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Literature and Charhinets

46
Literature and Charhinets
Iryna Khalip

A new war is waging around the school curricula.

Well, fellow citizens, do you feel relaxed? Summer is on, children do not have their brains powdered, and even a wave of public anger over Kolya's lack of sleep and the forced transfer of schools to another mode of work has somehow died out. What if nothing changes during the summer and resolves itself? Don't feel relaxed. Mikalai Charhinets is waiting for a new school year to come.

He expressed his wish to enter textbooks a year and a half ago. It happened when he sent a letter to the National Institute of Education on behalf of his Union of Writers "offers following works to be included in the curricula for studying of a modern Russian literature in Belarus at high school, both compulsory and recommended for extracurricular reading.

Novels:

"Sons", "Operation" Blood "- N.Charhinets,

"Bird Cherry Bloomed" N.Ilinsky

Stories:

"Reported from Siberia", "Vita", "It Was Spring" by S. Trakhimenok

"Zimogor", "Private Space", "We must endure" -by O. Zhdan

"The Lotus Effect", "Goldfish" by A.Andreev

Plays:

"The Way One-Eyed Hedgehog and Mole Went to the Disco", "Blindage" by E. Popova

"Crown of Love", "Young Adjutant" by A. Delendik

Poetry:

V.Polikanina, V.Blazhenny, A.Skorinkin, A.Avrutin, T.Gusachenko-Krasnova, Y.Sapozhkov.

Unquote. There is nothing to comment on, I think. I do not want to comment on "Bird Cherry Bloomed" N. N.Ilinsky (by the way, the police retiree) and its role in the world literature. But Belarusian literary critics had to do it. There is a proposal of the Union of Writers, it requires an answer. And here are conclusions of the working group:

1. Unfortunately, some texts do not meet the requirements for the school curriculum in a number of ways. It concerns prose to a greater extent. Most of them were not evaluated either in criticism or in literature studies.

2. According to experts (literary scholars, teachers), stories of O.Zhdan, novels of S.Alexievich, poems V.Blazhenny and plays of E.Popova can be included .

3. Novels of N.Charhinets are questionable, since they are mostly aimed at an adult reader, professionally oriented to such literature, and not to students. Novels are large in volume, contain many specific military-oriented details hard for the perception of school leavers. These texts miss a high degree of artistry proven and confirmed in literary studies. Novel "Sons" by N. Charhinets can be included in the curricula as an exception.

4. It is hard to include novel "Bird Cherry Bloomed" by N. Ilinsky taking into account its problems, but, unfortunately, its text is largely "secondary", since it not only recalls the epic novel "And Quiet Flows the Don" by M. Sholokhov, novel "Harvest on the Don", but also novel "Eternal Call" by A. Ivanov, which served as a template for the author, since almost all the plot and heroes' characters were borrowed. This text is close to mass literature and misses a high degree of artistry proven and confirmed in literary studies.

5. Stories "Reported from Siberia", "Vita", "It Was Spring" by S. Trakhimenok do not meet the criteria of highly-artistic prose, are likely aimed at the mass reader, do not take into account psychophysiological features of development of students.

6. Stories "Goldfish" and "The Lotus Effect" by A. Andreev devoted to love, relationships between a man and a woman were not accepted as well. Both stories include betrayal of one of the spouses. The texts do not correspond to tasks of literary education at school, since they are focused on an adult reader. On the background of texts of N.Charhinets, N. Ilinsky and S. Trakhimenok the prose by A.N.Andreev is written good, it complies with literary traditions of Russian psychological prose, it has erudition and some piece of humor. We propose to include only his story "Miracle".

7. It will be recalled that a written work should have a high degree of artistry proven and confirmed in literary studies; serve as an example of literary skills, i.e. to meet principles of originality and compositional completeness and conformity of the figurative system and the textural texture of the text to the selected topic; create the ground for comparative study with the preceding or subsequent literary tradition; reflect the relationship with other arts; express enduring aesthetic and moral values; correspond to age-related psychophysiological features of development of students.

All the above criteria are met by A. Solzhenitsyn, V. Astafyev, V. Aksenov, V. Makanin, V. Rasputin, L. Petrushevskaya, T. Tolstoy, V. Belov, A. Pristavkin, Yu. Nagibin, L. Ulitskaya and others included in the school curriculum for Russian modern literature of the high school.

Please, take a look at works you propose from these positions and give your comment. We will be grateful if you help us and send those works that cause no doubts either to experts or parents."

A languid correspondence between writers and literary critics lasted more than a year. But this June when teachers and parents got relaxed - vacations, after all, - Mikalai Charhinets decided to strike the last blow and complained to the Minister of Education about villains-literary critics. At first he recalls" War and Peace", "And Quiet Flows the Don", "Harvest on the Don" which, it turns out, helped win the Great Patriotic War, and then comes to the point:

"Today specifically these brilliant works are supposed to be excluded from mandatory reading and made as a part of extracurricular reading under the guise of "optimization" of school curricula. It is allegedly motivated by complexity and a large amount of material. But in Soviet times students read those works, actively participated in debates, and tried to look like heroes of these works. They had less technical knowledge, had no Internet, mobile communication and other achievements of modern technological progress. It is not too late to correct an impending error, thinking about modern students who fail to become acquainted with these masterpieces.

But "optimizers" noticeably reduce the number of works mandatory for reading (I.Bunin, S.Esenin, M.Tsvetaeva, A.Tvardovsky, the signed works of V.Astafyev, Valentin Rasputin "Farewell to Matyora", Vladimir Bogomolov "Ivan", "Carpenter's Stories" by Vasily Belov). But for some reason, the number of hours for M.Bulgakov's mystical novel "The Master and Margarita" is increasing, even in the time of the notorious "Perestroika" which became a kind of banner of the liberal anti-Russian forces. The work of contemporary Russian poets and prose writers of a patriotic direction is almost completely ignored...

But Belarusian students are encouraged to read Dina Rubina who lives in Israel and known for her anti-Russian views, her "colleague" for rejecting the Russian reality Tatiana Tolstaya ("Kys") or the third-rate Petersburg poet Viktor Sosnor, together with his at least third-rate counterpart in modernist camp A. Tsvetkov, I. Satunovsky or D. Vodennikov... "

And further with the same spirit, villains-program builders try to raise some Europeans, not patriots. Yes, it is written as that, patriotic values are substituted for "so-called pan-European ones."

I do not know if Charhinets wrote such letters to previous Minister of Education Mikhail Zhuraukou. Perhaps, he did, but unsuccessfully considering that the story with introduction of books enumerated in the first Charhinets' letter to the school curricula has been lasting for six months. But now it is the right moment: within six months a communist who managed to take away Saturdays from children and teachers, to abolish parents' committees and to put in lather the entire school system because of Kolya Lukashenka runs the education sphere.

Can you imagine what he can do in a year? In two years? In Five? Of course, officials do not stay on their position for so long, but in case with Karpenka six months were enough to ruin everything. So, the time, the addressee and the rhetoric ("anti-Russian views," "liberal anti-Russian forces," the notorious "Perestroika") were chosen correctly. He will do it. After all, when the Communists start to deal with the education, for some reason they always give up the humanitarian part to the retirees.

And Vlad Bumaha will definitely assemble stadiums. When making a choice between reading Charhinets and watching teenage video blogs on YouTube, not only any high school student but even his parents will choose the latter.

Iryna Khalip for Charter97.org

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