Plotonov’s “ditch” in the summary
“On the day of the thirtieth anniversary of his personal life, Voshchev was given a calculation from a small mechanical factory where he was earning funds for his existence.” He wrote in a dismissal document that he was being eliminated from production due to the growth of weakness in him and thoughtfulness among the general rate of work. ” Voshchev goes to another city. In a vacant lot in a warm pit, he settles down for the night. At midnight, a man wakes him, mowing grass on a vacant lot. The mower says that construction will begin soon, and sends Voshchev to the barracks: “Go there and sleep until morning, and in the morning you will find out.”
Voshchev wakes up with a team of artisans who feed him and explain that today begins the construction of a single building, where the entire local class of the proletariat will enter the settlement. Voshchev give a shovel, he squeezes her hands, as if wanting to get the truth out of the dust of the ground.
The diggers gradually get used to and get used to work. At the pit often comes Comrade Pashkin, chairman of the okrprofsoveta, which monitors the pace of work. “The pace is quiet,” he says to the workers, “why do you regret raising productivity?” Socialism will do without you, and without it you will live in vain and die. “
In the evenings, Voshchev lies with his eyes open and yearns for the future, when everything will become well-known and placed in a miserly sense of happiness. The most conscious worker Safronov suggests putting radio in the barracks to listen about achievements and directives, a disabled person, legless Zhachev, objecting: “It’s better to bring an orphan girl by the
Digger Chiklin finds in an abandoned building of a tile factory, where once he was kissed by the owner’s daughter, a dying woman with a small daughter. Chiklin kisses a woman and finds out from the rest of the tenderness in her lips that this is the same girl who kissed him in her youth. Before death, the mother tells the girl that she does not confess to anyone, whose daughter she is. The girl asks why her mother is dying: because she’s a bourgeois, or from death? Chiklin takes it with him.
Comrade Pashkin establishes a radio control room in the barracks, from which every minute demands are issued in the form of slogans: the need to harvest nettles, cut off tails and manes in horses. Safronov listens and regrets that he can not speak back into the pipe, so that they will learn about his sense of activity. Voshchev and Zhachev becomes baselessly ashamed of long speeches on the radio, and Zhachev yells: “Stop this sound! Let me answer it!” After listening to the radio, Safronov looks at the sleeping people without sleep, and says with sadness: “It’s hard for you to organize the skeleton of communism out of you!” And what do you need? Is it so stupid? You are the whole avant-garde, bastard, tortured! “
The girl who came with Chiklin, asks him about the features of the meridians on the map, and Chiklin says that these are fences from the bourgeoisie. In the evening navvies do not turn on the radio, but, having eaten, sit down to look at the girl and ask her who she is. The girl remembers what her mother told her, and tells that she does not remember her parents and she did not want to be born under the bourgeoisie, but how Lenin became, and she became. Safronov concludes: “And our Soviet power is profound, since even children, not remembering their mother, already feel Comrade Lenin!”
At the meeting, the workers decide to send to the village of Safronov and Kozlov for the purpose of organizing collective farm life. In the village they are killed – and other village diggers led by Voshchev and Chiklin come to the aid of village activists. While the Organizing Court hosts a meeting of organized members and unorganized individual farmers, Chiklin and Voshchev make a nearby raft. Activists refer to the list of people: the poor for the collective farm, the kulaks – for dekulakization. To more accurately identify all the kulaks, Chiklin takes the bear, working in the smithy with a hammer, to the aid. Bear remembers well at home, where he used to work – these houses are determined by the kulaks, who are driven to the raft and sent along the river current to the sea. The poor who stayed on the Orgdvory march on the spot to the sound of the radio, then dance, greeting the arrival of the collective farm life. In the morning people go to the smithy, where the work of a hammer-bear is heard. Members of the collective farm burn all coal, repair all dead implements and with longing for the end of work, sit at the fence and look at the village in bewilderment about their future life. The workers lead the villagers into the city. Towards evening the travelers come to the foundation pit and see that it is covered with snow, and in the barrack it is empty and dark. Chiklin fires a fire to warm the sick girl Nastya. People pass by the barracks, but no one comes to visit Nastya, because everyone, bending his head, constantly thinks about complete collectivization. By morning Nastya is dying. Voshchev, standing above the silent child, thinks about why he needs the meaning of life now, if there is not this little, faithful person in whom the truth would become joy and movement. they repair all the dead implements and, with longing for the end of their work, sit at the fence and look at the village in bewilderment about their future life. The workers lead the villagers into the city. Towards evening the travelers come to the foundation pit and see that it is covered with snow, and in the barrack it is empty and dark. Chiklin fires a fire to warm the sick girl Nastya. People pass by the barracks, but no one comes to visit Nastya, because everyone, bending his head, constantly thinks about complete collectivization. By morning Nastya is dying. Voshchev, standing above the silent child, thinks about why he needs the meaning of life now, if there is not this little, faithful person in whom the truth would become joy and movement. they repair all the dead implements and, with longing for the end of their work, sit at the fence and look at the village in bewilderment about their future life. The workers lead the villagers into the city. Towards evening the travelers come to the foundation pit and see that it is covered with snow, and in the barrack it is empty and dark. Chiklin fires a fire to warm the sick girl Nastya. People pass by the barracks, but no one comes to visit Nastya, because everyone, bending his head, constantly thinks about complete collectivization. By morning Nastya is dying. Voshchev, standing above the silent child, thinks about why he needs the meaning of life now, if there is not this little, faithful person in whom the truth would become joy and movement. Towards evening the travelers come to the foundation pit and see that it is covered with snow, and in the barrack it is empty and dark. Chiklin fires a fire to warm the sick girl Nastya. People pass by the barracks, but no one comes to visit Nastya, because everyone, bending his head, constantly thinks about complete collectivization. By morning Nastya is dying. Voshchev, standing above the silent child, thinks about why he needs the meaning of life now, if there is not this little, faithful person in whom the truth would become joy and movement. Towards evening the travelers come to the foundation pit and see that it is covered with snow, and in the barrack it is empty and dark. Chiklin fires a fire to warm the sick girl Nastya. People pass by the barracks, but no one comes to visit Nastya, because everyone, bending his head, constantly thinks about complete collectivization. By morning Nastya is dying. Voshchev, standing above the silent child, thinks about why he needs the meaning of life now, if there is not this little, faithful person in whom the truth would become joy and movement.
Zhachev asked Voshchev: “Why did the collective farm bring?” “The peasants want to be included in the proletariat,” answers Voshchev. Chiklin takes a crowbar and a shovel and goes to dig at the far end of the pit. Looking around, he sees that the whole collective farm is constantly digging the earth. All poor and middle peasants work with such zeal, as if they want to be saved forever in the pit of the pit. Horses are also not worth it: the collective farmers carry stone on them. One Zhachev does not work, mourning over the dead Nastya. “I am a freak of imperialism, and communism is a children’s business, for that I loved Nastya… I’ll go off to parting with Comrade Pashkin,” Zhachev said and crawls away on his cart to the city, never to return to the pit.
Chiklin digs for Nasty a deep grave, so that the child is never disturbed by the noise of life from the surface of the earth.
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)