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 speaks only of the conventionality of the boundaries of 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 is the main character, front-line soldier, former prisoner and exile Oleg Kostoglotov, in whom the author himself can easily be guessed.

He is opposed by a 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 another very long and interesting life after leaving the oncology department of the Tashkent hospital.

History of the book

Solzhenitsyn's book "Cancer Ward" was published 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 discerned the conceptual artistic intent of the book. Solzhenitsyn's "Cancer Ward" is not just a hospital oncology department, it is something much larger and sinister. The Soviet people had to read this work in Samizdat, but just reading it could have caused them to suffer greatly.

A summary of Solzhenitsyn's works - a retelling of "Cancer Ward"
Cancer building
Everyone was gathered by this terrible building - the thirteenth, cancerous one. The persecuted and the persecutors, the silent and the cheerful, the hard workers and the money-grubbers - he gathered them all and depersonalized them, all of them are now only seriously ill, torn from their usual surroundings, rejected and rejected everything familiar and familiar. Now they have no other home, no other life. They come here with pain, with doubt - cancer or not, to live or die? However, no one thinks about death, it doesn’t exist. Ephraim, with a bandaged neck, walks around and whines, “This is our great business,” but he doesn’t even think about death, despite the fact that the bandages are rising higher and higher, and the doctors are becoming more and more silent - he doesn’t want to believe in death and doesn’t believe . He is an old-timer, the illness left him for the first time and now it will let him go. Rusanov Nikolay Pavlovich is a responsible employee who dreams of a well-deserved personal pension. I ended up here by accident, if I really need to go to a hospital, it’s not this one, where the conditions are so barbaric (no separate room for you, no specialists and care befitting his position). Yes, and there were a lot of people in the ward, the Ogloed alone is worth something - an exile, a rude man and a malingerer.
And Kostoglotov (the same insightful Rusanov called him Ogloedom) no longer considers himself sick. Twelve days ago he crawled into the clinic not sick, but dying, and now he even has some “vaguely pleasant” dreams, and he’s more than willing to go on a visit - a clear sign of recovery. It couldn’t have been any other way, he’s already endured so much: he fought, then he was in prison, he didn’t finish college (and now he’s thirty-four, too late), he wasn’t accepted as an officer, he was exiled forever, and then there’s cancer. You couldn’t find a more stubborn, corrosive patient: he is sick professionally (he studied a book of pathological anatomy), he seeks an answer from specialists for every question, he found a doctor Maslennikov, who treats him with a miracle medicine - chaga. And he’s ready to go on a search himself, to be treated like any living creature is treated, but he can’t go to Russia, where amazing trees grow - birches...
A wonderful way of recovery with the help of tea from chaga (birch mushroom) revived and interested all cancer patients, who were tired and lost faith. But Oleg Kostoglotov is not the kind of person to reveal all his secrets to these free people, but not taught the “wisdom of life’s sacrifices”, who do not know how to throw off everything unnecessary, superfluous and be treated...
A believer in all folk medicines (here are chaga and the Issyk-Kul root - aconite), Oleg Kostoglotov is very wary of any “scientific” intervention in his body, which greatly annoys the attending physicians Vera Kornilievna Gangart and Lyudmila Afanasyevna Dontsova. With the last Ogloed, everyone is eager to have a frank conversation, but Lyudmila Afanasyevna, “giving in on a small thing” (cancelling one session of radiation therapy), with medical cunning, immediately prescribes a “small” injection of sinestrol, a medicine that kills, as Oleg later found out, the only one the joy in life that remained for him, having gone through fourteen years of hardship, which he experienced every time he met Vega (Vera Gangart). Does a doctor have the right to cure a patient at any cost? Should the patient and does he want to survive at any cost? Oleg Kostoglotov cannot discuss this with Vera Gangart, no matter how much he wants. Vega's blind faith in science collides with Oleg's confidence in the forces of nature, man, and his own strength. And both of them make concessions: Vera Kornilievna asks, and Oleg pours out an infusion of the root, agrees to a blood transfusion, to an injection that seemingly destroys the last joy available to Oleg on earth. The joy of loving and being loved.
And Vega accepts this sacrifice: self-denial is so much in the nature of Vera Gangart that she cannot imagine any other life. Having gone through fourteen deserts of loneliness in the name of her only love, which began very early and ended tragically, having gone through fourteen years of madness for the sake of the boy who called her Vega and died in the war, she only now became completely convinced that she was right, and today she acquired a new, complete meaning her long-term loyalty. Now, when I have met a person who, like her, has endured years of hardship and loneliness on his shoulders, like her, who has not bent under this weight and is therefore so close, dear, understanding and understandable - it is worth living for such a meeting!
A person must go through a lot and change his mind before he comes to such an understanding of life; not everyone is given this. So Zoenka, bee-Zoenka, no matter how much she likes Kostoglotov, will not even sacrifice her position as a nurse, and even more so will try to protect herself from a person with whom you can secretly kiss from everyone in a dead-end corridor, but you cannot create real family happiness ( with children, embroidery floss, pillows and many, many other joys available to others). The same height as Vera Kornilievna, Zoya is much denser, which is why she seems larger and more dignified. And in their relationship with Oleg there is no that fragility and understatement that reigns between Kostoglotov and Gangart. As a future doctor, Zoya (a medical student) perfectly understands the “doom” of the sick Kostoglotov. It is she who opens his eyes to the secret of the new injection prescribed by Dontsova. And again, like the pulsation of veins - is it worth living after this? Is it worth it?..
And Lyudmila Afanasyevna herself is no longer convinced of the impeccability of the scientific approach. Once upon a time, about fifteen to twenty years ago, radiation therapy, which saved so many lives, seemed to be a universal method, just a godsend for oncologists. And only now, in the last two years, patients, former patients of oncology clinics, began to appear with obvious changes in those places where particularly strong doses of radiation were applied. And now Lyudmila Afanasyevna has to write a report on the topic “Radiation sickness” and go over in her memory the cases of the return of “radiation workers”. And her own pain in the stomach, a symptom familiar to her as an oncologist, suddenly shook her previous confidence, determination and authority. Is it possible to raise the question of a doctor’s right to treat? No, Kostoglotov is clearly wrong here, but this does little to reassure Lyudmila Afanasyevna. Depression is the state in which doctor Dontsova finds herself, this is what really begins to bring her, so unattainable before, closer to her patients. “I did what I could. But I’m wounded and I’m falling too.”
Rusanov’s tumor has already subsided, but this news brings him neither joy nor relief. His illness made him think about too many things, made him stop and look around. No, he does not doubt the correctness of the life he lived, but others may not understand, may not forgive (neither anonymous letters, nor signals, which he was simply obliged to send out of duty, out of duty as an honest citizen, finally). Yes, he was not so much worried about others (for example, Kostoglotov, but what does he even know in life: Ogloed, one word!), but about his own children: how to explain everything to them? There is only one hope for daughter Avieta: she is correct, her father’s pride, and smart. The hardest thing is with my son Yurka: he is too trusting and naive, spineless. It’s a pity for him, how can such a spineless person live? This reminds Rusanov very much of one of the conversations in the ward at the beginning of treatment. The main speaker was Ephraim: having stopped itching, he read for a long time some little book handed to him by Kostoglotov, thought for a long time, was silent, and then said: “How does a person live?” Contentment, specialty, homeland (native places), air, bread, water - many different assumptions rained down. And only Nikolai Pavlovich confidently minted: “People live by ideology and the public good.” The moral of the book written by Leo Tolstoy turned out to be completely “not ours.” Love-bo-view... It smells like slobbering a kilometer away! Ephraim became thoughtful, sad, and left the room without saying another word. The wrongness of the writer, whose name he had never heard before, seemed less obvious to him. They discharged Ephraim, and a day later they brought him back from the station, under the sheet. And everyone who continued to live became completely sad.
The one who is not going to succumb to his illness, his grief, his fear is Demka, who absorbs everything that is said in the ward. He went through a lot in his sixteen years: his father abandoned his mother (and Demka doesn’t blame him, because she “got crazy”), the mother had no time for her son at all, and he, in spite of everything, tried to survive, learn, get back on his feet. The only joy left for the orphan was football. He suffered for it: a blow to the leg and cancer. For what? Why? A boy with an overly mature face, a heavy gaze, no talent (according to Vadim, his roommate), but very diligent and thoughtful. He reads (a lot and stupidly), studies (and has missed too much), dreams of going to college to create literature (because he loves the truth, his “social life is very inflamed”). Everything is a first for him: discussions about the meaning of life, and a new unusual view of religion (Aunt Stefa, who is not ashamed to cry), and his first bitter love (and that one is sick, hopeless). But the desire to live is so strong in him that even losing his leg seems like a good solution: more time to study (you don’t have to run to dances), you will receive disability benefits (enough for bread, but without sugar), and most importantly - alive!
And Demkin’s love, Asenka, amazed him with her impeccable knowledge of her entire life. It was as if this girl had just come from the skating rink, or from the dance floor, or from the cinema, dropped into the clinic for five minutes, just to get checked, but here, behind the walls of the cancer clinic, all her conviction remained. Who would need her like this now, one-breasted, from all her life experience the only thing that came out was: there is no need to live now! The demo may have said why: he thought of something during his long treatment-teaching (life teaching, as Kostoglotov instructed, is the only true teaching), but it doesn’t add up to words.
And all of Asenka’s swimsuits are left behind, unworn and unbought, all of Rusanov’s profiles are unchecked and unfinished, all of Efremov’s construction projects are unfinished. The entire “order of world things” has been overturned. The first experience with the disease crushed Dontsova like a frog. Dr. Oreshchenkov no longer recognizes his beloved student, he looks and looks at her confusion, realizing how helpless modern man is in the face of death. Dormidont Tikhonovich himself, over the years of medical practice (both clinical, advisory, and private practice), over many years of losses, and especially after the death of his wife, seemed to understand something different in this life. And this difference manifested itself primarily in the eyes of the doctor, the main “tool” of communication with patients and students. In his gaze, which to this day is attentive and firm, a reflection of some kind of renunciation is noticeable. The old man wants nothing, just a copper plate on the door and a bell accessible to any passerby. From Lyudochka he expected greater stamina and endurance.
Always collected, Vadim Zatsyrko, who was afraid to spend even a minute in inactivity all his life, has been lying in a ward of the cancer ward for a month. A month - and he is no longer convinced of the need to accomplish a feat worthy of his talent, leave behind a new method of searching for ores and die a hero (twenty-seven years old - Lermontov's age!).
The general despondency that reigned in the ward is not disturbed even by the diversity of the change of patients: Demka descends into the surgical room and two newcomers appear in the ward. The first took Demka's bed - in the corner, by the door. Eagle owl - Pavel Nikolaevich dubbed him, proud of his insight. Indeed, this patient looks like an old, wise bird. Very stooped, with a worn-out face, with bulging, puffy eyes - a “ward silent man”; life, it seems, has taught him only one thing: to sit and quietly listen to everything that was said in his presence. A librarian who once graduated from an agricultural academy, a Bolshevik since the age of seventeen, a participant in the civil war, a man who renounced life - that’s who this lonely old man is. Without friends, his wife died, his children forgot, his illness made him even more lonely - an outcast, defending the idea of moral socialism in a dispute with Kostoglotov, despising himself and his life spent in silence. Kostoglotov, who loved to listen and hear, learns all this one sunny spring day... Something unexpected, joyful presses Oleg Kostoglotov’s chest. It started on the eve of discharge, I was happy with the thoughts of Vega, I was happy with the upcoming “release” from the clinic, I was happy with new unexpected news from the newspapers, I was also happy with nature itself, which finally broke through with bright sunny days, turning green with the first timid greenery. It was a joy to return to eternal exile, to my dear native Ush-Terek. To where the Kadmin family lives, the happiest people he has ever met in his life. In his pocket there are two pieces of paper with the addresses of Zoya and Vega, but it is unbearably large for him, who has experienced a lot and given up a lot, it would be such simple, such earthly happiness. After all, there is already an unusually delicate blooming apricot in one of the courtyards of the abandoned city, there is a pink spring morning, a proud goat, a nilgai antelope and the beautiful distant star Vega... How people live.

Everyone was gathered by this terrible building - the thirteenth, cancerous one. The persecuted and the persecutors, the silent and the cheerful, the hard workers and the money-grubbers - he gathered and depersonalized them all, all of them are now only seriously ill, torn from their usual environment, rejected and rejected everything familiar and dear. Now they have no other home, no other life. They come here with pain, with doubt - cancer or not, to live or die? However, no one thinks about death, it doesn’t exist. Ephraim, with a bandaged neck, walks around and whines, “This is our great business,” but he doesn’t even think about death, despite the fact that the bandages are rising higher and higher, and the doctors are becoming more and more silent - he doesn’t want to believe in death and doesn’t believe . He is an old-timer, the illness left him for the first time and now it will let him go. Nikolay Pavlovich Rusanov is a responsible employee who dreams of a well-deserved personal pension. I ended up here by accident, if I really need to go to a hospital, it’s not this one, where the conditions are so barbaric (no separate room for you, no specialists and care befitting his position). Yes, and there were a lot of people in the ward, the Ogloed alone is worth something - an exile, a rude man and a malingerer.

And Kostoglotov (the same insightful Rusanov called him Ogloedom) no longer considers himself sick. Twelve days ago he crawled into the clinic not sick, but dying, and now he even has some “vaguely pleasant” dreams, and he’s eager to go on a visit - a clear sign of recovery. It couldn’t have been any other way, he’s already endured so much: he fought, then he was in prison, he didn’t finish college (and now he’s thirty-four, too late), he wasn’t accepted as an officer, he was exiled forever, and then there’s cancer. You couldn’t find a more stubborn, corrosive patient: he is sick professionally (he studied a book of pathological anatomy), he seeks an answer from specialists for every question, he found a doctor Maslennikov, who treats him with a miracle medicine - chaga. And he’s ready to go on a search himself, to be treated like any living creature is treated, but he can’t go to Russia, where amazing trees grow - birches...

A wonderful way of recovery with the help of tea from chaga (birch mushroom) revived and interested all cancer patients, who were tired and lost faith. But Oleg Kostoglotov is not the kind of person to reveal all his secrets to these free people, but not taught the “wisdom of life’s sacrifices”, who do not know how to throw off everything unnecessary, superfluous and be treated...

Believing in all folk medicines (here are chaga and the Issyk-Kul root - aconite), Oleg Kostoglotov is very wary of any “scientific” intervention in his body, which greatly annoys the attending physicians Vera Kornilievna Gangart and Lyudmila Afanasyevna Dontsova. With the last Ogloed, everyone is eager to have a frank conversation, but Lyudmila Afanasyevna, “giving in on a small thing” (cancelling one session of radiation therapy), with medical cunning, immediately prescribes a “small” injection of sinestrol, a medicine that kills, as Oleg later found out, that only joy in the life that remained for him, having gone through fourteen years of hardship, which he experienced every time he met Vega (Vera Gangart). Does a doctor have the right to cure a patient at any cost? Should the patient and does he want to survive at any cost? Oleg Kostoglotov cannot discuss this with Vera Gangart, no matter how much he wants. Vega's blind faith in science collides with Oleg's confidence in the forces of nature, man, and his own strength. And both of them make concessions: Vera Kornilievna asks, and Oleg pours out an infusion of the root, agrees to a blood transfusion, to an injection that seemingly destroys the last joy available to Oleg on earth. The joy of loving and being loved.

And Vega accepts this sacrifice: self-denial is so much in the nature of Vera Gangart that she cannot imagine any other life. Having gone through fourteen deserts of loneliness in the name of her only love, which began very early and ended tragically, having gone through fourteen years of madness for the sake of the boy who called her Vega and died in the war, she only now became completely convinced that she was right, and today she acquired a new, complete meaning her long-term loyalty. Now, when I have met a person who, like her, has endured years of hardship and loneliness on his shoulders, like her, who has not bent under this weight and is therefore so close, dear, understanding and understandable - it is worth living for such a meeting!

A person must go through a lot and change his mind before he comes to such an understanding of life; not everyone is given this. So Zoenka, bee-Zoenka, no matter how much she likes Kostoglotov, will not even sacrifice her position as a nurse, and even more so will try to protect herself from a person with whom you can secretly kiss from everyone in a dead-end corridor, but you cannot create real family happiness ( with children, embroidery floss, pillows and many, many other joys available to others). The same height as Vera Kornilievna, Zoya is much denser, which is why she seems larger and more dignified. And in their relationship with Oleg there is no that fragility and understatement that reigns between Kostoglotov and Gangart. As a future doctor, Zoya (a medical student) perfectly understands the “doom” of the sick Kostoglotov. It is she who opens his eyes to the secret of the new injection prescribed by Dontsova. And again, like the pulsation of veins - is it worth living after this? Is it worth it?..

And Lyudmila Afanasyevna herself is no longer convinced of the impeccability of the scientific approach. Once upon a time, about fifteen to twenty years ago, radiation therapy, which saved so many lives, seemed to be a universal method, just a godsend for oncologists. And only now, in the last two years, patients, former patients of oncology clinics, began to appear with obvious changes in those places where particularly strong doses of radiation were applied. And now Lyudmila Afanasyevna has to write a report on the topic “Radiation sickness” and go over in her memory the cases of the return of “radiation workers”. And her own pain in the stomach, a symptom familiar to her as an oncologist, suddenly shook her previous confidence, determination and authority. Is it possible to raise the question of a doctor’s right to treat? No, Kostoglotov is clearly wrong here, but this does little to reassure Lyudmila Afanasyevna. Depression is the state in which doctor Dontsova finds herself, this is what really begins to bring her, so unattainable before, closer to her patients. “I did what I could. But I’m wounded and I’m falling too.”

Rusanov’s tumor has already subsided, but this news brings him neither joy nor relief. His illness made him think about too many things, made him stop and look around. No, he has no doubts about the right-

of the life he lived, but others may not understand, may not forgive (neither anonymous letters, nor signals, which he was simply obliged to send out of duty, out of duty as an honest citizen, finally). Yes, he was not so much worried about others (for example, Kostoglotov, but what does he even know in life: Ogloed, one word!), but about his own children: how to explain everything to them? There is only one hope for daughter Avieta: she is correct, her father’s pride, and smart. The hardest thing is with my son Yurka: he is too trusting and naive, spineless. It’s a pity for him, how can such a spineless person live? This reminds Rusanov very much of one of the conversations in the ward at the beginning of treatment. The main speaker was Ephraim: having stopped itching, he read for a long time some little book handed to him by Kostoglotov, thought for a long time, was silent, and then said: “How does a person live?” Contentment, specialty, homeland (native places), air, bread, water - many different assumptions rained down. And only Nikolai Pavlovich confidently minted: “People live by ideology and the public good.” The moral of the book written by Leo Tolstoy turned out to be completely “not ours.” Love-bo-view... It smells like slobbering a kilometer away! Ephraim became thoughtful, sad, and left the room without saying another word. The wrongness of the writer, whose name he had never heard before, seemed less obvious to him. They discharged Ephraim, and a day later they brought him back from the station, under the sheet. And everyone who continued to live became completely sad.

The one who is not going to succumb to his illness, his grief, his fear is Demka, who absorbs everything that is said in the ward. He went through a lot in his sixteen years: his father abandoned his mother (and Demka doesn’t blame him, because she “got crazy”), the mother had no time for her son at all, and he, in spite of everything, tried to survive, learn, get back on his feet. The only joy left for the orphan is football. He suffered for it: a blow to the leg and cancer. For what? Why? A boy with an overly mature face, a heavy gaze, no talent (according to Vadim, his roommate), but very diligent and thoughtful. He reads (a lot and stupidly), studies (and has missed too much), dreams of going to college to create literature (because he loves the truth, his “social life is very inflamed”). Everything is a first for him: discussions about the meaning of life, and a new unusual view of religion (Aunt Stefa, who is not ashamed to cry), and his first bitter love (and that one is sick, hopeless). But the desire to live is so strong in him that even losing his leg seems like a good solution: more time to study (you don’t have to run to dances), you will receive disability benefits (enough for bread, but you can do without sugar), and most importantly - alive!

And Demkin’s love, Asenka, amazed him with her impeccable knowledge of her entire life. It was as if this girl had just come from the skating rink, or from the dance floor, or from the cinema, dropped into the clinic for five minutes, just to get checked, but here, behind the walls of the cancer clinic, all her conviction remained. Who would need her like this now, one-breasted, from all her life experience the only thing that came out was: there is no need to live now! The demo may have said why: he thought of something during his long treatment-teaching (life teaching, as Kostoglotov instructed, is the only true teaching), but it doesn’t add up to words.

And all of Asenka’s swimsuits are left behind, unworn and unbought, all of Rusanov’s profiles are unchecked and unfinished, all of Efremov’s construction projects are unfinished. The entire “order of world things” has been overturned. The first experience with the disease crushed Dontsova like a frog. Dr. Oreshchenkov no longer recognizes his beloved student, he looks and looks at her confusion, realizing how helpless modern man is in the face of death. Dormidont Tikhonovich himself, over the years of medical practice (both clinical, advisory, and private practice), over many years of losses, and especially after the death of his wife, seemed to understand something different in this life. And this difference manifested itself primarily in the eyes of the doctor, the main “tool” of communication with patients and students. In his gaze, which to this day is attentive and firm, a reflection of some kind of renunciation is noticeable. The old man wants nothing, just a copper plate on the door and a bell accessible to any passerby. From Lyudochka he expected greater stamina and endurance.

Always collected, Vadim Zatsyrko, who was afraid to spend even a minute in inactivity all his life, has been lying in a ward of the cancer ward for a month. A month - and he is no longer convinced of the need to accomplish a feat worthy of his talent, leave behind people a new method of searching for ores and die a hero (twenty-seven years old - Lermontov's age!).

The general despondency that reigned in the ward is not disturbed even by the diversity of the change of patients: Demka descends into the surgical room and two newcomers appear in the ward. The first took Demka's bed - in the corner, by the door. Eagle owl - Pavel Nikolaevich dubbed him, proud of his insight. Indeed, this patient looks like an old, wise bird. Very stooped, with a worn-out face, with bulging, puffy eyes - a “ward silent man”; life, it seems, has taught him only one thing: to sit and quietly listen to everything that was said in his presence. A librarian who once graduated from an agricultural academy, a Bolshevik since the age of seventeen, a participant in the civil war, a man who has renounced life - that’s who this lonely old man is. Without friends, his wife died, his children forgot, his illness made him even more lonely - an outcast, defending the idea of moral socialism in a dispute with Kostoglotov, despising himself and his life spent in silence. Kostoglotov, who loved to listen and hear, learns all this one sunny spring day... Something unexpected, joyful presses Oleg Kostoglotov’s chest. It started on the eve of discharge, I was happy with the thoughts of Vega, I was happy with the upcoming “release” from the clinic, I was happy with new unexpected news from the newspapers, I was also happy with nature itself, which finally broke through with bright sunny days, turning green with the first timid greenery. It was a joy to return to eternal exile, to my dear native Ush-Terek. To where the Kadmin family lives, the happiest people he has ever met in his life. In his pocket there are two pieces of paper with the addresses of Zoya and Vega, but it is unbearably large for him, who has experienced a lot and given up a lot, it would be such simple, such earthly happiness. After all, there is already an unusually delicate blooming apricot in one of the courtyards of the abandoned city, there is a pink spring morning, a proud goat, a nilgai antelope and the beautiful distant star Vega... How people live.

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Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn.

"Cancer Ward"

Everyone was gathered by this terrible building - the thirteenth, cancerous one. The persecuted and the persecutors, the silent and the cheerful, the hard workers and the money-grubbers - he gathered them all and depersonalized them, all of them are now only seriously ill, torn from their usual surroundings, rejected and rejected everything familiar and familiar. Now they have no other home, no other life. They come here with pain, with doubt - cancer or not, to live or die? However, no one thinks about death, it doesn’t exist. Ephraim, with a bandaged neck, walks around and whines, “This is our great business,” but he doesn’t even think about death, despite the fact that the bandages are rising higher and higher, and the doctors are becoming more and more silent - he doesn’t want to believe in death and doesn’t believe . He is an old-timer, the illness left him for the first time and now it will let him go. Rusanov Nikolay Pavlovich is a responsible employee who dreams of a well-deserved personal pension. I ended up here by accident, if I really need to go to a hospital, it’s not this one, where the conditions are so barbaric (no separate room for you, no specialists and care befitting his position). Yes, and there were a lot of people in the ward, the Ogloed alone is worth something - an exile, a rude man and a malingerer.

And Kostoglotov (the same insightful Rusanov called him Ogloedom) no longer considers himself sick. Twelve days ago he crawled into the clinic not sick, but dying, and now he even has some “vaguely pleasant” dreams, and he’s more than willing to go on a visit - a clear sign of recovery. It couldn’t have been otherwise, he’s already endured so much: he fought, then he sat in prison, he didn’t finish college (and now he’s thirty-four, too late), he wasn’t accepted as an officer, he was exiled forever, and now he has cancer. You couldn’t find a more stubborn, corrosive patient: he is sick professionally (he studied a book of pathological anatomy), he seeks an answer from specialists for every question, he found a doctor Maslennikov, who treats him with a miracle medicine - chaga. And he’s ready to go on a search himself, to be treated, like any living creature is treated, but he can’t go to Russia, where amazing trees grow - birches...

A believer in all folk medicines (here are chaga and the Issyk-Kul root - aconite), Oleg Kostoglotov is very wary of any “scientific” intervention in his body, which greatly annoys the attending physicians Vera Kornilievna Gangart and Lyudmila Afanasyevna Dontsova. With the last Ogloed, everyone is eager to have a frank conversation, but Lyudmila Afanasyevna, “giving in on a small thing” (cancelling one session of radiation therapy), with medical cunning, immediately prescribes a “small” injection of sinestrol, a medicine that kills, as Oleg later found out, that only joy in the life that remained for him, having gone through fourteen years of hardship, which he experienced every time he met Vega (Vera Gangart). Does a doctor have the right to cure a patient at any cost? Should the patient and does he want to survive at any cost? Oleg Kostoglotov cannot discuss this with Vera Gangart, no matter how much he wants. Vega's blind faith in science collides with Oleg's confidence in the forces of nature, man, and his own strength. And both of them make concessions: Vera Kornilievna asks, and Oleg pours out an infusion of the root, agrees to a blood transfusion, to an injection that seemingly destroys the last joy available to Oleg on earth. The joy of loving and being loved.

A person must go through a lot and change his mind before he comes to such an understanding of life; not everyone is given this. So Zoenka, bee-Zoenka, no matter how much she likes Kostoglotov, will not even sacrifice her position as a nurse, and even more so she will try to protect herself from a person with whom she can secretly kiss from everyone in a dead-end corridor, but it is impossible to create real family happiness ( with children, embroidery floss, pillows and many, many other joys available to others). The same height as Vera Kornilievna, Zoya is much denser, which is why she seems larger and more dignified. And in their relationship with Oleg there is no that fragility and understatement that reigns between Kostoglotov and Gangart. As a future doctor, Zoya (a medical student) perfectly understands the “doom” of the sick Kostoglotov. It is she who opens his eyes to the secret of the new injection prescribed by Dontsova. And again, like the pulsation of veins - is it worth living after this? Is it worth it?..

Rusanov’s tumor has already subsided, but this news brings him neither joy nor relief. His illness made him think about too many things, made him stop and look around. No, he does not doubt the correctness of the life he lived, but others may not understand, may not forgive (neither anonymous letters, nor signals, which he was simply obliged to send out of duty, out of duty as an honest citizen, finally). Yes, he was not so much worried about others (for example, Kostoglotov, but what does he even know in life: Ogloed, one word!), but about his own children: how to explain everything to them? There is only one hope for daughter Avieta: she is correct, her father’s pride, and smart. The hardest thing is with my son Yurka: he is too trusting and naive, spineless. It’s a pity for him, how can such a spineless person live? This reminds Rusanov very much of one of the conversations in the ward at the beginning of treatment. The main speaker was Ephraim: having stopped itching, he read for a long time some little book handed to him by Kostoglotov, thought for a long time, was silent, and then said: “How does a person live?” Contentment, specialty, homeland (native places), air, bread, water - many different assumptions rained down. And only Nikolai Pavlovich confidently minted: “People live by ideology and the public good.” The moral of the book written by Leo Tolstoy turned out to be completely “not ours.” Love-bo-view... It smells like slobbering a kilometer away! Ephraim became thoughtful, sad, and left the room without saying another word. The wrongness of the writer, whose name he had never heard before, seemed less obvious to him. They discharged Ephraim, and a day later they brought him back from the station, under the sheet. And everyone who continued to live became completely sad.

The one who is not going to succumb to his illness, his grief, his fear is Demka, who absorbs everything that is said in the ward. He went through a lot in his sixteen years: his father abandoned his mother (and Demka doesn’t blame him, because she “got crazy”), the mother had no time for her son at all, and he, in spite of everything, tried to survive, learn, get back on his feet. The only joy left for the orphan was football. He suffered for it: a blow to the leg and cancer. For what? Why? A boy with an overly mature face, a heavy gaze, no talent (according to Vadim, his roommate), but very diligent and thoughtful. He reads (a lot and stupidly), studies (and has missed too much), dreams of going to college to create literature (because he loves the truth, his “social life is very inflamed”). Everything is a first for him: discussions about the meaning of life, and a new unusual view of religion (Aunt Stefa, who is not ashamed to cry), and his first bitter love (and that one is sick, hopeless). But the desire to live is so strong in him that even losing his leg seems like a good solution: more time to study (you don’t have to run to dances), you will receive disability benefits (enough for bread, but without sugar), and most importantly - alive!

And all of Asenka’s swimsuits are left behind, unworn and unpurchased, all of Rusanov’s profiles are unchecked and unfinished, all of Efremov’s construction projects are unfinished. The entire “order of world things” has been overturned. The first experience with the disease crushed Dontsova like a frog. Dr. Oreshchenkov no longer recognizes his beloved student, he looks and looks at her confusion, realizing how helpless modern man is in the face of death. Dormidont Tikhonovich himself, over the years of medical practice (both clinical, and consultative, and private practice), over many years of losses, and especially after the death of his wife, seemed to understand something different in this life. And this difference manifested itself primarily in the eyes of the doctor, the main “tool” of communication with patients and students. In his gaze, which to this day is attentive and firm, there is a noticeable reflection of some kind of renunciation. The old man wants nothing, just a copper plate on the door and a bell accessible to any passerby. From Lyudochka he expected greater stamina and endurance.

Always collected, Vadim Zatsyrko, who was afraid to spend even a minute in inactivity all his life, has been lying in a ward of the cancer ward for a month. A month - and he is no longer convinced of the need to accomplish a feat worthy of his talent, leave behind a new method of searching for ores and die a hero (twenty-seven years old - Lermontov's age!).

The general despondency that reigned in the ward is not disturbed even by the diversity of the change of patients: Demka descends into the surgical room and two newcomers appear in the ward. The first took Demka's bed - in the corner, by the door. Eagle owl - Pavel Nikolaevich dubbed him, proud of his insight. Indeed, this patient looks like an old, wise bird. Very stooped, with a worn-out face, with bulging, puffy eyes - a “ward silent man”; life, it seems, has taught him only one thing: to sit and quietly listen to everything that was said in his presence. A librarian who once graduated from an agricultural academy, a Bolshevik since 1917, a participant in the civil war, a man who has renounced life - that’s who this lonely old man is. Without friends, his wife died, his children forgot, his illness made him even more lonely - an outcast, defending the idea of moral socialism in a dispute with Kostoglotov, despising himself and his life spent in silence. Kostoglotov, who loved to listen and hear, learns all this on one sunny spring day... Something unexpected, joyful presses Oleg Kostoglotov’s chest. It started on the eve of discharge, I was happy with the thoughts of Vega, I was happy with the upcoming “release” from the clinic, I was happy with new unexpected news from the newspapers, I was also happy with nature itself, which finally broke through with bright sunny days, turning green with the first timid greenery. It was a joy to return to eternal exile, to my dear native Ush-Terek. To where the Kadmin family lives, the happiest people he has ever met in his life. In his pocket there are two pieces of paper with the addresses of Zoya and Vega, but it is unbearably large for him, who has experienced a lot and given up a lot, it would be such simple, such earthly happiness. After all, there is already an unusually delicate blooming apricot in one of the courtyards of the abandoned city, there is a pink spring morning, a proud goat, a nilgai antelope and the beautiful distant star Vega... What makes people alive.

Solzhenitsyn's treatment in 1954 in the oncology department of Tashkent was reflected in the story “Cancer Ward.” The action of the story takes place in the same oncological building 13 of the Tashkent Medical Institute, always dirty and constantly overcrowded. Fate within the walls of oncology freely disposes of people’s lives, sending some to die, and expelling others from the hospital with minimal improvements. All the described heroes are not afraid of death, or rather, they do not expect it, but believe in their immediate recovery.

The main character of the story, Oleg Kostoglotov, was thrown by a difficult fate to the front, to prison, and led to lifelong exile in Kazakhstan, where he fell ill with cancer. During the 12 days spent in the hospital, he goes from dying to an active and cheerful person. Kostoglotov is described as a very corrosive person who does not particularly trust medicine. Having learned about Doctor Maslennikov, who treats cancer with chaga, he himself also decides to continue treatment with folk remedies. But after some time, under the influence of his attending physician, he pours out all his decoctions, undergoes a blood transfusion and gives all the necessary injections. However, the same Lyudmila Afanasyevna (the attending physician), who previously firmly believed in salvation with the help of radiation therapy, begins to notice her former patients among her patients. Now she is starting to create a report on the topic of radiation sickness. However, her own painful symptoms completely unsettle her.

The story also describes different types and fates of people who encountered each other under the roof of close oncology:

The informer Pavel Rusanov is a former head of the personnel department, whose swelling subsides after some time. Recovery gives him food for thought about his past words and actions, and thoughts about his own children often come to his mind.

Boy Demka, 16 years old, whom fate deprived of his parents early. In his early years, he contracted a serious illness from a blow to his leg during a football match. The story shows his dreams of college and a good life, but all his dreams are dashed by the amputation of his leg. But he also finds positive aspects in it, because now he does not need to run to dances, he will be able to devote even more time to studying.

Vadim Zatsyrko, who at the age of 27 became a geologist who wants to help the world and make at least one scientific discovery. All his time he works on a theory for determining the presence of minerals in radioactive waters. However, a month spent in the clinic completely disabuses the young man of his own ability to accomplish any feat before his possible death.

Alexey Shulubin, who previously worked as a librarian at an agricultural technical school. Shulubin completely despises his entire past silent life and zealously defends socialist ideas of morality in all disputes with other patients.

Efrem Podduvaev, who used to be a builder. Whose neck bandages are wrapped higher and higher every day. After several weeks he is discharged, but a day later, due to an exacerbation, he returns to the hospital on his own.

Solzhenitsyn’s book raises many questions about good and evil, truth and lies, and the theme of love is raised. With his story, the writer teaches responsibility for one's actions and words, and also shows the value of human life.

Review of the book “Cancer Ward” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, written as part of the “Bookshelf #1” competition.

Until recently, I tried to avoid Russian literature for reasons that were inexplicable even to myself, but “Cancer Ward” had been in my plans for a long time and was located on the imaginary “I want to read shelf” in the honorable first row. The reason for this was the following...

The title of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's story alone contains immense fear, endless pain and bitterness, bitterness for a person...

That's why I couldn't pass by. The best books turn you inside out. And this one did it, despite my readiness, despite the fact that I realized how difficult it would be. Alexander Isaevich’s work was the first to make me cry. What made the situation worse was that the story is largely autobiographical. Solzhenitsyn is a writer who endured many hardships and hardships in his life: from war, arrest, criticism and expulsion from the country, to cancer, which served as the basis for, dare I say it, a great work. And it was here, in the cracked walls of the cancer building, that the writer concluded all his thoughts and experiences that accompanied him along the long and difficult path, the path to building number thirteen.

“During this autumn, I learned for myself that a person can cross the line of death even when his body has not died. Something else is circulating or digesting in you - and you have already, psychologically, gone through all the preparation for death. And survived death itself."

It was with these thoughts that a man who once heard three terrible words... "you have cancer", crosses the threshold of the oncology department. And it doesn’t matter whether you are old or young, woman or man, an exemplary party member - a child of the system or a prisoner sentenced to eternal link - the disease will not choose.

And it seems to me that the entire horror of any disease - and especially cancer - lies, despite the above-mentioned humility, in ordinary human disbelief, in the notorious “maybe.” All of us, like the heroes of Solzhenitsyn’s story, are trying to brush it aside, disown it, and convince ourselves that under no circumstances will such grief happen to us, which is teeming all around.

“...he’s already sucking on an oxygen pillow, he’s barely moving his eyes, and he’s proving everything with his tongue: I won’t die! I don’t have cancer!”

And when we finally believe, and most importantly let's accept illness - then, again, having humbled ourselves, we begin to ask why we have such injustice, and we rummage through our past, as if in a black hole, and try in the darkness, in the name of justification, to find no less black rot, from which this mortal disease descended on us. But we don’t find anything, because, I repeat, the disease doesn’t matter. And we know this. But, I think, this is our human nature - to look for justification for everything. Justification for yourself alone, and don’t care about others...

“Everyone is more annoying than his own troubles.”

Each of the heroes of the “Solzhenitsyn” story leads to the thirteenth building. It’s amazing how different people can be brought together by fate one day (or not so much). At such moments you really begin to believe in her. This is how Rusanov and Kostoglotov meet here, in the cancer ward - two different people from one powerful system. Pavel Nikolaevich Rusanov is her adherent, an ardent supporter. Oleg Kostoglotov is a victim, a man forced to drag out his existence in exile and camps (what a telling name!). But the main thing is not that Where they meet (the cancer building here acts only as scenery, if I may). What is more important here, of course, is When! The 50s are a turning point in the history of the Union, and, more importantly, in the history of two specific people - Rusanov and Kostoglotov. The death of Stalin, the emerging conversations about exposing the cult of personality, the change of power - all this is clearly expressed in their reactions: what for one is an inevitable collapse, almost the end of life, and for the other - a long-awaited path to liberation.

And when in the middle of the ward of the hopelessly ill, useless disputes flare up about a regime that is ruining destinies, when one is ready to inform the authorities about the other “if only they were in another place,” when someone who agrees with you at the same time wants to argue - then it is so right and timely, even though through force, the hoarse voice of neighbor Ephraim sounds:

“What are people alive for?”

And, despite dislike and conflicts, having united in the face of death, everyone will answer the question in their own way, if, of course, they can answer at all. Some will say - food and clothing, another - the youngest, Demka - air and water, someone - qualifications or the Motherland, Rusanov - public good and ideology. And you are unlikely to find the correct answer. It's not worth looking for. I think he will find you one day.

Hard. It is sincerely difficult for me to understand how a person, being on the verge of death, can even think for a minute about the meaning of life. And so it is with the whole story: it’s easy to read, and you slowly float along the lines, and you want to read, read, read, and when you imagine the patient, look into his empty eyes, listen to the words, plunge into the pool of his disordered, perhaps incorrect, but the thoughts are so maddeningly strong that tears well up and you stop, as if afraid to continue.

But there is a small thread that stretches to the very end of the story, which seems to have been created in order to save. Of course, we are talking about love. About simple and real love, without embellishment, about unhappy and contradictory love, but unusually warm, about bitter and unsaid love, but still saving.

And therefore I want to say that life wins, and I want to be filled with great hope, and then before my eyes there is a terminally ill person, his thick medical history, metastases and a certificate with the inscription tumor cordis, casus inoperabilis(heart tumor, case not amenable to surgery). And tears.

In conclusion, having already left the cancer ward, I want to say that I am grateful to Alexander Isaevich for one carefully presented thought, in which I saw my attitude towards literature, but, fortunately, not towards people. I have to digest it.

— What are theater idols?

- Oh, how often this happens!

- And sometimes - what I myself experienced, but it’s more convenient to believe not in myself.

- And I saw such...

— Another idol of the theater is immoderation in accordance with the arguments of science. In a word, this is the voluntary acceptance of the delusions of others.

I cannot help but add that I felt an ineradicable feeling of shame in front of the book and the writer during breaks in reading. “Cancer Ward” is a difficult story, which is why leaving it and returning to the real “easy” world was awkward, I repeat, shameful, but it had to be done for obvious reasons.

The Cancer Ward is a place to which, alas, cured people often return. I most likely will not return to the book. I can't. And I don’t recommend everyone to read it. But I’ll probably continue my acquaintance with Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn. Later.

Cancer Ward plot. Cancer building

"Cancer Ward"