© Georgy Vladimov, heirs, 2016

© Valery Kalninsh, layout and design, 2016

© Vremya, 2016

Marina Vladimova
My father is Georgy Vladimov

I was asked to write about my father. Unfortunately, we were together very little - only some ten years. All the years I had the feeling that it was necessary to write down everything that my father talked about, that it was too significant: human memory is an unreliable thing. Didn't write it down. Now I write from memory, pitiful pieces of what was imprinted - but thank you that at least they remained.

How and when did we meet him? It sounds, of course, unbelievable, but it is true - we only recognized each other in 1995, at the presentation of the Russian Booker literary prize to my father, when I was already thirty-three years old. And before that there were only letters. Letters to Germany from Moscow and back.

How did your father end up in Germany?

In 1983, at the invitation of Heinrich Böll, my father left to lecture in Cologne. By that time, he had not published anything in Russia for ten years. Previously, he became the chairman of Amnesty International, wrote letters in defense of Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuri Daniel, was friends with Andrei Sakharov, Elena Bonner, Vasily Aksenov, Vladimir Voinovich, Bella Akhmadullina, Fazil Iskander, Bulat Okudzhava, Viktor Nekrasov, was acquainted with Alexander Solzhenitsyn , Alexander Galich, Vladimir Maksimov, Sergey Dovlatov, Yuri Kazakov, Yuri Lyubimov, Vladimir Vysotsky and many others. Gradually, he began to live “across”, and the Soviet authorities could not calmly endure such things, let alone forgive.

Slowly they survived him, persecuted him: he was expelled from the Writers' Union, where he was admitted back in 1961; then they began to publish slanderous articles in Literaturnaya Gazeta (the main mouthpiece of the joint venture of those years), which were joyfully welcomed by some "writers" (as their father called them). And then they set up surveillance of his apartment and the guests who visited it. Father writes about this in detail in his story “Pay no attention, maestro!”.

How could he be forgiven for his deepest inner independence and self-sufficiency? Once, after his return to Russia, he told me: “You know, I won’t go to this gathering, I can’t stand any parties, why waste time on this? A writer should be writing, not chatting and hanging out. I have always believed that it is not necessary to join any parties and associations, all this is nonsense - therefore I have always been non-partisan and free.

So my father answered my reproach - I reproached him for not going to some regular literary evening, where the literary elite of those years gathered and where he was invited in advance to present the statuette of Don Quixote - "a symbol of honor and dignity in literature" .

But I, a spoiled child of Soviet reality, believed that “useful people” might meet there who would help him get at least a small apartment from the state.

After all, Vladimir Voinovich received a wonderful four-room apartment in Bezbozhny Lane by order of Mikhail Gorbachev!

How could they forgive him, for example, for his friendship with the disgraced Sakharov, when his acquaintances recoiled from him as from the plague? Father tried to help Andrei Dmitrievich at least in those days, sometimes even acting as his driver. I recall a funny (it's funny now!) incident told by my father: during a trip (I think to Zagorsk), the door of my father's beloved old "Cossack" suddenly came off. And at full speed ... Everyone froze. And for the rest of the journey Sakharov imperturbably held the ill-fated door, continuing the conversation on some topic of interest to him.

Another, more dangerous story was connected with this "Cossack". Once, during a country trip, the engine of the car died out altogether, and when my father looked into her insides, he discovered that almost a kilogram of granulated sugar was poured into the fuel tank, which is why the car refused to go. My father was sure that this was not an accident, it was done by interested employees of the "hillock", as the ubiquitous organization responsible for the state security of the USSR was then called, but, of course, he had no direct evidence. With great difficulty, he managed to clear the tank of this muck ...

In 1981, after interrogations at the Lubyanka, my father had his first heart attack, then new interrogations and a hint that the interrogations would resume. Everything could have ended in landing (the lexicon of the then dissidents). At this time, the father had already begun to write "The General and his army." I had to save my business, my life. Thanks Belle!

But, leaving the country, the father did not think that he was leaving for a long time, for a maximum of a year. Two months after his arrival in Germany, his father and Natasha Kuznetsova (his second wife) heard on TV Andropov's decree depriving him of citizenship. They sold the cooperative apartment of Natasha's mother before leaving for Germany, and the board of the cooperative sold the father's apartment itself, without asking his permission.

Through friends at the publishing house Text, which published my father's story Verny Ruslan, I learned his German address. I wrote to him. She wrote that I didn’t need anything from him - I’m already a fully established person, a doctor, a graduate student, I have an apartment, friends, but how strange it is - two relatives live on such a small planet Earth and know nothing about each other. Father answered, we began to correspond. In 1995, he came to Moscow to receive Booker for his novel The General and His Army. He was nominated by the Znamya magazine, where the chapters of the novel were published. My father was very grateful to the employees of Znamya for the fact that they were the first to contribute to the return of his work to his homeland. He wanted his last novel, Long Way to Tipperary, to be published by them, the magazine advertised this work several times. Alas! Only the first part of the novel was published, after the death of his father. Others remained in plans; he told me something.

My father invited me to the award ceremony as well. Before that, I visited him - in the apartment of Yuz Aleshkovsky, who invited my father to live with him for the duration of his stay in Moscow.

My father no longer had his own apartment. He remained homeless. In 1991, by his decree, Gorbachev returned his citizenship, but not housing ... True, in 2000, the International Literary Writers' Fund provided his father with a dacha in Peredelkino for rent. Father was very fond of this not entirely his dacha, but the Lord did not allow him to enjoy peace and happiness in his homeland.

Prior to this, the dacha had stood empty for many years, slowly crumbling and collapsing, something was constantly leaking somewhere in it; father laughed and said that he lived in "Peterhof with a lot of fountains." It was a two-story brick house, more like a barrack, with four entrances. Next to my father's entrance were the entrances where Georgy Pozhenyan, the daughter of Viktor Shklovsky, lived with her husband, the poet Panchenko. I don't remember the third neighbor.

The history of the dacha was romantic and sad at the same time. It turned out that this writer's house was built on the site of the dacha of actress Valentina Serova. Her dacha was surrounded by a small garden, a small pond was preserved, in which, according to legend, she loved to swim. Father said that he imagines how Serova bathes in a pond before performances and sings something softly. It was then that he told me the story of the affair between Serova and Marshal Rokossovsky, during which Stalin was allegedly asked how to relate to the very fact of this connection (both were married). Stalin answered briefly and exhaustively: "Envy!"

After the divorce of Serova and Simonov, the dacha fell into disrepair, the Litfond demolished the old house, building a dacha for writers.

During my father's time, the garden grew incredibly, with a kitchen door leading to it with a terrace. There were tall dark trees, grass filled the whole space. The pond was covered with thick green mud, it was gloomy, terribly voracious mosquitoes were flying. My father kept trying to somehow cope with desolation: he removed rotten branches, broken trees, cut the bushes, mowed the grass in some places, the sun began to look through the windows of his office.

In front of his windows, he cleared a piece of land on which he tried to set up a vegetable garden - he planted dill, radishes and lettuce. In his last year in Russia, already weak and mortally ill, my father proudly showed me the budding sprouts, anticipating the harvest. Alas! He left for Germany without waiting for him ... But the kindergarten gave him a little joy - in the last year, his father could not, and did not want to write. He liked to mess with the earth and slowly disassemble some kind of wooden "halabuda" (the word of his father) behind the house, on the site of which he dreamed of building a garage with a pit.

Behind the gate, at the entrance, a two-story brick gatehouse has been preserved, where, apparently, at one time the guards were sitting, deciding who could be admitted before the bright eyes of Serova and Simonov. There was a fortress wall around the whole dacha, and right opposite the father's entrance, a wonderful mysterious door opened in it, surrounded by tall trees and fragrant herbs. Nightingales sang, sometimes echoing the ringing of bells - across the road was the dacha of the Patriarch with an old Peredelkino church.

In the first year, having received an empty dacha, where there was nothing but walls and old, rotten kitchen furniture, my father enthusiastically undertook to equip it. In my office I bought a large desk with a comfortable armchair (and what else does a writer need!), a sofa, a five-arm chandelier (it was a bit dark in the house). In the other two rooms he put two sofas for guests and a wardrobe, which he himself assembled. My father was very fond of doing everything with his own hands, getting from it, it seems, no less pleasure than from writing.

I gave him a "Voltaire" chair - it settled in the corridor on the ground floor, my father liked to sit in it, talking on the phone.

In the kitchen, my father installed a wall, a refrigerator, hung a low wicker chandelier, set up a table with long wooden benches, on which few people had time to sit - my father lived in the country for only four seasons ...

On the terrace, where the kitchen door opened, my father set up a small brazier, and grilled barbecue on it several times, drinking vodka with a neighbor friend, a wonderful poet Grigory Pozhenyan. It was thanks to Pozhenyan that his father got a dacha - once he came to visit him in Peredelkino and was fascinated by the beauty, peace and quiet of this place. He turned to the International Literary Fund for help, he was not refused; Pozhenyan, who put in a word, played a big role in this.

We met the New Year 2000 together with Pozhenyan and his wife, in a big company. It was a wonderful New Year! Pozhenyan read his poems, talked a lot about himself - he was a storyteller no less talented than a poet. My memory retained only some fragments. For example, his story about the liberation of Odessa, where he fought (later writing the script for the wonderful film “Thirst”), and then how he discovered a monument to the fallen liberators of the city and found his last name there (he was also considered dead by mistake). Or a story about how for "drunkenness and immoral behavior" in his student days he was expelled in disgrace from the Literary Institute, saying menacingly: "So that your foot is not within the walls of our institution!" After that, he entered the institute on his hands, without formally violating the instructions!

Pozhenyan said that Yuri Olesha affectionately called him in his letters "my dear cask of poetry." He was just like that - small, plump, noisy, very cozy, hospitable, literally gushing with verses and ideas.

My father was different - very laconic, he preferred to listen, to consider his interlocutors, sometimes smiling slightly, constantly thinking about something; some kind of inaudible, but very important internal work was going on in him all the time ...

Poor father - he dreamed of buying for a large room, a dining room (in it, the only one in the house, the walls were sheathed with clapboard), a white oval table with twelve white chairs. He dreamed of arranging a real fireplace in it so that you could admire the play of fire. Near the door to put a knight in full growth, in armor, with a visor and a sword (he saw this in Pozhenyan's house). Didn't have time to do it. The empty room contained the tools that my father happily acquired wherever he could. With what love he looked in the evenings at a woodworking machine, an electric jigsaw, an electric drill! ..

When I asked who he would receive in the “white dining room,” he said with pride and at the same time with irony: “What about whom? Ambassadors, heads of delegations, numerous admirers of my talent, journalists eager to interview about my next novel.

My father should have seen what the writer's town and the territory of the patriarchal dacha near his Green Dead End (my father's last address in Russia) have become like now ... Near the modest church (we listened to its bell ringing in the evenings from the dacha balcony) a wall with tiles no worse than the Kremlin has grown . The very same area around the church was ennobled with a playground, a toilet for pilgrims, a stall for selling church utensils. Nearby, a five-domed temple was built in honor of Prince Igor of Chernigov and two monuments to the saints were erected. Beautiful temple, majestic and huge. But he is still somehow cold, arrogant, he does not feel like going into it, like into the old Peredelkino church, where his father was buried in 2003. Now the road to the patriarch's dacha is being cleaned thoroughly, the asphalt looks like it is washed with shampoo every day. During the life of my father, local drunkards often hung around near the church, the asphalt was full of potholes, there was silence around, grasshoppers chirped in thickets of sagebrush and willow-tea.

We loved to go for water (when the water supply was not working) to the holy springs not far from our Green Dead End, next to the cardiological sanatorium for war veterans ... The air was the cleanest, even eat it with a spoon, and after all, only twenty minutes separated Peredelkino from Moscow by train.

Only one thing remained practically unchanged - the old "writer's" cemetery in Peredelkino, where, after four in the evening, it is still empty, even scary - there is no staff. Old slabs on the graves are destroyed, growing with moss and weeds, tall trees sway over the graves of famous writers: Pasternak, Tikhonov, Chukovsky, thickets of burdock, nettles and huge, human-sized burdocks near the fence ...

At the Peredelkino cemetery, my father found his peace, which he asked for in his will - he finally returned to his homeland. And his wife Natalya Kuznetsova and her mother remained forever in Germany ... Not far from his father is the grave of Grigory Pozhenyan - they became neighbors in the cemetery, there is something symbolic in this.

Let's return to our second acquaintance on the Booker. The first, of course, took place at the moment of my birth. But my father and mother divorced when I was four years old, and then my mother remarried, my stepfather adopted me, and I bore his last name.

Actually, it was at the Booker presentation that we really met. Sitting at the festive table, we drank brotherhood (before that, three years in the letters were on you) and my father won me over, telling me how he met my mother: “I met both of my wives at the CDL buffet.”

Oh, this famous buffet of the Central House of Writers, on the walls of which there were all kinds of signatures of writers, friendly and not very drawings-cartoons of all those who have ever visited it - from Mikhail Svetlov and Pogodin to Sergei Mikhalkov, Andrei Voznesensky, Bella Akhmadulina. His father's signature also showed off there before his departure for emigration and his "appointment" as a dissident.

My father told me that my mother was a beauty, mentioned that he still remembers what dress she was wearing then ... He proudly emphasized that both of his wives were beauties. It seems to me that for him it was to some extent self-affirmation - because of the large, almost full cheek birthmark, he considered himself ugly. True, when I saw him, the stain was gone, the German doctors did a great job with this.

Then my father asked me to take him to my mother's grave. Before leaving, he gave me The General and His Army - a book published by the Book Chamber (the first book edition), Faithful Ruslan (for some reason in a collection of stories about dogs) and a thin, nondescript little book with Big Ore (with which he entered into great literature).

Soon he and Natasha went back to Germany. Then there were letters again. But already others. And in 1997, his Natashenka died. It was a great grief for him - in exile they were everything for each other, by that time they had almost no friends left. He called me to his place, and together we made a fabulous journey through Europe. I discovered my father for myself - after all, we did not know anything about each other for almost thirty years. He also got to know me.

I flew to him in Germany at the end of October. A friend helped with the visa, who asked a German friend to send me an invitation. The poor father did not even have the right to invite me - he himself had the status of a refugee (he had a Nansen blue passport in his hands). Vladimov could have received German citizenship immediately if he knew the German language, but according to German laws, he received citizenship only fifteen years later.

My father met me at the Frankfurt am Main airport. When I saw him, I was horrified: when he came with Natasha to the Booker presentation, he had a well-groomed, polished appearance - in a light, thin drape autumn coat, a decent dark suit with small stripes, dark glasses that covered half of his face - a typical foreigner .

And now a stooped man came out to meet me in a dark green, obviously wife's jacket, in sweatpants with blisters on the knees, with long uncut gray-yellow hair. The overall impression of great misfortune was complemented by a brown bag made of pieces of leather, also clearly a lady's ...

My father lived in Niedernhausen - a small town with a population of no more than ten thousand, an urban-type settlement by our standards, but it was still a real city with a bank, many shops, restaurants, gas stations.

Frankfurt is only 40 minutes away by car. And fourteen kilometers to Wiesbaden - the very one where Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky burned his life in the largest casino in Europe, and along with the fees.

My father had a funny story with the casino in Wiesbaden. In Germany, he literally fell ill with computers (although he was already sixty years old at that time) and dreamed of a laptop. Then they were still very expensive. And so the father and wife went to the casino, Natasha bet on thirty-two numbers all the money that she had. Each number won one hundred marks, and she earned three thousand two hundred marks, with which she bought her father the coveted toy. Telling me this story, my father added instructively: “That's what the first time means! Beginners are always lucky, it’s good that we had the sense to stop and leave in time.”

We drove all over Niedernhausen and climbed a hill, along which stood seven or eight nine-story houses. My father's house was on the top of a mountain, behind the house one could see soft hills covered with dense forest, in front of the house the forest was surrounded by a fence, behind which I noticed some animals. Seeing us, a young deer immediately approached the grate, trustingly poked her velvet lips into the palm of her hand. Several deer with beautiful branched horns followed her.

- What a charm, tame deer, wow, they live right next to your house! I naively exclaimed.

“Don’t flatter yourself too much,” my father remarked gloomily, “this is a walking dinner, they are specially bred and kept here behind bars for a restaurant. The Germans' favorite dish here is venison with lingonberry jam.

- Here are the bastards!

Do you know who owns the houses?

- One doctor of medicine. At first he built one house and began to rent it out, and then he built eight more with the income from the rent.

- Wow!

- In our house, basically, there lives all kinds of homeless people like me, a few Armenians, Jews, Poles, but we are all called Russians. There are few Germans. So a man by the name of Kaltenbrunner lives in our house, can you imagine?

- Isn't there Bormann?

- Not. But I met Muller a couple of times in the pool.

We have a swimming pool on the first floor of our house. I pay two marks a month and I can use it at any time of the day. While you're here, go at least every day.

My father rented a four-room apartment in this house at one time for a large family - he took his wife and mother-in-law to Germany, who idolized him and was very proud of him. True, my father said that he sometimes regrets that he took his mother-in-law abroad: she lived after moving for only three years, and in Russia, according to her father, she could still live and live ... “You can’t deprive older people of their roots,” said he later.

In my father’s apartment, I noticed the amazing order in the office, so inconsistent with his worn clothes: various tools hung in separate nests on the wall - both for car repair and for many other purposes, I only guessed about the appointment of the majority. I, with my mouth open, considered this wealth - after all, I did not know anything about my father.

There was also a huge desk, a desktop computer, a full-wall rack (made by my father) filled with books in the office. Many of them were signed by very famous writers and public figures (Böll, Dovlatov, Maksimov, Voinovich, Aksyonov, Kopelev, Sakharov, Bonner).

I was surprised at the number of tools in his office out loud: they say, why would a writer do what hired workers can do. Father smiled slyly and said: “Don’t think, I’m not some kind of “lousy intellectual” who doesn’t know which end to drive a nail into the wall with. I really like to mess around with tools, repair, repair, do a lot with my own hands. You know, once I invented an important part for the internal combustion engine, I even have a patent for the invention!”

Georgy Vladimov - writer, literary critic. The most significant works of this author are the novel "The General and His Army", the stories "Faithful Ruslan" and "Big Ore". What are the reviews for these books? What is the peculiarity of Vladimov's prose?

Biography

Vladimov Georgy Nikolaevich was born in 1931. Father and mother were philologists. The future writer was orphaned early. After the death of his parents, he was brought up in the family of the writer Dmitry Stonov.

Georgy Vladimov graduated from the Faculty of Law, but after receiving his diploma he decided to devote himself to literature. In the early seventies, his critical writings gained notoriety. In the same years, Georgy Vladimov performed the duties of the editor of the Novy Mir magazine.

The biography of this writer is closely connected with the socio-political situation that prevailed in the country during the Brezhnev era. As you know, these years were unfavorable for the creativity of authors who prefer to raise sharp questions in their writings.

Early work

In 1960, after a visit, Georgy Vladimov wrote a story that resonated with society. The work is called "Big Ore". In the years when the story was written, some opposition had already begun to appear among the Soviet intelligentsia. It had a hidden character and was expressed, as a rule, in reading and discussing literature that did not correspond to Soviet ideology. The program of the so-called sixties also included "Big Ore".

Georgy Vladimov published his next work only nine years later. "Three Minutes of Silence" - this is the name of the second story of the author, who at the end of the sixties already belonged to the category of "forbidden" - was published in full thirty-five years after writing. The work has a confessional character. The book reflects the everyday life of a fishing liner. Before writing the story, the writer worked for several months as a sailor on a Murmansk seiner.

"Faithful Ruslan"

Vladimov's style of writing was appreciated by critics. Features of his prose - reliability, lyricism, accusatory motives. In 1975, the story "Faithful Ruslan" was published. The story about the devoted guard of the Soviet camp was published for the first time in Germany.

The book tells about how a dog protects a person from his own kind. About how she controls the life of some two-legged, who are under the supervision of others. Vladimov spoke about the tragedy of the time in which he lived. But he did it from a special angle.

Prohibited Activities

Vladimov's desire to cover topics that were dangerous to talk about in Soviet society led to the fact that he was expelled from the Writers' Union. Literary and social activity, of course, did not end there.

The writer in the late seventies led an organization banned in the country. This association was called Amnesty International. Like other Soviet authors who were refused publication at home, the hero of this article published his works abroad. And in 1982, in order to avoid arrest, the writer Georgy Vladimov emigrated.

It is worth paying more attention to the book that has already been mentioned in the article. In 1994, Georgy Vladimov completed writing the most famous work. "The General and His Army" is a sensational novel. Critics are still arguing about the reliability of the facts that formed the basis of this work.

"The General and His Army"

For this novel, the author was awarded Literary debates were conducted around the award before the award was given. They were caused by the fact that in the work of Vladimov the war is covered from an unusual point of view. One of the critics noted that the opinion about the book is erroneous. The impression that the novel takes place in the Soviet Union in the early forties is misleading. After all, a general named Kobrisov is unknown to national history. The cities of Myryatin and Predslavl never existed in the USSR either. Roman Vladimov, according to critic O. Davydov, in general, cannot be called historical.

The work "The General and His Army" depicts psychological problems, addictions and prejudices associated with the fate of the author. The military realities that are present in the novel play the role of a kind of entourage that sets off events unrelated to the Second World War from the life of the writer.

According to Oleg Davydov, it is impossible to condemn Vladimov for using unreliable data. The novel "The General and His Army" is not a historical work, but rather an autobiographical one. What questions did the author raise in the sensational book?

The hero of the novel is summoned by the commander-in-chief. Kobrisov committed some misconduct, for which he must be punished. But at the last moment the situation changes. His action was crowned with success, and he happily returns. This is the plot of the book. Its idea is that there is a higher court. And this, according to Davydov, is the main idea of ​​the book. Military events are just a background with which the writer expressed his idea. However, the book contains both fictional characters and real ones.

Germany

In exile, the writer continued his literary and social activities. He worked for two years in the magazine "Frontiers". During the period of perestroika, his works gradually began to appear in domestic magazines.

In 1990, Vladimov restored Soviet citizenship. At the beginning of the 2000s, he lived in the legendary writers' village in the south-west of the capital. Vladimov Georgy Nikolaevich died in October 2003. The writer was buried in Moscow, at the cemetery in Peredelkino.

Mikhail Nekhoroshev

Grigory Baklanov was asked which books about the war he considers the best. The writer named three works: "In the trenches of Stalingrad", "Life and Fate", "The General and his army". Actually, only G. Vladimov's novel "The General and His Army" could be the subject of discussion. The time for reviews, I believe, has already passed, but it is worth considering why Baklanov included this book in the top three of the absolute winners.

Of course, not because Vladimov wrote a “general's” novel, filling in a certain gap in the military theme: there is a “soldier's” and “lieutenant's” prose of a remarkable level, but there was no “general's” one. Telling the fate of General Kobrisov and naturally introducing other military leaders into the narrative, Vladimov writes not like a staff summary, not a history in the form of a set of dates, but speaks of those levers and springs that set the events in motion. We have already read so many books about the war, we know how we fought, but it will take a long time to answer the question why this is so. Yes, the company stood at a nameless height to the last, fighters and commanders fell the death of the brave, and then it turned out: shells were not delivered, communications were not extended, reserve units did not arrive on time or did not approach at all where they were expected - but what kind of delusion is this? Why is that? In 1941, almost unarmed, the Moscow militia perished under German bombs and tanks. But in 1943 we advanced, having experience of war, superiority in manpower and equipment, and won, as before, using the "Russian four-layer" tactics: three layers of soldiers would fall into the ground - a fourth would attack them. And why was it so in the 43rd - and even in the 45th! - this is our military secret.

Here are the commanders of the armies discussing the plan for the capture of Kyiv (in the novel - Predslavl). They discuss when Kobrisov’s army had already “settled in” the Myryatinsky bridgehead on the right bank of the Dnieper, when two crossings were established, a communication cable was laid, German positions were shot, and the army itself, with one wing, was already twelve kilometers from the city. Everything that military art requires has been done, you can take the “pearl of Ukraine”, leaving the town of Myryatin with the Germans, it does not decide the matter. And the Kobrisovs would have convinced Marshal Zhukov, but the argument had chosen the wrong one: they say, it’s a pity for people, but for this town, where there were ten thousand inhabitants before the war, the same number would have to be put. “Well, ask for replenishment,” the marshal said. The remark is short, everyday, without intonation, which means that it is always like this, such is the unwritten rule. And Marshal Zhukov, no doubt, knows how to fight better than many of his generals, and what he doesn’t want to know and never wanted to know how many soldiers will die, there is a reason for that: the main Soviet commander could not be different, we didn’t need another, we they did everything - "at any cost." What was our world, such was the war.

Vladimov, a frugal author, dropped his word that there was a plan to take the city by November 7, but not every reader will notice such a trifle. But in any historical work you will find proud lines: “Party-political work was carried out under the slogan “Let's liberate Kyiv by the 26th anniversary of the Great October Revolution.” It is impossible to explain what the greatest anniversary has to do with military tactics, but such was the ideology, such was the party line. Selfish ideology. She extolled those who took cities by anniversaries, and not those who wanted to save people. This spring determined a lot in the course of the war, and only secret investigation springs could be equal in strength with it: special departments of all varieties. Patriotic war of a totalitarian state - that's what this paradoxical situation was called. Because it is paradoxical that such states usually attack themselves, and the war for the Fatherland is not their business. And it turned out that, rising to the attack for the Motherland, soldiers died both for Stalin and for the Soviet regime. The regime that hated and feared its people more than anything else. And if these lines outrage someone, - and this is certainly! - then I will answer that it would be better to resent the actions of our command, for example, the order of the Stavka No. 270 of August 16, 1941. The order is large, but its essence is short: we do not have the word "prisoner of war", but there is the word "traitor". And there were, according to the most conservative estimates, no less than four million such "traitors" during the war.

A special place in the novel is occupied by the figure of General Vlasov. Critics either remain silent about it or speak briefly and sometimes reproach the author for the fuzziness of these pages. Well, this is understandable: the beginning of the counter-offensive near Moscow is described with many precise details, but in the center of the episode is a general, either having flesh, or flickering with some kind of vision. Mighty growth, “a wonderful male face”, walks “without fussing, stepping big”, “calmness and confidence” emanates from him - this is about him. “The face was difficult, partly suffering,” a grasping observer would have noticed in him “deceptiveness eluding others”, “he experienced the fear of captivity, which has not subsided even now” - and this is also all about him. The general has many faces, changeable and even nameless. Mystery general. Well, it is true. We know about Vlasov that he is a traitor who served the Germans, but what kind of Soviet military leader he was - not a word anywhere. It was as if he was born a general and immediately quickly ran over to the Germans. The author did not pretend to be a clairvoyant, did not build sensational versions and wrote not even a character, but only touches to the portrait.

There was also an afterword to the conversation about Vlasov and the prisoners. Three months after the publication of the novel, two articles appeared (again in Znamya): L. Reshin “Collaborators and Victims of the Regime”, G. Vladimov “New Investigation, Old Sentence”. Reshin wrote an article based on materials from the FSB archives, on those, of course, to which he was admitted, but he added some facts to our meager information, for which we are grateful. Reshin's conclusions are traditional and therefore uninteresting, and juggling with numbers has long become boring. In Vladimov's article, I believe, the most important thing is not the polemic with Reshin, but the direct speech of the author, who said this. Vlasov, of course, is not a fighter against the regime, rather, an adventurer, "a man of the minute, not an hour" and could not claim the role of the leader of the "third force" (against Stalin and Hitler at the same time). As for the soldiers who joined the ROA, then, of course, this is not about justifying betrayal, but about something completely different. “The tragedy of the desperate, who have lost all hope of finding a language with power other than rifle and machine gun, who went against their homeland, as they go against themselves, deciding to commit suicide,” this is what Vladimov’s soul hurts about. And the idea of ​​\u200b\u200ba "third force" - a possible but failed alliance between Vlasov and a general like Guderian, seems to me to be a political utopia. At that historical moment, everyone who could influence events had already filled the political arena. There was simply no free space.

And it’s good that in the novel there is no word about the “third force”, but there is Guderian, who wants to understand where this country draws the strength of resistance from and why it is not a war of two armies, but something else. Perhaps "Swift Heinz", the strategist and tactician of the "Panzerwaffe" really read "War and Peace" on the night when he signed the first retreat order in his life - but is that the case? Read Guderian at least all the Russian classics, he would not have come one step closer to the secret of the legendary T-34 tank. And the secret was simple and unsophisticated: "It was made by enemies of the people, which means they worked conscientiously and, most importantly, underground ... We have such patriots - as many as we need." It is impossible to explain this, it is an axiom of the Soviet system: to defend the Fatherland with the hands of "enemies of the people." "This is our pain, ours and no one else's." And almost everyone during the Great Patriotic War was sure that after the war it would be different. There is a lot of evidence of this. And perhaps Guderian really understood that in the autumn of the 41st German army “it was no longer the Soviet of Deputies with its strengthening and intensification of the class struggle that was opposed, it was Russia,” but what are we to Guderian?

When L. Anninsky (NM, No. 10, 94) asks why our soldiers were willing to "die for any piece of land, even if it had no strategic importance" - this is not even a rhetorical question, but just a figure of speech. The significance of the nameless heights and small towns was determined by the same commanders, masters of victorious reports, whom Anninsky rightly called "butchers". And the soldiers died - for hope. What happened when people lost hope has already been said. Frankly, I mention Anninsky only because he just read the novel adequately, read what is written (and we will see that this is not a rule at all), and headed the review with the key quote: "Save Russia at the cost of Russia." He wrote: “So I want to know where our fundamental inclination to such a principle of reckoning comes from.” Well, one can talk about fundamentality and mentality endlessly, eternal questions have no answers, but in this case, I believe, there was one decisive “circumstance: the principle of retribution was determined by the Soviet government.

And the first most detailed journal article was written by Natalia Ivanova (“Znamya”, No. 7, 94). In this material, it is pleasing, first of all, that the critic writes a lot about language, style and other things that are strangely out of fashion in today's literature publications. Natalya Ivanova notes that the novel is multi-layered, “read on several levels”, that this thing is traditional in the highest sense and there is a roll call in the novel not only with Tolstoy and Gogol, but also with folklore motifs. And everything would be great, but here's the oddity: the article begins with reflections on Brodsky's poems "On the Death of Zhukov" and a good third of the text is given to that. And it took an immense introduction to declare Brodsky - and then Vladimov - freed "from too simple an anti-Soviet scheme." Later there will be a conclusion: "Vladimov is looking for excuses for Kobrisov - just like Brodsky is looking for excuses for Zhukov." Of course, literature is not a multiplication table, and then novels are written in order to go beyond the “simple scheme”, but I cannot agree with the conclusion of Natalya Ivanova. The confrontation between Kobrisov and Zhukov is one of the main lines of the novel, the very question of the principle of retribution. The author did not look for any excuses for Kobrisov, nor did he make him a knight without fear and reproach. Kobrisov is one of the few who understood his sins and tried to atone for them to the best of his ability, while Zhukov - both in the novel and in life - did not count sins for himself. There was no such word in his vocabulary.

At the end, Natalya Ivanova says: “Even Vyacheslav Kondratiev, even Bulat Okudzhava, who fought and shed blood, could not overcome the ideological pressure of the topic of the day and finally doubted the greatness of the Patriotic War. “War of two totalitarian systems...” It seems to me that here one should be more careful in assessments, otherwise just a “simple scheme” will work out. Then V. Grossman, who wrote about the kinship of totalitarian systems, should be considered the first to doubt. And over the past year, Viktor Astafyev, Grigory Baklanov, Vasil Bykov, Yuri Levitansky have spoken about the same in various publications, and none of them doubted the greatness of the national feat. We won not because of, but in spite of this power - that's what we are talking about, that's what we will definitely come to by sound reflection. This is what Vladimov's novel is about.

The most original review was written by V. Toporov (Change, 10/27/94), who recalled from the very first lines that the novel was announced four years ago, but "did not come out under the military writer Baklanov." Consider the reader: Baklanov, as an editor, did not approve of everything in the novel, but he "retired" - and here is the result. Toporov is not an astrologer and was not obliged to guess what Baklanov would say on May 8, 1995, but meaningful hints, and not close to the truth, only disorient the reader. However, the extravagant manner of criticism is known, and one could not touch it, since Toporov perfectly understood the essence of the novel, but he did not accept it. Kobrisov is “a typical German general”, and in general this image is “by and large all the same false” - that is, an artistic miscalculation of the author, who has been living in Germany for too long. Look Toporov in reference books, he would have found out that Kobrisov is not even an image, but almost a photograph of a real prototype, Hero of the Soviet Union N.E. Chibisov, whom it is simply indecent to call a German. But Toporov really does not imagine a Soviet general who fights not by numbers, but by skill, and therefore does not look at reference books. Russia, Toporov writes, according to the rules of strategy, always lost, and won victories when "it did not stand behind the price" and, accordingly, gave the fate of the army and the country into the hands of military leaders like Zhukov - and specifically Zhukov.

In this conceptual discussion, I propose to listen to the opinion of another author - Viktor Astafiev. He seems to be a person not close to Vladimov either by fate, or by the style of writing, or by the plots of books, but if you count not by military ranks and positions of characters, then “Cursed and Killed” is all about tone; the same as "General ..." Already the publication of the first book of the novel ("Devil's Pit", "NM", No. 10-12, 92) caused a shock among the reading public. To say that this is not true - the tongue does not turn, but if it is true - the hair is on end and there are no words. A spare regiment, a damn pit - of course, hell, but very much everyday, at least a small detail, but familiar to any reader. Kazakh recruits in summer uniforms, fed on whatever they had to on the way, are brought to Berdsk in the middle of winter half-dead, and some are simply dead. The soldiers are rotting in the barracks, turning the future defenders of the motherland into goners. Well, let’s suppose that at the front they didn’t stand behind the price, but here why ruin for the sake of people? Not for the sake of - but because. Because even in the "citizen" the price of our man is a penny or even less. About the lies of the political departments, about the "work" of the special officers, who strive to make everyone an informer - everything, of course, is the same as with Vladimov. Here both soldiers and generals are equal - everyone needs supervision. But one of the soldiers considered Lieutenant Shusya a German - "for accuracy." “Because he didn’t see a real Russian officer, he matured more punks,” answered Shus. (It is a pity that Toporov did not remember these lines when he wrote about Kobrisov.) And one more thing. Critics often mention the story of the execution of the Snegirev brothers as an example of senseless cruelty. True, but for me the absolutely everyday scene is no less strong: the big general arrived with an inspection, came to the dining room, shouting menacingly: “Soldier to rob?” - yes, only from the very first lines it is clear that even shout, even shoot, and everything will remain as it was, because everything rests on this theft.

Astafiev has been moving towards this novel for a long time, since those times when the supervisory authorities strictly dosed the truth. Fortunately, his letters to Vyacheslav Kondratyev of 82-87, published in LG (10/26/94), have been preserved. Personal correspondence even with great writers is, let’s say, ordinary, but here is brilliant journalism, an opinion about our strategists, suffered in their own skin: “Mediocre commanders, who completely forgot how to value life itself, littered the soldiers like sand, and quarreled!” And further: “And between we pass, the one who“ gets to Zhukov ”will be a true Russian writer ... He, he and Comrade Stalin burned the Russian people and Russia in the fire of war. It is with this heavy accusation that we must begin a conversation about the war, then there will be truth.” Note that the "dispute" between Astafiev and Toporov is not about facts, but about concepts. According to Toporov, it turns out that such is our historical fate and it is not a trace to speak ill of the national hero Zhukov. If, according to Astafiev, the government is immoral, which has such heroes, and it is necessary not to erect monuments to them, but to learn at least today to live like a human being.

But literary and philosophical disputes are not all. In a society where civil harmony is not often dreamed of, one could also expect a strong scolding that puts the spiteful critics in their place. Not Toporov's extravagances, but a powerful, solid blow - in war as in war, without ceremony. It happened. On the day of the 50th anniversary of the Victory, - apparently, as a gift for the holiday - "Book Review" printed fragments of the book "Shame on the living, and the dead, and Russia ...", which, as the editorial note says, is dedicated to publications , "denigrating the Patriotic War." There is no list of spiteful critics yet, and fragments - as many as six pages! - they pay tribute to the writer Vladimov and his characters. In short, the novel is a juggling of facts, historical illiteracy, the fantasies of a man who has never smelled gunpowder, but who sympathizes with traitors and other scoundrels. Defamation, it is said. And if some retired commander had attacked Vladimov, everything would have been in the order of things. Here is Marshal D.T. Yazov (the last Minister of Defense of the USSR, a member of the State Committee for the State of Emergency and others) expressed himself in the press with a simple obscene word about V. Astafyev’s novel (newspapers bashfully put only the first letter), so there are no questions. Here the case is different: the author of the publication is Vladimir Bogomolov, a front-line soldier and writer, the same, it would seem, as Baklanov, Kondratyev, Astafyev, but it turned out that no, not like that.

It is easy to imagine that Bogomolov's material made a strong, if not overwhelming, impression. And it is unlikely that the stunned reader noticed an important detail: Bogomolov writes immediately about the novel “The General and His Army”, about the article “New investigation, old sentence” and about many other things that have a very indirect relation to the novel. Most likely, it seemed to Bogomolov that Guderian and Vlasov were Vladimov's favorite heroes, that they were depicted almost as angels, and that in general they were the main characters of the novel. Let's say this is absolutely wrong, but Bogomolov read it that way - his right. And the trouble is not that he deduced his position from an emotional impression, but that he decided to substantiate this position with documents and began to cite materials from the life of Guderian and Vlasov, proving, of course, what scoundrels they were. So literature fades into the background, giving way to history. And if Bogomolov blames Vladimov for not knowing the documents, let's remember everything that has been published today so as not to get into a mess.

For example, Guderyan's order of December 22, 1941 is quoted, when the Germans were retreating along the entire front, demanding "to burn all the remaining settlements." The order, what can we say, is cannibalistic, but a month earlier, when our troops were retreating, there was an order of the Soviet command No. 0428 dated November 17, 1941, beginning with the words: “To destroy and burn to the ground all the populated areas in the rear of the German troops ... » And the population of these settlements, where can they go in the middle of winter? - the sabotage detachments executing this order could hardly have been welcomed, which is why ordinary Soviet people gave Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya to the Germans. So judge the orders for yourself... Guderian, writes Bogomolov, is disgusting also because he brutally suppressed the Warsaw Uprising in the 44th. It’s true that they don’t erect a monument for such deeds, but what were we doing at that time? I will quote not some traitor-defector, but the writer Ovid Gorchakov, who went through the war as a scout: “When Warsaw was on fire, we were interested ... Stalin was interested ...” Published in Komsomolskaya Pravda on January 13, 1995, with a circulation of more than a million copies ... Heinz Guderian was a general during the Second World War, and discussing his moral character is a strange exercise. But if we discuss, then remember the rule: everything is known in comparison. And the last. Vladimov correctly described Guderian's surprise when he met the T-34 tank - Guderian knew our other tanks perfectly well. He - it so happened - studied the basics of tank business in the secret center "Kama" in Kazan.

Now about Vlasov. We, writes Bogomolov, had 183 commanders of combined arms armies, “a few were captured” (how many and why?), And only one Vlasov went to serve the Germans. There is an obvious magic of numbers and military positions, but what if not the commander of the army? If brigade commissar Zhilenkov, a member of the Military Council of the 32nd Army, or brigade commander Bessonov, the former head of the combat training department of the Main Directorate of Border and Internal Troops of the NKVD of the USSR, or Major General Blagoveshchensky, head of the Libava Naval Air Defense School - well, not in all these “companions” of Vlasov are in the ROA, although in terms of ranks and positions, too, you know, they are not reserve sergeants. (Information from the article by L. Reshin, and Bogomolov could not read it.) It would be nice to think why Vlasov was not alone! But Bogomolov has his own task: to prove that Vlasov did not command the 20th Army near Moscow at all, but was only listed in this position. According to archival data - which Bogomolov retells without quotes and references! - From the end of November to December 21, 41, Vlasov was ill with “severe purulent inflammation of the middle ear”, was in the hospital, and the chief of staff L. M. Sandalov commanded the army. At the command post of the army, Vlasov first appeared on December 19 in the village of Chesmeny (remember this date!), That is, the day before the capture of Volokolamsk. Vlasov could not be in Lobnya in early December, as described in the novel. In general, the 20th Army is the weakest of all that participated in the battle of Moscow.

Bogomolov's version resembles a dashing detective, and here's why. Having launched a second offensive against Moscow on November 16, the German troops had captured the city in a semicircle by the end of the month, concentrating strike groups in the southern and northern directions. On the night of November 29, in the Yakhroma region, the enemy crossed the Moscow-Volga canal on ice (the threat of encirclement from the east!), And it was possible to eliminate this breakthrough only a day later. On November 30, the Headquarters decides to launch a counteroffensive, the success of which was not at all obvious. The main blow is delivered on the right wing of the Western Front (northern, north-western direction), where the enemy is 25-30 kilometers from Moscow. The 1st shock army (V.I. Kuznetsov), the 20th army (A.A. Vlasov), the 16th army (K.K. Rokossovsky) begin the operation, later the 30th army (D.D. Lelyushenko). All open sources (monographs, memoirs, documents) agree that the 20th Army, acting from the Bely Rast - Krasnaya Polyana region, had the greatest responsibility.

So is it possible to imagine that the weakest army is sent to the most critical point of the front - taken from the reserve of the Stavka - and a seriously ill general is appointed to command it? Did we have a sanatorium at the front? Or Stalin, Zhukov, the General Staff in full force - all together and suddenly moved their minds?

And, let's say, they were appointed - they thought he would recover soon, and the general, therefore, was in good standing. And he keeps getting sick. So put another, time is running out! From December 1 to December 5, there is a struggle for the initiative, settlements pass from hand to hand. On December 1, the 3rd enemy tank group makes a breakthrough along the Rogachev highway and approaches Lobnya. On December 2, the right flank of the 16th Army retreats behind Kryukovo. (By the way, on December 2, the German command believed that our reserves were exhausted, so there is no need to comment on the severity of the situation.) The 20th Army is actively involved in the battles, although the full concentration of its units ends on December 4. The real counteroffensive begins on December 6 with the movement of the 1st shock and 20th armies in the direction of Klin-Solnechnogorsk. The enemy forces are still great, the resistance is desperate. Krasnaya Polyana and Bely Rast were recaptured from the Germans only by the morning of December 8th. The army advanced only 4-5 kilometers, but it was a turning point. (It is he who is described in the novel.) On December 12, the 20th Army liberated Solnechnogorsk, and on December 20, together with the 16th Army, Volokolamsk. Looking at the map, it is hard to imagine that the weakest army could have done all this.

For those wishing to verify this information, I recommend the memoirs of marshals G.K. Zhukov and K.K. Rokossovsky. However, in Bogomolov’s book “The Moment of Truth” there is also a mention that “at the decisive hour” “fresh reserves were introduced near Moscow, in particular two new armies concentrated north of the capital, which came as a complete surprise to the Germans.” It is said, as you can see, respectfully, and the attentive reader himself has already guessed that we are talking about the 1st shock and 20th armies. And why now Bogomolov has changed his point of view is a question for psychics who can read minds.

Now let's see what the main witness, the chief of staff of the 20th Army, L. M. Sandalov, writes in the book "On the Moscow Direction." On November 29, on an urgent call, he arrives at the General Staff to B. M. Shaposhnikov, receives information about the situation at the front and is appointed to the post of chief of staff. He asks who is in charge. There is a commander, but he is sick. “In the near future you will have to do without it. However, coordinate all important issues with him,” says Shaposhnikov. (The interlocutors stubbornly do not pronounce the name of the commander.) And most importantly, it remains a mystery whether Sandalov followed Shaposhnikov's instructions? Did you consult with the commander? We read: “On the night of December 2, the command of the army with the chiefs of the military branches and most of the employees of the headquarters and the political department of the army went to the troops to organize a counterattack.” (Reader, this is just that NP in Lobnya and that moment in time that we know about from the novel!) And I would also like to know who the “army command” is? Unknown. Usually generous with surnames, Sandalov did not name a single one here! (Perhaps he was afraid to let it slip?) In any case, L. M. Sandalov knew exactly what could be written in his memoirs and what should be omitted. Neither before nor after the "legendary" date of December 19, there is not a word about the commander in Sandalov's book: he flashed once in Chesmeny - in dark glasses and cloaks, and even with a surname! - and disappeared without a trace. Vlasov commanded the 20th Army until mid-March 42nd, but he never appeared on the pages of the book. As you can see, Sandalov wrote his detective much earlier than Bogomolov (1970), but both versions are surprisingly close.

It looks like we are dealing with a carefully crafted legend. Neither Sandalov nor Bogomolov have a single reference to sources when it comes to Vlasov (in other places - please). Bogomolov mentions telephone conversations, the records of which are kept in the archive. Where exactly? It would be nice to give the details: archive ... fund ... inventory ... file ... sheet ... The author of The Moment of Truth knows the price of the document very well, remember how his detective heroes work: “Print ... Date ... Ink ... Stamp mastic ... Texture of paper ... Signature of the unit commander ... natural ... "But here it doesn’t work out to be" natural "! Not only is the description of the December 19 episode by the two authors close in tone and mass of details, but Bogomolov has two phrases in quotation marks, as if from the archives, but again without indicating the source: “the front command is very dissatisfied with the slow advance of the army”, and “ General of the Army Zhukov pointed to the passive role of the commander of the army in the leadership of the troops and demanded his personal signature on operational documents. This is natural from Sandalov's book (p. 264), why Bogomolov put these phrases in quotation marks is a mystery. As you can see, reader, I had every reason to call Bogomolov's work a detective. And it cannot be considered proven that Vlasov was not at the NP in Lobnya.

(Strictly speaking, there was no need to disassemble the Bogomolov versions “by the bones”: it is enough to refer to the combat characteristics of the commander Vlasov, written on January 24, 1942 (during the summing up of the battle near Moscow): “He led the operations of the 20th army: a counterattack on the city of Solnechnogorsk, the offensive of the army troops in the Volokolamsk direction and the breakthrough of the defensive line on the Lama River. Personally, Lieutenant General Vlasov is operationally well prepared, he has organizational skills. He copes with command and control of the army quite "(cited by D. Volkogonov, "Triumph and Tragedy" "). The document is clear, concise, does not allow double interpretation. It was signed by the commander of the Western Front, General of the Army G.K. Zhukov. The future marshal was always strict with his subordinates, he did not tolerate idlers in the army, he had no favorites and was stingy with praise. Zhukovsky the words "does it quite" are equivalent to the highest certification. And it is impossible to imagine that Zhukov presented Vlasov to the Order of the Red Banner, if only The military merit of the commander was inflammation of the middle ear.)

Of course, Bogomolov had the right to use Sandalov's book, but I just have no right to believe that he did not work in the archives. But I would like to see not excerpts from documents in a free retelling, but the documents themselves: these materials may not actually coincide. According to the way Bogomolov quotes the novel, there are reasons for such fear. For example, a quote about Vlasov is given in the following form: “A person with such a face could be trusted recklessly ...” Here, they say, how Vladimov writes flatteringly about a traitor. So in the novel, there is a comma at this place, and then it follows: “and perhaps an observer, especially a grasping one, with a long worldly experience, would see in him deceptiveness that eludes others.” That's where the point is. And according to the method of Bogomolov, any thought can be turned into its complete opposite. Another example: “In December 1941, they could not allocate two hectares of land in Aprelevra to Kobrisov.” It's true, it's true, they couldn't. Six acres and those were not given. Neither Kobrisov, nor anyone else. An unconditional and indisputable historical fact, although all this has nothing to do with the novel. Kobrisov's wife says, "they are going to write down the generals for summer cottages." Wives, you know, often strive to get ahead of events, they have such a weakness, but women's gossip is not a government decree, is it? They are going to record - so what's the point of arguing? That's what you want, but at times it seems to me that Bogomolov wrote for people who not only hadn't read a single book on history, but hadn't even seen the novel in their eyes.

And Bogomolov also wants the characters of the novel to express themselves in conversation with the accuracy of official documents. Major Svetlookoe asks: “Do you know Kalmykova from the tribunal? Senior typist. There was no such position - "senior typist"! - Bogomolov is indignant, and adds up all such cases one to one, "convicting" Vladimov of complete ignorance of the realities of army life. To be honest, I also don’t know if there was such a position, but since there were three typists, and one older, and two just girls, then it’s for sure that she was always called the eldest: she was the eldest on business. It is the same in civilian life, and even more so in the army. But the novel does not say about the position - again, Bogomolov passes off his own impression as a text. Bogomolov counted several dozen such "mistakes".

Now for the more serious details. Bogomolov is outraged by the episode when, at a “general's” meeting before the capture of Predslavl, Khrushchev distributes gifts: nominal watches, cognac, embroidered Ukrainian shirts. The generals, writes Bogomolov, “could not, like the natives, rejoice at Khrushchev’s gifts” - in the 43rd they had at least a lot of cognac on the farm, the supply was established, and Vladimov, again, does not know life, does not understand “how absurd it all is ". Why supplying the army with brandy is so important, I don’t know, and the whole interpretation, to put it mildly, is doubtful: the gifts are not at all from Khrushchev, but “on behalf of, that means, the Military Council of the Front”, and try not to rejoice, so he , so, it means that the Military Council will offend, and even if he is at least three times a general, you won’t have to envy his future fate. Yes, and just humanly, not a gift of value, but attention, and it would be absurd to refuse nominal watches, because the generals, I think, had watches. But the distribution of Ukrainian shirts, which have been given a special ideological meaning, - the “pearl of Ukraine” is being liberated by Ukrainians! - this is a true absurdity, but so dear, so Soviet, and, perhaps, less absurdity than the slogan of the liberation of Kyiv on the 26th anniversary of the revolution. Vladimov knows "how absurd it is" - he writes about it.

And again, - for the umpteenth time! - I have to note Bogomolov's fantasies: there is no word in the novel that the generals rejoiced at the gifts. They are not at all up to it, they are busy with business, and only Khrushchev is joking. But if you think about it, there is some subtlety in this episode, and it cannot be categorically said that Bogomolov had no reason to be indignant. He had reasons, however, peculiar ones. Indeed, there is something insulting to the assembled generals in the very procedure for distributing gifts, in Khrushchev's jokes and in declaring everyone Ukrainians in a row: not the generals, like the natives, but Khrushchev with them, like with the natives! This scene is very close in spirit to what we know from other books: how Stalin soldered and gave gifts to his closest associates (including Khrushchev) at narrow gatherings, while humiliating anyone and everyone. Well, this is the skill of Vladimov, who made us feel the all-pervading spirit of servility, planted by the leader. But why was Bogomolov offended by the author, and not outraged by the norms of Soviet life? God knows...

Another "inaccuracy" - too omnipotent looks in the novel "smershevets" Svetlookov. Bogomolov tells for a long time that this is not the case. it was and could not be, even cites cases from life, although all the surnames are denoted by only two letters, as if this information is secret. And why are there cases from life, if we ourselves did not come from America? In a totalitarian state, the security services have all the power, and the word “organs” has a special meaning only in Russian, in Soviet times it appeared. And in Vladimir Bogomolov's own novel, The Moment of Truth, it is written: “The Smersh bodies reported directly to the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, People's Commissar of Defense I.V. Stalin." Hence the omnipotence. And how great it was, the modern reader cannot even imagine. And further. In the same novel, Captain Anikushin wants - although not on business - to complain about the wanted men from Smersh, he is going to write a report, but not to his superiors, but directly to Moscow: “Not to the major and not to the head of the garrison - these people, perhaps, they won’t want to get involved with special officers, they won’t start looking for trouble.” The heroes of Bogomolov knew what kind of trouble it was, but now the author himself has suddenly forgotten.

In a word, Bogomolov made a search, but did not achieve the “moment of truth”. And I would like to put an end to it, but a fresh issue of "LG" (06/07/95) arrived in time with an article by P. Basinsky "Playing hopscotch on someone else's blood", where the subtitle "Literary drama" would be appropriate. Having read Bogomolov's material in the "Book Review", the critic suddenly had an epiphany and declared his former love for the "General ..." to be heresy and delusion. “I am ready to admit my personal, as criticism, defeat, only partly excused by the fact that I praised Vladimir's novel not as a “military one,” Basinsky sincerely repents. But this insight, apparently, is not final, because the question remains: “Can a novel about the war be considered beautiful, in which the author, as Vladimir Bogomolov pedantically proves ... simply lies - sometimes involuntarily, and sometimes on purpose?”

The ethics of the last question is not worth discussing, because Basinsky's defeat is indisputable and in no way excusable. The critic must read carefully, compare facts and think. At least compare the text of the novel with the article, if there is no time to look at other sources. Bogomolov's "pedantic evidence" is so crude that just the intonation of the article should alert - this intonation is from yesterday. No one has ever been able to write a beautiful book on lies. Yesterday to admire a novel, and today to say that the author is “just lying” is indecent for an adult, even if he is not a critic. We must have our own position! If it is not there, you should not even take up the pen. Analyzing Bogomolov's material, I avoided harsh assessments, but now there is nowhere to go, I will say: juggling, postscripts and criticism of what is missing in the novel - this is a lie. Obvious and deliberate. And after getting acquainted with Basinsky's "literary drama", I had a new question: did he read Vladimir's novel at all or only what they write about "The General ..." in periodicals? ..

Little epilogue. Surprisingly, both those who praised and those who criticized "The General ..." wrote a lot about the historicity of the novel, although each time they bypassed the main character, Kobrisov. Zhukov, Vatutin, Chernyakhovsky, Vlasov, Guderian - a kaleidoscope of surnames, fragments of documents and memoirs, an interpretation of the role, meaning and even the moral character of these personalities with deep conclusions and generalizations. And the “quiet commander” Kobrisov remained in the shadows. Well, it's partly true. This means that Vladimov managed to write his general in such a way that his retinue plays him both in the novel and in subsequent literary life.

This means that a classic romance has taken place, and there is no need to wring your hands when Vladimov is convicted of “mistakes”. It is Basinsky who believes that the novel is “about a classical general outside of time and space”, a kind of collective image. No matter how! The novel is about a Russian general who never became completely Soviet. Maybe he wanted to, but he didn't. There were such generals. In our specific time and even more so - space.

Keywords: Georgy Vladimov, "The General and his army", criticism of the work of Georgy Vladimov, criticism of the works of Georgy Vladimov, analysis of the works of Georgy Vladimov, download criticism, download analysis, free download, Russian literature of the 20th century.

Vladimov G.N. "The General and His Army"

Georgy Nikolaevich Vladimov (real name) Volosevich, February 19, 1931, Kharkiv - October 19, 2003, Frankfurt ) - Russian writer.

Born February 19, 1937 in Kharkov in a family of teachers. He studied at the Leningrad Suvorov Military School. In 1953 he graduated from the law faculty of Leningrad University. He has been published as a literary critic since 1954 (articles in the Novy Mir magazine, where he began working: To the dispute about Vedernikov,Village Ognishchanka and the big world, Three days in the life of Holden and etc.). In 1960, under the impression of a business trip to the Kursk magnetic anomaly, he wrote a story big ore(publ. 1961), which caused controversy. Despite the outward resemblance to a typical "production" novel, the story became one of the programmatic works of the "sixties". Published in 1969 novel Three minutes of silence, narrating in the genre of confessional prose about the everyday life of a fishing liner, puts forward a “titular” leitmotif about the right of everyone to send their SOS signal and three minutes of silence legalized by maritime (portatively – worldly) laws, when each such signal must be heard. Metaphor and authenticity, literary talent, penetratingly elegiac lyricism and hidden accusatory power determine the style of Vladimov's writing, which will be most evident in his story about the guard dog. Faithful Ruslan(published in 1975 in Germany; in 1989 in the USSR), where in the story of a disinterested and devoted guard of the Soviet camps, the theme of the transformation of the best human beings (including embodied ones, in the spirit of the traditions of A. Chekhov and L. Tolstoy) arises for the writer , in the image of a watchdog) qualities into tragic “outsiderness”, homelessness, a sense of inferiority or uselessness in the modern sophisticated and deceitful world, in an unnatural and inhumane social order.

In 1977, Vladimov, having left the Union of Writers of the USSR, became the head of the Moscow section of the organization Amnesty International, banned in the USSR. In 1982 he publishes a short story in the West Never mind maestro. In 1983 he emigrated to Germany, since 1984 he has been the editor-in-chief of the émigré magazine Grani. In 1986, he left the post, having come to the conclusion that this organization is extremely suspicious, harmful and was used to combat the democratic movement. Since the late 1980s, he has been active as a publicist in domestic publications. In 1994, he publishes a novel in his homeland General and his army(Moscow Literary Prize "Triumph", 1995), dedicated to the history of the army of General A.A. Vlasov, who went over to the side of the Nazi troops during the Great Patriotic War.

Vladimov's novel, published in an abridged version in Znamya magazine in 1995, won the Booker Prize and caused a major literary scandal. "The General and His Army" was severely criticized from all sides. Conservative writers accused Vladimov, firstly, of distorting historical facts, and secondly, of showing sympathy for the "iron" Guderian (they immediately recalled that Vladimov himself had been living in Germany since 1983). Liberal critics declared that the classical "Tolstoy style" was hopelessly outdated and in the era of Booker's "death of literature" should be given to, say, Vladimir Sorokin, who sings this death. But there were also more than enough rave reviews about the novel. The military-historical novel "The General and His Army", which tells about General Kobrisov and the capture of the Myryatin bridgehead, the defense of which was held by the Vlasov battalions, is almost a non-military and almost non-historical novel. Not historical because there was never General Kobrisov, there was no Myryatin and Predslavl (although it is clear that we are talking about Kyiv, and the key plot collision of the novel - Predslavl-Kyiv should be taken by a general with a Ukrainian surname - took place in reality). Vladimov never claimed that all the events he described were true. "The General and His Army" is not a military book, since it lacks the second protagonist declared in the title - the army. There is a front-line spirit, battle scenes, but the army - whether it be Vlasov, Germans or Russians - is not in the novel. Kobrisov's troops - orderly Shesterikov, adjutant Donskoy, driver Sirotin and internal enemy - Major "Smersh" Svetlookov. All together they are the main character of the novel, but his last name is no longer Kobrisov, but it is not known what, most likely - Vladimov. "The General and His Army" is a psychological (autobiographical) book, fascinatingly written in a genre that is always too relevant for Russia.

Vladimov, the last great Russian realist, had only one serious shortcoming: he wrote little. For four decades of work, Vladimov became the author of only four great things. The fifth, his autobiography, Long Way to Tipperary, he did not have time to finish. So the appearance of a new work by Vladimov has always been perceived as a rare holiday. So it was in 1994, when Znamya published a magazine version of the novel The General and His Army. Postmodernists took this "old-fashioned" novel with astonishment, and even more surprising was its unexpected success: the Booker jury considered it the best novel of the year (later the best novel of the decade). And this is despite the fact that in the magazine version (four chapters out of seven) Vladimov's main "trump card" was lost, his trademark skillful composition. Three episodes of the military biography of General Kobrisov - the summer retreat of 1941, the battle for Moscow in 1941 and the battle for the Dnieper in 1943, the fate of Vlasov and the Vlasovites, Guderian and von Steiner - all these elements are skillfully combined. Transitions are always beautiful and natural. With an abundance of digressions, it seems, not a single superfluous episode, not a single unnecessary phrase. The style is excellent. Where necessary - there are decorations: “The bright glare path that crossed the river blazed, turned crimson red. On both sides of the path, the river was still dark, but it seemed that even there, under the dark cover, it was also red, and all of it emanated steam, like a fresh wound, rich in warm blood, smoking. The novel is easy to read, in one breath. Only the fact that we have lost the habit of more or less serious prose can explain the lack of commercial success.

But it is customary for us to evaluate literature not only by its artistic merit, especially when it comes to a military novel. Natalya Ivanova once advised me to re-read Georgy Vladimov's novel in order to find out how "shamelessly military leaders sacrificed" the lives of soldiers. And although I love and respect Natalya Ivanova, one of the most talented modern literary critics, I cannot accept this advice. The novel by Georgy Vladimov differs sharply from the military prose of the front-line soldiers - Viktor Nekrasov, Viktor Astafyev, Vasil Bykov, Yuri Bondarev. For veterans, the main source of “building material” for a new novel, story, short story was, after all, personal experience. But The General and His Army is not military prose. In Vladimov's novel, I was first of all struck by an epigraph from Othello:

Forgive me, you feathered troops

And proud battles in which

Ambition is considered valor.

Everyone, forgive me. I'm sorry my neighing horse

And the sound of the trumpet, and the roar of the drum,

And the whistle of the flute, and the royal banner,

All honors, all glory, all greatness

And the stormy anxieties of formidable wars...

To the reader, especially to a front-line soldier, it will seem alien, theatrical, and not suitable. The epigraph, like an overture in an opera, sets the reader up to perceive the text one way and not another. The lines from the play of the greatest playwright of all times and peoples are taken very well: they tell the reader that before him is not trench truth, but a tragedy novel.

Vladimov did not have time to go to the front (in 1941 he was only ten), but he went to the military theme almost all his life. Since the 1960s, he has been collecting materials, documents, engaged in “literary recording” of the memoirs of military leaders, and later, in Germany, listened to the oral stories of former Vlasovites. From this heterogeneous material, Vladimov created his own concept of the Great Patriotic War. Where there were not enough facts, the writer thought up, composed, but composed so well that fictional facts coexist with real ones on an equal footing.

1. The myth of the Germans. It is not one of the most common, it is more common in an intelligent environment. Especially popular with those who read a lot of German memoirs. The main thing here is the recognition of the absolute intellectual and professional superiority of the German generals over ours: von Steiner, “If he had not as much strength as Tereshchenko, but half as much, he would have swept him away in a few hours”. Firstly, it is only in German military memoirs that the Red Army always has darkness and darkness. We lost the war, it must be explained somehow. It is only strange that we (Vladimov is one of many here) believe their stories. After all, German memoirists lie no less than our military men, but for some reason the word of a foreigner is always more weighty for us than the word of a compatriot. It is not surprising that the praise of the enemy is considered the highest award for our general. To emphasize Kobrisov's military talent, Vladimov "quotes" von Steiner: “Here, on the Right Bank, we have twice seen a surge of Russian operational genius. For the first time, when General Kobrisov, who was advancing against my left flank, dared to capture the deserted plateau in front of Myryatin. His second step, no less elegant, was his personal appearance on the bridgehead in the very first hours of the landing”. Well, about the second, this is not a “splash of operational genius”, but a hussar, a youth. Erich von Manstein himself (the prototype of von Steiner) did not allow himself such escapades, nor did he particularly strive to praise the Russians. He referred more to the "overwhelming numerical superiority" of the Soviet troops, which they actually did not have. However, Marshal Konev in his memoirs also, not without pleasure, quoted Manstein's praise in his address.

2. The myth of “Russian four-layer tactics”, when "three layers lay down and fill the unevenness of the earth's crust, the fourth - creeps along them to victory." Vladimov writes about this more than once: both in connection with the anti-hero of the novel, General Tereshchenko (Moskalenko), and in connection with Zhukov: “he did not sin against the“ Russian four-layer tactics ”to the end, until his crowning Berlin operation, putting three hundred thousand on the Zeelovsky heights and in Berlin itself. Well, yes, of course, our commanders did not spare the soldiers and did not know how to fight differently. It's not like that, not exactly like that. And in the Berlin offensive, we lost not three hundred thousand, but almost four times less (counting irretrievable losses, that is, without the wounded). However, the images of the generals themselves (except for the disgusting Tereshchenko) least of all resemble those brainless and ruthless butchers that this myth depicts them as. “Lieutenant-general” Charnovsky (Chernyakhovsky), “tank dad” Rybalko (Rybalko) and even Zhukov are shown as smart, talented people. By the way, apart from the mention of the “Russian four-layer”, the image of Zhukov is simply magnificent. No one in our literature has been able to describe him in this way, to draw a portrait with a few strokes: “a tall, massive man, with a large, stern face, in a black leather jacket without shoulder straps, in a field cap, worn low and straight, not at all on one side, but no clothes, no manner of wearing it, would hide in him a military man born to command<…>tough wolf grin”.

3. Vlasov myth. Vlasov - Vladimov has one of the main characters. His portrait is also drawn with a few strokes: Kobrisov's recollection of a meeting at military maneuvers, a few author's comments, thoughts of Kobrisov himself. But the most important thing here is still the episode at the church of Andrei Stratilat (the author even changed the name of St. Theodore Stratilat to emphasize the importance of Vlasov the commander). Vlasov in this scene is the savior of Moscow, sent almost by Heaven itself (Vlasov's pre-war biography becomes known later). The real Andrei Andreevich Vlasov was neither a military genius nor the savior of Moscow. In the Battle of Moscow, he commanded only one of the fourteen armies of the Western Front (the 20th Army) participating in the counteroffensive. If it comes to that, then the role of the savior of Moscow belongs to G.K. Zhukov, who just commanded the Western Front. In 1941, Vlasov fought no worse and no better than others. However, K.A. Meretskov in his memoirs noted his professionalism, although, of course, he branded him as a traitor and renegade. Who knows how his fate would have developed in the future? Who would Vlasov have become by 1945 if he had not been captured on the Volkhov front in July 1942?

That the Vlasovites fought almost better than the Germans - it’s true that there were a lot of them, alas, it’s also true, but the words put into Vatutin’s mouth by Vladimov: “We fight more with our own than with the Germans” - an exaggeration, moreover - significant. The liberation of Prague by the 1st division of the ROA is a legend that the author of The General apparently heard from former Vlasovites. Taking part in liberation and liberation are not the same thing at all. And I don’t see much valor in going over to the side of the winner in the last days of the war.

In addition to these myths, Vladimov's novel also contains simply historical errors, blunders. Only now I have no desire not only to list them, but even to specifically look for them, as some historians like to do, who do not recognize and do not understand fiction. “The General and His Army” is still a novel, not a scientific monograph about the capture of Kyiv. Unlike the historian, the writer is not a slave to the source. He creates his own world, which has its own laws, its own heroes and anti-heroes, its own history and philosophy. To understand the difference between history and fiction, let's compare Vladimov's Guderian near Moscow with the historical basis - the memoirs of the "fast-moving Heinz" himself. I’ll say right away: “Memories of a Soldier” is not the most exciting reading. Most of all, they resemble the memoirs of Marshal Zhukov: the same dry, businesslike style of a military man that no “literary record” could correct. And so Vladimov unfolds a single phrase from “Memoirs of a Soldier” about a commander’s tank sliding into a ravine into the central event of the entire “Guderian” episode, when the “genius of blitzkrieg” realizes the inevitability of defeat.

What a boring historian would interpret as an obvious historical blunder is artistically and psychologically justified in Vladimov's novel. It is impossible to imagine that any general, even the most insane and desperate, violated the order of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, deployed his “jeep” in order to return to his army and take Predslavl himself (and what a wonderful name, much better, than Kyiv). General N.E. did not dare to do this. Chibisov, prototype of General F.I. Kobrisov. I did not dare to disobey the Supreme and K.K. Rokossovsky when Stalin transferred him from the Berlin-aimed 1st Belorussian to the secondary 2nd Belorussian. Zhukov himself did not dare to protest when Stalin sent him, the “father” of Operation Uranus, to organize a diversion strike on the Western and Kalinin fronts (so that the commander would not be painfully proud of the Stalingrad victory). But what does not happen in life is quite possible and justified in the novel. Like, for example, the absolutely fantastic shelling of Kobrisov's car, organized by the ubiquitous and omniscient Major Svetlookov. This stunning scene once again reminds us that the novel by Georgy Vladimov is not at all a “new truth about the war”, but literature, fiction, but fiction that looks more convincing than reality itself. Next to the historical Nefedov, Svetlookov is the theatrical Iago, he is as natural and organic in the world of Vladimov as Platon Karataev (Shesterikov) who moved from War and Peace and changed his appearance. The battles of the Great Patriotic War are a grandiose decoration for the great tragedy: retreat, crossing, stolen victory - its acts.

Forgive me, you feathered troops
And proud battles in which
Ambition is considered valor.
Everyone, forgive me. I'm sorry my neighing horse
And the sound of the trumpet, and the roar of the drum,
And the whistle of the flute, and the royal banner,
All honors, all glory, all greatness
And the stormy anxieties of formidable wars.
Forgive me, you deadly weapons,
Which rumble rushes along the ground ...

William Shakespeare,
"Othello, the Venetian Moor",
act III

Chapter first. MAJOR SVETLOOKOV

1

Here it appears from the darkness of the rain and rushes, gurgling tires, along the tormented asphalt - "jeep", "king of the roads", the chariot of our Victory. A tarpaulin thrown with mud flaps in the wind, brushes rush over the glass, smearing translucent sectors, swirling slush flies after it like a plume and settles with a hiss.

So he rushes under the sky of warring Russia, rumbling incessantly - whether with the thunder of an impending thunderstorm or a distant cannonade - a ferocious little beast, blunt-nosed and flat-headed, howling from an evil effort to overcome space, to break through to its unknown goal.

Sometimes even for him, whole versts of the road turn out to be impassable - because of the funnels that knocked out the asphalt in its entire width and filled to the top with dark slurry - then he crosses the ditch obliquely and eats the road, growling, tearing off layers of clay along with the grass, spinning in a broken rut, getting out with relief, picks up speed again and runs, runs beyond the horizon, and behind are wet, shot-through copses with black branches and heaps of fallen leaves, charred skeletons of cars dumped to rot behind the roadside, and chimneys of villages and farms that emitted their last smoke two years ago .

He comes across bridges - from hastily sanded logs, next to the former ones that have dropped rusty farms into the water - he runs along these logs, as if along the keys, bouncing with a clang, and the flooring still sways and creaks when there is no longer a trace of the "jeep", only the blue exhaust melts over the black water.

Barriers come across to him - and detain him for a long time, but, having confidently bypassed the column of sanitary vans, having cleared his way with demanding signals, he makes his way to the rails close and is the first to jump onto the crossing, as soon as the tail of the echelon rumbles.

He comes across "plugs" - from oncoming and transverse flows, a crowd of roaring, desperately honking cars, chilly traffic controllers, with courageous-girlish faces and swearing on their lips, embroider these "plugs", looking anxiously at the sky and threatening each approaching car with a rod from afar, - for the "jeep", however, a passage is found, and the drivers who have made room for a long time look after him with bewilderment and indistinct anguish.

Here he disappeared on the descent, behind the top of the hill, and calmed down - it seems that he fell there, collapsed, driven to the point of exhaustion - no, he surfaced on the rise, the engine sings a song of stubbornness, and the viscous Russian verst reluctantly crawls under the wheel ...

What was the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command? - for the driver, already petrified in his seat and looking at the road stupidly and intently, blinking his red eyelids, and from time to time, with the insistence of a man who has not slept for a long time, trying to light a cigarette butt stuck to his lip. It is true that in this very word - "Stavka" - he heard and saw something high and stable, rising above all Moscow roofs, like a pointed fairy-tale tower, and at its foot - a long-awaited parking lot, a walled yard lined with cars, like an inn, oh which he heard or read somewhere. Someone constantly arrives there, someone is escorted out, and an endless conversation flows between the drivers - no lower than those conversations that their owners-generals have in gloomy quiet wards, behind heavy velvet curtains, on the eighth floor. Above the eighth - having lived his previous life on the first and only one - the driver Sirotin did not get into the imagination, but the authorities were not supposed to be lower either, you have to watch at least half of Moscow from the windows.

And Sirotin would be cruelly disappointed if he knew that Stavka had hidden herself deep underground, at the Kirovskaya metro station, and her offices were fenced off with plywood shields, and buffets and locker rooms were located in the cars of the motionless train. It would be completely undignified, it would go deeper than our Hitler's bunker, the Soviet Headquarters could not be located like that, because the German one was ridiculed for this "bunker". Yes, and that bunker would not have caught up with such awe, with which the generals left for the entrance on half-bent cotton legs.

Here, at the foot, where he placed himself with his "jeep", Sirotin hoped to learn about his future fate, which could merge again with the fate of the general, or could flow in a separate channel. If you open your ears well, you could scout something from the drivers - how did he find out about this path in advance, from a colleague from the headquarter auto company. Having come together for a long smoke break, in anticipation of the end of the meeting, they first talked about something abstract - I remember Sirotin suggested that if an eight-local Dodge engine was installed on the Jeep, it would be a good car, you don’t need to wish for a better colleague against I didn’t object to this, but I noticed that the Dodge’s engine was too big and, perhaps, the hood would not fit under the Jeeps, they would have to build up a special casing, and this is a hump, and both agreed that it was better to leave it as it is. From here, their conversation leaned towards changes in general - how much benefit from them, - a colleague here declared himself a supporter of constancy and, in this connection, hinted to Sirotin that changes are expected in their army, literally one of these days, it is not known only, for better or for worse. What changes specifically, the colleague did not reveal, he only said that there was no final decision yet, but by the way he belittled his voice, it could be understood that this decision would not even come from the headquarters of the front, but from somewhere higher, maybe from such a high that both of them can’t even get there by thought. “Although,” said a colleague suddenly, “you might get there. If you see Moscow by chance, bow down.” To show surprise - what Moscow could be like in the midst of the offensive - to Sirotin, the commander’s driver, ambition did not allow, he only nodded importantly, but secretly decided: his colleague didn’t really know anything, he heard a distant ringing, or maybe this ringing itself gave birth. But it turned out - not a ringing, it really turned out - Moscow! Just in case, Sirotin then began to prepare - he mounted and installed unused tires, "native", that is, American, which he saved to Europe, welded a bracket for another gasoline canister, even pulled this tarpaulin, which was usually not taken under any weather , - the general did not like him: “It’s stuffy under him,” he said, “like in a doghouse, and doesn’t allow you to disperse quickly,” that is, to jump over the sides during shelling or bombing. In a word, it did not turn out so unexpectedly when the general ordered: "Harness, Sirotin, we'll have lunch - and go to Moscow."

Sirotin had never seen Moscow, and he was glad that long-standing, still pre-war plans were suddenly coming true, and he was worried about the general, who was suddenly recalled to Headquarters for some reason, not to mention himself: who else would have to be transported, and wouldn’t it be better to ask for a lorry, there’s just as much trouble, and there are probably more chances to stay alive, still the booth is covered, not every fragment will break through. And there was also a feeling - a strange relief, one might even say, deliverance, which I did not want to admit to myself.

He was not the first with the general, before him two martyrs had already changed - if you count from Voronezh, and it was from there that the history of the army began before that, according to Sirotin, there was no army, no history, but solid darkness and stupidity. So, from Voronezh - the general himself was not scratched, but under him, as they said in the army, two "jeeps" were killed, both times with drivers, and once with an adjutant. That's what the persistent legend went about: that he didn’t take himself, he seemed to be charmed, and this was just confirmed by the fact that they died next to him, literally two steps away. True, when the details were told, it turned out a little differently, these "jeeps" were killed not quite under him. For the first time - with a direct hit by a long-range land mine - the general had not yet got into the car, he lingered for a minute at the command post of the division commander and went out to the finished porridge. And the second time - when an anti-tank mine was blown up, he was no longer sitting, got out to walk along the road, watch how self-propelled guns disguised themselves before the onset, and ordered the driver to drive off somewhere from an open place, and he take it and turn into a grove. Meanwhile, the road was cleared of mines, and the sappers bypassed the grove, no movement was planned along it ... But what difference does it make, Sirotin thought, whether the general had prevented his death or was late for it, this was his conspiracy, but only on those who accompanied him it did not spread, it only confused them, it was, if you think about it, the cause of their death. Experts have already calculated that for every one killed in this war there will be up to ten tons of spent metal, Sirotin, even without their calculations, knew how difficult it is to kill a person at the front. If only he could hold out for three months, learn not to listen to either bullets or shrapnel, but to listen to himself, his unaccountable chill, which, the more unaccountable, the more surely it will whisper to you where it would be better to take your feet ahead of time, sometimes from the most seemingly safe dugout, from under seven reels, and lie in some kind of groove, behind an insignificant bump, - and the dugout will blow it over the log, and the bump will cover it! He knew that this saving feeling, as it were, goes out without training if you don’t visit the front line for at least a week, but this general didn’t really adore the front line, but he didn’t disdain it, so that Sirotin’s predecessors could not miss her too much, - it means that they died through their own stupidity, they did not obey themselves!

With a mine - well, it was funny. Would he, Sirotin, move out to this grove, under the canopy of birches? Yes, damn it, at least in front of each bush you stick it: "Checked, there are no mines," - whoever checked, for that, no, he already took his legs, and for your share, be sure, he left at least one anti-tank mine in haste, and even if he swept the whole grove with his belly - a well-known case, once a year an unloaded rifle shoots! It was more difficult with a shell - you yourself ran into a mine, and this one chose you, it was you. Someone unknown drew a heavenly path for him, corrected the mistake with a breath of breeze, carried it two, three thousandths to the right or left, and in just a few seconds - as you feel that your only, dear, destined by fate, has already left the trunk and hurries to you, whistling, buzzing, but you won’t hear his whistle, others will hear - and foolishly bow to him. However, why was it necessary to wait, not to take cover, when something delayed the general at that command post? Yes, the same, unconscious, and delayed, that's what you had to feel! In his reflections, Sirotin invariably felt superior to both predecessors - but, perhaps, only the eternal dubious superiority of the living over the dead? - and such a thought also visited him. The fact of the matter is that it is cursed to feel it, it confuses even worse, driving away the saving chill, the science of survival demanded: always humble yourself, do not get tired of asking to be gone - then, perhaps, it will blow you past. And most importantly ... most importantly - the same chill whispered to him: with this general, he will not pull out the war. What reasons? Yes, if you can name them, then what kind of lack of accountability ... Somewhere it will happen and someday, but it will certainly happen - that's what always hung over him, which is why he was often sad and gloomy, only a sophisticated look would recognize his dashing, behind a desperately brave, dandy look - a hidden premonition. Somewhere the rope ends, he told himself, it winds for a long time and too happily - and he already dreamed of escaping with a wound, and after the hospital to get to another general, not so charmed.

Here, in fact, what kind of fears - about nothing else - the driver Sirotin told Major Svetlookov from the army counterintelligence "Smersh" when he invited him for an interview, or - as he said - "to gossip about something." “Only here’s what,” he said to Sirotin, “you won’t talk to me in the department, they’ll break in with some damn thing, better in some other place. And for now, not a word to anyone, because ... you never know. Okay? " Their meeting took place in a wood near the headquarters, on the edge, where they met at the appointed hour, Major Svetlookov sat down on a fallen pine tree and, taking off his cap, exposed his steep, convex forehead to the autumn sun, with a red stripe from the band, - which, as it were, took off his bossiness, disposing to a frank conversation - Sirotin invited him to sit down lower, on the grass.

Let's lay it out, - he said, - what sharpens you, what is the young man's grief about? I can see that it won't hide from me...

It was not good that Sirotin talked about such things that the science of survival tells him to keep to himself, but Major Svetlookov immediately understood and sympathized with him.

Nothing, nothing, - he said without a smile, vigorously shaking his linen locks, throwing them far back, - we know how to understand this, all this mysticism. Everyone is subject to superstition, you are not alone, our commander is too. And I'll tell you a secret: he's not so charmed. He doesn’t like to remember this and doesn’t wear stripes for wounds, but he had it out of stupidity in forty-one, near Solnechnogorsk. Well stocked - eight bullets in the stomach. And you didn't know? And the orderly didn't tell? Which, by the way, was present at this. I thought everything was wide open with you ... Well, Fotiy Ivanovich probably forbade him to tell. And we won’t gossip about it either, right? ..

Listen, - he suddenly glanced sideways at Sirotin with a cheerful and piercing look, - maybe you are playing me a fool ...? And the main thing is that you don't talk about Fotiy Ivanych, do you hide it?

What should I hide?

Do you see any oddities with him lately? Mind you, someone already notices. Are you nothing?

Sirotin shrugged his shoulder, which could mean both "didn't notice" and "it's none of my business", but he caught the still unclear danger concerning the general, and his first internal movement was to step back, if only for a moment, just to understand that could threaten him. Major Svetlookov looked at him intently, the gaze of his piercing blue eyes was hard to bear. It seems that he figured out Sirotin's confusion and with this stern look returned him to the place that a person in the commander's retinue was obliged to keep - the place of a devoted servant who trusts the master infinitely.

Doubts, suspicions, all sorts of merihlyundia you do not lay out to me, - said the major firmly. - Only the facts. If they are, you must signal them. The commander is a big man, well-deserved, valuable, all the more we are obliged to strain all our small forces, to support him, if he has faltered in something. Maybe he's tired. Maybe he needs special mental attention right now. After all, he won’t make a request, but we won’t notice, we’ll miss the moment, then we’ll bite our elbows. After all, we are responsible for every person in the army, and only for the commander - to be sure ...

Who were "we" who were responsible for every person in the army, whether he was with the major or the entire army "Smersh", in whose eyes the general "staggered" in some way, Sirotin did not understand this, but for some reason did not dare to ask. He suddenly remembered that his friend from the staff's autorote had also uttered these words: "he staggered a little," - so he, therefore, did not hear a distant ringing, but downright the hum of the earth. It seems that the general's staggering, although not yet manifested in anything, was no longer news to some, and that's why Major Svetlookov called him to him. Their conversation became more and more addictive somewhere, into something unpleasant, and it was vaguely thought that he, Sirotin, had already taken a small step towards betrayal, agreeing to come here "to gossip."

From the depths of the forest there was a damp coolness of late evening, and the ubiquitous cloying stench insinuatingly merged with it. Damn funeral directors, thought Sirotin, they are picking up their own, and the Germans - they are too lazy, they will have to report to the general, he will give them a light. It was reluctant to pick up fresh ones - now plug your noses ...

Tell me something, - asked Major Svetlookov, - how do you think he feels about death?

Sirotin looked up at him in surprise.

Like all of us sinners...

You don't know," the major said sternly. - That's why I'm asking. Now the question of retaining command personnel is extremely acute. There is a special instruction from the Headquarters, and the Supreme Commander repeatedly emphasized that the commanders should not put themselves at risk. Thank God, not the forty-first year, they learned to force the rivers, the personal presence of the commander at the crossing is useless. Why did he have to cross under fire on a ferry? Maybe he deliberately does not protect himself? With some kind of despair, with fear that he will not be able to cope with the operation? Or maybe that’s it ... well, your little one? It is understandable to some extent - the operation is very complicated after all! ..

Perhaps Sirotin would not have thought that the operation was more complicated than others, and it seemed to develop normally, but there, upstairs, from where Major Svetlookov condescended to him, there could be other considerations.

Maybe an isolated case? the major mused. - So no, some kind of sequence is seen. The army commander brings his command post ahead of the divisional ones, but what remains for the divisional commander? Move closer to the German? And the regimental one - just climb into the teeth of the enemy? So will we prove personal courage to each other? Or another example: go to the front line without guards, without an armored personnel carrier, you don’t even take a radio operator with you. And this is how they run into an ambush, and this is how they drop in on the German. Go find out later, prove that there was no betrayal, but simply by mistake ... All this must be foreseen. And warn. And you and I - first of all.

What depends on me? - asked Sirotin with relief. The subject of the interview became clear to him at last and agreed with his own fears. - The driver does not choose the route ...

If only you had pointed out to the commander! .. But knowing in advance is in your competence, right? Fotiy Ivanovich says to you in ten minutes: "Harness, Sirotin, we'll jump at one hundred and sixteen." So?

Sirotin marveled at such awareness, but objected:

Not always. Another time he gets into the car and then the path speaks.

It is truth too. But he does not go to one place, you will visit three or four farms in a day: where for half an hour, and where for all two. Can you ask him: where then, will there be enough fuel? Here is your opportunity to call.

Who is it... to call?

With me, with whom. We will organize observation, we will contact the farm where you are currently on your way to send a meeting. I understand that the commander sometimes wants to drive up impudently, to find everything as it is. So one does not interfere with the other. We have our own line and our own task. The divisional commander will not know when Fotiy Ivanovich comes, if only we knew.

And I thought, - said Sirotin, grinning, - you are engaged in spies.

We take care of everything. But now the main thing is that the commander does not fall out of his tutelage even for a minute. Is that what you promise me?

Sirotin intensely wrinkled his forehead, gaining time. As if there was nothing bad if every time, wherever he and the general went, Major Svetlookov would know about it. But somehow it jarred that he would have to inform him secretly from the general.

Is that how it is? - asked Sirotin. - From Fotiy Ivanovich secretly?

Whoa! boomed the major mockingly. - You have a kilo of contempt for this word. It is secretly, behind the scenes. Why bother the commander in this?

I don’t know,” said Sirotin, “how this is possible...

Major Svetlookov sighed a long sad sigh.

And I don't know. But it is necessary. And it has to. So what are we to do? Previously, there was an institute of commissars in the army - how easy it is! What I've been trying to get from you for an hour, the commissioner would have promised me without thinking. How else? The commissar and the counterintelligence officer are the first assistants to each other. Now - more confidence in the commander, and work has become much more difficult. Do not approach a member of the Military Council, he, too, is now a "comrade general", this title is dearer to him than a commissar, he will engage in such "nonsense"! Well, we, modest little people, are obliged to engage in, moreover, the quiet glanders. Yes, the Supreme Commander has complicated the task for us. But he didn't take it off!

Call, because it is, you know ... The signalman's line is busy. And when it is free, it will not connect so easily either. He needs to be told where you are calling. So it will reach Fotiy Ivanych. No, it's...

What's "no"? - Major Svetlookov brought his face closer to him. He immediately cheered up from such naivety of Sirotin. - Well, you're a freak! Do you really ask: "And connect me with Major Svetlookov from Smersh? No, no, we'll fail the whole thing. do you know the tribunal?

Sirotin remembered something flabby, too busty and, in his twenty-six-year-old eyes, very old, with an inflexibly bossy face, with thinly pursed lips, shouting authoritatively at two subordinate young ladies.

What, not an object for passion? The Major smiled with his quickly rosy face. - Actually, there are hunters for it. They even praise. What can you do, love is evil! Besides, we don't have a nunnery. Let's enter Europe - if not this year, then next - there are such monasteries, especially for women. Or rather, girlish. Because these nuns, "Carmelites" are called, they take an oath about virginity - to the grave. Wow, what a sacrifice! So innocence is guaranteed. Take any - you can't go wrong.

These super-severe "carmelites", in Sirotin's imagination, for some reason correlating with "caramels", looked much more alluring and sweet. As for the busty one, he still didn’t imagine how he would start hitting on her or at least chatting on the phone.

Zergut, - the major agreed. - Choose another option. How do you like Zoya? Not the one, not from the tribunal, but the one at the headquarters of the telephone operator. With curls.

Here are those ashen curls hanging from under the cap in spirals on a convex faience forehead, and a look of astonishment - small, but such bright, shining eyes - and a deftly fitted tunic, unbuttoned with one button, never with two, so as not to run into a remark , and chrome, custom-tailored boots, and manicure on thin fingers - everything was much closer to what was desired.

Zoya? - doubted Sirotin. - So she seems to be with this ... from the operations department. Almost his wife?

This "slightly" has one secret obstacle - the spouse is legal in Barnaul. Which is already bombing the political department with letters. And two tender offspring. Here we will have to take some measures ... So Zoechka does not disappear, I advise you to do it. Ride up to her, make crossings. And call her wherever you can. What, the signalman won't connect you? Commander's chauffeur? The matter is understandable, one might say - urgent. You're just more impudent, you need to know your place in the army. In general, you told her: "Trali-wali, how did you sleep?" - and, by the way, something like this: "Unfortunately, time is running out, in an hour, wait, I'll call from Ivanov." They talk a lot over the link, one more chatter ... Well, this is not necessary, we will establish a cipher in the future, each farm has its own password. What is not clear to you yet?

Yes, somehow it...

What is "somehow"? What?! cried the major angrily. And it didn't seem strange to Sirotin that the major had the right to be angry at him for his lack of understanding, even to scold him angrily. - Do you think I'm trying for myself? To save the commander's life! And your life, by the way. Or are you also looking for death?!

And in his heart, with a whistle, he lashed himself on the boot with a twig that had come from nowhere - the sound seemed insignificant, but made Sirotin cringe inwardly and feel a chill in the lower abdomen, that dull, painful chill that appears when a projectile whistles leaving the barrel, and its slap into the marsh mess - the sounds of the very first and most terrible, because the roar of bursting steel, and the fountain splash of the heaving bog, and the crackling of branches cut by fragments, no longer threaten you with anything, you have already passed. This meticulous, sticky, all-penetrating Major Svetlookov saw what sat in Sirotino and did not let him live, but he also saw more: that something dangerous, disastrous was really happening to the general - both for himself and for those around him. When, standing to his full height on the ferry in his noticeable black leather jacket, he so picturesquely exposed himself to bullets from the right bank, to the bullets of a diving Junkers, this was not bravado, not an "example of personal courage", but the very fact that time from time to time comprehended others and was called - a person is looking for death.

Not at all in a desperate situation, not in a ring of envelopment, not under the muzzles of a detachment, but often in a successful offensive, in an attack, a person did the senseless, incomprehensible: he rushed hand-to-hand one against five, or, standing up to his full height, threw grenades one after another under a moving a tank attacked him, or, running up to a machine-gun embrasure, chopped the jumping barrel with a spatula - and almost always died. An experienced soldier, he dismissed all chances to evade, wait, somehow contrive. Whether it was in insanity, in a blinding fuse, or so many days of fear drained his soul, but those who were nearby heard his cry, containing both torment, and malicious triumph, and, as it were, liberation ... And on the eve - as they recalled later , or maybe they just made it up - this person was taciturn and gloomy, he lived somehow at random, looked around with an incomprehensible, hidden gaze, as if he had already foreseen tomorrow. Sirotin could not comprehend these people, but what led them to die so hastily was, in the end, their business, they did not call anyone along, did not drag, but the general called and dragged. Why, one wonders, did he not sit in the shell of an armored personnel carrier, which was next to him on the ferry? And did he not think that people who were obliged to be with him inseparably exposed themselves just as picturesquely under the same bullets? But then there was one who understood everything, saw with a nimble eye the general's games with death and would stop them with his intervention. How he will succeed, well, at least how he will take a stray projectile into the sky, for some reason Sirotin was not puzzled, somehow it went without saying, I just wanted to make the task of this preoccupied omnipotent major in every way easier, to tell in more detail about the oddities of the general’s behavior, so that he would take into account in some of your calculations.

The major listened to him without interrupting, nodded understandingly, sometimes sighed or clicked his tongue, then threw his twig far away and moved the planchette to his knees. Unfolding it, he began to examine a piece of paper hidden under yellow celluloid.

So, - he said, - on this we will round off for the time being. Come on, sign me here.

About what? - stumbled scattered Sirotin.

About non-disclosure. The conversation of us, as you understand, is not for any ears.

So... why? I'm not going to disclose.

Moreover, why not sign? Let's not break.

Sirotin, having already taken a pencil, saw that he should sign at the very bottom of the sheet, covered with ornate, elegant handwriting, tilted to the left.

Theses, - explained the major. - It was I who sketched out how our conversation would go approximately. You see - it came together, in general.

Sirotin was surprised by this, but partly reassured. In the end, he did not tell this major anything that he did not know in advance. And he signed with unsteady fingers.

And all business. - Major, grinning at Sirotin, neatly fastened the tablet, threw it behind his back and stood up. - And you, fool, were afraid. Press your skirt, let's go.

He strode ahead, firmly stepping over the ballet dancer's full, soft-chrome-covered legs, the planchette and the pistol crawled and bounced on his steep buttocks, and Sirotin had the feeling that a girl returning from the forest after a seducer who had already cooled down and who thereby tried to moderate the wounding of the soul that resisted as best it could.

And by the way, - the major suddenly turned around, and Sirotin almost ran into him, - since we are already on these topics ... Maybe you can explain the dream to me? Can you guess dreams? So, I pressed a good woman in a suitable environment. I pour it into her ears - about the lilac there, about Pushkin-Lermontov, and under the skirt I shuffle - politely, but inevitably, with honest intentions. And that's it, you understand, chinnenko, it's about to come to the point. All of a sudden - can you imagine? I feel like a man! An honest mother, it was I who made out with a peasant, I almost squandered the ammunition load. What do you say? I wake up in a cold sweat. And why would it?

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