What is Sharikovism? What is Sharikovism and Shvonderstvo? (From Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog) What is Sharikovism
Creative path Bulgakov is full of drama. He entered literature with rich life experience. After university, where he graduated in medicine, Bulgakov worked as a zemstvo doctor at the Nikolskaya hospital in Sychevsky district. In 1918-1919 he ended up in Kyiv and witnessed Petliura’s “Odyssey”.
These impressions were reflected in many of his novels, up to the novel “ White Guard"and the play "Days of the Turbins". Bulgakov did not immediately accept the revolution. After the war, Bulgakov began working in the theater and newspapers. Arriving in Moscow in the fall of 1921, Bulgakov took up journalism. Bulgakov sought to solve the most pressing problems of the time, to be more original - and philosophical views, and in satire. The result of this was sharp contradictions in his works.
One of them was “ dog's heart" The plot events in the work were based on a real contradiction. Professor Preobrazhensky, a world-famous physiologist, discovered the secret of the pituitary gland - an appendage of the brain. The operation that the scientist performed on the dog, transplanting the human pituitary gland into his brain, gave unexpected results.
Sharik not only acquired a human appearance, but all the character traits and features of the nature of Klim Chugunkin, twenty-five years old, a drunkard, a thief, were inherited in his genes. Bulgakov transfers the location of “Heart of a Dog” to Moscow, to Prechistenka. Moscow is real, even naturalistic, conveyed through the perception of Sharik, a homeless mongrel dog who “knows” life from the inside, in its unsightly form. Moscow during the NEP era: with chic restaurants, a “canteen for normal meals for employees of the Central Council of the National Economy,” where they cook cabbage soup “from stinking corned beef.” Moscow, where “proletarians”, “comrades” and “gentlemen” live.
The revolution only distorted the appearance of the ancient capital: it turned its mansions, its apartment buildings inside out (like, for example, the Kalabukhovsky house, where the hero of the story lives). One of the main characters of the story, Professor Preobrazhensky, a world-famous scientist and doctor, belongs to such “densified” people who are gradually being squeezed out of life. They haven't touched him yet - fame protects him. But representatives of the house management were already visiting him, showing tireless concern for the fate of the proletariat: is it too much luxury to operate in the operating room, eat in the dining room, sleep in the bedroom; It is quite enough to connect an examination room and an office, a dining room and a bedroom. Since 1903, Preobrazhensky has lived in the Kalabukhovsky house.
Here are his observations: until April 1917, there was not a single case in which even one pair of galoshes would disappear from our front door downstairs when the common door was unlocked. Please note, there are twelve apartments here, I have a reception. One fine day in April 17, all the galoshes disappeared, including two pairs of mine, three sticks, a coat and the doorman’s samovar. And since then the galosh stand has ceased to exist.
Why, when this whole story began, did everyone start walking up the marble stairs in dirty galoshes and felt boots? Why was the carpet removed from the main staircase? Why the hell did they remove the flowers from the sites? Why does electricity, which went out twice over the course of 20 years, now neatly go out once a month?
“- “Devastation,” answers the interlocutor and assistant Dr. Bormental. “No,” Philip Philipovich objected quite confidently, “no. What is this devastation of yours?
Old woman with a stick? Yes, it doesn't exist at all. The devastation is not in the closets, but in the heads.”
Devastation, destroy... The idea of destroying the old world, of course, was born in the minds of thinking, enlightened people, long before the appearance of the chairman of the house committee, Shvonder, and his team. Along with this problem of reorganizing society, the problem of what the revolution brought into human life, the problem of forming a new Soviet man appears. The “wild” man Sharikov experiences the influence of the word.
He becomes the object of verbal attacks by Shvonder, who defends the interests of Sharikov “as a worker.” Sharikov is not at all embarrassed by the fact that he lives and feeds at the expense of Preobrazhensky. It is Sharikov, who came from the people, who “fits on” the professor’s apartment. Sharikov’s principle is simple: why work if you can take it away; If one has a lot and the other has nothing, you need to take everything and divide it. Here it is, Shvonder’s treatment of Sharikov’s primitive consciousness!
Similar work has been done on millions of people. As you know, Lenin’s slogan “Rob the loot!” was one of the most popular during the revolution. The lofty idea of equality instantly degenerated into primitive egalitarianism. The Bolshevik experiment, designed to create a “new”, improved man, is not their business, it is nature’s business. According to Bulgakov, the new Soviet man is a symbiosis of a stray dog and an alcoholic.
We see how this new type gradually turns into the master of life, “recommending the dialectics of Marx and Engels for reading.” Professor Preobrazhensky's fantastic operation turned out to be as unsuccessful as the great communist experiment with history.
“Science does not yet know how to turn animals into people. So I tried, but it was unsuccessful, as you can see.
I talked and began to return to a primitive state,” Preobrazhensky admits. Bulgakov, in his story “The Heart of a Dog,” with enormous impressive power, in his favorite manner of grotesquery and humor, raised the question of the power of dark instincts in human life. Bulgakov, as a writer, has no faith that these instincts can be changed. Sharikovism is a moral phenomenon, and everyone must fight it within themselves.
The story “Heart of a Dog” by M. A. Bulgakov was written in 1925. By this time, the consequences of the October Revolution - a social experiment on a nationwide scale - had already become completely clear. It is from this point of view that the results of the experiment are considered in the story.
Professor Preobrazhensky - Sharikov and “Sharikovism”.
By origin, Sharikov, on the one hand, is a stray dog, on the other hand, a dissolute drunkard, and combines many of their traits. Sharikov’s main feeling is hatred of everyone who offended him.
It is characteristic that this feeling somehow immediately turns out to be close to the class hatred of the proletariat for the bourgeoisie (Sharikov reads the correspondence of Engels with Kautsky), the hatred of the poor for the rich (the distribution of living space by the house committee), the hatred of the uneducated for the intelligentsia. It turns out that all new world built on hatred of the old. And for hatred
You don't need much. Sharikov, whose first word was the name of the store where he was scalded with boiling water, very quickly learns to drink vodka, be rude to the servants, and turns his ignorance into a weapon against education. He even has a spiritual mentor - the chairman of the house committee, Shvonder.
Shvonder needs Sharikov, because Shvonder inside is exactly the same as Sharikov. He has the same hatred and fear of power, the same stupidity. After all, it is he who contributes to Sharikov’s promotion - he becomes authorized to exterminate stray dogs and cats. Well, it’s clear that cats are a relic of the past. But why dogs? And here the moral basis of “Sharikovism” manifests itself - ingratitude and the destruction of one’s own kind in order to prove one’s difference from them, to assert oneself. The desire to rise at the expense of others, and not at the cost of one’s own efforts, is characteristic of representatives of the so-called new world. Shvonder, who inspires Sharikov to perform feats (for example, to conquer Preobrazhensky’s apartment), simply does not yet understand that he himself will be the next victim.
When Sharikov was a dog, one could feel sympathy for him. Completely undeserved hardships and injustices accompanied his life. Maybe they give Sharikov and others like him the right to take revenge? Maybe they are fighting for justice? But the fact of the matter is that Sharikov and the Sharikovs think only about themselves. Justice in their understanding is to use the benefits that others previously enjoyed. There is no question at all about creating something for others. Professor Preobrazhensky speaks about this: “Devastation is in our heads.” People have stopped doing business, and are busy fighting, snatching a piece. Why, after the revolution, do you need to walk on carpets in galoshes and steal hats from front doors? People themselves create destruction and “Sharikovism”. This is social basis“Sharikovism”: slaves who came to power, but completely retained the slave psychology. On the one hand, this is obedience and servility towards superiors, on the other hand, servile cruelty towards people dependent on them or people like them.
In M. Bulgakov's story, Professor Preobrazhensky himself corrects his mistake. This is much more difficult to do in life. The cute dog Sharik does not remember that he was the authorized Sharikov and destroyed stray dogs. Real Sharikovs don’t forget this. Therefore, social experiments that result in “Sharikovism” are very dangerous.
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Bulgakov's creativity is the pinnacle phenomenon of Russian artistic culture XX century. The fate of the Master, deprived of the opportunity to be published and heard, is tragic. From 1927 to 1940, Bulgakov did not see a single line of his own in print.
Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov came to literature already during the years of Soviet power. He experienced all the difficulties and contradictions of Soviet reality in the thirties. His childhood and youth were connected with Kiev, and the subsequent years of his life - with Moscow. It was during the Moscow period of Bulgakov’s life that the story “Heart of a Dog” was written. It reveals with brilliant skill and talent the theme of disharmony, brought to the point of absurdity thanks to human intervention in the eternal laws of nature.
In this work, the writer rises to the top of satirical fiction. If satire states, then satirical fiction warns society of impending dangers and cataclysms. Bulgakov embodies his conviction in the preference of normal evolution over the violent method of invading life; he speaks of the terrible destructive power of complacent aggressive innovation. These themes are eternal, and they have not lost their significance even now.
The story “Heart of a Dog” is distinguished by an extremely clear author’s idea: the revolution that took place in Russia was not the result of natural spiritual development society, but an irresponsible and premature experiment. Therefore, the country must be returned to its previous state, without allowing the irreversible consequences of such an experiment.
So, let's look at the main characters of "Heart of a Dog". Professor Preobrazhensky is a democrat by origin and convictions, a typical Moscow intellectual. He sacredly serves science, helps people, and will never harm him. Proud and majestic, Professor Preobrazhensky spouts ancient aphorisms. Being a luminary of Moscow genetics, the brilliant surgeon is engaged in profitable operations to rejuvenate aging women.
But the professor plans to improve nature itself, he decides to compete with life itself, to create a new person by transplanting part of the human brain into a dog. This is how Sharikov is born, embodying the new Soviet man. What are its development prospects? Nothing impressive: the heart of a stray dog and the brain of a man with three convictions and a pronounced passion for alcohol. This is what should develop from new person, new society.
Sharikov wants to become one of the people at all costs, to become no worse than others. But he cannot understand that for this it is necessary to go through a long path of spiritual development; it requires work to develop the intellect, horizons, and mastery of knowledge. Polygraph Poligrafovich Sharikov (as the creature is now called) puts on patent leather shoes and a poisonous-colored tie, but otherwise his suit is dirty, unkempt, and tasteless.
A person with a doglike disposition, the basis of which was the lumpen, feels like the master of life, he is arrogant, arrogant, and aggressive. The conflict between Professor Preobrazhensky and the humanoid lumpen is absolutely inevitable. The life of the professor and the inhabitants of his apartment becomes a living hell. Here is one of their everyday scenes:
“-...Don’t throw cigarette butts on the floor, I ask you for the hundredth time. So that I no longer hear a single swear word in the apartment! Don't give a damn! “There’s a spittoon,” the professor is indignant.
“Somehow, dad, you’re painfully oppressing me,” the man suddenly said tearfully.”
Despite the dissatisfaction of the owner of the house, Sharikov lives in his own way: during the day he sleeps in the kitchen, messes around, does all sorts of outrages, confident that “nowadays everyone has their own right.” And he is not alone in this. Polygraph Poligrafovich finds an ally in Shvonder, the local chairman of the house committee. He bears the same responsibility as the professor for the humanoid monster. Shvonder supported social status Sharikov, armed him with an ideological phrase, he is his ideologist, his “spiritual shepherd.” Shvonder supplies Sharikov with “scientific” literature and gives him Engels’s correspondence with Kautsky to “study”. The beast-like creature does not approve of any author: “Otherwise they write, write... Congress, some Germans...” He draws one conclusion: “Everything must be divided.” This is how Sharikov’s psychology developed. He instinctively sensed the main credo of the new masters of life: plunder, steal, take away everything created. Main principle socialist society - universal leveling, called equality. We all know what this led to.
Finest hour for Polygraph Poligrafovich his “service” appeared. Having disappeared from the house, he appears before the astonished professor as a kind of young man, full of dignity and self-respect, “in a leather jacket from someone else’s shoulder, in worn leather pants and high English boots.” The incredible smell of cats immediately spread throughout the entire hallway. He presents the stunned professor with a paper stating that Comrade Sharikov is the head of the department for cleaning the city from stray animals. Shvonder got him there.
So, Bulgakov’s Sharik made a dizzying leap: from a stray dog, he turned into an orderly to cleanse the city of stray dogs and cats. Well, pursuing your own - characteristic all ball ones. They destroy their own, as if covering up traces of their own origin...
The last chord of Sharikov’s activity is the denunciation of Professor Preobrazhensky. It should be noted that it was in the thirties that denunciation became one of the foundations of a socialist society, which would be more correctly called totalitarian. Only such a regime can be based on denunciation.
Sharikov is alien to shame, conscience, and morality. He has no human qualities, there is only meanness, hatred, malice.
However, Professor Preobrazhensky still does not abandon the idea of making Sharikov a man. He hopes for evolution, gradual development. But there is no development and there will not be if the person himself does not strive for it. Good intentions Preobrazhensky turn into tragedy. He comes to the conclusion that violent intervention in the nature of man and society leads to catastrophic results. In the story, the professor corrects his mistake by turning Sharikov back into a dog. But in life such experiments are irreversible. Bulgakov managed to warn about this at the very beginning of the destructive transformations that began in our country in 1917.
After the revolution, all conditions were created for the appearance of a huge number of balls with dog hearts. The totalitarian system greatly contributes to this. Due to the fact that these monsters have penetrated into all areas of life, Russia is now going through difficult times.
Outwardly, the Sharikovs are no different from people, but they are always among us. Their non-human essence manifests itself all the time. The judge convicts an innocent man to fulfill a plan to solve crimes; the doctor turns away from the patient; a mother abandons her child; officials, for whom bribes have become the order of the day, are ready to betray their own. Everything that is most lofty and sacred turns into its opposite, since an inhuman has awakened within them and tramples them into the dirt. When a non-human comes to power, he tries to dehumanize everyone around him, since non-humans are easier to control. For them, all human feelings are replaced by the instinct of self-preservation.
The heart of a dog in alliance with the human mind is the main threat of our time. That is why the story, written at the beginning of the century, remains relevant today and serves as a warning to future generations. Today is so close to yesterday... At first glance, it seems that everything has changed, that the country has become different. But consciousness and stereotypes remained the same. More than one generation will pass before the Sharikovs disappear from our lives, people become different, the vices described by Bulgakov in his immortal work. How I want to believe that this time will come!..
“...the whole horror is that he has
not a dog's, but a human's
heart. And the worst thing of all,
that exist in nature."
M. Bulgakov
When the story “ Fatal eggs“,” one of the critics said: “Bulgakov wants to become a satirist of our era.” Now, on the threshold of the new millennium, we can say that he became one, although he did not intend to. After all, by the nature of his talent he is a lyricist. And the era made him a satirist. M. Bulgakov was disgusted by the bureaucratic forms of governing the country; he could not stand violence either against himself or against other people. The writer saw the main trouble of his “backward country” in lack of culture and ignorance. And he rushed into battle to defend that “reasonable, good, eternal” that the minds of the Russian intelligentsia sowed. And Bulgakov chose satire as a weapon of struggle. In 1925, the writer finished the story “Heart of a Dog.” The content of the story - an incredible fantastic story of the transformation of a dog into a man - was a witty, clever and evil satire on the social reality of the 20s.
The plot was based on the fantastic operation of the brilliant scientist Preobrazhensky with all the unexpectedly tragic consequences for him. By transplanting the testicular glands and pituitary gland of the brain into a dog for scientific purposes, the professor obtained homo sapiens , who a little later was named Polygraph Poligrafovich Sharikov. The “humanized” stray dog Sharik, always hungry, offended by all and sundry, revived in himself the person whose brain served as donor material for the operation. He was the drunkard and hooligan Klim Chugunkin, who accidentally died in a drunken brawl. From him Sharikov inherited both the consciousness of his “proletarian” origin with all the corresponding social mores, and the lack of spirituality that was characteristic of the philistine, uncultured environment of the Chugunkins.
But the professor does not despair, he intends to make his ward a person of high culture and morality. He hopes that with affection and his own example he can influence Sharikov. But it was not there. Polygraph Poligrafovich desperately resists: “Everything is like at a parade... A napkin is here, a tie is here, and “excuse me,” and “please,” but for real, this is not.”
Every day Sharikov becomes more and more dangerous. Moreover, he has a patron in the person of the chairman of the house committee, Shvonder. This fighter for social justice reads Engels and writes articles for the newspaper. Shvonder took patronage over Sharikov and educates him, paralyzing the professor’s efforts. This unfortunate teacher did not teach his ward anything useful, but he managed to hammer home a very tempting idea: whoever was nothing will become a dog. For Sharikov, this is a program for action. In a very short time he received documents, and a week or two later he became a co-worker and not an ordinary person, but the head of the department for clearing the city of Moscow from stray animals. Meanwhile, his nature is what it was - a dog-criminal one. You need to see and hear, and with what emotions he talks about his activities in this “field”: “Yesterday cats were strangled and strangled.” However, Poligraf Poligrafovich is not content with cats alone. He viciously threatens his secretary, who for objective reasons cannot respond to his advances: “You’ll remember me. Tomorrow I’ll make you redundant.”
In the story, fortunately, the story of Sharik’s two transformations has a happy ending: having returned the dog to its original state, the professor, refreshed and, as never before, cheerful, goes about his business, and the “dearest dog” does his: lies on the rug and indulges in sweet thoughts. But in life, to our great regret, the Sharikovs continued to multiply and “strangle and strangle,” but not cats, but people. Material from the site
M. Bulgakov’s merit lies in the fact that he managed to use laughter to reveal the deep and serious idea of the story: the threatening danger of “Sharikovism” and its potential prospects. After all, Sharikov and his associates are dangerous to society. The ideology and social claims of the “hegemonic” class contain the threat of lawlessness and violence. Of course, M. Bulgakov’s story is not only a satire on “Sharikovism” as aggressive ignorance, but also a warning about its likely consequences in public life. Unfortunately, Bulgakov was not heard or did not want to be heard. The Sharikovs were fruitful, multiplied, and took an active part in the social and political life of the country.
We find examples of this in the events of the 30s-50s, when innocent and irresponsible people were persecuted, just as Sharikov once caught stray cats and dogs in his line of work. The Soviet Sharikovs demonstrated dog-like loyalty, showing anger and suspicion towards those who were high in spirit and mind. They, like Bulgakov’s Sharikov, were proud of their low origins, low education, even ignorance, defending themselves with connections, meanness, rudeness and, at every opportunity, trampling people worthy of respect into the dirt. These manifestations of Sharikovism are very tenacious.
We are now reaping the fruits of this activity. And no one can say how long this will last. In addition, “Sharikovism” has not disappeared as a phenomenon even now, perhaps it has only changed its face.
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On this page there is material on the following topics:
- Why is Sharikovism dangerous?
- essay on literature on the topic of Sharik and Sharikovism based on Bulgakov’s story The Heart of a Dog
- essay on the topic of balls and Sharikovism, heart of a dog, summary
- that Sharikov inherited from Sharikov Bulgakov
"SHARIKOVSHINKA". Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov is one of the most significant writers and playwrights of the 20th century. Diverse in theme and style, his work is marked by the greatest artistic discoveries. Seeing and sharply criticizing all the shortcomings of the bourgeois system, the writer also did not recognize an idealized attitude towards the revolution and the proletariat. Topical criticism of the phenomena of social and political life of that time reaches its peak in the story “The Heart of a Dog,” filled with vivid grotesque and satirical images and paintings.
Having affirmed the cultural and spiritual values of humanity all his life, Bulgakov could not calmly relate to how, before his eyes, these values were lost, deliberately destroyed, and lost their meaning for a society subject to “mass hypnosis” of revolutionary changes. The story “The Heart of a Dog” was called by critics “a poignant pamphlet on modernity.” But time has shown that the issues raised in the work are relevant not only for the era in which Bulgakov lived and worked. The phenomena described in the story and the images created by the author remain relevant today.
The writer perceived the revolution as a dangerous experimentation with living life, when an accidental discovery is used as the basis for a thoughtless experiment that leads humanity to disaster. And the main danger lies not in the changes themselves that occur to people, but in the nature of these changes, in the way, by what methods these changes are achieved. Evolution also changes a person, but the difference is that evolution is predictable, but experiment is not, since it always contains unaccounted possibilities. M. Bulgakov shows us what dramatic consequences this can lead to. Professor Preobrazhensky transplants the human pituitary gland into a mongrel named Sharik, resulting in a completely new creature - a homunculus named Sharikov.
“A new area is opening up in science: without any retort of Faust, a homunculus was created. The surgeon's scalpel brought into being a new human unit." A unique experiment was carried out on humans. But how terrible this experiment will be, the heroes have yet to find out.
What happens when all these human and animal qualities are combined in a new being? “Here’s what: two criminal records, alcoholism, “divide everything”, a hat and two ducats are missing... - a boor and a pig...” Sharikov, who is prevented by his creator from living the way he wants, seeks to destroy his “dad” with the help of political denunciation.
Of course, an important role was played here by people from the breed of “simplifyers and equalizers”, in whose person the revolutionary idea appeared in its hypertrophied form. Such people seek to abolish the complex culture created by European humanity. Shvonder is trying to subordinate Sharikov to his ideology, but does not take into account the fact that in Poligraf Poligrafovich the human race itself has degraded, and therefore he does not need any ideology. “He doesn’t understand that Sharikov is a more formidable danger for him than for me,” says Preobrazhensky. “Well, now he’s trying in every possible way to set him against me, not realizing that if someone, in turn, sets Sharikov against Shvonder himself, then all that will be left of him is his horns and legs.”
Bulgakov was very concerned about such consequences of combining revolutionary experiment with the psychology of the human crowd. Therefore, in his work, he seeks to warn people about the danger threatening society: the process of forming balls can get out of control and it will be disastrous for those who contributed to their appearance. The blame in this case falls equally on the “fools” and the “clever” Preobrazhenskys. After all, the idea of an experiment with a person, born in a scientist’s office, long ago went out onto the street, embodied in revolutionary transformations. Therefore, the writer raises the question of the responsibility of thinkers for the development of ideas put into practice.
It is no coincidence that Sharikov so easily finds his social niche in human society. There are already masses of people like him, only created not in the laboratory of a scientist, but in the laboratory of a revolution. They begin to indiscriminately crowd out everything that does not fit into the framework of their ideology - from the bourgeoisie to the Russian intelligentsia. The Sharikovs gradually occupy all the highest echelons of power and begin to poison life normal people. Moreover, they take upon themselves the right to manage this life. “This, doctor, is what happens when a researcher, instead of going parallel and groping with nature, forces the question and lifts the veil: here, get Sharikov and eat him with porridge.”
An opponent of all violence, Professor Preobrazhensky recognizes only affection as the only possible way of influencing a rational being: “Nothing can be done with terror,” he says... “This is what I affirm, have asserted, and will continue to assert. They are in vain to think that terror will help them. No, no, no, it won’t help, no matter what it is - white, red and even brown! Terror is completely paralyzing nervous system*. And yet, his attempts to instill basic cultural skills in Sharikov fail.
