The books of Victor Astafiev attract the attention of readers and critics with their artistic originality and social acuity. Many of the works of this writer are autobiographical in nature. There is no mixture of reality and fiction in them. Astafiev’s creative heritage creates an idea of the life and character, fate and views of this person.
"Last bow"
On the banks of the Yenisei, there are many faceless villages. One of them is Oatmeal. But this village was more fortunate than its neighbors. Books of Victor Astafiev glorified her. They magnified her, made her legendary. The story “The Last Bow” reflects the rural way of life, the characteristic features of a person’s life in a Russian village.
According to the prose writer himself, he sang a small homeland in his works due to the fact that for a long time he was torn from it. Viktor Astafyev’s books are full of piercing pages about village childhood, which he has been extremely homesick for all his life.
"Theft"
This story became one of the first major works of Victor Astafiev. Left an orphan after the conclusion of his father and the tragic death of his mother, the future writer at the age of seven was on the street. And later - in the orphanage. Victor Astafiev survived the difficult years. Books, the list of which is quite extensive, are devoted to different stages of the writer’s life. They are interesting for both teenagers and people of the older generation.
In the story "Theft" the author embodied in the image of the teacher of the orphanage Repin the features of a man who forever remained an example for him. This man is Vasily Sokolov, a former White Guard who miraculously survived. He ended up in a small provincial town in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, where the boarding school was located, in which the future writer spent several years. In a larger city, an officer who fought under the command of Kolchak would not have survived.
Sokolov was the first truly cultured and educated person to meet on the way of Astafiev. While working as a teacher in an orphanage, he was always responsible for his duties and, most importantly, knew how to rise above his personal tragedy.
War and book
The books of Victor Astafiev tell readers about the war, the horrors of which the author had to know for the first time at eighteen. In his memoirs, the writer talked about how carefully he treated books in those years. He believed that they have a powerful effect on a person, and therefore, even in the most terrible troubles, reading saved him. Book and war are a strange combination that can hardly be understood by modern people who read little or no books at all. Young Astafyev indulged in reading even in the most inappropriate, unthinkable situations.
“War is booming somewhere”
The fate of the guys whom the war made adults ahead of time always interested in Victor Astafyev. They became his characters, he dedicated his books to them. After all, he is one of them. Before getting to the front, Victor, although he was a whole year far from the front line, lived only hopes and experiences. They were generated by the first defeats of the Soviet army.
The story “War is booming somewhere” is dedicated to young residents of Siberia who work on the railway in the first year of the war. And although their work is important, it becomes more and more difficult for them to be in the rear every day. First of all, because their young souls need a patriotic feat. They are sure that they would be more useful at the front than at the rear.
It was not easy to get used to the new difficult conditions for people evacuated to Siberia. There was no bombing, but there was a cold, hunger and disease. War is not only combat and hand-to-hand combat. She is everywhere. The books of Viktor Petrovich Astafiev are devoted to the all-consuming deadly power of war.
“Cursed and slain”
In his description of the war, Astafyev in his works attached great importance to the image of front-line life: hunger, cold, disorder, and the absence of basic amenities. Victor Astafyev filled his works with lively and terrible details. “Damned and killed. The second book. Bridgehead ”is a novel written several decades after the end of the war. But despite the old age, the military picture has many bright details. The author did not draw fictional idealized images of Soviet soldiers. Critics called portrayal of front-line life in the books Damned and Killed, unmerciful and extremely harsh. But hardly anyone could doubt the veracity of the “Astafiev’s war”.
In his books on the war, Astafyev spoke not only about the deaths of people. In what was happening, he saw the destruction of faith in the fact that this world of God. “Your judgment is blind and terrible,” the author’s voice is heard through the cries of the dying.
The writer was convinced of the immortality of human memory. The horrors of war cannot be forgotten by man. But only after many years can he rethink what is happening more deeply. The author of the novel Cursed and Killed, called the war "a crime against the human mind." And it was with this work that he drew a line under his thoughts on the most terrible and difficult period in the life of Soviet people.