The novel was originally planned to be published in the magazine New world"in the mid-1960s. However, in those years the book was never officially published in the Soviet Union. A little later, the novel began to be published in samizdat and distributed throughout the USSR. In addition, the book was published in other countries in Russian and in translations. The novel became one of A. Solzhenitsyn's greatest literary successes. The work becomes the basis for awarding the author Nobel Prize. In 1990, the novel was officially published in the Soviet Union in the New World magazine.
The action takes place in the hospital at the Tashkent clinic medical institute(TashMi). The thirteenth (“cancer”) building gathered people affected by one of the most terrible diseases, undefeated by humanity to the end. Having no other activities, patients spend their time doing numerous disputes about ideology, life and death. Each inhabitant of the gloomy building has his own fate and his own way out of this terrible place: some are discharged home to die, others are improved, others are transferred to other departments.
Characteristics
Oleg Kostoglotov
The main character of the novel is a former front-line soldier. Kostoglotov (or as his comrades in misfortune call him, Ogloed) went to prison and was then sentenced to eternal exile in Kazakhstan. Kostoglotov does not consider himself dying. He does not trust “scientific” medicine, preferring it folk remedies. Ogloed is 34 years old. He once dreamed of becoming an officer and getting higher education. However, none of his wishes came true. He was not accepted as an officer, and he will no longer go to college, since he considers himself too old to study. Kostoglotov likes the doctor Vera Gangart (Vega) and the nurse Zoya. Ogloed is full of desire to live and take everything from life.
Informer Rusanov
Before being admitted to the hospital, a patient named Rusanov held a “responsible” position. He was an adherent of the Stalinist system and made more than one denunciation in his life. Rusanov, like Ogloed, does not intend to die. He dreams of a decent pension, which he has earned through his hard “work.” The former informer doesn't like the hospital he ended up in. A person like him, Rusanov believes, should undergo treatment in better conditions.
Demka is one of the youngest patients in the ward. The boy has experienced a lot in his 16 years. His parents separated because his mother became a bitch. There was no one to raise Demka. He became an orphan with living parents. The boy dreamed of getting on his own feet and getting a higher education. The only joy in Demka’s life was football. But it was his favorite sport that took away his health. After being hit in the leg by a ball, the boy developed cancer. The leg had to be amputated.
But this could not break the orphan. Demka continues to dream of higher education. He perceives the loss of his leg as a blessing. After all, now he won’t have to waste time on sports and dance floors. The state will pay the boy a lifelong pension, which means he will be able to study and become a writer. Demka met his first love, Asenka, in the hospital. But both Asenka and Demka understand that this feeling will not continue beyond the walls of the “cancer” building. The girl's breasts were amputated, and life lost all meaning for her.
Efrem Podduvaev
Ephraim worked as a builder. Once a terrible illness had already “let go” of him. Podduvaev is confident that this time everything will work out. Shortly before his death, he read a book by Leo Tolstoy, which made him think about many things. Ephraim is discharged from the hospital. After some time he was gone.
Vadim Zatsyrko
Geologist Vadim Zatsyrko also has a great thirst for life. Vadim was always afraid of only one thing - inaction. And now he has been in the hospital for a month. Zatsyrko is 27 years old. He's too young to die. At first, the geologist tries to ignore death, continuing to work on a method for determining the presence of ores from radioactive waters. Then self-confidence begins to gradually leave him.
Alexey Shulubin
Librarian Shulubin managed to tell a lot in his life. In 1917 he became a Bolshevik, then participated in civil war. He had no friends, his wife died. Shulubin had children, but they had long forgotten about his existence. The illness became the last step towards loneliness for the librarian. Shulubin doesn't like to talk. He's much more interested in listening.
Character prototypes
Some of the novel's characters had prototypes. The prototype of the doctor Lyudmila Dontsova was Lydia Dunaeva, head of the radiation department. The author named the treating doctor Irina Meike as Vera Gangart in his novel.
The “cancer” corps united a huge number different people with different destinies. Perhaps they would never have met outside the walls of this hospital. But then something appeared that united them - a disease from which it is not always possible to recover even in the progressive twentieth century.
Cancer made people equal of different ages having different social status. The disease behaves in the same way with both the high-ranking Rusanov and the former prisoner Ogloed. Cancer does not spare those who have already been offended by fate. Left without parental care, Demka loses his leg. Forgotten by his loved ones, librarian Shulubin will not have a happy old age. Disease rids society of the old and infirm, without anyone the right people. But why then does she take the young, beautiful, full of life and plans for the future? Why should a young geologist leave this world before reaching the age of thirty, without having time to give humanity what he wanted? Questions remain unanswered.
Only when they found themselves far from the hustle and bustle of everyday life did the inhabitants of the “cancer” building finally have the opportunity to think about the meaning of life. All their lives these people strived for something: they dreamed of higher education, family happiness, about having time to create something. Some patients, such as Rusanov, were not too picky about the methods they used to achieve their goals. But the moment came when all successes, achievements, sorrows and joys ceased to have any meaning. On the threshold of death, the tinsel of existence loses its luster. And only then does a person understand that the main thing in his life was life itself.
The novel contrasts 2 methods of cancer treatment: scientific, in which Dr. Dontsova unconditionally believes, and folk, which Kostoglotov prefers. IN post-revolutionary years The confrontation between official and traditional medicine has become especially aggravated. Oddly enough, even by the middle of the century, doctor’s prescriptions could not overcome “grandmother’s” recipes. Space flights and scientific and technological progress have not destroyed the faith of many people in witchcraft prayers.
The secret of traditional medicine is that it treats not the disease, but the patient, while official, “scientific” medicine is strenuously trying to influence the disease. The treatment proposed by the doctor kills the cancer cells, at the same time killing the person himself. Having gotten rid of cancer, the patient gets new health problems. Traditional medicine invites people to return to nature and themselves, to believe in own strength, capable of providing greater healing than any modern medicine.
It’s scary to touch the work of a great genius, a Nobel Prize laureate, a man about whom so much has been said, but I can’t help but write about his story “ Cancer building" - a work to which he gave, albeit a small, part of his life, which they tried to deprive him of for many years. But he clung to life and endured all the hardships of the concentration camps, all their horror; he cultivated within himself his own views on what was happening around him, not borrowed from anyone; He outlined these views in his story.
One of its themes is that, no matter what a person is, good or bad, highly educated or, conversely, uneducated; no matter what position he occupies, when almost incurable disease, he ceases to be a high-ranking official, turns into an ordinary person who just wants to live. Solzhenitsyn described life in the cancer ward, the most terrible of hospitals, where people doomed to death lie. Along with describing a person’s struggle for life, for the desire to simply coexist without pain, without torment, Solzhenitsyn, always and under any circumstances distinguished by his thirst for life, raised many problems. Their circle is quite wide: from the meaning of life, the relationship between a man and a woman to the purpose of literature.
Solzhenitsyn pushes people together in one of the wards different nationalities, professions committed to different ideas. One of these patients was Oleg Kostoglotov, an exile ex-convict, and to others - Rusanov, the complete opposite of Kostoglotov: a party leader, “a valuable worker, an honored person,” devoted to the party. By showing the events first through the eyes of Rusanov, and then through the perception of Kostoglotov, Solzhenitsyn made it clear that power would gradually change, that the Rusanovs with their “questionnaire management”, with their methods of various warnings, would cease to exist, and the Kostoglotovs would live, who did not accept such concepts as “remains of bourgeois consciousness” and “social origin”. Solzhenitsyn wrote the story, trying to show different views on life: both from the point of view of Bega, and from the point of view of Asya, Dema, Vadim and many others. In some ways their views are similar, in others they diverge. But mainly Solzhenitsyn wants to show the wrongness of those who think, like Rusanov’s daughter, Rusanov himself. They are used to looking for people somewhere downstairs; think only about yourself, without thinking about others. Kostoglotov is an exponent of Solzhenitsyn’s ideas; through Oleg’s arguments with the ward, through his conversations in the camps, he reveals the paradoxical nature of life, or rather, the fact that there was no meaning in such a life, just as there is no meaning in the literature that Avieta extols. According to her, sincerity in literature is harmful. “Literature is to entertain us when we are in a bad mood,” says Avieta, not realizing that literature is truly a teacher of life. And if you have to write about what should be, then it means there will never be truth, since no one can say exactly what will happen. But not everyone can see and describe what exists, and it is unlikely that Avieta will be able to imagine even a hundredth part of the horror when a woman ceases to be a woman, but becomes a workhorse, which subsequently cannot have children. Zoya reveals to Kostoglotov the full horror of hormone therapy; and the fact that he is deprived of the right to continue himself horrifies him: “First I was deprived of my own life. Now they are depriving them of the right... to continue themselves. To whom and why will I be now?.. The worst of freaks! For mercy?.. For alms?..” And no matter how much Efrem, Vadim, Rusanov argue about the meaning of life, no matter how much they talk about it, for everyone it will remain the same - to leave someone behind. Kostoglotov went through everything, and it left its mark on his value system, on his concept of life.
The fact that Solzhenitsyn spent a long time in the camps also influenced his language and style of writing the story. But the work only benefits from this, since everything that he writes about becomes accessible to the person, he is, as it were, transported to the hospital and he himself takes part in everything that happens. But it is unlikely that any of us will be able to fully understand Kostoglotov, who sees a prison everywhere, tries to find and finds a camp approach in everything, even in the zoo. The camp has crippled his life, and he understands that he is unlikely to be able to start old life that the way back is closed to him. And millions more like them lost people thrown out into the vastness of the country, people who, communicating with those who did not touch the camp, understand that there will always be a wall of misunderstanding between them, just as Lyudmila Afanasyevna Kostoglotova did not understand.
We mourn that these people, who were crippled by life, disfigured by the regime, who showed such an insatiable thirst for life, endured terrible suffering, are now forced to endure rejection from society. They have to give up the life to which they have strived for so long, which they deserve.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn's oncology treatment in Tashkent in 1954 was reflected in the novel “Cancer Ward.”
The novel became famous thanks to samizdat and foreign publications in Russian and in translations in Western publishing houses.
The novel was one of the reasons why Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize. "New World" published the work only in 1990.
Storyline and main characters of the work
The action takes place within the walls of the 13th oncology building of the city hospital at the Tashkent Medical Institute.
A terrible fate controls the destinies of the main characters, sending some to die, others seem to be discharged from the hospital with improvement or transferred to other departments.
Before fate, everyone is equal, and the schoolboy Demka, a boy with an adult look, and Kostoglotov, a front-line hero and former prisoner, and Pavel Rusanov, an employee, a professional personnel officer and a secret informer.
The main event in the book is the contrast between the heroes of the writer himself, depicted in the work under the name Oleg Kostoglotov, and the former informer Rusanov, both of them are on the verge of death and both are fighting for life at a time when the seemingly indestructible Stalinist machine is collapsing.
Vadim Zatsyrko standing on the threshold between life and death and despite everything, working on scientific work, the result of his entire life, although a month in a hospital bed no longer gives him confidence that he can die a hero who has accomplished a feat.
Lonely librarian Alexei Shubin, who despises his own silent life, but nevertheless defends socialist ideas of morality and other seemingly completely different ideas in his dispute with Kostoglotov. ordinary people thinking about their lives and their own moral behavior. All of them are in constant dispute and wage their struggle with each other and with the disease, and with their own morality and soul.
The main thing in the book
The story is scary, unusually poignant, the characters are literally balancing on the brink of everyday life and their own hopelessness. It does not matter when and where the action takes place, what is important is what is going on in the heads of hospital patients who are on the verge of death, what is happening in the soul, how the body is tormented, and how to exist with all this. The author focuses on the feelings of the characters, their fears of a state of doom, where hope for a miracle and recovery barely glimmers. What’s next, and then that’s it, period, the reader himself figures out the end of the heroes’ fate.
Having read this book, I want to destroy it, just so as not to bring upon myself and my loved ones the misfortunes that dominate the work, and, probably, it is better not to touch it at all, the book is too terrible. In addition to all these experiences in the book, there is also a second bottom; the work makes a sharp comparison of the doom of cancer patients with those under investigation, victims of a. And a seemingly cured illness and suddenly gained freedom can turn out to be an unexpected side for a person, and the illness, and the arrest along with the investigation can come back.
In addition to all this seemingly hopeless, painful moral experience, the book does not forget the theme of love, the love of a man for a woman, a doctor for his difficult work for his patients. The author to his heroes, so recognizable and so extraordinary. The story makes it clear life meaning, raises questions of good and evil, truth and lies. The book teaches the concept of the value of life, teaches to bear responsibility.
There are questions that are awkward to ask, especially in public. So at some point I asked myself a stupid question: why was “Cancer Ward” written? The question is doubly stupid. Firstly, because any real work of art is created for one reason: the artist cannot help but create it. And secondly, Solzhenitsyn explained everything in some detail about the Cancer Ward. Eat it diary entry 1968 - “Corpus” had already been written by this time. It is from the so-called R-17 diary, which has not yet been published in full, but fragments of it have been published. These fragments were used in Vladimir Radzishevsky’s comments to “Cancer Ward” in Solzhenitsyn’s 30-volume collection.
The idea for the story “Two Cancers” arose in 1954. This meant the cancer of a former prisoner and the cancer of a functionary, a party worker, a prosecutor, with whom Solzhenitsyn was not in bed at the same time. He suffered that illness a year earlier and was known to the future author of “Cancer Ward” only from the stories of his neighbors in this very sad institution. Then he writes that on the day of discharge he had a different plot - “Tales of Love and Illness.” And they didn’t connect right away. “Only 8-9 years later, already before the appearance of Ivan Denisovich, both plots came together - and Cancer Ward was born. I started it in January 1963, but it might not have taken place; it suddenly seemed insignificant, on the same line as “For the good of the cause”…”.
It must be said that Solzhenitsyn seemed to like this story least of all that he wrote. Fair or not is another matter.
“...I hesitated and wrote “DPD”, but completely abandoned “RK”. Then somehow “The Right Hand” came out - a wonderful Tashkent “oncological” story. “It was necessary to create a desperate situation after the seizure of the archive, so that in 1966 I would simply forced(Sol-zhenitsyn italics this word for himself. — Approx. lecturer) was for tactical reasons, purely tactical: sit down at the “RK”, do open thing, and even (in haste) in two echelons.” This means that the first part was sent to the editors of Novy Mir when the second had not yet been completed. “Cancer Ward” was written so that they would see that I had something - such a purely tactical move. We need to create some kind of appearance. For what? What does Cancer Corps cover? “Cancer building” covers the final stage of work on “Archi-pe-lag”.
Work on a summary book about Soviet camps began a long time ago. But the peak time for working on “Archipelago,” as we know, was from 1965 to 1966 and from 1966 to 1967, when Solzhenitsyn went to Estonia to the farm of his friends, naturally in the camp. And it was there in Shelter, as it was later called in the book “The Calf Butted an Oak Tree,” that “Archipelago” was written in quite such Spartan conditions. The Corps is covering it up.
That's it. Tactics are tactics. But something here, in my opinion, remains unsettled. Perhaps Solzhenitsyn himself did not need to negotiate this. Of course, in 1963 Solzhenitsyn began writing and left Corpus. In 1964, he even made a special trip to Tashkent to talk with his doctors and delve into the matter. But strong work began at the same time, literally in parallel to “Archipelago”. No, he wrote this at a different time of the year, so to speak, in different conditions, in an open field. But these things went in parallel.
And there is some very deep meaning. We know that Solzhenitsyn did not intend to publish “Archipelago” right away. Moreover, its publication at the turn of 1973-1974 was forced: it was associated with the KGB seizure of the manuscript, the death of Voronyanskaya This refers to the suicide (according to the official version) of Elizaveta Voronyanskaya, Solzhenitsyn’s assistant and typist and the secret keeper of some of his manuscripts., with all these terrible circumstances - when he gave the command to print. In principle, he intended this publication later. Even in the situation of confrontation in the late 1960s - early 1970s with the authorities, and not only out of the instinct of self-preservation, Solzhenitsyn believed that this book’s turn had not yet come. It will be too powerful blast wave, and God knows what will happen here.
And while breathing out and building this, he simultaneously wrote “Cancer Ward,” a book that made it possible to take the path of reconciliation. Not oblivion of the past, but reconciliation, repentance and human conversation, including not in last resort with power. That’s why this initial message was so important. Two cancers. What does this mean? This means that all people are mortal, and according to Tolstoy’s story, which is read in the “Cancer Ward” This refers to Tolstoy's 1881 story "How People Live.", the inevitable question: how do people live?
The key phrase for the “Cancer Corps” is what Efrem Podduev recalls, how he did not spare the prisoners. Not because he had any special feelings for them, but because he would be held accountable if the ditch was not completed. And I heard: “And you will die, foreman!” Here are prosecutors, and personnel officers, and super-party functionaries - you, too, are not insured against cancer and diseases that are worse than cancer. Remember, Rusanov exclaims: “What could be worse?” Kostoglotov answers him: “Leprosy.” You are not insured against illness or death, come to your senses.
That’s why Tolstoy’s component of the subtext and death of Ivan Ilyich, and the direct discussion of the story “How People Live,” are so important. Solzhenitsyn was always, as they say, fanatically fascinated by the accuracy of the fact. At the same time, the duration of the “Cancer Ward” has been postponed by a year. He fell ill in the spring of 1954, and the action takes place in 1955. Why? Because it was in 1955 that changes became noticeable in the country. The removal of most of the members of the Supreme Court, the resignation of Malenkov and those cheerful promises of the commandant that sound in the last chapter: soon all this will end, there will be no eternal exile.
“Cancer Ward” was written about a time of hope, and let us note that it was written during a difficult time, but in some way a time of hope. In hindsight, we understand perfectly well that liberalization was driven into the grave. But in fact, the situation in 1966, 1965, 1967 was extremely fluctuating. It is unclear what this collective leadership will do. And here this human message was extremely important. This was somewhat of a missed chance for the authorities and for society. Despite the fact that the focus on society was very important, Solzhenitsyn wanted “Corpus” to be published in samizdat.
And here we cannot help but cite two analogies. When the noose approached completely, in the fall of 1973, everything became clear, and Alexander Isaevich did not know whether he should go west or east or be killed. What is he doing at this very moment? He writes a letter to the leaders Soviet Union, they say, you live on this land, you are Russian people, is there something human in you? It didn't turn out. And it must be said that much the same thing happened many years later with the word, addressed not so much to the authorities, but to society, with the article “How can we organize Russia”, where those soft paths, understanding, negotiation, recovery were not seen, not heard. In general, something like what happened with the “Cancer Ward” at one time.
The author himself preferred to call his book a story. And the fact that in modern literary criticism Solzhenitsyn’s “Cancer Ward” is most often called a novel; it speaks only of the conventionality of boundaries literary forms. But too many meanings and images turned out to be tied in this narrative into a single vital knot to consider the author’s designation of the genre of the work to be correct. This book is one of those that requires returning to its pages in an attempt to understand what escaped the first time we met it. There is no doubt about the multidimensionality of this work. “Cancer Ward” by Solzhenitsyn is a book about life, about death and about fate, but with all this, it is, as they say, “easy to read.” The everyday life and plot lines here do not in any way contradict the philosophical depth and figurative expressiveness.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, "Cancer Ward". Events and people
Doctors and patients are at the center of the story here. In a small oncology department, standing separately in the courtyard of the Tashkent City Hospital, those for whom fate has given a “black mark” of cancer and those who are trying to help them come together. It's no secret that the author himself went through everything he describes in his book. Solzhenitsyn’s small two-story cancer building still stands in the same place in the same city. The Russian writer depicted him from life in a very recognizable way, because this is a real part of his biography. The irony of fate brought together obvious antagonists in one room, who turned out to be equal in the face of impending death. This main character, front-line soldier, former prisoner and exile Oleg Kostoglotov, in whom the author himself can easily be guessed.
He is opposed by the petty bureaucratic Soviet careerist Pavel Rusanov, who achieved his position by fervently serving the system and writing denunciations against those who interfered with him or simply did not like him. Now these people find themselves in the same room. Hopes for recovery are very ephemeral for them. Many medicines have been tried and we can only rely on traditional medicine, such as the chaga mushroom growing somewhere in Siberia on birch trees. The fates of the other inhabitants of the chamber are no less interesting, but they fade into the background before the confrontation between the two main characters. Within the cancer ward, the lives of all the inhabitants pass between despair and hope. And the author himself managed to defeat the disease even when it seemed that there was nothing more to hope for. He lived for a very long time and interesting life after leaving the oncology department of the Tashkent hospital.
History of the book
“Cancer Ward” was released only in 1990, at the end of perestroika. Attempts to publish it in the Soviet Union were made by the author before. Individual chapters were being prepared for publication in the magazine "New World" in the early 60s of the twentieth century, until Soviet censorship saw the conceptual artistic design books. Solzhenitsyn's "Cancer Ward" is not just a hospital oncology department, it is something much larger and sinister. To the Soviet people I had to read this work in Samizdat, but just reading it could have suffered greatly.