The second volume of the epic novel by Mikhail Sholokhov tells about the civil war. It includes chapters about the Kornilov rebellion from the book Donshchina, which the writer began to write a year before The Quiet Flows the Don. This part of the work is precisely dated: the end of 1916 - April 1918.

The slogans of the Bolsheviks attracted the poor who wanted to be free masters on their land. But the civil war poses new questions for the protagonist Grigory Melekhov. Each side, white and red, seeks its own truth by killing each other. Once at the Reds,

Gregory sees cruelty, intransigence, thirst for the blood of enemies. War destroys everything: the well-established life of families, peaceful work, takes away the last, kills love. The heroes of Sholokhov, Grigory and Pyotr Melekhov, Stepan Astakhov, Koshevoy, almost the entire male population are drawn into battles, the meaning of which they do not understand. For whom and for what should they die in their prime? Life on the farm gives them a lot of joy, beauty, hopes, opportunities. War is only deprivation and death.

The Bolsheviks Shtokman and Bunchuk see the country exclusively as an arena of class battles, where people are like tin soldiers in someone else's game, where pity for a person is a crime. The burdens of war fall primarily on the shoulders of the civilian population, ordinary people; to starve and die - to them, not to the commissars. Bunchuk arranges lynching of Kalmykov, and in his defense he says: “They are us or we are them!.. There is no middle ground.” Hatred blinds, no one wants to stop and think, impunity unties hands. Grigory witnesses how Commissar Malkin sadistically mocks the population in the captured village. He sees terrible pictures of the robbery of the fighters of the Tiraspol detachment of the 2nd Socialist Army, who rob farms and rape women. As it is sung in an old song, you have become muddy, Father Quiet Don. Gregory understands that in fact, people who are distraught with blood are not looking for the truth, but a real turmoil is going on in the Don.

It is not by chance that Melekhov rushes between the two belligerents. Everywhere he encounters violence and cruelty, which he cannot accept. Podtelkov orders the execution of the prisoners, and the Cossacks, forgetting about military honor, cut down unarmed people. They carried out the order, but when Grigory realized that he was chopping down prisoners, he fell into a frenzy: “Whom did he hack!.. Brothers, I have no forgiveness! Cut to death, for God's sake ... mother God ... Death ... betray! Khristonya, dragging the “enraged” Melekhov away from Podtelkov, bitterly says: “Lord God, what is happening to people?” And the captain Shein, who has already understood the essence of what is happening, prophetically promises Podtelkov that "the Cossacks will wake up - and they will hang you." Mother reproaches Gregory for participating in the execution of captured sailors, but he himself admits how cruel he became in the war: “I don’t regret the child either.” Leaving the Reds, Grigory rushes to the Whites, where he sees the execution of Podtelkov. Melekhov tells him: “Do you remember under the Deep Battle? Do you remember how they shot officers?.. They shot at your order! A? Now you're burping! Well, don't worry! You are not the only one to tan other people's skins! You departed, chairman of the Don Council of People's Commissars!

War embitters and divides people. Gregory notices that the concepts of “brother”, “honor”, ​​“fatherland” disappear from consciousness. The strong community of Cossacks is disintegrating for centuries. Now - every man for himself and for his family. Koshevoy, using his power, decided to execute the local wealthy Miron Korshunov. Miron's son, Mitka, avenges his father and kills Koshevoy's mother. Koshevoy kills Pyotr Melekhov, his wife Daria shot Ivan Alekseevich. Koshevoy for the death of his mother is already taking revenge on the entire Tatarsky farm: leaving, he sets fire to "seven houses in a row." Blood is looking for blood.

Peering into the past, Sholokhov recreates the events of the Upper Don uprising. When the uprising began, Melekhov perked up, decided that now everything would change for the better: “We must fight those who want to take life, the right to it ...” Having nearly driven his horse, he rushes to fight the Reds. The Cossacks protested against the destruction of their way of life, but, striving for justice, they tried to solve the problem with aggression and conflict, which led to the opposite result. And here Gregory was disappointed. Attached to Budyonny's cavalry, Gregory does not find an answer to bitter questions. He says: "I'm tired of everything: both the revolution and the counter-revolution ... I want to live near my kids."

The writer shows that there can be no truth where there is death. The truth is one, it is not “red” or “white”. War kills the best. Realizing this, Gregory throws down his weapons and returns to his native farm to work on his native land, raise children. The hero is not yet 30 years old, but the war turned him into an old man, took away, burned out the best part of his soul from him. Sholokhov, in his immortal work, raises the question of the responsibility of history to the individual. The writer sympathizes with his hero, whose life is broken: “Like a steppe scorched by fires, the life of Gregory became black ...”

In the epic novel, Sholokhov created a grandiose historical canvas, describing in detail the events civil war on the Don. The writer became a national hero for the Cossacks, having created an artistic epic about the life of the Cossacks in a tragic time of historical change.

Other works on this topic:

1. The second volume of the epic novel by Mikhail Sholokhov tells about the civil war. It includes chapters about the Kornilov rebellion from the book "Donshchina", which the writer began to create in a year...
2. The civil war, in my opinion, is the most cruel and bloody war, because sometimes loved ones fight in it, who once lived in one whole, united country, ...
3. Soviet authority brought with it the worst thing that can happen in the history of the state - a civil war. A civil war is a war that goes on inside the country, ...
4. Epic novel by M. A. Sholokhov “ Quiet Don” is a book about the unhappy life of the Cossacks during the terrible bloody events that took place in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century....
5. Sholokhov imperiously entered the 20th century with his ideas, images and populated literature with living human characters. They came as if from life itself, still smoking with conflagrations...
6. Speaking about the work of M. Sholokhov, first of all, it should be said about the era in which the writer lived and worked, since social, social upheavals are almost ...

46. ​​Depiction of revolution and civil war in M. Bulgakov's novel "White Guard"

The novel action ends in 1925, and the work tells about the revolutionary events in Kyiv in the winter of 1918-1919. It tells about a very difficult time, when it was impossible to understand everything at once, to understand everything, to reconcile conflicting feelings and thoughts within themselves. This novel captures the still burning, burning memories of the city of Kyiv during the Civil War.

The White Guard (1925) is a work of fiction showing the inside of the White Army. These are warriors full of valor, honor, faithful to the duty of protecting Russia. They give their lives for Russia, its honor - as they understand it. Bulgakov appears as a tragic and romantic artist at the same time. The house of the Turbins, where there was so much warmth, tenderness, mutual understanding, is interpreted as a symbol of Russia. Bulgakov's heroes die defending their Russia.

The social cataclysm exposes the characters - someone runs, someone prefers death in battle.

The narration is complex and multifaceted: there is an objective narration, a fantastic, fairy-tale manner, lyrical essays. The composition is complex: the montage of various pieces: the history of the Turbin family, the change of power, the rampage of the elements during the civil war, battle scenes, the fate of individual heroes. The ring composition begins and ends with a premonition of the apocalypse, the symbolism of which permeates the entire novel. The bloody events of the civil war are depicted as the Last Judgment. The "end of the world" has come, but the Turbines continue to live on - their salvation, this is their home, the hearth that Elena looks after, it is not in vain that the old life, the details (up to the mother's service) are emphasized.

Through the fate of the Turbins, B opens up the drama of the revolution and the civil war. The problem of moral choice in the play: Alexey - either to remain faithful to the oath, or to save the lives of people, he chooses lives: “Tear off your shoulder straps, throw your rifles and immediately go home!”. Human life is the highest value. B. took the revolution of 17 not only as a turning point in the history of Russia, but also in the fate of the Russian intelligentsia. In The White Guard, the largely autobiographical intelligent family of the Turbins is drawn into the events of the civil war. The main distinguishing feature of the novel is that the events of the revolution are maximally humanized in it. B's departure from the negative portrayal of the white movement brought accusations against the writer of trying to justify the white movement. For B, the house of the Turbins is the embodiment of that R, which is dear to him. G. Adamovich noted that the author showed his heroes in "misfortunes and defeats." The events of the revolution in the novel are "humanized to the maximum." “This was especially noticeable against the background of the familiar image of the “revolutionary masses” in the works of A. Serafimovich, B. Pilnyak, A. Bely and others,” Muromsky wrote.

The main theme is a historical catastrophe. B connects the personal with the socio-historical, puts the fate of an individual in connection with the fate of the country. Pushkin's principle of depiction is tradition - historical events through the fate of individuals. The death of the City is like the collapse of an entire civilization. The rejection of the methods of revolutionary violence in order to create a society of social harmony, the condemnation of the fratricidal war is expressed in the images of the prophetic dream of Alexei Turbin, in which the sergeant-major Zhilin, who died in 1916 along with a squadron of hussars, appears to him, and talks about paradise, in which he ended up and about the events of civil war. The image of paradise, in a cat there is a place for everyone, they are “lonely killed” and white and red. It is no coincidence that in the prophetic dream of Alexei Turbin, the Lord says to the deceased Zhilin: "All of you, Zhilin, are the same - killed in the battlefield."

The turning point for the Turbins and other heroes of the novel is December 14, 1918, the battle with the Petliura troops, which was supposed to be a test of strength before subsequent battles with the Red Army, but turned into a defeat, a rout. This is the turning point and climax of the novel. A hunch flashes that everything is a chain of mistakes and delusions, that the duty is not to protect the collapsed monarchy and the traitor hetman, and honor is in something else. Tsarist Russia is dying, but Russia is alive...

One of the play's comical characters, Zhytomyr's cousin Larion, delivers an exalted monologue: "... My fragile ship was battered by the waves of the civil war for a long time... Until it was washed up in this harbor with cream curtains, among the people that I liked so much...". Bulgakov saw the ideal in preserving the "cream curtain harbor", even though time had turned. Bulgakov clearly saw the Bolsheviks as a better alternative to the Petliura freemen and believed that the intellectuals who had survived the fire of the civil war should, reluctantly, come to terms with the Soviet regime. However, at the same time, one should preserve the dignity and inviolability of the inner spiritual world,

"White Guard" lies entirely in line with the traditions of Russian classical realistic prose. The society is depicted on the eve of its death. The task of the artist is to depict the dramatic reality of the real world as authentically as possible. Artistic means were not needed here.

A novel about historical upheaval. Bulgakov succeeded in portraying what Blok once foresaw, only without romantic pathos. There is no distance between the author and his hero - one of the main features of the work (although the novel is written in 3rd person). Psychologically, it does not exist, because. depicted the death of that part of society to which the author belongs, and he merges with his hero.

The only depoliticized novel about revolution and civil war. In other works, the confrontation of the parties was depicted everywhere, there was always a problem of choice. Sometimes the psychological complexity of the choice was demonstrated, sometimes the right to make a mistake. Complexity was required, the right to make mistakes too. An exception - perhaps, "Quiet Don".

Bulgakov portrays what is happening as a universal tragedy, with no choice. The very fact of the revolution for the artist is an act of destruction of that social environment to which the author and characters belong. The White Guard is a novel about the end of life. The destruction of the environment necessarily entails the destruction of the meaning of existence. Physically, a person can be saved, but it will be a different person. The attitude of the author to what is happening is open. The last episode is symbolic: a picture close to the apocalypse is what the city expects. Final scene: night, city, freezing sentinel, he sees a red star - Mars - this is an apocalyptic picture.

The novel begins with a quiet bell ringing, and ends with a funeral, universal thunder of bells. (sic!) which heralds the death of the city.

M. Bulgakov's novel The White Guard (1922-1924) reflects the events of the civil war of the period 1918-1919. in his hometown of Kyiv. Bulgakov considers these events not from class or political positions, but from purely human ones. Whoever seizes the city - the hetman, the Petliurists or the Bolsheviks - blood inevitably flows, hundreds of people die in agony, while others become even more terribly hardened. Violence breeds more violence. This is what worries the writer the most.

The central image is the House, a symbol of the native hearth. Having gathered the heroes in the house on the eve of Christmas, the author thinks about the possible fate of both the characters themselves and the whole of Russia. “The year was great and terrible after the Nativity of Christ 1918, from the beginning of the second revolution ...” - this is how the novel begins, which tells about the fate of the Turbin family. They live in Kyiv, on Alekseevsky Spusk. Young people - Alexei, Elena, Nikolka - were left without parents. But they have a Home that contains not just things, but a way of life, traditions, inclusion in the national life. The Turbin House was erected on the "stone of faith" in Russia, Orthodoxy, the tsar, and culture. And so the House and the revolution became enemies. The Revolution came into conflict with the old House in order to leave children without faith, without a roof, without culture and destitute.

A Fiat light machine-gun armored car built by the Izhora plant and a Garford heavy machine-gun armored car built by the Putilov plant on Theater Square in Moscow. The picture was taken in July 1918 during the suppression of the uprising of the Left SRs. On the right side of the frame, on the building of the Shelaputinsky Theater (in 1918 it housed the K. Nezlobin Theater, and now the Russian Academic Youth Theater) you can read a poster with the title of the play "The King of the Jews", the author of which was Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich Romanov, cousin uncle of Nicholas II.

A soldier or commander of the Red Army with a badge of the 1918 model on his overcoat. The caption on the back of the photo: Filmed on December 26th of the new style of 1918. HELL. Tarasov. active army.

Members of one of the armed groups during the Civil War, presumably the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine under the command of Nestor Makhno. The soldier on the far right has a belt with a spin of the Russian Imperial Army turned upside down on his belt.

Photos of the victims of the Red Terror in Russia during the Civil War and their executioners.
Attention! Shock content! Not to look nervous!


A corpse found in the courtyard of the Kherson Cheka.
Head chopped off, right leg broken, body burned

Mutilated corpses of victims of the Kherson Cheka

Village headman in the Kherson province E.V. Marchenko,
tortured in the Cheka

The corpses of the tortured at one of the stations of the Kherson province.
The heads and limbs of the victims were mutilated.

The corpse of Colonel Franin, tortured in the Kherson Cheka
in Tulipov's house on Bogorodskaya street,
where was the Kherson emergency

Corpses of hostages found in the Kherson Cheka
in the basement of Tulipov's house

Captain Fedorov with signs of torture on his hands.
On the left hand is a trace of a bullet wound received during torture.
At the last minute he managed to escape from the execution.
Below are photographs of instruments of torture,
depicted by Fedorov

Skin found in the basement of the Kharkov Cheka,
torn from the hands of victims with a metal comb
and special forceps

Skin flayed from victims' limbs
in the house of Rabinovich on the street. Lomonosov in Kherson,
where the Kherson emergency was tortured

Executioner - N.M. Demyshev.
Chairman of the Executive Committee of Evpatoria,
one of the organizers of the red "St. Bartholomew's Night".
Executed by the Whites after the liberation of Evpatoria

The executioner is Kebabchants, nicknamed "bloody".
Deputy Chairman of the Evpatoria Executive Committee,
participant of the "St. Bartholomew's Night".
Executed by whites

Woman executioner - Varvara Grebennikova (Nemich).
In January 1920, she sentenced officers to death
and the "bourgeoisie" aboard the steamship "Romania".
Executed by whites

Executioners.
Participants of Bartholomew's Night
in Evpatoria and executions on the "Romania".
Executed by whites

Executioners of the Kherson Cheka

Dora Evlinskaya, under 20 years old, female executioner,
executed in the Odessa Cheka with her own hands 400 officers

Saenko Stepan Afanasyevich,
commandant of the concentration camp in Kharkov

Corpses of hostages shot in Kharkov prison

Kharkiv. Corpses of hostages who died under Bolshevik torture

Kharkiv. The corpses of tortured female hostages.
Second left - S. Ivanova, owner of a small shop.
Third from the left - A.I. Karolskaya, wife of a colonel.
Fourth - L. Khlopkova, landowner.
All have their breasts cut open and husked alive,
the genitals were burned and coals were found in them

Kharkiv. The body of the hostage lieutenant Bobrov,
to whom the executioners cut off the tongue, chopped off the hands
and removed the skin along the left leg

Kharkov, court of the emergency.
The corpse of the hostage I. Ponomarenko, a former telegraph operator.
The right hand is chopped off. Several deep incisions across the chest.
There are two more corpses in the background.

Corpse of hostage Ilya Sidorenko,
the owner of a fashion store in the city of Sumy.
The dead man's arms are broken, his ribs are broken,
sexual organs were cut.
Tortured in Kharkov

Station Snegirevka, near Kharkov.
The corpse of a tortured woman.
No clothes were found on the body.
Head and shoulders were cut off
(during the opening of the grave, they were never found)

Kharkiv. The corpses of the dead, dumped in a cart

Kharkiv. The corpses of those tortured in the Cheka

Yard of the Kharkiv Gubchek (Sadovaya street, 5)
with the corpses of the executed

concentration camp in Kharkov. Tortured to death

Kharkiv. Photograph of the head of Archimandrite Rodion,
Spassovsky Monastery, scalped by the Bolsheviks

Excavations of one of the mass graves
near the building of the Kharkov Cheka

Kharkiv. Excavations of a mass grave
with the victims of the red terror

Farmers I. Afanasiuk and S. Prokopovich,
scalped alive. At the neighbor, I. Afanasyuk,
on the body there are traces of burns of a hot checker

The bodies of three hostage workers from a factory on strike.
The middle one, A. Ivanenko, has burnt eyes,
cut off lips and nose. Others have their hands cut off

The corpse of an officer killed by the Reds

Bodies of four peasant hostages
(Bondarenko, Plokhikh, Levenets and Sidorchuk).
The faces of the dead are terribly cut.
The genitals were mutilated in a special savage way.
The doctors conducting the examination expressed the opinion that
that such a technique should be known only
Chinese executioners and according to the degree of pain
exceeds all human imagination

On the left is the corpse of the hostage S. Mikhailov,
grocery store clerk
apparently hacked to death with a saber.
In the middle is the body of a man hacked to death with ramrods,
with a broken lower back, teacher Petrenko.
On the right is the corpse of Agapov, with twisted
previously described genital torture

The corpse of a 17-18-year-old boy,
with a cut side and a mutilated face

Permian. Georgievskaya station.
The body of a woman.
three fingers right hand compressed for baptism

Yakov Chus, a seriously wounded Cossack,
abandoned by the retreating White Guard.
Approached red doused with gasoline
and burned alive

Siberia. Yenisei province.
Officer Ivanov, tortured to death

Siberia. Yenisei province.
The corpses of tortured victims of the Bolshevik terror.
In the Soviet encyclopedia
"Civil War and Military Intervention in the USSR" (M., 1983, p. 264)
this photograph, from a slightly different angle, is given as an example
"Victims of Kolchakism" in Siberia in 1919

Dr. Belyaev, Czech.
Brutally killed in Verkhneudinsk.
The photograph shows a severed hand
and a disfigured face

Yeniseisk. Captured Cossack officer
brutally murdered by the Reds (legs, hands and head burned)

The victim's legs were broken before death.

Odessa. Reburial of victims from mass graves,
excavated after the departure of the Bolsheviks

Pyatigorsk, 1919. Excavations of mass graves
with the corpses of hostages executed by the Bolsheviks in 1918

Pyatigorsk, 1919.
Reburial of the victims of the Bolshevik terror.
memorial service

15 July 2013, 15:31

Dmitry Shmarin

"Self-portrait against the background of the painting "Decossackization"

Dmitry Alexandrovich Shmarin was born in Moscow in 1967, his father is a native Muscovite, his mother comes from a family of Kuban Cossacks. After graduating from the children's art school and the Moscow Art School at the Surikov Institute, in 1985 Dmitry entered the Moscow State Academic Art Institute. IN AND. Surikov. The theme of the tragedy of the Cossacks permeated all his work.

"Decossackization"

By order of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of January 24, 1919, on the total destruction of the Cossacks, the Bolsheviks began to exterminate the Cossack class in cold blood, starting with the Don villages. Unable to withstand the abuse, the Cossacks rebelled, but the uprising was crushed with monstrous cruelty. In the early spring of 1919, executions were carried out in the villages of Veshenskaya and Kazanskaya. Cossacks were beaten out by families, from men capable of holding weapons to unintelligent children. Together with the Cossacks, the stanitsa priests were also killed. To carry out the bloody order, detachments of Chinese and Latvians were called in as executioners of the Russian people, and criminals did not disdain the authorities. Dmitry Shmarin chose the terrible moment of the Cossacks in the face of death as the plot for his painting "Decossackization". Worthy humility before the will of God is no less striking than the stern courage in standing up for the truth of the people represented on the canvas. Against the background of the ghostly gray undead - the Bolshevik executioners, the white shirts of the condemned martyrs shine brightly, the cornflower blue skirt of the Cossack woman, sobbing on her husband's shoulder, burns blue. In the distance, in a transparent haze, emphasizing the tragic and solemn peace, the domes of the stanitsa church quietly glow, bright huts doze peacefully, the Don steppe spreads widely. Everything is frozen ... In work

"For Holy Rus'" the image of the "white knights" hurts the heart - Russian children, teenagers, along with adults who have joined the battle ranks.

"Prayer before the road"

"Ice Camp"

"The Whites Came"

"Shooting of Whites in Crimea"

"Farewell. Autumn"

Dmitry Belyukin

Dmitry Belyukin was born in Moscow in 1962, the son of the famous artist, book illustrator Anatoly Ivanovich Belyukin. After graduating from the Moscow Art School. Surikov in 1980, entered the Moscow State Art Institute. V. I. Surikov at the Faculty of Painting, a portrait workshop (supervisor - Professor I. S. Glazunov). Art historians call Dmitry Belyukin an artist of big themes. Perhaps it would not be an exaggeration to say - the main topics. After all, in his works he reflects on the meaning of life and history, tries to look into the future of Russia through its past... At the age of 50, Dmitry Belyukin was awarded the highest regalia for a Russian artist, his exhibitions are a success, reproductions from paintings are published on book covers, in history textbooks. A permanent gallery of his works has been opened in Moscow. And most importantly - no one can reproach him for the fact that for all the years of his work he has at least somewhat changed his original creed.

Excerpt from the interview:

- Your father in the 1990s wrote the series “Gallery of Ancestors”, it also contains a portrait of his grandfather, your great-grandfather Sergei Kuzmich Belyukin from the village of Korablinka, Serebryanoprudsky district, Ryazan (now Moscow) region. It seems to me that this stern old man with delicate features reflects character traits your kind...

- Maybe. There was a large family, educated peasants, who, probably, Pyotr Arkadevich Stolypin would have been happy with ... They subscribed to agricultural magazines, bought equipment. My father often reminisced about his rural childhood. He could easily cut out a pipe or towns for me. In order to drink water from a spring in the forest, we made a ladle from birch bark, which we then left on the nearest tree for others.

And now there is not only our house in the village of Korablinka, there is no village itself. The 20th century wiped it off the face of the earth ...

Some works of Dmitry Belyukin:

Cossack Dry

"Esaul Kostrykin and Biplane"

"Evacuation of the Kornilovites from the Crimea"

"Exodus"

Fragment of the painting "Exodus"

"Shards"

Artist Ivan Vladimirov (1869 - 1947) the author of the famous painting “Lenin and Stalin in Razliv” is also known for his watercolor sketches of the socialist revolution. He made them in 1917 from nature, what he saw with his own eyes.
Here it is shown how the revolutionary masses organize a pogrom in the Winter Palace:

And here - the proletarians are robbing a wine warehouse:

Local priest and landowner in front of a revolutionary court. Soon they will be executed:

The Bolsheviks seize bread from the peasants:

February 1917, the arrest of the White Guard generals:

An agitator in the village with a portrait of Trotsky in his hands, this is how the masses were fooled:

Pavel Ryzhenko

Pavel Ryzhenko (born in 1970) is a graduate and teacher of the Russian Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. He writes in the style of "classical Russian realism". His teacher Ilya Glazunov says that "Pavel Ryzhenko is a talented artist passionate in his work, he has a great future." About his work, Ryzhenko himself says: “I invite people to take another look at our ambiguous past, full of tragic events, in which the great spirit of our people was fully manifested. To understand that we are not a gray mass, not the so-called "electorate", but a people with a rich history and self-consciousness. I want to believe that I offer people an alternative to the mass, "tinsel" culture, which makes us forget about the main issues of life.

"Farewell to shoulder straps"

Ryzhenko's painting is not just talentedly painted pictures. These are armor-piercing shells that destroy the indifference to great history Russia. These are heavy bells, awakening in us the desire to make ourselves better. Ryzhenko's paintings are an expression of his inner powerful spirit, an ardent and uncompromising desire, as he himself says, "to see Russia strong and free from sin."

"Farewell of the Sovereign with the troops"

One of the most famous works Pavel Ryzhenko - a triptych dedicated to the tragic fate of Emperor Nicholas II and his family, which includes the paintings "Farewell of the Sovereign to the troops", "Imprisonment in Tsarskoye Selo" and "Ipatiev House after the murder royal family". In "Farewell of the Sovereign ..." the artist with amazing psychologism managed to convey all the tragedy of the moment. Headquarters in Mogilev. Here, a few days ago, Nikolai Romanov was the autocrat of all Russia, the ruler great empire. And, now, he returned here, having abdicated the throne, he returned not as an Emperor already, but as a colonel Romanov, he returned to say goodbye to the troops dear to his heart. Bent down, he walks along their silent row, looking into the eyes of everyone, looking for either support or forgiveness in them ... And for the last time they salute their Tsar, whom they are not destined to see again. A terrible, irreparable disaster is moving towards Russia. Rolling along it, according to Solzhenitsyn's definition, is a fatal red wheel ... Moloch is launched, and it cannot be stopped already. Russia has stepped into the abyss, and soon it will engulf it, and the Sovereign, and the troops loyal to him ... And this atmosphere of an impending, accelerating catastrophe is conveyed by the February blizzard depicted in the picture. Like smoke, the sky is shrouded in mist, the wind bends the trees, rinses the banners, lifts snow flakes and throws them into the faces of the Russian soldiers and the Russian Tsar, sweeps them away, blinds the eyes ... With his abdication, the Sovereign finally opened the doors of the Empire for the frantic February winds that now roamed on her open spaces. And these winds will soon blow Great Russia off the face of the earth...

"Imprisonment in Tsarskoe Selo"

"Ipatiev House after the regicide"

Approximately to the same fatal years for the Russian land is the painting by Pavel Ryzhenko "Wreath", striking in its deep, inescapable sadness, penetrating into the very soul and causing in it a strange, inexplicable longing and bitterness of loss ...

The picture shows early spring. The snow has hardly melted, and that is why the whole earth resembles a swamp. The trees are shrouded in a light greenish haze. Behind their branches looms a gray, rainy sky, dull and mournful. It seems that all nature is crying at this moment, sympathizing with the soldier who came from the front. He survived in a terrible war, reached home, wounded, and there was no one here. No one expects a hero... And a soldier came to the churchyard, bowed to his native grave, shed a mean tear... He remembered the past peaceful years, remembered how he left here to defend native land how he said goodbye to the one that now rests in this swampy cemetery. The soldier remembered a lot. He thought to say “hello” to his dear person, but he has to say goodbye again, now forever ... Who rests under this gray wooden cross with a wreath of yellow flowers? Is the mother of a soldier? Or a wife? We will not know this... We can only see the endless sorrow of the hero who came from the war, and mourn with him...

The plot of the painting "Umbrella" is dramatic and touching to tears:

"Umbrella"

What else can touch the soul of a sinner-killer, yesterday's sailor from the battleship "Gangut"? Perhaps the absurdity of the situation and the poignant insecurity of the girl who opened her umbrella over her murdered mother? Why should he shoot the girl? But the brave sailor slid down the wall and sank into the snow. He did not have the strength to raise his rifle, and a powerful hand hung from his knee. He is confused. Will he come to realize what he has done? And what will become of him then?

And a few more works but by different artists dedicated to this topic.

Oleg Ozhogin "Officer"

Y. Repin "Portrait of Vasily Mikhailovich Maksimov"

V. Miroshnichenko. Pyotr Nikolaevich Wrangel

R.V. Bylinskaya. Alexander Vasilievich Kolchak

D. Trofimov. Anton Ivanovich Denikin

Ilya Glazunov "The destruction of the temple on Easter night"