Summary of the story: a trip to the past of Abrams. Children's stories online

1

The snowfall caught them in the middle of the river. Instantly I became blind, white, my eyes were blinded - I didn’t know where to go.
The geese flying somewhere overhead came to the rescue: they screamed, argued hecticly - apparently, and they got confused in this mess. It was then that Vlasik, listening to their retreating hubbub, realized which way was south, for where could the bird fly now if not to warmer climes.
The snow linden calmed down a bit when we climbed up the steep bank from the transportation. Sosino loomed ahead with a perch fence in the backyard, a black chapel loomed in the fields to the left.
Wiping his wet face with his hand, Vlasik began to explain to his taciturn companion how to get into the village and find the foreman, but he, it seemed, did not need this: he nailed the whitened road with a gnarled stick, as if he had walked along it all his life.
From the people here, you can see whose it is? – thought Vlasik.
However, he had no time to think about it. He was cold, chilled through and through - from the cold, from the dampness - and all his thoughts were now focused on getting to Miksha as quickly as possible and warming up in the warmth.
In Miksha’s house, despite the fact that it was past nine o’clock, it was still morning. The hostess, with a thin face flushed from the heat, was busy near the stove, and the owner, gloomy, swollen, all overgrown with dense stubble, sat at the table and drank tea. He drank alone, under the bombardment of the gloomy glances of his offspring, as strong-minded and busty as their father, huddled in a tight heap on the wide parental bed to the right of the threshold.
Vlasik said hello.
Not a word, not a nod in response. It’s as if they weren’t buddies or old friends.
But he didn’t even think of being offended by Miksha - he always does this when he’s had too much the day before - and so he calmly went about his business: he took off his wide signalman-lineman’s belt with a metal chain, took off his wet canvas jacket, which was standing like a stake, and went to the stove, on the bench - the warmth hugged his thin, chilled back.
The owner - in the complete silence of his family - drank two more glasses of tea, black as swamp water, and only after that he moved his fear-like croaker - his nose had been crushed since childhood:
-What are you smoking?
Vlasik readily took out a crumpled pack of Sever from his canvas pants and moved to the table - the quarantine was over. We lit a cigarette.
- News? – Miksha barked again in a short, drunken voice.
- What's the news, Nikifor Ivanovich. My news is known. The kids are now going to school, all the isolation wards have been knocked down. So I sunbathe every day on the line. Well, what about regional affairs... (Vlasik lived in the regional center.) The expedition returned here from Suzem, they say they screwed around. All the streams, all the rivers were locked up.
“Nonsense,” Miksha winced.
- No, it’s not nonsense, Nikifor Ivanovich. Now you won’t have to go to the narrows again to buy fish.
“Nonsense, I say,” Miksha repeated. - They will lock our husband and wife. What kind of fish are in the rivers of the land? There is only one garbage. They were fooling around, but the whole question was what. Isn't that the same fish that is underground?...
Vlasik’s lower jaw fell off, two yellow, smoke-stained fangs peeked out in his toothless mouth.
- Stupid! As for uranium, I say, what an explosive crap. And this fish is a distraction. Understood?
“But this is appropriate, Nikifor Ivanovich,” Vlasik agreed eagerly, and his dry, bloodless face immediately lit up. “I was crossing the river with one, and he didn’t look at the water painfully.”
- With whom and with one?
– Yes, with one, from this expedition. A healthy hog, but he himself is limping. With a stick.
Miksha raised his black woolly eyebrow in surprise:
- Why would he come here? What didn't he see in our hole?
– But I didn’t report on this part. – Vlasik looked out the window, looked at Oksya, rattling an iron poker by the stove, and narrowed his eye slyly. - Well, Nikifor Ivanovich, maybe we’ll figure it out this evening? Shall we scrape the bottom a little before the recoil starts?
- Poach? – Miksha asked the question directly. - They've been stalking you for a long time - do you want to go to prison again?
- Why, Nikifor Ivanovich, if you want fish, you’ll go to the prison...
“You can’t,” Miksha snapped. – Rybnadzor never spends the day or night on the river.
- Nothing, nothing. It’s possible, if you’re careful and careful. - And then Vlasik used, so to speak, a material incentive (he and Miksha loved all sorts of tricky words) - slamming a bottle on the table.
Oksa, of course, didn’t like this number, but why pay attention to her? What kind of woman claps her hands when a man hugs a bottle?
After the hangover, the conversation went like clockwork, and they began to develop a plan for the upcoming outing: what is the best way to do so as not to run into fish inspection? What time do you leave? Where? should I go down to the rifts, or, conversely, go up to the Red Gap, where the beam is not so noticeable?
However, before they even had time to discuss half of it, they were starting a serious business! - how a tall man in a black cloak grew under the window.
- He! – Vlasik exclaimed vividly and even stood up. - The same one from the fishing expedition.
The stranger looked at Miksha’s house for some time, then, falling on his sore leg, he suddenly moved into the alley.
Vlasik and Miksha looked at each other: had someone slandered them? What other business can a fish man call on?
The matter, thank God, did not concern them. But, as they say, horseradish is no sweeter than radish: the stranger, giving Miksha a note from the director of the state farm, asked to take him to Kurzia.
- To Kurzia? – Vlasik was terribly surprised. - Now? Yes, dear comrade, have you heard, no, what this same Kurzia is? Forty versts in the north and deep in the fall... It’s a shame that we call it Georgia!.. But after the disenfranchised, these same kulak people, no one has ever been there.
No impression! With iron eyes he clung to Miksha, as if he decided to freeze him, hypnotize him, and didn’t care what the others squeaked - Oksya also made a voice from the stove.
Miksha was in no hurry to answer. He sat, looked at the street, where the wind seemed to be whistling again, rolling his skin on his forehead like waves on a river, and Vlasik no longer doubted: he would now give this arrogant boss a turn from the gate, and Miksha just say:
- Maybe we can go for a ride.

2

We left not early, in the first hour, because we weren’t going to visit our mother-in-law – we were going to the family home. I had to change the front wheels of the cart, adjust the horse's collar, trim the hooves, and who knows what. And besides, Kudasov, a business traveler, kept himself waiting, who, like all visitors, dragged himself to look at their famous thing - the old chapel.
Drunk, thoroughly pumped up, Vlasik tied down to see them off. He passionately did not want to part with the two bottles that had floated away from him in a birch bark basket, tightly tied to the back of the cart, and he, clinking his chain, hobbled along the side, whining:
“You’re welcome, Comrade Kudasov, by God, you’re welcome.” We forgot when we went to this Kurzia-Georgia. And you decided to look at the evening. Let's at least because of the morning...
Miksha agreed with his friend in his heart. Of course, it would be better to sit in a warm hut now than to rinse in the autumn wind, but since the word has been given, be patient. And he, preparing himself for the long journey, spoke as soon as they entered the field - then Vlasik fell behind them:
- Well, you’ve scooped up fish from the seas and oceans - are you taking up the spoils?
Kudasov did not answer. He, as one would expect, looked at the chapel they were passing by - a gloomy, black building like a tall log barn, without a cross, with a torn roof, with supports on the sides.
“An ancient monument,” Miksha announced, not without malice. - Under state protection. There is a tablet. Not a single iron nail - all wood. Chopped with one ax. In one thousand six hundred and sixty seven. Under Ivan the Terrible.
“Ivan the Terrible lived a hundred years earlier,” Kudasov noted.
- Well, to hell with him, with Ivan the Terrible. Not everything is the same. But I can say for sure about the roof. – Miksha laughed. - Ours, Soviet production. One thousand nine hundred and thirty. Then the people were driven away from all the villages. They pulled down the cross with a bang so that there would be visual propaganda about God. I, too, even though I was a boy, held on to the rope for a little while.
A thin, whiny voice splashed in the distance—it must have been Vlasik who was entering the village singing—and immediately a drawn-out rumble covered it: they were approaching the forest. The black, propped up chapel, like some kind of antediluvian monster, looked after them from the fields.
– Yes... – Miksha lit a cigarette. – This chapel has seen something in its lifetime. In the old days, they say, the believers locked themselves in, they wanted to burn themselves alive - you understand what kind of people they were! - Yes, the royal soldiers interfered, they knocked down the doors. And in this very year of 1930, what was happening here... They pulled out two, three dead people per morning. From the dispossessed. From the southern regions they were sent to us, to the North. There were an awful lot of them in our village! They were transported by barges all summer. All the threshing floors, all the sheds were full, and in this chapel... There were bunks in four tiers!..
The rider turned out to be not one of those people you won't get bored with. He sat with his eyes on the ground, his hands locked (an ulcer, perhaps, sharpening?) and not a groan, not a sigh.
For some time Miksha peered at the sparse pine pole on the right - there must be his firewood here somewhere, chopped this spring. Then his attention was attracted by fresh hare snares scattered in the snow powder along the road, and he exclaimed with liveliness:
- Look, look, the oblique guy is up to something! Walking through the forest in such bad weather.
And again silence. Again the strained creaking of the cart and the snoring of the horse as it rises.
Behind Letovka - this is a stream two kilometers from the village - spruce trees began to come across, first one by one, mixed with birch trees, and then more and more densely - they ruffled the sky, tightly squeezing the road. We drove straight from broad daylight into twilight.
“Well,” said Miksha, listening to the taiga roar coming from above. – Now this beauty will go all the way to Kurzia. “He picked up his raincoat and shook his head.
- No, I don’t understand a damn thing how all this was done. Well, they expelled people from their lands, some by hook or by crook - we won’t say. It was a hot time, wood chips were flying left and right. But why force it into narrow spaces? Isn't there enough empty land in Russia? But here, in this narrow land, even if you burst, you won’t be able to grow bread. In the middle of summer, matinees thunder. We used to put hay on this Kurzia. In the village, summer is like summer, but here, thirty-five to forty miles away, the water in the pot freezes in the morning. Eh, what can I say! - Miksha waved his hand abruptly - I myself was terribly ideological then.
- And now you’re not ideological? – Kudasov suddenly raised his voice. It turns out he was listening.
- Don’t say it, don’t say it in words! Now the people are literate, you can’t take it out of fear. What am I talking about? And besides, my uncles and relatives were in charge of everything then. Kobylina. How can I, my nephew, keep up with them? Yes, there were revolutionaries! Flint! Now there are no such people. In 1919, Uncle Alexander was sent to Sosino, to our village, for language. And in Sosin - oh-oh! Only some old people and small children. The whites drove everyone onto the roads: men, women, and girls. And so Uncle Alexander thought and thought, and he said to his father, who was lying sick on the bed: “Get up, you will come with me.” Mati heard: “What are you, Oleksa, devil!.. Come to your senses! The old man hasn’t gotten up for three days, he’ll die on the road.” No nails! Since it is necessary for the revolution, I don’t know either my father or my mother. Well, Uncle Methodius, he was an even tougher nut to crack. Uncle Alexander had at least one weakness - in terms of women's issues, but this... I have never seen a smile on his face in my life. “I,” he says, “will smile when we have fully built socialism and when we have driven the last enemy into the coffin.” Understand?

In late autumn, an expedition arrived in the Siberian village of Sosino to explore rivers and reservoirs in Suzyom - the northern taiga. They were escorted to the village by the local signalman-lineman, the drunkard Vlasik. Having turned to the village groom Nikifor Ivanovich, nicknamed Miksha, for “healing,” Vlasik told him this news. Miksha, however, believed that the expedition was not looking for fish in the meager rivers of the Suzyoma, but for something more valuable - gold or uranium.

Having gotten drunk, the friends began to plan a poaching foray into Suzyom, but at that moment a man from the “fishing” expedition, Kudasov, knocked on the hut and asked to take him to Kurzia - a place where dispossessed settlers once lived. Miksha tried to object that now, in the mud, it would not be easy to travel forty miles along the narrow land, but the “fishmonger” did not want to listen to anything, and the groom agreed.

Kudasov turned out to be a taciturn passenger. Driving past a local landmark - an old chapel, Miksha remembered how the whole village pulled the cross from it, and in the 30s the dispossessed “contra” lived in it. Then the corpses of people who died of starvation were taken out of the chapel every day.

The black, propped up chapel, like some kind of antediluvian monster, looked after them from the fields.

Soon we entered the narrows. The uneven road was surrounded by a dense spruce forest. Miksha continued to rant. Northern Siberia is a disastrous place, continuous forests and swamps. It is impossible to grow bread here: in Sosino it is summer, and in Suzyoma there are morning frosts.

Now Miksha did not understand why peasants from all over the country were driven here, but then, in the 30s, he was “ideological.” He took his example from his uncles, his mother’s brothers, and the “silicon” revolutionaries Aleksand and Methodius Kobylin. Uncle Alexander was the commandant of Kurzia, and he was killed there. Methodius, the then chief of police, vowed revenge, but the killer was never found.

We went to Kurzia, but did not reach the village - the horse got lost in the dense bushes and refused to go further. Miksha turned into the hunting camp. There, by the fire, we spent the night. Miksha remembered how they, Sosin’s younger generation, fought against “class enemies” - they did not let hungry children into the forest to pick berries. Kudasov remained silent, refused vodka and refreshments, and sat all night looking into the fire.

4–6

In the morning, Kudasov left, and Miksha went to the still strong barracks where the displaced people lived. I also found Uncle Alexander’s house, near which he was killed. Then the guide of the local museum told the story of the murder of the fiery revolutionary for many years. Miksha, who loved Uncle Alexander more than anything in the world, then wanted to take revenge, sharpened the knife, but his father restrained him and persuaded him.

On the way back, Miksha wondered what kind of person was sitting behind him. Obviously not a fishmonger. Isn’t it one of the “former” ones? Miksha was in the camps, went through the war all the way to Berlin, and was not afraid of anything in this life, but he did not dare to ask the silent man directly.

He's silent the whole way - and that's how it should be. It seems like he has some special right to show his power over you.

Kudasov refused to go to Miksha and asked to be taken to the river for transportation. There he paid for the work and finally reminded him who he was.

A learned young lady in the museum talked about the hero, but in fact, drunken Uncle Alexander, a great lover of women, raped a fifteen-year-old girl who was cleaning in his commandant’s office. This girl’s brother, fourteen-year-old Kudasov, killed her uncle.

7–8

Miksha, a drunkard and a camp inmate, had one consolation in life - the memory of his heroic uncle. Now even that is gone. At the house, Miksha remembered the words of his dying father, which his old neighbor told him: “Tell Nikifor that his father has no grudge against him. It's not his fault. His uncles made him like this.”

All his life Miksha despised his gentle, quiet father.

Can you really compare him with his uncles? Wherever they step, there is a holiday: red banners, revolutionary songs, speeches that take your breath away.

When he was arrested in 1937 “as an accomplice of the international bourgeoisie,” Miksha publicly renounced his father and took his uncles’ surname.

Miksha’s heart pounded strongly, and he did not go home - he went to ask about his father from those who still remembered him. The old neighbor who looked after his father when he returned from the camps had long been able to do this, and Miksha went to the ancient grandmother Matryona.

Having fortified herself with vodka, the grandmother remembered that the whole village went to the good man Ivan Varzumov “about all sorts of paperwork,” which the uncles did not approve of. Matryona also remembered Miksha’s mother, a “bad woman” who loved to drink. Miksha remembered how his father was killed when she died. The grandmother didn’t remember anything else, and she stopped recognizing Miksha himself.

9–13

There lived another old woman in the village who remembered Ivan Varzumov, but Miksha did not go to her. Forty years ago, Uncle Alexander seduced her daughter, and she still remembered the insult.

Miksha went to the regional center, where an old friend of his father lived, and learned that the old man had recently died. The widow said that Ivan Varzumov warned her husband about the arrest, and he managed to escape. Uncle Methodius then almost shot Ivan, but Uncle Alexander interceded. Uncle Methodius shot so many innocent people in those days that he is still remembered with an unkind word.

The widow also said that Ivan Varzumov served as treasurer in a peasant shipping company, which he organized together with several exiles, undeterred by the threats of a local rich monopolist, the owner of several steamships. The old woman advised Miksha to go to the former village teacher Pavlin Fedorovich - he already knows all the details.

Once upon a time, twenty-five-year-old Pavlin Fedorovich exchanged his city apartment for a hut in a remote Siberian village to teach rural children. He never started a family - he devoted himself entirely to school.

In 1938, Pavlin Fedorovich was arrested, he spent seventeen years in camps, and after the Khrushchev Thaw he returned and began landscaping the area.

And people forgot the age-old proverb: there is a bush near the house - the house is empty.

Miksha remembered how the teachers were led into the city under escort. He himself then also got drunk and crashed into the people's platform with a truck.

Pavlin Fedorovich didn’t let Miksha into the house - he didn’t want to talk to the man who had renounced his own father.

Returning to Sosino, Miksha thought about his wife. When she, a stupid seventeen-year-old girl, came to him, a widower, she took pity on the orphaned children. She did not see joy with Miksha, but remained faithful and caring.

Near his native hut, Miksha’s heart began to pound again. He saw lights, heard bells ringing and singing - this is how the dispossessed people sang near the ancient chapel.

And the women of Sosinsk, listening to these songs, cried bitterly, and his father cried... And then he hated him to the point of tears, to the point of frenzy. I hated him because my father was a man...

And now Miksha himself went to his father...

A week later, a note appeared in the regional newspaper that the drunken groom Kobylin from Sosino got lost while returning home and froze to death near the chapel, on the old graves.

A TRIP TO THE PAST

The snowfall caught them in the middle of the river. Instantly I became blind, white, my eyes were blinded - I didn’t know where to go.

The geese flying somewhere overhead came to the rescue: they screamed, argued hecticly - apparently, and they got confused in this mess. It was then that Vlasik, listening to their retreating hubbub, realized which way was south, for where could the bird fly now if not to warmer climes.

The snow linden calmed down a bit when we climbed up the steep bank from the transportation. Sosino loomed ahead with a perch fence in the backyard, a black chapel loomed in the fields to the left.

Wiping his wet face with his hand, Vlasik began to explain to his taciturn companion how to get into the village and find the foreman, but he, it seemed, did not need this: he nailed the whitened road with a gnarled stick, as if he had walked along it all his life.

From the people here, you can see whose it is? - thought Vlasik.

However, he had no time to think about it. He was cold, chilled through and through - from the cold, from the dampness - and all his thoughts were now focused on getting to Miksha as quickly as possible and warming up in the warmth.

In Miksha’s house, despite the fact that it was past nine o’clock, it was still morning. The hostess, with a thin face flushed from the heat, was busy near the stove, and the owner, gloomy, swollen, all overgrown with dense stubble, sat at the table and drank tea. He drank alone, under the bombardment of the gloomy glances of his offspring, as strong-minded and busty as their father, huddled in a tight heap on the wide parental bed to the right of the threshold.

Vlasik said hello.

Not a word, not a nod in response. It’s as if they weren’t buddies or old friends.

But he didn’t even think of being offended by Miksha - it’s always like that when he’s had too much the day before - and so he calmly went about his business: he took off his wide signalman-lineman’s belt with a metal chain, took off his wet canvas jacket, which was standing like a stake, and went to the stove, onto the bench , - the warmth hugged his thin, chilled back.

The owner - in the complete silence of his family - drank two more glasses of tea, black as swamp water, and only after that he moved his fear-like croaker - his nose had been crushed since childhood:

What are you smoking?

Vlasik readily took out a crumpled pack of Sever from his canvas pants and moved to the table - the quarantine was over.

We lit a cigarette.

What's the news, Nikifor Ivanovich. My news is known. The kids are now going to school, all the isolation wards have been knocked down. So I sunbathe every day on the line. Well, what about regional affairs... (Vlasik lived in the regional center.) The expedition returned here from Suzyom 1, they say they screwed it up. All the streams, all the rivers were locked up.

Nonsense,” Miksha winced.

No, it’s not nonsense, Nikifor Ivanovich. Now you won’t have to go to the narrows again to buy fish.

Nonsense, I say,” repeated Miksha. “They will lock our husband up.” What kind of fish are in the rivers of the land? There is only one garbage. They were making noise, but the whole question was what. Isn't that the same fish that is underground?..

Vlasik’s lower jaw fell off, two yellow, smoke-stained fangs peeked out in his toothless mouth.

- Stupid! As for uranium, I say, what an explosive crap. And this fish is a distraction. Got it?

But this is appropriate, Nikifor Ivanovich,” Vlasik agreed eagerly, and his dry, bloodless face immediately lit up. “I was moving across the river with someone, he didn’t look at the water painfully.”

With whom with one?

Yes, with one, from this expedition. A healthy hog, but he himself is limping. With a stick.

Miksha raised his black woolly eyebrow in surprise:

Why would he come here? What didn't he see in our hole?

But I didn’t report this part.” Vlasik looked out the window, looked at Oksya, who was rattling an iron poker by the stove, and narrowed his eye slyly. “What, Nikifor Ivanovich, maybe we’ll figure it out this evening?” Shall we scrape the bottom a little before the recoil starts?

Poach? - Miksha asked the question directly. “They’ve been harassing you for a long time - do you want to go to prison again?”

Why, Nikifor Ivanovich, if you want fish, you’ll go to prison...

“It’s impossible,” Miksha snapped. “The fishery supervision department spends all day and night on the river.”

Nothing, nothing. It’s possible, if you’re careful and careful.” And then Vlasik used, so to speak, a material incentive (he and Miksha loved all sorts of tricky words) - slamming a bottle on the table.

Oksa, of course, didn’t like this number, but why pay attention to her? What kind of woman claps her hands when a man hugs a bottle?

After the hangover, the conversation went like clockwork, and they began to develop a plan for the upcoming outing: what is the best way to do so as not to run into fish inspection? What time do you leave? Where? should I go down to the rifts, or, conversely, go up to the Red Gap, where the beam is not so noticeable?

However, before they even had time to discuss half of it, they were starting a serious business! - how a tall man in a black cloak grew under the window.

- He! - Vlasik exclaimed vividly and even stood up. “The same one from the fishing expedition.”

The stranger looked at Miksha’s house for some time, then, falling on his sore leg, he suddenly moved into the alley.

Vlasik and Miksha looked at each other: had someone slandered them? What other business could a fish man come for?

The matter, thank God, did not concern them. But, as they say, horseradish is no sweeter than radish: the stranger, giving Miksha a note from the director of the state farm, asked to take him to Kurzia.

To Kurzia? - Vlasik was terribly surprised. - Now? Yes, dear comrade, have you heard, no, what this same Kurzia is? Forty versts in the north and deep in the autumn... It’s in vain, we call it Georgia!

No impression! With iron eyes he clung to Miksha, as if he had decided to freeze and hypnotize him, but he didn’t care what the others were squeaking - Oksya also gave a voice from the stove.

Miksha was in no hurry to answer. He sat and looked at the street, where the wind seemed to be whistling again, rolling his skin on his forehead like waves on a river, and Vlasik no longer doubted: he would now give this arrogant boss a turn, and Miksha just say:

Maybe we can go for a ride.

We didn’t leave early, at one o’clock, because we weren’t going to visit our mother-in-law, we were going to the family home. I had to change the front wheels of the cart, adjust the horse's collar, trim the hooves, and who knows what. And besides, Kudasov, a business traveler, kept himself waiting, who, like all visitors, dragged himself to look at their famous thing - the old chapel.

Refers to writers who worked in the genre of village prose. This direction was very popular in the second half of the twentieth century. It was easy for him to work on writing his works in this direction. It was easy for him to work on writing on this topic, since Abramov was born in the Arkhangelsk region. The summary (“A Trip to the Past” is an example) of the stories that came from his pen makes you think about the fate of not only small villages, but all of Russia. It is not surprising that recently they have been included in the compulsory literature curriculum. More mature readers can be advised to familiarize themselves with the trilogy “Pryasliny”, which was awarded the State Prize.

Fedor Abramov: “A trip to the past”

Many of the works of this prose writer were difficult to pass censorship. The story was written back in 1974, but it was published only at the very beginning of perestroika - in 1989. Unfortunately, the author of the publication did not wait. The story was published in the magazine “New World”, and later it was published in a posthumous collected works.

This story differs from similar works in that the main attention in it is given not to the events that happened to the hero, but to social conflicts and the psychology of people in the war and post-war years.

What, according to the prose writer, negatively affected people

What did Fyodor Abramov write about in his works? “A Trip to the Past,” the summary of which we are considering, tells how the policies of the party in the pre-war years (approximately 1920-1930) influenced the lives of ordinary people. This was a period of dispossession of wealthy peasants, which broke millions of destinies. At that time, those who, in the opinion of others, lived better and had more than those around them were exiled to the north of the country. It was possible to get on the lists of the dispossessed for the slightest income.

Abramov figuratively described all this with pain for his people. The summary (“A Trip to the Past” is especially characteristic in this regard) of his stories, if you review them, highlights the main problems that the erroneous policies of the party contributed to:
. collectivization;
. dispossession;
. the emergence of fanatics, adherents of the revolutionary movement;
. drunkenness of the village lumpen-proletarians.

The true guardians of traditional values in the time described by the author were in the minority and this can also be called a tragedy.

The main character and his image in the story

Abramov tied the central plot (summary, “A Trip to the Past”) around Miksha Kobylin. It would be strange for modern authors to choose such a hero, but in this work he looks organic. Miksha worked as a rural groom, loved to drink and was sure that his relatives, the leaders of the revolution, were honest, brave and noble people. All the actions that the hero’s uncles performed were perceived by him as exemplary.

At one time, Miksha even renounced his father and changed his last name. This was greatly facilitated by his uncles, who set him a different example than his father. Soviet ideology was very strong at that time. The main character did not realize until recently who he was following as an example. More than once they tried to open his eyes to his closest relatives, but he did not delve into what old Fedoseevna was telling.

What Miksha's family actually did

What does F. Abramov talk about next? “A Trip to the Past” (summary) very colorfully and emotionally describes the events of those times. Miksha Kobylin considered his uncles to be the leaders of the revolution, which was greatly facilitated by the propaganda of the regional museum. In fact, Methodius broke many destinies. Even his death could not atone for the sins committed during his life. For example, according to the stories of a local resident, he carried out mass executions.
But the truth about his uncle Alexander became more difficult for Miksha. The true cause of his death was hidden for a long time. The truth was revealed to the main character quite by accident - he went to accompany a stranger to the abandoned village of Kurzia. His last name was Kudasov, and the family of his fellow traveler Miksha was exiled to the North several years ago. Kudasova’s sister was already working at the age of 15; her duty was to clean the commandant’s office, where Alexander raped her. For this reason, he was killed by fellow traveler Miksha, who was only 14 at that time.

The scenes of dispossession are the most complex and vivid in the story

Let's return to the main plot that Abramov described. The summary (“A Trip to the Past” we are considering) can be continued by saying that it contains quite a lot of vivid and cruel details specifically about the dispossession procedure. The author knew firsthand about the life of disenfranchised people; he himself spent his childhood in the Arkhangelsk region, where migrants from the south were often sent. On the streets of the villages, battles often broke out between the indigenous residents and the former “kulaks” sent to them.

Miksha himself, despite his young age, tried to participate in the events held by his uncles on an equal basis with adults. He hated the dispossessed and, despite his young age, helped dismantle the cross from the chapel. He also took part in fights. As a souvenir of his childhood, Miksha kept it, which, as it turned out later, was damaged by Kudasov. The main character realized this during the conversation.

How did the truth affect Miksha?

It is also important what conclusions the main character made after his conversation with Kudasov. Abramov forces the main character to make a difficult choice. “A Trip to the Past” (the summary shows this only in part) is a story primarily about the truth and what it can do to a person. Of course, it is important to have a correct understanding of the world and the events that took place in it, but in the case of Miksha, the truth became disastrous. After he saw Kudasov off, Miksha cannot go home: he is tormented by the truth that he learned about his relatives. For their sake, he renounced the person closest to him - his father, and, as it turned out, in vain.

Tormented by his thoughts and memories, Miksha went to his father’s grave and froze there. People told him that his father was a true role model - hardworking and honest. Unfortunately, it was too late to change anything. The truth crushed Miksha, killed her from the inside.

The story is quite easy to read. Only the book itself and its full content will help you find out all the details and feel the writer’s talent. “A Trip to the Past” (Abramov himself emphasized this more than once) tells about the life of a simple Russian person with knowledge of the issue; this story is interesting primarily from a historical point of view. It describes events without ideological overtones or shielding the actions of representatives of Soviet power. That is why the story was rated quite highly during the author’s lifetime, but there was no hurry to publish it (at that time the pressure on publishing houses and the media from the official authorities was quite strong). "A Trip to the Past" is a very modern work that can influence people's feelings and make them rethink their actions. It's worth reading for more than just the summary.

In Fyodor Abramov's story, attention is drawn to conflicts during dispossession and collectivization. Miksha Kobylin lives, although not very happily, under the illusion that his uncles are noble leaders of the revolution. The Soviet government is far away, so they implanted communism in the wilderness, however, at the terrible cost of the lives of many innocents.

A random fellow traveler (but it turns out that it was he who, in childhood, defending himself in a fight, broke the hero’s nose) opens Kobylin’s eyes to the criminal nature of the “heroes.” Miksha returns to the past - with a new look at events. Denial of his father, removal of the cross from the church, mockery of the unfortunate - these “exploits” of the past drive the repentant hero to death.

the main idea

The story of the substitution of ideals, when the ideas of revolution overshadow human relationships, become a reason for unforgivable cruelty. The hero seems to be returning to the past, reevaluating his actions.

Read summary Abramov A trip to the past

The conflict is shown between the hero’s father and the “uncles”, who were fanatical. These ardent communists sang marches while everyone around them cried. Uncles had a bad influence on young Miksha. For example, he felt obliged to beat the children of dispossessed settlers, although they could barely stand on their feet from hunger. Those unfortunate people did nothing wrong, but they were called enemies of the authorities, so they need to be punished. The guys themselves killed many innocents, labeling them “kulaks are enemies of the people.”

Out of principle, the guys even condemned the hero’s father, although their sister begged to forgive this truly kindest man. In his youth, Miksha even publicly renounced his too kind father and changed his last name. His teacher, who forgave those around him for the denunciation, and the fact that not a single student, not a parent, no one stood up for him (and he once gave up everything to teach at their school), cannot forgive Miksha for his renunciation. And this also helps the hero to repent. At the last moment he rushes to his father's grave - for the first time. For this purpose, he crossed the river, got wet, and fell asleep in wet clothes on the grave - and froze. His death is portrayed in the newspaper as a drunken rampage.

The image of Miksha’s wife, Oksa, is interesting. At the age of seventeen, she herself came to him as a widow, because she felt sorry for his little children. She shouldered such a burden... But still she did not regret anything, she loved her stern, drinking husband.

This tragic story had an equally difficult fate. It was published only fifteen years after its completion, after the death of the author.