipelago

"GULAG Archipelago": reviews

Be that as it may, A. Solzhenitsyn (“The Gulag Archipelago” is not the author’s only work, but it must be the most famous) made a significant contribution to debunking the myth of prosperity and a happy life in the Soviet Union.

But unlike the author of the novel “The Master and Margarita,” Solzhenitsyn, a realist among realists, has no need to resort to any artistic “mysticism” - to recreate, through the means of fantasy and grotesque, “black magic” that turns people against their will this way and that. so, to depict Woland with his retinue, to trace all the “royal things” together with the readers, to present the novel version of the “Gospel of Pilate”. The life of the Gulag itself, in all its realistic nakedness, in the smallest naturalistic details, is much more fantastic and scarier than any a book “devilish game”, any, the most sophisticated decadent fantasy. Solzhenitsyn seems to be making fun of the traditional dreams of intellectuals, their pink and white liberalism, who are unable to imagine to what extent they can trample human dignity, destroy the individual, reducing him to a crowd of “prisoners”, break the will, dissolve thoughts and feelings in the elementary physiological needs of an organism on the verge of earthly existence. “If Chekhov’s intellectuals, who were all wondering what would happen in twenty, thirty, forty years, would have been told that in Rus' there would be a torture investigation, they would squeeze the skull with an iron ring, lower a person into a bath of acids, torture him naked and tied with ants, bedbugs, drive a ramrod hot on a primus stove into the anus (“secret brand”), slowly crush the genitals with a boot, and in the easiest way, torture them for a week with insomnia, thirst and beat them into bloody meat - not a single one would Chekhov's play If I hadn’t reached the end, all the heroes would have gone to a madhouse.” And, turning directly to those who pretended that nothing was happening, and if it did happen, then somewhere aside, in the distance, and if nearby, then according to the principle “maybe it will bypass me,” the author of “Archipelago” throws out on behalf of millions of the Gulag population: “While you were engaged in the safe secrets of the atomic nucleus for your own pleasure, studying the influence of Heidegger on Sartre and collecting reproductions of Picasso, traveling in compartment cars to a resort or completing the construction of dachas near Moscow, - and the funnels were constantly snooping around the streets and the KGB officers were knocking and ringing the doorbell " “Organs never ate bread in vain”; “We have never had empty prisons, but either full or overcrowded”; “in the extortion of millions and in the settlement of the Gulag there was a cold-blooded consistency and unflagging tenacity.” Summarizing in his study thousands of real destinies, hundreds of personal testimonies and memories, an innumerable number of facts, Solzhenitsyn comes to powerful generalizations - both social, psychological, and moral-philosophical. For example, the author of “Archipelago” recreates the psychology of the arithmetic average resident totalitarian state who has entered - not of his own free will - into a zone of mortal risk. Beyond the threshold is the Great Terror, and uncontrollable flows into the Gulag have already begun: “arrest epidemics” have begun. Solzhenitsyn forces every reader to imagine himself as a “native” of the Archipelago - suspected, arrested, interrogated, tortured. Prisoners of prisons and camps. Anyone is involuntarily imbued with the unnatural, perverted psychology of a person disfigured by terror, even by one shadow of terror hanging over him, by fear; gets used to the role of a real and potential prisoner.

Legal scholar Ida Averbakh (sister of Rappov’s general secretary and critic Leopold Averbakh) did not lag behind her teacher and ideological inspirer. In her programmatic book “From Crime to Labor,” published under the editorship of Vyshinsky, she wrote about the Soviet reform of labor politics - “the transformation of the worst human material (“raw materials” - remember? “Insects - remember? - A.S.) into full-fledged active conscious builders of socialism" " (6, 73). The main idea that wandered from one “scientific” work to another, from one political agitation to another: criminals are the social elements “socially closest” to the working masses: it’s a stone’s throw from the proletariat to the lumpen-proletariat, and there it’s very close.” thieves." The author of “The Gulag Archipelago” does not hold back his sarcasm: “Join my feeble pen in chanting this tribe! They were sung as pirates, as filibusters, as vagabonds, as escaped convicts. noble robbers- from Robin Hood to operettas, they assured that they have a sensitive heart, they rob the rich and share with the poor. O exalted companions of Karl Moore! Oh, rebellious romantic Chelkash! Oh, Benya Krik, Odessa tramps and their Odessa troubadours! Isn't it all world literature sang praises to the thieves? We will not reproach François Villon, but neither Hugo nor Balzac avoided this path, and Pushkin praised the thieves in the gypsies (What about Byron?) But they never sang them so widely, so unanimously, so consistently, as in Soviet literature. (But these were high Theoretical Foundations, not just Gorky and Makarenko.).” And Solzhenitsyn confirms that “there is always a sanctifying high theory for everything. It was not the lightweight writers themselves who determined that the thieves are our allies in building communism." Here it is timely to recall Lenin’s famous slogan “Rob the loot!”, and the understanding of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” as a legal and political “lawlessness” not bound by any laws and norms , and the “communist” attitude towards property (“everything is our common”), and the very “criminal origins” of the Bolshevik Party. The theorists of Soviet communism did not delve into the theoretical jungle of books in search of optimal models of a new society: the criminal world, crowded into a single “labor army” in a concentration camp, plus systematic violence and intimidation, plus a “ration scale plus agitation” stimulating the re-educational process - that’s all what is needed to build a classless society. “When this harmonious theory descended onto the camp ground, this is what came out: the most inveterate, seasoned thieves were given unaccountable power on the islands of the Archipelago, on the camp sites and camp points - power over the population of their country, over the peasants, bourgeois and intelligentsia, the power that they never had in history, never in any state, which they could not even imagine in freedom - and now they gave them all other people as slaves. What kind of bandit would refuse such power? “No,” says Solzhenitsyn, “neither from a stone is fruit, nor from a thief is good.” Having built state system, the entire Soviet society, according to the laws of the Gulag, the theorists and practitioners of communism actually “re-educated” - with the help of the “thieves” - a huge mass of workers and party leaders into thieves.

With all their might, those who appreciated “One Day.” tried to prove that the story exposes only individual violations of socialist legality and restores the “Leninist norms” of party and state life (only in this case could the story be published in 1963, yes also be nominated by the magazine for the Lenin Prize). However, Solzhenitsyn's path from "One Day." to “The Gulag Archipelago” irrefutably proves how far the author was already from socialist ideals, from the very idea of “Sovietism.” "One day." - just a small cell huge organism which is called GULAG. In turn, the GULAG is a mirror image of the system government system, systems of relations in society. So the life of the whole is shown through one of its cells, and not the worst one. The difference between "One day." and "Archipelago" primarily in scale, in documentary accuracy. Both “One Day.” and “Archipelago” are not about “individual violations of socialist legality,” but about the illegality, or rather, the unnaturalness of the system itself, created not only by Stalin, Yagoda, Yezhov, Beria, but also by Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin and other party leaders. Is it a person? This question is asked by the reader who opens the first pages of the story and seems to be plunging into a nightmare, hopeless and endless dream. All the interests of prisoner Shch-854 seem to revolve around the simplest animal needs of the body: how to “mow up” an extra portion of gruel, how at minus twenty-seven, how not to let the cold get under your shirt during a police patrol, how to save the last crumbs of energy when weakened by chronic hunger and exhausting work body - in a word, how to survive in the camp hell. And the dexterous and savvy Russian peasant Ivan Denisovich Shukhov succeeds well in this. Summing up the experience of the day, the main character rejoices at the successes achieved: for the extra seconds of the morning nap he was not put in a punishment cell, the foreman closed the interest well - the brigade will receive extra grams of rations, Shukhov himself bought tobacco with two hidden rubles, and he managed to overcome the illness that began in the morning on the masonry wall of a thermal power plant. All the events of the story seem to convince the reader that everything human remains behind barbed wire. The group going to work is a solid mass of gray padded jackets. Names have been lost. The only thing that confirms individuality is the camp number. Human life devalued. An ordinary prisoner is subordinate to everyone - from the warden and guard who are in the service to the cook and barracks foreman, quiet prisoners like him. He could be deprived of lunch, put in a punishment cell, provided with tuberculosis for life, or even shot. And yet, behind all the inhuman realities of camp life, human traits appear. They are manifested in the character of Ivan Denisovich, in the monumental figure of brigadier Andrei Prokofievich, in the desperate disobedience of captain Buinovsky, in the inseparability of the “brothers” - the Estonians, in the episodic image of an old intellectual serving his third term and, nevertheless, not wanting to give up decent human manners. There is an opinion that it is time to stop remembering the long-gone horrors of Stalin’s repressions, that the memoirs of eyewitnesses have overflowed the book market of the political space.

Yes, they did as much harm as they could, but for the time being, the Soviet regime could not sneeze at all these efforts. The power of the state only grew. And suddenly everything changed. Perhaps our endless disputes stem from this. I personally do not believe in even the slightest participation in the collapse of Soviet power by all these Maksimov’s “Continents”, Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulags” or Entees’ “Posevs”. Have all these current thieving rulers, all these Khodorkovskys and Pochinoks, read at least some anti-Soviet literature? Or do you think Boris Yeltsin studied The Gulag Archipelago before climbing onto his tank in 1991? Alas, the Soviet government itself gave birth to this rotten elite in large numbers. Therefore, by the way, quite rightly, none of the dissidents were allowed to power during the anti-Soviet perestroika era. This revolution is not their doing. And you all scold Solzhenitsyn and even Rasputin for collaborating with him, Shafarevich, Glazunov... Don’t you think that by doing so you exaggerate their significance in the events of the last decade? Why did almost the entire Soviet elite betray the Soviet regime? This is the main question for all communists at all times, why does degeneration occur? Why is it necessary to constantly update 1937 or the Chinese campaign of the Red Guards for the triumph of communism? Otherwise, the elite will become totally bourgeois? V. Bushin

From this language the language of verbal art is formed as a sign system of the second level. The described sign situation allows us to assert that in linguistic analysis literary text in fact, the language of the “first level” is studied. The language of the “second level” is the subject of linguapoetic, aesthetic and, in a sense, literary analysis. When researching linguistic units means and techniques for creating the expressiveness of a literary text are highlighted, i.e. a kind of struggle between general linguistic and poetic meanings and meanings. Linguistic analysis allows us to see the picture of the aesthetic whole in its true light, the way the writer created it and wanted it to be perceived. The relevance of this work lies in the fact that not one full-fledged literary analysis cannot take place without a holistic linguistic analysis, which is only part of such an analysis. The purpose of this work is to study the language of the cycle “Persian Motifs” by S.A. Yesenin, through which the ideological and associated emotional content of this cycle is expressed.

The deliberate silencing of the novels “The Prince of This World” and “My Name is Legion” should be perceived by the reader in the same way as the former silencing of “Kolyma Tales” by Varlam Shalamov, “Requiem” by Anna Akhmatova, “The Tulaev Case” by Victor Serge, “Imaginary Values” by Nikolai Narokov, “Pogorelytsyns” by Nikolai Klyuev, “Russia in a concentration camp” by Ivan Solonevich, “The Unquenchable Lamp” by Boris Shiryaev, “The Gulag Archipelago” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn... All versions of such a massive extermination of peoples should be read. And do they really contradict each other? Take Serge's "The Tulaev Case" and Narokov's "Imaginary Values" with their logical explanations of the inevitability of mass trials and sincere confessions of victims about monstrous crimes that were never committed. Don't they fit into the picture of satanic corruption of the people and the state? And why do we observe processes of such bloody cleansing of society throughout world history, when no one has ever heard of Marxism? The author does not absolve either the victims of the purges or the executioners of responsibility for what they did.

Deprived of the right to emigrate, Soviet citizens did not dare to dream of changing their citizenship. And only one “state” has always willingly accepted them into its citizenship - the Gulag Archipelago. NOTES 1. Northwestern USSR, 1930, art. 366 and 367. Resolution of the Central Election Commission and the Council of People's Commissars. Foreign citizens living abroad were admitted to Soviet citizenship by resolution of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, and those living on the territory of the USSR - by resolution of the Central Executive Committee of the Union Republics. The refusal of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of a union republic could be appealed to the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. Renunciation of Soviet citizenship for persons living in the USSR was allowed only with the permission of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR or a union republic, and for persons who were abroad - with the permission of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. Exceptions to these rules included industrial and agricultural immigrants and foreigners seeking asylum or changing citizenship due to marriage. In this case, the decision on admission to citizenship or renunciation (for those who were in the USSR) could follow the decision of the district executive committee or the plenipotentiary representative of the USSR (if the applicant was abroad)

This pronounced antipathy simultaneously serves as a characteristic of Mercutio himself as a man of the Renaissance, to whom Tybalt’s medieval morality is hostile. Therefore, the duel between Mercutio and Tybalt far outgrows the scope of a street fight started by young people from decent families - a phenomenon very common for those times. The duel between Mercutio and Tybalt is also the broadest generalization, symbolizing the clash of the old principle, embodied in Tybalt, and the free, life-loving spirit of the Renaissance, the brilliant bearer of which is Mercutio. The symbolic nature of this duel is emphasized by the last words of the dying Mercutio. Feeling the fatal blow, Mercutio understands that he did not just die from the blow of a vile nonentity, who could nevertheless kill a person. The dying curse that he sends to both houses: “Plague, plague on both your houses! Because of them I will go to worms for food, I disappeared, I died. A plague on both your houses!” (III, 1.103 - 105) - proves that Mercutio himself considers himself a victim of senseless medieval enmity.

Before January 21, 1793, and the murders of the 19th century, the regicides only wanted to destroy the king, not the principle. The problem was just personality. 1789 is a turning point in modern history: “the people of that time wanted, among other things, to overthrow the principle of divine right and to introduce into history the force of negation and rebellion, formed in the struggle of ideas over the past centuries.” Rousseau, according to Camus, creates a “new gospel” - the “Social Contract”, which “gives a broad interpretation and dogmatic presentation of a new religion, in which God is reason, coinciding with nature, and its representative on earth instead of the king is the people, considered as embodiment of the general will." Thus, a new God appears and will now come new era, when the murder of the “king-priest” is accomplished. Here Saint-Just takes over the baton of the revolutionary politician, putting forward his idea that any king is a rebel or a usurper. This is how the king is killed. Now is the time for a new religion, the “religion of virtue,” to come into its own. After all, everything is wonderful: “The people are an oracle to which one must turn in order to understand what the eternal order of the universe requires.

After all, it was the novel “Cavalry” that brought fame to Babel. But, unfortunately, he paid for it with his life: in the forties, Babel was declared an enemy of the people and sentenced to death. As you know: “The truth hurts your eyes!” Bibliography

GULAG (historical and sociological aspect) The purpose of this work is to show the true statistics of Gulag prisoners, a significant part of which has already been presented in articles by A.N. Dugin, V.F. Nekrasov, as well as in our publication in the weekly "Arguments and Facts". Despite the presence of these publications, which name the true and documented number of Gulag prisoners, the Soviet and foreign public for the most part are still under the influence of far-fetched statistical calculations that do not correspond to the historical truth, contained both in the works of foreign authors (R. Conquest , S. Cohen, etc.), and in the publications of a number of Soviet researchers (R.A. Medvedev, V.A. Chalikova, etc.). Moreover, in the works of all these authors, the discrepancy with genuine statistics never goes in the direction of understatement, but exclusively in the direction of manifold exaggeration. It seems that they are competing with each other to amaze readers with numbers, so to speak, more astronomically. Here is what, for example, S. Cohen writes (with reference to R. Conquest’s book “The Great Terror”, published in 1968 in the USA): “By the end of 1939, the number of prisoners in prisons and individual concentration camps grew to 9 million people (compared to 30 thousand in 1928 and 5 million in 1933-1935)." In reality, in January 1940, there were 1,334,408 prisoners in the Gulag camps, 315,584 in the Gulag colonies and in prisons - 190,266 people.

In Italy of this period there is an increasing departure from previous medieval traditions, which did not have such significance as in other countries. New symbols and allegories based on ancient mythology appear. However, artists High Renaissance retain the same traditional attributes and symbols in their works. All three works, different in size, are in the tondo format, common mainly in Italian art. The circle shape is the most perfect geometric figure. In the era of the High Renaissance, artists strived for correctness, clear alignment, and the ideal of a compositional solution, which often depended on the format. Tondo limited freedom of action and required special compositional skill. At the same time, this form is neutral in relation to the surroundings and therefore the tondo is a good interior decoration. Compared to other formats, the tondo is “not serious”: it does not pretend to be a real altarpiece. On the other hand, this form is closest to the human vision of the world.