The Hidden Man in abbreviation. Hidden Man

At the very beginning of the story, written by A.P. Platonov, “ Hidden Man» main character, Foma Pukhov cuts boiled sausage on the coffin of his recently deceased wife with the words: “Nature takes over.”

In general, Foma Pukhov seems to us to be a simple, ordinary person, and not even without some kind of naivety. He, like everyone else, passed the First World War, however, unlike everyone else, Foma Pukhov did not possess those outstanding qualities that should be endowed with every “model proletarian” who wished to go to new life with a rifle in hand and a red banner at the ready, but not to those who would volunteer to join the White Army detachments to revive the old order. Foma Pukhov is who he is, a man who lives according to his own principles and ways, formed in his innermost soul throughout his life.

Therefore, reading several separate passages from the story of A.P. Platonov, the reader may have a smile on his face, for example:

-What is a communist?

- You bastard! A communist is smart scientific man, and the bourgeois is a historical fool!

- Then I don’t want to.

- Why don’t you want to?

– I am a natural Fool! - Pukhov announced, because he knew special, unintentional ways to charm and attract people to himself and always produced an answer without any reflection.

But can that smile last more than a minute or two? After all, despite all these funny scenes on the one hand, they hide tragedy on the other.

Foma Pukhov lives during the Civil War. The new government promises a different life, and people who have walked for so long in the shackles of poverty, dirt, and disasters were able to feel how the locks holding them began to rust, and their step became firmer and more confident. And for this opportunity to become a free person, they were required to make a sacrifice for the “iron machine,” the main engine of the political idea:

-Where is he going? - Pukhov asked the people when he had already climbed into the carriage.

- Do we know where? – the meek voice of an invisible man said doubtfully. – He’s coming – and we’re with him.

Hundreds of thousands of lives were broken, destroyed, beaten down. Living blood flowed through steel pipes“iron machine”, bringing it into destructive and at the same time creative action. Morality lost its former meaning and began to fade and fade, giving way to its rightful place as a general political idea and social utopia.

The human soul began to suffocate and turn to stone. Now only fear made him move, go forward under the “brotherly bullets” and shoot him himself. This person no longer cares about the rest: neither the value of someone else’s life and soul, nor the beauty of nature; none of the above plays a significant role for a person in his destiny.

The Sharikovs are born. It is they, deprived of the necessary qualities, who stand at the helm of power and lead the “dead” and the living to the pinnacle of the political idea, not taking people like Foma Pukhov seriously, considering them fools and traitors, although they themselves cannot realize that they are wandering in the dark together with the others.

The reality created by A.P. Platonov in his story “The Hidden Man” may seem funny to someone - millions of people wander around the country waiting, bumping into each other, trying to find a means that can lead them to better life exactly at this moment of life. But this reality also completely personifies all the cruelty and weakness, the blindness of a person who decided to sacrifice his life to the “iron machine”, to trust the “Sharikovs” and other people of the same kind.

Updated: 2017-04-02

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“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 ship "Shanya", serving steam engine . On a pitch-black night, the landing party 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.”

Andrei Platonov is an author who is a recognized master of words in Russian literature. In this article we will tell you about the work “The Hidden Man” by Platonov. Summary will introduce you to this story. She was published in 1928. The story was published as a separate edition ("The Hidden Man" by Platonov). A summary of the events described in the work is as follows.

Video: Pit || Andrey Platonov

Foma Pukhov, the main character, was not gifted with sensitivity. For example, he cut boiled sausage on his wife’s coffin, because he was hungry due to the absence of the mistress. Having worn himself out, after her burial, Pukhov goes to bed. Someone knocks loudly on his door. This is the watchman of his boss’s office, who brings the hero a ticket to clear snow from the railway tracks. Pukhov signs this order at the station - try not to sign at that time!

Pukhov clears the way from snow drifts

Together with other workers who service a snowplow being transported on two steam locomotives, the main character begins to clear the way so that Red Army armored trains and trains can pass. The front is located 60 versts from this place. The snowplow suddenly brakes on one snow block. The workers fall, breaking their heads. Falls to death A mounted detachment of Cossacks surrounds the workers, ordering them to deliver the snowplow and locomotives to the station occupied by the whites. A red armored train arriving at the scene shoots the Cossacks stuck in the snow and frees their comrades.

Rest at Liski station

They rest at Liski station for three days. Pukhov reads an announcement on the wall of the barracks that mechanics are being recruited for the Southern Front, in the technical units. He invites Zvorychny, his friend, to go south, explaining that there is nothing left to do at the snow removal: spring is approaching. There will be a revolution, and the workers will have nothing left. Zvorychny does not agree, because he does not want to leave his wife and son.

Video: Continuation of the program by A. Platonov. Hidden man. Doubting Makar

The main character goes to Crimea

A week later, Pukhov, together with five mechanics, goes to Novorossiysk. On three ships, the Reds are equipping a landing force of 500 people to the rear of Wrangel, to the Crimea. Pukhov sets off on a steamship called "Shanya", serves on it. The landing force passes through the impenetrable night, but the ships lose each other due to the storm. The raging elements do not allow landing on the coast of Crimea. People are forced to return to the city of Novorossiysk.

Life in Novorossiysk

Here comes the news that the Red troops have taken Simferopol. Pukhov spends four months in the city as a senior fitter at a base belonging to the Azov-Black Sea Shipping Company. He is bored from lack of work: few ships arrive, and the main character is mainly engaged in writing reports on mechanical breakdowns. He often walks around the area, enjoying nature. The main character, remembering his deceased wife, is sad, burying his face in the ground, warmed by his breath. Pukhov, Platonov’s “secret man,” wets it with reluctant, rare drops of tears. The summary of the story allows only a passing mention of his state of mind.

Pukhov in Baku, meeting with Sharikov

Let's continue our story. Andrei Platonov further writes that after some time Pukhov leaves the city of Novorossiysk, but is not heading home, but to Baku, in order to walk along the shore of the Caspian Sea, and then along the Volga to his homeland. In Baku, he meets Sharikov, a sailor establishing a shipping company in the Caspian Sea. This man provides him with a business trip to the city of Tsaritsyn in order to attract qualified proletariat to Baku. Having arrived there, the main character shows Sharikov’s mandate to some mechanic who met him at the plant’s office. This person reads it, after which, smeared with saliva, he sticks the piece of paper to the fence - an interesting detail that Andrei Platonov introduces. “The Hidden Man” Pukhov looks at the piece of paper and drives a nail in so that the wind does not tear off the document. After that, he goes to the station, where he boards the train. Pukhov asks the passengers where they are going. One man's meek voice replies that they don't know either. “He’s coming, and we’re with him,” he says.

Life at home

Pukhov returns to his homeland, settles in the house of Zvorychny, who worked as the secretary of a cell of workshops, and serves here as a mechanic. After a week, he goes to live in his apartment, which he calls the “exclusion strip,” because Pukhov is bored here. The main character often goes to visit his friend Zvorychny and tells him various stories about the Black Sea - so that he doesn’t drink tea for nothing. Thomas, returning home, remembers that a human dwelling is called a hearth. He complains that his house doesn’t look like a hearth at all: no fire, no woman. The thoughts of the main character created by Platonov (“The Hidden Man”) are very interesting. Their analysis, unfortunately, is not the subject of our article. However, we will try to briefly describe the transformation that he ultimately undergoes.

Pukhov's failed idea

The whites are approaching the city. Gathered in groups, the workers defend themselves. A white armored train is shelling the city with hurricane fire. Foma proposes to organize several sand platforms in order to launch them onto the armored train from a slope. But they shatter into pieces without causing him any harm. The workers who rushed to attack fall under machine-gun fire. Two Red Army armored trains come to the aid of workers in the morning: the city is saved.

After these events, the cell is being investigated: is Pukhov a traitor? Or maybe he came up with this stupid idea because he is simply a stupid guy? That's what they decided on. Foma Pukhov is burdened by work in the workshop - with despondency, not heaviness. Remembering Sharikov, he writes him a letter.

Pukhov is back in Baku

The answer comes in a month. A friend invites him to work in the oil fields in Baku. Foma goes there, serves as a driver on one of the engines that pumps oil from a well into an oil storage facility. Time goes by, the main character gets better. He regrets only one thing: that he has aged a little and there is no longer something desperate in his soul, as there was before.

Awareness of Foma Pukhov

Once the main character, about whose life Platonov’s story “The Hidden Man” tells us, went fishing from Baku. He spent the night with his friend Sharikov, to whom his brother had returned from captivity. Unexpectedly awakened sympathy for people suddenly becomes clearer in Pukhov’s soul. He walks with pleasure, feeling the kinship of all other bodies to his body, the luxury of life, as well as the fury of nature, bold, incredible both in action and in silence. Gradually, the main character realizes the most painful and important thing: desperate nature has passed into people, into revolutionary courage. The spiritual foreign land leaves Pukhov, and he feels the familiar warmth of his homeland, as if he had returned to his mother from an unnecessary wife. Warmth and light strained over the surrounding world, gradually turning into human power. He says to the driver he meets: “Good morning!” He answers: “Completely revolutionary.”

This is how Platonov’s “The Hidden Man” ends. The summary introduces the reader only to the main events. After reading the original work, you will get to know the main character better and better understand why Platonov used such an unusual definition in his regard - “a hidden person.” The characters in the story are very interesting. Their characters deserve more detailed consideration.

« 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 party 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.”

1

“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.”

2

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, furiously 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!

3-6

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 into 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 make trouble for 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.”

7-9

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 up to the stop 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.”