Novel “Choice. Bondarev's choice Other retellings and reviews for the reader's diary

Bondarev Yu. V.

CHAPTER FIRST

After the guests left, it was empty and quiet, the sconces on each side of the mirror were still burning in the front room, the chandeliers in the rooms had not yet been extinguished, the lilac dome of the floor lamp above the ottoman was shining softly in the most delicate penumbra, everywhere there was a smell of cigarette smoke and other people’s perfume; and it was a little sad because chairs everywhere were moved from their places, ashtrays overflowing with cigarette butts, burnt matches on the carpet, untidy glasses with straws sticking out of half-drunk cocktails and mountains of plates in the kitchen - all this resembled the chaos of unfinished and offensive destruction in the apartment.

Vasiliev, exhausted by endless conversations about art, flattery and pleasant smiles, having escorted his wife’s last guests to the elevator, was relieved to tie up her kitchen apron and began to diligently remove the dishes in the dining room. However, Maria stopped him with pleading eyes (“Don’t do it now...”) and sat down on the sofa, hugging herself by the shoulders, and thoughtfully turned to the window, beyond which the February night was deep blue.

Thank God, finally,” she said. - My legs can’t hold me up anymore.

Do you know what time it is? - he asked worriedly. - Second hour... Wow! It's good that you didn't reveal the reason for the celebration. There would be no end to the toasts until the morning. How is it, Masha, Happy Angel Day? Or happy name day?

“I’m very tired,” she said, lighting a cigarette, and smiled at him casually. - Thank you, dear... and let’s not talk about it. These are all insignificant details and everything is not worth it... Good night! I'll sit alone for a while. Go to bed please...

He felt the insincerity of her words, and this familiar-classical “it’s not worth it,” and this salon-secular “thank you, dear,” seemed to unpleasantly block her, alienating her into a mannerism alien to her, noticeable in the days of quarrels, previously infrequent, which immediately created the dizzying instability of the swaying bridge.

Yes, Volodya, please go, go,” Maria repeated with tired insistence and, leaning the smoking cigarette against the edge of the ashtray, poured herself some red wine. - If you want to tell me something serious about my guests, then you don’t need to say it now - I don’t want to...

I don’t know many of your guests, Masha.

And maybe that's why you were very nice. He charmed all the women.

She took a sip; he saw how her throat moved and a wet reddish stripe remained on her lips, the related and delicate taste of which he knew so well.

Masha, what are you talking about? Women? Charmed? I didn't understand this.

I ask you - let's be silent...

No, he didn’t remember that before, after the guests had left, she would sit like this alone on the sofa, crossing her legs, drinking absentmindedly, taking a pensive drag on a cigarette, shaking her narrow toe shoes - four months ago he would have considered this some kind of fun game , offered to him (for the sake of mischievous amusement) from some vulgar foreign film, a banal farce, translated by her for the purchasing committee at the screening in the main office, and he was ready, as sometimes happened before, to hear her laughing drawl voice: “So, monsieur , we saw off the guests. The celebrities are gone! What a relief! What are we going to do? Are you going to the workshop? Or will you stay with your wife?” Now he was not expecting such a phrase, but looked somewhat puzzled at how Maria slowly sipped her glass between puffs of a cigarette, but for some reason he lacked the determination to be surprised by this desire of hers, similar to a whim or a challenge, so he said with playful clumsiness:

Aren't you having a blast, Masha? Nothing happened?

God! - She lowered her eyes, as if overcoming the pain, and he saw her eyelashes, heavy with tears. - Don’t you understand simple things - I want to be alone. Please understand me, I’m the only one who wants to take a break from everything in the world...

Sorry, Masha,” he said guiltily and left the room.

The corridor and the hallway were still idly illuminated by bronze candle-shaped sconces, frivolous and sleepless in the silence of the night apartment, and near the telephone table the space of the mirror shone with silvery emptiness. Vasilyev glanced briefly at his frowning face, pale from fatigue (“The best thing is for me to go to the studio now...”), then turned off the light, that belated electric illumination near the mirror, which instantly became mysteriously dark, and for a long time in the hall he put on his warmest sheepskin coat, his beloved, in which he went on location in the winter, fiddled with the “zippers” of his fur boots for a long time, thinking about the late time when going to the workshop was pointless, but Maria was silent, did not stop him, did not go out into the hall to accompany him to the door, turn his cheek for the kiss that was instituted between them.

“I’m going, Masha,” he said, trying to speak casually and convincing himself that nothing serious had happened. - I'll walk through the air and breathe. Good night!

“Goodbye, Volodya, I’ll call you in the morning,” Maria responded from the living room in a warning, almost affectionate tone, and he went out onto the landing and closed the door with his key.

While waiting for an elevator under a yellow light on the eighth floor of a sleeping apartment building, he heard muffled laughter mixed with whispers and glanced sideways towards the window, where a couple was standing near the radiator (as often happened), noticed something familiar in the girl’s figure, and then it was clearly the daughter’s sonorous voice called out in surprise:

Pa-ah, where are you going? And why are you?

He was not very pleased to see next to his daughter at that hour the tall actor Svetozarov, not in his first youth, a burning handsome man, an anecdotist, a drinker, a lover of practical jokes, twice married and twice divorced, with the manners of an operetta ladies' man, and Vasiliev felt a caustic, offensive chill from naive inexperience and excessive promiscuity of the daughter.

“It’s probably time for you, Vika,” Vasiliev said and looked at Svetozarov with sincere curiosity. “And you, young man of irresistible appearance, it’s time to let go of the Soviet student who has to get up for a lecture at seven.”

Victoria, you must obey your elders,” Svetozarov spoke in a deep baritone voice, feigning prudent submission. - Vladimir Alekseevich, generously excuse me for the unexpected midnight... I’m ready to atone for sins in the monastery, if only there was an address for at least one active person. There is no place to repent.

Please take the elevator with me instead of the monastery. I'll explain what to do.

Pa-ah, stop it! - Victoria objected with a laugh. - Advice and teachings begin! Anatoly tells funny stories, and I laugh! Have you heard about rehearsals at the Moscow Art Theater? About Massalsky and Ershov? No? How did they jump on stage at the “break” signal during the play?

While still a young man, the main character Ilya decided to become a strong fighter. He does everything for this, but then the war begins, he ends up at the front. They have to endure the retreat, the stupidity of the commander... Their battery is surrounded by the Germans, Ilya shoots the commander who killed them, and the prisoners end up in a German camp, where they inform on each other. Ilya is declared missing, but he ends up abroad, gets married, and avoids the Russians. Having accidentally met a classmate, Ilya decides to visit his mother in Russia, and she drives away the traitor.

A novel about the difficulty of choice. Of course, it is important to educate yourself as a fighter, play sports, develop your spirit, but you also need to think about your heart so that it will help you make the right choice.

Indeed, Ilya Ramzin consciously engages in wrestling and develops his spirit. With the beginning of the war, he ends up in an artillery school, and from there he quickly goes to the front. The first years turned out to be especially difficult and humiliating for the army, for every soldier.

Particularly powerful is the scene of the meeting with the gray-haired mother, who cried so much without him. For thirty years - not a line, and now he brought her “foreign money” as an insult. Realizing that he made the wrong choice, the hero decides to commit suicide.

For this novel, Yuri Vasilyevich was awarded a state prize before Perestroika.

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MKV(S) OUTSO Omutninsky district, Kirov region

Literature lesson notes
in 11th grade

« Lesson - confession based on the novel by Yu.V. Bondarev “Choice”

prepared

teacher of Russian language and literature

Honored Teacher of the Russian Federation

Vasenina Tamara Alexandrovna

Omutninsk - 2012

Lesson – confession based on the novel “Choice” by Yuri Bondarev

Goals:

Educational - to reveal the position of the characters in the novel in relation to the issue of choice, creating a problematic situation, to encourage students to express their own point of view about the life principles of Ramzin, Vasiliev, etc. Show the spiritual quest of the main characters of the novel. Protest of a humanist writer against the violation of the natural human right to life.
Educational – to promote the formation of students’ own point of view in relation to such a concept as “choice”; create situations in which students understand that there is a way out of any difficult situation. The problem of constant choice in life. Who is to blame for this tragedy?

Developmental – developing skills in working in a group, public speaking, and the ability to defend one’s point of view.

Equipment: portrait of Yu.V. Bondarev, artistic texts. works.

Methodical techniques: Educational dialogue, elements of role-playing game, creation of a problem situation.

Time: 90 minutes

Preparing for the lesson.

Questions for conversation are posted in the classroom 2 weeks before the lesson to intrigue the students and force them to turn to the text:

1.What were Ilya Nikolaevich Ramzin and Vladimir Alekseevich Vasiliev like in their youth? Which one do you like best at this age?

2. How did it happen that Ramzin committed treason?

3.Who is to blame for this: Major Vorotyuk, Sergeant Major Lazarev or Ramzin himself?

4. Remember the circumstances of the battle, the cruel order of Vorotyuk, the baseness of Lazarev?

5. What could Ramzin do? What choice did he have before him?

6. Is it easy at 19 to make a choice between life and death? (we are facing one of the tragedies of the war)

7. How did Ramzin live during the 30 years he spent abroad?

8. What is the reason for his complete inner emptiness?

9. What do you think is the climax scene of the novel?

10. How do you understand Ramzin’s words “I left no trace of myself on earth”?

11. What does it take to leave a mark on the earth? Find L. Martynov’s poem “Trace”

12. Why is Vasiliev unhappy, who made the right choice during the war and now, it would seem, has everything: honor, his favorite job, family?

13 Why do his relationships with loved ones become more complicated, and why does discord arise in the hero’s life?

14. How does Vasiliev try to understand himself, the people around him, and find the highest truth?

15. What is Vasiliev’s guilt before his father?

16. Can we be sure that Vasiliev will find a way out of the impasse?

Vasiliev’s daughter – Vika

1.What choice is Vika ready to make?

2. Does the tragedy she experienced justify her?

3. Where does this willingness to leave the homeland come from? Imitate the West in everything?

4. What happened to Vika 2 years ago?

5. How do you imagine Vika’s future fate?

INDIVIDUAL tasks for the lesson

The class is divided into 5 microgroups, each group receives a task, a staging of the climactic scene of the novel “Ilya’s Meeting with his Mother” is being prepared.

During the classes

Lesson epigraph: All life is an endless choice...

Yu.V.Bondarev

Teacher's opening speech

Yu.V. Bondarev belongs to that generation whose life is “entirely permeated and illuminated by war.” At seventeen, he stepped into the firestorms of '41, fought as an artilleryman, and was wounded twice. The front shaped him as a person. “War,” the writer admits, “was for me the most intelligent and ruthless teacher of life... Everything - faces, voices, battles, conflicts, victories, high-rise buildings, tank attacks - accumulated in memory, and memory in war is unusually receptive, and this determined in many ways my life experience.”

Almost everything Bondarev wrote is about the war. Together with his heroes, the writer walked along the roads of war, pushed guns with his shoulder, pulled them out of the autumn mud, stood at direct fire, shared the last tobacco for rolling after a tank attack.

Bondarev's military theme is a protest against the evil that war brings, disfiguring human souls. But war is also a heroic page of history that cannot be erased. She taught a lot, brought people together, made them think. The war pages are written by Bondarev with stern truthfulness, making you think not only about the past, but also about the future.

The novel “Choice” does not fit the usual definitions of the types of novel (political, psychological, ethical, everyday, philosophical, etc.) It is called a novel of reflection, a novel of reflection. I would add - a novel is a revelation, a novel is a confession. The main problem of the novel is the problem of CHOICE.

So, before us is one of the tragedies of the war. We will focus our attention on the problem of moral choice by the main characters of the novel.

Individual scenes and episodes of the novel are analyzed by trained students.

CONFESSION 1. Meeting of Ilya and Vladimir.

Chapter 5 pp. 16 – 20 from the words “Hello, Ilya... to the words... but then did I have a better friend than him? - says Vasiliev. (p.21)

Questions:

1. How did Ilya live abroad?

2. How did he end up in captivity?

3.Who killed Sergeant Major Lazarev?

4.What do we learn about Major Vorotyuk?

5. Why does Ilya absolutely want to come to Russia?

CONFESSION 2. War. Last Stand. Captivity.

1. An episode from chapter 10, page 56 is read out. Lazarev and Ramzin..

(Students note Ilya’s intolerance of anyone’s physical strength. Ilya’s rudeness p. 64.)

2.Environment. Major Vorotyuk. An excerpt from chapter 12 p.68 is analyzed.

(Students note the monstrous slander of Lazarev p. 71

Questions:

1. Why was Ramzin’s battery surrounded and cut off by German machine gunners, and the horses shot at point-blank range?

(Vorotiuk left the area bare, without cover, and yet he will accuse Ramzin of cowardice.)

2. Why does Sergeant Major Lazarev take revenge on Ramzin?

CONFESSION 3. Captivity. Living abroad.

An episode from chapter 13 (end) pp. 72-76 is read. We pay attention to Vorotyuk’s words: “Go and think which bullet is sweeter! Ours or the German one! Go! Ma-arsh from here!”

Ramzin tells Vasiliev: “No, he doesn’t need us alive... Our death is his justification. We died along with the guns"

Questions:

1. Why did Ilya decide to kill Lazarev?

2.What choice does Ilya make? (Having been captured, blinded by hatred of Vorotyuk and fear of the tribunal (his father was innocently convicted in 1937 and died), he made the wrong choice and paid dearly for his fatal mistake - a life without hope, without happiness, without joy. His fate instructive and tragic)

3. Is it easy at 19 to make a choice between life and death?

4. What could Ilya do, what choice faced him? (In the current dramatic situation, Ilya could have died, been killed or shot himself, stood trial or betrayed. Ramzin remained in captivity and survived, but we don’t know and will never know whether he himself surrendered or would have been captured. The only thing he admitted to was Vasiliev, it’s that he fired, as promised, two bullets into the criminal and Lazarev’s earpiece, but “spared” the bullet for himself.

5. How has Ilya lived abroad for 30 years? (Lived in Germany, owned a company producing needles for sewing machines, became a widower)

6. How did Vasiliev see him in Venice?

(A gray-haired, sophisticated foreigner in an impeccably tailored suit. He was considered missing. His mother persistently searched for him after the war. He is a widower. He was married to a German woman. His adult son Rudolf works in Munich. After the death of his wife, Ilya lives near Rome: there are fewer Russians here.

30 years after the war, Ilya is ready to pay the bills: “For not returning, and now it’s too late to return. Because he didn’t die in captivity, didn’t drown in shit like hundreds of other Russians abroad... But he didn’t serve with Vlasov. Although they were recruited in Sachsenhausen. He did not fight in the foreign legion. I am not listed among war criminals and punitive forces...”

Now he is pursuing one goal - to visit his homeland. This is another Ilya...

CONFESSION 4. Meeting with mother. (You can prepare a dramatization or role-playing) This is the climax scene of the novel.

In the scene of the meeting with his mother, the author pronounces the final verdict on Ramzin. The only person to whom Ilya was guilty beyond measure was his mother Raisa Mikhailovna. She waited all 30 years for her Ilyusha, but he could not, did not want, or did not find the opportunity to inform about himself. He loved her. The separation from my son was bitter, but their meeting was even more bitter. Over the long years of uncertainty, the mother's heart ached. Before meeting his mother, he still hoped for something, but after seeing her, he realized that it was time to pay the bills. A meeting with his mother, a gray-haired, seventy-year-old woman, her cold reception of her son is the last and largest straw in Ramzin’s cup of retribution for what he did. He is handsome, elegant, smart, but spiritually dead. No one can help him anymore - neither money, nor a woman, nor friendship with Vasiliev. And he makes the last choice - suicide.

CONFESSION 5. The last choice of Ilya Ramzin is Ramzen.

The suicide scene is analyzed, chapter 19 p.114.

Read Ilya’s suicide letter, Chapter 19, page 115 Finishing his suicide letter to Vasiliev, he will note: “I think that my mother, an iron woman, will calmly react to my departure...” But he was mistaken. His death resonated with pain in the hearts of those who knew him..

Questions:

What does Ilya ask for in his suicide letter? (so that he would be buried in his homeland. In the last moments before his death, he is tormented by doubt whether his former friend will fulfill his only request, the only reward for a dissolute and useless life - to be buried in some Moscow cemetery, in his native land, which he, perhaps , and did not betray, but did not love and appreciate enough during his life. But the earth accepted his sinful body, and that was all she could do for her lost son.)
Who is to blame for this tragedy?

(The man himself. A man who, by all accounts, could be a man with a capital M, passes away from life without even leaving a legacy. And this emptiness frightens him. It seems to him that “not a black, not a white hole in the universe, but emptiness...” On the eve of suicide, he tells his guests: “It’s scary to die. You can leave a mark, you can leave a legacy, the worst thing is an empty place.” Ramzin made the choice between life and death because he went through repentance, through punishment by his conscience. The war was Patriotic and it was not the Vorotyuks who needed to be defended, but the Fatherland. In those tragic moments of the front-line situation, Ramzin was unable to rise above himself, over his personal resentment. He allowed the desire for revenge to prevail, which led him too far.

3. The author’s attitude towards the hero. (Ilya Ramzin is not a criminal, he is a renegade, a prodigal son, who returned to his native home too late. Ilya is the strictest judge of himself. “Truth, like memory, is given to a person as punishment. Remembering the bad, we suffer. Remembering the good, we feel bitterness inevitable," says Ilya. His views are the result of all his bitter life experiences. Arriving in Moscow many years later, Ramzin remarks: “... There is no paradise. Why do people in Moscow so slavishly imitate the West? , in love with someone else’s style... in a soulless... disastrous vulgar style - and it becomes sickening. And you can go crazy. they are hard-earned.)

CONFESSION of Vasiliev.

Chapter 20 p. 121 is analyzed.

Vasiliev confesses to himself. Reads Tolstoy's confessional diaries of the last years of his life.

Questions:

Why is Vasiliev unhappy, who made the right choice during the war and now, it would seem, has everything: honor, his favorite job, family?

(His fault is that, busy only with his creativity, he seemed to isolate himself from people and did not confirm his choice. His guilt is great before his father and daughter.)

Do we have faith that Vasiliev will find a way out of the impasse? (Yes, we believe in this, because Vasiliev has that conscientiousness, humanity that will help him overcome loneliness and melancholy.
What is Vasiliev’s guilt before his father? (chapter 17, pp. 98-99. Vasiliev’s father admired his son, his talent. Several times he asked permission to come to visit his son and look at his granddaughter, but the son did not even answer the letters. And after his father’s death, he received in his will his money, which he transferred, and several shirts in plastic bags. Vasilyev is an artist who is aware that he is fed up, fed up to the point of nausea, with traveling abroad and meeting people of art.

Vasiliev’s painful thoughts about the different paths of man, about the meaning of life and death ultimately stop at one thing - love: love for the Motherland, parents, wife. On active, faithful, great and eternal love.

What episode from the past characterizes Vasiliev as a loyal and reliable friend? (when Vasiliev goes to his own shame for the sake of Ilya, he says that it was he and not Ilya who was with the woman before that fight. Chapter 11, p. 63. Ilya would never have decided on this.)
Will Vasiliev and Maria find their way to happiness? (We part with Vasiliev and Maria when their spiritual quest is not yet over, but they have found solid ground under their feet)

During the lesson, special attention should be paid to Vasiliev’s daughter Vika.

She is almost the same age as the high school students and is more understandable to them than the other characters in the novel. The guys talk about Vika for a long time, trying to imagine his future fate.

1.What happened to Vika? (Chapter 16 p.89)

2.Tell us about the relationship between father and daughter. (chapter 6)

3. Why is Vika going to go abroad with Ilya? (Ch. 16, pp. 92-93. Gifts of Ilya Ch. 18, pp. 108-109)

Lesson summary.

Many of the novel's problems remained unresolved. It is important to make children think about their own destiny, about their own CHOICE. And the more opinions there are, the more multifaceted the idea of Bondarev’s images will be. This piece gives students a lot to think about when leaving school. The lesson ends with the reading of L. Martynov’s poem “Trace” (M. Agatov “About the Authors of Your Books” Publishing House “Young Guard”, 1972, p. 250).

And you?

Entering any house -

And in gray

And in blue

Entering the steep stairs,

In apartments flooded with light,

Listening to the sound of the keys

And giving an answer to the question,

Tell:

What mark will you leave?

A trace to wipe the parquet

And they looked askance after him.

Invisible lasting trace

In someone else's soul for many years?

Literature

Bondarev Yuri “Choice”, Roman-newspaper No. 8, 1981, pp. 1-125. Review by Sergei Abramov “There is no other person’s pain...” pp. 125-128.
Buznik V.V. - Rereading it again. About the early prose of Yuri Bondarev. Article in the magazine “Literature at School” No. 3 1995, pp. 26-34.
Gorbunov E.N. Yu. Bondarev. Essay on life and creativity. – M., 1981.-p.351.
Kozlov I. – Yuri Bondarev (Strokes of a creative portrait). Article in the magazine “Literature at School” 1976 No. 4, pp. 7 – 17.
Korobov V.M. Yuri Bondarev. Pages of life, pages of creativity. – M., 1984. –P.368.
Kuzmichev I. Pain of memory: The Great Patriotic War in Soviet literature. – Gorky: Volgo-Vyatka book. publishing house, 1985.-P.121-147.
Talanchuk E.M. Journal “Russian language and literature in secondary educational institutions of the Ukrainian SSR” No. 1 1988, pp. 50-51.

Additional material for the lesson.

Biography

Yuri Vasilyevich Bondarev was born on March 15, 1924 in the city of Orsk, Orenburg Region, into the family of Vasily Vasilyevich Bondarev (1896-1988), a people's investigator, and Klavdiya Iosifovna Bondareva (1900-1978). In 1931 they moved to Moscow.

Participant of the Great Patriotic War (since August 1942), junior lieutenant.

He graduated from the Chkalov Artillery School and the Literary Institute named after. A. M. Gorky (1951).

He made his debut in print in 1949. The first collection of stories “On the Big River” was published in 1953. Author of short stories (collection “Late Evening”, 1962), stories “Youth of Commanders” (1956), “Battalions Ask for Fire” (1957; television series “Battalions” asking for fire" based on the story, 1985), "The Last Salvos" (1959; film of the same name, 1961), "Relatives" (1969), novels "Hot Snow" (1969), "Silence" (1962; film of the same name, 1964) , “Two” (continuation of the novel “Silence”; 1964), “The Shore” (1975).

In 1991 he signed the “Word to the People” appeal.

Hero of Social Labor. Awarded the Order of Lenin (twice), the October Revolution, the Red Banner of Labor, the Patriotic War 2nd degree, the Badge of Honor, medals “For Courage” (twice), etc. In 1994 he refused to be awarded the Order of Friendship of Peoples in connection with the 70th anniversary, writing in a telegram to the President of the Russian Federation B. Yeltsin: “Today this will no longer help the good harmony and friendship of the peoples of our great country.”

January 20, 2016

Very often in his work Yu. Bondarev turns to the military theme. “Choice” (a summary of the work will be the main topic of our article) is a novel that is no exception. In addition, this work raises serious moral and philosophical questions related to the role of choice in human life.

About the product

In 1980, Yuri Vasilyevich Bondarev (“Choice”) published his book. You can read the summary in different ways, but do not forget that the novel contains a deep philosophical meaning. It is connected not only with the problem of choice itself, but also with a description of the changes that occur in the soul of a person who has been in battle. This raises the very serious question of whether war distorts people's hearts or simply reveals their true nature. Proposing to solve this puzzle on your own, Bondarev does not give a clear answer in his work.

“Choice”: summary

Ilya Ramzin is the main character of the novel. He is purposeful, goes in for sports and wrestling, and pays great attention to his spiritual growth. The main thing for him is strength and freedom. In his understanding, the ideal person is a strong and courageous fighter who can control his own freedom. The worst thing for Ilya is to be humiliated. Contempt and neglect of others - there is nothing worse for him.

Time to go into battle

It is this self-confident character that Yuri Bondarev chooses for his story. The choice (a brief summary below will confirm this) for Ilya Ramzin will become the most severe test in his life. The author saw it as his goal to show the reader a person faced with harsh reality. Now it’s not vague ideals and ideas about the world that are at stake, but your own life.

The time of this harsh reality, as you might guess, is the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. Our hero, still a very young man, unexpectedly ends up in an artillery school. And from there straight to the front. It was especially difficult in the first months - the start of the war was unsuccessful, there were retreats on all fronts.

And it is not surprising that Ramzin and his battery find themselves surrounded by the enemy. Ilya begins to make at least some attempts to save the artillery pieces that were at the disposal of his comrades. But the battery commander prevents him from doing this. This is a short-sighted and stupid man, whose actions lead not only to the loss of all weapons, but also to the death of almost all the soldiers under his command.

The Nazis, who surrounded the battery, begin their offensive. Realizing that it is useless to resist, Ilya shoots his commander. Ramzin was going to end his life, but he didn’t have time - he was taken prisoner.

But battle is not the worst thing, Bondarev shows the reader (“Choice”). The summary describes a much more terrible fate - through no fault of your own, ending up in the hands of the enemy. The realities of camp life for prisoners of war plunge Ramzin into horror. He could not even imagine that soldiers who had fought shoulder to shoulder just yesterday would inform on each other, calmly betray and lie. For them there are no longer concepts of duty and honor, the main thing is to survive. In addition, a serious blow for Ilya comes from the fact that the Nazis perceived his murder of the commander as a feat.

As the years pass

Thirty years pass. It is from this moment that Bondarev resumes his description of events. The choice (the summary confirms this) that Ilya made in the war becomes known to the reader only now. The hero never returned to his homeland.

Ramzin is now a resident of Venice. It is on the streets of this European town that he accidentally meets Vasiliev, his former classmate. It turns out that everyone considers Ilya missing in action during the war. After all, the main character has not written a single line to anyone in all these years, and also avoided places where he could meet former compatriots. Even his mother knew nothing about his fate. Vasiliev talks about how she waited for Ilya for many years, tried to find him and was very sad about the loss of her only son.

Ramzin talks about his life - he got married a long time ago, but his wife has already died. But there is a son left, who currently lives in Munich.

Ending

Bondarev completes his story. “The Choice” (we reviewed the summary of the novel) ends with Ilya deciding to go to the USSR to see his mother. But the old woman is not happy about her traitorous son. She shoos him away. Ramzin cannot come to his senses after this. His conscience, which had inadvertently awakened, begins to torment him. As a result, the hero decides to commit suicide.

Bondarev does not evaluate the actions of his hero, leaving the reader to do it himself.

Where can I find a summary of the Choice of Yu. V. Bondarev? Specifically “Choice”. I can’t find it anywhere... and got the best answer

Answer from Oriy Polyakov[guru]
What was Ilya Ramzin like at the beginning of the war? What led him to lose contact with his homeland? “Young, strong, decisive, subduing his black mocking eyes with his hot and dangerous shine,” Ilya during his school years did gymnastics, sambo, and snow rubbing, “so as not to be humiliated by the strength of others...”. Together with his friend Volodya Vasilyev, he wanted to volunteer for the front. But because of his young age, he was not accepted and was sent to an artillery school for nine months. After college he goes to the front.
The character of Ilya Ramzin is manifested in his treatment of Lazarev. Despite the fact that Lazarev is a scoundrel, Ramzin is still too straightforward in his relationships with him. He asserted, communicating with Lazarev, the imperious, unquestioning strength of the battery commander, whose duties he performed. Just as Captain Puzhavin and Major Vorotyuk would later do to him. When the Ramzin battery was surrounded by the Germans, Major Vorotyuk left “the area bare, without covering the battery with either a platoon or an infantry squad.” Despite this, Vorotyuk will accuse Ramzin of cowardice: “But I thought that you died as a hero! They shot all the shells and died under the tracks of the tanks, but did not leave. They didn't bolt! Oh, cowards, cowards! Lazarev does not shun lies, declaring that their battery would not have retreated if the battalion commander had not ordered it, and that the battalion commander “wasted the night with a woman,” and therefore missed the enemy. Everyone understands Lazarev’s monstrous slander. In a state of bitterness and desire for revenge, Ilya Ramzin will put two bullets into Lazarev, save one for himself, but will be captured.
30 years after the war, Ramzin is ready to “pay the bills”: “For not returning, and now it’s too late to return. Because he didn’t die in captivity, didn’t drown in shit like hundreds of other Russians abroad... But he didn’t serve with Vlasov. Although they were recruited in Sachsenhaus. He did not fight in the foreign legion. I am not listed among war criminals and punitive forces...”
What is Ilya like now? Vasiliev saw in Venice “a gray-haired, somewhat sophisticated foreigner in an impeccably tailored suit...”. . He is tormented by one burning desire - to visit his homeland, to see his mother. And he makes his last choice - suicide. Ramzin's dream comes true - he comes home and meets his mother. No one can help him - neither money nor who is to blame for this tragedy? The man himself. Ramzin made the choice between life and death because he went through repentance, through punishment by his conscience. Ramzin, in a difficult situation, was unable to overcome himself and his personal resentment. He allowed the desire for revenge to take over, the bitterness that led him too far. It is interesting that at the moment of Ilya’s collision with Vorotyuk, Vasiliev said that it was not Ramzin who was with the woman at night, but he. At that moment, Vasilev realized “the need for truth, regardless of anything, from one thought that could betray Ilya, the past, Moscow, school, everything in between,” so he even agreed to his own shame. Such a thought about betraying the most dear did not occur to Ramzin, and he could not forgive his own shame. The problem of moral choice is not the only problem of the novel. The novel gives Vasiliev's thoughts about his life, about good and evil, truth, happiness. The psychology of a creative, thinking, talented person is written out very accurately. Vasilyev's condition - attacks of loneliness in the circle of friends, eternal haste, the dream of escaping from the bustle of the capital somewhere in a provincial town - is familiar to many. Vasiliev is an artist who is aware that he is fed up with meetings with people of art who adore “intellectual” chatter or are jealous of his success. This hero is also not ideal, confirmation of this is the relationship with his father.
woman, nor friendship with Vasiliev.
The image of director Shcheglov is curious. There is a lot of truth in his philosophical and accusatory escalades against life’s imperfections. And at the same time, Vasiliev and Lopatin answer him correctly, arguing that pessimism is a simple thing. If we ourselves do not work on improving people’s lives, then “we will choke in the world of words, in wit, in malice at life and perish.” Vasiliev's painful thoughts about different paths

Answer from Polina negodyaeva[active]
The writer illuminates the problem of choice that a person faces throughout his life on the pages of the novel. The story begins with the Second World War and ends with the thoughts of Soviet intellectuals in the 1970s.
The hero of the book goes in for sports, wrestling, hardening, and cultivates a freedom-loving person so as not to become humiliated by others. When the war began, Ilya Ramzin was young. I ended up in an artillery school, and from there to the front. The very first battles, the Soviet troops lost and retreated. Finding himself surrounded, Ilya tried to remove the guns, at least in parts. But the commander’s stupid and short-sighted orders destroyed the entire battery. Accusations of cowardice pushed Ramzinak to desperate actions. Surrounded by fascists, Ilya shoots at the commander, but does not have time to shoot himself. Then there was captivity. In the prisoner of war camp he was offered to join the ranks of the Vlasovites or the foreign legion, but he refused. He is tormented by his conscience for his past actions. Ramzin was not ready for the slander and slander that surrounded him during the war and in captivity. Shooting your commander is a feat in the eyes of the Nazis.
30 years have passed since those days. Ramzin meets his classmate Vasiliev, an artist, in Venice. All these years, Ilya was considered missing. His mother was looking for him, Ramzin did not write to anyone, he stayed away from the Russians. He married a German woman, was already widowed, and his son lived in Munich. Ilya really wants to see his mother.
When Ramzin arrived in the USSR, his mother greeted him coldly. The old woman considered him a traitor. Ilya could not stand such a meeting. Instead of finding peace of mind, Ramzin feels disappointed. He wants nothing more and decides to commit suicide.
In the company of intellectuals (Shcheglova, Lopatina), Vasiliev talks about the choice in our lives that is given to everyone, but not everyone takes the right step. Every mistake remains a pain in the soul. People are imperfect, but you cannot give in to pessimism either. Without real deeds, without love, going with the flow, a person loses the meaning of life. In any situation we are given the right to choose. Even in war.