How the exposition of Oblomov’s novel is constructed. Artistic features. How did the novel end?

Pavka Korchagin is a hooligan and doesn’t really want to study, which is why he is kicked out of school. He is very young and has not even finished school yet. But, nevertheless, he leaves the city when everyone learns the news that the king has been overthrown. The boy is eager to fight, the real one. He succeeds. After all, he is strong and agile. He meets a sailor whose name is Zhukhrai. They begin to become friends with him.

The sailor explains to him that he is too small, although he is tough and strong. But then Pavka saves a sailor from a convoy, which only makes Pavka stronger. Then he himself will fall into the hands of the Petliurists. But it’s not for nothing that he is still small and young - he turned away and ran away. Then adult life begins. He goes into battle with others, then when he returns, he becomes a member of the Komsomol club.

His first love is an intellectual who does not fully share Pavel’s views. Therefore, he soon forgets her. He works a lot in life and has become an activist. He fights for Lenin's idea, fulfills all orders from above. He became an example for everyone, as he worked very hard and fought to the end for the right idea, defended his views and comrades. He is a strong, wonderful young man. Soon he fell in love for the second and last time - a girl named Rita, to whom he became both a comrade and a bodyguard.

But he runs away from his love, thinking that it will bring him misfortune, just like the first time. He continues his activist activities, working in steel factories. But in the end he dies from a serious illness.

Detailed summary of the story How Ostrovsky's steel was hardened

Pavka Korchagin was expelled from school, as a result of which he began to work. Soon news comes to the city about the murder of the king. The hero faces looting, murder and many other nightmares of coups.

After everything he has seen, the boy strives to get into battle, where he meets the sailor Zhukhr, who told him everything in more detail. Thanks to good physical fitness and fighting skills, Pavka saves Zhukhrai from the convoy. But soon the Petliurists caught Pavka and want to kill him. However, Tonya saves Pavka from under the convoy. Previously, Pavka loved Tonya, but she was an intellectual, and they did not have the opportunity to be together.

Pavel actively participates in the civil war, and after returning to his hometown he takes an active part in the Komsomol organization. Even though Tonya supported Pavka in many of his opinions, Pavka was never able to drag her into the organization. And in the end they had to break off the relationship. Pavka has no choice but to go to Kyiv, where he ends up in Segal’s department.

The second part of the novel begins with the appearance of Pavka’s new love, Rita Ustinovich. At first, Pavka helped her and was a comrade, but he soon realizes that they are connected by something more. Through a telegram, Pavka refuses to meet with her personally and helps build a narrow-gauge railway. Hard work at a construction site bears fruit, and one day Pavka falls to the ground dead, contracting typhus. For a long time nothing is known about Pavel and everyone is resigned to the thought of his death.

However, Korchagin soon recovers and begins to restore order and work in the workshop. Pavka protects her comrades from the enemies of the revolution and performs brave deeds, such as catching criminals and dealing with them.

All the torment, suffering, and death that Pavel has seen in his life make him appreciate the world and understand that we only live once. Despite the fact that Pavka is an exemplary party worker, Lenin does not attach any importance to him. But after his death, Pavka still managed to make significant progress in the party.

Soon he meets Rita at the big theater, tells how much he was in love with her and how much he was able to see. But Rita turns out to be a married woman, and with a daughter at that. Pavka gets sick and goes to a sanatorium for treatment, but it’s all in vain.

This novel teaches us that each of our lives is not in vain. That through our efforts it is possible to change the lives of the future generation. And that in every great event there is a piece of each of us.

Picture or drawing How steel was hardened

Other retellings and reviews for the reader's diary

• Summary of Pushkin The Tale of the Priest and His Worker Balda

  “The Tale of the Priest and His Worker Balda” tells how a priest, with a big belly and shiny cheeks, came to the market on a sunny trading day to look for a worker.

How the Steel Was Tempered is an autobiographical novel based on real events, written and published in 1934.

The meaning of the novel

The novel has become for more than one generation of Soviet people a symbol of courage, valor, honor, and defiance of fate. This is a book about a man who devoted himself entirely to his homeland, society and the good cause of communism. Even when the main character lost his arms, legs, eyes, and one hand, he did not give up, but with the help of a stencil he invented, he began to write a book. To put it briefly, the message of the book is to never give up.

History of creation

Ostrovsky began working on the book in 1930. The work was extremely difficult, because the writer was blind and missing a hand. Therefore, I worked using a special stencil. Writing became his life's work, because he had nothing to lose. I wrote a lot, even at night. My hand began to hurt and swell. Therefore, the story was written under dictation. The first part of the novel was completed in 1931. The publisher approved it. In 1932, the author received an order for the second volume of the novel. In the middle of the same year the order was completed. The story was first published in the magazine in 1932, immediately gaining great popularity. The novel was finally ready in 1934. After 1956, in connection with the “exposure of Stalin’s personality cult,” Khrushchev’s censorship deleted a good half of the text from the novel.

Summary

Pavel Korchagin is 12 years old. He lives in the Ukrainian town of Shepetovka, goes to school. Soon he is expelled from there because he added tobacco to the Easter dough, wanting to take revenge on the teacher-priest for humiliation. He goes to work at a local tavern as a dishwasher. There he is beaten and humiliated by the waiter Proshka, but after a while brother Artyom stands up for Pavel. Since the age of 16, Pavka has worked in a boiler room at a power plant. Fate brings him together with the Bolshevik sailor Zhukhrai, whom he saved from the hands of the tsarist secret police, ending up in prison, although he soon left there by a happy accident. Zhukhrai told Pavel about the Bolsheviks, about Lenin, and taught him how to fight. Pavel also dated Tonya Tumanova for some time, but fate separated them. In 1917, the Germans came to Shepetivka. Paul came into conflict with them more than once. Finally he managed to escape from Shepetovka. Korchagin fought in the Civil War, first in the army, then in the army. I went blind during the war. Because of this I could not fight. For some time he worked in the Cheka, built a railway, and did other physical labor. That was all until fate made him a real disabled person. He lost his voice, his legs, and one arm. He spent the rest of his days in Crimea. His mother came to look after him; he saw little of his wife Margorita, because she also did a lot of work, both physical and political. At first, Pavel wrote a book about the “Kotovites,” telling in it how he once fought in Kotovsky’s army, but unfortunately the manuscripts were lost. And then Korchagin began writing the book “How the Steel Was Tempered”

1942 film adaptation

The first film adaptation of the work was released in 1942 during the Second World War, the film reinforced the fighting spirit of the Soviet people in the fight against the Nazi invaders. Cast:

Vladislav Perist-Petrenko - Pavel Korchagin

Daniil Sagal - sailor Zhukhrai

Irina Fedotova - Tonya Tumanova

Alexander Khvylya - Dolinik

Boris Runge - Earring

Composer - Lev Schwartz

In addition to the USSR, the film was shown in Greece, the USA and Sweden in 1944.

1956 film adaptation

In 1956, the film was released on USSR television screens. The action described in the film took place after the main character became disabled.

Vasily Lanovoi - Pavel Korchagin

Elsa Lezhdey - Rita Ustinovich

Lev Perfilov - Klavicek

Ada Rogovtseva - Christina

Konstantin Stepankov - Akim

Alexander Lebedev - Nikolay Okunev

Valentina Telegina - moonshiner

Evgeniy Morgunov - lesson

Dmitry Milyutenko - Tokarev

Pavel Usovnichenko - Zhukhrai

Vladimir Marenkov - Ivan Zharky

Nikolai Grinko - station manager

Felix Yavorsky - Victor Leshchinsky

Evgeniy Leonov - Sukharko (high school student)

Director: Alexander Alov, Vladimir Naumov

Cinematographer: Ilya Minkovetsky, S. Shakhbazyan

Composer: Yuri Shchurovsky

Artist: Wulf Agranov

1975 film adaptation

Unlike previous film adaptations, this film consisted of several episodes and was in color. In essence, it completely repeated the plot of the novel. Gained great popularity. He was shown more than once on Soviet television.

Vladimir Konkin - Pavel Korchagin

Natalya Saiko - Tonya Tumanova

Mikhail Golubovich - Artyom Korchagin

Konstantin Stepankov - Zhukhrai

Antonina Lefty - Rita Ustinovich

Lyudmila Efimenko - Taya

Antonina Maksimova - Ekaterina Mikhailovna Korchagina

Yuri Rotshtein - Tsvetaev

Les Serdyuk - Salomyga

Sergei Ivanov - Seryoga Bruzzhak

Lev Prygunov - Fileo

Vladimir Talashko - Red Army soldier Okunev

Elza Radzinya - Irina Aleksandrovna, newspaper editor

Lev Perfilov - man

Georgy Kulikov - Chairman of the Railway Forestry Committee

Director: Nikolay Mashchenko

Operator: Alexander Itygilov

Artist: Victor Zhilko, Eduard Sheikin

2000 film adaptation

In 2000, together with Ukraine, she made a 20-episode film based on Ostrovsky’s story of the same name. It was recognized as the best series of the year.

Andrey Saminin - Pavka Korchagin

Elena Eremenko - Tonya Tumanova

Alexander Zhukovin - German officer Zindel

Svetlana Prus - Rita Ustinovich

Natalia Morozova - Komsomol agitator

Vitaly Novikov - gang leader

Also working on the film:

Director: Han Gang

Artist: Sergey Brzhestovsky

The fate of the novel after perestroika

After perestroika and the collapse of the USSR, the work “became irrelevant,” or rather, it was made irrelevant by the gang that came to power in 1991, declaring it “false Soviet propaganda.” Nowadays, it is difficult to find a person born after the collapse of the country who would watch a film, let alone read a book. But true communist patriots will never forget their hero.

Nikolay Ostrovsky

AS THE STEEL WAS TEMPERED

PART ONE

Chapter first

- Which of you came to my house before the holiday to teach a lesson - stand up!

A flabby man in a cassock, with a heavy cross around his neck, looked menacingly at the students.

Little evil eyes seemed to pierce all six who rose from the benches - four boys and two girls. The children looked fearfully at the man in the cassock.

“You sit down,” the priest waved towards the girls. They quickly sat down, sighing with relief.

Father Vasily's eyes focused on four figures.

- Come here, my dears!

Father Vasily stood up, pushed back his chair and came close to the huddled boys:

- Which of you scoundrels smokes?

All four answered quietly:

– We don’t smoke, father.

The priest's face turned purple.

“Don’t smoke, you bastards, who put shag in the dough?” Do not smoke? But now we'll see! Turn out your pockets! Well, it's alive! What am I telling you? Turn it inside out!

The three began emptying the contents of their pockets onto the table.

The priest carefully looked through the seams, looking for traces of tobacco, but found nothing and set to work on the fourth one - black-eyed, in a gray shirt and blue pants with patches on the knees:

- Why are you standing there like an idol?

The black-eyed man, looking with hidden hatred, answered dully:

“I don’t have pockets,” and ran his hands along the sewn seams.

- Ah-ah-ah, no pockets! So you think, I don’t know who could do such a mean thing - ruin the dough! Do you think you will stay in school now? No, my dear, this will not be in vain for you. Last time, only your mother begged to leave you, but now it’s over. March out of class! “He grabbed him painfully by the ear and threw the boy into the corridor, closing the door behind him.

The class fell silent and shrank. No one understood why Pavka Korchagin was kicked out of school. Only Seryozhka Bruzzhak, Pavka’s friend and acquaintance, saw how Pavka poured a handful of terry cloth into the Easter dough there, in the kitchen, where six underachieving students were waiting for the priest. They had to answer the lessons already at the priest’s apartment.

Pavel, kicked out, sat down on the last step of the porch. He was thinking about how he should come home and what to say to his mother, who was so caring and worked from morning until late at night as a cook for an excise inspector.

Pavka was choked with tears.

“Well, what should I do now? And all because of this damn priest. And why the hell did I give him terry? He knocked down the earring. “Come on,” he says, “let’s pour some for the harmful viper.” So they poured it in. It’s okay for Seryozha, but they’ll probably kick me out.”

This enmity with Father Vasily began a long time ago. Once Pavka got into a fight with Levchukov Mishka, and he was left “without lunch.” To avoid being naughty in an empty classroom, the teacher brought the naughty boy to the elders, in the second grade. Pavel sat down on the back bench.

The teacher, lean, in a black jacket, talked about the earth and the stars. Pavel listened, mouth agape in surprise, that the earth had already existed for many millions of years and that the stars were also like the earth. He was so surprised by what he heard that he even wanted to get up and say to the teacher: “It’s not written like that in God’s law,” but he was afraid that he might get into trouble.

According to God's law, the priest always gave Pavka a high five. He knew all the troparia, the New and Old Testaments by heart: he knew exactly on what day what was done by God. Pavka decided to ask Father Vasily. At the very first law lesson, as soon as the priest sat down in his chair, Pavel raised his hand and, having received permission to speak, stood up:

“Father, why does the teacher in the senior class say that the earth lasts a million years, and not, as in God’s law, five thousand...” and immediately sank at the shrill cry of Father Vasily:

-What did you say, bastard? This is how you learn the word of God!

Before Pavka could even utter a word, the priest grabbed him by both ears and began slamming his head against the wall. A minute later, beaten and frightened, he was thrown into the corridor.

Pavka also received a lot of credit from her mother.

The next day she went to school and begged Father Vasily to take his son back. From then on I hated priest Pavel with all my being. Hated and feared. He did not forgive anyone for his little insults: he did not forget the undeserved spanking on his bottom, he became embittered, and hid.

The boy suffered many other minor insults from Father Vasily: the priest chased him out the door, put him in a corner for whole weeks for trifles and never asked him for his lessons, and before Easter because of this he had to go to the priest’s house with those who couldn’t do it. There, in the kitchen, Pavka poured terry into the Easter dough.

No one saw it, but the priest immediately recognized whose work it was.

...The lesson ended, the children poured out into the yard and surrounded Pavka. He remained gloomily silent. Seryozhka Bruzzhak did not leave the class, he felt that he was to blame, but he could not help his friend.

The head of the school, Efrem Vasilyevich, poked his head out of the open window of the teacher’s room, and his thick bass voice made Pavka shudder.

- Send Korchagin to me now! - he shouted.

And Pavka, his heart pounding, went to the teachers’ room.

The owner of the station canteen, an elderly, pale man with colorless, faded eyes, glanced briefly at Pavka, who was standing to the side:

- How old is he?

“Twelve,” answered the mother.

- Well, let him stay. The condition is this: eight rubles a month and a table on days of work, a day to work, a day at home - and so as not to steal.

- What are you, what are you! He won’t steal, I guarantee it,” the mother said in fear.

“Well, let him start working today,” the owner ordered and, turning to the saleswoman standing next to him at the counter, he asked: “Zina, take the boy to the scullery, tell Frosenka to give him a job instead of Grishka.”

The saleswoman dropped the knife she was using to cut the ham and, nodding her head to Pavka, walked across the hall, making her way to the side door leading to the scullery. Pavel followed her. His mother hurriedly walked with him, whispering to him hastily:

- You, Pavlushka, try not to embarrass yourself.

And, seeing her son off with a sad look, she went to the exit.

In the scullery, work was in full swing: a mountain of plates, forks, and knives stood on the table, and several women were rubbing them with towels thrown over their shoulders. A red-haired boy with disheveled, unkempt hair, a little older than Pavka, was fiddling with two huge samovars.

The scullery was filled with steam from a large tub of boiling water where dishes were washed, and Pavka at first could not make out the faces of the women working. He stood there, not knowing what to do or where to turn.

Saleswoman Zina approached one of the women washing dishes and, taking her by the shoulder, said:

- Here, Frosenka, a new boy is here for you instead of Grishka. You explain to him what needs to be done.

"AS THE STEEL WAS TEMPERED"

At the turn of the twenties and thirties, the features of the socialist system of Soviet life had already been determined. Alternating with the names of the heroes of long-distance flights, polar voyages and wintering on the newspaper pages were the names of concrete workers who erected the buildings of the Stalingrad and Kharkov tractor factories in severe frosts, Magnitka builders, the first shock workers of Donbass, fighters for a new, collective farm village. The name of Pavel Korchagin stood alongside the names of real heroes - the builders of socialism.

He joined the ranks as the right flank of the leading rank. It was possible to keep alignment with him. This is precisely why the Soviet reader fell in love with him.

Summing up the glorious thirtieth anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, V. M. Molotov said:

“It should be recognized that the most important achievement of our revolution is the new spiritual appearance and ideological growth of people as Soviet patriots. This applies to all Soviet peoples, both to the city and to the countryside, to both people of manual labor and people of mental labor. This is, indeed, the greatest success of the October Revolution, which has world-historical significance.”

Pavel Korchagin is one of the first heroes of such a new spiritual appearance shown in Soviet literature. He is not the fruit of an abstract romantic dream of an artist. All of it is an expression of real wealth, real reality. This is how he existed. This literary image is endowed with such enormous power of example precisely because the example is confirmed by life; it cannot be refuted. Life feeds his power and raises millions of people to his level.

The pathos of Korchagin’s life - the irrepressible and passionate desire that constantly possessed him - can be expressed in one phrase: “Always be in line.” And, moreover, not just to be in the ranks, but to march in the front ranks, to be on the line of fire.

Ostrovsky characterized Korchagin as follows:

“He did not know how to live calmly, greet the early morning with a measured lazy yawn and fall asleep at exactly ten. He was in a hurry to live. And not only was he in a hurry, but he was also urging others on!”

Korchagin addressed his old party friend Akim:

“Can you really think, Akim, that life will drive me into a corner and crush me into a cake? As long as my heart is beating here,” and he forcefully pulled Akim’s hand to his chest, and Akim clearly felt the dull, quick beats, “as long as it’s beating, I can’t be torn away from the party.” Only death will put me out of action. Remember this, brother."

He was happy when news reached him from Magnitogorsk and Dneprostroy about the exploits of the youth who replaced the first generation of Korchagins under the Komsomol banner.

“I imagined a blizzard - ferocious, like a pack of wolves, the Ural severe frosts. The wind howls, and in the night, a detachment of the second generation of Komsomol members, swept by a blizzard, glasses the roofs of giant buildings in the fire of arc lamps, saving the first chains of the world plant from the snow and cold.”

Following the Urals, the Dnieper appeared... “The water broke through the steel barriers and poured out, flooding cars and people. And again the Komsa rushed towards the elements and, after a fierce two-day battle without sleep or rest, drove the broken elements back behind the steel barriers.” The forest construction site in Boyarka seemed tiny, where several dozen boys from the first generation of Kyiv Komsomol members fought against the blizzard, hunger, disease and bandits. The country has grown, and so have the people.

Among the heroes of Stalin's first five-year plan, he was happy to hear names that were dear to him.

Life was calling him! We remember Korchagin’s speech at a meeting of Komsomol activists after he crossed the “death line” for the fourth time. Typhoid did not kill him, and he returned to work.

“Our country is again... gaining strength,” said Korchagin. - There is something to live for in the world! Well, how could I die at such a time!”

He was the master of life. Everything that happened around him concerned him, and he was vitally interested in everything. Korchagin belonged to those people of a “special make” and “special breed” who are called upon to rebuild the world and for whom happiness is unthinkable without struggle. Another great Marx answered his daughters’ question: “What is your idea of ​​happiness?” answered: “Struggle.”

Is it possible to understand anything in the image of Pavel Korchagin without understanding his happiness - the struggle he led, its meaning and character!

He is not alone in Soviet literature. Chapaev, Klychkov, Furmanov, Kozhukh, Levinson - this is Korchagin’s family. He is the youngest among them, but he is next to them. However, each of the literary heroes we mentioned, who came into the books from life, was shown to us in these books as already formed and active over a relatively short period of time. In addition, these are large-scale workers; division commander Chapaev, commissar Klychkov, commissioner of the Revolutionary Military Council Furmanov, commander Kozhukh, commander of the partisan detachment Levinson.

Nikolai Ostrovsky revealed to us the process of formation of Pavel Korchagin, from his childhood to the onset of civil and party maturity. “How the Steel Was Tempered” is a book about ordinary people of the revolution. And that is precisely why everything extraordinary that lives in them and that makes them great people is so clearly manifested in her.

Pavel was fourteen years old when he met a Baltic sailor, a member of the RSDLP(b) since 1915, Fedor Zhukhrai. The sailor liked the smart boy.

“Mother says you love to fight. - Zhukhrai asked Pavel. “He’s as pugnacious as a rooster,” he says. - Zhukhrai laughed approvingly. - Fighting is not harmful at all, you just need to know who to hit and why to hit.

Pavka, not knowing whether Zhukhrai was laughing at him or speaking seriously, replied:

I don’t fight at all, I always do it fairly.”

The idea of ​​justice is one of the main guiding principles of Korchagin's character. From childhood, from all the impressions of life, he chose and developed a standard to which he remained faithful forever; to abandon him, to betray him for Paul was tantamount to abandoning himself, betraying himself. The world was divided in his mind into what was fair and what was unjust towards people, and this moral divide became his political principle and constant life criterion. The idea of ​​social justice reigned supreme over Korchagin.

“Look what’s happening here! - he said to the cook Klimka, with whom he became friends at the station buffet. “We work like camels, and in gratitude, anyone hits you in the teeth, and there is no protection from anyone... They consider us like creatures.”

To Tony Tumanova’s question: “Why are you angry with Leshchinsky?”, he angrily replied:

“-...My lord's son, get out of him! My hands are itching for people like that: they try to step on their fingers, because he’s rich and he can do anything, but I don’t care about his wealth...”

From the very first steps of his life - studying at school, working in the station canteen, finding himself among barchuks like Leshchinsky and Sukharko, and then coming to the railway depot - Korchagin is ready to fight, defending what is just and subverting, destroying everything in which he sees injustice.

Korchagin did not put up with the degrading filth and vulgarity inherited from capitalism. From childhood he recognized the heat of the fire of class hatred directed against the bearers of all the injustice of the old world. He took up arms against them with fierce passion.

“Oh, if only I had strength!” he dreamed, envying his older brother Artem. “That man was Garibaldi! - he said enthusiastically. “Here is a hero!” Paul was jealous of him. “How many times... we had to fight with enemies, but he always had the upper hand. Sailed to all countries! Eh, if he were now, I would pester him! He recruited artisans and company for himself and fought for the poor.”

And so it was not Garibaldi, but the Russian sailor Fyodor Zhukhrai, “weathered by sea squalls,” who said to the young fireman Korchagin, who was looking at him with enchanted eyes:

“- I, brother, in childhood, too, was like you... I didn’t know what to do with my strength, my rebellious nature bulged out of me. Lived in poverty. You used to look at the well-fed and dressed up master’s sons, and hatred would overwhelm you. I often beat them mercilessly, but nothing came of it except a terrible beating from my father. Fighting alone won't change your life. You, Pavlusha, have everything to be a good fighter for the workers’ cause, but you are very young and have a very weak concept of the class struggle. I’ll tell you, brother, about the real road, because I know that you’ll be good. I can’t stand quiet and clingy ones. Now the fire has started all over the earth. The slaves have risen and the old life must go to the bottom. But for this we need brave lads, not mama’s boys, but people of a strong breed, who before a fight do not crawl into the cracks, like a cockroach from the light, but strike without mercy.”

Born in the fire and storm of class battles, passing through their purifying crucible, Korchagin embodied the courage and will of his class. He became stronger in spirit the more deeply he comprehended the purpose and meaning of his life, the more the idea of ​​the struggle for communism - the highest and all-encompassing justice - grew in his mind.

“The most precious thing a person has is life,” he said mentally at the mass grave of his fallen comrades. “It is given to him once, and he must live it in such a way that there is no excruciating pain for the years spent aimlessly, so that the shame for a petty and petty past does not burn, and so that, dying, he can say: all his life and all his strength were given to the most beautiful thing in world - the struggle for the liberation of humanity.."

The very first version of the manuscript directly states: “... the most beautiful thing in the world is the struggle for the idea of ​​communism.”

These words contain the key to the image of Pavel Korchagin and to the images of other young heroes of the book “How the Steel Was Tempered.”

There is the petty, selfish, selfish happiness of the centuries-old and worldwide tradesman, limited by the needs of the family, home - the lazy and swinish happiness of egoists who care only about petty, personal well-being; and there is another, great human happiness, inspired by the idea of ​​great justice - the happiness of a person who feels like the son of working humanity, always thinking about him and always fighting for him.

Korchagin knew this true happiness.

“How can one live outside the party in such a great, unprecedented period? - Ostrovsky wrote to Rosa Lyakhovich on April 30, 1930. - What is the joy of life outside the CPSU(b)? Neither family, nor love - nothing gives the consciousness of a fulfilled life. A family is several people, love is one person, and a party is 1,600,000. Living only for the family is animal selfishness, living for one person is baseness, living only for oneself is a shame.”

This was Ostrovsky’s philosophy of life. Korchagin understood his happiness in exactly the same way, and that’s how he lived.

Ostrovsky spoke about his hero:

“Pavka Korchagin was a cheerful young man who passionately loved life. And so, loving life, he was always ready to sacrifice it for his homeland.”

And the writer said about himself:

“I have always had a goal and justification for life - this is the fight for socialism. This is the most sublime love. If the personal in a person occupies a huge place, and the public - a tiny one, then the destruction of personal life is a disaster. Then a person has a question: why live?

This question will never arise before a fighter.”

The thoughts of N. A. Ostrovsky clearly echo those thoughts that were expressed by M. I. Kalinin in May 1934 at a meeting of the active members of the Dnepropetrovsk Komsomol:

“For a real communist,” Mikhail Ivanovich said then, “personal experiences are of a subordinate nature: some kind of family trouble happened - it’s very difficult, but I think that socialism did not suffer from this, and therefore work should not suffer. It is clear that if you live only by domestic interests, and only think about yourself or your Fekla all the time, then you will not be a real communist. And when you really work actively, actively participate in the entire construction project, sometimes you won’t even notice what dress she’s wearing, and you’ll forget everyday little things and personal adversities.”

An all-consuming sense of civic duty possesses Korchagin and determines his character, his actions, his personality. Soviet society, the Soviet homeland gave this feeling the richest and most complete concrete content. Already the first generation of Korchagins grew up under his elevating influence.

Selfless love for the socialist fatherland, concern for its prosperity and exaltation became a powerful driving force of the new society.

“The strength of Soviet patriotism,” as Comrade Stalin defined, “lies in the fact that it is based not on racial or nationalist prejudices, but on the deep devotion and loyalty of the people to their Soviet Motherland, the fraternal community of the working people of all nations of our country. Soviet patriotism harmoniously combines the national traditions of peoples and the common vital interests of all working people of the Soviet Union."

Nikolai Ostrovsky is Ukrainian by origin; his mother is a Russified Czech; he experienced the enormous formative influence of the great Russian people, its culture, the political consciousness of its working class.

The Soviet people are rightfully proud that our country has become a beacon and battle banner for the working people of the whole world. And that is why Soviet people do not hesitate to make any sacrifices in the name of their homeland. The love of a Soviet person for his socialist fatherland is not abstract, but passionate, assertive, active, indomitable.

For Korchagin, this love was a need, necessary and imperative, it dictated his behavior, served as a moral compass, it was the main and constant motive, basis, explanation of all his thoughts and feelings, actions and actions, relationships and interests.

From here, from the feeling of Soviet patriotism, grew his boundless thirst for serving his people, the consciousness of his social purpose and civic duty. It was a thirst for activity that was ebullient and unquenchable, urgent, often beyond the strength needed by the country and people.

“What do you think - the sun didn’t shine on us, or life didn’t seem wonderful to us, or there weren’t any attractive girls for us when we were rushing around the front and going through battle storms? - said Ostrovsky. “The fact of the matter is that life was calling us.” We, perhaps more than others, felt its charm, but we firmly knew that the most important thing now was to destroy the enemy, to defend the revolution. This consciousness absorbed everything. It stuck to our young hearts with enthusiasm and the greatest anger against our enemies. We rushed like a hurricane, drawing our sabers, into the enemy’s ranks, and woe was those who fell under our blows!”

It was with this feeling that the pages of the novel “How the Steel Was Tempered” were written. Were they only a reflection of the experience, a healing of the past? Ostrovsky was too active a person to be satisfied with this. He said: “I will tell you truthfully about the past. I am doing this so that in the upcoming battle, if it is imposed on us, none of the young people’s hand will tremble.”

Korchagin had good teachers. Ostrovsky wrote about Zhukhrai:

“Zhukhrai spoke brightly, clearly, understandably, in simple language. He had nothing unresolved. The sailor knew his path firmly, and Pavel began to understand that this whole tangle of different parties with beautiful names: socialist-revolutionaries, social democrats, the Polish party of socialists, are the evil enemies of the workers, and only one is revolutionary, unshakable, fighting against all the rich “This is the Bolshevik party.”

Fyodor Zhukhrai played a huge role in Korchagin’s ideological education. But he's not the only one. And Ostrovsky, besides Zhukhrai, showed other communists who were Korchagin’s educators.

Political instructor Kramer explained to him that the party and the Komsomol were built on iron discipline. He told Korchagin: “The party is above everything. And everyone should be not where he wants, but where he is needed.”

Party propagandist Segal, in whose circle Korchagin studied, said to Rita Ustinovich, leaving for work in the Central Committee:

“- Finish what you start, don’t stop halfway... The young man has not yet completely left spontaneity. He lives by the feelings that rebel within him, and the whirlwinds of these feelings knock him aside. As far as I know you, Rita, you will be the most suitable leader for him..."

From the lips of an old worker, Bolshevik Tokarev, the head of the construction of a narrow-gauge railway, Korchagin heard:

“- Die five times, but we need to build a branch. What kind of Bolsheviks will we be otherwise, just slush..."

Zhukhrai and Kramer, Segal and Tokarev, Dolinnik and Pankratov, Akim, Lisitsyn, Ledenev, Bersenev and other Bolsheviks were not random encounters for Korchagin. “A Komsomol member must remember,” teaches Comrade Stalin, “that ensuring the leadership of the party is the most important and most important thing in all the work of the Komsomol.” Using the example of Pavel Korchagin, Ostrovsky clearly demonstrated the decisive role of the party in educating the hero of our time. The communists taught Korchagin not to get lost in difficult circumstances, to fight cheerfully, with enthusiasm, with excitement, with ingenuity, to keep a smile in the most difficult moments, to find everywhere the opportunity to triumph over the enemy, and if you give your life, then for the most expensive flail. They taught him the ability to use every circumstance for the success of the struggle, the ability to captivate and direct new forces to useful, necessary work.

Nothing could touch, attract, and enchant Pavel Korchagin so much as the romantic burning of his young soul, the thirst for achievement in the name of the homeland, the high order of actions, the beauty and courage of life, without reservations, without compromise, completely devoted to the battle for the happiness of the homeland. Korchagin goes into struggle because it becomes an organic need of his ardent, honest, direct nature; because battles with enemies give him happiness; because a person has no other, meaningful, honest and beautiful way. Having set foot on this path, he knows no deviations, does not seek rest, does not tolerate half-heartedness, does not recognize deals with his own weaknesses. He is completely imbued with the dignity and greatness of the cause he serves. A sense of civic duty guides him; it serves him as a mentor and adviser, conscience and judge.

The character of Korchagin in the novel, like the characters of thousands of Korchagins in life, was formed on the moral basis of a sense of justice, on the basis of a deep, complete, undivided conviction in the rightness of his just cause. From here, from this noble source, all the traits of the new, Soviet man, who is integral and consistent in his beliefs, aspirations, and actions, are nourished.

By examining the nature of Korchagin’s moral superiority, we are convinced that it is based on the Leninist principle: our morality is derived from the interests of the class struggle. Korchagin's life fully corresponded to this Leninist understanding of morality.

The writer does not lecture or reason about the new man and new ethical standards. He shows these new norms and relationships, revealing Korchagin in all the fullness and spiritual beauty of his image.

The image of Korchagin brilliantly confirms the truth that between morality and ideology there is not only an organic connection, but also a direct dependence: the more ideological a person is, the more moral he is, and the less ideological a person is, the more immoral he is.

This pattern affected both the positive images of the novel, and above all Korchagin, and its negative characters - Dubava, Tsvetaev, Tufta. “Negative” (that is, immoral) is precisely the one who has lost his ideological basis and, as a result, has become morally decomposed. An ideological decline inevitably becomes a moral decline.

The last time Pavel encountered Dubava was after his return from the congress from Moscow to Kyiv. He was then looking for Dubava’s wife, Anna.

Here's the scene:

“Pavel climbed the stairs to the second floor and knocked on the door to the left - to Anna. No one answered the knock. It was early in the morning, and Anna could not yet leave for work. “She’s probably sleeping,” he thought. The door nearby opened slightly, and a sleepy Dubava came out onto the landing. The face is gray, with blue rims and eyes. It reeked of the pungent smell of onions and, which Korchagin’s subtle nose immediately detected, of wine fumes. Through the slightly open door, Korchagin saw some fat woman on the bed, or rather, her fat bare leg and shoulders.

Dubava, noticing his gaze, closed the door with a push of his foot.

Are you going to see Comrade Borchart? - he asked hoarsely, looking somewhere in the corner. - She's no longer here. Don't you know about this?

The gloomy Korchagin examined him searchingly.

I did not know that. Where did she move to? - he asked.

Dubava suddenly became angry.

This doesn't interest me. - And, belching, he added with stifled anger: “And you came to console her?” Well, it's about time. The vacancy is now available, take action. Moreover, you will not be refused. She told me more than once that she liked you... or whatever the women call it. Seize the moment, here you will find the unity of soul and body.”

Struck by the depth of Dubava’s moral decline, Korchagin told him:

“What have you come to, Mityai? I didn't expect to see you such a bastard. After all, you were once a good guy. Why are you running wild?”

And - the end of the date.

The enraged Dubava shouts:

“You will still tell me who I should sleep with! I’ve had enough of reading akathists! You can run away from where you came from! Go and tell me that Dubava drinks and sleeps with a prostitute...

Dubava's face darkened. He turned and walked into the room.

Eh, bastard! - Korchagin whispered, slowly descending from the stairs.

A champion of moral purity and nobility, Nikolai Ostrovsky inflames us with burning hatred for all the scum and evil spirits of the old world.

In memoirs about Nikolai Ostrovsky and critical articles about Pavka Korchagin, most attention is paid to the theme of courage. But this theme does not exist in Ostrovsky’s novel, as in his life, on its own. She is a part of the whole, not the whole itself.

It is appropriate to recall that the catchphrase “this is where the steel is hardened,” which the writer later put into the title of the novel, was uttered by Fyodor Zhukhrai when he saw with what inspired tenacity the young diggers dug slopes in order to then lay a narrow-gauge railway to the forest, to fuel, to which the city needed like bread.

Korchagin did not think about rest, did not complain, did not murmur. Having met him by chance, ragged, thin, with bloodshot eyes, Tonya Tumanova was ready to sympathize and feel sorry: how unsuccessfully his life turned out, they say. She believed that belonging to the party would help him make an easy career. He looked at her with a contemptuous look and responded with words full of pride in his fate. In a short and intense scene of Pavel's unexpected confrontation with a girl whom he loved touchingly in his early youth, the image of Korchagin appears in full height.

This scene seems to echo another. A few years later, already during the years of peaceful labor, in the railway workshops, Korchagin encouraged young people to clean: they washed windows, cleaned cars, and made the workshop unrecognizable.

Chief engineer Strizh looked at this with surprise. He did not understand people’s voluntary desire for cleanliness in the workshop: “You did this after hours?” - he asked Korchagin. He replied: “Of course. What did you think?.. Who told you that the Bolsheviks would leave this dirt alone? Wait, we'll shake this thing up more widely. You will still have something to look at and marvel at.”

Just like Tumanova, Strizh did not understand the deep motivations that drove Korchagin’s actions. It was not self-interest or ambition, but another, fundamentally different feeling that guided Korchagin - the feeling of a master, a person to whom this new world he had found belonged.

Let us remember the reason for Korchagin’s clash with the secretary of the Komsomol workshop group, Tsvetaev. The clash occurred at a meeting of the Komsomol collective bureau. The head of the workshop filed a report on the dismissal of Komsomol member Kostka Fidin because he worked carelessly and broke an expensive tool. The bureau of the shop Komsomol cell stood up for Kostka. The administration insisted, and the matter was dealt with at the team's bureau.

“Tsvetaev chaired the meeting, lounging in the only soft chair brought here from the red corner. The meeting was closed. When party organizer Khomutov asked to speak, someone knocked on the door, which was closed with a hook. Tsvetaev winced with displeasure. The knock was repeated. Katyusha Zelenova stood up and threw back the hook. Korchagin stood outside the door. Katyusha let him through.

Pavel was already heading towards an empty bench when Tsvetaev called out to him:

Korchagin! Our office is now closed.

Pavel's cheeks flushed with color, and he slowly turned towards the table:

I know it. I'm interested in your opinion about the Kostka case. I want to pose a new question in this regard. What, are you against my presence?”

Korchagin remained, despite the slap in the face. The party organizer supported him. Tsvetaev made a tailish speech at the bureau in defense of Kostka, he speculated on backward sentiments. He thought of making some capital from this, and strengthening his authority among those workers who were sympathetic to Kostka.

At the decisive moment, Korchagin demanded to speak. He spoke out, sharply attacked Tsvetaev’s rotten position and demanded that Fidin be expelled as a quitter and a slob from the Komsomol.

Relying on the bulk of Komsomol members - good production workers, Korchagin led an offensive against quitters, slobs, disruptors of production. And here he was in the vanguard, on the front line of fire. He - a collectivist, social activist, communist - was characterized by a sense of responsibility for everything that happened. Having joined the party, he demanded of himself the most merciless destruction of any manifestations of irresponsibility. When the secretary of the district party committee, Tokarev, saw Korchagin’s two completed questionnaires in front of him, he asked him:

"- What is this?"

Korchagin replied:

This, father, is the elimination of irresponsibility.

I think it's time. If you are of the same opinion, then I ask for your support.”

Korchagin's work became his happiness. This is exactly what Ostrovsky showed with exceptional brightness and persuasiveness. Nothing, including illness, should, in his opinion, cause such great concern for a person’s condition as the absence in him of a strong desire for activity. A person deprived of the thirst for work is in a most dangerous situation; This is the first thing you should worry about. Ostrovsky considered immobility and blindness to be “complete misunderstandings,” a “satanic joke,” because the need for work not only did not fade away in him due to illness, but grew immeasurably.

His heroic energy was born of a great goal and was directed towards serving this great goal.

The moral basis of Korchagin, his spiritual strength and beauty is Bolshevik ideology. In her and only in her is the key to his entire image, to any of his features, to every action.

The point is not that Korchagin allegedly did not have any human weaknesses at all, but that he always managed to overcome them. The measure by which he measured himself was a bridle for them. They could not triumph over what he professed; this would mean betraying oneself, betraying one’s faith and ideals. Meanwhile, Korchagin had weaknesses. With this in mind, he told Rita: “In general, Korchagin made big and small mistakes in his life.” He made these mistakes out of youth, out of inexperience, out of ignorance, but each time he knew how to extract useful grain from them and improve.

Will is, first of all, power over oneself, the ability to control oneself, to consciously regulate one’s behavior. Korchagin trained his will for a long time, learned to overcome external and internal obstacles. For him, “wanting” meant “being able.” A. M. Gorky wrote that even a small victory over oneself makes a person much stronger. Korchagin won many victories, and not small ones!

When we talk about Korchagin’s courage, we must first of all remember the characteristics of courage given by Comrade Stalin:

“The ability to act collectively, the readiness to subordinate the will of individual comrades to the will of the collective, this is what we call real Bolshevik courage. Because without such courage, without the ability to overcome, if you like, your pride and subordinate your will to the will of the collective, without these qualities there is no collective, no collective leadership, no communism.”

These words contain the key to understanding how the hero was formed. The Bolshevik Party educated Korchagin, guided him, led him. Learning the lessons taught by the party, he continued constant, complex internal work on himself and can rightfully serve as a model of self-education and self-discipline.

Getting acquainted with the diaries of M.K. Pavlovsky, we found in them a recording of one of the conversations with Ostrovsky on this matter. The recording is of great interest. The conversation turned to the education of will; after all, every new day of life was for the patient a new day of hard work on himself, a battle for his life and the possibility of creativity. The battle required a strong character and an unbending will. The doctor has long been interested in how such character, such will is cultivated. He read a lot of books where this topic was treated, and shared his impressions with Ostrovsky:

“I also thought a lot about this issue,” Ostrovsky told him. - It seems to me that in order to educate oneself, one must first of all call oneself to one’s own stern, impartial judgment. You should clearly and accurately, without sparing your pride and a certain amount of narcissism, find out your shortcomings, your vices and, in a Bolshevik way, decide once and for all: will I put up with them or not? Is it necessary to carry this burden over my shoulders, or should I throw this ballast overboard? Self-criticism is a very effective means given to us by the party, comrades Lenin and Stalin, for re-educating people. This must be constantly kept in mind. Secondly, you need to set yourself a specific goal in life, perhaps breaking it down into a number of successive units. Of course, you need to have enough common sense to set yourself a goal according to your strengths. Even the wise Kuzma Prutkov noted that “you cannot embrace the immensity.”

So,” Ostrovsky continued, “having reviewed your personality and outlined the goal of life, you need to firmly follow your chosen path, making certain amendments to your work... When working on yourself, you cannot indulge in random moods. You shouldn't exaggerate your strengths, but certainly don't underestimate them. You have to believe in yourself. My experiences in working on myself have shown that with any work, even modest work, one must make every effort to achieve its best completion. If you fail, you must not retreat, but go on the attack again and again. Combat life taught us this.

You, Mikhail Karlovich, once told me; that the Italians have a saying: a singer requires first of all a voice, a voice and a voice... Parodying it, I will say: in order to be a “man” worthy of Gorky’s famous exclamation, you need will, will and will. For self-criticism and comparison, it seems to me, it is of the greatest importance that each person has high examples of spiritual greatness that must be followed - I do not say: blindly imitate. History has shown that many outstanding people in their spiritual development followed exactly this path... That is why I welcome the study of the biographies of great people that has begun in our Union. This is a very important, necessary, big deal. Indeed, how much instructiveness can be found in the biographies of Marx, Engels, and Lenin. There are so many wonderful things that can serve as an example in the life of our leader Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin.

For me, the life of the Old Bolsheviks serves as a beacon that illuminates the path of my life, and an image that I always keep before my mental gaze. Raising oneself on such high examples, one must take advantage of every opportunity to act as a real Bolshevik would act, that is, a highly morally organized person with a strong-willed attitude. In other words, you need to energetically support the desire to do exactly this in order to cultivate the habit of being what you want to become. We must always be active in this direction, and not be content with good intentions, about which it has long been said that “the path to hell is paved with good intentions.” The poet Nekrasov very caustically said about such people in his poem “A Knight for an Hour”:

Good impulses are destined for you,

But nothing can be accomplished...

With people of this sort, when it comes to the point, the hand freezes.

In passing, I will note based on my experience: you should not think about what demagnetizes and relaxes you, and, on the contrary, you need to return your thoughts more often to subjects that are important to you. This is, of course, a truism. The pavements are paved with such truths, and yet they are not understood by everyone, and even more so, they are not used by everyone for education and self-education.

As soon as the disease goes on the attack, I respond with a counterattack... I vividly imagine the creation of a new world: I see new cities, new people, a new life. I take an active part in this life, and every small detail of my work stands out clearly before me to an almost tangible clarity. I experience the joy of creativity, but my pains remain somewhere behind, in the fog.

I assure you, Mikhail Karlovich, if discipline is necessary for education in general, then it is even more necessary for working on oneself. It is difficult to imagine a more disgusting type of character than the character of a mellifluous sentimentalist, who spends his entire life “spreading his thoughts over the tree” and, beating his fist on his chest, gives himself over to sensitive outpourings of words, but at the same time is not able to commit a single courageous act...

This harmonious system has truly been suffered through years of serious illness, tested in constant and consistent self-education, and confirmed by an amazing result that has delighted the whole world.

The power of life-affirming optimism permeates all these words of his patient quoted by Dr. M.K. Pavlovsky. N. Ostrovsky endowed Pavel Korchagin with the same power. Paul never became a slave to his passions and habits. Once, as readers remember, Korchagin got into an argument with his comrades, who convinced him that habit is stronger than man. He said what he thought: “Man controls habit, not the other way around. Otherwise, what will we agree to?”

Korchagin learned to control passions and habits so much that a number of episodes from the book “How the Steel Was Tempered” were included in a psychology textbook as an example of “volitional action.”

Isn’t it clear that Korchagin’s will is a derivative of the goal of his aspirations? It is known that the higher the goal of a person’s aspirations, the faster, more comprehensively, more socially useful his abilities, talents, and all his spiritual wealth develop. Low goals dry up the human soul and produce thistles. Great goals make a person great.

When thinking about the life path of Pavel Korchagin, readers remember “Martin Eden” for good reason. The hero of this book, a poor illiterate sailor, like Korchagin, becomes a writer. Begging, exhausted from hellish labor, he achieved success. But along with the sweetness of wealth and fame, he learned the terrible poison of moral devastation. Feeling suffocated, he commits suicide.

Ostrovsky knew “Martin Eden” well and once said about him:

The man fought and fought, succeeded and dived into the water. This means that he had nothing to carry if he spilled everything on the difficult road and reached the finish line empty-handed.

This is the bitter truth of the capitalist world, which Jack London could not hide, and no honest artist can hide.

“I am a strange human being,” he said about himself, “who, waiting for death to free him, lives with the shutters closed, knows nothing of the world, is motionless, like an owl, and, like an owl, sees a little only in the dark.” . This “neurasthenic snob” (in the words of Romain Rolland) withdrew into himself and, in order to relive his life, settled in the fortress of his subjective world.

Korchagin did not isolate himself. He wasn't looking for romantic solitude. “I need people... Living people! - he said to the secretary of the district party committee. “I can’t live alone.” He was not overcome by despair. His worldview served him as a reliable sword and shield.

The idea of ​​communism permeated his entire thinking. She became his strongest and noblest passion, his deepest experience. He not only - with his mind - comprehended his duty, recognized it - he lived it! This was the air he breathed.

“The Light Has Gone Out” is the title of a novel written by the Englishman Rudiard Kipling. His hero, a young, intelligent and talented artist, Dick Helder, was seriously wounded in the war in Sudan. The bullet hit the optic nerve. He returned to his homeland, England, and became blind. Horror and despair quickly took possession of this man, who had lost touch with life and turned into a lonely and pathetic blind man. His fate is sad. “Don’t leave me,” Helder begged his friends. -You won't leave me alone, will you? I can not see anything. Do you understand this? Darkness, black darkness! And I feel like I’m always falling somewhere.” They consoled him: “Take courage!” Everyone left him, even his beloved Maisie, whom he always raved about, even his best friend Torpenhow. “I’m out of action, I’m dead,” Dick says. And, as one would expect, only “a compassionate bullet took pity on him and pierced his head,”

Korchagin's eyes were also closed. But the light did not go out for him, he did not lose touch with life, did not remain lonely and pitiful blind, because the light of the young world - the light of communism - illuminated his path, strengthened his spiritual strength, made him invincible and all-conquering. “I’m out of action, but I’m alive, I’ll get back into action,” he said firmly and with conviction. Darkness, black darkness, which threatened him with death, retreated and fell before his courage.

While awaiting execution, Julius Fucik wrote to his wife from Pankratz prison:

“No storm can upend a tree with strong roots. This is their pride. And mine too".

Korchagin's ideological roots were strong, they were deeply rooted in the people's soil. That's why no storm could knock him down.

Tell me, if it weren’t for communism, could you have endured your position in the same way? - a correspondent for the English newspaper “News Chronicle” asked Ostrovsky.

Ostrovsky replied:

“When everything is bleak all around, a person is saved in the personal, for him all the joy is in the family, in a narrow personal circle of interests. Then misfortunes in personal life (illness, job loss, etc.) can lead to disaster - a person has nothing to live with. It goes out like a candle. No goal. It ends where the personal ends. Behind the walls of the house is a cruel world where everyone is each other's enemies. Capitalism deliberately cultivates antagonism in people; it is afraid of the unification of workers. And our party fosters a deep sense of camaraderie and friendship. This is the enormous spiritual power of a person - to feel in a friendly team...

The Party instills in us a sacred feeling - to fight as long as there is a spark of life in you. Here in the offensive the fighter falls; and the only pain is that he cannot help his comrades in the fight. It happened like this with us: the lightly wounded never went to the rear. A battalion is coming, and there are about twenty people in it with bandaged heads. Such a tradition of struggle has been created..."

A graduate of the party, Korchagin was a man of militant communist courage. He had someone to look up to, someone to be like.

“The whole life of our leaders, the whole life of the underground Bolsheviks is a wonderful, wonderful example of courage,” said Ostrovsky. - In the darkest years of reaction, when tsarism crushed every manifestation of revolutionary thought, our old guard of Bolsheviks did not retreat for a minute, believed in victory, and only thanks to boundless courage, thanks to enormous faith in victory, they led our country to these glorious, wonderful victories days."

How could the grandson and son of these people behave differently?

In 1907, J.V. Stalin published an article in the newspaper “Dro” “In memory of comrade. G. Telia” - an impeccable and invaluable person for the party. He fell victim to the damned old order. The prison gave him a fatal illness; he fell ill with consumption and died from it.

“Telia knew the fatal state of his health, but that was not what worried him. He was worried about only one thing - “idle sitting and inaction.” “When will I wait for the day when I will unfold in my own way in the open air, I will again see the masses of the people, cling to their breasts and begin to serve them,” this is what the comrade locked in prison dreamed about.”

You read these dear lines and think: after all, Korchagin is the same, he has the same persistent revolutionary character.

“Amazing abilities, inexhaustible energy, independence, deep love for work, heroic inflexibility and apostolic gift - this is what characterizes Comrade. Telia".

And from here living threads stretch to Korchagin.

Comrade Stalin wrote:

“Only in the ranks of the proletariat are people like Telia found, only the proletariat gives birth to such heroes...”

Don’t these words apply entirely to Korchagin?!

During the dark years of tsarism, Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky, languishing in the Warsaw citadel, wrote: “The thought falls on my soul, like an ominous shadow: “You must die, this is the best way.” But even then, in difficult moments of fatigue of spirit, he, seeing the approaching “time of song,” said: “No! I will live!"

What should Pavel Korchagin have done when this “time of song” came?

Dzerzhinsky wrote in January 1914:

“...My ability for mental work has recently been almost completely exhausted with a truly terrifying loss of memory. And more than once the thought arises of a complete inability to live and be useful in the future. But then I tell myself: someone who has an idea and is alive cannot be useless. Only death, when it comes, will say its word about uselessness... And while life glimmers and the idea itself exists, I will dig the earth, do the most menial work, I will give it everything I can. And this thought calms us down and makes it possible to bear the torment. You need to fulfill your duty, go through your destiny to the end. And even when the eyes are already blind and do not see the beauty of the world, the soul knows about this beauty and remains its servant. The torment of blindness remains, but there is something higher than this torment - there is faith in life, in people. There is freedom and consciousness of unchanging duty."

Pavel Korchagin is a soldier of this heroic army of the revolution. He belongs to the ideological people who can only be truly put out of action only by death; they always fulfill their duty and “pass their destiny” to the end.

“There are no fortresses that the Bolsheviks could not take.” True to these words of the leader, Korchagin strives to live up to them always and in everything. He understands that the organic property of a Bolshevik is to overcome any and all obstacles on the way to the goal. For people who are ideologically unstable, difficulties give rise to despondency, lack of faith in their strengths, and pessimism. For ideologically armed people, difficulties cause a surge of energy and tension of will. Such people are tempered in the struggle and come out of it even stronger. Having passed through a red-hot furnace, they turn not into ashes, but into steel.

Comrade Stalin wrote “On the tasks of the Komsomol” in 1925:

“We cannot be like relaxed people running away from difficulties and looking for easy work. Difficulties exist for the purpose of struggling with them and overcoming them. The Bolsheviks would probably have died in their struggle against capitalism if they had not learned to overcome difficulties. The Komsomol would not be a Komsomol if it were afraid of difficulties."

Komsomol member Korchagin was a reliable assistant to the party. He didn't look for easy ways. Difficulties did not frighten him. When the narrow-gauge railway builders in Boyarka were attacked by Orlik’s gang, some of the non-party workers voluntarily quit their jobs and, without waiting for the train, went along the sleepers to Kyiv. At the same time, the Gubernia Communist Party received a telegram: “We are getting to work with all our might. Long live the Communist Party that sent us! The chairman of the meeting is Korchagin.”

As a Komsomol member, Korchagin considered it his sacred duty to carry out any task of his native party. Having joined its ranks, he began to take his party duty with even greater responsibility. Korchagin said: “My party,” and we know that for him there was no closer and stronger kinship. “I am a small drop in which the sun is reflected - the Party,” Ostrovsky was proud.

That is why Korchagin lived so exceptionally tensely during the period when the Trotskyist traitors attacked our party. Korchagin rushed into the fray. He was a fiery fighter for the ideological purity of the party banner.

Talya Lagutina read out an excerpt from the letter she received at the city party conference:

“Yesterday an incident occurred that outraged the entire organization. The oppositionists, having not received a majority in any cell in the city, decided to fight with united forces in a cell of the regional military registration and enlistment office, which includes communists from the regional military planning and labor department. There are forty-two people in the cell, but all the Trotskyists have gathered here. We have never heard such anti-Party speeches as at this meeting. One of the military registration and enlistment offices spoke out and said directly: “If the party apparatus does not surrender, we will break it by force.” The opposition met this statement with applause. Then Korchagin spoke and said: “How could you applaud this fascist, being members of the party?” Korchagin was not allowed to speak further; they banged chairs and shouted. Members of the cell, outraged by the hooliganism, demanded to listen to Korchagin, but when Pavel spoke, he was again obstructed. Paul shouted to them: “Your democracy is good! I’ll still talk!” Then several people grabbed him and tried to pull him off the podium. It turned out something wild. Pavel fought back and continued speaking, but they dragged him off stage and, opening a side door, threw him onto the stairs. Some scoundrel smashed his face, bleeding... This incident opened the eyes of many..."

One had to look sharply to discern the fascist essence of those who were then still diligently putting on red makeup and trying to hide behind a “revolutionary” phrase. Korchagin tore off his masks, denounced traitors, selflessly and selflessly defended the Lenin-Stalin banner.

Ideology, without compromise, conviction, passionate and unshakable, led Korchagin forward and forward, into the line of fire, despite difficulties - to victory. The strength of his character is the strength of his convictions.

People without strong convictions cannot have a strong character; their behavior is determined primarily by external circumstances and random influences. Comrade Stalin gave a sharp and apt description of such people:

“There are people about whom you cannot say who he is, whether he is good, or he is bad, or he is courageous, or he is a coward, or he is for the people to the end, or he is for the enemies of the people... About people like this of an indefinite, unformed type, the great Russian writer Gogol quite aptly said: “People, he says, are indefinite, neither this nor that, you won’t understand what kind of people they are, neither in the city of Bogdan, nor in the village of Selifan.” Our people also quite aptly say about such vague people and figures: “a so-so person - neither fish nor fowl”, “not a candle for God, not a poker for the devil.”

You can’t say about Korchagin: “neither this nor that.”

He is definite in everything, sharply and clearly expressed in everything, all in sight. His character traits are his deepest convictions.

Ostrovsky revealed the complex process of formation of Pavel Korchagin. You can portray a hero with portrait accuracy, endow him with bright and truthful psychological traits, but if the features of the image do not form into a clearly defined character, this hero will not turn into an example for others, and will not be able to lead the reader. And no matter how well the individual instructive and worthy of imitation actions of the hero are told, if from the chain of such actions a pattern determined by the properties of character is not outlined, if the internal logic of the hero’s behavior is not revealed, if the motivating forces dictating the hero’s entire behavior and behavior are not shown. determining his development - the hero’s personality will remain completely undisclosed and unknown for the reader.

The founder and herald of Soviet literature was the great Gorky. His mighty genius completed the galaxy of literary names of the old century and opened the era of new, socialist literature. Gorky also created the first positive images of the new Russia. Pavel Vlasov from “Mother” became the founder of the literary heroes of our time. Pavel Korchagin is the heir and successor of Gorky's hero. Korchagin fulfilled its highest artistic function in Soviet literature: he became a literary type, a household hero, the broadest generalization and at the same time concrete, as an artistic creation should be.

F. Engels, in the introduction to “Dialectics of Nature,” derives “completeness and strength of character,” which makes “whole people” from the fact that they, that is, these whole people, “live in the very midst of the interests of their time, take an active part in practical struggle, they take the side of one party or another and fight, some with words and pens, some with swords, and some with both together.”

Korchagin lived in all the interests of his time. He fought with the sword, the word, and the pen.

The hero of the novel by Nikolai Ostrovsky combined in his image the main thing that makes up the character of a Soviet man, a Bolshevik: clarity of goal and perseverance in achieving it. Traits that appear in many characters and in many cases of life with varying degrees of strength and brightness were combined in the life of Nikolai Ostrovsky and in the image of Pavel Korchagin created by him with the greatest completeness. In this comprehensive completeness is the exclusivity of the central image of the novel and this is its remarkable typicality. Of course, Korchagin’s life feat cannot be called an ordinary phenomenon: people who would rise to such a high level of heroism are rare in life. But the character of the feat and its driving forces embodied features typical of Bolshevism - massive and universal features of our time.

Our people are not similar in level of knowledge, character, skills, tastes, abilities, personal aspirations; They manifest themselves differently in work and in everyday life; their national characteristics are diverse; their personalities are unique. But as the poet said:

On the basis of the unprecedented community of millions, the moral and political unity of the Soviet people grew and strengthened, and Soviet patriotism developed. These forces have become the driving forces of our social system. The heroism of the Soviet man is a manifestation of these forces that have inspired the peoples. It is not in purely individual, exceptional, out-of-the-ordinary characteristics peculiar to a given individual that one should look for the answer to the heroic behavior of our people, but in that universal socialist pattern that makes an ordinary, ordinary Soviet person a master, a builder and a fighter, ready to go to any lengths. a feat for the glory of his socialist fatherland.

That is why Nikolai Ostrovsky argued heatedly when they tried to attribute exclusivity to him (together with Korchagin), to turn him and Korchagin into “holy ascetics.”

What is the point of all these attempts to make me a “person not of this world”? - said Ostrovsky. - So every boy or girl, having read “How the Steel Was Tempered,” will be able to say to himself: “Korchagin was the same as us, a simple worker. And he managed to overcome all difficulties, even the betrayal of his own body. The happiness of people was his happiness, and he, like a true Bolshevik, found in this his highest satisfaction.” But if we pose the question in such a way that Korchagin is an exception, then another conclusion arises: “Can we follow him, be like him? We are “ordinary”, and he is “rare”.

No, Korchagin is not a saint, not an ascetic, not an exceptional person, but a representative of that million-strong communist vanguard that leads millions. Everything that is available to him is available to many: he is a simple working guy, raised by the Bolshevik Party. He had something to live for and overcome difficulties, so he fought and lived. Korchagin does not rise above his peers; it only most fully expresses their new qualities, their new essence.

The political prisoners of the Riga prison were right when, explaining in the letter we have already mentioned why the name of Pavel Korchagin was “so dear and dear” to them, they wrote:

“Pavka is a hero, but not that far-fetched hero who, with an incomprehensible ideal, rises above mere mortals, overwhelming them with his greatness, instilling in them obedient worship of himself. Pavka is not like that. His exploits are possible and real for us, his mistakes and delusions are so characteristic of youth, his momentary despair is so understandable to us and so natural in his position. His life, especially the first half of it, is so similar to millions of other lives. It’s as if he took a piece from each of them to show how to build it.”

Fiercely hating and despising egoists and cowards screaming in panic at the slightest blow of life, Nikolai Ostrovsky defended the fidelity of the Korchagin path for everyone who is selflessly and infinitely devoted to our homeland. Life belongs to her, life until her last breath. No one has the right to resign from his post.

In the novel “How the Steel Was Tempered”, the only thing unusual is the state of health of Pavel Korchagin. But let’s imagine any other collision, any other difficulties that he would have to meet and overcome. What would they change in the nature of his behavior?

We can rightfully call his life a feat, we can rightfully admire the courage of the fight against the “internal rebellions” of the body that betrayed him, but do we dare to talk about the “exclusiveness” of his final conclusion: “I will resist to the last”?

The degree of difficulties overcome may vary, but this conclusion is typical as a universal feature of Soviet people.

That is why Korchagin is so close and dear to millions of Soviet people. He discovered and showed the qualities organically inherent in Soviet people.

“I will hold the helm of the plane as long as I have strength in my hands and my eyes see the ground,” said Valery Chkalov.

Valery Chkalov spoke about one of his conversations with Comrade Stalin. Listening to him, he could not contain the surging feelings of deep love and gratitude. He stood up and said what all Soviet people were thinking, he said that he was ready to die for Stalin.

Joseph Vissarionovich stopped him:

Dying is hard, but not so difficult - I am for people who want to live; live as long as possible, fight in all areas, defeat enemies and win.

Pavel Korchagin was just such a person.

From the very beginning, Korchagin’s type was deeply popular in that wonderful sense when the hero’s traits, which arose in real life, correspond to the people’s aspirations and ideals. Korchagin became popular in an even more beautiful sense - the qualities contained in his image became the property of many. He not only embodied existence, but also brought others like himself to life. This image reflects two realities - past and present. But, in addition, that third reality lived in him, which Gorky aptly called “the reality of the future.” Addressing Soviet writers, Alexei Maksimovich rightly argued that without knowledge of this “third reality” it is impossible to understand what the method of socialist realism is.

Standing firmly on the basis of reality, strictly adhering to the truth of life, looking at it from the heights of the wonderful goals that our people, led by the Lenin-Stalin party, set for themselves, Nikolai Ostrovsky created an outstanding work of socialist realism.

The book “How the Steel Was Tempered” immediately aroused great interest in its author.

“The biography of Pavel Korchagin is the biography of the author himself,” it was written in the fifth (May) book of the “Young Guard” for 1933. “The author is a living witness and participant in all the events described in the book.”

Having learned the biography of Ostrovsky, readers identified the hero and the author, saw in the fate of Korchagin the life and true fate of a truly courageous man - Ostrovsky.

The writer protested when they tried to consider his work as a purely “biographical document”, as only “the life story of Nikolai Ostrovsky.” He said that this was “not entirely true.” He recognized himself as the son of a generation that began its life in the glow of the resolution, and he wanted the hero of his book to be endowed with traits inherent in this generation. The typicality of the hero concerned Ostrovsky throughout the entire period of work on the novel; he checked himself even after finishing work.

A former member of the Sochi literary circle, A. Kravets, recalls that after Ostrovsky was awarded the Order of Lenin, local schoolchildren - readers of the children's library - came to him at 47 Orekhovaya to congratulate him. They brought their favorite writer a congratulatory address.

It began with the words:

“Dear Pavel Korchagin!..”

Hearing this beginning, Ostrovsky stopped the reader:

“This is not for me,” he said, smiling, “I am Ostrovsky, not Korchagin, and it would be immodest and incorrect of me to say that “How the Steel Was Tempered” is my autobiography. You fix this."

Ostrovsky repeatedly said and wrote that while working on the book, he, as an artist, “used his right to fiction.” It should, however, immediately be noted that to the least extent he used this right when creating the biography of Pavel Korchagin. To an incomparably greater extent, fiction is present in the portraits of Fyodor Zhukhrai, Goni Tumanova, Rita Ustinovich...

If by “biography” we mean only a set of personal data, then such a biography of Pavel Korchagin in some of its features does not coincide with the biography of Nikolai Ostrovsky. One can point out, for example, that Ostrovsky was not a delegate to the VI All-Russian Komsomol Congress, but Korchagin was; Ostrovsky did not work in the secret part of the Central Committee of the Komsomol of Ukraine, but Korchagin did; Ostrovsky formally graduated from the 1st labor school in Shepetovka in 1921, that is, he received a seven-year education, and Korchagin’s education was three years of primary school; Ostrovsky became a candidate of the party, working in Berezdov, and Korchagin - in the Kyiv railway workshops.

But the point, of course, is not about questionnaires and photographic accuracy. Ostrovsky did not simply write down “what happened,” but wrote a novel, that is, he built his work according to certain laws of literary form.

It is no coincidence that the kitchen maid Frosya, the same one whom twelve-year-old Pavka met in the station buffet and whom he defended with all the strength of his childish soul from the scoundrel Prokhoshka, appears five years later at the bedside of the seriously wounded Korchagin. She's already a nurse. And Nina Vladimirovna, a junior doctor at a clinical military hospital, writes in her thick notebook:

“Near him, almost without leaving, sits the nurse Frosya. She turns out to know him. They once worked together. With what warm attention she treats this patient.”

It is also no coincidence that in the seventh chapter, during a search at the innkeeper’s apartment, Zon, Christina, the same peasant girl with large, frightened eyes, whom Korchagin first met in Petlyura’s prison, appears. She became Zon's servant; and there, in his house, after the predecessor Tymoshenko had already decided to stop the fruitless search, which lasted thirteen hours, Khristina shows the entrance to the secret basement. The episode of Korchagin’s meeting with Christina in prison allowed the writer to show with extraordinary convincingness the depth and purity of Pavel’s youthful love for Tonya. That is why this episode in the novel is important. Korchagin breaks up with Christina when she is taken from her cell to the Petlyura commandant; but the writer does not forget about her after that; he once again brings the reader to her, so that Christina’s fate becomes clear, so that her life path is outlined, so that, as we saw in the case of Frosya, even the episodic character of the novel has his clearly shown destiny in life.

N. Ostrovsky draws the destinies of his heroes not with a random dot, but with a thoughtful line (for minor characters this line may be dotted).

Rita Ustinovich speaks to Seryozha Bruzzhak about the military commissar of the propaganda train, Chuzhanin, a dandy and a whip:

“When will they drive away this tramp!”

Having once entered our field of vision, the Stranger does not suddenly disappear. The reader continues to observe him and subsequently becomes convinced of the validity of the characterization that Ustinovich gave him. At the autumn maneuvers of the territorial units, the battalion military commissar Korchagin encounters a “loud dandy,” soulless and selfish.

“You don’t know his last name?” - Korchagin asks battalion commander Gusev. And he, calming him down, answers:

“Come on, don’t pay attention... And his last name is Chuzhanin, it seems, a former warrant officer.”

Korchagin tried to remember where he heard this name, but he couldn’t remember. We haven't forgotten her. Or rather, the writer Ostrovsky did not let us forget about her.

He did not allow us to forget about Nelly Leshchinskaya, the daughter of Shepetov’s lawyer, from whom Korchagin suffered many insults as a child.

“I went to see them on some business, but Nelly didn’t even let me into the room, probably so that I wouldn’t ruin their carpets, the devil knows,” he told Tonya Tumanova.

He had his own scores to settle with Nelly Leshchinskaya and her brother Viktor, who betrayed him to the Petliurists.

And four years later, Korchagin, an electrician at the railway workshops, had to repair the wiring in the carriage of a foreign consulate. There he finds a dressed-up slut - Nelly Leshchinskaya. And, having recognized her, Korchagin does not look for words to express his hatred. They are on his lips.

Thus, the writer masterfully spins the thread of the narrative and organizes them into a single system. The experienced, autobiographical part is included in the fabric of the novel only insofar as it is necessary to express the author’s thoughts. It gives way to fiction where the writer needs an episode that is brighter, more condensed, more characteristic than the episodes suggested not by artistic imagination, but by personal memory. There is a complex and difficult creative process of selecting from the mass of heterogeneous material those facts, features, images that are the most typical, in which reality and ideas find their strongest and most complete expression. This process takes place in the work of every true artist, who comprehends what he sees and recognizes its patterns. After all, a person is not an existing individual in itself, but a part of a huge social collective. It matters who he is, with whom and against whom. It is important to discern it, clarify it, discover in it what is generalizing, characteristic, which makes it an image, a type.

N. G. Chernyshevsky stated:

“...In our opinion, calling art a reproduction of reality... would be more accurate than thinking that art realizes in its works our idea of ​​perfect beauty, which supposedly does not exist in reality. But one cannot help but show that it is in vain to think that by making the reproduction of reality the supreme principle of art, we will force it “to make crude and vulgar copies and banish idealization from art.” In order not to go into the presentation of opinions that are not generally accepted in the current theory, we will not say that the only necessary idealization should consist in excluding from the poetic work details that are unnecessary for the completeness of the picture, whatever these details may be; that if by idealization we understand the unconditional “ennoblement” of the depicted objects and characters, then it will amount to stiffness, pomp, and false dramatization.”

It was precisely this kind of artistic reproduction of reality, far from false “ennoblement”, freed from unnecessary details, striving to generalize the typical, that Nikolai Ostrovsky set as his goal. And he managed to achieve this goal in the novel he created.

It is interesting to trace how N.A. Ostrovsky selected from the accumulated baggage of his meetings and observations those features and signs that he needed for each of the images in the book.

It is generally accepted that the prototype of Fyodor Zhukhrai was a mechanic at the Shepetovsky railway depot, a former sailor Fyodor Peredreychuk, with whom Ostrovsky’s brother Dmitry was friends and who often visited the Ostrovskys’ apartment. Peredreichuk was indeed a member of the underground revolutionary committee of Shepetovka, and it was he who was saved by fourteen-year-old Ostrovsky by attacking an armed Petlyura guard. In Shepetivka they can even show you the crossroads described in the novel where Viktor Leshchinsky and Liza Sukharko stood. Not far from this intersection, Nikolai Ostrovsky heroically attacked the red-moustached Petliurist, thereby giving Peredreychuk the opportunity to escape. This was in fact the way it was later described in the book.

However, Fyodor Peredreychuk, who played a certain role in the upbringing of the teenager Kolya Ostrovsky, joined the CPSU (b) only in 1924. L Fedor Zhukhrai, as you know, has been a member of the RSDLP(b) since 1915. Peredreichuk’s connections with Ostrovsky are severed in Shepetovka, while Zhukhrai accompanies Korchagin in Kyiv. Zhukhrai worked in the Cheka and in the Special Department; there are no such facts in Peredreychuk’s real biography.

Having visited the Kiev car repair plant (former railway workshops where Ostrovsky worked) in September 1948, I talked with an old mechanic worker M. T. Vasiliev. He and Ostrovsky were in Boyarka, laying a narrow-gauge railway. And he remembers that on one of the very difficult days, when the road builders had nothing to eat, some sailor from the Cheka came from the city (he was missing one arm, he had a Mauser hanging on his side) and brought bread.

M. 3. Finkelstein, who in 1929–1930, together with Ostrovsky, was in the therapeutic clinic of the 1st Moscow State University, said that Ostrovsky repeatedly and with a very warm feeling recalled some security officer to whom he owed a lot. His name was Fedor.

Finally, Ostrovsky himself, in the article “My work on the story “How the Steel Was Tempered”,” wrote:

“Most of the characters have fictitious names. Zhukhrai only has a real name, and he was not a pre-gubchek, but the head of the Special Department. I don’t know to what extent I was able to sketch this figure of a Baltic sailor, a revolutionary security officer, cast from solid cast iron. Our party has comrades whom no blizzard, no wind can knock off their strong, slightly arched legs... These are wonderful people.”

This means that, besides Fyodor Peredreychuk, there was another Fyodor, whose features are inscribed in the image of Zhukhrai. Ostrovsky united them, he created his Fedor Zhukhrai the way he observed in the lives of many people like him.

Who is Rita Ustinovich?

The writer’s wife, recalling the Novorossiysk period of Ostrovsky’s life, writes:

“In those days, for the first time I heard the name Rita Ustinovich. With what warmth, with what extraordinary excitement he spoke about this girl!”

Nikolai Ostrovsky’s sister Ekaterina Alekseevna recalls that after the release of the novel “How the Steel Was Tempered,” when the writer began to receive thousands of letters from all over the country, he once said: “If Rita were alive, she would also give a voice.”

This means that there was, apparently, a person whose image in the writer’s mind inextricably merged with the image of Rita Ustinovich.

A former member of the Shepetovsky Revolutionary Committee and secretary of the Kvurt-Isaeva party cell (she can also be considered to a certain extent the prototype of one of the characters in the novel, Ignatieva), in a letter addressed to the Shepetovsky Museum of Nikolai Ostrovsky, reports:

“There was a division in Shepetivka. The division's political department assisted the party cell at the revolutionary committee in its work. A young girl spoke at a rally, which actually took place in the city theater."

Obviously, the young girl mentioned in the letter is the prototype of Rita Ustinovich. However, it is also indisputable and obvious that, while retaining in his memory the familiar features of the one in whom he saw Rita from his book, Nikolai Ostrovsky did not have any documentary diary. His own artistic work is the wonderful diary of Rita Ustinovich, where the inner world of this Komsomol activist of the first years of the revolution is revealed with such completeness and generous richness. Ostrovsky did not have a chance to participate in the work of the VI All-Russian Komsomol Congress. Consequently, he could not actually meet there with the real “Rita”, as Pavel Korchagin met Rita Ustinovich. But according to the writer’s plan, such characteristic representatives of their generation as Korchagin and Ustinovich were supposed to participate in the VI Congress. And that’s why their meeting took place in the novel. There is no doubt that the entire outcome of this storyline was thought out by the writer; the authentic “Rita” is extended in time and enriched with the artist’s intelligence and talent.

The same thing happened with Tonya Tumanova. We have reason to believe that only the origins of this line of the novel are biographical - the part where the relationship between Korchagin and Tumanova is narrated: the scene of their acquaintance, the joint reading of books, the birth of friendship... Having escaped from Petliura’s prison, Ostrovsky actually hides in the house of one of his young friends. All this is reliable.

And that is why in Anna Karavaeva’s memoirs about Nikolai Ostrovsky there is the following passage;

“You know...” he said, after a short silence. - Recently, Tonya Tumanova wrote a letter to me, that is, not Tonya... well, you understand, but the one with whom I wrote Tonya. Think about it, you haven’t forgotten me..."

And yet it is worth comparing the true facts from the life of this real “Tony” with the facts that the writer filled the biography of Tony Tumanova in his novel to make sure that they are far from similar.

Tonya Tumanova is the daughter of the chief forester. L. Borisovich is the daughter of a railway employee on duty at the station. She broke up with Ostrovsky at the end of 1924, when he, already seriously ill, went to Kharkov for treatment. This girl's life turned out differently than Tonina's life in the novel. Ostrovsky never met her and her husband at Boyarka station. There was no quarrel between them. They didn't become enemies.

In Shepetovka, however, there also lived a chief forester who had a daughter, Galya, I think. “Tonya” lived on Podolskaya, and the forester lived behind the station. “Kolya often visited there,” Ostrovsky’s school friend writes in his memoirs. This is also confirmed by the writer’s brother. It is possible that in the image of Tonya Tumanova both the daughter of the station duty officer and the daughter of the chief forester were united.

The writer creatively transformed the biographies of people and events discussed in the book. He didn't just record them; their meaning was revealed the more deeply, the more effective the artist’s intervention was, the more widely he covered the facts of life, the more acutely he compared them.

“How the Steel Was Tempered” is not the memoirs of Nikolai Ostrovsky, although the book contains many reliable facts taken from his biography.

When starting to work on the book, Ostrovsky was guided by a different, narrower plan than the one that he later managed to implement as a result of heroic work.

“When I started writing my book, I thought of writing it in the form of memoirs, records of a whole series of facts,” he reported to the editors of the Young Guard magazine.

However, in the process of work, plans changed and expanded. At the resort, he met with an editorial worker who advised him to write “in the form of a story or novel the history of working teenagers and young men, their childhood, work and then participation in the struggle of their class.” Ostrovsky liked this proposal, and he changed his earlier intention. He decided to “put into literary form” what he had experienced and seen.

This, of course, was achieved not only by constructing the plot of the novel, but by all the means of artistic skill with which this novel was written, with all its visual power.

When exploring the ideological and moral essence of Nikolai Ostrovsky’s work, they rarely and say little about its literary features. Meanwhile, they deserve the closest attention.

In the novel “How the Steel Was Tempered” there are, of course, literary errors. It is easy to see that the shortcomings of this book are characteristic of the books of all inexperienced artists.

However, the merits of an artist are characteristic only of the best of the best. It was N. Ostrovsky’s brilliant talent that allowed him, despite his inexperience, to so significantly reflect revolutionary reality, to so truthfully show the people it called to action.

A. Fadeev wrote about this to N. Ostrovsky:

“I liked the novel in many ways:

first of all, deeply understood and felt partisanship, which I only saw in Furmanov (of the writers) so simply, sincerely and correctly expressed; a new vision and feeling of the world, expressed mainly in the main character Pavel Korchagin, who with all his appearance opposes the young people of the 19th century, so well depicted in a number of novels by Russian and foreign writers. I’ll say more - it seems to me that in all of Soviet literature there is so far no other image of life that is equally captivating in purity and at the same time such a life.”

Ostrovsky's artistic talent was manifested in the composition of the novel, in his ability to sweep away the accidental and develop the main thing, to make the plot dynamic, to find significant living words for dialogue, to paint portraits and landscapes with precise and generous strokes, to subordinate all the figurative wealth to his goal.

His thoughts are invariably sharp and intelligible, full of energy and passion. Many writers can envy his ability to sculpt an image, create a character, reinforce the text with subtext, and reveal the hidden in one phrase, in one stroke.

Let us remember how powerful the descriptive lines of the novel are, and how organically the landscape paintings are connected with the events taking place. Here, for example, is how the “cadet grove” is described during the days of intense struggle against banditry:

“Tall silent oaks are hundred-year-old giants. A sleeping pond covered with burdocks and water nettles, wide neglected alleys. Among the grove, behind a high white wall, are the floors of the cadet corps. Now here is the Fifth Infantry School of Kraskomov. Late evening. The top floor is not lit. Outwardly everything is calm here. Anyone passing by will think that they are sleeping behind the wall. But then why are the cast iron gates open and what do they look like two huge frogs at the gate? But the people coming here from different parts of the railway area knew that they could not sleep at the school since the night alarm had been raised. They came here straight from cell meetings, after a short notice, they walked without talking, alone and in pairs, but no more than three people, in whose pockets there was always a booklet with the title “Communist Party of the Bolsheviks” or “Communist Youth League of Ukraine.” One could pass through the cast-iron gates only by showing such a book.”

With spare, expressive features, in two phrases, an evil portrait of the “young old man” Tufta, a bureaucratic member of the regional distribution committee from the Komsomol district committee, is sketched.

The portraits of Ivan Zharky are drawn in the same concise, energetic, but with enormous warmth. Rita Ustinovich, Ledeneva - all the favorite heroes of Ostrovsky's novel and even such persons who appear occasionally in it, such as Dora Rodkina, a member of the bureau of the Kharkov city committee, with whom Korchagin meets in the Crimean sanatorium.

The fast-paced story about Korchagin’s intervention in the fierce fight between the Berezdovites and the Poddubites that arose “beyond the boundaries” gives way to a solemn description of the October demonstration organized by Komsomol members on the Polish border.

Ostrovsky's talent manifested itself in the amazing capacity of his book, where a grandiose picture is unfolded in a relatively small space, a huge number of events are contained, dozens of characters are depicted, and each event, each character is subject to the artist's single plan.

Before us is a considerable historical period of time: the pre-revolutionary life of a small town in the “southwestern region”, the Bolshevik underground, the civil war, peaceful construction... This, in fact, is an epic that would require many volumes from another artist. Ostrovsky's laconicism, precision and precision of every episode, every stroke made it possible to create a work that was concise in form and broad in content.

One foreign journalist, talking with Ostrovsky, remarked:

I read the episode - Pavel's return to his mother - and thought that Rolland would devote a whole chapter to this, but yours is very sparing. But it is read with great interest, although I read very critically.

All readers of the book felt this - both in our country and abroad. Laconism and expressiveness determine the entire style of the novel “How the Steel Was Tempered.”

Remember how soulfully an ordinary, passing scene dedicated to Rita Ustinovich and Seryozha Bruzzhak was written. Follow the movement of their thoughts and feelings. With what immediacy the writer conveys this entire complex psychological process. This reflects the remarkable ability to recreate life, that is, truth.

After swimming, Seryozha found Rita Ustinovich not far from the clearing, on a fallen oak tree.

“We went, talking, into the depths of the forest. We decided to rest in a small clearing with tall, fresh grass. It's quiet in the forest. The oak trees are whispering about something. Ustinovich lay down on the soft grass, placing her bent arm under her head. Her slender legs, dressed in old, patched shoes, were hidden in the tall grass. Seryozha took a casual glance at her feet, saw neat patches on her boots, looked at his boot with an impressive hole from which a toe was peeking out, and laughed.

What are you?

Seryozha showed his boot:

How will we fight in such boots?

Rita didn't answer. Biting a stalk of grass, she thought about something else.

The stranger is a bad communist,” she finally said, “all our political workers wear rags, but he only cares about himself.” A random person in our party... But at the front it’s really serious. Our country will have to endure fierce fighting for a long time. - And, after a pause, she added: “We, Sergei, will have to act both with words and with a rifle.” Do you know about the resolution of the Central Committee to mobilize a quarter of the Komsomol to the front? I think so, Sergei, that we won’t last long here.

Seryozha listened to her, with surprise catching some unusual notes in her voice. Her black eyes, shining with moisture, were fixed on him.

He almost forgot himself and didn’t tell her that her eyes were like a mirror, everything was visible in them, but he stopped himself in time.

Rita raised herself up on her elbow.

Where's your revolver?

Sergei sadly touched his belt.

In the village, a kulak gang took it away.

Rita put her hand into her tunic pocket and pulled out a shiny Browning.

Do you see that oak tree, Sergei? - she pointed with the muzzle at the entire furrowed trunk, twenty-five paces from them. And, raising her hand to eye level, almost without aiming, she fired. Broken bark fell...

“Here,” Rita said mockingly, handing him the revolver, “let’s see how you shoot.”

Out of three shots, Seryozha missed one. Rita smiled.

I thought it would be worse for you.

She put the revolver on the ground and lay down on the grass. Her firm breasts showed through the fabric of her tunic.

Sergei, come here,” she said quietly.

He moved closer to her.

Do you see the sky? It's blue. But you have the same eyes. This is not good. Your eyes should be gray, steely. Blue is something too delicate.

And, suddenly grabbing his blond head, she imperiously kissed him on the lips.”

With amazing subtlety, this laconic episode reveals the pure spiritual world of those youth who gathered under the banner of Bolshevism in order to devote all their strength, their entire lives to the great cause of creating a new world. The unselfishness of inspired feat, humble courage, revolutionary vigilance, strength and purity of feelings stand behind this small painting painted by a passionate and intelligent artist.

There are many characters in the novel. They are divided into two camps: our Soviet people and people hostile to us, either openly or potentially. And on each of them is the light of the author's love or author's hatred.

Next to Korchagin, Zhukhrai, Ustinovich, Dolinnik, Bruzzhak and others stands “masculinely broad in the shoulders, with a heroic chest, with steep, powerful hips,” the unforgettable watchman Odarka, at whom Korchagin looked “with silent gratitude.” At first, mistaking Korchagin, numb from the cold, for a quitter who was “paving his way to dinner” ahead of schedule, she gave him an unkind look and said reproachfully: “You’re apparently running away from work, boy.” Then, seeing his thin boots with the soles falling off and foot wraps soaked in sticky clay, she was embarrassed and said sympathetically: “Where has this been seen, to suffer so much! If not today, tomorrow the frost will strike, you will be lost...”, and she brought him a deep galosh and a piece of dry, clean canvas for foot wraps.

Odarka is a so-called episodic character. Her role in the book is minimal. Nevertheless, she is shown so vividly that this image is remembered, and the reader is mentally able to imagine Odarka’s life much broader than what is told about her on the pages of the novel.

The fourth chapter describes the October celebrations in the border village of Poddubtsy. The village was divided by a small river. The words flew over the border and were heard on the other side. Concerned gendarmes drove residents into their houses with whips. Shots echoed across the roofs where young people had climbed to better see what was happening in Poddubki.

Then, supported by the guys, an old shepherd climbed onto the podium.

“Look well, kids! - he addressed the youth. “That’s why they beat us once, but now in the village no one has ever seen such a thing where the authorities beat a peasant with a whip.” When the lords finished, the whip on our backs also ended. Hold this power tightly, sons. I'm old and can't speak. And I wanted to say a lot. For all our lives, that we were dragged under the king like an ox pulling a cart, and such a resentment for those!.. - And he waved his bony hand across the river and began to cry, as only small children and old people cry.”

The old shepherd only experienced the great happiness of freedom at the end of his days; he became the master of his own destiny. And there lives in him a resentment towards everyone who continues to live as hard as he had to live most of his life, who endures gendarmerie oppression and the violence of the lords. He passionately wants all working people all over the world to live freely and joyfully, as he himself lives now - to live in the Soviet way. The writer discerned the emergence of a feeling that has now become organic for every Soviet person.

At the Kharkov Surgical Institute, Korchagin met resident physician Bazhanova. He had surgery. The hero then entered “the first act of his tragedy.” Irina Vasilievna Bazhanova became his faithful friend. She already knew what Korchagin did not yet know. “The tragedy of immobility awaits this young man, and we are powerless to prevent it,” her father, a famous surgeon, told her. She found no way to tell Korchagin this. Saying goodbye to him, Bazhanova only quietly said:

“Don’t forget about my friendship for you, Comrade Korchagin. All sorts of situations are possible in your life. If you need my help or advice, write to me. I will do everything in my power."

Her keen interest, selfless desire to help Korchagin, to do everything possible to improve his health - all these are not only individual traits inherent specifically to her, Bazhanova; no, these are, first of all, the characteristic features of a Soviet person, a Soviet doctor. This is humanism nurtured by the Soviet system. And it is he who makes Doctor Bazhanova related to Odarka and the shepherd grandfather.

The image of Bazhanova echoes the image of Nina Vladimirovna, a junior doctor in the clinical military hospital where the wounded Korchagin was admitted in 1920. In her notebook, in an entry dated September 2, 1920, we read:

“I am very sorry for his youth, and I want to win it back from death, if I can.” And further; “Today is a wonderful day for me. My patient, Korchagin, came to his senses and came to life. The pass has been passed. I haven’t gone home for the last two days.”

Bazhanova and Odarka, the old shepherd and Nina Vladimirovna - all these people are different, they are remembered precisely because of their individual traits. But the power of these and similar people lies in their unity. Ostrovsky showed what this unity means, what it is based on and how it manifests itself. They are the most beautiful people on earth because they serve the wonderful cause of the renewal of humanity - they fight for communism.

With them is the writer's love.

What is applicable to Ostrovsky here is what the outstanding Soviet teacher, remarkable scientist and writer A. S. Makarenko said about himself, responding to would-be critics who reproached him for the abundance of beautiful characters in the story “Flags on the Towers.” He wrote:

“I don’t understand your reproach that there are many beautiful things in my story. This is how I see people - this is my right.”

Ostrovsky passionately loved our Soviet people and saw their true beauty.

But with what destructive hatred the enemies are shown in the same book: be it the German interventionists, or the Petliurists, or the White Poles. And not only them! And all these careerists and opportunists like Chuzhanin and Razvalikhin are bagmen, Nepmen, Trotskyists, saboteurs. Ostrovsky's pen breathed with rage when it touched them.

Pavel Korchagin invariably judged people by their deeds, and Nikolai Ostrovsky showed people in their deeds.

This is a true creative method. “Without understanding affairs,” wrote V.I. Lenin to Gorky, “it is impossible to understand people except... outwardly.” Ostrovsky showed an excellent understanding of the deeds performed by people, and therefore he so deeply comprehended those who act in his book. Sometimes it’s just a page or a few lines, but behind them you feel a person with his real world, because this person is a participant in the struggle. His content is inseparable from the content of the cause to which he devoted himself and to which he serves. That is why the line between positive and negative in a novel, between loved and hated, is so sharp. She, this line, symbolically runs along the line - between those very border pillars, one of which Ostrovsky wrote about with love, and the other with hatred:

“The frontier is two pillars. They stand opposite each other, silent and hostile, personifying two worlds. One is planed and sanded, painted like a police box, black and white. A one-headed predator is nailed to the top with strong nails. Having spread its wings, as if covering a striped pillar with its claws, the one-eyed vulture peers unkindly at the metal shield opposite, its curved beak extended and tense. Six steps opposite is another pillar. A round oak plank pillar is dug deep into the ground. On the pillar there is a cast iron shield, on it there is a sickle and a hammer. There is an abyss between the two worlds, although the pillars are dug in their native land.”

The border line between the world of socialism and the world of capitalism runs along the earth. An invisible line separates people, their thoughts and feelings. This feature separates the socialist from the capitalist and its “birthmarks” - remnants.

Why didn’t Korchagin digest Fileo and Gribov? Because they had a bourgeois attitude towards women, although they were formally members of the party. Fileo’s vulgar, cynical story, which insulted Korotaeva, the head of the department, outraged Korchagin:

“- Cattle! - Pavel roared.

He spoke before the party court:

“- Fileo is a disgusting phenomenon in our communist life. I cannot understand, I will never come to terms with the fact that a communist revolutionary can at the same time be the most obscene brute and scoundrel...”

Korchagin demanded that Razvalikhin be expelled from the Komsomol. He spoke about him at the bureau of the district committee:

"-Exclude without the right to join."

This surprised everyone; it seemed too harsh. But Korchagin repeated:

"-Exclude the scoundrel..."

Ostrovsky's selfless love for the world of socialism and indomitable hatred for the world of capitalism became his passion, his vision, his artistic method, the flesh and blood of the work. They defined his epithets and his metaphors. The writer gave vent to what had accumulated in his heart.

To write about good things without love, and about bad things without hatred, means writing poorly. “How the Steel Was Tempered” is imbued with the powerful passion of the Bolshevik writer. This book is well written. And therefore she does not know indifferent readers.

In 1928, A. M. Gorky, answering the question of the Literary Club members: “By what signs can one identify a truly proletarian writer?”, wrote:

The writer’s respect for man as a source of creative energy, the creator of all things, all miracles on earth, as a fighter against the elemental forces of nature and the creator of a new “second” nature created by the work of man, his science and technology in order to free him from useless expenses his physical strength, costs, inevitably stupid and cynical in the conditions of a class state.

The writer's poeticization of collective work, the purpose of which is the creation of new forms in life, forms that completely exclude the power of man over man and the meaninglessness of the exploitation of his powers.

The writer’s assessment of a woman not only as a source of physiological pleasure, but as a faithful comrade and assistant in the difficult task of life.

Treating children as people to whom we are all responsible for everything we do.

The writer’s desire in every possible way to increase the reader’s active attitude towards life, to instill in him confidence in his strength, in his ability to overcome in himself and outside himself everything that prevents people from understanding and feeling the great meaning of life, the enormous significance of the joy of work.”

It is precisely this kind of truly proletarian writer who meets all of Gorky’s listed characteristics that the author of the book “How the Steel Was Tempered” showed himself to be.

Nikolai Ostrovsky is a talented Russian writer. Strong and widely branched roots, deeply rooted in the history and traditions of our great literature, generously nourished his creativity.

We know how much he read Gogol and Pushkin, Lermontov and Nekrasov, Tolstoy, Chekhov and Gorky. He returned to their books more than once, listened to them when he could no longer read with his own eyes, thought, comprehended and learned. Gogol had a fighting, vitally active romance that was close to him, which, perhaps, emerged most forcefully in Taras Bulba. Pushkin amazed and attracted with his magnificent breadth of outlook, an example of the writer’s true interest in life, when it is confirmed again and again that the right to life among his descendants is given only to that writer who “cared about everything” in the modern life around him. And Pushkin knew how to delve into the troubles of the “village of Goryukhin” and into the liberation struggle of Greek patriots; he was with the Decembrists, exiled “to the depths of the Siberian ores”; took notes from a traveler in Kamchatka and wrote about the life of North American Indians.

Ostrovsky returned to Gorky especially often. He read and re-read the novel “Mother”, admired the image of Pavel Vlasov, vividly perceived the heroic pathos of the first revolutionary battles of the Russian proletariat and felt like a direct descendant and heir of those who were the soldiers of these battles.

Nikolai Ostrovsky found a lot of similarities in the books of D. Furmanov and more than once expressed regret that they never managed to meet and talk with each other. Furmanov died in 1926. Ostrovsky remembered by heart the words that express the thoughts of Commissar Furmanov, the author and hero of the book “The Mutiny,” when he finds himself in front of a crowd of angry soldiers: “So die, so that your death will benefit... This is your last mobilization! Die well...” The words “You must die well” will later be uttered by one of the heroes of the book “How the Steel Was Tempered”, sentenced by the whites to cruel execution.

There is evidence that Ostrovsky re-read more than once, or rather, listened to more than once, the short story by V. G. Korolenko “The Blind Musician.” The first and simplest conclusion from this fact, which suggests itself, is that Ostrovsky was interested in the theme of the story: a description of the life of a person in a state similar to his own (although blindness was only part, and, moreover, far from the most painful, of physical suffering Ostrovsky). However, it is worth remembering the story itself by V. G. Korolenko to make sure that this “simplest” conclusion in this case is not correct, although, perhaps, the motivating reason for the first reading of the story was really in this apparent similarity of the topic. The story should have been of interest

N.A. Ostrovsky also because its action unfolds in places native to him - in that old “southwestern region”, where he spent his own adolescence. His childhood hobbies, dreams and games must have arisen in his memory when he listened to the story of the “desperate Volyn citizen,” old Maxim Yatsenko, who was angry with the lords, reached Italy and joined the Garibaldians, and then returned to Volyn from the hospital, “hacked to death.” like cabbage." It was this old Garibaldian Maxim who waged a long and persistent struggle for the return of blind Pyotr Popelsky to life, and his thoughts probably worried Ostrovsky and found a lively response in his heart. Maxim Yatsenko saw the last task of his life as “instead of himself, placing a new recruit in the ranks of fighters for the cause of life, on whom no one could count without his influence.”

He thought:

“Who knows... you can fight not only with a spear and a saber. Perhaps, unjustly offended by fate, over time, he will raise the weapon available to him in defense of others, disadvantaged by life, and then it will not be for nothing that I will live in the world, a mutilated old soldier ... "

Peter has to overcome the handicaps brought by blindness. And the path to overcoming opens in the joy of creativity. Blind Peter becomes a musician.

This is the closeness of Korolenko’s story to the world of Ostrovsky’s inner experiences. But that was where the closeness ended. Then a creative dispute began between Ostrovsky and Korolenko.

And, probably, while conducting this debate, Ostrovsky listened with such interest to “The Blind Musician” in 1928. This was on the eve of complete loss of vision. Ostrovsky asked his wife to reread certain passages to him several times.

The very image of Peter could only be hostile to him.

Blindness embittered Peter. She alienated him from people. It is not Peter himself who is struggling with bitterness and alienation; they are extinguished in him by old Maxim, Peter's mother - people who can fight for him only by overcoming his resistance.

And Peter’s victory - his first concert - is described as follows:

“A minute later, above the enchanted crowd in the huge hall, powerful and captivating, there was already only one song of the blind...

... It contained everything that had happened before, when, under his influence, Peter’s face was distorted and he ran from the piano, unable to fight the corroding pain. Now he defeated it in his soul and conquered the souls of this crowd with the depth and horror of life’s truth... It was darkness against the backdrop of bright light, a reminder of grief amid the fullness of a happy life..."

As an ambassador for the unfortunate, Pyotr Popelsky entered the concert hall and entered art.

But Ostrovsky, then conceiving his Korchagin, wanted to speak on behalf of the happy. Korchagin did not need Maxim to lead him into life by the hand. On the contrary, if we talk about the similarity of Ostrovsky’s plans with Korolenko’s story, then in Korchagin himself there was much more of the fighter Maxim than of the blind Peter, who was bitter towards people and (for this reason!) losing the will to fight.

Accepting the close and arguing with the alien and outdated, he looked for his own, innovative paths in literature, and went to his book.

The realistic, life-affirming line of great Russian literature is continued by the work of Ostrovsky.

A curious excerpt from the sixth chapter of the second part, which was not included in the printed text, was found in Ostrovsky's manuscript. We remember this chapter. Summer 1924. In Moscow, at the VI All-Russian Komsomol Congress - the same historical congress at which the Communist Youth League adopted the glorious name Leninsky - delegates Rita Ustinovich, Akim, Pankratov, Okunev, Zharkiy, Pavel Korchagin meet...

Ostrovsky wrote: “Never more vividly, more deeply did Korchagin feel the greatness and power of the revolution, that inexplicable pride and unique joy that life gave him, which brought him here as a fighter and builder, to this victorious triumph of the young guard of Bolshevism.”

And after the congress meeting, friends gathered at Rita Ustinovich’s Moscow apartment. They chatted animatedly and recalled the past years. And there Nikolai Okunev said:

“- The world has never seen a revolution like ours, and there are no books about it yet, where the young guard was shown... A book is more powerful than an army of agitators; it penetrates into the most remote corners, it is read, it leaves a mark on the mind, and if it is bright, if it was written by a Bolshevik, then it will serve the revolution.

“We look alike here,” he continued fervently, “each of us has six or seven years of revolutionary work, almost all of us fought at the fronts.” I wish I could write about at least one thing from his early years to his last days, and let this book be heated by fire. No matter who it is written about, no matter who is taken as a hero, this story will not only be about him, but about all our lads, about the Bolshevik Komsomol.

Someone remarked:

Yes, but this requires a lot of preparation, a high cultural level, knowledge of literature and language, and out of ten of us, nine are workers with primary education, or even self-taught. This barrier cannot be crossed in one day. This Perekop cannot be taken by storm overnight.

Nikolai Okunev was energetically supported by Rita Ustinovich.

Still, Okunev is right,” she said. - It is, of course, impossible to write a book with only one desire, without a high cultural level. But this cultural growth is happening in our country with unprecedented speed. The revolution is a school that no university can compare with... I am deeply convinced, friends, that in the coming years the Komsomol will produce masters of words from its midst and they will tell in artistic images our heroic past and no less glorious present. Who knows, maybe one of those present here will sketch us with a sharp pen..."

All these discussions about a possible future book, which were not included in the printed text of “How the Steel Was Tempered,” echo others that we already know from the book itself.

The Komsomol promoted such a writer from among its ranks. With his sharp and inspired pen, he spoke about the heroic past, recreated in artistic images the true heroes of our time, showed their lives, from childhood to their last days. Ostrovsky fulfilled the dream of Okunev, Ustinovich, Sereda and Androshchuk and wrote a book, “heated by fire,” in which he vividly and truthfully spoke about Pavel Korchagin and Rita Ustinovich, about Seryozha and Valya Bruzzhak, about Akim and Klimka, about Nikolai Okunev and Tala Lagutina , about Ivan Zharky and Lida Polevykh, about Taya Kyutsam and Gala Alekseeva - about the life of an entire generation of youth, starting from the pre-revolutionary years and ending with the years of the first Stalinist Five-Year Plan.

When Korchagin’s great destiny was determined and he began his independent life, the author himself, in turn, tried to keep up with Korchagin, to be worthy of him in everything, Ostrovsky seemed to compete with Korchagin, because for him his own hero became an uplifting example .

Korchagin would not have done that, he said once when, tormented by suddenly aggravated pain, he could not fulfill one promise he had made. - Korchagin would have kept his word.

The writer, who warmed the image he created with the warmth of his own life, warmed himself by the bright fire he lit. More than once in difficult times he called upon the heroic image of Pavel Korchagin for help.

Such in this case is the relationship between the author and the hero. In their ideological and moral unity, that bright all-conquering force was born, before which the dark forces of a painful illness retreated. This unity is an integral quality of a new type of writer - a socialist writer, an active participant in the creative work of his people.

Our reality gave birth to and raised Nikolai Ostrovsky not only as the author of talented works, but also as the heroic image of our contemporary, the combined image of Ostrovsky - Korchagin, whose consciousness and character were formed in the conditions of a new, socialist social existence.

In order to show Korchagin, Ostrovsky did not need to stand on romantic stilts, nor to abstract himself and add something to his own life, to enrich it, it was rich enough. There was no need to think too hard about how to bring yourself to a “common denominator”, to become like your peers; he was already inseparable from them.

Ostrovsky wrote to Chernokozov:

“After all, you and I are typical representatives of the young and old guard of the Bolsheviks.”

The creative process was to identify this typical.

“There are wonderful speakers,” said Ostrovsky. - They know how to fantasize well and call for a wonderful life, but they themselves do not know how to live well. From the rostrum they call for heroic deeds, but they themselves live like cowards. Imagine a thief who calls for an honest life, says that it is not good to steal, and he himself looks at which of the listeners is most convenient to steal the wallet. Or imagine a deserter who escaped during a battle and agitates the fighters to go to the front. The fighters have no mercy for this. There are also people among writers whose words do not match their deeds. This is incompatible with the title of writer."

100 famous symbols of the Soviet era Khoroshevsky Andrey Yurievich

"As the Steel Was Tempered"

"As the Steel Was Tempered"

“The most precious thing a person has is life. It is given to him once, and he must live it in such a way that there is no excruciating pain for the years spent aimlessly, so that the shame for a petty and petty past does not burn, and so that, when dying, he can say: all his life and all his strength were given to the most beautiful thing in the world - the struggle for the liberation of humanity." Every Soviet person knew these words of Nikolai Ostrovsky; Soviet schoolchildren quoted them millions of times in essays on the topic “The Image of Pavel Korchagin” or “Pavel Korchagin - a positive hero of the generations of the 30s–50s.” And from such endless repetition they became worn out and became a cliché, a school duty. I learned “from now to now,” answered the teacher, received my grade - and that’s it, but you don’t have to think about the fact that “life must be lived in such a way that there is no excruciating pain for the years spent aimlessly lived.” It’s a pity, the words are good and correct...

Nikolai Alekseevich Ostrovsky was born on September 29, 1904 in the village of Viliya, Ostrog district, Volyn province, in the family of a retired military man. His ancestors fought in various wars - his grandfather took part in the heroic defense of Sevastopol in 1854–1855, his father went through the Russian-Turkish War of 1877–1878, and was awarded two St. George Crosses for his bravery.

Older readers probably remember how the novel “How the Steel Was Tempered,” the main work of Nikolai Ostrovsky, begins. Twelve-year-old Pavel Korchagin is expelled from the parochial school, and he gets a job at the station canteen. And although Nikolai Ostrovsky himself asked not to identify himself with Pavel Korchagin and said that Pavel is an independent hero, the novel is actually the writer’s autobiography. Like Korchagin, Ostrovsky went to work early, first in a cafeteria, where, as he recalled, “he received his education mainly with slaps and kicks,” then on the railway as an electrician. And then the revolution broke out.

At this time, Ostrovsky’s large family fled from the war to Shepetivka (now a city in the Khmelnitsky region). “Nikolai Ostrovsky accepted the Great October Socialist Revolution with enthusiasm,” as they wrote in biographies of the writer published in Soviet times. In general, this was the case, although it is unlikely that a thirteen-year-old teenager understood all the vicissitudes of the political struggle in the country. However, despite his still very young age, Nikolai plunged headlong into the struggle for the “happiness of the working people.” In 1919, Ostrovsky secretly from his family joined the Komsomol, voluntarily went to the front, and fought in the brigade of the legendary Grigory Kotovsky. Once, near Lvov, Kotovsky’s detachment pursued a retreating enemy. In this pursuit, Nikolai was wounded in the head, flew off his horse at full gallop and severely damaged his spine in the fall. Then there was a long and difficult treatment, even then the doctors strongly recommended Ostrovsky not to return to the front. But he returned, ended up in the famous First Cavalry Army under the command of Semyon Budyonny. In the next battle he was wounded again, received a severe concussion, and his right eye practically ceased to see. This time the doctors were adamant - Nikolai was discharged and was forced to leave the army. At the age of 16, Ostrovsky is a war invalid...

“Only forward, only on the line of fire, only through difficulties to victory... And nowhere else” - this was the motto of Nikolai Ostrovsky. He is again at the front - this time at work, which is, perhaps, even more difficult than in battle with enemies. In 1922, Nikolai, on instructions from the Kyiv Provincial Committee of the Komsomol, went to build a narrow-gauge road from the forestry enterprise to the Boyarka station. This road will allow fuel to be quickly delivered to freezing Kyiv, and Ostrovsky does not stand aside: together with his comrades, in forty-degree frost, he hammers the frozen ground. And again the disease is typhus, which not many people overcome in times of famine and the almost complete absence of medicines. Nikolai survived, but his strength was practically running out. After recovery, Ostrovsky was sent as a military commissar of the universal training battalion to Berezdov and Izyaslav, then as secretary of the Komsomol district committee to Shepetovka.

In 1924, Nikolai first felt the first signs of an incomprehensible disease, which progressed rapidly. Serious problems with vision appeared, and it became more and more difficult to walk. And soon the doctors make a terrible diagnosis: toxic polyarthritis, bone paralysis, progressive deterioration of vision. In the long term - complete immobility and blindness. In the life of the future writer, a seemingly endless series of stays in hospitals, clinics, and sanatoriums begins. But operations and procedures do not give anything, the disease does not go away. Is there a way out? There is, and Nikolai thinks about him more than once...

“Slap yourself and that’s the end of it all...” There is always a trusty Browning at hand - and in a second all problems and misfortunes will go far, far away. But... “Make life useful when it becomes unbearable,” Nikolai answers himself. It was during this period that he had the idea of ​​becoming a writer. Nikolai understands that desire alone is not enough, that you cannot just sit down at the table and write good works. He loved to read since childhood, his favorite books were “Spartacus” by R. Giovagnoli, “The Gadfly” by E. L. Voynich, novels by Fenimore Cooper and Walter Scott, in which brave and courageous heroes fight injustice in the face of insidious villains. This is how Ostrovsky saw himself. But now, when the illness began to constrain him, Nikolai began to read voraciously, one book after another. While he could read on his own, he practically never let go of the books...

By the fall of 1927, Nikolai Ostrovsky could no longer walk; he was forever bedridden. And at the same time he begins to inexorably go blind. In 1929, Ostrovsky came to Moscow for treatment. He spends eight months in the hospital, after which he and his wife settle in the capital. And he starts writing. He was blind and practically paralyzed, but his arms still retained mobility. Friends made him a special banner (a stencil with slots for lines), and Nikolai slowly, carefully tracing each letter, wrote the first pages of the novel “How the Steel Was Tempered” (the original title was “Pavel Korchagin”). This name was not chosen by chance. “Steel is hardened with high heat and strong cooling,” said Nikolai Ostrovsky. “Then she becomes strong and is not afraid of anything.” This is how our generation became tempered in struggle and terrible wanderings and learned not to give in to life.”

However, the work progressed slowly, and the writer’s condition worsened. The disease affected the entire body, Ostrovsky was no longer able to even move his arms. Now Nikolai could only dictate - his words were recorded by his wife and mother, friends and roommates, and even his nine-year-old niece.

When the first part of the book was finished, the writer's friends sent it to the publishing house. But everywhere they found refusals and negative reviews. Finally, the novel was accepted in the Young Guard magazine. And suddenly, contrary to expectations, the novel “How the Steel Was Tempered” received wide recognition among readers. It was impossible to get the magazine where the chapters of the novel were printed; in libraries you had to sign up for a waiting list and wait at least a month. At the end of 1934, the first mass edition was published with a circulation of 100 thousand copies. During the writer’s lifetime, the novel was translated into Ukrainian, Polish, French, English and even Japanese.

Despite the success, the writer understands that the novel is far from perfect. “I am stunned and embarrassed by my popularity,” Ostrovsky wrote to his literary teacher, the famous writer Anna Karavaeva. “I understand how far my book is from perfection and true mastery... But one thing calms me down: I stopped eating bread from the victorious proletariat for nothing.” By the way, later, when drafts of the novel’s manuscript fell into the hands of researchers, doubts arose that Ostrovsky himself wrote (more precisely, dictated) the entire novel. Nikolai Alekseevich, of course, is the author of the plot and characters, and, most likely, he wrote the first part of the novel. But the material was raw, and professional writers Mark Kolosov and Victor Kin, who were officially considered the editors of Ostrovsky’s books, got down to business. The characters in the novel “How the Steel Was Tempered” are very close in character to the characters in Kolosov’s stories. And Victor Keen’s novel “On the Other Side,” which was popular in those years, telling about the struggle of Komsomol members in the Far East during the Civil War, is close in spirit to Ostrovsky’s work, and many of the dialogues in both novels are very similar.

Of course, we are not talking about this to cast a shadow on the writer or to drag his name through the mud. It’s just that the truth, whatever it may be, must remain the truth. And Nikolai Ostrovsky is worthy of all respect as a person who, in a seemingly hopeless situation, did not lose heart and was able to resist fate, which was inexorable in its cruelty. But... If Ostrovsky did not exist, then he should have been invented. “I am for this type of revolutionary, for whom the personal is nothing in comparison with the general,” said Pavel Korchagin, which means Nikolai Ostrovsky himself thought so. He sincerely believed that that “bright future”, “a fairy tale for working people”, would soon come, probably because he did not see (cynically, but true) what was happening around him. Unlike many “court” writers who carried out the orders of the party, Ostrovsky wrote what he thought. When he fought on the fronts of the Civil War, he firmly believed in the ideals of “class struggle.” And in the same way, he continued to believe in these ideals when he found himself bedridden and his only weapon was the word dictated to friends or family. But a person like Ostrovsky, such a literary hero as Pavel Korchagin, fiercely merciless both to himself and to his enemies, unconditionally devoted to the cause of the “world revolution” and ready to sacrifice himself for the cause, was needed by the regime, which always put the interests of the state above the interests of personality (more precisely, he never took this personality and her opinion into account). And even during his lifetime they began to make a myth out of Ostrovsky, a Soviet holy martyr. The famous French writer, Nobel laureate Andre Gide said this about him after visiting Nikolai in the hospital: “I cannot talk about Ostrovsky without feeling the deepest respect, I would say: “This is a saint.”

And when in 1934 an essay by the famous journalist Mikhail Koltsov “Courage” appeared in Pravda, when millions of readers learned that Pavel Korchagin and his tragic fate were not the fruit of the author’s invention, this was the author himself and his life, Nikolai Ostrovsky became truly a folk hero. “Nikolai Ostrovsky lies on his back, flat, absolutely motionless...” wrote Koltsov. - Thin hands, only the hands, move a little: they are wet when squeezed... But the face lives. Suffering dried out his features, erased his colors, sharpened his corners. The lips are open, two rows of young teeth make the mouth beautiful. These lips speak. This voice is calm, although quiet, but only sometimes occasionally trembles from fatigue... And then we make a terrible discovery: no, not this man’s entire head is alive! Two large eyes with their dull glassy shine do not respond to the sun's ray. Man is also blind to everything.”

On October 1, 1935, by Decree of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, Nikolai Ostrovsky was awarded the Order of Lenin. The writer is provided with a large apartment in Moscow on Gorky Street, and a new, comfortable dacha is being built especially for the Ostrovsky family. Nikolai has everything a Soviet person could dream of - a personal pension, constant medical care, a personal car and even a trailer car for moving around the country. But Ostrovsky, by and large, no longer needs all this: his days are numbered. On December 22, 1936, Nikolai Ostrovsky died. They buried him as a soldier who died at a combat post. He was worthy of such an honor...

Nikolai Ostrovsky and his hero are part of Soviet history, a symbol of the Soviet era. The novel “Like Tempered Steel,” despite its clear ideological orientation, is interesting as the view of a person who went through the crucible of the Civil War, a direct witness and participant in the events in post-revolutionary Russia. Yes, this is a view from one side of the barricades, but the overall and true picture of events is made up of a mosaic of views and judgments. The main thing is that we always have the opportunity to see this or that problem or event from different sides, to hear different opinions. After all, this is the primary right of any person - to think and say what he wants, and not what someone else demands of him...