Voronsky about Natalya page. Composition on the topic Voronsky A.K.

30 texts from the USE 2017 in the Russian language

Compiled by: Bespalova T.V.

1) Amlinsky V. Here are the people who come to me

2) Astafiev V. In the cage of the zoo capercaillie yearned.

3) Baklanov G. For a year of service in the battery, Dolgovushin changed many positions

4) Baklanov G. The German mortar battery is hitting again

5) Bykov V. The old man did not immediately tear off from the opposite shore

6) Vasiliev B. From our class I have memories and one photograph.

7) Veresaev V. Tired, with dull irritation boiling in his soul

8) Voronsky A. Natalia from a neighboring village

9) Garshin V. I live in the Fifteenth Line on the Middle Avenue

10) Glushko M. It was cold on the platform, grains were falling again

11) Kazakevich E. Only Katya remained in the secluded dugout.

12) Kachalkov S. How time changes people!

13) Round B. Still, time is an amazing category.

14) Kuvaev O. ... The tent dried out from the stones that retained heat

15) Kuvaev O. The traditional evening of the field workers served as a milestone

16) Likhachev D. They say that the content determines the form.

17) Mamin-Sibiryak D. The most for me strong impression produce dreams

18) Nagibin Yu. In the first years after the revolution

19) Nikitayskaya N. Seventy years have passed, but I do not stop scolding myself.

20) Nosov E. What is a small homeland?

21) Orlov D. Tolstoy entered my life without introducing himself.

22) Paustovsky K. We lived for several days at the cordon

23) Sanin V. Gavrilov - that's who did not give Sinitsyn peace.

24) Simonov K. All three Germans were from the Belgrade garrison ...

25) Simonov K. It was in the morning.

26) Sobolev A. In our time, reading fiction

27) Soloveichik S. I once rode in the train

28) Sologub F. In the evening they again met at the Starkins.

29) Soloukhin V. From childhood, from school

30) Chukovsky K. The other day a young student came to me

Amlinsky Vladimir Ilyich - Russian writer.

Here are the people who come to me, write greeting cards to me, pretend that I am the same as everyone else, and that everything will be all right, or they don’t pretend, but simply reach out to me, maybe they believe in a miracle, in my recovery. Here they are. They have this most compassion. Someone else's illness also sharpens them a little - some more, others less. But there are many who despise someone else's illness, they do not dare to say aloud, but think: well, why is he still living, why is he crawling? So in many medical institutions refer to the chronicles, the so-called chronically ill.

Poor healthy people, they do not understand that all their peace and health are conditional, that one moment, one misfortune - and everything turned upside down, and they themselves are already forced to wait for help and ask for compassion. I don't want this for them.

I lived with them side by side for several years. Now I remember it like a bad dream. They were my roommates. Mother, father, daughters. It seems like people are people. They worked properly, their family was friendly, they will not give offense to their own. And in general, everything is as it should be: no drunkenness, no betrayal, a healthy life, healthy relationships and love for the song. When they get home, they listen to the radio to the fullest, listen to music, the latest news, and discuss international events. Surprisingly smart people. They do not like, they do not tolerate disorder. Where did you get it, put it there! The things of the place know. The floors are rubbed, everything is shiny, the lights in public places are off. A penny saves a ruble. And here I am. And I have crutches. And I do not fly, but quietly walk. I waddle on the parquet. And the parquet from crutches - that spoils ... Here our spiritual discord with them began, the abyss and misunderstanding. Now all this is a joke, but there was a uniform war, cold, with outbreaks and attacks. It was necessary to have iron nerves in order to hobble to the bathroom under their hostile gazes and bend down the spine there, to wipe the floor, because a wet floor is a violation of the norms of social behavior, it is an attack on the very foundations of communal life.

And it began: if you are sick, live separately! What can I say? I would be glad separately, I ask about it, but they don’t give it. The sick have no place in our healthy life. So these people decided and began a siege, an embargo and a blockade against me. And the worst thing for them was that I did not respond, did not get into battles, not giving them joy in a verbal brawl. I have learned the art of silence. I swear, sometimes I wanted to take a good brand new machine gun ... But it is so, in nightmarish visions. I would not take a machine gun, even if we ended up on a desert island, in the absence of people's district courts. By that time, I had already learned to understand the value of life, even their nasty life. So, I was silent. I tried to be taller, and from constant attempts, I became so. And then sometimes I felt so bad that it didn't bother me anymore. I was not worried about their categories, I thought differently, and only when I rolled back from the abyss did I remember my communal enemies.

I gave them more and more trouble, more and more loudly pounded with my crutches, it became more and more difficult for me to wipe the floors, not to spill water, and the atmosphere in this strange monastery became more and more intolerable, uniting the most diverse, completely unnecessary to each other people.

And at one fine moment I understood quite clearly that perhaps the most important courage of a person is to overcome such a small quagmire, to get out of everyday infamy, not to succumb to the temptation of petty retribution, dwarf war, penny despair.

Because little things like that corrode with great force a lot of people who have not developed immunity to it. And now these people are seriously getting into squabbles, into a stupid struggle, they are devastated, they are wasting their nerves, they can no longer stop. When they get old, they will understand all the insignificance of this fuss, but it will be too late, already too much strength has been given to mouse fuss, so much evil has been accumulated inside, so many passions have been spent that could feed something important that should have moved a person forward .

Astafiev Viktor Petrovich - Soviet and Russian writer.

Capercaillie yearned in the zoo's cage. Happy. Publicly. A cage the size of two or three desks was both a prison and a "taiga" at the same time. In the corner of it was arranged something like a sit-in in the open. A twig of pine with dry, inanimate needles stuck out above the hole, grass was scattered or stuck on the cage, several tussocks were depicted, and between them there was also a “forest” - the top of a pine, a twig of heather, withered bushes, taken here, in the zoo, after spring shearing.

The capercaillie in captivity withered to a cock's height and weight, its feather in captivity was not renewed, it only fell out, and there were not enough feathers in the fan-spread tail, a hole shone, the neck and scruff of the bird were exactly covered with felted wool. And only the eyebrows filled with red rage, burned militantly, engulfing the eyes with a dawn arc, now and then being drawn in by the impenetrable, blind film of the taiga darkness, oblivion of the yearning male.

Having confused the time and place, ignoring the crowd of curious people, the captive capercaillie sang the song of love assigned to him by nature. Bondage did not extinguish the spring passion in him and did not destroy the desire to prolong his kind.

He slowly, with the dignity of a fighter, stomped baggily on the rag-sluggish grass between the tussocks, lifted his head and, aiming his beak at a heavenly star, appealed to the world and heaven, demanded that he be heard and listened to. And starting the song with rare, distinct clicks, all gaining strength and frequency, he entered into such a passionate rapture, into such forgetfulness that his eyes again and again were covered with a film, he froze in place, and only his womb was red-hot, his throat was suffocated from a love call, still continued to roll, crumble pebbles into shaking fragments.

At such moments, the bird giant becomes deaf and blind, and the cunning man, knowing this, sneaks up on him and kills him. Kills at the moment of the spring intoxicating celebration, not allowing the song of love to finish.

He didn’t see, or rather, didn’t want to see or notice anyone, this captive, he lived, continued to live in captivity, the life assigned to him by nature, and when his eyes were “blind”, his ears were “deaf”, he was carried away by his memory to a distant northern swamp, into sparse pine forests and, raising his head, aimed his beak, stained with pine resin, at that star that shone for thousands of years to his feathered brothers.

Looking at the capercaillie slave, I thought that once giant birds lived and sang in the light, but people drove them into the wilderness and darkness, made them hermits, and now they put them in a cage. Man pushes back and pushes back all living things in the taiga with gas and oil pipelines, hellish torches, electric mains, impudent helicopters, merciless, soulless equipment further, deeper. But our country is great, there is no way to completely finish off nature, although a person tries with all his might, but he cannot topple all living things under the root and reduce to the root not her best particle, therefore, himself. He got "nature" at home, dragged her into the city - for fun and for his whim. Why does he need to go to the taiga, to the cold ...

During the year of service in the battery, Dolgovushin changed many positions, nowhere showing his abilities.

He got into the regiment by accident, on the march. It was at night. Artillery moved towards the front, along the roadside, in the dust, raising the dust with many feet, the infantry stomped. And, as always, several infantrymen asked for guns, to drive up a little. Among them was Dolgovushin. The rest then jumped off, and Dolgovushin fell asleep. When I woke up, the infantry was no longer on the road. Where his company was going, what its number - he did not know any of this, because it had only been two days since he got into it. So Dolgovushin took root in the artillery regiment.

At first, he was assigned to Bogachev in the control platoon of a reel operator. Across the Dniester, near Iasi, Bogachev only once took him with him to the forward observation post, where everything was shot from machine guns and where, not only during the day, but also at night, you can’t raise your head. Here Dolgovushin foolishly washed everything from himself and remained in one greatcoat, and under it - in what his mother gave birth. So he sat by the phone, wrapped around himself, and his partner ran and crawled along the line with the coil until he was wounded. The next day, Bogachev expelled Dolgovushin: to his platoon, he selected people whom he could rely on in battle, as if he were himself. And Dolgovushin got to the firemen.

Resigned, silently diligent, everything would be fine, but he turned out to be painfully stupid. When a dangerous task fell out, they said about him: "This one will not cope." And if it doesn't work, why send it? And they sent another. So Dolgovushin migrated to the carriage. He did not ask, he was transferred. Maybe now, by the end of the war, he would have fought for his inability somewhere in the PFS warehouse, but in the wagons he was destined to fall under the command of foreman Ponomarev. This one did not believe in stupidity and immediately explained his attitudes:

In the army it’s like this: if you don’t know, they will teach you, if you don’t want, they will force you. - And he said: - From here you have only one way: to the infantry. So remember.

What about the infantry? And people live in the infantry, ”Dolgovushin answered despondently, more than anything in the world afraid of falling into the infantry again.

With that, the foreman began to educate him. Dolgovushin was no longer alive. And now he dragged himself to the NP, under the very shelling, all for the sake of the same upbringing. Two kilometers is not a long way, but to the front, and even under fire ...

Cautiously squinting at the distant gaps, he tried to keep up with the foreman. Now Dolgovushin walked in front, hunched over, and the sergeant-major in the back. The narrow strip of corn ended, and they walked through the streets, resting on the go: it was safe here. And the higher they climbed, the more they saw the battlefield left behind, it seemed to fall and become flat as they climbed up.

Ponomarev looked back once more. The German tanks spread apart from each other and continued to fire. Flat gaps rose up all over the field, and infantrymen crawled between them. Every time they got up to run across, machine guns began to scribble furiously. The farther to the rear, the more unfussy, more confident Dolgovushin became. They had to pass open space, and further on the ridge again began corn. Through its sparse wall, a reddish dump of a trench, covered with snow, looked through, some people ran across there, occasionally a head was shown above the parapet and a shot was heard. The wind was contrary, and the veil of tears that covered my eyes made it difficult to see carefully what was going on there. But they had already moved so far away from the front line, both were now so sure of their safety, that they continued to walk without worry. “Here, then, the second line of defense is being built,” Ponomarev decided with satisfaction. And Dolgovushin raised his clenched fists and, shaking them, shouted to those who fired from the trench.

There were fifty meters to the corn when a man in a helmet jumped onto the crest of the trench. With his short legs apart, clearly visible against the sky, he raised a rifle above his head, shook it and shouted something.

Germans! - measurement Dolgovushin.

I'll give those "Germans"! - Shouted the foreman and shook his finger.

All the way he watched not so much the enemy as Dolgovushin, whom he firmly decided to re-educate. And when he shouted "Germans", the foreman, who was suspicious of him, not only saw cowardice in this, but also disbelief in the order and rationality that exists in the army. However, Dolgovushin, who was usually shy of his superiors, this time, without paying attention, rushed to run back and to the left.

I'll run you! - Ponomarev shouted after him and tried to unfasten the holster of his revolver.

Dolgovushin fell, clawing his hands quickly, flickering with the soles of his boots, crawled with a thermos on his back. The bullets were already kicking up the snow around him. Understanding nothing, the foreman looked at these boiling snow fountains. Suddenly, behind Dolgovushin, in the lowland that opened up under the slope, he saw a sledge train. On a snowy field as level as a frozen river, horses were standing near the sledges. Other horses were lying around. Footprints and deep furrows left by crawling people fanned out from the sleigh. They broke off suddenly, and at the end of each of them, where the bullet caught up with him, lay the rider. Only one, having already gone far, continued to crawl with a whip in his hand, and a machine gun fired at him from above without stopping.

"Germans in the rear!" - understood Ponomarev. Now, if they put pressure from the front and the infantry starts to retreat, from here, from the rear, from the shelter, the Germans will meet it with machine-gun fire. Out of the blue, this is destruction.

Right, crawl right! he shouted to Dolgovushin.

But then the foreman was pushed in the shoulder, he fell and no longer saw what happened to the wagoner. Only Dolgovushin's heels flickered ahead, moving away. Ponomarev crawled heavily after him and, raising his head from the snow, shouted:

Take it right, take it right! There's a slope!

Heels swerved to the left. "Heard!" - happily thought Ponomarev. He finally managed to pull out the revolver. He turned around and, aiming, letting Dolgovushin get away, fired all seven rounds at the Germans. But there was no stop in the wounded hand. Then he crawled again. He was six meters away from the corn, no more, and he already thought to himself: "Now he is alive." Then someone hit him on the head with a stick, on the bone. Ponomarev trembled, poked his face into the snow, and the light dimmed.

And Dolgovushin, meanwhile, safely descended under the ramp. Here the bullets went overhead. Dolgovushin caught his breath, pulled out a “bull” from behind the lapel of his earflaps, and, bending over, smoked it. He swallowed smoke, choking and burning, and looked around. There was no more shooting upstairs. It was all over there.

“Crawl to the right,” Dolgovushin recalled and grinned with the superiority of the living over the dead. - That's what happened to the right ... He freed his shoulders from the straps, and the thermos fell into the snow. Dolgovushin pushed him away with his foot. Where by crawling, where by bending and dashing, he got out from under the fire, and anyone who believed that Dolgovushin was “bruised by God” would be amazed now at how sensibly, applying to the terrain, he acts.

In the evening, Dolgovushin came to the firing positions. He told how they fired back, how the foreman was killed before his eyes and he tried to drag him dead. He showed an empty disk machine. Sitting on the ground next to the kitchen, he ate greedily, while the cook scooped the meat out of the ladle with a spoon and put it in the pot. And everyone looked sympathetically at Dolgovushin.

“That's how it is impossible to form an opinion about people at first sight,” thought Nazarov, who did not like Dolgovushin. - I considered him a man of my own mind, but this is what he turns out to be. It’s just that I still don’t know how to understand people ... ”And since the captain was wounded that day, Nazarov, feeling guilty before Dolgovushin, called the battery commander, and Dolgovushin took a quiet, bread-and-butter post of captain.

Baklanov Grigory Yakovlevich - Russian Soviet writer and screenwriter.

Again the German mortar battery hits, the same one, but now the explosions lie to the left. It was she who had been beating since the evening. I rummage, rummage with a stereo tube - no flash, no dust over the firing positions - everything is hidden by a ridge of heights. It seems that he would give his hand, if only to destroy it. I roughly feel the place where she stands, and have already tried to destroy her several times, but she changes positions. If only the heights were ours! But we are sitting in the ditch of the road, putting a stereo tube above us, and our entire view is up to the crest.

We dug this trench when the ground was still soft. Now the road, torn apart by caterpillars, with footprints, wheels in fresh mud, has turned to stone and cracked. Not only a mine - a light projectile almost does not leave a funnel on it: the sun has calcined it so.

When we landed on this bridgehead, we did not have the strength to take the heights. Under fire, the infantry lay down at the foot and hastily began to dig in. There was a defense. It arose as follows: an infantryman fell, pressed by a machine-gun stream, and, first of all, he dug up the ground under his heart, poured a mound in front of his head, protecting it from a bullet. By morning at this place he already walked to full height in his trench, buried in the ground - it's not so easy to pull him out of here.

From these trenches we went on the attack several times, but the Germans again laid us down with machine-gun fire, heavy mortar and artillery fire. We can't even suppress their mortars because we can't see them. And the Germans from the heights look through the entire bridgehead, and the crossing, and the other side. We hold on, clinging to the foot, we have already taken root, and yet it is strange that they still have not thrown us into the Dniester. It seems to me that if we were on those heights, and they were here, we would have already bathed them.

Even when I tear myself away from the stereotube and close my eyes, even in a dream I see these heights, an uneven ridge with all the landmarks, crooked trees, funnels, white stones that have come out of the ground, as if it is a skeleton of a height washed out by a downpour.

When the war ends and people remember it, they will probably remember the great battles in which the outcome of the war was decided, the fate of mankind was decided. Wars are always remembered as great battles. And among them there will be no place for our bridgehead. His fate is like the fate of one person when the fate of millions is being decided. But, by the way, often the fates and tragedies of millions begin with the fate of one person. For some reason they just forget about it. Since we began to advance, we have captured hundreds of such bridgeheads on all rivers. And the Germans immediately tried to throw us off, but we held on, clinging to the shore with our teeth and hands. Sometimes the Germans succeeded in this. Then, sparing no effort, we seized a new foothold. And then they attacked him.

I don't know if we will attack from this bridgehead. And none of us can know this. The offensive begins where it is easier to break through the defenses, where there is operational space for tanks. But the very fact that we are sitting here, the Germans feel day and night. No wonder they tried twice to throw us into the Dniester. And they will try again. Now everyone, even the Germans, knows that the war will soon end. And how it will end, they also know. Perhaps that is why the desire to survive is so strong in us. In the most difficult months of the forty-first year, surrounded, for the mere fact of stopping the Germans in front of Moscow, everyone would have given their lives without hesitation. But now the whole war is over, most of us will see victory, and it's a shame to die in recent months.

Bykov Vasil Vladimirovich - Soviet and Belarusian writer, public figure, participant of the Great Patriotic War.

Left alone on the cliff, the old man silently fell silent, and his face, overgrown with bluish bristles, acquired an expression of long-standing habitual thoughtfulness. He was silent for a long time, mechanically going over the greasy sides of his tunic with a red edging along the edge, and his watery eyes peered unblinkingly into the district through the thickening twilight. The Kolomian below, waving the end of his fishing rod in his hand, deftly threw it into the oily surface of the darkening water. Flashing with a kapron fishing line, the sinker with a quiet splash quickly went under the water, dragging the bait along with it.

Petrovich shuddered slightly on the cliff, as if from cold, his fingers froze on his chest, and his whole thin, bony figure under his tunic shrunk and shrunk. But his eyes were still fixed on the river bank; on this, it seemed that he did not notice anything and seemed not even to hear Kolomiyets' unkind words. Kolomiets, meanwhile, with his usual skill, threw two or three more donks into the water, strengthened the short, with tiny bells of the angler in the stones.

“They all fool you, they fool you, they assent. And you believe. They will come! Who will come when the war is already over! Think with your head.

It was noticeably getting dark on the river, the dim silhouette of Kolomiyets moved indistinctly near the water. He said nothing more to the old man, and kept fiddling with the nozzle and fishing rods, while Petrovich, after sitting silently for some time, spoke thoughtfully and quietly:

- So this is the youngest, Tolik ... He got sick in the eyes. As it gets dark, he sees nothing. Senior, he saw well. What if it's with the elder?

“As for the elder, so it is with the younger,” the Kolomiets cut him off rudely. - The war, it did not reckon with anyone. Especially in blockade.

- Well! The old man simply agreed. - There was a blockade. Tolik with eyes only stayed at home for a week, and Ales already comes running, says: they have surrounded him from all sides, but there is little strength. Well, let's go. The youngest was sixteen years old. He asked to stay - in no way. When the Germans left, they said to build a fire...

- From the head! Kolomiets was surprised and even got up from his donkeys. - They said - spread out! .. When was it ?!

— Yes, to Petrovka. Accurately on Petrovka, yes ...

— To Petrovka! And how many years have passed, do you think?

The old man, it seems, was extremely surprised and, it seems, for the first time in the evening, tore his suffering gaze from the forest line of the coast, barely glimpsing in the essence.

— Yes, years? After all, twenty-five years have passed, spruce head!

A grimace of deep inner pain distorted Petrovich's old face. His lips trembled with resentment quite like a child's, his eyes blinked rapidly, and his gaze suddenly faded. It can be seen that only now the whole terrible meaning of his many years of delusion began to slowly reach his clouded consciousness.

- So this is ... So this is how? ..

Inwardly, all tensed in some kind of effort, he probably wanted and could not express some thought that justified himself, and from this unbearable tension his gaze became motionless, meaningless and went off the other side. The old man drooped in front of his eyes, became even more gloomy, and withdrew into himself. He probably had something inside him that for a long time fettered him with immobility and dumbness.

"I'm telling you, stop these amusements," Kolomiets was irritably urging downstairs, fiddling with gear. - Guys can not wait. Amba to both. Already somewhere and the bones have rotted. Like this!

The old man was silent. Occupied with his work, Kolomiets also fell silent. The twilight of the approaching night quickly swallowed up the coast, the bushes, gray wisps of fog crept from the riverine ravines, its light smoky streams stretched along the quiet reach. Rapidly dimming, the river lost its daylight brilliance, the dark opposite bank tipped wide into its depths, flooding the river surface with smooth impenetrable blackness. The dredger stopped rumbling, it became completely deaf and quiet, and in this silence, thinly and gently, as if from an unknown distance, the small bell of the donkey chirped. Slapping over the stones with the soles of his rubber boots, Kolomiets rushed to the last fishing rod on the shore and, dexterously moving his hands, began to pull the fishing line out of the water. He did not see how Petrovich got up with difficulty on the cliff, staggered and, hunched over, silently wandered somewhere away from this shore.

Probably, in the darkness, the old man parted company with Yura, who soon appeared on the cliff and, grunting, threw a crackling armful of deadwood at his feet - a large armful next to Petrovich's small bundle.

- Where is grandfather?

- Look what you got! - Hearing his friend, Kolomiets spoke cheerfully under the cliff. - Kelbik what do you need! Half a kilo will pull ...

Where is Petrovich? – sensing something unkind, Yura repeated the question.

— Petrovich? And who is it ... He went, probably. I told him…

- How? - Yura was dumbfounded on the cliff. - What you said?

- Said everything. And then they lead a madman by the nose. Assent…

- What have you done? You killed him!

- So he killed it! Will be alive!

- Oh, and kalun! Oh, and the fog! I told you! Everyone here took care of him! Spared! And you?..

- What is there to spare. Let him know the truth.

“The truth will kill him.” After all, they both died in the blockade. And before that, he himself took them over there by boat.

Vasiliev Boris Lvovich - Russian writer.

From our class, I have memories and one photograph. Group portrait with the class teacher in the center, girls around and boys at the edges. The photo faded, and since the photographer was diligently pointing at the teacher, the edges that had been smeared during the shooting were now completely blurred; sometimes it seems to me that they have blurred because the boys of our class have long since passed into oblivion, never having had time to grow up, and their features have been dissolved by time.

For some reason, even now I don’t want to remember how we ran away from lessons, smoked in the boiler room and arranged a hustle in the locker room in order to even for a moment touch the one we loved so secretly that we didn’t admit it to ourselves. I spend hours looking at the faded photograph, at the already blurred faces of those who are not on this earth: I want to understand. After all, no one wanted to die, right?

And we did not know that death was on duty outside the threshold of our class. We were young, and the ignorance of youth is filled with faith in our own immortality. But of all the boys that look at me from the photo, four survived.

And since childhood, we have been playing with what we ourselves lived. Classes competed not for grades or percentages, but for the honor of writing a letter to the Papanins or being called "Chkalovsky", for the right to attend the opening of a new factory workshop or to send a delegation to meet Spanish children.

And I also remember how I grieved that I could not help the Chelyuskinites, because my plane made an emergency landing somewhere in Yakutia, before reaching the ice camp. The real landing: I got "bad" without learning the poem. Then I learned it: “Yes, there were people in our time ...” But the thing was that there was a huge home-made map hanging on the classroom wall and each student had his own plane. An excellent rating was five hundred kilometers, but I received a “bad” and my plane was taken off the flight. And "bad" was not just in school magazine: I felt bad myself and a little - a little bit! - to the Chelyuskins, whom I have let down so much.

Smile at me, comrade. I forgot how you smiled, I'm sorry. I am now much older than you, I have a lot of things to do, I have become overgrown with chores. like a shell ship. At night, more and more often I hear the sobs of my own heart: it is tired. Tired of hurting.

I became gray-haired, and sometimes they give me a place in public transport. Yielding boys and girls, very similar to you guys. And then I think that God forbid they repeat your fate. And if this does happen, then God forbid they become the same.

Between you, yesterday, and them, today, lies not just a generation. We firmly knew that there would be a war, but they are convinced that it will not. And this is wonderful: they are freer than us. The only pity is that this freedom sometimes turns into serenity ...

In the ninth grade, Valentina Andronovna offered us the theme of a free essay “What do I want to become?”. And all the guys wrote that they want to become commanders of the Red Army. Even Vovik Khramov wished to be a tanker, which caused a storm of enthusiasm. Yes, we sincerely wanted our fate to be harsh. We elected it ourselves, dreaming of the army, aviation and navy: we considered ourselves men, and more male professions didn't exist then.

In this sense, I was lucky. I caught up with my father in height already in the eighth grade, and since he was a regular commander of the Red Army, his old uniform passed to me. A tunic and riding breeches, boots and a commander's belt, an overcoat and a budenovka made of dark gray cloth. I put these beautiful things on one wonderful day and did not take them off for fifteen years. Until he was demobilized. The form then was already different, but its content did not change: it still remained the clothes of my generation. The most beautiful and the most fashionable.

All the guys were jealous of me. And even Iskra Polyakova.

Of course, it’s a little big for me,” Iskra said, trying on my tunic. But how comfortable it is. Especially if you tighten the belt tighter.

I often remember these words, because they have a sense of time. We all strove to draw tighter, as if every moment a formation was waiting for us, as if the readiness of this general formation for battles and victories depended on our appearance alone. We were young, but we longed not for personal happiness, but for personal achievement. We did not know that a feat must first be sown and cultivated. That it ripens slowly, invisibly filling with strength, so that one day it will burst into a dazzling flame, the flashes of which will shine for future generations for a long time to come.

Veresaev Vikenty Vikentievich - Russian writer, translator.

Tired, with dull irritation seething in my soul, I sat down on a bench. Suddenly, somewhere not far behind me, the sounds of a tuned violin were heard. I looked around in surprise: behind the acacia bushes the back of a small outbuilding was white, and the sounds rushed from its wide open, unlit windows. This means that young Yartsev is at home ... The musician began to play. I got up to leave; These artificial human sounds seemed to me a gross insult to those around me.

I slowly moved forward, carefully stepping on the grass, so that the twig would not crackle, and Yartsev played ...

It was strange music, and improvisation was immediately felt. But what an improvisation! Five minutes, ten minutes passed, and I stood still, listening eagerly.

The sounds flowed timidly, uncertainly. They seemed to be looking for something, as if they were trying to express something that they were unable to express. Not by the melody itself, they attracted attention to themselves - it, in the strict sense, did not even exist - but precisely by this search, longing for something else that involuntarily waited ahead. “Now it’s going to be real,” I thought. And the sounds flowed all the same uncertainly and restrainedly. From time to time something flashes in them - not a melody, only a fragment, a hint of a melody - but so wonderful that the heart sank. Just about, it seemed, the theme would be grasped - and timid seeking sounds would spill out into a divinely calm, solemn, unearthly song. But a minute passed, and the strings began to ring with suppressed sobs: the hint remained incomprehensible, the great thought that had flashed for a moment disappeared forever.

What is this? Has anyone else been going through the exact same thing as me? There could be no doubt: before him that night stood the same painful and insoluble riddle as before me.

Suddenly there was a sharp, impatient chord, followed by another, a third, and frantic sounds, interrupting each other, poured violently from under the bow. As if someone bound violently rushed, trying to break the chains. It was something completely new and unexpected. However, it was felt that something like this was needed, that it was impossible to remain with the former, because it was too tormenting with its barrenness and hopelessness ... Now no quiet tears were heard, no despair was heard; every note sounded with strength and bold challenge. And something continued to struggle desperately, and the impossible began to seem possible; it seemed that one more effort - and strong chains would shatter to smithereens and some great, unequal struggle would begin. There was such a breath of youth, such self-confidence and courage, that there was no fear for the outcome of the struggle. “Let there be no hope, we will win back hope itself!” these mighty sounds seemed to be speaking.

I held my breath and listened in rapture. The night was silent and also listened, - sensitively, in surprise, listened to this whirlwind of alien, passionate, indignant sounds. The pale stars twinkled less frequently and more uncertainly; the thick fog over the pond stood motionless; the birches froze, drooping with weeping branches, and everything around froze and fell silent. Over everything dominated the sounds of a small, weak instrument rushing from the wing, and these sounds seemed to rumble over the earth like thunder.

With a new and strange feeling, I looked around. The same night stood before me in its former mysterious beauty. But I looked at her with different eyes: everything around me was now only a wonderful soundless accompaniment to those struggling, suffering sounds.

Now everything was meaningful, everything was full of deep, breathtaking, but native, understandable to the heart beauty. And this human beauty eclipsed, obscured, without destroying that beauty, still distant, still incomprehensible and inaccessible.

For the first time I returned home on such a night happy and satisfied.

Voronsky Alexander Konstantinovich - Russian writer, literary critic, art theorist.

... Natalya from a neighboring village, about ten years ago she immediately lost her husband and three children: in her absence, they died of intoxication. Since then, she has sold the hut, left the household and wanders.

Natalya speaks softly, melodiously, ingenuously. Her words are pure, as if washed, as close, pleasant as the sky, the field, the bread, the village huts. And all Natalia is simple, warm, calm and majestic. Natalya is not surprised at anything: she has seen everything, experienced everything, she tells about modern affairs and incidents, even dark and terrible ones, as if they are separated from our life for millennia. Natalya does not flatter anyone; she is very good in that she does not go to monasteries and holy places, does not look for miraculous icons. She is worldly and talks about worldly things. There is no excess, no fussiness.

The burden of the wanderer Natalya bears easily, and she buries her grief from people. She has an amazing memory. She remembers when and in what way they fell ill in such and such a family. She talks about everything willingly, but in one thing she is stingy with words: when they ask her why she became a wanderer.

... I already studied in the bursa, was known as "inveterate" and "desperate", took revenge from around the corner on guards and teachers, discovering remarkable ingenuity in these cases. During one of the breaks, the students informed me that “some woman” was waiting for me in the dressing room. Baba turned out to be Natalya. Natalya walked from afar, from Kholmogory, she remembered me, and although she had to give a hook eighty versts, but how not to visit an orphan, not to look at his city life, her son probably grew up, grew wiser to the joy and comfort of his mother. I inattentively listened to Natalya: I was ashamed of her bast shoes, onuche, knapsack, of her rural appearance, I was afraid to drop myself in the eyes of the students and kept looking askance at peers snooping past. Finally, he could not stand it and said rudely to Natalya:

Let's go from here.

Without waiting for consent, I took her to the backyard so that no one would see us there. Natalya untied her knapsack and slipped me rustic cakes.

Nothing more in store for you, my friend. And you don’t bury, you baked it yourself, in butter, in cow’s oil, I have them.

At first, I sullenly refused, but Natalya imposed donuts. Soon Natalya noticed that I was shy of her and was not at all pleased with her. She also noticed the torn, ink-stained, casenet jacket on me, the dirty and pale neck, the red boots, and my harried, scowling look. Natalie's eyes filled with tears.

What is it you, son, do not utter a good word? So, in vain I came to you.

I looked dumbfounded at the sore on my arm and muttered something languidly. Natalya leaned over me, shook her head and, looking into my eyes, whispered:

Yes, you, dear, as if not in yourself! You were not like that at home. Oh, they did bad things to you! Famously, apparently, they let you in! Here it is, the teaching that comes out.

Nothing, - I muttered insensitively, pulling away from Natalia.

Garshin Vsevolod Mikhailovich - Russian writer, poet, art critic.

I live in the Fifteenth Line on Sredny Prospekt and four times a day I walk along the embankment where foreign steamships dock. I love this place for its diversity, liveliness, hustle and bustle and for the fact that it has given me a lot of material. Here, looking at day laborers pulling coolies, turning gates and winches, carrying carts with all sorts of luggage, I learned to draw a working person.

I was walking home with Dedov, a landscape painter... A kind and innocent person, like the landscape itself, and passionately in love with his art. For him, there are no doubts; he writes what he sees: he sees a river - and writes a river, he sees a swamp with sedge - and writes a swamp with sedge. Why does he need this river and this swamp? He never thinks. He seems to be an educated man; at least graduated as an engineer. He left the service, the blessing was some kind of inheritance that gives him the opportunity to exist without difficulty. Now he writes and writes: in the summer he sits from morning to evening on the field or in the forest for sketches, in the winter he tirelessly composes sunsets, sunrises, noons, the beginnings and ends of rain, winters, springs, and so on. He forgot his engineering and does not regret it. Only when we pass by the wharf does he often explain to me the significance of the huge iron and steel masses: parts of machines, boilers, and various odds and ends unloaded from the ship ashore.

“Look what a cauldron they brought in,” he said to me yesterday, hitting the ringing cauldron with his cane.

“Don’t we know how to make them?” I asked.

- They do it with us, but not enough, not enough. See what a bunch they brought. And bad work; will have to be repaired here: see, the seam diverges? Here, too, the rivets loosened. Do you know how this thing is done? This, I tell you, is a hell of a job. A person sits in the cauldron and holds the rivet from the inside with tongs, which has the strength to press on them with his chest, and outside the master beats the rivet with a hammer and makes such a hat.

He pointed to a long row of raised metal circles running along the seam of the cauldron.

- Grandfathers, it's like beating on the chest!

- Doesn't matter. I once tried to climb into the boiler, so after four rivets I barely got out. Completely busted chest. And these somehow manage to get used to it. True, they die like flies: they will endure a year or two, and then, if they are alive, they are rarely fit for anything. If you please, endure the blows of a hefty hammer with your chest all day long, and even in a cauldron, in stuffiness, bent over in three deaths. In winter, the iron freezes, it's cold, and he sits or lies on the iron. In that cauldron over there - you see, red, narrow - you can’t sit like that: lie on your side and substitute your chest. Hard work for these bastards.

- Deer?

Well, yes, the workers called them that. From this ringing, they often deaf. And do you think how much they get for such hard labor? Pennies! Because here neither skill nor art is required, but only meat ... How many painful impressions at all these factories, Ryabinin, if you only knew! I'm so glad I got rid of them for good. It was just hard to live at first, looking at these sufferings ... Is it something with nature. She does not offend, and one does not need to offend her in order to exploit her, as we artists ... Look, look, what a grayish tone! - he suddenly interrupted himself, pointing to a corner of the sky: - lower, over there, under a cloud ... lovely! With a greenish tint. After all, write like this, well, just like that - they won’t believe it! And it's not bad, is it?

I expressed my approval, although, to tell the truth, I did not see any charm in the dirty green patch of the St. Petersburg sky, and interrupted Dedov, who began to admire some more “thin” near another cloud.

- Tell me where you can see such a capercaillie?

- Let's go to the factory together; I'll show you all sorts of things. If you want, even tomorrow! Have you ever thought of writing this capercaillie? Come on, it's not worth it. Isn't there anything more fun? And to the factory, if you want, even tomorrow.

Today we went to the factory and inspected everything. We also saw a wood grouse. He sat curled up in the corner of the cauldron and exposed his chest to the blows of the hammer. I looked at him for half an hour; in those half an hour Ryabinin invented such a stupidity that I don't know what to think of him. On the third day I took him to a metal factory; we spent the whole day there, examined everything, and I explained all sorts of productions to him (to my surprise, I forgot very little of my profession); Finally I brought him to the boiler room. There at that time they were working on a huge cauldron. Ryabinin climbed into the cauldron and watched for half an hour as the worker held the rivets with tongs. Came out pale and upset; was silent all the way back. And today he announces to me that he has already begun to write this wood-grouse worker. What's an idea! What poetry in the dirt! Here I can say, without embarrassment of anyone or anything, what, of course, I would not say in front of everyone: in my opinion, all this masculine stripe in art is pure ugliness. Who needs these notorious Repin "Barge Haulers"? They are beautifully written, there is no dispute; but after all and only.

Where is the beauty, harmony, grace? Isn't it to reproduce the graceful in nature that art exists? Whether business at me! A few more days of work, and my quiet "May Morning" will be over. The water in the pond sways a little, the willows bowed their branches on it; the east lights up; small cirrus clouds turned pink. A female figurine is walking down a steep bank with a bucket for water, frightening away a flock of ducks. That's all; it seems simple, but meanwhile I clearly feel that there is an abyss of poetry in the picture. This is art! It sets a person to quiet, meek thoughtfulness, softens the soul. And Ryabininsky's "Capercaillie" will not affect anyone just because everyone will try to run away from him as soon as possible, so as not to be an eyesore to himself with these ugly rags and this dirty mug. Strange affair! After all, in music, ear-piercing, unpleasant harmonies are not allowed; why is it possible for us, in painting, to reproduce positively ugly, repulsive images? We need to talk about this with L., he will write an article and, by the way, give Ryabinin a ride for his picture. And worth it.

Glushko Maria Vasilievna - Soviet writer, screenwriter.

It was cold on the platform, grains were falling again, she walked with a stomp, breathed into her hands.

Food was running out, she wanted to buy at least something, but nothing was sold at the station. She decided to get to the station. The station was packed with people, they were sitting on suitcases, bundles and just on the floor, spreading out food, having breakfast.

She went out into the station square, densely dotted with motley spots of coats, fur coats, bundles; here, too, people sat and lay with whole families, some were lucky enough to take benches, others settled right on the pavement, spreading a blanket, raincoats, newspapers ... In this thick of people, in this hopelessness, she felt almost happy - still I’m going, I know where and to to whom, but the war drives all these people into the unknown, and how long they have to sit here, they themselves do not know.

Suddenly an old woman screamed, she was robbed, two boys were standing next to her and also crying, the policeman said something angrily to her, holding her hand, and she struggled and screamed. There is such a simple custom - with a hat in a circle, And here there are hundreds and hundreds of people nearby, if everyone would give at least a ruble ... But everyone around looked sympathetically at the screaming woman and no one moved.

Nina called the older boy, rummaged through her purse, pulled out a hundred-dollar bill, put it in his hand:

Give it to your grandmother... - And she quickly went so as not to see his tear-stained face and bony fist clutching the money. She still had five hundred rubles left of the money that her father gave - nothing, enough.

She asked a local woman if the bazaar was far away. It turned out that if you go by tram, there is one stop, but Nina did not wait for the tram, she missed the movement, walking, went on foot.

The market was completely empty, and only under a canopy stood three thickly dressed aunts, stamping their feet in felt boots, in front of one stood an enamel bucket with pickled apples, another was selling potatoes, laid out in heaps, the third was selling seeds.

She bought two glasses of sunflower seeds and a dozen apples. Right there, at the counter, Nina ate one greedily, feeling her mouth blissfully filled with spicy-sweet juice.

Suddenly she heard a clatter of wheels and was frightened that it was taking her train away, she quickened her pace, but from a distance she saw that her train was in place.

That old woman with the children was no longer at the station square, probably she was taken somewhere, to some institution where they would help - she wanted to think so, it was calmer: to believe in the unshakable justice of the world.

She wandered along the platform, cracking seeds, collecting husks into a fist, went around the shabby one-story building of the station, its walls were pasted over with papers-ads, written in different handwriting, different ink, more often with an indelible pencil, glued with bread crumb, glue, resin and God knows how. “I’m looking for the Klimenkov family from Vitebsk, those who know, please tell me at the address ...” “Who knows the whereabouts of my father Sergeev Nikolai Sergeevich, please inform ...” Dozens of pieces of paper, and from above - right, on the wall with coal: “Valya, there is no mother in Penza, I’m moving on . Lida.

All this was familiar and familiar, at each station Nina read such announcements, similar to cries of despair, but every time her heart sank with pain and pity, especially when she read about lost children.

Reading such announcements, she imagined people traveling around the country, walking, rushing around the cities, wandering along the roads, looking for loved ones - a native drop in the human ocean - and thought that war was not only terrible with deaths, it was also terrible with separations!

Now Nina remembered everyone with whom the war had separated her: her father, Viktor, Marusya, the boys from her course ... Is it really not in a dream - crowded train stations, crying women, empty markets, and I'm going somewhere ... To an unfamiliar, alien. For what? For what?

Kazakevich Emmanuil Genrikhovich - writer and poet, translator, screenwriter.

Only Katya remained in the secluded dugout.

What did Travkin's answer to her final words on the radio mean? Did he say I understood you at all, as it is customary to confirm what he heard on the radio, or did he put a certain secret meaning into his words? This thought worried her more than anyone else. It seemed to her that, surrounded by mortal dangers, he became softer and more accessible to the simple, human feelings that his last words on the radio are the result of this change. She smiled at her thoughts. Having asked the military assistant Ulybysheva for a mirror, she looked into it, trying to give her face an expression of solemn seriousness, as befits - she even said this word aloud - to the hero's bride.

And then, throwing away the mirror, she would again repeat into the roaring ether gently, cheerfully and sadly, depending on her mood:

— Star. Star. Star. Star.

Two days after that conversation, the Star suddenly responded again:

- Earth. Earth. I am a star. Do you hear me? I am a star.

Star, Star! - Katya shouted loudly. - I am the Earth. I listen to you, I listen, I listen to you.

The Star was silent the next day and later. From time to time Meshchersky, then Bugorkov, then Major Likhachev, then Captain Yarkevich, the new head of intelligence, who replaced the removed Barashkin, entered the dugout. But Star was silent.

Katya, half asleep, pressed the radio receiver to her ear all day. She had some strange dreams, visions, Travkin with a very pale face in a green camouflage coat, Mamochkin, doubling himself, with a frozen smile on his face, her brother Lenya - also for some reason in a green camouflage coat. She came to her senses, trembling with horror that she could have missed Travkin's calls, and began to speak into the receiver again:

— Star. Star. Star.

Artillery volleys, the rumble of the beginning battle, reached her from afar.

During these tense days, Major Likhachev was in great need of radio operators, but he did not dare to remove Katya from duty at the radio. So she sat, almost forgotten, in a secluded dugout.

Late one evening Bugorkov came into the dugout. He brought a letter to Travkin from his mother, just received from the post office. Mother wrote that she had found a red general notebook in physics, his favorite subject. She will keep this notebook. When he enters the university, the notebook will be very useful to him. Indeed, this is an exemplary notebook. As a matter of fact, it could be published as a textbook - with such accuracy and sense of proportion everything is written down in the sections of electricity and heat. He has a clear tendency to scientific work which makes her very happy. By the way, does he remember that witty water engine that he invented as a twelve-year-old boy? She found these drawings and laughed a lot with Aunt Klava over them.

After reading the letter, Bugorkov bent over the radio, wept and said:

- I wish the war would end soon ... No, I'm not tired. I'm not saying I'm tired. But it's just time to stop killing people.

And with horror, Katya suddenly thought that maybe her sitting here, by the apparatus, and her endless calls to the Star were useless. The star went down and went out. But how can she leave here? What if he speaks? But what if he is hiding somewhere in the depths of the forests?

And, full of hope and iron perseverance, she waited. No one was waiting, but she was waiting. And no one dared to remove the radio from reception until the offensive began.

Kachalkov Sergey Semyonovich is a modern prose writer.

(1) How time changes people! (2) Unrecognizable! (3) Sometimes these are not even changes, but real metamorphoses! (4) As a child, there was a princess, matured - turned into a piranha. (5) But it happens the other way around: at school - a gray mouse, inconspicuous, invisible, and then on you - Elena the Beautiful. (6) Why does this happen? (7) It seems that Levitansky wrote that everyone chooses a woman, religion, a road for himself ... (8) It’s just not clear: does a person really choose a path for himself or does some force push him onto one path or another? (9) Is it really our life that was originally destined from above: one born to crawl cannot fly? (11) I don't know! (12) Life is full of examples both in favor of one opinion and in defense of another.

(13) Choose what you want? ..

(14) Maxim Lyubavin we called Einstein at school. (15) True, outwardly he did not at all look like a great scientist, but he had all the manners of geniuses: he was absent-minded, thoughtful, a complex thought process always boiled in his head, some discoveries were made, and this often led to the fact that he , as classmates joked, was not adequate. (16) They used to ask him in biology, but it turns out that at that time, in some tricky way, he calculated the radiation of some nuclides there. (17) He will go to the blackboard, start writing incomprehensible formulas.

(18) The biology teacher will shrug her shoulders:

(19) - Max, what are you talking about?

(20) He will catch on, hit himself on the head, not paying attention to the laughter in the class, then he will begin to tell what is needed, for example, about the discrete laws of heredity.

(21) He did not show his nose at discos, cool evenings. (22) I was not friends with anyone, so I was friends. (23) Books, a computer - these are his faithful comrades-brothers. (24) We joked among ourselves: remember well how Maxim Lyubavin dressed, where he was sitting. (25) And ten years later, when they hand him Nobel Prize, journalists will come here, at least there will be something to tell about their great classmate.

(26) After school, Max entered the university. (27) Brilliantly graduated from it ... (28) And then our paths diverged. (29) I became a military man, left my hometown for a long time, started a family. (30) The life of a military man is stormy: as soon as you are going on vacation - some kind of emergency ... (31) But still, he managed to escape to his homeland with his wife and two daughters. (32) At the station, they agreed with a private trader, and he drove us in his car to his parents' house.

(33) - Only, you didn’t recognize me or what? the driver suddenly asked. (34) I looked at him in amazement. (35) A tall, bony man, a liquid mustache, glasses, a scar on his cheek ... (36) I don’t know this! (37) But the voice is really familiar. (38) Max Lubavin?! (39) Yes, it can't be! (40) Is the great physicist a private driver?

(41) - No! (42) Take it higher! Max chuckled. - (43) I work as a loader in the wholesale market ...

(44) From my face, he realized that I considered these words a joke.

(45) - No! (46) I just know how to count! (47) We sell sugar in bags! (48) In the evening I’ll pour out three hundred or four hundred grams from each bag ... (49) Do you know how much it comes out a month, if you’re not greedy? (50) Forty thousand! (51) Just think, if I became a scientist, would I get that kind of money? (52) On the weekends, you can pick up a cab, drove a couple of clients - another thousand. (53) Enough for a bun with butter ...

(54) He laughed contentedly. (55) I shook my head.

(56) - Max, but with sugar - this is not theft?

(57) - No! (58) Business! Max answered.

(59) He drove me home. (60) I gave him two hundred rubles, he returned ten change and went to look for new clients.

(61) - Did you study together? the wife asked.

(62) - This is our Einstein! I told her. - (63) Remember, I talked about him!

(64) – Einstein?

(65) - Only the former! I said with a sad sigh.

Krugly Vladimir Igorevich - Honored Doctor of the Russian Federation.

Say, in the sixties and seventies, at least according to my recollections, reading for me and for those around me was not just a daily need: picking up a book, I experienced a unique feeling of joy. I haven't had that feeling in a long time. Unfortunately, my children too, although they are smart, developed and read, which is rare these days.

And, of course, time is to blame for this. Changed living conditions, large volumes of information that needs to be mastered, and the desire to make it easier to perceive through the video format lead to the fact that we no longer enjoy reading.

I understand that the enthusiasm of the seventies or eighties will probably never return, when we watched the appearance of books, hunted for them, sometimes we specially went to Moscow to barter somewhere or buy a scarce edition. Then books were a real wealth - and not only in the material sense.

However, as soon as I strengthened my disappointment, life presented an unexpected surprise. True, this happened after a regrettable and painful event. After my father passed away, I inherited a large and rich library. Having started to disassemble it, it was among the books of the late XIX - early XX centuries that I was able to find something that captured me from my head and returned, if not that childish joy, but the real pleasure of reading.

As I sorted through the books, I began to leaf through them, delving first into one, then into another, and soon realized that I was reading them avidly. All weekends, as well as long hours on the road, in trains and planes, I enthusiastically spend with essays on famous Russian artists - Repin, Benois or Dobuzhinsky.

About the last artist, I must admit, I knew very little. The book by Erich Hollerbach "Drawings of Dobuzhinsky" opened for me this wonderful person and an excellent artist. The marvelous edition of 1923 completely fascinated me, first of all, with the reproductions of Dobuzhinsky's works neatly covered with tissue paper.

In addition, Hollerbach's book is written in a very good language, easy to read and fascinating - like fiction. Talking about how from the very young years Dobuzhinsky's talent was formed, the author reveals to the reader the secrets of the artist. The book of the art historian and critic Erich Hollerbach was intended for a general reader, and this is its strength. What a pleasure to hold it in your hands! The beautiful design, the delicate smell of paper, the feeling that you are touching an old tome - all this gives rise to a real reader's delight.

But why exactly the books of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries became a sip for me fresh air? And I myself do not know for sure; I only realize that the atmosphere of that time seemed to have swallowed me up, captured me.

Perhaps it was an attempt to escape from modern reality into the world of history. Or, on the contrary, the desire to find “intersection points”: transitional periods, years of searching for new forms and meanings, as you know, repeat each other, which means that studying the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries in fiction, documents or journalism, you can gain experience or peep turnkey solutions for today.

Thanks to the bizarre play of time, the books of the "Silver Age" of our culture turned out to be a source of reader inspiration for me; for someone else, ancient tomes or manuscripts of beginning writers may become such a source. The main thing is not to let disappointment get stronger and continue to search: a book that will give pleasure is sure to be found.

... From the stones that retained heat, the tent dried out, and they spent the night in dry and not hot heat. In the morning Salakhov woke up alone in a tent. The heat still held, and Salakhov lay down in a doze. Coming out of the tent, he saw a clear sky and the God of Fire by the water. He was slowly washing a sample taken right off the shore.

I woke up right healthy, - said the worker and joyfully shrugged his shoulders in confirmation. - I decided to look at luck in the tray ...

... The God of Fire put down the tray, took off his wolverine hat and pulled out a piece of fishing line from behind the lapel.

Eating a red rag, dog. Look! - he faithfully looked at Salakhov, threw the fishing line into the water and immediately threw a large dark-backed grayling onto the sand.

The God of Fire strengthened his legs in oversized boots, pulled up his quilted jacket, pushed off his shaggy hat and began to shuttle the graylings one by one. Soon, all the sand around him was littered with resilient mother-of-pearl fish.

Enough! Salahov said. - Stop.

On this river ... yes with nets, yes with barrels. And you don't have to bend the hump. On the mainland, you climb, you climb with nonsense, you can barely pick it up in your ear. And if this river there. And our Voronezh here. Anyway, there is no population here, and an empty river will do here.

You would empty it there in a week,” Salakhov said.

During the week? No-no! The God of Fire sighed.

Close the sanatorium, ordered Salakhov

Maybe we can take it with us? the God of Fire suggested hesitantly.

Words have no power against greed,” Salakhov chuckled. - Machine guns are needed against her. Recovered? Dot! Gather the camp, boil the fish soup and stomp according to the assignment received. Any questions?

No questions," the God of Fire sighed.

Take action! I'm going downstream with a tray. …

Salakhov walked very fast. He was suddenly struck by the thought that kindness makes people worse. They turn piggy. And when people are bad, they become better. While the God of Fire was sick, Salakhov was very sorry for him. And today he was unpleasant to him, even hated ...

Salakhov, forgetting that he needed to take a sample, walked and walked along the dry bank of the Vatap River. The idea that kindness to people leads to their own condemnation was very unpleasant to him. Some hopeless thought. From the experience of the army, from the experience of prison life, Salakhov knew that excessive severity also embittered people. “So you won’t take us with good or fear,” he thought. - But there must be some approach. There should be an open door…”

And suddenly Salakhov stopped. The answer he found was simple, obvious. Among the many human collectives, there is probably only one that is yours. Like the army has its own company. If you find him, hold on to him with your teeth. Let everyone see that you are yours, you are with them to the end. And that you have everything in sight. One roof, one destiny, and let the state think about the rest...

Kuvaev Oleg Mikhailovich - Soviet geologist, geophysicist, writer.

The traditional evening of the field workers served as a milestone separating one expedition season from another.

Chinkov motioned to pour them into glasses and stood up.

- Dear Colleagues! he said in a high voice. First of all, let me thank you for the honor. For the first time I am present at the celebration of the famous geological department not as a guest, but as a friend. As a beginner, let me break with tradition. Let's not talk about last season. Let's talk about the future. What is a deposit discovery? It's a mixture of randomness and logic. But any true deposit is opened only when the need for it has matured.

Something thudded dully against the control wall, there was a sort of extended sigh, and immediately the windows at the end of the corridor rattled and groaned.

— God bless! someone said. — The first winter!

- What is this? Sergushova asked Gurin quietly.

- Yuzhak. The first one this winter. I'll have to run away from here.

Every journalist, every visiting writer, and in general anyone who has been to the Village and taken up a pen, has necessarily written and will continue to write about the southerner. It's like going to Texas and not writing the word cowboy or, being in the Sahara, not mentioning the camel. Yuzhak was a purely village phenomenon, similar to the famous Novorossiysk forest. On warm days, air accumulated behind the slope of the ridge and then, with hurricane force, fell into the basin of the Village. During the South, it was always warm, and the sky was cloudless, but this warm, even gentle wind knocked a person off his feet, rolled him to the nearest corner and sprinkled snow dust, slag, sand, and small stones on top. Trikoni boots and ski goggles were best for southerners. Shops did not work in the south, institutions were closed, roofs moved into the south, and cubic meters of snow were packed into a tiny hole into which a needle could not fit through.

The light bulbs dimmed, the glass was already rattling continuously, and behind the wall the ever-increasing sighs of gigantic lungs could be heard, at times metal on metal was beating somewhere.

They sat huddled at the same table. The light bulb flickered and went out, or the wiring was damaged, or the power plant changed its mode of operation. There was a murmur on the stairs. It was Kopkov who saw off Luda Hollywood and returned. He brought candles with him.

Yuzhak was breaking in the control doors, gaining strength. Candle flames flickered, shadows jumping across the walls. The bottles glowed in different colors. Kopkov pushed a glass of cognac away from Zhora Apryatin and walked along the tables, looking for his mug.

“That’s how things turn out, as always,” Kopkov suddenly muttered. He ran around everyone with the mischievous look of a prophet and clairvoyant, clasped his mug in his palms, hunched over. We're camping in a tent today. There is no coal, diesel fuel is running out, the weather is blowing. And all that stuff. Over the summer, the puppets stuck together from sweat, not wool, but shavings. Purzhit, the tent is shaking, well, and different, well known to everyone. I’m lying, thinking: well, how will the authorities let us down with transport, where will I put the people entrusted to me? You won't walk out. Frost, passes, no shoes. I'm looking for a way out. But I'm not talking about that. Thoughts are: why and for what? Why do my hard workers moan in sacks? Money can't measure it. What happens? We live, then we die. All! And so am I. It's a shame, of course. But why, I think, in the world since ancient times is it so arranged that we ourselves hasten the death of our neighbor and our own? Wars, epidemics, disorder of systems. So there is evil in the world. Objective evil in the forces and elements of nature, and subjective from the imperfection of our brains. This means that the common task of people and yours, Kopkov, in particular, is to eliminate this evil. A common task for the ancestors, you and your descendants. During the war, clearly take an ax or a machine gun. And in Peaceful time? I come to the conclusion that in peacetime work is the elimination of universal evil. There is a higher meaning in this, not measured by money and position. In the name of this higher meaning, my hard workers groan in their sleep, and I myself grind my teeth, because stupidly I froze my finger. This has a higher meaning, this is a general and specific purpose.

Kopkov raised his eyes once more, as if he were staring at people unknown to him in astonishment, and just as suddenly fell silent.

Likhachev Dmitry Sergeevich is a Russian literary scholar, cultural historian, textual critic, publicist, and public figure.

It is said that the content determines the form. This is true, but the opposite is also true, that the content depends on the form. The well-known American psychologist of the beginning of this century, D. James, wrote: “We cry because we are sad, but we are also sad because we cry.”

It was once considered indecent to show with all your appearance that a misfortune happened to you, that you were in grief. A person should not have imposed his depressed state on others. It was necessary to maintain dignity even in grief, to be equal with everyone, not to plunge into oneself and remain as friendly and even cheerful as possible. The ability to maintain dignity, not to impose one's grief on others, not to spoil the mood of others, to always be even in dealing with people, to be always friendly and cheerful - this is a great and real art that helps to live in society and society itself.

But how fun should you be? Noisy and obsessive fun is tiring for others. The young man who is always “pouring” witticisms ceases to be perceived as worthy of behaving. He becomes a joke. And this is the worst thing that can happen to a person in society, and it means ultimately the loss of humor.

Not being funny is not only the ability to behave, but also a sign of intelligence.

You can be funny in everything, even in the manner of dressing. If a man carefully matches a tie to a shirt, a shirt to a suit, he is ridiculous. Excessive concern for one's appearance is immediately visible. Care must be taken to dress decently, but this care in men should not go beyond certain limits. A man who cares too much about his appearance is unpleasant. A woman is another matter. Men should only have a hint of fashion in their clothes. A perfectly clean shirt, clean shoes and a fresh but not very bright tie are enough. The suit can be old, it doesn't have to be just unkempt.

Do not suffer from your shortcomings, if you have them. If you stutter, don't think it's too bad. Stutterers are excellent speakers, considering every word they say. The best lecturer of Moscow University, famous for its eloquent professors, historian V. O. Klyuchevsky stuttered.

Don't be ashamed of your shyness: shyness is very sweet and not at all funny. It only becomes funny if you try too hard to overcome it and feel embarrassed about it. Be simple and indulgent to your shortcomings. Don't suffer from them. I have a friend who is a little chubby. Honestly, I do not get tired of admiring her grace on those rare occasions when I meet her in museums on opening days. There is nothing worse when an “inferiority complex” develops in a person, and with it anger, hostility towards other people, envy. A person loses what is best in him - kindness.

No best music than silence, silence in the mountains, silence in the forest. There is no better “music in a person” than modesty and the ability to remain silent, not to come forward in the first place. There is nothing more unpleasant and stupid in the appearance and behavior of a person than dignity or noisy; there is nothing more ridiculous in a man than excessive concern for his suit and hair, calculated movements and a “fountain of witticisms” and jokes, especially if they are repeated.

Simplicity and "silence" in a person, truthfulness, lack of pretensions in clothing and behavior - this is the most attractive "form" in a person, which also becomes his most elegant "content".

Mamin-Sibiryak Dmitry Narkisovich is a Russian prose writer and playwright.

(1) The strongest impression on me is made by dreams in which distant childhood rises and in an obscure fog no longer existing faces rise, all the more dear, like everything irretrievably lost. (2) For a long time I cannot wake up from such a dream and for a long time I see alive those who have long been in the grave. (3) And what lovely, dear faces! (4) It seems that I would not give anything to look at them at least from a distance, hear a familiar voice, shake their hands and once again return to the distant, distant past. (5) It begins to seem to me that these silent shadows require something from me. (6) After all, I owe so much to these people who are infinitely dear to me ...

(7) But in the rainbow perspective of childhood memories, not only people are alive, but also those inanimate objects that were somehow connected with the little life of a beginner little man. (8) And now I think about them, again experiencing the impressions and feelings of childhood. (9) In these dumb participants in children's life, of course, a children's picture book always stands in the foreground ... (10) And this was that living thread that led out of the children's room and connected it to the rest of the world. (11) For me, until now, every children's book is something alive, because it awakens the child's soul, directs children's thoughts in a certain direction and makes them beat baby heart along with millions of other children's hearts. (12) A children's book is a spring sunbeam that makes the dormant forces of a child's soul awaken and causes the seeds thrown onto this grateful soil to grow. (13) Thanks to this book, children merge into one huge spiritual family that knows no ethnographic and geographical boundaries.

(14) 3here I have to make a small digression specifically about modern children, who often have to observe complete disrespect for the book. (15) Disheveled bindings, traces of dirty fingers, folded corners of sheets, all kinds of scribbles in the margins - in a word, the result is a cripple book.

(16) It is difficult to understand the reasons for all this, and only one explanation can be admitted: today too many books are published, they are much cheaper and seem to have lost their real price among other household items. (17) Our generation, which remembers expensive book, preserved a special respect for her as an object of the highest spiritual order, bearing the bright stamp of talent and holy labor.

The problem of memory (What is the duty of memory to those who are no longer with us?) Close people who are no longer with us are always alive in our memory; we are grateful to them for everything they have done for us; the duty of memory to them is to strive to become better.

The problem of childhood memories (What feelings do childhood memories evoke in a person?) Childhood memories awaken the strongest and most vivid feelings in a person.

The problem of the role of a book in the formation of a child's personality (What role does a book play in the formation of a child's personality?) A children's book awakens the soul of a child, connects him with the whole world, and fosters a careful attitude to spiritual values.

Problem careful attitude to books (Why do books require a careful attitude?) A book is an object of a higher spiritual order, and therefore it requires special respect for itself.

Nagibin Yuri Markovich - Russian prose writer, journalist and screenwriter.

In the first years after the revolution, Academician of Architecture Shchusev lectured on aesthetics to a wide, mostly youth working audience. Their goal was to familiarize the broad masses, as it was then expressed, with the understanding of beauty, the enjoyment of art. At the very first lecture, given by Shchusev with great enthusiasm, the talent of a born popularizer and, needless to say, an exhaustive knowledge of the subject, some guy got up with a cigarette butt stuck to his lower lip and said cheekily:

- Here you are, Comrade Professor, you kept mumbling: beauty, beauty, but I still did not understand what this beauty is?

Someone laughed. Shchusev looked at the guy carefully. Stooped, long-armed, dull-eyed. And why did this not at all flawless connecting rod fall into the lecture - to warm up or to buzz? He was not at all interested in the essence of the issue, he wanted to puzzle the "intellectual" who was crucifying in the department and to expose himself to those around him. He must be firmly besieged for the sake of the common cause. Shchusev narrowed his eyes and asked:

- Do you have a mirror at home?

- Eat. I jump in front of him.

No, big...

- Yeah. In a wall closet.

Shchusev handed the guy a photograph taken from Michelangelo's David, which he automatically took. You will immediately understand what beauty is and what ugliness is.

I brought this case not for fun. There is a rational grain in the mocking trick of the architect. Shchusev suggested the surest way to comprehend beauty. Truth is generally known in comparison. Only peering into the images of beauty created by art, whether it be Venus de Milo or Nike of Samothrace, Raphael's Madonna or Pinturicchio's boy, Titian's Flora or Van Dyck's self-portrait, Vrubel's swan princess or Vasnetsov's three bogatyrs, Argunov's peasant girl, Tropinin's lace maker, Nesterov's daughter or those running athletes Deineka, you can accustom your eye and soul to the joy that a meeting with the beautiful gives. Museums, exhibitions, reproductions, art books serve this purpose.

As the great educator K. Ushinsky well said: "Any sincere enjoyment of the graceful is in itself a source of moral beauty." Consider these words, reader!

Nikitayskaya Natalia Nikolaevna - science fiction writer, prose writer, poet. Trained as a theater critic.

Seventy years have passed, but I do not stop scolding myself. Well, what did it cost me, while my parents were alive, to ask them about everything, write everything down in detail, so that I myself would remember, and, if possible, tell others. But no, I didn't write it down. Yes, and listened to something inattentively, as basically their children listen to their parents. Neither mom nor dad liked to return to what they had lived and experienced during the war. But at times ... When guests came, when the mood to remember attacked, and so - for no reason ... Well, for example, my mother comes from a neighbor, Antonina Karpovna, and says: “Karpovna told me:“ Pebbles, you have not been found a hero with us ” . It was I who told her how I got out of the encirclement from under Luga.

By the beginning of the war, my mother was eighteen years old, and she was a paramedic, a rural doctor. Dad was twenty-four years old. And he was a pilot civil aviation. They met and fell in love with each other in Vologda. Mom was very pretty, lively and frivolous.

The profession of a pilot before the war belonged to the romantic professions. Aviation "became on the wing." The people involved in this formation immediately fell into the category of the elite. Still: not everyone is given to settle down in heaven. The liberties that the pilots of those times allowed themselves will be reminded, for example, by Chkalov's flight under the Trinity Bridge in Leningrad. True, historians believe that filmmakers came up with this for the film. But legends are legends, and my dad absolutely flew "at low level" over the roof of my mother's house. What conquered my mother completely.

On the very first day of the war, as conscripts, both dad and mom put on military uniforms. Both were sent to the Leningrad front. Mom - with the hospital, dad - in the air regiment. Dad served in an aviation regiment. They started the war on the U-2. There was no serious equipment on the planes, not even radio communications. But they did fight!

One day when dad, at the head of a squadron of these two-seat ships of the sky, was returning from a mission, he saw below, on the highway leading to the city, a broken ambulance bus. The driver was fumbling near him, trying to fix the breakdown. And the nurse desperately waved her jacket to our planes. And from above, dad saw that a column of Germans was marching along the same highway and also towards the city. And just about a bus with the wounded, with a driver and a nurse, will be in their way. The outcome of such a meeting was a foregone conclusion. “You know, I immediately thought of Gala. She could have been in the place of this sister. And then I signaled the command with my wings: “Do as I do” - and went to land in front of the bus. When they landed and counted the people, it turned out that they couldn’t take everyone, that three were left overboard. “I estimated the power of the machines and in some of them I distributed not one person, but two people.” And then one of the pilots yelled: “Commander, you want me to die! I won't fly with two! I planted one for myself ... ”“ I knew that his car was more reliable, but I didn’t argue, there was no time to argue. I say: "I'll fly on yours, and you take my car."

In fact, this whole story seems to be specially invented for cinema, for the indispensable use of parallel editing in order to inflame passions even more. Here the wounded climb with difficulty along the fuselage into the cockpit, and the Fritz column is already marching within sight, but our first plane with the wounded takes off into the sky, and the German is preparing his "Schmeisser" for firing ... Well, and so on ... And in real life, when the last pilot took off, the Nazis really opened fire ... And then they wrote about this case in the newspaper, but our careless family, of course, did not save it.

I am writing these notes of mine now not only to, albeit belatedly, confess my love for my parents who lived a very difficult, but such an honest life. There were millions of other such Soviet people who overcame fascism and did not lose their human face. And I really don't want them to be forgotten.

Nosov Evgeny Ivanovich - Russian and Soviet writer.

(1) What is a small homeland? (3) Where are its boundaries? (4) From where and to where does it extend?

(5) In my opinion, a small homeland is the window of our childhood. (6) In other words, something that can embrace a boy's eye. (7) And what a pure, open soul longs to contain. (8) Where this soul was first surprised, delighted and rejoiced from the surging delight. (9) And where it was first upset, angry or experienced its first shock.

(10) A quiet village street, a cramped shop smelling of gingerbread and leather shoes, an engine yard outside the outskirts, where it is tempting to sneak in, secretly sit in the cab of a tractor that has not yet cooled down, touch the levers and buttons, sigh blissfully the smell of a running motor; the vague mystery of a collective farm garden running downhill, in the twilight of which a wooden mallet taps warningly, a red-haired dog rattles with a heavy chain. (11) Behind the garden - serpentine zigzags of old, almost smoothed out trenches, overgrown with thorns and hazel, which, however, still make you shut up, speak in an undertone ...

(12) And suddenly, again returning to the former, noisily, rushing off into a calling expanse of a meadow with sparkles of small lakes and half-grown old women, where, having stripped naked and stirring up the water, with a T-shirt scoop in this black jelly grimy crucians in half with leeches and swimmers. (13) And finally, a rivulet, winding, evasive, not tolerating open places and striving to slip into the willows, into a clumsy and loopy mess. (14) And if you don’t spare shirts and pants, then you can make your way to an old mill with a long-broken dam and a collapsed roof, where through the dilapidated walkways and into empty openings wild fireweed beats violently. (15) Here, too, it is not customary to speak loudly: there is a rumor that even now a mill water, dilapidated, mossy, is found in the pool, and as if someone heard how he groaned and puffed in the bushes, trying to push into the pool now no one unnecessary millstone. (16) How can one not get there and not look, fearful and looking around, whether that stone lies or is no longer there ...

(17) Across the river is a neighboring village, and it’s not supposed to wander across the river: this is already a different, transcendent world. (18) There are their own swirling okemschiki, whose eyes one by one it’s better not to catch ...

(19) That, in fact, is the whole boyish universe. (20) But even that small dwelling is more than enough, so that in a day, until the sun falls, run, open and be impressed to the point where, already at dinner, the violent young head, scorched by the sun and battered by the wind, and mother picks up and carries the scratched, reeking of cattail and bedstraw, aloof, limp child to the bed, as the fallen sister of mercy carries away from the battlefield. dangerously and terribly swayed by the wind, to see: what is there further, where he has not yet been? (22) And suddenly something brittle crunches, and he falls head over heels with stopped breathing. (23) But, as happens only in dreams, at the very last moment he somehow successfully spreads his arms, like wings, the wind elastically picks him up, and now he is flying, flying, smoothly and bewitchingly gaining height and dying from indescribable delight.

(24) A small homeland is what gives us wings of inspiration for life.

Orlov Dal Konstantinovich - poet, Russian film critic and playwright.

Tolstoy entered my life without introducing himself. We already actively communicated with him, but I still had no idea who I was dealing with. I was about eleven or twelve years old, that is, a year or two after the war, when my mother was appointed director of a pioneer camp for the summer. Since the spring, young people of both sexes began to appear in our little room overlooking the endless communal corridor - to be hired as pioneer leaders and athletes. In today's terms, my mother conducted a casting right at home. But it's not that.

The fact is that once a truck was brought to our house and a mountain of books were dumped right on the floor - thoroughly used, but very diverse in subject matter. Someone worried in advance, not without my mother's, I think, participation, so that there would be a library in the future pioneer camp. “What is your favorite pastime?.. Rummaging through books” – this is also about me. Then too. Rummaged. Until, at one happy moment, a battered brick was fished out of this mountain: thin rice paper, ep and yati, no covers, no first pages, no last ones. The author is incognito. My eye fell on the beginning, which was not the beginning, and then I could not tear myself away from the text. I entered it as if I were entering a new house, where for some reason everything turned out to be familiar - I had never been there, but I knew everything.

Amazing! It seemed that the unknown author had been spying on me for a long time, found out everything about me and now told me - frankly and kindly, almost like a relative. It was written: “... By that instinctive feeling with which one person guesses the thoughts of another and which serves as a guiding thought of the conversation, Katenka realized that her indifference hurts me ...” But how many times it happened to me, as with the unknown Katenka: in a conversation, instinctively to guess the "thoughts of another"! How exactly... Or in another place: "... Our eyes met, and I realized that he understands me and that I understand that he understands me..." Again, you can't say it better! “I understand that he understands…” And so on every page. “In youth, all the forces of the soul are directed towards the future ... Some understandable and shared dreams of future happiness already constitute the true happiness of this age.” Mine again! So it is: every day of your childhood and adolescence, if they are normal, seems to be fused with the sun and the light of expectation, so that your destiny will take place. But how to express aloud this premonition that gnaws at you, can it be conveyed in words? While you are tormented by invincible dumbness, this incognito author managed to tell everything for you.

But who was he - an unknown author? Whose magical book was in my hands? Needless to say, she did not go to any pioneer library - with her beginning and end gnawed, she remained with me personally. Later I recognized it in the binding: LN Tolstoy. "Childhood", "Adolescence", "Youth".

This is how Tolstoy entered my life without introducing himself. The illusion of recognition is an indispensable feature of classical texts. They are classics because they write for everyone. It's right. But they are also eternal classics because they write for everyone. This is true no less. Young simpleton, I "bought" it on the latter. The experiment was carried out purely: the author was hidden. The magic of the name did not dominate the perception of the text. The text itself has defended its greatness. Tolstoy's "dialectics of the soul", first noted by Chernyshevsky, unkind to Nabokov, flew like ball lightning through a window, shining, into another unidentified reader's heart.

Paustovsky Konstantin Georgievich - Russian Soviet writer, classic of Russian literature.

We lived for several days at the cordon, fished on Shuya, hunted on Lake Orsa, where there was only a few centimeters of clear water, and bottomless viscous silt lay under it. Killed ducks, if they fell into the water, could not be obtained in any way. On the banks of the Ors, one had to walk on wide forestry skis so as not to fall into the bogs.

But most of the time we spent on Pre. I have seen many picturesque and remote places in Russia, but it is unlikely that I will ever see a river more virgin and mysterious than the Pra.

Dry pine forests on its banks intermingled with centuries-old oak groves, thickets of willow, alder and aspen. The ship's pines, blown down by the wind, lay like cast copper bridges over her brown, but completely clear water. From these pines we fished stubborn ides.

Washed by river water and blown by the wind, sandy spits are overgrown with coltsfoot and flowers. For all the time we did not see a single human footprint on these white sands - only traces of wolves, elks and birds.

Thickets of heather and lingonberries came up to the very water, mingling with thickets of pondweed, pink chastukha and teloreza.

The river went in bizarre bends. Its deaf backwaters were lost in the dusk of warm forests. Above the running water, glittering roller-rollers and dragonflies continuously flew from coast to coast, and huge hawks soared above.

Everything bloomed around. Millions of leaves, stems, branches and corollas blocked the road at every step, and we were lost in front of this onslaught of vegetation, stopped and breathed the tart air of a hundred-year-old pine to the pain in our lungs. Layers of dry cones lay under the trees. In them, the leg sank to the bone.

Sometimes the wind ran along the river from the lower reaches, from the wooded spaces, from where the calm and still hot sun burned in the autumn sky. My heart sank at the thought that where this river flows, for almost two hundred kilometers there is only forest, forest and there is no housing. Only in some places on the banks there are huts of tar smokers and it pulls through the forest with a sweetish haze of smoldering tar.

But the most amazing thing in these places was the air. It was completely and perfectly clean. This purity gave a special sharpness, even brilliance to everything that was surrounded by this air. Each dry pine branch was visible among the dark needles very far away. It was as if forged from rusty iron. From afar, every thread of the cobweb, a green cone in the sky, a stalk of grass could be seen.

The clarity of the air gave some extraordinary strength and originality to the surroundings, especially in the mornings, when everything was wet with dew and only a bluish fog still lay in the lowlands.

And in the middle of the day, both the river and the forests played with many sunspots - gold, blue, green and iridescent. Streams of light dimmed, then flared up and turned the thickets into a living, moving world of foliage. The eye rested from the contemplation of the mighty and varied green.

The flight of birds cut this sparkling air: it rang from the flapping of bird wings.

Forest smells came in waves. Sometimes it was difficult to identify these smells. Everything was mixed in them: the breath of juniper, heather, water, lingonberries, rotten stumps, mushrooms, water lilies, and maybe the sky itself ... It was so deep and clean that one could not help believing that these airy oceans also bring their own smell - ozone and the wind that ran here from the shores of the warm seas.

It is very difficult sometimes to convey your feelings. But, perhaps, the state that we all experienced can most accurately be called a feeling of admiration for the charm of our native land that cannot be described in any way.

Turgenev talked about the magical Russian language. But he did not say that the magic of language was born from this magical nature and the amazing properties of man.

And the man was amazing in both small and large: simple, clear and benevolent. Simple in work, clear in his thoughts, benevolent in relation to people. Yes, not only to people, but also to every good animal, to every tree.

Sanin Vladimir Markovich - a famous Soviet writer, traveler, polar explorer.

Gavrilov - that's who did not give Sinitsyn peace.

Memory, not subject to the will of man, did with Sinitsyn what he feared most of all, threw him into 1942.

He stood on watch at the headquarters when the battalion commander, a Siberian with a thunderous bass, gave orders to the company commanders. And Sinitsyn heard that the battalion was leaving, leaving one platoon at the height. This platoon must fight to the last bullet, but delay the Nazis for at least three hours. His, Sinitsyn, platoon, the second platoon of the first company! And then with him, a beardless boy, there was a sunstroke. The heat was terrible, such cases happened, and the victim, doused with water, was taken away in a wagon. Then the division announced the order of the general and saluted the fallen heroes, who had repulsed the attacks of the Nazis for more than a day. And then the company commander saw Private Sinitsyn.

- You are alive?!

Sinitsyn confusedly explained that he had a sunstroke and therefore ...

- I see, he held out the commanders and looked at Sinitsyn.

Never forget that look! With battles he reached Berlin, honestly earned two orders, washed away the guilt that no one had proven and unknown to anyone with blood, but this look haunted him at night for a long time.

And now also Gavrilov.

Just before Vize left, Gavrilov approached him and, obviously overpowering himself, muttered hostilely: Is the fuel prepared?

Sinitsyn, exhausted by insomnia, falling from his feet from fatigue, nodded in the affirmative. And Gavrilov left without saying goodbye, as if regretting that he had asked an extra and unnecessary question. For it went without saying that not a single head of the transport detachment would leave Mirny without preparing winter fuel and equipment for his replacement. Well, there was no such case in the history of expeditions and could not be! Therefore, in Gavrilov's question, anyone in Sinitsyn's place would have heard well-calculated tactlessness, a desire to offend and even offend with distrust.

Sinitsyn remembered exactly that he nodded in the affirmative.

But after all, he did not have time to prepare winter fuel, as it should! That is, he prepared, of course, but for his campaign, which was to take place in the polar summer. And Gavrilov will go not in the summer, but in the March frosts, and therefore fuel should have been specially prepared for his campaign. And the work is nonsense: to add the necessary dose of kerosene to the tanks with a solarium, more than usual, then no frost will take. How could he remember!

Sinitsyn cursed. You must immediately run to the radio room, find out if Gavrilov went on a campaign. If you didn’t come out, tell the truth: I’m sorry, I blundered, I forgot about the fuel, add kerosene to the solarium. If Gavrilov is on the march, raise the alarm, return the train to Mirny, even at the cost of losing several days to dilute the diesel fuel.

Sinitsyn began to dress, composing the text of the radiogram in his mind, and stopped. Is it worth raising a panic, asking for a scandal, elaboration? Well, what will be the frost on the track? About sixty degrees, no more, for such temperatures, and his diesel fuel will do just fine.

Reassuring himself with this thought, Sinitsyn took a carafe of water from the bracket, reached out his hand for a glass, and felt for the box on the table. In the semi-darkness I read: luminal. And Zhenya's nerves are on edge. I put two tablets in my mouth, washed it down with water, lay down and fell into a heavy sleep.

Three hours later, Gavrilov's sledge-caterpillar train left Mirny for the East in deadly cold. Simonov

Konstantin Mikhailovich - Soviet prose writer, poet, screenwriter.

All three Germans were from the Belgrade garrison and knew perfectly well that this was the tomb of the Unknown Soldier and that in case of artillery shelling, the grave had thick and strong walls. This was, in their opinion, good, and everything else did not interest them at all. So it was with the Germans.

The Russians also considered this hill with a house on top as an excellent observation post, but the enemy's observation post and, therefore, subject to fire.

What is this residential building? Something wonderful, I have never seen anything like it,” said the battery commander, Captain Nikolaenko, carefully examining the grave of the Unknown Soldier through binoculars for the fifth time. “And the Germans are sitting there, that’s for sure. Well, how are the data prepared for firing?

Yes sir! - Reported the platoon commander, standing next to the captain, a young lieutenant Prudnikov.

Start shooting.

They fired quickly, with three rounds. Two blew up the cliff just below the parapet, raising a fountain of earth. The third hit the parapet. Through the binoculars it was possible to see how fragments of stones flew.

Look splashed! - said Nikolaenko. - Move on to defeat.

But Lieutenant Prudnikov, before that, peering through binoculars for a long time and tensely, as if remembering something, suddenly reached into his field bag, pulled out a German trophy plan of Belgrade from it and, putting it on top of his two-verst, began to hastily run his finger over it.

What's the matter? - Nikolaenko said sternly. - There is nothing to clarify, everything is already clear.

Allow me, one minute, Comrade Captain, - muttered Prudnikov.

He quickly glanced several times at the plan, at the hill, and again at the plan, and suddenly, resolutely poking his finger at some point he had finally found, raised his eyes to the captain:

Do you know what it is, Comrade Captain?

And all - and a hill, and this is a residential building?

This is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I looked and doubted everything. I saw it somewhere in a photo in a book. Exactly. Here it is on the plan - the tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

For Prudnikov, who had once studied at the Faculty of History of Moscow State University before the war, this discovery seemed extremely important. But Captain Nikolaenko, unexpectedly for Prudnikov, did not show any responsiveness. He replied calmly and even somewhat suspiciously:

What else is there an unknown soldier? Come on fire.

Comrade Captain, allow me! - looking pleadingly into the eyes of Nikolaenko, Prudnikov said.

What else?

Maybe you don't know… It's not just a grave. It is, as it were, a national monument. Well ... - Prudnikov stopped, choosing his words. - Well, a symbol of all those who died for their homeland. One soldier, who was not identified, was buried instead of all, in their honor, and now it is for the whole country as a memory.

Wait, don't chatter, - said Nikolaenko, and, wrinkling his forehead, thought for a whole minute.

He was a man of great soul, despite his rudeness, the favorite of the whole battery and a good gunner. But, having started the war as a simple fighter-gunner and having risen to the rank of captain with blood and valor, in labors and battles he did not have time to learn many things that, perhaps, an officer should have known. He had a weak understanding of history, if it was not about his direct accounts with the Germans, and of geography, if the question did not concern the settlement to be taken. And as for the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, he did hear about it for the first time.

However, although now he did not understand everything in Prudnikov's words, he felt with his soldier's soul that Prudnikov must not be worrying in vain and that we are talking something really worthwhile.

Wait, - he repeated again, loosening his wrinkles. - Tell me plainly, whose soldier, with whom you fought, - tell me what!

A Serbian soldier, in general, Yugoslavian, - said Prudnikov. - He fought with the Germans in the last war of the fourteenth year.

Now it's clear.

Nikolaenko felt with pleasure that now everything was really clear and that the right decision could be made on this issue.

Everything is clear,” he repeated. “It is clear who and what. And then you weave God knows what - "unknown, unknown." What kind of unknown is he when he is Serbian and fought with the Germans in that war? Set aside!

Simonov Konstantin Mikhailovich - Soviet prose writer, poet, screenwriter.

It was in the morning. The battalion commander Koshelev called Semyon Shkolenko to him and explained, as always, without long words:

- "Language" must be obtained.

"I'll get it," said Shkolenko.

He returned to his trench, checked his machine gun, hung three disks on his belt, prepared five grenades, two simple ones and three anti-tank grenades, put them in a bag, then looked around and, after thinking, took the copper wire stored in the soldier’s bag and hid it in his pocket.

We had to walk along the coast. He walked slowly, with an eye. All around was quiet. Shkolenko quickened his pace and, in order to shorten the distance, began to cross the hollow straight ahead, through small bushes. There was a burst of machine-gun fire. Bullets passed somewhere close. Shkolenko lay down and lay motionless for a minute.

He was dissatisfied with himself. This machine-gun burst - you could do without it. All you had to do was walk through thick bushes. I wanted to save half a minute, and now I have to lose ten - go around. He got up and, bending down, ran into the thicket. In half an hour he passed first one beam, then another. Immediately behind this beam stood three sheds and a house. Shkolenko lay down and crawled like a plastuna. A few minutes later he crawled to the first barn and looked inside. The barn was dark and smelled of dampness. Chickens and a pig walked on the dirt floor. Shkolenko noticed a shallow trench near the wall and a loophole sawn into two logs. A half-smoked pack of German cigarettes was lying near the trench. The Germans were somewhere close. Now there was no doubt about it. The next barn was empty, near the third, near the haystack, lay two dead Red Army soldiers, rifles were lying next to them. The blood was fresh.

Shkolenko tried to reconstruct in his mind the picture of what had happened: well, yes, they came out of here, they were probably walking in height, without hiding, and the German hit from a machine gun from somewhere on the other side. Shkolenko was vexed at this careless death. “If they were with me, I wouldn’t let them go like this,” he thought, but there was no time to think further, it was necessary to look for a German.

In a hollow overgrown with a vineyard, he attacked a path. After the rain that had fallen in the morning, the ground had not yet dried out, and the footprints leading into the forest were clearly visible on the path. After a hundred meters Shkolenko saw a pair of German boots and a rifle. He wondered why they had been abandoned there, and just in case he thrust the rifle into the bushes. A fresh trail led into the forest. Shkolenko had not yet crawled even fifty meters, when he heard a mortar shot. The mortar hit ten times in a row with short pauses.

There were thickets ahead. Shkolenko crawled over them to the left; there was a pit, with weeds growing around it. From the hole, in the gap between the weeds, one could see a mortar standing very close and a light machine gun a few steps further away. One German stood at the mortar, and six sat in a circle and ate from bowlers.

Shkolenko threw up his machine gun and wanted to fire a burst at them, but judiciously changed his mind. He could not kill everyone at once with one burst, and he would have an unequal struggle.

Slowly, he began to make an anti-tank grenade for battle. He chose anti-tank because the distance was short, and she could hit harder. He took his time. There was no need to hurry: the goal was in sight. He firmly rested his left hand on the bottom of the pit, clung to the ground so that his hand did not slip, and, rising, threw a grenade. She fell right in the middle of the Germans. When he saw that six of them were lying motionless, and one, the one who stood at the mortar, continued to stand near him, looking in surprise at the barrel mutilated by a grenade fragment, Shkolenko jumped up and, coming close to the German, without taking his eyes off him, showed a sign, so that he unfastened his parabellum and threw it on the ground. The German's hands were trembling, he unfastened the parabellum for a long time and threw it far away from him. Then Shkolenko, pushing the German in front of him, went with him to the machine gun. The machine gun was unloaded. Shkolenko motioned to the German to put the machine gun on his shoulders. The German obediently bent down and raised the machine gun. Now both hands were occupied.

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Shkolenko chuckled. It seemed funny to him that a German would bring his machine gun to us with his own hands.

Sobolev Andrey Nikolaevich - Russian linguist, Slavist and Balkanist.

Reading fiction is, in fact, a privilege these days. This kind of work takes too much time. Lack of time. Yes, and reading is also work, and first of all - on oneself. Let it be inconspicuous, not so burdensome, but a person who has spent a day on solving problems that require intellectual and spiritual dedication, sometimes simply does not have the strength to take an interest in the latest literature. This does not excuse anyone, but the reasons are obvious, and not everyone has developed a strong habit of serious reading.

For the majority of adults and the elderly today, television and cinema replace reading; if they get acquainted with the novelties of the book market, then, with rare exceptions, in a primitive film presentation.

Young people are increasingly learning the world of words through headphones, players and Internet resources, on smartphones and tablets, which are always at hand.

Perhaps I am exaggerating and someone will be able to paint a more optimistic picture, but it seems to me necessary to take into account the realities of the times.

I consider myself in that category of people who are busy with work. But my example is not typical. I can read and even write. Wrote the 4th collection of poems. I do not stop there, the folders of manuscripts and drafts are replenished, although flights, trips and night vigils are all the writing resource that I have left. Reading is even more difficult, pauses rarely occur.

If you try to characterize what you have recently read, the first thing that comes to mind is that it was written by PERSONS! Self made people. You believe them. The very history of their life does not allow one to doubt the conclusions and formulations. But this is very important - to believe the author, no matter what we read - scientific literature, novel or memoir. The famous "I do not believe!" Stanislavsky now penetrates into all genres and types of art. And if in cinema the dynamics of the frame and the dashing plot can distract the viewer's attention from inconsistencies and outright falsehood, then the printed word immediately pushes any lies to the surface, everything that is written for the sake of a red word is sucked from the finger. Truly, what is written with a pen cannot be cut down with an axe.

Checking the reader's baggage of past years, I come to the conclusion that I have always been unconsciously drawn to authors who were not only noted for writing talent, but also had outstanding personal history. Biography, as they said then. In Soviet times, the personal life of popular authors was dosed, and sometimes inaccessible, then no one knew about PR. But the grains of their deeds and deeds were on everyone's lips, enlivened the image and increased our sympathy and degree of trust. So it was with Mayakovsky, so it was with Vysotsky, Vizbor, Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov. And many others, whose texts we analyzed into quotations, whose books became the most convincing arguments in disputes.

I do not know what is the criterion real literature, for me the main measure was and remains the result - to be believed.

Soloveichik Simon Lvovich - Soviet and Russian publicist and journalist, theorist of pedagogy.

Once I was on a train. A modestly dressed reserved woman sitting next to me at the window opened a volume of Chekhov. The road was long, I didn’t take the books, the people around were strangers, I began to think about work. And in the same tone that they ask, for example: “Do you know if we will arrive soon?” - I unexpectedly for myself and even more so for my neighbor asked her:

“Excuse me, do you know what happiness is?”

A woman with a volume of Chekhov in her hands turned out to be a wonderful companion. She didn’t ask me why I asked such a strange question, didn’t immediately answer: “Happiness is ...”, she didn’t tell me that happiness is when they understand you, or “what happiness is, everyone understands it in their own way ”, - she did not speak in quotes: no, she covered the book and was silent for a long time, looking out the window, - she thought. Finally, when I had already decided that she had forgotten about the question, she turned to me and said ...

We will return to her answer later.

Let us ask ourselves: what is happiness?

Each country has its own Chief Pedagogue - the people, and there is the Main Textbook of Pedagogy - language, "practical consciousness", as the classics wrote long ago. For actions we turn to the people, for concepts - to the language of the people. I do not have to explain what happiness is, I must humbly ask our language about it - everything is in it, you will understand everything from it, listening to the word in our speech today. Folk thought is contained not only in proverbs and sayings, in folk wisdom(proverbs are just contradictory), but in common, ordinary phrases and turns of speech. Let's look: with what other words the concept of interest to us is combined, why it is possible to say so, but not so. They say so, but they don't say so. It's never random.

We say: “happy share”, “happy occasion”, “happy fate”, “happiness rolled”, “pulled out a lucky ticket”, “happy luck”.

The most active people who have achieved everything by their work still say: “I have been lucky ... I have been given happiness ...”

Happiness is a fortune, a fate about which we know nothing, and if it is not there, then they say: “This is my fate”, “It is evident that it is written in my family”.

But we will come across the law of spiritual life more than once (this proposal was slightly different): everything that is in a person arises from two opposite movements, from two forces: from the movement directed from the world to man, and the movement from man to the world. These opposite forces, meeting at one point, do not annihilate, but add up. But if the meeting does not take place, then it is as if both forces did not exist. Suppose a person has no luck in anything, misfortunes haunt him, and he may have had a hard fate from birth. Not everyone will be able to overcome fate. But strong man knows how to use the most imperceptible chance, which, of course, is in everyone's life.

This is how man conquers fate. Or rather, not fate, but the difficulties that fate sent him. And if there is no own desire to win, the desire for happiness, then at least make it richer - there will be no happiness. He has no faith in life, his will is broken.

They say: I found my happiness, I got happiness, I achieved happiness, and even - I stole someone else's happiness. Language requires action: found, caught, obtained, reached, snatched his happiness from fate, every person is the blacksmith of his own happiness.

Happiness is not a thing, and not a stock of things, and not a position, and not a financial condition, but a state of mind that arises when a strongly desired is achieved. (And something else like “happiness is a blessing, grace”).

What, however, did the woman on the bus say about happiness? Later it turned out that she was a researcher, a specialist in the field of protein chemistry. After thinking about the question for a long time, she said:

“I can't give a definition of happiness. Here's a scientist! A scientist is not one who knows everything, but one who knows exactly what he does not know. But perhaps this is the case: a person has spiritual aspirations: when they are satisfied, he feels happy. Does it look like the truth?

Sologub Fedor - Russian poet, writer, playwright, publicist.

In the evening we met again at the Starkins'. They only talked about the war. Somebody spread the word that the call for new recruits this year would be earlier than usual, by the eighteenth of August; and that deferments to students will be abolished. Therefore, Bubenchikov and Kozovalov were oppressed - if this is true, then they will have to serve their military service not in two years, but today.

Young people did not want to fight - Bubenchikov loved his young and, it seemed to him, valuable and wonderful life too much, and Kozovalov did not like anything around him to become too serious.

Kozovalov said dejectedly:

I will go to Africa. There will be no war.

And I will go to France, - said Bubenchikov, - and I will transfer to French citizenship.

Lisa blushed in annoyance. Shouted:

And you are not ashamed! You have to protect us, and you think for yourself where to hide. And you think that in France you will not be forced to fight?

Sixteen spares were called up from Orgo. An Estonian caring for Liza, Paul Sepp, was also called. When Lisa found out about this, she suddenly felt somehow embarrassed, almost ashamed that she was laughing at him. She remembered his clear, childlike eyes. She suddenly clearly imagined the distant battlefield - and he, big, strong, would fall, struck down by an enemy bullet. A careful, compassionate tenderness for this departing man rose in her soul. With fearful surprise she thought: “He loves me. And me, what am I? She jumped like a monkey and laughed. He will go to fight. Maybe die. And when it will be hard for him, whom will he remember, to whom he will whisper: “Goodbye, dear”? He will remember a Russian young lady, someone else's, far away.

Those called were escorted solemnly. The whole village gathered. Speeches were made. Played by a local amateur orchestra. And summer residents almost all came. The ladies dressed up.

Paul walked ahead and sang. His eyes shone, his face seemed sunny, he held his hat in his hand, and a light breeze blew his blond curls. His usual bagginess was gone, and he seemed very handsome. This is how the Vikings and Ushkuyniki used to go on a campaign. He sang. Estonians enthusiastically repeated the words of the national anthem.

We reached the forest behind the village. Lisa stopped Sepp:

Listen, Paul, come to me for a minute.

Paul moved to a side path. He walked next to Lisa. His gait was resolute and firm, and his eyes looked boldly ahead. It seemed that the solemn sounds of martial music beat rhythmically in his soul. Lisa looked at him with loving eyes. He said:

Don't be afraid, Lisa. As long as we are alive, we will not let the Germans go far. And whoever enters Russia will not be happy with our reception. The more they enter, the less they will return to Germany.

Suddenly Liza blushed very much and said:

Paul, I love you these days. I will follow you. I will be taken as a sister of mercy. At the first opportunity, we will get married.

Paul exploded. He bent down, kissed Liza's hand, and repeated:

Honey, honey!

And when he looked into her face again, his clear eyes were wet.

Anna Sergeevna walked a few steps behind and murmured:

What tenderness with the Estonian! He God knows what he thinks of himself. Can you imagine - he kisses the hand, like a knight to his lady!

Lisa turned to her mother and shouted:

Mom, come here!

She and Paul Sepp stopped at the edge of the road. Both had happy, radiant faces.

Together with Anna Sergeevna, Kozovalov and Bubenchikov came up. Kozovalov said in Anna Sergeevna's ear:

And our Estonian is very much in the face of militant enthusiasm. Look, what a handsome man, like the knight Parsifal.

Anna Sergeevna grumbled with annoyance:

Well, handsome! Well, Lizonka? she asked her daughter.

Liza said, smiling happily:

Here's my fiancé, mommy.

Anna Sergeevna crossed herself in horror. She exclaimed:

Lisa, be afraid of God! What are you saying!

Lisa spoke proudly:

He is the defender of the fatherland.

Soloukhin Vladimir Alekseevich - Russian Soviet writer and poet.

From childhood, from the school bench, a person gets used to the combination of words: "love for the motherland." He realizes this love much later, and to understand the complex feeling of love for the motherland - that is, what exactly and for what he loves is already given in adulthood.

The feeling is really complex. Here is the native culture, and native history, all the past and all the future of the people, everything that the people managed to accomplish throughout their history and what they still have to do.

Without going into deep considerations, we can say that one of the first places in the complex feeling of love for the motherland is love for the native nature.

For a person born in the mountains, nothing can be sweeter than rocks and mountain streams, snow-white peaks and steep slopes. It would seem that what to love in the tundra? A monotonous swampy land with countless glassy lakes, overgrown with lichens, but the Nenets reindeer herder will not exchange his tundra for any southern beauties there.

In a word, to whom the steppe is dear, to whom the mountains, to whom the sea coast smelling of fish, and to whom the native Central Russian nature, the quiet beauties of the river with yellow water lilies and white lilies, the kind, quiet sun of Ryazan ... And so that the lark sang over the rye field, and to the birdhouse on the birch in front of the porch.

It would be pointless to list all the signs of Russian nature. But thousands of signs and signs add up to that common thing that we call our native nature and that we, while loving, perhaps, both the sea and the mountains, still love more than anything else in the whole world.

All this is so. But it must be said that this feeling of love for our native nature is not spontaneous in us, it not only arose by itself, since we were born and grew up among nature, but was brought up in us by literature, painting, music, by those great teachers of ours who lived before us. also loved native land and passed on their love to us, the descendants.

Don't we remember from childhood by heart the best lines about the nature of Pushkin, Lermontov, Nekrasov, Alexei Tolstoy, Tyutchev, Fet? Do they leave us indifferent, do they not teach anything about nature from Turgenev, Aksakov, Leo Tolstoy, Prishvin, Leonov, Paustovsky?.. And painting? Shishkin and Levitan, Polenov and Savrasov, Nesterov and Plastov - didn’t they teach and don’t they teach us to love native nature? Among these glorious teachers, the name of the remarkable Russian writer Ivan Sergeevich Sokolov-Mikitov occupies a worthy place.

Ivan Sergeevich Sokolov-Mikitov was born in 1892 on the land of Smolensk, and his childhood passed among the very Russian nature. At that time, folk customs, rituals, holidays, way of life and way of life were still alive. Shortly before his death, Ivan Sergeevich wrote about that time and about that world:

“My life began in native peasant Russia. This Russia was my real homeland. I listened to peasant songs, watched how bread was baked in a Russian oven, memorized village, thatched huts, women and peasants ... rustic weddings, fairs, round dances, village friends, guys, our funny Games, riding from the mountains ... I remember a cheerful haymaking, a village field sown with rye, narrow fields, blue cornflowers along the borders ... I remember how, dressed in festive sundresses, women and girls went out to reap the ripened rye, scattered with colorful bright spots across the golden clean field, like zazhinki were celebrating. The first sheaf was entrusted to be squeezed by the most beautiful hard-working woman - a good, smart housewife ... This was the world in which I was born and lived, this was Russia, which Pushkin knew, Tolstoy knew.

Chukovsky Korney Ivanovich - Russian Soviet poet, publicist, literary critic, translator and literary critic.

The other day a young student came to me, unfamiliar, lively, with some unpretentious request. Having fulfilled her request, I, for my part, asked her to do me a favor and read aloud at least five or ten pages from some book so that I could rest for half an hour.

She agreed willingly. I gave her the first thing that came to my hand - Gogol's story "Nevsky Prospekt", closed my eyes and prepared to listen with pleasure.

This is my favorite vacation.

The first pages of this intoxicating story are downright impossible to read without delight: there is such a variety of lively intonations in it and such a wonderful mixture of deadly irony, sarcasm and lyrics. To all this, the girl was blind and deaf. She read Gogol like a train timetable - indifferently, monotonously and dimly. In front of her was a magnificent, patterned, multicolored fabric, sparkling with bright rainbows, but for her, this fabric was gray.

Of course, while reading, she made a lot of mistakes. Instead of good, she read good, instead of mercantile - mekrantile and lost her way, like a seven-year-old schoolgirl, when she came to the word phantasmagoria, which was clearly not known to her.

But what is literal illiteracy in comparison with mental illiteracy! Do not feel marvelous humor! Do not respond with your soul to beauty! The girl seemed like a monster to me, and I remembered that this is exactly how - stupidly, without a single smile - a patient of the Kharkov psychiatric clinic read the same Gogol.

To check my impression, I took another book from the shelf and asked the girl to read at least a page of the Past and Thoughts. Here she gave way completely, as if Herzen were a foreign writer, speaking in a language unknown to her. All his verbal fireworks were in vain; she didn't even notice them.

The girl graduated from high school and successfully studied at a pedagogical university. No one taught her to admire art - to rejoice at Gogol, Lermontov, to make Pushkin, Baratynsky, Tyutchev her eternal companions, and I took pity on her, as one pities a cripple.

After all, a person who has not experienced a passionate passion for literature, poetry, music, painting, who has not gone through this emotional training, will forever remain a spiritual freak, no matter how successful he is in science and technology. At the first acquaintance with such people, I always notice their terrible flaw - the poverty of their psyche, their "stupidity" (in the words of Herzen). It is impossible to become a truly cultured person without experiencing an aesthetic admiration for art. The one who has not experienced these lofty feelings has a different face, and the very sound of his voice is different. I always recognize a truly cultured person by the elasticity and richness of his intonations. And a man with a beggarly-poor mental life mumbling monotonously and tediously, like the girl who read Nevsky Prospekt to me.

But does the school always enrich the spiritual, emotional life of its young pupils with literature, poetry, art? I know dozens of schoolchildren for whom literature is the most boring, hated subject. The main quality that children learn in literature lessons is secrecy, hypocrisy, insincerity.

Schoolchildren are forcibly forced to love those writers to whom they are indifferent, they are taught to be cunning and false, to hide their real opinions about the authors imposed on them school curriculum, and declare their ardent admiration for those of them who inspire them with yawning boredom.

I'm not talking about the fact that the vulgar sociological method, long rejected by our science, is still rampant in the school, and this deprives teachers of the opportunity to inspire students with an emotional, lively attitude towards art. Therefore, today, when I meet young people who assure me that Turgenev lived in the 18th century, and Leo Tolstoy participated in the Battle of Borodino, and confuse the ancient poet Alexei Koltsov with the Soviet journalist Mikhail Koltsov, I think that all this is natural, that otherwise and it can not be. It's all about the lack of love, indifference, the internal resistance of schoolchildren to those coercive methods by which they want to introduce them to the brilliant (and non-genius) work of our great (and not great) writers.

Without enthusiasm, without ardent love, all such attempts are doomed to failure.

Now they write a lot in the newspapers about the catastrophically bad spelling in the writings of today's schoolchildren, who mercilessly distort the most simple words. But spelling cannot be improved in isolation from common culture. Spelling is usually lame in those who are spiritually illiterate, who have an underdeveloped and poor psyche.

Eliminate this illiteracy, and everything else will follow.

In this text, A. K. Voronsky reveals the problem of a rude attitude towards a person, narrating an incident from his life. No one deserves the kind of treatment that the heroine of the story, Natalya, received, even for some special reason. Then why did the writer show rudeness towards the wanderer?

At the very beginning of the story,

K. Voronsky describes Natalya to the reader. This woman immediately lost her husband and three children at once. Trying to escape from grief, she became a wanderer. Natalya had known the narrator since the time he lived in the village. When Voronsky studied at the bursa, he was "inveterate" and "desperate." For him, authority among his peers was important. Therefore, when Natalya came, the narrator began to be ashamed of her rustic appearance, he was afraid to lower himself in the eyes of the students. The writer behaved very rudely towards the wanderer. But she made a detour of about eighty miles to visit the orphan. Natalya saw that the boy was having a hard time in the bursa, far from home: “She also noticed the torn jacket on me, the dirty and pale neck, my eyes, hunted, frowningly.” Despite the fact that Alexander Voronsky saw the strong anxiety of his guest, he still remained heartless towards her: "... I muttered insensibly, moving away from Natalya." The writer was afraid to fall in the eyes of his peers, he was ashamed of the heroine's rustic appearance, so he treated the wanderer rudely.

I believe that the writer Voronsky is right. You can't play with human feelings. From a rude attitude, he will not get closer to you. Trying not to fall in the eyes of the public, you risk dropping yourself in the eyes of a person.

The problem of a rude attitude towards a person is often touched upon in world literature. As an example, consider the novel by Leo Tolstoy "War and Peace". During the fire in Moscow, French soldiers, trying to show their superiority over the defenseless inhabitants of the city, mercilessly mocked people, humiliated them. Perhaps the soldiers did not want to test such an attitude, but it probably seemed to them that they had to present themselves to the commanders as “inveterate” and “desperate”. Anyway, this situation could have been bypassed if Napoleon's army had maintained a neutral attitude towards the enemy.

Thinking about the attitude towards a person, the saying involuntarily comes to mind: "Treat others the way you want to be treated." If you are rude to people, they will never reach out to you. If a person shows kindness to you, then he wants a mutual relationship. Therefore, you need to be more polite and attentive to the interlocutor, and in no case be rude and disrespectful.

Thus, on the basis of the arguments considered, we can only make sure that Voronsky was right. Natalya did not deserve such a cold and rude attitude, because she showed love and affection in return. The wanderer was very worried about the life of the narrator, but he did not want to thank her in the slightest for her attention to him. It was only important for him not to lower himself in the eyes of his peers, and this seemed more important to him than maternal love and care.

Ivan's hoarse command, my militant cries, Polkan's barking, Pitersky's heart-rending swearing merged into one utter jumble. At the neighboring huts, peasants appeared, hostesses looked out of the windows. Village children gathered around us, taking all possible part in the "war". The din, the turmoil, the confusion grew. Uncle Yermolai hurried from another order with a bucket, believing that at our end the hut was busy. Someone's calf, tail up, rushed across the pasture. Chickens clucked away in all directions. And Alexei was already hurrying towards us, shaking his head, waving his arms, mooing long and condemningly. Sweaty and frenzied, he grabbed my armpits and dragged me home; I resisted, yelled and, in a rage, kept brandishing a gun or a saber, looking back at Ivan, at Polkan, at Pitersky and at a horde of guys. The crowd at that moment was advancing on the pond, where a duck brood swam in the dirty rusty water. Away from sin. The brood wisely made their way to the opposite bank, the ducklings dusted themselves off and quacked disapproval of the reprehensible human behavior. I was torn from the strong hands of Alexei with a hoarse cry, either because I wanted to fight more, or because the nettles burned my legs and arms, or for mutual reasons. The uproar at the pond stopped when Nikolai Ivanovich appeared on the porch. Polkan was the first to hand over, he began to wag his tail slavishly and treacherously: they say, don’t mix me with these unlucky mischief-makers! Following Polkan, the guys jumped at random, showing black heels. Ivan muttered something unintelligible and retired under a canopy. The most stubborn of all was Pitersky; he continued to “clean” the pond, and the ducklings, and his uncle, and Polkan, until his old woman came for him and lured him with promises to give vodka, and she showed a bottle of water from under her apron or from under her skirt.

Ivan did not closely converge with anyone, did not make friends; intractable, obstinate, he had no attachments; he respected, perhaps, not out of fear, but out of conscience, only his grandfather. Seeing him, Ivan got up, with difficulty straightened his lower back and back, earnestly bowed to his grandfather, followed him with a gaze and did not sit down until he was hiding. Ivan never got up in front of the others.

Ivan died suddenly. In the morning they found him under the barn shed, already cold and covered with dew. Long before his death, he was completely dry, and his corpse resembled relics: the temples collapsed, his cheeks were deeply sunken, his cheekbones protruded sharply, his collarbones protruded; his eyes went under his forehead, his bent knees stuck out like sticks. In the corners of the blue-black lips swarming green flies and wood lice crawled across the face ... What a lonely, bitter and untold life can be!

... Behind the gardens - a hemp plant. Ripe rye. On the hillock, the mill keeps waving and waving its wings tirelessly, it would fly in, but the earth holds firmly. There is a hint of dill, cucumber blossom, and sometimes the wind brings a hot, bitter smell of wormwood. The sky is about to open up, surrounded by mirages.

I decided to make humanity happy. Raw eggs are excellently lathered. From under the hens I stole three eggs "for experiments." In a tin - yolks, salt, blue, cherry glue is added to them, the glue will harden, the liquid will turn into solid, and excellent soap is ready. Shall I add ink for coloring?.. So, I will become a famous soap maker, get rich, I will travel ... Maybe add sugar as well? For what? We'll see there. Better yet, lime. However, quicklime, if poured with water, sizzles and burns. Wouldn't lime produce something explosive instead of soap, say gunpowder? Well, that's not bad for a young chemist! It's even wonderful to invent gunpowder. Some people sweat all their lives over stench, but they don’t invent gunpowder ... We must be careful: what if the tin explodes! I put a piece of lime in the mixture and I even close my eyes from fear. Thank the creator, nothing happened!..

A woman descends from the mill from the hillock; closer and closer it flickers in the thick and tall rye. No one should guess about my secret chemistry classes. I diligently hide the tin under the bump. Soap and gunpowder failed today - there is no trace of discouragement: they will certainly succeed tomorrow. In a woman, I recognize the wanderer Natalya. Her head is tied with a gray calico scarf, the ends of the scarf stick out with horns above her forehead, and a wicker knapsack is behind her back. Natalya walks quickly, easily, leaning on the staff. She is in her forties, but it is difficult to determine her age by her face: she is tanned, weather-beaten almost black. She is wearing a homespun plaid skirt, a white woolen zipun, her feet in dusty bast shoes, tightly and neatly wrapped with onuchs and twine. I call Natalia.

Hello, dear, hello, master, - Natalya affably replies, wiping her lips tightly in small wrinkles. - Will you welcome a guest into your house? Is everyone alive and well?

Thank you. All are alive and well. I'll take a visit.

I speak solidly, as if indeed I am the owner. I waddle next to Natalya, like a peasant.

Natalya from a neighboring village, about ten years ago she immediately lost her husband and three children: in her absence they died of intoxication. Since then, she has sold the hut, left the household and wanders.

Natalya speaks softly, melodiously, ingenuously. Her words are pure, as if washed, as close, understandable as the sky, the field, the bread, the village huts. And all Natalia is simple, warm, calm and majestic. Natalya is not surprised at anything: she has seen everything, experienced everything, she tells about modern affairs and incidents, even dark and terrible ones, as if they are separated from our life for millennia. Natalya does not flatter anyone; it is very good in her that she does not go to monasteries and holy places, does not look for miraculous icons. She is worldly and talks about worldly things. There is no excess, no fussiness. The burden of the wanderer Natalya bears easily and she buries her grief from people. She has an amazing memory. She remembers when and how children fell ill in such and such a family, where during the Great Lent Kharlamov or Sidorov went to work, whether they lived well, whether they lived well and what kind of renovation they brought to the housewives.

Seeing the wanderer, Alexey mumbles joyfully, rushes to put the samovar on. From the knapsack Natalya slowly takes out a popular print "Guac or irresistible fidelity". She gives her sister a wooden doll, and her mother a towel embroidered with roosters. Over tea, carefully biting off sugar with strong and juicy teeth, supporting the saucer on spread fingers, Natalya narrates:

- ... I went near Kazan to one Tatar, and he also asked for peddlers for the night. An old Tatar, over sixty years old; the neck is all in folds and the scar is blue from the lip to the very chest; eyes tear up. He treats the pedlars, and they ask - "Where is your mistress?" The Tatar laughs - "My hostess is young, she is afraid of guests." - In the corner on the bench - an accordion. - "Who, master, plays the accordion?" - "And my wife and plays." The peddlers came: show me and show the hostess, let her play the accordion, we'll give you a mirror and a comb. One of the peddlers is in years, and the other is quite young, about twenty years old, no more. The Tartar leads his wife out of the other half, she resists, lowers her head, does not look at us, all crimson, blushing. In appearance - just a girl; with small rowans around the eyes, so pleasant and clean. She sat on the windowsill, buried herself and covered her face with her palm, unaccustomed. They begged - she took the accordion, began to play, and so it goes well with her; enough for the heart. Sadly, and everyone seems to be crying in harmony. She played well. The young peddler does not take his eyes off the Tatar, and only with a high eyebrow, no, no, yes, and he will lead; and I listen and think: he plays about his life with the old unenviable. It turns me, a wanderer, from my soul, as soon as I look at the old man’s scar, at the Adam’s apple and at the wrinkles, but for her, the young one, there’s no pleasantness with him at all: with such a person you won’t be pleased. She played, covered her face again with her palm and ran away. And the guy just sighed after her with his whole chest and ran his hand over his forehead ... The next day I said to the Tatar - “Your wife is not a match for you, Akhmet, not a match. went to you, but she has not yet seen the light. - “The first wife,” the old man answers, “died with me, someone needs to look after the guys. And this one served as a nanny. Well, that’s how it happened. , she is a round orphan ... "He paused, frowned: -" You have me, Natalya, don’t knock her down. We have our own law, you have your own law; go quickly, where you came from ... "Here they are, our affairs are women's!. .

What did you see in the Caucasus?

I was, my dear, I was there. The mountains are something marvelous, marvelous, miraculous. You stand on a mountain, and heavenly clouds float like a river below; the spirit from the height captures. Snow on the mountains lie in white scythes, pure, pure. They hurt their eyes. There are many oak forests, the rivers are fast.

She left those places, at first she was happy; a year has passed - she yearns for the mountains: they are pulled to her; remember them, and exactly what kind of gift would mother give. They even began to dream in dreams, the right word ... But they live there not in our way, they live hard. We, too, do not have any ease, and there it is even worse. Sometimes you look - a man with a jug of water from steep to steep for an entire hour barely moves his feet. Hay is mowed at a terrible height and lowered down on ropes; that's not the point. The people are toiling. That is why the desperate must eat among them. Oh, not everyone there welcomes us, another looks up - worse than a frying pan, the handkerchief is about to start ...

“According to A. Voronsky, Natalya from a neighboring village, about ten years ago she immediately lost her husband and three children: in her absence, they died of intoxication. Since then…”

According to A. Voronsky ... Natalya from a neighboring village, about ten years ago she immediately lost her husband and three children: in her absence they died of intoxication. Since then, she has sold the hut, left the household and wanders.

Natalya speaks softly, melodiously, ingenuously. Her words are pure, as if washed, as close, pleasant as the sky, the field, the bread, the village huts. And all Natalia is simple, warm, calm and majestic. Natalya is not surprised at anything: she has seen everything, experienced everything, she tells about modern affairs and incidents, even dark and terrible ones, as if they are separated from our life for millennia. Natalya does not flatter anyone; she is very good in that she does not go to monasteries and holy places, does not look for miraculous icons. She is worldly and talks about worldly things. There is no excess, no fussiness.

The burden of the wanderer Natalya bears easily, and she buries her grief from people. She has an amazing memory. She remembers when and in what way they fell ill in such and such a family. She talks about everything willingly, but in one thing she is stingy with words: when they ask her why she became a wanderer.

... I already studied in the bursa, was known as "inveterate" and "desperate", took revenge from around the corner on guards and teachers, discovering remarkable ingenuity in these cases. During one of the breaks, the students informed me that “some woman” was waiting for me in the dressing room. Baba turned out to be Natalya. Natalya walked from afar, from Kholmogory, she remembered me, and although she had to give a hook eighty versts, but how not to visit an orphan, not to look at his city life, her son probably grew up, grew wiser to the joy and comfort of his mother. I inattentively listened to Natalya: I was ashamed of her bast shoes, onuche, knapsack, of her rural appearance, I was afraid to drop myself in the eyes of the students and kept looking askance at peers snooping past. Finally, he could not stand it and said rudely to Natalya:

Let's go from here.

Without waiting for consent, I took her to the backyard so that no one would see us there. Natalya untied her knapsack and slipped me rustic cakes.

Nothing more in store for you, my friend. And you don’t bury, you baked it yourself, in butter, in cow’s oil, I have them.

At first, I sullenly refused, but Natalya imposed donuts. Soon Natalya noticed that I was shy of her and was not at all pleased with her. She also noticed the torn, ink-stained, casenet jacket on me, the dirty and pale neck, the red boots, and my harried, scowling look. Natalie's eyes filled with tears.

What is it you, son, do not utter a good word? So, in vain I came to you.

I looked dumbfounded at the sore on my arm and muttered something languidly. Natalya leaned over me, shook her head and, looking into my eyes, whispered:

Yes, you, dear, as if not in yourself! You were not like that at home. Oh, they did bad things to you! Famously, apparently, they let you in! Here it is, the teaching that comes out.

Nothing, - I muttered insensitively, pulling away from Natalia.

Alexander Konstantinovich Voronsky (September 8, 1884, Khoroshavka village, Tambov province - August 13, 1937, shot) - Russian Bolshevik revolutionary, writer, literary critic, art theorist.

The problem of repentance for what has been done.

The problem of selfishness, callousness, cruelty, heartlessness.

The problem of the strength of the human spirit.

The problem of the inner beauty of man.

The problem of attitude to life's difficulties.

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1) Amlinsky V. Here are the people who come to me

2) Astafiev V. In the cage of the zoo capercaillie yearned.

3) Baklanov G. For a year of service in the battery, Dolgovushin changed many positions

4) Baklanov G. The German mortar battery is hitting again

5) Bykov V. The old man did not immediately tear off from the opposite shore

6) Vasiliev B. From our class I have memories and one photograph.

7) Veresaev V. Tired, with dull irritation boiling in his soul

8) Voronsky A. Natalia from a neighboring village

9) Garshin V. I live in the Fifteenth Line on the Middle Avenue

10) Glushko M. It was cold on the platform, grains were falling again

11) Kazakevich E. Only Katya remained in the secluded dugout.

12) Kachalkov S. How time changes people!

13) Round B. Still, time is an amazing category.

14) Kuvaev O. ... The tent dried out from the stones that retained heat

15) Kuvaev O. The traditional evening of the field workers served as a milestone

16) Likhachev D. They say that the content determines the form.

17) Mamin-Sibiryak D. Dreams make the strongest impression on me

18) Nagibin Yu. In the first years after the revolution

19) Nikitayskaya N. Seventy years have passed, but I do not stop scolding myself.

20) Nosov E. What is a small homeland?

21) Orlov D. Tolstoy entered my life without introducing himself.

22) Paustovsky K. We lived for several days at the cordon

23) Sanin V. Gavrilov - that's who did not give Sinitsyn peace.

24) Simonov K. All three Germans were from the Belgrade garrison ...

25) Simonov K. It was in the morning.

26) Sobolev A. In our time, reading fiction

27) Soloveichik S. I once rode in the train

28) Sologub F. In the evening they again met at the Starkins.

29) Soloukhin V. From childhood, from school

30) Chukovsky K. The other day a young student came to me

Amlinsky Vladimir Ilyich is a Russian writer.

Here are the people who come to me, write greeting cards to me, pretend that I am the same as everyone else, and that everything will be all right, or they don’t pretend, but simply reach out to me, maybe they believe in a miracle, in my recovery. Here they are. They have this most compassion. Someone else's illness also sharpens them a little - some more, others less. But there are many who despise someone else's illness, they do not dare to say aloud, but think: well, why is he still living, why is he crawling? So in many medical institutions refer to the chronicles, the so-called chronically ill.

Poor healthy people, they do not understand that all their peace and health are conditional, that one moment, one misfortune - and everything turned upside down, and they themselves are already forced to wait for help and ask for compassion. I don't want this for them.

I lived with them side by side for several years. Now I remember it like a bad dream. They were my roommates. Mother, father, daughters. It seems like people are people. They worked properly, their family was friendly, they will not give offense to their own. And in general, everything is as it should be: no drunkenness, no betrayal, a healthy life, healthy relationships and love for the song. When they get home, they listen to the radio to the fullest, listen to music, the latest news, and discuss international events. Surprisingly smart people. They do not like, they do not tolerate disorder. Where did you get it, put it there! The things of the place know. The floors are rubbed, everything is shiny, the lights in public places are off. A penny saves a ruble. And here I am. And I have crutches. And I do not fly, but quietly walk. I waddle on the parquet. And the parquet from crutches - that spoils ... Here our spiritual discord with them began, the abyss and misunderstanding. Now all this is a joke, but there was a uniform war, cold, with outbreaks and attacks. It was necessary to have iron nerves in order to hobble to the bathroom under their hostile gazes and bend down the spine there, to wipe the floor, because a wet floor is a violation of the norms of social behavior, it is an attack on the very foundations of communal life.

And it began: if you are sick, live separately! What can I say? I would be glad separately, I ask about it, but they don’t give it. The sick have no place in our healthy life. So these people decided and began a siege, an embargo and a blockade against me. And the worst thing for them was that I did not respond, did not get into battles, not giving them joy in a verbal brawl. I have learned the art of silence. I swear, sometimes I wanted to take a good brand new machine gun ... But it is so, in nightmarish visions. I would not take a machine gun, even if we ended up on a desert island, in the absence of people's district courts. By that time, I had already learned to understand the value of life, even their nasty life. So, I was silent. I tried to be taller, and from constant attempts, I became so. And then sometimes I felt so bad that it didn't bother me anymore. I was not worried about their categories, I thought differently, and only when I rolled back from the abyss did I remember my communal enemies.

I gave them more and more trouble, more and more loudly pounded with my crutches, it became more and more difficult for me to wipe the floors, not to spill water, and the atmosphere in this strange monastery became more and more intolerable, uniting the most diverse, completely unnecessary to each other people.

And at one fine moment I understood quite clearly that perhaps the most important courage of a person is to overcome such a small quagmire, to get out of everyday infamy, not to succumb to the temptation of petty retribution, dwarf war, penny despair.

Because little things like that corrode with great force a lot of people who have not developed immunity to it. And now these people are seriously getting into squabbles, into a stupid struggle, they are devastated, they are wasting their nerves, they can no longer stop. When they get old, they will understand all the insignificance of this fuss, but it will be too late, already too much strength has been given to mouse fuss, so much evil has been accumulated inside, so many passions have been spent that could feed something important that should have moved a person forward .

Astafiev Viktor Petrovich - Soviet and Russian writer.

Capercaillie yearned in the zoo's cage. Happy. Publicly. A cage the size of two or three desks was both a prison and a "taiga" at the same time. In the corner of it was arranged something like a sit-in in the open. A twig of pine with dry, inanimate needles stuck out above the hole, grass was scattered or stuck on the cage, several tussocks were depicted and between them there was also a "forest" - the top of a pine, a twig of heather, withered bushes, taken here, in the zoo, after spring shearing.

The capercaillie in captivity withered to a cock's height and weight, its feather in captivity was not renewed, it only fell out, and there were not enough feathers in the fan-spread tail, a hole shone, the neck and scruff of the bird were exactly covered with felted wool. And only the eyebrows filled with red rage, burned militantly, engulfing the eyes with a dawn arc, now and then being drawn in by the impenetrable, blind film of the taiga darkness, oblivion of the yearning male.

Confusing the time and place, ignoring the crowd of curious people, the captive capercaillie sang the song of love assigned to him by nature. Bondage did not extinguish the spring passion in him and did not destroy the desire to prolong his kind.

He slowly, with the dignity of a fighter, stomped baggily on the rag-sluggish grass between the tussocks, lifted his head and, aiming his beak at a heavenly star, appealed to the world and heaven, demanded that he be heard and listened to. And starting the song with rare, distinct clicks, all gaining strength and frequency, he entered into such a passionate rapture, into such forgetfulness that his eyes again and again were covered with a film, he froze in place, and only his womb was red-hot, his throat was suffocated from a love call, still continued to roll, crumble pebbles into shaking fragments.

At such moments, the bird giant becomes deaf and blind, and the cunning man, knowing this, sneaks up on him and kills him. Kills at the moment of the spring intoxicating celebration, not allowing the song of love to finish.

He did not see, or rather, did not want to see or notice anyone, this captive, he lived, continued to live in captivity, the life assigned to him by nature, and when his eyes were "blind", his ears were "deaf", he was carried away by his memory to a distant northern swamp, into sparse pine forests and, raising his head, aimed his beak, stained with pine resin, at that star that shone for thousands of years to his feathered brothers.

Looking at the capercaillie slave, I thought that once giant birds lived and sang in the light, but people drove them into the wilderness and darkness, made them hermits, and now they put them in a cage. Man pushes back and pushes back all living things in the taiga with gas and oil pipelines, hellish torches, electric mains, impudent helicopters, merciless, soulless equipment further, deeper. But our country is great, there is no way to completely finish off nature, although a person tries with all his might, but he cannot topple all living things under the root and reduce to the root not her best particle, therefore, himself. He got "nature" at home, dragged her into the city - for fun and for his whim. Why does he need to go to the taiga, to the cold ...

During the year of service in the battery, Dolgovushin changed many positions, nowhere showing his abilities.

He got into the regiment by accident, on the march. It was at night. Artillery moved towards the front, along the roadside, in the dust, raising the dust with many feet, the infantry stomped. And, as always, several infantrymen asked for guns, to drive up a little. Among them was Dolgovushin. The rest then jumped off, and Dolgovushin fell asleep. When I woke up, the infantry was no longer on the road. Where his company was going, what its number - he did not know any of this, because it had only been two days since he got into it. So Dolgovushin took root in the artillery regiment.

At first, he was assigned to Bogachev in the control platoon of a reel operator. Across the Dniester, near Iasi, Bogachev only once took him with him to the forward observation post, where everything was shot from machine guns and where, not only during the day, but also at night, you can’t raise your head. Here Dolgovushin foolishly washed everything from himself and remained in one greatcoat, and under it - in what his mother gave birth. So he sat by the phone, wrapped around himself, and his partner ran and crawled along the line with the coil until he was wounded. The next day, Bogachev expelled Dolgovushin: to his platoon, he selected people whom he could rely on in battle, as if he were himself. And Dolgovushin got to the firemen.

Resigned, silently diligent, everything would be fine, but he turned out to be painfully stupid. When a dangerous task fell out, they said about him: "This one will not cope." And if it doesn't work, why send it? And they sent another. So Dolgovushin migrated to the carriage. He did not ask, he was transferred. Maybe now, by the end of the war, he would have fought for his inability somewhere in the PFS warehouse, but in the wagons he was destined to fall under the command of foreman Ponomarev. This one did not believe in stupidity and immediately explained his attitudes:

In the army it’s like this: if you don’t know, they will teach you, if you don’t want, they will force you. - And he said: - From here you have only one way: to the infantry. So remember.

What about the infantry? And people live in the infantry, ”Dolgovushin answered despondently, more than anything in the world afraid of falling into the infantry again.

With that, the foreman began to educate him. Dolgovushin was no longer alive. And now he dragged himself to the NP, under the very shelling, all for the sake of the same upbringing. Two kilometers is not a long way, but to the front, and even under fire ...

Cautiously squinting at the distant gaps, he tried to keep up with the foreman. Now Dolgovushin walked in front, hunched over, and the sergeant-major in the back. The narrow strip of corn ended, and they walked through the streets, resting on the go: it was safe here. And the higher they climbed, the more they saw the battlefield left behind, it seemed to fall and become flat as they climbed up.

Ponomarev looked back once more. The German tanks spread apart from each other and continued to fire. Flat gaps rose up all over the field, and infantrymen crawled between them. Every time they got up to run across, machine guns began to scribble furiously. The farther to the rear, the more unfussy, more confident Dolgovushin became. They had to pass the open space, and further on the crest again began to corn. Through its sparse wall, a reddish dump of a trench, covered with snow, looked through, some people ran across there, occasionally a head was shown above the parapet and a shot was heard. The wind was contrary, and the veil of tears that covered my eyes made it difficult to see carefully what was going on there. But they had already moved so far away from the front line, both were now so sure of their safety, that they continued to walk without worry. “Here, then, the second line of defense is being built,” Ponomarev decided with satisfaction. And Dolgovushin raised his clenched fists and, shaking them, shouted to those who fired from the trench.

There were fifty meters to the corn when a man in a helmet jumped onto the crest of the trench. With his short legs apart, clearly visible against the sky, he raised a rifle above his head, shook it and shouted something.

Germans! - measurement Dolgovushin.

I'll give those "Germans"! - Shouted the foreman and shook his finger.

All the way he watched not so much the enemy as Dolgovushin, whom he firmly decided to re-educate. And when he shouted "Germans", the foreman, who was suspicious of him, not only saw cowardice in this, but also disbelief in the order and rationality that exists in the army. However, Dolgovushin, who was usually shy of his superiors, this time, without paying attention, rushed to run back and to the left.

I'll run you! - Ponomarev shouted after him and tried to unfasten the holster of his revolver.

Dolgovushin fell, clawing his hands quickly, flickering with the soles of his boots, crawled with a thermos on his back. The bullets were already kicking up the snow around him. Understanding nothing, the foreman looked at these boiling snow fountains. Suddenly, behind Dolgovushin, in the lowland that opened up under the slope, he saw a sledge train. On a snowy field as level as a frozen river, horses were standing near the sledges. Other horses were lying around. Footprints and deep furrows left by crawling people fanned out from the sleigh. They broke off suddenly, and at the end of each of them, where the bullet caught up with him, lay the rider. Only one, having already gone far, continued to crawl with a whip in his hand, and a machine gun fired at him from above without stopping.

"Germans in the rear!" - understood Ponomarev. Now, if they put pressure from the front and the infantry starts to retreat, from here, from the rear, from the shelter, the Germans will meet it with machine-gun fire. Out of the blue, this is destruction.

Right, crawl right! he shouted to Dolgovushin.

But then the foreman was pushed in the shoulder, he fell and no longer saw what happened to the wagoner. Only Dolgovushin's heels flickered ahead, moving away. Ponomarev crawled heavily after him and, raising his head from the snow, shouted:

Take it right, take it right! There's a slope!

Heels swerved to the left. "Heard!" - happily thought Ponomarev. He finally managed to pull out the revolver. He turned around and, aiming, letting Dolgovushin get away, fired all seven rounds at the Germans. But there was no stop in the wounded hand. Then he crawled again. He was six meters away from the corn, no more, and he already thought to himself: "Now he is alive." Then someone hit him on the head with a stick, on the bone. Ponomarev trembled, poked his face into the snow, and the light dimmed.

And Dolgovushin, meanwhile, safely descended under the ramp. Here the bullets went overhead. Dolgovushin caught his breath, pulled out a “bull” from behind the lapel of his earflaps, and, bending over, smoked it. He swallowed smoke, choking and burning, and looked around. There was no more shooting upstairs. It was all over there.

“Crawl to the right,” Dolgovushin recalled and grinned with the superiority of the living over the dead. - That's what happened to the right ... He freed his shoulders from the straps, and the thermos fell into the snow. Dolgovushin pushed him away with his foot. Where by crawling, where by bending and dashing, he got out from under the fire, and anyone who believed that Dolgovushin was “bruised by God” would be amazed now at how sensibly, applying to the terrain, he acts.

In the evening, Dolgovushin came to the firing positions. He told how they fired back, how the foreman was killed before his eyes and he tried to drag him dead. He showed an empty disk machine. Sitting on the ground next to the kitchen, he ate greedily, while the cook scooped the meat out of the ladle with a spoon and put it in the pot. And everyone looked sympathetically at Dolgovushin.

“That's how it is impossible to form an opinion about people at first sight,” thought Nazarov, who did not like Dolgovushin. - I considered him a man of my own mind, but this is what he turns out to be. It’s just that I still don’t know how to understand people ... ”And since the captain was wounded that day, Nazarov, feeling guilty before Dolgovushin, called the battery commander, and Dolgovushin took a quiet, bread-and-butter post of captain.

Baklanov Grigory Yakovlevich - Russian Soviet writer and screenwriter.

Again the German mortar battery hits, the same one, but now the explosions lie to the left. It was she who had been beating since the evening. I rummage, rummage with a stereo tube - no flash, no dust over the firing positions - everything is hidden by a ridge of heights. It seems that he would give his hand, if only to destroy it. I roughly feel the place where she stands, and have already tried to destroy her several times, but she changes positions. If only the heights were ours! But we are sitting in the ditch of the road, putting a stereo tube above us, and our entire view is up to the crest.

We dug this trench when the ground was still soft. Now the road, torn apart by caterpillars, with footprints, wheels in fresh mud, has turned to stone and cracked. Not only a mine - a light projectile leaves almost no funnel on it: the sun has calcined it so.

When we landed on this bridgehead, we did not have the strength to take the heights. Under fire, the infantry lay down at the foot and hastily began to dig in. There was a defense. It arose as follows: an infantryman fell, pressed by a machine-gun stream, and, first of all, he dug up the ground under his heart, poured a mound in front of his head, protecting it from a bullet. By morning, at this place, he was already walking to his full height in his trench, buried himself in the ground - it was not so easy to pull him out of here.

From these trenches we went on the attack several times, but the Germans again laid us down with machine-gun fire, heavy mortar and artillery fire. We can't even suppress their mortars because we can't see them. And the Germans from the heights look through the entire bridgehead, and the crossing, and the other side. We hold on, clinging to the foot, we have already taken root, and yet it is strange that they still have not thrown us into the Dniester. It seems to me that if we were on those heights, and they were here, we would have already bathed them.

Even when I tear myself away from the stereotube and close my eyes, even in a dream I see these heights, an uneven ridge with all the landmarks, crooked trees, funnels, white stones that have come out of the ground, as if it is a skeleton of a height washed out by a downpour.

When the war ends and people remember it, they will probably remember the great battles in which the outcome of the war was decided, the fate of mankind was decided. Wars are always remembered as great battles. And among them there will be no place for our bridgehead. His fate is like the fate of one person when the fate of millions is being decided. But, by the way, often the fates and tragedies of millions begin with the fate of one person. For some reason they just forget about it. Since we began to advance, we have captured hundreds of such bridgeheads on all rivers. And the Germans immediately tried to throw us off, but we held on, clinging to the shore with our teeth and hands. Sometimes the Germans succeeded in this. Then, sparing no effort, we seized a new foothold. And then they attacked him.

I don't know if we will attack from this bridgehead. And none of us can know this. The offensive begins where it is easier to break through the defenses, where there is operational space for tanks. But the very fact that we are sitting here, the Germans feel day and night. No wonder they tried twice to throw us into the Dniester. And they will try again. Now everyone, even the Germans, knows that the war will soon end. And how it will end, they also know. Perhaps that is why the desire to survive is so strong in us. In the most difficult months of the forty-first year, surrounded, for the mere fact of stopping the Germans in front of Moscow, everyone would have given their lives without hesitation. But now the whole war is over, most of us will see victory, and it's a shame to die in recent months.

Bykov Vasil Vladimirovich - Soviet and Belarusian writer, public figure, participant in the Great Patriotic War.

Left alone on the cliff, the old man silently fell silent, and his face, overgrown with bluish bristles, acquired an expression of long-standing habitual thoughtfulness. He was silent for a long time, mechanically going over the greasy sides of his tunic with a red edging along the edge, and his watery eyes peered unblinkingly into the district through the thickening twilight. The Kolomian below, waving the end of his fishing rod in his hand, deftly threw it into the oily surface of the darkening water. Flashing with a kapron fishing line, the sinker with a quiet splash quickly went under the water, dragging the bait along with it.

Petrovich shuddered slightly on the cliff, as if from cold, his fingers froze on his chest, and his whole thin, bony figure under his tunic shrunk and shrunk. But his eyes were still fixed on the river bank; on this, it seemed that he did not notice anything and seemed not even to hear Kolomiyets' unkind words. Kolomiets, meanwhile, with his usual skill, threw two or three more donks into the water, strengthened the short, with tiny bells of the angler in the stones.

They all lead you by the nose, fool, assent. And you believe. They will come! Who will come when the war is already over! Think with your head.

It was noticeably getting dark on the river, the dim silhouette of Kolomiyets moved indistinctly near the water. He said nothing more to the old man, and kept fiddling with the nozzle and fishing rods, while Petrovich, after sitting silently for some time, spoke thoughtfully and quietly:

So this is the youngest, Tolik ... He got sick in the eyes. As it gets dark, he sees nothing. Senior, he saw well. What if it's with the elder?

As with the elder, the same with the younger,” the Kolomiets cut him off rudely. - War, she did not reckon with anyone. Especially in blockade.

Well! The old man simply agreed. - There was a blockade. Tolik with eyes only stayed at home for a week, and Ales already comes running, says: they have surrounded him from all sides, but there is little strength. Well, let's go. The youngest was sixteen years old. He asked to stay - in no way. When the Germans left, they said to build a fire...

Off the head! Kolomiets was surprised and even got up from his donkeys. - They said - to decompose! .. When was it ?!

Yes, Petrovka. Accurately on Petrovka, yes ...

To Petrovka! And how many years have passed, do you think?

The old man, it seems, was extremely surprised and, it seems, for the first time in the evening, tore his suffering gaze from the forest line of the coast, barely glimpsing in the essence.

Yes, yo? After all, twenty-five years have passed, spruce head!

A grimace of deep inner pain distorted Petrovich's old face. His lips trembled with resentment quite like a child's, his eyes blinked rapidly, and his gaze suddenly faded. It can be seen that only now the whole terrible meaning of his many years of delusion began to slowly reach his clouded consciousness.

So it's... So it's like...

Inwardly, all tensed in some kind of effort, he probably wanted and could not express some thought that justified himself, and from this unbearable tension his gaze became motionless, meaningless and went off the other side. The old man drooped in front of his eyes, became even more gloomy, and withdrew into himself. He probably had something inside him that for a long time fettered him with immobility and dumbness.

I'm telling you, stop these amusements, - Kolomiets was irritably urging downstairs, fiddling with tackles. - Guys can not wait. Amba to both. Already somewhere and the bones have rotted. Like this!

The old man was silent. Occupied with his work, Kolomiets also fell silent. The twilight of the approaching night quickly swallowed up the coast, the bushes, gray wisps of fog crept from the riverine ravines, its light smoky streams stretched along the quiet reach. Rapidly dimming, the river lost its daylight brilliance, the dark opposite bank tipped wide into its depths, flooding the river surface with smooth impenetrable blackness. The dredger stopped rumbling, it became completely deaf and quiet, and in this silence, thinly and gently, as if from an unknown distance, the small bell of the donkey chirped. Slapping over the stones with the soles of his rubber boots, Kolomiets rushed to the last fishing rod on the shore and, dexterously moving his hands, began to pull the fishing line out of the water. He did not see how Petrovich got up with difficulty on the cliff, staggered and, hunched over, silently wandered somewhere away from this shore.

Probably, in the darkness the old man parted ways with Yura, who soon appeared on the cliff and, grunting, threw a crackling armful of deadwood at his feet - a large armful next to Petrovich's small bundle.

Where is grandfather?

Look what you got! - Hearing his friend, Kolomiets spoke cheerfully under the cliff. - Kelbik what do you need! Half a kilo will pull ...

Where is Petrovich? - sensing something unkind, Yura repeated the question.

Petrovich? And who is it ... He went, probably. I told him...

How? - Yura was dumbfounded on the precipice. - What you said?

Said everything. And then they lead a madman by the nose. They agree...

What have you done? You killed him!

That's how he killed it! Will be alive!

Oh, and Kalun! Oh, and the fog! I told you! Everyone here took care of him! Spared! And you?..

What is there to spare. Let him know the truth.

This truth will kill him. After all, they both died in the blockade. And before that, he himself took them over there by boat.

Vasiliev Boris Lvovich - Russian writer.

From our class, I have memories and one photograph. Group portrait with the class teacher in the center, girls around and boys at the edges. The photo faded, and since the photographer was diligently pointing at the teacher, the edges that had been smeared during the shooting were now completely blurred; sometimes it seems to me that they have blurred because the boys of our class have long since passed into oblivion, never having had time to grow up, and their features have been dissolved by time.

For some reason, even now I don’t want to remember how we ran away from lessons, smoked in the boiler room and arranged a hustle in the locker room in order to even for a moment touch the one we loved so secretly that we didn’t admit it to ourselves. I spend hours looking at the faded photograph, at the already blurred faces of those who are not on this earth: I want to understand. After all, no one wanted to die, right?

And we did not know that death was on duty outside the threshold of our class. We were young, and the ignorance of youth is filled with faith in our own immortality. But of all the boys that look at me from the photo, four survived.

And since childhood, we have been playing with what we ourselves lived. Classes competed not for grades or percentages, but for the honor of writing a letter to the Papanins or being called "Chkalovsky", for the right to attend the opening of a new factory workshop or to send a delegation to meet Spanish children.

And I also remember how I grieved that I could not help the Chelyuskinites, because my plane made an emergency landing somewhere in Yakutia, before reaching the ice camp. The real landing: I got "bad" without learning the poem. Then I learned it: “Yes, there were people in our time ...” But the thing was that there was a huge home-made map hanging on the classroom wall and each student had his own plane. An excellent rating was five hundred kilometers, but I received a “bad” and my plane was taken off the flight. And "bad" was not just in the school magazine: it was bad for me myself and a little - a little bit! - to the Chelyuskins, whom I have let down so much.

Smile at me, comrade. I forgot how you smiled, I'm sorry. I am now much older than you, I have a lot of things to do, I have become overgrown with chores. like a shell ship. At night, more and more often I hear the sobs of my own heart: it is tired. Tired of hurting.

I became gray-haired, and sometimes they give me a place in public transport. Yielding boys and girls, very similar to you guys. And then I think that God forbid they repeat your fate. And if this does happen, then God forbid they become the same.

Between you, yesterday, and them, today, lies not just a generation. We firmly knew that there would be a war, but they are convinced that it will not. And this is wonderful: they are freer than us. The only pity is that this freedom sometimes turns into serenity ...

In the ninth grade, Valentina Andronovna offered us the theme of a free essay “What do I want to become?”. And all the guys wrote that they want to become commanders of the Red Army. Even Vovik Khramov wished to be a tanker, which caused a storm of enthusiasm. Yes, we sincerely wanted our fate to be harsh. We elected it ourselves, dreaming of the army, aviation and navy: we considered ourselves men, and there were no more male professions then.

In this sense, I was lucky. I caught up with my father in height already in the eighth grade, and since he was a regular commander of the Red Army, his old uniform passed to me. A tunic and riding breeches, boots and a commander's belt, an overcoat and a budenovka made of dark gray cloth. I put these beautiful things on one wonderful day and did not take them off for fifteen years. Until he was demobilized. The form then was already different, but its content did not change: it still remained the clothes of my generation. The most beautiful and the most fashionable.

All the guys were jealous of me. And even Iskra Polyakova.

Of course, it’s a little big for me,” Iskra said, trying on my tunic. But how comfortable it is. Especially if you tighten the belt tighter.

I often remember these words, because they have a sense of time. We all strove to draw tighter, as if every moment a formation was waiting for us, as if the readiness of this general formation for battles and victories depended on our appearance alone. We were young, but we longed not for personal happiness, but for personal achievement. We did not know that a feat must first be sown and cultivated. That it ripens slowly, invisibly filling with strength, so that one day it will burst into a dazzling flame, the flashes of which will shine for future generations for a long time to come.

Veresaev Vikenty Vikentievich - Russian writer, translator.

Tired, with dull irritation seething in my soul, I sat down on a bench. Suddenly, somewhere not far behind me, the sounds of a tuned violin were heard. I looked around in surprise: behind the acacia bushes the back of a small outbuilding was white, and the sounds rushed from its wide open, unlit windows. It means that young Yartsev is at home... The musician began to play. I got up to leave; These artificial human sounds seemed to me a gross insult to those around me.

I slowly moved forward, carefully stepping on the grass so that the twig would not crackle, and Yartsev played ...

It was strange music, and improvisation was immediately felt. But what an improvisation! Five minutes, ten minutes passed, and I stood still, listening eagerly.

The sounds flowed timidly, uncertainly. They seemed to be looking for something, as if they were trying to express something that they were unable to express. Not by the melody itself, they attracted attention to themselves - it, in the strict sense, did not even exist - but precisely by this search, longing for something else that involuntarily waited ahead. “Now it’s going to be real,” I thought. And the sounds flowed all the same uncertainly and restrainedly. From time to time something flashes in them - not a melody, only a fragment, a hint of a melody - but so wonderful that the heart sank. Just about, it seemed, the theme would be grasped - and timid seeking sounds would spill out into a divinely calm, solemn, unearthly song. But a minute passed, and the strings began to ring with suppressed sobs: the hint remained incomprehensible, the great thought that had flashed for a moment disappeared forever.

What is this? Has anyone else been going through the exact same thing as me? There could be no doubt: before him that night stood the same painful and insoluble riddle as before me.

Suddenly there was a sharp, impatient chord, followed by another, a third, and frantic sounds, interrupting each other, poured violently from under the bow. As if someone bound violently rushed, trying to break the chains. It was something completely new and unexpected. However, it was felt that something like this was needed, that it was impossible to remain with the former, because it was too tormenting with its barrenness and hopelessness ... Now there were no quiet tears, no despair was heard; every note sounded with strength and bold challenge. And something continued to struggle desperately, and the impossible began to seem possible; it seemed that one more effort - and strong chains would shatter to smithereens and some great, unequal struggle would begin. There was such a breath of youth, such self-confidence and courage, that there was no fear for the outcome of the struggle. “Let there be no hope, we will win back hope itself!” these mighty sounds seemed to be speaking.

I held my breath and listened in rapture. The night was silent and also listened, - sensitively, in surprise, listened to this whirlwind of alien, passionate, indignant sounds. The pale stars twinkled less frequently and more uncertainly; the thick fog over the pond stood motionless; the birches froze, drooping with weeping branches, and everything around froze and fell silent. Over everything dominated the sounds of a small, weak instrument rushing from the wing, and these sounds seemed to rumble over the earth like thunder.

With a new and strange feeling, I looked around. The same night stood before me in its former mysterious beauty. But I looked at her with different eyes: everything around me was now only a wonderful soundless accompaniment to those struggling, suffering sounds.

Now everything was meaningful, everything was full of deep, breathtaking, but native, understandable to the heart beauty. And this human beauty eclipsed, obscured, without destroying that beauty, still distant, still incomprehensible and inaccessible.

For the first time I returned home on such a night happy and satisfied.

Voronsky Alexander Konstantinovich - Russian writer, literary critic, art theorist.

... Natalya from a neighboring village, about ten years ago she immediately lost her husband and three children: in her absence, they died of intoxication. Since then, she has sold the hut, left the household and wanders.

Natalya speaks softly, melodiously, ingenuously. Her words are pure, as if washed, as close, pleasant as the sky, the field, the bread, the village huts. And all Natalia is simple, warm, calm and majestic. Natalya is not surprised at anything: she has seen everything, experienced everything, she tells about modern affairs and incidents, even dark and terrible ones, as if they are separated from our life for millennia. Natalya does not flatter anyone; she is very good in that she does not go to monasteries and holy places, does not look for miraculous icons. She is worldly and talks about worldly things. There is no excess, no fussiness.

The burden of the wanderer Natalya bears easily, and she buries her grief from people. She has an amazing memory. She remembers when and in what way they fell ill in such and such a family. She talks about everything willingly, but in one thing she is stingy with words: when they ask her why she became a wanderer.

... I already studied in the bursa, was known as "inveterate" and "desperate", took revenge from around the corner on guards and teachers, discovering remarkable ingenuity in these cases. During one of the breaks, the students informed me that “some woman” was waiting for me in the dressing room. Baba turned out to be Natalya. Natalya walked from afar, from Kholmogory, she remembered me, and although she had to give a hook eighty versts, but how not to visit an orphan, not to look at his city life, her son probably grew up, grew wiser to the joy and comfort of his mother. I inattentively listened to Natalya: I was ashamed of her bast shoes, onuche, knapsack, of her rural appearance, I was afraid to drop myself in the eyes of the students and kept looking askance at peers snooping past. Finally, he could not stand it and said rudely to Natalya:

Let's go from here.

Without waiting for consent, I took her to the backyard so that no one would see us there. Natalya untied her knapsack and slipped me rustic cakes.

Nothing more in store for you, my friend. And you don’t bury, you baked it yourself, in butter, in cow’s oil, I have them.

At first, I sullenly refused, but Natalya imposed donuts. Soon Natalya noticed that I was shy of her and was not at all pleased with her. She also noticed the torn, ink-stained, casenet jacket on me, the dirty and pale neck, the red boots, and my harried, scowling look. Natalie's eyes filled with tears.

What is it you, son, do not utter a good word? So, in vain I came to you.

I looked dumbfounded at the sore on my arm and muttered something languidly. Natalya leaned over me, shook her head and, looking into my eyes, whispered:

Yes, you, dear, as if not in yourself! You were not like that at home. Oh, they did bad things to you! Famously, apparently, they let you in! Here it is, the teaching that comes out.

Nothing, - I muttered insensitively, pulling away from Natalia.

Garshin Vsevolod Mikhailovich - Russian writer, poet, art critic.

I live in the Fifteenth Line on Sredny Prospekt and four times a day I walk along the embankment where foreign steamships dock. I love this place for its diversity, liveliness, hustle and bustle and for the fact that it has given me a lot of material. Here, looking at day laborers pulling coolies, turning gates and winches, carrying carts with all sorts of luggage, I learned to draw a working person.

I was walking home with Dedov, a landscape painter... A kind and innocent person, like the landscape itself, and passionately in love with his art. For him, there are no doubts; he writes what he sees: he sees a river - and writes a river, he sees a swamp with sedge - and writes a swamp with sedge. Why does he need this river and this swamp? - he never thinks. He seems to be an educated man; at least graduated as an engineer. He left the service, the blessing was some kind of inheritance that gives him the opportunity to exist without difficulty. Now he writes and writes: in the summer he sits from morning to evening on the field or in the forest for sketches, in the winter he tirelessly composes sunsets, sunrises, noons, the beginnings and ends of rain, winters, springs, and so on. He forgot his engineering and does not regret it. Only when we pass by the wharf does he often explain to me the significance of the huge iron and steel masses: parts of machines, boilers, and various odds and ends unloaded from the ship ashore.

Look what a cauldron they dragged, - he told me yesterday, hitting the ringing cauldron with his cane.

Are we not able to make them? I asked.

They do it with us, but not enough, not enough. See what a bunch they brought. And bad work; will have to be repaired here: see, the seam diverges? Here, too, the rivets loosened. Do you know how this thing is done? This, I tell you, is a hell of a job. A person sits in the cauldron and holds the rivet from the inside with tongs, which has the strength to press on them with his chest, and outside the master beats the rivet with a hammer and makes such a hat.

He pointed to a long row of raised metal circles running along the seam of the cauldron.

Dedov, it's like beating on the chest!

Doesn't matter. I once tried to climb into the boiler, so after four rivets I barely got out. Completely busted chest. And these somehow manage to get used to it. True, they die like flies: they will endure a year or two, and then, if they are alive, they are rarely fit for anything. If you please, endure the blows of a hefty hammer with your chest all day long, and even in a cauldron, in stuffiness, bent over in three deaths. In winter, the iron freezes, it's cold, and he sits or lies on the iron. Over there in that cauldron - you see, red, narrow - you can’t sit like that: lie on your side and substitute your chest. Hard work for these bastards.

Capercaillie?

Well, yes, the workers called them that. From this ringing, they often deaf. And do you think how much they get for such hard labor? Pennies! Because here neither skill nor art is required, but only meat ... How many painful impressions at all these factories, Ryabinin, if you only knew! I'm so glad I got rid of them for good. It was just hard to live at first, looking at these sufferings ... Whether it's a matter of nature. She does not offend, and one does not need to offend her in order to exploit her, as we artists ... Look, look, what a grayish tone! - he suddenly interrupted himself, pointing to a corner of the sky: - lower, over there, under a cloud ... lovely! With a greenish tint. After all, write like this, well, just like that - they won’t believe it! And it's not bad, is it?

I expressed my approval, although, to tell the truth, I did not see any charm in the dirty green patch of the St. Petersburg sky, and interrupted Dedov, who began to admire some other "thin" cloud near another cloud.

Tell me, where can I see such a capercaillie?

Let's go to the factory together; I'll show you all sorts of things. If you want, even tomorrow! Have you ever thought of writing this capercaillie? Come on, it's not worth it. Isn't there anything more fun? And to the factory, if you want, even tomorrow.

Today we went to the factory and inspected everything. We also saw a wood grouse. He sat curled up in the corner of the cauldron and exposed his chest to the blows of the hammer. I looked at him for half an hour; in those half an hour Ryabinin invented such a stupidity that I don't know what to think of him. On the third day I took him to a metal factory; we spent the whole day there, examined everything, and I explained all sorts of productions to him (to my surprise, I forgot very little of my profession); Finally I brought him to the boiler room. There at that time they were working on a huge cauldron. Ryabinin climbed into the cauldron and watched for half an hour as the worker held the rivets with tongs. Came out pale and upset; was silent all the way back. And today he announces to me that he has already begun to write this wood-grouse worker. What's an idea! What poetry in the dirt! Here I can say, without embarrassment of anyone or anything, what, of course, I would not say in front of everyone: in my opinion, all this masculine stripe in art is pure ugliness. Who needs these notorious Repin "Barge Haulers"? They are beautifully written, there is no dispute; but after all and only.

Where is the beauty, harmony, grace? Isn't it to reproduce the graceful in nature that art exists? Whether business at me! A few more days of work, and my quiet "May Morning" will be over. The water in the pond sways a little, the willows bowed their branches on it; the east lights up; small cirrus clouds turned pink. A female figurine is walking down a steep bank with a bucket for water, frightening away a flock of ducks. That's all; it seems simple, but meanwhile I clearly feel that there is an abyss of poetry in the picture. This is art! It sets a person to quiet, meek thoughtfulness, softens the soul. And Ryabininsky's "Capercaillie" will not affect anyone just because everyone will try to run away from him as soon as possible, so as not to be an eyesore to himself with these ugly rags and this dirty mug. Strange affair! After all, in music, ear-piercing, unpleasant harmonies are not allowed; why is it possible for us, in painting, to reproduce positively ugly, repulsive images? We need to talk about this with L., he will write an article and, by the way, give Ryabinin a ride for his picture. And worth it.

Glushko Maria Vasilievna - Soviet writer, screenwriter.

It was cold on the platform, grains were falling again, she walked with a stomp, breathed into her hands.

Food was running out, she wanted to buy at least something, but nothing was sold at the station. She decided to get to the station. The station was packed with people, they were sitting on suitcases, bundles and just on the floor, spreading out food, having breakfast.

She went out into the station square, densely dotted with motley spots of coats, fur coats, bundles; here, too, people sat and lay with whole families, some were lucky enough to take benches, others settled down right on the pavement, spreading a blanket, raincoats, newspapers ... In this thicket of people, in this hopelessness, she felt almost happy - still I'm going, I know where and to whom, but the war drives all these people into the unknown, and how long they have to sit here, they themselves do not know.

Suddenly an old woman screamed, she was robbed, two boys were standing next to her and also crying, the policeman said something angrily to her, holding her hand, and she struggled and screamed. There is such a simple custom - with a hat in a circle, And here there are hundreds and hundreds of people nearby, if everyone would give at least a ruble ... But everyone around looked sympathetically at the screaming woman and no one moved.

Nina called the older boy, rummaged through her purse, pulled out a hundred-dollar bill, put it in his hand:

Give it to your grandmother ... - And she quickly went so as not to see his tear-stained face and bony fist clutching the money. She still had five hundred rubles left of the money that her father gave - nothing, enough.

She asked a local woman if the bazaar was far away. It turned out that if you go by tram, there is one stop, but Nina did not wait for the tram, she missed the movement, walking, went on foot.

The market was completely empty, and only under a canopy stood three thickly dressed aunts, stamping their feet in felt boots, in front of one stood an enamel bucket with pickled apples, another was selling potatoes, laid out in heaps, the third was selling seeds.

She bought two glasses of sunflower seeds and a dozen apples. Right there, at the counter, Nina ate one greedily, feeling her mouth blissfully filled with spicy-sweet juice.

Suddenly she heard a clatter of wheels and was frightened that it was taking her train away, she quickened her pace, but from a distance she saw that her train was in place.

That old woman with the children was no longer at the station square, probably she was taken somewhere, to some institution where they would help - she wanted to think so, it was calmer: to believe in the unshakable justice of the world.

She wandered along the platform, cracking seeds, collecting husks into a fist, went around the shabby one-story building of the station, its walls were pasted over with papers-ads, written in different handwriting, different ink, more often with an indelible pencil, glued with bread crumb, glue, resin and God knows how. “I’m looking for the Klimenkov family from Vitebsk, who know, please tell me at the address ...” “Who knows the whereabouts of my father Sergeev Nikolai Sergeevich, please inform ...” Dozens of pieces of paper, and from above - right, on the wall with coal: “Valya, mothers in Penza no, I'm moving on. Lida.

All this was familiar and familiar, at each station Nina read such announcements, similar to cries of despair, but every time her heart sank with pain and pity, especially when she read about lost children.

Reading such announcements, she imagined people traveling around the country, walking, rushing around the cities, wandering along the roads, looking for loved ones - a native drop in the human ocean - and thought that war was not only terrible with deaths, it was also terrible with separations!

Now Nina recalled everyone with whom the war had separated her: her father, Viktor, Marusya, the boys from her course ... Is it really not in a dream - crowded stations, crying women, empty markets, and I'm going somewhere ... To an unfamiliar , stranger. For what? For what?

Kazakevich Emmanuil Genrikhovich - writer and poet, translator, screenwriter.

Only Katya remained in the secluded dugout.

What did Travkin's answer to her final words on the radio mean? Did he say I understood you at all, as it is customary to confirm what he heard on the radio, or did he put a certain secret meaning into his words? This thought worried her more than anyone else. It seemed to her that, surrounded by mortal dangers, he became softer and more accessible to simple, human feelings, that his last words on the radio were the result of this change. She smiled at her thoughts. Having asked the military assistant Ulybysheva for a mirror, she looked into it, trying to give her face an expression of solemn seriousness, as befits - she even said this word aloud - to the hero's bride.

And then, throwing away the mirror, she would again repeat into the roaring ether gently, cheerfully and sadly, depending on her mood:

Star. Star. Star. Star.

Two days after that conversation, the Star suddenly responded again:

Earth. Earth. I am a star. Do you hear me? I am a star.

Star, Star! - Katya shouted loudly. - I am the Earth. I listen to you, I listen, I listen to you.

The Star was silent the next day and later. From time to time Meshchersky, then Bugorkov, then Major Likhachev, then Captain Yarkevich, the new head of intelligence, who replaced the removed Barashkin, entered the dugout. But Star was silent.

Katya, half asleep, pressed the radio receiver to her ear all day. She had some strange dreams, visions, Travkin with a very pale face in a green camouflage suit, Mamochkin, doubling, with a frozen smile on his face, her brother Lenya - also for some reason in a green camouflage suit. She came to her senses, trembling with horror that she could have missed Travkin's calls, and began to speak into the receiver again:

Star. Star. Star.

Artillery volleys, the rumble of the beginning battle, reached her from afar.

During these tense days, Major Likhachev was in great need of radio operators, but he did not dare to remove Katya from duty at the radio. So she sat, almost forgotten, in a secluded dugout.

Late one evening Bugorkov came into the dugout. He brought a letter to Travkin from his mother, just received from the post office. Mother wrote that she had found a red general notebook in physics, his favorite subject. She will keep this notebook. When he enters the university, the notebook will be very useful to him. Indeed, this is an exemplary notebook. As a matter of fact, it could be published as a textbook - with such accuracy and sense of proportion everything is written down in the sections of electricity and heat. He has a clear penchant for scientific work, which she is very pleased with. By the way, does he remember that witty water engine that he invented as a twelve-year-old boy? She found these drawings and laughed a lot with Aunt Klava over them.

After reading the letter, Bugorkov bent over the radio, wept and said:

I wish the war would end soon... No, I'm not tired. I'm not saying I'm tired. But it's just time to stop killing people.

And with horror, Katya suddenly thought that maybe her sitting here, by the apparatus, and her endless calls to the Star were useless. The star went down and went out. But how can she leave here? What if he speaks? But what if he is hiding somewhere in the depths of the forests?

And, full of hope and iron perseverance, she waited. No one was waiting, but she was waiting. And no one dared to remove the radio from reception until the offensive began.

Kachalkov Sergey Semyonovich is a modern prose writer.

(1) How time changes people! (2) Unrecognizable! (3) Sometimes these are not even changes, but real metamorphoses! (4) As a child, there was a princess, matured - turned into a piranha. (5) But it happens the other way around: at school - a gray mouse, inconspicuous, invisible, and then on you - Elena the Beautiful. (6) Why does this happen? (7) It seems that Levitansky wrote that everyone chooses a woman, religion, a road for himself ... (8) It’s just not clear: does a person really choose a path for himself or does some force push him onto one path or another? (9) Is it really our life that was originally destined from above: one born to crawl cannot fly? (11) I don't know! (12) Life is full of examples both in favor of one opinion and in defense of another.

(13) Choose what you want? ..

(14) Maxim Lyubavin we called Einstein at school. (15) True, outwardly he did not at all look like a great scientist, but he had all the manners of geniuses: he was absent-minded, thoughtful, a complex thought process always boiled in his head, some discoveries were made, and this often led to the fact that he , as classmates joked, was not adequate. (16) They used to ask him in biology, but it turns out that at that time, in some tricky way, he calculated the radiation of some nuclides there. (17) He will go to the blackboard, start writing incomprehensible formulas.

(18) The biology teacher will shrug her shoulders:

(19) - Max, what are you talking about?

(20) He will catch on, hit himself on the head, not paying attention to the laughter in the class, then he will begin to tell what is needed, for example, about the discrete laws of heredity.

(21) He did not show his nose at discos, cool evenings. (22) I was not friends with anyone, so I was friends. (23) Books, a computer - these are his faithful comrades-brothers. (24) We joked among ourselves: remember well how Maxim Lyubavin dressed, where he was sitting. (25) And in ten years, when he will be awarded the Nobel Prize, journalists will come here, at least there will be something to tell about their great classmate.

(26) After school, Max entered the university. (27) He brilliantly graduated from it ... (28) And then our paths diverged. (29) I became a military man, left my hometown for a long time, started a family. (30) The life of a military man is stormy: as soon as you are going on vacation - some kind of emergency ... (31) But nevertheless, he managed to escape to his homeland with his wife and two daughters. (32) At the station, they agreed with a private trader, and he drove us in his car to his parents' house.

(33) - Only, you didn’t recognize me or what? the driver suddenly asked. (34) I looked at him in amazement. (35) A tall, bony man, a liquid mustache, glasses, a scar on his cheek ... (36) I don’t know this! (37) But the voice is really familiar. (38) Max Lubavin?! (39) Yes, it can't be! (40) Is the great physicist a private driver?

(41) - No! (42) Take it higher! Max chuckled. - (43) I work as a loader in the wholesale market ...

(44) From my face, he realized that I considered these words a joke.

(45) - No! (46) I just know how to count! (47) We sell sugar in bags! (48) In the evening I’ll pour out three hundred or four hundred grams from each bag ... (49) Do you know how much it comes out a month, if you don’t be greedy? (50) Forty thousand! (51) Just think, if I became a scientist, would I get that kind of money? (52) On the weekends, you can pick up a cab, drove a couple of clients - another thousand. (53) Enough for a bun with butter...

(54) He laughed contentedly. (55) I shook my head.

(56) - Max, but with sugar - this is not theft?

(57) - No! (58) Business! Max answered.

(59) He drove me home. (60) I gave him two hundred rubles, he returned ten change and went to look for new clients.

(61) - Did you study together? the wife asked.

(62) - This is our Einstein! I told her. - (63) Remember, I talked about him!

(64) – Einstein?

(65) - Only the former! I said with a sad sigh.

Krugly Vladimir Igorevich - Honored Doctor of the Russian Federation.

Say, in the sixties and seventies, at least according to my recollections, reading for me and for those around me was not just a daily need: picking up a book, I experienced a unique feeling of joy. I haven't had that feeling in a long time. Unfortunately, my children too, although they are smart, developed and read, which is rare these days.

And, of course, time is to blame for this. Changed living conditions, large volumes of information that needs to be mastered, and the desire to make it easier to perceive through the video format lead to the fact that we no longer enjoy reading.

I understand that the enthusiasm of the seventies or eighties will probably never return, when we watched the appearance of books, hunted for them, sometimes we specially went to Moscow to barter somewhere or buy a scarce edition. Then books were a real wealth - and not only in the material sense.

However, as soon as I strengthened my disappointment, life presented an unexpected surprise. True, this happened after a regrettable and painful event. After my father passed away, I inherited a large and rich library. Having started to disassemble it, it was among the books of the late XIX - early XX centuries that I was able to find something that captured me from my head and returned, if not that childish joy, but the real pleasure of reading.

As I sorted through the books, I began to leaf through them, delving first into one, then into another, and soon realized that I was reading them avidly. All weekends, as well as long hours on the road, in trains and planes, I enthusiastically spend with essays on famous Russian artists - Repin, Benois or Dobuzhinsky.

About the last artist, I must admit, I knew very little. The book by Erich Hollerbach "Drawings of Dobuzhinsky" opened for me this wonderful person and excellent artist. The marvelous edition of 1923 completely fascinated me, first of all, with the reproductions of Dobuzhinsky's works neatly covered with tissue paper.

In addition, Hollerbach's book is written in a very good language, easy to read and fascinating - like fiction. Talking about how Dobuzhinsky's talent was formed from a very young age, the author reveals the artist's secrets to the reader. The book of the art historian and critic Erich Hollerbach was intended for a general reader, and this is its strength. What a pleasure to hold it in your hands! The beautiful design, the delicate smell of paper, the feeling that you are touching an old tome - all this gives rise to a real reader's delight.

But why did the books of the late 19th and early 20th centuries become a breath of fresh air for me? And I myself do not know for sure; I only realize that the atmosphere of that time seemed to have swallowed me up, captured me.

Perhaps it was an attempt to escape from modern reality into the world of history. Or, on the contrary, the desire to find “intersection points”: transitional periods, years of searching for new forms and meanings, as you know, repeat each other, which means that studying the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries in fiction, documents or journalism, you can gain experience or peep ready-made solutions for today.

Thanks to the bizarre play of time, the books of the "Silver Age" of our culture turned out to be a source of reader inspiration for me; for someone else, ancient tomes or manuscripts of beginning writers may become such a source. The main thing is not to let disappointment get stronger and continue to search: a book that will give pleasure is sure to be found.

The stones that retained heat dried the tent, and they spent the night in a dry and cool warmth. In the morning Salakhov woke up alone in a tent. The heat still held, and Salakhov lay down in a doze. Coming out of the tent, he saw a clear sky and the God of Fire by the water. He was slowly washing a sample taken right off the shore.

I woke up right healthy, - said the worker and joyfully shrugged his shoulders in confirmation. - I decided to look for luck in the tray ...

The God of Fire put down the tray, took off his wolverine hat and pulled out a piece of fishing line from behind the lapel.

Eating a red rag, dog. Look! - he faithfully looked at Salakhov, threw the fishing line into the water and immediately threw a large dark-backed grayling onto the sand.

The God of Fire strengthened his legs in oversized boots, pulled up his quilted jacket, pushed off his shaggy hat and began to shuttle the graylings one by one. Soon, all the sand around him was littered with resilient mother-of-pearl fish.

Enough! Salahov said. - Stop.

On this river ... yes with nets, yes with barrels. And you don't have to bend the hump. On the mainland, you climb, you climb with nonsense, you can barely pick it up in your ear. And if this river there. And our Voronezh here. Anyway, there is no population here, and an empty river will do here.

You would empty it there in a week,” Salakhov said.

During the week? No-no! The God of Fire sighed.

Close the sanatorium, ordered Salakhov

Maybe we can take it with us? the God of Fire suggested hesitantly.

Words have no power against greed,” Salakhov chuckled. - Machine guns are needed against her. Recovered? Dot! Gather the camp, boil the fish soup and stomp according to the assignment received. Any questions?

No questions," the God of Fire sighed.

Take action! I'm going downstream with a tray. …

Salakhov walked very fast. He was suddenly struck by the thought that kindness makes people worse. They turn piggy. And when people are bad, they become better. While the God of Fire was sick, Salakhov was very sorry for him. And today he was unpleasant to him, even hated ...

Salakhov, forgetting that he needed to take a sample, walked and walked along the dry bank of the Vatap River. The idea that kindness to people leads to their own condemnation was very unpleasant to him. Some hopeless thought. From the experience of the army, from the experience of prison life, Salakhov knew that excessive severity also embittered people. “So you won’t take us with good or fear,” he thought. - But there must be some approach. There should be an open door…”

And suddenly Salakhov stopped. The answer he found was simple, obvious. Among the many human collectives, there is probably only one that is yours. Like the army has its own company. If you find him, hold on to him with your teeth. Let everyone see that you are yours, you are with them to the end. And that you have everything in sight. One roof, one destiny, and let the state think about the rest...

Kuvaev Oleg Mikhailovich - Soviet geologist, geophysicist, writer.

The traditional evening of the field workers served as a milestone separating one expedition season from another.

Chinkov motioned to pour them into glasses and stood up.

Dear Colleagues! he said in a high voice. First of all, let me thank you for the honor. For the first time I am present at the celebration of the famous geological department not as a guest, but as a friend. As a beginner, let me break with tradition. Let's not talk about last season. Let's talk about the future. What is a deposit discovery? It's a mixture of randomness and logic. But any true deposit is opened only when the need for it has matured.

Something thudded dully against the control wall, there was a sort of extended sigh, and immediately the windows at the end of the corridor rattled and groaned.

God bless! someone said. - The first winter!

What is this? Sergushova asked Gurin quietly.

Yuzhak. The first one this winter. I'll have to run away from here.

Every journalist, every visiting writer, and in general anyone who has been to the Village and taken up a pen, has necessarily written and will continue to write about the southerner. It's like going to Texas and not writing the word cowboy or, being in the Sahara, not mentioning the camel. Yuzhak was a purely village phenomenon, similar to the famous Novorossiysk forest. On warm days, air accumulated behind the slope of the ridge and then, with hurricane force, fell into the basin of the Village. During the South, it was always warm, and the sky was cloudless, but this warm, even gentle wind knocked a person off his feet, rolled him to the nearest corner and sprinkled snow dust, slag, sand, and small stones on top. Trikoni boots and ski goggles were best for southerners. Shops did not work in the south, institutions were closed, roofs moved into the south, and cubic meters of snow were packed into a tiny hole into which a needle could not fit through.

The light bulbs dimmed, the glass was already rattling continuously, and behind the wall the ever-increasing sighs of gigantic lungs could be heard, at times metal on metal was beating somewhere.

They sat huddled at the same table. The light bulb flickered and went out, or the wiring was damaged, or the power plant changed its mode of operation. There was a murmur on the stairs. It was Kopkov who saw off Luda Hollywood and returned. He brought candles with him.

Yuzhak was breaking in the control doors, gaining strength. Candle flames flickered, shadows jumping across the walls. The bottles glowed in different colors. Kopkov pushed a glass of cognac away from Zhora Apryatin and walked along the tables, looking for his mug.

Such is the case, as always, - unexpectedly muttered Kopkov. He ran around everyone with the mischievous look of a prophet and clairvoyant, clasped his mug in his palms, hunched over. - We are now in a tent. There is no coal, diesel fuel is running out, the weather is blowing. And all that stuff. Over the summer, the puppets stuck together from sweat, not wool, but shavings. Purzhit, the tent is shaking, well, and different, well known to everyone. I’m lying, thinking: well, how will the authorities let us down with transport, where will I put the people entrusted to me? You won't walk out. Frost, passes, no shoes. I'm looking for a way out. But I'm not talking about that. Thoughts are: why and for what? Why do my hard workers moan in sacks? Money can't measure it. What happens? We live, then we die. All! And so am I. It's a shame, of course. But why, I think, in the world since ancient times is it so arranged that we ourselves hasten the death of our neighbor and our own? Wars, epidemics, disorder of systems. So there is evil in the world. Objective evil in the forces and elements of nature, and subjective from the imperfection of our brains. This means that the common task of people and yours, Kopkov, in particular, is to eliminate this evil. A common task for the ancestors, you and your descendants. During the war, clearly take an ax or a machine gun. And in peacetime? I come to the conclusion that in peacetime work is the elimination of universal evil. There is a higher meaning in this, not measured by money and position. In the name of this higher meaning, my hard workers groan in their sleep, and I myself grind my teeth, because stupidly I froze my finger. This has a higher meaning, this is a general and specific purpose.

Kopkov raised his eyes once more, as if he were staring at people unknown to him in astonishment, and just as suddenly fell silent.

Likhachev Dmitry Sergeevich is a Russian literary scholar, cultural historian, textual critic, publicist, and public figure.

It is said that the content determines the form. This is true, but the opposite is also true, that the content depends on the form. The well-known American psychologist of the beginning of this century, D. James, wrote: “We cry because we are sad, but we are also sad because we cry.”

It was once considered indecent to show with all your appearance that a misfortune happened to you, that you were in grief. A person should not have imposed his depressed state on others. It was necessary to maintain dignity even in grief, to be equal with everyone, not to plunge into oneself and remain as friendly and even cheerful as possible. The ability to maintain dignity, not to impose one's grief on others, not to spoil the mood of others, to always be even in dealing with people, to be always friendly and cheerful - this is a great and real art that helps to live in society and society itself.

But how fun should you be? Noisy and obsessive fun is tiring for others. The young man who is always “pouring” witticisms ceases to be perceived as worthy of behaving. He becomes a joke. And this is the worst thing that can happen to a person in society, and it means ultimately the loss of humor.

Not being funny is not only the ability to behave, but also a sign of intelligence.

You can be funny in everything, even in the manner of dressing. If a man carefully matches a tie to a shirt, a shirt to a suit, he is ridiculous. Excessive concern for one's appearance is immediately visible. Care must be taken to dress decently, but this care in men should not go beyond certain limits. A man who cares too much about his appearance is unpleasant. A woman is another matter. Men should only have a hint of fashion in their clothes. A perfectly clean shirt, clean shoes and a fresh but not very bright tie are enough. The suit can be old, it doesn't have to be just unkempt.

Do not suffer from your shortcomings, if you have them. If you stutter, don't think it's too bad. Stutterers are excellent speakers, considering every word they say. The best lecturer of Moscow University, famous for its eloquent professors, historian V. O. Klyuchevsky stuttered.

Don't be ashamed of your shyness: shyness is very sweet and not at all funny. It only becomes funny if you try too hard to overcome it and feel embarrassed about it. Be simple and indulgent to your shortcomings. Don't suffer from them. I have a friend who is a little chubby. Honestly, I do not get tired of admiring her grace on those rare occasions when I meet her in museums on opening days. There is nothing worse when an “inferiority complex” develops in a person, and with it anger, hostility towards other people, envy. A person loses what is best in him - kindness.

There is no better music than silence, silence in the mountains, silence in the forest. There is no better “music in a person” than modesty and the ability to remain silent, not to come forward in the first place. There is nothing more unpleasant and stupid in the appearance and behavior of a person than dignity or noisy; there is nothing more ridiculous in a man than excessive concern for his suit and hair, calculated movements and a “fountain of witticisms” and jokes, especially if they are repeated.

Simplicity and "silence" in a person, truthfulness, lack of pretensions in clothing and behavior - this is the most attractive "form" in a person, which also becomes his most elegant "content".

Mamin-Sibiryak Dmitry Narkisovich is a Russian prose writer and playwright.

(1) The strongest impression on me is made by dreams in which distant childhood rises and in an obscure fog no longer existing faces rise, all the more dear, like everything irretrievably lost. (2) For a long time I cannot wake up from such a dream and for a long time I see alive those who have long been in the grave. (3) And what lovely, dear faces! (4) It seems that I would not give anything to look at them at least from a distance, hear a familiar voice, shake their hands and once again return to the distant, distant past. (5) It begins to seem to me that these silent shadows require something from me. (6) After all, I owe so much to these people who are infinitely dear to me ...

(7) But in the rainbow perspective of childhood memories, not only people are alive, but also those inanimate objects that were somehow connected with the small life of a beginning little person. (8) And now I think about them, again experiencing the impressions and feelings of childhood. (9) In these dumb participants in children's life, of course, a children's picture book always stands in the foreground ... (10) And it was that living thread that led out of the children's room and connected it to the rest of the world. (11) For me, until now, every children's book is something alive, because it awakens a child's soul, directs children's thoughts in a certain direction and makes a child's heart beat along with millions of other children's hearts. (12) A children's book is a spring sunbeam that makes the dormant forces of a child's soul awaken and causes the seeds thrown onto this grateful soil to grow. (13) Thanks to this book, children merge into one huge spiritual family that knows no ethnographic and geographical boundaries.

(14) 3here I have to make a small digression specifically about modern children, who often have to observe complete disrespect for the book. (15) Disheveled bindings, traces of dirty fingers, folded corners of sheets, all kinds of scribbles in the margins - in a word, the result is a cripple book.

(16) It is difficult to understand the reasons for all this, and only one explanation can be admitted: today too many books are published, they are much cheaper and seem to have lost their real price among other household items. (17) Our generation, which remembers an expensive book, has retained a special respect for it as an object of a higher spiritual order, bearing the bright stamp of talent and holy labor.

The problem of memory (What is the duty of memory to those who are no longer with us?) Close people who are no longer with us are always alive in our memory; we are grateful to them for everything they have done for us; the duty of memory to them is to strive to become better.

The problem of childhood memories (What feelings do childhood memories evoke in a person?) Childhood memories awaken the strongest and most vivid feelings in a person.

The problem of the role of a book in the formation of a child's personality (What role does a book play in the formation of a child's personality?) A children's book awakens the soul of a child, connects him with the whole world, and fosters a careful attitude to spiritual values.

The problem of caring for books (Why do books require caring for themselves?) A book is an object of a higher spiritual order, and therefore it requires special respect for itself.

Nagibin Yuri Markovich - Russian prose writer, journalist and screenwriter.

In the first years after the revolution, Academician of Architecture Shchusev lectured on aesthetics to a wide, mostly youth working audience. Their goal was to familiarize the broad masses, as it was then expressed, with the understanding of beauty, the enjoyment of art. At the very first lecture, given by Shchusev with great enthusiasm, the talent of a born popularizer and, needless to say, an exhaustive knowledge of the subject, some guy got up with a cigarette butt stuck to his lower lip and said cheekily:

- Here you are, Comrade Professor, you kept mumbling: beauty, beauty, but I still did not understand what this beauty is?

Someone laughed. Shchusev looked at the guy carefully. Stooped, long-armed, dull-eyed. And why did this not at all flawless connecting rod fall into the lecture - to warm up or to buzz? He was not at all interested in the essence of the issue, he wanted to puzzle the "intellectual" who was crucifying in the department and to expose himself to those around him. He must be firmly besieged for the sake of the common cause. Shchusev narrowed his eyes and asked:

- Do you have a mirror at home?

- Eat. I jump in front of him.

No, big...

- Yeah. In a wall closet.

Shchusev handed the guy a photograph taken from Michelangelo's David, which he automatically took. You will immediately understand what beauty is and what ugliness is.

I brought this case not for fun. There is a rational grain in the mocking trick of the architect. Shchusev suggested the surest way to comprehend beauty. Truth is generally known in comparison. Only peering into the images of beauty created by art, whether it be Venus de Milo or Nike of Samothrace, Raphael's Madonna or Pinturicchio's boy, Titian's Flora or Van Dyck's self-portrait, Vrubel's swan princess or Vasnetsov's three bogatyrs, Argunov's peasant girl, Tropinin's lace maker, Nesterov's daughter or those running athletes Deineka, you can accustom your eye and soul to the joy that a meeting with the beautiful gives. Museums, exhibitions, reproductions, art books serve this purpose.

As the great educator K. Ushinsky well said: "Any sincere enjoyment of the graceful is in itself a source of moral beauty." Consider these words, reader!

Nikitayskaya Natalia Nikolaevna - science fiction writer, prose writer, poet. Trained as a theater critic.

Seventy years have passed, but I do not stop scolding myself. Well, what did it cost me, while my parents were alive, to ask them about everything, write everything down in detail, so that I myself would remember, and, if possible, tell others. But no, I didn't write it down. Yes, and listened to something inattentively, as basically their children listen to their parents. Neither mom nor dad liked to return to what they had lived and experienced during the war. But at times… When guests came, when the mood to remember was attacked, and so - for no reason… Well, for example, my mother comes from a neighbor, Antonina Karpovna, and says: “Karpovna told me: “Galka, you have not been found a hero with us” It was I who told her how I got out of the encirclement from under Luga.”

By the beginning of the war, my mother was eighteen years old, and she was a paramedic, a rural doctor. Dad was twenty-four years old. And he was a civil aviation pilot. They met and fell in love with each other in Vologda. Mom was very pretty, lively and frivolous.

The profession of a pilot before the war belonged to the romantic professions. Aviation "became on the wing." The people involved in this formation immediately fell into the category of the elite. Still: not everyone is given to settle down in heaven. The liberties that the pilots of those times allowed themselves will be reminded, for example, by Chkalov's flight under the Trinity Bridge in Leningrad. True, historians believe that filmmakers came up with this for the film. But legends are legends, and my dad absolutely flew "at low level" over the roof of my mother's house. What conquered my mother completely.

On the very first day of the war, as conscripts, both dad and mom put on military uniforms. Both were sent to the Leningrad front. Mom - with the hospital, dad - in the air regiment. Dad served in an aviation regiment. They started the war on the U-2. There was no serious equipment on the planes, not even radio communications. But they did fight!

One day when dad, at the head of a squadron of these two-seat ships of the sky, was returning from a mission, he saw below, on the highway leading to the city, a broken ambulance bus. The driver was fumbling near him, trying to fix the breakdown. And the nurse desperately waved her jacket to our planes. And from above, dad saw that a column of Germans was marching along the same highway and also towards the city. And just about a bus with the wounded, with a driver and a nurse, will be in their way. The outcome of such a meeting was a foregone conclusion. “You know, I immediately thought of Gala. She could have been in the place of this sister. And then I signaled the command with my wings: “Do as I do,” and went to land in front of the bus.” When they landed and counted the people, it turned out that they couldn’t take everyone, that three remained overboard. “I estimated the power of the cars and distributed them to some not one person, but two people." And one of the pilots then yelled: "Commander, you want me to die! I won't fly with two! I planted one for myself ..." "I knew that his car was more reliable, but I didn’t argue, there was no time to argue. I said: “I’ll fly on yours, and you take my car“.

In fact, this whole story seems to be specially invented for cinema, for the indispensable use of parallel editing in order to inflame passions even more. Here the wounded climb with difficulty along the fuselage into the cockpit, and the Fritz column is already marching within sight, but our first plane with the wounded takes off into the sky, and the German is preparing his "Schmeisser" for firing ... Well, and so on ... And in real life , when the last pilot took off, the Nazis really opened fire ... And then they wrote about this case in the newspaper, but our careless family, of course, did not save it.

I am writing these notes of mine now not only to, albeit belatedly, confess my love for my parents who lived a very difficult, but such an honest life. There were millions of other such Soviet people who overcame fascism and did not lose their human face. And I really don't want them to be forgotten.

Nosov Evgeny Ivanovich - Russian and Soviet writer.

(1) What is a small homeland? (3) Where are its boundaries? (4) From where and to where does it extend?

(5) In my opinion, a small homeland is the window of our childhood. (6) In other words, something that can embrace a boy's eye. (7) And what a pure, open soul longs to contain. (8) Where this soul was first surprised, delighted and rejoiced from the surging delight. (9) And where it was first upset, angry or experienced its first shock.

(10) A quiet village street, a cramped shop smelling of gingerbread and leather shoes, an engine yard outside the outskirts, where it is tempting to sneak in, secretly sit in the cab of a tractor that has not yet cooled down, touch the levers and buttons, sigh blissfully the smell of a running motor; the vague mystery of a collective farm garden running downhill, in the twilight of which a wooden mallet taps warningly, a red-haired dog rattles with a heavy chain. (11) Behind the garden - serpentine zigzags of old, almost smoothed out trenches, overgrown with thorns and hazel, which, however, still make you shut up, speak in an undertone ...

(12) And suddenly, again returning to the former, noisily, rushing off into a calling expanse of a meadow with sparkles of small lakes and half-grown old women, where, having stripped naked and stirring up the water, with a T-shirt scoop in this black jelly grimy crucians in half with leeches and swimmers. (13) And finally, a rivulet, winding, evasive, not tolerating open places and striving to slip into the willows, into a clumsy and loopy mess. (14) And if you don’t spare shirts and pants, then you can make your way to an old mill with a long-broken dam and a collapsed roof, where through the dilapidated walkways and into empty openings wild fireweed beats violently. (15) Here, too, it is not customary to speak loudly: there is a rumor that even now a mill water, dilapidated, mossy, is found in the pool, and as if someone heard how he groaned and puffed in the bushes, trying to push into the pool now no one unnecessary millstone. (16) How can one not get there and not look, fearful and looking around, whether that stone lies or is no longer there ...

(17) Across the river is a neighboring village, and it’s not supposed to wander across the river: this is already a different, transcendent world. (18) There are their whirlwind dwellers, whose eyes one by one it’s better not to catch ...

(19) That, in fact, is the whole boyish universe. (20) But even that small dwelling is more than enough, so that in a day, until the sun falls, run, open and be impressed to the point where, already at dinner, the violent young head, scorched by the sun and battered by the wind, and mother picks up and carries the scratched, reeking of cattail and bedstraw, aloof, limp child to the bed, as the fallen sister of mercy carries away from the battlefield. dangerously and terribly swayed by the wind, to see: what is there further, where he has not yet been? (22) And suddenly something brittle crunches, and he falls head over heels with stopped breathing. (23) But, as happens only in dreams, at the very last moment he somehow successfully spreads his arms, like wings, the wind elastically picks him up, and now he is flying, flying, smoothly and bewitchingly gaining height and dying from indescribable delight.

(24) A small homeland is what gives us wings of inspiration for life.

Orlov Dal Konstantinovich - poet, Russian film critic and playwright.

Tolstoy entered my life without introducing himself. We already actively communicated with him, but I still had no idea who I was dealing with. I was about eleven or twelve years old, that is, a year or two after the war, when my mother was appointed director of a pioneer camp for the summer. Since the spring, young people of both sexes began to appear in our little room overlooking the endless communal corridor - to be hired as pioneer leaders and athletes. In today's terms, my mother conducted a casting right at home. But it's not that.

The fact is that one day they brought a truck to our house and dumped a mountain of books right on the floor - thoroughly used, but very diverse in subject matter. Someone worried in advance, not without my mother's, I think, participation, so that there would be a library in the future pioneer camp. "What is your favorite pastime?.. Rummaging through books" - this is about me too. Then too. Rummaged. Until, at one happy moment, a battered brick was fished out of this mountain: thin rice paper, ep and yati, no covers, no first pages, no last ones. The author is incognito. My eye fell on the beginning, which was not the beginning, and then I could not tear myself away from the text. I entered it as into a new house, where for some reason everything turned out to be familiar - I had never been there, but I knew everything.

Amazing! It seemed that the unknown author had been spying on me for a long time, found out everything about me and now told me - frankly and kindly, almost like a relative. It was written: "... By that instinctive feeling with which one person guesses the thoughts of another and which serves as a guiding thought of the conversation, Katenka realized that her indifference hurts me ..." But how many times it happened to me, as with the unknown Katenka : in a conversation, instinctively guess "the thoughts of another"! How exactly ... Or in another place: "... Our eyes met, and I realized that he understands me and that I understand that he understands me ..." Again, you can't say better! "I understand that he understands..." And so on every page. "In youth, all the forces of the soul are directed towards the future ... Some understandable and shared dreams of future happiness already constitute the true happiness of this age." Mine again! So it is: every day of your childhood and adolescence, if they are normal, seems to be fused with the sun and the light of expectation, so that your destiny will take place. But how to express aloud this premonition that gnaws at you, can it be conveyed in words? While you are tormented by invincible dumbness, this incognito author managed to tell everything for you.

But who was he - an unknown author? Whose magical book was in my hands? Needless to say, she did not go to any pioneer library - with her beginning and end gnawed, she remained with me personally. Later I recognized it in the binding: LN Tolstoy. "Childhood", "Adolescence", "Youth".

This is how Tolstoy entered my life without introducing himself. The illusion of recognition is an indispensable feature of classical texts. They are classics because they write for everyone. It's right. But they are also eternal classics because they write for everyone. This is true no less. Young simpleton, I "bought" it on the latter. The experiment was carried out purely: the author was hidden. The magic of the name did not dominate the perception of the text. The text itself has defended its greatness. Tolstoy's "dialectics of the soul," first noted by Chernyshevsky, who was unkind to Nabokov, flew into another unidentified reader's heart like ball lightning through a window.

Paustovsky Konstantin Georgievich - Russian Soviet writer, classic of Russian literature.

We lived for several days at the cordon, fished on Shuya, hunted on Lake Orsa, where there was only a few centimeters of clear water, and bottomless viscous silt lay under it. Killed ducks, if they fell into the water, could not be obtained in any way. On the banks of the Ors, one had to walk on wide forestry skis so as not to fall into the bogs.

But most of the time we spent on Pre. I have seen many picturesque and remote places in Russia, but it is unlikely that I will ever see a river more virgin and mysterious than the Pra.

Dry pine forests on its banks intermingled with centuries-old oak groves, thickets of willow, alder and aspen. Ship pines, blown down by the wind, lay like cast copper bridges over its brown but perfectly clear water. From these pines we fished stubborn ides.

Washed by river water and blown by the wind, sandy spits are overgrown with coltsfoot and flowers. For all the time we did not see a single human footprint on these white sands - only traces of wolves, elks and birds.

Thickets of heather and lingonberries came up to the very water, mingling with thickets of pondweed, pink chastukha and teloreza.

The river went in bizarre bends. Its deaf backwaters were lost in the dusk of warm forests. Above the running water, glittering roller-rollers and dragonflies continuously flew from coast to coast, and huge hawks soared above.

Everything bloomed around. Millions of leaves, stems, branches and corollas blocked the road at every step, and we were lost in front of this onslaught of vegetation, stopped and breathed the tart air of a hundred-year-old pine to the pain in our lungs. Layers of dry cones lay under the trees. In them, the leg sank to the bone.

Sometimes the wind ran along the river from the lower reaches, from the wooded spaces, from where the calm and still hot sun burned in the autumn sky. My heart sank at the thought that where this river flows, for almost two hundred kilometers there is only forest, forest and there is no housing. Only in some places on the banks there are huts of tar smokers and it pulls through the forest with a sweetish haze of smoldering tar.

But the most amazing thing in these places was the air. It was completely and perfectly clean. This purity gave a special sharpness, even brilliance to everything that was surrounded by this air. Each dry pine branch was visible among the dark needles very far away. It was as if forged from rusty iron. From afar, every thread of the cobweb, a green cone in the sky, a stalk of grass could be seen.

The clarity of the air gave some extraordinary strength and originality to the surroundings, especially in the mornings, when everything was wet with dew and only a bluish fog still lay in the lowlands.

And in the middle of the day, both the river and the forests played with many sunspots - gold, blue, green and iridescent. Streams of light dimmed, then flared up and turned the thickets into a living, moving world of foliage. The eye rested from the contemplation of the mighty and varied green.

The flight of birds cut this sparkling air: it rang from the flapping of bird wings.

Forest smells came in waves. Sometimes it was difficult to identify these smells. Everything was mixed in them: the breath of juniper, heather, water, lingonberries, rotten stumps, mushrooms, water lilies, and maybe the sky itself ... It was so deep and clean that one could not help believing that these airy oceans also bring their own smell - ozone and the wind that ran here from the shores of the warm seas.

It is very difficult sometimes to convey your feelings. But, perhaps, the state that we all experienced can most accurately be called a feeling of admiration for the charm of our native land that cannot be described in any way.

Turgenev talked about the magical Russian language. But he did not say that the magic of language was born from this magical nature and the amazing properties of man.

And the man was amazing in both small and large: simple, clear and benevolent. Simple in work, clear in his thoughts, benevolent in relation to people. Yes, not only to people, but also to every good animal, to every tree.

Sanin Vladimir Markovich - famous Soviet writer, traveler nnik, polar explorer.

Gavrilov - that's who did not give Sinitsyn peace.

Memory, not subject to the will of man, did with Sinitsyn what he feared most of all, threw him into 1942.

He stood on watch at the headquarters when the battalion commander, a Siberian with a thunderous bass, gave orders to the company commanders. And Sinitsyn heard that the battalion was leaving, leaving one platoon at the height. This platoon must fight to the last bullet, but delay the Nazis for at least three hours. His, Sinitsyn, platoon, the second platoon of the first company! And then with him, a beardless boy, there was a sunstroke. The heat was terrible, such cases happened, and the victim, doused with water, was taken away in a wagon. Then the division announced the order of the general and saluted the fallen heroes, who had repulsed the attacks of the Nazis for more than a day. And then the company commander saw Private Sinitsyn.

Sinitsyn confusedly explained that he had a sunstroke and therefore ...

Understandably, he held out the commanders and looked at Sinitsyn.

Never forget that look! With battles he reached Berlin, honestly earned two orders, washed away the guilt that no one had proven and unknown to anyone with blood, but this look haunted him at night for a long time.

And now also Gavrilov.

Just before Vize left, Gavrilov approached him and, obviously overpowering himself, muttered hostilely: Is the fuel prepared?

Sinitsyn, exhausted by insomnia, falling from his feet from fatigue, nodded in the affirmative. And Gavrilov left without saying goodbye, as if regretting that he had asked an extra and unnecessary question. For it went without saying that not a single head of the transport detachment would leave Mirny without preparing winter fuel and equipment for his replacement. Well, there was no such case in the history of expeditions and could not be! Therefore, in Gavrilov's question, anyone in Sinitsyn's place would have heard well-calculated tactlessness, a desire to offend and even offend with distrust.

Sinitsyn remembered exactly that he nodded in the affirmative.

But after all, he did not have time to prepare winter fuel, as it should! That is, he prepared, of course, but for his campaign, which was to take place in the polar summer. And Gavrilov will go not in the summer, but in the March frosts, and therefore fuel should have been specially prepared for his campaign. And the work is nonsense: to add the necessary dose of kerosene to the tanks with a solarium, more than usual, then no frost will take. How could he remember!

Sinitsyn cursed. You must immediately run to the radio room, find out if Gavrilov went on a campaign. If you didn’t come out, tell the truth: I’m sorry, I blundered, I forgot about the fuel, add kerosene to the solarium. If Gavrilov is on the march, raise the alarm, return the train to Mirny, even at the cost of losing several days to dilute the diesel fuel.

Sinitsyn began to dress, composing the text of the radiogram in his mind, and stopped. Is it worth raising a panic, asking for a scandal, elaboration? Well, what will be the frost on the track? About sixty degrees, no more, for such temperatures, and his diesel fuel will do just fine.

Reassuring himself with this thought, Sinitsyn took a carafe of water from the bracket, reached out his hand for a glass, and felt for the box on the table. In the semi-darkness I read: luminal. And Zhenya's nerves are on edge. I put two tablets in my mouth, washed it down with water, lay down and fell into a heavy sleep.

Three hours later, Gavrilov's sledge-caterpillar train left Mirny for the East in deadly cold. Simonov

Konstantin Mikhailovich - Soviet prose writer, poet, screenwriter.

All three Germans were from the Belgrade garrison and knew perfectly well that this was the tomb of the Unknown Soldier and that in case of artillery shelling, the grave had thick and strong walls. This was, in their opinion, good, and everything else did not interest them at all. So it was with the Germans.

The Russians also considered this hill with a house on top as an excellent observation post, but the enemy's observation post and, therefore, subject to fire.

What is this residential building? Something wonderful, I have never seen anything like it,” said the battery commander, Captain Nikolaenko, carefully examining the grave of the Unknown Soldier through binoculars for the fifth time. “And the Germans are sitting there, that’s for sure. Well, how are the data prepared for firing?

Yes sir! - Reported the platoon commander, standing next to the captain, a young lieutenant Prudnikov.

Start shooting.

They fired quickly, with three rounds. Two blew up the cliff just below the parapet, raising a fountain of earth. The third hit the parapet. Through the binoculars it was possible to see how fragments of stones flew.

Look splashed! - said Nikolaenko. - Move on to defeat.

But Lieutenant Prudnikov, before that, peering through binoculars for a long time and tensely, as if remembering something, suddenly reached into his field bag, pulled out a German trophy plan of Belgrade from it and, putting it on top of his two-verst, began to hastily run his finger over it.

What's the matter? - Nikolaenko said sternly. - There is nothing to clarify, everything is already clear.

Allow me, one minute, Comrade Captain, - muttered Prudnikov.

He quickly glanced several times at the plan, at the hill, and again at the plan, and suddenly, resolutely poking his finger at some point he had finally found, raised his eyes to the captain:

Do you know what it is, Comrade Captain?

And all - and a hill, and this is a residential building?

This is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I looked and doubted everything. I saw it somewhere in a photo in a book. Exactly. Here it is on the plan - the tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

For Prudnikov, who had once studied at the Faculty of History of Moscow State University before the war, this discovery seemed extremely important. But Captain Nikolaenko, unexpectedly for Prudnikov, did not show any responsiveness. He replied calmly and even somewhat suspiciously:

What else is there an unknown soldier? Come on fire.

Comrade Captain, allow me! - looking pleadingly into the eyes of Nikolaenko, Prudnikov said.

What else?

Perhaps you don't know... It's not just a grave. It is, as it were, a national monument. Well ... - Prudnikov stopped, choosing his words. - Well, a symbol of all those who died for their homeland. One soldier, who was not identified, was buried instead of all, in their honor, and now it is for the whole country as a memory.

Wait, don't chatter, - said Nikolaenko, and, wrinkling his forehead, thought for a whole minute.

He was a man of great soul, despite his rudeness, the favorite of the whole battery and a good gunner. But, having started the war as a simple fighter-gunner and having risen to the rank of captain with blood and valor, in labors and battles he did not have time to learn many things that, perhaps, an officer should have known. He had a weak understanding of history, if it was not about his direct accounts with the Germans, and of geography, if the question did not concern the settlement to be taken. And as for the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, he did hear about it for the first time.

However, although now he did not understand everything in Prudnikov's words, he felt with his soldierly soul that Prudnikov must not be worrying in vain and that it was about something really worthwhile.

Wait, - he repeated again, loosening his wrinkles. - Tell me plainly, whose soldier, with whom you fought, - tell me what!

A Serbian soldier, in general, Yugoslavian, - said Prudnikov. - He fought with the Germans in the last war of the fourteenth year.

Now it's clear.

Nikolaenko felt with pleasure that now everything was really clear and that the right decision could be made on this issue.

Everything is clear,” he repeated. “It is clear who and what. And then you weave God knows what - "unknown, unknown." What kind of unknown is he when he is Serbian and fought with the Germans in that war? Set aside!

Simonov Konstantin Mikhailovich - Soviet prose writer, poet, screenwriter.

It was in the morning. The battalion commander Koshelev called Semyon Shkolenko to him and explained, as always, without long words:

- "Language" must be obtained.

I'll get it, - said Shkolenko.

He returned to his trench, checked his machine gun, hung three disks on his belt, prepared five grenades, two simple ones and three anti-tank grenades, put them in a bag, then looked around and, after thinking, took the copper wire stored in the soldier’s bag and hid it in his pocket.

We had to walk along the coast. He walked slowly, with an eye. All around was quiet. Shkolenko quickened his pace and, in order to shorten the distance, began to cross the hollow straight ahead, through small bushes. There was a burst of machine-gun fire. Bullets passed somewhere close. Shkolenko lay down and lay motionless for a minute.

He was dissatisfied with himself. This machine-gun burst - you could do without it. All you had to do was walk through thick bushes. I wanted to save half a minute, and now I have to lose ten - go around. He got up and, bending down, ran into the thicket. In half an hour he passed first one beam, then another. Immediately behind this beam stood three sheds and a house. Shkolenko lay down and crawled like a plastuna. A few minutes later he crawled to the first barn and looked inside. The barn was dark and smelled of dampness. Chickens and a pig walked on the dirt floor. Shkolenko noticed a shallow trench near the wall and a loophole sawn into two logs. A half-smoked pack of German cigarettes was lying near the trench. The Germans were somewhere close. Now there was no doubt about it. The next barn was empty, near the third, near the haystack, lay two dead Red Army soldiers, rifles were lying next to them. The blood was fresh.

Shkolenko tried to reconstruct in his mind the picture of what had happened: well, yes, they came out of here, they were probably walking in height, without hiding, and the German hit from a machine gun from somewhere on the other side. Shkolenko was vexed at this careless death. "If they were with me, I would not let them go like this," he thought, but there was no time to think further, it was necessary to look for a German.

In a hollow overgrown with a vineyard, he attacked a path. After the rain that had fallen in the morning, the ground had not yet dried out, and the footprints leading into the forest were clearly visible on the path. After a hundred meters Shkolenko saw a pair of German boots and a rifle. He wondered why they had been abandoned here, and just in case he thrust the rifle into the bushes. A fresh trail led into the forest. Shkolenko had not yet crawled even fifty meters, when he heard a mortar shot. The mortar hit ten times in a row with short pauses.

There were thickets ahead. Shkolenko crawled over them to the left; there was a pit, with weeds growing around it. From the hole, in the gap between the weeds, one could see a mortar standing very close and a light machine gun a few steps further away. One German stood at the mortar, and six sat in a circle and ate from bowlers.

Shkolenko threw up his machine gun and wanted to fire a burst at them, but judiciously changed his mind. He could not kill everyone at once with one burst, and he would have an unequal struggle.

Slowly, he began to make an anti-tank grenade for battle. He chose anti-tank because the distance was short, and she could hit harder. He took his time. There was no need to hurry: the goal was in sight. He firmly rested his left hand on the bottom of the pit, clung to the ground so that his hand did not slip, and, rising, threw a grenade. She fell right in the middle of the Germans. When he saw that six of them were lying motionless, and one, the one who stood at the mortar, continued to stand near him, looking in surprise at the barrel mutilated by a grenade fragment, Shkolenko jumped up and, coming close to the German, without taking his eyes off him, showed a sign, so that he unfastened his parabellum and threw it on the ground. The German's hands were trembling, he unfastened the parabellum for a long time and threw it far away from him. Then Shkolenko, pushing the German in front of him, went with him to the machine gun. The machine gun was unloaded. Shkolenko motioned to the German to put the machine gun on his shoulders. The German obediently bent down and raised the machine gun. Now both hands were occupied.

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Shkolenko chuckled. It seemed funny to him that a German would bring his machine gun to us with his own hands.

Sobolev Andrey Nikolaevich - Russian linguist, Slavist and Balkanist.

Reading fiction is, in fact, a privilege these days. This kind of work takes too much time. Lack of time. Yes, and reading is also work, and first of all - on oneself. Let it be inconspicuous, not so burdensome, but a person who has spent a day on solving problems that require intellectual and spiritual dedication, sometimes simply does not have the strength to take an interest in the latest literature. This does not excuse anyone, but the reasons are obvious, and not everyone has developed a strong habit of serious reading.

For the majority of adults and the elderly today, television and cinema replace reading; if they get acquainted with the novelties of the book market, then, with rare exceptions, in a primitive film presentation.

Young people are increasingly learning the world of words through headphones, players and Internet resources, on smartphones and tablets, which are always at hand.

Perhaps I am exaggerating and someone will be able to paint a more optimistic picture, but it seems to me necessary to take into account the realities of the times.

I consider myself in that category of people who are busy with work. But my example is not typical. I can read and even write. Wrote the 4th collection of poems. I do not stop there, the folders of manuscripts and drafts are replenished, although flights, trips and night vigils are all the writing resource that I have left. Reading is even more difficult, pauses rarely occur.

If you try to characterize what you have recently read, the first thing that comes to mind is that it was written by PERSONS! Self made people. You believe them. The very history of their life does not allow one to doubt the conclusions and formulations. But it is very important to believe the author, no matter what we read - non-fiction, novel or memoir. The famous "I do not believe!" Stanislavsky now penetrates into all genres and types of art. And if in cinema the dynamics of the frame and the dashing plot can distract the viewer's attention from inconsistencies and outright falsehood, then the printed word immediately pushes any lies to the surface, everything that is written for the sake of a red word is sucked from the finger. Truly, what is written with a pen cannot be cut down with an axe.

Checking the reader's baggage of past years, I come to the conclusion that I have always been unconsciously drawn to authors who were not only noted for writing talent, but also had an outstanding personal history. Biography, as they said then. In Soviet times, the personal life of popular authors was dosed, and sometimes inaccessible, then no one knew about PR. But the grains of their deeds and deeds were on everyone's lips, enlivened the image and increased our sympathy and degree of trust. So it was with Mayakovsky, so it was with Vysotsky, Vizbor, Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov. And many others, whose texts we analyzed into quotations, whose books became the most convincing arguments in disputes.

I don’t know what the criterion of real literature is, for me the main criterion was and remains the result - to be believed.

Soloveichik Simon Lvovich - Soviet and Russian publicist and journalist, theorist of pedagogy.

Once I was on a train. A modestly dressed reserved woman sitting next to me at the window opened a volume of Chekhov. The road was long, I didn’t take the books, the people around were strangers, I began to think about work. And in the same tone that they ask, for example: "Do you know if we will arrive soon?" - I unexpectedly for myself and even more so for my neighbor asked her:

Excuse me, do you know what happiness is?

A woman with a volume of Chekhov in her hands turned out to be a wonderful companion. She didn’t ask me why I asked such a strange question, didn’t immediately answer: “Happiness is ...”, she didn’t tell me that happiness is when you are understood, or “what happiness is, everyone understands by - her own," she did not speak in quotes: no, she covered the book and was silent for a long time, looking out the window, - she thought. Finally, when I had already decided that she had forgotten about the question, she turned to me and said...

We will return to her answer later.

Let us ask ourselves: what is happiness?

Each country has its own Chief Pedagogue - the people, and there is the Chief Pedagogy Textbook - language, "practical consciousness", as the classics wrote long ago. For actions we turn to the people, for concepts - to the language of the people. I do not have to explain what happiness is, I must humbly ask our language about it - everything is in it, you will understand everything from it, listening to the word in our speech today. Folk thought is contained not only in proverbs and sayings, in folk wisdom (proverbs are just contradictory), but in common, ordinary phrases and turns of speech. Let's look: with what other words the concept of interest to us is combined, why it is possible to say so, but not so. They say so, but they don't say so. It's never random.

We say: "happy share", "happy occasion", "happy fate", "happiness rolled", "pulled out a lucky ticket", "happy luck".

The most active people who have achieved everything by their labor still say: “I have been lucky ... I have been given happiness ...”

Happiness is a fortune, a fate about which we know nothing, and if it is not there, then they say: “This is my fate”, “It is evident that it is written for me like that.”

But we will come across the law of spiritual life more than once (this proposal was slightly different): everything that is in a person arises from two opposite movements, from two forces: from the movement directed from the world to man, and the movement from man to the world. These opposite forces, meeting at one point, do not annihilate, but add up. But if the meeting does not take place, then it is as if both forces did not exist. Suppose a person has no luck in anything, misfortunes haunt him, and he may have had a hard fate from birth. Not everyone will be able to overcome fate. But a strong person knows how to use the most imperceptible chance, which, of course, is in everyone's life.

This is how man conquers fate. Or rather, not fate, but the difficulties that fate sent him. And if there is no own desire to win, the desire for happiness, then at least make it richer - there will be no happiness. He has no faith in life, his will is broken.

They say: I found my happiness, I got happiness, I achieved happiness, and even - I stole someone else's happiness. Language requires action: found, caught, mined, reached, snatched his happiness from fate, every person is the blacksmith of his own happiness.

Happiness is not a thing, and not a stock of things, and not a position, and not a financial condition, but a state of mind that arises when a strongly desired is achieved. (And something else like "happiness is a blessing, grace").

What, however, did the woman on the bus say about happiness? Later it turned out that she was a researcher, a specialist in the field of protein chemistry. After thinking about the question for a long time, she said:

I can't define happiness. Here's a scientist! A scientist is not one who knows everything, but one who knows exactly what he does not know. But perhaps this is the case: a person has spiritual aspirations: when they are satisfied, he feels happy. Does it look like the truth?

Sologub Fedor - Russian poet, writer, playwright, publicist.

In the evening we met again at the Starkins'. They only talked about the war. Somebody spread the word that the call for new recruits this year would be earlier than usual, by the eighteenth of August; and that deferments to students will be abolished. Therefore, Bubenchikov and Kozovalov were oppressed - if this is true, then they will have to serve their military service not in two years, but today.

Young people did not want to fight - Bubenchikov loved his young and, it seemed to him, valuable and wonderful life too much, and Kozovalov did not like anything around him to become too serious.

Kozovalov said dejectedly:

I will go to Africa. There will be no war.

And I will go to France, - said Bubenchikov, - and I will transfer to French citizenship.

Lisa blushed in annoyance. Shouted:

And you are not ashamed! You have to protect us, and you think for yourself where to hide. And you think that in France you will not be forced to fight?

Sixteen spares were called up from Orgo. An Estonian caring for Liza, Paul Sepp, was also called. When Lisa found out about this, she suddenly felt somehow embarrassed, almost ashamed that she was laughing at him. She remembered his clear, childlike eyes. She suddenly clearly imagined the distant battlefield - and he, big, strong, would fall, struck down by an enemy bullet. A careful, compassionate tenderness for this departing man rose in her soul. With fearful surprise she thought: “He loves me. And me, what am I? She jumped like a monkey and laughed. He will go to fight. Maybe die. And when it will be hard for him, whom will he remember, to whom he will whisper: "Goodbye, dear"? He will remember a Russian young lady, someone else's, far away.

Those called were escorted solemnly. The whole village gathered. Speeches were made. Played by a local amateur orchestra. And summer residents almost all came. The ladies dressed up.

Paul walked ahead and sang. His eyes shone, his face seemed sunny, he held his hat in his hand, and a light breeze blew his blond curls. His usual bagginess was gone, and he seemed very handsome. This is how the Vikings and Ushkuyniki used to go on a campaign. He sang. Estonians enthusiastically repeated the words of the national anthem.

We reached the forest behind the village. Lisa stopped Sepp:

Listen, Paul, come to me for a minute.

Paul moved to a side path. He walked next to Lisa. His gait was resolute and firm, and his eyes looked boldly ahead. It seemed that the solemn sounds of martial music beat rhythmically in his soul. Lisa looked at him with loving eyes. He said:

Don't be afraid, Lisa. As long as we are alive, we will not let the Germans go far. And whoever enters Russia will not be happy with our reception. The more they enter, the less they will return to Germany.

Suddenly Liza blushed very much and said:

Paul, I love you these days. I will follow you. I will be taken as a sister of mercy. At the first opportunity, we will get married.

Paul exploded. He bent down, kissed Liza's hand, and repeated:

Honey, honey!

And when he looked into her face again, his clear eyes were wet.

Anna Sergeevna walked a few steps behind and murmured:

What tenderness with the Estonian! He God knows what he thinks of himself. Can you imagine - he kisses the hand, like a knight to his lady!

Lisa turned to her mother and shouted:

Mom, come here!

She and Paul Sepp stopped at the edge of the road. Both had happy, radiant faces.

Together with Anna Sergeevna, Kozovalov and Bubenchikov came up. Kozovalov said in Anna Sergeevna's ear:

And our Estonian is very much in the face of militant enthusiasm. Look, what a handsome man, like the knight Parsifal.

Anna Sergeevna grumbled with annoyance:

Well, handsome! Well, Lizonka? she asked her daughter.

Liza said, smiling happily:

Here's my fiancé, mommy.

Anna Sergeevna crossed herself in horror. She exclaimed:

Lisa, be afraid of God! What are you saying!

Lisa spoke proudly:

He is the defender of the fatherland.

Soloukhin Vladimir Alekseevich - Russian Soviet writer and poet.

From childhood, from the school bench, a person gets used to the combination of words: "love for the motherland." He realizes this love much later, and to understand the complex feeling of love for the motherland - that is, what exactly and for what he loves is already given in adulthood.

The feeling is really complex. Here is the native culture, and native history, all the past and all the future of the people, everything that the people managed to accomplish throughout their history and what they still have to do.

Without going into deep considerations, we can say that one of the first places in the complex feeling of love for the motherland is love for the native nature.

For a person born in the mountains, nothing can be sweeter than rocks and mountain streams, snow-white peaks and steep slopes. It would seem that what to love in the tundra? A monotonous swampy land with countless glassy lakes, overgrown with lichens, but the Nenets reindeer herder will not exchange his tundra for any southern beauties there.

In a word, to whom the steppe is dear, to whom the mountains, to whom the sea coast smelling of fish, and to whom the native Central Russian nature, the quiet beauties of the river with yellow water lilies and white lilies, the kind, quiet sun of Ryazan ... And so that the lark sings over the field rye, and to the birdhouse on the birch in front of the porch.

It would be pointless to list all the signs of Russian nature. But thousands of signs and signs add up to that common thing that we call our native nature and that we, while loving, perhaps, both the sea and the mountains, still love more than anything else in the whole world.

All this is so. But it must be said that this feeling of love for our native nature is not spontaneous in us, it not only arose by itself, since we were born and grew up among nature, but was brought up in us by literature, painting, music, by those great teachers of ours who lived before us. , also loved their native land and passed on their love to us, the descendants.

Don't we remember from childhood by heart the best lines about the nature of Pushkin, Lermontov, Nekrasov, Alexei Tolstoy, Tyutchev, Fet? Do they leave us indifferent, do they not teach anything about nature from Turgenev, Aksakov, Leo Tolstoy, Prishvin, Leonov, Paustovsky?.. And painting? Shishkin and Levitan, Polenov and Savrasov, Nesterov and Plastov - didn't they teach and still don't teach us to love our native nature? Among these glorious teachers, the name of the remarkable Russian writer Ivan Sergeevich Sokolov-Mikitov occupies a worthy place.

Ivan Sergeevich Sokolov-Mikitov was born in 1892 on the land of Smolensk, and his childhood passed among the very Russian nature. At that time, folk customs, rituals, holidays, way of life and way of life were still alive. Shortly before his death, Ivan Sergeevich wrote about that time and about that world:

“My life began in native peasant Russia. This Russia was my real homeland. I listened to peasant songs, watched how bread was baked in a Russian oven, memorized village thatched huts, women and peasants ... I remember merry Christmas time, Shrovetide, village weddings, fairs, round dances, village friends, guys, our fun games, skiing from the mountains ... I remember a cheerful haymaking, a village field sown with rye, narrow fields, blue cornflowers along the borders ... I remember how, having changed into holiday sundresses, women and girls went out to reap the ripened rye, scattered like colorful bright spots across the golden clean field, as the reapers were celebrating. was Russia, which Pushkin knew, Tolstoy knew.

Chukovsky Korney Ivanovich - Russian Soviet poet, publicist, literary critic, translator and literary critic.

The other day a young student came to me, unfamiliar, lively, with some unpretentious request. Having fulfilled her request, I, for my part, asked her to do me a favor and read aloud at least five or ten pages from some book so that I could rest for half an hour.

She agreed willingly. I gave her the first thing that came to my hand - Gogol's story "Nevsky Prospekt", closed my eyes and prepared to listen with pleasure.

This is my favorite vacation.

The first pages of this intoxicating story are downright impossible to read without delight: there is such a variety of lively intonations in it and such a wonderful mixture of deadly irony, sarcasm and lyrics. To all this, the girl was blind and deaf. She read Gogol like a train timetable - indifferently, monotonously and dimly. In front of her was a magnificent, patterned, multicolored fabric, sparkling with bright rainbows, but for her, this fabric was gray.

Of course, while reading, she made a lot of mistakes. Instead of good, she read good, instead of mercantile - mekrantile and lost her way, like a seven-year-old schoolgirl, when she came to the word phantasmagoria, which was clearly not known to her.

But what is literal illiteracy in comparison with mental illiteracy! Do not feel marvelous humor! Do not respond with your soul to beauty! The girl seemed like a monster to me, and I remembered that this is exactly how - stupidly, without a single smile - a patient of the Kharkov psychiatric clinic read the same Gogol.

To check my impression, I took another book from the shelf and asked the girl to read at least a page of the Past and Thoughts. Here she gave way completely, as if Herzen were a foreign writer, speaking in a language unknown to her. All his verbal fireworks were in vain; she didn't even notice them.

The girl graduated from high school and successfully studied at a pedagogical university. No one taught her to admire art - to rejoice at Gogol, Lermontov, to make Pushkin, Baratynsky, Tyutchev her eternal companions, and I took pity on her, as one pities a cripple.

After all, a person who has not experienced a passionate passion for literature, poetry, music, painting, who has not gone through this emotional training, will forever remain a spiritual freak, no matter how successful he is in science and technology. At the first acquaintance with such people, I always notice their terrible flaw - the poverty of their psyche, their "stupidity" (in the words of Herzen). It is impossible to become a truly cultured person without experiencing an aesthetic admiration for art. The one who has not experienced these lofty feelings has a different face, and the very sound of his voice is different. I always recognize a truly cultured person by the elasticity and richness of his intonations. And a man with a beggarly-poor mental life mumbles monotonously and tediously, like the girl who read Nevsky Prospekt to me.

But does the school always enrich the spiritual, emotional life of its young pupils with literature, poetry, art? I know dozens of schoolchildren for whom literature is the most boring, hated subject. The main quality that children learn in literature lessons is secrecy, hypocrisy, insincerity.

Schoolchildren are forcibly forced to love those writers to whom they are indifferent, they are taught to be cunning and false, to hide their real opinions about the authors imposed on them by the school curriculum, and to declare their ardent admiration for those of them who inspire them with yawning boredom.

I'm not talking about the fact that the vulgar sociological method, long rejected by our science, is still rampant in the school, and this deprives teachers of the opportunity to inspire students with an emotional, lively attitude towards art. Therefore, today, when I meet young people who assure me that Turgenev lived in the 18th century, and Leo Tolstoy participated in the Battle of Borodino, and confuse the ancient poet Alexei Koltsov with the Soviet journalist Mikhail Koltsov, I think that all this is natural, that otherwise and it can not be. It's all about the lack of love, indifference, the internal resistance of schoolchildren to those coercive methods by which they want to introduce them to the brilliant (and non-genius) work of our great (and not great) writers.

Without enthusiasm, without ardent love, all such attempts are doomed to failure.

Now they write a lot in the newspapers about the catastrophically bad spelling in the writings of today's schoolchildren, who mercilessly distort the simplest words. But spelling cannot be improved in isolation from the general culture. Spelling is usually lame in those who are spiritually illiterate, who have an underdeveloped and poor psyche.

Eliminate this illiteracy, and everything else will follow.