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Генерал и его армия
Роман "Генерал и его армия" известного русского писателя Георгия Владимова сразу же после публикации вызвал бурные споры критиков и живейший интерес российского читателя.
Роман был удостоен Букеровской премии (1995) и премии имени А.Д. Сахарова (2000). Автор сорвал покров молчания с тем, которые официальная военная историография обходила стороной. Достаточно назвать имена двух главных героев книги, это - немецкий генерал Гудериан, которого зовут "железный Гейнц", и Андрей Власов, генерал, навеки внесенный в списки предателей.
Роман был удостоен Букеровской премии (1995) и премии имени А.Д. Сахарова (2000). Автор сорвал покров молчания с тем, которые официальная военная историография обходила стороной. Достаточно назвать имена двух главных героев книги, это - немецкий генерал Гудериан, которого зовут "железный Гейнц", и Андрей Власов, генерал, навеки внесенный в списки предателей.
459 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
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87 people want to read
About the author
Georgi Vladimov
13 books18 followersGeorgi Vladimov, who has died aged 72, was one of the promising young writers seen as representing new hope for Russian literature in the de-Stalinisation thaw of the 1950s and early 1960s. By the end of the 1970s, however, they had become disillusioned, and many, including Vladimov, had emigrated from the Soviet Union.
Vladimov's particular distinction was as a dissident of immense moral courage, and as the author of Faithful Ruslan, one of the defining literary texts of the post-Stalin period. His life was one of constant vicissitudes, but his authority and fortitude remained firm to the end.
Born Georgi Volosevich in Kharkov, Ukraine, of a Jewish mother and a father of mixed Polish and Belarusian origin, Vladimov studied at the Suvorov Military Academy and Leningrad University, graduating in law in 1953. His mother had already fallen foul of the official anti-semitic campaign, and Vladimov himself felt under threat.
His first novel, The Great Ore (1961), although on a typically Soviet industrial theme, attracted widespread praise for its unconventional treatment of the individualistic main character. The next novel, Three Minutes Of Silence (1969), also had a production theme, but the hero, a sailor in the White Sea fishing fleet, was a feckless youth, quite unlike a traditional hero. The book was heavily censored and Vladimov was accused of "perverting Soviet reality".
ollowing this debacle, Vladimov became a literary outcast and, after meeting Andrei Sakharov, began to play a major part in the dissident movement, boldly revoking his membership of the Writers' Union and becoming head of the Moscow branch of Amnesty International.
His most influential work, Faithful Ruslan, was written over a period of many years, and, in the 1970s, circulated widely in samizdat, where it was attributed to many different writers, including Solzhenitsyn. This brilliant allegory concerns an Alsatian guard dog after Nikita Khrushchev's closure of the prison camps; the dog's sudden release leads to disorientation and tragedy, and readers had no difficulty in seeing a parallel with the USSR's moral confusion after the Stalinist nightmare. Following its publication in Germany in 1982, the novella was translated into many European languages.
Vladimov's interest in the war and the army had begun heroically at the age of 12, when he ran away from home to defend the front against the Germans (too young to fight, he was promptly returned to his mother). The army entered his fiction in 1981 with a two-act comedy, The Sixth Soldier, which had to be published abroad. The play anticipated his later writing about the cruelty and absurdity of the Red army towards its own soldiers and others.
By this time Vladimov's life was being made intolerable by the KGB; some of his experience of harassment and its effect on family life is recorded in a satirical story, Pay No Attention, Maestro, published in 1983 in Germany, which highlighted many absurd aspects of Soviet life, including the rivalry between the KGB and the militia. Shortly before this, he and his second wife, the journalist Natalia Kuznetsova, decided to emigrate to Germany; within two months, they were stripped of their Soviet citizenship.
In 1984, Vladimov became editor of the Russian journal Facets, published in Frankfurt, though two years later he was dismissed for failing to toe the line of the journal's owners.
Financial and personal difficulties ensued, but in 1994 he produced his last major work, a novel about the retaking of Kiev during the second world war, The General And His Army. This bold, fictionalised account is notable for its portrait of the feared counter-intelligence organisation Smersh, and the true story of General Vlasov, whose army believed that taking the German side would help restore democracy in Russia. It won a prize for best Russian novel of 1994, and the Russian Booker the following year.
Vladimov's Russian citizenship was restored in
Vladimov's particular distinction was as a dissident of immense moral courage, and as the author of Faithful Ruslan, one of the defining literary texts of the post-Stalin period. His life was one of constant vicissitudes, but his authority and fortitude remained firm to the end.
Born Georgi Volosevich in Kharkov, Ukraine, of a Jewish mother and a father of mixed Polish and Belarusian origin, Vladimov studied at the Suvorov Military Academy and Leningrad University, graduating in law in 1953. His mother had already fallen foul of the official anti-semitic campaign, and Vladimov himself felt under threat.
His first novel, The Great Ore (1961), although on a typically Soviet industrial theme, attracted widespread praise for its unconventional treatment of the individualistic main character. The next novel, Three Minutes Of Silence (1969), also had a production theme, but the hero, a sailor in the White Sea fishing fleet, was a feckless youth, quite unlike a traditional hero. The book was heavily censored and Vladimov was accused of "perverting Soviet reality".
ollowing this debacle, Vladimov became a literary outcast and, after meeting Andrei Sakharov, began to play a major part in the dissident movement, boldly revoking his membership of the Writers' Union and becoming head of the Moscow branch of Amnesty International.
His most influential work, Faithful Ruslan, was written over a period of many years, and, in the 1970s, circulated widely in samizdat, where it was attributed to many different writers, including Solzhenitsyn. This brilliant allegory concerns an Alsatian guard dog after Nikita Khrushchev's closure of the prison camps; the dog's sudden release leads to disorientation and tragedy, and readers had no difficulty in seeing a parallel with the USSR's moral confusion after the Stalinist nightmare. Following its publication in Germany in 1982, the novella was translated into many European languages.
Vladimov's interest in the war and the army had begun heroically at the age of 12, when he ran away from home to defend the front against the Germans (too young to fight, he was promptly returned to his mother). The army entered his fiction in 1981 with a two-act comedy, The Sixth Soldier, which had to be published abroad. The play anticipated his later writing about the cruelty and absurdity of the Red army towards its own soldiers and others.
By this time Vladimov's life was being made intolerable by the KGB; some of his experience of harassment and its effect on family life is recorded in a satirical story, Pay No Attention, Maestro, published in 1983 in Germany, which highlighted many absurd aspects of Soviet life, including the rivalry between the KGB and the militia. Shortly before this, he and his second wife, the journalist Natalia Kuznetsova, decided to emigrate to Germany; within two months, they were stripped of their Soviet citizenship.
In 1984, Vladimov became editor of the Russian journal Facets, published in Frankfurt, though two years later he was dismissed for failing to toe the line of the journal's owners.
Financial and personal difficulties ensued, but in 1994 he produced his last major work, a novel about the retaking of Kiev during the second world war, The General And His Army. This bold, fictionalised account is notable for its portrait of the feared counter-intelligence organisation Smersh, and the true story of General Vlasov, whose army believed that taking the German side would help restore democracy in Russia. It won a prize for best Russian novel of 1994, and the Russian Booker the following year.
Vladimov's Russian citizenship was restored in
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
June 26, 2017
The General and His Army
I personally think Vladimov was one of the greatest Soviet authors. He is only moderately known in Russia and hardly known in the West. He wrote four novels in his entire life, and nothing else. The first one, Большая руда (literally translated as `Big Ore’, published in English as ‘Striking it rich’), was paying some formal tribute to the “socialist realism” as it described the life of a Soviet miner risking (and losing) his life in order to ensure delivery of the first iron-rich ore from a new mine. However the protagonist was less driven by socialist ideas than by а monetary reward, despite being an undeniable hero of the novel, and the general depiction of a Soviet mine was less than complimentary. His second book, “Three minutes of silence”, about the hardship of Soviet industrial fishermen, was written entirely in a very colorful fishermen’s argot, so that it is difficult to read, in the beginning, even for native Russian speakers. I think that Vladimov’s prose in this book is superb and unique, and at some point I knew most of the book by heart. I have no idea how did they manage to translate it into English – I guess it must be as lame as Faulkner translations. Now, this book already created friction between Vladimov and powers-to-be. His next book immediately made him an enemy of the state. This is his best known, albeit not his best, novel, ‘Faithful Ruslan; The Story of a Guard Dog’. The narrator in this story is a Gulag guard dog. I strongly recommend this book to English readers (and, of course, they would enjoy it double if read together with the notorious `White Dog’ by Romain Gary, a book about a Southern Police dog trained to attack African-Americans). His last book, written already in exile, in Munich, ‘The General’, is very much unlike the previous three. I think it is his best, and, sadly, the only one not available in English. It is a slightly fictionalized account of recapturing Kiev by the Red Army in 1944. The main strategic challenge there was to cross Dnieper, a mighty river about ½ mile wide near the city. Multiple attempts to gain a head on the heavily fortified western bank were unsuccessful. A second-tier general, Chibisov (Kobrissov in the book), against the plans of Stalin and his top strategists, realizes that the only chance is to cross Dnieper above the city, where it is two miles wide, but where the Nazis do not expect an attack. He manipulates the top brass into giving him a vague permission that he can interpret as green light to ferry troops according to his plan. Kiev is successfully retaken, but the main credit is taken by other, more important generals. The book was received with admiration by Russian intellectuals (Vladimov was awarded a prestigious literary award), and absolutely hated by the make-Russia-great-again “patriots”. It is one of the very few fiction books on the WWII where the war is shown not from the trenches by from General’s quarters, with all its complexity.
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February 5, 2022I liked the book. It seems to me that all the people,who are close to the general describe his feelings, thoughts and doubts. But still, the world that the book describes so far from me today. It is not a century, but people and their reality, - and I'm so glad about it
September 7, 2022
Я думала, что больше не смогу читать про войну. Но смогла. Потому что «Генерал и его армия» - это не героический эпос, а роман о человеке и системе.
А ещё это красивый трибьют «Войне и миру».
А ещё это красивый трибьют «Войне и миру».
June 14, 2021
Та самая книга о ВОВ, которую надо прочесть каждому. Очевидная параллель - "Война и мир" Толстого. Только произведение Владимова куда острее, критичнее, современее (за счет, того, что Болконские давно остались в прошлом, а вот чекисты и аппаратчики очень даже живы). И вся надежда только на Ростовых, которые и есть Россия. Особенно впечатляет то, какой титанический труд потребовался Владимову, чтобы собрать неимоверное количество материала и деталей (не веря многим событиям, я гуглила их, и к своему ужасу, каждый раз выясняла, что нет, это не выдумка) и какое мастерство позволило ему этот сложнейший перелом истории собрать в столь живую, понятную каждому правду.
June 5, 2025
... Всегда отличается твоя боль от боли чужой — твоя больнее
Впечатляющая книга. И, пускай история о Гудериане и Власове это скорее кликбейт, не так уж много текста им перепало, книга все равно отличная.
Прежде всего, она поднимает большие темы - о верности и предательстве, о славе и человеколюбии, о тактике и стратегии, наконец. Книга, вообщем, интересная, хотя приятного в ней не так и много. Главное - все описываемое даже слишком реально.
И в финале Кобрисов понмает, что не все, оказывется, были храбрыми.
Рекомендую
Впечатляющая книга. И, пускай история о Гудериане и Власове это скорее кликбейт, не так уж много текста им перепало, книга все равно отличная.
Прежде всего, она поднимает большие темы - о верности и предательстве, о славе и человеколюбии, о тактике и стратегии, наконец. Книга, вообщем, интересная, хотя приятного в ней не так и много. Главное - все описываемое даже слишком реально.
И в финале Кобрисов понмает, что не все, оказывется, были храбрыми.
Рекомендую
October 28, 2020
История взятия Киева с изменёнными именами
November 23, 2016
Познавательно и, на мой взгляд, правдиво. Вот всегда мне было непонятно как военные прямо из лагерей (или тюрем) попадали прямо на фронт. И было ли к ним полное доверие от вышестоящих, или всё же с опаской относились? Сюжетная линия прописана очень живо и персонажи характерные. Рекомендую всем, кто ищет неприлизанную совком военную прозу.
April 16, 2017
Историческая беллетристика полезна, но её действительное значение трудно понять. Редкий автор повествует именно о том времени, о котором рассказывает. Скорее, он повествует со своего рабочего места, окружённый бытом повседневности и заботами сегодняшнего дня. Поэтому на содержание беллетристики падает тень не прошлого, а авторского настоящего. Касательно произведения Георгия Владимова «Генерал и его армия» — всё так и есть. Казалось бы, Вторая Мировая война, некий гениальный генерал, подчинённые, общее дело, противостояние врагу, стремление развивать успех. Не было бы при этом излишних фантазий. Получилось произведение по мотивам.
(c) Trounin
(c) Trounin
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews