Andrey Platonovich Platonov

« Hidden Man»

“Foma Pukhov is not gifted with sensitivity: he cut boiled sausage on his wife’s coffin, getting hungry due to the absence of the hostess.” After burying his wife, having worn himself out, Pukhov goes to bed. Someone knocks loudly on his door. The watchman from the office of the head of the distance brings a permit to work on clearing snow from the railway tracks. At the station, Pukhov signs the order - in those years, try not to sign! - and together with a team of workers servicing a snowplow pulled by two steam locomotives, he sets off to clear the path for Red Army trains and armored trains from snow drifts. The front is sixty miles away. On one of the snow heaps, the snowplow suddenly brakes, the workers fall, breaking their heads, and the driver's assistant falls to his death. A mounted Cossack detachment surrounds the workers, ordering them to deliver locomotives and snow removal to the station occupied by whites. A red armored train arrives and frees the workers and shoots the Cossacks stuck in the snow.

At Liski station, workers rest for three days. On the wall of the barracks, Pukhov reads an advertisement for the recruitment of mechanics to the technical units of the Southern Front. He invites his friend Zvorychny to go south, otherwise “there is nothing to do at the snow removal - spring is already blowing in full force! The revolution will pass, and there will be nothing left for us!” Zvorychny does not agree, regretting leaving his wife and son.

A week later, Pukhov and five other mechanics go to Novorossiysk. The Reds are equipping a landing party of five hundred people on three ships to the Crimea, to Wrangel’s rear. Pukhov sails on the steamship "Shanya", serving steam engine. On a pitch-black night, the landing force passes the Kerch Strait, but due to a storm the ships lose each other. The raging elements do not allow the troops to land on the Crimean coast. The paratroopers are forced to return to Novorossiysk.

News arrives of the capture of Simferopol by the Red troops. Pukhov spends four months in Novorossiysk, working as a senior fitter at the coastal base of the Azov-Black Sea Shipping Company. He is bored from lack of work: there are few steamships, and Pukhov is busy writing reports on the malfunction of their mechanisms. He often walks around the city, admiring nature, finding everything appropriate and living to the point. Remembering his deceased wife, Pukhov feels his difference from nature and grieves, burying his face in the earth heated by his breath, wetting it with rare, reluctant drops of tears.

He leaves Novorossiysk, but goes not to home, but towards Baku, intending to reach his homeland along the shore of the Caspian Sea and along the Volga. In Baku, Pukhov meets with the sailor Sharikov, who is establishing the Caspian Shipping Company. Sharikov gives Pukhov a business trip to Tsaritsyn to attract qualified proletariat to Baku. In Tsaritsyn, Pukhov shows Sharikov’s mandate to some mechanic whom he meets at the factory office. He reads the mandate, smears it with his tongue and sticks it on the fence. Pukhov looks at the piece of paper and puts it on the head of the nail so that the wind does not tear it off. He goes to the station, gets on the train and asks people where he is going. “Do we know where? - the meek voice of an invisible man says doubtfully. “He’s coming, and we’re with him.”

Pukhov returns to his city, settles with Zvorychny, the secretary of the workshop cell, and begins working as a mechanic on a hydraulic press. A week later, he goes to live in his apartment, which he calls the “right-of-way”: he’s bored there. Pukhov goes to visit Zvorychny and tells him something about the Black Sea - so as not to drink tea for nothing. Returning home, Pukhov remembers that the home is called a hearth: “Hearth, damn it: no women, no fire!”

The whites are approaching the city. The workers, gathered in groups, defend themselves. A white armored train shells the city with hurricane fire. Pukhov suggests collecting several platforms with sand and launching them down the slope towards the armored train. But the platforms shatter into pieces without causing any harm to the armored train. The workers who rushed to attack fall under machine-gun fire. In the morning, two red armored trains come to the aid of the workers - the city is saved.

The cell figures out whether Pukhov is a traitor, who came up with a stupid idea with platforms, and decides that he is just a stupid guy. Work in the workshop burdens Pukhov - not with heaviness, but with despondency. He remembers Sharikov and writes him a letter. A month later, he receives Sharikov’s response with an invitation to work in the oil fields. Pukhov travels to Baku, where he works as a driver on an engine pumping oil from a well to an oil storage facility. Time goes by

Pukhov feels better, and he regrets only one thing: that he has aged a little, and there is no something unexpected in his soul that was there before.

One day he goes from Baku to fish. He spent the night with Sharikov, to whom his brother returned from captivity. Unexpected sympathy for people working alone against the substance of the whole world becomes clear in Pukhov's soul, overgrown with life. He walks with pleasure, feeling the kinship of all bodies to his body, the luxury of life and the fury of bold nature, incredible in silence and in action. Gradually he realizes the most important and painful thing: desperate nature has passed into people and into the courage of the revolution. The spiritual foreign land leaves Pukhov in the place where he stands, and he recognizes the warmth of his homeland, as if he had returned to his mother from an unnecessary wife. Light and warmth intensified over the world and gradually turned into human strength. " Good morning! - he says to the driver he meets. He indifferently testifies: “Completely revolutionary.”

The action of Andrei Platonov’s work “The Hidden Man” begins with how main character- Foma Pukhov, at his wife’s funeral, cuts sausage on her coffin, and after everything, he comes home and goes to bed. But his rest is interrupted by a knock on the door. Having opened it, the hero saw the watchman of the office of the head of the distance, who brought him a ticket to work on clearing snow on the tracks. Arriving at the station, he signs the order and, together with the work team, sets off to clear the paths for the Red Army trains and armored trains. Along the way, a mounted Cossack detachment is surrounded by an overturned snowplow, but the surviving people, including our hero, are saved by the Red Army.

At Liski station, the rescued workers rest for three days. On one of the walls of the barracks, Foma finds an advertisement that says that mechanics are needed for the technical units of the Southern Front. Then the hero invites his friend Zvorychny to go there, but he does not want to leave his family - he refuses. And after just seven days, Foma and five mechanics set off for Novorossiysk. There the Reds send their people to Crimea on three ships to help Wrangel. Our Foma ends up on the steamship Shanya, where he services the steam engine. But along the way, the ships lose each other, so the rest must return back to Novorossiysk. There the hero spends four months, working as a senior fitter at the coastal base of the Azov-Black Sea Shipping Company. Here he walks, admires nature, misses his wife and cries, burying his face in the warm earth.

As a result, the hero leaves Novorossiysk, but not towards home, but to Baku. He plans to reach his homeland along the shores of the Caspian Sea and along the Volga. In Baku, Foma meets the sailor Sharikov, who is establishing the Caspian Shipping Company. He gives the hero a business trip to Tsaritsyn, in which Pukhov must transfer the mandate to one mechanic. After all this, the hero returns to his hometown, where he settles with Zvorychny, who has already become the secretary of the workshop cell. Foma starts working as a mechanic, and after a while he moves into his own apartment. There he gets bored, and he often visits his friend, telling him about the Black Sea.

After a while, his hometown is attacked by whites. Residents begin to defend themselves, trying to throw several platforms onto the enemies' armored train, but they are unsuccessful. The whites shot half the people, and in the morning the reds came to the rescue and the city was saved. The whole idea with the platforms was invented by Pukhov. In the end, the cell begins to understand this matter and decides that the hero is an ordinary idiot. Since then, work in the workshop begins to burden Foma, and he decides to go to Baku and work in the oil fields, at the invitation of his friend Sharikov. There he realized that the desperate nature had passed into the people and the courage of the revolution. Thomas understood the meaning of his life, and the hero began to treat all people, animals and the world around him with sympathy.

Essays

« Foma Pukhov not gifted with sensitivity: he cut boiled sausage on his wife’s coffin, hungry due to the absence of the mistress.” After burying his wife, having worn himself out, Pukhov goes to bed. Someone knocks loudly on his door. The watchman from the office of the head of the distance brings a permit to work on clearing snow from the railway tracks. At the station, Pukhov signs the order - in those years, try not to sign! - and together with a team of workers servicing a snowplow pulled by two steam locomotives, he sets off to clear the path for Red Army trains and armored trains from snow drifts. The front is sixty miles away. On one of the snow heaps, the snowplow suddenly brakes, the workers fall, breaking their heads, and the driver's assistant falls to his death. A mounted Cossack detachment surrounds the workers, ordering them to deliver locomotives and snow removal to the station occupied by whites. A red armored train arrives and frees the workers and shoots the Cossacks stuck in the snow.

At Liski station, workers rest for three days. On the wall of the barracks, Pukhov reads an advertisement for the recruitment of mechanics to the technical units of the Southern Front. He invites his friend Zvorychny to go south, otherwise “there is nothing to do at the snow removal - spring is already blowing in full force! The revolution will pass, and there will be nothing left for us!” Zvorychny does not agree, regretting leaving his wife and son.

A week later, Pukhov and five other mechanics go to Novorossiysk. The Reds are equipping a landing party of five hundred people on three ships to the Crimea, to Wrangel’s rear. Pukhov sails on the steamship "Shanya", servicing the steam engine. On a pitch-black night, the landing force passes the Kerch Strait, but due to a storm the ships lose each other. The raging elements do not allow the troops to land on the Crimean coast. The paratroopers are forced to return to Novorossiysk.

News arrives of the capture of Simferopol by the Red troops. Pukhov spends four months in Novorossiysk, working as a senior fitter at the coastal base of the Azov-Black Sea Shipping Company. He is bored from lack of work: there are few steamships, and Pukhov is busy writing reports on the malfunction of their mechanisms. He often walks around the city, admiring nature, finding everything appropriate and living to the point. Remembering his deceased wife, Pukhov feels his difference from nature and grieves, burying his face in the earth heated by his breath, wetting it with rare, reluctant drops of tears.

He leaves Novorossiysk, but goes not to home, but towards Baku, intending to reach his homeland along the shore of the Caspian Sea and along the Volga. In Baku, Pukhov meets with the sailor Sharikov, who is establishing the Caspian Shipping Company. Sharikov gives Pukhov a business trip to Tsaritsyn - to attract qualified proletariat to Baku. In Tsaritsyn, Pukhov shows Sharikov’s mandate to some mechanic whom he meets at the factory office. He reads the mandate, smears it with his tongue and sticks it on the fence. Pukhov looks at the piece of paper and puts it on the head of the nail so that the wind does not tear it off. He goes to the station, gets on the train and asks people where he is going. “Do we know where? - the meek voice of an invisible man says doubtfully. “He’s coming, and we’re with him.”

Pukhov returns to his city, settles with Zvorychny, the secretary of the workshop cell, and begins working as a mechanic on a hydraulic press. A week later, he goes to live in his apartment, which he calls the “right-of-way”: he’s bored there. Pukhov goes to visit Zvorychny and tells him something about the Black Sea - so as not to drink tea for nothing. Returning home, Pukhov remembers that the home is called a hearth: “Hearth, damn it: no women, no fire!”

The whites are approaching the city. The workers, gathered in groups, defend themselves. A white armored train shells the city with hurricane fire. Pukhov suggests collecting several platforms with sand and launching them down the slope towards the armored train. But the platforms shatter into pieces without causing any harm to the armored train. The workers who rushed to attack fall under machine-gun fire. In the morning, two red armored trains come to the aid of the workers - the city is saved.

The cell figures out whether Pukhov is a traitor, who came up with a stupid idea with platforms, and decides that he is just a stupid guy. Work in the workshop burdens Pukhov - not with heaviness, but with despondency. He remembers Sharikov and writes him a letter. A month later, he receives Sharikov’s response with an invitation to work in the oil fields. Pukhov travels to Baku, where he works as a driver on an engine pumping oil from a well to an oil storage facility. Time passes, Pukhov feels better, and he regrets only one thing: that he has aged a little, and there is nothing unexpected in his soul that was there before.

One day he goes from Baku to fish. He spent the night with Sharikov, to whom his brother returned from captivity. Unexpected sympathy for people working alone against the substance of the whole world becomes clear in Pukhov's soul, overgrown with life. He walks with pleasure, feeling the kinship of all bodies to his body, the luxury of life and the fury of bold nature, incredible in silence and in action. Gradually he realizes the most important and painful thing: desperate nature has passed into people and into the courage of the revolution. The spiritual foreign land leaves Pukhov in the place where he stands, and he recognizes the warmth of his homeland, as if he had returned to his mother from an unnecessary wife. Light and warmth intensified over the world and gradually turned into human strength. "Good morning!" - he says to the driver he meets. He indifferently testifies: “Completely revolutionary.”

“Foma Pukhov is not gifted with sensitivity: he cut boiled sausage on his wife’s coffin, being hungry due to the absence of the mistress.” After burying his wife, having worn himself out, Pukhov goes to bed. Someone knocks loudly on his door. The watchman from the office of the head of the distance brings a permit to work on clearing snow from the railway tracks. At the station, Pukhov signs the order - in those years, try not to sign! - and together with a team of workers servicing a snowplow pulled by two steam locomotives, he sets off to clear the path for Red Army trains and armored trains from snow drifts. The front is sixty miles away. On one of the snow heaps, the snowplow suddenly brakes, the workers fall, breaking their heads, and the driver's assistant falls to his death. A mounted Cossack detachment surrounds the workers, ordering them to deliver locomotives and snow removal to the station occupied by whites. A red armored train arrives and frees the workers and shoots the Cossacks stuck in the snow.

At Liski station, workers rest for three days. On the wall of the barracks, Pukhov reads an advertisement for the recruitment of mechanics to the technical units of the Southern Front. He invites his friend Zvorychny to go south, otherwise “there is nothing to do at the snow removal - spring is already blowing in full force! The revolution will pass, and there will be nothing left for us!” Zvorychny does not agree, regretting leaving his wife and son.

A week later, Pukhov and five other mechanics go to Novorossiysk. The Reds are equipping a landing party of five hundred people on three ships to the Crimea, to Wrangel’s rear. Pukhov sails on the steamship "Shanya", servicing the steam engine. On a pitch-black night, the landing force passes the Kerch Strait, but due to a storm the ships lose each other. The raging elements do not allow the troops to land on the Crimean coast. The paratroopers are forced to return to Novorossiysk.

News arrives of the capture of Simferopol by the Red troops. Pukhov spends four months in Novorossiysk, working as a senior fitter at the coastal base of the Azov-Black Sea Shipping Company. He is bored from lack of work: there are few steamships, and Pukhov is busy writing reports on the malfunction of their mechanisms. He often walks around the city, admiring nature, finding everything appropriate and living to the point. Remembering his deceased wife, Pukhov feels his difference from nature and grieves, burying his face in the earth heated by his breath, wetting it with rare, reluctant drops of tears.

He leaves Novorossiysk, but goes not to home, but towards Baku, intending to reach his homeland along the shore of the Caspian Sea and along the Volga. In Baku, Pukhov meets with the sailor Sharikov, who is establishing the Caspian Shipping Company. Sharikov gives Pukhov a business trip to Tsaritsyn - to attract qualified proletariat to Baku. In Tsaritsyn, Pukhov shows Sharikov’s mandate to some mechanic, who

Orogo meets at the factory office. He reads the mandate, smears it with his tongue and sticks it on the fence. Pukhov looks at the piece of paper and puts it on the head of the nail so that the wind does not tear it off. He goes to the station, gets on the train and asks people where he is going. “Do we know where? - the meek voice of an invisible man says doubtfully. “He’s coming, and we’re with him.”

Pukhov returns to his city, settles with Zvorychny, the secretary of the workshop cell, and begins working as a mechanic on a hydraulic press. A week later, he goes to live in his apartment, which he calls the “right-of-way”: he’s bored there. Pukhov goes to visit Zvorychny and tells him something about the Black Sea - so as not to drink tea for nothing. Returning home, Pukhov remembers that the home is called a hearth: “Hearth, damn it: no women, no fire!”

The whites are approaching the city. The workers, gathered in groups, defend themselves. A white armored train shells the city with hurricane fire. Pukhov suggests collecting several platforms with sand and launching them down the slope towards the armored train. But the platforms shatter into pieces without causing any harm to the armored train. The workers who rushed to attack fall under machine-gun fire. In the morning, two red armored trains come to the aid of the workers - the city is saved.

The cell figures out whether Pukhov is a traitor, who came up with a stupid idea with platforms, and decides that he is just a stupid guy. Work in the workshop burdens Pukhov - not with heaviness, but with despondency. He remembers Sharikov and writes him a letter. A month later, he receives Sharikov’s response with an invitation to work in the oil fields. Pukhov travels to Baku, where he works as a driver on an engine pumping oil from a well to an oil storage facility. Time goes by

Pukhov feels better, and he regrets only one thing: that he has aged a little, and there is no something unexpected in his soul that was there before.

One day he goes from Baku to fish. He spent the night with Sharikov, to whom his brother returned from captivity. Unexpected sympathy for people working alone against the substance of the whole world becomes clear in Pukhov's soul, overgrown with life. He walks with pleasure, feeling the kinship of all bodies to his body, the luxury of life and the fury of bold nature, incredible in silence and in action. Gradually he realizes the most important and painful thing: desperate nature has passed into people and into the courage of the revolution. The spiritual foreign land leaves Pukhov in the place where he stands, and he recognizes the warmth of his homeland, as if he had returned to his mother from an unnecessary wife. Light and warmth intensified over the world and gradually turned into human strength. "Good morning!" - he says to the driver he meets. He indifferently testifies: “Completely revolutionary.”

Retelling - V. M. Sotnikov

Good retelling? Tell your friends on social networks and let them prepare for the lesson too!

“Foma Pukhov is not gifted with sensitivity: he cut boiled sausage on his wife’s coffin, being hungry due to the absence of the mistress.” After burying his wife, having worn himself out, Pukhov goes to bed. Someone knocks loudly on his door. The watchman from the office of the head of the distance brings a permit to work on clearing snow from the railway tracks. At the station, Pukhov signs the order - in those years, try not to sign! - and together with a team of workers servicing a snowplow pulled by two steam locomotives, he sets off to clear the path for Red Army trains and armored trains from snow drifts. The front is sixty miles away. On one of the snow heaps, the snowplow suddenly brakes, the workers fall, breaking their heads, and the driver's assistant falls to his death.

A mounted Cossack detachment surrounds the workers, ordering them to deliver locomotives and snow removal to the station occupied by whites. A red armored train arrives and frees the workers and shoots the Cossacks stuck in the snow.

At Liski station, workers rest for three days. On the wall of the barracks, Pukhov reads an advertisement for the recruitment of mechanics to the technical units of the Southern Front. He invites his friend Zvorychny to go south, otherwise “there is nothing to do at the snow removal - spring is already blowing in full force! The revolution will pass, and there will be nothing left for us!” Zvorychny does not agree, not wanting to leave his wife and son.

A week later, Pukhov and five other mechanics go to Novorossiysk. The Reds are equipping a landing party of five hundred people on three ships to the Crimea, to Wrangel’s rear. Pukhov sails on the steamship "Shanya", servicing the steam engine. On a pitch-black night, the landing force passes the Kerch Strait, but due to a storm the ships lose each other. The raging elements do not allow the troops to land on the Crimean coast. The paratroopers are forced to return to Novorossiysk.

News arrives of the capture of Simferopol by the Red troops. Pukhov spends four months in Novorossiysk, working as a senior fitter at the coastal base of the Azov-Black Sea Shipping Company. He is bored from lack of work: there are few steamships, and Pukhov is busy writing reports on the malfunction of their mechanisms. He often walks around the city, admiring nature, finding everything appropriate and living to the point. Remembering his deceased wife, Pukhov feels his difference from nature and grieves, burying his face in the earth heated by his breath, wetting it with rare, reluctant drops of tears.

He leaves Novorossiysk, but goes not to home, but towards Baku, intending to reach his homeland along the shore of the Caspian Sea and along the Volga. In Baku, Pukhov meets with the sailor Sharikov, who is establishing the Caspian Shipping Company. Sharikov gives Pukhov a business trip to Tsaritsyn - to attract qualified proletariat to Baku. In Tsaritsyn, Pukhov shows Sharikov’s mandate to some mechanic whom he meets at the factory office. He reads the mandate, smears it with his tongue and sticks it on the fence. Pukhov looks at the piece of paper and puts it on the head of the nail so that the wind does not tear it off. He goes to the station, gets on the train and asks people where he is going. “Do we know where? - the meek voice of an invisible man says doubtfully. “He’s coming, and we’re with him.”

Pukhov returns to his city, settles with Zvorychny, the secretary of the workshop cell, and begins working as a mechanic on a hydraulic press. A week later, he goes to live in his apartment, which he calls “the exclusion zone”: he is bored there. Pukhov goes to visit Zvorychny and tells him something about the Black Sea - so as not to drink tea for nothing. Returning home, Pukhov remembers that the home is called a hearth: “Hearth, damn it: no women, no fire!”

The whites are approaching the city. The workers, gathered in groups, defend themselves. A white armored train shells the city with hurricane fire. Pukhov suggests collecting several platforms with sand and launching them down the slope towards the armored train. But the platforms shatter into pieces without causing any harm to the armored train. The workers who rushed to attack fall under machine-gun fire. In the morning, two red armored trains come to the aid of the workers - the city is saved.

The cell figures out whether Pukhov is a traitor, who came up with a stupid idea with platforms, and decides that he is just a stupid guy. Work in the workshop burdens Pukhov - not with heaviness, but with despondency. He remembers Sharikov and writes him a letter. A month later, he receives Sharikov’s response with an invitation to work in the oil fields. Pukhov travels to Baku, where he works as a driver on an engine pumping oil from a well to an oil storage facility. Time passes, Pukhov feels better, and he regrets only one thing: that he has aged a little and that there is nothing unexpected in his soul that was there before.

One day he goes from Baku to fish. Pukhov spent the night with Sharikov, to whom his brother returned from captivity. Unexpected sympathy for people working alone against the substance of the whole world becomes clear in Pukhov's soul, overgrown with life. He walks with pleasure, feeling the kinship of all bodies to his body, the luxury of life and the fury of bold nature, incredible in silence and in action.

Gradually he realizes the most important and painful thing: desperate nature has passed into people and into the courage of the revolution. The spiritual foreign land leaves Pukhov in the place where he stands, and he recognizes the warmth of his homeland, as if he had returned to his mother from an unnecessary wife. Light and warmth intensified over the world and gradually turned into human strength. "Good morning!" - he says to the driver he meets. He indifferently testifies: “Completely revolutionary.”

“The Hidden Man” by A. Platonov

The story “The Hidden Man” can be defined as a work about the adventures of a “reflective proletarian” during the Civil War. In general, Platonov’s works are characterized by “thinking” heroes who strive to penetrate reality and understand the way of the world. In Platonov’s story, both the heroes and the author are trying to find a way to exist in the world of eternal existential problems. The boundaries between inner world man, between living and inanimate nature, concepts and things are coming closer. Platonov brings life and death closer together.

The world of “The Hidden Man” is quite illusory for all its tangible reality. People strive to understand life, but in the end: “Do we know where? He’s coming, and we’re with him.”

“Foma Pukhov is not gifted with sensitivity: he cut boiled sausage on his wife’s coffin, being hungry due to the absence of the mistress.”

However, in his soul there lives some kind of melancholy that cannot be expressed in words.

Winter. Foma goes to work - to railway. Pukhov works on a snowplow. There is a Civil War going on.

“If only they’d invent some kind of automatic machine: I’m so tired of being a worker!” - Foma Yegorovich reasoned, packing food into a bag: bread and millet.

The snowplow “was given an order: to lead the armored car and the People’s Commissar’s train, making a trench in the drifts... And the fact that the whites were crushed by the artillery of the armored trains happened because the teams of steam locomotives and snowplows were destroying the snowdrifts, without sleeping for weeks and eating dry porridge.”

The locomotive suddenly slows down in the snow. Pukhov's head was knocked out, and the driver, thrown from the tender, had his head broken. The driver's assistant was killed.

However, they do not mourn the dead. They only think about completing the task.

- Everything is in place, mechanic! - Pukhov answered in an official manner. “Your assistant just killed himself, but I’ll give you another, he’s a smart guy, he’s just a healthy eater!”

The railway workers, on the one hand, are under threat from the Revolutionary Tribunal (Reds), and on the other, under pressure from the White Army (Cossacks).

The Cossack detachment “was completely shot from an armored train.

Only one horse left and rushed across the steppe, screaming pitifully and straining its thin, fast body.

Pukhov looked at her for a long time and became haggard with sympathy.”

Pukhov “jealously followed the revolution, ashamed of its every stupidity, although he had little to do with it.”

Here an important fat boss appears alone on a whole train and, “explaining that the bourgeoisie is completely and completely bastard,” leaves.

Pukhov persuades assistant driver Zvorychny to leave at the call of the Red Army to the Southern Front. Spring begins, snow removal ends. The comrade is thinking about his wife and child, it’s a pity to leave them.

Pukhov campaigns:

- They paid you for clearing the snow. What did you sacrifice for free, they will ask, what did you sympathize with? You understand mechanics, but you yourself are a prejudiced person!

After Civil War Pukhov sees himself as a “red nobleman.”

In Novorossiysk, Pukhov went to a commission that supposedly tested the knowledge of specialists.

The check was pretty ridiculous:

- What's happened Horsepower?

— A horse that acts instead of a machine.

- Why does it act instead of a machine?

- Because we have a country with backward technology - they plow with snags and reap with their fingernails!

—What is religion?

— The prejudice of Karl Marx and folk moonshine.

Our hero was assigned to the port as a fitter to repair a completely unfit ship with the proud name “Mars”. “The engine wheezed, but persisted in turning.”

However, the mechanic manages to somehow fix the engine. Arrests and destruction of wealthy people are underway in Novorossiysk.

“Why are they fooling people? - thought Pukhov. - What kind of thunderstorm are these buffoons causing? They’re already afraid to go beyond the rubble.”

The Red Army soldiers receive the task of striking Wrangel in the rear from the sea. The soldiers are filled with a thirst for heroism.

“That is the only reason why the Red Army soldiers, sometimes armed only with their fists, managed to catch the armored vehicles of the enemy of the White Guards in the steppes.

Young, they built themselves a new country for a long time future life, in a frenzy, destroying everything that did not go well with their dream of the happiness of poor people, which they were taught by the political instructor.”

Pukhov asks to board the Turkish ship “Shanya” - it has a better engine. The Commissioner agrees.

"Shanya" first finds itself in a terrible storm, the paratroopers suffer from pitching. Then the ship is discovered by the White Guards.

“It turned out that the time had come for the landing force to voluntarily sink itself.” Everything is the same, as the author puts it, “the voluptuousness of courage.” However, the Shana manages to pass itself off as a merchant ship.

“Shane” meets the unfortunate “Mars” - he received a hole. The ship is in danger of destruction, but a harmonic can be heard from “Mars” - “someone was playing there before death, frightening all the laws of human nature.”

Some of the dying Mars crew are saved. However, nothing worked out with the landing - the storm interfered. Return to Novorossiysk.

Sailor Sharikov reproaches Pukhov for being a non-party member. Why?

“I couldn’t believe it, Comrade Sharikov,” Pukhov explained, “and our party committee was located in the governor’s pre-revolutionary house!”

Why is there a pre-revolutionary house there! - Sharikov convinced even more. - I was born before the revolution - and I endure it!

Poohov! The war is ending! - the commissioner once said.

It’s high time we dress with only ideas, but no trousers!

Pukhov proves to the commissioner that qualifications are needed to work with machines. But “rednecks” cannot create a new world with sheer enthusiasm.

Our hero himself, however, is also not particularly literate. This can be seen in his reports: “The steamer called “World Council” is suffering from a boiler explosion and a general lack of a firebox, which cannot now be found out where it went.”

“Remembering his deceased wife, Pukhov grieved for her. He never told anyone about this, so everyone really thought that Pukhov was a clumsy man and cut boiled sausage on the coffin. So it was, but Pukhov did it not out of obscenity, but out of hunger.

But then sensitivity began to torment him, although the sad event was already over.”

Pukhov thought that the communists “are persecuting God in vain, not because he was a pilgrim, but because people are accustomed to putting their hearts in religion, but in the revolution they did not find such a place.

“And you love your class,” the communists advised.

“You still need to get used to this,” reasoned Pukhov, “but it will be difficult for the people in the void: they will heap wood on you from their inappropriate heart.”

From Novorossiysk the hero ends up in Baku, and then gets ready to go home. Many people, torn from their place by hunger and the winds of revolution, see the obsolescence of the revolution.” Some of these wanderers involuntarily say that they went all the way to Argentina for a bag of wheat - whether it’s true or not, who can say?

Pukhov returned to his native place - and there was hunger there. Bread is given in rations, not enough. People get sick and even die. I settled down with Zvorychny for now. He signed up for the party, but makes no profit from it - he and his wife eat only potatoes, and treat their guests with them.

“Pukhov lived with Zvorychny for another week, and then moved to his own apartment.

Finding himself at home, he was delighted, but soon became bored and began to visit Zvorychny every day.”

While visiting, Pukhov desperately lies, talking about his landing behind Wrangel’s lines, for which he was allegedly “introduced to the Red Hero.”

The white army approaches the city again.

The workers, organized somehow by the commissars, are trying to shoot back.

The “White Armored Car” is about to be pushed off the road by ten loaded platforms, launched manually. However, the idea failed. The platforms were broken into pieces, but the armored train remained unharmed.

A detachment of railway workers “rushed onto the armored train, plagued by the last fear, which turned into hopeless heroism.”

“Late in the evening, an armored train of sailors jumped into the station and began to smash the whites point-blank. The unconscious, frantic force of the sailors almost all died as corpses - across the dead detachment of railway workers, but none of the whites left at all.”

Pukhov, sad, writes a letter to Sharikov. And again he fantasizes. “I wrote about everything: about the sand landing that destroyed the white battleship with one blow, about the Communist Cathedral, built in spite of all the people in the summer on Market Square, about my boredom away from sea life and about everything else.”

On the envelope he wrote:

“To the addressee, sea sailor Sharikov.

To Baku - to the Caspian flotilla."

Sharikov calls a friend in Baku.

“They fired Pukhov willingly and quickly, especially since he is a vague person for the workers. Not an enemy, but some kind of wind blowing past the sails of the revolution.”

In Baku, Pukhov begins working with a machine at an oil well. Eats off. He is in no hurry to sign up as a communist again, because communists are learned people, and he is a “natural fool.”

In the end, the hero realizes the kinship between revolution and nature.

“Pukhov himself didn’t know - either he was melting or he was being born.

The light and warmth of the morning strained over the world and gradually turned into human strength.

In the machine shed, Pukhov was met by a driver waiting for a shift.

Pukhov absorbed the gas from the engine like a fragrance, feeling his life in full depth - right down to his innermost pulse.

- Good morning! - he said to the driver.

He stretched, went outside and indifferently examined:

“Quite revolutionary.”