Ant Country short. that steep, turning point period, the “year” of its history

Works of Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky - author famous poem"Ant Country" - rated ambiguously modern critics, literary scholars, readers. However, we can say with confidence that he was an outstanding poet of the Soviet period of Russian literature, whose works reflected important stages history of the Russian people and are of significant artistic value.

The poem “The Country of Ant” was published in 1936 and brought him wide literary fame. At this time, the country was solving a serious socio-political problem of the village way of life, the fate of the peasants. Relying on Nekrasov’s traditions in depicting the peasant worldview (“Who lives well in Rus'”), Tvardovsky creates a detailed poetic work about the victory of the collective farm system.

The plot of the poem is quite simple. The main character is the peasant Nikita Morgunok, who does not dare to join the collective farm because he is afraid of losing his independence. He is attracted to an individual life, filled with special meaning and even poetry. Hearing old legend about the country of peasant happiness of Ant, Morgunok goes in search of this fabulous land. His imagination lovingly paints ideal pictures of wealth and abundance, simplicity and independence reigning in this small wonderful country:

Land in length and breadth
All around us.
Sow one bobble
And that one is yours...
...And everything is yours in front of you,
Go ahead and spit.
Your well and your fir tree,
And all the cones are fir.

Next, we observe how reality gradually destroys the hero’s illusions regarding the possibility and correctness of individual management peasant farm and convinces us that real happiness is possible only on the collective farm, in collective work on common land.

First, Morgunok finds himself at a cheerful kulak wedding (Chapter II) and understands that he is not satisfied with this way of life (“There’s a wedding and a wake”). Next, the hero meets a cunning priest on his way (Chapter V), and makes an enemy in the person of the fist of Ilya Bugrov (Chapter VIII). However, the strongest impression on Morgunk, which finally changed his worldview, was made by the village of individual peasants on the Island (Chapter XIV), in which live peasants who did not want to go to the collective farm and because of this found themselves in poverty:

There are seas of bread all around,
Fields of a large country.
Thin Roofs of the Islands
They are barely visible behind them.

The new position of the hero, who has realized the advantages of collective farm life, is finally consolidated after his visit to the collective farm, in which he sees the well-coordinated work of the peasants (Chapter XV). Like Nekrasov's hero looking for happy peasants, Tvardovsky's hero finds them on the collective farm fields. Morgunok comes to the conclusion that he is “not a quitter, not a villain”, “no worse than all people” and therefore worthy better life. This is confirmed by a conversation with the chairman of the collective farm, Frolov, who tells Morgunk about the struggle for collective farms in the village, about the gradual and difficult transition to a new way of farming:

You say how many years
Will this life work?
So I give you the answer
Open and cordial:
At first only for five years.
And there? - And there for ten years.
And there? - And there for twenty years.
And there? - And there - forever...

A significant creative merit of the poet is the authenticity artistic development the problem posed: showing the fullness and inconsistency of the doubts, the painful hesitations of Morgunk, a truthful and unembellished depiction of the fierce struggle for the collective farms. In this regard, A. Tvardovsky’s poem echoes M. Sholokhov’s novel “Virgin Soil Upturned.”

The undoubted artistic merit of this work is the authenticity of the paintings. folk life, and it can be argued that the poem “Country of Ant” most fully reflected the main features of Tvardovsky’s ideological and artistic worldview: a close connection with modernity, the ability to capture and poetically express the mood of the era, it is possible to convey high ideas to the very wide range readers, proximity best traditions Russian literary classics.

At the same time, Tvardovsky wrote cycles of poems “Rural Chronicle” (1939). “About Grandfather Danila” (1938), poems “Mothers” (1937, first published in 1958), “Ivushka” (1938), “Trip to Zagorye” (1939), and a number of other notable works. It is around the “Country of Ant” that the emerging and contradictory art world Tvardovsky from the late 20s until the beginning of the Patriotic War.

Today we perceive the work of the poet of that time differently. It should be recognized that the researcher’s comments about the poet’s works of the early 30s are fair (with certain reservations they could be extended to this entire decade): “The acute contradictions of the collectivization period in the poems, in fact, are not touched upon, the problems of the village of those years are only named, and they are resolved in a superficially optimistic manner.” However, it seems that this can hardly be attributed unconditionally to “The Country of Ant,” with its unique conventional design and construction, and folklore flavor, as well as to the best poems of the pre-war decade.

IN recent years the view of “The Country of Ant” as a poem glorifying collectivization has undergone significant adjustments and revision in a number of works. The point is that already in early period Tvardovsky was characterized by a holy, unbridled Komsomol belief that the life of the village was being rebuilt “on new way" But he also had doubts, anxiety, anxious thoughts, born of real impressions of the “great turning point” taking place in the countryside, which turned into a tragedy for the Russian peasantry.

Today, the dual perception of the events of collectivization in Tvardovsky’s poem is quite obvious. And yet, what happened in the village at the turn of the 20s and 30s is depicted and affirmed in it, perhaps primarily in pictures of a powerful flood, a spring flood, and rapid movement that swept the country:

Our native country is great.

Spring! Great year!..

And the whole country has a hand,

Calling forward.

At the same time, the author’s desire to convey the dramatic nature of the hero’s fate and the complexity of his quest is undeniable. Here is the drama of farewell to his single life, expressed in Nikita Morgunok’s journey itself, in his dreams of the fabulous Ant, which was not affected by the current changes, in his memories and experiences about the horse, about threshing... Of course, this is not the tragedy of “de-peasantization”, although there are individual touches and hints of it in the poem - in the words of Ilya Bugrov, returning from exile, in the sketches of the dispossession scene:

They were not beaten, they were not tied up,

Didn't torture

They were transported, transported in carts

With children and belongings.

And who himself did not leave the hut,

Who fainted -

Police guys

They brought me out by hand...

Rooted in real life and events in the Russian village of the 30s, “Ant Country” is at the same time designed in a fabulously folklore poetic vein. Hence myself central image Nikita Morgunka, in whom closeness is clearly felt fairy tale hero- to the carrier best qualities people: hard work, honesty, kindness, desire for truth and free life. And the very path of his search is embodied in the spirit of folklore and classical traditions Russian poetry, primarily Nekrasov’s poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'.”

The folklore principle is embodied in many images, motifs, genres echoed in the poem, in the use of the forms of fairy tales, parables, songs, ditties - especially in the contrasting scenes of a kulak wedding-funeral and a collective farm wedding. By the way, these forms and means also serve to poetize collective farm life, the figures of representatives of the former peasant poor - the “heroes” Frolovs and, in particular, the chairman of the collective farm Andrei Frolov with his belief in a utopia imposed from above - the illusion that this new, collective farm life is “forever ", "forever".

And if in “The Country of Ant” two utopias collided: peasant and socialist, then for the hero and the author it was inevitable to say goodbye to both. At the same time, the poem was important for Tvardovsky, perhaps, first of all, in mastering the form, classical and folk poetic traditions organically absorbed and implemented in it: speech polyphony, variety of rhythms, verbal and intonation findings - right down to individual lines that will resonate in “ Vasily Terkina” (“The number of miles on foot is long…”; “And the accordion wanders somewhere...”, etc.).

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Analysis of the poem by A.T. Tvardovsky “Country of Ant”

“The Country of Ant” is a qualitatively new stage in the development of Tvardovsky’s poetry. It is with her that the mature Tvardovsky begins.

No more than 2-3 years passed after writing the poems “The Path to Socialism” and “Introduction” when Tvardovsky began work on “The Country of Ant”. “With “The Country of Ant,” which met with an approving reception from readers and critics, I begin counting my writings that can characterize me as a writer,” this is how the author himself defined the meaning of this poem in “Autobiography” [vol. 1, p. 35].

In his poem, Tvardovsky sets the task of depicting the difficult and complex path of introducing the middle peasant to a new life.

"Ant's Country", like the future "Book about a fighter", is also without beginning, without end: from the first to last chapter her hero Nikita Morgunok is on the road or at short rest stops. In the text, in the road descriptions, the presence of the author is constantly visible - sympathizing with his hero or ironizing, regretting or reproaching. .

In the poem “Country of Ant,” Tvardovsky sets himself the task of tracing in detail, step by step, the process of formation of a new, socialist consciousness, using the example of showing the path of the middle peasant Nikita Morgunok to the collective farm. The poet says almost nothing about the past of his hero, does not show him even after the turning point in consciousness has taken place. Portraying Morgunk, the poet set himself the task of revealing the very process of destruction of old concepts and ideas and the formation of a new consciousness.

Morgunok – central figure"Countries of Ant". The author monitors his actions, actions, thoughts. All reality is shown through the perception of this hero in connection with the disclosure of one or another side of his character. Of all the features that characterize the hero, Tvardovsky singles out and traces in detail the change in attitude towards collective farm construction. The author says almost nothing about Morgunka the family man, about his relationships with loved ones, about his passions. All this is told briefly and only in connection with the disclosure of the most essential thing in the character of the hero - his social person. Morgunok’s past can only be judged by reference to his grandfather’s unfulfilled “prediction” that “there is a deadline for everything: health has a deadline, luck has a deadline, wealth and intelligence.”

Looks, and soon - forty years,

There is no wealth, no prosperity.

Morgunk's relationship with his loved ones is revealed only in the episode of his meeting with his brother-in-law. Morgunk’s connections with his fellow villagers are also given in their most significant manifestations (relationship to the kulak Bugrov) in order to show social evolution hero. The author characterizes Morgunk’s personal qualities as follows:

Morgunok was not so smart

Not so cunning and brave

But he believed that he was strong

I knew what I wanted...

Tvardovsky subordinates all the details of the characteristics of his main task: the depiction of the social nature of the hero. The images of Frolov, Bugrov and others in the poem were created using the same principle.

Morgunok combines the narrowness and poverty of his political outlook with the rich spiritual qualities. He has a sensitive kind heart: he shares his last “grub” on the road when meeting with Bugrov. Despite the grave offense inflicted by Bugrov, he caressed the boy son he had abandoned. Morgunok tenderly and enthusiastically loves nature, its sounds, colors and smells: here he, like a child, stretches out his palm towards the spring rain and feels how

The smell of summer water

The earth is like a year ago...

For Morgunka, work is not a means of enrichment, but the meaning of life. Even in the details, Morgunk’s “mastery” is evident. Let's take, for example, his habit of harnessing his horse with dexterity; At the same time, the poet does not forget to note:

A gray horse wanders through the shafts

Under the painted arc,

And the soup is tightly pulled

With the master's hand.

The definition of “household” has not only its direct meaning, but also a hint of Nikita’s skill as a master, i.e. efficiently, skillfully, take on everything that is required in peasant life.

The cheerful threshing reminds him of joyful music. Longing for work while traveling, Morgunok greedily watches the sowing of grain, mowing, and harvesting - he himself so wants to get involved in this work that he cannot stand it and willingly helps the collective farmers. And even your own self-respect he evaluates the ability to work. It is precisely because of his love for work that Morgunk has a particularly tender feeling for his horse. For him, a horse is something absolutely irreplaceable in a person’s life, an assistant in work, in troubles and joys.

It seems to Morgunk that collective work depersonalizes a person and deprives him of “freedom” of action. This is why Morgunka is so frightened by the collective farm. He is looking for quiet peaceful life just at the time when a radical change in the old takes place and, in the struggle against it, the birth of a new world takes place. Life pits Morgunk against two antagonistic forces. It is in this clash that the heroes’ attitude to reality is determined. He is convinced not only by the victory of socialism (collective farmers working in the field, a tractor driver, a gypsy collective farm, the Frolovs), but also by an old, doomed life that clings powerlessly to all living things (Bugrov, priest, “islanders”).

At that time, neither active participation in the construction of a new life, nor an active struggle against this new thing in the camp of the enemies of socialism was typical for Morgunka. The image of Morgunk typifies the life and ideals not of the entire working Russian peasantry, but of a certain social group, the middle peasant of the 30s - a period of decisive disruption of the proprietary way of life, when the essence of this social group of people was most fully revealed. Morgunok contrasts the idealized past with modernity, trying to save what is becoming obsolete, something that is doomed to destruction throughout the course of life.

The picture of collective farm life drawn by Tvardovsky in the poem is realistic. Tvardovsky based his “Country of Ant” on the conditional fairy tale plot. The work tells about the most significant phenomena of folk life, the poem is full of original fairy-tale entertainment.

Ant as an ideal of some kind of individualistic peasant happiness is a fantasy, unreality; it could only be born in the naive consciousness of a poverty-stricken, backward peasant. Therefore, Ant’s searches are unrealistic: they are funny, but for Morgunok they represent the meaning of his whole life. Oppressed for centuries, deprived of all the blessings of life, the peasant dreamed away into the world of legends and fairy tales. That is why the search for a “happy” land is so motivated in the poem. Giving fairy tale character throughout the history of searches, Tvardovsky by this alone emphasizes the inconsistency and illusory nature of the ideals of his hero.

The half-fantastic, half-real journey of the middle peasant Nikita Morgunok in search of collective farm land represents only external reflection the conflict that was caused by the era of the widespread offensive of socialism in our country and which constitutes the main meaning of the poem - a decisive clash of two opposing forces: individualism and collectivism. But it is precisely this convention, the allegorical nature of the plot situation that also helps the poet to highlight and emphasize the most significant side of this grandiose process.

All this affected the construction of the poem as a whole. The poet includes in its plot legends, fairy-tale episodes, symbolic images, which, although sometimes do not have a direct external connection with the plot of the poem, but at the same time deepen the internal content of the poem and give it a great generalizing meaning. For example, such fabulous symbolic scenes and images as the episode with the hut of two old men, which is brought to the collective farm by the spring flood, as the image of an unemployed man walking, “as if from captivity,” across all of Europe to our borders, and others, in the poem of real The episodes take on an almost fairy-tale character. Here is the village of Ostrov, where Morgunok ends up after unsuccessful attempts to find his happy Ant. This is not just a village, but the personification of the outgoing old rural Russia with its inertia and backwardness:

Not a whole roof, not a hut,

Every corner is a hole.

And absolutely – three pipes

For thirty-three yards.

The fabulous Ant is a symbol of ideal individualistic peasant happiness. The village of Ostrov is the same world, but real, not idealized. The poet, as it were, gives his hero the opportunity to be convinced of the true nature of his ideal. In this case, one should take into account the poetic convention dictated by the fairy-tale form of the work.

Consequently, the poem “Ant’s Country” to a large extent, starting from the main storyline and ending with a whole series of chapters and episodes, is not an ordinary realistic image phenomena of life, as if refracted through the prism of folk fiction and convention.

At the same time, the poet saturates the poem with details real life villages of the 30s, he draws the characters so realistically, and main idea The poem is so vital and significant for that era that we do not notice this convention; “life itself” appears before us in its essential moments.

The image of the main character is endowed with such properties that, although impossible for an individual person, truthfully convey the essential features of an entire social group of people. The image of Morgunk is conventional, almost symbolic. Many qualities of his nature are revealed by the author in the form of folk poetic ideas: his understanding of life is expressed by a folk proverb (“Like at 20 years old you are not strong”), the past hero is told in the form of a folk joke (“Nikita was born to the father, to the womb”). From the point of view of “reality,” the episode when Morgunok carries a cart for many kilometers also seems incredible.

At the very beginning of the poem, Tvardovsky draws a picturesque picture“thousands of paths and thousands of roads,” along one of which the hero of the poem is heading. In this regard, the poem acquires makes a lot of sense allegorical image of the road. Morgunok is looking for his own special path in life, and not a common one with others, not the one along which the bulk of the peasantry has taken. The author contrasts this narrow path of personal happiness with the people’s main path to socialism. When Morgunka began to feel burdened by his lonely path, when he increasingly began to doubt the reality of his dream, other, new real roads of people began to emerge more and more clearly before him, which merged into one common powerful path of struggle for common happiness.

A tractor squad went out into the field,

A fast train rumbles along the tracks,

Airplanes by flying to the sky,

Icebreakers round the pole...

Talking about how the priest galloped away on Morgunok's horse, and Morgunok, chasing after him, fell onto the dusty road, the author emphasizes the tragedy of Morgunok's situation with his desire to find his own special path.

The beginning of Nikita’s path is not overshadowed by anything and there is almost no doubt in his mind about the correctness decision taken. Neither the kulak wedding-memorial, nor the meeting with his brother-in-law, nor the affirmative answer of those working in the field to his question “Collective farmers, oh no?”, nor the meeting with the priest yet shook his faith in the possibility of the existence of his Ant. In a dream and in reality, he dreams of his Ant and doesn’t think about anything yet and doesn’t want to know. Morgunok maintains this mood until his first meeting with Bugrov (Chapter 8).

In the seventh chapter in open speech For the first time we feel the power of the passion of his dream and, even more, the uncertainty of its implementation, the fear of parting with it forever.

The meeting of Morgunk with the fist Bugrov was the first strong push that the hero experienced in a collision with reality on the path to a new life. Bugrov, who had always been the ideal owner and man, for Morgunok, Bugrov, whom Morgunok imitated and with whom he considered it happiness to sit at the same table - this same Bugrov turned out to be not only an honest man, but also a bad father, he turned out to be a man who despises work.

Morgunk's meeting with the gypsy collective farmers (Chapter 10) overturns his old ideas about life and people. Gypsies, who have always been considered quitters and horse thieves, turn out to be quite good diggers.

They're mowing like men,

Row after row they walk.

They only wear donkeys

Not in shape, it seems.

And when the gypsies, in response to Morgunk’s demand to give up his horse, good-naturedly invite him to a rich stable to choose any one if he recognizes it as his own, Morgunk had nothing to say.

The fourteenth chapter can be considered the culmination in the composition of the poem: It, as it were, sums up Morgunk’s journey and outlines an internal turn in his search. In the village of Ostrova it is symbolic image peasant past, poverty and ruin. Tvardovsky here confronts Morgunk with his own dreams actually coming true. One of the residents is trying to prove to Morgunk that they live well, in the words of Morgunk himself:

Why is our life bad?

In my opinion, there is no better way.

The earth's length and breadth are

All around...

But it’s hard to convince Morgunk now. He answers “Beskolkhozniki”:

And your life is not life, friends,

Just melancholy and pain.

I look at you: you can’t live like this.

We need to decide what...

In Morgunk’s soul there is still a lot of attachment to the old world, he is sorry to part with it:

And everything fell silent. And Morgunok

Suddenly he fell silent dejectedly.

And with a crumpled cap of wires

Slowly in the eyes...

The decision, which first emerged in his mind at the sight of the meager life of the inhabitants of the village of Ostrov, was further strengthened during his stay on the Frolov collective farm. Morgunok sees clear advantages of collective farm life. But he still does not believe that such a life can last for a long time: it is too unusual and incomprehensible.

Frolov reveals the great Morgunka social meaning transformations in the country opens his eyes to many things that were not clear or known to him. But Morgunk is even more convinced by what he himself sees: new, truly human relations between collective farmers, joyful collective work.

The meeting with the “mantis” returning to the collective farm finally convinced Morgunk of the need to join a new life. Now the hero already doubts something else: the collective farmers “will not let him in” (“he has traveled, they will say, half the country, and has come to a ready-made place”). However, what he acquired during his wanderings is incomparably more significant - and Morgunok himself understood this well:

But now I can see everything better

Thousands of miles around.

Thus ended the journey of the hero of the poem. The plot of the poem is complete, since it more fully reveals the main idea of the work: it shows the complex and difficult turn of the peasant owner to socialist forms of life.

Tvardovsky reveals inner world of his hero, mainly conveying his thoughts. Morgunok travels alone, but constantly encounters by different people, his attitude towards them characterizes him state of mind. The main form of revealing the image of Morgunk is showing the hero’s inner experiences. This better allows the author to penetrate into the very way of thinking and feeling of the hero, to convey the subtlest psychological movements of his soul. Tvardovsky's hero is shown in close connection with reality, his spiritual world reveals itself in a sharp confrontation with her.

The style of Tvardovsky’s poem is characterized by clear and clear imagery of speech. The language of the poem is devoid of metaphor, the sentences are simple in construction. Tvardovsky is very economical in words, restrained in the use of various tropes. But everywhere the poet creates a whole, complete picture. To show how absolutely irreplaceable a horse is in a peasant individual farm, the poet uses only one phrase:

Land, family, hut and oven

And every nail in the wall

A footcloth from your feet, a shirt from your shoulders -

Stayed on horseback.

Truthfulness, realism of everything figurative system The poem is achieved, first of all, by the fact that Tvardovsky strives to convey with the greatest accuracy the essence of an object or phenomenon. The author tends to avoid descriptive sentences. The images in the poem are visible and material. The picture is shown in its internal content, and not in the external drawing. The entire imagery of “The Country of Ant” is determined by the ideological and thematic content of the poem. The nature of metaphors, epithets, comparisons is close peasant image thinking:

And all covered in dust, like bread in ashes,

Nikita Morgunok.

Ahead, in the distance, the sound of hoofs,

It’s like they’re pounding hemp in a mortar,

It’s as if women are beating the devil somewhere.

The oak staff is knocked down by its cap,

Like the handle of a chisel.

We took a fur coat along the slopes

Dense greenery.

The poem is dominated by the simplest tropes - comparisons and epithets, and the epithets are mainly constant, characteristic of oral folk art. The style of the poem as a whole very well reflects the life of the Soviet village of the 30s, the way of thinking and feelings of ordinary workers.

Following Pushkin and Nekrasov, Tavrdovsky makes huge amount colloquial words are common knowledge high poetry and thereby, as it were, reveals the richest poetic virtues hidden in the language of broad layers of the people. Tvardovsky uses colloquial vocabulary and folk phraseology much more widely than his predecessors. His author's speech is filled with colloquial words, proverbs and sayings to the same extent as the speech of the heroes. This is one of distinctive features poems. At the same time, Tvardovsky’s use of non-literary words is always artistically justified. Here is a small picture: Morgunok set off on his long journey, his native village had already disappeared beyond the horizon.

And the yard is far behind,

The pillars are running forward.

I can’t see my native house,

No roof, no chimney...

By using the colloquial “not visible” instead of “not visible” in the author’s speech, Tvardovsky seems to emphasize that these words belong to Morgunk himself; Thus, the poet manages not only to paint a picture, but also to show the complex experience of the hero parting with his native places.

"Ant Country" has become a classic Soviet literature not only due to the poetic skill of its author, it was and remains a high example artistic truth, historical events 30s and deep reflection on the paths of history, people, and man.

Literature

List of sources

T.1: Poems (1926-1940). Ant Country. Poem. Translations.

T. 2: Poems (1940-1945). Poems. Vasily Terkin. House by the road.

T. 3: Poems (1946-1970). Poems. Beyond the distance is the distance. Terkin in the next world.

T. 4: Stories and essays (1932-1959).

T. 5: Articles and notes on literature. Speeches and performances (1933-1970)

2. Tvardovsky, A.T. Selected works. In 3 volumes. / Comp. M. Tvardovsky. - M.: Fiction, 1990.

T. 2: Poems.

List of scientific, critical, memoir literature and dictionaries

Vykhodtsev, P.S. Alexander Tvardovsky / P.S. Vykhodtsev. – M., 1958.

Lyubareva, S.P. Epic by A. Tvardovsky / S.P. Lyubareva. – M.: Higher School, 1982.

Muravyov, A.N. Creativity of A.T. Tvardovsky / A.N. Muravyov. – M.: Education, 1981.

Ozhegov, S.I. Dictionary Russian language / S.I. Ozhegov ed. prof. L.I. Skvortsova. – M.: OOO Publishing House Onyx, 2011.

"Ant Country" analysis of the work - theme, idea, genre, plot, composition, characters, issues and other issues are discussed in this article.

One of early works A. T. Tvardovsky, with whom he declared himself in literature, was the poem “The Country of Ant” (1934-1936), dedicated to collectivization.

The poet viewed work on a work as a social order. In the year of a sharp change in economic relations in the village, the peasant was required to finally and irrevocably abandon the old individual farm and move to a collective farm. Tvardovsky understood the irreversibility of the historical process and the need for collectivization in the current conditions, therefore his work contains motives “for” collective farming in the countryside.

However, along the way, as a writer, Tvardovsky explores the village and its inhabitants. It is important for the author to show people why others resist collectivization, what is the point of it. Among the gallery of characters presented in the poem “Country of Ant”, there are fists, and bandits, and ardent adherents of antiquity, and those who are afraid of future changes, and those who simply want happiness - in their own understanding. The latter includes main character“Ants” - Nikita Morgunok. He is not against the collective farm, but he is afraid that he will live poorly on the collective farm. There is a strong conviction in this middle-aged man that he must become a strong master before the age of forty. If you don’t have time, then you will vegetate in poverty. But Morgunk has his own idea of a strong economy: he sees such an economy primarily as an individual one. Live like this for at least a year, and then you can safely go to the collective farm.

A middle peasant, he wants to become a rural rich man. This is possible, according to rumors, in the country of Ant. And Nikita sets off on a search for the mysterious Muravskaya country, where everyone lives “on their own” and everything is rich. Depicting the ups and downs of Morgunk’s difficult path, the author shows the absurdity of such searches, as well as the fact that people like Nikita do not understand the changes taking place around them.

Understanding comes to Morgunk only when he moves away from the kulak environment, which he once envied, and approaches the collective farmers. Getting closer to their life and work, Morgunok begins to more fully realize the advantages of his new life. He understands that the sole owner is now out of work; the true owner in the village is the collective farmer - the one who keeps up with the times, no matter how difficult this path is. And Nikita Morgunok makes his choice as a person who loves and respects work.

“Ant Country” is considered the work from which the true literary career Tvardovsky. The poem was warmly received not only by critics, but also recognized by a large circle of readers. And indeed, the poem touched upon those problems that were topical or, at least, were still very fresh in the memory of millions of people. The theme of collectivization, its consequences, the theme of the Russian land, the Russian peasantry - this is an incomplete list of issues raised in the poem.

The title of the poem - “The Country of Ant” - is the ideal of social life that not only Morgunok, but also every peasant, is looking for, and more in a broad sense every Russian person in the depths of his soul. Russian people, like no one else, tend to strive for ideals. And for the sake of this ideal, he is ready to endure a lot and for a long time. This is what the builders of communism were counting on. But the author allegorically says that the country of Ant is a myth. The myth invented by the Bolsheviks is unlikely to come to life; most likely, this experiment is doomed to failure. Tvardovsky debunks the ideals of communism, says that through blood and destruction, through violence, one cannot lead a person to happiness. You cannot build happiness on the misfortune of others, on violence.

So, Nikita Morgunok goes in search of a certain illusory country of Ant, which he often heard about from his grandfather. The main incentives guiding Nikita come from his attachment to the earth. He did not want to go to the collective farm, to work for everyone, and not for himself. And therefore he is looking for that country where “the land in length and breadth is its own all around.”

Morgunok is presented by Tvardovsky as collective image Russian peasant. He is a hardworking, thrifty, strong man who has lived his entire life by honest labor. And if it weren’t for the war, famine and other troubles, he would now be living happily. Through Nikita's eyes, the author lovingly looks at the ground, at the unmown wheat. He happily takes up work, which he missed, and helps on the collective farm. The land is alive for the Russian peasant:

Earth!... From the moisture of the snow It is still fresh. She wanders by herself and breathes like deja.

This is a nurse, this is a dear mother! It is in her name that Nikita makes his journey. The horse is harnessed with the master's hand:

That was a horse - there are no such horses! Not a horse, but a man.

The entire economy rested on the horse, right down to the very last nail in the wall. And how he loved and took care of his horse Morgu-nok! It is around the horse that all subsequent action unfolds. And therefore this image is quite symbolic. This is the personification of the entire peasant economy. It is bitter to think that for the sake of a ghostly country, a comfortable future, the peasant is losing everything that he has already earned with blood and sweat. This refers the reader to the reality that came after the formation of collective farms. Captivated by the idea of a bright life, and sometimes even forced, people brought all their livestock to the collective farm. But to whom did they give their blood wealth, their breadwinner - a cow, their breadwinner - a horse? People who did not know their business at all came to manage the farm, hiding behind the mask of an all-knowing and educated boss their complete illiteracy and ignorance in matters of farming. And they brought only losses.

Tvardovsky also draws attention to other heroes who played an important role in historical process. One of these heroes is a priest - a collective image of the Russian clergy. The author debunks the hitherto inviolable image of the Russian priest, spiritual father. There is both irony and allegory here. Tvardovsky's priest wanders, reasoning not at all according to the Bible. And it’s not at all according to the biblical commandments that he steals a horse. On the one hand, this is explained by strict ideological censorship, on the other hand, by the actual debunking of the ideal of the clergy.

The idea of the destructiveness of collectivization and its terrible consequences could not be expressed directly during the years of creation of the poem, and therefore Tvardovsky resorts to allegory. He shows pictures of the prosperity of collective farms, all of its workers are open, serious, slightly stern people, with a clearly expressed love of work, almost ideal. The author, moreover, seems to lend himself to idealization: he shows Nikita’s amazement when he sees Chairman Frolov easily lifting weights that are too heavy for one person. And the poem itself ends with the enlightenment of Nikita, who has finally decided to join the collective farm. The work is completely suitable for the literature of that time, and censorship could not find fault with the poem. A allegorical meaning easy to catch.

Plan

Nikita Morgunok is going in search of the country of Muravia, where there are no collective farms, where all the land is personal, private property.
He stops by to say goodbye to the matchmaker.
On the way, he first meets a priest who invites him to ride with him and earn money. And then he sees his neighbor Ivan Kuzmich, feeding on alms. Material from the site
A neighbor steals Nikita's horse. Nikita travels further, but already harnessed to the cart. Only once did he see his horse from that same priest, but he did not have time to catch up.
He sees gypsies who do not have their stallion. At the market he sees Ivan Kuzmich, but without a horse, he catches him, but he deftly escapes from Nikita’s hands.
Nikita ends up on a collective farm, where work is in full swing, the collective farm is thriving.
Morgunok ends up in the village of Ostrov. Theoretically, this is exactly the country of Ant that he dreamed of so much. Here the land is in the hands of the peasants, no one puts pressure on them. But the entire village is in great ruin.
Morgunok returns to the collective farm and meets the chairman, Frolov. The wedding begins. The priest also comes to see her. Recognizing him, Nikita rushes out into the street and sees his Gray.
Nikita moves on. He asks a wise old man who came across him along the way about the country of Ant. The old man replies that there is no such country.
Nikita decides to join the collective farm.

Ant Country short. that steep, turning point period, the “year” of its history

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