Retelling of Junker's plot Kuprin A. I - Free school essays

The image of army life in Kuprin's stories "Junkers", "Cadets"

Introduction
1. The image of military life in the early work of Kuprin. On the outskirts of the "Cadets".
2. The autobiographical story "At the Break" ("The Cadets").
3. Creative history of the creation of the novel "Junker".

5. Instead of a conclusion. Army military everyday life in the story "The Last Knights".
Bibliography
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Introduction.
The great Russian writer Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin was destined to live a difficult and difficult life. He experienced ups and downs, the poverty of the Kyiv lumpen and the well-being of the writer beloved by the public, fame and oblivion. He never - or almost never - went with the flow, but often - against it, not sparing himself, not thinking about tomorrow, not afraid to lose what he had won, to start all over again. In his strong nature there was a lot of outwardly contradictory and at the same time - organically inherent in it, and it was the inconsistency of Kuprin's character that largely determined the originality and richness of his personality.
Having abandoned military service, left without a livelihood, Kuprin managed to break out of the addictive swamp of a tramp life, not to get lost among the mass of provincial newspapermen, doomed to the position of tabloid scribblers, and became one of the most popular Russian writers of his time. His name was mentioned among the names of prominent realists of the late 19th - first half of the 20th century Andreev, Bunin, Veresaev, Gorky, Chekhov.
At the same time, Kuprin is perhaps the most uneven writer in all of Russian literature. It seems that it is impossible to name another writer who created works so different in their artistic quality throughout his entire career.
A deeply Russian man, longing for a well-aimed folk phrase, without his beloved Moscow, he spent almost two decades away from his homeland.
“He is complicated, sore,” Chekhov spoke about Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin [A.P. Chekhov. Collected works in 12 volumes, - M., 1964, v. 12, p. 437].
A lot of things in him become clear when referring to the years of childhood - "scandalized childhood", by his definition, and youth - it was then that they finally took shape, and in some ways, probably, the character and mental warehouse of the future writer broke down.
Not all works of Alexander Ivanovich have stood the test of time, not all works that have stood this test have entered the golden fund of Russian literature. But it is enough to list only some of the best novels and stories of the writer to make sure that they are still interesting, have not become a thing of the past, as happened with the legacy of a myriad of writers, that Kuprin rightfully occupies an honorable place in the history of Russian literature.
An artist of diverse life experience, Kuprin studied the military environment in which he spent fourteen years in a particularly profound way. The writer devoted a lot of creative work to the theme of the tsarist army; it is with the development of this theme that the individual coloring of his talent is largely connected, the new that he introduced into Russian literature, which is difficult to imagine without "Inquest", "Army Ensign", "Wedding", "Overnight", "Duel", "Cadets", "Junkers", dedicated to the life and way of life of the Russian army.
And if someone who evaluates the works of Kuprin from the standpoint of the sophisticated art of the 20th century, with his irony - a sign of weakness - they seem somewhat naive, "rustic", let us remind him of the words of Sasha Cherny from a letter to Kuprin: "I rejoiced at your wonderful simplicity and enthusiasm - there are no more of them in Russian literature ... "[Kuprina K.A. Kuprina is my father. - M., 1979, p. 217].
1. The image of military life in the early work of Kuprin.
On the outskirts of the "Cadets".
Depicting the military environment, Kuprin opened to readers an area of ​​\u200b\u200bRussian life that was little explored by literature. Russian philistinism was severely criticized by Kuprin's great contemporaries - Chekhov and Gorky. But Kuprin for the first time with such artistic skill and in such detail shows the officer, in its essence also petty-bourgeois, environment.
“In this little world, the features of Russian petty-bourgeoisness appeared in a concentrated form. In no other layers of petty-bourgeois Russia was there, perhaps, such a screaming contradiction between spiritual poverty and the inflated caste arrogance of people who imagine themselves to be the “salt of the earth.” And, very importantly, it is unlikely "Where did such a gulf exist between intellectuals and people from the people. And it was necessary to know very well all the nooks and crannies of army life, to visit all the circles of hell of the royal barracks in order to create a broad and reliable image of the royal army." [Volkov A.A. Creativity A.I. Kuprin. Ed. 2nd. - M., 1981, p. 28.]
Already among the early Kuprin stories there are quite a few that conquer us with their artistic authenticity. These are works from military life familiar to him, and first of all the story "Inquiry" (1984), in which Kuprin appeared as a successor to the traditions of military fiction prose by L. Tolstoy and V. Garshin, a writer of everyday life in the barracks soldier's life, an accuser of the tsarist military, cane discipline in the army. Unlike his predecessors, who portrayed a man on the battlefield, in battles, in the "blood and suffering" of the war, Kuprin showed a soldier of "peaceful" army everyday life, quite cruel and inhuman. In fact, it was he who was one of the first to talk about the powerless position of the Russian soldier, who is cruelly tortured for the most insignificant duty. The scene of the execution of private Baiguzin described in the "Inquest" anticipated a similar episode of the torture of a soldier in Tolstoy's later "After the Ball". The humanism of the writer was expressed in a deeply sympathetic depiction of the victims of arbitrariness, in the experiences and thoughts of Lieutenant Kozlovsky, a largely autobiographical character.
Barely having achieved recognition from Baiguzin, Kozlovsky already regrets it. He feels personally responsible for what happens to the Tatar. He tries in vain to get a reduced sentence. The forthcoming cruel and humiliating whipping of the soldier haunts him. When his name is mentioned in the verdict, it seems to Kozlovsky that everyone is looking at him with condemnation. And after the flogging, his eyes meet Baiguzin's, and he again feels some strange spiritual connection that has arisen between him and the soldier.
The story features a number of characters typical of the royal barracks. The image of sergeant major Taras Gavrilovich Ostapchuk is very picturesque. The image of Ostapchuk embodies the features of non-commissioned officers, who are a kind of "mediastinum" between "gentlemen officers" and "lower ranks".
The thinking of the sergeant major, his manner of speaking, holding himself, his vocabulary vividly characterize the type of an experienced campaigner, cunning and limited. In each of his words, in each act, the simple psychology of the overseer is reflected, formidable with his subordinates and currying favor with his superiors.
The sergeant-major loves after the evening roll call, sitting in front of the tent, to drink tea with milk and a hot roll. He "talks" with volunteers about politics and appoints those who disagree with his opinion to extraordinary duty.
Ostapchuk, as is typical of ignorant people, likes to talk "about lofty matters" with an educated person. But “an abstract conversation with an officer is a liberty that a sergeant major can only allow himself with a young officer, in whom he immediately discerned an intellectual who had not yet learned to order and despise the “lower ranks”.
In the image of Ostapchuk, the writer gives his first sketch of a type very characteristic of the tsarist army. The company commander shifts all household chores to the sergeant major. The sergeant major is the "thunderstorm" of the soldiers and in fact the owner of the unit. In relation to the officers, he is a servant. In relation to the soldiers, he is the master, and here the traits of the overseer brought up by the regime and cane discipline are revealed. In this capacity, Ostapchuk sharply opposes the humane and reflective Kozlovsky.
The themes and images outlined in "Inquest" will find their further artistic development in other works of Kuprin from military life, created between 1895 and 1901 - "Army Ensign", "Lilac Bush", "Overnight", "Breguet", " Night shift".
Kuprin considered the establishment of mutual understanding and trust between officers and soldiers to be the best means of raising the combat effectiveness of the army. Ensign Lapshin (the story "Army Ensign", 1897) writes in his diary that during field work between officers and soldiers, the "hierarchical difference" seems to be weakening, "and then you involuntarily get acquainted with a Russian soldier, with his apt views on all kinds of phenomena, even such complex ones as the corps maneuver - with its practicality, with its ability to adapt everywhere and to everything, with its biting figurative word seasoned with coarse salt. This suggests that a Russian person, even in the hard labor conditions of the royal barracks, does not leave natural humor, the ability to accurately characterize the phenomena of life, and in other cases inquisitively, almost "philosophically" evaluate them.
This idea is even more clearly expressed in the story "The Night Shift" (1899). Here, a string of precisely and picturesquely outlined village types, "polished" by the royal barracks, passes before the readers.
Yesterday’s peasant, private Luka Merkulov, is eager to go to the village with all his heart, because he’s at least lost in the barracks: “They feed him from hand to mouth, dress him out of line to order, the platoon officer scolds him, the detached scolds, sometimes he will poke him in the teeth with his fist, - learning is difficult , difficult ... "It is especially hard for soldiers from among the so-called foreigners. Tatar Kamafutdinov, for example, does not understand many Russian words, and for this, at the "literature lessons", he is rudely scolded by an enraged non-commissioned officer: "Turkish idiot! Muzzle! Why am I asking you? Well! What am I asking you ... Speak like your gun is called, Kazan cattle! Behind the insult inevitably poking, scuffle. So every day, year after year.
This is in the barracks. And in tactical exercises - the same thing, as shown in the story "Campaign" (1901). Tired, emaciated, stupefied by drill and straining under an unbearable burden, people in gray overcoats wearily and randomly wander in gloomy and anxious silence, in the pitch darkness of the night, watered by the tedious autumn rain. The old soldier Vedenyapin, an inexhaustible merry fellow and wit, tries to stir them up with his jokes. But people are not up to fun ... In the dark, one of the privates, probably half asleep, ran his eye into the bayonet of the one in front - the hoarse voice of the wounded is heard: It hurts a lot, your honor, you can’t endure ... ". And the answer : “Why did you climb on the bayonet, idiot?” - this is shouted by the company commander Skibin, who always has a whole set of bad curses in reserve for the soldiers: “scoundrel”, “fool”, “idiot”, “rotozey”, etc. Lieutenant Tushkovsky, obligingly fawning over Skibin, seems to compete with him in indifferent cruelty and contempt for the soldiers; for him they are “cattle”, “bastard.” The evil and stupid sergeant major Gregorash stretches behind the authorities, from whose tongue the words “scoundrels” break out , "scoundrels". These three are convinced: the soldier should be scolded, kept in fear, beaten in the teeth, slashed at their backs. "But in my opinion, you need to beat their scoundrels! ..." - Skibin says vindictively, and Tushkovsky obsequiously agrees with him.
The author's position in the story "Campaign" is clearly felt in the thoughts and feelings of lieutenant Yakhontov. Like Kozlovsky from "Inquest", Yakhontov is extremely sincere in his compassion for the soldier, in respect and love for him. He is indignant at the boorish behavior of Skibin and Tushkovsky: he is resolutely against the massacre, against the torture of soldiers, against the rude, inhuman treatment of them. He is certainly a kind, sensitive, humane person. However, what can he do alone, if mockery and bullying have long become in the tsarist army almost a legalized form of treatment of officers with subordinates? Almost nothing. And this consciousness of his own powerlessness before the evil reigning in the army causes him almost physical pain, gives rise to a nagging feeling of longing and loneliness, close to despair. For an honest officer, as well as for a bewildered soldier, military service is worse than hard labor. The same feelings are keenly experienced by Lapshin in "The Ensign of the Army", and later by Romashov and Nazansky in "Duel"; a lot of Kuprin's heroes are covered by similar moods. In general, the theme of soldiery, barracks army life, begun in "Inquest" and artistically developed by the writer from the standpoint of a consistent humanistic and democratic worldview, will become one of the leading ones in Kuprin's work.
Autobiographical story "At the Break" ("The Cadets").
Kuprin also spoke about barracks life and drill in the autobiographical story "At the Break" ("The Cadets"), which appeared in 1900 and was first published in the issues of the Kiev newspaper "Life and Art" under the title "At the Beginning" with the subtitle: "Essays on the military - gymnasium life. Under the title "The Cadets" the story was published in 1906 in the magazine "Niva" (December 9-30, Nos. 49-52). In an expanded edition called "At the Break" ("The Cadets"), it was included in the fifth volume of the collected works of Kuprin in the Moscow Book Publishing House (1908).
In the newspaper and magazine, the story was provided with footnotes by the author: "The entire gymnasium was divided into three ages: junior - I, II classes, middle - III IV V and senior - VI VII; "Kurilo" was the name of a pupil who already knew how to inhale while smoking and carrying his own tobacco." [Kuprin A.I. Sobr. op. in 9 volumes - M., 1971, v.3, p. 466].
And although the story is not about soldiers, but about the education of future officers of the tsarist army, the essence remains the same. Military gymnasium life instilled in the cadets for seven years wild, "bursat" morals, and the dull barracks environment, hateful studies, mediocre teachers, cruel, stupid guards, ignorant educators, rude, unfair gymnasium authorities - all this distorted the soul of the boys, on morally deformed them all their lives. The military gymnasium lived according to the written rule of life: the one who has strength is right. Educators and teachers painfully whipped with rulers or rods, and older cadets, strong, arrogant and cruel, like the inveterate Gruzov, Balkashin or Myachkov, mocked the weak and timid, who secretly hoped in time to move into the category of strong.
Here is how the military gymnasium meets the main character, the newcomer Bulanin (an autobiographical image of the author himself):
Surname?
What? asked Bulanin timidly.
Fool, what's your last name?
Bu... Bulanin...
Why not Savraskin? Look at you, what a surname ... horse.
Laughed helpfully all around. Gruz continued:
Have you ever tried buttermilk, Bulanka?
N... no... haven't tried it.
How? Never tried?
Never...
That's the thing! Do you want me to feed you?
And without waiting for Bulanin's answer, Gruzov bent his head down and very painfully and quickly hit it first with the end of his thumb, and then fractionally with the knuckles of all the others, clenched into a fist.
Here's butter for you, and another, and a third! ... Well, Bulanka, is it delicious? Maybe you want more?
The old men gleefully cackled: "This Cargo! Desperate! ... He fed the newcomer great with butter."
The universal "cult of the fist" very clearly divided the entire gymnastic environment into "oppressors" and "oppressed". It was possible not only to "force" the weakest, but it was also possible to "forget", and Bulanin very soon understood the difference between these two actions.
"Forsila" seldom beat a newcomer out of malice or for the sake of extortion, and even more rarely took anything away from him, but the trembling and confusion of the baby gave him once again the sweet consciousness of his power.
Much worse for a first-grader were "forgotten". There were fewer of them than the first, but they brought much more harm. She “forgot” when harassing a beginner or a weak classmate, she did it not out of boredom, like “force”, but consciously, out of revenge, or self-interest, or another personal motive, with a physiognomy distorted from anger, with all the ruthlessness of a petty tyrant. Sometimes he tormented the newcomer for whole hours in order to "squeeze" out of him the last pitiful remnants of gifts that had survived from the grab, hidden somewhere in a secluded corner.
The forgetful jokes were violent and always ended in a bruise on the victim's forehead or a nosebleed. They were especially and downright outrageously angry towards boys suffering from some kind of physical defect: stutterers, cross-eyed, bow-legged, etc. Teasing them, the forgetfuls showed the most inexhaustible ingenuity.
But the forgetfuls were angels in comparison with the "desperate", this scourge of God for the entire gymnasium, from the headmaster to the very last kid.
All life in the cadet corps, as it were, revolves in a kind of vicious circle, which Kuprin speaks of in the story: "... Wild people who grew up under a rod, in turn, with a rod, used in terrifying amounts, prepared other wild people for the best service to the fatherland , and this service was again expressed in the frantic flogging of subordinates ... ".
Naturally, future torturers of soldiers, rapists and sadists, cynics and ignoramuses, with whom the story "Duel" is so densely populated, came out of military gymnasiums.
The connection between this early story by Kuprin and his "Duel" is obvious. "The Cadets" are, as it were, the first link in Kuprin's trilogy ("The Cadets", "Junkers", "Duel"). It was from such cadet corps that those army bourbons came out, with their lack of culture, rudeness, caste arrogance and isolation from the life of the people, whom the writer portrayed in "Duel". It is not without curiosity to trace where the heroes of his "Duel" come from, what their school years are, wrote the critic A. Izmailov about "The Cadets" [Birzhevye Vedomosti, 1907, January 24, No. 9711.]
We found an interesting mention of the 2nd Moscow Cadet Corps and Kuprin's stay in it in the memoirs of L.A. Limontov about A.N. Scriabin (the future composer studied here at the same time as Kuprin).
"I was then," writes Limontov, "just as 'tempered', rude and wild as all my comrades, the Cadets. Strength and dexterity were the naked ideal. The first strongman in the company, in the class, in the department - enjoyed all sorts of privileges: the first increase of the "second" at dinner, the extra "third", even a glass of milk prescribed by the doctor to the "weak" cadet was often transferred to the first strongman. About our first strongman, Grisha Kalmykov, our other friend, A.I. Kuprin, a future writer, and at that time a nondescript, small, clumsy cadet, composed:
Our Kalmykov, modest in the sciences,
He was athletic
How amazing - huge
And stunning Parchen.1
He is stupid, like Zhdanov of the first company,
Strong and agile, like Tanti.2
Everywhere in everything has benefits
And everywhere he can go
When first published in the newspaper, the story was not noticed by critics. When she appeared in the Niva in 1906, she aroused sharp criticism from the military press. Critic of the military-literary magazine "Scout" Ross in the feuilleton "Walks in the Gardens of Russian Literature" wrote: depiction of military life in its various manifestations. This is to the taste of readers of a certain kind, but where does artistic truth go? Alas, she has no place; it is replaced by a trend. In our time, this trend is such that all military affairs should be cursed, if not directly, then at least allegorically ... According to Kuprin, the Cadet Corps has not gone far from the blessed memory of the Bursa, and the Cadets - from the Bursaks ...
And what a surprise! The author's talent is undeniable. The pictures he draws are vital and true! But for God's sake! Why talk only about bad things, exclusively about nasty things, emphasizing and highlighting them! ["Scout", - St. Petersburg, 1907, July 24, No. 874.]
In the text of Life and Art, there were six chapters in the story; the sixth chapter ended with the words: "They say that in the present corps morals have softened, but softened to the detriment of, albeit wild, but still comradely spirit. How good or bad it is, the Lord knows."
In Niva and subsequent reprints, the author gives a different ending to the sixth chapter: “They say that things are different in the current corps. future. The present showed nothing."

The creative history of the creation of the novel "Junker".
The idea of ​​the novel "Junker" originated with Kuprin back in 1911, as a continuation of the story "At the Break" ("The Cadets") and at the same time announced by the magazine "Motherland". Work on the "Junkers" continued throughout all the pre-revolutionary years. In May 1916, the Vecherniye Izvestiya newspaper published an interview with Kuprin, who spoke about his creative plans: "... I eagerly set about finishing the Junkers," the writer reported, "this story is partly a continuation of my own story" At the turning point "" Cadets ". Here I am completely at the mercy of the images and memories of the cadet life with its ceremonial and inner life, with the quiet joy of first love and meetings at dance evenings with my" sympathies ". I remember the cadet years, the traditions of our military school, types educators and teachers. And I remember a lot of good things ... I hope that in the autumn of this year I will publish this story. [Petrov M., A.I. Kuprin, "Evening News", 1916, May 3, No. 973.]
"The revolutionary events in Russia and the subsequent emigration interrupted the writer's work on the novel. Only in 1928, five years before the publication of the novel as a separate book, did separate chapters appear in the Vozrozhdeniye newspaper: January 4 - Drozd, February 19 -" Photogen Pavlych", April 8 - "Polonaise", May 6 - "Waltz", August 12 - "Quarrel", August 19 - "Love Letter", August 26 - "Triumph".
Apparently, the writer began from the middle of the novel, gradually returning from describing the school and the love of Alexandrov and Zina Belysheva to the starting point: the end of the cadet corps, the passion for Yulia Sinelnikova, etc. These chapters were published in Renaissance two years later: February 23, 1930 - "Father Michael", March 23 - "Farewell", April 27 and 28 - "Julia", May 25 - "Restless Day", June 22 - " Pharaoh "", July 13 and 14 "Tantalum Torments", July 27 - "Under the Banner!", September 28, October 12 and 13 - "Mr. Writer". The last chapter of the novel "Production", was published on October 9, 1932. [ Kuprin A. I. Collected works in 5 volumes, - M., 1982, v. 5, p. 450.]
The novel was published as a separate edition in 1933.
The Juncker novel depicts real faces and real facts. So, the novel mentions "the times of General Schwanebach, when the school was going through its golden age." Shvanebakh Boris Antonovich was the first head of the Alexander School - from 1863 to 1874. General Samokhvalov, the head of the school, or, in Junker, "Epishka", commanded the Alexandrovites from 1874 to 1886. The chief, whom Kuprin found, Lieutenant General Anchutin, nicknamed "the statue of the commander"; battalion commander "Berdi Pasha" - Colonel Artabalevsky; the commander of the company "His Majesty's stallions" "Khukhrik" - captain Alkalaev-Kalageorgy; commander of the "beasts" company - Captain Klochenko; the commander of the "dab" company - Captain Khodnev - they are all bred in the novel under their own names. In the book, the Alexander Military School for 35 years, both the Doctor of Theology, Archpriest Alexander Ivanovich Ivantsov-Platonov, and the actual State Councilor Vladimir Petrovich Sheremetevsky, who taught the junkers Russian from 1880 to 1895, and bandmaster Fyodor Fedorovich Kreinbring, who led the orchestra from 1863 without a break, are mentioned years, and fencing teachers Taras Petrovich Tarasov and Alexander Ivanovich Postnikov.
In the list of cadets who graduated from college on January 10, 1890, next to Kuprin we will find the names of his friends - Vladimir Vincent, Pribil and Zhdanov, Richter, Korganov, Butynsky and others.
Kuprin began his great autobiographical work with a study of those feelings and impressions that were inviolably stored in the deep recesses of his soul. The joyful and direct perception of life, the delights of fleeting love, the naive youthful dream of happiness - this is sacred and freshly preserved by the writer, and from this he began a novel about the youthful years of his life.
A common feature of Kuprin's works written in exile is the idealization of old Russia. "The beginning of the novel, which describes the last days of cadet Aleksandrov's stay in the corps (in the story "At the Break" - Bulanin), in a somewhat softened tone, but still continues the critical line of the story "At the Break". However, the strength of this inertia is very quickly depleted, and along with interesting and true descriptions of the life of the school, laudatory characteristics are heard more and more often, gradually forming into a jingoistic chanting of the cadet school. [Volkov A.A., p. 340-341.]
With the exception of the best chapters of the novel, which describe Alexandrov's young love for Zina Belysheva, the pathos of praising the pedagogical principles and morals of the Alexander School unites individual episodes of life, as earlier in the stories "At the Break" and "Duel" they were united by the pathos of exposing public order and methods of educating the younger generations.
"Father wanted to forget himself," says the writer's daughter Ksenia Kuprina, "and so he undertook to write Junkers. He wanted to write something like a fairy tale." [Zhegalov N., Outstanding Russian realist. - "What to read", 1958, No. 12, p. 27.]
4. Features of the image of army life in the novel "Junkers".
In the novel "Junker" one can feel the author's admiration for the festive, bright and easy life of carefree and in their own way happy, contented people, admiring affection for the refined "secularism" of Junker Alexandrov, his dexterity, grace of movements in dance, ability to control all the muscles of his strong young body.
In general, the physical development and maturation of the Junkers in the novel is given the same significant place as their intimate love experiences. In Alexandrov, a strong and agile athlete, an excellent and tireless dancer and an excellent exemplary drillman are always emphasized. About his hero Kuprin says: "He enjoyed a quiet military life, smoothness in all his affairs, the trust of his superiors in him, excellent food, success with young ladies and all the joys of a strong muscular young body."
How does this “military life”, which Alexandrov enjoyed, look like in the novel? What are the everyday life of pupils of the cadet school? To what extent did Kuprin truthfully tell about this?
The well-known researcher of Kuprin's work, Fedor Ivanovich Kuleshov, believes: "There is no doubt that the real Russian reality of the reaction period of the eighties, to which the narrative relates, gave the writer abundant material for critical coverage of the life and customs that reigned in military educational institutions. And whether the novel was written in the era " violent and rebellious "moods of Kuprin, we would probably have a product of the same accusatory power as the story" Duel. "Now this cannot be said about the Junkers: the people of time are shown here from a different angle than in the duel and the Cadets. It’s not that accusatory assessments and criticism were completely absent in the Junkers - they are there, but both are significantly weakened, softened. ed., - Minsk, 1987, p. 238.]
The story of the internal regime in the military school is conducted in the novel in such a way that, having barely touched on the shady sides of the cadet life, which are spoken of in general terms, the author, after that, often in contradiction with the facts and with himself, hurries to put forward one or another excuse circumstances.
Thus, from the chapter "Tantalum Torments" it can be indubitably concluded that the first-year cadets - "poor yellow-mouthed pharaohs" - were subjected to many hours of "continuous prosaic strictest drill" at the school: the junkers were trained day by day, taught to march with a gun and with a rolled-up overcoat, rifle techniques, they were trained in the "subtle art of saluting", and for a petty offense they were put in a punishment cell, deprived of home holidays, "warmed" mercilessly. And in real life, all this was in the order of things, which is confirmed by Kuprin's biography of the period of his stay at the cadet school. [Mikhailov O.N. Kuprin, ZhZL, - M., 1981, p. 25-28.]
And the life of Alexei Alexandrov, like other cadets, according to the author of the novel, consisted of days of truly "quadruple heating": they were "warmed by their uncle-classmate, warmed by his platoon harness-cadet, warmed by a course officer", greatly annoyed by the company Drozd, who was the main "warmer". The novelist says that among the junkers every day was "completely tightly cluttered" with military duties and exercises, and "only two hours a day" remained free for soul and body, during which "the junker could move where he wanted and do what he wanted. within the inner limits of the school building. Only during these two afternoons was it possible to sing, chat or read and "even lie down on the bed, unbuttoning the top hook of the jacket." And then classes began again - "cramming or drawing under the supervision of course officers." If, as it is said in the novel, Alexandrov never "forgotten his first terrible impressions", then this, obviously, is not from a sweet and calm life. Involuntarily recognizing it, Kuprin says about his hero: "Black days fell to his lot more, than the bright ones: a dreary, tedious stay in the boring position of a young novice pharaoh, a harsh, tedious drill drill, rude shouts, arrest, appointment for extra duties - all this made the military service heavy and unattractive."
If the Junkers had "much more "black days" than bright ones, then wouldn't it be more natural to preserve real proportions in the novel? Cooper did the wrong thing. Highlighting the front side of the Junker life, he preferred to talk more about bright days than about black ones. Is military service hard and unattractive? But this is only out of habit and for a very short time, after which "without a trace" disappears into oblivion "all the difficulty of military exercises and the military system." And Alexandrov, at the behest of the author, quickly felt that "the gun is not heavy", that he easily developed a "big and strong step", and a "proud consciousness appeared in his soul: I am a cadet of the glorious Alexander School." Yes, and all the junkers, according to Kuprin, live in general "fun and free." Military service, brought "to brilliant perfection," has become for them an exciting art that "borders on sporting competition" and does not tire the junkers. boring? And here's some variety.
So, almost every critical remark is immediately followed by a phrase of carefully chosen words, designed to soften, neutralize any unfavorable impression on the reader from the story about the regime at the school. Instead of a sharp and definite word "hard" - Kuprin very often uses the harmless "hard". For example, after the winter holidays, when the junkers were "infinitely free," it was "hard for them to get involved again in harsh military discipline, in lectures and rehearsals, in drill drill, in getting up early in the morning, in sleepless night shifts, in the boring repetition of days, deeds and thoughts." Is it possible to characterize the above listed here with the vague word "hard"? Or here's another. In the cramped bedrooms of the school, the junkers "had a hard time breathing at night." During the day, I immediately had to teach lectures and make drawings, sitting in a very uncomfortable position - "sideways on the bed and resting my elbows on an ash cabinet where shoes and toiletries lay." And after these words comes a cheerful author's exclamation: But-nothing! The strong young people endured everything cheerfully, and the infirmary was always empty ... ".
Kuprin painted a rosy picture of the relationship between the cadets and the school authorities. These relations were even, calm, and, according to a long tradition, they were established "on truthfulness and broad mutual trust." The authorities singled out neither favorites nor hateful among the junkers, the officers were "imperceptibly patient" and "severely sympathetic." Were there bourbons and persecutors in the school? Kuprin does not deny this. He writes: "There were officers who were too strict, picky thugs, too quick to pay big penalties." Among the "happening persecutors, the battalion commander Berdi Pasha is named, who seemed to be" cast from iron at the factory and then beaten with steel hammers for a long time until he took on the approximate, rude form of a man. "Berdi Pasha knows" neither pity nor love, no affection", he only "calmly and coldly, like a machine, punishes, without regret and without anger, applying the maximum of his power." Captain Khukhrik, the commander of the first company Alkalaev-Kalageorgy, is also shown with obvious antipathy.
But these three "persecutors" whom the junkers endured "like God's punishment" were not typical representatives of the authorities. Kuprin considers Captain Fofanov (or Drozd) to be a characteristic figure of a street officer. It was he, Drozd, who in his appearance and rough-figurative speech resembled the captain of the plum from "Duel", was the favorite commander and skillful educator of the junkers. Now instantly quick-tempered, now imperturbably calm and "intelligently caring", always direct, honest and often generous, he brought up his chicks "in agile obedience, in unconditional truthfulness, on a wide denouement of mutual trust." He knew how to be both strict, without offending the personality of the pupil, and at the same time gentle and comradely simple. Almost all officers were like that, and not one of them ever "dared to shout at the junker or insult him with a word." Even General Samokhvalov, the former head of the school, who used to "with merciless, Bourbon cruel rudeness" treat subordinate officers, showering them with "merciless curses", even he invariably favored "his beloved junkers", gave them indulgence, paternally patronized and protected .
Kuprin mentions both civilian teachers and military school educators. It was "not at all that difficult" for the junkers to study, because the professors at the school were "the best there are in Moscow." Among them, of course, there is not a single ignoramus, drunkard or cruel torturer, like those with whom we are familiar from the story "The Cadets". Obviously, they were still in the Alexander and other cadet schools, but the writer's changed view of the past prompted him to depict them differently than he had done before, in his pre-revolutionary work.
Let's remember one particular. In The Cadets, Kuprin, in a sharply accusatory light, presented the figure of the priest Peshchersky, hated by the Cadets for hypocrisy, unctuousness, unfair treatment of pupils for his "thin, nasal and rattling" voice, for his tongue-tied tongue in the lessons of God's law. Peshchersky in the story "The Cadets" is contrasted with the rector of the gymnasium church, Father Mikhail, but the latter is given literally six lines there. While working on The Junkers, Kuprin not only remembered this “Father Mikhail,” but willingly introduced him into the novel and spoke about him in great detail, with undisguised tenderness, in the first two chapters. That Peshchersky "were lost" from her memory, but a handsome old man in a cassock took root in her - "small, gray-haired, touchingly similar to St. Nicholas the Saint."
For the rest of his life, the hero of the "junkers" remembered both the "homemade cassock" on the skinny priest, and his stole, from which "it smelled so cozy of wax and warm incense," and his "meek and patient instructions" to the pupils, his soft voice and soft laughter. The novel tells that fourteen years later - "in the days of severe spiritual anxiety" - Alexandrov was irresistibly drawn to confession to this wise old man. When an old man “in a brown cassock, very tiny and hunched, like Seraphim of Sarov, no longer gray-haired, but greenish” rose to meet Alexandrov, Alexandrov noted with joy his “nice, long-familiar habit” of screwing up his eyes, saw all the same “unusually sweet" face and a gentle smile, heard a heartfelt voice, so that at parting Alexandrov could not stand it and "kissed a dry little bone", after which "his soul became numb." F.I. Kuleshov assesses this scene in this way: “All this looks in the novel touchingly touching, idyllic and, in fact, sugary-sweet. a writer who became a bit sentimental in his declining years Kuleshov F.I., p.242.
Four hundred pupils of a military school look in Kuprin's novel as a single, soldered team of contented, cheerful young men. In their treatment of each other there is no malice and envy, captiousness, hostility, desire to offend and offend. The junkers are very polite, obligingly correct: Zhdanov is not like Butynsky, and Vincent differs sharply from Alexandrov in his individual traits. But, - according to the author, - "the arches of their characters were so located that in the union they had to get along well, without hanging out and without pressing." The school does not have that dominance of the strong over the weak, which actually reigned for centuries in institutions of a closed type and about which Kuprin himself spoke in the story "The Cadets". Senior junkers treat newcomers - "pharaohs" with extraordinary sensitivity and humanity. They adopted on this account a "wise verbal decree" directed against possible "zucchini" at first-year students: "... let every second-year student carefully watch the pharaoh of his company with whom he ate the same corps porridge just a year ago. Beware of him on time, but on time and pull up tight." All junkers jealously guard the "excellent reputation" of their school and strive not to tarnish it "neither by buffoonery, nor by idiotic persecution of junior comrades."
Not only the age inequality of the Junkers has been eliminated, but social differences, discord and inequality have also been erased. There is no antagonism between junkers from rich and poor families. It never occurred to any of the junkers, say, to sneer at a fellow student of humble origin, and no one at all allowed himself to mock at those whose parents were financially untenable, poor. “Cases of such bullying,” the novel says, were completely unknown in the home history of the Alexander School, whose pupils, under some mysterious influence, lived and grew on the foundations of chivalrous military democracy, proud patriotism and stern, but noble, caring and considerate camaraderie. ".
What was the expression of this peculiar "patriotism" of the Junkers? First of all, in youthful conceited pride in their glorious school, in which they had the "high honor" to be brought up and serve, considering it the best not only in Russia, but also "the first military school in the world." Here, the sprouts of consciousness of their privileged position in society and imaginary superiority over people of a different social affiliation were born, caste prejudices of the future officers were cultivated. It is noteworthy that the Alexandrovites, proud of their military uniform, called all civilians without exception "shpaks", and their attitude towards this category of people "from time immemorial has been contemptuous and dismissive." However, this is well known from "Duel". The difference, however, is that before, in the era of the “Duel”, such arrogance of the “gentlemen of the officers” in relation to civilians gave rise to anger and protest in the writer, aroused his unconditional judgment: now Kuprin speaks of the contempt of the junkers for the “spaks” with a gentle smile as if it were a harmless, innocent eccentricity of future officers.
Junkers are not alien to another kind of vain pride - pride in their ancestors. The Alexandrovites are proud of their "illustrious ancestors because many of them at one time" lay down on the battlefield for faith, the tsar and the fatherland. "This" proud patriotism "of the junkers was precisely an expression of their readiness to give their lives in the future" for faith, the tsar and the fatherland ". After all, it is not for nothing that, judging by the novel, they idolize the Russian Tsar so much.
The chapter "Triumph" is curious in this respect. All of it is entirely sustained in iridescent bright colors, designed to set off the loyal delight of the junkers on the eve of and during the royal review of the military units of Moscow. Kuprin writes: "In Alexandrov's imagination, the 'tsar' is drawn in gold, in a Gothic crown, the 'sovereign' is bright blue with silver, the 'emperor' is black with gold, and on his head is a helmet with a white sultan." This is in the Junker's imagination. As soon as the tall figure of the tsar appeared in the distance, a "sweet sharp delight" seized Alexandrov's soul and carried it up like a whirlwind. The tsar presented himself to him as a giant of "superhuman might". The sight of the tsar gives rise in the soul of an enthusiastic cadet to "thirst for boundless sacrificial exploits" for the glory of the "adored monarch."
F.I. Kuleshov believes: “The subjective experiences and excited thoughts of an eighteen-year-old cadet speak of the naive monarchism of pupils of a military school who idolize the person of the tsar. himself during the years of the cadet, or, in any case, experienced by him then to an incomparably weaker degree. The cadet Kuprin was not deeply impressed by the tsar's arrival in Moscow in October 1888, described in detail in the novel. That is why Kuprin did not write then, in his early youth, not a single line of poetry about the tsar’s review of the junkers, although he responded in verse to other important and even insignificant moments of his junker life.Moreover: a year and a half before this event, in the poem tried to kill the tsar. The final hero, Junker Alexandrov, on the contrary, sees in the Tsar a "great shrine." [Kuleshov F.I., p. 245.]
Alexandrov did not think about how correct were the system of feelings and the direction of thoughts that were instilled in him and his comrades in the school. Questions of politics, public life, social problems, everything that happened behind the thick walls of a military school and how the people and the country lived, do not excite the hero of the "Junkers", do not interest him. Only once in his life he is by chance - just by chance! - came into contact with people of a completely different world. Once, during some kind of student riot, he was passing by the university in a column of junkers and suddenly saw “a pale, worn-out student who angrily shouted from behind the iron university fence: “Bastard! Slaves! Professional assassins, cannon fodder! Chokers of freedom! Shame on you! A shame!"
It is not known how each of the junkers reacted to the student's passionate cries addressed to them. But many months later, recalling this scene, Aleksandrov tried to mentally refute the words of the "students": "He is either stupid, or irritated by resentment, or sick, or unhappy, or simply snared by someone's evil and deceitful will. But war will come, and I will readily go to defend against the enemy: this student, and his wife with small children, and his elderly father and mother. To die for the fatherland. What great, simple and touching words!"
The "Junkers" are dominated by people whose social emotions are, as it were, muffled or atrophied: feelings of indignation, indignation, protest. While the heroes of the "Junkers" were Cadets, they were still capable of some kind of struggle and even rebellion. Aleksandrov, for example, remembers the case when an "evil" mass uprising broke out in the Fourth Cadet Corps, caused by poor nutrition and "pressure from the authorities": then the Cadets broke "all the lamps and glass, opened the doors and frames with bayonets, tore the library books to pieces." The riot stopped only after the soldiers were called. The "rebels" were dealt with severely. On this occasion, the following author's judgment is expressed in the novel: "It's true: you can't twist people and boys" - you can't bring people to indignation and push them to rebellion by force. Having matured and settled down, the cadets no longer allow themselves to rebel, and through the mouth of Aleksandrov they condemn the "evil mass uprising", for which, as it seems to them, there are no reasons, no reason.
Superficial and erroneous were the ideas of the junkers about barracks life in the tsarist army. Alexandrov honestly admits that he knows nothing about the "unknown, incomprehensible creature" whose name is a soldier. "... What do I know about the soldier," he asks himself and answers: Lord God, I know absolutely nothing about him. He is infinitely dark for me. And all this is from the fact that the cadets were only taught to command a soldier, but they did not say what to teach a soldier, except for formation and gun techniques, they did not show at all how to talk to him. And upon leaving the school, Aleksandrov will not know how to train and educate an illiterate soldier and how to communicate with him: “How will I approach this important matter, when I have only a little more special military knowledge than my one-year-old, young soldier, which he does not have at all, and, however, he is an adult in comparison with me, a hothouse child. He does not see anything bad, abnormal, and even more outrageous in the relationship between officers and soldiers, and does not want to see it. Before being sent to the regiment, Alexandrov declares: "Yes, of course, there is not a single vicious regiment in the Russian army." He is still ready to admit that, perhaps, there are "poor, driven into the impenetrable wilderness, forgotten by the higher authorities, coarsened regiments," but they are all, of course, "no lower than the glorified guard."
Strange: from what did Alexandrov conclude that life is good among soldiers and that there is not “a single vicious regiment” in Russia if he knows nothing about the army? The answer is simple: here, as in some other places in the novel, Kuprin attributed to his hero what he sometimes thought about the Russian army many years later - in exile. Kuprin here makes some adjustments to his previous bold judgments about the tsarist military. as a result, one gets the impression that the author of "The Junkers" is constantly arguing with the author of "Duel", and in other chapters with the author of "The Cadets".
When was such a "corrected", changed view of the writer on army and school life determined?
F.I. Kuleshov explains it this way: “It would be wrong to link these changes directly with Kuprin’s departure to emigration. The writer’s partial departure from the“ bold and violent ”ideas of the era of the first revolution, a certain weakening of the critical spirit, a decrease in accusatory pathos - all this was already felt in his work of the period reaction and the imperialist war. And even then the youth of the writer and the years of the Junkers began to be clothed in his imagination in iridescent colors. As the story moved away from the time, all the bad things faded, decreased in size, and now the writer looks at him exactly through inverted binoculars. In exile he , obviously, became even more entrenched in the idea that a bright look at yesterday that had sunk into eternity is the most fair.Surrendering to the magical power of memories, Kuprin extracted from the "archive of memory" colorfully colored episodes, pictures, faces, facts that, according to the law of psychological antithesis, were so unlike his present dreary, lonely, gray vegetating in a foreign land. [F.I. Kuleshov, p. 247.]

5. Instead of a conclusion. Army military everyday life in the story
"The Last Knights"
The narrative tone taken in the "Junkers", full of tenderness and sadness, changed dramatically in another "foreign" work of Kuprin on military topics - the story "The Last Knights" (originally - "Dragoon Prayer"). The writer turned to the events of the era of the imperialist war, relatively close in time, and his voice acquired severity, his judgments became sharp, the characters were vital, and the author's position was clear and unambiguous.
One of the undoubted advantages of the story "The Last Knights" is the richness of events and the swiftness of their development. The form of the narrative is extremely compressed, but meanwhile the author covered significant periods of time, said a lot about the historical era and managed to trace almost the entire life of the main characters. Despite the seeming slowness and thoroughness of the descriptions, the narrative flows freely, quickly and naturally, as in the best stories of this writer.
In The Last Knights, Kuprin plunged into his native element of army military everyday life, but not in order to admire them, but in order to once again sharply condemn the careerism, stupidity and mediocrity of the generals and staff tsarist officers. The sarcastic words about "the great strategists of the General Staff sitting in Petrograd and never having seen the war even from afar" are full of indignant pathos. One of the heroes of the story, whose views are entirely shared by the author, says indignantly: “Even during the Japanese war, I loudly insisted that it was impossible to direct battles sitting a thousand miles away in an office; that it was absurd to send old generals to the most responsible posts, under patronage. in whom the sand is pouring and there is no military experience, that the presence in the war of persons of the imperial family and the sovereign himself does not lead to anything good.
But it was they, mediocre and stupid people - these "great strategists of the general staff" and persons of the imperial family - who actually led the army during the Russo-Japanese and German wars, they developed armchair plans of operations that actually led to defeat and disgrace, they were the culprits the deaths of thousands of brave soldiers and officers, and they "cawed like crows" when enterprising military officers dared to show independence, contemptuously calling the latter "incompetent brave men." Such a "crow's croak" was heard in response to the proposal of the talented and fearless General L. to make a bold cavalry raid behind German lines and achieve the transfer of the war to German territory - "thus making our position from defensive to offensive, and taking the initiative of fighting into their own hands, as the great Russian victors did in past centuries. Up there, they knew little about the true situation on the fronts and did not know how to coordinate the actions of the army and military units. For this reason, says Kuprin, the well-known raid of the army of General Rennenkopf into East Prussia in August 1914 ended so tragically and shamefully: "He was not supported in time and his flight was slowed down by the same staff careerists." Yes, and on other fronts, the Russian army often turned out to be beaten only because of the stupidity, inactivity, and sometimes outright betrayal of staff officers.
More and more military units were called upon to mend the holes "made by the ruling class and the sycophancy of the theoreticians". No one took into account the lives of soldiers who were recklessly exposed to enemy fire, doomed to a senseless death. “These armchair columnists, the future Russian Moltke,” writes Kuprin sarcastically, “loved to flaunt a phrase that speaks of the boundless severity of power and the boundlessness of bloody military measures that contribute to the achievement of success ... Their modern science of winning included terrible iron formulas and terms : "throw a division into the fire", "shut up the defile with a corps", "revive the sluggish offensive of such and such an army with their own machine guns, and so on." contempt for the "combat units" that make up the strength and power of the Russian army as a whole. Those who led the army often talked about the "psychology of the masses" in general, but as usual completely forgot the psychology of the Russian soldier, underestimated "his incomparable fighting qualities", gratitude for good manners, his sensitive capacity for initiative, his amazing patience, his mercy to the vanquished.
In those military units where a soldier is valued and respected, where "even innocent slaps on the back of the head have been weathered", where the unwritten rule is firmly observed, according to which one cannot even jokingly beat and one can never talk nasty about his mother, - there reigns a high fighting spirit, every soldier there is worthy of admiration. "And what kind of people! - Kuprin says admiringly about the soldiers of one regiment, - Well done to well done. Tall, healthy, cheerful, dexterous, self-confident, white-toothed ..."
This is due to the fact that in that regiment the commander treats the soldier "without yelling stupid, without goiter and without rancor." A soldier in battle - "in action" shows amazing quick wit, resourcefulness and ingenuity, which, for example, was shown by the Cossack constable Kopylov. The story expresses a firm conviction that from the mass of peasant farmers "it is possible to grow and educate an army that has never been and never will be in the world."
On hospitable and humane principles, the attitude towards the soldiers of Captain Tulubeev and General L., who are brought out in the story as positive characters, is kept. The first of them captivates with the absence of conceited thoughts, simplicity and modesty, honesty and generosity. It was he, Captain Tulubeev, who refused an enviable position in the general staff and preferred to return to his regiment. He served in the army by vocation, out of love for the "swift profession" of a cavalryman. Tulubeev found himself a like-minded person in the person of General L., whose name the soldiers pronounced "with clumsy, stern adoration", because for all his severity the general was extremely fair and responsive: he was distinguished by a deep "knowledge of military science, diligence, resourcefulness, representativeness and remarkable skill in dealing with soldiers."
These two combat commanders are opposed in the story "The Young Prince". This is a person of the imperial family, "an unsuccessful offspring of a great house", one of the "young grand dukes, who has already managed to become famous in St. Petersburg for revelry, debts, scandals, audacity and beauty." Being in the regiment of General L. in the rank of junior officer, the young "princesses" behave in the most "shameful, shameful and indecent way. General L., a very direct and independent person, did not reckon with the" offspring "of the Romanovs' house and severely punished the cheeky" princess ". True, General L. "got hard" for this, but in the eyes of officers and soldiers, his authority grew even more.
In this light, the tsarist military and the Russian army appeared in the story "The Last Knights".
Immediately after the appearance in the press, Kuprin's story provoked indignant attacks from the white emigration. Kuprin was accused of slandering "the victorious Russian army." A certain Georgy Sherwood in a letter addressed to the editor of the newspaper "Vozrozhdeniye" called the Kuprin story a libel and drew the following conclusion: "The Last Knights" is the best fit for one of the Soviet newspapers, where they will undoubtedly be reprinted, but in "Vozrozhdeniye" - in that organ of the émigré press, which we are accustomed to regard as the spokesman of healthy and pure state views - how could all this fiction be printed? The White Guard officer Sherwood found it necessary to send an open letter to the author of The Last Knights through Vozrozhdenie. Sherwood concluded that with "The Last Knights" Kuprin crossed out the novel "Junker" and his other works of the period of emigration and again returned to the path of denunciation ...
Bibliography.
"A.I. Kuprin on Literature". - Minsk, 1969
"Alexander Ivanovich Skryabin. 1915-1940. Collection for the 25th anniversary of his death. M.-L., 1940.
Afanasiev V.A.I. Kuprin. Ed. 2nd. - M., 1972.
Berkov P.N. A.I. Kuprin. Critical biographical essay. - M., 1956.
Verzhbitsky N., Meetings with A.I. Kuprin. - Penza, 1961.
Volkov A.A. Creativity A.I. Kuprin. Ed. 2nd. M., 1981.
Zhegalov N., An outstanding Russian realist. - "What to read", 1958, No. 12.
Kiselev B. Stories about Kuprin. - M., 1964.
Kozlovsky Yu.A. Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin. - In the book: A.I. Kuprin. Favorites. - M., 1990.
Koretskaya I.V. A.I. Kuprin. To the 100th anniversary of the birth. - M.. 1970.
Krutikova L.V. A.I. Kuprin. - L., 1071.
Krutikova L.V. A.I. Kuprin. - L., 1971.
Kuprin A.I. Sobr. cit.: in 6 volumes, M., 1982.
Kuprin A.I. Sobr. cit.: in 9 volumes, M., 1970-1973.
Kuprina-Iordanskaya M.K. Young years. - M., 1966.
Lilin V. Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin. Biography of the writer. - L., 1975.
Fonyakova N.N. Kuprin in Petersburg. - L., 1986.
Chukovsky K.I. Kuprin. - In the book: Korney Chukovsky. Contemporaries. Portraits and studies. - M., 1963.

1 The cook is a fermenter in our building. A very big and strong man. 2 Clown in the circus of Solomon. [Sat. "Alexander Ivanovich Skryabin. 1915-1940. Collection for the 25th anniversary of his death", - M.-L., 1940, p.24.] 1 2

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"Junker" Kuprin A.I.

Like other major Russian writers who, once in a foreign land, turned to the genre of artistic autobiography (I. A. Bunin, I. S. Shmelev, A. N. Tolstoy, B. K. Zaitsev, etc.), Kuprin devotes his youth to the most significant thing is the novel Juncker. In a certain sense, it was a summing up. “Junkers,” the writer himself said, “this is my testament to the Russian youth.”

The novel recreates in detail the traditions and life of the Third Alexander Cadet School in Moscow, tells about the teachers and educator officers, classmates of Alexandrov-Kuprin, talks about his first literary experiments and the youthful "crazy" love of the hero. However, "Junkers" is not just a "home" history of the cadet school on Znamenka. This is a story about the old, "specific" Moscow - Moscow "forty-forties", the Iberian chapel of the Mother of God and the Catherine's Institute for Noble Maidens, which is on Tsaritsynskaya Square, all woven from volatile memories. Through the haze of these memories, the familiar and unrecognizable today silhouettes of the Arbat, Patriarch's Ponds, Earthen Wall appear. “It is this power of Kuprin’s artistic vision that is amazing in Junkers,” wrote prose writer Ivan Lukash, responding to the appearance of the novel, “the magic of revitalizing memories, his mosaic work of creating an airy beautiful, light and bright Moscow from“ fragments ”and“ dust particles ” frescoes, full of completely lively movement and completely lively people from the time of Alexander III.

"Junker" is both a human and artistic testament of Kuprin. The best pages of the novel include those where the lyrics find their inner justification with the greatest force. Such, in particular, are the episodes of Aleksandrov's poetic infatuation with Zina Belysheva.

And yet, despite the abundance of light, music, festivities - “a furious funeral feast in the outgoing winter”, the thunder of a military band at divorces, the magnificence of a ball at the Catherine Institute, the elegant life of the cadets-Alexandrovites (“Kuprin’s novel is a detailed story about the bodily joys of youth, about the ringing and, as it were, weightless feeling of life of youth, vigorous, pure, ”Ivan Lukash very accurately said), this is a sad book. Again and again, with "indescribable, sweet, bitter and tender sadness," the writer mentally returns to Russia. “You live in a beautiful country, among smart and kind people, among the monuments of the greatest culture,” Kuprin wrote in his essay “Motherland”. “But it’s all pretend, it’s like a movie is unfolding. And all the silent, dull grief is that you no longer cry in your sleep and do not see in your dream either Znamenskaya Square, or Arbat, or Povarskaya, or Moscow, or Russia.

The very end of August; the number must be the thirtieth or thirty-one. After a three-month summer vacation, cadets who have completed their full course come for the last time to the corps where they studied, played pranks, sometimes sat in a punishment cell, quarreled and made friends for seven whole years in a row.

The term and hour of appearance in the corps are strictly defined. And how can you be late? “Now we are no longer some kind of half-staff cadets, almost boys, but cadets of the glorious Third Alexander School, in which severe discipline and distinctness in the service are in the foreground. No wonder in a month we will swear allegiance under the banner!

Aleksandrov stopped the driver at the Red Barracks, opposite the building of the Fourth Cadet Corps. Some secret instinct told him to go to his second building not by a direct road, but by a roundabout way, along those former roads, along those former places that had been traveled and avoided many thousands of times, which would remain imprinted in memory for many decades, up to death itself, and which now wafted over him with an indescribable sweet, bitter, and tender sadness.

To the left of the entrance to the iron gate is a stone two-story building, dirty yellow and peeling, built fifty years ago in the Nikolaev soldier's style.

Corps educators lived here in state-owned apartments, as well as Father Mikhail Voznesensky, a teacher of the law and rector of the church of the second building.

Father Michael! Alexandrov's heart suddenly sank from light sadness, from awkward shame, from quiet remorse... Yes. Here's how it was:

The combatant company, as always, at exactly three o'clock went to lunch in the common corps dining room, descending down the wide stone winding stairs. So it remains still unknown who suddenly whistled loudly in the ranks. In any case, this time it was not him, not Alexandrov. But the company commander, Captain Yablukinsky, made a gross mistake. He should have called out, "Who whistled?" - and immediately the guilty would respond: "I, Mr. Captain!" He shouted angrily from above: “Again Alexandrov? Go to the punishment cell, and - without lunch. Alexandrov stopped and pressed himself against the railing so as not to interfere with the company's movement. When Yablukinsky, descending down behind the last row, caught up with him, Alexandrov said quietly but firmly:

“Captain, it's not me.

Yablukinsky shouted:

– Shut up! Raise no objection! Don't talk in line. To the punishment cell immediately. And if not guilty, then he was guilty a hundred times and did not get caught. You are a disgrace to the company (the bosses said “you” to seventh-graders) and the entire corps!

Offended, angry, unhappy Alexandrov trudged into the punishment cell. His mouth became bitter. This Yablukinsky, nicknamed Schnapps by the Cadet, and more often Cork, always treated him with pointed distrust. God knows why? Is it because he was simply antipathetic to Alexandrov's face, with pronounced Tatar features, or because the boy, having a restless character and ardent ingenuity, was always at the head of various enterprises that violated peace and order? In a word, the entire older age knew that Cork found fault with Aleksandrov ...

Quite calmly, the young man came to the punishment cell and put himself in one of the three cells, behind an iron grate, on a bare oak bunk, and the punishment cell uncle Kruglov, without saying a word, locked him up.

From afar, Alexandrov heard the muffled and harmonious sounds of the pre-dinner prayer, which was sung by all three hundred and fifty cadets:

“The eyes of all trust in Thee, O Lord, and You give them food at the right time, opening up Thy generous hand...” And Aleksandrov involuntarily repeated in his thoughts long-familiar words. There is a craving for excitement and a tart taste in the mouth.

After the prayer, there was complete silence. The cadet's irritation not only did not subside, but, on the contrary, kept growing. He whirled in the small space of four square paces, and new wild and audacious thoughts took possession of him more and more.

“Well, yes, maybe a hundred, maybe two hundred times I have been guilty. But when asked, I always confessed. Who smashed a tile in the stove with a blow of his fist on a bet? ME: Who smoked in the restroom? Z. Who stole a piece of sodium from the physics office and, throwing it into the washbasin, filled the entire floor with smoke and stench? ME: Who put a live frog in the duty officer's bed? Again, I...

Despite the fact that I quickly confessed, they put me under a lamp, put me in a punishment cell, put me at dinner with a drummer, left me without a vacation. This, of course, is hogwash. But if you are guilty, there is nothing you can do, you have to endure. And I dutifully obeyed the stupid law. But today, I'm not at all guilty. Someone else whistled, not me, but Yablukinsky, “this traffic jam”, attacked me with anger and shamed me in front of the whole company. This injustice is unbearably offensive. Not believing me, he sort of called me a liar. He is now as many times unjust as he was right in all previous times. And therefore, the end. I don't want to sit in a cell. I don't want to and I won't. I won't and won't. Basta!

He clearly heard the afternoon prayer. Then all the companies with a rumble and clatter began to disperse to their quarters. Then everything was quiet again. But the seventeen-year-old soul of Alexandrov continued to rage with a vengeance.

“Why should I be punished if I am not guilty of anything? What am I to Yablukinsky? Slave? Subject? Serf? Servant? Or his snotty son Valerka? Let me be told that I am a cadet, that is, like a soldier, and must unquestioningly obey the orders of my superiors without any reasoning? No! I'm not a soldier yet, I haven't taken an oath. After leaving the corps, many cadets at the end of the course take exams at technical schools, at the surveying institute, at the forestry academy, or at another higher school where Latin and Greek are not required. So: I have absolutely nothing to do with the body and I can leave it at any moment.

His mouth was dry and his throat burned.

- Kruglov! he called the watchman. - Open it. I want to go to the toilet.

The uncle opened the lock and released the cadet. The punishment cell was located on the same upper floor as the drill company. The restroom was common for the punishment cell and for the company bedroom. This was a temporary device while the punishment cell in the basement was being repaired. One of the duties of the punishment cell uncle was to see the arrested person to the toilet, without letting him go a single step, to watch vigilantly that he did not communicate with free comrades in any way. But as soon as Aleksandrov approached the threshold of the bedroom, he immediately rushed between the gray rows of beds.

- Where, where, where? Kruglov cackled helplessly, quite like a chicken, and ran after him. But where was he to catch up?

Having run through the bedroom and the narrow overcoat corridor, Aleksandrov burst into the duty room at a run; she was also a teacher. There were two people sitting there: Lieutenant Mikhin, who was also Alexandrov's detached chief, and the civilian teacher Otte, who had come to the evening rehearsal for students who were weak in trigonometry and the application of algebra, a small, cheerful man, with the body of Hercules and with the miserable legs of a dwarf.

- What it is? What a disgrace? Mikhin shouted. “Go back to the punishment cell now!”

"I won't go," Aleksandrov said in a voice inaudible to himself, and his lower lip trembled. At that moment, he himself did not suspect that the furious blood of the Tatar princes, his irrepressible and indomitable ancestors from the maternal side, was boiling in his veins.

- To the punishment cell! Immediately to the punishment cell! Mikhin squealed. - Whoa second!

- I'm not going and that's it.

What right do you have to disobey your direct superior?

A hot wave surged through Alexandrov's head, and everything in his eyes turned pleasantly pink. He rested his firm gaze on Mikhin's round white eyes and said loudly:

- Such a right that I no longer want to study in the second Moscow building, where I was treated so unfairly. From this moment I am no longer a Cadet, but a free man. Let me go home now, and I won't come back here again! not for any rugs. You no longer have any rights over me. And everything is here!

If childhood years are remembered with a kind word, then you need to remember them. And remember as long as he is able to retain important fragments in memory. And when the realization comes that the past is being forgotten, then you need to collect memories and arrange them for posterity in a separate publication. Actually, in "Junkers" Alexander Kuprin told about the everyday life of one student, by the name of Alexandrov, in the Moscow Alexander School, where he studied himself. It is worth thinking that what is happening in the work with the main character also happened with Kuprin himself. And if so, we are talking about a personal perception of what happened once. The past cannot be erased, but it is permissible to embellish it.

No longer a cadet, now a freshman, the protagonist continues to have a tendency to break discipline. According to the unspoken rules of the school, misconduct must be confessed when one of the mentors demands it, so that the guilty, and not the innocent, suffer. That is why it is sad for the reader to see how, having not yet had time to play tricks, a young man is forced to go to a punishment cell, thanks to the fame of a troublemaker. Kuprin creates a portrait of a rake, immediately presenting the main character in his characteristic frivolity.

Indeed, nothing holds Alexandrov back. He always lived without worries, studies moderately tolerably and does not imagine his future life. He is not interested in performance. He and the girls are interested because of due necessity, although he does not attach serious importance to relationships. It's easy to get over rejection and build relationships with others. A year later, the picture of the world for the protagonist of the work will turn over and he will take up his mind, because there will be a need to think about obligations to the future young wife, who cannot be supported on the salary paid to the lower officer ranks.

Everything around Alexandrov is perfect. What is happening is subject to clear laws and you need to comply with them. There is no negativity in the military profession, as long as the cadets are drilled by mentors, driving nobility and high morality into the subconscious of the younger generation. Maybe then these young people will be disappointed in the system and will embark on the path of degradation, but during their studies there will be no talk of such a thing. No matter how stupid they are, their spirit must correspond to the bar of the school: always a cheerful look, a drill step, a model for others.

The protagonist has another important tendency. He feels the need to write. This hobby looks artificially introduced into what is happening. As if in passing, Alexander Kuprin describes the difficulties of self-expression and further attempts to attach written stories: the main character sold the first novel for one and a half rubles and never saw him again. If this part of the work is considered as the formation of Kuprin himself as a writer, then, undoubtedly, the reader will learn valuable information. How could one find out how a successful publication cost a talented cadet an additional stay in a punishment cell?

The main character is obliged to think about life after graduating from college. He must get the required graduation score, or he will be assigned to an unattractive duty station, like an infantry regiment in the Great Muds. Of course, the protagonist will make efforts. Kuprin will contribute to this. Let a mediocre officer come out of a mediocre junker. The reader already understands which path Aleksandrov, presented on the pages, wants to take. He is destined to create works of art, including about himself.

At the very end of August, the cadet adolescence of Alyosha Alexandrov ends. Now he will study at the Third Junker named after Emperor Alexander II infantry school. In the morning he pays a visit to the Sinelnikovs, but alone with Yulenka he manages to stay no more than a minute.

Always in the foreground, always in the main place she is; incomprehensible, inaccessible, incomparable, unique, delightful, dizzying - Julia.

The girl invites Alyosha to forget summer country nonsense: both of them have now become adults.

Alyosha appears in the building of the school with sadness and confusion in his soul. True, he is flattered that he is already a "pharaoh", as the first-year sophomores called "chief officers" called the first-year students. Alexander's Junkers are loved in Moscow and are proud of them. The school invariably participates in all solemn ceremonies. Alyosha will long remember the magnificent meeting of Alexander III in the autumn of 1888, when the royal family walked along the line at a distance of several steps and the "pharaoh" fully tasted the sweet, pungent delight of love for the monarch.

However, during their studies, extra day-to-day duties, the cancellation of vacation, and arrest are pouring on the heads of the young men. Junkers are loved, but the platoon officer, course officer and commander of the fourth company Captain Fofanov, nicknamed Drozd, are mercilessly "warmed" at the school. Daily exercises with a heavy infantry berdanka and drill could have caused disgust for the service, if not for the patience and stern participation of all the "warmers".

There is no pushing around the younger ones in the school, which is usual for St. Petersburg schools. The atmosphere of chivalrous military democracy, stern but caring camaraderie prevails here. Everything related to the service does not allow indulgences even among friends, but outside of this, a friendly address to “you” is prescribed.

After the oath, Drozd recalls that now they are soldiers and for misconduct they will be sent not to their mother, but as privates in an infantry regiment. And yet, boyishness, which has not been completely outlived, forces young junkers to give their names to everything around them. The first company is called "stallions", the second - "animals", the third - "dabs" and the fourth (Alyoshina) - "fleas".

Each commander, except for the second course officer Belov, also has a nickname. From the Balkan War, Belov brought a Bulgarian wife of indescribable beauty, before whom all the cadets bowed, which is why the personality of her husband is considered inviolable. But Dubyshkin is called Pup, the commander of the first company is Khukhrik, and the battalion commander is Berdi-Pasha. All junker officers are mercilessly hounded, which is considered a sign of youth.

However, the life of eighteen-twenty-year-old boys cannot completely absorb the interests of the service. Alexandrov is vividly experiencing the collapse of his first love, but he is also keenly interested in the younger sisters Sinelnikovs. At the December ball, Olga Sinelnikova informs Alyosha about Yulenka's engagement. Shocked, Aleksandrov replies that he doesn't care. He has long loved Olga and will dedicate his first story to her, which will soon be published by Evening Leisures.

This writing debut of his is really taking place, but at the evening roll call Drozd assigns him three days in a punishment cell for publishing without the sanction of his superiors. Aleksandrov takes Tolstoy's "Cossacks" into the cell, and when Drozd asks if the young talent knows what he was punished for, he cheerfully replies: "For writing a stupid and vulgar essay."

Alas, the troubles don't end there. A fatal mistake is revealed in the dedication: instead of “O” there is “Yu” (such is the power of first love!). Soon the author receives a letter from Olga: "For some reason, I'm unlikely to ever see you, and therefore goodbye."

There is no limit to the shame and despair of the Junker, but time heals all wounds. Alexandrov gets to the ball at the Catherine Institute. This is not included in his Christmas plans, but Drozd suppresses all Alyosha's reasoning. For many years Alexandrov will remember the brilliant entrance of an old house, marble staircases, bright halls and pupils in formal dresses with a ball neckline.

At the ball, Alyosha meets Zinochka Belysheva, from whose very presence the very air brightens and shines with laughter. Between them there is a true and mutual love. In addition to undeniable beauty, Zinochka has something more valuable and rare.

Alexandrov confesses his love to Zinochka and asks him to wait for three years. In three months he is graduating from college, and before entering the Academy of the General Staff he will serve for another two years. Then he will pass the exam and will ask for her hand. The lieutenant receives forty-three rubles a month, and he will not allow himself to offer her the miserable fate of a provincial regimental lady. Zinochka promises to wait.

True love, like gold, never rusts or oxidizes.

Since then, Alexandrov has been trying to get the highest score. With nine points, you can choose a suitable regiment for service. He also lacks up to nine some three tenths because of the six in military fortification.

But now all the obstacles have been overcome, Alexandrov receives nine points and the right to choose the first place of service. When Berdi Pasha calls his last name, the cadet, without looking, points his finger at the list and stumbles upon the unknown Undomsky infantry regiment.

And now a brand new officer's uniform is put on, and the head of the school, General Anchutin, admonishes his pupils. Usually there are at least seventy-five officers in a regiment, and in such a large society, gossip is inevitable, corroding this society.

Having finished the parting words, the General says goodbye to the newly minted officers. They bow to him, and General Anchutin remains "forever in their minds with such firmness, as if he had been cut with a diamond on carnelian."

retold