The hero of Mikhail Sholokhov's novel "Quiet Don" - Grigory Melikhov - is a simple Cossack from the middle peasants, who fell into the whirlpool of the First World War, revolution and civil war. In this dashing time, he, a skilled warrior, is needed by everyone - both white and red. In the whirlwind of war, Melekhov finds himself in all the opposing armies of the civil war and is trying to figure out which side is right.

First, he is with the Reds, led by Podtelkov and Krivoshlykov. Here, Melekhov's inherent dislike for officers-nobles, who are alien to the interests of the people, including the Cossacks, affects. However, it is Podtelkov's savage reprisal against the captured White Guard officers that turns Gregory away from the Reds. He throws angrily to the leader of the Red Cossacks, whom they themselves are going to execute with a painful death:

“Under Deep Combat, remember? Do you remember how the officers were shot... 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 Moscow Council of People's Commissars! You, grebe, sold the Cossacks to the Jews!” But the anger of Grigory Melekhov is cooled by his comrade Khristonya: “Come on, let's go to the horses. Go! We have nothing to do with you. Lord God, what is happening to people!..” The impending execution of Podtelkov, Krivoshlykov and their comrades also shakes Gregory. Without waiting for it to begin, he leaves Ponamarev farm, where the massacre of the prisoners is being carried out.

Grigory himself, too, after the execution of his brother Peter by the Reds, is able to give the order to exterminate the captured Red Army soldiers. Able to chop up countless red sailors in open battle. But he takes such actions only in moments of extreme anger or excitement caused by battle. In quiet moments, he releases the captured enemy in peace, and about the same chopped sailors, having cooled down, he says with anguish “at some moment of monstrous enlightenment”:

“Who did he cut!..” And for the first time in his life he thrashed in a severe fit, shouting, spitting out, along with foam, which even swirled on his lips: “Brothers, there is no forgiveness for me! ... betray!..” He speaks in almost the same words as the Cossack Yegor Zharkov, who received a mortal wound in the First World War and begged his comrades to end his torment: “Brothers, put to death! Brothers! .. Brothers ... What are you looking at? .. Ahahaa-ah-ah-ah! .. Brothers, put to death! .. ”Melekhov, unlike Zharkov, whose guts are falling out of his torn stomach, is not wounded , but he experiences almost the same torment that he has to kill compatriots, Russian people, Cossacks, peasants, sailors ... Even killing the enemy in a fair fight, he sometimes experiences moral torment. What can we say about the killing of the unarmed. True, in avenging Peter, Gregory does such a dirty deed. But the feeling of revenge passes quickly. And having learned that the killers of Peter fell into the hands of the Cossacks, Grigory hurries to his native farm not to hasten their death, but on the contrary, to save them from death. But he was too late: during the lynching, Ivan Alekseevich was killed by Peter's widow Daria. Truly, “what is done to people”! The brutality caused by the civil war, Gregory does not accept. And in the end it turns out to be a stranger in all warring camps. He begins to doubt whether he is looking for the right truth. Melekhov thinks about the Reds: “They are fighting so that they can live better, and we fought for our good life ... There is no one truth in life. It can be seen whoever defeats whom will devour him ... And I was looking for the bad truth. My soul hurt, it swayed back and forth ... In the old days, you can hear, the Tatars offended the Don, they went to take away the land, to captivity. Now - Rus'. No! I will not reconcile! They are alien to me and to all the Cossacks.” He feels a sense of community only with fellow countrymen Cossacks, especially at the time of the Vyoshensky uprising. He dreams of the Cossacks being independent from both the Bolsheviks and the “Kadets”, but quickly realizes that there is no place left for any “third force” in the struggle between the Reds and the Whites. In the White Cossack army of Ataman Krasnov, Grigory Melekhov serves without enthusiasm. Here he sees robbery, and violence against prisoners, and the unwillingness of the Cossacks to fight outside the region of the Don Cossacks, and he himself shares their sentiments. And just as without enthusiasm, Grigory fights with the Reds after the connection of the Vyoshensky rebels with the troops of General Denikin. The officers who set the tone in the Volunteer Army are not just strangers to him, but also hostile. It is not for nothing that Yesaul Yevgeny Listnitsky becomes an enemy, whom Grigory beats half to death for his connection with Aksinya. Melekhov foresees the defeat of the Whites and is not too sad about this. By and large, he is already tired of the war, and the outcome is almost indifferent. Although during the days of the retreat “at times he had a vague hope that the danger would force the dispersed, demoralized and warring forces of the whites to unite, fight back and overturn the victoriously advancing red units.”

Grigory, “oppressed by idleness,” wanted to “join some military unit,” but friend and orderly Prokhor Zykov strongly advised against doing this: “You, Grigory Panteleevich, you see, have completely lost your mind! he declared indignantly. - Why the hell are we going there, into this hell? It's over, you see for yourself, why are we going to waste ourselves in vain? Al you think that we two will help them! As long as they don’t touch us and don’t forcibly take us into the unit, we must, as soon as we can, get away from sin, and you’ll cut what the hell! No, come on, please, peacefully, like an old man, retreat. You and I have already fought enough in five years, let the others try at once!”

And Gregory agrees with his arguments. After all, Melekhov is also tired of the war, although he has a military streak, prowess, even some kind of craving for battle. That is why Gregory is bored in retreat without real work. However, he does not consider any of the parties in the civil war to be right, and for this reason he quickly cools down to fight for a cause that he does not consider fair. Melekhov then goes to serve the Reds in order to atone for past sins, and even fights against the Poles with enthusiasm, almost like against the Germans and Austrians in the First World War.

Prokhor Zykov, who had returned to the Tatarsky farm and lost his arm, tells Aksinya about Grigory: “Together with him in Novorossiysk, we entered the cavalry army of Comrade Budyonny ... Our Grigory Panteleevich took a hundred, that is, a squadron, of course, I am with him, and we went in marching order near Kiev . Well, girl, and we gave the devils to these Poles! We went there, Grigory Panteleevich, and said: “They cut down the Germans, they tried the broadsword on all sorts of Austrians, do the Poles really have stronger shards? It seems to me that it will be easier to cut them down than their own - Russians, what do you think? - and winks at me, grins. He changed, as he joined the Red Army, he became cheerful of himself, smooth as a gelding ... He says that I will serve as long as I atone for my past sins. He will do this - a simple fool's business ... Near one place he led us on the attack. Before my very eyes, he cut down four of their lancers. He, damned, was left-handed from childhood, so he got them from both sides ... After the battle, Budyonny himself, before the ranks, handled him, and there was gratitude to the squadron and him. Nevertheless, the gratitude of the legendary commander of the First Cavalry did not save Melekhov from suspicion. And when the Budennovites were transferred to the Crimea against Wrangel, Grigory had to cut down not the Poles, but his own, Russian people. After being wounded on the Wrangel front, Melekhov was demobilized from the Red Army, not relying too much on his reliability.

Gregory's words that the Poles have no stronger “shards” than the Germans cannot be understood as a joyful readiness to kill people. Melekhov rejoices, so to speak, only because he has to kill foreigners, and not compatriots. However, as we see, he later had to kill the Russians, perhaps the same Cossack brothers who fought under the banner of Wrangel.

Grigory, returning to the farm, expects to be left alone: ​​“He has finished fighting. Enough with him. He was going home in order, in the end, to take up a job, live with children, with Aksinya ... ”Grigory seems to have found his truth: a quiet family life, with kids, with his wife. To a former friend and current son-in-law, he confesses: “I don’t want to serve anyone else. I have fought enough in my life and I am terribly tired of my soul. I'm tired of everything - both the revolution and the counter-revolution. Let all this ... let it all go to waste! I want to live near my kids, do housework, that's all. Believe me, Michael, I say this from the bottom of my heart.” However, Koshevoy does not believe, and Grigory's dreams of a calm, peaceful life are not destined to come true.

The threat of arrest forced Grigory to flee from his native farm, and the case led him to Fomin's gang, where he was no longer looking for the truth, but simply hiding from persecution. He decided to leave with Aksinya for the Kuban and start a new life there, but his beloved died from a stray bullet.

After that, Melekhov "still convulsively clung to the ground, as if in fact his broken life was of some value both for him and for others." In the end, Gregory, without waiting for an amnesty, returned home.

In the finale, “the little that Gregory dreamed about during sleepless nights came true. He stood at the gates of his native house, holding his son in his arms ... It was all that remained in his life, which still made him related to the earth and to all this huge world shining under the cold sun.

Sholokhov led his beloved hero through all the circles of hell of the civil war, finally led him to a peaceful shore and left him here. And although he himself perfectly understood what awaited Grigory Melekhov ahead, he could not and did not want to say this, and therefore left the appearance of a happy ending. In an era of revolutionary cataclysms, there is no happiness for honest people.

Grigory Melekhov is one of the central characters in M. Sholokhov's epic work "Quiet Don". The epic novel is a real encyclopedia of folk life at a turning point in Russian history. Gregory is a collective image of a man who faced a difficult choice between mutually exclusive views.

Melekhov is a typical representative of the Cossacks, associated with him by centuries-old traditions and customs. He cannot imagine life apart from his national roots. Gregory is endowed with all the qualities of a real Cossack. He is a courageous and courageous person, ready to support a comrade in any situation.

At the same time, Melekhov is characterized by an unconscious desire for truth and justice. If the vast majority of Cossacks without hesitation take the side of the white movement simply because of unshakable traditions, then Grigory wants to figure it out on his own.

The First World War became a turning point in Melekhov's soul. Participating in hostilities, he immediately draws attention to himself with his fearlessness. At the same time, doubts arise in his soul about the justice of war in general. Melekhov understands that the generals do not care deeply about the suffering of ordinary soldiers.

Since that time, Melekhov no longer feels calm. He admits to himself and others that he has lost a stable support in life. The traditions of the Cossacks turned out to be an illusion that does not give a true sense of truth. Gregory's soul rushes about in search of a way out. His spiritual emptiness is gradually filled with the slogans of the red movement. It seems to Melekhov that he has found what he was striving for.

In the ranks of the Bolsheviks, Gregory continues to perform feats. But the struggle for another truth turns into the blood of innocent people. Melekhov understands that in addition to the Reds and Whites, who equally commit cruelty and lawlessness, there must be some kind of “real” truth. It is above political convictions and comes from the human soul.

The author does not put an end to the fate of Melekhov, giving the reader the opportunity to figure out the problem of finding the truth for himself. Gregory's inner struggle is an important philosophical theme. The problem of a difficult choice can affect anyone.

Option 2

What is truth? What is she? Each of us, probably, will answer this question in his own way and will be right, because this concept is contradictory and ambiguous. How to distinguish truth from lies? What choice to make? Some immediately decide on a choice, while others rush about, doubt the correctness of their choice. Their soul is tormented by doubts, and they begin a painful search for the truth. Sometimes it takes a lifetime.

One of these truth-seekers is Grigory Melekhov, the protagonist of Sholokhov's novel The Quiet Flows the Don. Having become acquainted with the work, we learn the following about him: he was born in a hereditary family of Don Cossacks, who had a strong economy, material wealth. From his ancestors, he inherited such qualities of character as honesty, love for peasant labor, compassion, pride and independence. He differed from other Cossacks in courage, depth of feelings, kindness. The main feature of his character was that he was constantly trying to find his truth, for which it was worth serving and for which it was worth living. Doesn't accept untruth.

The First World War was the beginning of the hero's life trials. She divided the Cossacks into red and white, putting everyone before a choice. Our hero himself could not figure out everything that was happening, he did not meet such a person who could explain everything to him in a simple and accessible language. It happened that he vaguely felt the truth, but did not know how to prove it, so he was forced to obey, with which he internally disagreed. Once in the war, Gregory manifests himself as a brave and determined person, never hiding behind others, but quickly disappointed. He feels like he's doing everything wrong. For him, a warrior and humanist, the massacre of the unarmed is disgusting. He wants to find a truth that will be acceptable to everyone and everyone will be fine.

Having been wounded, Melekhov ends up in the hospital, where he meets the Bolshevik Garanzha. Under his influence, the hero's insight occurs, who is increasingly convinced that he lived in illusions that are far from reality. He understood the meaning of the imperialist war and hated it.

The search for truth is most intensified during the Civil War. The meeting with Efim Izvarin sowed doubts in Grigory's soul, he tries to argue with him, but semi-literate, fails in verbal battles with his opponent, he does not have enough knowledge to prove his truth.

Thus, the path to the truth was long, painful, difficult for Gregory, but on this path he remained a man.

Melekhov is looking for the truth

Roman M.A. Sholokhov's "Quiet Flows the Don" is an excellent example of a work that touches on almost all the problems of mankind. When reading this novel, it is sometimes difficult to understand what is the main theme of this work, however, through a thorough analysis of the work, one can single out the main character’s search for his place in the world as the most mentioned in the text.

The main character of the novel was Grigory Malekhov. On his difficult life path, he met a large number of trials associated with life at the beginning of the twentieth century - in the bloody time of a warrior and great changes. As a participant in hostilities, Gregory achieved great success: he received the rank of officer, was awarded many awards, but at the same time did not achieve the main goal of life. He was constantly tormented by the question: “What is the meaning of life?”. He could not understand why people need wars, why they need victories and power. Gregory participates in the civil war in 1918 in a detachment of whites under the command of his older brother. Over time, in an attempt to understand who is right in this fratricidal war and who is not, he becomes a bandit, but even in such an environment he does not feel calm. Restless thoughts come to Gregory. He still can't find answers to his questions. In the end, risking his life, he returns to his homeland in his native village. Meeting with relatives: wife, son and sister gives him strength and desire to live. However, later a great tragedy awaits the hero: his wife is killed by a bullet that was intended for him. He is left alone with the child, sister and her husband, who at that time is his main enemy.

In my opinion M.A. Sholokhov, in the image of Grigory, contained all the features of a typical village man of those times. Few ordinary peasants understood the meaning of the war, the seizure of power and the possible consequences of one or another outcome of the war. Malekhov is a person with a sufficient level of intelligence, as he can talk on very complex topics, but due to ignorance and lack of life experience, he cannot find himself in this life. The main obstacle is war. In those days, armed conflicts led not only to the death of a large number of people, but also to sad consequences among the survivors.

Grigory Malekhov is a good example of how much war can break the fate of a person. Because of conflicts, he loses a lot of time, his wife, faith in himself. In addition, he often had to kill in order to survive, which he clearly did not want to do, which took away from him perhaps the greatest wealth - a clear conscience. The war has turned a simple worker Grigory into a tragic hero, an unfortunate bandit who is looking for the truth of life and still cannot find it, dooming himself to eternal unsuccessful attempts.

The hero of Mikhail Sholokhov's novel "Quiet Don" - Grigory Melikhov - is a simple Cossack from the middle peasants, who fell into the whirlpool of the First World War, revolution and civil war. In this dashing time, he, a skilled warrior, is needed by everyone - both white and red. In the whirlwind of war, Melekhov finds himself in all the opposing armies of the civil war and is trying to figure out which side is right.
First, he is with the Reds, led by Podtelkov and Krivoshlykov. Here the dislike inherent in Melekhov for officers-nobles, who are alien to

The interests of the people, including the Cossacks. However, it is Podtelkov's savage reprisal against the captured White Guard officers that turns Gregory away from the Reds. He throws angrily to the leader of the Red Cossacks, whom they themselves are going to execute with a painful death:
“Under Deep Combat, remember? Do you remember how the officers were shot... 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 Moscow Council of People's Commissars! You, grebe, sold the Cossacks to the Jews!” But the anger of Grigory Melekhov is cooled by his comrade Khristonya: “Come on, let's go to the horses. Go! We have nothing to do with you. Lord God, what is happening to people!..” The impending execution of Podtelkov, Krivoshlykov and their comrades also shakes Gregory. Without waiting for it to begin, he leaves Ponamarev farm, where the massacre of the prisoners is being carried out.
Grigory himself, too, after the execution of his brother Peter by the Reds, is able to give the order to exterminate the captured Red Army soldiers. Able to chop up countless red sailors in open battle. But he takes such actions only in moments of extreme anger or excitement caused by battle. In calm moments, he releases the captured enemy in peace, and about the same chopped sailors, having cooled down, he says with anguish “at some moment of monstrous enlightenment”:
“Whom did he cut!..” And for the first time in his life he thrashed in a severe fit, shouting, spitting out, along with foam, even swirling on his lips: “Brothers, there is no forgiveness for me! ... betray!..” He speaks in almost the same words as the Cossack Yegor Zharkov, who received a mortal wound in the First World War and begged his comrades to end his torment: “Brothers, put to death! Brothers! .. Brothers ... What are you looking at? .. Ahahaa-ah-ah-ah! .. Brothers, put to death! .. ”Melekhov, unlike Zharkov, whose guts are falling out of his torn stomach, is not wounded , but he experiences almost the same torment that he has to kill compatriots, Russian people, Cossacks, peasants, sailors ... Even killing the enemy in a fair fight, he sometimes experiences moral torment. What can we say about the killing of the unarmed. True, in avenging Peter, Gregory does such a dirty deed. But the feeling of revenge passes quickly. And having learned that the killers of Peter fell into the hands of the Cossacks, Grigory hurries to his native farm not to hasten their death, but on the contrary, to save them from death. But he was too late: during the lynching, Ivan Alekseevich was killed by Peter's widow Daria. Truly, “what is done to people”! The brutality caused by the civil war, Gregory does not accept. And in the end it turns out to be a stranger in all warring camps. He begins to doubt whether he is looking for the right truth. Melekhov thinks about the Reds: “They are fighting so that they can live better, and we fought for our good life ... There is no one truth in life. It can be seen whoever defeats whom will devour him ... And I was looking for the bad truth. My soul hurt, it swayed back and forth ... In the old days, you can hear, the Tatars offended the Don, they went to take away the land, to captivity. Now - Rus'. No! I will not reconcile! They are alien to me and to all the Cossacks.” He feels a sense of community only with fellow countrymen Cossacks, especially at the time of the Veshensky uprising. He dreams of the Cossacks being independent from both the Bolsheviks and the “Kadets”, but quickly realizes that there is no place left for any “third force” in the struggle between the Reds and the Whites. In the White Cossack army of Ataman Krasnov, Grigory Melekhov serves without enthusiasm. Here he sees robbery, and violence against prisoners, and the unwillingness of the Cossacks to fight outside the region of the Don Cossacks, and he himself shares their sentiments. And just as without enthusiasm, Grigory fights with the Reds after the connection of the Veshensky rebels with the troops of General Denikin. The officers who set the tone in the Volunteer Army are not just strangers to him, but also hostile. It is not for nothing that Yesaul Yevgeny Listnitsky becomes an enemy, whom Grigory beats half to death for his connection with Aksinya. Melekhov foresees the defeat of the Whites and is not too sad about this. By and large, he is already tired of the war, and the outcome is almost indifferent. Although during the days of the retreat “at times he had a vague hope that the danger would force the dispersed, demoralized and warring forces of the whites to unite, fight back and overturn the victoriously advancing red units.”
Grigory, “oppressed by idleness,” wanted to “join some military unit,” but friend and orderly Prokhor Zykov strongly advised against doing this: “You, Grigory Panteleevich, you see, have completely lost your mind! he declared indignantly. - Why the hell are we going there, into this hell? It's over, you see for yourself, why are we going to waste ourselves in vain? Al you think that we two will help them! As long as they don’t touch us and don’t forcibly take us into the unit, we must, as soon as we can, get away from sin, and you’ll cut what the hell! No, come on, please, peacefully, like an old man, retreat. You and I have already fought enough in five years, let the others try at once!”
And Gregory agrees with his arguments. After all, Melekhov is also tired of the war, although he has a military streak, prowess, even some kind of craving for battle. That is why Gregory is bored in retreat without real work. However, he does not consider any of the parties in the civil war to be right, and for this reason he quickly cools down to fight for a cause that he does not consider fair. Melekhov then goes to serve the Reds in order to atone for past sins, and even fights against the Poles with enthusiasm, almost like against the Germans and Austrians in the First World War.
Prokhor Zykov, who had returned to the Tatarsky farm and lost his arm, tells Aksinya about Grigory: “Together with him in Novorossiysk, we entered the cavalry army of Comrade Budyonny ... Our Grigory Panteleevich took a hundred, that is, a squadron, of course, I am with him, and we went in marching order near Kiev . Well, girl, and we gave the devils to these Poles! We went there, Grigory Panteleevich, and said: “They cut down the Germans, they tried the broadsword on all sorts of Austrians, do the Poles really have stronger shards? It seems to me that it will be easier to cut them down than their own - Russians, what do you think? – and winks at me, grins. He changed, as he joined the Red Army, he became cheerful of himself, smooth as a gelding ... He says that I will serve as long as I atone for my past sins. He will do this - a simple fool's business ... Near one place he led us to attack. Before my very eyes, he cut down four of their lancers. He, damned, was left-handed from childhood, so he got them from both sides ... After the battle, Budyonny himself, before the ranks, handled him, and there was gratitude to the squadron and him. Nevertheless, the gratitude of the legendary commander of the First Cavalry did not save Melekhov from suspicion. And when the Budennovites were transferred to the Crimea against Wrangel, Grigory had to cut down not the Poles, but his own, Russian people. After being wounded on the Wrangel front, Melekhov was demobilized from the Red Army, not relying too much on his reliability.
Gregory's words that the Poles have no stronger “shards” than the Germans cannot be understood as a joyful readiness to kill people. Melekhov rejoices, so to speak, only because he has to kill foreigners, and not compatriots. However, as we see, he later had to kill the Russians, perhaps the same Cossack brothers who fought under the banner of Wrangel.
Grigory, returning to the farm, expects to be left alone: ​​“He has finished fighting. Enough with him. He was going home in order, in the end, to take up work, live with children, with Aksinya ... ” Gregory seems to have found his truth: a quiet family life, with kids, with his wife. To a former friend and current son-in-law, he confesses: “I don’t want to serve anyone else. I have fought enough in my life and I am terribly tired of my soul. I'm tired of everything - both the revolution and the counter-revolution. Let all this ... let it all go to waste! I want to live near my kids, do housework, that's all. Believe me, Michael, I say this from the bottom of my heart.” However, Koshevoy does not believe, and Grigory's dreams of a calm, peaceful life are not destined to come true.
The threat of arrest forced Grigory to flee his native farm, and the case led him to Fomin's gang, where he was no longer looking for the truth, but simply hiding from persecution. He decided to leave with Aksinya for the Kuban and start a new life there, but his beloved died from a stray bullet.
After that, Melekhov "still convulsively clung to the ground, as if in fact his broken life was of some value both for him and for others." In the end, Gregory, without waiting for an amnesty, returned home.
In the finale, “the little that Gregory dreamed about during sleepless nights came true. He stood at the gates of his native house, holding his son in his arms ... It was all that remained in his life, which still made him related to the earth and to all this huge world shining under the cold sun.
Sholokhov led his beloved hero through all the circles of hell of the civil war, finally led him to a peaceful shore and left him here. And although he himself perfectly understood what awaited Grigory Melekhov ahead, he could not and did not want to say this, and therefore left the appearance of a happy ending. In an era of revolutionary cataclysms, there is no happiness for honest people.

You are now reading: Grigory Melekhov - a seeker of truth (the novel by M. A. Sholokhov “Quiet Flows the Don”)

. Grigory Melekhov - a seeker of truth (the novel by M.A. Sholokhov "Quiet Flows the Don")

The protagonist of the novel by M. A. Sholokhov "Quiet Flows the Don" Grigory Melekhov, looking for the truth of life, gets confused a lot, makes mistakes, suffers, because he does not find the moral truth he aspires to in any of the warring parties.

Gregory is faithful to the Cossack traditions, instilled in him from birth. But at the same time, he surrenders to the power of violent passion, capable of violating generally accepted norms and rules. Neither the formidable father, nor dirty rumors and ridicule can stop Gregory in his passionate outburst.

Melekhov is distinguished by an amazing ability to love. Unwittingly, at the same time, he causes pain to loved ones. Grigory himself suffers, suffers no less than Natalya, Aksinya, and his parents. The hero finds himself as if between two poles: love-duty and love-passion. Committing bad deeds from the point of view of public morality and meeting with a married woman, Gregory remains honest and sincere to the end. “And it’s a pity for you,” he says to Natalia, “to go to sleep, for these days we became related, but there is nothing in my heart ... Empty.”

Stormy historical events swirled Gregory in their whirlwind. But the more he goes into military operations, the more he is drawn to the land, to work. He often dreams of the steppe. His heart is always with my beloved, distant woman, with his native farm, kuren.

A new turn in history brings Melekhov back to the earth, to his beloved, to his family. Grigory meets with the house, with the farm after a long separation. The bosom of the family returns him to the world of shaken habitual ideas about the meaning of life, about the Cossack duty.

While fighting, “Grigory firmly protected the Cossack honor, seized the opportunity to show selfless courage, took risks, went wild, went disguised to the rear of the Austrians, removed outposts without blood.” Over time, the hero changes. He feels that “that pain over a person that crushed him in the first days of the war has irrevocably gone. Hardened heart, hardened ... ". The initial portrait of Gregory is also changing: "... his eyes are hollow and his cheekbones are sharply sticking out."

The tragic upheaval that split the world of the Cossacks into friends and foes poses numerous difficult and acute questions for Grigory. The hero is faced with a choice. Where to go? With whom? For what? Where is the truth? Melekhov, on his path of search, encounters different people, each of whom has his own point of view on what is happening. So the centurion Efim Izvarin does not believe in the universal equality declared by the Bolsheviks, he is convinced of the special fate and destiny of the Cossacks and stands for an independent, autonomous life of the Don region. He is a separatist. Grigory, delving into the essence of his speeches, tries to argue with him, but he is illiterate and loses in an argument with a well-educated centurion who knows how to consistently and logically express his thoughts. “Izvarin easily defeated him in verbal battles,” the author reports, and therefore Grigory falls under the strong influence of Izvarin's ideas.

Other truths are instilled in Melekhov by Podtelkov, who believes that the Cossacks have common interests with all Russian peasants and workers, with the entire proletariat. Podtelkov is convinced of the need for elected people's power. He speaks so competently, convincingly and passionately about his ideas that this makes Gregory listen to him and even believe. After a conversation with Podtelkov, the hero "painfully tried to sort out the confusion of thoughts, think over something, decide." In Gregory, an illiterate and politically unsophisticated person, despite various suggestions, the desire to find his truth, his place in life, something that is really worth serving is still actively pulsating. Those around him offer him different ways, but Grigory firmly answers them: "I myself am looking for an entrance."

There comes a moment when Melekhov wholeheartedly takes the side of the new system. But this system, with its cruelty to the Cossacks, injustice, once again pushes Gregory onto the warpath. Melekhov is shocked by the behavior of Chernetsov and Podtelkov in the scene of the massacre of Chernetsovites. It burns with blind hatred and enmity. Gregory, unlike them, is trying to protect an unarmed enemy from a merciless bloody race. Gregory does not stand up for the enemy - in each of the enemies he sees first of all a person.

But in war as in war. Fatigue and anger lead the hero to cruelty. This is eloquently evidenced by the episode of the murder of sailors. However, Gregory is not easily given such inhumanity. It is after this scene that Melekhov is deeply tormented by the realization of a terrible truth: he has gone far from what he was born for and what he fought for. “The wrong course in life, and maybe I’m to blame for this,” he understands.

An unrelenting truth, an unshakable value, always remains for the hero a native nest. In the most difficult moments of life, he turns to thoughts about the house, about his native nature, about work. These memories give Gregory a sense of harmony and peace of mind.

Gregory becomes one of the leaders of the Veshensky uprising. This is a new round in his path. But gradually he becomes disillusioned and realizes that the uprising did not bring the expected results: the Cossacks suffer from the Whites in the same way that they suffered from the Reds before. Well-fed officers - the nobles contemptuously and arrogantly treat the ordinary Cossack and only dream of achieving success with his help in their new campaigns; the Cossacks are only a reliable means to achieve their goals. The boorish attitude of General Fitskhelaurov towards him is outrageous for Grigory, foreign invaders are hated and disgusting.

Painfully enduring everything that is happening in the country, Melekhov nevertheless refuses to evacuate. “Whatever the mother, she is someone else’s kindred,” he argues. And such a position deserves all respect.

The next transitional stage, salvation for Gregory again becomes a return to the earth, to Aksi-nye, to the children. He is suddenly imbued with extraordinary warmth and love for children, he realizes that they are the meaning of his existence. The habitual way of life, the atmosphere of his native home give rise in the hero to the desire to get away from the struggle. Gregory, having passed a long and difficult path, loses faith in both whites and reds. Home and family are true values, real support. Violence, repeatedly seen and known, evokes disgust in him. More than once he does noble deeds under the influence of hatred towards him. Grigory releases the relatives of the Red Cossacks from prison, drives a horse to death in order to have time to save Ivan Alekseevich and Mishka Koshevoy from death, leaves the square, not wanting to be a witness to the execution of the underdogs.

Quick to reprisal and unjustifiably cruel, Mishka Koshevoy pushes Gregory to run away from home. He is forced to wander around the farms and, as a result, joins Fomin's gang. Love for life, for children does not allow Gregory to give up. He understands that if he does not act, he will be executed. Melekhov has no choice, and he joins the gang. A new stage of Gregory's spiritual quest begins.

Little remains with Gregory by the end of the novel. Children, native land and love for Aksinya. But the hero is waiting for new losses. He deeply and grievously experiences the death of his beloved woman, but finds the strength to look for himself further: “Everything was taken from him, everything was destroyed by ruthless death. Only the children remained. But he himself still convulsively clung to the ground, as if in fact his broken life represented some kind of value for him and for others.

Gregory spends most of his life in captivity of hatred tearing the world, death, becoming hardened and falling into despair. Stopping on the way, he discovers with disgust that, hating violence, he does not set death. He is the head and support of the family, but he has no time to be at home, among people who love him.

All the attempts of the hero to find himself are the path of going through the torments. Melekhov goes forward with an open to everything, "tossed" heart. He is looking for wholeness, genuine and undeniable truths, in everything he wants to get to the very essence. His searches are passionate, his soul burns. He is tormented by an unsatisfied moral hunger. Gregory longs for self-determination, he is not without self-condemnation. Melekhov is looking for the root of mistakes, including in himself, in his deeds. But about the hero who went through many thorns, one can say with confidence that his soul, in spite of everything, is alive, it has not been ruined by the most difficult life circumstances. Evidence of this is the desire of Gregory for peace, for peace, for the land, the desire to return home. Without waiting for an amnesty, Melekhov returns home. He has only one desire - the desire for peace. His goal is to raise his son, a generous reward for all the pains of life. Mishatka is Gregory's hope for the future, in him is the possibility of continuing the Melekhov family. These thoughts of Gregory are confirmation that he is broken by the war, but not broken by it.

The path of Grigory Melekhov to the truth is a tragic path of human wanderings, gains, mistakes and losses, evidence of a close connection between personality and history. This difficult path was traversed by the Russian people in the 20th century.

Critic Yu. Lukin wrote about the novel: “The meaning of the figure of Grigory Melekhov ... expands, going beyond the scope and specifics of the Cossack environment of the Don in 1921 and grows to a typical image of a person who did not find his way during the years of the revolution.”