The military secret is the story of a children's writer A. P. Gaidar , written in 1934 and published for the first time in 1935 .
A military secret | |
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Genre | Story |
Author | A.P. Gaidar |
Original language | Russian |
Date of writing | 1934 |
Date of first publication | 1935 |
Electronic version | |
Content
Story
The matured Natka and her uncle are chatting in the station buffet. Natka confesses to her uncle that she wants to become a captain of a steamer or a pilot, but after the end of the co-board school she is sent to pioneering work. She admits that she does not like this job, it seems to her that she is not in her place, but her uncle says that she needs to learn a little, pull herself up, not be timid, and everything will turn out as it should.
Shegalov sees off his niece to the train.
In the dining car Natca drew attention to two companions: a high military man and his six-year-old son. Natka accidentally saw last year’s magazine on a carriage table with a photo of Komsomol Maritsa Margulis killed in a prison in Chisinau (she ran off prison and was caught). Alka - that was the name of the boy - approached Natka and said that he had forgotten the magazine at the table yesterday. So they met.
In the pioneer camp pioneers gather from all over the country. Pupils of the Natkin Detachment Vladik Dashevsky and Tolka Shestakov became close friends from the very first day. The boys examine the surroundings of the camp and discover the ruins of an old fortress. There, in the fortress, they find a secret hole, which later, on occasion, decide to explore.
There is an accident on the camp's water supply system, for the elimination of which engineer Ganin arrives (Natka's traveling companion on the train). Alcoe is temporarily arranged in Natka’s room. To solve the problem, dynamite is needed, and Ganin, having found a friend from Gitaevich’s CEC, asks him to send a request to Moscow for dynamite.
Alka is very attached to Natka, but does not answer her questions about family and mother. Once Alka tells Natka a fairy tale about Malchish-Kibalchish , which she then retold to the Octobrists .
The war ended, the Red Army won and drove the burzhuins away . He lived and was Malchish-Kibalchish with his father and older brother. But here again the damned burzhuiny attacked. My father took a rifle and went to war, soon his elder brother left him, but the Army could not stop the Burzhuins. Malchish assembled his friends as a boy-child to the aid of the Red Army, and only Malchish-Plokhish began to serve the burzhuins (he went along with everyone, but wondered how to help the burzhuins).
Chief Burzhuin asked his burzhuins why they could not win, and having learned that subordinates had defeated fathers and older brothers, but could not cope with Malchish-Kibalchish and his friends, he became angry and shouted in a terrible voice so that they would not return to him without victory. A bad wood chopped up, he hayed and lit all the boxes of ammunition. Burzhuiny rejoiced and gave him a betrayal of a barrel of jam and a basket of cookies for treason.
Burzhuiny attacked and chained Malchish-Kibalchish in chains, and began to extort from him the main Military Secret: how did the Red Army defeat the Forty Kings and Forty Kings? Malchish laughed at them in the face and replied that he would not reveal the secret of the invincible Red Army, and they could never guess by themselves. Chief Burzhuin was surprised: what kind of country is it that such kids know the Military Secret and keep their word so firmly?
Malchish-Kibalchish died, and Chief Burzhuin fled, cursing the country. Malchish-Kibalchish was buried on the hill and put a big red flag on his grave.
The repaired plot, which is headed by Sergey Ganin, Alka's father, imperceptibly disappears money, weapons, documents and sheets for engineering work, in addition, workers dug the land in the wrong place.
Ganin notices at the site of a suspicious drunk.
The camp is preparing for a big campfire. Among the chefs from the sanatorium of the CEC, who visited a large pioneer camp, Natka meets an old acquaintance, a friend of her parents - Gitaevich. Natka represents Gitaevich Alcu, and after Alki’s departure, Natka learns that his mother was Mariez Margulis, a Komsomol member, the one who was tortured to death in a prison in Chisinau.
Engineer Ganin manages repair work. He suspects one of the brigade leaders, Shalimov, and the foreman Dyagilev of thefts and financial frauds (robbing of workers). Returning to the camp, the engineer hears a shot - this is Vladik and Tolka, having made an unauthorized absenteeism from the camp, which was strictly forbidden, they accidentally find a gun hidden by someone in a dilapidated tower (before that the boys explore a manhole, get out of the ruins and suddenly see how enters a stranger).
Because of their “unauthorized” hike in the quest for adventure, the guys are late for the fire. When they finally arrived at the camp, Tolka found himself covered in abrasions and with a dislocated hand. Vladik does not tell what happened. Natka shames the boys in front of the whole camp. They only put them in the camp medical unit for several days, and the bored Vladik loiter around, not knowing what to do. He is somewhat embittered by both the team and Natka Shegalova, the pioneer leader. The accumulated resentment, anger and indignation find their own splash: Vladik gets involved in a fight with an unfamiliar boy - one of the local hooligans, who turned out to be bigger and stronger than Vladik. After the fight, Vladik meets Alka and goes with him to the sea. Hastily washing up the bloody vest, Vladik plunged into the water, washing away the blood from his neck and face. And suddenly he noticed an angry Natka on the top of a hillside. Vladik was sure that tomorrow he would be discharged from the camp and immediately sent home; in fact: well, who after all that happened will believe that he just rinsed his T-shirt !? After all, Natka decided that he voluntarily, without asking, ran off to bathe, which, according to the laws of the camp, was considered the most serious offense.
Vladik almost came to terms with his fate, but Alka, as a witness, tells his father the whole truth, and he stands up for Vladik in front of the camp commander.
The senior foreman Dyagilev is in the camp shooting gallery, where it is completely unexpected for himself - and quite inopportunely! - together with Sergey Alekseevich Ganin, Vladik is caught. Dygilev appeals to Ganin with a request to sign documents. Vladik recognizes a strange visitor - the very suspicious type of night, hiding a gun in the ruins of the tower. Vladik tells Ganin that it was this very Dygilev who hid a firearm in an abandoned fortress, which he and Tolkoy found and accidentally shot. And after that, frightened, they rushed to run. And just that same ill-fated evening Tolka, injured by a derailment, was injured.
Diagilev and Shalimov are being arrested.
Sergey Ganin, taking advantage of a short leisure time, together with his son Alka go for a walk. They are waiting for Natka. But because of the bushes, Dyagilev's brother appears unexpectedly - a drunkard already familiar to Sergei, who was once hanging out on the reconstruction works. Revenging for his brother, a maniac distraught with vodka and anger, throws stones at Ganina. Defensively, Sergei snatches the Browning from his holster and shoots the aggressor, but late - one of the stones hits Alc approached (he ran away after the cigarettes forgotten by his father).
The six-year-old boy dies tragically.
The whole camp comes to bury Alcu on a cliff above the sea.
Sergey and Natka are returning to Moscow. At the station, they are met by Natkin's uncle - the chief of staff of Shegalov, who, it turns out, had previously known Ganin well; still in the Civil War, almost a boy.
Sergey Ganin, by order of the command, on special mission, leaves for the Far East . Going to Shegalov to say goodbye, to his great disappointment he doesn’t catch Natka by his uncle and leaves Natka with a farewell note and a photo in which Alka and his mother, Maritza Margulis, hug, laughing.
The distressed Natka rushes headlong to Kazansky railway station, hoping to be in time before the departure of the express train to the Far East; she almost does not believe that it is possible to find Sergey at the huge metropolitan railway station. And suddenly, almost in despair, intending to leave already, she sees Sergei in the form of an engineer of the sapper troops in the group of departing soldiers.
Brief minutes of stingy goodbyes pass. The train is moving.
Returning from the station, Natka realizes that she is in her place, her goal is to raise the younger generation, worthy of replacing the previous generation, such as her uncle, his comrades in arms; to all those who died in the Civil War.
Creation History
In July 1931, Gaidar, together with his son Timur, visited the pioneer camp Artek. Some episodes of this trip were then described in the story, and Timur became the prototype of the main character - Alka [1] .
Work on the story began in the summer of 1932 in Khabarovsk , where Gaidar worked as a correspondent for the Pacific Star newspaper. A year later, the Young Guard publishing house published The Tale of a Military Secret, about Malchish-Kibalchish and his firm word, which was entirely included in the story Military Secret, which was completed by the autumn of 1934 (in a diary entry dated August 21, 1934 : “Finally, I’m finishing the“ Military Secret ””).
At the end of 1934, the manuscript was prepared for publication and was published almost simultaneously as a separate publication in the Children’s Publishing House and in the literature and art magazine Krasnaya Novy (1935, No. 2) [2] .
In 1936, a new edition of “Military Secret” (with drawings by D. Shmarinov ) was published, distinguished from the first edition by the presence of two new chapters, as well as a small edition of some parts of the story. The story has gained greater clarity and harmony.
The last lifetime edition of the story "Military Secret" was carried out in the collection "My Comrades" (Moscow, "Soviet Writer", 1940).
In 1938, Gaidar wrote the screenplay for the film “Military Secret” (published in 1969 in the magazine Pioneer, No. 5 and 6, with a preface by R. I. Fraerman) [2] .
Title
In a letter [3] dated March 5, 1935 from Arzamas to Rostov, A.P. Gaidar explained to the pioneers the choice of the title for the story: “Why is Military Secret?” Of course, according to the tale. In the fairy tale, Burzhuin asks three questions: the first of them - does the winning Red Army have any special military secret or secret of its victories? The secret, of course, is, but it will never be understood by the main Burzhuin ” [2] .
Criticism
Immediately after the publication of the story caused a lively discussion; On the whole, it was accepted positively, even in negative reviews it was said that the story is very interesting, appeared in a timely manner and raises vital questions, that children are vividly and faithfully shown and the book is imbued with “Gaidar's humor” [2] .
Notes
- ↑ Timur Gaidar, “Golikov Arkady from Arzamas”. On a trip with my father to "Artek"
- ↑ 1 2 3 4 A.P. Gaidar. Collected Works in 4 volumes. - Moscow: Children's literature. - T. 2. - p. 422-429. - 432 s. - 300 000 copies
- ↑ Published in 1949 in the journal Pioneer, No. 5, with an introductory note by the writer Iv. Khalturin