One hundred years ago, the main author of lieutenant prose, Yuri Bondarev, was born

To begin with, personal memories. In 2016, when Sevastopol still had an active local cultural life, I implemented the “Assembly Point” cultural and educational initiative. Among other things, I organized a literary festival, which was attended by writers from 8 countries – a powerful event! As part of this festival, it was decided to establish the Tauride Literary Prize. They began to think: who should I give it to? So that it would become an unconditional authority in Russian literature. So that there are no questions.

And we decided to present the Tauride Literary Prize to Yuri Bondarev. By the way, this is his last lifetime literary prize. I took her to the Moscow region, to the Soviet Writer cooperative, where Yuri Vasilyevich lived with his wife. He lived more than modestly. They received me in the courtyard, under a spreading tree, in a country style. So I visited one of the last classics of Russian literature – I saw before me an indomitable man. It is this word – “unbending” – that I primarily associate with Yuri Bondarev.

Thinking about him, I inevitably remember my grandfather, Valentin Nikolaevich Besedin. They were even similar in appearance – in their bearing, their build, their looks, above all. The childhood of both Yuri Bondarev and Valentin Besedin is connected with the river. My grandfather’s is Akhtuba in the village of Zaplavnoye, Yuri Vasilyevich’s is Belaya near Ufa. And there is fishing, night gatherings and conversations around the fire. Healthy childhood of a healthy Soviet child; closeness to nature, closeness to the authentic.

Later, when Yura was seven years old, the Bondarev family moved to Moscow. His father was a people’s investigator – as Yuri Vasilyevich recalled, a fearless man, always ready to fight with evil, with injustice. This turned out to be a personal example, which is always paramount. Yuri Vasilyevich spent his childhood in Zamoskvorechye. And he retained many warm memories of this wonderful place. How people went out into the yard and spent the night under the summer starry sky, remembering that only it and the moral law within are eternal. How pigeons were bred – a great many dovecotes were built in Zamoskvorechye. Proper Moscow childhood.

But then the war began – it came, it crawled like a bloody clump. My grandfather volunteered for the front at the age of 17 – and immediately ended up in Stalingrad and was wounded. Yuri Vasilyevich did not end up there right away, in 1942. At first, as an 18-year-old boy, he dug trenches near Smolensk. In Stalingrad, Bondarev commanded a mortar crew. Although, in essence, he is a boy – only 19 years old! He was wounded, concussed, and frostbite, but survived and went through the entire war. He was awarded two medals “For Courage”.

Yuri Bondarev reflected the truth of the war in his prose. She, as I already said, was called a lieutenant. There, in the battle, Bondarev did not write anything down, but his memory retained everything. He was called a tough realist. Indeed, his prose is full of important, defining details, but there is no room for emphasized realism – the kind with, for example, severed limbs and pierced skulls. Bondarev avoids naturalistic details, but still shows the essence of the war as convincingly as possible. You trust him like no one else.

The main thing for Bondarev is to comprehend the military tragedy, the desire to understand why some fell there on the battlefield, while others survived. Life as a miracle, death as a mystery – this is what Yuri Vasilyevich reflects on in his best books about the war: “Hot Snow”, “Battalions Ask for Fire”. However, in both “Silence” and “The Shore” he thinks about this too – only from a different angle. In his texts there is bitterness, born of acquired wisdom, in which there is a lot of sadness, but in his prose there is also consolation, maximum concentration on the essence of things and events, sometimes the most terrible, turning the life and fate of both the entire people and the individual inside out.

Again, I look at Bondarev’s photographs and remember my grandfather. I see a handsome man, a front-line soldier, clean-shaven, with an honest, confident look. I see a person who was not afraid to follow the truth, who knew how to say “no” to outside pressure. You know, in the old days, when they still poisoned themselves with poisonous petty topics, when they were not afraid of healthy pathos, the writer was spoken of as a seeker of truth, a fighter for justice, a voice of conscience. This is how I see Yuri Vasilyevich Bondarev. Now I’m somewhat idealizing, of course, but I’m sure a person still needs to be judged by his best actions and motives.

Critics of Bondarev are, as a rule, critics of Soviet reality. Those who do not accept it under any circumstances and in any manifestations. Those who wrinkle their noses at everything Soviet. So they are trying to classify Bondarev as a singer and a favorite of the Soviet regime. Yes, Yuri Vasilyevich was treated kindly by her – so what? What’s next? What does it change? After all, something else is much more important: the fact that Bondarev did not waver with the party line, like Grigory Baklanov, did not try to please it and did not spit on the past, like Viktor Astafiev. Throughout his life, he remained faithful, plus or minus, to the same values ​​and ideals.

When Gorbachev’s perestroika began, Bondarev did not integrate into it, but honestly stated what would immediately become quoted everywhere: “We took off the plane, but we don’t know where we’re flying and where we’ll land…” That’s all true, but we landed in a new reality. , about which Bondarev, like Rasputin, like Belov, had a low opinion, because this reality was saturated with falsehood and hypocrisy. The most ardent praisers of the Soviet Union became its detractors. They denounced the Soviet past with the same degree of hatred with which they had previously glorified the party – they crucified themselves with all their might; Such people don’t know how to do otherwise.

Bondarev remained true to his ideals. And when in 1994 they wanted to award him the Order of Friendship of Peoples, he refused. “Today this will no longer help the good harmony and friendship of the peoples of our great country,” Bondarev wrote briefly, clearly, in a telegram to Boris Yeltsin. And thereby he declared that this is not at all the friendship of peoples that existed under the Soviet Union. That true friendship of peoples is over. Unfortunately, the understanding of the fundamental role of Russian literature has also ended. The very concepts of truth, responsibility, and conscience ceased to exist. The Russian – and Soviet – coordinate system has gone astray.

Is Russian literature over? Of course not. But it is obvious that in the new Russian reality, Bondarev’s prose was not in demand. What is the truth here, astrologers, bandits and MMM reigned around? And now – what has changed? And yet Bondarev’s legacy lives on. Let the question of compliance and scale arise every time. Who instead? Especially now, when there is a massacre. For example, will someone be able to create powerful battle scenes like those in the book “Hot Snow”? There is no doubt that they will try. But can they? Today, when in new territories not only our destiny is being determined, but also, in theory, new art is being born.

Vadim Kozhinov once said about the front-line poetry of Samoilov, Mezhirov, Simonov: “These poems were written not about the war, but about the war.” It was the understanding that there is a war, what kind of people are in it, that gave birth to the best Soviet literature and cinema about the war. “Only “old men” go into battle,” “They fought for their Motherland,” “In the trenches of Stalingrad,” “Lord, it’s us!” – you believe in these works, films and books. Because the people who created them saw the war from the inside and had the courage and talent to depict it.

Yuri Bondarev is one of the best examples here. He did not give up and turned out to be faithful to the truth of the trenches, the truth of military comradeship to the end. And despite all the obstacles and circumstances, his best prose, like his personality himself, will forever remain in Russian history. Because power is in truth – even now, when it would seem there is no truth. But the more a person will be drawn to the truth – it just takes a moment, it takes circumstances to manifest it. I believe that they will appear in the near future. And then we will again read and re-read Yuri Bondarev.