THE RESPONSE TO THE FIRST WORLD WAR IN MINIATURE "SOLDIER KHAMIDA" BY M. GAFURI
Many writers have looked on the First World War as on God’s punishment for the sins of the people that trampled all their bright hopes and feelings; unable to find answers to their questions, puzzled, they began to appeal to God. By 1915, recovering from a loss of artistic landmark surge of feelings and external rhetorical blast M. Gafuri, like other writers, began to look for the causes of war in effect socio-political and socio-economic realities of Russia. The story “Soldier Khamida” by M. Gafuri is different from many works of wartime not only in attitude to the war, but it is also based on an original image of the time - the village women. Writer as a subtle chronicler of the era could not miss woman transformation with his clear gaze. There is a transformation in the women, becoming a head of the family, she gradually gets used to the situation. Khamida image can be called the most realistic, natural in Gafuri’s works. The author reveals to the reader a picture of the life of the family of Bashkir peasant Garifulla, hardworking and prosperous. The story is a perfect description of pre-revolutionary seeing off ceremony for recruited soldier, the author subtly catch the mood and attitude towards the war in the rural community. However, it does not divide the people of the village into two class polar camps hating each other. All of a sudden, everyone unite in front of impending disaster, which does not meet interests of any villager and carries only death and grief to each family. The war in the story comes to replace the popular in the work of M. Gafuri intangible but powerful image of death, but rather merges with it. The death in this case becomes one of the options intended to continue the story of the Garifuna; death here is seen as one of the maids of war, more merciful than the war itself, because it does not give a rise to the illusion of hope and bring salvation from the suffering of eternal waiting. By creating a strong image of women in the work “Soldier Khamida”, M. Gafuri laid the foundation for the creation of poetic prose of modern times.