War does not have a woman's face, an argument. “War does not have a woman’s face” - essay
War does not have a woman's face... High school students write essays on this topic, not realizing how much cruel truth there is in this phrase. War was invented by men. But while inciting it, they could not protect their wives, daughters, mothers... It was, is, and, alas, will be. The article is devoted to the most disharmonious and unnatural picture in the history of mankind - a woman at war.
The most brutal war
The Great Patriotic War is the most terrible war of the 20th century. Over the years, the woman has learned to kill. She destroyed the enemy, who attacked her home with unprecedented cruelty. She blew up bridges, bombed and went on reconnaissance missions. She had no other choice.
Lyudmila Pavlichenko - Hero of the Great Patriotic War
It can be dedicated to both an individual and a collective image. IN national history There are many examples of female heroism. One of them is the image of Lyudmila Pavlichenko.
Expanding on the topic: “Woman at War,” the essay, without a doubt, can be dedicated to this extraordinary figure. Best female sniper ever Soviet Union had three hundred fatal hits to her credit. Her heroism was admired and a sniper rifle was named in her honor. Songs, documentaries and feature films were dedicated to Pavlichenko. Once, in 1942, at a meeting with American journalists, she uttered the legendary phrase about the gentlemen who were hiding behind her back. She was applauded.
Heroine or living legend?
Much has been said about the heroism of this woman. There is an opinion that her exploits are somewhat exaggerated. The country needs heroes. Real or fictional. But besides Lyudmila Pavlichenko, several hundred Soviet girls and women served at the front. Unlike the legendary sniper, they had the right to talk about what they experienced. But they spoke little. Talking about war is a man's business.
A woman by nature is intended to generate life, but not to destroy it. But if it is necessary to protect her home and her children, she will take up arms. And she will learn to kill. But after that it will remain a heavy burden on her soul, a bleeding wound. A woman who takes a life is always scary. Even if this life belonged to the enemy, the fascist and the occupier. After all, war does not have a woman’s face...
An essay on how war can affect a person’s destiny can be written on the basis of fiction and historical literature. But it is better to refer not to pretentious books about high-profile exploits, but to read the stories of simple eyewitnesses. They contain less propaganda and more truth.
Truth and fiction
Stories are not about heroes and winners, but about ordinary people- this is the book “War does not have a woman’s face.” The essay will become much more truthful if its topic is not the achievements of the legendary sniper, but the fate of ordinary women. Svetlana Alexievich is an author who wrote about women in war like no one else. She was accused of excessive naturalism and lack of patriotism. For her heroines, war means burnt faces after shelling, wounds from bullets and shrapnel. These are cauldrons with steaming porridge, which no one can eat, because out of a hundred people only seven returned from the battle.
For Lyudmila Pavlichenko, war is just an irreconcilable battle with a hated enemy. The memories of a Soviet sniper could not help but be subject to strict censorship. Therefore, they contain only part of the truth. I manage to believe more for women from the book Alexievich.
War is not only about battles and victories. These are many terrible and disgusting little things that add up to an overall picture that only male eyes can bear. Still, war does not have a woman’s face... An essay on Russian literature on a military topic should be as truthful and reliable as possible. Its young author must know that war is a crime. She maims, she kills. And there are no winners in it.
I have only seen hand-to-hand combat once...
The Great Patriotic War made her a poetess. An essay on the topic “The Work of Yulia Drunina” should be written after first becoming more familiar not only with her poems, but also with her biography.
Since childhood, she dreamed of a feat. The thirst to participate in the Great Victory drove her to the military registration and enlistment office on June 22. She took her first steps at the front as a nurse. Then there was the Khabarovsk School of Junior Aviation Specialists. And finally - the Belarusian Front.
Young boys and girls died before Yulia Drunina’s eyes. Under fire, in the cold and mud, a seventeen-year-old girl from an intelligent Moscow family made her way with her fellow soldiers to the front line. She bandaged the wounded, was hungry, cold and saw corpses. And she wrote poetry in the trenches. “Front-line poetry of Yulia Drunina” - interesting topic, which is worth dedicating an essay to.
A person becomes stronger in war, unprecedented resources are discovered in him. But the experience remains in the soul forever.
Anyone who says that war is not scary knows nothing about war...
From childhood to the horrors of war - a motif that sounds even in Drunina’s later poems. Front-line nostalgia did not leave her until last days life. The war did not abandon the poetess even in peacetime. There were horrors there, but there was also real friendship. There is no deception, no lies on the front line. And it is not easy for those who were brought up at the front to live in a world where material values are above all. Especially if we're talking about about a woman. It is more difficult for her to adapt and adapt to a different way.
A terrible phenomenon that has no right to exist is a woman at war. An essay dedicated to the work of the poetess Yulia Drunina should be based on this axiom. She lived for so long in her beautiful romantic world, and justified the horrors of war with such boundless love for her homeland that when this homeland was gone, she was gone too. The poetess tragically passed away in 1991.
And the dawns here are quiet...
War is not a woman’s business... An essay on literature on this topic cannot be completed without reading the story by Boris Vasiliev. This author was one of the first to talk about how women, along with men, defended their homeland. Five lives were cut short before reaching the 1945 milestone. They could have given birth to children, and they could have given birth to grandchildren, but the strings were broken. Sergeant Major Vaskov thought about this when he prepared the grave for one of them.
Vasilyev wrote many books about brave soldiers. The essay “Man at War” can be written using the example of one of them.
A wonderful, but, unfortunately, not without an ideological touch, the film, based on Vasiliev’s story in 1972, does not convey the thoughts of one of the heroines that came to her mind in the last moments of her life. In the wilds of the Karelian forests, leading the Germans with her, she ran and thought, “How stupid it is to die at eighteen!” Even a heroic death for a person who is just beginning his life path, always stupid and monstrously absurd. Especially if this person is a woman.
Mother field
An essay on the topic “Years of War” can tell not only about exploits on the front line. And the horrors of battles are not the main theme in it. There are things worse than bombs and shelling. The worst thing is the fate of the mother who outlived her sons. Chingiz Aitmatov's story is dedicated to women who overcame all the hardships of war - hunger, daily exhausting work - but never saw their children. A mother should not bury her son. She will not be able to come to terms with his death, no matter what valiant feat he performed. Even if her son is a Great Hero Patriotic War. An essay based on the work “Mother Field” allows you to explore the topic of tragic destinies soldiers' mothers.
Came to Berlin to kill the war
These words were written on the wall of the Reichstag by Sofia Kuntsevich, a girl who carried more than two hundred wounded from the battlefield. A journalistic and artistic work by Svetlana Alexievich is dedicated to her and other women.
This book is not about the big victory, but about the little people. The author looked at the topic of war from the perspective of a person who did not see it. She learned about it from the words of front-line soldiers. The stories and confessions that are presented in this work are pain and tears. And reading them, you see the true face of war. It is neither feminine nor masculine. It is completely inhuman.
However, there are lines in the book that prove that war is not capable of killing a woman. She cannot destroy the goodness and care inherent in nature.
German prisoners, exhausted by hunger, walk through a Russian village. Along those roads that they spent five years trying to burn and wipe off the face of the earth. And Russian peasant women come out to meet them and offer them bread, potatoes, everything they have. In the present they have a destroyed house, in the future they have poor post-war years. And life without men who did not return. But even this could not destroy compassion in women's hearts.
A topic that should remain one of the important ones in school curriculum- The Great Patriotic War. An essay on women in war is difficult creative task. The victory was achieved not only thanks to male courage and bravery. War spares no one and is always impartial. Humanity is unable to get rid of it. It does not yet possess the humanity and wisdom necessary for this. But every man should understand from a young age that there is no place for a woman in war.
Even on the eve of the war, on a fine June day, millions of people lived according to the peace calendar. At dawn on June 22, 1941, for the entire Soviet people, at the same hour, at the same minute, an entire era ended and a new one burst in with terrible, stunning suddenness.
Writers, historians, journalists, military leaders and veteran soldiers - whoever has not taken up a pen to resurrect for us that moment of an unexpected shift in the life of an entire country, the consequences of which have affected and are affecting a whole chain of subsequent generations! Their books about the war have enormous historical and spiritual value, as living evidence of all the many-sided and incomprehensible things that made up the years of unprecedented confrontation between the two worlds.
A woman at war is what connects the works of B. Vasiliev and S. Alexievich. In one of the interviews with a newspaper journalist > to the question: > Svetlana Alexievich answered: >. War does not have a woman's face. But from now on, after the books of B. Vasiliev and S. Alexievich, the face last war, Patriotic, carries within itself the great truth about the price paid by our people for victory - with the lives, blood, and suffering of soldiers’ daughters, sisters, and mothers.
The story > is poignant and tragic story a war that took place far from the front and showed the best human and civic qualities in girls who became defenders of the Fatherland. Five female anti-aircraft gunners, led by Sergeant Major Vaskov, in May 1942, on a distant patrol, confront a detachment of selected German paratroopers. Fragile girls enter into mortal combat with strong men trained to kill. Alexievich's book > is not a novel or a story, this book is documentary. It is compiled from records and stories of hundreds of women front-line soldiers: doctors, signalmen, sappers, pilots, snipers, shooters, anti-aircraft gunners, paratroopers, sailors, traffic controllers, drivers, ordinary field bath and laundry detachments, cooks, and collected testimonies from partisans and underground women. >,” wrote Marshal of the Soviet Union A.I. Eremenko. Among the girls there were Komsomol members of a tank battalion and driver mechanics heavy tanks, and in the infantry - commanders of a machine gun company, machine gunners, although in our language the words >, >, > do not have a feminine gender, because this work has never been done by a woman.
On the most terrible war In the 20th century, a woman had to become a soldier. She not only saved and bandaged the wounded, but also shot from >, bombed, blew up bridges, went on reconnaissance, took >. The woman killed. She killed the enemy, who attacked her land, her home, and her children with unprecedented cruelty. But nothing is forgotten, how can a person forget something like that? We, who did not experience this, or today’s young people - do we have the right not to try to find out about everything that they, women, endured, experienced, suffered, did for us!? History never dies. She is a part of us, our feat, our yesterday. The search expanded, the names of the living and the dead were resurrected. Theme of the Great Patriotic War - unusual topic. Unusual, because so much has been written about the war that a whole book would not be enough if you only remembered the titles of the works. The date of May 9 fills hearts with pride for the feat of the multinational Soviet people, who won the battle against fascism, and with sadness: millions of sons and daughters of the Fatherland remained forever in their own and in foreign lands. Unusual because it never ceases to excite people, opening up old wounds and souls with heartache. Unusual because memory and history merged into one.
There are so many girls, so many destinies: everyone is different. But in one thing they are still similar: all destinies were broken and disfigured by the war. Having received an order not to let the Germans get to the railway, the girls carried it out at the cost of their own lives. 5 girls and a foreman - these are the main characters of the story > They are all so different, but so similar.
Rita Osyanina, strong-willed and gentle, rich in spiritual beauty. She is the most courageous, fearless, strong-willed, she is a mother! She married > at less than eighteen years old. She sent her son Alik to his parents. Her husband died heroically on the second day of the war.
Zhenya Komelkova is cheerful, funny, beautiful, mischievous to the point of adventurism, desperate and tired of war, pain and love. The first beauty of the road, she grew up in a good family. She loved to have fun, and one fine day she fell in love with Colonel Luzhin. It was he who picked her up at the front. He had a family, and Zhenya was sent on this patrol for contacting him.
Sonya Gurvich is the embodiment of an excellent student and a poetic nature - a “beautiful stranger”, who came out of a volume of poems by A. Blok. She is an orphan, her parents most likely died in Minsk. At that time she was studying in Moscow, preparing for the session. She was a translator in the detachment.
Galya Chetvertak asked to go to war because she dreamed of a heroic deed. The real world demanded not heroic impulses, but strict execution of military regulations. And she was confused, unable to overcome her fear.
Lisa Brichkina - >
Galya, who never grew up, is a funny and childishly clumsy girl from an orphanage. Notes, escape from orphanage and also dreams. become new love Orlova. None of them had time to fulfill their dreams, they simply did not have time to live their own lives.
Death was different for everyone, just as their fates were different: Rita’s was an effort of will and a shot in the temple, Zhenya’s was desperate and a little reckless (she could have hidden and stayed alive, but she didn’t); Sonya has a dagger in the heart; in Galya - as painful and helpless as herself, in Lisa - “Oh, Lisa-Lizaveta, she didn’t have time, she couldn’t overcome the quagmire of war.” And Sergeant Major Vaskov, whom I have not yet mentioned, remains alone. One in the midst of trouble, torment, one with death, one with three prisoners. Is it alone? He now has five times the strength. And what was best in him, human, but hidden in his soul, was all revealed suddenly, and what he experienced, he felt for himself and for them, for his girls, him >. All five girls died, but each of them carries some kind of life principle, and all of them together represent feminine life.
We are accustomed to the fact that in war there is no place for sentimentality and tenderness, and the word “hero” in our understanding is necessarily a fighter, a soldier, in a word, a man. Everyone knows the names: Zhukov, Rokossovsky, Panfilov and many others, but few people know the names of those girls who went straight from the prom to the war, without whom, perhaps, there would have been no victory.
Few people know that nurses pulled wounded soldiers from the battlefield to the whistling of bullets. If for a man the defense of the Fatherland is a duty, a sacred duty, then women went to the front voluntarily. They were not accepted because of their young age, but they went anyway. They went and mastered professions that had previously been considered only for men: pilot, tanker, anti-aircraft gunner. They walked and killed enemies no worse than men. It was difficult for them, but they still went. It just so happens that our memory of the war and all our ideas about the war are male. This is understandable: it was mostly men who fought, although hundreds of books have been written about women who took part in the Great Patriotic War, there is a considerable amount of memoir literature, and it convinces us that we are dealing with historical phenomenon. Never before in the history of mankind have so many women participated in war. The Great Patriotic War showed the world an example of the massive participation of Soviet women in the defense of their Motherland.
Women's memory covers that continent of human feelings in war, which usually eludes male attention. If a man was captivated by war as an action, then a woman felt and endured it differently due to her psychology: bombing, death, suffering - for her this is not the whole war. The woman felt more strongly, again due to her psychological and physiological characteristics, the reboots of the war - physical and moral, she was more difficult to endure > wars. And what she remembered, took out from mortal hell, today has become a unique spiritual experience, the experience of limitless human possibilities, which we have no right to consign to oblivion.
Not famous snipers, not famous pilots or partisans, but ordinary girls are the heroes of S. Alexievich’s book. >,” said Alexandra Iosifovna Mishutina, sergeant, medical instructor. In the words of a simple woman who went through the entire war, then got married, gave birth to three children and was imprisoned main idea books. Taken together, the women's stories paint a picture of a war that does not have a feminine face at all. They sound like evidence and accusations against the fascism of yesterday, the fascism of today, and the fascism of the future. Mothers, sisters, wives blame fascism. A woman accuses fascism. Nobody wanted to put up with the fact that a fascist was walking on your land.
From the memoirs of Vera Iosifovna Odinets: > She pressed the mark like that
And laid so many on the ground,
That twenty years and thirty years
The living cannot believe that they are alive.
K. Simonov
Sofya Konstantinovna Dubnyakova was a medical instructor during the war, but do you know what it is, a medical instructor of a tank company? The tanks rushed to attack, and she, an eighteen-year-old girl, should be nearby when her help is needed. There is no space for a medical instructor in the car: God forbid we can squeeze in all those shooting and driving the tank. Clinging to the iron brackets, yesterday's schoolgirl lay spread out on top of the armor, and the only thought in her was not about cutting fragments, bullets, but about not getting her legs pulled into the tracks. And you have to watch and not miss the moment if someone’s tank catches fire: run, crawl, climb and help the wounded, burned tankers get up before the ammunition explodes. > - > And here is what nurse Maria Seliverstovna Bozhok remembered: >.
I left my childhood for a dirty car,
To an infantry echelon, to a medical platoon.
I listened to distant breaks and did not listen
Forty-first year, accustomed to everything.
I came from school to damp dugouts,
From Beautiful lady in > and >.
Because the name is closer than Russia
I couldn't find it.
Yu. Drunina
Woman and war are incompatible concepts, if only because a woman gives life, while any war is, first of all, murder. It was difficult for any person to take the life of his own kind, but what was it like for a woman in whom, according to B. Vasiliev, hatred of murder is inherent in her very nature? In his story, the writer showed very well what it was like for a girl to kill for the first time, even an enemy. Rita Osyanina hated the Nazis quietly and mercilessly. But it’s one thing to wish someone dead, and quite another to kill someone yourself. > In order to kill calmly, you had to get used to it, to harden your soul. This is also a feat and at the same time a huge sacrifice of our women, who, for the sake of life on earth, had to step over themselves, go against their nature. By the end of the story, all the main characters die, and with the death of each, a small thread with > is broken. From chapter to chapter, the bitterness of the irreversibility of losses increases. The words of the foreman in the last chapter sound like a kind of requiem: >. It is at this moment that you truly deeply comprehend the meaning of the words of the dying Rita Osyanina about her understanding of love for the Motherland and the sacred duty of every person to her: >. Rita Osyanina’s words are lofty, solemn and at the same time so natural in the dying minute. They sound like a testament from a mother to her son, to the younger generation, which will live after her, remove the mental anguish and suffering from Vaskov, justify the inevitability of the tragic outcome. These words also reveal common destiny generation of Rita Osyanina ->, whose feat was dictated by a high sense of duty to the Motherland and its people.
“And the dawns here are quiet, quiet, I only saw them today>> Everything will pass, but the place will remain the same. Quiet, silent, beautiful, and only the marble gravestones will turn white, reminding of what has already passed.
Sometimes I feel connected
Between those who are alive
And who was taken away by the war.
No, nothing is forgotten.
No, no one is forgotten
Even that one.
Who lies in an unknown grave.
Yu. Drunina
The war changed them. The war shaped me because it saw me at the age of developing my character and outlook on life. The war forced them to see a lot, much of what it would be better for a person not to see at all, especially for a woman. The war made me think about a lot, about war and evil, for example. About life and death. About those questions that a person learns to answer to some extent after living his life. And they were just beginning to live.
In war, they not only shoot, bomb, go hand-to-hand, dig trenches - they also wash clothes, cook porridge, and bake bread. For a soldier to fight well, he must be dressed, shod, fed, washed, otherwise he will be a bad soldier. There are many examples in military history when a dirty and hungry army was defeated simply because it was dirty and hungry. The army walked in front, and behind it were laundresses, bakers, and cooks.
Valentina Kuzminichna Borshchevskaya, lieutenant, political officer of the field laundry detachment, recalls: >, >, and one laundress was awarded the Order of the Red Star. The best laundress, she did not leave the trough: it happened that everyone no longer had the strength, they fell, and she washed. It was an elderly woman.>> How do we count our lives? Usually we divide it into the time before first love, before the first child, before college, after college, and they add the word > to these marks of human life, with the obligatory prefix > and >: what happened before the war, what happened during the war, what after .
Was it possible to defeat a people whose woman, in the most difficult hour, when the scales of history swung so terribly, dragged both her own wounded and another’s wounded soldier from the battlefield? Is it possible to believe that a people whose woman wanted to give birth to a girl and believed that she would have a different fate, not hers, that this people wants war? Was it in the name of this that a woman saved a life - she was a mother, daughter, wife, sister and Soldier?
But even on the eve of the war, on a fine June day, millions of people lived according to the peace calendar. But at dawn on June 22, 1941, for the entire Soviet people, at the same hour, at the same minute, an entire era ended and a new one burst in with terrible, stunning suddenness.
Second World War brought the world a lot of grief, loss and destruction. Many authors wrote about it, each of whom had their own idea of the war. The story “The Dawns Here Are Quiet” was published in 1969 and was based on real events. Boris Vasiliev described the fate of five different girls who, by the will of fate, were involved in hostilities. As a rule, any war is associated with masculinity, but even young women took part in this war. The author more than once emphasized in his work the inappropriateness of women in war. It's scary when a woman-mother picks up a machine gun and goes to shoot people. This is possible only in the most difficult and hopeless situations.
So the heroines of Vasiliev’s story went to this length in order to protect their relatives, friends and fatherland. Each of them experienced their own tragedy. The platoon leader, Rita Osyanina, had her husband killed on the second day of the war. She was left alone with her little son. In front of the beautiful Zhenya Komelkova, the Nazis shot her entire family. She survived miraculously and was now full of hatred for the enemy. Galya Chetvertak, an orphan from an orphanage who was never noticed due to her short stature. She wanted to stand out somehow, to accomplish some memorable feat. When they didn’t want to take her to the front, she achieved her goal in every possible way, but she could not pass the test of war. Liza Brichkina is a village girl from the Bryansk region. All her life the girl dreamed of education, but she was never able to graduate. Lisa's father was a forester, and her mother was terminally ill. While caring for her mother, she was unable to finish school. Sonya Gurvich is a translator and student at Moscow University. Sonya grew up in a large and poor family. With the beginning of the war, she wanted to become a translator, but due to the large concentration of translators at the front, she was sent to a school for anti-aircraft gunners.
It was no coincidence that all these girls ended up in Sergeant Vaskov’s detachment. Fate brought them together. Perhaps in ordinary life they would not even have become friends, since they were too different in character. However, finding themselves in the same squad, with a common goal to defeat the enemy, they became a real family for each other. In addition to the girls in the story there is one more main character- Sergeant Major Vaskov. He himself was extremely surprised when female anti-aircraft gunners were sent to his squad. Accustomed to commanding only male soldiers, at first she didn’t even know how to treat the new ones, and they laughed at him. When the order came to go on reconnaissance in the direction of the railway siding, it was these girls who volunteered to go. Not far from the crossing, Rita Osyanina’s mother lived with her son Albert. Rita really wanted to be closer to them and help them if possible.
This mission was the last for the girls. All of them were killed in turn by the Germans, except for Lisa, who drowned in a swamp. Sergeant Major Vaskov tried with all his might to save them and got even with all the enemies who had settled in the forest, but the girls could not be returned. The author has repeatedly emphasized that war has no place for women. They should still live, study, fall in love, give birth to children, but they all fell at the hands of the Nazis, defending their homeland. Each of these girls contributed to the war. In fact, they prevented the German sabotage group from blowing up railway in this area. Their feat was not forgotten. Many years later, on the spot where the girls died, through the efforts of Sergeant Major Vaskov and Rita Osyanina’s son, a monument was erected - a monument to the heroes of World War II.
1The novel of voices by S. Alexievich “War does not have a woman’s face” is studied. A comparative analysis of the context was carried out with the memoirs of Zoya Aleksandrovna Troitskaya, a participant in the Battle of Stalingrad, a resident of the city of Kamyshin before the events of the Great Patriotic War and now. It was revealed that the work reveals a new understanding of the problem of personality in literature, an in-depth interest in the inner world of a woman. The writer’s field of view is the mental state of a person who has undergone enormous upheavals, and it helps to comprehend what was happening to society as a whole. The facts of the biography of individual heroines merge into one complex life-intricacy. The conducted research allows us to come to the conclusion that the “novel of voices” can be called a synthetic biography, since it represents the process of a woman’s accumulation of experience belonging to an individual and an entire era; the author chose such eyewitness accounts that objectively speak about the subjective perception of terrible events of the war, allow us to create a holistic picture of what is happening.
eyewitness memories.
context
synthetic autobiography
1. Alexievich S. War does not have a woman’s face. – M.: Pravda, 1988. – 142 p.
2. Dictionary of the Russian language: in 4 volumes / ed. A.P. Evgenieva. – M., 1982. – T.2.
5. Popova Z.D. Language and national consciousness. Questions of theory and methodology / Z.D. Po-pova, I.A. Sternin. – Voronezh, 2002. – P.26.
Every year the events of the Great Patriotic War move away from us living today, and, thinking about what the Soviet people had to endure, you understand: each of them is a hero. In 1983, the book “War Doesn’t Have a Woman’s Face” was written. She spent two years in the publishing house. The censorship representatives did not accuse the journalist of anything. The novel of voices “War Has Not a Woman’s Face” was published in 1985. After this, the book was republished several times here and in other countries.
The purpose of this work is to study the work of Svetlana Alexievich “War does not have a woman’s face” in the aspect of consistency with the interpretation of the events of the Battle of Stalingrad from the point of view of other eyewitnesses. The research material was based on the memoirs of Zoya Aleksandrovna Troitskaya, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War.
Svetlana Alexievich dedicated her “novel of voices” to the exploits of Russian women. The author himself defines the genre of the work as documentary prose. The book is based on over 200 women's stories. This determines the relevance of the problem, since the work is evidence of an era that played a decisive role in the life of the country. The scientific novelty of the topic is due to the low degree of knowledge of the writer’s work.
The work can be called a synthetic biography, since it represents the process of a woman’s accumulation of experience belonging to an individual and an entire era.
“For four painful years I have been walking, burned by kilometers of other people’s pain and memory,” collecting stories of women front-line soldiers: doctors, snipers, pilots, shooters, tank crews. There was no specialty in the war that was not given to them. On the pages of his stories, Alexievich interviews the war participants themselves, so each one is a story of heroes. Those who fought and survived this war. Svetlana listened, noting: “Everything they have: both words and silence is a text for me.” Making notes in notebooks, Alexievich decided that she would not speculate, guess or add anything for the front-line soldiers. Let them talk...
Svetlana Alexievich tried to reduce a big story to one person in order to understand something. But even in the space of one and only human soul everything became not only no clearer, but even more incomprehensible than in great history: “You cannot have one heart for hatred and another for love. A person has only one.” And women are fragile, tender - are they really created for war?
With each chapter, with each story, you begin to think differently. Everything that surrounds us is little things. Another thing is important: to see your children happy, to hear them laugh. Falling asleep and waking up next to your loved one and knowing that he is nearby. See the sun, the sky, the peaceful sky.
The work reveals a new understanding of the problem of personality in literature, an in-depth interest in the inner world of a woman. In the author's field of view is the mental state of a person who has undergone enormous upheavals, and it helps to comprehend what was happening to society as a whole. The facts of the biography of individual heroines merge into one complex life-intricacy. Proof of which is a comparative analysis of the context with the memoirs of Zoya Aleksandrovna Troitskaya, a participant in the Battle of Stalingrad, a resident of the city of Kamyshin.
Zoya Aleksandrovna says that she decided to volunteer to go to the front: “At the military registration and enlistment office they gave me a tunic, belts and caps, and I had my own shoes. They immediately dressed us, took the bags that our parents had collected for us, and gathered in the park...” Let’s compare how the heroine of the novel of voices, Maria Ivanovna Morozova, talks about being sent to the front: “We came to the military registration and enlistment office, they immediately led us through one door and out the other: I braided such a beautiful braid, and left without it... Without a braid. .. They cut their hair like a soldier... And they took away the dress. I didn’t have time to give my mother either the dress or the braid. She really asked that she keep something from me, something of mine. They immediately dressed us in tunics and caps, gave us duffel bags, and loaded us onto a freight train on straw. But the straw was fresh, it still smelled like the field.”
“We started saying goodbye, the ferry arrived, we were all herded there. Our parents remained on the steep bank. And we swam to the other side. We were transported to the other side. And we walked along this left bank all the way to Krasny Yar. This is just the village opposite Stalingrad” (according to the memoirs of Z. Troitskaya).
In the book, S. Alexievich continues the story with the heroine Elena Ivanovna Babina: “From Kamyshin, where we took the oath, we marched on foot along the left bank of the Volga all the way to Kapustin Yar. The reserve regiment was stationed there." Dry parts. Comparing the memories of Z. Troitskaya with the events of the novel of voices, we understand that the author, despite numerous reproaches from critics, in this case softens the difficulties of the moment of transition: “Our junk, our bags were carried on oxen, because the horses were at the front at that time. And this was our first test, because many were wearing different shoes, not everyone had boots: some had boots, some had felt boots, galoshes. Many feet were chafed. Someone fell behind us, someone drove ahead in a car. Well, in general, we got there - we walked twenty kilometers. And so in Kapusny Yar some were sent to Rodimtsev, and some were sent to the 138th division. Lyudnikov was commanded there by Ivan Ilyich.”
The girls were trained in just a few days. “In Krasny Yar they taught communications for ten days. Rima was a radio operator, and Valya, I and Zina became telephone operators” (according to Troitskaya’s memoirs). Alexievich chooses the memoirs of Maria Ivanovna Morozova, which absorb all the details of entering military life: “We started studying. We studied regulations, ... camouflage on the ground, chemical protection. ... With our eyes closed, we learned to assemble and disassemble a “sniper gun,” determine wind speed, target movement, distance to the target, dig cells, and crawl on our bellies.”
Each had their own first meeting with death, but one thing unites them: the fear that then settles in the heart forever, that your life can easily be cut short: “I had a curious incident - my first, so to speak, meeting with a German. We went to the Volga for water: they made an ice hole there. Run quite far after the bowlers. It was my turn. I ran, and here the shelling with tracer bullets began. It was scary, of course, there was a rumble here. I got halfway, and there was a bomb crater. The shelling began. I jumped there, and there was a dead German there, so I jumped out of the crater. I forgot about water. Run quickly” (according to Troitskaya’s memoirs).
Let’s compare with the memories of ordinary signal operator Nina Alekseevna Semenova: “We arrived at Stalingrad... There were mortal battles there. The deadliest place... The water and the ground were red... And now we need to cross from one bank of the Volga to the other. ... They wanted to leave me in reserve, but I made such a roar... In the first battle, the officers pushed me off the parapet, I stuck my head out to see everything for myself. There was some kind of curiosity, childish curiosity... Naive! The commander shouts: “Private Semenova! Private Semenova, you’re crazy! Such a mother... She’ll kill you!” I couldn’t understand this: how could this kill me if I had just arrived at the front? I didn’t yet know how ordinary and indiscriminate death was. You can’t beg her, you can’t persuade her. They transported the people's militia in old semi-trucks. Old men and boys. They were given two grenades and sent into battle without a rifle; the rifle had to be obtained in battle. After the battle there was no one to bandage... All were killed...”
Klavdia Grigorievna Krokhina, senior sergeant, sniper: “We are lying down, and I am watching. And then I see: one German stood up. I clicked and he fell. And so, you know, I was shaking all over, I was pounding all over. I started crying. When I was shooting at targets - nothing, but here: how did I kill a man?..”
Overcoming themselves, they brought Victory closer, the road to which began from Stalingrad: “At this time, the surrender of the Germans was being prepared, ultimatums were presented, and our banners began to be displayed, erected on the ruins of a department store. The commander has arrived - Chuikov. I started traveling around the division. And on February 2 they held a rally and danced, sang, and hugged, and shouted, and shot, and kissed, oh, and the guys drank vodka. Of course, we didn't drink much, but the point is that it was all a piece of victory. This was already the hope that the Germans would not go, as they planned, to the Urals. We had faith in victory, in the fact that we would win” (Troitskaya). And every participant in the war has the same feeling: “I only remember one thing: they shouted - victory! There was a cry all day... Victory! Victory! Brothers! We won... And we were happy! Happy!!” .
There are lines in the book by the author that she was no longer worried about the description of military operations, but about a person’s life in war, every little detail of everyday life. After all, these untrained girls were ready for a feat, but not for life in war. Did they really imagine that they would have to wrap up foot wraps, wear boots two or three sizes too big, crawl on their bellies, dig trenches...
The women in this book are strong, courageous, honest, but above all, they need peace. How much I had to overcome, how difficult it is to continue my life’s path with these memories. We are sincerely proud of everyone about whom this work is about and about whom books have not been written. The conducted research allows us to come to the conclusion that the “novel of voices” can be called a synthetic biography, since it represents the process of a woman’s accumulation of experience belonging to an individual and an entire era; the author chose eyewitness accounts that objectively speak about the subjective perception of the terrible events of the war , allow you to create a holistic picture of what is happening.
Reviewers:Brysina E.V., Doctor of Philology, Professor, Head of the Department of General and Slavic-Russian Linguistics, Volgograd Social Pedagogical University, Volgograd;
Aleshchenko E.I., Doctor of Philology, Professor of the Department of General and Slavic-Russian Linguistics, Volgograd Social Pedagogical University, Volgograd
Bibliographic link
Latkina T.V. ON THE QUESTION OF DETERMINING THE GENRE OF SVETLANA ALEXIEVICH’S WORK “WAR HAS NOT A FEMALE FACE” // Contemporary issues science and education. – 2015. – No. 2-1.;URL: http://science-education.ru/ru/article/view?id=20682 (access date: 02/06/2020). We bring to your attention magazines published by the publishing house "Academy of Natural Sciences"
Composition
Fifty-seven years ago our country was illuminated by the light of victory, victory in the Great Patriotic War. She got it at a difficult price. For many years, the Soviet people walked the paths of war, walked to save their Motherland and all of humanity from fascist oppression.
This victory is dear to every Russian person, and this is probably why the theme of the Great Patriotic War not only does not lose its relevance, but every year finds more and more new incarnations in Russian literature. In their books, front-line writers trust us with everything they personally experienced during the war. firing lines, in front-line trenches, in partisan detachments, in fascist dungeons - all this is reflected in their stories and novels. “Cursed and Killed”, “Overtone” by V. Astafiev, “Sign of Trouble” by V. Bykov, “Blockade” by M. Kuraev and many others - a return to the “kroshevo” wars, to the nightmarish and inhuman pages of our history.
But there is another topic that deserves special attention, - the theme of the difficult lot of women in war. Such stories as “The Dawns Here Are Quiet...” by B. Vasiliev and “Love Me, Soldier” by V. Bykov are devoted to this topic. But the novel by the Belarusian writer and journalist S. Alexievich “War Has Not a Woman’s Face” makes a special and indelible impression.
Unlike other writers, S. Alexievich made the heroes of her book not fictional characters, but real women. The clarity, accessibility of the novel and its extraordinary external clarity, the apparent simplicity of its form are among the merits of this wonderful book. Her novel has no plot, it is built in the form of a conversation, in the form of memories. For four long years, the writer walked “burnt kilometers of other people’s pain and memory,” recording hundreds of stories of nurses, pilots, partisans, and paratroopers who recalled the terrible years with tears in their eyes.
One of the chapters of the novel, entitled “I don’t want to remember...” tells about those feelings that live in the hearts of these women to this day, which I would like to forget, but there is no way. Fear, along with a true sense of patriotism, lived in the hearts of the girls. This is how one of the women describes her first shot: “We lay down and I watched. And then I see: one German stood up. I clicked and he fell. And so, you know, I was shaking all over, I was pounding all over. I started crying. When I was shooting at targets - nothing, but here: how did I kill a man?
The women's memories of the famine, when they were forced to kill their horses in order not to die, are also shocking. In the chapter “It Wasn’t Me,” one of the heroines, a nurse, recalls her first meeting with the fascists: “I bandaged the wounded, a fascist was lying next to me, I thought he was dead... but he was wounded, he wanted to kill me. I felt someone push me, and I turned to him. I managed to kick the machine gun with my foot. I didn’t kill him, but I didn’t bandage him either, I left. He was wounded in the stomach."
War is, first of all, death. Reading the memories of women about the death of our soldiers, someone’s husbands, sons, fathers or brothers, it becomes scary: “You can’t get used to death. To death... We were with the wounded for three days. They are healthy, strong men. They didn't want to die. They kept asking for something to drink, but they couldn’t drink because they were wounded in the stomach. They died before our eyes, one after another, and we could do nothing to help them.”
Everything we know about a woman fits into the concept of “mercy.” There are other words: “sister”, “wife”, “friend” and the highest - “mother”. But mercy is present in their content as the essence, as the purpose, as the ultimate meaning. A woman gives life, a woman protects life, the concepts “woman” and “life” are synonymous. Roman S. Alexievich is another page of history, presented to readers after many years of forced silence. This is another terrible truth about war. In conclusion, I would like to quote the phrase of another heroine of the book “War Has Not a Woman’s Face”: “A woman in war... This is something about which there are no human words yet.”
