What is ball rolling? Bulgakov (Heart of a Dog). Essay on the topic: what is "Sharikovism" Essays on topics

The famous story "Heart of a Dog", written in 1926, is a vivid example of Bulgakov's satire. She develops Gogol's traditions, organically combining two principles: fantastic and realistic. This characteristic feature of the writer's satire is also embodied in such works of his as "The Diaboliad" and "Fatal Eggs". All three satirical stories contain the writer's warning addressed to his contemporaries, which they did not hear. Today we cannot but be struck by the amazing insight of Bulgakov, who managed to feel the danger of scientific discoveries that got out of control, to urge people to be as careful as possible in dealing with the unknown forces of nature.

In the center of the story "Heart of a Dog" is an experiment by Professor Preobrazhensky, which turned the sweet, glorious dog Sharik into a short man of unsympathetic appearance. In this creature that appeared as a result of scientific experience, the makings of an eternally hungry and humiliated dog were combined with the qualities of his human donor - an alcoholic and criminal Klim Chugunkin. Such heredity makes the process of Sharikov's upbringing very difficult. On the one hand, Professor Preobrazhensky and his assistant Dr. Bormental unsuccessfully try to instill in him the rules of good manners, to develop and educate him. But of the whole system of cultural events, Sharikov likes only the circus, because he calls the theater a counter-revolution, and he does not have the slightest interest in books. On the one hand, life itself intervenes in the process of Sharikov's upbringing. First of all, in the person of the Chairman of the House Committee, Shvonder, who strives to turn yesterday's Sharik into a conscious builder of socialism as soon as possible, stuffing him with proletarian slogans and books like the correspondence between Engels and Kautsky. Many statements of Polygraph Polygraphych are clearly borrowed from his benefactor Shvonder, who deliberately incites his pet against the hated professor. The chairman of the house committee cannot in any way forget his shameful defeat in Preobrazhensky's apartment, come to terms with the fact that the professor still occupies seven rooms and is not subject to any compaction, because the life of influential bosses depends on his talent as a surgeon. So, Shvonder sees in Sharikov a kind of instrument of revenge.

By showing how Sharikov's evolution is taking place, how he is gradually becoming bolder and more aggressive, Bulgakov makes the reader, who laughs merrily at comic situations and witty remarks, feel the terrible danger of Sharikovism, this new social phenomenon that began to emerge in the 1920s. The revolutionary government encourages informing, informing, releasing the basest instincts of uncultured and uneducated people. It gives them a sense of power over smart, cultured, intelligent people. The Sharikovs, who have seized power, pose a terrible threat to society. Bulgakov refers in his story to the reasons for their appearance. If Sharikov arose as a result of the scientific experience of Professor Preobrazhensky, then such people with a dog's heart can appear as a result of that risky experiment, which was called in our country the construction of socialism, an experiment of enormous scale and very dangerous. An attempt to create a new just society, to educate a free and conscious person by revolutionary, that is, violent methods, according to the writer, was initially doomed to failure. After all, the desire "to the ground" to destroy the old world with its eternal universal moral values ​​and build life on a fundamentally new basis - this means forcibly interfering with the natural course of things. The consequences of this intervention will be deplorable. Philip Philipovich understands this when he sadly reflects on why his brilliant scientific experiment gave birth to a real monster, which began to pose a mortal danger to everyone around him. This happened because the researcher violated the laws of nature, and this should never be done.

Bulgakov's story "Heart of a Dog" remains relevant even today, because the discoveries and prophecies of the great writer will help us understand the chaos and confusion of today's life, avoid previous mistakes, so that ball shoes do not become a terrible sign of the times.

Bulgakov's work is the pinnacle of Russian artistic culture of the 20th century. Tragic is the fate of the Master, deprived of the opportunity to be published, heard. From 1927 to 1940, Bulgakov did not see a single line of his in print.
Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov came to literature already during the years of Soviet power. He experienced all the difficulties and contradictions of the Soviet reality of the thirties. His childhood and youth are connected with Kiev, the subsequent years of his life - with Moscow. It was during the Moscow period of Bulgakov's life that the story "Heart of a Dog" was written. With brilliant skill and talent, it reveals the theme of disharmony, brought to the point of absurdity due to human intervention in the eternal laws of nature.
In this work, the writer rises to the top of satirical fiction. If satire states, then satirical fiction warns society of impending dangers and cataclysms. Bulgakov embodies his conviction that normal evolution is preferable to a violent method of intrusion into life, he speaks of the terrible destructive power of self-satisfied aggressive innovation. These themes are eternal, and they have not lost their significance even now.
The story "Heart of a Dog" is distinguished by an extremely clear author's idea: the revolution that took place in Russia was not the result of the natural spiritual development of society, but an irresponsible and premature experiment. Therefore, the country must be returned to its previous state, without allowing the irreversible consequences of such an experiment.
So, let's look at the main characters of "Heart of a Dog". Professor Preobrazhensky is a democrat by origin and convictions, a typical Moscow intellectual. He sacredly serves science, helps a person, never harms him. Proud and majestic, Professor Preobrazhensky keeps pouring out old aphorisms. Being the luminary of Moscow genetics, the ingenious surgeon is engaged in profitable operations to rejuvenate aging ladies.
But the professor plans to improve nature itself, he decides to compete with life itself, to create a new person by transplanting part of the human brain into a dog. So Sharikov is born, embodying the new Soviet man. What are its development prospects? Nothing impressive: the heart of a stray dog ​​and the brain of a man with three criminal records and a pronounced passion for alcohol. This is what the new man, the new society, must develop from.
Sharikov, by all means, wants to break out into the people, to become no worse than others. But he cannot understand that for this it is necessary to go through the path of a long spiritual development, it requires work to develop the intellect, horizons, and mastery of knowledge. Polygraph Polygraphovich Sharikov (as the creature is now called) puts on patent-leather shoes and a poisonous tie, but otherwise his suit is dirty, untidy, tasteless.
A man with a canine disposition, based on a lumpen, feels like the master of life, he is arrogant, swaggering, aggressive. The conflict between Professor Preobrazhensky and the humanoid lumpen is absolutely inevitable. The life of the professor and the inhabitants of his apartment becomes a living hell. Here is one of their domestic scenes:
“- ... Do not throw cigarette butts on the floor, for the hundredth time I ask. So that I no longer hear a single swear word in the apartment! Don't give a damn! There is a spittoon, - the professor is indignant.
- Something you me, daddy, painfully oppress, - the man suddenly uttered whiningly.
Despite the dissatisfaction of the owner of the house, Sharikov lives in his own way: during the day he sleeps in the kitchen, idles, does all sorts of outrages, confident that "nowadays everyone has his own right." And he is not alone in this. Polygraph Poligrafovich finds an ally in the person of Shvonder, the local chairman of the house committee. He bears the same responsibility as the professor for the humanoid monster. Shvonder supported Sharikov's social status, armed him with an ideological phrase, he is his ideologist, his "spiritual shepherd". Shvonder supplies Sharikov with "scientific" literature and gives him the correspondence between Engels and Kautsky for "study". The animal-like creature does not approve of any author: “They write, they write ... Congress, some Germans ...” He draws one conclusion: “We must share everything.” So the psychology of Sharikov developed. He instinctively sensed the main credo of the new masters of life: rob, steal, take away everything created. The main principle of a socialist society is universal leveling, called equality. We all know what this led to.
Finest hour for Polygraph Poligrafovich was his "service". Having disappeared from the house, he appears before the astonished professor as a kind of young man, full of dignity and self-respect, “in a leather jacket from someone else’s shoulder, in worn leather trousers and high English boots.” The incredible smell of cats immediately spread all over the hallway. To the dumbfounded professor, he shows a paper that says that Comrade Sharikov is the head of the department for cleaning the city from stray animals. Shvonder arranged it there.
So, Bulgakov's Sharik made a dizzying leap: from a stray dog, he turned into an orderly to clean up the city from stray dogs and cats. Well, the pursuit of one's own is a characteristic feature of all ballrooms. They destroy their own, as if covering up the traces of their own origin...
The last chord of Sharikov's activity is the denunciation of Professor Preobrazhensky. It should be noted that it was in the thirties that denunciation became one of the foundations of a socialist society, which would be more correctly called totalitarian. Only such a regime can be based on denunciation.
Sharikov is alien to shame, conscience, morality. He has no human qualities, there is only meanness, hatred, malice.
However, Professor Preobrazhensky still does not leave the thought of making a man out of Sharikov. He hopes for evolution, gradual development. But there is no development and there will not be if the person himself does not strive for it. The good intentions of Preobrazhensky turn into a tragedy. He comes to the conclusion that violent intervention in the nature of man and society leads to disastrous results. In the story, the professor corrects his mistake by turning Sharikov back into a dog. But in life, such experiments are irreversible. Bulgakov managed to warn about this at the very beginning of those destructive transformations that began in our country in 1917.
After the revolution, all the conditions were created for the appearance of a huge number of balloons with dog hearts. The totalitarian system is very conducive to this. Due to the fact that these monsters have penetrated into all areas of life, Russia is now going through hard times.
Outwardly, the balls are no different from people, but they are always among us. Their non-human essence is constantly manifested. The judge convicts an innocent in order to carry out a plan to solve crimes; the doctor turns away from the patient; mother abandons her child; officials, whose bribes are already in the order of things, are ready to betray their own. Everything that is most lofty and holy turns into its opposite, as the non-human woke up in them and tramples them into the mud. Coming to power, non-humans try to dehumanize everyone around, since non-humans are easier to control. They have all human feelings replaced by the instinct of self-preservation.
The heart of a dog in union with the human mind is the main threat of our time. That is why the story, written at the beginning of the century, remains relevant today, serving as a warning to future generations. Today is so close to yesterday... At first glance it seems that everything has changed, that the country has become different. But consciousness and stereotypes remained the same. More than one generation will pass before the balls disappear from our lives, people will become different, there will be no vices described by Bulgakov in his immortal work. How I want to believe that this time will come! ..

Sharikovshchina is a social phenomenon
“Now that our unfortunate Motherland is at the very bottom of the pit of shame and disaster into which the “great social revolution” has driven it, many of us begin to have the same thought more and more often. It is simple: what will happen to us further..."

Michael Bulgakov

If the reader looks into the Concise Literary Encyclopedia to get information about Mikhail Bulgakov, then first of all he will know that the future writer was born in 1891 "in the family of a professor." There is a small inaccuracy here: Bulgakov's father, an associate professor at the Kyiv Theological Academy, became a professor only in 1907. Nevertheless, for us this is an important fact of the writer's biography. Indeed, one of the main characters of the story "Heart of a Dog" is an intelligent man, Professor Preobrazhensky.

The story unfolds before us a real picture of the new Soviet life. It just so happened that the dream of the figures of the Russian revival came true in an ugly form. A "new man" has really appeared in Russia, he received the name "Homo Sovieticus". Writers in their works began to explore this phenomenon. And a number of parodic works appeared in such outstanding satirists as Zoshchenko, Erdman, Kataev.

"Homo Sovieticus" fit perfectly into the new political and social conditions. The Bolshevik regime perfectly reflected his "genotype". Such a person believed in his innocence, was aggressive and intolerant of other people's opinions.

Mikhail Bulgakov could not ignore such a phenomenon and created a whole series of portraits of "homo sovieticus". Almost at the same time, his satirical stories "Fatal Eggs", "Devil's Game" and "Heart of a Dog" were published.

So, before us is the main character of the story "Heart of a Dog" - Professor of Medicine Philip Filippovich Preobrazhensky. He practices the rejuvenation of a person, fashionable at that time. We must pay tribute to the talent of the scientist: Preobrazhensky is known for his work abroad. During the day he receives patients, and in the evening he takes up the study of medical literature. The professor is no stranger to small earthly joys: he loves to eat deliciously, to shine in a respected society in expensive clothes, to chat with his assistant Bormental on various slippery topics. In a word, we have before us a typical intellectual, to whom the Soviet authorities have not yet had time, as they say, to completely cut off the oxygen. However, such a scientist does not interfere with the Bolsheviks: after all, he is not involved in politics.

One fine day, the mongrel Sharik appears in the professor's house. His character is surprisingly consonant with the "homo sovieticus": the dog is ready for anything for a piece of sausage, he has an absurd and aggressive character. Passing by the porter, Sharik thinks: "I wish I could nip him on the proletarian calloused leg." He looks at the stuffed owl with such feelings: "And this owl is rubbish. Insolent. We will explain it."

As an experiment, Preobrazhensky transplants human seminal glands to Sharik. And now, before the eyes of the astonished scientist, the dog gradually turns into a humanoid creature.

Sharik, or already Polygraph Polygraphovich Sharikov, quickly finds his social niche in human society. Everything happens as in the Soviet state: the lower classes, having seized power, begin to crowd out everything that previously occupied this social living space.

Combining the past of a stray dog ​​and a drunken lumpen, Sharikov is "born" with one feeling - hatred for those who offended him. Here is the class hatred of the proletariat for the bourgeoisie (Sharikov reads Engels' correspondence with Kautsky), the hatred of the poor for the rich (the distribution of apartments by the house committee), the hatred of the uneducated for the educated, etc.

As a result, the entire "new world" is built on hatred of the old. After all, it doesn't take much to hate. It destroys itself, and what will happen then - we'll see. Sharikov, whose first word was the name of the store where he was scalded with boiling water, very quickly learns to drink vodka, be rude to servants, turn his ignorance into a weapon against education. He already has a "spiritual mentor" - chairman of the house committee Shvonder. Sharikov's career is truly amazing: from a stray dog ​​to a commissioner for the extermination of stray cats and dogs.

One can understand why Sharikov hates cats. But why dogs? And here one of the main features of Sharikov manifests itself: gratitude is alien to him (unlike Sharik). On the contrary, he takes revenge on those who know his past. He takes revenge on his own kind in order to prove his difference from them, to assert himself. The desire to rise at the expense of others, and not at the cost of one's own efforts, is characteristic of the representatives of the so-called "new world". Shvonder, who inspires Sharikov to exploits (for example, to conquer Preobrazhensky's apartment), simply does not yet understand that he himself will become the next victim.

Sharikov the dog evoked some sympathy. Deprivation and injustice accompanied his life. Perhaps they give Sharikov and others like him the right to take revenge? What made them so embittered and cruel? Does Preobrazhensky, who during times of famine and devastation live in five rooms and have a splendid dinner every day, think about the hungry beggars and social justice?

But the whole trouble is that the Sharkovs do not think about social justice either. They only think about themselves. Justice in their understanding is to use the benefits that others used to use. Do not divide equally, especially do not earn, but take it for yourself! There is no question of creating something for everyone.

That is why Professor Preobrazhensky exclaims: "The devastation is in the minds." Everyone ceases to do business, and is engaged only in the struggle, snatching a piece. The intellectual wonders why, during revolutions, it is necessary to walk in galoshes on carpets and steal hats from the front ones? People themselves create devastation and balls.

Bulgakov masterfully shows the psychological type of a Russian scientist who has not yet encountered all the "charms" of the Bolshevik regime. Carried away by his developments, the professor did not notice that he had gone too far and created a representative of harsh power. And this is the deep meaning of the story. The Russian intelligentsia, in search of universal happiness, embarked on an experiment, the monstrous result of which they did not expect.

The newly appeared Sharikov literally squeezes the scientist out of the world. The professor, in late remorse, complains about his mistake: "I cared about something completely different, about eugenics, about improving the human race. And then I ran into rejuvenation." Realizing his fatal mistake, Professor Preobrazhensky performs a new operation to free humanity from this nightmare. He returns Sharikov to his former state.

In our time, the question of the responsibility of each person for the results of his work is very acute. Numerous irresponsible experiments on nature led to a catastrophe in ecology. Scientific discoveries in the 20th century made it possible to create a superweapon that does not make sense to use, because then the entire planet will die. We constantly feel the results of social experiments on ourselves.

Mikhail Bulgakov's story "Heart of a Dog" describes a biosocial experiment. The purely scientific curiosity of Professor Preobrazhensky leads to the birth of an unusual creature - the monster Sharikov!

In the new society, slaves come to power, who have not changed their slavish nature in any way. Only in place of obsequiousness and obedience to the highest do they develop an equally servile cruelty towards people dependent on them. The Sharkovs received power earlier than the foundations of culture and education.

In M. Bulgakov's story, the professor himself corrects his mistake. It is much more difficult to do this in real life. The beautiful dog Sharik does not remember that she was authorized by Sharikov and exterminated stray dogs. Real, "human" balls do not forget this. Once they have received power, they will not voluntarily give it up. Therefore, social experiments, on the wave of which balls rise, are more dangerous than all other experiments.

Bulgakov's creative path is full of drama. He entered literature with rich life experience. After the university, which he graduated from in the medical field, Bulgakov worked as a zemstvo doctor in the Nikolskaya hospital of the Sychevsky district. In 1918-1919 he ended up in Kyiv and witnessed Petliura's Odyssey.

These impressions were reflected in many of his novels, up to the novel The White Guard and the play Days of the Turbins. Bulgakov did not immediately accept the revolution. After the war, Bulgakov began working in the theater and newspapers. Arriving in Moscow in the autumn of 1921, Bulgakov took up journalism. Bulgakov strove to solve the most acute problems of the time, to be more original - both in philosophical views and in satire. The result of this was sharp contradictions in his works.

One of them was "Heart of a Dog". The plot events in the work were based on a real contradiction. Professor Preobrazhensky, a world-famous physiologist, discovered the secret of the pituitary gland - an appendage of the brain. The operation that the scientist performed on the dog, transplanting the human pituitary gland into his brain, gave unexpected results.

Sharik not only acquired a human appearance, but he was inherited in the genes by inheritance all the character traits and features of the nature of Klim Chugunkin, twenty-five years old, a drunkard, a thief. Bulgakov transfers the scene of the "Heart of a Dog" to Moscow, to Prechistenka. Moscow is real, even naturalistic, conveyed through the perception of Sharik - a homeless mongrel dog, "knowing" life from the inside, in its unsightly form. Moscow during the NEP: with chic restaurants, "a canteen of normal food for employees of the Central Council of the National Economy", where cabbage soup is cooked "from stinky corned beef." Moscow, where "proletarians", "comrades" and "gentlemen" live.

The revolution only distorted the face of the ancient capital: it turned inside out its mansions, its tenement houses (like, for example, the Kalabukhovsky house, where the hero of the story lives). One of the main characters of the story, Professor Preobrazhensky, a world-famous scientist and doctor, belongs to such “compacted” and gradually forced out of life. They don’t touch him yet - fame protects. But representatives of the house management have already visited him, showing tireless concern for the fate of the proletariat: is it not too great a luxury to operate in the operating room, eat in the dining room, sleep in the bedroom; it is quite enough to connect an observation room and an office, a dining room and a bedroom. Since 1903, Preobrazhensky has been living in the Kalabukhov House.

Here are his observations: until April 1917, there was not a single case that at least one pair of galoshes would disappear from our front door downstairs with the common door unlocked. Notice there are twelve apartments here, I have a reception. On April 17, one fine day, all the galoshes disappeared, including two pairs of mine, three sticks, an overcoat and a samovar from the porter. And since then, the galoshes stand has ceased to exist.

Why, when this whole story began, did everyone start walking in dirty galoshes and felt boots up the marble stairs? Why was the carpet removed from the front stairs? Why the hell were the flowers removed from the grounds? Why is the electricity that went out twice for 20 years, now neatly goes out once a month?

"-" Ruin, "- answers the interlocutor and assistant Dr. Bormenthal. “No,” Philipp Philippovich objected quite confidently, “no. What is this ruin of yours?

An old woman with a stick? Yes, it doesn't exist at all. The devastation is not in the closets, but in the heads.

Ruin, destroy... The idea of ​​destroying the old world, of course, was born in the minds, and the minds of the thinking, enlightened, and long before the appearance of the chairman of the house committee, Shvonder, and his team. Along with this problem of the reorganization of society, the problem of what the revolution brought to human life, there appears the problem of the formation of a new Soviet person. The "wild" man Sharikov experiences the influence of the word.

He becomes the object of verbal attacks by Shvonder, who defends the interests of Sharikov "as a worker." Sharikov is not at all embarrassed by the fact that he lives and feeds himself at the expense of Preobrazhensky. It is Sharikov, who came out of the people, who “tryes on” the professor’s apartment. Sharikov's principle is simple: why work if you can take it away; if one has a lot, and the other has nothing, you need to take everything and share it. Here it is, Shvonder's processing of Sharikov's primitive consciousness!

Similar work has been done on millions of people. As you know, Lenin's slogan "Rob the loot!" was one of the most popular during the revolution. The lofty idea of ​​equality instantly degenerated into a primitive egalitarianism. The experiment of the Bolsheviks, conceived in order to create a "new", improved man, is not their business, it is the business of nature. According to Bulgakov, the new Soviet man is a symbiosis of a stray dog ​​and an alcoholic.

We see how this new type is gradually turning into the master of life, "recommending the dialectic of Marx and Engels for reading." The fantastic operation of Professor Preobrazhensky turned out to be as unsuccessful as the great communist experiment with history.

“Science does not yet know how to turn animals into people. So I tried, but only unsuccessfully, as you can see.

I talked and began to turn into a primitive state, ”Preobrazhensky admits. Bulgakov in the story "The Heart of a Dog" with great impressive force, in his favorite manner of grotesque and humor, raised the question of the power of dark instincts in human life. As a writer, Bulgakov does not have faith that these instincts can be changed. Sharikovism is a moral phenomenon, and everyone must struggle with it within themselves.

"SHARIKOVSHINA". Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov is one of the most significant writers and playwrights of the 20th century. Diverse in theme and style, his work is marked by the greatest artistic discoveries. Seeing and sharply criticizing all the shortcomings of the bourgeois system, the writer also did not recognize the idealized attitude towards the revolution and the proletariat. The topical criticism of the phenomena of social and political life of that time reaches its peak in the story "Heart of a Dog", filled with vivid grotesque and satirical images and paintings.

Having affirmed the cultural and spiritual values ​​of mankind all his life, Bulgakov could not calmly relate to how, before his eyes, these values ​​were being lost, deliberately destroyed, losing their meaning for a society subject to the “mass hypnosis” of revolutionary changes. The story "Heart of a Dog" was called by critics "a sharp pamphlet on modernity." But time has shown that the issues raised in the work are relevant not only for the era in which Bulgakov lived and worked. The phenomena described in the story and the images created by the author remain relevant today.

The writer perceived the revolution as a dangerous experiment with living life, when an accidental discovery is the basis of a thoughtless experiment leading humanity to disaster. And the main danger lies not in the changes taking place with people, but in the nature of these changes, in the way, by what methods these changes are achieved. Evolution also changes a person, but the difference lies in the fact that evolution is predictable, and the experiment is not, because it always hides unaccounted for opportunities. M. Bulgakov shows us what dramatic consequences this can lead to. Professor Preobrazhensky transplants the human pituitary gland into a mongrel named Sharik, resulting in a completely new creature - a homunculus named Sharikov.

“A new field is opening up in science: a homunculus has been created without any Faustian retort. The surgeon's scalpel brought to life a new human unit. A unique human experiment has been carried out. But how terrible this experiment will be, the heroes have yet to find out.

What happens when all these human and animal qualities are combined in a new being? “Here’s what: two convictions, alcoholism, “divide everything”, a hat and two gold coins are gone ... - a boor and a pig ...” Sharikov, whom his creator prevents from living the way he wants, seeks to destroy his “daddy” with the help of a political denunciation.

Of course, people from the breed of "simplifiers and equalizers" played an important role here, in whose person the revolutionary idea appeared in its hypertrophied appearance. Such people seek to undo the complex culture created by European humanity. Shvonder is trying to subordinate Sharikov to his ideology, but does not take into account the fact that the human race itself has degraded in Polygraph Poligrafovich, and therefore he does not need any ideology. “He does not understand that Sharikov is a more formidable danger for him than for me,” says Preobrazhensky. - Well, now he is trying in every possible way to set him on me, not realizing that if Someone, in turn, sets Sharikov on Shvonder himself, then only horns and legs will remain of him.

Bulgakov was very worried about such consequences of combining a revolutionary experiment with the psychology of a human crowd. Therefore, in his work, he seeks to warn people about the danger threatening society: the process of forming balls can get out of control and it will be disastrous for those who contributed to their appearance. At the same time, the blame falls equally on the "fools" of the Shvonderov and the "wise men" of the Preobrazhenskys. After all, the idea of ​​an experiment with a person, born in a scientist's office, has long gone out into the street, embodied in revolutionary transformations. Therefore, the writer raises the question of the responsibility of thinkers for the development of ideas launched into life.

It is no coincidence that Sharikov so easily finds his social niche in human society. There are already masses of people like him, only created not in the laboratory of a scientist, but in the laboratory of the revolution. They begin to indiscriminately suppress everything that does not fit into the framework of their ideology - from the bourgeoisie to the Russian intelligentsia. The Sharikovs gradually occupy all the highest echelons of power and begin to poison the lives of normal people. Moreover, they take upon themselves the right to dispose of this life. “Here, doctor, what happens when the researcher, instead of walking in parallel and groping with nature, forces the question and lifts the veil: here, get Sharikov and eat him with porridge.”

An opponent of all violence, Professor Preobrazhensky, as the only possible way of influencing a rational being, recognizes only affection: “You can’t do anything with terror,” he says ... “I affirm this, I have affirmed and I will affirm. They think in vain that terror will help them. No-sir, no-sir, it won't help, no matter what it is - white, red and even brown! Terror completely paralyzes the nervous system*. Yet his attempts to instill elementary cultural skills in Sharikov fail.