«The Jolly Soldier»: why Viktor Astafiev is one of the main writers

MOSCOW, April 30, Pavel Surkov. Today marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of the writer Viktor Astafiev. His biography seemed to contain the fate of our entire country. He was born into a peasant family, lost his parents early, went through an orphanage, and changed many professions. And then war invaded his life.
At the front, Astafiev, under mortar fire, restored communications, connecting pieces of cable and correcting the fire of our riflemen. He was one of many soldiers who froze in the trenches and went into the attack shouting “Hurray.”
About these terrible years, Viktor Petrovich would later write his most important books “The Cheerful Soldier” and “Cursed and Killed” — that same “trench truth” that shows the war through the eyes of a simple soldier who fights for his native land, for his family. Frankly, accurately, painfully, but incredibly poetically: Astafyev’s lines can be reprinted in a column, and his prose turns into free verse, into a poem, it is so rich in images and light in style.

He picks up the “village” theme , so popular in Russian literature of the 60s and 70s. But Astafiev brings the drama of the common man to the level of an epic — he associates the life of a worker with the fate of the entire country.

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In one of his best novels, “The Tsar Fish,” Viktor Petrovich takes us through the entire history of the development of Siberia, and we look at it through the prism of the vicissitudes of the “little man.” This is how the writer enters into a creative dialogue with Gogol, and with Nekrasov, and even with Platonov. And the main thing for Astafiev is extreme frankness and honesty towards the reader.

Sometimes he paints life with dark colors, but still he always believes in man: in the strength of his spirit, will, in the fact that the concepts of conscience and honor are unconditional, innate. The heroes from his books simply cannot betray their ideals, based on the main values ​​- love for one's neighbor, generosity of soul and noble self-denial for the sake of saving others.
He calls his lyrical hero, and, in fact, himself, “a cheerful soldier «. This is a person in whom life is seething, who never gives up. Astafiev’s books are amazingly life-affirming: yes, they tell us about difficulties and injustices, but they also show how strength of spirit and absolute faith can overcome these hardships.
That is why Viktor Astafiev is still one of our main interlocutors today. An author who tells us the truth, sometimes uncomfortable, even cruel, but invariably filled with a thirst for life and the triumph of the human spirit.