One of the most notable literary events in Russia in recent years is a novel written by Zakhar Prilepin. The "cloister", a summary of which you will find in this article, is a story about the life of the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp in the late 1920s.
The novel "The Abode"
In 2014, he wrote his last novel at the moment, Zakhar Prilepin. The "cloister", a summary of which they can already ask today for an exam at a university, in a short time gained readership.
The work was published by AST. Won the prestigious domestic literary prize "Big Book".
It is worth noting that the main things the writer has are people. The book of Zakhar Prilepin "The Abode" introduces amazing human archetypes. Moreover, some of them were invented by the author, and some existed in reality. As, for example, the head of the Solovetsky camp Fedor Ivanovich Eichmans. In the novel, he is bred under the name Eichmanis.
The main character, of course, is invented. This is the 27-year-old Artem, who ended up in the camp before the Stalinist repressions. But even his lover has his own historical prototype. Galina in the novel is the real lover of Eichmans Galina Kucherenko.
Behind Artyom's cellmates are also hiding prototypes of real characters of Soviet reality. Mitya Shchelkachov - Academician Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev. The head of the Nogtev camp is Alexander Petrovich Nogtev, the first leader of the Solovki, even before Eichmans. Frenkel - Naftaly Aronovich Frenkel, one of the leaders of the Gulag. Boris Lukyanovich - Boris Lukyanovich Solonevich, a Russian writer and public figure who spent 8 years in the Solovetsky camps.
Zahar Prilepin
Before understanding what is so important Prilepin’s novel “The Abode”, you must first learn more about its author.
Prilepin was born in 1975 in the Ryazan region. When he was 11 years old, the family moved to the Nizhny Novgorod region. His parents got an apartment in the city of Dzerzhinsk.
He was drafted into the army, but was soon commissioned. He studied at the police school, served in the riot police. In parallel, he began to study at the philological faculty of the Nizhny Novgorod University. It was then that Z. Prilepin first showed a keen interest in literature. The "cloister", the brief content of which is in this article, was conceived by the author much later, but he mastered the first literary devices in his creative career then.
In 2000, Prilepin began working as a journalist, leaving the job in law enforcement. At that time it was published under various pseudonyms, for example, Evgeny Lavlinsky. Prilepin is fond of ideology by the national-Bolshevik party of Eduard Limonov, the newspaper Limonka writes. He heads the periodical publication of the NBP in Nizhny Novgorod. At that time, he wrote his first stories, becoming on a par with the first representatives of modern military prose, together with Karasev and Babchenko.
Prilepin's publications
Zakhar Prilepin wrote his first novel in 2004. It was called "Pathology", was dedicated to the Chechen war. This is the most truthful and realistic work. The main character is a commando who goes on a business trip to the North Caucasus.
The second novel "Sankya" was created in 2006. It is dedicated to members of the fictional radical movement Union of Creators. This is an allusion to the National Bolshevik Party. The protagonist is one of the active participants in this movement, participates in conflicts with the state, goes into active underground, as a result, takes part in an armed coup in one of the regional centers.
In 2007, Prilepin wrote the novel "Sin." It consists of stories on a variety of topics. Key narratives are devoted to the theme of adolescent maturation of the protagonist, the acquisition of fundamental concepts about the world around him.
In 2011, another author’s novel “The Black Monkey” was published. This is a detailed journalistic investigation, which is dedicated to the mysterious case of the massacre in a small provincial town. In the center of the story are mysterious killer children who want no one knows what. And also this novel about the truth, which in the surrounding life is becoming less and less. The exciting plot of this novel does not allow you to tear yourself away from reading for even a minute. The main thing is that this work can cause a desire to change the world that we see outside our window for the better.
All these works preceded the main and largest novel, which the author has written to date. In this article, you will find a summary of it. The "cloister" of Zakhar Prilepin is worth it to be read in its entirety.
The meaning of the novel
Most critics and admirers of the author’s creativity note that his work is simply full of health and life, despite the fact that it is devoted to one of the most shameful pages in the history of Soviet power - the organization of concentration camps. They killed millions of people, further undermined their health, were forced to leave their families forever.
Most importantly, the events described by the author take place long before the Stalinist repressions, when people were massively sent to camps. The end of the 1920s in the Soviet Union was still a fairly liberal time when the repression machine was just starting to accelerate.
In all the diversity of the camp material, it was Solovetsky Camp Prilepin who chose it. "The Abode" (a brief summary of the book will help you get to know her better) is a novel that tells about a unique monastery. It has long been inhabited by priests who deliberately cut themselves off from the outside world for many years. The Soviet government turned the monastery into a special purpose camp, without completely eradicating the monks from their harsh places, their orders and rites.
The plot of the novel
On the Solovetsky Islands coexist monastery lakes and cells with camp huts. Here the new head of the camp, a man, of course, educated and intelligent. Trying to implement an experiment for reforging a person. To build healthy members of Soviet society from criminals and political prisoners. A similar idea, by the way, can be seen in Bulgakov’s novel “Heart of a Dog”. There, as a result of a medical experiment, Professor Preobrazhensky obtained a man of a new Soviet formation. Eichmanis acts differently.
The new warden of the Solovetsky camp arranges, according to the exact remark of one of the heroes of the novel, a circus in hell. There is a library, a theater, but a penitentiary and a punishment cell coexist nearby. Creativity and self-education must be combined with hard daily physical labor. And political and criminals live in the same hut, because of which conflicts constantly occur, often social. In such a difficult situation, the main character is Artyom, who arrives to serve his sentence in Solovki.
Reforging a new person
According to Eichmanis, the new Soviet man should grow up in this difficult and harsh northern climate. In the shops on Solovki they trade English pins and sweet marmalade, but at the same time they cross up crosses from old cemeteries and float huge logs along the river. Prilepin’s novel The Abode, a brief summary of which will help to better understand the author’s intent, describes how people try to combine these two opposites with inhuman efforts.
Outside the window the 1920s. The battles of the Civil War have just passed away. Therefore, the people among the prisoners are the most motley. Here you can meet both the officer of the army Kolchak, and the representative of the clergy, who has not yet figured out how much the Soviet government is intolerant of any manifestation of faith, and screwed up the Chekist. But most of all here, of course, are ordinary criminals.
The protagonist of the novel
So is Artyom, the main character of Prilepin’s novel The Abode. The summary will help to understand his story, because of which he ended up in the Solovetsky camp.
Political reasoning is far from him, he ended up behind bars for the murder of his father, which he committed in a domestic brawl, trying to protect the rest of his relatives from his aggression. The act of the young man was not appreciated, as a result, he was actually in hard labor.
Compositional structure of the novel
The composition of this work is built simple. The novel "The Abode" of Zakhar Prilepin, the summary of which you are reading now, is completely built along the life line of the main character. All events described on the pages are somehow connected with it.
Prilepin notes that in life, as in a work of art, chance is of great importance to others. It is a series of sometimes ridiculous coincidences that leads to the main character being able to show his best youthful qualities and not get lost, that is, not get down, in the local jargon. Artyom passes most of the dangers that often overtook his comrades or neighbors in the barracks. Often we can compare Artyom with the hero of a rogue novel. That’s how Zakhar Prilepin “The Abode” builds.
Artem gets a place in a sports company, which means a special attitude, mode and nutrition. He manages to tame the thieves in his hut, with which intelligent political prisoners cannot control. Together with Eichmanis, he sets off to search for mysterious treasures hidden by the monks of the Solovetsky Monastery in time immemorial. All the time he manages to get new appointments, which greatly facilitate his existence on Solovki.
Love line
A love line appears in the novel. Artem falls in love with Galina, the overseer, and part-time lover of Eichmanis. The development of relations contributes to its new appointment. He gets a place on a remote island where he needs to care for foxes. As a result, Galina regularly comes to visit him, ostensibly in order to assess how he does his work.
However, he makes a lot of mistakes. Mainly due to its quick-tempered and non-caring nature. Escape, as always, helps the case. The luck that accompanies the protagonist can be called one of the full-fledged characters that inhabit Prilepin’s novel "The Abode". A summary of the work must necessarily tell about the mortal dangers that awaited the protagonist. These are sharpenings of criminals, and bullets of the Red Army, and conspiracies of neighbors in the barracks. He succeeds in avoiding the unenviable illegal secret employee of the Soviet special services, whose main task is to denounce everyone around him.
The character of the protagonist
At the same time, Zakhar Prilepin very skillfully writes out the character of the protagonist. "The Abode", the brief content of which you are reading, allows you to fully imbue this sincere Russian spirit. Artem constantly demonstrates visual paradoxes of a national character.
He rarely thinks about his tomorrow, while everything happens around in the most successful way. He has a sensitive sensual mind, while being as direct as possible. I’m ready to show my emotions, for example, to jump with delight, no matter who was next to him at that moment.
Moreover, he is far from a positive character. Although Artyom is able to stand up for the weak and offended, another time, in a similar situation, he may well join the crowd, which will mock the weak. Here the whole dualism of human nature is manifested. The feeling of pity inherent in a person in him replaces a respect for life.
Eternal questions
The hero of Prilepin constantly asks questions about the meaning of life, he is visited by thoughts of the Dostoevsky sense. Prilepin describes them in detail. The "cloister", the brief content of which allows you to find out the main ones, provides answers to various questions. Is there a poisonous worm in my heart? What is a god? Does happiness exist in the world?
Of course, the hero fails to find unambiguous answers to these questions, but the way he tries to find them says a lot about his personality.
Escape from Solovki
Perhaps the climax of the novel is an attempt to escape from the Solovetsky Islands. It is undertaken by Artem and Galina. They try to sail away by boat, having reached foreign shores in severe weather. It is worth recognizing that the venture is initially doomed to failure.
Having washed for several days along the waves of the northern seas, they return to the camp, trying to explain their absence as plausibly as possible. But the guards and the colony authorities are still suspicious of their stories. As a result, both go under investigation.
Conclusion
Prilepin concludes his novel with a paradoxical and profound phrase: "Man is dark and terrible, but the world is human and warm." It is in this contradiction that the whole essence of human relations lies.