Semi-artistic, semi-reportative essays from a hot spot in 1855. Tolstoy shows the war like no one before him, and breaks into the front ranks of Russian literature.

comments: Vyacheslav Kuritsyn

What is this book about?

About the climax Crimean War Or the Eastern War, which lasted from 1853 to 1856. In 1853, Russia occupied Moldavia and Wallachia, which were under Turkish rule. The Ottoman Empire declared war on Russia, in 1854 France and Great Britain joined the war against Russia. English and French troops landed in the Crimea and besieged Sevastopol. In February 1855, Nicholas I died, and Alexander II was determined to end the war with minimal damage to Russia. On March 18, 1856, a peace treaty was signed in Paris, according to which Russia regained the southern part of Sevastopol in exchange for the Turkish fortress of Kars, abandoned the protectorate over the Danubian principalities, and the Black Sea was declared a neutral zone. The Crimean War was one of the heaviest defeats for Russia in the 19th century. ⁠ - the blockade of Sevastopol by superior forces of the Anglo-French-Turkish coalition, which lasted from the autumn of 1854 to August 1855. The book reflects the situation in the city, specific military operations and the experiences of their participants. Three stories of the cycle - "Sevastopol in the month of December", "Sevastopol in May", "Sevastopol in August 1855" - cover the entire period of the siege

Lev Tolstoy. Photograph from an 1854 daguerreotype

When was it written?

In 1855, synchronously with the events described, mostly on the scene, in an army camp. At first there was an idea for the story “Sevastopol by Day and Night”, which was divided into two parts: the “day” “Sevastopol in the month of December” was composed from March 27 to April 25, the “night” “Sevastopol in May” was created in about a week on the twentieth of June . Work on "Sevastopol in August" began in mid-September, and was completed after the author left the front, at the end of the year in St. Petersburg.

The minute a projectile, you know, flies at you, it will certainly occur to you that this projectile will kill you; but a sense of pride keeps you going, and no one notices the knife that cuts your heart

Lev Tolstoy

How is it written?

Differently. The first text is more like an essay than others. An invisible interlocutor leads the reader around the city: here is a boulevard with music, here is a hospital with heroes, and here they fight, kill and die; Boris Eichenbaum Boris Mikhailovich Eikhenbaum (1886-1959) - literary critic, textual critic, one of the main formalist philologists. In 1918, he joined the OPOYAZ circle along with Yuri Tynyanov, Viktor Shklovsky, Roman Yakobson, and Osip Brik. In 1949 he was persecuted during Stalin's campaign against cosmopolitanism. Author of the most important works on Gogol, Leo Tolstoy, Leskov, Akhmatova. ⁠ even called the first story "a guide to Sevastopol." The second text is a psychological study in the form of a story. Tolstoy describes the thoughts and feelings of quite a few military characters with frightening awareness. The story ends with a spectacular allegory: a warrior who is sure that he will die remains alive, and a warrior who thinks that he has escaped dies.

The third text, according to the observation of the same Eichenbaum, is "an etude of a large form." The story of two brothers who, having met at the beginning of the story, die at its end, never seeing each other again; the author seems to come to the conclusion that reality cannot be comprehended with the help of an essay or reasoning, but requires expression through a complex (ideally family) plot. With all these different ways of writing, Tolstoy solved one problem: to convey reality "as it really is." “The hero of my story, whom I love with all the strength of my soul, whom I tried to reproduce in all its beauty and who has always been, is and will be beautiful, is true,” the last phrases of the second story.

Paul Lever. Battle of the Black River on August 16, 1855. State Museum of Heroic Defense and Liberation of Sevastopol

What influenced her?

Tolstoy, despite his sometimes very strict intonation in assessing the classics and contemporaries, was a very receptive author. Researchers find in the “Sevastopol Tales” the influence of Thackeray, whom Lev Nikolayevich just at that time was reading in English (“objectivity”), the moralizing tradition from Rousseau to Karamzin, Homer (frankness in depicting battle details), Stendhal (the theme of money in war ; Tolstoy himself directly declared this author to be his predecessor in describing the war), Stern with his discursive experiments (Tolstoy translated Stern into Russian), and even Harriet Beecher Stowe Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) was an American writer. She taught at a girls' school and wrote stories. The book that brought her worldwide fame is Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). The novel about a black slave gained immense popularity in America (the book sold 350 thousand copies in the first year) and became a harbinger of the Civil War, which began 10 months after the publication of the first chapter of the novel. President Abraham Lincoln, when meeting with Beecher Stowe, called her "the little lady who started a great war with her book." ⁠ (From her story "Uncle Tim", published in "Sovremennik" in September 1853, Tolstoy borrowed the tone of the conversation with the reader: "Do you see there, in the distance, a house painted with dark paint?").

In addition, Tolstoy (at least in the first text of the cycle) was guided by the current journal and newspaper journalism. The genre of "letters from the scene", known since the time of the "Letters of a Russian Traveler", survived perfectly until the mid-fifties. “Letter from Sevastopol. Sevastopol, December 21, 1854" (G. Slavoni), "From Simferopol, January 25, 1855" (N. Mikhno) are typical names. And the essay by A. Komarnitsky “Sevastopol at the beginning of 1855” (“Odessky Vestnik”, April 2 and 5) resembles Tolstoy’s text not only in name, but also repeats the method of addressing the reader (“Do you know the Sevastopol sailors? If you say that you know , I'll ask you: have you been, at least once, in Sevastopol, since the day of its siege? Haven't been? - so you don't know its defenders").

All three stories were first published in the magazine "Contemporary" ⁠ : twice under different signatures, and once without any indication of the author.

The first appeared in the sixth issue for 1855 with the signature "L. N. T.” (all previous texts of the writer published at that time and in the same edition were signed in a similar way: L. N. "Childhood" and "Foray" - and L. N. T. "Adolescence" and "Marker's Notes") and with minor censorship corrections (“the white-haired” midshipman became “young” in order to avoid a mocking intonation, “stinking dirt” and “unpleasant traces of a military camp” disappeared as a hint of flaws in the military leadership).

The second story (known to us as "Sevastopol in May"; when first published in the September issue of 1855 it was called "Night in the spring of 1855 in Sevastopol") was subjected to monstrous censorship. At first, the editors made a lot of edits, highly appreciating the artistic level of the story, but frightened of the “ruthlessness and joylessness” (and these were not only abbreviations, but also insertion of “patriotic phrases”). Then the chairman of the censorship committee, Mikhail Musin-Pushkin, completely banned the printing of the text, but in the end (perhaps having learned that Tolstoy's work was interested "at the very top") he allowed the publication - already with his own significant interventions. As a result, the editors themselves removed the author's signature and apologized to Tolstoy that they could not do otherwise.

The author completed the third story just before the New Year; in order to have time to print it in the January book of Sovremennik for 1856, the editors, cutting the manuscript into pieces, distributed it to eight compositors. The author, who was in St. Petersburg, could follow the process and make additions to the text in the course of typing. Apparently, he was satisfied with the result, since under "Sevastopol in August 1855" the signature "Count L. Tolstoy" first appeared in print.

Nikolay Nekrasov. Late 1850s. Photograph by Carl August Bergner. Sevastopol Stories were first published in Nekrasov's journal Sovremennik.

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Sovremennik magazine with the first publication of Leo Tolstoy's war stories. 1855

How was it received?

The first story, "Sevastopol in December", even before the issue of the magazine was published Pyotr Pletnev Pyotr Alexandrovich Pletnev (1791-1866) - critic, poet, teacher. Close friend of Pushkin. He was a teacher of literature in St. Petersburg women's institutes, cadet corps, Noble Boarding School, taught literature to the future Emperor Alexander II. From 1840 to 1861 he was the rector of St. Petersburg University. He wrote poetry and critical articles, was the editor of the anthology "Northern Flowers" and the magazine "Contemporary" after the death of Pushkin. In 1846 he sold Sovremennik to Nikolai Nekrasov and Ivan Panaev. ⁠ presented in an imprint to Alexander II. The story, which glorified heroism, made a strong impression on the monarch, he ordered the text to be translated into French, an abbreviated version appeared in Le Nord (this newspaper was published in Brussels on the money of the Russian government) under the name "Une journée à Sebastopol", and then in the Journal de Francfort .

Russian military newspaper "Russian invalid" ⁠ soon reprinted the story in large "excerpts", calling the text "a truly excellent article." Panaev Ivan Ivanovich Panaev (1812-1862) - writer, literary critic, publisher. He was in charge of the critical department of Otechestvennye Zapiski. In 1847, together with Nekrasov, he began publishing Sovremennik, for which he wrote reviews and feuilletons. Panaev is the author of many stories and novels: "Meeting at the Station", "Lions in the Province", "The Grandson of a Russian Millionaire" and others. He was married to the writer Avdotya Panaeva, after ten years of marriage she went to Nekrasov, with whom she lived in a civil marriage for many years. ⁠ : "This article was eagerly read here by everyone." Turgenev: "Absolute delight", "Tolstoy's article about Sevastopol is a miracle! I shed tears reading it and shouted: ypa! Nekrasov: "The success is huge." "Petersburgskie Vedomosti": "High and bright talent." "Library for reading": "Wonderful article." "Domestic Notes": "I made you admire", "you are surprised at every step." Ivan Aksakov Ivan Sergeevich Aksakov (1823-1886) - publicist, poet, public figure. The son of the writer Sergei Aksakov, brother of the Slavophil Konstantin Aksakov, was married to the daughter of Fyodor Tyutchev. He played an important role in the life of the Moscow Slavic Committee, from 1875 to 1878 he was its chairman. After Aksakov's speech critical of the Berlin Congress, convened to revise the terms of the peace treaty in the Russian-Turkish war, the publicist was expelled from Moscow, and the committee itself was closed. He published several Slavophile publications - "Moscow collection", "Sail", "Steamboat", "Russian conversation", "Den", "Moscow", "Rus". ⁠ : “A very good thing, after which you want to go to Sevastopol - and it seems that you won’t be afraid and you won’t become brave. What a subtle and at the same time warm analysis in the writings of this Tolstoy.

After "Sevastopol in May" "Saint-Petersburg Vedomosti" The first Russian regular newspaper. It was founded in 1703 and published under the name "Vedomosti about military and other matters worthy of knowledge and memory." In 1728, the publication was transferred to the Academy of Sciences and changed its name to "Sankt-Peterburgskiye Vedomosti". In 1847, the Academy of Sciences began leasing the newspaper to private publishers. In 1814, when St. Petersburg was renamed, the newspaper changed its name to Petrogradskiye Vedomosti, and after the revolution its publication was interrupted. ⁠ reported that Tolstoy "becomes along with our best writers." "Domestic Notes" A literary magazine published in St. Petersburg from 1818 to 1884. Founded by writer Pavel Svinin. In 1839, the journal passed to Andrei Kraevsky, and Vissarion Belinsky headed the critical department. Lermontov, Herzen, Turgenev, Sollogub were published in Otechestvennye Zapiski. After part of the staff left for Sovremennik, Kraevsky handed over the magazine to Nekrasov in 1868. After the death of the latter, the publication was headed by Saltykov-Shchedrin. In the 1860s, Leskov, Garshin, Mamin-Sibiryak published in it. The journal was closed by order of the chief censor and former employee editions of Evgeny Feoktistov. ⁠ published excerpts with comments: "Life, and feeling, and poetry." Magazine "Pantheon" The theater magazine "Pantheon" was opened in 1840 under the editorship of Fyodor Koni. In 1842, the publication merged with the magazine "Repertoire" and began to appear under the general title "Repertoire and Pantheon". Since 1848, the publication was again published under the name "Pantheon", but in subsequent years it changed its name more than once. Since 1852, the magazine has gradually moved away from a purely theatrical agenda, turning into a literary and artistic publication. The Pantheon closed in 1856. ⁠ : "The most complete and deepest impression." “Military collection”: “Depicted so vividly, so naturally, that it involuntarily captivates and transfers to the very theater of action, as if placing the reader himself as a direct spectator of events.” Chaadaev: "Charming article." Chernyshevsky: “The depiction of the internal monologue must, without exaggeration, be called amazing” (it is possible, by the way, that Chernyshevsky was the first to use the expression “internal monologue” in this phrase in a sense close to the “stream of consciousness”). Turgenev, who read the story in its entirety, in a pre-censored form: "A terrible thing." Pisemsky (also about the full version): "The article is written to such an extent ruthlessly ... that it becomes hard to read."

An issue not resolved by diplomats is even less resolved by gunpowder and blood

Lev Tolstoy

“Sevastopol in August 1855” Nekrasov already called a story, emphasizing that its merits are “first-class: well-aimed, peculiar observation, deep penetration into the essence of things and characters, strict truth that does not retreat before anything, an excess of fleeting notes sparkling with intelligence and surprising vigilance of the eye, the richness of poetry, always free, flashing suddenly and always moderately, and, finally, strength - strength, spilled everywhere, the presence of which is heard in every line, in every carelessly dropped word - these are the merits of the story.

"Russian invalid" wrote that "the story breathes truth." Peterburgskiye Vedomosti: "The types of soldiers are outlined ... artistically ... their conversations and jokes - all this breathes true life, genuine nature." Pisemsky: “This officer will peck us all. Throw down your pen." Truth, Stepan Dudyshkin Stepan Semyonovich Dudyshkin (1821-1866) - journalist, critic. Since 1845, he published reviews and translated articles in the Journal of the Ministry of National Education, Sovremennik. Since 1852, Dudyshkin became a critic of Otechestvennye Zapiski, and in 1860 he became a co-publisher and editor of the magazine. He was the first critic to respond to Childhood, Leo Tolstoy's first story. Dudyshkin criticized Sovremennik and its editor Chernyshevsky for being too harsh in their assessments, while Chernyshevsky, on the contrary, accused Dudyshkin of being "evasive and kind-hearted." ⁠ in "Notes of the Fatherland" he wrote that "August" repeats Tolstoy's previous Sevastopol texts and that is why the author stopped writing them; and this is an interesting remark, in the third text Tolstoy actually runs through the openings of the first two, while only groping for the possibility of creating a great form with their help.

Overall, however, short stories are still rated very highly. Druzhinin Alexander Vasilyevich Druzhinin (1824-1864) - critic, writer, translator. Since 1847, he published stories, novels, feuilletons, translations in Sovremennik, and his debut was the story Polinka Saks. From 1856 to 1860 Druzhinin was the editor of the Library for Reading. In 1859, he organized the Society to provide assistance to needy writers and scientists. Druzhinin criticized the ideological approach to art and advocated "pure art" free from any didacticism. ⁠ writes about three at once: “Of all the enemy powers whose troops were under the walls of our Troy, not one had a siege chronicler that could compete with Count Leo Tolstoy.” Apollon Grigoriev Apollon Alexandrovich Grigoriev (1822-1864) - poet, literary critic, translator. In 1845, he began to study literature: he published a book of poems, translated Shakespeare and Byron, and wrote literary reviews for Otechestvennye Zapiski. From the late 1950s, Grigoriev wrote for the Moskvityanin and headed a circle of its young authors. After the closure of the magazine, he worked at the "Library for Reading", "Russian Word", "Vremya". Because of alcohol addiction Grigoriev gradually lost influence and practically ceased to be published. ⁠ : "The picture of the master, strictly conceived, executed just as strictly, with energy, conciseness, extending to avarice in detail, is a truly poetic work both in design, that is, in response to majestic events, and in artistic work."

Tolstoy himself summed up the results in a draft of the novel The Decembrists, characterizing one of the passing characters: “Not only did he himself sit for several weeks in one of the dugouts of Sevastopol, he wrote an essay about the Crimean War that gained him great fame, in which he clearly and he depicted in detail how the soldiers fired from the bastions with rifles, how they were bandaged at the dressing station with dressings and buried in the cemetery in the ground.

The interior of the officer's dugout on the fifth bastion. From the "Sevastopol Album" by Nikolai Berg. 1858

Konstantinovsky battery. From the "Sevastopol Album" by Nikolai Berg. 1858

At the end of 1855, Tolstoy triumphantly entered St. Petersburg (he will receive his resignation almost a year later, but his status as a soldier this year will be completely formal). In all editorial offices, dinners are held in honor of the new genius, everyone is looking for communication, Turgenev persuades him to move from the hotel to him, Nekrasov signs an agreement with him on the publication of all new works in "Contemporary" Literary magazine (1836-1866), founded by Pushkin. From 1847, Nekrasov and Panaev directed Sovremennik, later Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov joined the editorial board. In the 60s, an ideological split occurred in Sovremennik: the editors came to understand the need for a peasant revolution, while many authors of the journal (Turgenev, Tolstoy, Goncharov, Druzhinin) advocated slower and more gradual reforms. Five years after the abolition of serfdom, Sovremennik was closed by personal order of Alexander II. ⁠ . Tolstoy writes “Two Hussars”, prepares his first books for publication (the publisher is the bookseller Alexei Ivanovich Davydov): “Military stories” of interest to us (which, when submitting the manuscript to censorship, were called “Military Truths”; in addition to Sevastopol stories, it included “Raid” and "Deforestation") and "Childhood and adolescence". Druzhinin and Panaev take patronage of a young star, try to help in editing, "facilitate" the work for the perception of a simple reader, and Lev Nikolayevich does not mind, he agrees to shorten especially long suggestions 1 Burnasheva N. I. The book of L. N. Tolstoy "Military stories" // Tolstoy and about Tolstoy: materials and research. Issue. 1. M.: Heritage, 1998. C. 11. ⁠ .

But he does not succumb to taming. Strikes, to the horror of his new friends, in revelry, his diary of these months is full of carnal lamentations. At literary gatherings, he behaves politically incorrect, cuts the truth-womb left and right (Turgenev even calls Tolstoy a “troglodyte”), and in the conflict between the revolutionary (Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov) and liberal (Turgenev, Goncharov, Grigorovich) wings of Sovremennik, no one side occupies, although both wings claimed it.

At the same time, at the beginning of the year, Tolstoy's brother Nikolai dies, in St. Petersburg the writer experiences several not very successful love adventures, and literary affairs are not going as brilliantly as we would like. It turns out that the recognition of criticism is not equal to the interest of the public. Despite the fact that Tolstoy agreed that his books should be priced at one and a half rubles in silver per copy instead of the two originally set by the author (for comparison: Turgenev's new collection was sold for four), trade was restrained, the remnants of two thousand copies lay in stores after another three of the year 2 Burnasheva N. I. The book of L. N. Tolstoy "Military stories" // Tolstoy and about Tolstoy: materials and research. Issue. 1. M.: Heritage, 1998. C. 14. ⁠ .

Later he would write about this period in Confessions: "These people disgusted me, and I became disgusted with myself." Having received his resignation, Tolstoy leaves for Yasnaya Polyana, then abroad; returning from there, he is fond of organizing schools for peasant children. He will return to the literary world much later.

Group portrait of writers - members of the editorial board of the journal Sovremennik. Second row: Leo Tolstoy and Dmitry Grigorovich. Seated: Ivan Goncharov, Ivan Turgenev, Alexander Druzhinin and Alexander Ostrovsky. 1856 Photo by Sergey Levitsky

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Are "Sevastopol Tales" a complete work?

The question is debatable. At the center of each story is an underlined different topics. "Sevastopol in December": an amazing combination of peaceful urban and bloody military realities in one space; moreover, quite a lot is said here about the unparalleled courage of the Russian troops. The heroes here are practically not singled out, the hero is a mass.

“Sevastopol in May”: in the foreground is the question of vanity, revealing the mechanisms that determine human behavior in war, a combination of courage and cowardice in the same sinful soul, genuine and imaginary “aristocratism”: quite radical (and against the background of the glorification of heroism in the first story, and in general against the background of tradition) expansion of the problematics of battle prose. The characters of Sevastopol in May are almost as much concerned as life and death with how they look in the eyes of others and whether they are sufficiently dismissive towards their subordinates. This confused the censorship: in place of heroism and patriotism, there was a play of petty passions.

And, finally, “Sevastopol in August”: the main characters, the Kozeltsov brothers, are more like living people than the allegorical characters of “May”, while they are not high aristocrats, but middle-class nobles, and their ideas of “honor” are more human and warm. The main external problem in the story is a disgusting organization, a mess, the inability of the military authorities to organize life and logistics (which was not discussed in the first texts).

Thus, the main themes of each of the texts are not very tightly mounted with each other. The stories "do not form a coherent narrative ... The opposition of the second story to the first and third" 3 Leskis G. A. Leo Tolstoy (1852-1869). M.: OGI, 2000. C. 158; a similar point of view is common in tolstology. ⁠ . From the underlined heroism of "Sevastopol in the month of December" there is almost no trace in the next two works, but at the same time, petty passions do not cancel the ability of soldiers to sacrifice themselves; secular entertainment in the second story looks like a sign of "aristocratic" rottenness, and in the first - like a natural state of military space, even a kind of wisdom of life; in the third story, the idea of ​​the absurdity of war is actively promoted, and in the first story, war was presented as an everyday state of the universe; there are many such contradictions. If you try to describe the book as a whole, the ends meet not too readily. However, one should not forget that this is generally an important property of Tolstoy's poetics: ends meet often do not meet with him, and in a particularly expressive way - in. It is possible that the impossibility of a complete, consistent statement is the main "message" of this writer.

Order of St. Anne 4th class

Award medal "For the defense of Sevastopol. 1854-1855"

What was Tolstoy doing in Sevastopol?

In May 1853, Tolstoy, who served as a cadet in the Caucasus, decided to leave the army and submitted a letter of resignation, which, however, was not accepted due to the outbreak of the Crimean War. Then Tolstoy asked to be transferred to the Danube army, and then to the besieged Sevastopol.

He arrived in the city on November 7, 1854, and finally left it at the beginning of November 1855. At first, after spending nine days in Sevastopol, Tolstoy was assigned to the battery, which was on vacation six miles from Simferopol, and did not participate in battles for a long time, even asking (unsuccessfully) in February to be transferred to a warring unit in Evpatoria. But soon he was transferred to Belbek, on the night of March 10-11, he participated in a dangerous sortie, and soon got to the most dangerous Yazonovsky redoubt of the fourth bastion already in Sevastopol itself, where he took an active part in hostilities for a month and a half. Soon after the big battle on May 10-11, he was again transferred to a less dangerous place (he was assigned to command two guns of a mountain platoon somewhat far from the city), but later he again found himself on the front line, including participating in decisive and tragic battles for the Russian army August 4 and 27, 1855 (in the latter he commanded five guns).

Tolstoy was awarded the Order of St. Anna 4th degree "For Bravery", medals "For the Defense of Sevastopol 1854-1855" and "In Memory of the War 1853-1856". The actual battle details are not recorded in historical documents, but there is a memory colleague 4 Gusev N. N. Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy. Materials for the biography: From 1828 to 1855. M.: Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1954. C. 538. ⁠ about Tolstoy’s amusement “to pass in front of the muzzle of a loaded cannon in a few seconds that separated the departure of the cannonball from the presentation of the wick” - and another memory: when familiar onlookers like the sightseer from “Sevastopol in December” came to the bastion, Lev Nikolayevich immediately ordered to open fire on the enemy, so that the excursionists would be present at the return.

You know, I'm so used to these bombs that, I'm sure, in Russia on a starry night it will seem to me that these are all bombs: you'll get used to it

Lev Tolstoy

Away from the theater of operations and in the intervals between battles, Tolstoy managed to do many different things. He went hunting, “to Simferopol to dance and play the piano with the young ladies” (letter to brother Sergei on July 3, 1855), played a lot of shtoss and lost large sums, read books, wrote the story “Youth”, composed combat appeals, wrote an analytical note “ On the negative aspects of the Russian soldier and officer ”and seriously planned to establish a periodical military publication.

In the modern (and even in the timeless) Russian context, it is very appropriate to cite the following recollection, confirmed by various sources 5 Gusev N. N. Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy. Materials for the biography: From 1828 to 1855. M.: Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1954. C. 576. ⁠ : “According to the custom of that time, the battery was a profitable item, and the battery commanders put all the remnants of the fodder in their pockets. Tolstoy, having become the commander of the battery, took and wrote down the entire remainder of the fodder for the battery. Other battery commanders, whom this hit their pockets and failed in the eyes of their superiors, revolted: there had never been any remnants before and they should not have remained. As a result of this story, Tolstoy ceased commanding the battery, and touched upon the topic of command income from economic activity in the 18th chapter of Sevastopol in August.

A less favorable review of Tolstoy in Sevastopol was left by Porfiry Glebov, Assistant Chief of Staff of the Southern Army Artillery. On September 13, 1855, he wrote in his diary that there were too many officers at the main apartment - “bashi-bazouks” with not entirely clear duties (“most of them push around Bakhchisaray from morning to evening; some went in cavalcade to the mountain coast”), to whom applies to Tolstoy. “... Tolstoy tries to sniff gunpowder, but only on a raid, as a partisan, eliminating from himself the difficulties and hardships associated with the war. He travels to different places as a tourist; but as soon as he hears where the shot is, he immediately appears on the battlefield; the battle is over, - he again leaves according to his arbitrariness, wherever his eyes look. It is unlikely that in the twenty-first century it is possible to objectively assess such behavior of Tolstoy from the then military point of view. But the connection of this documentary image with the future artistic image is striking: Pierre Bezukhov will be bred such a tourist in the war ten years later. And we understand that the position of a slightly-tourist-where-ever-it-has something important to do with the mysteries of literary creativity. Glebov’s diary entry ends like this:

“They also talk about him [Tolstoy] as if he has nothing to do, and sings songs and, as if on August 4, a song of his composition:

Like the fourth
It was not easy to carry us, -
occupy mountains,
Mountains to occupy! etc."

The interior of one corner of the fourth bastion. From the "Sevastopol Album" by Nikolai Berg. 1858

The fourth bastion from the enemy side after leaving Sevastopol. From the "Sevastopol Album" by Nikolai Berg. 1858

Did Tolstoy really compose a song with the words "It was smooth on paper, but they forgot about the ravines"?

In any case, Tolstoy himself admitted this. At first, he did not deny his authorship in relation to another Sevastopol military song (“Like on September 8, we left the French for the faith, for the tsar ...”), but then he clarified that he had only an indirect relation to it (it is clear that such texts are more often the result of collective creativity), and in the case of the "Fourth Number" he acted as the main author. Here is the full lyrics of the song (which, of course, has no authorized manuscript):

Like the fourth
We were not easy to carry
Select mountains (bis).

Baron Vrevsky Pavel Alexandrovich Vrevsky (1809-1855) - Russian military leader. Participated in the war with Turkey in 1828-1829, was shell-shocked and retired. Soon he returned to the service and took part in the suppression of the Polish uprising of 1830-1831. Spent four years in the Caucasus. During the Crimean War, Vrevsky insisted that the Russian army go on the offensive from the besieged Sevastopol. However, the battle on the Black River was lost, and Vrevsky himself was killed in battle, refusing to leave the battlefield. ⁠ general
TO Gorchakov Mikhail Dmitrievich Gorchakov (1793-1861) - Russian military leader. Participated in the Patriotic War (including the Battle of Borodino) and the Foreign Campaign of 1813-1814. He fought in the Russian-Turkish war of 1828-1829 and participated in the suppression of the Polish uprising of 1830-1831. During the Crimean War, he led the Danube Army, and during the retreat - the Southern Army, which was located on the northwestern coast of the Black Sea. Gorchakov led the defense of Sevastopol from February to August 1855. After the death of Field Marshal Paskevich, he was appointed governor of the Kingdom of Poland and commander-in-chief of the 1st Army. ⁠ molested,
When drunk (bis).

"Prince, take these mountains,
Don't quarrel with me
Not that I will inform ”(bis).

Gathered for advice
All big epaulettes
Even Platz-bek-Kok (bis).

Police Chief Platz-bek-Kok
Couldn't think of anything
What to tell him (bis).

Long thought, wondered
Topographers wrote everything
On a large sheet (bis).

Smoothly written on paper
Yes, we forgot about the ravines,
And walk on them ... (bis)

Princes, counts went out,
And behind them topographers
To the Great Redoubt (bis).

The prince said: "Go, Liprandi Pavel Petrovich Liprandi (1796-1864) - Russian military commander. Younger brother of secret police officer Ivan Liprandi. Participated in the Patriotic War, the Foreign Campaign of 1813-1814, the Russian-Turkish War of 1828-1829 and the suppression of the Polish uprising of 1830-1831. During the Crimean War, he was appointed head of the Malo-Valakh detachment. Liprandi had a reputation as a wise general who cared about the soldiers - during his command he did not subject any of them to corporal punishment. ⁠ »
And Liprandi: “No, c, atande,
No, they say, I will not go (bis).

There is no need for smart
you went there Reada Nikolai Andreevich Read (1793-1855) - Russian military commander. He participated in the Patriotic War, the Foreign Campaign of 1813-1814 and the capture of Paris. Accompanied Nicholas I during the Russian-Turkish war of 1828-1829. He took part in the suppression of the Polish uprising of 1830-1831, served in the Caucasus for several years. During the Crimean War, he defended Sevastopol. During the battle on the Black River, Readad's troops partially occupied the Fedyukhin Heights, but due to the prevailing forces of the coalition forces, the Russian army had to retreat. The general was killed in action. ⁠ ,
I'll take a look..." (bis)

Suddenly, take Read for nothing
And led us straight to the bridge:
"Come on, cheer" (bis).

Weimarn Pyotr Vladimirovich Weimarn (? - 1855) - Russian military leader. Participated in the Patriotic War, the Foreign campaign of 1813-1814, the Polish campaign of 1830-1831. During the Crimean War, he was chief of staff of the 3rd Infantry Corps, was under the command of General Nikolai Read. General Weimarn was killed in action on the Black River shortly after he ordered his division to attack as ordered by Read. ⁠ crying, begging
To wait a little.
“No, let them go” (bis).

General Ushakov Alexander Kleonakovich Ushakov (1803-1877) - Russian military commander. Participated in the Russian-Turkish war of 1828-1829, the suppression of the Polish uprising of 1820-1831, as well as the Hungarian campaign of 1849. During the Crimean War, Ushakov's division became part of the Sevastopol garrison and took part in the battle on the Black River. After the war, Ushakov served in the Ministry of War, worked on military judicial reform. Since 1867, Ushakov was the chairman of the main military court. ⁠ ,
It's not like that at all:
Everything was waiting for something (bis).

He waited and waited
While I was going with the spirit
Cross the river (bis).

We made a noise with a bang,
Yes, the reserves did not ripen,
Someone distorted (bis).

A Belevtsov Dmitry Nikolaevich Belevtsov (1800-1883) - Russian military commander. Participated in the Russian-Turkish war of 1828-1829 and the suppression of the Polish uprising of 1830-1831. During the Crimean War, he commanded a squad of the Kursk militia. After the war, Belevtsov was the honorary guardian of the Moscow Board of Trustees of the institutions of Empress Maria Feodorovna and the director of the Nikolaev Izmailovo military almshouse. ⁠ general
Everything just shook the banner,
Not at all to the face (bis).

On the Fedyukhin Heights The heights are located in the Balaklava region between Sapun Mountain and the Chernaya River. They are named after General Fedyukhin, who first set up camp in these places. Fedyukhin Heights became the site of battles during the battle on the Black River. ⁠
There were only three companies of us,
And let the regiments go! .. (bis)

Our army is small
And there were three French
And sikursu darkness (bis).

Waited - will leave the garrison
We have a column to the rescue,
Signaled (bis).

And there Saken Dmitry Erofeevich Osten-Saken (1793-1881) - Russian military leader. He participated in the Patriotic War, the Foreign Campaign of 1813-1814, the Persian War of 1826-1828, the suppression of the Polish uprising and the Hungarian campaign of 1849. During the Crimean War, he was appointed head of the Sevastopol garrison. The historian Yevgeny Tarle, in a book about the Crimean War, spoke of Osten-Saken as follows: “He appeared on the bastions no more than four times at all times, and then in less dangerous places, and his inner life consisted of reading akathists, listening to dinners and talking with priests." ⁠ general
I read all the akathists
Mother of God (bis).

And we had to retreat
Once ... and their mother,
Who drove there (bis).

The meaning of the song is that the unsuccessful battle on the Chernaya River on August 4, 1855 was the result of discontent, which different kind the authorities experienced because of the "inaction" of the commander-in-chief, Prince Mikhail Gorchakov; in fact, the headquarters needed at least some kind of battle. Gorchakov objected to it to the last, but at the convened representative meeting (“We gathered for advice / All the big epaulettes ...”) it was customary to go into battle. All further verses accurately convey the specific ups and downs of this tragic enterprise.

Egor (Georg) Botman. Portrait of Mikhail Gorchakov. 1871. State Hermitage. During the Crimean War, Gorchakov led the Danube Army, and during the retreat - the Southern

Did "Sevastopol Tales" really grow out of the project of the magazine "Soldier's Messenger"?

Chronologically, this is exactly what happened. Back in October 1854 (that is, before Tolstoy was transferred to Sevastopol), a group of artillery officers of the Southern Army, among whom was Tolstoy, came up with the idea of ​​publishing a weekly, with a possible transition to a daily regimen, the magazine "Soldier's Bulletin" (a later version of the name - "Military sheet"). The project of the magazine was created with the active and even decisive participation of Tolstoy: “the spread of the rules of military virtue among the soldiers”, truthful information about current military events (as opposed to “false and harmful rumors”), “the spread of knowledge about special subjects of military art”, as well as publication of military songs, literary materials and "religious teachings to the military". It was assumed that there were people who wanted to invest their money in the project (including Tolstoy himself), the organizers enlisted the support of the commander-in-chief, Prince Gorchakov, and even collected a trial issue. Tsar Nicholas (who had a few weeks left before his death) did not support, however, the project, suggesting that the participants in the venture send their articles to the official military body, "Russian invalid" Military newspaper published in St. Petersburg. Founded by Paul Pesarovius in 1813, sales proceeds were donated to the disabled Patriotic War. From 1862 to 1917 the paper was the official publication of the War Office. Throughout the history of the newspaper, “literary additions” were also published to it: Belinsky collaborated with the Russian Invalid as a critic; Sergei Uvarov. ⁠ (and even "allowing" them to do this, although it is clear that this was not forbidden to anyone).

Then Tolstoy tried to reformat the idea and suggested to Nekrasov to start a permanent military section in Sovremennik, which he undertook to supervise. Tolstoy promised to supply every month from two to five sheets of articles of military content (for comparison: the article on the "Sevastopol Tales" that you are reading now has a sheet size with a small one), written by various qualified military authors. Nekrasov agreed. Tolstoy submitted some military articles to the magazine, but the idea of ​​permanent work did not inspire his associates, and on March 20, 1855 he entered in his diary: “I have to write to me alone. I will paint Sevastopol in various phases and the idyll of officer life. It was during these days that he came up with the plan "Sevastopol day and night."

Girolamo Induno. Battle on the Black River on August 16, 1855. 1857 Piazza Scala Gallery

How is the war described in Sevastopol Tales?

According to Victor Shklovsky 6 Shklovsky V. B. Leo Tolstoy. M .: Young guard, 1967. C. 160. ⁠ , in "Sevastopol Tales" the author "writes about the unusual as about the usual." Shklovsky built his concept of estrangement on other works of Tolstoy (“Strider”,), but it is clear that exactly the same effect is meant: L. N. T. describes the war on behalf of a subject who does not fully understand the meaning of what is happening, but only observes outer contours of the phenomenon. This intonation is set and most clearly manifested in “Sevastopol in December”, the terrible fourth bastion is presented only as one of the city locations, blood and death do not interfere with music on the boulevard, do not interfere (this is already in “Sevastopol in May”) aristocratic officers to think about the conditional "beauty of the nails." The war was presented by Tolstoy as an everyday phenomenon even earlier, in the Caucasian essay “The Raid”, but the Sevastopol way of life is noticeably more civilized than the Caucasian, and therefore the discrepancy between the objective contrast of “war” and “peace” and the intonation of Tolstoy, who, as it were, does not notice the contrast, in “Sevastopol stories" is much brighter. The war, described with the intonation of describing a walk, "is derived from automatism perception" 7 Shklovsky V. B. On the theory of prose. M.: Federation, 1929. C. 17. ⁠ , hence such a beating effect on the eyes with the external calmness of the narrator.

Canadian researcher Donna Orvin, tracing the dependence of the Sevastopol Tales on the Iliad (which Tolstoy was reading around that time), comes to the conclusion that from Homer Tolstoy learned to introduce real horrors of war into the text without exaggerating colors. Indeed, against the backdrop of the current domestic tradition, Tolstoy is very frank. “The picture is too bloody to describe: I lower the veil,” wrote Peter Alabin Pyotr Vladimirovich Alabin (1824-1896) - statesman and military writer. Participated in the suppression of the Hungarian uprising in 1848-1849. In 1853, as part of the Okhotsk Jaeger Regiment, he took part in the Crimean War, distinguished himself in the Oltenitsky and Inkerman battles. In 1855 he published "Correspondence from the Theater of the Crimean War" in the "Northern Bee". From 1866 he lived in Samara, during the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878 he handed over to the Bulgarian militias a banner embroidered by Samara ladies - it became a symbol of the Bulgarian resistance to the Ottoman Empire, and then - the Bulgarian army. In 1884-1891, Alabin was the mayor of Samara, in 1892 he was removed from his post and put on trial for purchasing low-quality food. He wrote several books about his military experience. ⁠ (“Battle of Oltenitsa on October 23, 1853” // Russian Art Sheet. 1854. No. 22) - and lowered the veil. Tolstoy, on the other hand, does not hesitate to insert into the text a corpse with a huge swollen head, a blackened glossy face and everted pupils, or a crooked knife that enters a white healthy body, but these harsh descriptions do not turn into naturalism. In literature and art, it is not uncommon for the same person in the status of an author to show himself wiser, more restrained, more mature than at the same time in the status of an “ordinary person”. In synchronous diaries and letters, Tolstoy is ardent, neurotic and contradictory, but here there is a noble restraint, a sense of tact and proportion.

And yet the war, which was also a very innovative gesture, is described in the Sevastopol Tales as a bewitching sight. Panoramas of battles, lightning shots illuminating the dark blue sky, stars like bombs and bombs like stars - all this is not as grandiose and cinematic as in War and Peace, but the direction of movement is set.

Anatoly Kokorin. Illustrations for "Sevastopol stories". 1953

Was Tolstoy original in mixing fiction with documentary in Sevastopol Tales?

Was not. Yes, among Tolstoy's experiments of this kind, even before "Sevastopol in December" - both the already printed "Raid", and the unfinished radical experiment "The History of One Day", in which an attempt was made to depict the events and sensations in the smallest detail of just that one particular day . But writings balancing between "fiction" and "non-fiction" is a common place for the literature of the middle of the nineteenth century.

"Notes of a Hunter" (1847-1851) by Turgenev, for example, were first published in the same "Sovremennik" in the "Mixes" section, as documentary sketches, and then moved to the main section fiction. “The frigate Pallada (1852-1855) by Goncharov, being formally a travel report, deservedly has the status of a miracle of Russian prose. The autobiographical trilogy (1846-1856) by Sergei Aksakov includes both "Family Chronicles", in which the Aksakovs are bred under the surname Bagrovs, and "Memories", in which the same characters are bred under their real surname.

In general, the meanings of words denoting literary genres in that era differed from those familiar to us. “The outrageous disgrace into which your article is brought has spoiled the last blood in me,” Nekrasov wrote to Tolstoy about the censorship violence against “Sevastopol in May”, which to a modern observer would seem to be an “article” to a much lesser extent than “Sevastopol in May”. December." Vissarion Belinsky, in the preface to the collection “Physiology of Petersburg” (1845), complained that “we have absolutely no fiction works that, in the form of travels, trips, essays, stories, descriptions, would introduce various parts of boundless and diverse Russia”: essays and short stories rank equally in the list of fiction.

"Physiology of Petersburg", a key publication of the natural school (in total, two parts of the almanac were published), is a vivid example of such a merger of discourses, frank journalism is adjacent here to an excerpt from Nekrasov's novel and a play Alexander Kulchitsky Alexander Yakovlevich Kulchitsky (1814 or 1815 - 1845) - writer, theater critic, translator of German poetry. Born in Kerch. In 1836 he published the almanac "Hope" in Kharkov. Since 1842 he lived in St. Petersburg, was friends with Belinsky, participated in the almanac "Physiology of St. Petersburg". Author of the novel "Unusual duel". Known as a brilliant player of preference, he wrote a humorous artistic treatise about this game. ⁠ "Omnibus", and in Grigorovich's essay on organ grinders, after a completely "physiological" analysis of the types of real organ grinders, the frankly artistic character Fedosey Ermolaevich suddenly appears. By the way, it was to this essay on organ grinders that Dostoevsky proposed the famous correction to his flatmate: Grigorovich’s manuscript read “a nickel fell at his feet”, and Dostoevsky said that it would be better to write “a nickel fell on the pavement, ringing and bouncing”. Grigorovich still didn’t finish it, put it less spectacularly - “the nickel fell, ringing and jumping, on the pavement”, but the fact itself testifies to the attitude towards the genre of the essay as to high literature.

Later, Tolstoy himself will formulate (on occasion): "... In the new period of Russian literature, there is not a single artistic prose work that is a little out of mediocrity, which would fit perfectly into the form of a novel, poem or story."

The ruins of the Barakkovskaya battery. 1855–1856. Photograph by James Robertson

What is the difference between Tolstoy's experiments and the natural school?

In particular, in a different relation to the depicted person. Even for Turgenev and Dahl, not to mention less talented authors, the object is “other”, derived with a fair amount of ethnographic. You can pity him or ridicule him (condescension is a constant intonation), but he is always separated from the author by an impenetrable partition. Grigorovich writes about the streets as scenery, V. Lugansky (Vladimir Dahl's pseudonym) calls the street scenes a "disgrace" (an outdated designation for a theatrical spectacle): watching the stirring of life is the privilege of an idle observer.

For Tolstoy, the narrator is also in a different dimension, but at the same time it is clear that “another dimension” is stylistic figure, a solution to constructive and philosophical problems, and not a way to emphasize one's superiority. Tolstoy's interest in another person is natural, and not set within the framework of a "literary trend." According to the important observation of the literary critic Georgy Lesskis, Tolstoy's search for "truth" does not contradict the desire to show the "good" and "good" in people. “Only in the aesthetics of the so-called critical realism, setting on the “truth” meant setting on “exposing” human…” 8 Leskis G. A. Leo Tolstoy (1852-1869). M.: OGI, 2000. C. 202-204. ⁠

Did Tolstoy invent a stream of consciousness in Sevastopol Tales?

The question of a patent for certain techniques in art, as a rule, is meaningless, because there are always a large number of transitional forms, not to mention the methods by which we establish the primacy of any applicant. However, it makes sense to note that the last two pages of the 12th chapter of "Sevastopol in May", a description of Praskukhin's thoughts in one last second of his life, thoughts in which life and death are mixed, the once beloved woman in a cap with purple ribbons, who offended long ago - for a long time a man, jealousy for Mikhailov, twelve rubles of gambling debt, unnecessary counting of soldiers running past - these two pages for illustrating the term "stream of consciousness" fit no worse than any page of "Ulysses" (and the stretched second itself reminds of the construction of the story by Ambrose Bierce "The Incident on the Bridge over Owl Creek").

Tolstoy himself later resorted more than once to the stream of consciousness; a particularly expressive and famous example is the thoughts of Anna Karenina on the way to the Obiralovka station.

Jules Rigaud. Scene of the winter siege of Sevastopol. 1859 From the collection of the Palace of Versailles

"Sevastopol in December" is written from a complex second person. “You approach the pier - a special smell of coal, manure, dampness and beef strikes you”; at first glance, “you” here can be meaningfully replaced by “I” (“I approach”, “I am amazed”). But scattered throughout the text are markers of the presence behind this “you” of a certain governing body, which will either offer: “Look at least at this Furstadt soldier”, then introduce a strange modality (“maybe the sounds of shooting will reach your hearing”) and, in addition, it constantly runs ahead - “you will see” cannot be easily replaced by “I see”; the form itself sets the uncertainty of the source of the voice.

Researchers, trying to define this feature of "Sevastopol in December", are forced to resort to approximate terminology. Shklovsky wrote 9 Shklovsky V. B. Leo Tolstoy. M .: Young Guard, 1967. C. 163. ⁠ that this is a story "as if with an invisible, transparent author, a hidden style, with an extinguished sense of expressions." Lesskis - that this is an imitation of a story from the first person, but in fact from the second, but the narrator is located "in a different space" 10 Leskis G. A. Leo Tolstoy (1852-1869). M.: OGI, 2000. C. 159-160. ⁠ , which clearly contradicts his observed presence in the hospital and on the battlefield. The narrator does not seem to be able to decide who he is - the one who shows, or the one who is shown.

In "Sevastopol in May" Tolstoy seems to cut through the contradictions with one blow, taking the position of supreme author that everyone remembers. Eichenbaum thinks 11 Eikhenbaum B.M. Leo Tolstoy. Research. Articles. St. Petersburg: Faculty of Philology and Arts, St. Petersburg State University, 2009. P. 236. ⁠ “the author’s voice sounding from above” is the most important artistic discovery, notes that the famous inner monologues of Tolstoy’s characters become possible only thanks to such a supreme point of view. But such a point of view is difficult to follow to the end, in the text every now and then there are zones in which the author navigates uncertainly: for example, the narrator doubts for some time who Mikhailov is (“He should have been either a German, if his facial features had not Russian origin, or adjutant, or quartermaster Or the quartermaster. An official in the army who is responsible for accommodating troops in apartments and supplying them with food. ⁠ regimental (but then he would have had spurs), or an officer who, for the duration of the campaign, transferred from the cavalry, and maybe from the guards”), and then jumps out from behind himself and gives the right answer.

Each of them is a little Napoleon, a little monster, and now he is ready to start a battle, to kill a hundred people just to get an extra star or a third of his salary.

Lev Tolstoy

In addition, a significant part of “Sevastopol in May” is direct journalistic passages, “The hero of my story ... is true”, “I often had ... a thought”, and this “I” belongs to the legal author of the story rather than the supreme narrator. Eichenbaum, in his early work on Tolstoy, calls it "the typical speech of an orator or preacher" 12 Eikhenbaum B. M. Young Tolstoy. Pb.; Berlin: Z. I. Grzhebin Publishing House, 1922. C. 124. ⁠ (It is interesting that the image of the narrator splits in the thoughts of one scientist: in the early study there is no question of the supreme point of view, in the later one the preacher is forgotten). Either this is the oratory "I", or the supreme narrator, moreover, constantly gets into a squabble with the characters, convicts them of deceit or inaccuracy, which further blurs the idea of ​​​​the source of the voice. In Sevastopol in August, Tolstoy, as it were, takes a little back: the same newly acquired supreme author broadcasts there, but he shows his omniscience more modestly.

An additional tension lies in the fact that Tolstoy wants to consider the point of view of his characters no less valuable than his own, no matter how supreme the latter may be. This is how Tolstoy comes to the idea of ​​angles, different ways of seeing. In "Sevastopol in May" the classic montage cinematic eight is used: Russian soldiers see this and that, Frenchmen seen by Russians see this and that. Film director Mikhail Romm, without mentioning this eight, nevertheless repeatedly refers to Tolstoy's prose as an example of a virtuoso director's script, writes about the "finest montage vision of the writer", in one of the battle episodes of "War and Peace" he discovers a change of seven or eight panoramas 13 Romm M. I. Conversations about cinema and film directing. M.: Academic project, 2016. C. 411-415. ⁠ ; in "Sevastopol Tales" the scope is more modest, but the montage effect is present, the look is transferred to one or another character, close-ups give way to general ones, etc.

To combine (“It is necessary to match!” - so Pierre Bezukhov will hear in a half-sleep the words of a postilion “to harness it”) often incompatible points of view and angles, “truths” and “narratives”, to combine and discover that they cannot be exactly fitted, anyway contradictions stick out and the seams come apart - this is, in fact, the formula of War and Peace, and we see that it was already tested in Sevastopol Tales. In fact, even earlier: the story “Notes of a Marker” (1853) consists of two parts, one is the notes of a tavern clerk, and the second is a death letter from a player, and between the two points of view there remains a gap, a manifestation of the impossibility of a complete meaning.

However, the author of Sevastopol Tales himself actively provokes this conversation. The reason, apparently, is that for Tolstoy this far-fetched, for many, patriotic question always had a painfully concrete projection: relations with one's own peasants, experiencing one's class status.

“From Chisinau on November 1, I asked for the Crimea ... partly in order to escape from the headquarters Serzhputovsky Adam Osipovich Serzhputovsky (? - 1860) - Russian military leader. He was a lieutenant general, chief of artillery troops in the Danube army. Tolstoy, who was with him on special assignments, did not like him, called him in his diaries "an old bashi-bazook" and "a stupid old man", asked for a transfer - but was friends with his son Osip. ⁠ , which I did not like, but most of all from patriotism, which at that time, I confess, had a strong effect on me, ”Tolstoy admitted in a letter to his brother Sergei a little retroactively, in July 1855, and this construction is important here -“ found me”: patriotism is presented as some kind of external gripping force.

The very first letter to the same addressee, written immediately upon arrival in Sevastopol on November 20, 1854, glorified the Russian army. “The spirit in the troops is beyond description. In the days of ancient Greece, there was not so much heroism.<…>A company of sailors almost rebelled because they wanted to be removed from the battery, on which they stood for 30 days under bombs.<…>In one brigade ... there were 160 people who, wounded, did not leave the front ... ”- this is just the beginning of a stream of enthusiasm. At the same time, in a diary entry made on November 23, three days later, there are traces of completely different impressions: "... Russia must either fall, or be completely transformed." The first Sevastopol story is much closer to the first of the two poles indicated by these quotes: it does not contain absolutely frenzied enthusiasm, but the heroic-patriotic intonation is evident.

A person who does not feel the strength in himself to inspire respect with his inner dignity is instinctively afraid of rapprochement with subordinates and tries to distance himself from criticism by external expressions of importance.

Lev Tolstoy

One of the obvious weaknesses of a person is the readiness and even a hidden need to join mass experiences, and in a situation of war, patriotic slogans probably also seem to be a means of psychological self-defense. Tolstoy was flattered that the emperor liked Sevastopol in December, that the newspapers reprinted it, in Sevastopol in May he describes how eagerly the province reads Invalid with a description of exploits; The editors of Sovremennik were upset by the reprint of the story in Russkiy Invalid, but only because Invalid was dispersed across Russia faster than Sovremennik, and thereby robbed the magazine of the glory of being the first publisher. “Good patriotism, one of those that really do honor to the country,” even Pyotr Chaadaev called the first story of the Crimean cycle.

Of course, Tolstoy's euphoria was situational and did not last long, he perfectly sees the stupidity of the leadership and theft in the army, adequately assesses the moral level of officers; the title of the note composed at the same time “On the Negative Sides of the Russian Soldier and Officer” speaks for itself. In the center of the second story are petty feelings (which Tolstoy made it all the easier to describe because in his diaries he constantly stigmatizes himself for “vanity”), guiding a person’s behavior in the war: there was no trace of heroism.

"Progressive" criticism of different eras (advanced Slavophile Orest Miller Orest Fedorovich Miller (1833-1889) - teacher, literary critic. Born in Estonia, he converted to Orthodoxy at the age of 15, a few years later he entered St. Petersburg University, after graduation he remained to teach there. In 1858 he defended his master's thesis on morality in poetry. In 1863 he published a textbook for students "The experience of the historical review of Russian literature." He studied Russian folklore, defended his doctoral thesis on this topic (“Ilya Muromets and the Kievan heroism”). In 1874, based on his university lectures, he published the book Russian Literature after Gogol. Miller was known for his Slavophile views, his articles and speeches were collected in the book Slavdom and Europe (1877). ⁠ in 1886, the brightly talented alcoholic popularizer Yevgeny Solovyov in 1894 and, of course, scientists of the Soviet era) represented the collision of “Sevastopol in May” in such a way that a white bone is guided by petty feelings, and “a soldier is not like that, he has a completely different attitude to war" (Miller). Good "people" is thus contrasted with bad "aristocracy": for example, Konstantin Leontiev, who does not support the thesis of a good people, still recognized the presence of this ethical symmetry in the story, with the difference that he condemned, rather than praised Tolstoy for "excessive worship of a peasant, an army soldier and a simple Maxim Maksimych.

At the bottom of everyone's soul lies that noble spark that will make a hero out of him; but this spark gets tired of burning brightly

Lev Tolstoy

The problem, however, is that the “bad” aristocrats in the story, albeit without sympathy, albeit dotted, but deduced, while the “good” soldier remains a stuck together mass throughout the cycle (and in the same abstract form, with a few exceptions , will flow into), but it is still absurd to talk about sympathy for the stuck together mass.

Everyone remembers the “hidden warmth of patriotism” from “War and Peace”, where it is assigned to the role of some kind of fuel that maintains morale, but in whom? - all in the same undivided crowd, which is why it is designated by such a slightly slurred phrase. In "Sevastopol in May" Tolstoy calls love for the motherland a feeling that is rarely manifested, "shameful in Russian", and here he clearly speaks of himself. Patriotism is something that cannot be completely eliminated, but one has to be ashamed of it. The first story, when published in Sovremennik, contained the words “Great, Sevastopol, your significance in the history of Russia! You were the first to serve as an expression of the idea of ​​the unity and inner strength of the Russian people" - when preparing the collection "Military Stories", the author crossed them out. In the second story, appeasing censorship, Panaev included a fragment: “But we did not start this war, we did not cause this terrible bloodshed. We defend only our native land, our native land, and we will defend it to the last drop of blood.” When preparing the Military Tales, Tolstoy did not catch these phrases, but later angrily deleted them from the already printed copies.

The question of "patriotism" sticks closely to the question of "the people," and Tolstoy's ambivalent feelings are caused, presumably, by his equally ambivalent attitude toward the "muzhik." Theoretically, according to natural moral concepts, a peasant is exactly the same person as an aristocrat, and deserves equal rights and respectful treatment. In practice, Tolstoy often observed in men in life (and reflected this in the texts) qualities that greatly hinder talking about them as equals. Telling his brother in a letter about Sevastopol, Tolstoy mentions a miserable huntsman, "a little, lousy, wrinkled one" and suggests writing in a journal "about the exploits of these lousy and wrinkled heroes." This screaming contradiction is resolved in “Sevastopol in May” by the fact that pejorative words are put into the mouth of a negative prince - “This is what I don’t understand and, I confess, I can’t believe,” Galtsin said, with unwashed hands we could be brave. So, you know cette belle bravoure de gentilhomme This beautiful courage of a nobleman. — Franz. ⁠ , - can not be". But for us, who know the text of letters and diaries, as well as for Tolstoy himself, this simple forwarding does not solve the problem. Here it is appropriate to recall the future syndrome of Prince Andrei: having an extremely low opinion of his peasants, he nevertheless, driven by a sense of honor, strives to do good for them.

In Sevastopol in August, Tolstoy tried to approach synthesis, to bring the poles closer together. The story (like the real August 1855) ends with the defeat of the Russian troops. A cruel defeat - that's what can be equally clear to the heart of every Russian. This is going to be a very long quote.

Despite the passion for heterogeneous fussy activities, a sense of self-preservation and a desire to get out of this terrible place of death as soon as possible was present in the soul of everyone. This feeling was also felt by the mortally wounded soldier lying among five hundred of the same wounded on the stone floor of the Pavlovsk embankment and asking God for death, and by the militia, who squeezed himself into the dense crowd with his last strength to give way to the passing general on horseback, and the general, firmly commanding the crossing and holding the haste of the soldiers, and the sailor, who fell into the moving battalion, squeezed to the point of deprivation of breath by the hesitant crowd, and the wounded officer, who was carried on a stretcher by four soldiers and, stopped by the crowded people, was laid to the ground at the Nikolaev battery, and the artilleryman, sixteen years he served with his gun and, according to the order of his superiors, incomprehensible to him, pushing the gun with the help of his comrades from the steep bank into the bay, and with the naval ones, who had just knocked out the bookmarks in the ships and, rowing briskly, on longboats sailing away from them. Coming to the other side of the bridge, almost every soldier took off his hat and crossed himself. But behind this feeling there was another, heavy, sucking and deeper feeling: it was a feeling, as if similar to repentance, shame and anger. Almost every soldier, looking from the northern side at the abandoned Sevastopol, sighed with inexpressible bitterness in his heart and threatened his enemies.

Powerfully said, but hardly many will agree to consider death and fear natural way to resolve the Damocles Russian question of "patriotism".

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Sevastopol stories

Sevastopol in December

“The dawn is just beginning to color the sky over Sapun Mountain; the dark blue surface of the sea has already thrown off the twilight of the night and is waiting for the first ray to sparkle with a cheerful brilliance; from the bay it carries cold and fog; there is no snow - everything is black, but the sharp morning frost grabs your face and cracks under your feet, and the distant unceasing rumble of the sea, occasionally interrupted by rolling shots in Sevastopol, alone breaks the silence of the morning ... It cannot be that at the thought that you are in Sevastopol, a feeling of some kind of courage, pride, and so that the blood does not begin to circulate faster in your veins has not penetrated into your soul ... ”Despite the fact that hostilities are going on in the city, life goes on as usual: vendors sell hot men are a wreck. It seems that camp and peaceful life are strangely mixed here, everyone is fussing and frightened, but this is a deceptive impression: most people no longer pay attention to either shots or explosions, they are busy with “everyday business”. Only on the bastions "you will see ... the defenders of Sevastopol, you will see terrible and sad, great and funny, but amazing, uplifting spectacles there."

In the hospital, wounded soldiers talk about their impressions: the one who lost his leg does not remember the pain, because he did not think about it; a woman carrying lunch to her husband's bastion was hit by a shell, and her leg was cut off above the knee. Dressings and operations are done in a separate room. The wounded, awaiting their turn for surgery, are horrified to see how doctors amputate their comrades' arms and legs, and the paramedic indifferently throws the severed body parts into a corner. Here you can see "terrible, soul-shattering spectacles ... the war is not in the correct, beautiful and brilliant formation, with music and drumming, with fluttering banners and prancing generals, but ... war in its true expression - in blood, in suffering , in death ... ". A young officer who fought on the fourth, most dangerous bastion, complains not about the abundance of bombs and shells falling on the heads of the defenders of the bastion, but about the dirt. This is his defensive reaction to danger; he behaves too boldly, cheekily and at ease.

On the way to the fourth bastion, non-military people are less and less common, and stretchers with the wounded are increasingly coming across. Actually, on the bastion, the artillery officer behaves calmly (he is used to both the whistle of bullets and the roar of explosions). He tells how during the assault on the 5th, only one active gun and very few servants remained on his battery, but still the next morning he was already firing from all the guns again.

The officer recalls how the bomb hit the sailor's dugout and killed eleven people. In the faces, posture, movements of the defenders of the bastion, “the main features that make up the strength of the Russian are visible - simplicity and stubbornness; but here on every face it seems to you that the danger, malice and suffering of war, in addition to these main signs, have also laid traces of consciousness of one’s dignity and lofty thoughts and feelings ... A feeling of anger, revenge on the enemy ... is hidden in the soul of everyone. When the cannonball flies directly at a person, he does not leave a feeling of pleasure and at the same time fear, and then he himself waits for the bomb to explode closer, because "there is a special charm" in such a game with death. “The main, gratifying conviction that you made is the conviction that it is impossible to take Sevastopol, and not only to take Sevastopol, but to shake the strength of the Russian people anywhere ... Because of the cross, because of the name, because of the threat people can accept these terrible conditions: there must be another high motivating reason - this reason is a feeling that rarely manifests itself, shy in Russian, but lies in the depths of everyone's soul - love for the motherland ... This epic of Sevastopol will leave great traces in Russia for a long time, whose hero was the Russian people ... "

Sevastopol in May

Six months have passed since the start of hostilities in Sevastopol. “Thousands of human vanities managed to be offended, thousands managed to be satisfied, puffed up, thousands - to calm down in the arms of death” The most fair is the solution of the conflict in an original way; if two soldiers fought (one from each army), and victory would remain with the side whose soldier emerges victorious. Such a decision is logical, because it is better to fight one on one than a hundred and thirty thousand against a hundred and thirty thousand. In general, war is illogical, from the point of view of Tolstoy: “one of two things: either war is madness, or if people do this madness, then they are not rational creatures at all, as we somehow usually think”

In the besieged Sevastopol, the military walk along the boulevards. Among them is an infantry officer (headquarters captain) Mikhailov, a tall, long-legged, stooped and awkward man. He recently received a letter from a friend, a retired lancer, in which he writes how his wife Natasha (Mikhailov's close friend) enthusiastically follows through the newspapers the movements of his regiment and the exploits of Mikhailov himself. Mikhailov bitterly recalls his former circle, which was "so much higher than the current one that when, in moments of frankness, he happened to tell his infantry comrades how he had his own droshky, how he danced at the governor's balls and played cards with a civilian general" , they listened to him indifferently, incredulously, as if not wanting only to contradict and prove the contrary

Mikhailov dreams of a promotion. He meets Captain Obzhogov and Ensign Suslikov on the boulevard, employees of his regiment, and they shake hands with him, but he wants to deal not with them, but with "aristocrats" - for this he walks along the boulevard. “And since there are many people in the besieged city of Sevastopol, therefore, there is a lot of vanity, that is, aristocrats, despite the fact that death hangs every minute over the head of every aristocrat and non-aristocrat ... Vanity! It must be a characteristic feature and a special disease of our age ... Why in our age there are only three kinds of people: some - accepting the beginning of vanity as a fact that necessarily exists, therefore just, and freely obeying it; others - accepting it as an unfortunate but insurmountable condition, and still others - unconsciously, slavishly acting under its influence ... "

Mikhailov twice hesitantly passes by a circle of "aristocrats" and, finally, dares to come up and say hello (before he was afraid to approach them because they might not at all honor him with an answer to the greeting and thereby prick his sick pride). "Aristocrats" are Adjutant Kalugin, Prince Galtsin, Lieutenant Colonel Neferdov and Captain Praskukhin. In relation to the approached Mikhailov, they behave rather arrogantly; for example, Galtsin takes him by the arm and walks a little back and forth only because he knows that this sign of attention should please the staff captain. But soon the "aristocrats" begin to defiantly talk only to each other, thereby making it clear to Mikhailov that they no longer need his company.

Returning home, Mikhailov recalls that he volunteered to go the next morning instead of a sick officer to the bastion. He feels that he will be killed, and if he is not killed, then surely he will be rewarded. Mikhailov consoles himself that he acted honestly, that it is his duty to go to the bastion. On the way, he wonders where he might be wounded - in the leg, in the stomach or in the head.

Meanwhile, the "aristocrats" are drinking tea at Kalugin's in a beautifully furnished apartment, playing the piano, remembering their St. Petersburg acquaintances. At the same time, they behave not at all so unnaturally, importantly and pompously, as they did on the boulevard, demonstrating their “aristocratism” to those around them. An infantry officer enters with an important assignment to the general, but the "aristocrats" immediately assume their former "puffed up" look and pretend that they do not notice the newcomer at all. Only after escorting the courier to the general, Kalugin is imbued with the responsibility of the moment, announces to his comrades that a “hot” business is ahead.

Galtsin asks if he should go on a sortie, knowing that he will not go anywhere, because he is afraid, and Kalugin begins to dissuade Galtsin, also knowing that he will not go anywhere. Galtsin goes out into the street and begins to walk aimlessly back and forth, not forgetting to ask the wounded passing by how the battle is going, and scolding them for retreating. Kalugin, having gone to the bastion, does not forget to demonstrate his courage to everyone along the way: he does not bend down when the bullets whistle, he takes a dashing pose on horseback. He is unpleasantly struck by the "cowardice" of the battery commander, whose bravery is legendary.

Not wanting to take unnecessary risks, the battery commander, who spent half a year on the bastion, in response to Kalugin's demand to inspect the bastion, sends Kalugin to the guns along with a young officer. The general gives the order to Praskukhin to notify Mikhailov's battalion of the redeployment. He successfully delivers the order. In the dark, under enemy fire, the battalion begins to move. At the same time, Mikhailov and Praskukhin, walking side by side, think only about the impression they make on each other. They meet Kalugin, who, not wanting to "expose himself" once again, learns about the situation on the bastion from Mikhailov and turns back. A bomb explodes next to them, Praskukhin dies, and Mikhailov is wounded in the head. He refuses to go to the dressing station, because it is his duty to be with the company, and besides, he has a reward for the wound. He also believes that his duty is to pick up the wounded Praskukhin or make sure that he is dead. Mikhailov crawls back under fire, is convinced of the death of Praskukhin and returns with a clear conscience.

“Hundreds of fresh, bloodied bodies of people, two hours ago full of various high and small hopes and desires, with stiff limbs, lay on a dewy flowering valley that separates the bastion from the trench, and on the flat floor of the chapel of the Dead in Sevastopol; hundreds of people - with curses and prayers on parched lips - crawled, tossed and groaned, some among the corpses on a flowering valley, others on stretchers, on cots and on the bloody floor of the dressing station; and all the same, as in the old days, the lightning lit up over Sapun Mountain, the twinkling stars turned pale, a white fog pulled from the noisy dark sea, a scarlet dawn lit up in the east, crimson long clouds fled across the light azure horizon, and everything is the same , as in former days, promising joy, love and happiness to the whole revived world, a mighty, beautiful luminary emerged.

The next day, "aristocrats" and other military men stroll along the boulevard and vied with each other to talk about yesterday's "case", but in such a way that they basically state "the participation that he took and the courage that the narrator showed in the case." “Each of them is a little Napoleon, a little monster, and now he is ready to start a battle, to kill a hundred people just to get an extra star or a third of his salary.”

A truce has been declared between the Russians and the French, ordinary soldiers freely communicate with each other and, it seems, do not feel any enmity towards the enemy. The young cavalry officer is simply delighted to be able to chat in French, thinking he is incredibly smart. He discusses with the French what an inhuman deed they started together, referring to the war. At this time, the boy walks around the battlefield, collects blue wildflowers and looks at the corpses in surprise. White flags are displayed everywhere.

“Thousands of people crowd, look, talk and smile at each other. And these people, Christians, professing one great law of love and selflessness, looking at what they have done, will not suddenly fall with repentance on their knees before the one who, having given them life, put into the soul of everyone, along with the fear of death, love for good and beautiful, and with tears of joy and happiness will not embrace like brothers? Not! White rags are hidden - and again the instruments of death and suffering whistle, pure innocent blood is shed again and groans and curses are heard ... Where is the expression of evil, which should be avoided? Where is the expression of the good that should be imitated in this story? Who is the villain, who is her hero? Everyone is good and everyone is bad ... The hero of my story, whom I love with all the strength of my soul, whom I tried to reproduce in all its beauty and who has always been, is and will be beautiful, is true "

Sevastopol in August 1855

Lieutenant Mikhail Kozeltsov, a respected officer, independent in his judgments and in his actions, not stupid, in many ways talented, a skilled drafter of state papers and a capable storyteller, is returning to his position from the hospital. “He had one of those self-esteem, which merged with life to such an extent and which most often develops in some male, and especially military circles, that he did not understand any other choice, how to excel or be destroyed, and that self-esteem was the engine even of his internal motives."

A lot of people passing by have accumulated at the station: there are no horses. Some officers heading to Sevastopol do not even have lifting money, and they do not know how to continue their journey. Among those waiting is Kozeltsov's brother, Volodya. Contrary to family plans, Volodya, for minor misconduct, did not join the guard, but was sent (at his own request) to the active army. He, like any young officer, really wants to "fight for the Fatherland", and at the same time serve in the same place as his elder brother.

Volodya is a handsome young man, he is both shy in front of his brother and proud of him. The elder Kozeltsov invites his brother to immediately go with him to Sevastopol. Volodya seems to be embarrassed; he no longer really wants to go to war, and, besides, he, sitting at the station, managed to lose eight rubles. Kozeltsov pays his brother's debt with the last money, and they set off. On the way, Volodya dreams of the heroic deeds that he will certainly accomplish in the war together with his brother, of his beautiful death and dying reproaches to everyone else for not being able to appreciate “those who truly loved the Fatherland” during their lifetime, etc.

Upon arrival, the brothers go to the booth of a convoy officer, who counts a lot of money for the new regimental commander, who is acquiring a "farm". No one understands what made Volodya leave his quiet place in the far rear and come to warring Sevastopol without any profit. The battery, to which Volodya is seconded, stands on Korabelnaya, and both brothers go to spend the night with Mikhail on the fifth bastion. Before that, they visit Comrade Kozeltsov in the hospital. He is so bad that he does not immediately recognize Michael, he is waiting for an early death as a deliverance from suffering.

Leaving the hospital, the brothers decide to disperse, and, accompanied by the batman Mikhail Volodya, goes to his battery. The battery commander offers Volodya to spend the night in the staff captain's bed, which is located on the bastion itself. However, Junker Vlang is already sleeping on the bunk; he has to give way to the ensign (Voloda) who has arrived. At first Volodya cannot sleep; he is now frightened by the darkness, then by a premonition of imminent death. He fervently prays for deliverance from fear, calms down and falls asleep to the sound of falling shells.

Meanwhile, Kozeltsov Sr. arrives at the disposal of the new regimental commander - his recent comrade, now separated from him by a wall of subordination. The commander is unhappy that Kozeltsov is returning to duty prematurely, but instructs him to take command of his former company. In the company, Kozeltsov is greeted joyfully; it is noticeable that he enjoys great respect among the soldiers. Among the officers, he also expects a warm welcome and a sympathetic attitude towards the wound.

The next day, the bombardment continues with renewed vigor. Volodya begins to enter the circle of artillery officers; one can see their mutual sympathy for each other. Volodya is especially liked by the junker Vlang, who in every possible way foresees any desires of the new ensign. The good Captain Kraut, a German, who speaks Russian very correctly and too beautifully, returns from the positions. There is talk of abuse and legalized theft in senior positions. Volodya, blushing, assures the audience that such an "ignoble" deed will never happen to him.

Everyone is interested at lunch at the battery commander's, the conversations do not stop despite the fact that the menu is very modest. An envelope arrives from the chief of artillery; an officer with servants is required for a mortar battery on Malakhov Kurgan. This is a dangerous place; no one volunteers to go. One of the officers points to Volodya and, after a short discussion, he agrees to go "shoot" Together with Volodya, Vlang is sent. Volodya takes up the study of the "Guide" on artillery firing. However, upon arrival at the battery, all “rear” knowledge turns out to be unnecessary: ​​firing is carried out randomly, not a single shot even resembles those mentioned in the “Manual” by weight, there are no workers to repair broken guns. In addition, two soldiers of his team are wounded, and Volodya himself repeatedly finds himself on the verge of death.

Vlang is very scared; he is no longer able to hide it and thinks solely about saving his own life at any cost. Volodya is "a little creepy and fun." Volodya's soldiers are holed up in Volodya's dugout. He communicates with interest with Melnikov, who is not afraid of bombs, being sure that he will die a different death. Having got used to the new commander, the soldiers under Volodya begin to discuss how the allies under the command of Prince Konstantin will come to their aid, how both warring parties will be given a rest for two weeks, and then they will take a fine for each shot, how in the war a month of service will be considered as year, etc.

Despite Vlang's entreaties, Volodya comes out of the dugout into the fresh air and sits on the doorstep with Melnikov until morning, while bombs fall around him and bullets whistle. But in the morning the battery and guns were put in order, and Volodya completely forgot about the danger; he only rejoices that he performs his duties well, that he does not show cowardice, but, on the contrary, is considered brave.

The French assault begins. Half-asleep, Kozeltsov jumps out to the company, awake, most of all concerned that he should not be considered a coward. He grabs his little saber and runs ahead of everyone at the enemy, shouting to inspire the soldiers. He is wounded in the chest. Waking up, Kozeltsov sees the doctor examining his wound, wiping his fingers on his coat and sending a priest to him. Kozeltsov asks if the French have been driven out; the priest, not wanting to upset the dying man, says that the Russians have won. Kozeltsov is happy; “He thought with an extremely gratifying feeling of self-satisfaction that he had done his duty well, that for the first time in his entire service he had acted as well as he could, and he could not reproach himself for anything.” He dies with the last thought of his brother, and Kozeltsov wishes him the same happiness.

The news of the assault finds Volodya in the dugout. "It was not so much the sight of the calmness of the soldiers as the miserable, undisguised cowardice of the junker that aroused him." Not wanting to be like Vlang, Volodya commands lightly, even cheerfully, but soon hears that the French are bypassing them. He sees enemy soldiers very close, it strikes him so much that he freezes in place and misses the moment when he can still be saved. Melnikov dies next to him from a bullet wound. Vlang tries to shoot back, calls Volodya to run after him, but, jumping into the trench, he sees that Volodya is already dead, and in the place where he just stood, the French are and shoot at the Russians. The French banner flutters over the Malakhov Kurgan.

Vlang with a battery on a steamboat arrives in a safer part of the city. He bitterly mourns the fallen Volodya; to which he was truly attached. The retreating soldiers, talking among themselves, notice that the French will not be staying in the city for long. “It was a feeling, as if similar to remorse, shame and anger. Almost every soldier, looking from the North side at the abandoned Sevastopol, sighed with inexpressible bitterness in his heart and threatened the enemies.

Sevastopol in December

The morning dawn is just beginning to color the sky over Sapun Mountain; the dark blue surface of the sea has already thrown off the twilight of the night and is waiting for the first ray to sparkle with a cheerful brilliance; from the bay it carries cold and fog; there is no snow - everything is black, but the morning sharp frost grabs your face and cracks under your feet, and the distant unceasing rumble of the sea, occasionally interrupted by rolling shots in Sevastopol, alone breaks the silence of the morning. On the ships, the 8th bottle beats dully.

In the North, daytime activity is gradually beginning to replace the calm of the night: where the change of sentries took place, rattling their guns; where the doctor is already in a hurry to the hospital; where the soldier climbed out of the dugout, washes his tanned face with icy water, and, turning to the blushing east, quickly crossing himself, prays to God; where the high is heavy majara she dragged herself on camels with a creak to the cemetery to bury the bloody dead, with which it was almost covered to the top ... You approach the pier - a special smell of coal, manure, dampness and beef strikes you; thousands of various objects - firewood, meat, tours, flour, iron, etc. - lie in a heap near the pier; soldiers of different regiments, with sacks and guns, without sacks and without guns, are crowding around here, smoking, cursing, dragging weights onto the steamer, which, smoking, is standing near the platform; free skiffs filled with all kinds of people - soldiers, sailors, merchants, women - moor and set sail from the pier.

To Grafskaya, your honor? Please, - two or three retired sailors offer you their services, getting up from the skiffs.

You choose the one that is closer to you, step over the half-rotten corpse of some bay horse, which lies in the mud near the boat, and go to the steering wheel. You set sail from the shore. All around you is the sea, already shining in the morning sun, in front of you - an old sailor in a camel coat and a young white-headed boy, who silently and diligently work with oars. You look at the striped bulks of ships scattered close and far across the bay, and at the small black dots of boats moving along the brilliant azure, and at the beautiful light buildings of the city, painted with pink rays of the morning sun, visible on the other side, and at the foaming white line booms and sunken ships, from which the black ends of the masts stick out sadly here and there, and to the distant enemy fleet, looming on the crystal horizon of the sea, and to the foaming jets in which salt bubbles jump, raised by oars; you listen to the steady sounds of the strokes of the oars, the sounds of voices reaching you through the water, and the majestic sounds of the shooting, which, as it seems to you, is intensifying in Sevastopol.

It is impossible that at the thought that you are in Sevastopol, a feeling of some kind of courage, pride does not penetrate into your soul, and that the blood does not begin to circulate faster in your veins ...

Your honor! right under Kistentina [Ship "Konstantin".] hold, - the old sailor will tell you, turning back to believe the direction that you give the boat, - to the right of the rudder.

And there are still guns on it, - the white-haired guy will notice, passing by the ship and looking at it.

And then how: it’s new, Kornilov lived on it, - the old man will notice, also looking at the ship.

You see where it broke! - the boy will say, after a long silence, looking at the white cloud of divergent smoke, which suddenly appeared high, high above the South Bay and was accompanied by a sharp sound of a bomb explosion.

This he now it’s firing from a new battery,” the old man will add, indifferently spitting on his hand. - Well, come on, Mishka, we'll overtake the longboat. - And your skiff moves faster along the wide swell of the bay, really overtakes a heavy launch, on which some coolies are piled up, and clumsy soldiers row unevenly, and sticks between a multitude of moored boats of all kinds at the Count's Quay.

Crowds of gray soldiers, black sailors and motley women are moving noisily on the embankment. Women are selling rolls, Russian men with samovars are shouting sbiten hot, and right there on the first steps, rusted cannonballs, bombs, buckshot and cast-iron guns of various calibers are lying around. A little further on is a large square, on which some huge beams, cannon-mounts, sleeping soldiers are lying; there are horses, wagons, green tools and boxes, infantry goats; soldiers, sailors, officers, women, children, merchants are moving; carts with hay, with sacks and barrels go; in some places a Cossack and an officer on horseback, a general in a droshky, will pass. To the right, the street is blocked off by a barricade, on which some small cannons stand in embrasures, and a sailor is sitting near them, smoking a pipe. To the left is a beautiful house with Roman numerals on the pediment, under which there are soldiers and bloody stretchers - everywhere you see unpleasant traces of a military camp. Your first impression is certainly the most unpleasant: a strange mixture of camp and city life, a beautiful city and a dirty bivouac, not only is not beautiful, but seems like a disgusting mess; it even seems to you that everyone is frightened, fussing, not knowing what to do. But look closer at the faces of these people moving around you, and you will understand something completely different. Just look at this furshtat soldier who leads some bay troika to drink and purrs something under his breath so calmly that, obviously, he will not get lost in this heterogeneous crowd, which for him does not exist, but that he is doing his the business, whatever it may be - watering the horses or carrying tools - is just as calm and self-confident, and indifferent, no matter how it all happens somewhere in Tula or Saransk. You read the same expression on the face of this officer, who, in immaculate white gloves, passes by, and on the face of a sailor who smokes, sitting on the barricade, and on the face of working soldiers, with a stretcher, waiting on the porch of the former Assembly, and on the face of this girl , who, afraid to get her pink dress wet, jumps over the pebbles across the street.

Yes! you will certainly be disappointed if you enter Sevastopol for the first time. In vain will you look for traces of fussiness, confusion or even enthusiasm, readiness for death, determination on even one face; - there is none of this: you see everyday people calmly busy with everyday business, so maybe you will reproach yourself with excessive enthusiasm, doubt a little about the validity of the concept of the heroism of the defenders of Sevastopol, which was formed in you from stories, descriptions and appearance, and sounds from the north side. But before doubting, go to the bastions, look at the defenders of Sevastopol at the very place of defense, or, better, go directly opposite to this house, which was formerly the Sevastopol Assembly and at the porch of which there are soldiers with a stretcher - you will see the defenders of Sevastopol there, you will see there terrible and sad, great and funny, but amazing, uplifting spectacles.

You enter a large assembly hall. As soon as you open the door, the sight and smell of 40 or 50 amputees and the most seriously wounded patients, some in beds, mostly on the floor, suddenly strikes you. Do not believe the feeling that keeps you on the threshold of the hall - this is a bad feeling - go ahead, do not be ashamed that you seem to have come watch sufferers, do not be ashamed to approach and talk to them: the unfortunate love to see a human sympathetic face, they love to talk about their suffering and hear words of love and compassion. You walk through the middle of the beds and look for a face less severe and suffering, to whom you dare to approach to talk.

Where are you injured? - you ask hesitantly and timidly of one old, emaciated soldier, who, sitting on a bunk, is following you with a good-natured look and as if inviting you to come up to him. I say: “You ask timidly,” because suffering, in addition to deep sympathy, for some reason inspires fear of offending and high respect for the one who endured it.

In the foot, - the soldier answers; - but at this very time you yourself notice from the folds of the blanket that he does not have a leg above the knee. - Thank God now, - he adds: - I want to be discharged.

How long have you been injured?

Yes, the sixth week has gone, your honor!

What hurts you now?

No, now it doesn't hurt, nothing; only as if it aches in the calf when the weather is, otherwise nothing.

How were you injured?

On the 5th bucksion, your honor, how the first gang was: pointed the gun, began to retreat, in a sort of manner, to another embrasure, as he hit me on the leg, exactly as if he stumbled into a hole. Look, no legs.

Didn't it hurt that first minute?

Nothing; only as hot as being kicked in the leg.

Well, and then?

And then nothing; only as they began to stretch the skin, it seemed to hurt so much. It is the first thing, your honor, don't think too much whatever you think, it's nothing to you. More and more because of what a person thinks.

At this time, a woman in a gray striped dress, tied with a black scarf, approaches you; she intervenes in your conversation with the sailor and begins to tell about him, about his sufferings, about the desperate situation in which he was for four weeks, about how, being wounded, he stopped the stretcher in order to look at the salvo of our battery, like great the princes spoke to him and granted him 25 rubles, and how he told them that he again wanted to go to the bastion in order to teach the young, if he himself could no longer work. Saying all this in one breath, this woman looks first at you, then at the sailor, who, turning away and as if not listening to her, pinches lint on his pillow, and her eyes shine with some special delight.

This is my mistress, your honor! - the sailor notices you with such an expression as if he is apologizing for her to you, as if saying: “You must forgive her. It is known that the woman's business - he says stupid words.

You begin to understand the defenders of Sevastopol; for some reason you feel ashamed of yourself in front of this person. You would like to tell him too much to express your sympathy and surprise to him; but you find no words or are dissatisfied with those that come to your mind - and you silently bow before this silent, unconscious greatness and firmness of spirit, this shame before your own dignity.

Well, God forbid you get well soon, - you tell him and stop in front of another patient who lies on the floor and, as it seems, awaits death in unbearable suffering.

This is a blond man with a plump and pale face. He lies on his back, throwing back left hand, in a position expressing severe suffering. Dry open mouth with difficulty lets out wheezing breath; blue pewter eyes are rolled up, and from under the tangled blanket stick out the remnant of the right hand, wrapped in bandages. The heavy smell of a dead body strikes you more strongly, and the devouring inner heat, penetrating all the limbs of the sufferer, seems to penetrate you too.

What, he has no memory? - you ask the woman who follows you and looks at you affectionately, as if at home.

No, he still hears, but it’s very bad, ”she adds in a whisper. - I gave him tea today - well, even though he’s a stranger, you still have to have pity - he almost didn’t drink.

How do you feel? you ask him.

Ghoring at the heart.

A little further on you see an old soldier who is changing clothes. His face and body are somehow brown and thin, like a skeleton. He does not have an arm at all: it is hollowed out at the shoulder. He sits cheerfully, he recovered; but from the dead, dull look, from the terrible thinness and wrinkles of the face, you see that this is a creature that has already suffered the best part of its life.

On the other side, you will see on the bed the suffering, pale, pale and tender face of a woman, on which a feverish blush plays all over her cheek.

It was our sailor on the 5th that was hit in the leg by a bomb, - your guide will tell you: - she wore her husband to the bastion to dine.

Well, cut off?

Cut off above the knee.

Now, if your nerves are strong, go through the door to the left: in that room they make dressings and operations. You will see doctors there, with bloodied hands to the elbows and pale, sullen physiognomies, busy near the bed, on which, with open eyes and speaking, as if in delirium, meaningless, sometimes simple and touching words, lies a wounded man, under the influence of chloroform. Doctors are busy with the disgusting but beneficial business of amputations. You will see how a sharp curved knife enters a white healthy body; you will see how, with a terrible, tearing cry and curses, the wounded man suddenly comes to his senses; you will see how the paramedic throws a severed hand into the corner; you will see how another wounded man lies on a stretcher in the same room and, looking at the operation of a comrade, writhes and groans not so much from physical pain as from the moral suffering of waiting - you will see terrible, soul-shaking spectacles; you will see the war not in the correct, beautiful and brilliant formation, with music and drumming, with waving banners and prancing generals, but you will see the war in its true expression - in blood, in suffering, in death ...

Leaving this house of suffering, you will certainly experience a gratifying feeling, breathe fresh air into yourself more fully, feel pleasure in the consciousness of your health, but at the same time, in the contemplation of these sufferings, you will draw the consciousness of your insignificance and calmly, without indecision, go to the bastions .. .

"What is the death and suffering of such an insignificant worm as I, in comparison with so much death and so much suffering?" But the sight of a clear sky, a brilliant sun, a beautiful city, an open church, and military people moving in different directions will soon bring your spirit into a normal state of frivolity, small worries and passion for the present alone.

You will come across, perhaps from the church, the funeral of some officer, with a pink coffin and music and fluttering banners; perhaps the sounds of shooting from the bastions will reach your ears, but this will not lead you to your former thoughts; the funeral will seem to you a very beautiful militant spectacle, the sounds - very beautiful militant sounds, and you will not connect either with this spectacle or with these sounds a clear thought, transferred to yourself, about suffering and death, as you did at the dressing station.

Having passed the church and the barricade, you will enter the most lively part of the city with inner life. On both sides there are signs of shops, taverns; merchants, women in hats and headscarves, dapper officers - everything tells you about the firmness of spirit, self-confidence, and the safety of the inhabitants.

Go to the tavern to the right if you want to listen to the talk of sailors and officers: there surely are stories about this night, about Fenka, about the case of the 24th, about how expensive and bad cutlets are served, and about how he was killed - that same comrade.

Damn it, how bad we are today! - says a white-haired, beardless naval officer in a green knitted scarf in a bass voice.

Where are we? another asks him.

On the 4th bastion, - the young officer answers, and you will certainly look at the blond officer with more attention and even some respect at the words: "on the 4th bastion." His excessive swagger, his waving of his arms, his loud laugh, and his voice, which seemed to you impudent, will seem to you that special bratty mood of spirit that some very young people acquire after danger; but still you think that he will tell you how bad it is from bombs and bullets on the 4th bastion: nothing happened! bad because it's dirty. “You can’t go to the battery,” he will say, pointing to boots covered with mud above the calves. “But today they killed my best gunner, slapped me right in the forehead,” another will say. Who is this? Mityukhin? - “No ... But what, will they give me veal? Here are the channels! - he will add to the tavern servant. - Not Mityukhin, but Abrosimov. Such a good fellow - he was in six sorties.

On the other corner of the table, behind plates of cutlets with peas and a bottle of sour Crimean wine called "Bordeaux", two infantry officers are sitting: one young, with a red collar and two stars on his overcoat, tells the other, old, with a black collar and no stars , about the Alma case. The first one had already drunk a little, and by the stops that occur in his story, by the indecisive look that expresses doubt that he is believed, and most importantly, that the role he played in all this is too great, and everything is too scary, noticeable, that it deviates greatly from the strict narration of truth. But you are not up to these stories, which you will listen to for a long time in all corners of Russia: you want to go to the bastions as soon as possible, namely to the 4th, about which you have been told so much and so differently. When someone says that he was in the 4th bastion, he says it with special pleasure and pride; when someone says: "I'm going to the 4th bastion," a little excitement or too much indifference is certainly noticeable in him; when they want to play a trick on someone, they say: “you should be put on the 4th bastion”; when they meet a stretcher and ask: "from where?" for the most part they answer: "from the 4th bastion." In general, there are two completely different opinions about this terrible bastion: those who have never been on it, and who are convinced that the 4th bastion is a sure grave for everyone who goes to it, and those who live on it, as a white-haired midshipman, and who, speaking of the 4th bastion, will tell you whether it is dry or dirty there, warm or cold in the dugout, etc.

In the half-hour you spent in the tavern, the weather had time to change: the fog spread over the sea gathered into gray, dull, damp clouds and covered the sun; some kind of sad frost pours from above and wets the roofs, sidewalks and soldiers' overcoats...

After passing another barricade, you exit the doors to the right and go up the big street. Behind this barricade, the houses on both sides of the street are uninhabited, there are no signboards, the doors are closed with boards, the windows are broken, where the corner of the wall is broken off, where the roof is broken. The buildings seem old, veterans who have experienced all the grief and need, and seem to look at you proudly and somewhat contemptuously. On the way, you stumble over the balls lying around and into the water holes dug in the stone ground with bombs. Along the street you meet and overtake teams of soldiers, scouts, officers; occasionally there is a woman or a child, but the woman is no longer in a hat, but a sailor in an old fur coat and soldiers' boots. Walking further along the street and descending under a small izvolok, you notice around you no longer houses, but some strange piles of ruins - stones, boards, clay, logs; ahead of you on a steep mountain you see some black, dirty space, pitted with ditches, and this is the 4th bastion ahead ... There are even fewer people here, women are not visible at all, the soldiers are moving quickly, there are drops along the way blood and you will certainly meet here four soldiers with a stretcher and on a stretcher a pale yellowish face and a bloody overcoat. If you ask: "Where is he wounded?" the porters angrily, without turning to you, will say: in the leg or in the arm, if he is wounded lightly; or they will remain sternly silent if the head is not visible because of the stretcher, and he has already died or is seriously wounded.

The near whistle of a cannonball or a bomb, at the same time as you begin to climb the mountain, will shock you unpleasantly. You will suddenly understand, in a completely different way than before, the meaning of those sounds of gunshots that you listened to in the city. Some quiet-pleasant memory will suddenly flash in your imagination; your own personality will begin to occupy you more than observations; you will become less attentive to everything around you, and some unpleasant feeling of indecision will suddenly take possession of you. Despite this petty voice, at the sight of danger, suddenly speaking inside you, you, especially looking at the soldier, who, waving his arms and slicking downhill, through liquid mud, at a trot, laughingly runs past you - you force this voice to be silent, involuntarily straighten your chest, raise your head higher and climb up the slippery clay mountain. You have just climbed a little up the mountain, rifle bullets begin to buzz to the right and left, and you may be wondering if you should go along the trench that runs parallel to the road; but this trench is filled with such liquid, yellow, smelly mud above the knee that you will certainly choose the road along the mountain, especially since you see, everyone is walking down the road. After passing two hundred paces, you enter a pitted, dirty space, surrounded on all sides by tours, embankments, cellars, platforms, dugouts, on which large cast-iron tools stand and cannonballs lie in regular heaps. All this seems to you heaped up without any purpose, connection and order. Where a bunch of sailors are sitting on the battery, where in the middle of the platform, half sunk in the mud, lies a broken cannon, where an infantry soldier, with a gun, goes over the batteries and with difficulty pulls his legs out of the sticky mud; everywhere, from all sides and in all places, you see shards, unexploded bombs, cannonballs, traces of the camp, and all this is flooded in liquid, viscous mud. It seems to you that you hear the impact of the cannonball not far from you, from all sides you seem to hear various sounds of bullets - buzzing like a bee, whistling, fast or squealing like a string - you hear the terrible rumble of a shot that shocks you all, and which you think something terribly scary.

“So this is it, the 4th bastion, this is it, this is a terrible, really terrible place!” you think to yourself, feeling a little pride and great feeling repressed fear. But be disappointed: this is not the 4th bastion yet. This is the Yazonovsky redoubt - a place, comparatively, very safe and not at all scary. To go to the 4th bastion, take to the right, along this narrow trench, along which, bending down, an infantry soldier wandered. Along this trench, you may again meet a stretcher, a sailor, a soldier with shovels, you will see mine handlers, dugouts in the mud, into which, bending over, only two people can climb, and there you will see the scouts of the Black Sea battalions, who change their shoes there, eat, they smoke pipes, live, and you will again see the same stinking mud everywhere, traces of the camp and abandoned cast iron in all sorts of forms. After walking another three hundred paces, you again go out to the battery - to a platform pitted with pits and furnished with rounds filled with earth, guns on platforms and earthen ramparts. Here you will see, perhaps, about five sailors playing cards under the parapet, and a naval officer who, noticing a new and curious person in you, will gladly show you his economy and everything that may be of interest to you. This officer so calmly rolls up a yellow paper cigarette while sitting on a gun, walks so calmly from one embrasure to another, talks to you so calmly, without the slightest affectation, that in spite of the bullets that are buzzing over you more often than before, you you yourself become cold-blooded and carefully question and listen to the stories of the officer. This officer will tell you - but only if you ask him - about the bombardment on the 5th, he will tell you how only one gun could operate on his battery, and out of all the servants 8 people remained, and how, nevertheless, the next morning on the 6th he fired[Sailors all say fire, not shoot.] from all guns; he will tell you how on the 5th a bomb hit the sailor's dugout and killed eleven people; will show you from the embrasure of the battery and the enemy trenches, which are no further here, as in 30-40 sazhens. I am afraid of one thing, that under the influence of the buzzing of bullets, leaning out of the embrasure to look at the enemy, you will not see anything, and if you see, you will be very surprised that this white rocky rampart, which is so close to you and on which white haze flares up, this -the white shaft is the enemy - he as soldiers and sailors say.

It may even very well be that a naval officer, out of vanity or just to please himself, wants to shoot a little in front of you. “Send the gunnery and servants to the cannon,” and fourteen sailors lively, cheerfully, some putting their pipes in their pockets, some chewing on crackers, tapping their shod boots on the platform, go up to the cannon and charge it. Look at the faces, postures and movements of these people: in every wrinkle of this tanned, bony face, in every muscle, in the width of these shoulders, in the thickness of these legs, shod in huge boots, in every movement, calm, firm, unhurried, these main features that make up the strength of the Russian are visible - simplicity and stubbornness.

Suddenly, a most terrible, terrifying, not only ear organs, but your whole being, a rumble strikes you so that you tremble with your whole body. Then you hear the receding whistle of a projectile, and thick powder smoke covers you, the platform and the black figures of the sailors moving along it. On the occasion of this shot of ours, you will hear various rumors of the sailors and see their animation and manifestation of a feeling that you did not expect to see, perhaps - this is a feeling of anger, revenge on the enemy, which is hidden in the soul of everyone. "In the very abrasion hit; it seems that they killed two ... they carried it out, ”you will hear joyful exclamations. “But he’ll get angry: he’ll let him in here now,” someone will say; and indeed, soon after this you will see lightning, smoke in front of you; the sentry standing on the parapet will shout: “poo-shka!” And after that, the cannonball will screech past you, slam into the ground and throw splashes of dirt and stones around itself like a funnel. The battery commander will get angry about this cannonball, order another and third guns to be loaded, the enemy will also begin to answer us, and you will experience interesting feelings, hear and see interesting things. The sentry will again shout: “cannon” - and you will hear the same sound and blow, the same spray, or shout: “Markela!”, [Mortar.] And you will hear a uniform, rather pleasant and one with which the thought of terrible, the whistle of a bomb, hear this whistle approaching you and accelerating, then you will see a black ball, hitting the ground, a palpable, ringing explosion of a bomb. With a whistle and a screech, fragments will then scatter, stones will rustle in the air, and splatter you with mud. With these sounds, you will experience a strange feeling of pleasure and fear at the same time. The minute a projectile, you know, flies at you, it will certainly occur to you that this projectile will kill you; but the feeling of pride sustains you, and no one notices the knife that cuts your heart. But on the other hand, when the projectile has passed without hitting you, you come to life, and some kind of gratifying, inexpressibly pleasant feeling, but only for a moment, takes possession of you, so that you find some special charm in danger, in this game of life and death. ; you want more and more and more near you, a cannonball or a bomb. But then another sentry shouted in his loud, thick voice: "markela", another whistling, a blow and a bomb explosion; but along with this sound you are struck by the groan of a man. You approach the wounded man, who, covered in blood and dirt, has some strange inhuman appearance, at the same time as the stretcher. The sailor's chest was torn out. In the first minutes, on his mud-spattered face one can see only fright and some kind of feigned premature expression of suffering, characteristic of a person in such a position; but at the time a stretcher is brought to him, and he himself lies on his healthy side on them, you notice that this expression is replaced by an expression of some kind of enthusiasm and a lofty, unexpressed thought: eyes burn, teeth clench, head rises with an effort higher, and while he is being lifted, he stops the stretcher and with difficulty, in a trembling voice, says to his comrades: “Forgive me, brothers! ”, still wants to say something, and it is clear that he wants to say something touching, but he only repeats once more: “forgive me, brothers!” At this time, a fellow sailor approaches him, puts on a cap on his head, which the wounded man offers him, and calmly, indifferently, waving his arms, returns to his gun. “That’s about seven or eight people every day,” the naval officer tells you, responding to the expression of horror expressed on your face, yawning and rolling up a cigarette from yellow paper ...

..........................................................................................................................................

So, you saw the defenders of Sevastopol at the very place of defense and you go back, for some reason not paying any attention to the cannonballs and bullets that continue to whistle all the way to the destroyed theater - you go with a calm, uplifted spirit. The main, gratifying conviction that you have made is the conviction that it is impossible to take Sevastopol and not only to take Sevastopol, but to shake the strength of the Russian people anywhere - and you did not see this impossibility in this multitude of traverses, parapets, cunningly woven trenches , mines and guns, one on the other, of which you did not understand anything, but saw it in the eyes, speeches, techniques, in what is called the spirit of the defenders of Sevastopol. What they do, they do so simply, with such little effort and strenuousness, that, you are convinced, they can still do a hundred times more ... they can do everything. You understand that the feeling that makes them work is not that feeling of pettiness, vanity, forgetfulness that you yourself experienced, but some other feeling, more powerful, which made them people who live just as calmly under the nuclei, while a hundred accidents of death instead of one, which all people are subject to, and living in these conditions amidst continuous work, vigil and dirt. Because of the cross, because of the name, because of the threat, people cannot accept these terrible conditions: there must be another, lofty motive. Only now are the stories about the first times of the siege of Sevastopol, when there were no fortifications, no troops, no physical ability to hold him, and yet there was not the slightest doubt that he would not surrender to the enemy - about the times when this hero worthy ancient greece, - Kornilov, circling the troops, said: “We will die, guys, and we will not give up Sevastopol,” and our Russians, incapable of phrase-mongering, answered: “We will die! Hooray!" - only now the stories about these times have ceased to be a wonderful historical tradition for you, but have become authenticity, a fact. You will clearly understand, imagine those people whom you just saw, those heroes who in those difficult times did not fall, but rose in spirit and prepared with pleasure for death, not for the city, but for their homeland. For a long time this epic of Sevastopol, of which the Russian people were the hero, will leave great traces in Russia .....

It's evening already. The sun just before sunset came out from behind the gray clouds covering the sky, and suddenly with a crimson light illuminated the purple clouds, the greenish sea, covered with ships and boats, swaying with an even wide swell, and the white buildings of the city, and the people moving along the streets. The water carries the sounds of some old waltz, which is played by regimental music on the boulevard, and the sounds of shots from the bastions, which strangely echo them.

Sevastopol.

SEVASTOPOL STORIES

Lev Nikolaevich TOLSTOY
In 1851-53 Tolstoy took part in military operations in the Caucasus (first as a volunteer, then as an artillery officer), and in 1854 he was sent to the Danube army. Shortly after the start of the Crimean War, he was transferred to Sevastopol at his personal request (in the besieged city, he fights on the famous 4th bastion). Army life and episodes of the war gave Tolstoy material for the stories "The Raid" (1853), "Cutting the Forest" (1853-55), as well as for the artistic essays "Sevastopol in the month of December", "Sevastopol in May", "Sevastopol in August 1855 year" (all published in Sovremennik in 1855-56). These essays, traditionally called "Sevastopol Stories", boldly combined a document, a report and a plot narrative; they made a huge impression on Russian society. The war appeared in them as an ugly bloody massacre, contrary to human nature. The final words of one of the essays, that his only hero is the truth, became the motto of all further literary activity of the writer. Trying to determine the originality of this truth, N. G. Chernyshevsky shrewdly pointed out two specific traits Tolstoy's talent - "dialectics of the soul" as a special form of psychological analysis and "immediate purity of moral feeling" (Poln. sobr. soch., vol. 3, 1947, pp. 423, 428).
SEVASTOPOL IN DECEMBER
The morning dawn is just beginning to color the sky over Sapun Mountain; the dark blue surface of the sea has already thrown off the dusk of the night and is waiting for the first ray to sparkle with a cheerful brilliance; from the bay it carries cold and fog; there is no snow - everything is black, but the morning sharp frost grabs your face and cracks under your feet, and the distant unceasing rumble of the sea, occasionally interrupted by rolling shots in Sevastopol, alone breaks the silence of the morning. On the ships, the eighth bottle beats dully.
In the North, daytime activity is gradually beginning to replace the calm of the night: where the change of sentries took place, rattling their guns; where the doctor is already in a hurry to the hospital; where the soldier crawled out of the dugout, washes his tanned face with icy water and, turning to the blushing east, quickly crossing himself, prays to God; where a tall, heavy majara on camels dragged creakingly into the cemetery to bury the bloody dead, with which it was almost covered to the top ... You approach the pier - a special smell of coal, manure, dampness and beef strikes you; thousands of various objects - firewood, meat, tours, flour, iron, etc. - lie in a heap near the pier; soldiers of different regiments, with sacks and guns, without sacks and without guns, are crowding around here, smoking, cursing, dragging weights onto the steamer, which, smoking, is standing near the platform; free skiffs filled with all kinds of people - soldiers, sailors, merchants, women - moor and set sail from the pier.
- To Grafskaya, your honor? Please, - two or three retired sailors offer you their services, getting up from the skiffs.
You choose the one that is closer to you, step over the half-rotten corpse of some bay horse, which lies in the mud near the boat, and go to the steering wheel. You set sail from the shore. All around you is the sea, already shining in the morning sun, in front of you is an old sailor in a camel coat and a young white-headed boy, who silently and diligently work with oars. You look at the striped bulks of ships scattered close and far across the bay, and at the small black dots of boats moving along the brilliant azure, and at the beautiful light buildings of the city, painted with pink rays of the morning sun, visible on the other side, and at the foaming white line booms and sunken ships, from which the black ends of the masts stick out sadly here and there, and to the distant enemy fleet, looming on the crystal horizon of the sea, and to the foaming jets in which salt bubbles jump, raised by oars; you listen to the steady sounds of the strokes of the oars, the sounds of voices reaching you through the water, and the majestic sounds of the shooting, which, it seems to you, is intensifying in Sevastopol.
It is impossible that at the thought that you, too, are in Sevastopol, feelings of some kind of courage and pride do not penetrate into your soul, and that the blood does not begin to circulate faster in your veins ...
- Your honor! keep right under Kistentin, - the old sailor will tell you, turning back to check the direction that you give the boat - to the right of the rudder.
“But it still has all the guns on it,” the white-haired guy will notice, passing by the ship and looking at it.
“But how is it: it’s new, Kornilov lived on it,” the old man remarks, also looking at the ship.
- You see, where it broke! - the boy will say after a long silence, looking at the white cloud of divergent smoke that suddenly appeared high above the South Bay and was accompanied by the sharp sound of a bomb exploding.
“He’s firing from a new battery today,” the old man will add, indifferently spitting on his hand. - Well, come on, Mishka, we'll overtake the longboat. - And your skiff moves faster along the wide swell of the bay, really overtakes a heavy launch, on which some coolies are piled up and clumsy soldiers row unevenly, and sticks between a multitude of moored boats of all kinds at the Count's Quay.
Crowds of gray soldiers, black sailors and motley women are moving noisily on the embankment. The women are selling rolls, Russian men with samovars are shouting hot sbiten, and right there on the first steps rusty cannonballs, bombs, buckshot and cast-iron cannons of various calibers are lying around. A little further on is a large square, on which some huge beams, cannon-mounts, sleeping soldiers are lying; there are horses, wagons, green guns and boxes, infantry packs; soldiers, sailors, officers, women, children, merchants are moving; carts with hay, with sacks and barrels go; in some places a Cossack and an officer on horseback, a general in a droshky, will pass. To the right, the street is blocked off by a barricade, on which some small cannons stand in embrasures, and a sailor is sitting near them, smoking a pipe. To the left is a beautiful house with Roman numerals on the pediment, under which there are soldiers and bloody stretchers - everywhere you see unpleasant traces of a military camp. Your first impression is certainly the most unpleasant: a strange mixture of camp and city life, a beautiful city and a dirty bivouac, not only is not beautiful, but seems like a disgusting mess; it even seems to you that everyone is frightened, fussing, not knowing what to do. But look closer at the faces of these people moving around you, and you will understand something completely different. Just look at this furshtat soldier who leads some bay troika to drink and hums something under his breath so calmly that, obviously, he will not get lost in this heterogeneous crowd, which for him does not exist, but that he is doing his own thing. the business, whatever it may be - to water the horses or to carry tools - is just as calm, and self-confident, and indifferent, as if all this were happening somewhere in Tula or Saransk. You read the same expression on the face of this officer, who, in immaculate white gloves, passes by, and on the face of a sailor who smokes, sitting on the barricade, and on the face of working soldiers, with a stretcher, waiting on the porch of the former Assembly, and on the face of this girl , who, afraid to get her pink dress wet, jumps over the pebbles across the street.
Yes! you will certainly be disappointed if you enter Sevastopol for the first time. In vain will you look for traces of fussiness, confusion or even enthusiasm, readiness for death, determination on even one face - there is none of this: you see everyday people calmly engaged in everyday business, so maybe you will reproach yourself for excessive enthusiasm, doubt a little about the validity of the concept of the heroism of the defenders of Sevastopol, which was formed in you from stories, descriptions, and the sight and sounds from the North side. But before you doubt, go to the bastions, look at the defenders of Sevastopol at the very place of defense, or, better, go directly opposite to this house, which was formerly the Sevastopol Assembly and on the porch of which there are soldiers with stretchers - you will see the defenders of Sevastopol there, you will see terrible and sad, great and funny, but amazing, uplifting spectacles.
You enter a large assembly hall. As soon as you open the door, the sight and smell of forty or fifty amputees and the most seriously wounded patients, some in beds, mostly on the floor, suddenly strikes you. Do not believe the feeling that keeps you on the threshold of the hall - this is a bad feeling - go ahead, do not be ashamed that you seem to have come to look at the sufferers, do not be ashamed to approach and talk to them: the unfortunate love to see a human sympathetic face, they love to tell about their suffering and hear words of love and participation. You pass in the middle of the beds and look for a face less severe and suffering, to whom you dare to approach in order to have a conversation.
- Where are you injured? - you ask hesitantly and timidly of one old, emaciated soldier, who, sitting on a bunk, follows you with a good-natured look and, as if inviting you to come up to him. I say: “You ask timidly,” because suffering, in addition to deep sympathy, for some reason inspires fear of offending and high respect for those who endure it.
“In the foot,” the soldier replies; but at this very time you yourself notice from the folds of the blanket that he has no legs above the knee. “Thank God now,” he adds, “I want to be discharged.
- How long have you been injured?
- Yes, the sixth week has gone, your honor!
- What, does it hurt you now?
- No, now it doesn’t hurt, nothing; only as if it aches in the calf when the weather is bad, otherwise nothing.
- How did you get hurt?
- On the fifth bucksion, your honor, as the first bandage was: pointed the gun, began to retreat, in a sort of manner, to another embrasure, as he hit me on the leg, exactly as if he stumbled into a pit. Look, no legs.
Didn't it hurt that first minute?
- Nothing; only as hot as being kicked in the leg.
- Well, and then?
- And then nothing; only as they began to stretch the skin, it seemed to hurt so much. It is the first thing, your honor, not to think much: no matter how you think, it is for you and nothing. More and more because of what a person thinks.
At this time, a woman in a gray striped dress and tied with a black scarf comes up to you; she intervenes in your conversation with the sailor and begins to tell about him, about his sufferings, about the desperate situation in which he was for four weeks, about how, being wounded, he stopped the stretcher in order to look at the salvo of our battery, like great the princes spoke to him and granted him twenty-five rubles, and how he told them that he again wanted to go to the bastion in order to teach the young, if he himself could no longer work. Saying all this in one breath, this woman looks first at you, then at the sailor, who, turning away and as if not listening to her, pinches lint on his pillow, and her eyes shine with some special delight.
- This is my mistress, your honor! - the sailor remarks to you with such an expression, as if saying: “You must excuse her. It is known that the woman's business - he says stupid words.
You begin to understand the defenders of Sevastopol; for some reason you feel ashamed of yourself in front of this person. You would like to tell him too much to express your sympathy and surprise to him; but you find no words or are dissatisfied with those that come to your mind - and you silently bow before this silent, unconscious greatness and firmness of spirit, this shame before your own dignity.
“Well, God forbid you get well soon,” you say to him and stop in front of another patient who lies on the floor and, as it seems, awaits death in unbearable suffering.
This is a blond man with a plump and pale face. He lies on his back with his left arm thrown back, in a position that expresses severe suffering. Dry open mouth with difficulty lets out wheezing breath; blue pewter eyes are rolled up, and from under the tangled blanket stick out the remnant of the right hand, wrapped in bandages. The heavy smell of a dead body strikes you more strongly, and the devouring inner heat, penetrating all the limbs of the sufferer, seems to penetrate you too.
What, is he unconscious? - you ask the woman who follows you and looks at us affectionately, as at her own.
“No, he still hears, but it’s very bad,” she adds in a whisper. - I gave him tea today - well, even though he is a stranger, you still have to have pity - so I almost didn’t drink.
- How do you feel? you ask him. The wounded turns his pupils to your voice, but does not see or understand you.
- My heart is roaring.
A little further on you see an old soldier who is changing clothes. His face and body are somehow brown and thin, like a skeleton. He does not have an arm at all: it is hollowed out at the shoulder. He sits cheerfully, he recovered; but from the dead, dull look, from the terrible thinness and wrinkles of the face, you see that this is a creature that has already suffered the best part of its life.
On the other side, you will see on the bed the pained, pale and tender face of a woman, on which a feverish blush plays all over her cheek.
“It was our sailor woman who was hit in the leg by a bomb on the 5th,” your guide will tell you, “she brought her husband to the bastion to dine.
- Well, cut off?
- Cut off above the knee.
Now, if your nerves are strong, go through the door to the left: in that room they make dressings and operations. You will see doctors there with bloody elbows and pale, gloomy physiognomies, busy near the bed, on which, with open eyes and speaking, as if in delirium, meaningless, sometimes simple and touching words, lies a wounded man under the influence of chloroform. Doctors are busy with the disgusting but beneficial business of amputations. You will see how a sharp curved knife enters a white healthy body; you will see how, with a terrible, tearing cry and curses, the wounded man suddenly comes to his senses; you will see how the paramedic throws a severed hand into the corner; you will see how another wounded man lies on a stretcher in the same room and, looking at the operation of a comrade, writhes and groans not so much from physical pain as from the moral suffering of waiting - you will see terrible, soul-shaking spectacles; you will see the war not in the correct, beautiful and brilliant formation, with music and drumming, with waving banners and prancing generals, but you will see the war in its true expression - in blood, in suffering, in death ...
Leaving this house of suffering, you will certainly experience a gratifying feeling, breathe fresh air into yourself more fully, feel pleasure in the consciousness of your health, but at the same time, in the contemplation of these sufferings, you will draw the consciousness of your insignificance and calmly, without indecision, go to the bastions ...
"What is the death and suffering of such an insignificant worm as I, in comparison with so much death and so much suffering?" But the sight of a clear sky, a brilliant sun, a beautiful city, an open church, and military people moving in different directions will soon bring your spirit into a normal state of frivolity, small worries and passion for the present alone.
You will come across, perhaps from the church, the funeral of some officer, with a pink coffin and music and fluttering banners; perhaps the sounds of shooting from the bastions will reach your ears, but this will not lead you to your former thoughts; the funeral will seem to you a very beautiful warlike spectacle, the sounds - very beautiful warlike sounds, and you will not connect either with this spectacle or with these sounds a clear thought, transferred to yourself, about suffering and death, as you did at the dressing station.
Having passed the church and the barricade, you will enter the most lively part of the city with inner life. On both sides are signs for shops and taverns. Merchants, women in hats and headscarves, dapper officers - everything tells you about the firmness of spirit, self-confidence, and the safety of the inhabitants.
Go to the tavern to the right if you want to listen to the talk of sailors and officers: there, surely, there are stories about this night, about Fenka, about the case of the twenty-fourth, about how expensive and bad cutlets are served, and about how he was killed and that comrade.
“Damn it, how bad we are today!” says a white-haired, beardless naval officer in a green knitted scarf in a bass voice.
- Where are we? another asks him.
“On the fourth bastion,” the young officer answers, and you will certainly look at the blond officer with great attention and even some respect when he says: “on the fourth bastion.” His excessive swagger, his waving of his arms, his loud laugh, and his voice, which seemed to you impudent, will seem to you that special bratty mood of spirit that some very young people acquire after danger; but all the same you think that he will tell you how bad it is from bombs and bullets on the fourth bastion: nothing happened! bad because it's dirty. “You can’t go to the battery,” he will say, pointing to boots covered with mud above the calves. “But today they killed my best gunner, slapped me right in the forehead,” another will say. Who is this? Mityukhin? - “No ... But what, will they give me veal? Here are the channels! he will add to the tavern servant. - Not Mityukhin, but Abrosimov. Such a good fellow - he was in six sorties.
On the other corner of the table, behind plates of cutlets with peas and a bottle of sour Crimean wine called "Bordeaux", two infantry officers are sitting: one, young, with a red collar and two stars on his overcoat, tells another, old, with a black collar and without asterisks, about the Alma case. The first one had already drunk a little, and by the stops that occur in his story, by the indecisive look that expresses doubt that he is believed, and most importantly, that the role he played in all this is too great, and everything is too scary, noticeable, that it deviates greatly from the strict narration of truth. But you are not up to these stories, which you will listen to for a long time in all corners of Russia: you want to go to the bastions as soon as possible, namely to the fourth one, about which you have been told so much and in so many different ways. When someone says that he was in the fourth bastion, he says it with special pleasure and pride; when someone says: “I am going to the fourth bastion,” a little excitement or too much indifference is certainly noticeable in him; when they want to play a trick on someone, they say: “You should be put on the fourth bastion”; when they meet a stretcher and ask: “Where from?” - for the most part they answer: "From the fourth bastion." In general, there are two completely different opinions about this terrible bastion: those who have never been on it and who are convinced that the fourth bastion is a sure grave for everyone who goes to it, and those who live on it, like a white-haired midshipman, and who, speaking of the fourth bastion, will tell you whether it is dry or dirty there, warm or cold in the dugout, etc.
In the half-hour you spent in the tavern, the weather had time to change: the fog spread over the sea gathered into gray, dull, damp clouds and covered the sun; some kind of sad drizzle pours from above and wets the roofs, sidewalks and soldiers' overcoats ...
After passing another barricade, you exit the doors to the right and go up the big street. Behind this barricade, the houses on both sides of the street are uninhabited, there are no signboards, the doors are closed with boards, the windows are broken, where the corner of the moan is beaten off, where the roof is broken. The buildings seem old, experienced veterans of all grief and need, and seem to proudly and somewhat contemptuously look at you. On the way, you stumble over the balls lying around and into the water holes dug in the stone ground with bombs. Along the street you meet and overtake teams of soldiers, scouts, officers; occasionally there is a woman or a child, but the woman is no longer in a hat, but a sailor in an old fur coat and soldiers' boots. Walking further along the street and sinking under a small plank, you notice around you no longer houses, but some strange piles of ruins - stones, boards, clay, logs; ahead of you on a steep mountain you see some black, dirty expanse, pitted with ditches, and this is the fourth bastion ahead ... Here you meet even fewer people, you can’t see women at all, soldiers are moving quickly, drops of blood come across along the road, and certainly you will meet here four soldiers with a stretcher and on a stretcher a pale yellowish face and a bloody overcoat. If you ask: "Where are you wounded?" - the porters angrily, without turning to you, will say: in the leg or in the arm, if he is wounded lightly; or they will remain sternly silent if the head is not visible because of the stretcher and he has already died or is seriously wounded.
The near whistle of a cannonball or a bomb, at the same time as you begin to climb the mountain, will shock you unpleasantly. You will suddenly understand, and in a completely different way than before, the meaning of those sounds of gunshots that you listened to in the city. Some quiet-pleasant memory will suddenly flash in your imagination; your own personality will begin to occupy you more than observations; you will become less attentive to everything around you, and some unpleasant feeling of indecision will suddenly take possession of you. Despite this petty voice that suddenly spoke inside you at the sight of danger, you, especially looking at the soldier, who, waving his arms and slicking downhill, through liquid mud, at a trot, laughingly runs past you - you force this voice to be silent, involuntarily straighten your chest, raise your head higher and climb up the slippery clay mountain. You have just climbed a little uphill, rifle bullets begin to buzz to your right and left, and you may be wondering if you should not go along a trench that runs parallel to the road; but this trench is filled with such liquid, yellow, smelly mud above the knee that you will certainly choose the road up the mountain, especially since you see everyone is walking along the road. After passing two hundred paces, you enter a pitted, dirty space, surrounded on all sides by tours, embankments, cellars, platforms, dugouts, on which large cast-iron tools stand and cannonballs lie in regular heaps. All this seems to you heaped up without any purpose, connection and order. Where a bunch of sailors are sitting on the battery, where in the middle of the platform, half sunk in the mud, lies a broken cannon, where an infantry soldier, with a gun, goes over the batteries and with difficulty pulls his legs out of the sticky mud. But everywhere, from all sides and in all places, you see shards, unexploded bombs, cannonballs, traces of the camp, and all this is flooded in liquid, viscous mud. It seems to you that you hear the impact of the cannonball not far from you, from all sides you seem to hear various sounds of bullets - buzzing like a bee, whistling, fast or squealing like a string - you hear the terrible rumble of a shot that shocks us all, and which you seems like something terribly scary.
“So here it is, the fourth bastion, here it is, this terrible, really terrible place!” you think to yourself, experiencing a small sense of pride and a large sense of repressed fear. But be disappointed: this is not the fourth bastion yet. This is the Yazonovsky redoubt - a relatively very safe place and not at all scary. To go to the fourth bastion, take to the right, along this narrow trench, along which, bending down, an infantry soldier wandered. Along this trench, you may again meet a stretcher, a sailor, a soldier with shovels, you will see mine handlers, dugouts in the mud, into which, bending over, only two people can climb and there you will see the scouts of the Black Sea battalions, who change their shoes there, eat, smoke pipes, live, and you will again see the same stinking mud everywhere, traces of the camp and abandoned cast iron in all kinds of forms. After walking another three hundred paces, you again go out to the battery - to a platform pitted with pits and furnished with rounds filled with earth, guns on platforms and earthen ramparts. Here you will see, perhaps, about five sailors playing cards under the parapet, and a naval officer who, noticing in you a New, curious person, will gladly show you his economy and everything that may be of interest to you. This officer so calmly rolls up a cigarette of yellow paper, sitting on a gun, walks so calmly from one embrasure to another, speaks to you so calmly, without the slightest affectation, that, despite the bullets that buzz over you more often than before, you you yourself become cold-blooded and carefully question and listen to the stories of the officer. This officer will tell you - but only if you ask him - about the bombardment on the fifth day, he will tell you how only one gun could operate on his battery, and eight people remained from all the servants, and how, nevertheless, on the next morning, on the sixth , he fired from all guns; he will tell you how the fifth bomb hit the sailor's dugout and killed eleven people; will show you from the embrasure of the battery and the trenches of the enemy, which are no further than thirty or forty sazhens. I am afraid of one thing, that under the influence of the buzzing of bullets, leaning out of the embrasure to look at the enemy, you will not see anything, and if you see, you will be very surprised that this white rocky rampart, which is so close to you and on which white haze flares up, this - a white shaft and a network of the enemy - he, as the soldiers and sailors say.
It may even very well be that a naval officer, out of vanity or just to please himself, wants to shoot a little in front of you. “Send the gunnery and servants to the cannon,” and fourteen sailors lively, cheerfully, some putting their pipes in their pockets, some chewing on crackers, tapping their shod boots on the platform, go up to the cannon and load it. Look at the faces, postures and movements of these people: in every wrinkle of this tanned, high-cheeked face, in every muscle, in the width of these shoulders, in the thickness of these legs, shod in huge boots, in every movement, calm, firm, unhurried, you can see these main features that make up the strength of the Russian are simplicity and stubbornness; but here on every face it seems to you that the danger, malice and suffering of war, besides these main signs, have also laid traces of consciousness of one's dignity and lofty thought and feeling.
Suddenly a most terrible, terrifying, not only ear organs, but your whole being, a rumble strikes you so that you tremble with your whole body. After that, you hear the whistle of a projectile receding, and thick powder smoke covers you, the platform and the black figures of sailors moving along it. On the occasion of this shot of ours, you will hear various rumors of the sailors and see their animation and manifestation of a feeling that you did not expect to see, perhaps - this is a feeling of anger, revenge on the enemy, which is hidden in the soul of everyone. “It hit the very abrasion; it seems that they killed two ... they carried it out, ”you will hear joyful exclamations. “But he is angry: now he will let him in here,” someone will say; and indeed, soon after this you will see lightning, smoke in front of you; the sentry standing on the parapet will shout: “Pu-u-shka!” And after that, the cannonball will screech past you, slam into the ground and throw splashes of dirt and stones around itself like a funnel. The battery commander will get angry about this cannonball, order another and third guns to be loaded, the enemy will also begin to answer us, and you will experience interesting feelings, hear and see interesting things. The sentry will shout again: "Cannon!" - and you will hear the same sound and blow, the same splashes, or shout: “Markela!” - and you will hear a uniform, rather pleasant and one with which the thought of a terrible thing can hardly be combined, the whistle of a bomb, you will hear this whistle approaching you and accelerating, then you will see a black ball, a blow to the ground, a tangible, ringing explosion of a bomb. With a whistle and a screech, fragments will then scatter, stones will rustle in the air, and splatter you with mud. With these sounds, you will experience a strange feeling of pleasure and fear at the same time. The minute a projectile, you know, flies at you, it will certainly occur to you that this projectile will kill you; but the feeling of pride sustains you, and no one notices the knife that cuts your heart. But on the other hand, when the projectile has passed without hitting you, you come to life, and some kind of gratifying, inexpressibly pleasant feeling, but only for a moment, takes possession of you, so that you find some special charm in danger, in this game of life and death. ; you want more and more near you to fall a cannonball or a bomb. But then another sentry shouted in his loud, thick voice: “Markela!”, More whistling, blow and explosion of the bomb; but along with this sound you are struck by the groan of a man. You approach the wounded man, who, covered in blood and dirt, has some strange inhuman appearance, at the same time as the stretcher. The sailor's chest was torn out. In the first minutes, on his mud-splattered face one can see only fright and some kind of feigned premature expression of suffering, characteristic of a person in such a position; but while a stretcher is brought to him and he himself lies on his healthy side on them, you notice that this expression is replaced by an expression of some kind of enthusiasm and a lofty, unexpressed thought: the eyes burn brighter, the teeth clench, the head rises with an effort higher; and while he is being lifted, he stops the stretcher and with difficulty, in a trembling voice, says to his comrades: “Forgive me, brothers! ”- still wants to say something, and it is clear that he wants to say something touching, but he only repeats once more: “Forgive me, brothers!” At this time, a fellow sailor approaches him, puts on a cap on his head, which the wounded man offers him, and calmly, indifferently, waving his arms, returns to his gun. “It’s about seven or eight people every day,” the naval officer tells you, responding to the expression of horror expressed on your face, yawning and rolling up a cigarette from yellow paper ...
***
So, you saw the defenders of Sevastopol at the very place of defense and you go back, for some reason not paying any attention to the cannonballs and bullets that continue to whistle all the way to the destroyed theater - you go with a calm, uplifted spirit. The main, gratifying conviction that you have made is the conviction that it is impossible to take Sevastopol, and not only to take Sevastopol, but to shake the strength of the Russian people anywhere - and you did not see this impossibility in this multitude of traverses, parapets, intricately woven trenches. , mines and guns, one on the other, of which you did not understand anything, but saw it in the eyes, speeches, techniques, in what is called the spirit of the defenders of Sevastopol. What they do, they do so simply, so lightly and intensely, that you are convinced that they can still do a hundred times more ... they can do everything. You understand that the feeling that makes them work is not that feeling of pettiness, vanity, forgetfulness that you yourself experienced, but some other feeling, more powerful, which made them people who live just as calmly under the nuclei, while a hundred accidents of death instead of one, which all people are subject to, and living in these conditions amidst continuous work, vigil and dirt. Because of the cross, because of the name, because of the threat, people cannot accept these terrible conditions: there must be another, lofty motive. And this reason is a feeling that is rarely manifested, bashful in Russian, but lying in the depths of everyone's soul - love for the motherland. Only now are the stories about the first times of the siege of Sevastopol, when there were no fortifications, no troops, no physical ability to hold him, and yet there was not the slightest doubt that he would not surrender to the enemy - about the times when this hero, worthy of ancient Greece, - Kornilov, circling the troops, said: “We will die, guys, and we will not give up Sevastopol,” and our Russians, incapable of phrase-mongering, answered: “We will die! Hooray!" - only now the stories about these times have ceased to be for you a wonderful historical tradition, but have become authenticity, a fact. You will clearly understand, imagine those people whom you just saw, those heroes who in those difficult times did not fall, but rose in spirit and prepared with pleasure for death, not for the city, but for their homeland. This epic of Sevastopol, whose hero was the Russian people, will leave great traces in Russia for a long time ...
It's evening already. The sun just before sunset came out from behind the gray clouds covering the sky, and suddenly with a crimson light illuminated the purple clouds, the greenish sea, covered with ships and boats, swaying with an even wide swell, and the white buildings of the city, and the people moving along the streets. The water carries the sounds of some old waltz, which is played by regimental music on the boulevard, and the sounds of shots from the bastions, which strangely echo them.
Sevastopol. April 25, 1855
SEVASTOPOL IN MAY

1
Six months have already passed since the first cannonball whistled from the bastions of Sevastopol and blew up the ground at the enemy’s works, and since then thousands of bombs, cannonballs and bullets have not stopped flying from the bastions, into the trenches and from the trenches to the bastions and the angel of death has not stopped hover above them.
Thousands of people's vanities have had time to be offended, thousands have had time to be satisfied, puffed up, thousands - to calm down in the arms of death. How many stars are worn, how many are taken off, how many Annas, Vladimirs, how many pink coffins and linen covers! And all the same sounds are heard from the bastions, all the same - with involuntary trembling and superstitious fear - the French from their camp look on a clear evening at the yellowish dug ground of the bastions of Sevastopol, at the black figures of our sailors moving along them and count the embrasures, from which angrily iron cannons stick out; the navigator non-commissioned officer still looks through the pipe from the telegraph tower the colorful figures of the French, their batteries, tents, columns moving along Zelenaya Mountain, and the smoke flaring up in the trenches, and all with the same fervor heterogeneous crowds of people rush from different parts of the world , with even more heterogeneous desires, to this fateful place.
And a question not resolved by diplomats is even less resolved by gunpowder and blood.
A strange thought often came to me: what if one belligerent offered the other to send one soldier from each army? The desire might seem strange, but why not fulfill it? Then send another one on each side, then a 3rd, 4th, etc., until there is one soldier left in each army (assuming the armies are equal and that quantity would be replaced by quality). And then, if really complex political issues between intelligent representatives of rational creatures should be decided by a fight, let these two soldiers fight - one would besiege the city, the other would defend it.
This reasoning seems only a paradox, but it is true. Indeed, what would be the difference between one Russian fighting against one representative of the Allies, and between 80,000 fighting against 80,000? Why not 135 thousand against 135 thousand? Why not 20 thousand against 20 thousand? Why not 20 against 20? Why not one against one? One is not more logical than the other. The latter, on the contrary, is much more logical, because it is more humane. One of two things: either war is madness, or if people do this madness, then they are not rational creatures at all, as we somehow usually think.
2
In the besieged city of Sevastopol, on the boulevard, near the pavilion, regimental music played, and crowds of military people and women festively moved along the paths. The bright spring sun rose in the morning over the English works, passed to the bastions, then to the city - to the Nikolaevsky barracks and, shining equally joyfully for them, now descended to the distant blue sea, which, swaying measuredly, shone with a silver sheen.
A tall, slightly round-shouldered infantry officer, pulling on a not quite white, but neat glove, came out of the gate of one of the small sailor's houses set up on the left side of Morskaya Street, and, looking thoughtfully at his feet, went uphill to the boulevard. The expression of this officer's ugly face with a low forehead revealed dullness of mental abilities, but, moreover, prudence, honesty and a tendency to decency. He was badly built - long-legged, awkward and as if bashful in his movements. He was wearing an unworn cap, a thin overcoat of a slightly strange lilac color, from under the side of which a gold watch chain was visible; pantaloons with drawstrings and clean, shiny, although with slightly worn-out heels in different directions, calcined boots - but not so much by these things, which are not usually found in an infantry officer, but by the general expression of his person, an experienced military eye immediately distinguished in not quite an ordinary infantry officer, but a little taller. He had to be either a German, if his facial features did not reveal his purely Russian origin, or an adjutant, or a regimental quartermaster (but then he would have had spurs), or an officer who, for the duration of the campaign, had transferred from the cavalry, and maybe from the guard . He really had been transferred from the cavalry, and at the present moment, going up to the boulevard, he was thinking about the letter that he had just received from his former comrade, now retired, the landowner T. of the province, and his wife, pale blue-eyed Natasha, his great friend. He remembered one passage in the letter, in which a comrade writes:
“When they bring us “Invalid”, then Pupka (as the retired lancer called his wife) rushes headlong into the hallway, grabs newspapers and runs with them to the es into the gazebo, into the living room (in which, remember how nice we spent winter evenings with you when the regiment stood in our city), and reads your heroic deeds with such fervor that you cannot imagine. She often says about you: “Here is Mikhailov,” she says, “so this is a darling man, I am ready to kiss him when I see him, he fights on the bastions and will certainly receive the St. George Cross, and they will write about him in the newspapers,” etc. etc., etc., so that I definitely become jealous of you.” Elsewhere he writes: “Newspapers reach us terribly late, and although there is a lot of word of mouth news, not everyone can be trusted. For example, young ladies familiar with music told you yesterday that Napoleon was caught by our Cossacks and sent to Petersburg, but you understand how much I believe this. One visitor from St. Petersburg told us (he is with the minister, on special assignments, a nice person, and now, as there is no one in the city, such a resource for us that you cannot imagine) - so he probably says that ours occupied Evpatoria so that the French no longer have communication with Balaklava, and that two hundred people were killed with us, and up to fifteen thousand with the French. My wife was so delighted with this occasion that she spent the whole night drinking, and she says that you, probably, according to her presentiment, were in this business and distinguished yourself ... "
Despite the words and expressions that I purposely marked in italics, and the whole tone of the letter, according to which the arrogant reader, rightly, formed a true and disadvantageous concept in relation to decency about Staff Captain Mikhailov himself, on worn-out boots, about his comrade, who writes drawings and has such strange notions about geography, about a pale friend in the es (perhaps even imagining this Natasha with dirty nails not without reason), and in general about all this idle dirty provincial circle, contemptible for him, staff captain Mikhailov remembered with inexpressibly sad pleasure his pale provincial friend and how he used to sit with him in the evenings in the gazebo and talk about feelings, remembered his good comrade lancer, how he got angry and resigned when they used to compose a bullet for a penny, how his wife laughed at him - he remembered the friendship of these people for himself (perhaps it seemed to him that there was something more on the part of a pale friend): all these faces from their surroundings which flashed in his imagination in a surprisingly sweet, delightfully pink color, and he, smiling at his recollections, touched his pocket with his hand, in which lay this letter, dear to him. These recollections were all the more charming for Staff Captain Mikhailov because the circle in which he now happened to live in an infantry regiment was much lower than that in which he had previously rotated as a cavalryman and ladies' cavalier, everywhere well received in the city of T.
His former circle was so much higher than his present that when, in moments of frankness, he happened to tell his infantry comrades how he had his own droshky, how he danced at the governor's balls and played cards with a civilian general, they listened to him indifferently, distrustfully, as as if not only wanting to contradict and prove the opposite - “let him talk”, they say, and that if he did not show obvious contempt for the revelry of his comrades - vodka, for playing a quarter of a kopeck on old cards, and in general for the rudeness of their relationship, then this should be attributed to the special meekness, accommodatingness and prudence of his character.
Staff Captain Mikhailov involuntarily passed from reminiscences to dreams and hopes. “What will Natasha’s surprise and joy be,” he thought, walking on his worn-out boots along a narrow alley, “when she suddenly reads in Invalid a description of how I was the first to climb onto the cannon and get George.

“The dawn is just beginning to color the sky over Sapun Mountain; the dark blue surface of the sea has already thrown off the twilight of the night and is waiting for the first ray to sparkle with a cheerful brilliance; from the bay it carries cold and fog; there is no snow - everything is black, but the morning sharp frost grabs your face and cracks under your feet, and the distant unceasing rumble of the sea, occasionally interrupted by rolling shots in Sevastopol, alone breaks the silence of the morning ... It cannot be that at the thought that you are in Sevastopol, a feeling of some kind of courage, pride, and so that the blood does not begin to circulate faster in your veins has not penetrated into your soul ... ”Despite the fact that hostilities are going on in the city, life goes on as usual: the merchants sell hot rolls, and the peasants sell sbiten. It seems that camp and peaceful life are strangely mixed here, everyone is fussing and frightened, but this is a deceptive impression: most people no longer pay attention to either shots or explosions, they are busy with “everyday business”. Only on the bastions "you will see ... the defenders of Sevastopol, you will see terrible and sad, great and funny, but amazing, uplifting spectacles there."

In the hospital, wounded soldiers talk about their impressions: the one who lost his leg does not remember the pain, because he did not think about it; a woman carrying lunch to her husband's bastion was hit by a shell, and her leg was cut off above the knee. Dressings and operations are done in a separate room. The wounded, awaiting their turn for surgery, are horrified to see how doctors amputate their comrades' arms and legs, and the paramedic indifferently throws the severed body parts into a corner. Here you can see “terrible, soul-shattering spectacles ... the war is not in the correct, beautiful and brilliant formation, with music and drumming, with fluttering banners and prancing generals, but ... war in its true expression - in blood, in suffering, in death ... ". A young officer who fought on the fourth, most dangerous bastion, complains not about the abundance of bombs and shells falling on the heads of the defenders of the bastion, but about the dirt. This is his defensive reaction to danger; he behaves too boldly, cheekily and at ease.

On the way to the fourth bastion, non-military people are less and less common, and stretchers with the wounded are increasingly coming across. Actually, on the bastion, the artillery officer behaves calmly (he is used to both the whistle of bullets and the roar of explosions). He tells how during the assault on the 5th, only one active gun and very few servants remained on his battery, but still the next morning he was already firing from all the guns again.

The officer recalls how the bomb hit the sailor's dugout and killed eleven people. In the faces, posture, movements of the defenders of the bastion, “the main features that make up the strength of the Russian are visible - simplicity and stubbornness; but here on every face it seems to you that the danger, malice and suffering of war, in addition to these main signs, have also laid traces of consciousness of one’s dignity and lofty thoughts and feelings ... A feeling of anger, revenge on the enemy ... is hidden in the soul of everyone. When the cannonball flies directly at a person, he does not leave a feeling of pleasure and at the same time fear, and then he himself waits for the bomb to explode closer, because "there is a special charm" in such a game with death. “The main, gratifying conviction that you made is the conviction that it is impossible to take Sevastopol, and not only to take Sevastopol, but to shake the strength of the Russian people anywhere ... Because of the cross, because of the name, because of the threat, they cannot accept people these terrible conditions: there must be another high motivating reason - this reason is a feeling that rarely manifests itself, bashful in Russian, but lies in the depths of everyone's soul - love for the motherland ... This epic of Sevastopol, of which the people were the hero, will leave great traces in Russia for a long time Russian…"

Sevastopol in May

Six months have passed since the start of hostilities in Sevastopol. “Thousands of human vanities managed to be offended, thousands managed to be satisfied, puffed up, thousands - to calm down in the arms of death.” The most fair is the solution of the conflict in an original way; if two soldiers fought (one from each army), and victory would remain with the side whose soldier emerges victorious. Such a decision is logical, because it is better to fight one on one than a hundred and thirty thousand against a hundred and thirty thousand. In general, war is illogical, from the point of view of Tolstoy: “one of two things: either war is madness, or if people do this madness, then they are not rational creatures at all, as we somehow usually think”

In the besieged Sevastopol, the military walk along the boulevards. Among them is an infantry officer (headquarters captain) Mikhailov, a tall, long-legged, stooped and awkward man. He recently received a letter from a friend, a retired lancer, in which he writes how his wife Natasha (Mikhailov's close friend) enthusiastically follows through the newspapers the movements of his regiment and the exploits of Mikhailov himself. Mikhailov bitterly recalls his former circle, which was "so much higher than the current one that when, in moments of frankness, he happened to tell his infantry comrades how he had his own droshky, how he danced at the governor's balls and played cards with a civilian general" , they listened to him indifferently, incredulously, as if not wanting only to contradict and prove the contrary

Mikhailov dreams of a promotion. He meets Captain Obzhogov and Ensign Suslikov on the boulevard, employees of his regiment, and they shake hands with him, but he wants to deal not with them, but with "aristocrats" - for this he walks along the boulevard. “And since there are many people in the besieged city of Sevastopol, therefore, there is a lot of vanity, that is, aristocrats, despite the fact that death hangs every minute over the head of every aristocrat and non-aristocrat ... Vanity! It must be a characteristic feature and a special illness of our age ... Why in our age there are only three kinds of people: some - accepting the beginning of vanity as a fact that necessarily exists, therefore just, and freely obeying it; others - accepting it as an unfortunate, but insurmountable condition, and still others - unconsciously, slavishly acting under its influence ... "

Mikhailov twice hesitantly passes by a circle of "aristocrats" and, finally, dares to come up and say hello (before he was afraid to approach them because they might not at all honor him with an answer to the greeting and thereby prick his sick pride). "Aristocrats" are Adjutant Kalugin, Prince Galtsin, Lieutenant Colonel Neferdov and Captain Praskukhin. In relation to the approached Mikhailov, they behave rather arrogantly; for example, Galtsin takes him by the arm and walks a little back and forth only because he knows that this sign of attention should please the staff captain. But soon the "aristocrats" begin to defiantly talk only to each other, thereby making it clear to Mikhailov that they no longer need his company.

Returning home, Mikhailov recalls that he volunteered to go the next morning instead of a sick officer to the bastion. He feels that he will be killed, and if he is not killed, then surely he will be rewarded. Mikhailov consoles himself that he acted honestly, that it is his duty to go to the bastion. On the way, he wonders where he might be wounded - in the leg, in the stomach or in the head.

Meanwhile, the "aristocrats" are drinking tea at Kalugin's in a beautifully furnished apartment, playing the piano, remembering their St. Petersburg acquaintances. At the same time, they behave not at all so unnaturally, importantly and pompously, as they did on the boulevard, demonstrating their “aristocratism” to those around them. An infantry officer enters with an important assignment to the general, but the "aristocrats" immediately assume their former "puffed up" look and pretend that they do not notice the newcomer at all. Only after escorting the courier to the general, Kalugin is imbued with the responsibility of the moment, announces to his comrades that a “hot” business is ahead.

Galtsin asks if he should go on a sortie, knowing that he will not go anywhere, because he is afraid, and Kalugin begins to dissuade Galtsin, also knowing that he will not go anywhere. Galtsin goes out into the street and begins to walk aimlessly back and forth, not forgetting to ask the wounded passing by how the battle is going, and scolding them for retreating. Kalugin, having gone to the bastion, does not forget to demonstrate his courage to everyone along the way: he does not bend down when the bullets whistle, he takes a dashing pose on horseback. He is unpleasantly struck by the "cowardice" of the battery commander, whose bravery is legendary.

Not wanting to take unnecessary risks, the battery commander, who spent half a year on the bastion, in response to Kalugin's demand to inspect the bastion, sends Kalugin to the guns along with a young officer. The general orders Praskukhin to notify Mikhailov's battalion of the redeployment. He successfully delivers the order. In the dark, under enemy fire, the battalion begins to move. At the same time, Mikhailov and Praskukhin, walking side by side, think only about the impression they make on each other. They meet Kalugin, who, not wanting to "expose himself" once again, learns about the situation on the bastion from Mikhailov and turns back. A bomb explodes next to them, Praskukhin dies, and Mikhailov is wounded in the head. He refuses to go to the dressing station, because it is his duty to be with the company, and besides, he has a reward for the wound. He also believes that his duty is to pick up the wounded Praskukhin or make sure that he is dead. Mikhailov crawls back under fire, becomes convinced of the death of Praskukhin and returns with a clear conscience.

“Hundreds of fresh bloodied bodies of people, two hours ago full of various high and small hopes and desires, with stiff limbs, lay on the dewy flowering valley that separates the bastion from the trench, and on the flat floor of the chapel of the Dead in Sevastopol; hundreds of people - with curses and prayers on parched lips - crawled, tossed and groaned, some among the corpses on a flowering valley, others on stretchers, on cots and on the bloody floor of the dressing station; and all the same, as in the old days, the lightning lit up over Sapun Mountain, the twinkling stars turned pale, a white fog pulled from the noisy dark sea, a scarlet dawn lit up in the east, crimson long clouds fled across the light azure horizon, and everything is the same , as in former days, promising joy, love and happiness to the whole revived world, a mighty, beautiful luminary emerged.

The next day, "aristocrats" and other military men stroll along the boulevard and vied with each other to talk about yesterday's "case", but in such a way that they basically state "the participation that he took and the courage that the narrator showed in the case." “Each of them is a little Napoleon, a little monster, and now he is ready to start a battle, to kill a hundred people just to get an extra star or a third of his salary.”

A truce has been declared between the Russians and the French, ordinary soldiers freely communicate with each other and, it seems, do not feel any enmity towards the enemy. The young cavalry officer is simply delighted to be able to chat in French, thinking he is incredibly smart. He discusses with the French what an inhuman deed they started together, referring to the war. At this time, the boy walks around the battlefield, picking blue wild flowers and looking askance at the corpses in surprise. White flags are displayed everywhere.

“Thousands of people crowd, look, talk and smile at each other. And these people, Christians, professing one great law of love and selflessness, looking at what they have done, will not suddenly fall with repentance on their knees before the one who, having given them life, put into the soul of everyone, along with the fear of death, love for good and beautiful, and with tears of joy and happiness will not embrace like brothers? Not! White rags are hidden - and again the instruments of death and suffering whistle, pure innocent blood is shed again and groans and curses are heard ... Where is the expression of evil, which should be avoided? Where is the expression of the good that should be imitated in this story? Who is the villain, who is her hero? Everyone is good and everyone is bad ... The hero of my story, whom I love with all the strength of my soul, whom I tried to reproduce in all its beauty and who has always been, is and will be beautiful, is true "

Sevastopol in August 1855

Lieutenant Mikhail Kozeltsov, a respected officer, independent in his judgments and in his actions, not stupid, in many ways talented, a skilled drafter of government papers and a capable storyteller, returns to his position from the hospital. “He had one of those self-esteem, which merged with life to such an extent and which most often develops in some male, and especially military circles, that he did not understand any other choice, how to excel or be destroyed, and that self-esteem was the engine even of his internal motives."

A lot of people passing by have accumulated at the station: there are no horses. Some of the officers heading to Sevastopol do not even have lifting money, and they do not know how to continue their journey. Among those waiting is Kozeltsov's brother, Volodya. Contrary to family plans, Volodya, for minor misconduct, did not join the guard, but was sent (at his own request) to the active army. He, like any young officer, really wants to "fight for the Fatherland", and at the same time serve in the same place as his elder brother.

Volodya is a handsome young man, he is both shy in front of his brother and proud of him. The elder Kozeltsov invites his brother to immediately go with him to Sevastopol. Volodya seems to be embarrassed; he no longer really wants to go to war, and, besides, he, sitting at the station, managed to lose eight rubles. Kozeltsov pays his brother's debt with the last money, and they set off. On the way, Volodya dreams of heroic deeds that he will certainly accomplish in the war with his brother, of his beautiful death and dying reproaches to everyone else for not being able to appreciate “truly loving Fatherland” during their lifetime, etc.

Upon arrival, the brothers go to the booth of a convoy officer, who counts a lot of money for the new regimental commander, who is acquiring a "farm". No one understands what made Volodya leave his quiet place in the far rear and come to the warring Sevastopol without any profit. The battery, to which Volodya is seconded, stands on Korabelnaya, and both brothers go to spend the night with Mikhail on the fifth bastion. Before that, they visit Comrade Kozeltsov in the hospital. He is so bad that he does not immediately recognize Michael, he is waiting for an imminent death as deliverance from suffering.

Leaving the hospital, the brothers decide to disperse, and, accompanied by the batman Mikhail Volodya, goes to his battery. The battery commander offers Volodya to spend the night in the staff captain's bed, which is located on the bastion itself. However, Junker Vlang is already sleeping on the bunk; he has to give way to the ensign (Voloda) who has arrived. At first Volodya cannot sleep; he is now frightened by the darkness, then by a premonition of imminent death. He fervently prays for deliverance from fear, calms down and falls asleep to the sound of falling shells.

Meanwhile, Kozeltsov Sr. arrives at the disposal of the new regimental commander - his recent comrade, now separated from him by a wall of subordination. The commander is unhappy that Kozeltsov is returning to duty prematurely, but instructs him to take command of his former company. In the company, Kozeltsov is greeted joyfully; it is noticeable that he enjoys great respect among the soldiers. Among the officers, he also expects a warm welcome and a sympathetic attitude towards the wound.

The next day, the bombardment continues with renewed vigor. Volodya begins to enter the circle of artillery officers; one can see their mutual sympathy for each other. Volodya is especially liked by the junker Vlang, who in every possible way foresees any desires of the new ensign. The good Captain Kraut, a German, who speaks Russian very correctly and too beautifully, returns from the positions. There is talk of abuse and legalized theft in senior positions. Volodya, blushing, assures the audience that such an "ignoble" deed will never happen to him.

Everyone is interested at lunch at the battery commander's, the conversations do not stop despite the fact that the menu is very modest. An envelope arrives from the chief of artillery; an officer with servants is required for a mortar battery on Malakhov Kurgan. This is a dangerous place; no one volunteers to go. One of the officers points to Volodya and, after a short discussion, he agrees to go "shoot" Together with Volodya, Vlang is sent. Volodya takes up the study of the "Guide" on artillery firing. However, upon arrival at the battery, all “rear” knowledge turns out to be unnecessary: ​​firing is carried out randomly, not a single shot even resembles those mentioned in the “Manual” by weight, there are no workers to repair broken guns. In addition, two soldiers of his team are wounded, and Volodya himself repeatedly finds himself on the verge of death.

Vlang is very scared; he is no longer able to hide it and thinks solely about saving his own life at any cost. Volodya is "a little creepy and fun." Volodya's soldiers are holed up in Volodya's dugout. He communicates with interest with Melnikov, who is not afraid of bombs, being sure that he will die a different death. Having got used to the new commander, the soldiers under Volodya begin to discuss how the allies under the command of Prince Konstantin will come to their aid, how both warring parties will be given a rest for two weeks, and then they will take a fine for each shot, how in the war a month of service will be considered as year, etc.

Despite Vlang's entreaties, Volodya comes out of the dugout into the fresh air and sits on the doorstep with Melnikov until morning, while bombs fall around him and bullets whistle. But in the morning the battery and guns were put in order, and Volodya completely forgot about the danger; he only rejoices that he performs his duties well, that he does not show cowardice, but, on the contrary, is considered brave.

The French assault begins. Half-asleep, Kozeltsov jumps out to the company, awake, most of all concerned that he should not be considered a coward. He grabs his little saber and runs ahead of everyone at the enemy, shouting to inspire the soldiers. He is wounded in the chest. Waking up, Kozeltsov sees the doctor examining his wound, wiping his fingers on his coat and sending a priest to him. Kozeltsov asks if the French have been driven out; the priest, not wanting to upset the dying man, says that the Russians have won. Kozeltsov is happy; “He thought with an extremely gratifying feeling of self-satisfaction that he had done his duty well, that for the first time in his entire service he had acted as well as he could, and he could not reproach himself for anything.” He dies with the last thought of his brother, and Kozeltsov wishes him the same happiness.

The news of the assault finds Volodya in the dugout. "It was not so much the sight of the calmness of the soldiers as the miserable, undisguised cowardice of the junker that aroused him." Not wanting to be like Vlang, Volodya commands lightly, even cheerfully, but soon hears that the French are bypassing them. He sees enemy soldiers very close, it strikes him so much that he freezes in place and misses the moment when he can still be saved. Melnikov dies next to him from a bullet wound. Vlang tries to shoot back, calls Volodya to run after him, but, jumping into the trench, he sees that Volodya is already dead, and in the place where he just stood, the French are and shoot at the Russians. The French banner flutters over the Malakhov Kurgan.

Vlang with a battery on a steamboat arrives in a safer part of the city. He bitterly mourns the fallen Volodya; to which he was truly attached. The retreating soldiers, talking among themselves, notice that the French will not be staying in the city for long. “It was a feeling, as if similar to remorse, shame and anger. Almost every soldier, looking from the North side at the abandoned Sevastopol, sighed with inexpressible bitterness in his heart and threatened the enemies.