The second day
The second day (Russian День второй , Den wtoroi ) is a development novel by the Russian writer Ilya Ehrenburg , which was written in Paris from December 1932 to February 1933 and published in 1934 by the Sovetskaya literatura publishing house with an edition of 7,000 copies in Moscow .
In 1933 the contemporary novel , which was worthy of criticism in the Soviet Union , was published in French ( 2e jour de la création ) and in German. For example, it was translated into English ( Out of chaos ) in 1934, into Yiddish (טאג דער צווייטער) in 1936, into Chinese (第二天) in 1957 and into Lithuanian ( Antroji diena ) in 1968 .
overview
Ilja Ehrenburg takes the title of the novel from the biblical Genesis . With the “festivities between the waters” quoted at the beginning of the novel, he means, symbolic of the first five-year plan , the construction and commissioning of the first blast furnaces in the Siberian ironworks Novokuznetsk on the banks of the Tom - located around 400 kilometers south-southeast of Tomsk - in the years 1931 to 1932. The smelter receives iron ore from the ore processing plant Mondy-Basch. The ore mines on the banks of the Telbess River supply the processing plant. Convicts extract the coal required from the Ossinowka mine.
To Novokuznetsk "were Ukrainians and Tatars , people from Perm and from Kaluga , Buryats , Cheremis , Kalmyks , miners from Yuzovka , Dreher from Kolomna , bearded road paver from Ryazan , Komsomol , dispossessed kulaks , unemployed Häuer from Westphalia and Silesia , condemned to forced labor slider from Sukharevka -Schwarzmarkt and embezzlers come enthusiasts, crooks and even sectarian preacher ". Kazakhs , Chuvashes , Mordvins and Tungus are working on the construction site. Foreign specialists live separately from Soviet citizens; marvel at everything Siberian - the lice, the frost, the enthusiasm. Americans occasionally pat the Russian engineers on the shoulder, the English mostly stay to themselves, Germans tell the Russians about beautiful, lice-free Germany, Italians assemble turbines and sing romances. On April 4th, 64 tons of top quality pig iron are extracted from the first tapping at the first blast furnace.
Kolja Rshanow and Volodja Safonow
When 19-year-old Kolja Rzhanov arrived in Novokuznetsk from Sverdlovsk in 1931, 220,000 people were employed there on the three-meter-thick permafrost . Kolja's father had worked in the Verkhne-Issetsk ironworks during his lifetime . The mother had disapproved of the occasional visits by the father's comrades because they had carried the dirt into their room on their shoes. The father had been shot by the whites during the civil war . Afterwards, the mother also feared for Kolja's life.
Already in July 1931 Kolya Brigadier is in the blast furnace department and overhauled in terms of productivity in the same year with its Cowper -Maurern, the Rshanow-people, the leading Brigade. Eighteen hours a day are worked without a break. When a rope gets tangled up on the assembly mast, the broad-shouldered Kolja - ignoring the danger to life - climbs up, repairs the accident and is celebrated as a hero by his people. In discussions with the social democrat Grün from Elberfeld , who works in the blast furnace department, Kolja comes to the conclusion that there is a lack of specialist knowledge. Kolja stands up for his people; vouches for the son of a kulak when he is suspected of being a saboteur.
Born in 1909, the doctor's son Volodja Safonow from Tambov studied mathematics in Tomsk in 1931. One of his professors calls him an Isgoi. This is a “priest's son who has been expelled from his class; a prince without property ”. This lexicon entry applies to Volodya only in a figurative sense. Dr. med. Safonov had campaigned for a patient during the civil war and was therefore put in prison by the Tambov rulers "for counter-revolutionary activity" and died as a result of the imprisonment in 1920. The polite and silent Volodya, who apparently had inherited his father's obstinacy, had left the pioneer organization in 1923 . He had thought the pioneers of his circle were cowards. Before going to university, Volodya had necessarily proven himself as a grinder in Chelyabinsk . In contrast to Kolja, Volodja is not a Komsomol .
19-year-old Irina Korenewa falls in love with Volodya. The wearer of glasses with the weak physique plays the indifferent. Irina meets Kolya, who was sent to Tomsk for a party conference. Even though Irina is very impressed by Kolya, she still thinks of Volodya. She goes to Novokuznetsk as a teacher and of course meets Kolya there.
The rebellious schoolchildren make life difficult for Irina. On an excursion to the Guryevsk iron casting and processing plant , she finds a way to win the children over. Back in Novokuznetsk, she and Kolja are happy about her educational breakthrough. The couple come together. Nobody can separate it from now on. Not even Volodya, who followed Irina to Novokuznetsk as an intern. He tells himself he's not after Irina at all. He soon realizes that Kolja snatched the woman away from him.
The respected young locksmith and toolmaker Tolya Kuzmin and Grunja Saizewa, who works on the workbench in Novokuznetsk, fall in love. Grunja comes from the old Siberian village of Mikhailovskoye and joined the Komsomol in Novokuznetsk. Tolja, who mainly wants to earn money on the construction site, doesn't understand Grunja's political commitment. The love relationship breaks because of the difference. Tolya - disappointed and furious - meets Volodya and lets the Tomsk student instigate him to commit an act of sabotage, for which he is sentenced to "five years".
Volodya Safonov hangs himself.
Fifteen years of revolution
The 19th of the 22 chapters speaks of "fifteen years of revolution ". So the narrated time ends in 1932, the year the work began in Paris. Like other epics of Ilja Ehrenburg, the second day has a form weakness. The majority of side episodes lined up confused. For example, the reader suspects that Kolja Rshanow could be the protagonist. However, this only becomes clear when his opponent, the other protagonist - Volodja Safonow - with such acting main characters as Irina Korenewa, Tolja Kuzmin, Grunja Saizewa, Grigori Markowitsch Schor, the local chief Markutow , who is close to the GPU , and the mathematics professor Ivan Eduardowitsch Grim in one legible, fairly homogeneous framework of action is anchored. Previously - as I said - the inhomogeneity dominated. Keeping a flood of side by side individual fates apart in the first half of the novel is not for everyone. Nevertheless, this novel is worth reading. Because Ilja Ehrenburg offers side stories in a wildly rotating text kaleidoscope that answer the question: What did the people of Russia endure in the first third of the 20th century?
If the hymns of praise for the party and the pathetic end of the novel (for example the talented young inventor Kolja is supposed to study engineering in Tomsk or the lurid success report "Novokuznetsk overtaken with its Martini stoves Magnitogorsk " et cetera), Ilja Ehrenburg must be certified with powerful, colorful writing . This applies, for example, to the party officials Schor and Markutov.
The 48-year-old Grigory Markovich Schor had as a member of Smolensk RSDLP been in prison and had escaped from it to Paris. Schor studied Bebel , Kautsky , Lafargue and Plechanow . In the fall of 1917 he was in Turukhansk , hurried to Saint Petersburg and took part in the assault on the Winter Palace . Schor had to start over a couple of times. Metallurgy was new to him in Novokuznetsk . He does not pay attention to his severe heart attack. Even on his deathbed, he played down his heart trouble. During Kolja Rshanow's lifetime, Schor had scolded Kolja Rshanow after he had climbed down safely from the assembly mast, following the motto: Proven workers like Kolja shouldn't put their lives in danger lightly. Since this "acquaintance" Kolja had gone to Schor whenever he had reached a dead end with anything concerning his people. When Schor didn't know what to do next, he usually sent Kolja to Markutov. The latter was a completely different caliber than Schor. Because Markutov was in abundance against Markutov, especially in the years of the civil war, the irreconcilable man, even after fifteen years of revolution, sensed betrayal when in doubt and usually prompted relentless punishment.
As a foundling, Markutov grew up in the Omsk orphanage and later fought as a partisan against Kolchak . The whites had injured his lungs during interrogation under torture. After taking part in the expropriation of the kulaks , Markutov only trusted the Central Committee of his party.
Self-testimony
- “In 1932 I went to Kuznetsk. ... I was shocked by the persistence of the people who built the factories under terrible conditions ... "
reception
- Alexei Pawlowitsch Seliwanowski wrote in 1934 that Ilya Ehrenburg was not a whitewater, because: "On the construction site, the dirt must also be shown, the garbage, the half-finished and also the legacy of the past in the psyche of people."
- In autumn 1973 in Leipzig, Schröder wrote that the novel was “a checkered and multi-layered story of a passionate search for the laws of life of the 20th century, for the new paths and tasks of the revolution…” and called the work a “hurry, on the hot trail of the contemporary novel written in the first Soviet five-year plan ”. On the subject of the novel of development, Schröder notes: “As representative ... the development of the proletarian boy Kolja Rshanow into the new socialist workers' intelligentsia ... is emphasized. Kolja goes through all the twists and turns that can occur on such a path. ”Schröder briefly compares the novel with Nikolai Ostrowski's How Steel Was Hardened from 1934.
Web links
- The full text
- Entry at fantlab.ru (Russian)
German-language editions
- The second day. Translated from the Russian by Ingeborg Schröder. P. 5–279 in: Ilja Ehrenburg: The second day. Without breathing space. Novels. With an afterword by Ralf Schröder . Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin 1974 (1st edition, edition used)
Individual evidence
- ↑ The second day in the stories of the creation of the world ( Genesis 1: 6-8 EU )
- ↑ Edition used, p. 7, 1. Zvo, see also Schröder in the afterword of the edition used, p. 516, 9. Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 259, 11. Zvo (Russian Мундыбаш (посёлок городского типа), Mundybasch (posjolok gorodskowo tipa))
- ↑ Edition used, p. 259, 9. Zvo (Russian Тельбес (приток Мундыбаша), Telbes (pritok Mundybascha))
- ↑ Edition used, p. 39, 6. Zvu (Russian Осиновка (Кемеровский район), Ossinowka (Kemerowski rajon))
- ↑ Edition used, p. 9, 7th Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 228, 18. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 240, 14. Zvo
- ↑ Schröder in the afterword of the edition used, p. 519, 17. Zvo
- ↑ Ilja Ehrenburg in his autobiography in 1958, quoted by Schröder in the afterword of the edition used, p. 521, 14. Zvo
- ↑ Russian Селивановский, Алексей Павлович (1900–1938)
- ↑ Seliwanowski, quoted in Schröder in the afterword of the edition used, p. 520, 7th Zvu
- ↑ Schröder in the afterword of the edition used, pp. 499–528
- ↑ Schröder in the afterword of the edition used, p. 499, 6th Zvu
- ↑ Schröder in the afterword of the edition used, p. 500, 1. Zvo
- ↑ Schröder in the afterword of the edition used, p. 519, 3rd Zvo
- ↑ Schröder in the afterword of the edition used, p. 520