Matryonin Yard

The story began in late July - early August 1959 in the village of Chernomorsky in the west of Crimea , where Solzhenitsyn was invited by friends from Kazakhstan exile by the spouses Nikolai Ivanovich and Elena Alexandrovna Zubov , who settled there in 1958. The story ended in December of that year.

Solzhenitsyn narrated the story to Twardowski on December 26, 1961 . The first discussion in the journal took place on January 2, 1962. Twardowski believed that this work could not be printed. The manuscript remained in the editorial office. Upon learning that censorship cut out from the New World (1962, No. 12) the memoirs of Veniamin Kaverin about Mikhail Zoshchenko , Lydia Chukovskaya wrote in her diary on December 5, 1962:

... What if Solzhenitsyn didn’t print the second thing? I liked her more than the first. She is stunned by courage, shocked by material, - and, of course, by literary skill; and "Matryona" ... here we can already see the great artist, humane, returning our native language, loving Russia, as the Block says, mortally offended by love. <...> So the prophetic oath of Akhmatova comes true:

And we will save you, Russian speech,
Great Russian word.

Preserved - revived - s / c Solzhenitsyn ^[2] .

After the success of the story “One Day by Ivan Denisovich”, Twardowski decided on a second editorial discussion and preparation of the story for publication. In those days, Twardowski wrote in his diary:

By today's arrival, Solzhenitsyn had re-read his Righteous One from five in the morning. Oh my god, writer. No jokes. The writer, the only one preoccupied with the expression of what lies “at the base” of his mind and heart. Not a shadow of the desire to “get into the bull's eye”, to please, to ease the task of an editor or critic — just as you want, you can get out of it, and I won’t get out of my way. Unless I can only go further ^[3] .

The name "Matryonin Dvor" was proposed by Alexander Twardovsky before publication and approved during the editorial discussion on November 26, 1962 :

“The name should not be so edifying,” argued Alexander Trifonovich. “Yes, I’m not lucky with your names,” Solzhenitsyn responded, however rather kindly, ^[4] .

The story was published in the January notebook of the New World for 1963 (pages 42–63) along with the story “ The Case at Kochetovka Station ” ^[5] under the common heading “Two Stories” ^[6] .

Unlike Solzhenitsyn’s first published work, “ One Day of Ivan Denisovich, ” generally accepted positively by critics, Matryonin Dvor caused a wave of controversy and discussion in the Soviet press. The position of the author in the story was at the center of a critical discussion on the pages of Literary Russia in the winter of 1964. Its beginning was an article by a young writer L. Zhukhovitsky “I am looking for a co-author!”.

In 1989, Matryonin Dvor became the first publication of texts of Alexander Solzhenitsyn in the USSR after years of silence. The story was published in two issues of the magazine " Spark " (1989, No. 23, 24) with a huge circulation of more than 3 million copies. Solzhenitsyn declared the publication "pirated", as it was carried out without his consent.

In the summer of 1956, “ one hundred eighty-fourth kilometer from Moscow along the branch that goes to Murom and Kazan ”, a passenger leaves the train. This is a storyteller whose fate resembles the fate of Solzhenitsyn himself (he fought, but from the front “delayed the return of ten years”, that is, he spent time in the camp and was in exile, which is also indicated by the fact that when the storyteller got a job, each letter in his documents was “felt over”). He dreams of working as a teacher in the depths of Russia, away from urban civilization. But living in a village with the wonderful name High Field did not work: “Alas, they did not bake bread. They did not sell anything edible. The whole village dragged food from bags from the regional city. ” And then he is transferred to the village with the monstrous name of Peat product for his hearing. However, it turns out that "not everything is around peat mining " and there are also villages with the names of Chaslitsy , Ovintsy , Spudny , Shevertney , Shestimirovo ...

This reconciles the narrator with his share: “The wind of reassurance pulled me from these names. They promised me a condo Russia. ” In one of the villages called Talnovo, he settles. The mistress of the hut in which the narrator lodges is called Matryona Vasilievna Grigoryeva or simply Matryona.

Matryona, not considering her fate interesting for a "cultured" person, sometimes in the evenings tells about herself to a guest. The life story of this woman fascinates and at the same time stuns him. He sees in it a special meaning that is not noticed by the villagers and relatives of Matryona. The husband went missing at the beginning of the war. He loved Matryona and did not beat her like the village husbands of his wives. But hardly Matryona herself loved him. She was supposed to marry her husband’s older brother, Thaddeus. However, he went to the front in World War I and disappeared. Matryona was waiting for him, but in the end, at the insistence of the Thaddeus family, she married her younger brother Yefim. And then suddenly Thaddeus, who was in Hungarian captivity, returned. According to him, he didn’t slaughter Matryona and her husband with an ax just because Yefim was his brother. Thaddeus loved Matryona so much that he found a new bride with the same name. The “Second Matryona” gave birth to Thaddeus of six children, but the “first Matryona” all the children from Yefim (also six) died without having lived for three months. The whole village decided that Matryona was “spoiled”, and she herself believed in it. Then she took up the daughter of the "second Matryona" - Kira, raised her for ten years, until she got married and left for the village of Cherusti .

Matryona has lived all her life as if not for herself. She constantly worked for someone: for a collective farm, for neighbors, while doing “peasant” work, and never asked for money for her. There is tremendous inner strength in Matryon. For example, she is able to stop a racing horse on the run that men cannot stop. Gradually, the narrator realizes that Matryona, giving herself to others without a trace, and "... there is ... that same righteous man, without whom ... there is no village. Not a city. Nor is all our land. ” But this discovery is hardly pleasing to him. If Russia rests only on selfless old women, what will happen to her next?

Hence the absurdly tragic death of the heroine in the ending of the story. Matryona dies, helping Thaddeus and his sons drag part of their own hut bequeathed to Kira via the sleigh through the railway. Thaddeus did not want to wait for the death of Matryona and decided to take the inheritance for the young during her lifetime. Thus, he involuntarily provoked her death. When relatives bury Matryona, they cry, rather, by duty than from the heart, and think only about the final division of Matryonin’s property. Thaddeus doesn't even come to the wake.

• The story was staged by the Vakhtangov Theater (the idea of ​​the stage version of the story was Alexander Mikhailov , stage version and production of Vladimir Ivanov , premiered on April 13, 2008) ^[7] . Cast: Ignatich - Alexander Mikhailov, Matryona - Elena Mikhailova . Artist Maxim Obrezkov .
• Matryonin Dvor. Folk Theater Tovarkovo . Premiere in the Kaluga Youth Theater , 2015 ^[8]
• On February 10, 2018, the premiere of a performance based on a short story at the Pushkin Theater in Krasnoyarsk took place ^[9] . Director Boris Ploskikh. Cast: Ignatich - Dmitry Koryavin, Matryona - Galina Salamatova.
• On March 2, 2018, the first show of the play based on the story was held at the Vladimir Regional Puppet Theater . Director Marina Protasova, artist Natalia Krutova, composer Alexei Sidortsev. The role of Matryona is performed by Marina Vakhtanina ^[10] .

• The story is based on genuine events. The heroine of the story in reality was called Matryona Vasilyevna Zakharova (1896-1957). The events took place in the village of Miltsevo (in the story of Talnovo).
• At the end of 2012, the house of Matryona Vasilyevna, in which it was supposed to make a museum, burned down. It is possible that the cause was arson ^[11] . On October 26, 2013, a museum was opened in the house recreated after the fire ^[12] . The house-museum is installed near the Mezinovskaya high school, where Alexander Solzhenitsyn taught.

• Solzhenitsyn A.I. Matryonin yard and other stories . Texts of stories on the official website of Alexander Solzhenitsyn
• Browman, G. Is it mandatory to be a co-author? // Literary Russia : newspaper. - 1964. - January 1.
• Zhukhovitsky, L. I am looking for a co-author! // Literary Russia: newspaper. - 1964. - January 1.
• Ivanova, L. Citizen must be // Literary newspaper . - 1963. - May 14.
• Kuzmin, V.V. Poetics of the stories of A.I. Solzhenitsyn (inaccessible link) . - Tver: TVSU , 1998. - Without ISBN
• Poltoratsky, V. "Matryonin Dvor" and its environs // News : newspaper. - 1963. - March 29.
• Sergovantsev, N. The tragedy of loneliness and "continuous life" // October : magazine. - 1963. - No. 4. - S. 205.
• “Matryonin Dvor” by A. I. Solzhenitsyn: The Art World. Poetics. Cultural context: Sat. scientific tr / under. ed. A.V. Urmanova. - Blagoveshchensk: Publishing House of BSPU, 1999.
• N.S. <N. Solzhenitsyn.>. The story "There is no village without a righteous one" // Alexander Solzhenitsyn: From under the boulders: Manuscripts, documents, photographs: On the 95th anniversary of his birth. - M .: Russian Way , 2013 .-- S. 205 . - ISBN 978-5-85887-431-7 .