Lieutenant prose

In the 1940-1950s, the tradition of heroizing the Great Patriotic War developed in Soviet literature. At the same time, there was almost no place to show the tragic aspects of the war.

In 1946, in the journal Znamya , a novel by front-line writer Viktor Nekrasov , In the Trenches of Stalingrad, was published, which depicted the war from a completely different perspective. The reader will see military everyday life, the life of ordinary soldiers, their quiet heroism, their judgments about the war, about retreat and victory. The narration is conducted in the first person, this is a kind of diary of a war veteran. The story received a lively response from readers. After reading it by Joseph Stalin , Victor Nekrasov received the Stalin Prize of the 2nd degree in 1947 . But soon due to the tightening of public policy was banned ^[6] .

The beginning of the “ thaw ” made it possible to publish the “trench” truth. Then the works of front-line writers were printed: Yuri Bondarev : “ Battalions ask for fire ” (1957), “Last Volleys” (1959); Grigory Baklanov “South of the main blow” (1957), “Span of the earth” (1959), “Dead have no shame” (1961), Vasily Bykov : “Creek Cry” (1961), “Third Rocket” (1962), Konstantin Vorobyov : “ Scream ” (1962), “ Killed near Moscow ” (1963), Victor Kurochkin : “ In war as in war ” (1965).

This predetermined the appearance of a trend in Russian literature, called “lieutenant literature” or “lieutenant prose” ^[4] .

The authors of "lieutenant prose" most often used the story genre ^[4] .

The form of the works is simple, strict. According to Vasil Bykov, she shied away from “pseudo-romantics, pseudo-lyrism, stylistic delights, illustrativeness”, demanded from the writer “maximum deepening in sociality, unpleasant realism”, was especially sensitive to falsehood, and required high literary skill ^[5] .

In "lieutenant prose" war is shown from the closest distance. A huge role in the narrative is played by the description of details and details ^[5] .

The feat is often depicted "everyday, individual, invisible, as if" smaller "and" quieter "of its reference sample." According to Igor Dedkov ,

“It is through such a feat that the writer shows the everyday heroic efforts of the people, the deepest morality of his existence in the tragic circumstances of a specific time and a specific small space. His standing, conquering humanity ” ^[7] .

The removal or reduction of pathos in portraying the war in “lieutenant prose” does not lead to a reduction in drama, which can be amplified to a tragic force ^[5] .

The line of conflict is shifted from the front line to the line of collision and confrontation between one's own ^[5] .

"Lieutenant Prose" continued the tradition of depicting war, laid down primarily by L. N. Tolstoy ^[6] . Its aesthetic ^[4] and ethical ^[8] principles influenced the literary process of the second half of the XX ^[4] - early XXI ^[8] centuries. In particular, “lieutenant prose” formed the idea that the writer has no moral right to write about the war if he himself did not fight. The conflict around the novel about the Chechen war Asan (2008-2009) by the non-war writer Vladimir Makanin is indicative ^{[8] [9]} . The novel was criticized by writers who went through the war in Chechnya: Arkady Babchenko ^[10] , Aleksanra Karaseva ^[10] , Zakhar Prilepin ^{[8] [9]} .

The credibility of "lieutenant prose" was interpreted in criticism , including negatively. Because of the utmost authenticity, the works of front-line writers were often classified as memoirs , called “their own front-line biographies of authors,” they claimed that the authors' horizons were limited only to the field of view of an individual soldier or officer, pressed against the ground by an enemy machine gun or carrying neutral bands of a wounded comrade. " The terms “trench truth”, “soldier's truth”, “large-scale truth”, etc. ^[5] were used in literary and critical use. The authors of “lieutenant prose” were criticized for “degeneration of the feat” ^[5] .

Yuri Bondarev , responding to criticisms, said that he “still does not understand the indulgent and barren judgments of some critics about the“ look from the soldier’s trench ”, about the narrowness and limited horizons of death of those fighting on some bridgehead, as if our soldiers and officers they didn’t concentrate the political and moral strength of the people, as if the courageous and laconic “ Sevastopol Tales ” of Leo Tolstoy did not incorporate the whole harsh essence of the Crimean War, an incomparable feat and did not pave the way for the unrivaled world masterpiece “ War and Peace ”. ”

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