Lushnikov Oleg Vadimovich
Researcher at the Institute of History and Archeology, Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences
The topic of the civil war is huge, complex, controversial, and is so connected with the personal views of researchers that sometimes you realize that almost 100 years have passed, and the civil war is still going on. Disputes continue who is more to blame - whites or reds, who started the terror first, and who was more cruel.
The civil war became a national tragedy, both for those who were in power, and for the intelligentsia, and for the common people. Under the conditions of the external and internal war that did not stop for 7 years, the entire established world collapsed. The economy was destroyed, personal destinies were broken, the country lost colossal resources - material and human. The death of millions in fratricidal combat, devastation, famine, disease, epidemics, threw the country back for decades, and caused new crises (demographic, economic, etc.). To a certain extent, the inevitable methods of forced industrialization of the 1930s were laid at the same time. and accompanying victims.
While "big politics" was solving global issues, the life of ordinary people turned into an ongoing nightmare. Documents from the Perm archives (GAPO and GOPAPO) impartially testify to the realities of society in a period of instability of power, the attitude of the population to the policies of the whites and reds. The leitmotif of all the documents of this period is the theme of hunger, devastation, violence, chaos.
A comprehensive analysis of what is happening in the country was given "in hot pursuit" in the "Appeal of Perm University professors to scientists in Europe and America" signed by A.I. Syrtsov. “All printing is suspended; no newspapers are published except Pravda. Free preaching in the church entails imprisonment and execution... The slightest manifestation of displeasure causes punitive expeditions that carry out mass executions and even the destruction of entire villages. Under such conditions, the only way out for the population is an uprising. And indeed, the uprisings do not stop ... The country captured by the Bolsheviks is getting upset every day, thanks to the complete disorganization of life and poor nutrition, labor productivity has fallen 5 times, which even the Soviet authorities admit. Passive resistance or sabotage, manifested at every step, finally demoralized the people's labor. The unpunished capture of someone else's made labor meaningless. In this regard, the amount of food is decreasing every day and hunger is spreading wider and wider. There is a decrease in livestock and an ominous reduction in plowing in the country, which, however, is understandable; who wants to plow and sow, since he is not sure that the harvest will go to him, and will not be taken away by the committees of the poor or requisitioned for the needs of the Red Army ... After the departure of the Bolsheviks in the areas they left behind, they find everywhere the corpses of not only executed, but tortured by them victims. Especially terrible are the moments when, under the pressure of the advancing Siberian troops, the Red Army soldiers leave the areas where they ruled. Their anger reaches extreme limits. They forcibly steal residents with them, attack civilians, kill them, invade houses, where entire families are often slaughtered, rape women, and plunder property. In the villages, to this is added the senseless slaughter of those cattle that they cannot steal with them. (GAPO. F. r-656. Op. 1. D. 33. L. 1–9.)
The result of such a policy was the “Perm catastrophe” of the Reds in December 1918, and the successful mobilization and offensive of the Whites in the Kama region in the spring of 1919 (GAPO. F. r-656. Op. 1. D. 5. L. 76 .; F. р-746. Inv. 2. D. 54. L. 11, 11 v.), and the amazing intensity of passions and the readiness to die “like a samurai”, but not to fall into the hands of the “red monsters” among part of the Perm peasantry. (GAPO. F. r-656. Op. 1. D. 4. L. 298, 298v.)
In the summer of 1919, the most irreconcilable either died in battle or left for Siberia and emigration. Tired of the arbitrariness of the military, the population hoped to find peace under the new government. However, soon after the red agitation generously distributing promises (F. r-484. Op. 2. D. 19. L. 1, 1 rev.), people in the village and in the city again faced the reality of “war communism”. Inflation, devastation, lack of food (GOPAPO. F. 557. Op. 1. D. 8. L. 14 .; F. 557. Op. 1. D. 3. L. 117.), Arbitrariness of power (GAPO. F 383. Inventory 1. File 20. Sheet 271.; F. R-49. Inventory 3. D. 19. Sheet 2, 2v.; F. R-656. Inventory 1. D. 32. L. 1–8; GOPAPO. F. 557. Inv. 1. D. 9. L. 68.; F. 557. Inv. 1. D. 138. F. 77, 77v.; 557. Inv. 1. D. 50. L. 63-65.) cause dissatisfaction even with workers and peasants who accepted the new government with hope, which often developed into spontaneous protests, covert and open criticism of the authorities, workers' strikes and peasant uprisings, mass desertion from the Red Army and prolonged partisan resistance in many districts of the province (Cherdyn, Osa, Okhansk, Kungur) (GOPAPO. F. 557. Inv. 1. D. 52. L. 55 .; F. 557. Inv. 1. D. 7. L. 69, 69v., F. 754. Inv. 2. D. 5. L. 195, 195v.). The authorities did not actually control most of the territory of the province, continuing to hold on to the bayonets of punitive detachments (GOPAPO. F. 557. Inv. 1. D. 52. L. 158-159).
A set of documents from the Perm archives highlights the realities of the food dictatorship, the activities of the committees and food detachments, the pumping out of food from the village and its hungry everyday life (GOPAPO. F. 557. Op. 1. D. 52. atrocities of food workers (GOPAPO. F. 557. Inv. 1. D. 50. L. 29, 29v. GAPO. F. r-49. Inv. 1. D. 534. L. 78, 78v.). In each document - tr “Comrades, freedom, equality and fraternity are preached everywhere and everywhere, but, unfortunately, I still don’t see any freedom or equality for the peasant yet, but they lead him, the poor fellow, like a leash horse, force him to soon time to thresh bread and at the same time provide bread, hay, straw, potatoes for bulking points, they are driven to all kinds of work and forced to bring fuel for all state institutions and even officials and are driven on duty, at the same time leaving no more than 1 horse on the farm, and require uniforms for our red eagles to the front, and a large amount of meat is required. And in such a daze, the peasant's head is completely spinning, and it happens that the peasant has no time to bring a hay cart and a bundle of firewood for his household, and he goes, poor, in the middle of the night ... ”(GOPAPO. F. 557. Op. 1. D 38. L. 89.)
“There are riots in our village, two soldiers came and took away a young cow from us, they impose very large taxes. If there is a pound of flour in the barn, then half a pound is taken away. We don't know how to live, it's very bad... Life is very bad. You can't say a word right now, otherwise you'll be arrested. They also take potatoes and eggs from us. Petya, this government is very bad.” (GOPAPO. F. 557. Op. 1. D. 53. L. 29-30v.)
The attitude of the people to the new government is also characteristic, with the demand to disperse the councils of idlers and bureaucrats and return the headman, clerk and constable to the village. “Zhul crammed everywhere: bosses, commissars, etc., scoundrels, robbers, former drunkards who slept under the boat on the shore; they are commissars, they are our rulers. Our husbands, our fathers, our sons involuntarily shed blood at the front, and these damned communists hang around in the rear, save their skins, travel around the villages, arrange performances, such lazy people want to enlighten the people. This is only mockery of us, there is nothing more, if you please, now drive to work in such cold and such deep snow, tell jokes, we women go to the forest to chop firewood - not felt boots, not bast shoes and leather shoes, but go ... In an institution where 2 people were sitting, they ruled all affairs, and now there are 20 people, and they also say that there is already so much work - and there is no time to eat. Of course, there is a lot of work when they are almost completely illiterate: you come with some piece of paper, and you go from table to table, here it’s clear as day that he doesn’t know either “A” or “B”! (GAPO. F. r.-737. Op. 2. D. 1. L. 17–18 v.)
The food pumped out by repeated re-supplies from the villages under peppy loud reports (GOPAPO. F. 557. Op. 1. D. 138. L. 97.) led to a terrible famine in the winter of 1919 and in the spring of 1920 (GOPAPO. F. 557. Op.1. D. 7. L. 79). Peasants dying of hunger were forced to buy bread at exorbitant prices in neighboring counties, if only they could turn in an unbearable surplus appropriation (GOPAPO. F. 557. Op. 1.D. 52. L. 94–96 .; F. 557. Op. 1. D. 138. L. 21.). Cultivation areas have fallen catastrophically. The former province-producer itself became in dire need of bread. (GOPAPO. F. 557. Inv. 1. D. 138. L. 21.; F. 557. Inv. 1. D. 138. L. 38, 38v.). At the same time, the food taken from the people was actively and with impunity plundered by those who “guarded” and distributed it, rotted in tons in warehouses, and then thrown into ravines for all to see the hungry. (GOPAPO. F. 557. Op. 1. D. 52. L. 94–96, 104–106, 133, 133v.). The bungling of individual leaders and the general line of the Central Committee on the "food dictatorship" as the most effective way to control society, almost did the Soviet Power a disservice.
Typical responses to the "second coming of the Bolsheviks" a year later. “1.07.20. Today in Perm they are celebrating the anniversary of the liberation from the bloody Kolchakovshchina, in other words, the liberation from grits, oil, freedom, etc. therefore, the occasion was only dealt with today until one o'clock, and from 2 o'clock the fun will begin. Eh ... yes, you just need to be silent. ” (GOPAPO. F. 557. Op. 1. D. 51. L. 40, 44.)
“No, in other powers there are no such unrest as you have in Soviet Russia. You rule according to the popular saying: “I used to be a swindler, climbed into my pockets, and now I am the chief commissar in the Council” ... Down with the war, down with the communists! Long live the whites. Down with Lenin and Trotsky with the mare! Long live Kolchak with pig meat! (GOPAPO. F. 557. Op. 1. D. 53. L. 4.)
The growth of anti-Soviet and anti-Semitic sentiments (GOPAPO. F. 557. Inv. 1. D. 10. L. 32 .; F. 557. Inv. 1. D. 52. L. 46-47), mass exit from the party, as ordinary members and responsible employees (GOPAPO. F. 557. Inv. 1. D. 52. L. 63–66; F. 557. Inv. 1. D. 52. L. 63–66 v.; F. 557.op.1.D.55.l.77–79,134,135 .; F. 557. Inv. 1. D. 53. L. 36v.), dissatisfaction with the authorities in a sick, hungry and undressed army (GOPAPO.-F .557.op.1.D.52.l.104-106.; GAPO. F. r-78. Inv. 3. D. 22. L. 41-42.) threatened the very fact of the continued existence of the Bolsheviks among authorities. And only the awareness of V.I. Lenin, the dangers of continuing such a course and the transition to the NEP made it possible to soften relations between Russian society and its new government.
Russia is preparing to celebrate the 120th anniversary of Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin. Probably the most popular Russian poet of the twentieth century. As great as it is tragic. A lot has been written about the difficult fate of Yesenin, which was reflected in his poems. What was the main tragedy of the poet? In his rampant character, many reckless acts, for which he later repented in verse? Of course, this too. But many of us are familiar with this - to do things, and then regret. We can say that this is one of the features of the Russian character, which was quite inherent in Yesenin. However, this was hardly the main tragedy of the poet.
Sergei Alexandrovich was madly in love with his Motherland. Love for Russia, for Russia is one of the main themes of his works. What was the Motherland for the poet, what did he mean by this concept?
Maybe power, or, as they say now, "the system"? Yesenin really looked with great hopes at the revolutionary events in Russia and the construction of the coming "new world". However, as often happens, dreams gave way to disappointment:
I believed... I burned...
I walked with the revolution
I thought that brotherhood is not a dream and not a dream,
That all will merge into one sea -
All hosts of nations,
Both races and tribes.
Empty fun.
Some conversations!
At the same time, Yesenin was to some extent favored by the Soviet authorities, and he himself answered her with poetic curtsies. But here we can rather talk about some kind of symbiosis: the authorities needed a talented folk peasant poet, and Yesenin needed influential patrons. But, without restraining himself, he spoke out quite definitely:
The same crooks came, the same thieves
And with the revolution
Everyone was taken prisoner...
Your equality is a deceit and a lie.
Old ugly hurdy-gurdy
This world of ideological deeds and words.
For fools - a good bait,
Scoundrels - a decent catch.
Maybe Yesenin associated the Motherland with the people? Being a native of the village, he certainly loved the peasants and the Russian people as a whole. But he also perfectly saw his shortcomings, which were especially clearly revealed in those difficult times. Acquisitiveness, concern for the base, indifference, meanness - the manifestation of such traits among the people incredibly upset the poet. Yesenin often expressed his emotions in very harsh lines:
Let those who care about the barn
Called Citizens and Residents
And they get fat in the lousy heat.
These are all perishable creatures!
Item for dunghills!
All of you wear sheepskins,
And the butcher shepherds knives for you.
You are all herd!
Herd! Herd!
Have the people gone now?
Is it a tribe?
Scoundrel on a scoundrel
And a coward on a coward.
I won't go anywhere with people
It is better to die together with you (wolves - approx.).
And even one of his works the poet eloquently called "Country of Scoundrels"...
Motherland for Yesenin is an ideal. But the Russian people, beautiful in its best manifestations, but not devoid of unsightly flaws, cannot in itself personify it. What then remains? Birches, fields and rivers? The motherland cannot be associated only with this, and Yesenin understood this very well.
I will take the liberty of suggesting that the main tragedy of Sergei Yesenin was a misunderstanding of what the Motherland, Russia, which he so metaphysically and comprehensively loved, was. Actually, the poet did not hide it:
But I love you, meek homeland!
For what, I can't figure it out.
Overwhelmed by a great and passionate feeling, Yesenin could not find an answer to the question of what is the object of his love. “My Russia, who are you? Who?”... Perhaps, all the poet's work was accompanied by a search for an answer to this question. Sometimes Yesenin's sense of the Motherland was unconsciously associated with childhood impressions: "... I am tenderly ill with the recollection of childhood."
Perhaps it was in this feeling that the poet was closest to the answer. After all, the Motherland, it seems to me, is first of all an age-old tradition, a traditional way of life, a culture. In isolation from this, nothing: neither the government nor the people, can personify the Motherland. And, perhaps, in his tender childhood memories, Yesenin could find that Rus that he sang, which he had been looking for all his short and tragic life.
He was born on October 3, 1895, in the Ryazan village of Konstantinovo. From the age of two, due to the poverty of the family, he was given up for education to his grandfather, a more prosperous peasant.Village Konstantinovo. House of Yesenin
At 17, Yesenin - graduate of the church teacher's school. But teaching does not attract him.
Awareness of his poetic gift came quickly. He later recalled: “For 18 years, I was surprised to send my poems to the editors that they were not being published, and suddenly burst into St. Petersburg. I was very welcome there."
He "burst" in St. Petersburg still a very rustic guy. Subsequently, he himself said that when he saw Blok, he sweated with excitement. In those years, Yesenin, who had not yet fledged, was an obedient companion of Klyuev and Gorodetsky. Together with them he walked about like a kind of tinsel peasant, wore smart morocco boots, a blue silk shirt, belted with a gold lace, on which hung a comb for combing valiant curls, frightening off people with taste with his appearance.
Yesenin and Klyuev
Yesenin's first poetry collection "Radunitsa" was published in 1916.
At the heart of Yesenin's early poetry lies a devout, almost religious love for his native land. It is to the native peasant land, and not to Russia with its cities, factories, universities and theaters, with political and social life. In this sense, he essentially did not know Russia and was not interested in it. For the time being, his homeland is his native side with its fields and forests, and not a country, not a state.
In the first half of 1916, Yesenin was drafted into the army. Thanks to the efforts of friends, he was appointed as an orderly to the Tsarskoye Selo military hospital train No. 143, where the empress and princesses served as sisters of mercy.
Yesenin among the military hospital train.
At one of the concerts in the infirmary, he met with Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. Yesenin recalled in his autobiography: “After reading my poems, she said that my poems are beautiful, but very sad. I answered her that this is the whole of Russia. The proofreading of his second book, Dove, contained a whole cycle of poems dedicated to the Empress. But after the revolution, Yesenin removed these dedications.
Yesenin's early poetry— it is still essentially a popular print, striking in the eyes with vivid images and metaphors. There is a smoky touch of sadness in it, but there is no anxiety, no anguish. The revolution will make him a great tragic poet.
***
Yesenin initially accepted the revolution enthusiastically. He was waiting for peasant Russia with its age-old truth to fly up from this flame like a fabulous firebird. In 1918-1919, several revolutionary poems were published from his pen, including Inonia with her aspirations for the coming general renewal. At this time, Yesenin flaunts his acquaintance with the leaders of the Cheka and even invents a new way of meeting girls, inviting them to the cellars of the Lubyanka to watch the executions.
However, very soon he realizes that the Bolsheviks— not at all who they would like to pretend to be. The mood of elation is replaced by confusion, bewilderment before what is happening.
Yesenin reads poetry at a rally.
"I am the last poet of the village"— Yesenin writes in a 1920 poem. But the village did not live up to expectations. Due to human weakness, he still blames the "city", the urban culture, with which the Bolsheviks, in his opinion, are poisoning rural Russia. It seems to him that the car that came running from the city blowing the "death horn" is to blame, he curses the rushing train, which the foal is chasing so ridiculously and stupidly.
And the result - oppressed state: "There is no love, neither for the village nor for the city."
At this time, Yesenin was already drinking heavily, often falling into a rage, in his poems there are motifs of hopeless loneliness, drunken revelry, hooliganism and a ruined life. But with this rot, with city hooligans, Yesenin is still easier than with the prosperous philistines of Soviet Russia. Now the Bolsheviks have become disgusting to him, his former friends from the Cheka are disgusted:
I am not a villain, and I did not rob the forest,
He did not shoot the unfortunate in dungeons.
One of his last major works was the poem "Country of Scoundrels", in which he denounced the Soviet regime. After that, he was persecuted in the newspapers. The last two years of Yesenin's life were spent in constant traveling: hiding from prosecution, he travels to the Caucasus three times, travels to Leningrad several times, seven times to Konstantinovo. Almost every one of his poems for some time now began to end with a prediction of imminent death:
My friend, my friend! Eyes clear
Only death closes.
The eyelids have cleared. But Yesenin did not want to see what was happening around. There was only one thing left for him to do: die.
***
At the end of November 1925, due to the threat of arrest, Yesenin had to go to a paid psycho-neurological clinic at Moscow University, where Professor Gannushkin provided him with a separate room.
Employees of the GPU and the police ran off their feet, looking for the poet. Only a few people knew about his hospitalization in the clinic, but there were informants. On November 28, the Chekists rushed to Gannushkin and demanded the extradition of Yesenin. The doctor replied with a firm refusal. Then the clinic was placed under surveillance. After waiting for a moment, Yesenin secretly leaves the hospital and leaves for Leningrad on December 23. On the night of December 28, he was found dead in a room at the Angleterre Hotel. The surviving evidence still does not allow us to make an unambiguous medical verdict on whether the death of the poet was suicide or the work of the Soviet special services, who staged the murder as a suicide. http://kp.by/daily/23609.3/46548/
Yesenin's body was transported to Moscow for burial at the Vagankovsky cemetery. The funeral was grandiose. According to contemporaries, not a single Russian poet was buried like this.
Yesenin's funeral. Funeral rally at the monument to Pushkin
Today it is already clear that the history of Yesenin is the history of the delusions of his time. He believed that the Bolshevik revolution was the path to the renewal of Russian life, and it turned out to be the path to the destruction of peasant Russia, which he loved so sincerely and sincerely. He renounced God in the name of love for man, and this "liberated" man only did that he removed the cross from the church and hung Lenin instead of the icon.
And, however, beyond all the delusions and all the falls of Yesenin's life, something remains that deeply attracts him. What is beautiful and noble in Yesenin is that he was infinitely truthful in his work, that he was not afraid to admit mistakes - and wanted to pay for everything with the last, terrible price. His truth is love for the motherland, albeit blind, but great:
I love my homeland
I love my country very much!
His misfortune was that he was never able to name it, this homeland: he sang of log, peasant Russia, and socialist Inonia, and Asiatic Russia, he tried to accept not with his heart, so with his mind even the USSR, - only the right name is not came to his lips: Russia. "A sixth part of the earth" as a state and cultural-historical phenomenon remained unknown to him. That was his main delusion, not an evil will, but a bitter mistake. Here is the plot and denouement of his tragedy.
Original article on my site "Forgotten stories" (world history in essays and stories)
Sergei Yesenin, without a doubt, is the most popular of all Russian poets of the 20th century, and perhaps even of all Russian poets. For him, the words that the people need him have never been an empty phrase. Outside of popular recognition, Yesenin did not think of his poems. His talent was recognized early and blasphemed just as early, but, perhaps, he did not have time to fully blossom, the reason for which was the tragic fate and tragic death of the poet, who did not even have time to live to the age of Christ. Stormy and sad was the fate of Yesenin. A bright and hectic life largely contributed to the popularity of his poems - sincere and musical, close and understandable to a wide variety of people. Legends began to form about her during the life of the poet.
After the death of Sergei Yesenin and the publication of the posthumous collected works of his works, a period of official oblivion of his work began. It was recognized as petty-bourgeois, kulak, not in keeping with the great epoch. For several decades, Yesenin was a banned poet. But his poems have always been loved by readers, and his life was full of legends.
Yesenin lived only 30 years. But so many trials fell on the lot of his generation that would have been more than enough for several centuries: the Russo-Japanese war, the revolution of 1905, the imperialist war, the February and October revolutions, the Civil War, the devastation and famine of the first post-revolutionary years.
How did the era affect the fate of Yesenin and his worldview, how was it reflected in his work? In this work, we will try to answer this question and at the same time try to penetrate the world of Yesenin's poetry.
“I began to compose poems early,” Yesenin later writes in his author’s biography. “The grandmother gave impetus to this. She told fairy tales. I didn’t like some fairy tales with bad endings, and I remade them in my own way. Grandmother managed to convey to her beloved grandson all the charm of folk oral and song speech. A whirlpool of pink fogs, autumn gold of lindens, a reddish poppy of a sunset, Russia - a raspberry field - Sergey Yesenin comprehended all this poetic picturesque alphabet in the clear expanse of the Ryazan field and birch expanse, in the noise of reeds over river backwaters, in the family of his grandfather - a scribe, a connoisseur of the lives of saints and Gospels, and grandmothers - songwriters.
The beauty of native nature and the Russian word, mother's songs and fairy tales, the grandfather's Bible and the spiritual verses of wanderers, the village street and the zemstvo school, Koltsov's songs and Lermontov's poems, ditties and books - all these sometimes extremely contradictory influences contributed to the early poetic awakening of Yesenin, whose mother - nature has so generously endowed with the precious gift of the song word.
Yesenin's childhood passed in the family of his maternal grandfather, a wealthy peasant. Therefore, Sergei, unlike many of his peers, did not have to take care of their daily bread, although for the order of peasant labor, of course, he was taught how to mow, sow, take care of horses, he knew how. Perhaps it was precisely this seemingly purely worldly circumstance that helped him bring Russian nature into Russian poetry with all its distances and colors, already through this bright window pierced to God to see in the Ryazan village broken by latrine fishing her poetic, ideal prototype - blue Russia, Motherland with a capital letter.
In 1916, Yesenin's first collection of poems, Radunitsa, appeared, combining poems depicting peasant life and interpreting religious subjects. At the end of 1915 - beginning of 1916. Yesenin's name is found on the pages of many publications next to the names of the most famous poets.
2. Revolution and poetry
The first world war was on. The call to the active army was avoided. Yesenin served in the Tsarskoye Selo military sanitary battalion. He read his poems in the infirmary for the wounded in the presence of the Empress. This speech, like a speech a few months earlier in Moscow before the Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, aroused indignation in St. Petersburg literary circles, hostile to the monarchy. However, it is difficult to speak definitely about that period of Yesenin's life: the testimonies and memoirs of contemporaries are too contradictory.
In any case, it is reliably known that in Tsarskoe Selo Yesenin visited N. Gumilyov and A. Akhmatova and read them a poem that struck Anna Andreevna with its last quatrain - it seemed to her prophetic.
I meet everything, I accept everything,
Glad and happy to take out the soul.
I came to this earth
To leave her soon.
The imperialist war was perceived by Yesenin as a genuine tragedy of the people. In the poem "Rus" (1914), the disturbing atmosphere of the trouble that came to the village is conveyed:
Black crows croaked:
Terrible troubles a wide scope.
The whirlwind of the forest twists in all directions,
Waves shroud foam from the lakes.
Cell phones were placed under the windows
Militias go to war.
Sloboda women zagygykali,
A cry cut through the silence.
Later, the poet recalled: “The sharp difference with many Petersburg poets of that era was reflected in the fact that they succumbed to militant patriotism, and I, with all my love for the Ryazan fields and for my compatriots, always had a sharp attitude towards the imperialist war and militant patriotism. I even got into trouble for not writing patriotic poems like "Thunder of victory, resound."
Yesenin took the military oath, along with other military orderlies, only on January 14, 1917. And already at the end of February, a revolution broke out, overthrowing the tsar. On March 17, Yesenin was seconded from medical train No. 143 to the Military Commission under the State Duma, and the poet received a certificate that there were no obstacles for him “to enter the school of ensigns”. It is possible that the issue of sending him to the ensign school was resolved even before the revolution.
In his autobiography, the poet stated: “During the revolution he left Kerensky’s army without permission and, living as a deserter, worked with the Socialist-Revolutionaries not as a party member, but as a poet.
During the split of the party, he went with the left group and in October was in their fighting squad. He left Petrograd together with the Soviet authorities.”
At the end of March, having arrived in Petrograd, Yesenin immediately began to collaborate in the Socialist-Revolutionary publications edited by R.V. Ivanov-Razumnik, in particular, in two collections of the Scythians literary group. In the fighting squad, at best, he was listed, but did not take any part in the battles in October 1917. Ivanov-Razumnik extolled Yesenin and Klyuev as prophetic poets of "Russia of the future".
As for his desertion, Yesenin made a clear poetic exaggeration in his autobiography. And after the October Revolution, desertion was much more honorable than work at the Military Commission of the State Duma. Another thing is that in the conditions of the revolution, Yesenin changed his mind about enrolling in the school of ensigns, but preferred to cooperate in the Socialist-Revolutionary newspapers. But no one was looking for him as a deserter at that time.
In general, Yesenin accepted both the February and later October revolutions. The February Revolution is dedicated to the 1917 poem "Comrade":
But quietly ringing
Outside the window,
Turning off, then flaring up
Iron
"Rre-es-puu-public!"
But it cannot be said that the revolution aroused in him the same stormy enthusiasm, poetic and human, as, say, in Mayakovsky. Yesenin experienced the revolution as a sharp and sudden renewal of life. The revolution provided rich material for his poetry, but it hardly touched the poet's soul. Socialist-Revolutionary - then Yesenin was "March".
Nevertheless, the revolution in the verses of 1917 is presented as good news for the people:
Oh, I believe, I believe, there is happiness!
The sun hasn't gone out yet.
Dawn prayer book red
Prophecies good news.
Ring, ring, golden Russia,
Worry, indefatigable wind!
Blessed is he who celebrates with joy
Your shepherd's sadness.
"Shepherd's sadness", according to the poet, should be replaced by revolutionary fun.
In 1917, he urged in a poem dedicated to Nikolai Klyuev:
Hide, perish you tribe
Festering dreams and thoughts!
On a stone top
We carry stellar noise.
Enough to rot and whine,
And glorify the rise of the vile -
Already washed away, erased the tar
Resurrected Russia.
Already moved the wings
Her dumb support!
With other names
Another steppe rises.
The poet accepted the October Revolution, in his own words, "with a peasant bias." In an effort to respond to revolutionary events, he turns to mythology, biblical legends, which is reflected in his theomachic and cosmic poems and small poems: "Transfiguration" (1917), "Inonia" (1918), "Jordan Dove" (1918).
The poet does not hide his jubilation, watching the collapse of the old world, in a fit of joy he says goodbye to traditional religious beliefs, but at the same time he widely uses religious vocabulary. Concrete reality, real events are burdened with surprises, metaphors, biblical images, vague symbols. And at the same time, the “peasant bias” is also clearly visible.
In 1917-1918, he felt the gift of a prophet in himself, created the “Yesenin bible” from ten small poems: “Singing Call”, “Otchar”, “Oktoikh”, “Coming”, “Transfiguration”, “Inonia”, “Village Book of Hours” , “Heavenly Drummer”, “Pantocrator”, where the birth with the revolution of the New World is compared with the divine creation, the revolutionary transformation of life is expected as a boon. For Yesenin, the revolution was something great and religious. The revolution, the uprising of slaves, was seen by the poet both on earth and in heaven. In The Heavenly Drummer, Yesenin urged:
Gay you slaves, slaves!
You stuck to the ground with your belly.
Today the moon from the water
The horses drank.
Star leaves are pouring
In the rivers in our fields
Long live the revolution
On earth and in heaven!
Throwing souls with bombs
We sow a blizzard whistle.
What do we saliva icon
At our gates in the sky?
Are commanders strange to us
White herd of gorillas?
Whirling cavalry is torn
To the new shore of the world.
In "Transfiguration", dedicated to Ivanov-Razumnik, Yesenin painted a picture of the revolution as a universal, cosmic phenomenon that transforms both nature and the planet itself:
Hey Russians!
Hunters of the universe
Scooping up the sky with a seine of dawn, -
Blow the pipes.
Under the plow of the storm
The earth roars.
Ruins the rocks golden-fanged
New sower
Wandering through the fields
New grains
Throws into furrows.
Bright guest in a rattletrap to you
Runs through the clouds
Mare.
Harness on a mare -
Bells on the collar-
But here, too, there are already disturbing, disturbing lines that create a blasphemous image:
The clouds are barking
The golden-toothed heights roar
I sing and call:
Lord, recline!
And in Pantokrator, Yesenin appears before us as a rebel, glorifying the spontaneous impulse and ready to overthrow God himself from heaven:
Glory, my verse, who vomits and rages,
Who buries longing in the shoulder,
Horse face of the month
Grab the bridle of the rays.
For thousands of years the same stars are famous,
The same honey flows the flesh.
Do not pray to yourself, but bark
You taught me, Lord.
Maybe to the gates of the Lord
I will bring myself.
On June 15, 1918, Yesenin's program poem "Inonia" appears in the magazine "Our Way". Its name comes from the Church Slavonic word "ino", meaning "okay, good". In his last completed autobiography of 1925, Yesenin described the circumstances of the emergence of the poem as follows: “In the beginning of 1918, I firmly felt that the connection with the old world was broken, and wrote the poem “Inonia”, which was subjected to many sharp attacks, because of which I the nickname of a hooligan was established.
In this poem, Yesenin boldly takes on the prophetic rank:
I'm not afraid of death
No spears, no arrows of rain, -
That's what the Bible said
Prophet Yesenin Sergey.
My time has come
I'm not afraid of the clang of the whip.
Body, Christ body,
I spit out my mouth.
I don't want to rise to salvation
Through his torment and the cross:
I learned something else
Selling eternity stars.
I saw another coming -
Where death does not dance over the truth.
In Inonia, the poet stated:
The barking of bells over Russia is formidable -
These are the walls of the Kremlin crying.
Now on the peaks of the stars
I lift you up, earth!
I curse the breath of Kitezh
And all the hollows of his roads.
I want to be on a bottomless hood
We have erected a palace for ourselves.
I will lick on the icons with my tongue
Faces of martyrs and saints.
I promise you the city of Inonia,
Where the deity of the living lives.
Similar motifs appeared in the "Jordan Dove" created in June 1918:
My land is golden!
Autumn light temple!
Rushing to the clouds.
The sky is like a bell
The month is language
My mother is the motherland
I am a Bolshevik.
Full of vitality, self-confidence, the poet "is ready to bend the whole world with an elastic hand" It seemed that a little more effort - and the eternal dream of the Russian plowman of a golden age would come true.
But the life of revolutionary Russia unfolded more and more abruptly. It was during this difficult period of class battles that Yesenin's peasant bias manifested itself most tangibly. This deviation primarily reflected those objective contradictions that were characteristic of the Russian peasantry during the period of the revolution.
Deep pain and indefatigable sorrow for the irretrievable, historically doomed old village sounded in the "Song of the Bread" and in the poem "I am the last poet of the village." And at the same time, what a soul-searing faith in the great future of Russia in this traditional song of the poet. Is it possible to forget the romantic image of the Yesenin foal. This image has a deep historical meaning:
Dear, dear, funny fool
Well, where is he, where is he chasing.
Doesn't he know that living horses
The steel cavalry won.
The passage of time, the course of history is inexorable. The poet feels it. “The steel horse defeated the living horse,” he notes with anxiety and sadness in one of his letters. The poet rejoices at the good changes that are taking place in the life of the Russian peasantry. “You know,” Yesenin told one of his friends, “I am now from the village and all Lenin. He knew what word to say to the village to make it move. What is the power in it?
Yesenin tried more and more to understand, to comprehend what was happening in these years in Russia. At this time, the horizons of his poetry are expanding.
However, pretty soon Yesenin began to understand: neither the cosmic revolution nor the peasant paradise was destined to come true. In one of the letters of the poet in 1920. we read: "I am very sad now that history is going through a difficult era of killing the individual as a living person, because there is absolutely not the socialism that I thought about. Closely living in it." According to one of the poet's friends, Yesenin, when meeting with him, "said that his Yesenin revolution had not yet come, that he was all alone."
Undoubtedly, the roots of Yesenin's poetry are in the Ryazan village. Therefore, with such pride, he spoke in verse about his peasant birthright: “My father is a peasant, but I am a peasant son.” And it is no coincidence that in the revolutionary days of the seventeenth year, Yesenin sees himself as the successor of the Koltsovo traditions. But we should not forget and lose sight of another very important circumstance. Russia was a peasant country. The three Russian revolutions are revolutions in a peasant country. The peasant question has always worried the progressive minds of Russia. Let's remember Radishchev, Gogol, Saltykov - Shchedrin, Leo Tolstoy. Taking the social path of solving the “peasant question”, Yesenin felt in his heart that it would be far from easy and simple to overcome his peasant Russia, as it seemed to some of his contemporaries.
And yet Yesenin was seized by a longing for what had irretrievably gone along with the revolution. This longing implicitly burned his soul, although the despair of the last years of his life was still far away:
Good in this moonlit autumn
Wander the grass alone
And gather ears of corn on the road
In an impoverished soul-bag.
But by the end of 1918, having known all the horrors of war communism, faced with devastation and famine, Yesenin does not hide his anxiety about the fate of blue Russia, but affirms his belief that it will be preserved thanks to nature itself, no matter what:
I left my home
Blue left Russia.
Three-star birch forest over the pond
The mother's old sadness warms.
golden frog moon
Spread out on still water.
Like apple blossom, gray hair
My father spilled in his beard.
I won't be back soon!
For a long time to sing and ring the blizzard.
Guards blue Russia
Old maple on one leg
And I know there's joy in it
To those who kiss the leaves of the rain,
Because that old maple
Head looks like me.
The horrors and sufferings of the civil war strengthened the poet in anticipation of the impending death of the village. In November 1920, Yesenin wrote the poem "Confessions of a Hooligan", which Klyuev and some others considered almost like a break with peasant poets.
Poor, poor peasants!
You must have become ugly
You are also afraid of God and the bowels of the swamp.
Oh if you could understand
What is your son of Russia
The best poet!
Didn't you destroy his life with your heart,
When he dipped his bare feet in puddles of autumn?
And now he walks in a top hat
And patent leather shoes.
In general, the revolution became an important stage in Yesenin's poetic revolution. He was imbued with the grandiosity of the events taking place, acquired a universal, cosmic look at the village dear to his heart, at his native nature, but at the same time he realized the inevitability of the departure of the peasant “calico” Russia. The foundations of the former measured life were collapsing, the poet was increasingly immersed in a bohemian environment, and the drunken sprees that began were aggravated by fear of the onset of the "steel cavalry".
4. The poem "Anna Snegina"
In the work of Sergei Yesenin, the poem "Anna Snegina", published in March 1925, occupies a prominent place, reflecting both the poet's lyrical memories and his foresight of the fate of the country and the revolution. The poem, which Yesenin considered the best of all he wrote, is largely autobiographical in nature. The protagonist, on behalf of whom the story is being told and who, like the poet, is called Sergei, travels to his native village - Radovo in the period between the two revolutions of the 17th year - February and October. He notes: “Then Kerensky was caliphed over the country on a white horse,” hinting that it was already clear at that time: the head of the Provisional Government was caliph for an hour. The driver introduces Sergei to sad events in his native village. First, we are presented with a picture of the former bliss, so close to Yesenin's ideal:
We don’t get into important things very much,
But still, happiness is given to us.
Our yards are covered with iron,
Everyone has a garden and a threshing floor.
Everyone has painted shutters,
On holidays meat and kvass.
No wonder once a police officer
He loved to stay with us.
Radovtsy knew how to get along with the previous government:
We paid dues on time,
But - a formidable judge - foreman
Always added to quitrent
As far as flour and millet.
And to avoid adversity
Surplus us was without hardships.
Once - the authorities, then they are the authorities,
And we are just ordinary people.
However, even before the revolution, the well-being of the inhabitants of Radov was violated by the peasants of the neighboring village of Kriushi, where "life was bad - almost the entire village plowed at a gallop with one plow on a pair of hackneyed nags." The leader of the Kriushans, Pron Ogloblin, killed the foreman of Radov in one of the fights. According to the driver-radovets:
Since then, we have been in trouble.
The reins rolled down from happiness.
Almost three years in a row
We have either a case, or a fire.
The years of Radov's misfortunes coincide with the years of the First World War. And then the February Revolution broke out. And now Sergey comes to his native place. Here he learns that Pron Ogloblin returned from hard labor and again became the leader of the Kriushans. Sergei is close to the aspirations of the peasants, who demand "without redemption of the arable land of the masters", although he retains in his heart love for the local landowner Anna Snegina. She and Pron come to Anna to ask to give the land to the peasants just at the moment when she receives news of her husband's death at the front. Although Pron rather rudely speaks to Snegina's mother about the land: “Give it back!. Don’t kiss your feet!”, he still has the conscience to lag behind her at this tragic moment, agreeing with Sergey’s arguments: “Today they are not in a good mood. Let's go, Pron, to the tavern. Pron is a rather reckless person. Sergei's friend, the old miller, speaks of Ogloblin without sympathy: “A cobblestone, a fighter, a rude man. He is always angry at everyone, drunk in the morning for weeks on end. But the elemental strength of character attracts Sergei to Pron. After all, Ogloblin is a disinterested person, rooting for the interests of the people. After the Bolshevik coup, Pron promises: "I will be the first to establish a commune in my village right now." In civilian life, he dies at the hands of whites, and his brother Labutya comes to power in Kriushy:
Man - what is your fifth ace:
At every dangerous moment
Hvalbishka and devilish coward.
Of course, you have seen these.
Their rock was rewarded with chatter.
Before the revolution, he wore two royal medals and boasted of imaginary exploits in the Japanese war. As Yesenin very accurately points out: “Such are always in mind. They live without calluses on their hands. And after the Labutya revolution
Of course, in the Council,
I hid the medals in a chest.
But with the same important posture,
Like some grey-haired veteran
Wheezed over a fusel jar
About Nerchinsk and Turukhan:
“Yes, brother!
We saw grief
But we were not intimidated by fear.”
Medals, medals, medals
Ringing in his words.
At one time, Labutya went first to describe the estate of the Snegins:
There is always speed in capture:
Give! We'll figure it out later! -
The whole farm was taken to the parish
With mistresses and cattle.
By the way, Yesenin deliberately exaggerated. In reality, the estate of the prototype Snegina - Kashina was not ruined, and it was Sergei Yesenin who managed to keep fellow villagers from robbery in the summer of 1918, persuading them to save the estate for a school or hospital. And indeed, a year later, an outpatient clinic was opened in the manor house, and the stable in the estate was adapted for a club. But in the poem, Yesenin preferred to strengthen the motive of the peasant element.
When Denikin's men shot Pron, Labutya safely hid in the straw. Yesenin felt that in the revolution and the civil war, people like Labutya survived much more often than people like Pron, cowards who were accustomed only to “rob the loot”, to act according to the principle: “Give it! We'll figure it out later!" The poet was clearly worried that such people play a major role not only at the local level, but also in the leadership of the party. Perhaps it was no coincidence that Labutya spoke of his imaginary exile to the Turukhansk region, where in reality Stalin was exiled before the revolution. Yesenin understood that under the rule of labut, the peasants' dreams of happiness, following the model of Radovsky, would be finally buried. And the main character of the poem, like Blok's Stranger, personifying beauty, leaves Russia in the finale. Anna writes to Sergei:
I often go to the pier
And, whether for joy, or in fear,
I look among the courts more and more closely
On the red Soviet flag.
Now there have reached strength.
My path is clear
But you are still nice to me
Like home and like spring.
In the new Russia, there will be no place left for beauty, just as there has long been no place for Radov's paradise. The country has turned into poor Kriushi. By the way, the prototype of Anna Snegina, Lidia Ivanovna Kashina, never went abroad. In 1918, she moved not to London, but to Moscow, worked here as a translator, typist, stenographer, and although she died in the formidable 1937, not from a KGB bullet, but by her own death. However, here the poet preferred to increase the contrast and break with his former life, sending his ideal into an irrevocable distance. The poet, most likely, foresaw that the Soviet government, unlike the tsarist government, would by no means be satisfied with an extra measure of flour and millet, but, having reached strength, would be able to squeeze the juice out of the peasants (this is what happened in collectivization, after the murder of Yesenin). That is why, like the heroine of the poem, he looks at the red flag not only with joy (Yesenin welcomed the revolution that gave land to the peasants), but also with ever-increasing fear.
5. Yesenin's conflict with reality
In the 1920s, Yesenin experienced the collapse of his revolutionary illusions. He concluded: real socialism, "without dreams", kills all living things, including the individual. Utopias about the religious-revolutionary transformation of Russia left his work, motives of flowing away, withering of life, detachment from modernity appeared, and in the lyrical hero - "horse thief", "robber and boor" - Yesenin's inner opposition was designated.
In 1921, the poet, disillusioned with the revolution, turned to the image of a rebel and wrote the poem "Pugachev", in which the theme of the peasant war was associated with post-revolutionary peasant unrest. The logical continuation of the theme of the conflict between the authorities and the peasantry was the poem "The Country of Scoundrels" (1922-1923), which expressed not only Yesenin's oppositional moods, but also his understanding of his outcast in real socialism. In one of his letters in 1923, he wrote: “I cease to understand to which revolution I belonged. I see only one thing, that neither by February, nor by October, apparently, some kind of November was hiding and hiding in us.
The poet became more and more aware that mutual misunderstanding was growing between him and his fellow countrymen. On the one hand, he was increasingly separated from village life. On the other hand, Soviet realities appeared in the countryside, unfamiliar to Yesenin, to which his countrymen had to adapt. Yesenin, unlike some other poets, could never say that he was born of a revolution or that this is his revolution. Yesenin accepted the revolution, but, as he admitted more than once, he accepted it in his own way, "with a peasant bias." However, very soon revolutionary blizzards chilled to death the voice of the golden-haired birch-blue singer and the white smoke of apple trees. The Russian village began to die long before the revolution. It cannot be said that in this respect the revolution awakened Yesenin's talent, it only made the main theme of "the last singer of the village" more acute. But the first joy of the revolution passed very quickly. The poet saw that the Bolsheviks were not only not the saviors of the peasantry, but their faithful destroyers, and that freedom of creative expression frightens them even more than tsarist power.
He tried to enter into Soviet life, to sing a new socialist reality, but he did not succeed very well. Yesenin was tormented by this, he did not want to sing the stars and the moon, but the emerging Soviet new. In the Stanzas, the poet insisted:
write with a rhyme,
Perhaps everyone can
About the girl, about the stars, about the moon
But I have a different feeling
The heart is gnawing
Other thoughts
They give me a skull.
I want to be a singer
And a citizen
So that everyone
As pride and example, was real,
And not a half-son -
In the great states of the USSR.
But Yesenin was not given to find the harmony of will and power. In 1924 he wrote in Soviet Russia:
That hurricane has passed. Few of us survived.
Many are not at the roll call of friendship.
The hurricane of revolution orphaned the village. The Yesenin generation was replaced by people with non-peasant thinking: “not a village, but the whole earth is their mother.” Pushkin’s motive of the meeting of the lyrical hero with the “young, unfamiliar tribe”, his theme of harmony and natural succession of generations is solved by Yesenin tragically: he is a foreigner in his country and a “gloomy pilgrim” in his native village, whose young men “sing other songs”. In "Soviet Russia", the village building socialism rejected the poet: "I do not find shelter in anyone's eyes."
The lyrical hero himself fences himself off from the Bolshevik reality: he will not give her the “dear lyre”, he will continue to sing “A sixth part of the earth / With the short name “Rus””, despite the fact that he tends to perceive the image of the departed Russia as dreams .
The village has long ceased to seem like an earthly paradise to the poet, the bright colors of the Russian landscape have faded, motives of inferiority have appeared in the description of nature: “maple trees wrinkle their ears with long branches”, poplars stuck their “bare feet” in ditches.
Harmony was found by Yesenin in the acceptance, on the one hand, by the mind of the new generation, “alien youth”, “strong enemy”, and on the other hand, by the heart - the homeland of feather grass, wormwood, a log hut. Yesenin's compromise is expressed in the following lines:
Give me in the homeland of my beloved,
All loving, die in peace!
But behind the sincere desire to see a civilized beginning in the new Russia, one cannot fail to notice the tragedy of the outcast hero:
I don't know what will happen to me.
Maybe I'm not good enough for a new life.
Discord with reality and with himself led the poet to a tragic end.
6. Death of a poet
Is there a mystery, a mystery in the death of Yesenin? As we can easily see, if there is, then it lies not at all in the circumstances of Yesenin's death, as many people think, but only in the reasons that pushed the poet to the fatal step.
We can agree with Yuri Annenkov: “Yesenin hanged himself from despair, from impassability. The paths of Russian poetry were cut off in those years and were soon boarded up tightly. If here, in exile, the free Georgy Ivanovs continued to create, then within the Soviet Union more and more bureaucratic Demyan Bedny were born and filled the printed pages.
But the most accurate of all about Yesenin's suicide, perhaps, was said by Leon Trotsky, who, it would seem, should have been Yesenin's ideological opponent, but was subdued by his poetry. On January 18, 1926, Trotsky's letter was read at the Esenin memorial evening at the Art Theater. Lev Davydovich, in particular, wrote: “We have lost Yesenin - such a wonderful poet, so fresh, so real. And how tragically lost! He left himself, saying goodbye with blood to an unnamed friend - perhaps to all of us. Striking in tenderness and softness are his last lines. He passed away without a loud resentment, without a pose of protest - without slamming the door, but quietly closing it with his hand, from which blood oozed. In this gesture, the poetic and human image of Yesenin flashed with an unforgettable farewell light. Hiding behind a mask of mischief - and giving this mask an internal, which means not an accidental tribute - Yesenin always, apparently, felt himself - not from this world.
Our time is a severe time, perhaps one of the most severe in the history of so-called civilized mankind. The revolutionary born for these decades is obsessed with the fierce patriotism of his era, his fatherland in time. Yesenin was not a revolutionary. The author of "Pugachev" and "The Ballad of Twenty-Six" was the most intimate lyricist. Our era is not lyrical. This is the main reason why Sergey Yesenin arbitrarily and so early left us and his era.
Trotsky further argued: “His lyrical spring could unfold to the end only in the conditions of a harmonious, happy, song-living society, where not struggle reigns, but friendship, love, tender participation. That time will come."
Perhaps more clearly than others, the results of Yesenin's life and work were summed up by Vl. Khodasevich: “It is wonderful and beneficial in Yesenin that he was infinitely truthful in his work and before his conscience, that he reached the end in everything, that, not being afraid to make mistakes, he took upon himself what others tempted him to, - and he wanted to pay for everything at a terrible price. His truth is love for the motherland, albeit blind, but great. He confessed it even in the guise of a bully:
I love my homeland
I love my country very much!
His grief was that he could not name it: he sang of log Russia, and peasant Russia, and socialist Inonia, and Asian Russia, he even tried to accept the USSR - only one correct name did not come to his lips: Russia. That was his main delusion, not an evil will, but a bitter mistake. Here is the plot and the denouement of his tragedy.
CONCLUSION
In this work, we tried to consider how the era in which Yesenin had to live influenced his fate and was reflected in his work.
Then, when Yesenin first gained fame as a poet, Russia was waiting for a revolution. During the years of his mature creativity, the country reaped the fruits of the revolution. The revolution unleashed elemental forces, and spontaneity as such corresponded to the nature of Yesenin's creativity. The poet was carried away by the spirit of freedom, but by the end of the civil war he realized that the "steel cavalry" would destroy the peasantry.
Yesenin called himself the last poet of the village, whose doom in the industrial-urban era he felt with all his heart. This circumstance largely predetermined the tragedy of his work.
Although Yesenin lived in the city for most of his conscious life, he never became a real city dweller. In recent years, he was haunted by the fear of writing himself, the fear of finally losing his peasant roots, without which Yesenin could not imagine himself a poet. All this led to a tragic ending.
SERGEY YESENIN, 1918
REVOLUTION IN SERGEY ESENIN'S WORK http://esenin-poetry.ru/ref/351-2.html
About S. Yesenin, Blok wrote: "Sergey Yesenin appeared in Russian literature suddenly, as comets appear in the sky." Indeed, this finest lyricist, the singer of Russian nature, quickly and easily took a special place in literature, many of his works were set to music and became songs.
The Russian land appears before the poet as a sad "calm corner", "the meek homeland", "the side of the feather grass forest". The whole world for him is painted in bright, iridescent colors. The Russian plowman, the Russian peasant, until quite recently so earthly and peaceful, turns into a brave, proud in spirit hero - the giant Otcharya, who holds on his shoulders the "unkissed world." Yesenin's peasant - Otchar is endowed with the "strength of Anika", his "mighty shoulders are like a granite mountain", he is "indescribable and wise", in his speeches "blue and song". There is something in this image from the legendary heroic figures of the Russian epic epic. Otchar makes us remember, first of all, the epic image of the hero-plowman Mikula Selyaninovich, who was subject to the great "draught of the earth", who effortlessly plowed the "clean field" with his miracle plow. "Father" is one of Yesenin's first poetic responses to the events of the February Revolution of 1917. This poem was written by Yesenin in the summer of 1917 during his stay in his native village. In September, "Otchar" is published by one of the Petrograd newspapers. In this poem, as well as in the "Singing Call" and "Okto-ikha" written a little earlier, in Petrograd, the theme of the revolutionary renewal of the country is revealed in images that are most often cosmic, planetary in nature. Hence the prophetic meaning of these poems, their oratory-polemical rhythmic structure.
Rejoice!
The earth appeared
New font!
Burned out
blue blizzards,
And the earth lost
The sting.
In the men's manger
A flame was born
To the peace of the whole world!
This is how Yesenin begins his "Singing Call". In "Oktoikh" this junction of the "earthly" with the cosmic gets its further development:
We shake the sky with our shoulders,
We shake the darkness with our hands
And in a skinny ear of bread
We inhale star grass.
Oh Russia, oh steppe and winds,
And you, my father's house!
In "Oktoikh", as well as in "Singing Call" and "Father", mythological images and biblical legends are filled with new, revolutionary-rebellious content. They are reinterpreted by the poet in a very peculiar way and are transformed in verses into pictures of a "peasant's paradise" on earth. The civic pathos of these poems finds its figurative expression in the poet's romantic dream of the harmony of the world, renewed by a revolutionary storm: "We did not come to destroy the world, but to love and believe!". The desire for equality, the brotherhood of people is the main thing for the poet. And one more thing: already the February events give rise to a completely different social mood in Yesenin's lyrical poems. He joyfully welcomes the coming of a new day of freedom. He expresses this state of mind with great poetic power in the beautiful poem "Wake me up early tomorrow ...". S. Tolstaya-Yesenina says that "according to Yesenin, this poem was his first response to the February Revolution." With the revolutionary renewal of Russia, Yesenin now connects his further poetic fate.
Wake me up early tomorrow
Shine a light in our upper room.
They say that I will soon be
Famous Russian poet.
The feeling that now he, too, the son of peasant Russia, is called upon to become a spokesman for the thoughts, aspirations and aspirations of the insurgent people, Yesenin conveys with great pathos in the poem "O Russia, flap your wings ...". In his poetic manifesto, Yesenin puts forward a noble, democratic idea: to show revolutionary Russia in all its beauty and strength. The poet seeks to expand the artistic horizon, to deepen the social problems of his works. Special mention should be made of Yesenin's "little poem" "Comrade", written by him in the hot pursuit of the February events in Petrograd.
Yesenin was one of those Russian writers who, from the first days of October, openly sided with the rebellious people. “During the years of the revolution,” Yesenin wrote, “he was entirely on the side of October, but he accepted everything in his own way, with a peasant bias.” Everything that happened in Russia during the years of October was unusual, unique, and incomparable to anything. "Today the foundation of the world is being revised," Vladimir Mayakovsky said. "Revolutionary, keep stepping!" Alexander Blok called on the sons of insurgent Russia. Sergei Yesenin also foresaw great changes in the life of Russia:
Come down, appear to us, red horse!
Harness yourself to the lands of the shafts.
We are a rainbow to you - an arc,
The Arctic Circle - on the harness.
Oh, take out our globe
On a different track.
More and more Yesenin captures the "vortex" beginning, the universal, cosmic scope of events. The poet Pyotr Oreshin, recalling meetings with Yesenin during the years of the revolution, emphasized: “Yesenin accepted October with indescribable delight, and accepted it, of course, only because he was already internally prepared for it, that all his inhuman temperament was in harmony with October ...". However, to comprehend deeply, consciously all the significance of historical and social changes in the life of the people, especially the Russian village, associated with the struggle for the triumph of the ideas of the Great October Revolution, he, of course, could not immediately.
At first, the poet perceives the period of war communism one-sidedly; it is still difficult for him to understand that the contradictions of this time will be quickly overcome by the development of the new reality itself. It was during this difficult period of class battles, which required an especially clear and precise ideological position from the artist, that Yesenin's "peasant bias" manifested itself most tangibly. One should not think that this "deviation" is a consequence of only the subjective aspects of the poet's worldview and creativity. In fact, there was no "peasant deviation". Yesenin's works primarily reflect those specific, objective contradictions that were characteristic of Russian society during the period of the proletarian revolution, which actually did not please the ideologists of the "iron discipline", this was the main conflict between the poet and the "revolution".
Russia!
Dear heart!
The soul shrinks from pain.
“I am very sad now,” Yesenin writes in 1920, “that history is going through a difficult era of killing the individual as a living thing, because it’s completely different from the socialism that I thought about ...” The poet’s utopian dreams of socialism as "peasant's paradise" on earth, until recently so inspiredly sung by him in "Inonia".
Especially hard, at times tragically, in 1919-1921, the poet experiences a revolutionary breakdown of the old, patriarchal foundations of the Russian village. The story about how a locomotive overtook a thin-legged colt has a deep inner meaning in Sorokoust. It is in this scene that the poem reaches its climax:
Let us recall one of the most heartfelt and humane lyrical poems - "I do not regret, I do not call, I do not cry ...", written by him in 1921. How philosophically wise Yesenin's reflections on the days of a fleeting life are in him, with some artistic power expressed in him love for people, for all life on earth!
Wandering spirit, you're less and less
You stir the flame of your mouth.
Oh my lost freshness
A riot of eyes and a flood of feelings.
When you read into the late Esenin, you are amazed at the fact that, it turns out, almost everything that we have just now started talking aloud after seventy years of silence, almost all of this has already been said and foreseen by the poet of genius. With amazing force, Yesenin captured that “new” that was forcibly introduced by visiting emissaries into the life of the village, blew it up from the inside and now led to a well-known state.
"I was in the village. Everything is collapsing ... You have to be there yourself to understand ... The end of everything" - these were Yesenin's impressions of those years. They are supplemented by the memoirs of the poet’s sister Alexandra Yesenina: “I remember the famine that came. Terrible time. Bread was baked with chaff, husks, sorrel, nettles, swan-doy. There was no salt, matches, soap, and I didn’t even have to think about the rest ... Along with honest people, "laboutis" with long arms crawled into power. These people lived quite well ... "
June 1, 1924 Yesenin writes "Return to the Motherland". The image of desolation, but not Chekhov's and Bunin's, in which there was poetry, but some kind of hysterical, hopeless, foreshadowing "the end of everything", meets us at the very beginning of this little poem. "The bell tower without a cross", the crosses of the cemetery, the crosses that are the image of the civil war! - "as if in hand-to-hand dead men, froze with outstretched arms." The miserable life of a village devastated by years of internecine strife, "calendar Lenin" instead of icons thrown out by the sisters of the Komsomol members, "Capital" instead of the Bible ... A grandson who did not recognize his grandfather, another image of a symbol - an epoch, another terrible insight into the future . How does this contrast with Pushkin's: "The grandson ... will remember me"! ..
The poet sums up the tragic result of all this in the poem of the same days "Soviet Russia":
That's the country!
What the hell am I
Shouted in verse that I am friendly with the people?
My poetry is no longer needed here
And, perhaps, I myself am not needed here either.
I accept everything
I accept everything as is.
Ready to follow the beaten tracks.
I'll give my whole soul to October and May,
But I won't give you my sweet lyre.
Yesenin predicted much of what happened in the country. in his lyrics in the summer of 1924 and in the poem "Anna Snegina", conceived at the same time. The poem is closely connected with Yesenin's entire lyrics, it absorbed many of its motifs and images. If we talk about traditions, then in the year the work on the poem was completed - 1925 - Yesenin wrote: "In the sense of formal development, now I am drawn to everything more to Pushkin. And the Pushkin tradition, of course, is present in the poem. It seems to be more fruitful to talk about Pushkin's beginning in a broad sense, which, by the way, Yesenin himself referred to in the above statement. First of all, it is the people. Yesenin, having gone through the temptation of an exquisite metaphor, came to such an understanding of art, which is determined by the artist's loyalty to "simplicity, goodness, truth." These guidelines were expressed in the language of the poem, more precisely, in all the richness of colloquial folk speech, which is striking from the first lines. In Yesenin's poem, the characters "self-reproduce" through speech and therefore immediately acquire plastically visible features of a living face. Everyone's speech is so individual that we well remember the driver, and the miller, and the old woman, and Anna, and even her mother, who utters only one phrase, but is defined in it, and Pron, and Labutya, and, of course, the main hero himself.
The fact that Anna Snegina ended up far from Soviet Russia is, of course, a sad pattern, a tragedy for many Russian people of that time. Separation from Anna Snegina in the lyrical context of the poem is the poet's separation from youth, separation from the purest and most holy that a person has at the dawn of life. But - and this is the main thing in the poem - everything humanly beautiful, bright and holy lives in the hero, remains with him forever - like a memory, like a "living life", like the light of a distant star that points the way in the night:
Far away, they were cute!…
That image in me has not faded away
We all loved during these years,
But that means
They loved us too.
This epilogue was very important for Yesenin - a poet and a man: after all, all this helped him to live, fight in himself with his "black man", and also withstand an inhuman struggle with the haters of Russia and the Russian poet. The theme of the motherland and the theme of time are closely connected in the poem. In a narrow chronological sense, the epic basis of the poem is as follows: the main part is the Ryazan land of 1917 in the fifth chapter - a sketch of the fate of one of the corners of the great rural Russia of the period of terrible upheavals, witnessed by the poet and hero of "Anna Snegina" (action in poem ends in 1923). Of course, behind the fate of one of the corners of the Russian land, the fate of the country and the people is guessed, but all this, I repeat, is given in sketches, although with rather characteristic poetic pictures. After the lines about the time of the revolution, when "the grimy rabble! Played the yards on the pianos! The Tambov fox-mouth for cows," follow verses of a different tone:
Years went by
Sweeping, fiery...
The grain grower's lot is gone.
Yesenin, as it were, foresaw the time when the fate of the grain grower would result in the tragedy of 1929-1933. The words sound sarcastically in the poem, which representatives of different intellectual strata called the peasant:
Fefela! Breadwinner! Iris!
Owner of land and livestock
For a couple of dirty "katek"
He will let himself be whipped.
Yesenin himself does not idealize the Russian peasantry; he sees heterogeneity with it, sees in him both the miller with his old woman, and the driver from the beginning of the poem, and Pron, and Labutya, and the peasant squeezing his hands from profit ... At the same time, one must not forget that the positive principles, the peculiar basis of life the poet sees in the working peasantry, whose fate is the epic basis of the poem. This fate is sad, as it is clear from the words of the old miller's woman:
We are now restless here.
Everything blossomed with sweat.
Continuous peasant wars -
They fight village against village.
These peasant wars are symbolic; they are the prototype of a great fratricidal war, a genuine tragedy, from which, indeed, according to the miller’s wife, Rasey almost “disappeared” ... A echo with this also occurs at the end of the poem in the miller’s letter:
Russia...
She's a dumbass.
Believe it or not, don't believe your ears -
Once Denikin's detachment
Ran into the Kriushans.
This is where the fun started...
With such fun - around -
With a screech and a laugh
The Cossack whip roared...
Such "fun" is not good for anyone, except perhaps for Labuta, who demands a "red order" for himself ... The condemnation of the war - imperialist and fratricidal - is one of the main topics. The war is condemned by the entire course of the poem, by its various characters and situations: the miller and his old woman, the driver, the two main tragedies of Anna Snegina's life. Moreover, sometimes the voice of the character merges with the voice of the author, as, for example, in the words of a letter from a miller, the poet once says directly from himself:
And how many unfortunates with the war
Freaks now and cripples!
And how many are buried in the pits!
And how many more will be buried!
And I feel in the cheekbones stubborn
Violent spasm of cheeks...
The soul-shattering humanity of Russian classical literature, its "humanity that cherishes the soul" lives in Yesenin's poem.
In January 1925, while in the Caucasus, Yesenin completed his last and main poem. The breadth of the historical space of the poem, acquired by the hero at the end of her openness to life impressions, the best movements of the soul, directly correspond to folk ideals, the spokesman of which was and remains in his best works the great Russian poet S.A. Yesenin - "the poetic heart of Russia". And while the earth lives, Yesenin the poet is destined to live with us and "sing with his whole being in the poet the sixth part of the earth with the short name" Russia ".
