A.T. Tvardovsky "Vasily Terkin": description, characters, analysis of the poem. Lesson “Vasily Terkin”. History of creation and features of the composition How Vasily Terkin was created

Lesson topic: A.T. Tvardovsky "Vasily Terkin".

History of creation, composition of the poem.

Class: 8

Lesson type: A lesson in discovering new knowledge.

Goals and objectives:

for students:

What is the work “Vasily Terkin” about? (subject)

Who is Vasily Terkin?

Story creating a poem,

Composition "V.T"

for the teacher:

continue to get acquainted with the life and work of Tvardovsky,

introduce the history and relevance of the creation of “Vasily Terkin”,

analyze the chapters “From the author” and “At a halt”;

identify the composition and relate it to the theme of the work,

reveal the character traits of the title character,

style features,

ideological originality.

During the classes.

The guys sit down, divide into 3 groups of 5 people (Draw lots, take colorful leaves

On the tablesby number of children sheets with tables ("I know, I want to know, I found out" technique)

Org. moment

- Hello guys, today I will teach your lesson. My name is Tatyana Valentinovna Dyakonova, I work as a teacher of Russian language and literature at the Sindori secondary school in the Knyazhpogost district.

People meet for different reasons. Today we met in order to learn about another wonderful work of art in the process of communication and performing joint tasks.

Today you will work in groups. Tell me who is the captain in each group. The functions of the captain are to organize the work of the entire group.

2. Lesson topic( slide 1).

The topic, as you can see, is formulated in several sentences. Let's read them. You have sheets of tables on your tables. Read her cap (“I know, I want to know, I found out!”). Let's fill in the cells of this table as the lesson progresses.

What do you already know about the topic of the lesson?

2. Updating knowledge

Poem, Composition, some worksAlexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky ?

Let's check. Group work(I'm handing out a printout):

1 Group : works with the definition of “POEM”, you need to collect it from the words that are in this envelope, take into account more words than you need (large / small poetic / prose lyric/lyric/epic work, all parts of which are united / not united by a single plot, characters )

2 Group : works with the structure of the composition. Indicate the sequence of its semantic parts that is traditional for a work of art (exposition, plot, plot development, climax, denouement, epilogue,)

3 Group : Find works by A.T. Tvardovsky ("Tankman's Tale""Mtsyri""July is the crown of summer""Vasily Terkin", "The Captain's Daughter", "Case History")

Time to work 1 minute.

Shall we check?

Group 1 pronounces, checks with the sample.slide 2

Group 2 pronounces, checks with the sample.slide 3

Group 3 pronounces, checks with the sample.slide 4 (Well done. What are these poems about?It is clear from the titles that the tankman’s story about the Second World War, “July - the Top of Summer” is about nature. And “Vasily Terkin”?- a name like a name, simple Russian, Terkin. Probably experienced a lot, but this is not accurate) So who is Tvardovsky? (poet)

You convinced me, let's look at our table. Which column should we fill in?("I know") How? (poem, composition, A.T. Tvardovsky - poet)

3. Identifying difficulties

What do we have to learn about? (fill in your tables)

What is the work “Vasily Terkin” about?

Who is Vasily Terkin?

Directly about the poem “V.T” history of creation,

Composition "V.T"(we write this in the 2nd column - “I want to know”, perhaps along the way we will add questions to the second column, and write the answers to them in the 3rd column)

4. Developing a plan to get out of the problem

And in what ways can we find out all this? (remember we have to fill out column 3!):

1. Teacher’s story (+ quick, easy, - not interesting, but what if he doesn’t know - you see me for the first time!)

2. Look for information on the Internet yourself (+ interesting, - a lot of unnecessary, distracting things, no Internet, a lot of time for selecting information)

3. Ask those who read (but this is long, maybe they didn’t understand it themselves)

5. Implementation of the chosen plan

Look at the portrait of Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky. What can you tell about this person's character based on his appearance? (Simple, courageous face, attentive look, serious expression).

Listen to the sound of the surname. (Tvardovsky - firmness, masculinity).Alliteration - “r” (in both the first and patronymic and last names)

Pay attention to the clothes (Tvardovsky is wearing a tunic, which means the photo was taken during the war, and he was a participant in the war)

Now get acquainted with brief information about A.T. and answer questions(I'm handing out a printout)

Slide 6 When did you live? (20th century) What is the origin?(from a peasant family)

When did you start writing? (early, at the age of 14 he already sends notes to magazines) What 2 wars did you go through? (Finnish and WWII)During WWII?War correspondent. What else did he work for (editor of the magazine “New World”)

- So, let's finally start getting acquainted with the poem. I want you to listen to the actor’s reading of chapter 1, it’s called “From the Author.” And in order for us to analyze it, I will give you a printed text.(I'm handing out printouts)

FROM THE AUTHOR (video)

(Slide 8) Questions for analyzing chapter 1 “From the author”:

What is this chapter about?

Who do you think it was written for and when?

Why first Vasily Terkin, and then Vasya Terkin?

How to understand the expression “real truth” here?

Why is the book “without beginning without end”?

What interesting things did you notice about the language of the poem?

B) Read and analyze 1 excerpt of the chapter “At a Rest”

1 group

Efficient, to be sure

There was the same old man

What did you come up with to cook soup?

On wheels directly.

Soup first. Secondly,

The porridge is normally strong.

No, he was an old man

Sensitive - that's for sure.

Hey, give me another one

Such a spoon

I am the second, brother, war

I will fight forever.

Rate it, add a little something.

The cook looked sideways:

"Wow eater -

This guy is new."

puts an extra spoon,

He says unkindly:

You should, you know, join the navy

With your appetite.

That one: - Thank you. I'm just

I haven't been in the navy.

I'd rather be like you

Cook in the infantry. -

And, sitting down under a pine tree,

He eats porridge while slouching.

"Mine?" - fighters among themselves, -

"Mine!" - they looked at each other.

And already, having warmed up, he slept

The regiment is very tired.

In the first platoon, sleep disappeared,

Contrary to the regulations.

Leaning against the trunk of a pine tree,

Not sparing shag,

At war about war

Terkin conducted the conversation.

You guys from the middle

Start off. And I will say:

I'm not the first shoes

I wear it here without repair.

Now you have arrived at the place,

Take your guns and fight.

And how many of you know

What is Sabantui?

- Sabantuy - some kind of holiday?

Or what is it - Sabantuy?

Sabantuy can be different,

If you don’t know, don’t interpret

Here under the first bombre

You'll lie down from hunting,

You're still alive - don't worry:

Thissmall Sabantui .

Take a breather, eat a hearty meal,

Light a cigarette and don't blow your nose.

It's worse, brother, howmortar

Suddenly Sabantuy will begin.

He will penetrate you deeper, -

Kiss Mother Earth.

But keep in mind, my dear,

This -average sabantuy .

Sabantuy is science for you,

The enemy is fierce - he himself is fierce.

But it's a completely different thing

This -main sabantuy.

So you went out early,

I looked at your sweat and trembling;

Rod of German thousandtanks …

A thousand tanks? Well, brother, you're lying...

Why should I lie, buddy?

Think about it - what is the calculation?

But why immediately - a thousand?

Fine. Let it be five hundred

Well, five hundred. Tell me honestly

Don't scare me like old women.

OK. What's three hundred, two hundred -

At least meet one...

Well, the slogan in the newspaper is accurate:

Don't run into the bushes and into the bread.

Tank - it looks very formidable,

But in reality he is deaf and blind.

He's blind. You're lying in a ditch

And on the heart of the pendulum:

Suddenly he crushes you blindly, -

After all, he doesn’t see a damn thing.

They look into the joker's mouth,

They catch the word greedily.

It's good when someone lies

Fun and challenging.

To the side of the forest, deaf,

In bad weather,

Okay, as it is

Guy on a hike.

And he hesitated

They ask: - Come on, for the night

Tell me something else

Vasily Ivanovich …

Slide 9

Did your assumptions come true?

What is this chapter about?

How did the soldiers conclude that Terkin was “one of their own”?

What other war was Terkin a participant in?

What is “Sabantuy”?(slide 10)

What are the small, medium and main sabantuy in the work?

How do fighters address Terkin?(Slide 11) Vasily Ivanovich was the name of the legendary division commander Chapaev, hero Civil War

D) Read and analyze 2 excerpts of the chapter “At a halt”

Reading group 2

The night is deaf, the earth is damp.

The fire is smoking a little.

No, guys, it's time to sleep,

Start creeping.

With my face pressed to my sleeve,

On a warm hillock

Between fellow fighters

Vasily Terkin lay down.

The overcoat is heavy and wet,

The rain was good.

The roof is the sky, the hut is spruce,

The roots are pressing under the ribs.

But it is not visible that he

I was saddened by this

So that he can't sleep

Somewhere in the world.

He sleeps - even if he’s hungry, even if he’s full,

At least one, at least in a heap.

To sleep for the previous lack of sleep,

Learned to sleep in reserve.

And the hero hardly dreams

Every night a heavy dream:

Like from the western border

He retreated to the east;

How did he go, Vasya Terkin,

From the reserve private,

In a salty gymnast

Hundreds of miles of native land.

How big is the earth?

The greatest land.

And she would be a stranger

Someone else's, or your own.

The hero sleeps, snores - that's it.

Accepts everything as it is.

Well, my own - that’s for sure.

Well, war - so I’m here.

He sleeps, forgetting about the difficult summer.

Sleep, care, don't rebel.

Maybe tomorrow at dawn

There will be a new Sabantuy.

The soldiers sleep as if caught in a dream,

Rolling under the pine tree,

Sentinels at posts

They get wet and lonely.

Zgi is not visible. Night all around.

And the fighter will feel sad.

He just suddenly remembers something,

He will remember and smile.

And it’s as if the dream has disappeared,

Laughter chased away the yawn.

- It's good that he got it,

Terkin, to our company.

Slide 12 Conversation based on an excerpt from the chapter “At a Rest”

Did your assumptions come true?

What is the author telling us about? (how and in what conditions do soldiers sleep and what other tests may await them)

Why does the fighter say at the end:- It’s good that he ended up in our company, Terkin. (with his conversations he relieved tension, taught him to approach life more simply, to be happy with what you have)

We haven't finished reading the chapter. Can you guess what will happen next?

D) Read and analyze the 3rd excerpt of the chapter “At a halt”

The continuation of the same chapter is read by group 3

Terkin - who is he?

Let's be honest:

Just a guy himself

Heordinary.

However, the guy is good.

A guy like that

Every company always has

And in every platoon.

And so that they know how strong they are,

Let's be honest:

Endowed with beauty

He wasn't excellent

Not tall, not that small,

But a hero is a hero.

Fought in Karelian -

Beyond the Sestra River.

And we don’t know why, -

They didn’t ask,

Why then should he

They didn't give me a medal.

Let's turn from this topic,

Let's say for order:

Maybe on the award list

There was a typo.

Don't look at what's on your chest

And look what's ahead!

In service from June, into battle from July,

Terkin is at war again.

Apparently a bomb or a bullet

I haven't found one yet for me.

Was inhit by shrapnel in battle ,

It has healed - and there is so much sense.

Three times I was surrounded ,

Three times - here it is! - went out.

And although it was restless -

Remained unharmed

Under oblique, three-layer fire,

Under hinged and straight.

And more than once on the usual path,

Along the roads, in the dust of columns,

I was partially distracted

And partially destroyed …

But, however,

The warrior is alive,

To the kitchen - from the place, from the place - into battle.

Smokes, eats and drinks with gusto

Any position.

No matter how difficult, no matter how bad -

Don't give up, look forward

This is a saying for now

The fairy tale will be ahead.

(Slide 13)

Were your assumptions correct?

What is this passage about?

Has the image of the main character been revealed? Describe it.

Have our assumptions about Vasily Terkin come true?

What features does the author emphasize in the hero?

6. Primary consolidation

(Slide 14) Discussion of the entire text.

You and I have read the first 2 chapters of this work, and the whole poem consistsof 30 chapters .

Did you like the work?

What do these 2 chapters have in common?

Can you guess what will happen next?

What compositional part of the poem are the read chapters?

What is unique about the language of this work?

7. Independent work and testing against the standard.

Let's go back to our “I know - I want to know - I found out” sheets and try to answer the questions posed at the beginning of the lesson. Do you have enough knowledge?

( Not quite: we can answer the question of what the work is about, who he is main character, composition features can-Why? -can not.

The history of creation can be assumed that before the Second World War, because the 2nd war was fought, possibly the Finnish one. But I'm not sure.)

- Why? ( because we analyzed only a small part of the work.

Where else can we find out the answers? (in reference literature, in the statements of contemporaries, after reading the entire work, ask the author)

Let's work in groups again :

1 groupfinds out the history of the creation of “Vasily Terkin”, comparing information already known to us from the chapters we read and information from reference literature.

2nd groupwill try to find out why the author chose this particular onecomposition , and in this they will be helped by the author’s statement and the study of the genre of “Vasily Terkin”

3 groupfinds out the genre of “Vasily Terkin”. Tvardovsky did not consider his work a poem; he called it “A Book about a Fighter” and compared it with a chronicle and a story. The group will work and tell us what the book has in common with these genres and what makes it different.

Time to work 3 minutes. Upon completion of the work, the group will report, and we will be able to fill in the remaining cells in our table.

Slides 15, 16, 17

8. Inclusion of knowledge and skills into the system

What should appear in the table:

9. Reflection, which includes reflection on educational activities, introspection, and reflection on feelings and emotions

Reflection Slide 18-19

Game “How did I work today?” (who can call themselves a good guy? - give “5”

And who worked half-heartedly? - this means homework needs to be done so that everyone gasps!

Homework . slide 20

Expressive reading of the chapter “Crossing”.

Prepare an oral or written characterization of Vasily Terkinorproject “The Image of Vasily Terkin in Illustrations by Artists of Different Years.”

Thank you, it was a pleasure working with you! The lesson is over.Slide 21

You have stickers on your tables (the same pieces of paper with which I divided you into teams, please write your feedback about the lesson on them.Slide 22

Vasya Terkin, a beloved literary hero of the war years, appeared in the front-line press even before the Great Patriotic War - in 1939-1940, during the war with Finland. It was created by a team of authors, among whom was Tvardovsky. He was a successful and cheerful fighter, always defeating his enemies. This hero was reminiscent of characters in comic books or series of cartoons: “He is a man himself / Extraordinary... / A hero, fathoms in the shoulders... / And he takes enemies with a bayonet, / Like sheaves on a pitchfork,” etc.

At the same time, during the Finnish campaign, a literary work in verse about the resilient soldier “Vasya Terkin” was conceived. As you know, the hero of Tvardovsky’s previous books (primarily the poem “The Country of Ant,” famous in the Soviet years) is a peasant dreaming of happiness in his native land, and the peasant, village theme was the main one for Tvardovsky. The Finnish war, in which Tvardovsky was a correspondent, opened up to him a new layer of life, a whole new world: “A new, unusually harsh and at the same time very human, friendly and joyful world was revealed to me.

I'm glad that it became accessible and understandable to me. I fell in love with the Red Army as I had previously only loved the countryside and collective farms. And, by the way, there are a lot of similarities. It seems to me that the army will be my second theme for the rest of my life,” the poet wrote. Probably, it would be more accurate to say that Tvardovsky, who knew well the troubles and worries of the Russian peasant, discovered the same Russian peasant in a new way during the war. character, a Russian man, but in his new incarnation: not a cultivator and breadwinner, but a defender of the Fatherland, as had happened more than once in Russian history.This was the secret of the poet’s future success.

After the completion of the Finnish campaign, Tvardovsky began work on a poem, the hero of which, Vasya Terkin, was a participant in the last war. It was assumed that the poem would be completed in the summer of 1941(!).

With the beginning of the war, Tvardovsky was appointed to the position of “writer” in the newspaper “Red Army” of the Kyiv Military District and went to the front. In the first, most difficult, months of the war, Tvardovsky had no time for poetry: together with the army, he went through the entire war, along its most difficult roads, and emerged from encirclement in 1941. The poet returned to the idea of ​​"Terkin" in June 1942, only it was already a poem about a new war and, in fact, about a new hero - previously a joker and a merry fellow. It was not “Vasya Terkin”, but “Vasily Terkin”. The name has changed, the concept of the hero has changed: now nothing remains of the square chin, the author focused on the character of Terkin, on his front-line (and not only front-line) philosophy, on his role in the destinies of other people - the characters in the poem. The new title of the poem was announced in Tvardovsky’s creative report on June 22, 1942 - “Vasily Terkin.”

The poem was created throughout the war, following its course, combining seemingly incompatible qualities: efficiency, almost newspaper-like quality, and at the same time the highest artistry. The first chapters were published in the summer of 1942, after the difficult and long (seemingly endless) retreat of our troops to the Volga and the North Caucasus, in a difficult time that was unpredictable for the further course of the war. Everyone was gripped by anxiety: what next; Will the Germans be stopped? It is unlikely that there was “before literature”, “before poetry”. But, one must think, there was something in Tvardovsky’s book that resonated with almost everyone. The poem immediately became famous (surprisingly, long before its completion); newspapers with chapters of the poem, as eyewitnesses testify, were eagerly awaited by readers and passed from hand to hand.

Initially, until 1946, the poem was published divided into two, then into three parts, which reflected the main stages of the war: retreat, turning point, expulsion of the enemy from their native land. However, subsequently the author abandoned the division into parts and the numbering of chapters, making the composition of the book more free, and this was required by the special artistic logic of the work. The poem does not have a plot or event ending: we part with the main character, Vasily Terkin, shortly before the end of the war, when the enemy was expelled from his native land. But even after reading the poem, the image of Vasily Terkin continues to live in our minds, hidden in our memory as the image of a loved one.

Vasily Terkin is a character in the verse poem of the same name about the war, created by the writer. The image of the main character embodied the features of the common people. The author endowed the soldier with a cheerful disposition, ingenuity, the ability not to lose heart in difficult situations, courage and bravery. For these qualities, the character was loved by readers. Tvardovsky’s book raised the morale of Soviet soldiers, instilled in them optimism and faith in victory.

History of character creation

The image of the Soviet soldier was created several years before the Great Patriotic War. Thinking through the character's character, Tvardovsky endowed Terkin with resourcefulness, inexhaustible positivity and a sense of humor. The authorship of the image belongs to a team of journalists, which included Alexander Trifonovich.

In 1939, two feuilletons about Vasily Terkin were published. In the opinion of publicists, he was a successful and strong representative of the common people. Tvardovsky began to work out the character of the main actor future book during the Soviet-Finnish War. The good-natured and brave hero of the feuilletons gained popularity among the readership. This convinced the writer that the theme needed to be developed in a larger literary form.

The author set out to create a poetic poem, but the beginning of the Great Patriotic War changed his creative plans. Only in 1942 were the first lines of the work written, which Alexander Trifonovich initially called “The Book about a Fighter.” The image of Vasily Terkin has no prototype. However, the writer, being on the battlefield as a war correspondent, managed to give the image “liveness” and realism, which allowed readers to perceive the hero of the poem as a real person.

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The first chapters of the book were published in a front-line newspaper. Then it began to be published by such printed publications as Pravda, Izvestia and others. Readers were inspired by the image of a worker saving his native lands. The chapters reached both front-line soldiers and citizens remaining in the rear. “The Book about a Fighter” was loved by the public.

In 1943, having ended up in a military hospital after being wounded, the writer decided that he was approaching the end of the poem. Subsequently, he had to continue working until 1945. The book was continued thanks to requests from readers. Completing work on the work, Alexander Trifonovich begins to write the next poem with the unusual title “Terkin in the Other World.” It was originally planned that this would be the last chapter of the essay about the Russian soldier. However, the idea grew into a separate book. The new work became an anti-Stalin pamphlet.

In terms of genre, Tvardovsky’s poem resembled folklore tales about folk heroes. Therefore, in the text the writer consciously abandoned the ideological principle. Alexander Trifonovich noted that turning to party themes and the image of Joseph Stalin would violate the plan and “figurative structure of the poem about the people’s war.” This fact later created difficulties for the writer when publishing the poem - the work underwent numerous edits and proofreading.

Tvardovsky's book became very popular during the war years. The work was not only published in newspapers, but also read out on the radio by such announcers as. The artist Orest Vereisky created wonderful illustrations for the poem about Terkin. The author of the essay himself visited hospitals and work groups, where he introduced the public to the history of the Soviet soldier.

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Rest after the battle (based on the poem by A. Tvardovsky “Vasily Terkin”)

Phrases from the poem famous quotes. The lines about the battle, which is fought not for glory, but for the sake of life on Earth, express the main idea and theme of the work. The image of the main character was later captured in sculpture - monuments to the bright character of Russian literature were erected in Smolensk, Orekhovo-Zuyevo, and Gvardeysk.

Biography of Vasily Terkin

Tvardovsky's poem does not have a consistent plot. Each chapter is a separate episode from the life of a soldier. Little is known about the biography of Vasily Terkin. The text states that the hero was born in a village near Smolensk. The character is young and not yet married. The guy wants to go to the front to save the Fatherland from the encroachments of the enemy.

A cheerful and straightforward character demonstrates remarkable courage and courage, despite the difficulties of front-line life. The soul of the company, from whom you can always get support, Terkin was a role model. In battle, the soldier was the first to attack the enemy, and in his spare time he entertained his comrades by playing the accordion. A charming and charismatic guy endears himself to readers.

Readers' first acquaintance with the hero occurs when he and his colleagues cross the river. The operation takes place in winter, but the river is not completely frozen, and the crossing is disrupted due to an enemy attack. The image of the road becomes central in the poem - this is the path of the Soviet army to victory over the invaders. In the episode with the crossing, Terkin demonstrates courage and ingenuity - thanks to the efforts of the hero, the soldiers are able to continue the campaign. However, the character himself is wounded and ends up in a military hospital.

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Monument to Vasily Terkin in the city of Gvardeysk

Having recovered from his wound, Terkin decides to catch up with the platoon. The chapter “Harmon” is dedicated to his ability to find an approach to the team and win their respect and trust.

The soldier becomes a participant in battles and provides all possible assistance to those with whom he serves in the same unit, and to civilians. Having received leave, Terkin refuses to travel to his native village, captured by the Germans, in order to be useful at the front. For his feat in battle - the hero shoots down an enemy plane - Vasily Terkin is awarded a medal, which during the war becomes not the only award for the character.

One day, entering a village, the hero finds himself in a house where an old man and his wife live. Vasily repairs watches and saws for the old people and encourages them in every possible way. In another episode, a warrior gives a personal pouch to a soldier who has lost his. At the same time, Terkin recalls that when he was in the hospital and lost his hat, the young nurse gave the character her headdress. Since then, Vasily carefully kept this gift.

During the battle for the village, the soldier has to take on the functions of the young killed lieutenant. The hero leads the platoon and leads the attack. The village was taken by Russian soldiers, but Vasily was seriously wounded. When a fighter lies in the snow, Death appears to him and asks him to submit to it. But the character finds the strength to resist the uninvited guest. Soon the wounded man is found by other employees and sent to the medical battalion. After spending some time in the hospital, the soldier returns to his native company, where he finds many new faces.

I’ll start in order - with the first question that most often arises among readers in relation to the hero of a particular book.

"Does Terkin really exist?", “Is he a type or just one, a living person known to you?”, “Does he really exist?” - here are the formulations of this question, taken selectively from letters from front-line soldiers. It arose in the mind of the reader even at the time when I had just begun publishing “The Book about a Fighter” in newspapers and magazines. In some letters this question was posed with the obvious assumption of an affirmative answer, and in others it was clear that the reader had no doubts about the existence of the “living” Terkin, but the question was only about “isn’t he serving in our, such and such, division?” ?". And cases of letters being addressed not to me, the author, but to Vasily Terkin himself are also evidence of the prevalence of the idea that Terkin is a “living person.”

In a word, there was and still is such a reader's idea that Terkin is, so to speak, a personal person, a soldier living under this or another name, listed under the number of his military unit and field post office. Moreover, prose and poetic messages from readers speak of a desire for this to be exactly so, that is, for Terkin to be a non-fictional person. However, I could not and cannot, to the satisfaction of this simple-minded, but highly valued reader’s feeling, declare (as some other writers could and can do) that my hero is not a fictional person, but lives or lived there and met me then - and under such and such circumstances.

No. Vasily Terkin, as he appears in the book, is a fictitious person from beginning to end, a figment of the imagination, a creation of fantasy. And although the features
expressed in him, were observed by me in many living people - not one of these people can be called a prototype of Terkin.
But the fact is that it was conceived and invented not only by me, but by many people, including writers, and most of all not by writers and, to a large extent, by my correspondents themselves. They actively participated in the creation of Terkin, from its first chapter to the completion of the book, and to this day continue to develop this image in various forms and directions.

I explain this in order to consider the second question, which is posed in an even more significant part of the letters - the question: how was “Vasily Terkin” written? Where did this book come from?
“What served as the material for it and what was the starting point?”
“Wasn’t the author himself one of the Terkins?”

This is asked not only by ordinary readers, but also by people specially involved in the subject of literature: graduate students who took “Vasily Terkin” as the theme of their works, literature teachers, literary scholars and critics, librarians, lecturers, etc.

I’ll try to tell you about how “Terkin” was “formed”.

"Vasily Terkin", I repeat, has been known to the reader, primarily the army, since 1942. But "Vasya Terkin" has been known since 1939-1940 - from the period of the Finnish campaign. At that time, a group of writers and poets worked in the newspaper of the Leningrad Military District “On Guard of the Motherland”: N. Tikhonov, V. Sayanov, A. Shcherbakov, S. Vashnetsev, Ts. Solodar and the writer of these lines. Once, discussing with the editorial staff the tasks and nature of our work in a military newspaper, we decided that we needed to start something like a “humor corner” or a weekly collective feuilleton, where there would be poems and pictures. This idea was not an innovation in the army press. Following the model of the propaganda work of D. Bedny and V. Mayakovsky in the post-revolutionary years, newspapers had a tradition of printing satirical pictures with poetic
signatures, ditties, feuilletons with continuations with the usual heading - “At leisure”, “Under the Red Army accordion”, etc. There were sometimes conventional characters moving from one feuilleton to another, like some merry cook, and characteristic pseudonyms like Uncle Sysoy, Grandfather Yegor, Machine Gunner Vanya, Sniper and others. In my youth, in Smolensk, I was involved in similar literary work in the district "Krasnoarmeyskaya Pravda" and other newspapers.

And so we, the writers who worked in the editorial office of “On Guard of the Motherland,” decided to choose a character who would appear in a series of amusing pictures, equipped with poetic captions. This was supposed to be some kind of cheerful, successful fighter, a conventional figure, a popular popular figure. They began to come up with a name. They came from the same tradition of the “humor corners” of the Red Army newspapers, where at that time their Pulkins, Mushkins and even Protirkins were in use (from the technical word “rubbing” - an object used to lubricate weapons). The name had to be meaningful, with a mischievous, satirical undertone. Someone suggested calling our hero Vasya Terkin, namely Vasya, and not Vasily. There were suggestions to name Vanya,
Fedey, somehow, but they settled on Vasya, and that’s how this name was born. Here I must dwell, by the way, on one particular reader's
question, just regarding the name Vasily Terkin.

Major M. M-v, a Muscovite, writes in his letter:
“I recently read P. D. Boborykin’s novel “Vasily Terkin.” And, frankly speaking, I felt great embarrassment: what is common between his and your Vasily Terkin? How is your Vasya Terkin - a smart, cheerful, experienced Soviet soldier operating in during the Great Patriotic War and with great patriotism defending his Soviet Motherland - to the rogue merchant, scammer and hypocrite Vasily Ivanovich Terkin from Boborykin's novel? So why did you choose for your (and our) hero such a name, behind which a certain type and which has already been described in our Russian literature? Were you really guided by the consideration of the relatedness of this,
already described, type and created by you? But this is an insult to the experienced soldier Vasya Terkin! Or is this an accident?"

I confess that I heard about the existence of Boborykin’s novel, when a significant part of Terkin had already been published, from one of my older literary friends. I took out the novel, read it without much interest and continued my work. I did not and do not attach any significance to this coincidence of Terkin’s name with the name of the Boborykin hero. There is absolutely nothing in common between them. It is possible that one of us, looking for a character’s name for feuilletons in the newspaper “On Guard of the Motherland,” came up with this combination of a first name and a surname by chance, like something that had sunk into memory from Boborykin’s book. And I doubt it: it was Vasya that we needed then, and not Vasily; Vasya, however, cannot be called a Boborykinsky hero - this is completely different. As for why I subsequently began to call Terkin more Vasily,
than Vasya, this is again a special matter. In a word, there was and is not a shadow of “borrowing” here. There is simply such a Russian surname Terkin, although it previously seemed to me that we “constructed” this surname, starting from the verbs “rub”, “grind”, etc. And here is one of the first letters from my correspondents on the “Book about a fighter”, when it was published in a Western Front newspaper:

"To the editors of Krasnoarmeyskaya Pravda, to the poet comrade A. Tvardovsky.

Comrade Tvardovsky, we ask you: is it possible to replace the name Vasily with Victor in your poem, since Vasily is my father, he is 62 years old, and I am his son - Viktor Vasilyevich Terkin, platoon commander. I am on the Western Front, serving in the artillery. Therefore, if possible, then replace it, and please inform me of the result at the address: p/p 312, 668 art. regiment, 2nd division, Viktor Vasilyevich Terkin."

Probably, this is not the only namesake of the hero of “The Book about a Fighter”

(In 1964, a number of newspapers ("Week", "Evening Moscow", "Soviet Trade") published extensive correspondence about Vasily Semenovich Terkin, a counter worker, a former front-line soldier, which emphasized precisely the "Terkin" traits of appearance, character and life destiny this person. (Author's note.)).

But I return to “Terkin” from the period of fighting in Finland.

I was entrusted with writing the introduction to the proposed series of feuilletons - I had to give at least the most general “portrait” of Terkin and determine, so to speak, the tone, the manner of our further conversation with the reader. Before this, I published in the newspaper “On Guard of the Motherland” a short poem “At a Rest,” written under the direct impression of a visit to one division.
This poem contained, among other things, the following lines:

Efficient, to be sure
There was the same old man
What did you come up with to cook soup...
On wheels straight.

For me, who had not served in the army until that time (except for the short time of the liberation campaign in Western Belarus) and
who wrote nothing “military,” this poem was the first step in mastering a new topic, new material. I was still very unsure here, I stuck to my usual rhythms and tonality (in the spirit of, say, “Grandfather Danila”). And in my introduction to the collective "Terkin" I turned to this previously found intonation, which, when applied to new material, a new task, seemed to me most suitable.
I will cite some stanzas of this “beginning” of “Terkin”:

Vasya Terkin? Who it?
Let's be honest:
He's a man himself
Unusual.

With a surname like this,
Not at all unsightly,
Loud glory - hero -
I quickly became close to him.

And let's add here,
If you were asked:
Why is his name Vasya - not Vasily!
Because it is dear to everyone,
Because people
They get along with Vasya like no one else,
Because they love.

Bogatyr, fathoms in the shoulders,
Well-tailored fellow,
Cheerful by nature
An experienced man.

At least in battle, at least somewhere, -
But this is for sure:
First of all, Vasya must eat well,
But it doesn’t protect
Bogatyr strength
And takes enemies to the bayonet,
Like sheaves on pitchforks.

And at the same time, no matter how strict
In appearance Vasya Terkin, -
He couldn't live without a joke
Yes, without a saying... ("Vasya Terkin at the front." - Front-line library
newspaper "On Guard of the Motherland", ed. "Art", L. 1940.)

I note that when I came to grips with my now existing “Terkin”, the features of this portrait changed dramatically, starting with the main
stroke:

Terkin - who is he?
Let's be honest:
Just a guy himself
He's ordinary...

And one could say that this alone determines the name of the hero in the first case, Vasya, and in the second, Vasily Terkin.
All subsequent illustrated feuilletons, made by a team of authors, bore the same headings: “How Vasya Terkin...” I will cite in full, for example, the feuilleton “How Vasya Terkin got the “language””:

The snow is deep and pine trees are rare.
Vasya Terkin on reconnaissance.
Snow white, no patches
Camouflage robe.

Terkin sees, Terkin hears -
Belofinn flies on skis:
Know that he doesn’t smell trouble,
He's heading straight for trouble.

Terkin, having weighed the situation,
Applies disguise:
He buried himself face down in the snow -
It became like a snowball.

A tempting view of the "springboard"
Attracts the White Finn.
He rushes headlong towards the "snowdrift"...

Got Terkin tongue
And delivered to the regimental headquarters.

It may seem that I chose a particularly weak example, but also the stories about “how Vasya Terkin captured the arsonists,” whom he “covered everyone with barrels one by one and, satisfied, lit a cigarette on an oak barrel”; about how he “delivered a report on skis,” “flying through the forests above, over a stormy river,” “through mountains, waterfalls, rushing forward without restraint”; about how from the cockpit of an enemy plane he pulled out a Shyutskorist by the leg of his pants with a cat, and others - all this now gives the impression of the naivety of the presentation, the extreme implausibility of Vasya’s “exploits” and not such an excess of humor.

I think that the success of “Vasya Terkin”, which he had in the Finnish war, can be explained by the need of the soldier’s soul to have fun with something that, although it does not correspond to the harsh reality of military everyday life, but at the same time somehow embodies exactly them, and not abstract fairy-tale material in almost fairy-tale forms. It also seems to me that a considerable share of the success should be attributed to the drawings of V. Briskin and V. Fomichev, executed in a cartoon style and often truly funny.

By the way, it has been repeatedly noted that O. Vereisky’s illustrations for “The Book about a Fighter” are very consistent with its style and spirit. This is true. I just want to say that, unlike “Vasya Terkin,” not a single line of “Vasily Terkin,” illustrated by my front-line comrade, the artist O. Vereisky, was written as text for the finished drawing, and it’s even difficult for me to imagine how this could have been . And with “Vasya Terkin” this is exactly what happened, that is, the theme of the next feuilleton was conceived, the artists “distributed” it into six cells, executed it in drawings, and only then came the signature poems.

Having paid tribute to “Vasya Terkin” with one or two feuilletons, most of its “founders” took up, each according to their inclinations and capabilities, other work in the newspaper: some wrote military-historical articles, some front-line essays and sketches, some poetry, some what. The main author of "Terkin" was A. Shcherbakov, a Red Army poet and long-time employee of the editorial office. And “Terkin” was a greater success among the Red Army reader than all our articles, poems and essays, although at that time we all treated this success somewhat condescendingly and condescendingly. We rightfully did not consider it literature. And at the end of the war in Finland, when one of my comrades who worked in the military press heard from me - in response to a question about what I was now working on - that I was writing "Terkina", he slyly shook his finger at me; So, they say, I believed you that you would now start doing this.

But right now I was thinking, working, struggling on “Terkin”. “Terkin,” I felt, turning to this work in a new way, “must leave
columns of “corners of humor”, “direct shots”, etc., where he has so far appeared under this or another name, and to occupy not some small part of my forces, as a task of a highly specialized “humorous” kind, but all of me without a trace. It is difficult to say on what day and hour I came to the decision to throw myself into this business with all my might, but in the summer and autumn of 1940 I was already living with this idea, which overshadowed all my previous intentions and plans. One thing is clear that this was determined by the acuteness of the impressions of the war, after which it was no longer possible to simply return to one’s usual literary work.

"Terkin", according to my plan at that time, was supposed to combine accessibility, unpretentiousness of form - direct purpose
feuilleton "Terkin" - with seriousness and, perhaps, even lyricism of content. Thinking of “Terkin” as a kind of integral work, a poem, I now tried to unravel, to grasp that “necessary moment of presentation” (as one of the readers recently put it in a letter to me), without which it was impossible to move forward.

The insufficiency of the "old" "Terkin", as I now understand, was that it came out of the tradition of ancient times, when the poetic word,
addressed to the masses, it was deliberately simplified in relation to a different cultural and political level of the reader and when this word was not at the same time the most cherished word for its creators, who believed their true success, who saw their real art in another, “real” creativity that was put aside for a while.

Now it was a different matter. The reader was different - these were the children of those fighters of the revolution for whom D. Bedny and V. Mayakovsky once wrote their songs, ditties and satirical couplets - people who were all literate, politically developed, familiar with many of the benefits of culture, who grew up under Soviet power .

I first of all set about, so to speak, mastering the material of the war I had experienced, which was for me not only the first war, but also the first
a truly intimate encounter with the people of the army. During the days of fighting, I deeply understood, so to speak, felt that our army is not a special world, separate from the rest of the people in our society, but simply these are the same Soviet people, placed in the conditions of army and front-line life. I whitewashed my pencil notes from the notebooks into a clean notebook, and wrote something down again from memory. In this material, which was new to me, everything was dear to me down to the smallest detail - some picture, a turn of phrase, a single word, a detail of front-line life. And most importantly, the people with whom I managed to meet, get acquainted, and talk on the Karelian Isthmus were dear to me.
Driver Volodya Artyukh, blacksmith-artilleryman Grigory Pulkin, tank commander Vasily Arkhipov, pilot Mikhail Trusov, coastal infantry soldier Alexander Poskonkin, military doctor Mark Rabinovich - all these and many other people with whom I talked for a long time, spent the night somewhere in a dugout or a survivor in a front-line crowded house, were not a fleeting journalistic acquaintance for me, although I saw most of them only once and for a short time. I have already written something about each of them - an essay, poetry - and this, of course, in the process of that work, forced me to understand my fresh impressions, that is, one way or another to “assimilate” everything connected with these
people.

And, while nurturing my plan for “Terkin,” I continued to think about them, to understand their essence as people of the first post-October generation.
“It was not this war, whatever it was,” I wrote down in my notebook, “that gave birth to these people, but rather more that happened before the war. The revolution,
collectivization, the whole system of life. And the war revealed and brought to light these qualities of people. It’s true, she did something too.”

And further:
“I feel that the army will be as dear to me as the topic of reorganizing life in the village, its people are as dear to me as the people of the collective farm village, but then, for the most part, these are the same people. The task is to penetrate their spiritual inner world, to feel them as their generation (the writer is the same age as any generation). Their childhood, adolescence, youth passed under the conditions of Soviet power, in factory schools, in a collective farm village, in Soviet universities. Their consciousness was formed under the influence, among other things , and our literature."

I was delighted by their spiritual beauty, modesty, high political consciousness, and willingness to resort to humor when it came to the most difficult trials that they themselves had to face in combat life. And what I wrote about them in poetry and prose - all this, I felt, as if it were both this and not that. Behind these iambs and trochees, behind the phraseological turns of newspaper essays, the peculiar lively manner of speech of the blacksmith Pulkin or the pilot Trusov, and the jokes, habits, and touches of other heroes in nature remained somewhere in vain, existing only for me.

I re-read everything that appeared in print related to the Finnish war - essays, stories, records of memories of participants in the battles. I enthusiastically engaged in any work that in one way or another, even if not in the literary sense, concerned this material. Together with S. Ya. Marshak, I processed the memoirs of Major General Hero of the Soviet Union V. Kashuba, which later appeared in “Knowledge”. On instructions from the Political Directorate of the Red Army, he traveled with Vasily Grossman to one of the divisions that came from the Karelian Isthmus in order to create its history. By the way, in the manuscript of the history of this division we described, from the words of the participants in one operation, the episode that served as the basis
to write the chapter of the future "Terkin".

In the fall of 1940, I went to Vyborg, where the 123rd Division was stationed, in which I was in the days of the breakthrough of the “Mannerheim Line”: I needed
see the battlefields, meet my friends in the division. All this is with the thought of “Terkin”.

I was already starting to “test out the verse” for it, feeling for some beginnings, introductions, choruses:

... There, beyond that river Sister,
In war, in chest-deep snow,
Gold Hero Star
The path has been marked for many.

There, in the battles of semi-unknowns,
In the pine forest of deaf swamps,
The death of the brave, the death of the honest
Many of them fell...

It was this meter - the tetrameter trochee - that was increasingly felt as a poetic meter in which to write a poem. But there were other tests. Often the tetrameter trochee seemed to bring this work of mine too close to the primitiveness of the verse of the “old” “Terkin”. “The sizes will be different,” I decided, “but basically one will “flow around.” There were sketches for “Terkin” and in iambic, from these “blanks” a poem was somehow later formed: “When you walk the path of the columns...”

The “crossing” began, by the way, like this:

To whom death, to whom life, to whom glory,
At dawn the crossing began.
That shore was steep, like an oven,
And, sullen, jagged,
The forest turned black high above the water,
The forest is alien, untouched.
And below us lay the right bank, -
Rolled snow, trampled into the mud, -
Level with the edge of the ice. Crossing
It started at six o'clock...

Here are many of the words from which the beginning of “The Crossing” was formed, but this verse did not work for me. “It is obvious that this meter did not come from words, but was “sung” and it is not suitable,” I wrote down, abandoning this beginning of the chapter. Even now I believe, generally speaking, that meter should be born not from some wordless “hum” that V. Mayakovsky talks about, for example, but from words, from their meaningful combinations inherent in living speech. And if these combinations find a place for themselves within the framework of any of the so-called canonical meters, then they subordinate it to themselves, and not vice versa, and are no longer just an iambic like this or a trochee like this (counting stressed and unstressed is extremely
a conditional, abstract measure), but something completely original, like a new size.

The first line of “The Crossing”, the line that developed into its, so to speak, “leitmotif” that permeates the entire chapter, was the word itself - “crossing”,
repeated in intonation, as if anticipating what stands behind this word:

Crossing, crossing...

I thought about it for so long, imagined in all its naturalness the episode of the crossing, which cost many victims, enormous moral and physical stress of people and must have been remembered forever by all its participants, and I “got used to” it all so much that suddenly I seemed to say to myself this sigh-exclamation:

Crossing, crossing...

And he “believed” in him. I felt that this word could not be pronounced differently than I pronounced it, having in my mind everything that it
means: battle, blood, losses, the disastrous cold of the night and the great courage of people going to death for their Motherland. Of course, there is no “discovery” here at all. The technique of repeating a particular word at the beginning was and is widely used both orally and in
written poetry. But for me in this case it was a godsend: a line appeared that I could no longer do without. I forgot to think whether it was a trochee or not, because this line was not in any trochees in the world, but now it was there and itself determined the structure and mode of further speech.

This is how the beginning of one of the chapters of Terkin was found. Around this time, I wrote two or three poems, which most likely were not even
were perceived as “blanks” for “Terkin”, but later they were partially or completely included in the text of “The Book about a Fighter” and ceased to exist as separate poems. For example, there was such a poem - “It’s better not.” In war, in the dust of the march... etc. until the end of the stanza, which became the initial stanza of "Terkin".

There was a poem "Tank" dedicated to the tank crew of the Heroes of the Soviet Union, comrades D. Didenko, A. Krysyuk and E. Krivoy. Some of his stanzas and lines turned out to be needed when working on the chapter “Terkin is wounded.” A tank going into battle is scary... Some diary entries from the spring of 1941 talk about searches, doubts, decisions and re-decisions in work, perhaps even better than if I talk about this work from the point of view of my current attitude towards it.

“A hundred lines have already been written, but it still seems that there is no “electricity”. You keep deceiving yourself that it will work out on its own and will be good, but in fact it hasn’t even formed in your head yet. You don’t even know for sure what you need. The ending (Terkin swimming across the channel in his underpants and thus establishing contact with the platoon) is clearer than the transition to it. The appearance of the hero must be joyful. This needs to be prepared. I thought about replacing this place with dots for now, but having failed to cope with the most difficult, you don’t feel the strength to do the easier ones. Tomorrow I'll break it again."
“I began with an uncertain determination to write “simply”, somehow. The material seemed to be such that no matter how you wrote it, it would be good. It seemed that
it even requires a certain indifference to form, but it only seemed so. So far there has been nothing about this, except for essays... But they have already taken away from me partly the opportunity to write “simply”, to surprise me with the “severity” of the topic, etc.

And then other things appear, the book “Fighting in Finland” - and this becomes more and more obligatory. The "color" of front-line life (external) turned out to be
public. Frost, frost, shell explosions, dugouts, frosty raincoats - both A. and B have all this. But what I don’t have yet, or only in a hint, is a person in the individual sense, “our guy” , - not abstract (in the plane of the “era” of the country, etc.), but living, dear and difficult.”

“If you don’t strike real sparks from this material, it’s better not to take it on. It needs to be good not in accordance with some conscious “simplicity” and “rudeness,” but simply good - at least for anyone. But this does not mean that you need to “refine “everything from the very beginning (B., by the way, is bad because he is not internally guessing about the reader, but about his circle of friends with its pathetic aesthetic signs).”

“The beginning may be half-baked. And then this guy will become more and more difficult. But he should not be forgotten, this “Vasya Terkin.”
“There should be more of a previous biography of the hero. It should appear in his every gesture, action, story. But there is no need to give it as such. It is enough to think it through well and imagine it for yourself.”

“The difficulty is that such “funny”, “primitive” heroes are usually taken in pairs, in contrast to the real, lyrical, “high” hero. More digressions, more of oneself in the poem.”

“If you yourself don’t care, don’t please, don’t sometimes surprise at least what you write, it will never excite, won’t please, won’t surprise someone else: the reader,
friend-expert. You need to feel it well again first. No discounts for yourself on “genre”, “material”, etc.”

The twenty-second of June 1941 interrupted all my searches, doubts, and assumptions. All this was the normal literary life of peacetime, which we had to immediately leave behind and be free from all this while fulfilling the tasks now facing each of us. And I left my notebooks, sketches, notes, intentions and plans. It never occurred to me then that this work of mine, interrupted by the outbreak of the great war, would be needed during the war.

Now I explain to myself this irrevocable break with the plan, with the working plan, in this way. In my work, in my searches and efforts, no matter how deep the impression of the past “small war” was, there was still a sin of literature. I wrote in peacetime, no one was particularly expecting my work, no one was rushing me, the specific need for it seemed to be absent outside of me. And this allowed me to consider form as such a very essential aspect of the matter. I was still somewhat preoccupied and disturbed by the fact that the plot did not seem ready to me; that my hero is not what the main character of the poem should be according to literary ideas; that there has never been an example of large things being written in such an “undignified” meter, such as trochaic tetrameter, etc.

Subsequently, when I suddenly turned to my peacetime plan, based on the immediate needs of the masses at the front, I gave up on all these prejudices, considerations and fears. But for now, I simply curtailed my entire writing business in order to
to do what the situation urgently and immediately requires.

As a special correspondent, or more precisely, as a “writer” (there was such a full-time position in the military press system), I arrived on the Southwestern Front, at the editorial office of the newspaper “Red Army”, and began to do what everyone else was doing then writers at the front. I wrote essays, poems, feuilletons, slogans, leaflets, songs, articles, notes - everything. And when the editorial office came up with the idea of ​​starting a regular feuilleton with
pictures, I suggested “Terkin,” but not my own, left at home in notebooks, but the one that had been quite famous in the army since the days of the Finnish campaign. That Terkin had many “brothers” and “peers” in various front-line publications, only they had different names. In our front-line editorial office they also wanted to have “their” hero, they named him Ivan Gvozdev, and he existed in the newspaper along with the “Direct Fire” department, it seems, until the end of the war. I wrote several chapters of this “Ivan Gvozdev” in collaboration with the poet Boris Paliychuk, again without connecting this work of mine with peacetime intentions regarding “Terkin”.

At the front, one comrade gave me a thick notebook bound in black oilcloth, but made from pencil-like paper - bad, rough, and leaking ink. In this notebook I pasted or pinned my daily “products” - newspaper clippings. In the conditions of life at the front, moving, spending the night on the road, in conditions when every hour it was necessary to be ready for redeployment and always be ready, this notebook, which I kept in my field bag, was for me a universal item that replaced briefcases and archive folders , boxes
desk, etc. She supported in me what is very important in such a life, at least a conditional sense of safety and orderliness of “personal household”.

I haven’t looked at it, perhaps, since that very time and, leafing through it now, I see how much in that newspaper work, varied in genres,
which I was working on was done for the future "Terkin", without thinking about it, about any other life for these poems and prose, except for the one-day period of a newspaper page.

“Ivan Gvozdev” was, perhaps, better than “Vasya Terkin” in terms of literary execution, but it did not have the same success. First of all, this was not a matter of
a novelty, and secondly, and this is the main thing, the reader was different in many ways. The war was not positional, when a soldier’s leisure, even in the harsh conditions of military life, is conducive to reading and re-reading everything that somewhat corresponds to the interests and tastes of a front-line soldier. The newspaper could not regularly reach units that were, in essence, on the march. But what is even more important is that the mood of the reading masses was determined not simply by the difficulties of a soldier’s life itself, but by the entire enormity of the formidable and sad events of the war: the retreat, the abandonment of loved ones by many soldiers behind enemy lines, the inherent stern and concentrated thought about the fate of the homeland,
experiencing the greatest trials. But still, even during this period, people remained people, they had a need to relax, have fun, have fun with something at a short rest or in the break between artillery fire and bombing. And “Gvozdev” was read, praised, the newspaper looked at, starting from the “Direct Fire” corner. It was a feuilleton dedicated to a specific episode of the combat practice of “Cossack Gvozdev” (unlike V. Terkin, an infantryman, Gvozdev was - perhaps, due to the conditions of the saturation of the front with cavalry units - a Cossack).

Here, for example: “How to cook dinner skillfully, so that it is on time and tasty” (“From the military adventures of the Cossack Ivan Gvozdev”);

The battle that day was fierce.
The cook was wounded. How can we be here?
And Gvozdev has to
Cook lunch for the soldiers...

He took everything quickly:
As one poem says, -
Seasoning with peppers and onions
And a parsley root.

Work is going well
The water boils loudly.
Only suddenly from mortars
The Germans began to attack here.

Fight - fight, lunch - lunch,
Nothing else matters.
Are mines exploding? I'll drive away
I'll save the pot of borscht.

Borsch until you're full, tea until you sweat
Will be ready on time.
Lo and behold, the planes were covered, -
Climb into the crack, Gvozdev.

Take your basket with you -
The fighters-friends are waiting for the borscht.
Let the bombing and potatoes
You can't put the husks into the cauldron.

And if it happened just for fun,
Unfortunately it happened, -
To the forest where Gvozdev drove off,
From the sky - jump! - parachutist.

Gvozdev spied the fascist,
Hastened to cover the boiler,
I kissed it. A shot rang out...
- Don’t bother cooking dinner.

The borscht is ripe, the grain is ripe,
Not even half an hour had passed.
And Gvozdev finishes the matter:
Ready borscht - in a thermos.

Nothing about mines whistling
The hot battle does not subside.
The driver turned the car around
And let's go to the front line.

At our forefront,
Perched behind a hillock,
Excellent borscht pours
The cook is a good ladle.

Who is so skillful today?
Nourishing, on time and tasty
Did you manage to feed the soldiers?
Here he is: Ivan Gvozdev.

There were also statements on behalf of Ivan Gvozdev on various topical issues of front-line life. Here, for example, is a conversation about the importance of maintaining military secrets: “About language” (“Sit down and listen to the word of the Cossack Gvozdev”):

Everyone must know
Like a bolt and a bayonet,
Why is it tied?
He has a tongue...

Or “Welcome speech to the guys from the Ninety-ninth from the Cossack Gvozdev” on the occasion of the awarding of the said division for successful combat
actions. And here is a feuilleton on the topic “What is Sabantui” (“From the conversations of the Cossack Gvozdev with the soldiers who arrived at the front”):

To those who came to fight the Germans,
It is necessary, no matter how you interpret it,
By the way, let's figure it out:
What is "Sabantuy"...

It was a teaching quite close in form and meaning to Terkin’s corresponding conversation on the same topic in the future “Book about a fighter.”
Where does this word come from in "Terkin" and what does it exactly mean? - this question is very often posed to me both in letters and in notes on literary
evenings, and simply by word of mouth when meeting with various people.

The word "sabantuy" exists in many languages ​​and, for example, in Turkic languages ​​it means the holiday of the end of field work: saban - plow, tui -
holiday. I first heard the word “Sabantuy” at the front in the early autumn of 1941, somewhere in the Poltava region, in one unit that held the defense there. This word, as often happens with catchy words and expressions, was used by staff commanders, artillerymen on the front line battery, and residents of the village where the unit was located. It meant the enemy’s false intention in some area, a demonstration of a breakthrough, and a real threat on his part, and our readiness to give him a “treat.” Last thing
closest to the original meaning, and the soldier’s language is generally characterized by the ironic use of the words “treat”, “snack”, etc. In the epigraph to one of the chapters " The captain's daughter"A.S. Pushkin quotes the lines of an old soldier's song:

We live in a fort
We eat bread and drink water;
And how fierce enemies
They will come to us for pies,
Let's give the guests a feast,
Let's load the cannon with buckshot.

My friend who worked at the newspaper, S. Vashentsev, and I brought the word “Sabantuy” from this trip to the front, and I used it in a feuilleton, and S. Vashentsev used it in an essay called “Sabantuy.” In the first weeks of the war, I once wrote a feuilleton “It was early in the morning.”
Together with the feuilleton about "Sabantuy" and the poem "At a Rest", written at the beginning of the Finnish campaign, it subsequently served as a draft for the chapter of "Terkin", also entitled "At a Rest".

It was early in the morning
I'll take a look...
- So what?
- There are a thousand German tanks...
- A thousand tanks? Aren't you lying?
- So that I lie to you, buddy?
- You're not lying - your tongue is lying,
- Well, don’t let yourself have a thousand,
There were only about five hundred...

This is a rhymed adaptation in a front-line manner of an old fable about a liar out of fear, an example of that poetic improvisation that was most often performed in one sitting, according to the plan for tomorrow's newspaper issue. This is how “Gvozdev” was made by me and B. Paliychuk together. Then the series “About Grandfather Danila” - I alone, by right, so to speak, was the first author, then a series about the German soldier - “Willy Müller in the East”, in which I participated very little, arrangements of popular songs - “Katyusha”, “On the Military Road” "and other various
poetic trifle. True, these writings included some of the living oral humor of soldiers, words that arose and became widespread, etc.

But in general, this entire work, like “Vasya Terkin,” was far from matching the capabilities and inclinations of its performers and themselves
was considered not the main one, not the one with which they associated more serious creative intentions. And in the editorial office of the "Red Army", as in their time in the newspaper "On Guard of the Motherland", along with all the special poetic production, poems by poets involved in "Direct Fire" appeared, but already written with an emphasis on "full artistry". And it’s a strange thing - again, those poems did not have such success as “Gvozdev”, “Danila”, etc. And let’s be honest - both “Vasya Terkin” and “Gvozdev”, like everything similar to them in the front-line press, were written hastily, carelessly, with such assumptions in the form of poetry that none of the authors of this product would tolerate in their “serious” poems, not to mention the general tone, manner, as if intended not for adult literate people, but for a certain fictional village mass.
The latter was felt more and more, and finally it became unbearable to speak in such a language with the reader, whom it was impossible not to respect, not to love. What if I didn’t have the strength, I didn’t have time to stop and start talking to him differently.

My inner satisfaction came from working in prose - essays about battle heroes, written on the basis of personal conversations with people at the front. Even if these short, two hundred to three hundred newspaper lines, essays did not contain everything that communication with the person in question gave, but, firstly, it was a recording of living human activity, consolidation of the real material of front-line life, secondly, there was no need to joke at all costs, but to simply and reliably state the essence of the matter on paper, and, finally,
we all knew how much the heroes themselves valued these essays, which made their exploits known to the entire front, recording them as if in some kind of chronicle of the war. And if a feat was described, or, as they said then, a combat episode where the hero died, then it was important to dedicate his memory to his memory, once again mentioning his name in the printed line. The essays were most often entitled with the names of the fighters or commanders whose combat work they were dedicated to:

"Captain Tarasov", "Battalion Commissar Pyotr Mozgovoy", "Red Army soldier Said Ibragimov", "Sergeant Ivan Akimov", "Battery Commander Ragozyan", "Sergeant Pavel Zadorozhny", "Hero of the Soviet Union Pyotr Petrov", "Major Vasily Arkhipov" and etc.

Of the poems written during this period not for the “Direct Fire” department, I still include some in new editions of my books. These are “The Ballad of Moscow”, “The Tankman’s Tale”, “Sergeant Vasily Mysenkov”, “When You Fly”, “For a Soldier of the Southern Front”, “The House of a Soldier”, “The Ballad of Renunciation” and others. Behind each of these poems there was a vivid front-line impression, a fact, a meeting that is still memorable for me. But even at that time I felt that the literary moment itself somehow alienated the reality and vitality of these impressions, facts, and human destinies from the reader.

In a word, the feeling of dissatisfaction with all types of our work at the newspaper gradually became a personal disaster for me. Thoughts also came to mind that maybe your real place is not here, but in the ranks - in a regiment, in a battalion, in a company - where the most important thing is done, what needs to be done for the Motherland. In the winter of 1942, our editorial office came up with the idea of ​​expanding the “Direct Fire” section into a separate weekly sheet - a supplement to the newspaper. I undertook to write, as it were, a programmatic editorial in verse for this publication, which, by the way, for various reasons did not last long. Here is the introductory part of this poem:

In war, in harsh everyday life,
In a difficult life of combat,
In the snow, under a chilly roof -
There is nothing better than simple, healthy,
Durable front line food.
And any old warrior
He will simply say about her:
If only she had some broth
Yes, it would be in the heat, in the heat -
Come on, hotter.
So that she warms you,
Gifted, bled,
So that your soul and body
We rose together bravely
For good deeds.

To go forward, to attack,
Feeling the strength in my shoulders,
Feeling cheerful. However
It's not just about the cabbage soup...

You can live without food for a day,
More is possible, but sometimes
In a one-minute war
You can't live without a joke.
Jokes of the most unwise...

Before the spring of 1942, I arrived in Moscow and, looking at my notebooks, suddenly decided to revive Vasily Terkin. An introduction was immediately written about water, food, jokes and truth. The chapters “At a halt”, “Crossing”, “Terkin is wounded”, “About the reward”, which were in rough drafts, were quickly completed. "Garmon" remained basically in the same form as it was printed at the time. A completely new chapter, written based on the impressions of the summer of 1941 on the Southwestern Front, was the chapter “Before the Battle.” The movement of the hero from the situation of the Finnish campaign to the situation of the front of the Great Patriotic War gave him a completely different meaning than in the original plan. And this was not a mechanical solution to the problem. I have already had occasion to say in print that the actual military impressions, the battle background of the war of 1941-1945 for me were largely preceded by work at the front in Finland. But the fact is that the depth of the national historical disaster and national historical feat in the Patriotic War from the first day distinguished it from any other
wars and especially military campaigns.

I did not long languish with doubts and fears regarding the uncertainty of the genre, the lack of an initial plan that embraces the entire work in advance, and the weak plot connection of the chapters with each other. Not a poem - well, let it not be a poem, I decided; there is no single plot - let it be, don’t; there is no very beginning of a thing - there is no time to invent it; the climax and completion of the entire narrative is not planned - let it be, we must write about what is burning, not waiting, and then we’ll see, we’ll figure it out. And when I decided so, breaking all internal obligations to the conventions of form and giving up on one or another possible interpretation of this work by writers, I felt cheerful and free. As if as a joke on myself, on my plan, I jotted down the lines that this is “a book about a fighter, without beginning, without end.”

Indeed, “it was not enough time to start it all over again”: the war was going on, and I had no right to postpone what needed to be said today, immediately, until everything was stated in order, from the very beginning.

Why without end?!
I just feel sorry for the guy.

It seemed to me that such an explanation was understandable in a war situation, when the end of a story about a hero could only mean one thing - his death. However, in the letters of comrades, not just readers of Terkin, but those who considered it, so to speak, from a scientific perspective, there was some bewilderment about these lines: shouldn’t they be understood in some other way? Do not do it! But I won’t say that questions about the form of my essay didn’t bother me.
there has been more of me since the moment I dared to write “without form,” “without beginning or end.” I was concerned with the form, but not the one that is generally thought of in relation to, say, the genre of a poem, but the one that was needed and gradually in the process of work
guessed for this book itself.

And the first thing I accepted as the principle of composition and style was the desire for a certain completeness of each individual part, chapter, and within a chapter - each period, and even stanza. I had to keep in mind the reader who, even if he was unfamiliar with the previous chapters, would find in this chapter, published today in the newspaper, something whole, rounded. In addition, this reader might not have waited for my next chapter: he was where the hero is - at war. It was this approximate completion of each chapter that I was most concerned with. I didn’t keep anything to myself until another time, trying to speak out at every opportunity - the next chapter - to the end, to fully express my mood, to convey a fresh impression, a thought, a motive, an image. True, this principle was not determined immediately - after
The first chapters of Terkin were published one after another, and new ones then appeared as they were written. I believe that my decision to print the first chapters before completing the book was correct and largely determined the fate of Terkin. The reader helped me write this book as it is, I will say more about this below.

The genre designation of “Books about a fighter”, which I settled on, was not the result of a desire to simply avoid the designation “poem”, “story”, etc. This coincided with the decision to write not a poem, not a story or a novel in verse, that is, not something that has its own legalized and, to a certain extent, obligatory plot, compositional and other characteristics. These signs didn’t come out for me, but something did come out, and I designated this something as “The Book about a Fighter.” What was important in this choice was the special sound of the word “book”, familiar to me from childhood, in the mouths of the common people, which seemed to presuppose the existence of a book in a single copy. If it was said and spread among the peasants that there was such and such a book, and such and such was written in it, then it was not meant in any way that there could be another book exactly the same. One way or another, the word “book” in this popular sense sounds especially significant, as a serious, reliable, unconditional subject.

And if I thought about the possible successful fate of my book while working on it, then I often imagined it published in a soft cloth cover, like military regulations are published, and that a soldier would keep it behind his boot, in his bosom, in his hat. And in terms of its construction, I dreamed that it could be read from any open page. From the time the chapters of the first part of Terkin appeared in print, he
became my main and main job at the front. None of my works was so difficult for me at first and did not come so easily later as Vasily Terkin. True, I rewrote each chapter many times, checking it by ear, and worked for a long time on one
stanza or line. For example, remember how the beginning of the chapter “Death and the Warrior” was formed, in the poetic sense “formed” from the lines of an old song about a soldier:

Don't hang yourself, black raven,
Over my head.
You won't get any booty
I'm a soldier still alive...

At first there was a recording where poetry was interspersed with prosaic exposition - it was important to “cover” the whole picture:

The Russian wounded lay...

Terkin lies in the snow, bleeding.
Death sat down at the head of the bed and said:
- Now you're mine. Answers:
- No, not yours, I am a soldier still alive.
“Well,” he says, “he’s alive!” Move your hand at least.” Terkin quietly replies:
I keep peace, they say...

Then the opening stanza appeared:

In an open field on a hill,
Lonely, and weak, and small,
In the snow Vasily Terkin
Unpicked lay.

But here there were not enough signs of the battlefield, and the picture we got was too conventionally songlike: “In an open field...” - and then the words begged for:
“under the willow tree...” And with the intonation coming from the famous song, I needed the reality of the current war. In addition, the second line was not suitable - it was not simple, it had more fictional than song characteristics.

Then came the stanza:

Beyond the distant hills
The heat of battle went away.
In the snow Vasily Terkin
Unpicked lay.

This is not very good, but it gives greater certainty of place and time: the battle is already in the distance, the wounded man has been lying in the snow for a long time, he is freezing. And the next stanza naturally develops the first:

The snow under him, covered in blood,
I picked it up in a pile of ice.
Death leaned towards the head of the bed;
- Well, soldier, come with me.

But in general, this chapter was written easily and quickly: its basic tone and composition were immediately found (Chapter “Death and the Warrior” in “The Book about a Fighter”
By the way, it also plays the role that it most closely connects “Vasily Terkin” with “Terkin in the Other World” published many years later. It, this chapter, contains the external plot scheme of my last poem: Terkin, picked up half-dead on the battlefield, returns to life from oblivion, “from the other world,” the pictures of which constitute the special, modern content of my “second “Terkin.” (Note . by the author.)).And how many lines were written, forwarded dozens of times only then sometimes to throw them away in the end, while experiencing the same joy as when writing new successful lines.

And all this, even if it was difficult, but not boring, was always done with great spiritual enthusiasm, with joy, with confidence. I must say in general: in my opinion, what is good is what is written as if it were easy, and not what is typed with painful painstakingness, line by line, word by word, which either fall into place or fall out - and so on ad infinitum. But the whole point is that getting to this “lightness” is very difficult, and it is these difficulties in approaching “lightness” that we are talking about when we talk about the fact that our art requires work. And if you still haven’t experienced the “lightness”, the joy when you feel that it’s “got it”, you haven’t experienced it during the entire time you worked on the thing, but only, as they say, dragged the boat on dry land without ever launching it into the water, then the reader is unlikely to experience joy from the fruit of your painstaking efforts.

At this time I was no longer working on the Southwestern, but on the Western (3rd Belorussian) Front. The front troops were then, roughly speaking, at
land in the eastern regions of the Smolensk region. The direction of this front, which was to liberate the Smolensk region in the near future, determined some of the lyrical motifs of the book. Being a native of the Smolensk region, connected with it by many personal and biographical connections, I could not help but see the hero as my fellow countryman.

From the first letters I received from readers, I realized that my work was well received, and this gave me strength to continue it. Now I was no longer alone with her: I was helped by the reader’s warm, sympathetic attitude towards her, his expectation, sometimes his “hints”: “I wish I could reflect this and that”... etc.

In 1943, it seemed to me that, in accordance with the original plan, the “story” of my hero was ending (Terkin was fighting, wounded,
returns to duty), and I put an end to it. But from the letters from readers, I realized that this cannot be done. In one of these letters, Sergeant Shershnev and Red Army soldier Solovyov wrote:
“We are very upset by your final words, after which it is not difficult to guess that your poem is finished, but the war continues. We ask you to continue the poem, because Terkin will continue the war until the victorious end.”

It turned out that I, the storyteller, encouraged by my front-line listeners, suddenly left them, as if I had left something unsaid.
And, besides, I did not see the opportunity for myself to move on to some other work that would captivate me so much. And from these feelings and many
reflections, the decision was made to continue “The Book about a Fighter.” I have once again neglected literary convention, in this case the convention
completeness of the “plot”, and the genre of my work was defined for me as a kind of chronicle, not a chronicle, a chronicle, not a chronicle, but a “book”, a living, moving, free-form book, inseparable from the real matter of the people’s defense of the Motherland, from their feats in the war . And with new enthusiasm, with full awareness of the necessity of my work, I set about it, seeing its completion only in the victorious end of the war and its development in accordance with the stages of the struggle - the entry of our troops into more and more lands liberated from the enemy, with their advancement to borders, etc.

Another confession. About halfway through my work, I was carried away by the temptation of “storytelling.” I began to prepare my hero for
crossing the front line and actions behind enemy lines in the Smolensk region. Much in this turn of his fate could seem organic, natural and seemed to provide the opportunity to expand the field of activity of the hero, the possibility of new descriptions, etc. The chapter “General” in its first printed form was dedicated to Terkin’s farewell to the commander of his division before leaving for rear to the enemy. Other excerpts were also published where the conversation was about life behind the front line. But I soon saw that this reduced the book to some kind of private
history, trivializes it, deprives it of that front-line “universality” of content that has already emerged and has already made Terkin’s name a household name in relation to living fighters of this type. I decisively turned away from this path, threw out what related to the enemy rear, reworked the chapter “General” and again began to build the fate of the hero in the previously established plan.

Speaking about this work as a whole, I can only repeat the words that I have already said in print about “The Book about a Fighter”:
“Whatever its actual literary significance, for me it was true happiness. It gave me a sense of the legitimacy of the artist’s place in the great struggle of the people, a feeling of the obvious usefulness of my work, a feeling of complete freedom to handle verse and words in a naturally occurring, relaxed form of presentation. "Terkin" was for me in the relationship between the writer and his reader, my lyrics, my journalism, song and teaching, anecdote and saying, heart-to-heart conversation and a remark to the occasion."

The front-line reader, whom during our face-to-face and correspondence, through the pages of print, communication, I became accustomed to consider as my co-author - according to the degree of his interest in my work - this reader, for his part, also considered “Terkin” to be our common cause.

“Dear Alexander (I don’t know about his patronymic),” wrote, for example, fighter Ivan Andreev, “if you need material, I can do a favor. A year on the front line and seven battles taught me something and gave me something.” .

“I heard at the front a soldier’s story about Vasya Terkin, who I did not read in your poem,” reported K.V. Zorin from Vyshny Volochok. “Perhaps he interests you?”

“Why was our Vasily Terkin wounded?” D. Kaliberdy and others asked me in a collective letter. “How did he end up in the hospital? After all, he so successfully shot down a fascist plane and was not wounded. Did he catch a cold and end up in the hospital with a runny nose? So our Terkin is not that kind of guy. It’s so bad, don’t write about Terkin like that. Terkin should always be with us on the front line, a cheerful, resourceful, brave and determined fellow... Greetings! We’ll be waiting for Terkin soon from the hospital.”

And there are many such letters where the reader’s participation in the fate of the hero of the book develops into involvement in the very act of writing this book.

Long before the completion of Terkin, the editorial offices of newspapers and magazines, where the next parts and chapters of the book were published, began to receive “sequels”
"Terkina" in verse, written almost exclusively by people trying their hand at such a thing for the first time. One of the first experiments was the “third part” of “Terkin”, sent to the guard by senior sergeant Kondratyev, who in his letter to the editor of the newspaper “Krasnoarmeyskaya Pravda” wrote:

"Comrade editor!
I earnestly apologize if I take a few minutes of your time to read my poem “Vasily Terkin,” part 3. Please, of course, agree with Comrade. Tvardovsky, as the author of this poem. Being at the front, over the past 8-10 months I have not had to read the latest in our literature. Only in the hospital I saw a poem about Terkin, although I had not read the first part. Not knowing the author’s intentions and Terkin’s future, I dared to try to portray him as a Red Army soldier, assuming that he was not in the forefront at the time of the capture of the village, but he had to prove himself as at least a temporary commander and become an example..."

Cadet V. Ugryumov talks in a letter about his “plan” to describe the second Terkin, the hero of labor...

“A soldier comes home from war,” he writes, “but he doesn’t like rest (even a month of rest after all the troubles). From the first day he starts work.
He meets with the deputy battalion commander, and together they begin to lead and work. From the foreman of the field brigade, Terkin reaches the director of MTS. For valiant work he was presented with the highest award... Here, roughly, is the story in brief..."

In addition to the “continuations” of “Terkin”, a large place among the letters of readers, especially in the post-war period, is occupied by poetic messages to Vasily Terkin, with urgent wishes that “The Book about a Fighter” be continued by me.

It remains for me to dwell on this, perhaps the most difficult, point of the three that I outlined at the beginning.

In May 1945, the final chapter of Terkin, “From the Author,” was published. She evoked many responses in poetry and prose. Ninety-nine percent of them boiled down to the fact that readers want to get to know Terkin in conditions of peaceful working life. I still receive such letters, and sometimes they are addressed not to me, but to the editors of various publications, the Writers' Union, that is, organizations that, according to the authors of the letters, should influence me, so to speak, in a public order. V. Minerov from the Prechistensky district in the Smolensk region, in a note accompanying his poems “The Search for Terkin” to one of the Moscow editorial offices, writes: “I beg you to skip these careless and rude lines. I am not a poet, but I had to work hard: to call Tvardovsky to work.” .

In wishes and advice to continue “Terkin”, the hero’s field of activity in peaceful conditions is usually determined by the occupation of the letter’s authors. Some would like Terkin, remaining in the ranks of the army, to continue his service, training young recruits and serving as an example to them. Others want to see him definitely return to the collective farm and work as a pre-collective farm worker or foreman. Still others find that the best development of his fate would be to work on one of the great post-war construction projects, for example, on the construction of the Volga-Don Canal, etc. Here are stanzas taken from a message in verse to the hero of the book on behalf of the people of the Soviet Army :

Where are you, our Vasily Terkin,
Vasya Terkin, our hero?
Or are you no longer Terkin,
Or has it become completely different?

We often remember you
Let's remember the past
About the war, how they fought,
How they finished off the enemy...

But four years have passed
When the end of the war came,
How are you gone from us?
What happened, brother, to you?..

Maybe you went to a construction site
Five-year plan for combat?
But you remember our address -
He is still the same - field...
But we knew your character

And we are sure
That you will be together with us
After the whole war big
To work in our Army,
Like in your own family,
She might need you
You have your own experience...

N. Matveev

The author of the message expresses confidence that the hero of “The Book about a Soldier” is in the ranks of the army. Another correspondent, cadet Zh. Yagupov, on behalf of
Terkin himself asserts this not without an obvious reproach to the author of the book:

I'm ready to answer you
My creator, my poet,
Let me just note,
Where have you been for so many years?
Somehow they forgot the Army.
And it’s very offensive to me:
After all, we once served
Together with you in the war...
I am a soldier, although not a proud one,
But I’m offended, poet...
So, Terkin, battle-worn,
Suddenly resign? You're kidding. No!
I, brother, became close to the Army,
And I can’t resign...
And so I'm sorry,
What, I didn’t ask you,
Became a cadet. As you wish,
The asset advised me.
The soldiers want to live with me,
They tell me: they say, respect...
I remain guilty
In front of you
Terkin
Your.

V. Litavrin from Chita, also concerned about Terkin’s post-war fate, admitting its various possibilities, asks:

Maybe he's in the slaughter now
Fulfills the norm three times,
What do they give him according to plan?
Perhaps he is approaching the camp,
And with a funny saying,
The well-known Vasya Terkin,
Formerly a valiant soldier,
Does he produce rolled steel?..
What does your Terkin do:
Does he attend parties?
Or did you get married a long time ago?
Write everything - it’s all the same.
Maybe he, cherishing a dream,
Quiet morning in the middle of the alley
Listen to the nightingale's song?
Or a judge a long time ago?
Or is he a hero of our days?
Does he play hockey?
Maybe he became a combine operator?
Or dominates the choir
And he runs a drama club?
Where are you, our dear friend?..

But A.I. Makarov in his letter, like a detailed instruction, decisively suggests that I “let” Terkin “to the front of agriculture.”
“Let him,” recommends A.I. Makarov, “seriously and with humor tell and point out to collective farmers and collective farm women, tractor drivers and workers of MTS and state farms:
1. That food in all forms... is the physical strength of the people, the cheerful spirit of the people...
2. That abundance of food can be achieved by timely sowing of all crops with good seeds, good soil cultivation, application of fertilizers, introduction of correct multi-field crop rotations...
The next section... criticism of the shortcomings... which need to be hit... with a sharp Terkin word:
1. Due to dishonest work...
2. Due to the poor quality of agricultural machinery and spare parts for them.
3. By... careless... care of agricultural machinery, equipment, workers
cattle and harness.
4. According to agronomists who... did not make plans for correct multi-field
crop rotations.
5. According to the culprits whose fields have more weeds than ears of corn.
6. According to the Ministry of Forestry.
7. According to the leaders of the fishing industry."
Etc.

A.I. Makarov imagines this work in the form of a voluminous collection brochure... "Terkin in Agriculture." With illustrations below
separate headings (chapters): “Terkin on a collective farm, on a state farm, on a dairy farm, in a poultry house, on tobacco and beet plantations, in an orchard, in a vegetable garden, on melon fields, in vineyards, in “Zagotzerno” - on an elevator, on fish farms "

In itself, such a variety of wishes regarding the specific fate of the “post-war” Terkin would put me in an extremely difficult position. But that's not the point, of course.

I answered and am answering my correspondents that “Terkin” is a book born in the special, unique atmosphere of the war years, and that, completed in this special quality, the book cannot be continued on other material, requiring a different hero, other motives. I refer to the lines from the final chapter:

We need a new song.
Give it time, she will come.

However, new and new letters with proposals and urgent advice to write a “peaceful” “Terkin”, and each correspondent, naturally, seems to be the first to open such an opportunity for me, forcing me to explain this matter to my readers in a little more detail. “In my opinion,” writes I.V. Lenshin from the Voronezh region, “you yourself feel and you yourself are sorry that you have finished writing Terkin. You should continue it... write what Terkin is doing now...”

But even if it were so that I would regret the separation from “Terkin”, I still could not “continue” him. This would mean "exploit"
a ready-made, established and somehow imprinted image in the minds of readers, to increase the number of lines under the old title, without looking for a new quality. Such things are impossible in art. Let me give you one example.

In the same newspaper "Krasnoarmeyskaya Pravda" where "Terkin" was published, "New Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik" was published. This piece was written by my fellow writer M. Slobodskoy who worked at the front. It was a “continuation” of J. Hasek’s work, created on the material of the First World War. The success of “The New Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik” is explained, in my opinion, firstly, by the great need for this kind of entertaining and entertaining reading, and secondly, of course, by the fact that the familiar image was satirically related to the conditions of Hitler’s army.
But I don’t think anyone would have thought of continuing this “sequel” of “Schweik” in the post-war period. Moreover, the author of “New Schweik” after the last war did not even find it necessary to publish it as a separate book - there is no such book, but there was and is a book by J. Hasek “The Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik”. Because Hasek’s book was a creative discovery of an image, and M. Slobodsky’s work in this case was a more or less skillful use of a ready-made image, which, generally speaking, cannot be the task of art.

True, the history of literature knows examples of the “use of ready-made images,” as we find, for example, in Saltykov-Shchedrin, who transferred Griboyedov’s Molchalin or Gogol’s Nozdryov into the conditions of a different reality - from the first to the second half of the 19th century. But this was justified by the special tasks of the satirical-journalistic genre, which is not so concerned, so to speak, with the secondary full-blooded life of these images as such, but uses their characteristic features familiar to the reader in application to other material and for other purposes... (This is approximately how one can explain now the appearance of “Terkin in the Other World,” which is by no means a “continuation” of “Vasily Terkin,” but a completely different thing, determined precisely by the “special tasks of the satirical-journalistic genre.” But about this, perhaps,
There is still a special conversation with readers ahead. (Author's note))

Perhaps for some readers all these explanations are unnecessary, but here I mean mainly those readers who, with constant insistence, demand a continuation of Terkin. By the way, my “silence” is all the more incomprehensible to them because the “continuation” does not seem so difficult to them.

The above-quoted message from V. Litavrin says so directly:

Where is your Terkin, where is Vasily, -
You will find without effort,
Because, I know, for a poet
Small work - this task.

And Litavrin, like others who think so, is absolutely right. “To continue” “Terkin”, to write several new chapters in the same plan, with the same verse, with the same “nature” of the hero in the center - this is really “a small task - this task.” But the fact is that it was precisely this obvious ease of the task that deprived me of the right and desire to implement it. This would mean that I would give up new searches, new efforts, which alone would make it possible to do something in art, and would begin to rewrite myself.

And that this task is obviously not difficult is evidenced by the “sequels” of “Vasily Terkin” themselves, which are still widely used.

“I recently read your poem “Vasily Terkin”...,” seventeen-year-old Yuri Moryatov writes to me, “and I decided to write the poem “Vasily
Terkin", only:

You wrote about how Vasya
Fought with a German in the war,
I'm writing about the five-year plan
And about Vasya’s work...”

Another young poet, Dmitry Morozov, writes “An Open Letter from Vasily Terkin to Former Fellow Soldiers” in terms of highlighting the post-war fate of the hero:

Add my machine gun to my arsenal
Delivered under grease lubrication.
I'm not a soldier in uniform,
Passed, as they say,
To a new, peaceful life.
Our ancient land - wilderness and forest -
Everything has changed
So to speak, great progress
It showed up in life.
We strengthened ourselves in the spring,
They lived richly.
Like an attack, like a battle,
The soldiers went to work.
I'm demobilized
During the first term of the Decree,
He rebuilt the house, and his own
Now we have a family,
Or, let's say, the base.
Glory to peaceful labor!
Be vigilant today.
If anything happens, I’ll come!
Sending my regards. V. Terkin.

From the “continuations” and “imitations” of “Terkin”, known to me, it would be possible to compose a book, perhaps no less in volume than the existing “Book about a fighter”. I know of cases of printed continuations of Terkin. For example, in several issues of the newspaper "Zvezda" at a plant in Perm
"Vasily Terkin at the Factory" by Boris Shirshov was published:

In a new summer tunic
(It’s time to take a vacation)
Front-line soldier Vasily Terkin
I decided to visit the factory.
They say Vasily Terkin
From the Smolensk side,
And others argue: “Assembled
He worked before the war."
Well, the third ones are no joke,
But seriously they say:
"Vasya Terkin! Yes, in the foundry
Together for many years in a row
We worked." In short,
In order not to argue, let's say this:
Terkin was our worker,
The rest is all nothing...

The chapters “Terkin in the Assembly Shop”, “Terkin in the Tool Shop”, “Terkin in the Foundry Shop” and others talk about the participation of a visiting soldier in factory affairs, about his meetings with workers; proper names and specific facts of industrial life - the texture of the usual stanza and intonation of the verse of "Terkin".

Arguing with the reader is unprofitable and hopeless, but if necessary, you can and should explain yourself to him. In order to explain this, I will give another example.

When I wrote “The Country of Ant” and published it in the form that it still exists, not only I, in my youth, but also many other comrades believed that this was the “first part”. Two more parts were planned, in which Nikita Morgunok’s journey would extend to the collective farms of the south of the country and the regions of the Ural-Kuzbass. This seemed obligatory, and most importantly, it didn’t seem to be much work: the story unfolded, its style and character were determined - let’s move on. But this obvious ease and necessity of the task alarmed me. I refused to “continue” the poem and still don’t regret it.

“Vasily Terkin” came out of that semi-folklore modern “element” that consists of newspaper and wall newspaper feuilleton, pop repertoire, ditty, comic song, raek, etc. Now he himself has generated a lot of similar material in the practice of newspapers, special publications, pop, oral use. Where he came from is where he goes. And in this sense, “The Book about a Fighter,” as I already said in part, is not my own work, but a work of collective authorship. I consider my share of participation in it fulfilled. And this in no way infringes on my feeling as an author, but, on the contrary, is very pleasing to him: at one time I managed to work on identifying the image of Terkin, which, as evidenced by written and oral reviews from readers, became quite widespread among the people.

In conclusion, I would like to thank my correspondents from the bottom of my heart for their letters about Terkin, both those that contain questions, advice and comments, and those that simply express their kind attitude towards this work of mine.

In the years since the publication of this article, the Terkinsky mail has brought many new reader responses. They came and come on the occasion of either the new edition of the “Book about a Fighter”, or the next radio broadcast “Vasily Terkin” performed by the late D. N. Orlov, or the production of the play of the same name in professional theaters (stage composition by K. Voronkov) and on the stage of amateur army performances , finally, on the occasion of the appearance of my other books in print.

Among these responses, a large place is occupied by such an active form of reader participation in the fate of the book, such as numerous “amateur”
dramatizations, scripts or their libretto based on Terkin, not to mention urgent proposals of this kind to the author of the book. But, perhaps, an even more active form of the reader’s attitude towards the hero of the book is the desire to somehow prolong his current life, to transfer
him from the front-line situation to the conditions of peaceful post-war labor. The article explaining why the author refrains from “continuing” this book of his using new material did not at all reduce such reader demands and wishes. But poetic messages - calls for a continuation of "Terkin" by its author have decisively given way to the main place of "continuations" of "The Book about a Fighter" by the readers themselves, even by people with some hidden or obvious literary pretensions, but, in any case, not by professional writers.

Following Terkin, a military school cadet, appear: Terkin, an anti-aircraft gunner; Terkin - demobilized, going to the construction of the Bratsk hydroelectric power station; Terkin in the electric forging shop; Terkin on virgin soil; Terkin is a policeman... Terkin’s “sons” and “nephews” appear - the years go by, and even the hero’s age undergoes this kind of “amendment” in accordance with the interests of young readers.

Some of these “Terkins” were published: “Vasily Terkin in the Air Defense” by senior lieutenant E. Chumakov - in the newspaper “At the Combat Post”; "Yasha Terkin"
M. Ivanova - “Labor Reserves” (Alma-Ata); “Terkin in the Fire Troops” - “Alarm” (Kharkov), etc. (Over the past two or three years, in connection with the publication of “Terkin in the Next World”, the number of imitations and continuations in my “Terkin archive”, perhaps, doubled, and their themes and polemical or other orientation were already determined by the content of this second “Terkin”, (Author’s note.))

The literary merits of these “continuations”, both printed and handwritten, sometimes very large in volume, are, of course, conditional - their direct dependence on the “Book about a Fighter” not only in borrowing the main image, but also in the entire texture of the verse is obvious. Yes, it is not disguised by their authors, it is not presented as something other than newspaper, wall newspaper or pop material for local or “industry” purposes. In any case, the motives of these authors are touching and selfless. In a word, exactly like this: the image of Terkin “where he came from is where he goes” - into the modern semi-folklore poetic “element”. And such a collective “continuation” of “Terkin” can only make me happy and evoke in me only a feeling of friendly gratitude towards my numerous, so to speak, co-authors on “Terkin”.

But, of course, completely different feelings are evoked by one special case of the “continuation” of “The Book about a Fighter” - for purposes deeply alien to Terkin’s image, and
in a way that does not have even a remote resemblance to generally accepted concepts of literary art. I mean the book by a certain S. Yurasov, “Vasily Terkin after the war,” published in New York, with the designation in brackets: “According to A. Tvardovsky.” This “co-author” is by no means an inexperienced beginner, and this work of his is not a simple-minded “test of the pen” - he owns, for example, the announced
on the cover of this publication is the autobiographical novel “Enemy of the People,” which depicts “a portrait of the Soviet major Fyodor Panin, who decided to break with Bolshevism and become an emigrant.”

S. Yurasov pretends that he quite literally understood my words in “Answer to Readers” that in a certain sense, “The Book about a Fighter” is not my own work, but a collective authorship. He writes there: “Part of the book “Vasily Terkin after the war” consists of what I heard in the army and in the Soviet Union. Some places in this part coincide with certain places in A. Tvardovsky, but have a completely different meaning. What is here by imitation of the nameless “Terkins” by the poet, but what, on the contrary, belongs to folklore and was used by A. Tvardovsky is difficult to say.”

“We can say,” continues Yurasov, “that Vasily Terkin, as he lives and is being created to this day in the midst of the soldiery and popular masses, is
free folk art." Having presented the matter in this way, Yurasov arrogates to himself the right to complete "freedom" in handling the text of my "Vasily Terkin." We open the first page of the book:

Which river to swim along -
To create a sweetheart...
From the first days of the bitter year,
In the difficult hour of our native land,
Not joking, Vasily Terkin,
You and I have become friends.
But I didn’t know yet, really,
What's from the printed column
Everyone will like you
And you will enter the hearts of others...

And so on, and so on - stanza after stanza, everything exactly “according to Tvardovsky,” except that, for example, the line “From the first days of the year
bitter" is replaced by the unpronounceable "From the days of the war, from the bitter time", and the line "But I didn’t know yet, right" - "And no one thought, right..." So until the third page, where after my line "Maybe "Is there a problem with Terkin?" suddenly there is a stanza entirely made by Yuras:
- Maybe they put him in a camp
- Nowadays the Terkins can’t...
“In forty-five,” they said,
- That he went to the West...

This blasphemous attempt to liken the fate of the honored Soviet warrior, the victorious hero - at least presumably - to his despicable
the biography of a defector, a traitor to the motherland, naturally can only cause disgust, which does not allow one to dwell on all the methods of this shameless falsification.

The work is rough. For example, from the chapter “The Duel,” the entire, so to speak, technical side of Terkin’s hand-to-hand fight with the German is taken and, with the help of lines and stanzas somehow cobbled together from himself, is presented as Terkin’s hand-to-hand fight with... a policeman. In comparison, the painting of a stolen car by motorist thieves in a different color and replacement of the license plate seems much more plausible.
Yurasov “quotes” me in stanzas, periods and entire pages, but does not put quotation marks anywhere, believing that his “additions” and “replacements” give him the right to use the well-known, so many times republished text of a Soviet book in any way he likes for his base anti-Soviet purposes. It is significant that this man, who went “in the service” of the bourgeois world, where the highest deity is private property, completely neglected the principle of literary property, which in our socialist society is protected by law, being primarily a moral concept.

However, why be surprised if the publishers of Yurasov’s anti-artistic concoction do not hesitate to name their establishment in New York after one of the greatest and noblest Russian writers - A.P. Chekhov, as indicated on the cover of S. Yurasov’s thieving, fake book.

One of the main works in the poet’s work, which received nationwide recognition. The poem is dedicated to a fictional character - Vasily Terkin, a soldier of the Great Patriotic War.

The poem began to be published with a continuation in a newspaper version in 1942 and was completed in 1945. The first separate edition of the still unfinished work was published in 1942. For the most part, the poem is written in trochee tetrameter (certain chapters in trochee trimeter).

The poem consists of 30 chapters, prologue a and epilogue a, conventionally divided into three parts. Each chapter is a short story about an episode from Tyorkin’s front-line life, not connected to the others by any common plot. Vasily Terkin is a joker and a merry fellow, the soul of his unit. In battle, he is an example for everyone, a resourceful warrior who will not get confused in the most difficult situation. At a rest stop, a company always gathers around him - Tyorkin will sing and play the accordion, and will never reach into his pocket for a sharp word. Being wounded, on the brink of death (chapter “Death and the Warrior”), he finds the strength to gather himself and enter into a battle with Death, from which he emerges victorious. When meeting with civilians, he behaves modestly and with dignity. Separate short stories in the poem were created based on real events war (chapter “Who Shot”). Some stories tell about victories, and some about heavy defeats (chapter “Crossing”).

The narrative of the poem is not connected with the course of the military campaign of 1941-1945, but there is a chronological sequence in it; specific battles and operations of the Great Patriotic War are mentioned and guessed: the initial period of retreat of 1941-1942, the battle of the Volga, the crossing of the Dnieper, the capture of Berlin.

History of creation

Tvardovsky began working on the poem and the image of the main character in 1939-1940, when he was a war correspondent for the Leningrad Military District newspaper “On Guard of the Motherland” during the Finnish military campaign. The name of the hero and his image were born as the fruit of joint creativity of members of the newspaper's editorial board. Terkin became the satirical hero of several short feuilleton poems by Tvardovsky, written for the newspaper. Other authors also wrote about Tyorkin. The coincidence of the name of the main character with the name of the hero of the novel by the 19th century writer P. D. Boborykin is purely coincidental.

The Red Army soldier Tyorkin had already begun to enjoy a certain popularity among readers of the district newspaper, and Tvardovsky decided that the topic was promising and needed to be developed within the framework of a large-scale work.

On June 22, 1941, Tvardovsky curtailed his peaceful literary activities and left for the front the next day. He becomes a war correspondent for the Southwestern and then the 3rd Belorussian Front. In 1941-1942, together with the editorial staff, Tvardovsky found himself in the hottest spots of the war. Retreats, finds himself surrounded and leaves it.