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How steel was tempered summary. Nikolai Ostrovsky "how the steel was tempered"

As the Steel Was Tempered

The autobiographical novel by Nikolai Ostrovsky is divided into two parts, each of which contains nine chapters: childhood, adolescence and youth; then mature years and illness.

For an unworthy act (he poured makhra into the dough for the priest), the cook's son Pavka Korchagin is expelled from school, and he gets "into the people." "The boy looked into the very depths of life, at its bottom, into the well, and musty mold, swamp dampness smelled of him, greedy for everything new, unknown." When the stunning news of “the Tsar was thrown off” burst into his small town like a whirlwind, Pavel had no time to think about studying at all, he works hard and, like a boy, without hesitation, hides his weapon despite the ban from the bosses of the suddenly surging Germans. When the province is flooded with an avalanche of Petliura gangs, he becomes a witness to many Jewish pogroms, ending in brutal murders.

Anger and indignation often seize the young daredevil, and he cannot but help the sailor Zhukhrai, a friend of his brother Artem, who worked in the depot. The sailor talked kindly with Pavel more than once: “You, Pavlusha, have everything to be a good fighter for the working cause, only now you are very young and you have a very weak concept of the class struggle. I, brother, will tell you about the real road "Because I know you'll be good. I don't like the quiet and the smug. Now a fire has begun all over the earth. The slaves have risen and the old life must be put to the bottom. But for this we need brave lads, not sissies, but people of a strong breed, who before a fight, he does not climb into the cracks, like a cockroach, but beats without mercy. Knowing how to fight, strong and muscular Pavka Korchagin saves Zhukhrai from under the escort, for which Petliurists seize him on a denunciation. Pavka was not familiar with the fear of an inhabitant protecting his belongings (he had nothing), but ordinary human fear seized him with an icy hand, especially when he heard from his escort: "Why carry him, sir cornet? A bullet in the back, and it's over" . Pavka was scared. However, Pavka manages to escape, and he hides with a girl he knows, Tonya, with whom he is in love. Unfortunately, she is an intellectual from the "rich class": the daughter of a forester.

Having passed the first baptism of fire in the battles of the civil war, Pavel returns to the city where the Komsomol organization was created, and becomes its active member. An attempt to drag Tonya into this organization fails. The girl is ready to obey him, but not completely. Too dressed up, she comes to the first Komsomol meeting, and it is hard for him to see her among the faded tunics and blouses. Tony's cheap individualism becomes unbearable for Pavel. The need for a break was clear to both of them ... Pavel's intransigence leads him to the Cheka, especially in the province it is headed by Zhukhrai. However, the KGB work is very destructive on Pavel's nerves, his concussion pains become more frequent, he often loses consciousness, and after a short respite in his hometown, Pavel goes to Kyiv, where he also ends up in the Special Department under the leadership of Comrade Segal.

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The second part of the novel opens with a description of a trip to a gubernatorial conference with Rita Ustinovich, Korchagin is assigned to her as assistants and bodyguards. Borrowing a "leather jacket" from Rita, he squeezes into the carriage, and then drags a young woman through the window. “For him, Rita was inviolable. Ego was his friend and comrade on purpose, his political instructor, and yet she was a woman. He felt it for the first time at the bridge, and that’s why he cares so much about her embrace. Pavel felt a deep, even breath, somewhere then her lips were very close. From the closeness, an irresistible desire was born to find these lips. Straining his will, he suppressed this desire. Unable to control his feelings, Pavel Korchagin refuses to meet with Rita Ustinovich, who teaches him political literacy. Thoughts about the personal are pushed aside in the mind of a young man even further when he takes part in the construction of a narrow gauge railway. The season is difficult - winter, Komsomol members work in four shifts, not having time to rest. Work is delayed by bandit raids. There is nothing to feed the Komsomol members, there are no clothes and shoes either. Work to the full strain of strength ends with a serious illness. Pavel falls, stricken with typhus. His closest friends, Zhukhrai and Ustinovich, having no information about him, think that he is dead.

However, after his illness, Pavel is back in the ranks. As a worker, he returns to the workshops, where he not only works hard, but also puts things in order, forcing the Komsomol members to wash and clean the workshop, to the great bewilderment of his superiors. In the town and throughout Ukraine, the class struggle continues, the Chekists catch the enemies of the revolution, and suppress bandit raids. The young Komsomol member Korchagin does a lot of good deeds, defending his comrades at meetings of the cell, and his party friends on the dark streets.

"The most precious thing for a person is life. It is given to him once, and you need to live it in such a way that it is not excruciatingly painful for the aimlessly lived years, so that the shame for a mean and petty past does not burn, and so that, dying, he could say: all life "All forces were given to the most beautiful thing in the world - the struggle for the liberation of mankind. And we must hurry to live. After all, an absurd illness or some tragic accident can interrupt it."

Having witnessed many deaths and killing himself, Pavka valued every passing day, accepting party orders and statutory orders as responsible directives of his being. As a propagandist, he also takes part in the defeat of the "workers' opposition", calling the behavior of his own brother "petty-bourgeois", and even more so in verbal attacks on the Trotskyists who dared to oppose the party. They do not want to listen to him, and after all, Comrade Lenin pointed out that we must bet on the youth.

When it became known in Shepetovka that Lenin had died, thousands of workers became Bolsheviks. The respect of the party members pushed Pavel far ahead, and one day he found himself at the Bolshoi Theater next to Rita Ustinovich, a member of the Central Committee, who was surprised to learn that Pavel was alive. Pavel says that he loved her like a Gadfly, a man of courage and infinite endurance. But Rita already has a friend and a three-year-old daughter, and Pavel is sick, and he is sent to the sanatorium of the Central Committee, carefully examined. However, a serious illness, which led to complete immobility, progresses. No new best sanatoriums and hospitals are able to save him. With the thought that "it is necessary to remain in the ranks," Korchagin begins to write. Next to him are good kind women: first Dora Rodkina, then Taya Kyutsam. “Did he live his twenty-four years well, did he live badly? Going through his memory year after year, Pavel checked his life like an impartial judge and decided with deep satisfaction that his life was not lived so badly ... Most importantly, he did not oversleep hot days, found his place in the iron struggle for power, and on the crimson banner of the revolution there are also a few drops of his blood.

The list of books that are constantly talked about, but no one reads them, is headed, of course, by the work of Joyce and Proust, but on the local scale of the Russian-speaking space, “How the Steel Was Tempered” is undoubtedly among them. Who hasn't heard? Everyone heard. And who read? I still haven’t read either, although, strictly speaking, for me, who specialized in Soviet literature of the 1920s (the “20s” in literary criticism traditionally means a somewhat wider period - from the late 1910s, i.e. from 1917-18, and until about the mid-1930s, so Ostrovsky’s book fits into this framework completely) this is also a professional omission, but more than that, I didn’t even see the famous film. No, it is clear that the 35+ generation read without exception, in order, wrote essays, passed exams, etc., but my peers already got "Mother's Heart" and "Stories about Seryozha Kostrikov" at best when they were pioneers , we have not grown up to the Komsomol and "How the Steel Was Tempered". And yet, in today's terms, the "brand" itself does not lose weight at all. Over the past few weeks, I have personally heard the title of Ostrovsky's book at least three times in a variety of situations: in a repeat of Maxim Galkin's concert the year before last (Maxim has an interlude where he talks about the existence of the so-called "naive-Ukrainian" language), in speeches by Sergei Barkhin at the opening of the exhibition of Oleg Sheintsis (Barkhin said about Sheintsis that he was so hardworking that it was as if he alone read "How the Steel Was Tempered") and in a documentary television film about Viktor Astafyev and Georgy Zhzhenov (Astafyev told how the Germans did not become shoot at them, fearing that you never know, the Komsomol foolishly, instead of escaping, will start firing at them at the risk of their own lives - having read "How the Steel Was Tempered").

A striking phenomenon, by the way: the original source has long been forgotten, abandoned, and not only the brand in the form of a book title continues to live in culture, not only the formula taken out of context "life is given to a person once and you need to live it so that it is not excruciatingly painful. ..", but also the mythological image of its protagonist. Pavka Korchagin is still a household name, and what this character is, there is no particular need to explain to anyone.

The fact that the artistic merit of "How the Steel Was Tempered" is minimal and in this sense it can hardly compete with other "unreadable" books like "Ulysses" or "In Search of Lost Time" was a revelation for me. Actually, even in the 30-50s, no one declared “How the Steel Was Tempered” to be such a directly outstanding literary masterpiece, even according to the most official concepts, Fadeev, Sholokhov, but certainly not Nikolai Ostrovsky, were “great” writers. Why, despite this, his work nevertheless turned out to be a textbook is also understandable. It was imposed not so much as a literary, but as a life, behavioral model. And not even a model, but an ideal. And in this respect, as well as in some others, "How the Steel Was Tempered" is a work characteristic of the literature of its time (of a certain, of course, direction). Characteristic to the point of normativity - its lack of artistic quality is primarily due to the fact that the author strives for full compliance with the ideals of literature of this kind, and at the same time does not have the opportunity to resort to outright falsification of facts (this is a very curious feature of the "well-intentioned" writings of the late 1920s - x-early 1930s: they were read by those who still had the events of the revolution and the civil war in their memory, frankly lying until most of the witnesses were destroyed in the late 30s and early 40s, it turned out to be even more difficult, which, by the way , at the same time explains why even the most loyal and loyal books by the standards of this most interesting era were subsequently not welcomed and republished by the Soviet authorities for the most part) - as a result, I have to resort either to defaults or to strange ones by today's concepts, and even by the concepts of 60- 70s already, explanations of the depicted events and actions of the characters.

Almost the entire first part of "How the Steel Was Tempered" is devoted, in the language of Soviet history textbooks, to "prerequisites, reasons, and the course of the establishment of Soviet power in Ukraine." And everything seems to be in accordance with the official version: the Germans and the Hetmanate, the Petliurists bandits with Jewish pogroms, the proletariat, who understands the strength of the Bolsheviks and follows them. But both Pavka Korchagin and his entourage in this first part are not yet a leafy character in Soviet heroic mythology. His "revolutionary activity" begins with the fact that the priest Vasily punished Korchagin and kicked him out of school, suspecting that Pavka poured shag into his dough - however, Korchagin really did it (I'm ready to argue that in a similar plot of the 50s, the character would have suffered innocently, as well as about the fact that there could not already be in a book written at least ten years later, such a number of "positive" Jewish comrades, and especially Jewish women, and Ostrovsky has a lot of them). Then Pavka was "offended" in the dishwasher at the station buffet - but offended, again, because he really fell asleep at work, and through his fault there was a big flood at the station. Further, when the Bolsheviks distribute weapons to everyone in Shepetovka, and Korchagin is late for the distribution, he takes the rifle on the road from the oncoming boy - not a bourgeois, not a class enemy, but the most ordinary boy who turned out to be weaker and became a victim of the robber Korchagin. Finally, he steals the revolver of a German officer, determined to stay with the neighbors Leshchinsky - from the enemy, from the class, but still steals, alone, and for no particular reason, simply because he liked the weapon. And all this happens even before the hero becomes "conscious" and learns about the "class struggle".

And after that, with Ostrovsky, everything is like in medieval courtly novels, with which, by the way, if you are puzzled, in "How the Steel Was Tempered" you can trace genre, thematic, plot, characterological, stylistic, etc. on all levels of text organization analogy. And also, just like in classic comedies, Ostrovsky awards unpleasant characters or unreliable, with a "double bottom" people with characteristic surnames: Chuzhanin, Razvalikhin, Tufta, Dubava. But these are particulars, and the most significant thing is that the dignity of the hero in Ostrovsky is determined solely by the origin and loyalty to this origin, just as a medieval knight must be faithful to the honor of the family, with the difference compared to medieval concepts that now proletarian origin is considered "noble". This proletarian position is carried out in the book as harshly as possible. Korchagin's first love is Tonya Tumanova - a sweet, in fact, girl, the daughter of a forester, that is, not a bourgeois, but a completely progressive intellectual - but progressive only for her "class", and therefore Pavka is unworthy, later he meets her again when heroically he lays a narrow-gauge railway with other Komsomol members to deliver firewood to the city and for this he removes passengers from the train, including Tonya and her husband, also an intellectual, and they do not want to voluntarily share their labor enthusiasm - then Korchagin threatens them. In general, this is a characteristic technique for Ostrovsky, when, after some time, Pavka again encounters obvious or hidden "class enemies" from his childhood, in order to make sure once again: no matter how much you feed the wolf ... Pop Vasily with his daughters turns out to be one of the organizers of the Polish rebellion in the town. Nelly Leshchinskaya, the daughter of a neighbor lawyer, in whose deep car Korchagin comes to fix electric lighting - an arrogant cocaine addict, etc.

It is not surprising that with such a keen class instinct, Korchagin loses not only the "bourgeois" Tonya, but also a reliable comrade Rita Ustinovich. In general, by universal standards, Korchagin is a typical loser: despite colossal efforts, he achieved nothing for himself, did not acquire property, did not start a family, lost his health ... That is the pathos of the work - in the new concept of happiness: it is required to submit it fate not as a failure, but as a triumph. And this is also a very characteristic motive for the literature of the 1920s and 1930s: the motive of the sacrifice of the individual for the sake of the collective, suffering today for the sake of happiness tomorrow, reality for the sake of the idea - "so that the harsh earth bleeds, so that new youth rises from the bones." Only if for really great writers, in truly significant works - I don’t even take Babel or Pilnyak, but at least in Fadeev’s “Defeat” - this sacrifice, for all its heroic context, is somehow perceived as a tragedy, as an occasion for reflection, then Ostrovsky presents it schematically. "How the Steel Was Tempered" is not a novel, but the scheme of a novel, with "epic" beginnings like: "A sharp merciless class struggle seized Ukraine." With a "new family" of party and Komsomol workers instead of relatives and lovers ("lost the feeling of a separate personality" - this is how the peak of the "moral" development of the hero is characterized). With the need to kill the one who is the enemy, and the enemy to consider that of a different origin. With readiness to die for the sake of the cause (this is the "new birth", and, it would seem, here the condo socialist realism merges with the mythopoetics of the "spontaneous" writers, as well as in comparing the revolution with a snowstorm, with a snowstorm).

The second part, however, is practically unreadable, since there is almost nothing either human or artistic in it. Ostrovsky writes in the language that in Soviet publications (I have a book published before my birth in 1977 at hand) I had to comment in line-by-line, and compound abbreviations and slang derivatives of these abbreviations recognizable in the 20-30s - nashtaoker, provincial party school, Komsa ... - clogs it terribly. But it also gives a sense of time - not historical, but literary. Since the end of the 1910s, everyone has been mastering this language, some for heroic epics, others for satires and parodies ("And I went, went to petrocomproms, tailed for a long time and porches in the district committee ..." - Gippius wrote in 1919 still in Petrograd; “when a child for the fourth year babbles the same indistinct, unintelligible words like “sovnarkhoz”, “uezemelkom”, “sovbur” and “revolutionary military council”, then this is no longer a touching, eye-caressing baby, but forgive me, a rather decent fellow , fallen into quiet idiocy" - Averchenko scoffed in "A Dozen Knives in the Back of the Revolution" already abroad), and the most subtle and gifted tried to taste this strange language, hear these eerie words in the howl of a revolutionary snowstorm or decompose into elementary particles of meaning, combine a linguistic remake with the archaic, as, for example, Pilnyak (all these Pilnyakov's "head-boom!" or "to whom - tators, and to whom - lyators"), whose poetics, by the way, was witty and accurately parodied by Dmitry Bykov in "Spelling" ( "And out of sinful fury, stomp Comrade Gurfinkel hobbles loudly, champing me). But there is no poetry at all in Ostrovsky's style, so much so that it is difficult to talk about style at all - a novel, especially the second part, with an endless struggle on the labor and ideological front (party meetings are described, where first the "workers' opposition" of the Trotskyists is smashed, then the Trotskyist-Kamenev " new opposition" - it is curious that Stalin is never mentioned in the 1977 edition, but briefly - repressed soon after the release of the first edition of the novel Yakir) is written more in the language of Soviet journalism than in fiction of any ideological consistency. Fiction, using the language of highly ideological journalism, when reading, really gives an effect that is both frightening and funny in its own way. But in any case, in comparison with Nikolai Ostrovsky, both Sholokhov and Fadeev are writers, if not great, as they were declared, then at least real ones.

It is all the more curious that at the level of individual micro-themes and leitmotifs, "How the Steel Was Tempered" can still conceal some surprises. For example, you can trace the "Italian theme" in the book. In the second part, it is constantly mentioned that Pavka reads a lot and voraciously, but apart from the classics of Marxism-Leninism, with the exception of "Capital", by the way, also completely abstract, only Furmanov's "Mutiny" appears as a specific title, in the episode where the already sick Korchagin , while being treated in Evpatoria, he meets a woman who will become his party comrade in the future - Dora Rodkina, although the circumstances of the acquaintance would seem to hint at the possibility of some kind of romantic context, but the Komsomol ideal is monastic-ascetic (i.e. again or "medieval"), and even when Korchagin eventually marries the daughter of his mother's friend Taya Katsyum, it is practically a "immaculate marriage": the hero is physically almost incapacitated (if he is fit for something as a man, and not just as an agitator and organizer of party work - there are no direct hints of this in the book), Taya, in turn, is more passionate about Marxism and Komsomol-party work, and they got married for that Go, in order to tear Taya away from the family where her father, an old-fashioned underachiever, ate her. However, if we return to the topic of Korchagin's reading, it turns out that as a teenager-worker he was fond of brochures, where stories about the adventures of Garibaldi were printed, a little later, The Gadfly becomes his favorite book, dedicated, again, to the Italian revolutionaries, already a "conscious" young man Korchagin discovers "Spartacus" by Giovagnoli, and in the library he transfers this book to the same shelf with Gorky's works. In the light of this “line”, it becomes clear why, promising a mother who misses her son and complaining that she sees him only crippled, a paradise life after the victory of the “world revolution”, Korchagin tells her: “One republic will become for all people, and you, old women and old people who are working - to Italy, the country is so warm over the sea. There is never a winter there, mama. We will put you in bourgeois palaces, and you will warm your old bones in the sun. And we, bourgeois, will go to America to finish ".

In this unremarkable, simply stupid passage, however, two themes are voiced that today give practical relevance to interest in Ostrovsky's novel. The first is the aggressive "internationalist" Soviet plans, on the one hand, largely coinciding with the Orthodox-imperial ones, and on the other, completely not based on so-called "patriotism", since Ostrovsky, we must pay tribute, is very consistent in his ideological obstinacy and his "patriotism" is aimed exclusively at the idea, at the system and at the class, but not at the country, not at the state, not at the people (Ukrainians, Jews, Latvians and Poles fight against Ukrainians, Jews, Latvians and Poles, the front line runs between classes, and not between countries and peoples; episodes on the Soviet-Polish border are very characteristic in this light). Which, however, does not at all make the supposedly “new” Russia harmless to the rest of the world; on the contrary, it reminds once again that the “peaceful” Soviet Union was in fact the main instigator of World War II. In a book published even before the National Socialists came to power in Germany, as in hundreds of other Soviet novels, poems, not to mention the journalism of that time, and not in the late 1910s and early 1920s, when the prospect of "exporting the revolution" seemed possible to many and, probably, in fact was partly probable, and already in the early 1930s, when the official doctrine of the USSR proclaimed "peacefulness", it is directly and unambiguously reminded every now and then that at the first opportunity, the Russians will go to war against the civilized world . Take, for example, one more episode - in the carriage at Nelly Leshchinskaya, whom Korchagin, threatening, says, "so far" we have peace, since "the bourgeoisie have come up with diplomacy" - but, they say, beware ... And another - with regards to the age category of Ostrovsky. In yet another passage, he calls Ledenev's 50-year-old character an "old man." Korchagin's mother is hardly older than 50 - but she is also an "old woman" with him. Yes, and Pavka himself, in his early twenties, and at the very end of the novel, in his early thirties, is physically worked out material, living on the same idea. Again the essentially medieval "ideal" of the victory of the "spirit" over the "body".

In fact, such a cult of youth and moral strength, which gives a weak, imperfect human body physical strength, too, is characteristic of any totalitarian ideologies, regardless of their political coloring. It is clear why "How the Steel Was Tempered" is still popular in China. It would have been returned to the Russian "pantheon" today - but Ostrovsky is still doing well in some ways, it is precisely the ideological limitations that lead to the schematization of the plot and characters that deprive the book not only of the volume inherent in any more or less fiction, but also of the possibility to read it differently than contemporaries and the author himself - which without much difficulty today can be done with the Quiet Don, and even with the seemingly permeated love for the Young Guard party. So, let's say, the common formula "life is given to a person and once and it must be lived in such a way that it is not excruciatingly painful for the aimlessly lived years" sounds good (despite the stylistic inferiority) and can be used, in essence, in a fairly universal context, although would be today's guardians for Orthodox spirituality. But in the original source, everything is concretized: "... so as not to burn the shame for a vile and petty past, and so that, dying, he could say: all life and all forces were given to the most beautiful thing in the world - the struggle for the liberation of mankind. And we must hurry to live. After all, an absurd illness or some tragic accident can interrupt it.

But all the same, "How the Steel Was Tempered" did not and will not become my "desktop" book purely formally - this place of honor is firmly occupied by "Hydrocentral" by Marietta Shaginyan.

Nikolai Ostrovsky

AS THE STEEL WAS TEMPERED

PART ONE

Chapter first

- Which of you came to my house before the holiday to answer the 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 had risen 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, breathing a sigh of relief.

Father Vasily's eyes focused on four figurines.

- Come here, darlings!

Father Vasily got up, pushed back his chair and came close to the guys who had huddled together:

“Which of you scoundrels smokes?”

All four quietly replied:

We don't smoke, sir.

The priest's face turned purple.

- Don't smoke, bastards, but who poured shag into the dough? Do not smoke? And now we'll see! Turn out your pockets! Well, live! What am I telling you? Turn out!

The three began to take out the contents of their pockets onto the table.

Pop carefully looked through the seams, looking for traces of tobacco, but did not find anything and set to work on the fourth - black-eyed, in a gray shirt and blue trousers with patches on the knees:

- And what are you, like an idol, standing?

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

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

- Ah, no pockets! So you think I don't know who could do such a mean thing - spoil the dough! Do you think you will stay at school now? No, my dear, it won't work for you. Last time, only your mother begged to leave you, but now it's over. March from class! He grabbed the ear painfully and threw the boy out into the corridor, closing the door behind him.

The class fell silent, cringed. No one understood why Pavka Korchagin was expelled from school. Only Seryozhka Bruzzhak, Pavka's friend and buddy, saw how Pavka poured a handful of makhra into his ass in the Easter dough there, in the kitchen, where six unsuccessful students were waiting for the priest. They had to take lessons already at the priest's apartment.

Pavka, driven out, sat down on the last step of the porch. He thought about how he should come home and what to say to his mother, such a caring, cook from morning until late at night for the excise inspector.

Pavka was choked with tears.

“Well, what should I do now? And all because of that damn priest. And why the hell did I pour makhr for him? Earring hit. "Come on, he says, let's pour a harmful viper." Here they poured. Seryozhka is fine, but they will probably kick me out. ”

This enmity with Father Vasily began a long time ago. Once Pavka had a fight with Levchukov Mishka, and he was left "without dinner." In order not to be naughty in an empty classroom, the teacher brought the naughty to the elders, to the second grade. Pavka sat down on the back bench.

The teacher, thin, in a black jacket, was talking about the earth, the luminaries. Pavka listened with his mouth wide open 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 is not written that way in the law of God,” but he was afraid that it would fly in.

According to the law of God, the priest always gave Pavka five. He knew all the troparia, the New and Old Testament by heart: he knew for sure on what day what was produced by God. Pavka decided to question Father Vasily. At the very first lesson of the law, as soon as the priest sat down in an armchair, Pavka raised his hand and, having received permission to speak, stood up:

- Father, why does a teacher in the senior class say that the earth has stood for a million years, and not as in the law of God - five thousand ... - and immediately fell down from the screeching cry of Father Vasily:

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

Before Pavel had time to utter a word, the priest grabbed him by both ears and began to pound his head against the wall. A minute later, beaten and frightened, he was thrown into the corridor.

It was good for Pavel from his mother too.

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

The boy suffered many more minor grievances from his father Vasily: the priest drove him out the door, put him in a corner for trifles for weeks on end and never asked him for lessons, and before Easter, because of this, he had to go to the house to take the priest to the house. There, in the kitchen, I poured Pavka makhra into the Easter dough.

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

... The lesson ended, the kids poured out into the yard and surrounded Pavka. He kept silent. Seryozhka Bruzzak did not leave the classroom, he felt that he was to blame, but he could not help his comrade in any way.

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

"Send Korchagin to me at once!" he shouted.

And Pavka, with a pounding heart, went to the teacher's room.

The owner of the station buffet, elderly, pale, with colorless, faded eyes, glanced briefly at Pavka, who was standing aside:

- How old is he?

“Twelve,” said the mother.

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

- What are you, what are you! He won't steal, I vouch, - the mother said frightened.

“Well, let him start working today,” the owner ordered and, turning to the saleswoman standing next to him at the counter, 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 Pavel, she walked across the hall, making her way to the side door leading to the scullery. Pavka followed her. His mother hurried along with him, whispering to him hastily:

- You, Pavlushka, try not to be ashamed.

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

In the scullery, work was in full swing: a mountain of plates, forks, and knives towered on the table, and several women rubbed them with towels slung over their shoulders. A red-haired boy with tousled, unkempt hair, a little older than Pavel, was busy with two huge samovars.

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

The saleswoman Zina went up to one of the women washing the dishes and, taking her by the shoulder, said:

- Here, Frosenka, the new boy is here for you instead of Grishka. You tell him what to do.

The autobiographical novel by Nikolai Ostrovsky is divided into two parts, each of which contains nine chapters: childhood, adolescence and youth; then mature years and illness.

For an unworthy act (he poured makhra into the dough for the priest), the cook's son Pavka Korchagin is expelled from school, and he ends up "into the people." “The boy looked into the very depths of life, at its bottom, into the well, and musty mold, swamp dampness smelled of him, greedy for everything new, unknown.” When the stunning news “The Tsar was thrown off” burst into his small town like a whirlwind, Pavel had no time to think about his studies at all, he works hard and, like a boy, without hesitation, hides his weapon despite the ban from the bosses of the suddenly surging Germans. When the province is flooded with an avalanche of Petliura gangs, he becomes a witness to many Jewish pogroms, ending in brutal murders.

Anger and indignation often seize the young daredevil, and he cannot but help the sailor Zhukhrai, a friend of his brother Artem, who worked in the depot. The sailor spoke kindly with Pavel more than once: “You, Pavlusha, have everything to be a good fighter for the working cause, only now 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: you will be good. I don’t like quiet and smeared ones. Now the whole earth is on fire. The slaves have risen and the old life must be put to the bottom. But for this we need brave lads, not sissies, but people of a strong breed, who, before a fight, do not climb into the cracks, like a cockroach, but beat without mercy. Knowing how to fight, strong and muscular Pavka Korchagin saves Zhukhrai from under the escort, for which Petliurists seize him on a denunciation. Pavka was not familiar with the fear of an inhabitant protecting his belongings (he had nothing), but ordinary human fear seized him with an icy hand, especially when he heard from his escort: “Why carry him, sir cornet? A bullet in the back and it's over." Pavka was scared. However, Pavka manages to escape, and he hides with a girl he knows, Tonya, with whom he is in love. Unfortunately, she is an intellectual from the "rich class": the daughter of a forester.

The second part of the novel opens with a description of a trip to a gubernatorial conference with Rita Ustinovich, Korchagin is assigned to her as assistants and bodyguards. Borrowing a "leather jacket" from Rita, he squeezes into the carriage, and then drags a young woman through the window. “For him, Rita was untouchable. It was his friend and comrade in purpose, his political instructor, and yet she was a woman. He felt it for the first time at the bridge, and that's why he cares so much about her embrace. Pavel felt deep, even breathing, somewhere very close to her lips. From proximity was born an irresistible desire to find those lips. By straining his will, he suppressed this desire. Unable to control his feelings, Pavel Korchagin refuses to meet with Rita Ustinovich, who teaches him political literacy. Thoughts about the personal are pushed aside in the mind of a young man even further when he takes part in the construction of a narrow gauge railway. The season is difficult - winter, Komsomol members work in four shifts, not having time to rest. Work is delayed by bandit raids. There is nothing to feed the Komsomol members, there are no clothes and shoes either. Work to the full strain of strength ends with a serious illness. Pavel falls, stricken with typhus. His closest friends, Zhukhrai and Ustinovich, having no information about him, think that he is dead.

However, after his illness, Pavel is back in the ranks. As a worker, he returns to the workshops, where he not only works hard, but also puts things in order, forcing the Komsomol members to wash and clean the workshop, to the great bewilderment of his superiors. In the town and throughout Ukraine, the class struggle continues, the Chekists catch the enemies of the revolution, and suppress bandit raids. The young Komsomol member Korchagin does many good deeds, defending his comrades at meetings of the cell, and his party friends in the dark streets.

“The most precious thing for a person is life. It is given to him once, and he must live it in such a way that it would not be excruciatingly painful for the aimlessly lived years, so that he would not burn shame for a vile and petty past, and so that, dying, he could say: all life, all strength were given to the most beautiful in the world. - the struggle for the liberation of mankind. And we must hurry to live. After all, an absurd illness or some tragic accident can interrupt it.

When it became known in Shepetovka that Lenin had died, thousands of workers became Bolsheviks. The respect of the party members pushed Pavel far ahead, and one day he found himself at the Bolshoi Theater next to Rita Ustinovich, a member of the Central Committee, who was surprised to learn that Pavel was alive. Pavel says that he loved her like a Gadfly, a man of courage and infinite endurance. But Rita already has a friend and a three-year-old daughter, and Pavel is sick, and he is sent to the sanatorium of the Central Committee, carefully examined. However, a serious illness, which led to complete immobility, progresses. No new best sanatoriums and hospitals are able to save him. With the thought that "it is necessary to stay in the ranks," Korchagin begins to write. Next to him are good kind women: first Dora Rodkina, then Taya Kyutsam. “Is it good, did he live his twenty-four years badly? Going through his memory year after year, Pavel checked his life like an impartial judge and with deep satisfaction decided that life was not lived so badly ... Most importantly, he did not sleep through the hot days, found his place in the iron struggle for power, and on the crimson banner there is a revolution and his few drops of blood.”

Summary of Ostrovsky's novel "How the Steel Was Tempered"

"As the Steel Was Tempered"

The autobiographical novel by Nikolai Ostrovsky is divided into two parts, each of which contains nine chapters: childhood, adolescence and youth; then mature years and illness.

For an unworthy act (he poured makhra into the dough for the priest), the cook's son Pavka Korchagin is expelled from school, and he ends up "into the people." “The boy looked into the very depths of life, at its bottom, into the well, and musty mold, swamp dampness smelled of him, greedy for everything new, unknown.” When the stunning news “The Tsar was thrown off” burst into his small town like a whirlwind, Pavel had no time to think about his studies at all, he works hard and, like a boy, without hesitation, hides weapons despite the ban from the bosses of the suddenly surging Germans. When the province is flooded with an avalanche of Petliura gangs, he becomes a witness to many Jewish pogroms, ending in brutal murders.

Anger and indignation often seize the young daredevil, and he cannot but help the sailor Zhukhrai, a friend of his brother Artem, who worked in the depot. The sailor spoke kindly with Pavel more than once: “You, Pavlusha, have everything to be a good fighter for the working cause, only now 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: you will be good. I don’t like quiet and smeared ones. Now the whole earth is on fire. The slaves have risen and the old life must be put to the bottom. But this requires brave lads, not sissies, but a people of strong breed, who before a fight does not climb into the cracks, like a cockroach, but beats without mercy. Knowing how to fight, strong and muscular Pavka Korchagin saves Zhukhrai from under the escort, for which Petliurists seize him on a denunciation. Pavka was not familiar with the fear of an inhabitant protecting his belongings (he had nothing), but ordinary human fear seized him with an icy hand, especially when he heard from his escort: “Why carry him, sir cornet? A bullet in the back and it's over." Pavka was scared. However, Pavka manages to escape, and he hides with a friend of hers, Tonya, with whom he is in love. Unfortunately, she is an intellectual from the "rich class": the daughter of a forester.

Having passed the first baptism of fire in the battles of the civil war, Pavel returns to the city where the Komsomol organization was created, and becomes its active member. An attempt to drag Tonya into this organization fails. The girl is ready to obey him, but not completely. Too dressed up, she comes to the first Komsomol meeting, and it is hard for him to see her among the faded gymnasts and blouses. Tony's cheap individualism becomes unbearable for Pavel. The need for a break was clear to both of them ... Pavel's intransigence leads him to the Cheka, especially in the province it is headed by Zhukhrai. However, the KGB work is very destructive on Pavel's nerves, his concussion pains become more frequent, he often loses consciousness, and after a short respite in his hometown, Pavel goes to Kyiv, where he also ends up in the Special Department under the leadership of Comrade Segal.

The second part of the novel opens with a description of a trip to a gubernatorial conference with Rita Ustinovich, Korchagin is assigned to her as assistants and bodyguards. Borrowing a "leather jacket" from Rita, he squeezes into the carriage, and then drags a young woman through the window. “For him, Rita was untouchable. It was his friend and comrade in purpose, his political instructor, and yet she was a woman. He felt it for the first time at the bridge, and that's why he cares so much about her embrace. Pavel felt a deep, even breathing, somewhere very close to her lips. From proximity was born an irresistible desire to find those lips. By straining his will, he suppressed this desire. Unable to control his feelings, Pavel Korchagin refuses to meet with Rita Ustinovich, who teaches him political literacy. Thoughts about the personal are pushed aside in the mind of a young man even further when he takes part in the construction of a narrow gauge railway. The season is difficult - winter, Komsomol members work in four shifts, not having time to rest. Work is delayed by bandit raids. There is nothing to feed the Komsomol members, there are no clothes and shoes either. Work to the full strain of strength ends with a serious illness. Pavel falls, stricken with typhus. His closest friends, Zhukhrai and Ustinovich, having no information about him, think that he is dead.

However, after his illness, Pavel is back in the ranks. As a worker, he returns to the workshops, where he not only works hard, but also puts things in order, forcing the Komsomol members to wash and clean the workshop, to the great bewilderment of his superiors. In the town and throughout Ukraine, the class struggle continues, security officers catch the enemies of the revolution, suppress bandit raids. The young Komsomol member Korchagin does many good deeds, defending his comrades at meetings of the cell, and his party friends on the dark streets.

“The most precious thing for a person is life. It is given to him once, and it is necessary to live it in such a way that it would not be excruciatingly painful for the aimlessly lived years, so that the shame for the mean and petty past would not burn, and so that, dying, he could say: all life, all forces were given to the most beautiful in the world. - the struggle for the liberation of mankind. And we must hurry to live. After all, an absurd illness or some tragic accident can interrupt it.

When it became known in Shepetovka that Lenin had died, thousands of workers became Bolsheviks. The respect of the party members pushed Pavel far ahead, and one day he found himself at the Bolshoi Theater next to a member of the Central Committee Rita Ustinovich, who was surprised to learn that Pavel was alive. Pavel says that he loved her like a Gadfly, a man of courage and infinite endurance. But Rita already has a friend and a three-year-old daughter, and Pavel is sick, and he is sent to the sanatorium of the Central Committee, carefully examined. However, a serious illness that led to complete immobility is progressing. No new best sanatoriums and hospitals are able to save him. With the thought that "it is necessary to stay in the ranks," Korchagin begins to write. Next to him are good kind women: first Dora Rodkina, then Taya Kyutsam. “Is it good, did he live his twenty-four years badly? Going over in his memory year after year, Pavel checked his life like an impartial judge and with deep satisfaction decided that life was not lived so badly ... Most importantly, he did not sleep through the hot days, found his place in the iron struggle for power, and on the crimson banner there is a revolution and his few drops of blood.”

Nikolai Ostrovsky divided his autobiographical novel into two parts of nine chapters each: childhood, adolescence, youth, then mature years, illness.

Pavka Korchagin, the son of the cook, poured makhra into the dough for the priest. For this, he was expelled from school. He does not work like a child at all when the news of the overthrow of the king arrives. The child saw with his own eyes how the Petliurists staged many Jewish pogroms, and often this ended in brutal murders.

The boy is filled with anger and indignation. He helps his brother's friend Zhukhrai, who works at the depot. He often gave advice to the young man. The strong and courageous Pavel was caught by the Petliurists thanks to a denunciation. He felt real fear, because he heard that they wanted to kill him. Fleeing, the young man takes refuge with Tony, the girl he loves. But she is from a different society - intelligent and rich.

Having become a participant in the civil war, the guy returns and becomes a member of the Komsomol organization. Pavel tries to attract Tonya to her as well. But all to no avail. The girl comes to the meeting dressed up, and looks ridiculous among the working youth. They both understand that they are too different and cannot be together. The young man begins his work in the Cheka, but it has a bad effect on his health and nerves. After resting at home for a while, Pavel travels to Kyiv, where he joins the Special Department.

At the beginning of the second part, a trip to the conference is described together with Rita Ustinovich. The young man is her assistant and bodyguard. Seeing in her not only a comrade, but also a woman, he ceases to see her. In a cold winter, a guy with other workers is building a narrow gauge railway. The work is hard, the guys almost do not rest, gang raids constantly interfere. Clothes and shoes, as well as food, are very scarce. Because of these conditions, Pavka fell ill with typhus. Friends do not have any news about him, they think that he is dead.

After recovering from his illness, the young man enters the workshop as a worker. In addition to his duties, Pavel organized all the workers and put things in order in the room. The young man is a reliable comrade, which he repeatedly proved at party meetings.

A Komsomolets member appreciates every passing day and perceives orders as the purpose of his existence. The guy openly opposes everyone who dared to contradict the party line. Even if they were his family.

Somehow Pavka ended up at the Bolshoi Theater next to Rita Ustinovich, a member of the Central Committee. He confesses his feelings, but it's too late. The woman has a friend and a daughter. The man became seriously ill and was sent for examination. Because of his illness, he is almost immobile and no hospitals or doctors can help him. In order to be in the ranks, Paul begins to write.

How steel was tempered summary. Nikolai Ostrovsky "how the steel was tempered"

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"As the Steel Was Tempered"